College to Mark 50th Anniversary with Year-Long Celebration

Fifty years ago, a Catholic liberal arts college with just 33 students was set to open its doors on a rented campus in Southern California. This new institution would be animated by a spirit of faith seeking understanding, dedicated to timeless truths and a time-tested pedagogy. Great Books and Socratic discussions, rather than textbooks and lecturing, would guide students in pursuit of truth under the light of the Catholic intellectual tradition.

This vision, both ancient in its practice and revolutionary in its time, defied all conventional wisdom about what constituted education and what was required for a school to thrive.

“In the early 1970s the all-but-universally held opinion in academia was that liberal education was dead, that intellectual inquiry was incompatible with Catholic fidelity, and that truth was unknowable and not worth pursuing,” recalls Dr. Michael F. McLean, president of Thomas Aquinas College. “Our founders left good, tenured positions elsewhere to do something that most of their peers would have thought fanciful, if not preposterous, and certainly destined for failure.”

Yet this fall, that same college — now operating with beautiful campuses on both coasts, with a growing student body of some 500 students, and with a hard-earned reputation for academic excellence — will commence its 50th academic year. Having survived early brushes with insolvency, having overcome challenges from regulators and bureaucracies, and having withstood natural disaster, Thomas Aquinas College has emerged stronger and more vibrant than ever, inspiring the numerous other faithfully Catholic schools that have sprung up in its wake.

“We know that God has been at work in the life of the College because the extraordinary successes of these 50 years could never have been achieved through merely human effort,” says Dr. McLean. “This glorious gift of Divine Providence must be celebrated properly — which is to say, extensively.”

A Year of Celebrations

To mark the 50th Anniversary of Thomas Aquinas College, no less than a full year of celebrations — held on both campuses and at various points in between — will do.

The festivities will begin, fittingly, with a Mass of Thanksgiving, offered in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel, followed by a luncheon on the California campus. Set for September 26, the College’s two West Coast ordinaries — the Most Rev. José H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, and the Most Rev. Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop for the Santa Barbara pastoral region — will serve as presiding prelates.

Less than a month later, the College will host its 50^th Anniversary Gala at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills on October 16. Highlighting this night of fine dining and dancing will be an address from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who has graciously agreed to serve as the keynote speaker. From there, more celebrations will follow throughout the country, with events in the works for Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York. Finally, the year of celebration will conclude in the fall of 2022 on the College’s new campus in Northfield, Massachusetts, with a Mass of Thanksgiving and formal reception.

“We are trying to hold many events, in a wide range of locations, so that we can include as many friends as possible,” says Dr. McLean. “We have so many people to thank, from our founders and faculty, to our governors and benefactors, to the parents who have entrusted their children to us, to the alumni who have demonstrated through their lives the goodness and durability of this education. Most of all, though, we are grateful to God, Who has deigned to make Thomas Aquinas College possible, and to let us all play our small roles in its great story.”

To sign up for updates about 50th Anniversary events as they become available, please see thomasaquinas.edu/50.