A Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic
Liberal Education
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Introduction
This document was first published in 1969 as a proposal for
a new Catholic college. Written during a time of manifest
educational decline and disintegration, it begins with a critique
of what Catholic education generally has become, tracing its
debility to an unreflective compromise of its own precious
intellectual heritage with the prevailing skepticism of most
secular colleges and universities.
More important than the introductory critique, however, is
the understanding of Catholic liberal education upon which
it is based and which is fully elaborated in the remainder
of the proposal. Fundamental in this understanding is the
principle that the essential purpose of a Catholic college
is to educate under the light of the Faith.
To indicate how Christian faith can be a guide in the intellectual
life as well as in the moral life, the proposal explains that
genuine intellectual freedom, to which liberal education is
ordered, lies in knowledge of the truth. Accordingly, divinely
revealed truth, the highest and most worthy object of study,
properly orders and illumines the study of other disciplines.
Moreover, the Catholic college, in forming the intelligence
of its students, is to draw from the rich patrimony of the
teaching Church, including, as its documents so clearly emphasize,
the wisdom of the perennial philosophy found in the writings
of St. Thomas Aquinas.
The ideal of liberal education as perfecting man's rationality,
once the cornerstone of higher learning, has been all but
lost in our own time. The view that liberal education begins
in wonder and aims at wisdom--that is, a knowledge of an order
which human reason does not create but can discover and understand--has
by and large been replaced by the notion that such an education
aims at a kind of cultural enrichment, so that the primary
focus of study becomes the works and inventions of man rather
than the larger order of which he is a part.
This document reaffirms that understanding of liberal education
which looks to wisdom as its end. It proposes a program of
liberal studies which integrates and orders the various theoretical
disciplines and which makes the student a judge in the diverse
branches of knowledge by developing his competency within
them, so that he grasps, through his own practice, the principles
and methods of procedure proper to each.
The program begins with the traditional liberal arts: grammar,
rhetoric, and logic (the trivium), and geometry, arithmetic,
astronomy, and music (the quadrivium). It proceeds
to the particular philosophical disciplines (e.g., the general
study of nature, ethics, politics, metaphysics), and it terminates
in theology, the perfecting discipline which is its principal
part.
The texts to be studied within the curriculum are the original
writings of the greatest minds in our intellectual tradition.
They are to be read not primarily for historical or cultural
reasons, but because they are the best attempts to understand
things in themselves while attending to our common experience.
These writings, sometimes called the "Great Books,"
are to be analyzed and discussed in small tutorials and seminars
so that the student, by actively participating in his education,
begins on the path to wisdom and comes to make the intellectual
virtues his own.
In 1971, Thomas Aquinas College was founded to fulfill the
proposal expounded on these pages. From the very beginning
the College has been characterized by an uncompromising faithfulness
to the principles set forth in this document. Over the years
the College has attracted students and faculty of exemplary
character and noble aspirations. They have undertaken its
demanding academic program in a zealous spirit, and Providence
has blessed the College with remarkable success.
As the College continues in its work, we pray that God will
continue to bless its efforts as He has so generously in the
past.
Thomas Aquinas College
Thomas E. Dillon
December, 1981
Dean of the College
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