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Each July, Thomas Aquinas College invites members of the President’s Council — the backbone of the College’s financial-aid fund — to one of two Great Books Summer Seminar Weekends. At these weekends participants get an inside look at the unique education that they so generously help to make possible. They attend a series of classroom discussions led by the College’s president, dean, and other members of the teaching faculty; and they participate in the spiritual life of the College at Mass and confession in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel.

This second of this year’s Summer Seminars took place on the weekend of July 17-19. Readings and discussions focused on the theme of “Choice and Moral Responsibility.” In addition to examining Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, participants discussed Aristotle’s treatment of human choice and voluntary action in the Nicomachean Ethics and St. Thomas’s commentary on grace and human action in the Summa Contra Gentiles. At the end of the weekend, College President Michael F. McLean helped to tie these themes together in a talk he delivered to the group.

Between seminars, attendees enjoyed delicious meals and delightful conversations. Due to some rare albeit much needed rain, Saturday’s dinner took place inside the campus coffee shop. At the dinner, student musicians led by Giorgio Navarini (’17) performed several operatic solos and duets as well as a piece that Mr. Navarini composed specifically for the College’s benefactors, an original setting for the Ave Maria