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From the Desk of the President

President Thomas E. Dillon

(Summer 2003 Newsletter)

[Index of Past Articles by President Dillon]

Each year, following the last of senior exams, the College president hosts a reception and formal dinner, attended by faculty members and their spouses, to honor the graduating seniors. The event is traditionally marked by merriment and toasting, as well as serious reflection. Following are President Thomas E. Dillon's remarks to the Class of 2003 at the President's Dinner on May 14, 2003.

It is a privilege for me tonight formally to congratulate you, the Class of 2003, for having successfully completed our academic program. As you well know, mastering the arts and sciences which comprise our curriculum is not easy, and you are to be commended for your accomplishment.

You have spent the past four years at the feet of the greatest thinkers the world has seen, struggling to penetrate their thought and to better understand nature, man, and God. This week marks both an end and a beginning. You have now completed your course of formal studies in our halls, and you have equipped yourselves with the tools of learning which will help you commence a lifelong pursuit of wisdom.

You should remember to be grateful to your parents, your tutors, the College's benefactors, and God Himself for making it possible for you to spend four years apart from the world to develop your minds and pursue the truth.

In thinking of what I might say to you tonight, I read your class quote from St. Jerome and thought it was good to reflect upon, especially as you leave the friendly confines of our idyllic campus and take your places in the world at large. Let me explain why.

If I ask myself what is the character of the world to which you are returning, I don't know what to say for sure, but I am not altogether encouraged.

First, one disturbing fact is that Christian Europe seems to be dying out. Not only are Christian principles no longer infusing the cultures of Western Europe, such countries - for example, Italy, France, and Spain - have native populations that are not reproducing themselves, and they are ready to acquiesce to a Muslim ascendancy just by way of their declining birthrates, if not their wholesale abandonment of the Christian ideals that have formed them for centuries. This is important to us because, as you know, the Catholic Church was nurtured in Europe, where it grew strong, but now its influence there is waning and the number of the faithful is dwindling.

Here also in the United States, it seems to me that things have changed dramatically in the last 50 years, during which time our Catholic leadership has been too often weak and vacillating. When I was young, the United States was, by and large, a Christian country. Now that same Christianity is under assault everywhere - in the universities, in the media, in the courts, and in the public square. Most of all, it seems to me, Christianity is under assault in the popular culture, and it is fast losing its struggle to uplift and ennoble the minds and hearts of our fellow citizens - the devil is having his day.

So, given this rather bleak picture, how is your class quote from St. Jerome relevant? Let's consider what he says in the passage you have taken from his third tract against the Pelagians:

Are not these words of St. Jerome first an invitation to prayer, second, an exhortation to do whatever good we can, and third, an affirmation of faith in God's provident care of us?

In the lines written by St. Jerome just before the ones you have quoted, he says that the preservation of the righteousness we receive from baptism is dependent on toil, industry, earnestness, and especially God's mercy. In my opinion, in order for you to follow St. Jerome's injunction - that is, to prayerfully offer what you can and trust in God's providence to complete your efforts - you will also need, in the years ahead, the grace of courage and perseverance.

For, as you settle into a world that is increasingly hostile to Christ and His teachings, you will be surrounded by allurements of the popular culture that are at once seductive and numbing, and it will be easy to imperceptibly slip away into a comfortable complacency. This is a difficulty for all Christians: if we are not vigilant, we shall find ourselves ready to accept what should be rejected, to allow what should be scorned, and to accommodate what should be rebuffed.

Now, if we think about it, there are many problems that confront us as modern Americans. For example, there is a certain irony that as our society continues to become more technologically advanced, it also is becoming less open to reason and rational discourse, and more driven by imagination and appetite.

Articulate speech and the manifold distinctions it makes possible - all of which can be put to the service of reason and truth - is giving way in our communications to what is more primitive and ambiguous - namely, the image. And we find all around us a steady stream of images which, in the service of a ravenous materialism and a rampant sensuality, often offer a distorted projection of the good life.

We need a return to the soberness of intellect; we need a return to reason and to wisdom. The Holy Father himself says as much in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, in which he takes pains to delineate the proper place of reason alongside faith.

Now the gifts you have been given at Thomas Aquinas College are primarily intellectual, and the world is in desperate need of genuine intellectual leadership. You represent hope to so many, for you have the ability - intellectually - to uphold the truth, to confront sophistry, and to move beyond mere images to fruitful discursive thought. This is especially so because your reason has been formed and elevated by the faith, and you can have confidence that if you devote yourselves to following Christ the teacher, you will be following the Author of all truth.

Now, to follow Christ, of course, is necessarily to proceed with humility and charity, but also with hope and joy, for we can be certain we are going in the right direction. Consider the simple but edifying words of our Lord, right in today's Gospel: "As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my Love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in His love. I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete."

Ponder this. Christ, in His great love for us, wants to share His joy with us, and He asks only that we keep His commandments, telling us further that whatever we ask the Father in His name he will give to us. So despite the troubles besetting the world, St. Jerome has our part right. It is our part to seek, His to grant what we ask, His to bring to completion, ours to offer what we can, and His to finish what we cannot.

I pray that God will bless you all, that He will keep you in grace, and that He will guide you on your way as you strive to uphold the truth and to live out the Gospels. May He be with you always.

-- Qtrly Newsletter, Summer 2003