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Alumni Profile: Ben and Andrea Loop

Team Work: Ben ('96) and Andrea ('96) Loop

(Winter 2006 Newsletter)

During the first few years of marriage, Andrea and her daughters Gwendolyn and Claudine became frequent flyers, often hopping on planes to be with Ben whose professional duties include extensive travel. The addition of sons Aidan and Henry has kept Andrea grounded in recent years, but thanks to cell phones, the Loops stay in close touch when Ben is on the road.

According to no less an authority on the sanctity of marriage than the late Pope John Paul II, “Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and binds them....They make up a sole family—a domestic church.” (Familiaris Consortio, 1981)

Meet Ben and Andrea Loop, two high school sweethearts, two graduates of Thomas Aquinas College, and one family unit joined together in the sacramental bonds of marriage in very much the fashion that John Paul II described.

Like a number of Thomas Aquinas College alumni who are profiled in this newsletter, Ben and Andrea were not cradle Catholics. They began their journey to Rome looking for answers to difficult questions of life, and arrived, through the grace of God and their Thomas Aquinas College education, at the Truth.

The Journey Begins

Unlike most of the College’s married alumni, Ben and Andrea traveled most of their road together, starting out as high school sweethearts in the small town of Calswell, Idaho. They identified themselves as Christians, with Andrea having an especially strong belief in God, but neither embraced any particular, organized faith. Affected some by the prevailing skepticism of modern culture, they were uncertain about many things. But of one thing they seemed fairly sure: there was nothing the Roman Catholic Church had to offer them.

It was in their last year of public high school back in Idaho that Ben and Andrea’s journey began. One of their teachers, Mr. Stephen Hauge, introduced a Great Books political philosophy class for seniors in which the two enrolled. Andrea took an immediate liking to it. “We read Artistotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Plato’s Republic and through those works, we began to see that our minds were indeed able to grasp reality and that there were truths which could be known.” Ben completes the picture saying, “Exchanging loving glances over Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics...what could have been more romantic than that?”

Moving Closer to Rome

After graduating from high school, Ben and Andrea attended a small, Catholic college on the East Coast because it seemed to offer more of what they had found with Mr. Hauge; but they soon found the experience lacking. About the same time, however, Ben’s younger sister, Rebecca (’96), learned about Thomas Aquinas College and visited the campus. She called her brother and, with great excitement, told him that the curriculum he and Andrea had been seeking actually existed at Thomas Aquinas College. All three applied for admission, and the following year, Rebecca, Ben, and Andrea were enrolled in the freshman class at the College.

Ben was enthusiastic about learning at the feet of true masters like Euclid, Aristotle, and Plato. For Andrea, however, struggling with questions about what to believe about God, the seriously Catholic nature of Thomas Aquinas College was troubling. She feared that people with a strong faith would have an equally strong desire to share it, and she didn’t want to engage in “battles,” having to fend off challenges to her own beliefs. But it wasn’t long before Andrea’s misgivings were dispelled. “I was in awe of the people I met at the College. I had been in churches all of my life, but had never experienced the zeal for holiness that I found there.”

Though it was the College’s curriculum that most attracted Ben, he, like Andrea, couldn’t help but be influenced by the good example of faculty and students alike. “Through our classes in theology, our dorm room conversations, and the personal example of our tutors and classmates, both Andrea and I began to wonder whether objections we had to Catholicism were reasonable anymore.” Though they were pleased for Ben’s sister, Rebecca, when she entered the Catholic Church during their junior year at the College, Ben and Andrea had a longer road ahead of them.

They graduated from the College on June 14, 1996, and were married just two weeks later. With Ben having been heavily recruited during his senior year by the Cerner Corporation, a healthcare software company based in the Midwest, the newlyweds moved to Kansas City, Kansas, and settled down.

Conversion

Ben and Andrea loved living in Kansas City, and Ben excelled at his new job. But something was missing. They began to search for a church they could call their own, and seriously considered a certain Presbyterian congregation. At the same time, Ben’s sister Rebecca, unaware that they were on the verge of becoming Presbyterians, was inspired to make a novena with a few fellow graduates of the College to St. Francis de Sales for their conversion. It is surely no coincidence that St. Francis de Sales served in Geneva, Switzerland, as a missionary to the Calvinists—the founders of the Presbyterian Church.

Through the graces of that novena and the intellectual and spiritual foundation the Loops had received at Thomas Aquinas College, Ben and Andrea, after probing the merits of the Presbyterian Church, came to the conclusion that the Catholic Church was the only one that met all the criteria necessary for their belief. According to Ben, “I had always more or less assumed that Catholics had to prove to me that theirs was the infallible Church, founded by Christ. But I finally realized it was the other way around: It was I who bore the burden of proof to justify my dissent. The Catholic Church was the only church with a history one could trace directly back to Christ.”

Professional Success

Following their conversions, Ben’s professional career continued to prosper and grow. Sponsored by Cerner, Ben obtained an MBA from the University of Chicago’s European Executive MBA program in Barcelona, Spain, and it wasn’t long before he had built a multi-million dollar product and service portfolio at Cerner.

In November of 2005, Ben became the Practice Director for Siemens Medical Solutions company, an extensive and far-reaching services, imaging, and software company based in Erlangen, Germany. “It is gratifying to see my work translate into better patient care, more satisfied clinicians, and improved operating margins for the uninsured.”

Though he works in the high-tech world of computer software, Ben is quick to explain that it has been his exposure to the “ancients” that best prepared him to succeed in the world of business. “There’s no question that my Thomas Aquinas College education has made me a better thinker and a better problem solver.”

Forming a Domestic Church

The Loops credit Thomas Aquinas College not only for Ben’s professional success, but for being instrumental in their conversion to Catholicism. Now the proud parents of Gwendolyn (6), Claudine (4), Aidan (2), and Henry (six months), they are forging the kind of “domestic church” of which the late Pope John Paul II spoke. When in need of a model for their family life, they recall their days at Thomas Aquinas College, their conversations there, and the care with which so many of the faculty and alumni were raising their children.

Because Ben travels frequently for business, Andrea shoulders the lion’s share of domestic responsibility. And as Ben often remarks, raising strong, Catholic children is more important than developing software to make the health care industry run more efficiently. For her part, Andrea believes that without the foundation she received at Thomas Aquinas College she would not be as well-equipped to meet her domestic challenges. “With the Socratic method, people are allowed to discover the truth through conversations instead of being told. That’s how we’ve approached the education of our own children.” In teaching them, Andrea relies in part on the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a program that offers a Montessori-based approach to the religious formation of children.

Reflections

The Loops have come a long way from that little town of Calswell, Idaho. Andrea sums up their journey saying, “We laugh about the fact that in this little town in Idaho, we fell in love with philosophy and fell in love with each other at the same time. Now, just look at all the circumstances that brought us to the Church. It was really marvelous—something that we couldn’t have planned for ourselves and, in fact, neither one of us had intended.”

St. Irenaeus, one of the great Fathers of the early Church, is quoted in the opening pages of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “...The Church, though scattered throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, having received the faith from the apostles and their disciples. . . guards [this preaching and faith] with care, as dwelling in but a single house...” Fifteen years ago, Ben, his wife, Andrea, and his sister, Rebecca, walked through the doors of Thomas Aquinas College and, through the grace of God, came ultimately to that single house we call the Church.

But the story does not end there: In God’s great mercy, Ben’s parents have come into the Church as well. Speaking for all the Loops, they say, “Thomas Aquinas College has been a wonderful influence on us all, and an instrument in changing our lives. We are truly grateful.”

-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2006