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In establishing Thomas Aquinas College, we wanted it to be Catholic, seriously intellectual, and providing as a result a curriculum which would be manageable for young and interested American Catholics. What, then, is Catholic higher education? Catholic education is characterized as faith seeking understanding. It means that both the teacher and the learner believe the fullness of the Christian message, and that it lives in them to the extent that it becomes supremely important to understand it more completely—to see, as much as is possible, what is first believed. This conception is an echo of St. Augustine, St. Anselm, the whole monastic tradition, St. John Damascene, St. Albert The Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, and innumerable popes in their magisterial teaching. It is the traditional understanding of Catholic education, the education which played such a crucial role in the flowering of Catholic Europe. St. Augustine, who perhaps more than anyone else determined the character of Western Civilization, gives fervent witness to faith as the basis of understanding. He says, in one of his sermons, that “If you cannot understand, believe so you can understand.” St. Anselm follows the same path. He says in the Proslogium, “I do not understand so that I may believe; rather, I believe so that I may understand.” St. John Damascene, in his treatise On The Orthodox Faith, says that “The Godhead is ineffable and incomprehensible….Nevertheless, God has not gone so far as to leave us in complete ignorance, for through the world the knowledge and existence of God has been revealed by Him to all men.” These great thinkers we have made our guides, and from them we learn not only the importance of faith, but of understanding as well. That understanding is only possible because we have intellect, our very slight spark of divinity, which is nevertheless a precious gift. Here is Pascal’s remarkable affirmation of intelligence: “The grandeur of man lies in thinking. Man is nothing but a reed, the most feeble in nature; but he is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the whole universe arouse to crush him; a vapor, a drop of water suffice to kill him. But when the universe shall crush him, man will still be more noble than that which kills him, because he knows that he dies, and knows as well the advantage the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing. All our dignity lies in our ability to think. It is there that we must take our bearings, and not from space and time, which we would not be able to fill up. Work then to think well; there is the principle of morals.” All genuinely liberal education springs from this conviction, that the cultivation and development of the intellect is a noble endeavor, and that it is essential for the well-being of the Church and society. It is sound Catholic doctrine that God has revealed Himself not only in the inspired Scriptures, but in the world He has created. To study this world is itself to study the word of God, and no complete education can neglect it. All the education known to the pagans is, therefore, a significant part of our own concerns. There is no incompatibility between faith and reason. They make one whole, though of unequal parts. The curriculum at the College is fashioned in order to help our students acquire the liberal arts, those arts which perfect the mind in its activity of thinking, and further help them acquire some knowledge in mathematics, the modern mathematical sciences, and more especially in philosophy and in theology...and all for the sake of understanding better the contents of the Faith with which we begin. This is the sole aim of the College, and all the parts of the curriculum are meant to play some role in achieving this end. We count ourselves successful in the measure that our graduates have begun a serious study of reality, and are equipped to pursue further the learning into which they have been initiated. We do this by using the texts themselves of the great thinkers. But the school is not a “Great Books school,” in the way that is often understood. We do read original texts, and we take those original texts seriously. But the school was not founded to read important texts by important thinkers in order to see what people say. It was founded in order to help our students understand reality as best they can. To do this we use and are guided by the doctrine and method of St. Thomas Aquinas. There are two theologians who stand above all others as masters: St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. Leo XIII, in Aeterni Patris, after lauding many great Christian thinkers has this to say about St. Augustine: “Augustine would seem to have wrested the palm from all….What height of philosophy did he not reach? What region of it did he not diligently explore...in expounding the loftiest mysteries of faith….” Then Pope Leo, after having lauded the scholastics doctors for their further contributions in philosophy and theology, has this to say about St. Thomas Aquinas: “Among the scholastic doctors, the chief and master of all stands St. Thomas Aquinas, who, as Cajetan observes, because ‘he most venerated the ancient doctors of the Church, seems to have inherited the intellect of all.’ The doctrines of those illustrious men, like the scattered members of a body, Thomas collected together and cemented, distributed in wonderful order, and so increased with important additions that he is rightly esteemed the bulwark and glory of the Catholic faith.” Pope Leo’s encomium of St. Thomas is but one of very many. The consensus of papal teaching is clear: St. Thomas is the greatest theologian, and his doctrine the greatest achievement of the Catholic mind. Our understanding of him, then, is the single most important reason for the founding of Thomas Aquinas College; take away the habituation to St. Thomas and you would have nothing but a name.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2006 |
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