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Choosing The Right College - The Whole Truth About America's
Top 100 Schools
Intercollegiate Studies Institute (1998)
Introduction by William J. Bennett
"[Thomas Aquinas College is] virtually
unparalleled for providing its students with a rigorous
liberal arts education." -- Intercollegiate Studies
Institute
I. Life, and More Abundantly
The 250 students at Thomas Aquinas College
don’t learn the latest things; instead, they learn
the oldest things, and find them to be thoroughly relevant
to the concerns of the present. With its "Great Books"
program, the Thomas Aquinas curriculum is virtually unparalleled
for providing its students with a rigorous liberal arts
education. And because the school has a deeply religious
character, students quickly discover that faith and knowledge
are inextricably related. "Sacred Scripture and the
magisterium of the Church are understood to be the most
important sources of enlightenment," the college
states.
The guiding principles of Thomas Aquinas
are enumerated in its "founding document," a
monograph entitled "A Proposal for the Fulfillment
of Catholic Liberal Education." Published two years
before the college opened its doors in 1971, the document
was drafted by the college’s first president, Ronald
P. McArthur, and Marcus Berquist, still a tutor at the
school. It outlines a powerful vision of Catholic liberal
education that has been realized almost without alteration
at Thomas Aquinas for over twenty-five years. According
to the document, a Catholic college, "if it is to
be faithful to the teaching of Christ, will differ from
its secular counterpart in two essential respects. First,
it will not define itself by academic freedom, but by
the divinely revealed truth, and second, that truth will
be the chief object of study as well as the governing
principle of the whole institution, giving order and purpose
even to the teaching and learning of the secular disciplines."
But the true intellectual and spiritual
force behind the college is its patron saint. Considered
a Doctor communis (universal teacher) by the Catholic
Church, St. Thomas Aquinas has served as the bulwark for
Catholic philosophical and theological thought for over
seven centuries. Nearly all of the college faculty consider
themselves Thomists, and the college relies on its patron
saint for "help and inspiration" in fulfilling
its liberal arts mission. Thomas is not a quaint mascot,
but an inspiring guide and teacher. Very few -- if any
-- colleges in the country are founded on such an inspired
vision, and even fewer remain so faithful to their founding
visions. Of course, a small and demanding school like
this is not for everyone, but highly motivated young Catholics
should give it serious consideration. This college has
received a great deal of well-deserved praise.
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[Contents]
Reprinted by permission of Intercollegiate
Studies Institute.
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