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JESUIT GIANT
College to Bid Farewell to Retiring Chaplain Rev. Cornelius M. Buckley, S.J.
This fall, shortly after students have returned for the new academic year, Thomas Aquinas College, California, will bid farewell to its beloved chaplain of these least 17 years, Rev. Cornelius M. Buckley, S.J.
“I like to compare Thomas Aquinas College to the maraschino cherry on top of the whipped cream that covers the spiritual sundae that I’ve been enjoying for years,” says the ever-smiling priest known for his generous spirit, his deep faith, and his razor-sharp wit. “The nicest part of my life as a priest has been right here. But all these good things come to an end, and I’m ready to take the next step.”
Fr. Buckley will depart the campus he has called home since 2004 just months shy of his 96th birthday on November 2 — “All Souls Day, the Day of the Dead!” he quips — and less than a year before the 60th anniversary of his ordination as a priest, July 31, 2022. He is headed for the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center, some 350 miles north of the College in Los Gatos, California.
“I call it the Jesuit Finishing School, or burial above ground,” he laughs. “But I’m under obedience, and my provincial tells me that this is what I should do, so that’s God’s will, and that’s where I go. I’m sure that this place where I’m going will have a lot of great opportunities to do spiritual work. I can pray for the TAC community there a lot more than I do here; so the Lord gives me a schedule.”
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Rev. Cornelius M. Buckley, S.J.
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“SMALL SCHOOL WITH A BIG CATHOLIC IDENTITY”
National Catholic Register Interviews Incoming President Paul J. O’Reilly
The National Catholic Register recently published an interview with Dr. Paul J. O’Reilly, the president-elect of Thomas Aquinas College, about his experience as a student and member of the teaching faculty, as well as his vision for the future of the College. Calling TAC “the small school with a big Catholic identity and Great Books curriculum,” reporter Virginia Aabram noted that Dr. O’Reilly “will take over as president in July 2022 and is the first alumnus to hold the office in the school’s 50-year history.”
The interview begins with Dr. O’Reilly’s personal background — growing up in Belfast during the Troubles, emigrating to Canada as a teen, and losing his mother shortly thereafter. “That’s when I discovered Thomas Aquinas College,” he recalls. “I fell in love with the place. I attended that college for four years and met my wife there.” The interview goes on to recount how he earned his doctorate at Université Laval, then eventually made his way back to his alma mater, this time as a member of the teaching faculty.
Dr. O’Reilly’s “principal goal” as president, he says, “will be to preserve the mission of the College,” while also maintaining its robust financial aid program, tending to the needs of the California campus, and overseeing the continued expansion of Thomas Aquinas College, New England. “I have to govern the college in such a way that we preserve what we have,” he adds, “because it works.”
► Full interview
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Dr. Paul J. O’Reilly
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FAITH IN ACTION
Highlights from the College’s Alumni Blog
• The Hillsdale Daily News reports that Hillsdale College has awarded its Judith Finn Memorial Award to an alumna of Thomas Aquinas College, Jeannette Richard (’17). The award is presented annually to a master’s graduate on the basis of academic excellence, as measured by thesis, comprehensive exam, or overall graduate-program performance. Miss Richard is now working toward earning her Ph.D. Her principal areas of research interests include ancient and modern political philosophy as well as the founding principles of U.S. government. “Jeannette’s passion for finding what makes a political society just and how to institute that in America today prime her for success,” says Dean Ronald J. Pestritto.
• “What could be more inspiring than a man whose whole mission in life was to be a second Christ in the world and bring others to total conversion?” asks Margaret (Steichen ’84) O’Reilly, author of Sinner, Servant, Saint: A Novel Based on the Life of St. Francis of Assisi. “St. Francis was a man so dedicated to that ideal that his every action, every thought, and every eloquent word spoke of it with irresistible authenticity.” Sinner, Servant, Saint is, like Mrs. O’Reilly’s 2018 book, Humble Servant of Truth: A Novel Based on the Life of Thomas Aquinas, part of the Mentoris Project, founded by Thomas Aquinas College Governor Robert Barbera.
• “For more than 30 years, I have struggled over my role within the framework of litigation,” writes alumnus attorney David A. Shaneyfelt (’81) in “Confessions of a Catholic Litigator,” recently published in the University of St. Thomas Law Journal. “I want to be a good Catholic. I want to be a good lawyer. Can I be both?” In a long, thoughtful article that raises as many questions as it answers, Mr. Shaneyfelt considers the ethical tensions afflicting Catholic attorneys. Recognized as a Southern California Super Lawyer, Mr. Shaneyfelt is a former trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice who now practices with The Alvarez Firm in Calabasas, California.
► Faith in Action blog
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Jeannette Richard (’17)
Margaret (Steichen ’84) O’Reilly
David A. Shaneyfelt (’81) |
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DOES FAITH MATTER?
Incoming President Considers Reason, Skepticism for Massachusetts Newspaper
By Paul J. O’Reilly
Greenfield Recorder
At Thomas Aquinas College, we begin each class with a question to get students talking about the text and topic at hand. In that spirit, I would like to open this reflection with a question about the name that the Recorder has given this series of articles about spirituality and religion, “Faith Matters.”
Does it?
There are plenty who will tell you that, no, faith doesn’t matter at all. Some will argue that it’s a mostly harmless pastime, like collecting stamps — fine, if that’s what interests you, but otherwise unimportant. Others will take a harder line, insisting that faith is a pernicious assault on reason, relevant only because its damaging effects must be contained and mitigated.
Throughout much of higher education, faith is widely considered tangential, at best, to the work of a college or university. At most schools, if religion is part of campus life, it’s limited to the chaplaincy and a single, isolated department.
Yet even for those who reject it, faith matters.
► Full article
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SUMMER SEMINAR 2021
College Thanks President’s Council Members at Annual Gathering
Last month Thomas Aquinas College resumed its annual tradition of Summer Seminars, inviting members of the President’s Council to its California campus for three days of scholarship, friendship, and fellowship.
At these weekends, participants — the benefactors who make up the backbone of the College’s financial-aid fund — 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, vice president, and dean; and they participate in the spiritual life of the College at Mass and confession in Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel.
Readings and discussions at this year’s Summer Seminar focused on the timely theme of “Catholic Teachings on Socialism and Capitalism.” In addition to excerpts from Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom, participants read from Albert Einstein’s essay “Why Socialism” and Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, as well as Centesimus Annus, Pope St. John Paul II’s “re-reading” of Rerum Novarum 100 years later.
“A capitalist or market economy informed by the social teachings of the Catholic Church,” said President McLean, summing up the group’s findings, “would go a long way toward answering the objections raised by Einstein; help those in the Friedman school see that freedom is not an end in itself, but must be ordered by an orientation to the common good and transcendent truth; and finally be a salutary message in a world plagued by disharmony and division.”
► Full story
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Summer Seminar attendees
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