A Man Born to Lead: Remembering Dr. Ronald P. McArthur, 1924 – 2013

 

By Anne S. Forsyth (’81)

 

His unrivaled charm, as that of every really eloquent man, lies in his singleness of purpose, his fixed grasp of his aim, his noble earnestness.

 

Thus does Cardinal Newman speak of St. John Chrysostom, the “Golden-mouthed” Father of the Church. But his words are also an apt description of Thomas Aquinas College’s founding president, the 10th anniversary of whose death the College marks today. A towering figure of a man, Dr. Ronald P. McArthur did indeed possess the kind of charm of which St. John Cardinal Newman spoke.

“By the sheer force of his intellect and personality, and an unrivaled ability to articulate the nature and mission of Thomas Aquinas College, he gathered together a small band of tutors, students, governors, and benefactors to do the impossible.”

Larger than life, with a booming voice and a tremendous sense of humor, Ron McArthur was completely engaging. He was a man born to lead — and lead he did. By the sheer force of his intellect and personality, and an unrivaled ability to articulate the nature and mission of Thomas Aquinas College, he gathered together a small band of tutors, students, governors, and benefactors to do the impossible. In the words accompanying the Salvatori Award, which he received from the Heritage Foundation in 1991, he accomplished “the herculean task of founding a new private college in 1971, dedicated to the highest standards of teaching and leadership.”

Yet he would be the first to say that there were others who were indispensable to the effort: Mark Berquist, with the scope of his mind and his wisdom in ordering the College’s curriculum; Jack Neumayr, with his knowledge and love of St. Thomas and the conviction that a fruitful study of his works required a good grasp of Aristotle’s philosophic works; and Peter DeLuca, the only founder with practical business experience. With their help, Dr. McArthur brought Thomas Aquinas College to life and then sustained the young community for 20 years, guiding it with prudence and an unfailing conviction in the excellence of our academic program and the goodness of the moral and spiritual life it cultivated in our students.

Rallying the Troops

Those early years were not easy, as the College faced nearly overwhelming financial challenges. During an especially fraught 1983 meeting of the Board of Governors, Dr. McArthur departed from his prepared report to rally the troops as only he could, putting into high relief the nobility and urgency of their purpose:

I think it is important, given our problems and difficulties, that I spend my time not so much in reporting on the College as in reflecting upon the reasons which brought us together and upon the importance of the education we undertake with our students. …

Our attempt to educate is a quite successful undertaking which has had, as its effect, to show our students that reason can understand some very important aspects of reality, and that it can guide from high ground the moral life. It has been successful because we study the greatest minds, because we help our students work from within a great tradition of learning, and because we help them use their own minds to consider the questions. …

There is not, in the United States, any other school which does what we do. We are devoted to the intellectual life, to understanding God, and to Catholic teaching as our guide and our end. Our view of education is unique, its implementation somewhat different; its results, however, are reassuring, for we see every day the intellectual and moral growth of our students who, though the path is difficult, yet desire to keep their lives focused on Wisdom, the wisdom of Christ.

We have borne fruit, significant fruit, in our graduates, and from them will come some of the leaders, some of the saints, some of the intelligent citizens, upon which our country and the world will, in its increasing disorientation, depend for the sanity to hold it together.

Our task, then, is to make sure that we keep Thomas Aquinas College in existence — for, if we do not, there will be no collegiate education in this land which is Catholic, intellectual, and able to develop the minds of our young.

In a similar way, Dr. McArthur often rallied the students at the College, particularly during the gloomy days of winter, when the rigors of the academic program weighed heavy on us. He never failed to revive us and set us out afresh on our academic path.

Humility: The Mark of Greatness

Dr. McArthur loved the truth more than his own opinions; he submitted himself to it and followed it wherever it led him. His students saw this daily in the classroom. Instead of lecturing, he humbly listened to us give our thoughts on the work at hand, guiding the discussions when needed, confident that we would be better for having come to the truth by the workings of our own minds. (Though, truth be told, he would often, in the end, summarize our attempts to get at the truth, elaborating and improving upon them!)

In a talk to a gathering of alumni after stepping down as president, he revealed the depth of his humility as he recounted what he had learned from the school’s earliest students:

When we started the College, I wanted, along with the other founders, a time set apart for Mass and priests on the faculty. But I was determined that we would be a college. There were some who thought we should, in some way, be like a monastery if we were to fulfill our purpose. Not I! We were to be seekers of the truth, philosophers and theologians, and of course subject to the Magisterium. But we were to be somewhat detached from the ordinary life of the Church and from any undue concern for liturgical worship.

I was badly mistaken, and I began to know it as soon as we opened in 1971. The first students wanted something wholly Catholic: a Catholic community, and not a Catholic version of American education. They began immediately the nightly Rosary; they began to adorn the chapels with the spiritual works of the saints; they formed a choir to sing at Mass in the great Catholic tradition. In other words, they spontaneously tended to form a community akin in some ways to the monastery — and not just a college. They were thirsting for the wholeness of life, and I was intending to give them bread alone.

I was taken aback, having never seen a group of students like this, and I knew I could never direct such aspirations, always recognizing from afar how good and true they were.

What I see now is that Thomas Aquinas College will continue to succeed — given the curriculum, good tutors, good students, and a dedicated administration — in the measure in which the liturgy and the sacramental life are alive on campus, in the measure in which the Holy Sacrifice is the center of the day, and where it not only sanctifies but teaches daily the splendor of the New Law, Who is Christ Himself in His passion, death, and resurrection, and in His sacramental presence on the altar. Liturgical worship is not an adjunct to the life of learning; it is rather the other way around: We study and learn so that we might be more fully members of the Church and live Her life more deeply.

This is, of course, the teaching of St. Paul, and I had read it many times without much profit. Only now do I see how much better than I were those early students, and how much we all owe them.

A Personal Note

Ron’s wife Marilyn was the love of his life, and like him, she gave her life to the College. In His wisdom, God did not grant them biological children, but their spiritual progeny number in the thousands. Moreover, their companion of 40 years, Cathy Walsh (’80) loved and cared for them like a daughter, especially in their last days on earth.

Looking to the Future

Some years before his death, Ron was asked what he thought about the state of the College and how it had developed over the years. In response, he said:

The school remains essentially the same and is in many ways better now than ever before. We should then love and support the common effort. While individuals are important, and play their role for a time, they pass on, as they must. But hopefully the idea remains, and we must hope that there will always be others who will give their lives to the effort. Yes, I believe the College can look forward in this vale of tears to a hopeful future, with an important role to play in the Church and in the history of salvation.

Speaking on behalf of the alumni and friends of the College, with all our hearts, we thank you, Dr. McArthur, for having given your life to found, establish, and guide Thomas Aquinas College.

Requiescat in pace.