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COMMENCEMENT 2016
Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone to
Serve as Speaker
On Saturday, May 14, the Most Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, will serve as Commencement Speaker at Thomas Aquinas College’s annual graduation exercises. During the event, His Excellency, who heads the United States Conference of Catholic Bishop’s subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, will receive the College’s highest award, the Saint Thomas Aquinas Medallion, in recognition of his lifelong fidelity and service to the Catholic Church.
“We are honored and delighted that our longtime friend Archbishop Cordileone will be with us for Commencement, especially as this visit comes so soon after the publication of Pope Francis’s recent exhortation on marriage, Amoris Laetitia,” says Thomas Aquinas College President Michael F. McLean. “Nationally, Archbishop Cordileone is known for the clarity of his teaching about marriage, the family, and the unborn, and the courageous witness he gives in their defense. In the Bay Area, too, he serves his flock as a faithful shepherd. We very much look forward to His Excellency’s visit and to his remarks at Commencement.”
At this year’s Commencement exercises, the 42nd in the College’s history, Archbishop Cordileone will address a graduating class of 79 students who hail from across the United States and abroad.
Full story 
Coverage in The Tidings
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The Most Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone,
Archbishop of
San Francisco
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SUPREME COURT UPDATE
College’s Attorneys File Reply Brief in Challenge of HHS Mandate
“When the government itself concedes that it can achieve its ends through less restrictive means, then it must do so, and the substantial burden it has imposed on religious exercise cannot be sustained.”
So declare attorneys representing Thomas Aquinas College and its 34 co-plaintiffs in a supplemental reply brief filed on April 20 as part of their Supreme Court challenge of the HHS Contraceptive Mandate. The 10-page document cites the federal government’s acknowledgment, in an April 12 filing, that the HHS Mandate “could be modified” so as not to violate the consciences of religious objectors, while still fulfilling the government’s aim of “ensuring that the affected women receive contraceptive coverage seamlessly.”
This admission, the College’s attorneys charge, should lay the three-year-old legal dispute to rest. Under the terms of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), when a law substantially burdens religious exercise, the government must employ only the means of effecting it that are “least restrictive” of religious liberty. “The government itself now concedes that it has less restrictive means available to it, and so it must use them,” proclaims the reply brief. “RFRA demands nothing less.”
Continue reading
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President McLean and members of the College community at the U.S. Supreme Court |
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THE COLLEGE IN THE NEWS
Catholic News Agency, National Catholic Register and Cardinal Newman Society
• “The rise of a culture designed to protect students from words and ideas that seem threatening, has some experts questioning the effect that this hyper-sensitivity could be having on higher education and society at large,” reports Mary Rezac of the Catholic News Agency. Yet while many colleges are kowtowing to this culture with “safe zones” and “trigger warnings,” Thomas Aquinas College is among a select few that seem to be “untouched by the phenomenon,” Miss Rezac writes. Her story explains how the College’s Catholic fidelity and pedagogy contribute to an academic climate that leads, in the words of one College official, to “endless conversation on all subjects, on which people can really disagree.”
• Although there are some Catholic colleges and universities that “honor those who have publicly supported views against the teachings of the Catholic faith and morality,” observes Joseph Pronechen in the National Catholic Register, others “invite commencement speakers and honorees who are models of faith, virtue and achievement.” Among this latter category, whom Mr. Pronechen singles out as “model choices,” is Thomas Aquinas College, where the Most Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, will serve as the 2016 Commencement Speaker.
• After reviewing hundreds of news reports, the Cardinal Newman Society has released a list of “Top 10 Signs of Renewal in Catholic Colleges,” four of which come from Thomas Aquinas College. These include the College’s selection of a faithful Commencement Speaker, its commitment to student virtue through its prohibition of inter-sex visitation in the residence halls, its nourishing of faithful marriages among its graduates, and its fight for religious freedom in the U.S. Supreme Court. “These examples show that faithful Catholic education is flourishing on many campuses,” the authors write, “forming students morally, spiritually and intellectually.”
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FAITH IN ACTION
Highlights from the College’s Alumni Blog
• Whenever the matter of mandatory priestly celibacy arises, the arguments put forth in its defense are typically practical in nature, touching on matters pastoral or even financial, but seldom theological. Recognizing this shortcoming in the ongoing discussion, Rev. Gary B. Selin, STD (’89) has authored a new scholarly work, Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations, which proposes a systematic theology of priestly celibacy, ordered around the Eucharist. Fr. Selin is an assistant professor and the formation director at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.
• Alumna Maggie Tuttle (’10), who works as a lead for Talent Solutions Support Services at LinkedIn, returned to campus on April 17 to present a workshop about how students and graduates can use the professional-networking site in their career search. “You can leverage the LinkedIn network and the data we have there to better understand what career options are available to you,” Miss Tuttle told students. Her 30-minute talk focused on how to use the service, which boasts more than 400 million users, to discern a career, land a job, or select a graduate school.
• “Most of us have a profound appreciation for our mothers that transcends description,” begins Dr. S. Adam Seagrave (’05) in a new essay, timed for Mother’s Day, in The Public Discourse. An assistant professor of political science at Northern Illinois University, Dr. Seagrave then proceeds to consider the current state of motherhood in terms of social and public policy. Americans’ affection for their mothers, he observes, does not translate into an appreciation for motherhood itself, particularly the stay-at-home variety. So, as his Mother’s Day gift to moms elsewhere, Dr. Seagrave proposes “a significant tax deduction for households with a full-time parent … on the order of 150 percent of the mean individual income.”
Faith in Action blog
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Rev. Gary B.
Selin, STD (’89)
Maggie Tuttle (’10)
 Dr. S. Adam Seagrave (’05)
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GREAT WORKS & GREAT IDEAS
College Governor Tom Krause Gives ALL for Liberal Learning
A recent story in National Review Online highlights the contributions of a new organization that is championing the cause of liberal education, the Alliance for Liberal Learning, whose director, Dr. Thomas R. Krause, is a member of the Thomas Aquinas College Board of Governors and President’s Council. The group, writes author David Clemens, seeks to “rally some humanist troops to the defense of the Western liberal tradition.”
The Alliance — or ALL, as it is known — consists of some 30 educational institutions, including Thomas Aquinas College, as well as nonprofits and businesses that “provide liberal learning opportunities for students and adults.” Its mission is to “promote and support conversations about great works and ideas” and to “open the public imagination to the enduring value of lifelong liberal learning, which prepares us to live freely and well.”
Dr. Krause is a longtime devotee of liberal education, dating back to the decision of his daughter Christel (Kelsey ‘91) to attend the College in 1987. In addition to being a member of the Thomas Aquinas College Board of Governors, he is a member of the Board of Visitors and Governors at St. John’s College and a member and founding president of the Agora Foundation, which offers great books seminars in Ojai, California. Now he has gathered all these organizations together, as well as many others, in ALL, which will hold a national conference in Chicago on October 28-29.
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College Governor Dr. Thomas R. Krause
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