New Curriculum Reflections on the Cardinal Arinze at Unveiled Year for Priests Thomas More College Building on the original College chaplain Cardinal Arinze lauds Humanities core, the new Fr. William Ventura Thomas More College, curriculum integrates on St. Jean-Marie emphasizes to graduates theology and the new Way Vianney, charity, the importance of the of Beauty sequence penance, and vocation Liberal Arts Communitas THE MAGAZINE OF THOMAS MORE COLLEGE The Way of Beauty Also in this issue: Prof. Jay Thompson on Caritas in Veritate Thomas More College Students March for Life Jane Austen as Christian Witness Action Anchored in Truth BY DR. WILLIAM EDMUND FAHEY ye need know” becomes a rod all influence and constraint. to lord over the student. Beauty Unbridled imagination, once remains stuck in the eye of the condemned as “the mad woman beholder, or demands tortuous of the house,” is made a goddess initiation in secret knowledge. of the vain and fantastic; she There is a better path. beckons her acolytes and turns This year Thomas More them from the truth. But an im- College of Liberal Arts launch- age is for thought, and thought es its year-long Way of Beauty is to express what is perennially efining what he meant by sequence. Our students will good and true and beautiful. Da “classic,” T.S. Eliot draws not only study naturalistic and The proper use of the imagina- attention to the essential ma- iconic forms of art, but prac- tion is achieved through careful turity of art, artist, and critic. tice drawing and “icon writing.” maturation. Hence, the critical Maturity is much neglected They’ll plumb the theoretical need for a structured approach today, as are hierarchy, experi- depths of music, and take joy to a curriculum; hence, the care ence, and discernment. Our so- in learning to chant. When they with which we deliberate over ciety takes comfort in youthful arrive in Rome, they will not our students’ studies at Thomas spontaneity, equality, luck, and gaze mutely at the treasures of More College. fashion. To pass a judgment is our civilization, but love them I encourage you to con- considered either arbitrary or rightly, understanding them tinue to follow developments unkind. Talent becomes a ran- through a disciplined progress at Thomas More College—for dom gift, we cherish the raw toward an enriched maturity. instance, on our website. In all and unrefined, and disciplined This is true freedom from the things, we hope to give witness learning is abandoned as the shackles of current prejudice to the College’s motto: caritas tool of an antiquated order. against good art, music, and congaudet in veritate (charity Sadly, the betrayal of ma- poetry. rejoices in the truth). turity is commonplace within In all actions—artistic, polit- In Christ the King, the academy. In the hands of ical, scholarly, or religious—we the tenured ideologue, Keats’s must anchor the imagination in pronouncement that “Beauty the truth. This dictum is lost on is Truth,—Truth Beauty,—that those who conceive of the imag- William Edmund Fahey, Ph.D. is all/Ye know on earth, and all ination as something free from President Communitas | staff John Zmirak, Ph.D., Editor Contributing Photographer: Contact Communitas at: Charlie McKinney, Managing Editor James Lockwood, Charlie McKinney, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts Carolyn McKinney, Art Director Mark Schwerdt Six Manchester Street Merrimack, NH 03054 Paige E. Scarlett, Copy Editor Contributing Writers: Dr. Christopher Blum, Stratford [email protected] Caldecott, Dr. William Fahey, (800) 880-8308 Prof. Jay Thompson contents 10 2 2 Cardinal Arinze Lauds Thomas More College During Commencement 4 FEATURE Passing on Our Treasures: Thomas More College Unveils Its New Curriculum 9 Freshman Orientation 10 Thomas More College Students Walk for Life 12 L ’Admirable Jane: The Novelist as Witness 9 14 Reflections in the Year for Priests 16 COVER STORY (Left) Thomas More College freshmen The Way of Beauty, plus Thomas More College attend orientation in the White Mountains Consecrated to the Sacred Heart and Pope John of New Hampshire, preparing themselves Paul II on the Arts for the academic life that lies ahead. (Middle) TMC students defend the sanctity 21 A Basket of Riddles of human life at Boston’s Walk for Life. By Thomas More College Juniors (Right) Cardinal praises Thomas More 22 Love in Truth: The Heart of the Church’s College for its “unapologetic fidelity to the Social Teaching Magisterium.” 24 FEASTS AND SEASONS The Feast of St. John, December 27 25 Ruminatio Cardinal Arinze Lauds Thomas More College During Commencement t is easy to forget last season’s headlines, but in Thomas More College turned instead to a man Ispring 2009 much of the buzz in the Catholic press who came from material poverty in a troubled concerned the choice of certain famous Catholic col- British colony in Africa, a convert from traditional leges to seek their commencement speakers from African paganism, who made his name as a pastor of the ranks of men with power in the secular world— the Christian people in his country, as a peacemaker regardless of those men’s adherence to fundamental in its civil war, and a sober guardian of the Church’s principles of justice and morality. deposit of Faith. On Sunday, May 10, 2009, Francis Cardinal Arinze addressed the graduating seniors of 2009, their families, and the whole college com- munity as keynote speaker at Thomas More College’s commencement exercises. Cardinal Arinze called Thomas More College “a young and dynamic Catholic liberal arts college… dedicated to forming students intellectually and spiritually within the Catholic tradition and with un- apologetic fidelity to the Magisterium.” For Arinze, a “serious and authentic Catholic college” owes its stu- dents a “rigorous” education on the proper balance of faith and reason, science and ethics, and special- ization versus general education. Students benefiting from such an education will be “model Christians who are good citizens.” Since “both reason and faith come from God... Truth does not contradict itself,” Arinze explained, citing both John Paul II and St. Thomas Aquinas. “Whatever its source, truth is of the Holy Spirit.” Speaking of the importance of integrated liberal arts education such as that offered at Thomas More College, Arinze said, “It would be risky to produce citizens who specialize in one little area of life but have no viable vision of the whole of life. While no one pretends to know something about everything, it would be even more dangerous to have to deal with a person who parades himself as knowing everything about a tiny aspect of life, and who is therefore lost in discussing or understanding anything except his own area of specialization.” Arinze warned that without a proper grounding in philosophy, the advanced study of science and (Top) Cardinal Arinze addresses the graduates. (Bottom) Cardinal Arinze offers the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass prior to the commencement exercises. 2 Communitas Francis Cardinal Arinze A Life in Brief ducated by Irish missionaries, ECardinal Arinze advanced to All Hallows Seminary in Onitsha, technology can be positively dangerous: Nigeria, where he earned his de- “The scientist... should not regard what- gree in Philosophy. In 1955, he ever is physically possible as also mor- went to Rome to study Theology ally lawful. Human action has to take at the Pontifical Urban University. into account the natural law, the eternal He was ordained in November law of God written into human nature.” 1958, and earned his doctorate in A Catholic college that is doing its job, sacred theology summa cum laude Arinze said, “educates students to appre- in 1960. The subject of his disser- ciate that moral rules of right and wrong tation was an examination of Ibo apply also to science, technology, poli- sacrifice in traditional African re- tics, trade and commerce, and, indeed, ligion as a precursor to the Holy to all human endeavors.” Sacrifice of the Mass. Arinze insisted that “the Christian Cardinal Arinze spent the early 1960s teaching liturgy, logic, must learn to make a synthesis between and philosophy at Bigard Memorial Seminary. In 1965, Pope his duties as a citizen and his religious Paul VI nominated him to be co-adjutor bishop of Onitsha. practices. There must be no divorce be- At that time, he was the youngest Roman Catholic bishop in tween these two dimensions of his life…. the world. He attended the final session of the Second Vatican We can also in this light see the mistake Council, where he met the future John Paul II. In 1967 he was of politicians who regard the Church consecrated Archbishop of Onitsha. For the next three years, as interfering in politics when the Pope Archbishop Arinze stood as a beacon of peace during one of the or the Bishops speak on contraception, most violent civil wars in African history. For three years, he abortion, strange new definitions of fam- worked with all leaders—Christian, Muslim, and polytheists— ily, the rights of workers, the education to care for refugees and re-establish peace in the region. Over of children or what moral standards the next two decades, Archbishop Arinze oversaw the formation should guide the mass media,” the car- of an entirely Nigerian clergy and through his steady stream of dinal warned. pastoral letters encouraged the application of the Church’s so- Concluding, Arinze called for Catholic cial and ethical teachings in wider regions, especially in politics, colleges to “prepare for us members of inter-religious dialogue, and the life of the family. Congress or the Senate who will not say In 1979, Pope John Paul II appointed Archbishop Arinze ‘I am a Catholic, but...,’ but rather those the pro-president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious who will say ‘I am a Catholic, and there- Dialogue.