Thomas More College of Liberal Arts

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The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts was founded to provide a solid education in the liberal arts, a Catholic education for all faiths, united in the quest for what is right, kind, and beautiful. It pursues this mission by seeking Wisdom and sharing it joyfully with the world.
The College holds that every human life, from the moment of inception until natural death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God. The human and his endeavors are worthy of our regard, interest, and study. Humanity and the human person's capacity are seen most clearly when viewed under the eye of eternity and the light of Revelation. As St. Ireneaus wrote so many centuries ago, "The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God. If the Revelation of God through creation already brings life to all living beings on the earth, how much more will the manifestation of the Father by the Word bring life to those who see God." Thus, the College affirms and enriches the age-old tradition, inherited from Greco-Roman civilization, studying the humanities through the masterworks of Classical and Christian civilization. It holds with equal conviction that the path to Wisdom is best found with the Catholic intellectual tradition's right companions—the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Their lives were dedicated to understanding and living according to the Word of God.
In pursuing its mission, the College does not neglect the desires and insights of people from other cultures and other ages, which strive to answer the most important question of Man's existence. All humanity has been created to know the highest truths and discover happiness in its end. The search, marked strongly by the desire for God and knowledge of metaphysical Truth, is only sustained when men and women live according to classical and theological virtues.
Thus, the Board of Trustees is committed to supporting the moral and intellectual life of the College community. In the words of its patron, St. Thomas More, it seeks to establish, govern, and sustain a Catholic academic community in which "learning is joined with virtue."
Thus, the College affirms that Catholic education is integral to the mission of the Church in Her proclamation of the Good News. Therefore, the College must be a place to encounter the living God who in Jesus Christ reveals his transforming love and Truth. This relationship should elicit all members of the College community a desire to grow in knowledge and understanding of Christ and His teachings. Far from separating reason, the study of culture, or science from faith, this Catholic humanism allows faith to illuminate reason, enliven culture, and give meaning to all learning.
Equally, it allows reason to give voice to humanity's orientation towards the Truth. Such a dynamic between faith, reason, and culture demands a response in contemplation, prayer, charity, and action. It necessitates that the College supports each of its members in their discernment of discovering God's particular vocation and living it. In this way, those who meet the Truth are drawn by the very power of the Gospel to lead a new life characterized by beautiful, good, and true a life of Christian witness nurtured and strengthened within the community of our Lord's disciples, the Church.
As a participant in the Catholic Church's educational mission, Thomas More College binds itself to the Church's magisterial teachings, communion with Her authentic hierarchy, and fidelity to Petrine authority. Thomas More College gazes with confidence at the heights which reason can ascend. However, it understands that the climb is arduous and requires something more than mere status or talent. It requires a path, a path-finder, companions, and—crucially—the desire to make the journey.
The path is the Catholic tradition. At Thomas More College, students and teachers strive together within a single tradition—the great intellectual tradition of the West, of the Catholic Church, of our civilization.
At Thomas More College, the academic life is founded upon the principle expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas that "the vision of the teacher is the beginning of the teaching," that is, that the source or principle of the transmission of knowledge and Wisdom is the teacher's own contemplative life. The College takes its motto, Caritas congaudet veritati–Charity rejoices in the Truth—from the ideal of a common pursuit of Wisdom. As Wisdom—human and divine—is a common good, it is the typical end of the whole community, faculty, and students. There is, therefore, one curriculum for all, without division into specialties or departments. Since human Wisdom is attained through reflection upon our experience of the world and deepened and refined through conversation with our ancestors, our program of studies encourages students and faculty alike to refine the experience of their senses, to hone and train the powers of their minds, and to follow the development of human culture attentively by the reading of great works from Classical and Christian civilization.

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