Why I Am Catholic
Where? Thomas Aquinas College in California. When? You guessed it: on the feast of Saint Paul of the Shipwreck. Isn’t that a beautiful campus? As Mr. Hewitt notes,
I arranged this date last year after a quick visit to the campus on Memorial Day Weekend 2011. It is a beautiful place with a unique “Great Books” curriculum, and it is a thoroughly tradition Roman Catholic institution.
Which mens, of course, that the Thomas Aquinas College is now in direct conflict with the demands made by our anti-Catholic president. St. Thomas Aquinas’ president, Michael McClean was quoted in yesterday’s Ventura Star:
“Frankly, I don’t see how we could comply with it,” said Michael F. McLean, leader of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, diving into a controversy dividing Congress and the country. “It’s requiring academic institutions to subsidize or potentially subsidize medical procedures and contraceptive pills, the use of which is contrary to the Catholic faith.”
The reporter mischaracterizes the college’s response. The college didn’t “dive into” anything. It is rather refusing to be thrown into the pool in which its faith forbids it to swim. I will spend most of the day with faculty, staff, trustees and of course students asking them about the unique approach to learning and life taught at Thomas Aquinas but of course as we are in the opening stage of a prolonged President Obama-Catholic Bishops struggle, today’s visit is uniquely timed to see what one community of Catholics believe about the president’s assault on their institution.
You’ll want to check out the rest.
I have a friend in California whose children have graduated from TAC. And the HHS Mandate bomb is ticking at other small Catholic colleges across the country now as well. Aquinas College in Nashville, Belmont Abbey in North Carolina, Wyoming Catholic College, et al, are all equally threatened.
But have no fear, none of them have NCAA ranked sports teams, or anything, so really they don’t exist anyway.
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