Thomas Aquinas College. Our elder daughter graduated from TAC in 1993, so it's a school about which I am personally familiar. Located in beautiful Santa Paula, California, TAC is truly one of the most remarkable institutions of higher education in the country. Unlike so many nominally Catholic colleges and universities that have pretty much abandoned the Faith, TAC is unashamedly and wholeheartedly Catholic. If you want your child to receive a true liberal education and graduate as a civilized human being who understands the world and the Catholic Faith, you should consider TAC. The demanding curriculum is based on the world's "great books" so the students read, study and discuss the originals and not the watered-down pablum served up by most textbooks. I can guarantee you one thing: you won't find any over-the-hill Marxist ideologues among the faculty. I include this among my good news reports because TAC is growing and thriving and its graduates are doing remarkable things in the world and the Church.
US News & World Report in its annual college guide, America's Best Colleges 2010, ranked TAC among the best liberal arts colleges in the country. Click here to read more. And if you'd like to read a recent article (in a secular newspaper) about TAC, click here. I expect you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
ELCA Lutherans not of one mind...not by a long shot. As I mentioned in this blog a few weeks ago, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), at its main meeting in Minneapolis last month, voted to approve actively homosexual clergy and the blessing of gay marriages. As a result, a significant number of ELCA Lutherans who disagree with the vote have decided to get together to address their response. So many Lutherans registered to attend the conference that the group (Lutheran CORE) had to move it to a larger venue, a Catholic church! In the words of the group's director, "It is wonderfully ironic that Lutherans who started 500 years ago as a movement to reform the Roman Catholic Church would now return to a Catholic Church to re-form themselves." This is all good news because it shows that many of our Lutheran brothers and sisters have kept their sanity and their faith. To read an article in the Washington Times about the conference, click here. For more information on the ELCA opposition group, Lutheran CORE, click here.
We are all Evangelists... we are all missionaries. Pope Benedict, in his message for World Mission Day, affirms that all Catholics are duty bound to assist the mission ad gentes (the mission to the nations). This is especially good news because too many Catholics don't seem to believe they have a responsibility to evangelize, to spread the faith throughout their little slice of the world. Jesus, right before His Ascension, commanded His disciples to "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." [Mt 28:19-20] This was a command aimed not only at the apostles, but at all of us. To read the Holy Father's entire message, click here.Irish Seminarians on the Rise. Good news out of Ireland. Despite all the problems that the Church in Ireland has experienced in recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of Irish seminarians. It's been a sad thing to watch the sufferings of the Church in this country that has been so strongly Catholic for so long. How wonderful that an increasing number of men are recognizing and accepting their vocations to the priesthood. Pray for the Church in Ireland. You can read more about this by clicking here.
Enough for now, I will make an effort to spread a bit of good news every week or so. I think we all need to hear it.
Blessings...
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