Program of Studies

The Program of Studies at Thomas More College is a rigorous training in the liberal arts,  humane letters, and the disciplines of philosophy and theology.  The entire program is designed to help our students to “put on the mind of Christ” (Philippians 2:5) by forming them in human and divine wisdom and by preparing them for a life of service to the world as eloquent witnesses to the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

Wisdom, as Cardinal Newman put it, is that “clear, calm, accurate vision, and comprehension of the whole course, the whole work of God.”  It is, in other words, the habit of right thinking and judgment that comes from the reasoned-out knowledge of God as first cause and final end of all that exists.  Human, or philosophical wisdom is attained after an arduous ascent that begins with the beauty and intelligibility that the senses discover in the world around us and proceeds to what our mind can apprehend of spiritual goods, the soul, and God.  The liberal arts, and especially the art of logic, are the necessary equipment for such a course of study, which must be “rigorous,” “coherent,” and “systematic” if it is to result in authentic knowledge  (Fides et Ratio, §4).  For the Christian, human wisdom yields to divine as its completion and judge, as from revelation we receive the principles of Sacred Doctrine, and from the Holy Spirit the gift of infused wisdom, the inheritance of every confirmed Christian.  In conformity with the constant teaching of the Magisterium, the wisdom that theology promises is to be sought first in the reverent, careful reading of Holy Scripture in light of the commentaries of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and the decrees of Ecumenical Councils and Popes, and afterwards in the discipline of theology proper.  And this learning, in order not to be sterile or unreal, must take place within a community of prayer that understands the Sacred Liturgy to be the privileged place of encountering the Truth about man, the universe, and God.

The search for Truth naturally leads to the desire to rejoice in and testify to the Truth one has attained.  Thomas More College embraces the Church’s teaching that a Catholic education should lead its possessors to “try to communicate to society those ethical and religious principles which give full meaning to human life” (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, #33).  By giving her students a true and integral humanistic formation, Thomas More College enables them to contribute to the evangelization of culture.  In an age of cultural dislocation, such a formation must include not only reflection upon the principles of the good life, but also a course of study–almost an immersion–in the great works of Classical and Christian culture and in the lives and writings of the saints, so that the student’s imagination and desires may be shaped in accord with what is truly good and beautiful.  This humanistic formation is guided by philosophical and theological ethics and employs the tools of the traditional arts of grammar (through the study of one of the great Classical languages), rhetoric, and poetics.  Such a formation, culminating in the Tutorials, Junior Project, and Senior Thesis, leads to a kind of eloquence in its possessors, who become ambassadors of the gaudium de veritate, the joy in the truth, that is a Catholic education’s characteristic fruit.  Like the great Christian humanists throughout the ages—from St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine to St. Thomas More and the Venerable John Henry Newman—the Thomas More College graduate rejoices to have been given the great task of serving the world by communicating the saving truth of the Incarnate Word.