[Apologetics] Fw: "This College is Gutsy!" --Robert Novak

Thu Jun 25 15:03:40 EDT 2009

--- On Thu, 6/25/09, Human Events <HumanEvents at HumanEventsOnline.com> wrote:

From: Human Events <HumanEvents at HumanEventsOnline.com>
Subject: "This College is Gutsy!" --Robert Novak
To: arthurkelly at yahoo.com
Date: Thursday, June 25, 2009, 11:50 AM

Below please find a special message from one of our advertisers, Thomas More College. From time to time, we receive opportunities we believe you as a valued customer may want to know about. Please note that the following message does not necessarily reflect the editorial positions of Human Events.

"Most colleges shy away from having me give commencement addresses. They're afraid my outspoken conservatism might offend somebody. 
No guts! 
Not Thomas More College. 
They invited me to speak with no worry 
about what I might say. 
Guts!"

Robert Novak
Conservative columnist
and our 2006 commencement speaker

*
That was three years ago. 
This year our gutsy commencement speaker,
Francis Cardinal Arinze, went toe-to-toe
with the President of the United States!

Why? 
Because in his commencement speech at Notre Dame University,
Barack Obama urged graduates to walk the safe
and easy path of "thoughtful dialogue." 
(No guts there!)

At Thomas More, Cardinal Arinze
instead urged our graduates to move
through dialogue and past it to an
"unapologetic fidelity to truth."
(Which, these days, takes guts.)

*
At Notre Dame, Obama said
"Faith necessarily admits doubt." 
Forgetting Stephen Vincent Benet's comment that "We thought, because we had power, we had wisdom," Obama then declared to that vast audience of Catholic priests, professors, parents, and grads, "It's beyond our capacity to know what God asks of us."
To which Cardinal Arinze gave the obvious response: 
"People of all religions and cultures recognize
most of the dictates of the Ten Commandments." 

*
Did any of the adoring crowds at Notre Dame challenge Obama's rejection of their Faith? Did any take issue with his cavalier repudiation of the Natural Law that undergirds Western Civilization itself? 
Not that day.
No guts there.

*
Which is why, when he funded a scholarship for college students, Robert Novak turned away from universities like Notre Dame and chose our tiny college here in New Hampshire, the school about which conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan recently remarked:

"Excellence in every respect is what Thomas More College offers young people. I do not exaggerate when I say that Thomas More College is exactly the kind of college you want your children and your children's children to attend."
*
Yes, our school has guts (as did our patron, Thomas More), but we never forget that it takes more than guts to sustain a civilization. So on our modest campus of less than ten acres, we've created a gracious community of faculty and students rooted in the civility that alone forms virtue in souls. 

And for four years, we require each of our students to dwell at length in the Great Books that built Western Civilization in the first place, the books whose study will make it once again a shining city on a hill, books by 

Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, Augustine, Dante, Aquinas, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Jefferson, Madison, de Tocqueville, Hawthorne, Melville, T.S. Eliot, and the other great men and women whose wisdom gives courage its meaning.

*
Dialogue? 
Sure, President Obama! We're for it!

But not dialogue as an end in itself. 

*
At Thomas More our students engage in four years of genuine, hearty dialogue with the greatest thinkers the human race has produced, joining with those thinkers in the ongoing search for truth . . . and in gutsy, unapologetic fidelity to it.

*
That's the education the young people of our country need, the education that countless respected conservative journals (and even many liberal ones!) have recognized as top-flight.

Recent accolades
for Thomas More College
* Ranked as one of the top 50 schools in the country by All-American Colleges: Top Schools for Conservatives, Old-Fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith. 
* Ranked as one of the nation's top 100 schools in the Intercollegiate Studies Institute's best-selling college guide, Choosing the Right College: The Whole Truth About America's Top Schools. 
* Featured by Time Magazine in a cover story titled "Who Needs Harvard?" as a unique alternative to large, ivy-league schools for those seeking a rigorous education in the Western tradition.
* Included in The National Review College Guide: America's Top Liberal Arts Schools and Cool Colleges, and recommended by the Young America's Foundation.
* Recognized by Crisis Magazine as one of the top-ten Catholic colleges in the country. 

A great and gutsy education we give, no doubt,
but in today's world, Great Books don't win big grants
. . . and money flows to schools that
court presidents, not cardinals.
Like most of the other small schools,
we've been slammed by the market's collapse,
and our students are hurting, too.

*
We're hurting so much that
I'm going to be completely frank:
Things were so bad last Fall that 
many of our professors went without pay

. . . so we could keep our doors open
. . . so our students could continue their life-giving dialogue with Plato and Aristotle and Aquinas and Shakespeare
. . . so the voices of wise and gutsy men like Robert Novak, Patrick Buchanan, and Cardinal Arinze would continue to be heard regularly on at least one college campus in America.

*
It takes guts for young professors with large families
to persist this way when hope seems lost. 
Yet persist we will.
We don't take federal handouts, and we never will;
we won't become politically-correct in order to survive. 

In fact, until the man comes to shut off the lights, turn off the water, and lock the doors, our gutsy faculty will continue to provide our eager students the best conservative education available in America today.

Robert Novak knows this, 
which is why he contributed
his own money to help us. 
Now you know it.
Will you help us before
it's too late for our students?
Will you help us continue to provide a gutsy education
that develops in them an unapologetic fidelity to truth?

You know, this past year we severely reduced our expenditures,
and we have more sharp cuts planned. But to survive until September
when our students return to campus bringing what tuition
they can afford to pay, we simply need to raise $100,000. 
That's not much for Notre Dame,
but for us it's the difference between life and death. 
Will you help?

Before you decide, recall Pat Buchanan's words:

"Excellence in every respect is what Thomas More College offers young people. I do not exaggerate when I say that Thomas More College is exactly the kind of college you want your children and your children's children to attend. Please join me in supporting this marvelously authentic college!"
We don't need your help tomorrow.
We need it today!

Please click here to make
your donation now.
$50 if you can possibly afford it,
but no contribution is too small
--- or too large! 
Thank you, and please
keep us in your prayers,
William Fahey
President
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts
Six Manchester Street
Merrimack, New Hampshire 03054

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