St. Thomas Aquinas Week

The Aquinas College community celebrated the feast of its patron saint during this Sexagennial year of its founding with a week of intellectual nourishment.  The week’s first course was served by former president of the College, Sr. Mary Agnes, O.P. with a talk entitled “The Story of St. Cecilia Normal School, Precursor to Aquinas College.” This presentation vividly demonstrated the College’s roots in the St. Cecilia normal school, a program for teacher preparation run at St. Cecilia Motherhouse from 1928 until Aquinas College’s founding in 1961.  Later in the week, the Reverend John Corbett, O.P., Assistant Professor of Moral Theology at the Dominican House of Studies, ruminated with Aquinas faculty and staff on the virtue of fortitude and the part this virtue plays in the field of education.  He further treated the Aquinas community with a robust homily on the qualities that make St. Thomas aptly titled the Angelic Doctor, during the St. Thomas Aquinas mass celebrated by the Most Reverend J. Mark Spalding, Bishop of Nashville.  A festive Italian luncheon worthy of the Italian saint followed.  Finally, all were invited for compline and an evening lecture by Father Corbett at St. Cecilia Motherhouse to end the week’s celebrations.  Father Corbett likened the theology of sins of speech to the current theory of micro-aggression, and prescribed a healing of the mind from fear by pondering Scripture and living a virtuous life. Recordings of Sr. Mary Agnes’s presentation and Father Corbett’s Friday evening lecture may be found on Aquinas’s Youtube channel.