Catholic Vancouver October 13, 2022
Canadian link to noted U.S. Catholic College just got stronger
By Terry O'Neill
You can measure the distance between Vancouver and Thomas Aquinas College in southern California by counting the 2,000 kilometres of I-5 pavement that separates the Peace Arch border crossing from the renowned Catholic college.
But a better measure would take into account the historic, spiritual, and personal connections between the college and this country. And by that calculation, the two are as close as a Catholic family on Easter morning – a bond that is currently epitomized by the college’s new president, Paul O’Reilly.
As the 51-year-old O’Reilly looked forward to his formal swearing in as president of Thomas Aquinas College on Oct. 22 – the feast of Saint John Paul II – he took time to speak with The B.C. Catholic about his links with Canada and about the important future of the college he now leads.
O’Reilly grew up amid sectarian violence in Belfast, Ireland. After two of his uncles were murdered and two of his seven siblings became enmeshed in violence, his mother, Carmel (who was separated from her husband) left the country and settled in New Brunswick near Carmel’s brother, Ed O’Reilly, and his wife, Dorothy. Paul was just 16 at the time.
The family’s troubles were not over, though. Just seven months later – on a Christmas Eve – Paul and his siblings were orphaned when Carmel was killed in a traffic accident. Ed and Dorothy, who already had four children of their own, decided to adopt all eight of the orphans, who then took the O’Reilly name.
The blended family moved to Surrey the next year to open a Tim Horton’s franchise. They later moved to Bella Coola, where Ed began a logging business. Several of Paul’s siblings still live in B.C., as does his 87-year-old adoptive mother, Dorothy, who lives in Abbotsford.
Curriculum rooted in the ‘great books’
With the guidance of a priest from the Archdiocese of Vancouver, Father Donald Neilson, Paul O’Reilly enrolled at Thomas Aquinas College, about 90 minutes northwest of Los Angeles. He is one of many Canadians who, in the half-century of the college’s existence, have travelled south to enroll in a college whose founders rooted the institution in the Catholic faith, a traditional approach to the liberal arts, a curriculum grounded in the great books of the western tradition, and, above all, a commitment to discovering truth in what was and remains a relativistic age.
O’Reilly met his wife, Peggy, at the college, and they have been blessed with 12 children.
“We had a remarkable group of founders who came together a little over 50 years ago to put together an academic program in response to – it wasn’t ‘wokeness’ but it was something akin to that – this view that there wasn’t an absolute truth,” O’Reilly said.
At the time, too many Catholic institutions were deciding to model themselves after their secular counterparts, with a smattering of Catholic courses on the side. “I think that has been unwise,” he said. “The tradition of the Catholic Church is extraordinary in understanding where education begins and ends, how the parts fit together. And our founders – we were blessed to have founders who understood that.”
O’Reilly said several of those founders attended Laval University in Quebec City, where they were greatly influenced by Catholic philosopher Charles De Koninck. It’s not a coincidence that after earning his bachelor’s degree at Thomas Aquinas O’Reilly himself attended Laval, where he pursued graduate studies in philosophy. His career path eventually led him back to TAC, where he became a member of the teaching faculty before becoming the college’s vice president for development.
“We owe to Canada an extraordinary debt of gratitude,” O’Reilly said, “for not just the Canadian students who come our way – and even some Canadian faculty members that we still have – but because of the formation they received at Laval, under De Koninck and some of the wisest men in the 20th century.”
College ‘taught me how to think’
The gratitude goes both ways. Marc Vella, a member of St. James Parish in Abbotsford, credits the education he received at TAC for revolutionizing the way he thinks. Vella, the founder of Christian Civic Affairs Committees of Canada and more recently of ParentsVoice B.C., graduated from the college in 1993.
“For 12 years in regular school, I – and everyone else – was taught to memorize, regurgitate on a test, then forget,” Vella told The B.C. Catholic.
“Then rinse and repeat for the subject segment. Nowhere in that method were we ever taught to think for ourselves. TAC, through both the combination of reading the greatest minds the world has ever known, plus the debate-style of classes, was and is the perfect antidote to our current education system.”
Vella recalled that on the first day of classes at the college, his Latin tutor asked the class, “What is a sign?”
“Silence followed for an uncomfortably long time until some brave soul ventured an answer,” Vella said. “I watched as 15 student heads swivelled in unison to see if the tutor would accept the answer or not. The tutor gave the mind-altering answer, ‘I don’t know. What do you guys think?’
“And so began the process of exercising mental muscles of reasoning that had either long since atrophied from lack of use or, more likely, were never developed to their full potential in the first place.”
A ‘life-changing’ education
Natalie (Hudson) Sonnen, former executive director of Life Canada and a long-time Vancouver-based pro-life advocate, has similar praise for the college, from which she graduated in 1995. “The education at TAC is hard to put into words,” she told The B.C. Catholic. “Its thoroughness and complete immersion into the intellectual life is something that is utterly life-changing.
“For most of us, the rigorous training in logic, the primacy of reason, the introduction to the great ideas of Western civilization, and the attention to the aesthetic life of art and beauty prepared us to easily see through and debunk the fallacies of our time.”
More importantly, the education also “prepared us for the worthy vocations” of parenthood, business, medicine, higher education, and religious life. “I consider it one of the greatest blessings of my life that I was able to attend TAC,” she said.
The college continues to play an important role in the modern world, Sonnen added. “Our public education system, at every level, continues to devolve into woke propaganda, which is so utterly tragic,” she said. “Anyone who is exposed to a ‘great books’ education like that being offered by TAC will not only be better prepared for life as a whole, but the odds are they will just be downright happier.”
The four-year college accepts about 100 new students a year, meaning there are never more than 400 enrolled at any one time. Seven current students call B.C. home, and several more come from other parts of Canada.
The college opened an eastern campus 90 miles east of Boston in 2019. Remarkably, the college received the entire campus – administration and academic buildings, dormitories, a chapel, and more – as a gift from the National Christian Foundation. The campus had been the home of the Northfield Mount Hermon Christian College but was vacated after the college consolidated operations on another campus in 2005.
Preserving college mission is highest goal
Ensuring the success of the second campus is high on the list of O’Reilly’s aspirations as the college’s new president. But ultimately he wants to preserve the mission of the college. “If I don’t do that, if Thomas Aquinas College goes the way of the world, then I have failed,” he said.
The Catholic college has already achieved remarkable success, including the fact that some 80 graduates have become priests and about 10 more are currently seminarians. “So, just to preserve the good that Thomas Aquinas College has produced over these years, that’s one thing that’s got to be our principal goal,” O’Reilly said.
Today’s prevailing “woke” culture in general and the gender-identity movement in particular pose a particular challenge. “We’re concerned about all these questions about gender identity,” he said. “We have male and female dormitories. We understand that to mean biological male and biological female. We won’t tolerate biological males in the female dormitory. We worry about the challenges that might come our way.
“We don’t take federal funds, we don’t take state funds, so the government doesn’t have its talons in us, but you never know how they might react. So we need to be vigilant about those things.”
O’Reilly ended his interview with a request. “I would ask your readership to keep Thomas Aquinas College in their prayers,” he said. “Pray for me and the success of the college. There is a benefit to Canada – the impact Canadian alumni are having cannot be discounted. As Thomas Aquinas College flourishes, Canada will also be a beneficiary.”