Why does Aquinas College need an underground newspaper? Because students deserve an intelligent newspaper that takes them seriously as thinking, spiritual beings interested in seeking and capable of knowing and loving the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Students require and are paying for what a school named after the greatest intellect of Christendom and Western Civilization ought to offer them: a Catholic perspective on the Life of the Mind, Body, and Soul.
At the early ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church, bishops oftentimes settled dogmatic definitions of the deepest Christian Mysteries by stating what they were not. This was in part an extension of the classical philosophical tradition wherein lovers of wisdom like Plato had worked to define concepts like "Justice" by excluding all those things that Justice is not. So while the bishops could not express Truth completely in all its particulars in mere human words, they could however say without a doubt what a Thing was not. And so in this tradition I begin by enumerating those things that The Catacombs is not.
The Catacombs is not an evangelical vehicle, as such, although if someone comes home to the Catholic Church through reading it we in the Catacombs will rejoice. After all, there exists a unity of all truth, and for Christians, truth is a Person, Jesus Christ.
The Catacombs is not a preacher to the proverbial choir, but if we in the Catacombs give comfort to others who have been living down here since their freshman year, then we will rejoice.
The Catacombs is not a paper for whining and ad hominem attacks on deans and instructors and fellow students from behind the shield of pseudonyms. In the American tradition of public argumentation, we use pseudonyms only so that our writers' arguments can rise or fall on their own merits, unrelated to what readers might think about the writer. Slovenly intellectual fodder and execrable shallowness will not go unremarked and unnoticed, however, but only ideas will be attacked in the pages of The Catacombs. This is not a forum for hatred, ugliness, or meanness of spirit but rather a forum for love--a love of God, a love of Mankind, and a love of Truth. St. John said, "God is Love," and Our Lord Himself said, "The truth shall set you free."
So, then, what is the aim of The Catacombs?
The Catacombs aims to be intelligent and Catholic as it explores the Good, the True, and Beautiful. This paper contains the thoughts of those who for too long at a school named for St. Thomas Aquinas have been pushed underground, free only to seek That Which Is Above as long as they remained hidden down below. Twenty-first century students deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, as people who are curious and capable of serious learning and academic excellence. They deserve to discover the joy that comes through applying the Catholic perspective to the life of the mind, the body, and the soul.
The liberal arts free us to search for the truth, to know it when we find it, and to love it in gratitude. Conversely, part of this liberation of the mind means that we recognize untruth, for falsehood cannot stand up to Reason's test. At a Catholic college the mind ought to face no constraints in this pursuit of the True, the Good, and Beautiful other than its own nihilistic tendencies, obstinate shallowness, and lethargy. These are difficult enough obstacles as it is. But too often Aquinas College and our modern world place constraints on serious learning in the name of "sensitivity," "inclusivity," and "safety." Sometimes this is even done in the name of St. Dominic's and St. Thomas's use of "dialogue," as if dialogue was the End in and of itself, not the Means for discovering or explaining truth. Aristotle, the greatest student of the truth-seeker and dialogue writer, Plato, had this to say in his Metaphysics: "To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false...while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true."
The Catacombs therefore is not a "safe zone" for the untruth, irrationality, ungrounded opinion, sloppy argumentation, Creation-worship (as opposed to Creator-worship), "I'm spiritual but not religious" vacuity, partisan politicking, intellectual and moral relativism, and libidinous libertinism that pass elsewhere for deep thinking and bliss. Such things will not be safe here because, regardless of propaganda to the contrary, they are not in the "Catholic Dominican Tradition." Fr. James V. Schall, SJ, describes our sentiments well: "The Catholic mind is the mind that is open to everything but what is not true, and even of that, it knows it in the truth of its untruth."
Why does Aquinas need The Catacombs? One ought instead to ask how a college in the "Catholic Dominican tradition" has done without such a forum for so long!
Carthago Delenda Est.
