MARKS OF A TRULY CATHOLIC LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION

1. Institutional commitment of faculty and administration to the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church in their spiritual, moral, and intellectual life (cp. Ex corde ecclesiae, para. 13).

2. Commitment to undergraduate liberal education devoted to the discovery and appropriation of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful for their own sakes (cp. Ven. John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University), in contradistinction to career, technical, or vocational training.

3. A strong undergraduate core curriculum of history, literature, classical and modern languages, political philosophy, mathematics, and science, in which Catholic theology and Thomistic philosophy hold a central place and exercise a sapiential role for the whole curriculum, so that all the disciplines are informed and illuminated by Catholic Truth.

4. Development and maintenance of a Catholic spiritual life, including daily sacramental practice, a sound moral climate, and abundant opportunities for liturgical and personal prayer.

5. Development and maintenance of a Catholic social and cultural life, including parietal discipline conducive to good manners and morals, a high liturgical culture with musica sacra, and a wide range of collegiate activities involving the fine arts.

6. Commitment to a humane scale in the academic community, in which every faculty member and student may be personally known to one another, on the model of integral Catholic communities such as the medieval academic collegium.