In January, parents and their children in high school are thinking about college. However, too often of late, Catholic families do not take seriously enough or simply are not aware of the marvelous opportunities made available to them by the rich heritage of our nation’s Catholic colleges and universities. This article means to address this situation, at least in part.
With this list of Catholic schools, we focus on ten of the smaller institutions which successfully integrate a genuine liberal arts education into a campus culture that encourages the formation of Catholic character. Limited as this must be, the following ten portraits are not a specific guide to the individual merits of these colleges and universities, but more of a general endorsement of the renewed strength to be found in American Catholic education. In the course of our research we came upon many other schools similarly deserving of our attention, and so Crisis will make this survey a regular feature of our annual reporting.
The University of Dallas
 Irving, Texas
The University of Dallas attracts Catholic students seeking the highest standard in academic achievement. Named after Eugene Constantin, who first brought to Irving several Cistercian monks fleeing Soviet persecution in Hungary to become the founding fathers of UD, the Constantin College of the Liberal Arts provides a home for over 1,100 students dedicated to the proposition that truth and virtue are the proper objects of an education. Through a core curriculum based largely on the reading of primary sources, students at UD study such broad themes as western civilization, literature, politics, mathematics, economics, and the history of fine arts, all in the context of their classical origins.
Unlike many liberal arts programs, on the other hand, the stringent requirements of the core curriculum do not prevent the university from offering a diverse array of bachelor degrees. Bio-chemistry, education, psychology and pre-dentistry are all available to the general readers of Plato, Augustine, and de Tocqueville. Dual degrees in business can also be arranged and even a 3-2 engineering degree is possible through Washington University in St. Louis. Perhaps it is this solid commitment to the sciences that honors the University of Dallas with a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
Franciscan University 
Steubenville, Ohio
Anyone who has read Let the Fire Fall knows that neither President Scanlan nor his university knows anything about compromise. Rescued more than twenty years ago from the forces of student rebellion and pending economic collapse, Franciscan University stands today not only as Father Michael Scanlan’s gift to Catholic education, but as Catholic education’s bold testament to the efficacy of the spiritual life.
Steubenville, one might fairly say, is the very center of the charismatic movement among Catholics in the United States. Encouraged by Scanlan’s own devotion to the Holy Spirit, Steubenville can claim more students of theology per capita than any other university in the country. Perhaps even more striking than this is the degree to which Catholic spirituality enters into every facet of university life. The campus itself is a display of shrines and iconography; students who so choose may live in certain ‘households’ to further their commitment to the Christian life; Blessed Sacrament chapels adorn every dormitory; and the University’s central Christ the King Chapel is filled to capacity twice a day with daily communicants. For Scanlan, as perhaps for every student in his university, the truths we learn from God should never be relegated to second place, and so it is that the pursuit of His truth is suffused with His prayer.
Loyola College in Maryland
 Baltimore, Maryland
Loyola College in Maryland is a comprehensive Jesuit university. As such it can offer in virtue of its physical resources what no other institution in this precis can afford. Fielding no fewer than 14 NCAA Division I teams, while providing for an equally impressive range of club and intramural sports — not to mention the world’s fifth largest field of artificial turf — Loyola is both proudly and conspicuously dedicated to athletic excellence.
Merged with Mount Saint Agnes College since 1971, Loyola has two undergraduate schools: the College of Arts and Sciences and the Sellinger School of Business Management. All undergraduates are required to complete a broad, eighteen-course program in the liberal arts, in addition to which the business students must complete another core of required material in economics, accounting, finance and business ethics. All in all, every student must complete 120 hours of course credits, the balance of which is fulfilled in pursuit of a chosen major. Both pre-professional and the more traditional disciplines are available as specializations.
Despite several accommodations to the look of modern university life, including a ‘diversity statement’ which appears in one of its official catalogues, Loyola is not shy in proclaiming its Catholic identity. Enjoying a dual heritage from both the Jesuits and the Sisters of Mercy, Loyola offers a rich environment for the young person who is unwilling to profit from the grand offerings of a university at the expense of a sound formation.
Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts 
Merrimack, New Hampshire 
Rome, Italy
Formerly the Thomas More Institute, the Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts is, in the words of one recent graduate, “the best Catholic College in the Country and the best non-Great Books, Great Books program in the world.”
“Where else do graduates travel every year across the country to see one another,” another alumnus asked. Finding these alumni, however, is not so easy a task. Since its founding in 1978, the College, with a faculty of 7 professors, has graduated fewer than 200 students, making the academic community which results from such closeness one of the hallmarks of its education. In fact, by design, all of the students in a given class take six credit hours of course work together each semester for all four years. Here, friendship is the precondition of sustained inquiry. Beyond this required program in the humanities, students also choose one of three majors: literature, philosophy, or political science, which accounts for the entirety of their course electives.
Since 1983 the college has also offered a semester in Rome for its sophomores to continue their same course of study in the invigorating environs of the Eternal City. An education at Thomas More does in fact interweave a Great Books with a non-Great Books approach, and in a fashion that carries both its students and its reputation, around the world.
Mount Saint Mary’s College 
Emmitsburg, Maryland
Divided roughly into two parts across all four years of a student’s education, the core curriculum at Mount Saint Mary’s is designed to ensure that every graduate leaves with a sound foundation in both the arts and sciences. Whereas in the first two years western culture is studied more generically through history, art, literature, and philosophy, the third and fourth years concentrate specifically on American experience and then a non-western culture.
In the midst of this education, however, what truly distinguishes the Mount is its social responsibility. Personal guidance is a hallmark of its education. From the first day on campus each freshman’s seminar instructor is assigned to the new student not only as an academic advisor, but also as a mentor and personal confidant. From the first day, therefore, the effort is made at Mount Saint Mary’s to connect its liberal arts training explicitly to the social and moral growth of the student. Time and again one hears that the regular presence of priests and sisters from the adjoining seminary likewise unifies the entire community in its common concern to pursue a Christian life well lived.
Set aside on its own 1,400 acre mountain retreat, it should be no surprise that the peace of its surroundings is at the center of its surety.
Thomas Aquinas College 
Santa Paula, California
Drafted in the spring of 1968, the principles set forth in the Founding Document of Thomas Aquinas College to this day are said to epitomize both the outer character and inner disposition of the institute they were designed to establish. Simply stated, the College itself embodies ‘A Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic Liberal Education.’
Liberal education is pursued to perfect man’s rationality. This alone accounts for the extraordinary emphasis TAC places on its totally integrated Great Books curriculum, first conceived at Columbia University and later most fully implemented at St. John’s College (Annapolis and Santa Fe). There are no majors and no electives. But what is more, liberal education so conceived naturally draws the student to the study of theology and to the knowledge of God who is the source of all knowing. As such, theology is studied in every semester at TAC with a particular emphasis on the doctrines of the Church as they are presented in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.
In its bulletin, which contains the application materials received by every prospective student, one reads, “Whatever nourishes the faith belongs to religious education; without strong faith, the best theology is only trivial.” It is in this light that the sacramental life too is alive and well among the student body. In fact, nothing about the communal life at TAC is oriented simply at the education of its students, rather, its goal is their complete freedom in the love of God.
Christendom College
 Front Royal, Virginia
Christendom College has no less a purpose for its students than to prepare them for the evangelization of the world. Following the impetus of its motto, at Christendom the imperative to “Restore all things in Christ” is the beginning, middle, and end of its mission.
Founded in 1977 to provide an education informed throughout by the Catholic faith, Christendom is, according to its charter, “institutionally committed to the Magesterium of the Catholic Church in conformity with the Apostolic Constitution Ex corde ecclesiae.” To this end the college seeks to pass on the heritage and culture of our western civilization by offering a carefully structured liberal arts education in which the truths of natural reason and the Catholic faith are pursued together. Most impressively, 100% of its faculty publicly affirm their adherence to the official teachings of the Church, and any variance from that posture is grounds for dismissal. It is not the task at Christendom simply to provide an education in the faith, but rather, to equip its students for the fulfillment of the Church’s widest mission.
Given this extraordinary devotion it is almost without surprise that 15 percent of its graduates have already entered the consecrated life in one way or another. There is a splendid education in the liberal arts awaiting every student at Christendom, but more to the point, there is a way of life to shape a person for a lifetime.
St. Mary’s College of California
 Moraga, California
Set within the San Francisco Bay Area’s Moraga Valley, surrounded by the beautiful hills of west-central California, St. Mary’s enjoys an idyllic campus setting as rich as the education it provides.
Owned and operated by the Christian Brothers since 1863, the college strives to maintain a school genuinely Catholic in character by ensuring that matters of faith inform every aspect of a student’s education. But in order to provide a specific arena for such inquiry, since 1941 St. Mary’s has radically shaped its core curriculum around a mandatory four-semester long Great Books program in the humanities known as the Collegiate Seminars. Reading the great authors of western tradition from Aeschylus and Aristophanes to Kafka and Kierkegaard, students acquire all of the necessary tools of critical thinking by grappling with the original writings of the world’s greatest minds. Unlike many other colleges, however, which have made similar efforts to incorporate such reading within their programs, the Collegiate Seminar on Roman, Early Christian and Medieval Thought carries a far more substantial representation of authors essential to the Catholic tradition.
Roman and medieval writings have been dropped in many of this country’s best Great Books programs, but certainly not at St. Mary’s. Understandably, for some, this still might not be enough. But for those students wanting more Great Books than a core curriculum and a few seminars in literature, philosophy and theology, one can always choose St. Mary’s four-year totally integrated alternative curriculum, exclusively based in a reading of original sources.
Assumption College
 Worcester, Massachusetts
For those to whom New England is dear, the Augustinians of the Assumption offer a college that has to be considered. While it is a rather large school, with a student population just under three thousand, both its size and immediate proximity to the nine other academic institutions in the Worcester Consortium make it a very attractive option for the student who could benefit from exposure to such resources. Studies at Assumption are not all hustle and shuffle from Holy Cross to Worcester Polytechnic, on the other hand. Every student is required to complete certain courses in both philosophy and theology, as well as in the social sciences and the humanities — which covers art, music, theater, literature and history. And for those interested in French language, the French Institute on campus provides an impressive cultural resource firmly rooted in the area’s deep Anglo-French heritage.
In a survey drawn to the particular merits of a school’s offerings in the liberal arts, it would certainly be folly not to mention Assumption’s unique Foundations program. This is a two-year interdisciplinary course integrating art, politics, and philosophy all within a single study. In the first year, by considering certain cities, the people who lived there, and the art they created, the students are able to investigate how a culture influences one’s thought and vice versa. In the second year, the concentration is more specifically on religion and philosophy, which are examined in a parallel reading of certain authors whose ideas are interrelated. All in all the program offers a marvelous foundation for any future study.
Saint Anselm College
 Manchester, New Hampshire
1,500 years of religious and intellectual tradition should add gravitas to any institution with such a heritage, but more basic to all Benedictine education is a singular pursuit of God that flows from the living community at its center. One should not have to wax poetic to describe a school that is the apostolate of a Benedictine Abbey: sound education is the obvious consequence of lives committed to work, study, and prayer.
In its particular manifestation in Manchester, the Benedictine education is most unique for a humanities program, in which all students participate, called “Portraits of Human Greatness.” In it students approach questions of character and moral choice through various value systems as they might be depicted, say, in the lives of a warrior, a prophet, a philosopher or an artisan. After this, the program continues by examining chronologically the social, cultural and political significance of certain historic figures from the Renaissance to the present. While creating a particularly attractive arena for the development of critical thought, the program seems most appropriate in this setting, as here also, surrounded by individuals committed to a certain way of life, a student can see for himself the impact of that life on the one who pursues it.