Obama vs. Catholics: A battle we must win

"Lazy, ivory-tower intellectuals."

"Self-important specialists."

"Arrogant wool-gatherers!"

Sometimes professors deserve their titles. Perhaps my colleagues and I at Thomas More College have even been guilty of too much detachment; too much other-worldly contemplation . . . but now a dark shadow has ruined such a peace. A dark shadow lies across our land.

A dark shadow threatens all Catholic institutions and new Herods threaten to kill with extinction at the stroke of a pen.

This rising pagan culture drives good professors out of the library, out of their studies, and out of their cherished classrooms.

We are driven not only into the public square, but literally to the streets to defend rights and values that less than 50 years ago were upheld by all men and women of goodwill, whether housed in ivory towers or not.

CASE IN POINT: quite recently, the American government declared its intention to force Catholic colleges to provide its students with health insurance that pays for sterilization and contraceptives, including those that cause abortion. The government specifically states that this mandate "ensures that collegiate women have access to contraception, abortifacients, sterilization, and the like."

Now maybe I am an "ivory tower intellectual" wedded a bit too closely to my books. I certainly didn't spend those long years in graduate school studying the Classics so that I could spend even more years battling government regulators and bureaucrats who are trampling on my rights as a Catholic . . .

But then maybe I did: The truth must be defended! In the streets as in the classroom: the Truth must be defended. Enough is enough!

As President of Thomas More College, I am morally obligated to uphold the teachings of our beloved Catholic Church.

I must stand by the best traditions of our civilization.

I must resist by all means possible every effort to compromise the dignity of human life.

I must, therefore, resist all who attempt to lure young people into the Culture of Death through the stealthy introduction of contraceptives and abortifacients, and all those who seek to use our funds to fuel immorality and murder.

And I do not care if the Culture of Death is backed by a Federal Mandate.

Consequently, with scores of American bishops, I have come out fighting. We have joined forces to demand that the Obama administration repeal this immoral new regulation; and we will not stand down until we win.

Unfortunately, battling the Bureaucracy of Death drains away time and money; it tears me away from my primary vocation of strengthening Thomas More College. Most dangerously, it keeps me from critical fundraising efforts that allow our College to fight for Life and Truth.

But what can we do? Abandon our bishops? Abandon other Catholic Colleges still asleep to this sinister threat?

Help me battle this immoral regulation and make up the funding shortfall it will cause here.

Could you give $25, $50, $100, $250, or even $500 today?

Your support will preserve our modest campus where we've created a gracious community of faculty and students rooted in the Christian civility that alone forms virtue in souls.

For four years, we require each student to dwell at length on the Great Books that built Western civilization -- the books whose study will make it once again a shining city on a hill, books from:

Holy Scripture, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, St. Augustine, Dante, St. Thomas Aquinas, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Burke, Hamilton, de Tocqueville, Hawthorne, Chesterton, T.S. Eliot, and the other great men and women whose wisdom gives courage its meaning.

And for four years, we expect our students to live the truth, to think and to act in accord with it; they travel as pilgrims to Rome; they work in homeless shelters, they pray the liturgy of the hours, they stay close to the Sacraments, to their books, to Our Lord.

That's the education young Catholics in our day need—the education that countless bishops, cardinals, public leaders, and trusted institutions have recognized as top flight.

	"Thomas More College is dedicated to forming students intellectually and spiritually within the Catholic intellectual tradition and with unapologetic fidelity to the Teaching Authority of the Church." Francis Cardinal Arinze
"The teaching at Thomas More College exemplifies the right relationship between faith and reason, which is always at the service of the truth." Cardinal Raymond Burke
	"Excellence in every respect is what Thomas More College offers young people. I do not exaggerate when I say that Thomas More College is exactly the kind of Catholic college you would want your children and your children's children to attend." Patrick J. Buchanan, Author and Public Figure
"Thomas More College is is exactly what a Catholic college should be." the late Robert D. Novak, Conservative Columnist

Thomas More College was also just ranked in the top 2% nationwide in educational quality by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Out of 1,009 schools reviewed, we were one of only 19 to receive an "A" rating.

You know, "ivory tower intellectual" is spat out as a slur.

But we teachers and scholars --- those of us who study our Faith --- know that for centuries "Tower of Ivory" has been one of the loveliest names of Mary. Quiet and retiring she was, like a gentle teacher, and a contemplative like we strive to be at Thomas More College.

But Our Lady was not weak or afraid of battles forced upon her: she crushed the head of the serpent, the Devil himself. She is the ivory tower that stands against the shadow of darkness.

So now I, an "ivory tower intellectual" proudly go forth into the public square under the banner of Mary, the Tower of Ivory herself, to battle an administration drunk on regulation, a regime that tries to force its dark ideas through "mandates," a regime that tries to compel teachers and students to co-operate with the Culture of Death.

We go forth to defend the Truth and to defend the innocent and vulnerable so dearly loved by Our Lady.

Will you help? We don't need your help tomorrow. We need it today!

Please click here to make your donation now.

$50 if you can possibly afford it, but no contribution is too small -- or too large!

Thank you, and please keep us in your prayers.

Sincerely,

William Edmund Fahey, Ph.D. President, Thomas More College