51����

 

“Do Not Underestimate What You Have Received Here”

 

by Paul J. O’Reilly, Ph.D.
President, 51����
Remarks at the New England President’s Dinner
May 20, 2026
 

When you were freshmen, I spoke to you about what you could expect from 51����. I quoted one of our founders, Mr. Berquist:

… this present life does allow some leisure to some of us, and liberal education seeks to exploit this leisure so that we might achieve as much freedom as possible. Accordingly, it is directed to the kinds of knowledge that human understanding seeks for its own perfection. Thus, it is not concerned primarily with practical knowledge — for no such knowledge is desirable in itself. If we could have the practical results without the knowledge, we would not bother with the latter; for example, if the sick could get well by themselves, no one would study medicine.

To say that school is for the sake of a career, or a well-paying job, then, is exactly inverting the right order. Work is for the sake of leisure. Education is for the sake of truth. The practical is for the sake of the leisure to pursue and rest in the truth. Mr. Berquist put it this way: “We might say, then, that the free man does not desire learning in order to change the world but sees in learning itself the kind of change the world needs.”

One of the things you have seen is that virtue lies in the mean, and that extremes are to be avoided. That principle applies also to the intellectual formation you have received at 51����. There are, indeed, extremes to avoid.

You know the College simply as TAC. But there are some who say that TAC stands for “That Arrogant College.” Is that truly the danger we should fear?

What is arrogance? It is a species of pride. And St. Thomas says of pride, “Pride denotes immoderate desire of one’s own excellence, a desire that is not in accord with right reason” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.162, a.4).

Arrogance is also related to boasting: “Boasting seems properly to denote a man’s extolling of himself by his words” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.112, a.1).

“Yet, this evening, I do not wish chiefly to warn you against overestimating your education. I wish, rather, to warn you against the opposite extreme: underestimating it.”

Strictly speaking, boasting concerns speaking about oneself. Yet something like boasting can also occur when a person speaks in such a way as to display his own knowledge: “For when someone lifts himself up inwardly by arrogance, it often results that outwardly he boasts … Hence arrogance, which is an extolling of oneself, is a kind of pride; yet it is not the same as boasting, but is very often its cause” (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.112, a.1, reply to objection 2).

“That Arrogant College?”

In light of what arrogance truly is, I do not think this criticism is fair to our graduates. It may be that when someone possesses confidence about first principles and what follows from them; when someone understands the distinction and order of the sciences; when someone can distinguish demonstration from probable argument, or sees clearly the harmony between faith and reason — such confidence can appear, especially in conversation, to be arrogance.

But intellectual confidence is not arrogance.

Still, appearances matter. Even when others are mistaken or confused, we must approach them with patience, humility, and charity. Truth does not need harshness to defend it.

Yet, this evening, I do not wish chiefly to warn you against overestimating your education. I wish, rather, to warn you against the opposite extreme: underestimating it.

51���� is a rare institution. The education you have received here is not merely unusual by contemporary standards; it is almost impossible to find elsewhere. And so, we may ask: Having completed these studies, have you become wise?

St. Paul writes: “Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age … the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’” (1 Cor. 3:18–19).

St. Thomas explains in his commentary that: “The wisdom of this world rests mainly on this world, whereas the wisdom that attains to God through the things of this world is not the wisdom of the world but the wisdom of God … Therefore, the wisdom of this world, which considers the things of this world in such a way that it does not reach divine truth, is foolishness with God.”

And quoting the Book of Wisdom, he reminds us: “All men who are ignorant of God are foolish.”

Our age gives us many examples of this worldly wisdom. We live in a culture capable of extraordinary technical achievement and yet capable also of astonishing superficiality. We are surrounded by slogans masquerading as insight, and sentiment substituting for thought.

Perhaps, then, you are not yet wise in the fullest sense. Surely none of us possesses wisdom perfectly. Yet over these four years you have come to see many truths, including divine truths, and that raises another question: How did this happen?

Our founding president, Dr. McArthur, once explained it this way: “When we fail to respect and follow the natural order of learning, we can never verify our views, or, more importantly, find that we may be wrong. Should we wish to maintain our positions, we can only will them to be so, and sneer at those who disagree with us. This is to go beyond reason, to become the measure of a reality we have cut down and pared to comply with our desires.”

You have been formed according to the natural order of learning. And because of the method adopted here, you have not merely received conclusions passively; you have actively participated in inquiry itself.

Your studies have taught you to begin with what is vague and confused and to proceed gradually toward clearer and more distinct understanding. You have learned that confused knowledge is not useless knowledge; it is the beginning of inquiry.

“Our age gives us many examples of this worldly wisdom. We live in a culture capable of extraordinary technical achievement and yet capable also of astonishing superficiality. We are surrounded by slogans masquerading as insight, and sentiment substituting for thought.”

This movement — from the indistinct to the distinct — is characteristic not only of our knowledge of nature, but also of mathematics and theology.

One first comes to know, for example, that the exterior angle of a triangle is greater than either of the opposite interior angles before one comes to understand precisely that it is equal to the sum of those two interior angles.

And similarly in theology: One may first understand, in some way, that Christ is true God and true man. But it takes immense intellectual labor to understand what is contained within that proposition. Is Christ one person or two? Is His nature composed of divine and human natures? Is the person of Christ identical with the eternal Word? The theologian proceeds cautiously, step by step, toward greater clarity.

This, indeed, is how Christian doctrine develops: beginning from truths certainly known, though indistinctly grasped, and advancing toward fuller understanding.

Notice, then, what follows from this. Nature guarantees the beginning of wisdom, but not its completion. Other things are needed. Logic is needed so that we may reason soundly from common conceptions. Teachers are needed to guide and order our thoughts. Faith is needed to illuminate the path toward truth.

And friendship is needed as well. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote in Fides et Ratio, “Reason needs to be sustained in all its searching by trusting dialogue and sincere friendship.”

That friendship has been one of the great gifts of your years here. For intellectual life cannot flourish in isolation. Truth is pursued most fruitfully in conversation, in shared wonder, in common devotion to what is real.

Dr. McArthur also reminded us that during these years we have reflected “on our starting points by asking ourselves the essential questions about the suppositions of our disciplines, which means confronting the greatest thinkers, not as historical personages who express the view of a given culture, but as writers who think beyond any time and place.”

And, further: “The authors, in other words, must be thought of as contemporaries.”

This is one of the most remarkable features of your education. You have not been taught merely to consider opinions historically, nor to dismiss thinkers because they belong to another age. You have instead entered into conversation with them. You have learned to approach Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Newton, and others not as museum pieces, but as living teachers.

Dr. McArthur continues: “Only in this way will the philosophical life be restored, and only in this way can we escape the tyranny of our starting points, which, even when they are true, must not be accepted without constant reflection. Unless we are willing to undergo such efforts, we cannot even understand our own words and our own thoughts.”

You have discovered that there are perennial truths — truths not determined by time, place, or ideology. Because such truths arise from ordinary experience and the common conceptions of the human mind, they remain accessible to all who are willing to reflect carefully. That is why Newman could say of Aristotle that “He has told us the meaning of our own words and ideas, before we were born.”

Aristotle began not with theories or abstractions inaccessible to men, but with ordinary experience itself. Mortimer Adler observed the same thing: “In an effort to understand nature, society, and man, Aristotle began where everyone should begin — with what he already knew in the light of his ordinary commonplace experience.”

This is profoundly important today. Few of us will become specialists in physics, molecular biology, or advanced mathematics. Yet all of us have access to the perennial principles rooted in ordinary experience. And, therefore, all of us remain capable of judging whether conclusions are reasonable.

For example, through your studies of Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s De Anima, many of you have come to see that living things cannot be adequately explained by matter alone. Yet materialism is often presented today as though it were simply “what science has proven.” Radical materialism, however, is not a scientific conclusion. It is a philosophical assumption, one that cannot account for reason and moral obligation.

“You have been formed according to the natural order of learning. And because of the method adopted here, you have not merely received conclusions passively; you have actively participated in inquiry itself.”

Long before Plato and Aristotle, Genesis had already revealed this mystery: Man is formed from the dust of the earth, and yet also made in the image and likeness of God.

Reason exposes the inadequacy of materialism. Faith confirms what reason discovers. Here, again, you have seen the harmony of faith and reason.

This is only one example among many of the kind of intellectual formation you have received here. Perhaps you could have reached some of these conclusions on your own, but it is unlikely. For you would have had to overcome alone the powerful customs and assumptions that most people simply absorb without reflection.

What you have received here is not merely a formation. You have learned to recognize what comes first. You have learned the nature of argument, the difference between rhetoric and demonstration, the order of learning, and the hierarchy of the sciences.

Perhaps most remarkably, you have learned many of these things not through explicit lectures about them, but through the structure of the program itself. That is what makes this education unique.

Now, you are still beginners. But what a beginning you have made.

This beginning may at times have escaped your notice amid the daily routine of tutorials, demonstrations, papers, and seminars. Perhaps some classes seemed unresolved. Perhaps many conversations ended inconclusively. And yet, quietly and steadily, you have been formed.

As Mr. Berquist said: “That you should make … a beginning [in the way of judgment], and make it well, is the chief purpose of your education here.”

 You do not want to underestimate what a great good that is.

I have seen the fruits of this education in our alumni: in parents entrusted with the formation of their children, in priests caring for souls. Our graduates bring intellectual competence and moral clarity into every vocation they enter.

And, so, I say to you tonight: Do not underestimate what you have received here. You have received a pearl of great price. Guard it carefully and hand it on generously. If you do so, then you need not fear arrogance. Instead, you should be grateful and humble, always keeping in mind the source of truth.