Dear Friends:

Introduction
Warm greetings - and congratulations - to all of you who are beginning your studies at Catholic Pacific College and TWU. You have made a wise choice in choosing CPC. Its Catholic Formation Track will give you a solid intellectual formation in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. And all this within the context of a major Christian university, with all the advantages that such a campus offer you.

St. John Henry Newman insisted relentlessly that the primary purpose of higher education - and this is true of CPC - is, in the first place, decidedly intellectual. Get ready to have your mind transformed, changed in the light of truth, so that you will become someone who can engage fruitfully in conversation and debate with your colleagues and peers, many of who do not share your faith. If CPC is successful in fulfilling its mission , you will become someone who has a capacity for exercising judgement, for bringing insights and arguments from a variety of disciplines to bear on the complex issues that are facing society and the Church. Just think of the light that needs to be shed on such questions as the meaning of human sexuality and marriage, gender identity, abortion and euthanasia, reconciliation between First Nations and non-Indigenous people, the proper role and limits of government authority.

Two Marks of a Catholic University Education
Many descriptions of Catholic higher education are possible. I will attempt only to give you two brief insights, that I believe are crucial - and probably the most important: an emphasis on community and on a sacramental-incarnational attitude to reality.

1. Communitarian Ethos
The community spirit that exists at CPC is due, yes, of course to its manageable size. It allows for and fosters the interaction of faculty with students, and of students with one another.

There is, moreover, also a theological basis for this strong sense of community. It comes from Catholic teaching on the Body of Christ, where each member is dependent on the other, and all together serve the common good. In worship - which you will find accessible and frequent at CPC - you are all together. Your prayer, while always personal, reached its high point at the Eucharist, where you are united as “one body, one spirit in Christ.” Furthermore, the students at CPC do good works for others. They commit themselves together to the common good of everyone and of each individual. This is what St. John Paul II called “solidarity.”

2. Sacramental Sensibility
Authentic Catholic education, such as you will experience at CPC, will help make you more attuned to seeing reflections and images of the divine in ordinary day-to-day life. You will come to appreciate, God willing, that all reality has been touched by God and can be explored. Truth is, of course, found fully in Christ, but “seeds of the Word” are everywhere, and Catholic formation helps one to see that. A Catholic education helps to see the harmony between faith and reason, between Jerusalem and Athens. The world itself is “charged with the grandeur of God,” in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ phrase.

The doctrine of the Incarnation is, therefore, central to a genuine Catholic college. That God is transcendent but also Emmanuel makes it possible to see that, no matter what one is studying, it can be connected to the things of God, because he became flesh (cf. Jn 1:14). CPC will alert you to an awareness of God’s sacramental presence in our world. Let me quote a theologian: “For the university, dedicated as it is to studying all aspects of human and natural reality,…faith in the Incarnation provides both a goal and a sense of companionship for our wonder: this world is a holy place, a shrine of meaning, because God has made it His own.” 2
Welcome to the exciting and exhilarating world of Catholic education at CPC.