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Published: March 5, 2009

“Ever loyal to the Vicar of Christ and faithful to the teaching Church”

Thomas Aquinas College dedicates new $23 million campus chapel this weekend

Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles, will be the principal celebrant of a concelebrated Dedication Mass on Saturday at Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, a school widely regarded as one of the most orthodox Catholic colleges in the United States.

Joining Cardinal Mahony in celebration of the 11 a.m. Mass will be three bishops, two abbots and more than 40 priests, including about 14 priests who are alumni of the college, said school spokeswoman Anne S. Forsyth. The Mass “will be in the ordinary form said in English, but with parts, for example the Gloria, the Sanctus, etc., and hymns in Latin primarily,” said Forsyth. “Our choir and chant schola will sing for this.” A statement issued earlier by the school said selections would include music from composers such as Hassler, Mozart, Dubois, and Palestrina.

Attendance at the Dedication Mass is by invitation only, said Forsyth, and admission to the campus throughout the weekend will be by special pass only. “This is highly unusual for us,” she said. “We tend to have an open door policy and welcome all visitors. However, in order to ensure that those who have been invited can be properly accommodated, we've had to set this policy, and passes have long since been mailed out.”

Thomas Aquinas faculty members, officials of the college and benefactors have been issued invitations for the Saturday Mass, though Forsyth said there may be some room for members of the school’s senior class.

Between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Saturday, Adoration and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is scheduled at the new campus chapel.

The following day, Sunday, March 8, an 8 a.m. Mass in the extraordinary form will be held for alumni and students. The Mass will be offered by “our graduate, Fr. John Berg, the Superior General of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, based in Switzerland,” said Forsyth. “Our chant schola will sing for this Mass.”

At 11 a.m. on Sunday, Auxiliary Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Diego will offer a Mass in the ordinary form, in Latin, for Thomas Aquinas alumni.

“Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel is the 12th of 15 buildings to be completed on the campus of Thomas Aquinas College,” said a statement issued by the college. “At a cost of $23 million, it is 15,000-square feet in area and is the most prominently situated and most elaborate of the structures on the campus.”

The chapel, cruciform in shape and featuring a 135-foot bell tower, was designed by Duncan Stroik, a professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame and a principal of Duncan G. Stroik Architecture, a firm that specializes in ecclesiastical design. “Although the basis of its design is in the Spanish Mission style of Southern California, Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel also incorporates elements from the Catholic Church's long tradition of sacred architecture, such as a dome that rises 89 feet over the sanctuary, floors and columns of Italian marble, and an ornate limestone façade,” said the college’s statement.

“Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity Chapel will be a statement in stone, as it were, for our students and for all who visit our campus that Thomas Aquinas College is resolved to remain ever loyal to the Vicar of Christ and faithful to the teaching Church,” said college president Dr. Thomas E. Dillon.

Once dedicated, the new chapel, which features permanent seating for 350 and side aisles that can be used to accommodate another 300 temporary seats, will be the site of the college's four daily Masses, “as well as the many devotions initiated and attended by a large majority of its 350 students, who hail from across the country and abroad,” said the statement.

“The name that has been chosen for our new chapel is fitting, since the entire academic program at Thomas Aquinas College culminates in the study of St. Thomas Aquinas' treatise on the Trinity," said college chaplain Jesuit Fr. Cornelius Buckley. “And Mary is our model par excellence in her relationship to the Holy Trinity -- the perfect daughter of the Father, the most admirable mother of the Son, and the dearest spouse of the Holy Spirit."

The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College has this to say about Thomas Aquinas College: "It is the only Catholic college that has exclusively focused on the Great Books. There is an impressive intellectual rigor at TAC that is matched by a commitment to orthodox Catholicism."

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