Other Articles

Aquinas House Jubilee-A Feat of Faith
By Christal Costello '98

In the year 2003,we at Aquinas House are enthusiastically celebrating the fifty year anniversary of the founding of our Aquinas House Catholic Student Center at Dartmouth College. We hope that the larger Dartmouth community will join in this celebration as well, for from Aquinas House’s very inception, our support of the College’s mission of higher education has proven to be mutually beneficial.

After the Second World War, John Sloan Dickey, then president of the College, advocated the need to form students “in both competence and conscience.” His vision involved the establishment of the Tucker Committee, and subsequently the Tucker Foundation, to oversee a renewed emphasis on moral formation. In response, Bishop Brady of the Diocese of Manchester funded the purchase of a location for a Catholic student center and appointed a full-time Catholic chaplain to minister to Dartmouth students. On December 8, 1953, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception,Aquinas House was inaugurated at 13 Choate Road, with Father William Nolan as its first chaplain.

To this day,Aquinas House, though remaining financially independent from the College, nevertheless maintains its intricate connection to the life of the campus.We have been blessed with the leadership of two well-beloved chaplains, Father William Nolan, director from 1953- 1987, and Father John McHugh, director from 1987-2002. The vision of the center, begun by Father Nolan and continued by Father John, sought to sustain a community in which students could nurture their faith and grow in holiness. They fostered an atmosphere of fraternal charity among students, encouraged growth in the moral and spiritual life, and facilitated a dynamic engagement of the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition with the scholarship and critical issues of our time. The untiring commitment of Father Nolan and Father John to advance this vision has left a solid and lasting heritage that will benefit students for generations to come. The current staff at Aquinas House, director Father Brendan Buckley, Anna Mae Mayer, and I, are united in our commitment to this vision, as well.

Reflection on the past fifty years of Aquinas House’s presence at Dartmouth reminds me that despite the most recent change occurring here, Father John’s departure after seventeen years of exemplary service to Dartmouth students and the wider community, the continuity of our mission remains as strong as ever. I myself am a small link in that chain. As an undergraduate, the myriad array of lectures, discussions, distinguished visiting speakers, liturgies, social gatherings, retreats, and service outreach that I participated in at Aquinas House has left an indelible mark on my Dartmouth education. I am very grateful to have studied at the rigorous and diverse institution that is Dartmouth, with the opportunity to cultivate my Catholic faith in an equally rigorous way. Catholic students continue to be drawn to Dartmouth for this very reason. I feel privileged having just graduated from divinity school, to return to Aquinas House, to give back to this center and to Dartmouth a small part of what I have so richly received here.We at Aquinas House invite all those who call Dartmouth’s motto their own to rejoice with us, as we celebrate with gratitude and awe these past fifty years of rich abundance brought forth at Aquinas House.