Catholic Identity and Mission

Introduction

On March 1, 2022, a teepee was installed in the St. Thomas More College (STM) chapel, foregrounding the place of the original peoples of this land, and reminding us of the essentially relational nature of our college’s mission and identity. The arrival of the teepee in the chapel space was the culmination of many conversations, conversations that both created and enacted the type of authentic relationships to which we, as a community, aspire. The teepee will serve as both a place of quiet prayer and a powerful symbol of encounter – between peoples, with the land, and with the Creator of all that is.

In our work for reconciliation, we have learned that healthy relationship presupposes a healthy understanding of our own identity. Being rooted in who we are, both individually and collectively, allows us to engage with others in respectful and constructive ways. We bear witness to the belief that diverse identities and communities can interact without aggression or desire for dominance. Dialogue partners can each grow from participating in what Pope Francis calls ‘cultures of encounter’. This document, then, invites us to reflect on our communal identity as a college to better equip us to engage in dialogue with the diverse individuals and communities that inhabit this place.

The theme of encounter weaves together our reflections on key facets of who we are as a college: 1) Catholic intellectual traditions; 2) Catholic social teaching; 3) Hospitality and pastoral care of the college community, 4) Sacramental imagination, and 5) Inclusivity, diversity, and community.

Each of these themes elaborate on how we live out our Catholic identity and mission at STM, as a gathering place of peoples and ideas. They point back to our deep roots, illustrate our current commitments, and aspire to ever greater authenticity as we seek to fulfill our “calling as an exemplary embodiment of the Catholic intellectual tradition in Canada”.

Since the Basilian Fathers founded STM in 1936, we have become an increasingly diverse community. This diversity only underscores the centrality of encounter in the life of STM. Early experiences of STM, associated with the White House on College Drive, saw the Basilian Fathers serving the needs of Catholic students on the University of Saskatchewan campus. Most of these students were the children of European settlers living on this prairie landscape. The Basilians, as depicted in the Kurelek mural, modeled a way of encountering students. They nourished both their minds and their spirits, they were present, and pointed them to Christ, the central figure in their lives as Basilian priests. As a result, countless students have found in STM a home during their university years and have been shaped by STM into leaders in our community and beyond.

Today at STM we face the opportunity and challenge of remaining both true to the educational legacy bequeathed us by the Basilian Fathers and responding to the needs of this time and place. Each time we gather as a college community, we remind ourselves of the fact that we are situated on Treaty Six Territory and the traditional Homeland of the Métis. We welcome students, staff, and faculty from diverse cultural, linguistic, and religious backgrounds and celebrate that fact. We still exist on the prairie landscape but have expanded our understanding of the human geography of this place.

The call to work for right relationship, based on the biblical notion of justice, resounds as we become ever more aware of the devastating impacts of colonization on the Indigenous peoples of this territory. The privilege of being an institution of higher learning on Treaty Six Territory and the traditional Homeland of the Métis bears with it the responsibility of truth-telling and redress to move forward in right relationship. That responsibility includes a deep and difficult reflection on the role of the Catholic Church in the colonial project and, in particular, the Indian Residential Schools. Living in right relationship on a land shaped by settler colonialism is hard work.

This document is meant to be a tool to enable this work with greater authenticity, grounding us in the tradition, vision, and values of this institution in order to better engage with the relationship building and mending to which we are called as a people of faith.

While our institutions are bearers of both hope and brokenness, the core of our traditions contain the seeds of transformation. We therefore walk forward both humbly and confidently, respectfully mining our respective traditions for truth and carefully bringing these truths into dialogue with each other. The role of a Catholic college today continues to be one of hospitality and welcome, a place where respectful dialogue across difference can flourish. In such hospitable and right relationships, no identities are diminished but all are fed. Friendship abounds and new worlds are created.

This document offers pathways for dialogue. It proposes some starting points for conversation about who we are as the community of St. Thomas More College. It hearkens back to our founders, history, and traditions that have shaped us. It reminds us of our roots and the ideals that we have held in common. It also locates us in our current context, naming the moment and asking us to imagine how our mission can respond to the questions, perplexities, and possibilities of our time. The challenges are many but, in our community, there is strength. This document invites us into conversations that can empower us to move forward in a way that is both true to our tradition and relevant in today’s world. We move forward together.

In these sections, we invite you into dialogue with the Catholic identity and mission of St. Thomas More College.

In doing so, we invite you to bring your own identity into the conversation. How do your own traditions and values intersect with those of the College? Where do they diverge? Can you see yourself participating in the life of this community? If so, how can your own gifts help us build a more just and hospitable community of faith and learning, one the seeks to reach out beyond itself to build a better world? We invite you to enter the conversation…

The teepee in the chapel reminds us that the treaties signed by our ancestors shaped the relationships we are called to foster today. The traditions that were bequeathed us by our founders enliven our encounters in the present. In these next pages, we reflect on the ideals that guide us and invite you to join in this reflection. Together we can respond to Peter’s call to give “an account of the hope” (1 Peter 3, 15) that is in us and answer the call to do so with gentleness and reverence.

Evolving from the Basilian tradition and federated with the much larger University of Saskatchewan, St. Thomas More College represents a unique iteration of the Catholic intellectual tradition. Indeed, as claimed by Pope John Paul II in his apostolic constitution on Catholic colleges and universities, Ex Corde Ecclesiae , the university was born from the heart of the Church. STM enlivens and sharpens the idea that the search for truth is enriched by one’s sensitivity to the ethical and spiritual dimensions of life. So too, it recognizes that faith itself must be informed by intelligence: “If faith does not think, it is nothing.” Scholarship at STM is directed toward finding truth in God’s creation and can never be antithetical to the search for God. It is pursued in the context of the dignity of every human person.

For over 80 years, STM has contributed to the long tradition of advancing a creative dialogue between faith and reason. Scholars from a variety of different intellectual traditions within the social sciences and humanities, and from a variety of faith traditions, have answered the call to work across disciplines and foster the integration of knowledge, attentive to the spiritual and ethical dimensions of their work. The Catholic intellectual tradition, as lived out at STM, offers a holistic, historical, and ethical perspective to many intellectual endeavors. Drawing from the vision of a university that evolved from the encounter between intellectual inquiry and the conviction of faith in the medieval Church, STM applies this approach to current thinking, creating a dialogical space between faith and reason today. As reason is perfected, so must faith increase.

In the context of responsible academic freedom, STM challenges students to explore new ideas and to question assumptions in theory and research while contributing to the growing treasury of human knowledge. At STM, students are encouraged to engage questions of conscience, to reflect upon ethical implications, and to put one’s knowledge in service of the well-being of others and the world. The responses to such reflections require wisdom, careful discernment, a certain measure of humility, and a capacity to overlook self-interest and recognize a horizon of human need in the world today. Within their own traditions, students are challenged to deepen their faith so as to keep pace with clear reasoning. They are given space to reflect on the intersection of faith and reason in their own lives and to share their experiences with others.

It is our belief that our living out of the Catholic intellectual tradition as a Catholic liberal arts college is a gift to the wider Church and society. Our search for truth and knowledge is a gift of the Spirit which allows us to shed new light on contemporary questions. It challenges us, at times, to speak prophetically as we read the “signs of the times,” all the while reaching into our rich heritage of faith.

Questions for Reflection
Catholic Intellectual Tradition

What are the ethical implications of my search for truth/knowledge? How will my scholarship affect individuals, families, and/or institutions?

What does this knowledge teach me about the human condition? Having learned this information, do I have more empathy or understanding for those whose experiences differ from my own?

When I encounter views that challenge my own, how can I meet that challenge with openness and respect? What common ground can I find with these other perspectives?

The moral and ethical framework that emerges from Christ’s encounter with humanity is an expression of God’s deep love for all and the dignity of each person, created in God’s image and likeness. As such, the call to justice espoused in the Gospels is essential to the Catholic worldview. As followers of Christ, we are called to reach out to the margins of society just as he did. This commitment runs deep: entering into the fullness of humanity, Christ stood in solidarity with our broken world. In doing so, he laid an expectation on us to do the same. The college’s mission statement articulates our institutional commitment to this call: “as a Catholic college we are called to share in Christ’s service to the people of God. Thus, the work of our college is not an end in itself but must find application for the good of humanity.”

The call to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God” comes to us through the Hebrew prophets and continues through the ages. Living justly in community was central to the early Christian church, and throughout history the Catholic Church has played a major role in supporting the most vulnerable among us. Today, this work is most clearly articulated through what has come to be known as Catholic social teaching.

The beginning of Catholic social teaching as we understand it now is found in the writings of Pope Leo XIII, who wrote the first modern social encyclical (papal letter) in 1891. Entitled Rerum Novarum, it responded to the economic, social, and political impact of the Industrial Revolution. This prophetic document offered clarity and moral guidance at a time of great upheaval, speaking both theologically and practically to the issues of the day.

Social encyclicals written since the publication of this landmark paper follow its template, striving to speak to contemporary ills with eternal wisdom. These writings are, fundamentally, a considered and compassionate response to the world not as it could be, but as it is. The guiding principle of each encyclical, as laid out in Benedict XVI’s Caritas In Veritate, is the theological virtue of charity — or, more colloquially, love:

Charity is at the heart of the Church’s social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law.

Thus, the Catholic quest for justice must necessarily be informed by Christ’s articulation of the two greatest commandments: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and to love your neighbour as yourself.

Dorothy Day expressed these commandments in action as “the reckless spending of ourselves in God’s service and for his poor.” Within the Catholic tradition, this manifests itself both in justice and in service work. Working for structural change in society (justice) and responding to the direct needs of the marginalized (service) can both be articulated as acts of charity in the theological sense. One can see how these activities complement one another in the sprawling mission of the Catholic Worker movement, which Day co-founded. Catholic Workers could be found serving the homeless in the movement’s urban homeless shelters just as easily as they could be found serving jail time for acts of civil disobedience done in protest of nuclear proliferation, and one could find spirited discussions about both in The Catholic Worker, the movement’s newspaper. Each of these actions, in its way, is a manifestation of charity.

As a college, we strive to embody all these principles for our students through academic and co-curricular programming. We offer distinctive programming in the areas of Critical Perspectives on Social Justice & the Common Good as well as Peace Studies, both of which invite students to explore notions of charity and justice from a scholarly perspective. Students also have the opportunity to address these issues practically outside the classroom, through student groups such as Just Youth and the Service & Justice Project. The Engaged Learning Office allows students to bring the scholarly and the practical together with academic programming that incorporates active community engagement, both locally and abroad. These programs offer students the opportunity to meet and come to know people who have had diverse life experience and struggles. Students serve real community needs while developing a deeper understanding of injustice through direct encounters with those who are affected by it most. Through direct encounters, students begin to understand the human face of injustice.

Underpinning the college’s programs is the notion that the thirst for justice is not theoretical; it must be practical, and practicable. Students are taught a sense of moral responsiveness that will influence their lives and decisions long after they graduate from university.

Although we may aspire to Christ’s perfection in love, we are clay-footed creatures. Part of taking on the mantle of Catholic Social Thought is recognizing our limitations and failings. The college’s commitment to Catholic Social Teaching must necessarily include a level of critical self-reflection in order to remain faithful to this mission. Canadian Catholics especially must understand the Church’s complicity in the Canadian colonial project, grappling with our part in the wounds that have been inflicted upon the Indigenous communities of this land. Faithfully adhering to the truest expressions of justice and charity necessarily means we must acknowledge and atone for those wrongs in order to rebuild trust with Indigenous communities. This is a duty that the college takes seriously, working with Indigenous elders, scholars, students, and community members to understand how best to walk humbly through a process of reconciliation, decolonization, and Indigenization.

Questions for Reflection
Catholic Social Teaching

• How do we address social and economic inequality both locally and globally?
• How do we engage with other religious or non-religious traditions in a discussion about social justice?
• How do we provide education to those who otherwise would not have access to it?
• How does my choice of research/area of study contribute to the “good of all humanity”?
• How do our employment practices, policies, and fiscal stewardship reflect our values?

Our college is a place of encounter. In the classrooms and in the halls and in the cafeteria, across desks and around tables, we meet and we share in community. It is through “the challenge and the gift present in an encounter” that we accomplish the work—at once intellectual and moral—of our college. Our alumni often share memories of the original White House, our first college building, and likewise our students today often remember and remark on the physical space of the college: the library and the cafeteria, the atrium and the chapel, all the modern additions and amenities. But it’s not really the walls they remember, nor the books nor the pews, nor the shining glass. They remember the experiences that those walls held. These spaces are containers for the encounters that we share as members of a college community. In that White House and later in our current building, the Basilian Fathers offered hospitality to students, many of whom had left home for the first time. Rooted in their charism, those Basilians built a home in which students could flourish.

This impulse to hospitality and to care continues in our work today. The Campus Ministry team at STM is charged, in a special way, with providing pastoral care to students, faculty and staff. They are professional pastoral ministers trained in the art of spiritual direction and faith formation. However, the call to offer pastoral care goes beyond the Campus Ministry team. STM strives to be a compassionate workplace, allowing its members to develop to the “full measure of their humanity.” Pastoral care offered and given among faculty and staff, and even reaching out to the wider community, remains a hallmark of the STM experience.

As a college, we recognize that our community lives in the encounters we share, and because we work and learn in community, we have a duty to care. This duty is active in the relationship between teacher and student, of course, but our identity as a Catholic college likewise compels us to advance an ethics of care in all the work we do. Care—we might call it love—is fundamental to our common flourishing, and though our college is first and foremost an institution of higher learning, nevertheless we are committed to work that moves beyond the intellectual and into the moral space of those with whom we live and work and learn. The Basilian Fathers who founded our college were teachers, but they were also chaplains and ministers and friends. Christ’s greatest commandment is to love, and the gospel of Matthew reminds us that the love we show in encounter with others is an expression of a love for God.

And so, the pastoral care modeled by our Basilian founders is a duty that requires real work, but it is also a source of joy. All are invited to our shared table, and we live out our commitment to love and to care in those moments of community and hospitality that are characteristic of our college life. Christ’s first public miracle was at a wedding celebration, and we share in the “good wine” of Christ when we gather together to live out our mission as a college. Pastoral care happens in those joyous moments of encounter, when we reach out across a shared table and across our differences and truly acknowledge that person sitting across from us. This is a care that sustains all who experience it.

On the other hand, we must recognize that these bonds of care have sometimes been frayed or broken. Our commitment to pastoral care is fundamental to the work of reconciliation at the college. Catholic educators here on this land and not so far from our college have perpetrated terrible abuse against Indigenous children in their care. We must commit to knowing this past fully and repenting. We at the college are called to embody a model of pastoral care that celebrates difference rather than destroying it. Pope Francis calls us to embrace others with a radical openness; to create a culture of encounter in which all people can flourish to the full measure of their humanity; to cultivate dialogue across difference. So, if we would claim that pastoral care is central to our Catholic identity, we have a duty to extend that care to all. If we would claim all are invited to our shared table, we have real work ahead of us to make that table truly welcoming. A culture of encounter can flourish only when we acknowledge the truths of our past relations with Indigenous peoples on this land and commit to the difficult work of righting those relations.

With all this in mind, we are asked to consider what gift we give of ourselves in our encounters with others. How do we care for the whole student? How do we care for each other? How do we help members of our college community discover their own giftedness and give name to their own deep gladness? Our Catholic identity compels us to move beyond ourselves. When we can do that, when we can meet the challenge of encounter and share in its common gifts, we can respond more fully to the hungers of the world, we can partake in a community committed to mutual care, and we can ourselves flourish more fully.

Questions for Reflection
Hospitality and Pastoral Care of the College Community

Take time to reflect on the following statements:
• “Our hearts expand as we step out of ourselves and embrace others” (Fratelli Tutti 89).
• One “cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” (Gaudium et spes 24)
• “the beginning, the subject and the goal of all social institutions is and must be the human person which for its part and by its very nature stands completely in need of social life.” (Gaudium et spes 25)
• Pastoral care is “that activity of the University which offers the members of the university community an opportunity to integrate religious and moral principles with their academic study and non-academic activities, thus integrating faith with life.” (Ex Corde Ecclesiae 38)
How might these ideas inform how you understand your work and relationship with STM?

Catholic sacramental imagination emphasizes God’s presence in the created world as an expression of love for humanity. In the opening paragraph of the 2nd Vatican Council document Lumen Gentium, we read: “the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race”. Each created thing—each person, each moment, each part of nature—holds the potential to communicate to us the sacred presence. All can become ways of encountering the Lord, icons of His presence in our bodies and the body of creation.

At STM, an encounter with the sacred is at the heart of all we do. As Pope Francis reminds us in Fratelli Tutti, the road we must travel is that of closeness; it is the culture of encounter. This theme of encounter is experienced in a variety of ways at St. Thomas More College. The Engaged Learning Program offers students a rich and meaningful encounter with those living in poverty or who are marginalized. The STM Art Gallery facilitates an encounter with beauty and artistic expressions. The heart of the Campus Ministry Team is providing opportunities to encounter the sacred or nourish faith-life through Bible study groups, retreats, spiritual direction, and encounters with other Christian communities and faith traditions. 

The Liturgy of the Word, focused on the reading of Scripture, offers an opportunity to listen to, and to reflect upon, the Word of God. The celebration of the Eucharist is the most important Sacramental event in the life of the Catholic Church. Catholics believe that the ordinary materials of bread and wine are transformed into the real presence of Christ. The nature of this transformation is mysterious, but its implications are inspiring. Christ in his Body is clearly offered for the nourishment of the community and is meant to transform the community. By partaking in this sacred meal, we become wholly united in Christ, as the Eucharistic bread that we eat is incorporated into the substance of our own bodies.

These encounters with the sacred are a summons, calling us to care for the needs around us: in particular, to create a sense of belonging for our student community. Recalling with Teresa of Avila that “Christ has no body now but yours,” we are strengthened in our desire to be authentic witnesses of Christ to the world. At STM, Sunday and weekday celebrations of the Eucharist in the Roman and Byzantine traditions commission those who partake to go forth in peace to love and to serve. 

Throughout the year at STM, many opportunities arise for the STM community to worship together. A good example is the Academic Mass when we, as a community, ask the Holy Spirit to guide and inspire our work in the coming year. All are invited to the Academic Mass, regardless of religious affiliation. Those who are not Catholic are invited to the Eucharist as prayerful participants or as respectful observers. By extension, the greatest respect is accorded to members of the academic community who are members of other Churches, ecclesial communities or religions (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, 39).

We do these things because we are created to be relational, to be in communion with God and one another. In Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis expresses a deep concern that people are becoming more and more isolated from each other. From our experiences of virtual communication, we know that digital information can carry the presence of a person to us, whether through messaging, web-conferencing, tweeting, posting, liking, or sharing. But while these platforms enable us to be substantially present, physical presence and encounter is the essence of life. Pope Francis states, "If we take each other seriously, then we should be brothers and sisters and friends, and not just anonymous beings." We are called to be sacraments of God’s love for each other.

Questions for Reflection
Sacramental Imagination

• How does STM’s faith life affect me?
• Does my participation in the mass or other prayer groups draw me closer to others in the community?
• Do I find inspiration in the faith of others in these settings?
• Do these contexts help me to cultivate inwardness, to become more reflective, and to be a better listener?

To be an inclusive community means being conscious of God working in each person’s life and recognizing the dignity of the individual as a unique creation and revelation of the divine. To that end, all are welcome at STM: our students, faculty, and staff represent a wide range of beliefs and backgrounds. We value each individual’s contribution in building the college’s identity and, following Catholic tradition, “every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, colour, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent.” This means that STM is a safe, welcoming space in which every member of the community matters.

We therefore strive to live out of a deep respect for the human person convinced that each is created in the “image and likeness of God.” Those who participate in our community of learners freely and warmly engage in dialogue ever conscious that, within a Catholic college, one of the interlocutors will always be the Catholic intellectual tradition, and that this tradition benefits from a culture of encounters with others.

At the heart of our desire to be a space of hospitable Catholicism (https://stmcollege.ca/about-us/administration-and-governance/college-plan.php ) is the belief that being both inclusive and diverse strengthens the Catholic identity of St. Thomas More College. Identity is never born in a vacuum. Identity is shaped and discovered in and through relationship. Healthy identities breed healthy relationships; healthy relationships enable the deepening of our identity. Theologian Peter Phan articulates well this productive tension:

Rather than differentiation or exclusiveness, I conceive Catholic identity as intensification and deepening of those deep structures that are pervasive in the Catholic church’s faith and practice and that are possessed in common with other Churches and even with non-Christian believers. In this way ecumenical and interreligious dialogues do not constitute a threat to the preservation of the Catholic identity; rather they provide necessary means and opportunities for deepening and intensifying the Catholic identity; not over [or] against the others but with them.

At St. Thomas More College, we live in the context of a federated relationship with the University of Saskatchewan. Within that relationship we recognize we have much to receive and much to share, not only in our dialogue with believers from other traditions, but also with those who claim no faith tradition. We also foster dialogue among the many expressions of faith within Catholicism. Each encounter, each conversation, allows for a dynamic deepening of the quest toward greater truth. We celebrate the discovery of our own collective identity as we develop a wide constellation of relationships within a diverse academic community, both at STM and the wider campus.

At STM, see ourselves as a diverse community of learners, built on a culture of meaningful and respectful encounters, striving for unity of vision amidst the diversity of human perspectives. Transcending difference and deepening communion is an act of love to which we bear witness.

Questions for Reflection
Inclusivity, Diversity, and the Value of Community

As one enters St. Thomas More Chapel and gazes at the expanse of the Kurelek mural on the north wall, one notices that images of gathering abound. Indigenous peoples and newcomers, women and men, young and old (and even one ghost!) gather around the central figure of Christ feeding the multitudes. In its original context, the mural meant to depict inclusivity, a core feature of STM’s communal life, showing the community meeting with others and the Creator. As we are today moved to evaluate and recognize the deep hold of the colonizing and Settler gaze on all aspects of representations, including artistic ones, we need to reflect: are all these people truly occupying an equal space? Moving forward, how could our commitments to reconciliation, Indigenization, and decolonization be represented in STM’s visual representations if itself? In what other ways can we foster hospitality, diversity, and the value of community?

This document represents more than three years of conversation as we reflected on how STM embodies the Catholic intellectual tradition in this time and place.

There are inherent tensions in such a process.

Perhaps, first and foremost, is the fact that such a document is a rather static representation of a dynamic, living tradition – a tradition that exists in the hearts and work and lives of the students, faculty, and staff at STM. Nevertheless, we offer this document as an entryway into this living tradition, an invitation into this learning community of faith, an affirmation of our belief that we can be at once welcoming and Catholic, humble and prophetic.

We live out our tradition as we strive for ever greater understanding, allowing faith and reason to challenge and inform each other.

We live out our tradition as we speak prophetically into our current context, inspired by the font of Catholic social teaching.

We live out our tradition as we offer each other hospitality, acceptance, kindness, and care.

We live out our tradition when we break the bread and drink the wine, allowing that deepest encounter to nourish and transform us in the process.

We live out our tradition when we celebrate our diversity, growing in our capacity for authentic friendship, delighting in our differences and respectfully challenging each other to growth.

What inspires you within this tradition? What perplexes or disturbs? Where does your own work intersect with the endeavour outlined here? How could you help the STM community grow in its ability to faithfully serve the people and planet today?

In the end, our work is an invitation to an encounter … may this encounter nourish all who enter this place, remembering that faith, hope, and love abide and that the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13: 13).

Click below to download a copy of:

STM College: An Inclusive Community Catholic Identity & Mission

Use this document:

• As an individual reflection tool
• In small groups of faculty and staff to help assess the mission-effectiveness of particular units or departments
• Among student groups to help plan initiatives with STM’s mission and Catholic identity in mind
• In classrooms whenever various aspects of Catholic identity are discussed
• In any way which will encourage dialogue and mutual understanding of our Catholic identity and mission

If you have any questions or comments about this document, please contact Gertrude Rompré, Director of Mission and Ministry at: grompre@stmcollege.ca

The Leslie and Irene Dubé Chair for Catholic Studies was established in fall 2012 by St. Thomas More College (STM), to provide intellectual leadership for STM and the broader Catholic community through the discipline of Catholic Studies.

The Chair, made possible by Leslie and Irene Dubé’s $1 Million endowment to the College, supports scholarship and research related to Catholic teaching and tradition, fosters Catholic education, and promotes ecumenical dialogue and awareness of other faith traditions.

The Leslie and Irene Dubé Chair for Catholic Studies also sponsors an annual lecture in Catholic Studies exploring topics related to faith and the intellectual life, ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, and Catholic reflections on current issues. Through this lecture series, distinguished scholars engage with key issues of our time and bring the Catholic tradition into dialogue with contemporary culture.

Fully funding the Chair will enable STM to name a respected scholar to act as a beacon of the Catholic intellectual tradition within our community and beyond. Please consider contributing toward this endowed fund, to ensure that the best of Catholic scholarship remains a living tradition emanating from STM to the benefit of students and the wider community. 

(Pictured: STM President Terrance Downey, Leslie and Irene Dubé, and Bishop Don Bolen at the
announcement of the Leslie and Irene Dubé Chair for Catholic Studies in 2012)

 Read about how you can help make the vision of a Chair for Catholic Studies at STM College a reality:

To contribute toward the funding of the Leslie and Irene Dubé Chair in Catholic Studies, please contact:

Connie Andersen
Director of Advancement
candersen@stmcollege.ca 
306-966-8203