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Sage Chapel is one of the buildings on the campus of the former Northfield Mount Hermon School in Northfield.
(Republican file)
NORTHFIELD -- Thomas Aquinas College, a private four-year California institution, has entered into a preliminary agreement with the National Christian Foundation to accept its gift of the former Northfield Mount Hermon property.
Founded by Catholic lay people in 1971, Thomas Aquinas College plans to assume ownership on May 7, pending site review and permit requirements. It would open an East Coast branch of the college in Northfield.
The foundation, the country's biggest Christian charitable organization, was given the Northfield property and the responsibility of gifting it by Steve Green, president of the arts and crafts retailer Hobby Lobby.
Green bought the campus for $100,000, in 2009, intending to transfer it to a Christian educational institution with the financial means to accept and maintain it.
Efforts to find an institution with sufficient deep pockets and willingness to adopt to its community setting have yet to succeed, though the relatively modest stated plans of the California college -- assisted by the foundation's help in the establishment of a $5 million matching grant fund for the undertaking -- may prove suitable.
The college, devoted to Catholic values and practices and the teaching of analytical, rhetorical and critical thinking skills through the study of theology, philosophy and mathematics, plans to establish what will initially be an East Coast branch on the campus that was originally founded as a girls' school, in 1879, by Northfield-born evangelist Dwight L. Moody who also founded the Mount Hermon school for boys in Gill in 1881.
The schools merged in 1971 to form Northfield Mount Hermon. The Northfield campus was shuttered when the private secondary school consolidated to its present Gill campus in 2005. Hobby Lobby reportedly spent more than $5 million in upgrades to the Northfield campus before turning it over the foundation.
Institutions involved in earlier gifting efforts including the C.S. Lewis Foundation, which failed to raise enough money in its plans to open a Christian-oriented liberal arts college for 400 students, and Grand Canyon University of Phoenix, Ariz., that planned to establish a for-profit Christian university for 5,000 students, but backed out over what it said were financial and town requirement issues.
"From the beginning, we have been impressed with Thomas Aquinas College for its commitment to academic excellence. We selected it because of this reputation, its strong leadership, and its financial strength," said Emmitt Mitchell of the foundation's Heartland board of directors in a statement.
In the same statement Michael F. McLean, college president, said the school was "profoundly grateful to Emmitt and the National Christian Foundation for this magnificent gift of the Northfield property, and that the plan for the branch campus, expected to open in fall 2018, is "to start small and build slowly, just as our founders did in California."
The statement said 36 freshmen will be accepted in each of the first four years, allowing the study body to slowly increase to between 350 to 400 students. Some members of the faculty, who are called tutors, are expected to relocated to the Northfield campus where, according to the statement, the residential and spiritual life of the California campus will be replicated.
The college was founded after the Second Vatican Council amid concerned that its reforms, which included Mass in the vernacular of practitioners, greater emphasis on ecumenical dialogue and the directive for clergy and religious to administer out in the community, too secularized Catholic identity and teachings.
Life at Thomas Aquinas, named for a saint considered a doctor in the Church for his philosophical and theological teachings, includes single sex dorms, the opportunity for daily Mass and confession, adherence to a dress code for classes and being taught by tutors who take am oath of fidelity in which they pledge to "hold fast to the deposit of faith in its entirety; I shall faithfully hand it on and explain it, and I shall avoid any teachings contrary to it."
Supporters of the college include Cardinal Raymond Burke who spoke to the 400-member student body last year on "Genuine Catholic Education and its Power to Transform Our Culture."
"Both campuses will be fully committed to, and governed by, our founding document, "A Proposal for the Fulfillment of Catholic Liberal Education,'" McLean's statement said.
"Both will initially be part of one college, with a single faculty, a single board of governors, a single curriculum, and a single accreditation, but we will explore the path to the possible independence of the two campuses in the years to come."
In a expressing support to McLean, the Most Rev. Mitchell T. Rozanski, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, is quoting as saying, "I wish to inform you of my full support for this endeavor, and will do whatever I can to help you in establishing the school here to form faithful witnesses to Christ in our Catholic faith."
McLean said the college was "greatly encouraged by Bishop Rozanski's warm welcome and pledge of assistance."
"We look forward to working with His Excellency, with the town of Northfield, and with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to expand our mission of Catholic liberal education at this new branch campus. With God's help, we will provide even more young people the intellectual, moral, and spiritual formation they need to serve the Church and our country well," McLean's release said.
The statement also said the college will share a portion of the Northfield property with The Moody Center, which plans to do do some restoration work as well as operate a small museum with an archive of materials related to the evangelist's life and work.
The college was among the co-plantiffs in the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court case, Roman Catholic Archbishop v. Burwell, that challenged the Affordable Care's mandate that workplace insurance cover contraception for women. The court did not rule in that case, referring it to lower courts for a possible compromise.
Lawyers for Hobby Lobby successfully argued before the Supreme Court in 2014 that it is a violation of religious freedom to require corporations owned by families who object to such coverage on religious grounds to provide it.