By Jacinta Sigaud ’26, Publications Intern
Thomas More College is honored to welcome Dr. Matthew Walz as the St. John Henry Newman Visiting Chair in Catholic Studies for the 2025–2026 academic year. Dr. Walz has taught at the collegiate level since 1998, serving on the faculty of multiple fellow Newman Guide colleges: the Catholic University of America (CUA), Thomas Aquinas College, and the University of Dallas (UD). Since 2012, he has served as the Director of the Philosophy & Letters and Pre-Theology Programs at UD and as the Director of Intellectual Formation at Holy Trinity Seminary. Over the course of the coming year, the College looks forward to having Dr. Walz take an active part in classes, Junior Projects and Senior Theses, faculty development, and other school events.
Dr. Walz sat down to share his thoughts on Thomas More College and the value of a liberal arts education.
What would you say draws you in particular to liberal arts schools that have a focus on the Catholic faith?
First and foremost, it’s rooted in the experience I had as an undergraduate. Growing up, my family’s way of life was informed by books. My father was a biochemistry professor. He was a scientist, but he was also a serious Catholic and a reader of journals and philosophy and literature. So I grew up with a desire to have a well-rounded education. I went to Christendom College; in my case, I was the youngest of seven and four of my siblings had already gone to Christendom, so it had become a kind of family tradition. I went there thinking that I’d only stay for two years and that I’d study mathematics, because I loved math. But I fell in love with philosophy, so I ended up staying at Christendom and graduating, and then I went on to a philosophy PhD program. I have a very deep personal experience that has verified for me the importance of having an education that—especially now that I’m raising children and thinking about how they’re going to navigate the world—has created for me a solid base by which I can live a full human life. And not to mention, of course, maybe the more obvious side, that the education’s being Catholic has illumined all of that by the Gospels and by the teachings of the Church. Now that I’m experienced in this world, I get to see those effects carried on. As a professor, you start to see the fruitfulness—not just in your own life, but in the way in which other people and families that come from these colleges are themselves rooted in that education. That’s creating the possibility of really renewing the culture.
You’ve known President William Fahey for a number of years. When did you first hear about Thomas More College, and what made you want to be involved?
This came about through a number of connections. Dr. Fahey and I first met when I was in graduate school at CUA and he was in the DC area. I was doing some fellowships with the Heritage Foundation and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), and I think we first met on an ISI retreat. We got to know each other, funnily enough, through birthing classes that our wives were taking—and got to know each other pretty well, because that was a weekly thing for eight weeks. And we stayed in touch over the years. We’ve done a couple of accreditation visits together. My connection to Thomas More College also comes through Paul Jackson, the Executive Vice President, and the late Dr. Patrick Powers. For fifteen to twenty years, I helped them with the Fides et Ratio seminars every summer. We used to run one or two a year at the College, so for several summers running I spent weeks here doing seminars. And over the years, I’ve gotten to know the rest of the faculty. Whenever I come up here, I feel like it’s a home away from home and it’s such a beautiful setting. I love the tight-knitted feel of this community. I’ve never really spent much time here during the school year—I’ve only come up for a couple of visits—so I’m excited about spending more time here this year. Sitting in on a couple of classes this week has been fun for me.
What would you say makes Thomas More College unique?
One important thing is the integrated curriculum that still provides moments of being able to dive into things that you prefer rather than that you’re mandated to take. I like that mix where there is a shared education among the students but also the possibility of choices and preferences. That turns out to be important in an education in terms of coming to an awareness of your own preferences and choosing between goods, which are sometimes hard choices. Sometimes I see this at UD, where I teach; if you’re choosing between majors, there might be two that you love, but you have to face the finitude of options. So I appreciate that integrated-ness with moments of choice. And then there are also moments of public display or public witnessing to the effectiveness of the education and the way that it’s had a transformative effect on the soul. TMC does that with the Junior Project and Senior Thesis. Those are crucial moments, and a lot of schools have given up on those, but to me they are moments where the faculty and students can engage on a more personal level. That closeness of faculty to students is something that I really appreciate. That’s the ethos here, from what I’ve experienced over the years—the tight-knit character of the community that’s united by worship and the liturgical life. It’s beautiful to see. In some ways, that’s harder to maintain if things get too big. Being small has advantages in terms of the real experience of community; you have to recognize one another as brothers and sisters in a way that expands beyond family but also is a witness to the unity that can come through the Faith. And that’s connected to the books we’re reading together, the social events we’re doing together and planning together. A lot of that, too, is students who take responsibility. To me, that’s beautiful. Things are not just simply taken care of for you; a lot of the responsibility falls on the students to create the community. Those are the kinds of things that seem extracurricular but will carry through in all sorts of ways and are informed by that curriculum. The events reflect the seriousness and playfulness that the curriculum has within it.
How would you say a Catholic liberal arts education equips students for the future?
That’s in some ways a perennial question. Liberal education, even in Athens, was thought of as useless or maybe dangerous. It’s always been that way. I think we have to be honest about that: liberal education has always been accused of either non-practicality or even possibly harm done to the soul or the common good. On the other hand, a lot of things I’ve been thinking about lately in terms of Catholic liberal education orient me more to seeing the way in which it influences family life in a more direct way than one might expect. There is a sort of cultural concern that education somehow relates more immediately to a career. I don’t want to say that’s false, but ultimately it doesn’t seem to me to be the Church’s view. In some ways, the reason to be educated is so that you yourself can enter into the generational education that takes place through parenting or through any vocation in which you exercise some form of spiritual motherhood or fatherhood. What I would hope to instill in a student who is on the cusp of leaving a community like this is to begin to think about their vocation, their work in the world, as always being tied up with that generative, maternal or paternal presence in the world. Even if it’s in a workplace that looks a little bit more like drudgery—compared to the beauty of seminars—you can still bring a kind of personalistic vision to the world on the basis of the community that you’ve lived here. There is no formula for calculating how this education is going to transfer immediately into a career. Thinking about it with more of that vocational or even spiritual lens gives you a kind of suppleness and flexibility. In some ways, you have to believe that God has a plan for you, and you have to give yourself over to that, while at the same time entering into a deliberation where you’re measuring your talents and investigating what is actually available to you in the next step. There is no replacing the prudential decisions that you’re going to have to make. We don’t want to deny the centrality of prudence in the moral life. From the Church’s point of view, the fundamental call for each person is to try to bring other persons to their maturity. Most people do that through a vocation to marriage, some people do that through vocations to the religious life or the priesthood, but in every situation, that is what you need to be in the world: a presence that is maturing and bringing others—and yourself—along the way to the development of their personhood in relation to the nature that they’ve been given. That’s the Church’s vision, especially through the writings of John Paul II. That is the vision of the human vocation, both on a natural level—because that’s what you give to the natural human community—but also on a spiritual level, being fruitful within the Church.
What are your hopes and plans for your involvement in the College this academic year?
There are two prongs to my visits here this year. One is on the side that students won’t see directly. I am working to try to trigger some conversations among the faculty about the curricular standards that Thomas More College puts forward as “True Enlargement of Mind.” I will be able to maybe bring in that familiar outsider’s point of view about the beauty of this goal but maybe also the difficulties and challenges of it. So that’s on the faculty side, and I look forward to getting to know the faculty better through that. “True Enlargement of Mind” is taken from a phrase by St. John Henry Newman about the goal of a liberal education, so I’m enthused to think through what Newman means by that and how that can be embodied in a setting like this.
On the student side, partly I just want to become familiar with the students. I want to see how they operate in class, if I can help with some of those discussions, maybe eat some meals with you all. There are some other more particular things; for example, Dean Kitzinger has me coming in December to sit in on as many of the Junior Projects as possible. And again, you might say as someone who is not intrinsically a part of the community—although for this year I want to see myself as part of it—it’s going to be fascinating for me to be reading these and to be asking questions and to see the kinds of virtues that come from this particular educational setting, which strikes me as effective and beautiful. So there’s a faculty dimension and a student dimension. The Spring is wide open right now. My hope is that I’ll come up more in the Spring and maybe be a little more involved in a particular class, so that’s at least on the horizon. I’m really excited.
These remarks have been edited for length and clarity.
For further reading:
Matthew Walz to Serve as TMC’s 2025–2026 St. John Henry Newman Visiting Chair in Catholic Studies
Milk Street Society Hosts Lecture by Dr. Andrew Willard Jones
