About the Institute

Main website: http://www.stanthonypaduainstitute.org.

The St. Anthony of Padua Institute was formed in July 2004 in order to address the critical need for an authentically Catholic community of higher learning in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Institute is intended to organize establishment of an accredited Catholic liberal arts college. As this project unfolds, we add to the educational services provided to our subscribers and the laity at large. These offerings now extend to lectures, seminar series, tutorial programs, conferences, and a two-year certificate program comprised of six classes on the fundamentals of philosophy and theology in the Catholic tradition, conducted in a night class format (launched in January 2008).

The Institute is formally constituted as an Association of the Lay Catholic Faithful in the Diocese of Oakland, and as a California not-for-profit corporation; the Institute received non-profit, 501(c)(3) tax status from the Internal Revenue Service in 2005.

Learning and education is a lifelong endeavor. We encourage all Catholics of the Bay Area to join us, taking advantage of this opportunity to participate in a community dedicated to extending our magnificent intellectual heritage in a way that allows us to communicate the New Evangelization to a world sorely in need. Now is the time to act in solidarity with the vision of the Church and to address the needs before us.

A Community of Learning and Catholic Culture

In order to respond to ongoing pontifical calls for the evangelization of culture, the Institute proposes to constitute a vibrant, local center of religious, philosophic, and broadly aesthetic inquiry; it aims to offer reasons and occasions for celebrating every form of human cultivation arising from the cultus of the living God. To this end, we actively seek collaboration with existing entities that have convergent aims, including the Department of Evangelization for the Diocese of Oakland and several lay and religious apostolates.

Our peculiar charism as a community of learning is based on the Liberal Arts through the Great Books. We act first as learner and, secondly and consequently, as teacher and resource in living out this charism.

Students admitted to Institute classes or courses are assessed neither tuition nor fees. The Institute depends upon a confraternity of subscribers, who choose to participate in this common good for the local church by offering on-going financial support, even as the Institute's volunteers, lecturers and teachers contribute to the work according to their gifts.

Subscription - Not Tuition

The Institute-and, as conceived, the College of St. Anthony of Padua-are "subscription driven" rather than "tuition driven." We seek to be as an Institute, and we seek to incorporate in collegiate form, a community of learning rather than an "educational services provider." Subscription is used in the literal sense of underwriting or supporting, so that to subscribe is more akin to taking a membership than to taking, say, a newspaper.

In fact, "subscription driven" implies "community of learning," and vice versa. The Institute recognizes that structural change in the economics of delivering Catholic education for families is demanded by current circumstances. Neither the vocation to family life nor the vocation to religious life is well served when Catholic students exit their studies under a staggering load of debt; nor can education remain a spiritual work of mercy when it demands as much.

The Institute therefore employs a subscription rather than a fee-for-service approach; it looks for financial support from full partners in the community of learning. Traditional methods of fund-raising, including fund-raising in aid of a permanent endowment, are and will be pursued to supplement the subscription-based structure.

Saint Anthony of Padua as a Patron for Liberal Studies

Saint Anthony of Padua is our patron for the same reason that Saint Francis of Assisi endorsed him as a teacher in the Liberal Arts, Philosophy, and Theology for the fledgling Franciscan Order and for the same reason that the Church recognizes St. Anthony as a Doctor of the Church, that is, a major teacher having permanent relevance. Anthony's excellent education provided the means for his holiness to find expression and application in the world, allowing him to develop a powerful charism of being able to instruct, persuade, and draw his contemporaries closer to Christ

Through his education, he became an apt, timely, and agile mediator of the Good News for all he met. Similarly, this Institute is dedicated as an educational apostolate to serve the New Evangelization, to similarly inspire all those we encounter. Thus, Anthony himself, titled the Evangelical Doctor by the Church, provides an ideal name, model, and patron for this Institute.

Prayer to St. Anthony of Padua

Holy Saint Anthony, gentle and powerful in your help, your love for God and charity for all His creatures, made you worthy, when on earth, to possess the power of miracles. Miracles waited on your word, which you were always ready to request for those in trouble or anxiety.

Encouraged by this thought, we implore you to obtain for us a worthy Catholic college to serve the Catholics of the Bay Area, and we implore you to intercede for us, that we may be made worthy of such a college.

The answer to our prayer may require a miracle. Even so, you are the Saint of miracles. Gentle and loving Saint Anthony, whose heart is ever full of human sympathy, take our petition to the Infant Savior for whom you have such a great love, and the gratitude of our hearts will be ever yours in Him.

Amen.