Today is the first day of classes at Thomas More College. Like the students with whom I hiked in the White Mountains on Monday and Tuesday, I am a Freshman at this new school. I am the new kid on the block, having joined the TMC Faculty after eleven years of teaching at Ave Maria University. It is therefore a little strange to look out of my office window at the new campus, which is so different from the old campus at AMU. The first notable difference is that the new is much older than the old. Whereas the buildings on the AMU campus were custom-built in 2007, only five years ago, the buildings on the campus at Thomas More College are almost three hundred years old. The building in which I write was built in 1726, fifty years before the United States was born. The building opposite, which is visible from my desk, has the date “1726” emblazoned across it as a mark of its venerable status. The chapel next to it was also built in the same year.
 
It is comforting to be situated in such a cozy colonial setting. As a native of Old England I feel positively at home in this Catholic corner of New England. As a hobbit, I can close my eyes and almost imagine myself back in the Shire …