Clarence Thomas (JD)

Clarence Thomas, a justice of the U.S. Supreme court, was abandoned by his father when Clarence was only two years old. Following a devastating house fire that left them homeless, his remaining family found refuge with their maternal grandparents. Thomas's grandfather, a convert to Catholicism, raised him in the Catholic faith. Clarence briefly attended the Conception Seminary College to explore his calling to the priesthood. However, he left in 1968 after fellow seminarians made disparaging remarks about Martin Luther King's assassination. Reflecting on this difficult period, Clarence wrote: " I lost faith in the teachings of my childhood and succumbed to an array of angry ideologies." Later, with patient reflection, he reexamined his belief's: "As I rediscovered the God-given principles of the Declaration and our Founding, I eventually returned to the Church, which had been teaching the same truths for millennia."