Dominicans and Jesuits in the mission of the Church
It is urgently necessary that the Dominican Order fully summarizes its essential task in the advanced promotion of theology if it does not want to betray the mandate of the Church and subordinate itself to the current world plans of the enemies of Christ and dissolve in the ideological Babel of the contemporary world.
The difficult renewal of the Order attempted by the Rahnerian model
The Holy Father's speech on St. Thomas at the recent international Thomistic conference at the Angelicum in Rome
[ Ed.: The International Thomistic Congresses have been organized since 1925 by the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The general scientific objective of the XI International Thomistic Congress - held in Rome from 19 to 24 September 2022, was organized by the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Angelicum Thomistic Institute. The precedent one took place in 2003, with the title "Christian Humanism in the Third Millennium" - was to consider new perspectives in the study of St. Thomas (interests, methods, and results), in order to highlight the resources of the Thomistic tradition in contemporary theological and philosophical debates: “Vetera novis augere.” ]
constitutes an extremely important reminder to the whole Church, but with particular reference to the Dominican Order to resume its leading role in the field of the progress of theology.
It is interesting that the pressing exhortation came from a Jesuit Pope, almost an acknowledgment by the sons of St. Ignatius to the sons of St. Dominic that it belongs to them and not to the former to be constituted at the forefront of the Church in research and in the most advanced proposals of theological knowledge, both of a theoretical type and in its application in the field of priestly formation.
In fact, we have all known for decades how the Society of Jesus, starting immediately since the post-conciliar era, launched into the theological arena and publicized with all its strength its “Star”, a theologian of undoubted qualities, but who at last provoked, due to a false interpretation of the doctrines of the Second Vatican Council, a climate of bitter controversy within the Church, and even provoking with its modernist tendency - though tamed under the pretext of reform and renewal-, the acid and sclerotic pro-SSPX priests’ reaction. So, this fact has profoundly weakened or questioned by many Catholics the authority of the Supreme Pontiff and largely caused false mysticism, the corruption of moral customs, the falsification of faith, the attenuation of charity, and the clouding of Christian hope, and finally it spread a theological language based on ambiguity and duplicity.
Everyone understood that I am referring to Karl Rahner. And if someone hadn't yet acknowledged it, and was among those who care effectively about the good of the Church and the preservation of faith, I solicitously and fraternally invite him to open his eyes, because Rahnerism has been dominating the theological scene for 60 years now and produces its effects. These effects are truly not exactly the optimum of what we would have the desire and the right to expect from the conciliar reform. Not to say indeed, they are precisely its falsification.
Unfortunately, with the advent of the Council, a regrettable tendency re-emerged with virulence and the power of seduction which has always been present at times and to varying degrees in the Society of Jesus, a serious misunderstanding of the Ignatian principle of holy competing inspired by the words of Saint Paul (1 Cor 9:24), that certain willingness to be number one, forgetting that this is not true zeal for perfection, but a foolish presumption that leads to ruining oneself and others.
Dominicans felt a strong unease before the St. John XXIII's program, emphasizing mercy and attenuating severity. They thought the Johannine program referred to them, who for centuries had presided over the severe Institute of the Inquisition.
An undoubtedly deep repugnance and shame was to them for this past historical terrible severity and unfortunately, this reaction - inherent particularly the current of the (Dominican) Order follower of Edward Schillebeeckx - sprang out into the opposite excess, an intellectual laxity that bordered on duplicity and (moral (Ed.)) relativism. We jump from dogmatism to skepticism. The belief that one possessed the truth began to look like a presumption. The clear affirmation of the truth seemed like an imposition, a violence against the conscience of others.
The concept of truth seemed lost and lost faith in the truth. That truth, for which the martyrs of the Order had given their blood, seemed to vanish into the mist. Descartes (chosen) instead of St. Thomas. Contradictors together at home. And developed an absolute relativist concept of truth, so that, “what is true for me could be false for you.” “I cannot tell you: ‘you are wrong’ because this would imply imposing on you that criterion of truth which is mine.” We can quote the distinguished Cardinal Pietro Parente, ex-Secretary of the CDF, who coined the term "crisis of truth", according to the title of one of his books in which he denounces the neo-modernism of Schillebeeckx and Rahner [1].
This way of thinking obviously caused an identity crisis in the Order, a disastrous intellectual instability with a consequent sharp decrease in intellectual energy and moral convictions. And as a consequence, numerous defections from the Order, the closure of convents, the absence of new convents, and a decline in vocations.
The already mentioned, Cardinal Parente, called this sad phenomenon, which could have the appearance of applying the principle of mercy, a "crisis of truth". A theologian who, despite not being a Dominican, was an eminent disciple of Thomistic wisdom, Jacques Maritain, for decades already before the Council, gave large proof of finding the intellectual equilibrium desired by the Council, for which the certainty of dogmatic truth it married perfectly with a merciful openness towards modernity.
[Ed.: “The marriage of medieval metaphysics and modern personalism (a wedding of minds made in Heaven) … is something that is both larger and smaller than any… other lectures: it’s larger because it's based on a big-picture, an overall judgment about the whole history of philosophy and about what might be the next step. And it's smaller because it's more focused on a single issue: the possible marriage between what I see as the best of the old and the best of the new… The pre-modern mind is the mind of a curious and intelligent child: it asks in the words of the question of a very platonic dialogue: ‘What is justice? What is death? What is beauty?’ It wants to know everything's objective universal essence and it's oriented toward objective reality. The modern mind is more like the mind of a teenager: a subjective self-conscious mind oriented toward his own identity. In particular (the question) is about what I consider the highest achievement of pre-modern philosophy, which is the metaphysics of Saint Thomas Aquinas, especially his identification of being or reality with the act of existence, and the highest achievement of modern philosophy, which is…the anthropology of personalism. (Though for Aquinas himself ‘person is that which is highest in all of nature’.) … There is also a powerful theological argument for (this marriage) that is implicit in the self-revealed divine name “I am”, the word from the burning bush, the only time God revealed to us His own eternal essential name. Thomistic metaphysics revealed the depths of the “am” half of the divine name. Personalism reveals the depths of the “I” half, and the identity of the “I” and the “am” in God's being is the ultimate reason for unifying them in our thinking… Saint Pope John Paul II back in 1961 presented a prophetic little 10-page paper entitled “Thomistic personalism” at the Catholic University of Lublin by calling for this marriage and for the marriage of pre-modern and modern philosophy in general.”
Cfr.: Peter Kreeft, The Marriage of Medieval Metaphysics and Modern Personalism. May 25, 2023]:
Even today we Dominicans can find in Maritain the criteria and example of that intellectual renewal that the Council asked of us, marked by that charity which knows how to wisely and fruitfully unite, according to the circumstances, the moment of mercy with that of severity. In this way, we will fully rediscover the peculiarity of our charism.
In fact, in the Church, each Institute has its own particular and peculiar charism, linked to that of the Father founder, for which that Institute excels over the others at the service of the Church, a charism which it must jealously guard precisely in order to fulfill the specific mission that the Church has entrusted to him. Lacking fidelity to that charism means simultaneously that the raison d'être of the Institute itself would be lost. So, the Institute would thereby lose the right to boast of the recognition of the Church and to herald that mission, which the Mother Church has entrusted to it by approving and guaranteeing its authenticity and validity.
Unfortunately, instead, we have to painfully note how the Society of Jesus, by launching its champion - a lot of hot hair, to be good in the judgment -, did not have the best of its ideas, and caused damage rather than advantages. So it happened that after the Council the Jesuits made so much of a mess by scandalously and repeatedly violating their vow of obedience to the Pope so that the Blessed Pope John Paul I was determined to abolish the Society if his sudden, mysterious death did not prevent him.
St. John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate had the same idea, had he not been distracted by his able Secretary of State, Cardinal Casaroli, with whom he succeeded in the formidable undertaking of peacefully dissolving, for the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima, the Soviet Union and upholding Christianity and democracy back to Russia.
Unfortunately, with the post-Council, that nefarious competition between Jesuits and Dominicans has reappeared, which it was hoped was over forever, a scandalous competition, even if it is not devoid of exciting aspects. I am referring to the famous controversy "De auxiliis", from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 17th century, following the work of the Spanish Jesuit Luis Molina on the harmony of free will with grace, where the opposition of the Ignatian conception of free will as an ally of grace, with a clear perception of human causality, emphasizing psychology. In contrast, the Dominicans, with a more excellent perception of divine causality, saw free will as moved by grace, dealing with the primacy of metaphysics.
The Dominicans seemed to devalue the force of free will and were accused by the Jesuits of getting close to Luther. The Dominicans, conversely, accused the Jesuits of Pelagianism, because they seemed to place too much emphasis on free will. But the underlying references were also different: the Jesuits referred to the biblical metaphor of the Covenant, the pact between God and man. The Dominicans paid more attention to metaphysics: the nexus between human and divine causality according to the analogical metaphysical notion of causality.
The Pope, who attended even 167 meetings with infinite patience, the climate of which had become overheated, at a certain point, imposed silence on both sides by forbidding accusing each other of heresy and claiming the final sentence for himself, something the Popes no longer entrusted; and yet they recommended following St. Thomas in theology; which suggests their preference for the Thomistic solution over the Molinist one.
The documents of the Council match exactly with the thought of St. Thomas, even if to a superficial and inexperienced approach - that does not know deeply both the poles - this would not appear. But it is essentially a matter of diversity of language: St. Thomas, a scholar, obviously has a scholastic language. The Council, on the other hand, although containing doctrinal parts, preferred a pastoral language.
But it is clear that among the experts of the Council assigned to the preparation of the documents, Dominicans and Jesuits worked side by side, hiding, in silence, and in obedience to the Magisterium of the Church, in the service of the Fathers of the Council, without showing-off and desire to be in the limelight, the exhibitionisms and trumpet sounds of the Rahnerians.
In the Church, as in civil society, one must not steal a job from others. Everyone must be satisfied with the role entrusted to him because he is prepared for that and not for others. In theology, the "Lumen Ecclesiae", and the "Doctor communis Ecclesiae" is the Dominican, not the Jesuit. The Jesuit is already sufficiently defined by the beautiful title of his Institute: Society of Jesus.
It is the "good fight" of which Saint Paul speaks. This is his competence. Here the Jesuit is a teacher, model, and champion. He must be satisfied with this, boast of this, and excel in this. This is why the Church approved it. And for no other reason. He must leave the teaching of theology to the Dominican. Here he must learn from St. Thomas, as St. Ignatius himself wisely wished.
The Jesuit excels in pastoral care. But pastoral care is the application of theology and a stimulus to theology. Here then is the distinction of roles in mutual complementarity: the Jesuit puts into practice what the Dominican teaches; he learns pastoral care from the Jesuit.
The relationship between Dominicans and Jesuits
The fundamental problem of the Church today, the cause of her unease and effort in purifying herself and progressing, and in expanding and winning souls for Christ, and gaining credibility facing the world, and in carrying out the conciliar reform seriously, and in defense of tradition and in the understanding of the newness of the Spirit, is that of the alliance between Dominicans and Jesuits - respecting their specific charism and collaborating in mutual aid for the good of the Church and the salvation of the world.
The serious disorder in the relations between these two Institutes of the Church is due to the fact that the Jesuits tend to replace the Dominicans in the theological leadership of the Church, inserting Rahner in place of St. Thomas. The Holy Father, as a true and faithful Jesuit, and Successor of Peter, shows us the way to put things right: not Rahner, but St. Thomas is the "Doctor communis Ecclesiae". From this ground derive many practical consequences for Dominicans and Jesuits.
First of all, we Dominicans must resume our theological guiding role by implementing Thomistic discipleship in full fidelity to the dictates of our Constitutions and according to the full development and realization of the mandate that comes to us today from the Holy Father's speech. In the words of the Pope, it is the entire Society of Jesus that in the name of Saint Ignatius declares its repentance of its Rahnerism and reconfirms its will to follow Saint Thomas according to the will of the Founder and that of the Roman Pontiffs.
Secondly, we Dominicans and our Jesuit brothers must bear in mind that our raison d'être in the Church and therefore our very existence as Dominicans and Jesuits as such are at stake in full respect for our different charism. And it could not be otherwise, because the Church approves us to the extent that we are faithful to our charism.
Thirdly, in order to truly and usefully realize our charism, we Dominicans must purify our theology from certain false forms of Thomism which, under the pretext of a deeper understanding of Aquinas' thought or the need of integrating it with the contributions of modern thought or to make his doctrine more understandable and useful for today's men, or to update its language, pollute and falsify Thomas's thought with errors deduced from certain modern philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Gentile, Husserl, Gadamer
[Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) was one of the best-known thinkers of the twentieth century. Heidegger's pupil, and Hegel's profound connoisseur, he was the founder of the so-called hermeneutic direction - the reaction of one of the four European theological matrices, the Catholic, the Protestant, the Orthodox and the Jewish - to the anti-humanistic currents dominated mostly by positivism, structuralism, deconstructionism, Marxism. From the Protestant matrix, of which Gadamer was a part, originated, in particular, elements of a philosophical foundation, heirs of the neo-Kantian idealist rigorist and Hegelian historicist and phenomenological schools (Dilthey, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Weizsäcker, etc.). Positions that, sadly, have effectively reached a level of anti-humanism, namely of nihilism (Heidegger) and of skepticism, precisely, hermeneutic - even if ‘de jure’ pursuing, as an ideal end, the truth in an objective sense. Among the most prominent theologians, there were ‘de facto’ anti-humanist positions. Suffice it to recall Rudolf Bultmann – of whom Gadamer considered himself a friend – for whom God means "the radical negation and annulment of man", thus reviving the anti-humanism and Lutheran hatred for the world.
See, in particular, the interview with H.G. Gadamer edited by Massimo Borghesi and Tommaso Ricci, in 30 Days, 9, 1985, pp. 56-60.],
Habermas, Heidegger
[ Ed.: “Heidegger (and Nietzsche) had a very enlightening relationship with Hitler. It is shocking to find as profound and sensitive a Philosopher as Heidegger joining the Nazi party, not protesting when Hitler fired his Professor, Edmond Husserl, the founder of phenomenology and a great philosopher himself, simply because he was Jewish… These are Heidegger's words: ‘The National Socialist Revolution is not simply the taking of power in the state by one party from another, but brings a complete Revolution to our German existence. Doctrine and ideas shall no longer govern your existence. Through our national socialist State, our entire German reality has been altered and that means altering all our previous ideas and thinking. The words ‘knowledge’ and ‘scholarship’ have acquired a different meanings from Fuhrer himself, and only he is the current and future reality of Germany. And his word is your law.”, “Now there is a sharp battle to be fought in the spirit of national socialism which must stifle humanistic Christian Notions that still hold us down”, “the public burning of Jewish Marxist writings on May 10, 1933, served as a symbol of this fight.”, “Germans rallied to this fight: make your participation public too, from the publishers and bookstores send us all books and writings that deserve burning.’
Has any great philosopher ever written anything more anti-philosophical than this?
The contrast between Heidegger's philosophical profundity and his Nazi passion is almost unbelievable! What lesson does this astonishing contrast teach us? Is it merely that profound philosophers can be politically naïve? But this is not just terrible politics: this is terrible philosophy. Is it that Heidegger is simply a fake and not a profound philosopher at all?
That's too simple and that ignores the other half of the data!
Is it that profound philosophy alone cannot save us from moral idiocy and even insanity?
Yes, but we learned that already in meeting Nietzsche (in a previous lecture on WOF philosophical series from YouTube Channel (Ed.)): when one stops worshiping the true God one is tempted to worship a very dark false god. (…)
Is it that we are now living in the short time between the death of God and the death of a man?
Alas, I fear that that may be the lesson that Heidegger( and Nietzsche) both teach us!
or Severino.
Fourthly, in particular, our Order must free itself from the errors of Schillebeeckx, above all from his denial of the divinity of Christ and from his gnoseological subjectivism. He must also free himself from the secularism of Gustavo Gutierrez by understanding that, on the one hand, the Gospel certainly denies the existence of two worlds in the sense that the world created by God is only this one, where we are. A world to be saved from sin and resurrected on the last day.
But, on the other hand, the Gospel also tells us that there is another world, above this world and beyond this world, in the sense that the purpose of Christianity is not simply an earthly, economic, social, and political end, to save this world
[ Ed.: Rediscovering one of America’s most obscure critical thick writers, Philip Rieff ( 1922-2006), and his: “The Triumph of the Therapeutic,” I’d underline that he had been particularly influential on one point. He’s clear that the modern self—unlike the self of the Middle Ages or the Reformation for instance—tends to live with a vision of happiness as resulting exclusively from inner, psychological happiness. Everything else must conform to my inward desires and pander to my personal needs. There’s no need for me to fit into a larger society and learn to behave in accordance with societal norms. Rieff’s central concern—the collapse of the social order maintained by Western culture—is the crisis of our time, and a community of resurgence versed in his insight may yet save us from the interminable vulgar banality of what our psycho-therapeutic civilization has become. “Freud transformed what the Romantics had held as the vices of reason—its power to blight spontaneity—into a therapeutic virtue.” “With the decline of a civilization of authority, the therapeutic requirement shifted toward an action which would take place, first, within the circle of personal relations. ( Personal relations, by the 1970s and 1980s, became publicized on a massive scale, and public re-education happened before private re-education cohered, and the resultant crisis in the cultural condition of the public life became a central question of social order. Culture—morals—became political.) After this first level of private reeducation had been successfully negotiated, public life could then be altered. A new kind of community could be constructed, one that did not generate conscience and internal control but desire and the safe play of impulse.”, “Quantity has become quality. The answer to all questions of ‘what for?’,” Rieff declares, “is ‘more.’ . . . Western culture is changing already into a symbol system unprecedented in its plasticity and absorptive capacity. Nothing much can oppose it really, and it welcomes all contradiction, for, in a sense, it stands for nothing.” Cfr. James Poulos: https://kirkcenter.org/reviews/philip-rieff-modern-prophet/],
but it is to raise our mind and our life in the life of grace in Christ and in the Church, so as to be enlightened and guided by it, fleeing the world of sin, to ascend to God's world, heaven, where we will see God "face to face", "as He is".
Fifthly, Jesuits need to free themselves from a certain tendency to want to overdo it. Their dynamism, their ability to move, and their missionary, pragmatic, and pastoral fervor are excellent. Their desire to progress and to do better and better is excellent, and so is their desire to conquest souls for Christ is excellent, or to be completely available to Christ, through the mediation of the Pope, in view of the salvation of the world. However, they must be careful, in the awareness of their multiple gifts and abilities, not to claim to excel in everything, not wanting to be number one, because this is the ruin of the Order.
They must beware of voluntarism, syncretism, and duplicity. And in this way, they must learn from the Dominicans, from their intellectualism, their wisdom, and their honest thinking and speaking. Jesuits must remember that the will is not a rule unto itself.
[ Ed.: “Whether we are adults or children, philosophers or rock stars, we can all do both kinds of thinking. We all know that some things are zero-sum, black-or-white, and absolute. Either there is a God or there is not; either some abortion is morally licit for some people or not. Two propositions that contradict each other cannot both be true; if one is true, the other must be false. We also know that some things are not quantitative but qualitative; not zero-sum but fractional or gradual; not black or white but gray (or rainbow (Ed.). For example, in the proposition God is good, what does God mean? Trinitarianism, Unitarianism, generic theism, agnosticism, pantheism, polytheism, deism, apophatic mysticism? And what does good mean? Morally good, ontologically good, psychologically good, practically good, economically good? And just how good must a thing be in order to be good? There is an almost endless range of possible meanings to good. But once two concepts are defined in a single (univocal) way, a proposition that connects them has only two possibilities: true or false; and an argument using such propositions has only two possibilities: logically valid or logically invalid, consistent or inconsistent.
Cf.: Kreeft, Peter. The Cybernetics of Liberalism. Crisis 17, no. 6 (June 1999), or:
A will not be enlightened by truth and intellectual certainty, but moved only by emotion, oscillates between servility and disobedience, lacking the presupposed intellectual finality. This is demonstrated by the phenomenon of Rahnerism, for which unfortunately many Jesuits supinely and fanatically follow a theologian who rebels against the Magisterium of the Church.
Intellectual certainty, in fact, unless it is a matter of the truth of faith, does not depend on a decision of the will, but on a necessity of the intellect. We understand then how Descartes stemmed from a Jesuit school. In fact, the certainty of the Cartesian "sum" does not depend on a shred of intellectually necessitating evidence, such as the Aristotelian and Thomist principle of identity, but on the decision of the will to choose the "cogito" as the reason for the "sum"; but Descartes could indeed easily have chosen another act of conscience, such as for example, vivo, sentio, amo, gaudeo, etc.
Another risk that derives from the presumption of knowing everything is syncretism, for which, instead of paying attention to the quality of knowledge, one pays attention to the quantity, with the consequence of assembling a large quantity of uncriticized, and un-scrutinized, contradictory, and disordered ideas. The cornerstone of Jesuit scholarship is that of knowing how to collect large quantities of positive data. Synthesizing, ordering, and evaluating them, however, require a Dominican speculative discernment.
This tendency to syncretism is already notoriously present in Suarez
[ Francisco Suárez (1548 –1617) a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca, was generally regarded among the greatest scholastics after Thomas Aquinas. According to Christopher Shields and Daniel Schwartz, "figures as distinct from one another in place, time, and philosophical orientation as Leibniz, Grotius, (Samuel von) Pufendorf, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger, all found reason to cite him as a source of inspiration and influence."Cf.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Su%C3%A1rez ],
who joined – and we could not say in which way - Thomas, Bonaventure, Scotus, and Ockham. And in so doing arousing the just criticisms of the Dominicans. Wanting to get along with everyone, one ends up agreeing with no one, opening the gates to the smartest, and embittering the wisest. So, one falls into opportunism, duplicity, and ambiguity, hateful vices bitterly fought by Christ against Pharisees.
Sixthly, it is necessary to entrust reciprocity, each in his own place, without invading the other field. The Jesuit is not sufficiently equipped to deal with metaphysics, natural theology, or systematic, dogmatic, and speculative theology. Or angelology, natural ethics, philosophical anthropology, and the relationship between science, philosophy, faith, morals, and theology. He must learn from St. Thomas. Conversely, the Dominican has to learn from the Jesuit in the field of biblical theology and biblical sciences, patrology, the history of the Church, and the history of religions, liturgy, hagiography; the human, juridical, and social sciences, the relationship between faith and politics, and experimental psychology or, finally, spiritual direction.
In the issues of pastoral care, the Dominicans are masters in preaching, though the Jesuits are masters in the field of spiritual exercises, religious and spiritual education and formation, and the pastoral management of the community. In the area of mysticism, there are two mutually complementary approaches: firstly, the phenomenological approach, proper to the Jesuits, and secondly the theological approach, suitable for Dominicans [2].
Seventhly, Jesuits, and Dominicans must complement and help each other in the language theme. Christ is very clear: «Saying yes what is yes, and saying no what is no. Anything more belongs to the devil" (Mt 5:37). Dominicans pay more attention to Christ's command: "Simple as doves" and therefore to honesty, sincerity, clarity, frankness, parrhesia, and loyalty in thinking and speaking – though risking naivety, credulity, simplism, and do-gooders; the Jesuits, on the other hand, are more attentive to (Jesus' advise): «Cautious as serpents».
[“(A second puzzling phenomenon) I find in my students (is) what C. S. Lewis calls chronological snobbery: the view that an idea need not be refuted, just sneered at as unfashionable; that we are the people, and wisdom will die with us; that history presents us with simple good guys vs. bad guys scenario not intellectually (the wise vs. the foolish) or morally (saints vs. sinners), but chronologically (the tradition-bound, the primitive, the closed, or the stagnant vs. the enlightened, the nuanced, the open, or the dynamic). They call this the historical point of view; I call it dissolving the rock of truth into the sands of time. Truth for them is a process, a river with no origin and no end, that never reaches the sea but always gets wider and truer as it flows on and on.
The popularity of this historical relativism has always puzzled my simplistic mind because it is obviously self-contradictory. If progressivism is true and traditionalism false, then there must be a real truth and false; but that is precisely what traditionalism claims and progressivism denies. It is only a slightly more sophisticated version of the silly old skepticism that says, ‘It is true that there is no truth.’
But the most puzzling phenomenon of all was my discovery of the coexistence of these opposite errors in the same minds. And this was almost always the case. Liberals almost always embrace both gray logic… and black-and-white history... I could understand, though I could not approve, an antipathy to all black or white thinking, or an antipathy to all gradual, contextual thinking; but liberalism seemed to marry these opposite errors. It imposed the simplicity of logic on the complexity of history, and it also imposed the complexity of history onto the simplicity of logic. (Bold font mine)”
Kreeft, Peter. The Cybernetics...quoted above]
Discernment requires ductility, flexibility, understanding, adaptability, a sense of situations and circumstances, simulation or dissimulation for self-defense, secrecy, and subterfuges for a good purpose, mixed with the risk, however, of lying, hypocrisy, duplicity, disloyalty, infidelity, handling, ambiguity.
We need to replace soft mercy with thought-mercy and distinguish severity from cruelty
Today the post-Conciliar reaction to the use of severity in the past has been so exaggerated, that we have fallen into the opposite excess of letting everything go and excusing everything
[ Ed.: “When you're confronted with an evil, perverted, nasty little kid smashing a chandelier with a hammer, why should you use gentleman's language? It's decadence; it's death wish; it's necrophilia; it's the end of sanity and civilization.”
Cf.: PETER KREEFT A Refutation of Moral Relativism, Ignatius Press, 1999, San Francisco, p.51-52)],
under the pretext that God is good, and into the false idea that everyone is saved.
[ “(Among) the "liberal" and the "conservative," I see four essential differences. First, liberals begin with subjectivity, and personal freedom while conservatives begin with objectivity. Conservatives prioritize objective truth. Liberals absolutize persons and see truth as relative to persons … Second, in their anthropology, liberals prioritize the heart while conservatives prioritize the mind… Third, liberals emphasize the abstract universal, the cosmopolitan, and the global while conservatives emphasize the concrete particular: individuals, families, neighborhoods, and nations. Fourth… liberals love changes and conservatives love permanence...
These four differences manifest themselves in religion as Modernism vs. Fundamentalism, especially regarding salvation. Liberals say you are saved by subjective sincerity, love, and openness to the new; conservatives by objective truth and fidelity to the old. Thus, modernists are typically universalists and inclusivists regarding salvation … while fundamentalists are typically exclusivists.”
Cf.: https://www.ncregister.com/news/dominus-iesus-liberal-or-conservative]
So, I have no doubt that I will save myself by doing what I please (so, does an objective truth exist?), while Hitler is certainly in heaven next to St. Francis to enjoy the beatific vision forever.
This explains the success of Rahner, who, in order to lead "soft-mercy" to the extreme consequences, was not satisfied with the already heretical "soft-mercy" of Luther of "sola fides" and "sola gratia", but rejected what in Luther remained of Catholic truth, i.e., the belief in the existence of the damned (among whom Luther also placed the Pope). He distanced himself from Catholicism even more than Luther, accepting Schleiermacher's thesis, according to which everyone is saved and Hell does not exist (something similar to “apokatastasis” of the Origenian school of Alessandria, (Ed.); unlike Hegel, who here remains a Lutheran, while applying his dialectic, whereby for him Hell becomes a logical necessity of divine action - as the negative is necessary for the affirmation of the positive-.
In fact, in the 19th century in the Protestant world there had been a big debate on the question of the devil and Hell, from which debate had risen the position of Schleiermacher, initiator of the so-called "liberal Protestantism." Influenced by the Enlightenment, he was convinced that a better understanding of divine mercy required abandoning the Lutheran belief in the existence of the damned and the devil, a belief considered not very evangelical and still linked to the severity of the Old Testament God. Thus, Schleiermacher resurrected Origen's "soft-mercy", understood moreover not in an eschatological sense, but as an immediate resurrection for everyone in Heaven. The devil was no longer seen as a real person, but as a simple mythological figure, a symbol of evil.
[“The compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, at number 74, recites a very concise sentence: '(Demons) have rejected God and his kingdom giving rise to Hell', …, Pope (St.) Paul VI not by chance defines Satan, on June 29, 1972, with very harsh words: 'Dark and disturbing being, hidden enemy, perfidious and astute charmer.' Yet how many priests, bishops, and faithful do not believe in his actual existence? … I want to say it right away: those who with the air of supermen recognize only what is demonstrated by scientific knowledge only make me feel sorry… Here a new chapter opens, which I will barely mention: the difference between those who believe in the supernatural and those who do not think so. All peoples since the remotest antiquity have always had a religion… beliefs that surpassed natural knowledge and addressed an invisible world. Today, however, ... atheism is widespread, thanks to the Enlightenment and rationalism"
(Cf.: Fr. Gabriele Amorth, Il Segno dell’Esorcista, Piemme, Milano, 2013, p.51,54,75 ss.)
The devil is getting smart. He knows that ‘the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,’” as St. Cyprian said, and that overt hatred, persecution, and martyring of the Saints backfires, for it produces more sympathy and support for them and even imitation of them as heroes. So, Satan’s strategy today in our culture is to persecute not Christians themselves but their defense of traditional sexual morality, to make politically incorrect and intolerable any contradiction of the ever-expanding dogmas or practices of the sexual revolution, including contraception, abortion, sodomy, pedophilia, and transgenderism. This is now labeled ‘hate speech, ‘religious dogmatism’, ‘fundamentalism’, ‘bigotry,’ ‘homophobic behavior’, ‘racism’, and ‘Patriarchal-chauvinism’ although it is only fidelity to any repetition of the three-thousand-year-old Judeo-Christian tradition that defines human love as God defines it (Cf.: Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul, Word on Fire, Park Ridge, USA, 2022, pp. 524-525]
Contrary to Schleiermacher, judged with contempt by Hegel as a sentimental devoid of speculative spirit, for Hegel God - who coincides with becoming and with history, where good is opposed to evil and life to death in dialectically and therefore logically - is necessarily also the author of evil.
Derived from the pantheistic thought of Hegel, but mitigated in the Parmenidean sense, is Severino's thought today. For Severino, as for Hegel, everything is the coincidence of thought and being, not however as time and becoming, but as a pure eternal being. For Severino, therefore, everything is not becoming, but everything is eternal. Furthermore, being the Absolute, all is well as it is. Good is the synthesis of good and evil. Glory is the synthesis of joy and suffering. Life is the synthesis of life and death. The truth is the synthesis of the true and the false. Being is the synthesis of being and non-being. Affirmation is the synthesis of affirmation and negation.
Faced with this mentality, which today seduces many in the Church – even in the Dominican Order itself and in the Society of Jesus – a mentality which, under the color of mercy, tenderness, acceptance, accompaniment, inclusiveness, conscience, charity, diversity, freedom and forgiveness, risks causing many to lose the distinction between true and false, between good and evil, licit and illicit, the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment, the tolerable and the intolerable.
There is a risk of denying duty in the name of pleasure, the universal and the objective in the name of the concrete and the subjective. It is therefore urgent that Dominicans and Jesuits join together, in the mutual complementarity of their charisms, in a solid and fraternal pact of powerful action for the good of the Church, torn between laxity and rigor, or Modernism and Lefebvrism.
The Jesuits risked being abolished by the Blessed Pope John Paul I, who had previously expressed this intention to private individuals if he were elected Pope. But he was stopped by death. With difficulty, St. John Paul II left the Society of Jesus alive, giving it one more chance. This evidently implied the end of Rahnerism. However, Rahnerians seem not to give up.
But Pope Francis spoke clearly in his historic speech at the Angelicum. And this voice comes from a Jesuit, a true son of St. Ignatius, a Jesuit who, however, is the Pope and whom St. Gallo’s mafia, headed by Cardinal Martini, hoped would have been a Rahnerian Pope. The devil always deludes himself of triumphing and always remains discouraged. It wins only - said Saint Catherine of Siena - in those who want to let themselves be won.
The Dominicans, to date, do not run this risk, and yet they must remember that their raison d'être officially in the Church exists to the extent that they will fulfill the office of "pugiles fidei et vera mundi lumina", as Pope Honorius III expresses it in the Second Confirmation of the Order of January 11th, 1216 [3]. By failing in this mandate or deviating from this direction, could they continue to boast of possessing the approval of the Church?
So, now it's up to the Dominicans. Here is their "kairòs", here is the favorable moment of their salvation (2 Cor. 6,2). It's now or never. “Edizioni Studio Domenicano” of Bologna (ESD) published 2004 an interesting collection of the speeches of the last Masters of the Order [4] starting with Father Fernandez, Master of the Order from 1962 to 1974. Obviously, these are indications and directives useful for us friars of the Order. They stimulate a fervent commitment to the realization of the Dominican ideal in the context of today's social and moral and cultural situation, in compliance with the ordinances of the Second Vatican Council.
Anyway, unfortunately, in these speeches we do not find the highlighting of the needs of the Church and of the Order with the precision with which I have highlighted them in this article. In particular, no mention is ever furnished of the presence in the Order of the current of Schillebeeckx, which gave so much concern to Saint John Paul II, and in connection with this, the serious question of the authentic interpretation of the documents of the Council is never highlighted, and of the need, repeatedly mentioned by the Popes, to interpret them according to the line proposed by the Papal Magisterium and not in the modernist one of the followers of Schillebeeckx and Rahner.
[An explanatory summary by the relevant author cited is available in previous translated articles. (Ed.)]
Even on the few occasions in which they speak of St. Thomas, they do not do so with sufficient force, required by the current ecclesial situation, by the papal Magisterium itself, and by the Dominican Constitutions. They avoid bringing the illustrious example of Maritain (bold mine (Ed.)), which instead is very enlightening and encouraging, praised by St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II, an outstanding model of Thomist, whom I have been recommending for decades and whose praise I praised in one of my books dedicated to the history of Dominican theologians [5].
Our Superiors should speak more clearly. The time has come for a great chance for the Dominican Order. The situation of the Church today is much more serious than that of the 13th century (bold mine (Ed.)), that is from the time of Saint Dominic, with the then problem of the Cathar heretics. But at the same time, we are in possession of a much greater light today: that which comes to us from today's papal Magisterium and from the spiritual strength that the Church, with her saints, has acquired over the centuries that separate us from that period.
For his part, the Pope, with his dissertation on St. Thomas, wants to put us Dominicans to the test: either we decide to follow Aquinas as the Pope prescribes us by defending him from his enemies or it will be our end, but not that of the Catholic Church, who will be helped by Thomists from whatever provenience.
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, 13 March 2023
source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/o-tommaso-o-la-fine.html
[1] The Crisis of Truth and the Second Vatican Council, Padano Institute of Graphic Arts, Rovigo 1983.
[2] Classical works, exemplary from this point of view, are for example, for the Dominicans: "Les trois âges de la vie intérieure" by Garrigou-Lagrange, "La structure del'âme et l'expérience mystique" by Ambroise Gardeil , the "Treatise on the gifts of the Holy Spirit" by John of St. Thomas, the "Mystical Theology of St. Thomas" by Thomas of Vallgornera, the "Theology mystica mentis et cordis" by Contenson, "La contemplation mystique selon Saint Thomas" by Joret; the “Traité de la vie intérieure” by Meynard; for the Jesuits: “De ascensione mentis et cordis” by S.Roberto Bellarmino; the "Practice of Mystical Theology" by Michel Godinez, "The Spiritual Doctrine" by Lallemant; "The foundations of the spiritual life" by Surin, the "Mystical Directory" by Scaramelli; Grou's "Manual of Inner Souls"; the "Practice of Mental Prayer" by de Maumigny; Poulain's "Les graces d'oraison"; “Dieu entre nous” by Raoul Plus, “The mystical evolution” by Juan Arintero; de Guibert's “Ascetic and mystical spiritual theology”; the "Studies on the Psychology of the Mystics" by the Maréchal; "Psychopathology and spiritual direction" by de Sinéty.
[3] Published by Albertus Grech O.P., De confirmaione Ordinis Praedicatorum. Historia synoptica, Melitae, Typis «Empire Press» 1916.
[4] The title of the collection is “Words of Grace and Truth. Letters of the Masters General to the Friars and Sisters of the Dominican Order.”
[5] Theologians in black and white. The contribution of the Dominican school to the history of theology, Edizioni PIEMME, 2000.