Father Tomas Tyn OP, Light of the Church
Next January 1st [ 2023, in accordance with the original dating of the article (Ed.] will be the 33rd anniversary of the death of the Servant of God Father Tomas Tyn, well known to the Readers [of Father Cavalcoli's blog, on which is inspired the present one (Ed.)] Father Tomas is one of those lights the Church uses to advance, amid the darkness of present life, towards the fullness of light, which is Christ, the light of the world.
The short life of Father Tomas - who died at the age of 39 - extraordinarily intense in intellectual and practical activity, was an example of how intelligently and fruitfully we can spend that short time God places at our disposal, using every moment to grow in charity and in pursuit of holiness, and doing his best with his own talents. Father Tomas had truly a lot and profited from those ascetic methods, which are taught us by the Gospel and by spiritual great masters.
Many of us, especially in our youth, before finding our own path, if we succeed on it, suffer periods or moments of doubt, uncertainty, and second thoughts, if not disbandment or prevarication. Some even lose their way in pursuit of the vanities of the world. Not so does Fr. Tomas, who, availing of an excellent Christian education from an early age, despite living under a communist dictatorship, in then Czechoslovakia, very early intuited the purpose of his life - to serve the God of Truth - and launched himself with all forces in perfect coherence in the pursuit of the goal, "without bending either to the right or to the left" (Jos 23:6), with gentleness on one hand towards the friendly forces and bravely on the other towards the hostile ones. And with these dispositions where could he not fail to enter, at the age of only eighteen, if not in the Dominican order, whose specific mission is the teaching and defense of the Truth?
Providence has given us this learned Dominican, most faithful to St. Thomas, an open mind to all the truths of faith, sensitive in a special way to those which, due to a modernist interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, are often set aside today, seriously damaging a complete view on all Catholic doctrine.
I am referring to those dogmas which use metaphysical concepts, such as those of substance, form, nature, person, or participation. In particular, as regards the notion of substance, we must remember that it is linked to the divine nature: the First Vatican Council speaks of God as "substantia spiritualis", the person is clearly a spiritual substance. In the Eucharist we find, as it is known, the term "transubstantiation". The Catholic Creed tells us that the Son is "consubstantial with the Father", and the liturgy speaks of the substance of the sacraments.
[ Ed.: In the history of Christian doctrine - in order to be able to resolve the Arian crisis – the Church had to use a category that is not directly biblical. That one of “consubstantiality,” or "homo-ousios".
The First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea – representing the first effort aimed to attain consensus in the Church, Christian bishops convened by Constantine I in 325 in the current city of İznik, Turkey - accomplished its main purpose of settling the Christological issue of the divine nature of the Son and his relationship to the Father. His results consisted of the former uniform Christian doctrine, called the Nicene Creed.
In particular, it resolved disagreements, the Arian controversy, which arose in Alexandria when a presbyter, Arius, began to spread doctrinal views that were contrary to those of his bishop, Alexander, whether the Son had been 'begotten' by the Father from his own being, and therefore having no beginning, or else created out of nothing, and therefore having a beginning.
Arius – we could call him, an “old Rahner,” as Hegel, conversely, could be named a “new Heraclitus” - emphasized the supremacy and uniqueness of God the Father, meaning that the Father alone is almighty and infinite and that therefore the Father's divinity must be greater than the Son's.
The Council stated that He was begotten out of the substance (essence) of the Father.
The debate was not about “what” His substance is, but “of what” substance He (the Son's "full divinity") was generated out. The Son, in other words, is divine in just the same sense the Father is, or coeternal with the Father, else He could not be a true Son.
As long as (the Fathers of the Church) remained with pure biblical data they could not solve the problem with the Arians: Arius insisted that the Father's divinity was greater than the Son's. They in fact appealed to Scripture, quoting biblical statements such as "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), and also that the Son is "firstborn of all creation" (Colossians 1:15).
So, the banner of orthodoxy was a non-biblical adjective.
Many of the words used in the debates at Nicaea were, in fact, Greek words like "essence" (ousia), "substance" (hypostasis), "nature" (physis), "person" (prosopon) and bore a variety of meanings drawn from pre-Christian, that’s pagan philosophy.
(cf.: Card. Giacomo Biffi, Lezioni di Cristocentrismo, YouTube : neoschola, 23 ottobre 2016 ]
In the area of theological teaching, which is where Tomas felt called and was directed by the Superiors within the Dominican Order, he manifested an extraordinary sharpness and depth of intelligence, ability to logical argument, perfect intellectual honesty, security, and clarity of ideas, the seriousness of convictions and modesty of opinions, with simplicity and frankness, without human respect, deception, opportunism, exhibitionism, desire to be in the limelight and narcissism - which are unfortunately very frequent today among those who, like theologians, should, on the contrary, set an example of humility and spirit of service.
Thus, Father Tyn dedicated a book of almost 1000 pages to the metaphysical treatment of substance [1] in connection with other metaphysical notions of supreme utility in theology, such as that of participation, in the doctrine of grace, and of analogy for the development of the concept of God in natural theology.
[Analogy - that sees its maximum development and uses with St. Thomas Aquinas - already knows at its inception, with his contemporaries, the premises of his future crisis. Starting right from the thirteenth century, the two great schools of philosophical-theological thought based in Paris, where Albert the Great (1200 ca.-1280) and then his disciple Thomas worked first, and in Oxford, where we encounter, among others, Roger Bacon (1214-1292) and Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), John Duns Scotus (1275-1308) and William of Ockham (1280-1349), are confronted and will follow different paths, without understanding each other. The Aristotelian line, followed by Albert and Thomas, will acquire great importance above all for Catholic theology and, three centuries later, will be officially accepted, in large part, by the Church in the Council of Trent (1545-1563), while the Platonic line, prevalent in Oxford, he will concentrate, starting from Roger Bacon on the problem of the mathematization of science, creating the remote methodological premises for the development of modern science.
Thus, begins that gradual distancing of increasingly univocal scientific thought - insofar as it is mathematized - from the metaphysical and theological, analogical one. Scotus will resolve the analogy of beings into a multiplicity of univocal terms just as Ockham will dissolve the reality of the universals into a pure “name” (nominalism) denying it a real extra-mental existence. This operation, with the success of Galilean and Newtonian science, will then obtain a relapse also on philosophical thought, first through Descartes (1596-1650) and then Kant (1724-1804), up to the dissolution of the very possibility of a metaphysics as a science and consequently of theology as a systematic science. (Cf. Alberto Strumia, https://disf.org/analogia (2002))]
Within the horizon of this recovery program of that Catholic thought - which today risks being forgotten and marginalized, following a misunderstood renewal of theology and a false ecumenism of the decades following the Second Vatican Council-, Father Tomas devoted himself special attention to Luther, both in his final licentiate thesis in theology - at the Dominican Studio in Bologna - and in his doctoral thesis in theology - at the Angelicum (Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Ed.)), in Rome.
There is nothing but to rejoice at the "Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification" between Catholics and Lutherans in 1999 under the aegis of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, but this does not diminish the value of the complementary work carried out by Father Tyn, who would certainly have rejoiced at the steps advanced. But he would not have failed to highlight the knots still to be resolved represented by the persistent Lutheran tendency to maintain certain errors and certain gaps, such as ignorance of the doctrine of merit, the confusion between lust and sin, the radical corruption of human nature, the rejection of theology natural and of almost all the Sacraments.
[ Ed.: “The main foundation for modern relativism in medieval Christian philosophy was William of Ockham's Nominalism. Nominalism was the philosophy that reduced all universal terms to mere names, “nomina” — there are no real universals — and therefore there are no real moral universals, like "honesty is always good" or "adultery is always evil", by the very nature of those things, by their unchangeable essence.
Ockham's Razor, explains things by the minimum number of causes…, (which gave) birth to relativism.
Luther and Calvin and Descartes followed Ockham there; their "divine command theory" got rid of the more complex natural law theory. The divine command theory says that God's command is the only thing that makes an act right, or morally good. The natural law theory says that there is also a natural law, as well as a divine law—a law that comes from the nature of the act itself, and the nature of man and that this natural law also makes an act good or evil. The natural law is the proximate cause; the divine law is the ultimate cause. Two causes instead of one: not the simplest explanation…The Razor could be used to eliminate the natural law or the divine law. The religious Nominalists like Luther thought they could maximize religion by eliminating the natural law, and the nonreligious Nominalists thought they could minimize religion by eliminating the divine law. Both sides used the Razor. The same principle that the Protestant reformers used to eliminate the natural law and the natural human reason (bold mine (Ed.)) that knows it, the secularists used to eliminate divine law and the faith that knows that. So, faith and reason became enemies instead of the allies that they were in all classical medieval philosophy, whether Islamic or Jewish, or Christian (cf. Peter Kreeft, A Refutation of Moral Relativism, Ignatius Press, 1999, pages 40-41;]
Furthermore, Father Tyn, regarding the Lutheran conception of justification, maintains the expression "forensic justification", alongside the traditional Catholic polemic, which is actually a euphemism because, in reality, it is not about this, since this type of justification has its plausibility, while Lutheran justification let the eternal Father subsume the miserable part of covering up sin and childishly pretending not to see them, which should be called by its real name, namely simulation, however blasphemous this may appear if attributed to God, our Father. The Council of Trent specified that we are not just shamming forgiven, but in earnest forgiven.
Father Tyn's theology donates large contributions to the issue of grace, a doctrine today too often distorted by two contrary errors, denounced by Pope Francis under two terms, well known to the historians of heresies: on the one hand, a Pelagian lowering of grace in a naturalistic or secular sense; on the other, a Gnostic overestimation, which borders on pantheism.
Father Tomas taught moral theology at the Dominican Studio in Bologna, so his courses on virtues and vices, natural and supernatural virtues, and criteria of judgment that he then used in the diligent practice of the Sacrament of Confession and of spiritual direction, are highly recommended. For these reasons, he was highly sought after, endowed as he was with extraordinary sweetness and affability, capacity for dialogue and persuasion, as far as he was clear, firm, and steadfast in the affirmation of principles, of whose importance, due to the seriousness and also the warmth with which he spoke, he knew how to persuade penitents and attract souls in search of perfection. Anyway, he also knew how to shake the consciences of unbelievers and dodgers, and not infrequently lead them to conversion. He was a most affable man, capable of great human warmth and friendship, sociability, piety, and mercy. When the opportunity arose, very rarely indeed, he stood up with a prophetic stance against the hypocrites and the proud.
Father Tomas deals with grace in a close relationship with free will, and was the subject of subtle as well as useful analyses, following an illustrious Dominican tradition, which continues the famous “De auxiliis” dispute with Jesuits theologians, at the end of the 16th century.
[“Unfortunately, during the post-conciliar period, 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 sides. 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 appeared as an ally of grace, with a clear perception of human causality, while the Dominicans, with a greater perception of divine causality, saw free will as moved by grace.
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 causality and divine causality according to the analogical metaphysical notion of causality.
The Pope, who in the meantime had already awaited with indefatigable patience the hearing of 167 reports, had the climate of its 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 have done before; and yet they recommended following St. Thomas in theology; which suggests their preference for the Thomistic solution over the Molinist, namely the Jesuit’s one.
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/o-tommaso-o-la-fine.html ]
Quite important is his treatment of the main mysteries of Christianity: The Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption. Particularly rich in wisdom is the treatment of natural theology, namely, the evidence of the existence of God, divine attributes, and God's relationship with man and with the world. Important is also the writings on the nature of theology. Beyond that, we array a beautiful collection of homilies on various saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
His homilies were very fervent and suffused of solid and luminous doctrine. The volume of the voice was so high that it could be heard even outside the Church. Exemplary and very diligent in the celebration of the Holy Mass, at the request of the then Archbishop of Bologna, Card. Biffi
[Giacomo Biffi, born in Milan on June 13, 1928, received the sacred order of the priesthood there on December 23, 1950. Paul VI appointed him titular bishop of Fidene and auxiliary to Cardinal Giovanni Colombo on December 7, 1975. He receives episcopal ordination on 11 January 1976. Appointed archbishop of Bologna, and elevated to the rank of cardinal by John Paul II, he retired in 2003 due to aging. In 2007, he held the Lenten exercises at the Roman Curia and at Benedict XVI. He passed away on the morning of Saturday 11 July at the age of 87.
Cardinal Caffarra, his successor, defined him: "One of the greatest pastors of the Italian Church of the 20th century.” His greatest legacy was the proclamation of the Word of God to everyone, including Muslims. He expressed a splendid faith, through the splendor of a thought-out truth, defended if necessary.
He highly esteemed dialogue and deeply despised those who practiced it either as an effort to reduce us all to a lowest common denominator or to the waste of time of parlor chat. Dialogue for him coincides with evangelization.
Using the words of Saint Maximus, the Confessor, he built his life, his theological thought, and his pastoral ministry on the rock of that profession: Christ, the Son of the living God, teaching to think everything through Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ through all things.
He was also a great defender of reason. He liked to repeat: “West has lost its faith, but its reason. Faith without reason is impossible because the act of faith is a reasonable act.”
His episcopal logo recited: "Ubi fides ibi libertas."
Another pastor testified of him:
"A man who has collected the greatest intellectual and moral tradition of the Ambrosian spirit and history.
A great theological intelligence, one of the deepest and most extensive of the last century, gathered around the great theme of absolute "Christ-centrism", the absolute centrality of Christ as redeemer of man and of the world, the center of the cosmos and of history (typical theme of the Franciscan school and of the incipit of the first John Paul II’s Encyclical, "Redemptor Hominis"(Ed.).
From this awareness flowed a broad and concrete vision of reality and of Christianity to which he often returned, recovering the great lesson of Saint Ambrose and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
His thought ranged over all the great themes of the Catholic faith, especially the mystery of the Holy Church. Far from the dominant mentality, which lets itself be measured by public opinion, Cardinal Biffi said: «My problem is what God thinks of me, what the Church thinks of me, and what the Pope thinks of me». (Msgr. Luigi Negri)], in addition to the parish ministry, carried out in the Parish of “San Giacomo fuori le mura” (Bologna, Italy), he celebrated every Saturday in the (form of) vetus ordo.
[ A recent article, from which I synthetically excerpt and adapt, (Ponzo, J. (2021). Vetus Ordo Missae: Italian Catholic priests facing the revival of Latin and traditional liturgy. Social Semiotics, 31(4), 570-584; https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2019.1647819 and here:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8389980/ ) presents the results of an ethnographic study investigating how Italian priests interpret the liturgical use of Latin in the contemporary socio-cultural context, what meanings and values they attribute to the ancient ritual, especially in comparison with the new one, and how they deal with the issue of the translation of sacred and liturgical texts.
The liturgical reform promoted by the Second Vatican Council led, in fact, to a renewed way of celebrating the Mass entailing new ritual features and the drastic reduction of the use of Latin in favor of vernacular languages.
A significant category of interlocutors in these debates is constituted by the ordinary priests, who have both to apply the directives established by the Holy See and to engage with local communities.
In general, the priests interviewed do not express a negative opinion about the Council’s directives and principles, but they do criticize the way in which they were applied, considered sometimes as an ineffective and dangerous radicalization of the spirit of the Council, which was both innovative and moderate.
Some of the most significant issues emerging from the interviews are:
Firstly, the fact that the priests tend to see the celebration of the Mass according to the vetus ordo and the knowledge of Latin as bringing them special spiritual benefits thanks to their specific role in the traditional liturgy. These spiritual benefits consist specifically of an increased concentration and consciousness of the sacred meanings of liturgical words and gestures.
Secondly, the priests perceive the novus ordo as a ritual privileging the horizontal communication between the priest and the people, while the vetus ordo privileges the vertical communication of human beings with God, the priest is placed both physically (on the altar, higher than the assembly space, and turned toward the cross) and spiritually (as a mediator) between the two.
Thirdly, the priests believe that Latin constitutes an important linguistic and cultural root. The knowledge of this ancient language is essential especially for the clergy, both because it provides an interpretative key that is indispensable for the comprehension of sacred and liturgical texts and because it is an important component of the Catholic identity.
Consequently, all the priests consider the study of Latin and private prayer in Latin as beneficial spiritual practices that should be encouraged, also following the example of the great saints of the Church.]
for a group of people near the beautiful Ark of San Domenico. Father Tomas also loved youths, he was a great educator and was also an assistant to the boy scouts for some years.
But the supreme testimony of Father Tomas, the most persuasive, and most characteristic of holiness, that of Jesus Christ, was not so much the testimony of truth, but that of charity. Feeling all the limitations of his power of persuasion as a theologian and, precisely as a theologian, understanding more than others the evil that atheism brings to souls translated into political power, strongly attached indeed to his homeland -
[ Ed.: Czech Republic, or Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, historically and traditionally known as Bohemia. Nazi Germany took control of the Czech lands early, in 1938. Czechoslovakia was restored in 1945 and three years later became an Eastern Bloc communist state following a coup d'état in 1948. Attempts to liberalize the government and economy were suppressed by a Soviet-led invasion of the country during the famous Prague Spring, in 1968.]
from which, despite the oppressive dictatorial regime, through his educators, he had received a Christian formation -, he got from God the inspiration and the strength to carry out a heroic act that cannot hold back the omnipotent intervention of divine mercy: the heroic offering of one's life (he performed a vow of the spiritual victim and so, accepting God's will to suffer, made him more like Christ, the Great Victim. (Ed.)). And as always happens in these cases, God granted him by calling him to Himself after a few years through a short but very painful illness.
So, it happened that the date of his death, January 1, 1990, coincided with the transition of Czechoslovakia from communism to democracy without a fight, which is miraculous if we remember how all revolutions in history occur with extensive bloodshed.
All this reveals Father Tomas as a light and a mark of conciliation and peace for the Church today. And from his witness flows an extraordinary source of truth, freedom, and charity for the whole Church, troubled and divided by a conciliar reform deformed by the modernists and misunderstood by traditionalists or, as the Pope calls them, "backward people".
In his testimony of unconditional love for the unity and universality of the Church, and in his skillful highlighting of common values, and avoiding opposing extremisms, in knowing how to reconcile tradition and progress, we really find the path and the modality to work effectively for reconciliation and peace.
Today the Church suffers from the lack of an internal dialogue between brothers, who, while affected by bias, claim to reserve for their part the qualification of "Catholics", perhaps against the Pope or above the Pope.
[ Ed: As stated by Peter Kreeft on the 10th Anniversary of Cardinal Ratzinger’s Landmark Document, “Dominus Iesus, published in the summer of 2000: “This is one of the most important Church documents of modern times, …, because it concerns what is absolutely central and primary in Christianity, Christ himself. Because it defends the most unpopular aspect of the Church's claim today – its "absolutism." And because it overcomes the dualism of "liberal" vs. "conservative" by which the media classify and evaluate everything. To understand this, we should first try to spear those two slippery fish: the "liberal" and the "conservative." I see four essential differences.
First, liberals begin with subjectivity while conservatives begin with objectivity.
Liberals prioritize personal freedom. Conservatives prioritize objective truth. Liberals absolutize persons and see truth as relative to persons. Conservatives absolutize truth and see persons as relative to truth. (Both are right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. Both persons and truth are absolute.)
Second, in their anthropology, liberals prioritize the heart while conservatives prioritize the mind. An attempted mutual heart-and-brain transplant between a conservative and a liberal failed because no one could find a conservative who would give up his heart to a liberal or a liberal who had any brains to give to a conservative.
Third, liberals emphasize the abstract universal, the cosmopolitan, and the global while conservatives emphasize the concrete particular: individuals, families, neighborhoods, and nations.
Fourth, most obviously, liberals love change, and conservatives love permanence; liberals love the new, conservatives the old. That is a matter of temperament rather than ideological content, for anti-Establishment liberals turn into Establishment conservatives when they succeed. And truth is not told by clocks any more than time is told by syllogisms.
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 ("We're all going to heaven, except perhaps the Fundamentalists"), while Fundamentalists are typically exclusivists ("You're going to hell because you're not us").
When Dominus Iesus debuted, both groups gagged. The Fundamentalists found it too liberal and universalistic. The Liberals found it too conservative and exclusivist. It's not surprising that it happened to Dominus Iesus, because the same thing happened to Jesus himself: Sadducees and Pharisees, Herodians and Zealots, suddenly found one thing to agree about. They had found their common enemy. Throughout Christian history, the pattern has repeated itself. There have always been the "faith alone" fundamentalists (Tatian, Tertullian, Bernard, Luther) and the "reason trumps faith" liberals (Origen, Abelard, Spinoza, Bultmann), but also the "both-and" defenders of mainline orthodoxy (Justin Martyr, Augustine, Aquinas, Newman, Chesterton).
The same threefold pattern manifests in Judaism. In Islam, of course, the "faith alone" people won the center of the battlefield. Dominus Iesus not only overcomes the "liberal"/"conservative" divide but also unites the positive in both while rejecting the negative. It is not a compromise but a "higher synthesis." You can see how this would deeply offend both Modernists and Fundamentalists. Just as Jesus himself did.
The point of Dominus Iesus is that it is precisely the "conservative" or "traditional" "high Christology" of the Church and the Bible – so uncompromising on Christ's full divinity, "unicity" or uniqueness and universality – that allows us to have a very "liberal" hope for the salvation of non-Christians. Because all truth and goodness come from Him, the truth and goodness in the hearts, lives, and religions of non-Christians are His actions in their cultures and their hearts.
Second, since the Church is not Christ's artifact but his very body, what is true of Him is true of her. Dominus Iesus refutes the "liberal" separation of the two (three cheers for Christ, one for the Church) by correcting its misinterpretation of Vatican II's statement that Christ's Church "subsists in" the Catholic Church: Thus our "liberal" assessment of the truths in other religions is based on our "conservative" Christology. This is the double reason, both "conservative" and "liberal" reason, why we will not and cannot shut up, why we insist on telling the Good News to everyone (including Jews and Muslims): because Christ is the only Savior and because he is already at work in their lives.”
https://www.ncregister.com/news/dominus-iesus-liberal-or-conservative ]
It happens then, understandably, that the enemies of the Church make fun of us by saying: do you want to teach us concord and peace when you are the first to destroy each other? Today, the Church suffers from the same conflicts as the world (in the Johannine sense, (Ed.)) because the light that warms and enlightens them is lacking. If the Church today is pleasing or accepted to the world, the reason is that it has become worldly (or mundane, following Pope Francis’ frequent statements (Ed.)). Father Tomas helps greatly to increase the light that illuminates the world.
There is no doubt that Father Tomas had made a choice. Between the commitment to affirm the novelties of the Council and the need to recover some traditional values that risked being easily forgotten, he chose this latter, distancing however himself far from those who accused the Council of modernism. He holds the Council in high esteem and profound veneration, as befits a faithful Catholic, especially a Dominican friar.
We need the example of holy theologians. Today the tendency to canonize benefactors of the poor, the suffering, and the marginalized is widespread. Great. But where do these Saints find the reasons and the strength of their heroic commitment to charity? Truth is the response. Love of neighbor is not an end in itself, nor motivated by itself. Loving your neighbor does not mean making an idol of your neighbor, but putting God's will into practice for your neighbor. Therefore, it is necessary to know the truth about God.
This is the role or ministry of the theologian. Without this reference to truth, love of neighbor either becomes an affirmation of others or enslavement or idolatry or partisanship, finally, it loses its motivation and selfishness emerges, and egotistic exploitation of others.
Instead of rescuing immigrants, men become human traffickers. Instead of correcting sodomites, sodomy is promoted and sponsored. Or rising up against the powerful is neglected, and praises are perilously sung. Or working for the common good is replaced with seats-sought. Instead of suffering for others, they let others suffer because of us. (Instead of letting the tomb become a womb – as at the Resurrection -, they let the womb transformed in the tomb – as it happens in the wide political relentless legal abortion tide (Ed.).) For this reason, if the Church does not proceed to promote Causes for the canonization of theologians, as is her tradition and tenet, those (causes) of the lawyers of the poor will diminish either.
I am convinced, therefore, that if Father Tyn were placed on the candlestick by the Catholic Church, that would turn advantage to the Church oneself, and simultaneously to the detriment of her enemies, who are responsible for the obstacles and for the deafness hindering the progress of his Beatification’s cause.
Identifying the enemies of the Church is an easy task: one has only to see whom Father Tomas is harassed by. He calls them the "moderns", which may lead to the suspicion that Fr. Tomas is angry with all modern philosophy,
[Modern philosophy has classical clear birth and death dates: 1637 marks its beginning, with the publication of Descartes’ “Discourse on Method,” and then 1831 marks its end, with Hegel's death. (Ed.)]
even the healthy ones, as Lefevrians do. This, however, is absolutely untrue, because Fr. Tomas, as a good Thomist, is open to any truth, whether ancient or modern.
He clearly and deeply knows that philosophical knowledge increases and progresses in history. His feelings for the "Ancients" are only a tribute to their gnoseological realism – namely, Plato and Aristotle. This sympathy does not prevent him from appreciating modern innovations, however deducible from Aquinas' philosophia perennis, such as for example the philosophy of Maritain
[This year, 2023, marks his 50th death anniversary, and we’ll dedicate, in the next article, to this outstanding theologian and philosopher some of Fr. Cavalcoli’s insights and reflections (Ed.)]
or Fr. Fabro, or Father Alberto Boccanegra
[Osvaldo Boccanegra (Venice, 19 October 1920 - San Domenico di Fiesole, 11 July 2010). He participated in the Second World War. During his military years, he devoted himself to studying Aristotle's entire Organon. In 1948 he obtained a doctorate in philosophy at the Catholic University of Milan with a thesis entitled “The First Principles in Duns Scotus.”
He was offered the chair of theoretical philosophy, which he declined, and entered the Dominican Order and assumed a so-to-speak new identity and mission, being called “Fra Alberto.”
At the Pontificio Ateneo "Angelicum" in Rome, he discussed his doctoral thesis in philosophy (“The dynamism of being”).
He left his doctoral treatise in theology forever unfinished, but in 1969 he nevertheless published an exhaustive synthesis of his thoughts on it.
Thousands of manuscript pages are kept after his death in the convent archive of San Domenico di Fiesole. Author of publications and philosophical articles that have appeared or been reviewed in Italian and international journals, he excelled in the Ministry of Confession and was sought after, above all, by young people. In his later years, he dedicated himself to unceasing prayer day and night.]
and others.
Taking the word "modern" in a positive sense, modern philosophers are for Father Tomas modern Thomists, as he himself believes, who lives in the 20th century and not in the 13th. He, therefore, does not confuse the modern with the modernist, the modern faithful to Thomas with the modern who mixes Thomas with Descartes, Kant, Hegel, or Heidegger.
If instead we look carefully at what he means by «moderns» when he criticizes them, we will realize that Father Tomas refers to the Cartesians and the idealists, derived from them, who, with a skillful propaganda move, have managed to establish themselves in historiography with the label prestige of founders of "modernity", when truly their errors instead date back to before Aristotle and were decisively refuted by him. No impostor can withstand the critical gaze of Father Tomas.
Let us, therefore, ask God the Father to deign to cast a benevolent gaze on this holy enterprise and let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Holy Rosary, of whom the Servant of God was most devoted, an effective intercession so that that light which Father Tomas gives us, on the example of St. Dominic Lumen Ecclesiae, may it spread more and more for the good of the Church, the salvation of souls and the glory of God.
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, 26 December 2022
source: https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/padre-tomas-tyn-luce-della-chiesa.html
[1] Metaphysics of substance, Participation, and analogy of being, Fede&Cultura Editions, Verona 2009