The dislike for St. Thomas
Luther's mistake and its consequences
The cult of many saints of the Catholic Church, who also lived in the first centuries, usually takes place peacefully with repetitive and traditional ceremonies, commemorations, and ritual gestures, especially at a popular level. Each Saint has his undisputed fame, and his own message, he bestows spiritual graces to his more or less wide circle of devotees, satisfied with his own devotion and the graces received.
The same rites and religious ceremonies are always repeated at each anniversary of the feast of the Saint, which lasts over the centuries. There are those who prefer this Saint and there are those who prefer another one, but always in an atmosphere of mutual respect, without problems and without disputes or at best the indifference of others.
But no standard Catholic is annoyed by some Saint or is scandalized or shocked by his ideas or by the cult that is paid to him, especially if the Church periodically praises him and recommends him as an example and as a teacher. This fate instead has befallen St. Thomas Aquinas over the centuries by many and above all by Luther and his followers up to the present day.
Thomas - unlike many other popular saints, who leave everyone calm and happy, such as St. Anthony of Padua, St. Biagio, St. Nicholas, St. Rita, St. Francis, and St. Gennaro - is not a distributor of graces and material favors, except in the case of the most precious ones, which concern the "intellectus fidei", in which the Angelic Doctor is largely protective, comforting and guiding.
However, Thomas is often a saint who disturbs, arouses controversy, and signs of contradiction even within the Catholic Church, and today more than ever! How is it possible? Let's try to see why this happened and how to fix this problem.
In the meantime, let's resume the discussion on the ex-monk Luther, one of Aquinas' most bitter enemies, within Christianity itself, namely Luther, who while posing as an Augustinian, made a clean break with St. Thomas, precisely in the name of that Word of God, who was Thomas' supreme love, so that Aquinas has been and is completely neglected by Lutherans and by Luther-influenced German philosophy up to the present day.
It so happened that the Germans in the following centuries until today showed a religious and indeed a mystical spirit, love of the Bible, high spiritual aspirations, strong speculative vigor, and robust feelings, but, in total ignorance of the millennial Thomistic wisdom, they grappled with fundamentals philosophical problems, which Thomas had already solved, and they had the presumption and the imprudence of wanting to redo, in their own way, a work that had already been achieved by Scholastics, and even drawing on ancient pagan authors, believing they would find - who knows?- what a sort of alternative wisdom, such as Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus, or dealing with Gnostics and heretics like Arius, Eutyches, Scotus Eriugena or Ockham, without mention insecure mystics like Meister Eckhart or Cusan, or even false mystics, like the Cathars and Böhme, or magicians like Giordano Bruno or even heading to India. So, inevitably emerged - from this messy and reckless method - the aberrations of empiricism, rationalism, the Enlightenment, esoteric Freemasonry, idealism, pantheism, theosophy, and atheism.
And this opposition to Thomas in the name of a false adherence to the Bible was so stubborn and pugnacious that this hostility ended up at the beginning of the last century, with the phenomenon of modernism
[ Catholic modernism, writes Father Cornelio Fabro (1911-1995) «[…] is the heterodox trend, which emerged among Catholic scholars at the end of the last century and in the early years of the present, which aimed to renew and interpret the Christian doctrine in line with modern thought". It was born within a cultural context characterized by the challenge of modern thought to Christianity, a challenge that took on different connotations during the 19th century, from Enlightenment rationalism to romanticism, positivism, and evolutionism: a world increasingly dominated intellectually and politically by forces hostile to Catholicism. The history of the Church has always been accompanied by heresies, especially after the persecutions of the first three centuries, but modernism takes on a new aspect that distinguishes it from previous heresies, that of trying not to formally break communion with the Church.
Modernism was an attempt to respond, in this climate of conflict between Christianity and modernity, to the relationship between the objective reality of Revelation and the importance of the fact that the act of faith produces a vital experience in the believer. Arising as a criticism of the abstractness of scholastic philosophy, accused of lacking a sense of history and therefore of being incapable of responding to the "vital" needs of the human being, modernism mistakes "immanentizing" the act of faith, that is, to claim that faith arises from the act of believing. Hence, the modernist criticism of the formulation of dogmas and the assumption, by the part of modernism, of a large part of modern philosophy, above all of its immanent current.
Having thrown into crisis the philosophical thought based on transcendence, which, in the teaching of scholastic theology, prepared to accept the revealed datum, modernism becomes functional to anti-Christian thought in the face of which it had also arisen, aiming paradoxically to indicate a new and more effective Catholic apologetics. Thus, modernists lose hope of being able to build a better world because it is more Christian, in the sense that they stop fighting to rebuild a civilization that conforms to natural and Christian principles, as they no longer consider it possible and perhaps not even desirable.
The problems that had favored the rise of the heresy - defined by the encyclical "Pascendi" of Saint Pius X as a "synthesis of all heresies" -, remain present and imminent within the Church. They are big and delicate problems, such as that of the relationship between faith and experience, between Revelation and theodicy, between the Thomistic and scholastic system and modern philosophy, between the State and the Church, such as the problem of the relationship between the function of the priest and that of the layman or like that of religious freedom. The Church will address these problems in a particular way with the documents of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council (1962-1965) and above all by seeking the balance between the difficulties in the intellectual field and in relations with the dominant culture, deeply entangled with the process of secularization, and the risk of a new wave of neo-modernism, which in effect will manifest itself on following years. This form of neo-modernism, judged by Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) in his work The Peasant of the Garonne, of 1966, «[…] such that the modernism of the times of Pius X appears in comparison as a modest hay fever », takes up the same themes from the beginning of the century, aided by the climate of great uncertainty and excitement that arose in the Catholic world following the Council. The effects are devastating: by contrasting the "spirit of the Council" versus the Church - as an institution - and interpreting the conciliar documents in the light of this "spirit", a climate of tabula rasa is created in a decade that produces a serious conflict within the Church between progressives and conservatives or traditionalists, up to the schism promoted by the French arch-conservative archbishop Msgr. Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991). The purpose of the Council, which wanted a new missionary action in the "old" Europe, is overturned, especially through the interpretation provided by the media molders, superficial and distorting as usual. Someone has defined what happened after the Council within the Church as the posthumous victory of the modernists.” ( cfr. M.Invernizzi: https://alleanzacattolica.org/il-modernismo/ ) (Ed.)], to penetrate into the Catholic Church itself. But the paradoxical thing is that at least Luther, recognizing the support that the Church has always given to St. Thomas, has abandoned the Church, the modernists, on the other hand, today more alive than ever, claim to consider themselves the advanced tip of Catholicism and the protagonists of an "epochal turning point" in contempt for St. Thomas.
A constant reproach that has been made to Aquinas since the time of Luther is that of having made use of the pagan Aristotle for the interpretation of the revealed datum. One of the most frequent accusations is that of having distorted the meaning of Scripture, getting entangled, in anthropology and in morals, in what is called "Greek dualism", a generic, ill-defined, and imprecise propaganda expression which is transmitted relentlessly and uncritically by exegete to exegete, where ignorance of true Greek thought equals ignorance of the true meaning of the Bible, and of true Thomistic doctrine, as well as ignorance of the doctrine of the Church.
Remarkable is the annoyance with metaphysics, closely associated with an unreasonable contempt for abstraction and terror of the supposed "tough” principles, because for the modernists, sons of Luther, everything becomes, everything changes, everything flows in history, everything is mobile, changeable and renewable, everything must be "concrete" and "pastoral".
Thomas also annoys by his inflexible morality, which derives from his anthropology, which is based on metaphysics and leads to theology. That of Thomas is a reason that leads to faith, a grace that perfects nature and that moves free will, a justice that leads to charity, a humanism that leads to Christ, and a civil life that introduces ecclesial life.
Certainly, the modernists, just to avoid lying outright, have not completely confined St. Thomas on the back burner; some of them even claim to be Thomists, and others claim to teach what St. Thomas would teach if he lived today; others guarantee that it is possible that St. Thomas would be in agreement with Luther, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, Heidegger; others assure that they have finally discovered the real Thomas against the false secular interpretation of the so-called "Thomists", by which, to firmly distinguishing from them, they declare themselves "Thomasians"; others proclaim from the rooftops that they have understood that the Thomist esse is founded on the Parmenidean esse of (Emanuele) Severino.
Others, followers of Rahner, for whom the German theologian is superior to St. Thomas and much more suitable than Aquinas himself to debate with modern thought, limit themselves to occasionally quoting some Aquinas’ sentences, although interpreted in favor of Rahner's heretical theses. Everyone, anyway, ignores or misunderstands the warm recommendation of Thomas' thought addressed by the Second Vatican Council.
A saint for a few or a saint for many?
There is no doubt that Thomas is not and never will be a popular Saint with his subtle scholastic distinctions, his citation of Authors that are not easily available, the abstractness of his concepts, the technical nature of his terms, the extraordinary sublimity and hardly understandable of his speculative thinking.
And yet, at the same time, for those who are able to appreciate it, what clarity of speech, what clarity, sobriety, and propriety of expression, what order of exposition and classification, what usefulness of distinctions, what breadth and depth of gaze, what sense of transcendence, what strength of argument, what accuracy in the definitions, what rigor in the demonstration, what help it gives us in discerning and refuting errors, what charity, objectivity and serenity of judgment, what honesty and loyalty of language, what innovative genius, what audacity of a researcher, such modesty in opinions, such accuracy of the information, such sense of history, such capacity for synthesis, such attention to the existing and to the concrete, as well as to the different cases of morality, such wise moral sentences, such respect for the doctrine of the Saints, what obedience to the Magisterium of the Church, what fidelity to Tradition and to the Word of God!
Thomas has been the trainer of generations of priests, teachers, pastors, and theologians for centuries. It is up to them to explain Thomas's doctrine to the people in simple words as far as people can understand, and the thing basically is not difficult, because the foundations of Thomistic doctrine are none other than natural reason, which all sane possess since childhood, and are the Articles of the Creed, universal values, which everyone - children and adults, learned and unlearned, intellectuals and men of action, men of any culture, people or religion, believers or non-believers, enlightened by grace - accept or can accept.
The metaphysics of St. Thomas does not start, like that of Descartes, from philosophical ideas proper to the adult subject (theory of ideas, the veracity of meaning, the idea of the self, of conscience, of thought, of reason, of the infinite, of spirit, of the soul, of God and his attributes), but from original and elementary words, which even children know how to use and understand, such as the verb «to be», thing, something, yes, no, this, that, one, true, good, beautiful, etc.
It is also normal to prefer affective theology or even mysticism to speculative or dogmatic theology, where St. Thomas excels. Indeed, in the field of mysticism, the Church has rather recommended other Doctors, such as St. Teresa of Avila, the Pseudo-Dionysius, St. John of the Cross, St. Bonaventure, St. Catherine of Siena, and St. Bernard. So, among biblical scholars, the Church has its preferences, which don’t deal with St. Thomas.
The authority of Thomas in the sacred sciences should not be stressed too much. It is true, however, that as regards other forms of theology other than dogmatics, such as biblical theology, systematic theology, narrative theology, or moral and pastoral theology, they cannot fail to refer to dogmatic theology, where Thomas is the teacher.
It is also necessary or at least appropriate to maintain the expression "scholastic theology" as an ever-current linguistic, cultural, and educational value, and therefore not in a simple historical sense now outdated, referring to Catholic theology that goes from the 12th century to the 19th century, mostly influenced by St. Thomas. In fact, "scholastic theology" means nothing else than "school of theology", that is, the theology that is taught and learned in the high schools of the Church, in short, the authorized, approved, and supervised academic or scientific theology (epi-skopeo = surveillance) by the Church [1]. It corresponds to what the Faculties of Theology are today. This means that the doctrinal patrimony and the method of study and teaching, as well as the technical vocabulary elaborated by Catholic theologians in those past centuries essentially retain their expressive, educational, and scientific value, even if naturally this patrimony must be renewed, updated and enriched with the new achievements of contemporary theology.
The sense of the universality of the Doctor Communis Ecclesiae
Scientific or scholastic theology cannot fail to have a universal objective value, even if, as a product of man, it is subject to error. However, her research, discoveries, and proposals - and here Thomas is an exemplary model - it is of help to the magisterium of the Church for the enrichment of his doctrine and also in view of the preparation of new dogmatic definitions.
Theological knowledge is objective, certain and universal and in this sense immutable. Theological discoveries resemble geographical discoveries: if until the discovery of Columbus, the existence of America was not known, from the moment of discovery it is impossible to go back to ignoring the existence of America. Once Thomas has demonstrated the immortality of the soul, it would be foolish to doubt or deny the immortality of the soul. Therefore, for special merits such as this, the Church has appointed Thomas "Common Doctor of the Church". But at the same time, as is known, there are also different theological currents in the Church, which give space to the diversity of opinions and to legitimate freedom of thought.
Thomas teaches us that if we want to be Catholic (kath'olikòs = what-is-everywhere), we cannot grasp the universal if we despise abstraction. The exaggerated and out-of-place need for concreteness leads to shortsightedness, materialism, and sensism, to what St. Thomas calls «hebetudo sensus» [2], a sign of obtuseness of spirit, proper, as St. Paul would say, of a mind «carnal, because the intellect only works by abstracting, above all in the field of spiritual and supernatural knowledge. The intellect, in practice, must grasp the concrete, but rise above space-time, beyond physics, into metaphysics.
For this reason, sober living, the practice of religious vows, and ascetic austerities favor metaphysics, speculative theology, and spiritual intelligence. Every Priest or Religious, like St. Thomas, in order not to fall into devotionals and into the quarrels and chores of daily life, in order to give real flavor to his life, to be "salt of the earth" and keep up his ascetic commitment, should have the taste or at least admiration for metaphysics, even if he doesn't have to teach theology in Bologna and has to be a hospital chaplain or country parish priest or convent treasurer.
It is necessary to know how to renounce Egyptian onions in order to enjoy with the senses of the spirit, as St. Bonaventure says, the apparent insipidity of the manna falling from heaven, food that nourishes the mind of the celestial realities revealed in faith. Panem de caelo praestitistis eis.
Thomas is one of those saints, rather rare, in truth, but frequent in the Dominican Order, who are passionate about an abstract theme, which seems to leave many cold or indifferent, but which in reality touches and vibrates a particularly sensitive chord of the human spirit: that of truth. He goes into this extremely deeply, knows the human heart very well, knows how to handle it, imperturbable shakes the foundations of conscience to strengthen them, paves the way in the forest, cuts down fearful monsters, where man's eternal destiny is at stake, and therefore with his childish simplicity, consummate prudence, and ardent charity, either arouse the most enthusiastic consents, or the strongest reactions of rejection, not to mention hatred.
The faithful persevere through the centuries, always beaten and never beaten down. Others, the ringleaders of the dominant culture, from time to time would like to put an end to this troublemaker, "a stumbling block and a stumbling block" (I Pt 2:8). Thomas, for his part, takes hold of the snakes without being poisoned, speaks of heresy with the objectivity of a scientist, a restrained emotion and the thoughtful calm of a doctor, while he unleashes the scandal of the surrounding Pharisees.
Instead, this day, in reaction to a past in which this issue was overdramatized and there was an excess of severity, easy judgmentalism, and horror, today we have lost sight of the therapeutic framework in which the problem of heresy must be inserted. So, we are now witnessing a climate of irresponsibility and superficiality, where heresy is not spoken of or there is an inability to be objective and easily explodes an emotional climate of over-excitement or bitter irony; here is the aggression against those who raise the question with the best intentions, as if they were the ogre of children's fairy tales. It would be like being scandalized by the fact that the doctor cures diseases.
It is urgent to return to speaking of heresy for the love of the truth, with due balance, with judicious evaluation, with modesty, charity, courage, and prudence, a spirit of service to souls, a desire to help pastors in their not-easy task and to defeat powers of lies and evil [3].
We need holy theologians
It does not seem that today we have a clear perception of the relationship of theology with holiness. It is difficult to understand how a theologian can be holy with those virtues proper to holiness which are mercy, thirst for God, simplicity, humility, honesty, love of the Cross, prophetic courage, parrhesia, discernment of spirits, doctrinal purity, religious piety, obedience to the Church, hatred of falsehood, wisdom, charity towards one's neighbor, the fight against Satan and contempt for the world. The Rahnerian model, which is so successful today, certainly does not help, but, on the contrary, produces rebels, know-it-alls, narcissists, hypocrites, and presumptuous and false mystics.
It is difficult to understand the ecclesial usefulness of causes for beatification that include theologians. On the other hand, perhaps due to the scarcity of holy theologians, today the causes for beatification seem mostly oriented towards the valorization of social and welfare works, an expression of corporal mercy, certainly an excellent thing, to which we are all sensitive, and of which there is always a need. For this reason, these cases have guaranteed success; but, thank God, in this field, it is not necessary to have an explicitly Catholic faith, but a good heart and sense of humanity are sufficient, which also belongs to the honest non-believer, which could correspond to the Samaritan of the Gospel.
[From the "Constitutions" of the Institute of Charity, founded by Blessed Antonio Rosmini (Ed.):
593. The offices of charity, with respect to the good of one's neighbor, to which they directly tend, are of three kinds.
The first species includes those offices which tend to benefit the neighbor immediately in what concerns the temporal life: and this can be called temporal charity.
594. The second species include those offices which tend to immediately benefit the neighbor in the formation of his intellect and in the development of his intellectual faculties: and this can be called intellectual charity.
595. The third species includes the offices of charity, which tend to help one's neighbor in what pertains to the salvation of souls: and this can be called moral and spiritual charity. We call moral that charity which disposes man to fulfill moral duties, and spiritual the same charity raised to the supernatural order, whereby man adheres to God, what the religious means tend to by which man, having obtained the divine grace, can fulfill moral obligations. In each of these species, the office of charity can include one or more acts, and permanently require one or more people continuously or successively [...].
596. Spiritual charity tends to give to one's neighbor what is good in itself and only good, that is, eternal life. On the other hand, temporal and intellectual charity offer men only relative and partial goods, which can be said to be goods only insofar as they are ordered with the intention of the absolute good of spiritual charity and in some way disposed towards it. Therefore, strictly speaking, the above three kinds of charity belong to one, as we said above (part VI, chap. IV), and therefore we are to exercise temporal and intellectual charity only in order to save souls and to honor people our God and Lord JESUS, who wanted to take upon himself the needs of all of us.
597. The principal and supreme kind of charity is the third, which tends to a greater and truer good; then the second species excels because the formation of the intellect is the most important of temporal things and serves more closely to the supreme species; the first is the least kind of charity. But in assuming offices one must not only look at this order, to assume the species that seems more important with more ease and readiness than the others, but one must first consider the following.
598. Since the state we choose is that of humility, and we place ourselves among the disciples and not among the teachers of Israel, we must not abandon this state, so dear to us, without a valid reason and, when we can, we must prefer that charity which it is proper to all the faithful, assuming the status of doctors and pastors only when the divine call is made evident.]
On the other hand, where the workers of the Gospel are scarce is in the field of the spiritual works of mercy, which concern the spiritual needs of the people, works in themselves far more important than the corporal ones, pertaining to the specific values of Catholicism. And here the helper often has to begin by arousing an interest in and a need for things of the spirit, for if anyone in his right mind perceives his material needs, few realize the higher importance of spiritual needs.
And here evidently the good Samaritan is not enough, it is not enough to be endowed with the faith of the common believer, but men with a particularly robust and enlightened faith are needed, because they must stimulate, correct, strengthen and protect the faith of the common believer, similarly to how the doctor in the field of physical health and the treatment of diseases must possess a knowledge far superior to that of the common patient.
But those so-called theologians, perhaps teachers in pontifical faculties (I won't mention names), who, due to their foolishness and disobedience to the magisterium of the Church, allow themselves to be outwitted in matters of Catechism by the laundress, the baker, or the newsagent, how could they absolve their grave responsibility, and what will they say one day before the tribunal of Christ, assuming they believe in Him?
A very important office of the theologian, today as never before, is, therefore, that of stimulating his fellow theologians to holiness, and of proposing the holiness proper to the theologian, on the model of Aquinas, giving the example of an irreproachable fidelity to the Word of God, to the tradition and magisterium of the Church, with the retinue of all the virtues that make holiness.
Today's model of holy theologians, among the few that could be mentioned, is the Servant of God the Dominican Father Tomas Tyn (1950-1990), in whose Cause of Beatification I was Vice-Postulator from 2006 to 2012 [4].
Doctrine, even sound, matters little if it is not witnessed by holiness, which inspires a modest and obliging lifestyle, alien to the haughty and oracular one, which is sometimes found in scholars, who "let it, so to speak, fall from above". The holy theologian, while inspiring veneration for the sacra doctrina, is totally dedicated to satisfying the spiritual needs of his neighbor, especially those who lie "in darkness and in the shadow of death" (Lk 1:79). Let's not talk about the damage done by those who spread a false doctrine.
We need physicians of the spirit, learned, experienced, and trained, who know how to diagnose diseases and provide effective treatments. We need shepherds who take care of the custody of the faith, who protect the sheep from wolves, and who free the faithful from errors.
The comparison with modernity
We need theologians who know how to face modernity, without global condemnations, but also without subjection, separating the wheat from the chaff, following the example of great theologians such as C. Fabro, Y. Congar, J. Daniélou, and J. Maritain. For this reason, Maritain rightly calls Thomas the "apostle of modern times" [5]. As Maritain adds, Tommaso is also an example for us of how he was able to deal with the modernity of his time, marked by Aristotle's entry into Paris. On the one hand, he knew how to value the Stagirite, overcoming the traditionalism of the Augustinians and St. Bonaventure; but on the other hand, he also knew how to avoid the errors of the Philosopher, by which innovators, such as Siger of Brabant, had let themselves be seduced.
Thomas' doctrine, with the exception of some brochures of a popular type, is certainly made for theologians, so he expresses himself in the technical language of theology. But this in no way prevents the theologians themselves from being able to present the main concepts of Thomas to the people and to the common faithful in a simple language suitable for them, especially since they are not concepts of private opinions, but excellent mediations of the Word of God. Second Vatican Council’s language translates the scholastic one of St. Thomas into modern language. It is easy to recognize Aquinas' concepts behind the terms of the Council or at least see their perfect agreement with them.
It is also clear that however much Thomas is the genius he was, nothing prevents God from giving rise to a theologian superior to St. Thomas, who can be praised and recommended like him by the Church, just as Thomas surpassed those who had preceded him. But it is not necessary for God to place only one at the top of all: he could also offer the Church a set of examples. But, so far the Church has not replaced Aquinas with anyone else. It is not excluded that the Rahnerians put pressure on the Pope because he grants Rahner similar honor.
But from Pope Francis, beyond some expressions that could smell of Rahnerism, although the Pope is open to the positive aspects of Rahnerism and cites very little the Doctor Communis Ecclesiae, has not yet come the slightest signal in this sense and indeed the Supreme Pontiff has repeatedly condemned idealism, Pelagianism and Gnosticism, errors indeed that can also be traced in Rahnerism, although not exclusively his own.
St. Thomas, "Doctor Humanitatis"
It is the title that St. John Paul II wanted to give to St. Thomas on the occasion of a speech he gave on September 29, 1990, at the conclusion of the IX International Thomistic Congress, organized by the Pontifical Roman Academy of St. Thomas, which he had assumed the general theme of its works, as the Pope himself affirms, «the figure and value of St. Thomas as “Doctor humanitatis”, as I myself defined him at the conclusion of the previous Congress of 1980». So, the Pope says:
«St. Thomas, for his conception of man and human nature as a substantial entity of soul and body, for the ample space given to the "De Homine" questions in the "Summa" and in other works, for the deepening and often decisive clarification of these questions, he can also be attributed the qualification of "Doctor Humanitatis", in close connection with an essential relationship to the fundamental premises and to the very structure of the "Science of God". In fact, he inserts his treatise "De Homine" in the "De Deo creator" (Cf. I, q.75ff.), since man is the work of God's hands, he carries within himself the image of God and strives for his nature to an ever- fuller resemblance to God (cf. I, q. 93) » [6].
Thomas theologian bases his theology on anthropology and conversely anthropology on metaphysics. Thomas is the founder of Christian humanism. But he proposes a humanism founded first of all on reason and then on faith and Christian revelation. Revelation, according to Thomas, confirms, integrates, and elevates the divine son-ship, that humanism that the natural reason of every man already knows how to build by itself on the basis of metaphysics. From the conception of man, then, reason derives morality, rises up to God, and embraces the gift of faith: knowledge of man in the light of faith. «Integral humanism», to use the title of Maritain's famous book, is, therefore, Thomistic humanism, which adds the contribution of faith to the knowledge of reason.
But Thomas shows us that it is possible, in principle, to build a humanism with the forces of reason alone, based on metaphysics and then rising to natural theology. It is probably this humanism of reason and metaphysics that Pope Francis refers to when he exhorts all peoples to fraternity and proposes to them a common educational pact. God is not named not because he is excluded, but because He is implied.
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli O.P.
Fontanellato, 4 febbraio 2020
source: https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/lantipatia-per-san-tommaso.html
[1] For this reason, it was perfectly reasonable that in 1964 the ecclesiastical authority dismissed Emanuele Severino from teaching at the Catholic University of Milan for having begun to teach a Gnostic system in complete contrast with Catholic philosophy. Fr. Cornelio Fabro declared in his time that he had never known in the entire history of thought a doctrine so anti-Christian as that of Severino. The theologian Andrea Grillo, on the other hand, gave further proof, if there were still any need, of his total lack of sapient judgment by defending the philosopher from Brescia on the occasion of his death against the provision of the Church.
[2] Cf. "Summa Theologiae" II-II, q.15, a.3.
[3] I dealt with this delicate topic in my book The Question of heresy today, Editions Vivere In, Monopoli, (Bari, Italy) 2008.
[4] See my book published on the occasion of the opening of the Cause: Father Tomas Tyn. A post-conciliar traditionalist, Editions Fede&Cultura, Verona (Italy) 2007.
[5] Le Docteur Angélique, Desclée de Brouwer et Cie, Paris 1930.
[6] Published by the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, Libreria Editrice Vaticana 1990, pp.6-7.