In honor of the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (his dies natalis, March 7, as observed in the traditional calendar), Os Justi Press has released two major Thomistic publications.
Showing posts with label Thomas Aquinas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Aquinas. Show all posts
Prayers in Honor of Saint Thomas Aquinas, gathered in one book for the first time
We’ve hit some huge Thomistic anniversaries in recent years:
• in 2023, the 700th of Aquinas’s canonization;
• in 2024, the 750th of his death;
• and in 2025, the 800th of his birth.
Summer Study Program on Galatians with Daily Traditional Mass
Overview: Each summer brings with it a number of opportunities for further education in congenial Catholic settings. This August 12-16, the Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine and the Albert the Great Center for Scholastic Studies are partnering with the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest to offer a five-day theology program studying the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians with the aid of St. Thomas Aquinas's superb commentary.
Albert the Great Summer School in Wisconsin, August 12-16, 2019: Study St. Thomas on Galatians, with Daily Latin Mass
"No Longer I Who Live, But Christ In Me"
St. Thomas's Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians
Albert the Great Summer Program 2019 – USA
August 12 – 16, in Wausau, Wisconsin
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| The Angelic Doctor |
The Albert the Great Center, which has held summer programs in Norcia, Italy, for several years, is expanding its offerings by holding a summer theology program in the USA for the first time, in collaboration with The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine. The primary focus of this week-long intensive course will be St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, supported by St. Thomas Aquinas's superb commentary on the same.
According to St. Thomas, Galatians is about the grace of Christ as it exists in his Mystical Body, which is the Church, and in particular, as it exists in the sacraments of Church, for "in the letter ... superfluous sacraments are rejected against certain men who wanted to join the old sacraments to the new ones." Galatians and the commentary on it bring forward important considerations on the unchangeableness of sacred doctrine ("even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be anathema"), on the mystical identification of the Christian with Christ, on the setting-aside of the Old Covenant in consequence of its messianic fulfillment, and on the confrontation of Church hierarchs by their subjects -- all subjects under considerable discussion in our day.
Guest Op-Ed: The Six Principles of Penance according to St. Thomas Aquinas
By Veronica A. Arntz
In Summa Theologiae III, q. 85, a. 5, St. Thomas Aquinas writes that
there are six principles of penance. These principles of penance, according to
Aquinas, are the “acts whereby in penance we co-operate with God operating”
(III, q. 85, a. 5, corpus). Reflecting
on these principles during the season of Lent can be helpful for us as we
prepare for the Holy Triduum.
How have we been using our time
during this Lent? Have we been truly sorry for our sins, or are we wasting our
time idly pursuing worldly ends and goals? How diligently have we been purging
ourselves of earthly attachments, bad habits, and sinful behaviors? Have we
been striving to become closer to God in prayer? These are the questions to ask
ourselves as we read and reflect upon the six principles offered by Aquinas.
First, a note on penance in
general: in I-II, q. 113, a. 5, Thomas writes that sadness is a sign of love.
Penance is sadness over our sins; we repent over the wrong that we have
committed, and we resolve not to commit the same sins again. Thus, when we are
sad over our sins, we should ultimately be sad because of offending God who is
Love, who loved us so much that He suffered and died for us on the Cross.
Guest Op-Ed: A vision of the Church in 1 Timothy, through Aquinas
By Veronica A. Arntz
“I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth. Great, indeed, we confess, is the mystery of your religion” (1 Timothy 3:14-16, RSV-CE).
These verses of St. Paul, in
addition to the previous passages, reveal very succinctly the nature and soul
of the Church. Paul first outlines the different roles within the Body of
Christ—men and women, bishops, and deacons—and then describes the source of the
Church’s unity, namely, the Incarnate Word of God. Reflecting on these passages
of Paul, with the trustworthy guide of St. Thomas Aquinas, will shed light on
how we should respond to the current situation in our Church. The Church today
is indeed in need of a reminder of how she should act as the “household of
God,” given how easily we fall into sin, which divides the Church and prevents
her from being truly unified as the Body of Christ.
In this letter, St. Paul first
talks about men and women, or the laity, in the Church. St. Paul writes, “I
desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without
anger or quarrelling” (1 Tim 2:8). St. Paul thus desires that all the men
should pray, and this prayer, according to Thomas, is marked by three
characteristics: “that it be assiduous, pure, and quiet” (71). Mental prayer
can occur anywhere, which is why men are no longer required to pray only in
Jerusalem. Moreover, the prayer ought to be pure, which means that by our
external signs, we are giving glory to God.
As Thomas explains, “For genuflections
and the like are not of themselves pleasing to God, but only because by them,
as by signs of humility, a man is internally humble” (72). Man’s actions in
prayer are a sign of his humility and thereby purity before God. Finally,
prayer should be quiet, or without anger, both toward God and toward neighbor;
thus, real prayer is guided by charity. A man cannot truly pray unless he
deeply possesses the virtue of charity, which is expressed in the twofold
commandment of love of God and love of neighbor. Thus, we can see from the
beginning that, for Paul, prayer is at the center of the Church. The Church
must pray to God in humility, begging for his grace and his mercy to transcend
our weak human nature.
New Reprints of Three Theological Classics
People who enjoy reading theological books quickly discover, in the vaults of university libraries, at used bookstores, or by lucky links online, a lot of hidden gems out there — books that were first published 50, 75, 100 years ago or even more, which have long since fallen out of print and yet very much deserve to be back in print for new readers.
Is Amoris Laetitia really Thomistic and against “decadent scholasticism”? Let’s hear what the Angelic Doctor says
Luisella Scrosati
La Nuova Bussola Quotidiano
April 11, 2016
After the publication of the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio (1981), as likewise the Letter to the Bishops
of the Catholic Church on the Reception of Eucharistic Communion by the
Divorced-Remarried of 1994, an appeal has been made to the principle of epikeia, in order to “bypass” the prohibition
present in these documents, regarding the admission of the divorced and
remarried to the Sacraments, basing it on the fact that particular cases cannot
simply be deduced by universal laws.
According to its contesters,
the positions expressed in such documents – as those likewise clearly taught in
Veritatis Splendor – would represent
a very legalistic vision of the Christian life, which would neither take into
account the complexity of situations nor mercy. Similar observations we have
heard a number of times in the words of Cardinal Kasper, who appealed for a
broader vision, more attentive to people’s concrete life situation, more
merciful. In that context the German
Cardinal indicated the road to follow was the principle of epikeia. These are attractive considerations, as each of us would
like to share, at a deep level, a prospective which doesn’t create man for the law, but the law for man.
At the same time however, we need to leave the dynamic of slogans and actually
see how things stand.
Guest Post: Why I Love the Work of Thomas Aquinas
By Dr. Christopher Malloy
I was recently asked why Thomas is so crucial to theology. I replied by indicating why I love his work so much.
Above all, I love Thomas’s thought because I find so many of his judgments to be considered, grounded, and true. His dexterous precision is coupled with keen attention to things. Thus, his terminology is clear; you can grasp what he is aiming at. Such clarity I used to flee, thinking it meant shallowness. I now think it is limpidity in service of communion, relationship.
However, unlike some logical experts, Thomas attends to things and does so with a profound, searching gaze. Hence, he alights upon essential features and thus achieves lasting insights. A false generalization has exceptions. A profound observation lasts, while admitting of sundry realizations which are not exceptions. Indeed, they can more truly instantiate the insight.
I believe Thomas achieves profound observation. A friend of mine, now a nun, and I both agreed on the following image: Reading Thomas on some problem (free will, e.g.) is like having your gnarly hair combed. Another friend said that after reading Thomas’s observations, one can look at the real with him and say, “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” All those “disputed points,” all those “qualifications”, all that “hair-splitting”: In fact, it is simply a tour of the real. It is Aquinas taking you on a field hike, pointing things out. It is you, watching the real with him, and falling in love with it. It is finding God’s mind in things.
Reprint of old classic on prayer by Msgr Fenton
Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton (1906–1969), a professor of fundamental and dogmatic theology at the Catholic University of America and editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review, was one of the twentieth century’s foremost theologians. His work is particularly notable for its total fidelity to sound Catholic principles: inerrant Sacred Scripture, apostolic and ecclesiastical Tradition, and the consistent Roman Magisterium.
His 1939 text The Theology of Prayer has been re-published in a beautiful newly typeset and designed edition from Cluny Media. (Cluny last year released a collection of Monsignor Fenton’s essays, edited by Christian D. Washburn, which was reviewed here on Rorate Caeli by Christopher Malloy).
The Theology of Prayer distills the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Vallgornera, and Joseph a Spiritu Sancto, among other great scholastic theologians, on the nature of Christian prayer. The writings of those theologians hold such treasures on praying effectively that their loss would be a tragedy for the people of God. In these pages, Monsignor Fenton clearly and concisely presents to the contemporary reader the scholastics’ works and their penetrating insights into Sacred Scripture and Catholic Tradition. With The Theology of Prayer, Fenton revitalizes the work of those theologians, preserving their insights and presenting plainly what God has revealed about prayer and how the Church has preserved and expounded that revelation for the good and the salvation of all who believe.
New Reprint of a Classic Work of Thomistic Theology
A Manual of Catholic Theology, Based on Scheeben's "Dogmatik." By Joseph Wilhelm, D.D., Ph.D., and Thomas B. Scannell, B.D., with a Preface by Henry Edward Cardinal Manning. Volume I: The Sources of Theological Knowledge; God; Creation and the Supernatural Order. liii + 508 pp. $24.95. (CreateSpace; Amazon) Volume II: The Fall; Redemption; Grace; The Church and the Sacraments; The Last Things. x + 566 pp. $24.95. (CreateSpace; Amazon)
As a Thomist, theologian, and teacher, I find this manual invaluable: it is arguably the single most successful presentation of traditional scholastic theology available, if one is looking not for a mere historical overview of one set of opinions after another (the typical approach in scholarship nowadays) but an actual theological exposition, where the focus is on articulating and defending the rei veritas, the truth of things. Scheeben is thoroughly steeped in Aquinas's works as well as in the Scriptures, the Fathers, the Councils, and the wealth of scholasticism across the centuries, and writes his account in a measured, precise, and fervent manner, logical and yet poetic, satisfying to the intellect but always open to the ineffable divine mystery that lies behind and beyond the truths to which God, in His mercy, has granted us access.
Reminder: Summer Theology Program in Norcia, Accepting Applications
As announced here on February 21, the sixth annual Summer Theology Program of the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies, held in Norcia, Italy, is accepting applications from prospective students. With the program running from July 2-14, now is the time to apply!
In addition to our usual heady round of prayer, study, conversation, quiet walks, and ample Italian meals, this year's program is going to be special in two ways.
Deutschland—Church of the Rich or Church of the Poor?
As we know, there are two kinds of poverty: material and spiritual. The African church, in many ways materially poor (certainly as compared with Germany), is spiritually rich, with Catholics striving, often in terribly difficult circumstances, to live what Pope John Paul II called as “the Gospel of life.”
The German church, in contrast, appears to be spiritually impoverished in proportion to its immense material assets, once more establishing a law as old as divine revelation: “One is as it were rich, when he hath nothing: and another is as it were poor, when he hath great riches” (Proverbs 13:7). “Better is a little to the just, than the great riches of the wicked” (Psalm 36:16). “And that which fell among thorns, are they who have heard, and going their way, are choked with the cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and yield no fruit” (Luke 8:14). The earthly riches of the German church will be the millstone that drags it down to Gehenna—all but the remnant that, despising these vain pomps, cleaves to the untarnished Word of God.
In his magnificent little work On the Perfection of the Spiritual Life, St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us about the dangers of material wealth and the urgent need to abandon them for the sake of Christ:
"The Law of the Land is the Law of the Land" -- Except When It Actually Isn't and Couldn't Possibly Be
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| The Hireling |
“The law of the land is the law of the land,” says Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl. “We certainly follow what the law says. That doesn’t mean we change the word of God. That doesn’t mean we change the scriptures, or the church’s millennia-long tradition of what marriage is.” [link]
In one sense, this is hardly surprising; we have seen the same Cardinal take a soft line towards pro-abortion politicians who abuse the Most Blessed Sacrament by receiving It despite their notorious, persistent public dissent from immutable teaching on faith and morals. At the same time, however, it should shock us profoundly, as one more instance of a shepherd abandoning the crystal-clear teaching of the Church. The greatest witness to this teaching is, of course, the Angelic Doctor, who writes:
Damned Lies: On the Destiny of Judas Iscariot
O God, from whom Judas received the punishment of his guilt, and the thief the reward of his confession: grant unto us the full fruit of Thy clemency; that even as in His Passion our Lord Jesus Christ gave to each retribution according to his merits, so having cleared away our former guilt, he may bestow on us the grace of His resurrection: Who with Thee liveth and reigneth…
This conclusion was once taken for granted by everyone. Why, then, do so many people nowadays say that we “do not know” about Judas’s final destiny? To show that I am not exaggerating, take the former Father Thomas Williams of the Legionaires of Christ, in a ZENIT interview:
Historically, many have thought that Judas is probably in hell, because of Jesus’ severe indictment of Judas: “It would be better for that man if he had never been born,” as he says in Matthew 26:24. But even these words do not offer conclusive evidence regarding his fate. In his 1994 book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II wrote that Jesus’ words “do not allude for certain to eternal damnation.”
The Witness of Scripture
The Glory of Eucharistic Theology
Saint Thomas has sometimes been portrayed, especially in the theological anarchy of the postconciliar period, as a hidebound medieval scholastic trapped in a rationalistic methodology, whose works lack a palpable spirituality that resonates in the hearts of modern people. As a lifelong student and teacher of Aquinas’s works, I have two reactions: first, this stance betrays a poor understanding of the enterprise of theology itself; and second, it is simply not true on the ground, if I may judge from countless experiences I have had over the past twenty-five years with students from many countries, whom I have the privilege to see coming alive in the joy of intellectual discovery and in a growing love for the Catholic faith, as they go more and more deeply into the wisdom found in Aquinas’s works.
With St. Thomas, we learn that the essential purpose of investigating a divinely revealed truth that is inaccessible to natural reason is to raise our minds to a more intense appreciation of the very mysteriousness of the mystery. In other words, we are helped to see it in all its “dark luminosity,” a mysterium tremendum et fascinans, opaque to our intellects but full of wonder and fascination. We see the mystery as mystery only when we apply our reason to the fullest extent to see the marvelousness of the miracle; more broadly, to see the supernatural, the super-rational, in its very beyondness.
A Christmastide Gift for our Readers:
- Attacks on Thomism: a special historical and theological essay
Attacks on Thomism
Thomism and neomodernism
I: Progressives, 'manualism', and Thomism
Anyone who has any familiarity with the clerical and intellectual scene in the Catholic Church will have encountered the received 'progressive' wisdom concerning Thomism and its role in the Church before the Second Vatican Council, and concerning the preconciliar state of theology in general. Its claims and slogans are continually reiterated in theological and clerical circles, with little change since the era – the first half of the twentieth century – in which they were first elaborated. Unlike 'progressive' positions on moral questions, this received wisdom has virtually attained the status of a pseudo-orthodoxy within the Church, with some of its components being central to 'conservative' Catholicism. Its acceptance by neoconservatives is indicated by a favourable presentation of it by Fr. Brian van Hove in the Homiletic and Pastoral Review,1 a journal that is one of the oldest pillars of conservative Catholicism. Fr. Van Hove's exposition of this received wisdom takes the form of an attack on Pius XII's encyclical Humani Generis, an embarrassing document for neoconservative Catholics. His exposition is a naïve one, lacking the nuances that would be introduced by a clever apologist for his outlook, but it is valuable for that very reason. It is the naïve version of an idea, the simplified and readily accessible one, that gets widely adopted and that determines events; this fact is known by the clever apologists, who are aware that the nuances they introduce to disarm criticism and conceal their intentions will fall by the wayside once their position has triumphed. Together, these points make up the ideology that justified the destruction of preconciliar Catholic theology, and that is an essential underpinning of the progressive hegemony that now controls the Church. Seeing through this ideology is crucial to overcoming this hegemony; this article and its two sequels are devoted to the task of exposing it.
'Manualism'.
An important component of this ideology is an attack on 'manualism'. This attack claims that preconciliar Catholic theology largely consisted in 'manualist theology'. Allegedly, this theology was conveyed in theological manuals, and suffered from legalism, dogmatism, anti-modernism (presumed to be a fault), abstraction, and ahistoricism.
The very idea of 'manualist theology' is however a fiction. Theological manuals were indeed in wide use before the Second Vatican Council, for the purposes that manuals exist for; the education of theological students.2 The best of them were excellently designed for that purpose, as any educator who looks at them can see. But there was no such thing as a school of theology based on these manuals, let alone a dominant school. Theology before the council was carried on by the same means as other scholarly enterprises; monographs, learned journals, extensive treatises. These works, not the theological manuals, were the venues for preconciliar theology. If we were to identify a characteristic product of theology in the period that preceded the council, it would not be the manuals, but the great works of reference such as the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique or the Dictionnaire de spiritualité. The articles in these works often amounted to book-length treatments in excess of 100,000 words. They include outstanding monuments of scholarship that could never be replaced today; the depth of theological learning that went into their composition no longer exists – so much for the weakness of preconciliar theology. The idea of 'manualist theology' was a fiction aimed at priests whose theological formation did not go much farther than the manuals they had studied in seminary. Such priests were in the majority, especially in the English-speaking world where academic theology was weak. Convince them that what they had learned in the seminary was flawed and obsolete 'manualist theology', and the road to leading them away from the Catholic doctrine they had been taught was open.
Thomism.
Another article of the postconciliar creed has to do with the character of the Thomism that was promoted by popes from Leo XIII to Pius XII. The substantive accusations made against this Thomism are that it unjustifiably limited theology to a particular philosophical system, that theology was forced to conform to it, and that it was not the true thought of St. Thomas. These claims play a subordinate role in the criticism of preconciliar Thomism, whose main thrust lies in accusations that Thomism was 'abstract', 'rationalist', 'ahistorical', 'arid', 'frozen', 'immobile', 'obsessed', 'encouraging pure secularity', 'sclerotically hardened and furred theologically, spiritually and ecclesially', 'causing a rupture between theology and life', a 'wax mask', a 'straightjacket' that 'reduced theological speculation to sterility'. The essence of this villainous form of Thomism is supposed to be given by the 24 Thomistic theses developed by leading scholars and endorsed by the Sacred Congregation of Studies in 1914, as containing the principles and main pronouncements of St. Thomas's philosophy.3
Keeping Secrets at Mass
There are times (usually in the summer) when it happens that no one else is available to serve the traditional Latin Mass and I have the opportunity to don cassock and surplice. It is hard to describe my feelings on these occasions. Normally my perch is either up in the choir loft directing the schola or down in the pews following along in a missal. I do not often have the opportunity to see the Mass “close up” like this, and it always moves me—not to mention the fact that kneeling for so long on marble, keeping my back straight, is a good penance.
One thing that struck me this summer as I served a number of Masses is the immense beauty of the priest saying the “Secret” prayer silently—and since this is an example of a practice that liturgists in the middle of the 20th century assumed ought to be changed (and so it was changed in the Novus Ordo), it seems worthwhile to ponder it more carefully, lest we make the same mistake with some future edition of the traditional Missale Romanum.
At first, it bothered me that, whenever I was serving, I could not know what the priest was praying in the Secret, unless I remembered to look it up before or after Mass. But as time went on, the thick silence of that particular prayer, right before the great offering of the sacrifice (and at a moment when the Novus Ordo has habituated me to expect to hear something), made me realize with a new vividness how the Mass is a prayer directed to God first and foremost, to such an extent that my hearing and following of this prayer is secondary. The priest was not addressing it to me, but to God—and as I experienced this orientation of the prayer, it humbled me, focused me, purified me of some subtle remnant of self-interest that would take offense at not understanding everything. “It is good to hide the secret of a king” (Tobias 12:7).
Now, I know some of you are thinking: “Wait a minute, St. Thomas Aquinas says that we worship God not for His sake, since He gains nothing from our prayers, but for our sake, that we may be perfected by ordering ourselves to Him. And so it is crucial that we understand what we are saying; otherwise, why not have the entire Mass be a completely silent act of adoration culminating in communion? Surely, things are said aloud in order to be grasped by us, since God has no need of our words.” Not surprisingly, I agree with this point; I would never say that we should have no idea of what is going on or what is being prayed in the liturgy. This is why much of the Mass, whether Solemn, High, or Low, is sung or spoken aloud, and this is why, in an age of near-universal literacy, daily missals are an excellent aid. My own spiritual life has been immensely nourished by years of following along in my missal, which, together with the singing, the postures and gestures, and simply watching and listening, has been an incomparable apprenticeship to the sacred liturgy, the Church’s school of prayer par excellence.
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