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On the eve of the 750th anniversary of St. Thomas Aquinas’ death, a skull revered as a relic of St. Thomas Aquinas was carried in a solemn procession through the cobblestone streets of the southern Italian town of Priverno.Bishop Mariano Crociata led the procession to honor the medieval philosopher and theologian widely considered one of the greatest thinkers in Western civilization, who died in the nearby Fossanova Abbey on March 7, 1274.The procession of the purported skull of St. Thomas Aquinas in Priverno, Italy, March 7. | Daniel Ibanez/CNAThe relic has been venerated in the town’s 12th-century cathedral since it...

Eternal Law does not change. But sometimes how we have to interpret it does change. How do we bring the atrocities of the PC Left under control? Faith helps us survive. God Is Good. We do the best we can. Most of us.

What attitude should a Catholic take toward cruel and arbitrary prelates – for example, those who endlessly stir up division and then shamelessly blame the division on those who note and bemoan the fact? In Quodlibet VIII, Aquinas makes some relevant remarks when addressing the question whether “evil prelates” should be honored. You can find the passage in the Nevitt and Davies translation of Thomas Aquinas’s Quodlibetal Questions, from which I quote: [snip] There are two key points here. The first is that when a man is a bad prelate, we should not pretend otherwise merely because of his office....

Perhaps American Christians cannot think clearly about homeland security, borders, and immigration for the same reason Americans cannot think clearly about anything else. As Christians we have rich, intellectually credible traditions and frameworks for ethical reflection at our fingertips, and yet, as Americans, we suffer from a historical amnesia. What we need is a historically-attuned theological framework that can lay the foundation for our debates and political deliberations. Without one, we risk acting in ways that contradict the Gospel that we profess. To jump, as we tend to, from Plato and Aristotle to Locke and Hobbes is to ignore crucial...

Thomas Aquinas and the Healing Grace of Study March 7 is the dies natalis, the heavenly birthday — and therefore the traditional liturgical commemoration — of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, a Dominican friar who combined childlike innocence, guileless humility, and fervent prayer with one of the most towering intellects the human race has ever seen. He has been put forward by the Church not only as a guide to the truth but as a model of discipleship.The Lord has granted me the privilege of studying the works of St. Thomas for almost thirty years, and of teaching them...

Four Reasons That the Incarnation was Fitting, According to St. Thomas Aquinas Msgr. Charles Pope • December 9, 2018 • Incarnation of Jesus, Piero di Cosimo (1505)As we approach the Christmas feasts, it is good for us to ponder aspects of the Incarnation. In this post, I would like to consider what St. Thomas Aquinas teaches about its fittingness. God was not radically “required” to do everything as He did. We do well to ponder why the manner of the Lord’s incarnation is “fitting,” why it makes sense.St. Thomas, referencing St. John Damascene, gives four reasons for the fittingness...

White Double THE SAINT we are to honor today is one of the sublimest and most lucid interpreters of Divine Truth. He rose up in the Church many centuries after the Apostolic Age, nay, long after the four great Latin Doctors, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory. The Church, the ever young and joyful Mother, is justly proud of her Thomas, and has honored him with the splendid title of The Angelical Doctor on account of the extraordinary gift of understanding wherewith God had blessed him; just as his cotemporary and friend, St. Bonaventure, has been called the Seraphic Doctor...

What would Thomas Aquinas, in his wisdom, say about President Trump’s executive order temporarily banning travel from seven Muslim countries, in terms of its justness and conformity to right reason?… I am grateful to The Imaginative Conservative for publishing Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s reasoned defence of President Trump’s executive order placing a ninety day moratorium on immigration from countries deemed to pose a terrorist threat to the United States. I am grateful also for a recent essay by John Horvat II in which Mr. Horvat discusses what Thomas Aquinas says on the thorny topic of immigration.[1] Both of these essays have served as...

Why Did the Second Person of the Trinity Become Incarnate Rather Than the Father or the Holy Spirit? Msgr. Charles Pope • December 19, 2016 • As we continue to await the fast-approaching Feast of Holy Christmas, it is good to ponder some aspects of the Incarnation. Among the questions for us to consider is why it was the Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, that became incarnate, rather than the Father or the Holy Spirit.Most people have never even thought of this question let alone sought to answer it. God could have chosen many different ways...

Aquinas Is Not A Safe Guide For Protestants Reading Aquinas with care and caution. Written by Dewey Roberts | Sunday, October 16, 2016 In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas clearly stated his view that the sacraments perform their work through a virtue in themselves. He also stated unequivocally that the sacraments confer the new birth, justification, the grace of the Holy Spirit, sanctification, inward enlightenment, the washing away of guilt, and forgiveness of sins on every person who partakes of them. From time to time, I come across articles by Reformed authors wherein they encourage the reading of the Summa Theologica...

The Inclination to the Truth Msgr. Charles Pope • March 14, 2016 • In a recent post (Is There a Way Back to Undeniable Reality and Universally Binding Norms?) I discussed how we today tend to “live in our heads” a lot more so than did the people living in biblical times and even those who lived up to and including the High Middle Ages and the Scholastic Period. Prior to that time, the “real world” was taken to be largely self-evident. But in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, a school of thought later called “nominalism” began...

He Warned Us About Islam Over 750 Years Ago… It’s Time To Listen. St. Thomas Aquinas is considered one of the most revered philosophers and theologians of any era. A 13th-century Dominican friar, his works include the “Summa Theologica” and several groundbreaking commentaries on the works of Aristotle. Over 750 years ago, he also had some prescient words about the spread of Islam, shared via Breitbart. In his work “Summa Contra Gentiles” — in which he argued for the truth of Christianity against other religions — he blasted Islam as a carnal, brutal religion which seemed to place earthly pleasures...

The 13th-century scholar Thomas Aquinas, regarded as one of the most eminent medieval philosophers and theologians, offered a biting critique of Islam based in large part on the questionable character and methods of its founder, Mohammed. According to Aquinas, Islam appealed to ignorant, brutish, carnal men and spread not by the power of its arguments or divine grace but by the power of the sword. Aquinas, a keen observer of the human condition, was familiar with the chief works of the Muslim philosophers of his day–including Avicenna, Algazel, and Averroes–and engaged them in his writings. Since Islam was founded and spread in...

Religion and Its Duties Are Not Only an Act of Justice Toward God, but Something We Owe One Another Msgr. Charles Pope • December 13, 2015 • In his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas discusses the virtue of religion within his treatise on justice. This surprises some, who expect it to be treated under the theological virtue of faith. But Thomas clearly states that religion is not a theological virtue. Theological virtues have God Himself for their object, whereas religion has as its object the reverence, worship, and honor due to God (cf IIa, IIae 81.5). Religion is a matter...

This article is politically incorrect and says things that might shock you. Please read the entire article until the very last two paragraphs before making a judgment or writing incendiary comments. This might be one of the clearest things you’ve read on the topic, because it draws on virtue ethics of Thomas Aquinas – something generally ignored in our day and age. – Godspeed, Taylor Marshall

Saint Thomas Aquinas, The Angelic Doctor The grammar of existence is bound up in the Law and it is and always has been for us to read reality rightly, to hear rightly, to speak rightly, and with human reason to discover the law by which we are to live if we are to live out our intended purpose. There is no conversation more necessary in the present age than the dialogue on the meaning of law. It is in manÂ’s nature to bind himself to principles in the form of rules that guide human action. These rules are the laws...

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...

Everyone knows that good Christian girls love Jane Austen.But perhaps not everyone knows that good Catholic Christian girls also love St. Thomas Aquinas.That is why I had to have mama fetch my smelling salts when the Masked Thomist linked me to a whole series of posts on Austen, Aquinas and Aristotle at the Dominicana blog. In a series of 5 posts, Br. Aquinas Beale argues that, There is something more than romance and drama in the novels of Jane Austen, namely a systematic approach to leading the good and happy life. It’s true you know.Austen’s novels are a perfect education in...

God Exists – I Can Prove It! Pt. 2 In my last blog post, we pretty much nailed the idea that the universe has a beginning. And if it has a beginning, it must have a Beginner who is omnipotent.In a recent discussion with an atheist, however, I got an interesting retort at this point:Just because there was a “beginning” of this universe of ours, does not mean there could not have been other universes before ours. Moreover, how do you know there are not parallel universes to ours and that ours came from one or more of them? Or,...

God Exists – I Can Prove It! Pt. 1 As a Catholic apologist, I hear way too many sad stories from parents telling of children gone astray. Little Johnny (or little Janey) went off to college and got ”enlightened” as to the truth about God and science. The refrain is repeated: “Science has disproved the existence of God, mom and dad. All that we know or can know exists is what we see in the material universe and that can be scientifically proven. Any notion of ‘spirit’ or a ‘supreme being’ is based purely on emotion and wishful thinking.”The parents are always devastated and often...