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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...

[Catholic Caucus] The 750th birthday of St Thomas Aquinas into eternal life Today, 750 years ago, Friar Thomas d'Aquino of the Order of Preachers breathed his last, at a Cistercian monastery in Fossanova, en route to an ecumenical council (Lyon II) that his friend and colleague, the Franciscan Bonaventure, would reach but where he, too, would die.Before dying, Thomas received the Viaticum with tremendous devotion and submitted all his writings, especially on the Blessed Sacrament, to the judgment of the Church. The Church's judgment has been clear: for over 700 years, the magisterium has held up St Thomas Aquinas's writings...

American colonial leaders in the 18th century and Martin Luther King, Jr. both fused religious beliefs with philosophical principles to motivate action. Throughout the Stamp Act crisis of the 1760s — the “Prologue to Revolution,” according to the title of historian Edmund S. Morgan’s published collection of documents — the British North American colonists sent petition after petition to both houses of the British Parliament. These petitions frequently asserted the rights that the colonists possessed as British subjects.According to the Resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, the colonists were “entitled to all the inherent rights and liberties” due...

[Catholic Caucus] Holy Saturday: The Harrowing of Hell (Let the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, speak to us, console us, and edify us as The Blessed Mother surely did in the Cenacle as she awaited the fulfillment of her Son’s promise, never doubting for an instant, despite the horror of the previous day, that He would do as He said He would.)From the descent of Christ to hell we may learn, for our instruction, four things:1. Firm hope in God. No matter what the trouble in which a man finds himself, he should always put trust in God’s help and...

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...

People Who Think Their Beliefs Are Better Than Others’ Probably Know the Least There are some things that you can be absolutely sure of. The Earth is round, it goes around the sun, everybody is going to die someday, and tax day is going to come around every single year. But if you feel that you've got the one correct answer to a question that's a little more controversial, then you might want to double-check that. It turns out, the more certain you are about something, the less informed you're likely to be about it.Knowledge Versus Belief According to a...

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...

Every nation has the right to distinguish, by country of origin, who can migrate to it and apply appropriate immigration policies, according to the great medieval scholar and saint Thomas Aquinas. In a surprisingly contemporary passage of his Summa Theologica, Aquinas noted that the Jewish people of Old Testament times did not admit visitors from all nations equally, since those peoples closer to them were more quickly integrated into the population than those who were not as close. Some antagonistic peoples were not admitted at all into Israel due to their hostility toward the Jewish people. The Law “prescribed in...

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...

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...

Analysis Nov. 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) - A Dominican friar, Fr. Adriano Oliva, has celebrated the 800th anniversary of his religious order with a book about “the Church, the divorced and remarried, and homosexual couples.” Amours (“Loves”) is a study of St Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love and aims to show that the “Angelic Doctor” recognized the “natural” character of homosexuality. In the wake of the Synod on the family, Oliva pleads for new ways of welcoming divorced and remarried and homosexual couples into the Church and of recognizing their unions in civil law. His editor, the “editions du Cerf” publishing...

The Catechism of St. Thomas Aquinas THE FIFTH ARTICLE: "He Descended into Hell." The death of Christ was the separation of His soul from His body as it is with other men. But the Divinity was so indissolubly conjoined to the Man Christ that although His soul and body were disunited, His Divinity was always most perfectly united to both the soul and body. This we have seen above. Therefore in the Sepulchre His body was together with the Son of God who together with His soul descended into hell.[1] REASONS FOR CHRIST'S DESCENT There are four reasons why...

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...

At the risk of being presumed rather caustic–especially considering the heinous acts perpetrated against the Copts this past weekend–I offer this tidbit from St. Thomas Aquinas on Islam. On the other hand, those who founded sects committed to erroneous doctrines proceeded in a way that is opposite to this. The point is clear in the case of Mohammed. He seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh goads us. His teachings also contain precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as...

For millennia the Catholic Church has consistently opposed unnatural vice. Here is a brief sampling of useful quotes from Saints, Doctors of the Church, Church Fathers and Ecclesiastical Writers who condemn homosexual vice in their writings. 1. Athenagoras of Athens (2nd Century) Athenagoras of Athens was a philosopher who converted to Christianity in the second century. He shows that the pagans, who were totally immoral, did not even refrain from sins against nature: "But though such is our character (Oh. why should I speak of things unfit to be uttered?), the things said of us are an example of the...

Featured Term (selected at random):SUMMA THEOLOGICA The principal doctrinal synthesis in Catholic theology, written by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). The method used was the application of Aristotelian philosophy in the systematic and rational explanation of dogma and morals, without any substantial modification of the traditional teaching of the Church. Its central theme is God considered under aspects: 1. he is studied as Being, not only in himself but also outside himself, as the source of all things; 2. he is then seen as the Good, that is, as the end of created beings and especially of angels and men; 3....

The term “social justice”… is the key term and concept of Catholic social teaching … with all the other aspects of the Church’s social doctrine—the principle of subsidiarity, the just wage or the right to private property—are related to, and rely, on the existence of social justice. The term “social justice,” though common enough today, is little understood by most of those who use it—whether they consider themselves friends and practitioners of social justice, or they regard it as a suspect term of probably socialist origin. But the term does have a precise meaning. That meaning and the significance of...

The Death of Bin Laden: Legitimate and Illegitimate Rejoicing Written by Luiz Sérgio Solimeo    May 11, 2011 Share Tweet The extraordinary feat of the Navy Seals taking the compound where Bin Laden was hiding by surprise, and killing him, gave rise to manifestations of joy among numerous people who saw themselves free from an implacable enemy of the nation and because justice had been served on the mastermind of the 9/11 attack which killed 2,977 people, mostly Americans.1 It Is Not Licit to Rejoice at the Harm Suffered by Fellow Human Beings… Following this spontaneous explosion of jubilee...