This is a an article by the late Msgr Joseph Clifford Fenton now in the public domain (apparently) that is worth an extended meditation by some worthy old school Traddie Thomist:
Whosoever's Ghost you be, that of Fr. John Southworth's or some other saint, thank you for the article by CUA's Msgr. Fenton on Newman's complicated dissent-cum-assent to the doctrine of papal infallibility as it worked its way through the First Vatican Council into defined Church dogma. It is an illuminating (if sometime depressing) read.
I have just ordered his Theology of Prayer, in reprint edition from Amazon:
INTRODUCTION
This book constitutes an attempt to bring to the readers of the English language what the great scholastic theologians have taught about the nature of Christian prayer. The rather formidable Latin tomes of Thomas a Vallgornera, Joseph a Spiritu Sancto, Francis Sylvius, and Antoine Le Gaudier, to mention only four of them, contain treasures of doctrine on prayer so precious that t would be unfortunate if the people of God were to be deprived of them. These great scholastic theologians of prayer availed themselves of all the official pronouncements of the Church, and all the invaluable and vast resources of the teachers who had preceded them in the Church of God, and then expressed that living Catholic teaching with scientific accuracy and clarity. They were not concerned with any idle curiosity, with any mere drawing up of opinions or theories. The task which they set out to accomplish, and which they succeeded in accomplishing, was the statement of what God has revealed about prayer and what the Catholic Church proposes as having been revealed by God.
That teaching is obviously too good and too valuable not to transmit to the people of God. It was meant for them, and they cannot help but be benefited by it. The teaching of these great scholastics can help to increase the fervor and the intensity of the prayer of those who profit by it. These men show that prayer is a petition, the expression of a desire, ordered by God for the attainment of certain definite and necessary goods; an act which by its very nature gives God the reverence and worship which are due to Him because of His supreme excellence. They explain that this petition is meant to be composed of four parts. The person who prays is supposed to realize the cause which makes the granting of our petitions by God Possible. He is meant to arrive at an appreciation of God, as the One to whom prayer is offered, and as the One whom we wish to possess forever in the ineffable glory of the beatific vision. He is meant to express his gratitude to God for the various favors he has received from the divine bounty. These acts, taken with the actual statement of the desire which we wish to have fulfilled by God, constitute the complete prayer, the petition of fitting things from God.
3 comments:
This is a an article by the late Msgr Joseph Clifford Fenton now in the public domain (apparently) that is worth an extended meditation by some worthy old school Traddie Thomist:
http://strobertbellarmine.net/aer/newman_and_infallibility.pdf
Dear Ghost of Tyburn,
Whosoever's Ghost you be, that of Fr. John Southworth's or some other saint, thank you for the article by CUA's Msgr. Fenton on Newman's complicated dissent-cum-assent to the doctrine of papal infallibility as it worked its way through the First Vatican Council into defined Church dogma. It is an illuminating (if sometime depressing) read.
I have just ordered his Theology of Prayer, in reprint edition from Amazon:
INTRODUCTION
This book constitutes an attempt to bring to the readers of the English language what the great scholastic theologians have taught about the nature of Christian prayer. The rather formidable Latin tomes of Thomas a Vallgornera, Joseph a Spiritu Sancto, Francis Sylvius, and Antoine Le Gaudier, to mention only four of them, contain treasures of doctrine on prayer so precious that t would be unfortunate if the people of God were to be deprived of them. These great scholastic theologians of prayer availed themselves of all the official pronouncements of the Church, and all the invaluable and vast resources of the teachers who had preceded them in the Church of God, and then expressed that living Catholic teaching with scientific accuracy and clarity. They were not concerned with any idle curiosity, with any mere drawing up of opinions or theories. The task which they set out to accomplish, and which they succeeded in accomplishing, was the statement of what God has revealed about prayer and what the Catholic Church proposes as having been revealed by God.
That teaching is obviously too good and too valuable not to transmit to the people of God. It was meant for them, and they cannot help but be benefited by it. The teaching of these great scholastics can help to increase the fervor and the intensity of the prayer of those who profit by it. These men show that prayer is a petition, the expression of a desire, ordered by God for the attainment of certain definite and necessary goods; an act which by its very nature gives God the reverence and worship which are due to Him because of His supreme excellence. They explain that this petition is meant to be composed of four parts. The person who prays is supposed to realize the cause which makes the granting of our petitions by God Possible. He is meant to arrive at an appreciation of God, as the One to whom prayer is offered, and as the One whom we wish to possess forever in the ineffable glory of the beatific vision. He is meant to express his gratitude to God for the various favors he has received from the divine bounty. These acts, taken with the actual statement of the desire which we wish to have fulfilled by God, constitute the complete prayer, the petition of fitting things from God.
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