"Why Saint Thomas Aquinas Opposed Open Borders"

Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D., discussing this passage from the Summa Theologiae, writes (Catholic Family News, January 31, 2017):

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 respect of certain nations that had close relations with the Jews,” the scholar noted, such as the Egyptians and the Idumeans, “that they should be admitted to the fellowship of the people after the third generation.”

Citizens of other nations “with whom their relations had been hostile,” such as the Ammonites and Moabites, “were never to be admitted to citizenship.”

“The Amalekites, who were yet more hostile to them, and had no fellowship of kindred with them, were to be held as foes in perpetuity,” Aquinas observed.

For the scholar, it seemed sensible to treat nations differently, depending on the affinity of their cultures with that of Israel as well as their historic relations with the Jewish people.

In his remarkably nuanced commentary, Aquinas also distinguished among three types of immigrants in the Israel of the Old Testament.

First were “the foreigners who passed through their land as travelers,” much like modern day visitors with a travel visa.

Second were those who “came to dwell in their land as newcomers,” seemingly corresponding to resident aliens, perhaps with a green card, living in the land but not with the full benefits of citizenship.

A third case involved those foreigners who wished “to be admitted entirely to their fellowship and mode of worship.” Even here, dealing with those who wished to integrate fully into the life and worship of Israel required a certain order, Aquinas observed. “For they were not at once admitted to citizenship: just as it was law with some nations that no one was deemed a citizen except after two or three generations.”

“The reason for this was that if foreigners were allowed to meddle with the affairs of a nation as soon as they settled down in its midst,” Aquinas logically reasoned, “many dangers might occur, since the foreigners not yet having the common good firmly at heart might attempt something hurtful to the people.”

In other words, Aquinas taught that total integration of immigrants into the life, language, customs and culture (including worship, in this case) was necessary for full citizenship.

It requires time for someone to learn which issues affect the nation and to make them their own, Aquinas argued. Those who know the history of their nation and have lived in it, working for the common good, are best suited to participate in decision-making about its future.

It would be dangerous and unjust to place the future of a nation in the hands of recent arrivals who do not fully understand the needs and concerns of their adoptive home.

When facing contemporary problems, modern policy makers can often benefit from the wisdom of the great saints and scholars who have dealt with versions of the same issues in ages past.

Aquinas’ reflections reveal that similar problems have existed for centuries—indeed, millennia—and that distinguishing prudently between nations and cultures doesn’t automatically imply prejudice or unfair discrimination.

Quotable quotes ...

"A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her." -- W.C. Fields

"Anti-Catholicism is as American as Thanksgiving, apple pie à la mode, and chocolate malts with two butter cookies. It has been part of American culture from the very beginning and ... it persists even today." -- Andrew Greeley

"Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution; justice without mercy is cruelty." -- St. Thomas Aquinas

"Serving God does not give us the same kind of here-and-now pleasure that sin gives. To eyes as little trained to reality as ours, there is a color and energy in sin, by comparison with which virtues look pallid and half-alive." -- Frank Sheed

“Peter has no need of our lies or flattery. Those who blindly and indiscriminately defend every decision of the Supreme Pontiff are the very ones who do most to undermine the authority of the Holy See—they destroy instead of strengthening its foundations” -- Fr. Melchior Cano O.P., Bishop and Theologian of the Council of Trent.

[Hat tip to NOR, ST, JM, SS]

"The Glory of Eucharistic Theology: A Post in Honor of St. Thomas Aquinas on his Feastday"

Peter Kwasniewski, "The Glory of Eucharistic Theology" (Rorate Caeli, March 7, 2015):

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.

Torture: some clarity in an overheated debate

Boniface has a wonderfully thorough and clear-headed analysis of this hot-button issue in his article, "Torture: Historical and Ethical Perspectives" (Unam Sanctam Catholicam, December 2014).

As always comprehensive, Boniface makes numerous indispensable distinctions to understanding what is at issue in this debate. I'll leave you with his table of contents to entice you to read his essay:

I. Definition of Torture
II. A Necessary Distinction
III. Extraction Torture: The Patristic Era
IV. Extraction Torture: Early Medieval
V. The Rediscovery of Roman Law
VI. St. Thomas Aquinas
VII. Extraction Torture: To the Modern Period
VIII. Punitive Torture
IX. The Post-Conciliar Problem
X: Extrajudicial Torture
XI. Conclusion

"Thee" and "vouchsafe"

Again, my pet peeve: how so many hymns and prayers have been revised to omit those "offensive" words like "Thee," "Thou" and "Thy" to substitute the egalitarian, familiar and nondescript "You" and "Your." [I know this is an absolute non-issue for many of my readers, and they needn't read on.]

Sometimes it's almost comical. Like many of you, doubtless, I make use of those lovely prayers by St. Thomas Aquinas before and after Holy Communion. I have a little card in my Missal with these prayers, which doubles as a bookmark.

The comical part is that all the offending "Thees" and "Thous" have been removed, substituting "You" and "Your," even though ALL OF US continue to use the older form of address in the Our Father and Hail Mary ...

... AND here's the kicker: they still retain the word "VOUCHSAFE"! [There are other even worse translations.]

Therefore, I implore the abundance of YOUR measureless bounty that YOU would VOUCHSAFE to heal my infirmity ..."

... and again

I give You thanks, holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God, that YOU have VOUCHSAFED to feed me, a sinner, YOUR unworthy servant, for no merits of my own ..."

Is this not hysterical?? They keep a word like "vouchsafe," which probably only one in a dozen people understands today, but dump "Thou," "Thee," "Thy" and "Thine"!

Don't get me wrong, "vouchsafe" is a perfectly noble word meaning to "graciously grant" something. My own sense of the language of the prayers in English translation is that it would be much better served by retaining the older forms in toto, rather than trying to modernize them and throwing a philistine indignity like "YOU" in amidst the dignified references to "almighty" and "everlasting" and "imploring" God's "measureless bounty."

Keep "YOU" for the ordinary language of today. Keep the language of prayer noble, elevated, respectful, and dignified. "Hallowed by THY name. THY kingdom come. THY will be done ... Blessed art THOU among women, and blessed is the fruit of THY womb, Jesus."

Related: David Mills, "Lewis & Orwell on Language" (Patheos, July 9, 2014).

Just for fun: How to ruin a good round of love-making?

Certainly that's what this typically-detached analysis by St. Thomas Aquinas will probably suggest to nearly everyone. It will doubtless provide some food for thought, however, for those who read between the lines of his all-too-spare prose. Here it is, from his Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, ch. 7, p. 329:

-- Hence it should be noted that the conjugal act is sometimes meritorious and without any mortal or venial sin, as when it is directed to the good of procreation and education of a child for the worship of God; for then it is an act of religion; or when it is performed for the sake of rendering the debt, it is an act of justice. But every virtuous act is meritorious, if it is performed with charity. But sometimes it is accompanied with venial sin, namely, when one is excited to the matrimonial act by concupiscence, which nevertheless stays within the limits of the marriage, namely, that he is content with his wife only. But sometimes it is performed with mortal sin, as when concupiscence is carried beyond the limits of the marriage; for example, when the husband approaches the wife with the idea that he would just as gladly or more gladly approach another woman. In the first way, therefore, the act of marriage requires no concession; in the second way it obtains a concession, inasmuch as someone consenting to concupiscence toward the wife is not guilty of mortal sin; in the third way there is absolutely no concession.

For further discussion, see "Friday Linkage: Virtuous Sex Edition" (Darwin Catholic, May 25, 2012). To be clear, I'm not necessarily endorsing what we find on the Darwin Catholic blog, but I do think it helps to provoke the right sort of discussion or reflection that may be needed.

Many contemporary Catholics don't realize it, but St. John Paul II has a passage in an essay somewhere, where he's discussing treating spouses as ends rather than means in the context of sexual intercourse, and he suggests, in effect, that it would be sinful for a husband to approach his wife with a predatory attitude.

There you go. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. What do you think? Are Christians killjoys? Are they not? What are the possibilities of reciprocal pleasure in acts of mutual self-donation? Or has the contemporary Catholic focus on the goodness of sex overlooked something?

[Hat tip to Sir A.S.]

One-stop resource for the "pure nature" debate

"Henri De Lubac, Thomas Aquinas, and the Debate over 'Pure Nature'" -- imagine, a whole blog devoted to this ongoing debate! You can keep track of the ongoing discussions here, blog-posts, collected articles, citations, books, etc. They have everything but popcorn and ringside seats. They may have that soon, if the technology keeps pace!

R. C. Sproul salutes St. Thomas Aquinas!

The reason this is noteworthy is because R.C. Sproul is one of those intrepid Calvinist intellectuals who remains undaunted by contemporary ecumenical overtures: unlike J.I. Packer, he refused to sign on to the 1994 ecumenical document, Evangelicals and Catholics Together. He remains unapologetically and vociferously anti-Catholic. Yet credit where credit is due: in a recent lengthy article, he conceded that St. Thomas Aquinas is probably the most brilliant of all the theologians in Church history. "So who was the most brilliant ever? I don’t know. I know the question cannot be raised without the name of Thomas Aquinas being brought to the fore. And I know that he deserves my salute." But there's much more worth reading in the details of his piece. Read more >>

Someone should do a study of recent Evangelical and Reformed scholarship on St. Thomas Aquinas. As popularity of the Angelic Doctor has sadly waned among Catholics since the 1960s, conservative Protestants appear to be discovering him in droves. Some of these discoveries have yielded conversions. Regardless, it is a phenomenon that warrants some attention.

[Hat tip to JM]

Affirming Aquinas & Catholic Tradition only to dismiss them?

Jason Steidl, in a paper on Chesterton's interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas, writes:

Ironically, just as Chesterton's biography of Thomas Aquinas was published in 1933, many theologians within the Roman Catholic Church were beginning to criticize the role of the Thomistic tradition in Christianity. The way of understanding Christian faith and the world, so strongly advocated by Chesterton, had become stale with centuries of use and abuse, its thinking, as Chesterton characterized the Neo-Platonism that preceded it, an outmoded model that no longer addressed modern concerns. Hence, scholars such as Marie Dominique Chenu challenged the church authorities in much the same way that Aquinas had challenged the hierarchy centuries before. These scholars of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s proposed new paradigms for Thomistic thought and the role of theology in the church, while Chesterton remained silent in thecontroversy, content to dwell in, and even defend, the forms of faith as he received them.

Our Atlantic correspondent, who sent us this linked article, suggested that it's worth checking out how someone like Aquinas or Chesterton is handled by modern Catholics, such as this writer, and remarks:

[These writers, like Aquinas or Chesterton] are affirmed even as they are essentially dismissed! Sometimes I feel like this is just how the Nouvelles handled Tradition: "We are all for it! There, now lets dismantle it!"

[Hat tip to G.N.]

Bernard McGinn's "Biography" of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas

A new book on St. Thomas's Summa. It will be interesting to see where this comes out when the dust settles. His self-identification as something other than "a card carrying member of any Thomist party," as well as his disenchantment with the pre-Vatican II "dry-as-dust version of neo-Thomist philosophy" and affection for the Nouevelles suggests some caution. We shall see.

Christopher Blosser plans a more substantial review of the book in the near future, but for now offers this post as a courtesy to the publisher who sent him a complimentary copy for review: "Thomas Aquinas' 'Summa theolgiae': A Biography -- Bernard McGinn" (Against the Grain, May 14, 2014): In full disclosure, I promised that I would give it mention on my blog while the review was forthcoming. McGinn is distinguished for his extensive scholarship of Christian mysticism and does not identify himself as "a card carrying member of any Thomist party." Nevertheless:

"... I'd been reading Thomas for almost sixty years and teaching him for over forty. When I was studying a dry-as-dust version of neo-Thomist philosophy from 1957 to 1959, I was rescued from despair by reading the works of Etienne Gilson, especially his Being and some Philosophers. . . . between 1959 and 1963, I was privileged to work with two great modern investigators of Thomas, Joseph de Finance and Bernard Lonergan. It was then I realized that no matter what kind of theology one elects to pursue in life, there is no getting away from Thomas. So the opportunity to come back to Thomas and the Summa was both a challenge and a delight." [From the Preface]

Suffice to say I am intrigued, and will have more to report once I get into it.

From the Publisher

This concise book tells the story of the most important theological work of the Middle Ages, the vast Summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which holds a unique place in Western religion and philosophy. Written between 1266 and 1273, the Summa was conceived by Aquinas as an instructional guide for teachers and novices and a compendium of all the approved teachings of the Catholic Church. It synthesizes an astonishing range of scholarship, covering hundreds of topics and containing more than a million and a half words--and was still unfinished at the time of Aquinas's death.

Here, Bernard McGinn, one of today's most acclaimed scholars of medieval Christianity, vividly describes the world that shaped Aquinas, then turns to the Dominican friar's life and career, examining Aquinas's reasons for writing his masterpiece, its subject matter, and the novel way he organized it. McGinn gives readers a brief tour of the Summa itself, and then discusses its reception over the past seven hundred years. He looks at the influence of the Summa on such giants of medieval Christendom as Meister Eckhart, its ridicule during the Enlightenment, the rise and fall of Neothomism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the role of the Summa in the post-Vatican II church, and the book's enduring relevance today.

Tracing the remarkable life of this iconic work, McGinn's wide-ranging account provides insight into Aquinas's own understanding of the Summa as a communication of the theological wisdom that has been given to humanity in revelation.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Cessario on Cajetan and the Communio School

"Cessario on Cajetan and the Communio School" (Against the Grain, April 1, 2014), quoting from Romanus Cessario, OP., Nova et Vetera Vol. 2, No. 2 (2004):

The Communio school of theology, taken globally, and not as it plays out under the influence of the American edition, is more difficult to define than Thomism. Thomists are those who read Aquinas, and so may be distinguished from those who read and adhere to other major Christian thinkers such as Scotus or St. Bonaventure or Ockham. Partisans of the Communio school, on the other hand, study many authors; their return to the sources embraces a wide range of both ancient and recent theologians and philosophers, and even includes consulting social scientists.

[Tracey] Rowland identifies many of these figures in her chapters. Suffice it to remark that a common feature of Communio school theology is that its adherents subscribe without hesitation to a viewpoint that lately has been set forth by Nicholas M. Healy in his Thomas Aquinas: Theologian of the Christian Life: “In his commentary on the Summa theologiae, Cajetan so separates nature from grace that humanity now has two ends, natural and supernatural. . . .” Healy of course repeats an assertion that was set forth with remarkable success in the twentieth century by Jesuit Father Henri de Lubac, later Cardinal of the Roman Church.

It has always struck me as odd that so many good-willed theologians accept the view that a twentieth-century French Jesuit whose intellectual interests were wide-ranging occupied a better position to understand what St.Thomas Aquinas taught about the finalities of the human person than did a sixteenth-century Italian humanist, who had represented Catholic doctrine in person to no less imposing a figure than Martin Luther and whose commentary on the entire Summa theologiae appears by order of Pope Leo XIII in the critical edition of Aquinas’s opera omnia that bears that Pope’s name, the still incomplete Leonine edition. But they do. Many sincere people, including Tracey Rowland, accept the proposition that de Lubac laid bare a huge historical mistake about how to construe the relationship between nature and grace, and they seemingly consider his critique of Cardinal Cajetan and the Thomists who follow him a non-gainsayable principle of all future Catholic theology. What Cajetan obscured, de Lubac grasped with clarté. Nicholas Healy illustrates this conviction:“[T]he influence of the two-tier conception of reality became widespread and was understood by many theologians as a reasonable development of Thomas’s thought.” One could infer from remarks such as these that Tommaso De Vio, Cardinal Cajetan (1469–1534) should be known as the great betrayer of Aquinas instead of his papal approved interpreter. Prima facie, the proposition seems primitive.

Those who want to understand more about this golden apple of twentieth-century theological discord should consult the work of Professor Steven A. Long....

Read more >>

[Hat tip to C.B.]

Milbank's de Lubacian reading of Aquinas as interpretive dance

Christopher Blosser, in "Mulcahy on Milbank" (Against the Grain, April 1, 2014), writes: "I particularly appreciate Mulcahy's Aquinas's Notion of Pure Nature and the Christian Integralism of Henry de Lubac for its demonstration of how De Lubac's criticism of pure nature has, carried to its logical conclusions, culminated in the "integralist revolution" of John Milbank, leading proponent of Radical Orthodoxy."

After an extensive treatment of Radical Orthodoxy, its relation to de Lubac, and the aestheticism of Milbank ("Once the attractiveness of the divine beauty is experienced, no other arguments or evidence need be considered"), Christopher turns to Radical Orthodoxy's use of de Lubac's account of Thomism, writing: "The impression is clearly given that for Mulcahy -- and I would imagine for most anybody who adheres to prevailing norms of academic scholarship, rational discourse and validation -- the very act of reading Milbank is itself a recipe for exasperation." Consider, he says, the following:

The word "interpretation" must be emphasised and explained when it comes to Milbank’s treatment of Aquinas. As one who rejects "accepted secular standards of scientific truth or normative rationality" and denies that truth is a correspondence between the intellect and extra-mental reality, Milbank insists that "the point [of theology] is not to represent ... externality, but just to join in its occurrence; not to know, but to intervene, originate." Accordingly, his recourse to Aquinas is not a work of exegesis, but a project of creative expression: “exegesis is easy; it is interpretation that is difficult, and Aquinas, more than most thinkers, requires interpretation." This explains why Milbank holds that, even if the actual text of St Thomas "appear[s] incontrovertibly to refute my reading," that reading itself should not be subjected to conventional scholarly critique. ...

This ostensibly post-modern approach to sources has predictably occasioned intense criticism. Informed scholars have described Radical Orthodoxy’s interpretations as "gnostic idealism," "blithely imprecise, ideologically driven historical revisionism," "free-floating, self-perpetuating insularity", "opaque [sentences] drifting [in] conceptual murkiness", "sophistical legerdemain," "blatant misreading ... that ignores the ordinary canons of scholarly enquiry," and "[not] just wrong, [but] laughable, though not amusing." Milbank’s vague and sometimes even inaccurate footnotes do not help his cause.

In Milbank’s defence, one can say only that RO had disclaimed the canons of scholarly objectivity and verifiable accuracy right from the beginning. Radical Orthodoxy sets itself to challenge all settled theological opinion, and pretends no dialogical relationship with other views or types of rationality. When considering Milbank’s interpretation of St Thomas, the best approach, one might suggest, is to recognise it as something akin to an interpretive dance. It displays an inherently subjective approach, and, in effect, purports to be nothing else. Scholarship of an objective kind must be sought elsewhere.

[Hat tip to C.B.]

The Spirit of Solesmes

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, "The Spirit of Solesmes" (Views from the Choir Loft, June 27, 2013):

HAVE BEEN READING a beautiful book called The Spirit of Solesmes, a compilation of spiritual writings by Dom Prosper Guéranger, Abbess Cécile Bruyère, and Dom Paul Delatte, with wonderful notes by Sister Mary David Totah. I simply cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone who is seriously interested in monastic spirituality. The writings display that uniquely Benedictine synthesis of down-to-earth practical wisdom, a pervasive presence of the rhythms of liturgical prayer, and a vibrant serenity that is always hovering somewhere between the poetry of everyday life and the silence of eternity.

St. Thomas is fond of the axiom: “What is last in execution is first in intention.” Or as the ancients put it still more succinctly: Respice finem. One must begin any major action—such as taking care of one’s children or teaching classes each day!—with the end in view. God, our ultimate end, is known through prayer, in which, by His grace, we enter more deeply into the union of indwelling that He gives us in baptism and all the sacraments.

“Being a Christian does not only mean accepting Christ’s teaching and receiving the graces won by Him; it also means becoming a worshiper in spirit and in truth, reliving His mysteries, ascending to God in the liturgy in the way Christ descended to us and returned to the Father. Here is realized the unity of our human life, the participation of whole persons in their highest act, which is worship.” (Spirit of Solesmes, 24)

The unification of our lives, the orientation to the ultimate goal that gives meaning to every proximate and particular goal we seek, is the work of the sacred liturgy. This is what endows the fragments of each day, colorful and leaden alike, with the unity of a stained glass window.

Many of the Church’s liturgical prayers contain the petition that we should experience in ourselves the mystery we celebrate. Without prayer, we might (for a time at any rate) “have” this union objectively, but it would not be the place we dwell, the determinative content of our thoughts and desires. If we want then to sanctify our actions, whatever they may be, we must enter consciously and lovingly into this union, so as to draw from God, for whom nothing is impossible, the strength to do all the work He asks of us.

When speaking of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Summa Ia-IIae, Question 68), Saint Thomas argues the absolute necessity of special assistance by the Holy Spirit, every day, throughout the day, if we are to attain the glorious end God has in store for us, so greatly does it exceed our natural abilities—even the superadded power of the theological virtues in us. “Let your good spirit lead me into the promised land.” And he makes clear that it is not only for reaching the ultimate end but also for attaining any of the particular ends we aim at as Christians, if we want to do them as God’s children, that is, with wisdom, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, and so on.

So we have to listen to the Spirit in order to be directed in our activity. In this sense, there cannot be a genuine apostolate at all without contemplative prayer behind it, as the Acts of the Apostles so clearly shows. Moreover, prayer of all sorts, but especially quiet prayer in solitude, disposes one to be a good listener and a keen perceiver of reality. You learn how to listen to others and, at times painfully, discover the secret workings of your own heart.

Finally, then, we are left with a question, an examination of conscience: What is at the center of my day? What is the center of my being—what is the still point?

Prayer is
The world in tune,
A spirit-voice,
And vocal joys
Whose echo is heaven’s bliss.
(Henry Vaughan)

[Hat tip to P.K.]

Thomas Aquinas in 50 Pages

No kidding. Click HERE access a FREE PDF of this very-interesting synopsis of the Angelic Doctor by Prof. Taylor R. Marshall.

[Hat tip to IANS]

The Dominican charism

The Dominicans really are the "lights" of the Church. Think about it: Saint Albert the Great, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Catherine of Siena, among others, were all Dominicans. The intellectual wattage and spiritual luminosity hardly gets brighter than that among us mortal men. It always amazes me to hear what Jesus said to Catherine, as reported in her Dialogue:

With this light that is given to the eye of the intellect, Thomas Aquinas saw Me, wherefore he acquired the light of much science; also Augustine, Jerome, and the doctors and My saints. They were illuminated by My Truth to know and understand My Truth in darkness. By My Truth I mean the Holy Scripture, which seemed dark because it was not understood,; not through any defect of the Scriptures, but of them who heard them, and did not understand them.

If you turn to Augustine, and to the glorious Thomas and Jerome, and the others, you will see how much light they have thrown over this spouse, [the Holy Catholic Church] extirpating error, like lamps placed upon the candelabra, with true and perfect humility....

Look at My glorious Thomas, who gazed with the gentle eye of his intellect at My Truth, whereby he acquired supernatural light and science infused by grace, for he obtained it rather by means of prayer than by human study. He was a brilliant light, illuminating his order and the mystical body of the Holy Church, dissipating the clouds of heresy.

Apart from the fact that countless popes have recommended him for over 700 years, it seems to me that Saint Catherine's encomium goes a long way towards explaining why the Church grants Saint Thomas such a privileged place in the teaching of sacred theology.

... Saint Dominic saw that without sustained and serious use of the human intellect, guided by the Magisterium of the Church, the world's rulers and rustics alike would fall prey again and again to charlatans, hooligans, heretics, bad poets, and an assortment of demonic forces.

Peter Kwasniewski, "The Source and Summit of the Christian Life: What the Schools Can Teach Us About the Mass," Latin Mass magazine (Christmas, 2012), p. 8.

Dr. Janet Smith goes public on theology of lying

Janet E. Smith, "Fig Leaves and Falsehoods: Pace Thomas Aquinas, sometimes we need to deceive" (First Things, June/July, 2011).

[Hat tip to Janet Smith]

Aquinas converts Serbian abortionist via dreams

Br. James Brent, O.P. ("Dominicans Defend Life," November 13, 2008) writes: The Catholic News Agency is reporting an amazing story of a conversion of an Eastern European abortionist [See "Another 'champion of abortion' becomes defender of life: the story of Sotjan Adasevic" CNA, November 12, 2008]. The story involves a Dominican of most prominent stature. The article is a must read. See also our editorial note at the end.

Madrid, Nov 12, 2008 / 09:21 pm (CNA).- The Spanish daily “La Razon” has published an article on the pro-life conversion of a former “champion of abortion.” Stojan Adasevic, who performed 48,000 abortions, sometimes up to 35 per day, is now the most important pro-life leader in Serbia, after 26 years as the most renowned abortion doctor in the country.

“The medical textbooks of the Communist regime said abortion was simply the removal of a blob of tissue,” the newspaper reported. “Ultrasounds allowing the fetus to be seen did not arrive until the 80s, but they did not change his opinion. Nevertheless, he began to have nightmares.”

In describing his conversion, Adasevic “dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. ‘My name is Thomas Aquinas,’ the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican genius saint. He didn’t recognize the name”

“Why don’t you ask me who these children are?” St. Thomas asked Adasevic in his dream.

“They are the ones you killed with your abortions,’ St. Thomas told him.

“Adasevic awoke in amazement and decided not to perform any more abortions,” the article stated.

“That same day a cousin came to the hospital with his four months-pregnant girlfriend, who wanted to get her ninth abortion—something quite frequent in the countries of the Soviet bloc. The doctor agreed. Instead of removing the fetus piece by piece, he decided to chop it up and remove it as a mass. However, the baby’s heart came out still beating. Adasevic realized then that he had killed a human being,”

After this experience, Adasevic “told the hospital he would no longer perform abortions. Never before had a doctor in Communist Yugoslavia refused to do so. They cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her job, and did not allow his son to enter the university.”

After years of pressure and on the verge of giving up, he had another dream about St. Thomas.

“You are my good friend, keep going,’ the man in black and white told him. Adasevic became involved in the pro-life movement and was able to get Yugoslav television to air the film ‘The Silent Scream,’ by Doctor Bernard Nathanson, two times.”

Adasevic has told his story in magazines and newspapers throughout Eastern Europe. He has returned to the Orthodox faith of his childhood and has studied the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas.

“Influenced by Aristotle, Thomas wrote that human life begins forty days after fertilization,” Adasevic wrote in one article. La Razon commented that Adasevic “suggests that perhaps the saint wanted to make amends for that error.” Today the Serbian doctor continues to fight for the lives of the unborn.

OP Editorial Note: Although St. Thomas Aquinas held that the human soul is infused after conception, St. Thomas never held that abortion was morally acceptable. He taught that procured abortion is intrinsically evil.