Thomas Aquinas and Catholic Church

Two documents that I have found in Internet.

1) Revival of Thomism by Pope Leo XIII in 1879:

AETERNI PATRIS
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON THE RESTORATION OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html

“31. While, therefore, We hold that every word of wisdom, every useful thing by whomsoever discovered or planned, ought to be received with a willing and grateful mind, We exhort you, venerable brethren, in all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and to spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences. The wisdom of St. Thomas, We say; for if anything is taken up with too great subtlety by the Scholastic doctors, or too carelessly stated-if there be anything that ill agrees with the discoveries of a later age, or, in a word, improbable in whatever way-it does not enter Our mind to propose that for imitation to Our age. Let carefully selected teachers endeavor to implant the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of students, and set forth clearly his solidity and excellence over others. Let the universities already founded or to be founded by you illustrate and defend this doctrine, and use it for the refutation of prevailing errors. But, lest the false for the true or the corrupt for the pure be drunk in, be ye watchful that the doctrine of Thomas be drawn from his own fountains, or at least from those rivulets which, derived from the very fount, have thus far flowed, according to the established agreement of learned men, pure and clear; be careful to guard the minds of youth from those which are said to flow thence, but in reality are gathered from strange and unwholesome streams.”

2) An interesting document about discussions about Thomism at the second Vatican council

Joseph A. Komonchak
THOMISM AND THE SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

http://jakomonchak.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/thomism-and-vatican-ii/

‘“The history of the modern Neo-Thomist movement, whose magna charta was Aeterni Patris, reached its end at the Second Vatican Council.” This was not supposed to happen.’


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