The Angelic Doctor
Our Guide in Philosophy and Theology
This is an excerpt from They Have Uncrowned Him, 1988, pp. 225-230.
For great evils, great remedies! What is it that will be able to heal the cancer or the AIDS in the Church? The response is clear: the remedies must be applied which the popes have proposed against the modern errors; namely Thomist philosophy, sound theology, and the Law which flows from the two first sciences.
Sound Philosophy—that of St. Thomas Aquinas
You understand that, in order to combat the subjectivism and the rationalism which are at the basis of the liberal errors, I will not appeal to the modern philosophies, infected precisely with subjectivism or with rationalism. It is neither the subject, nor its knowledge, nor its love that the philosophy of all time and metaphysics in particular, takes as its object. It is the very being of things; it is that which is. It is indeed being, with its laws and its principles that our most spontaneous knowledge uncovers. At its peak, the natural wisdom which is philosophy, leads through theodicy or natural theology, into the Being par excellence, the Being subsisting by itself. It is indeed this first Being that common sense, supported, strengthened, and elevated by the data of the Faith, prompts us to place at the summit of the real, according to the revealed definition: Ego sum qui sum—“I am He Who am.”1 You know indeed that to Moses, who was asking Him His name, God answered: “I am He Who am,” which means: I am He Who is through Himself, I possess being through myself.
Let us then ponder this Being who subsists by Himself, Who has not received existence but who has it through Himself. He is “ens a se” being by itself, in opposition to all other beings, who are ens ab alio: being through another, through the gift that God has given them of existence! We can meditate on this for hours; it is so striking, unimaginable. To have being through oneself, this is to live in eternity; it is to be eternal. He who has being through himself can never have been without having it; being could never have left him. He always is, he always will be, he always has been. On the contrary, he who is “ens ab alio,” a being through another, he has received being from another; therefore he has begun to be at a given moment: he has begun!
How this consideration should keep us in humility! Penetrate us with the nothing that we are in God’s eyes! “I am He Who is; you are she who is not,” Our Lord was saying one day to a holy soul. How true that is! The deeper man penetrates into this principle of the simplest philosophy, the better he puts himself into his true place before God.
The mere fact of saying: I am “ab alio,” God is “ens a se”; I have begun, God is forever, what a piercing contrast! What an abyss! So it is this little being “ab alio,” who receives his very being from God, who would have the power to limit the glory of God? He would have the right to say to God, “You have the right to this, but no more”! “Reign in hearts, in the sacristies, in the chapels, yes; but in the street, in the city, no!” What conceit! Likewise, would it be this being “ab alio” who would have the power to reform the plans of God, to make things be other than what they are, other than what God has made them? The laws that God, in His wisdom and His omnipotence, has appointed for all beings and especially for man and for society, these laws, the wretched being “ab alio” would have the power to remake them at his caprice by saying, “I am free”! What pretension! What absurdity, this revolt of Liberalism! Behold how important it is to possess a sound philosophy and thus to have a thorough knowledge of the natural, supernatural, social, and political order. For this, the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas is irreplaceable. I will not resist quoting for you Leo XIII in his Encyclical, Æterni Patris, of August 4, 1879:
The Angelic Doctor considered the philosophical conclusions in the reasons and the very principles of things: now the extent of these principles and the innumerable truths that they contain in germ supply the teachers of subsequent ages with ample material for useful developments, which will be produced at the opportune time. In using as he does this same process in the refutation of errors, the great doctor arrived at this double result, of repulsing by himself all the errors of earlier times, and of supplying invincible arms in order to dispel those that will not fail to rise up in the future.
It is especially to the modern errors of Liberalism that Leo XIII wishes the remedy of Thomistic philosophy to be applied:
The immense peril into which the pestilence of perverse opinions has thrown the family and civil society is obvious to all of us. To be sure, both of them would enjoy a much greater peace and security if, in the academies and the schools, a doctrine more sound and more consistent with the teaching of the Church were given, a doctrine such as is found in the works of Thomas Aquinas. What St. Thomas teaches us on the true nature of liberty, which, in our time, is degenerating into license; on the divine origin of all authority; on laws and their power; on the paternal and just government of sovereigns; on the obedience due to the highest powers; on the mutual charity which must reign among all men—what he tells us on these subjects and others of the same kind has an immense, invincible force to overturn all these principles of the new law, full of dangers, it is known, for good order and the public welfare.
The Sound Theology, also that of St. Thomas
In addition to the natural wisdom that is sound philosophy, he who wants to protect himself against Liberalism will have to know the supernatural wisdom that is theology. It is the theology of St. Thomas that the Church recommends among all others in order to acquire a thorough knowledge of the supernatural order. It is the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas that the Fathers of the Council of Trent “determined that in the midst of the holy assembly, along with the book of the divine Scriptures and the decrees of the supreme Pontiffs, on the altar itself, be deposited, open, so that advice, reasons, oracles could be drawn up from it.”2 It is at the school of St. Thomas that the Council of Trent dispelled the first clouds of nascent naturalism.
Who, better than St. Thomas, has shown that the supernatural order goes infinitely beyond the capacities and the very requirements of the natural order? He shows us (here below this can be only in the obscure light of the faith) how Our Lord, through His Redeeming Sacrifice, by the application of His merits, has elevated the nature of the redeemed ones, by sanctifying grace, by baptism, by the other sacraments, by the holy sacrifice of the Mass. It is by knowing this theology well that we will increase in ourselves the spirit of faith, that is to say, the Faith and the attitudes which correspond to a life of faith.
Thus, in divine worship, when one truly has the Faith, he has the gestures that flow from it. Precisely what we reproach the entire new liturgical reform with, is that it gives us attitudes which are no longer attitudes of faith; it imposes on us a naturalistic and humanistic worship. It is in this way that people are afraid to make genuflections; they no longer want to manifest the adoration that is due to God; they want to reduce the sacred to the profane. This is the most sensitive thing for the persons who have contact with the new liturgy: they reckon that it is flat, that it does not raise them up, that in it there are no longer any mysteries found. It is sound theology as well which will fortify in us this conviction of faith: Our Lord Jesus Christ is God; this is the central truth of our Faith—the divinity of Our Lord. Then we will serve Our Lord as God, and not as a mere man. Beyond a doubt, it is by His humanity that He has sanctified us through the sanctifying grace which filled up His holy soul; this shows us the infinite respect that we must have for His Holy Humanity. Today the danger is to make of Our Lord a mere man, an extraordinary man, to be sure, a superman, but not the Son of God. On the contrary, if He truly is God, as the Faith teaches us, then everything changes; for from that moment on, He is the Master of all things. In this case, all consequences flow from His divinity. Thus, all the attributes that theology has us acknowledge in God: His omnipotence, His omnipresence, His permanent and supreme causality in regard to everything, to all things that exist; for He is the source of being—all this is applied to Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He thus has supremacy over all things; by His own nature He is King, King of the universe. No creature, individual or within society, can escape His sovereignty, His sovereignty of power and His sovereignty of grace:
It is in Him that all things have been created, those that are in the heavens and those that are on the earth…all has been created by Him and for Him…all things subsist in Him…God…has willed to reconcile all things to Himself through Him, those which are of the earth and those which are in the heavens, by making peace by the blood of His cross.
Therefore, from this first truth of faith, the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, is derived this second truth of faith: His Royalty, and especially His Kingship over societies, and the obedience which societies must have to the Will of Jesus Christ, the submission which the civil laws must bring about with regard to the law of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Even more so than this, Our Lord wants souls to be saved, doubtless indirectly, but effectively, through a Christian civil society—a society fully submissive to the Gospel which lends itself to His redeeming design to be the temporal instrument for the salvation of souls. From that moment on, what could be more just, more necessary, than civil laws which comply with the laws of Jesus Christ and punish with the coercion of penalties the transgressors of the laws of Our Lord in the public and social domains? Now precisely, religious liberty, that of the Freemasons, like that of Vatican II, wants to suppress this restraint. That is the ruin of the Christian social order! What does Our Lord want, if not that His redeeming sacrifice permeate civil society! What is Christian civilization, what is Christendom, if not the incarnation of the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the life of an entire society! That is what is called the social reign of Our Lord. Therefore, this is the truth that we must preach with the most vigor today, faced with Liberalism.
A second consequence of the divinity of Jesus Christ is that His Redemption is not optional for eternal life! He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life! He is the door. He says Himself:
I am the door of the sheep. All those who have come before me are robbers and thieves; but the sheep have not listened to them. I am the door: if anyone enters through me, he will be saved; he will come in, and he will go out, and he will find the pastures.
He is the only way of salvation for every man. St. Peter proclaims:
Salvation is in no other, for there is under Heaven no other name which has been given to men, by which we must be saved.
This truth is the one that must be reaffirmed the most today, in the face of the false ecumenism of a liberal nature, which assures us that there are values for salvation in all religions and that it is a question of developing them.
Endnotes
1 Ex. 3:14.
2 Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris.
Current Issue
