TITLE: My Life with Thomas Aquinas
AUTHOR: Mrs. Carol Robinson
PUBLISHER: Angelus Press

SUMMARY: The brilliance of St. Thomas Aquinas is made clearly and simply applicable to daily life which has become so chaotic because of the rejection of his wisdom.

Tne reviewer of this book said, “Here is a book one would much prefer to quote in toto than attempt to describe.” The first essay, My Life with Thomas Aquinas, was written in 1990 and gives a brief biography of the author and an introduction to St. Thomas and the state of modern Thomism. Reader, beware! This opener is a heady, profoundly insightful piece that might tend to scare you away. But, don’t let it! Push onward to the rest of the book which is made up of updated articles originally published in Integrity magazine from 1946 through 1952. There has never been a magazine like Integrity and you would do you and your family well if you were to find out why that statement is true. Even Communists knew the power it packed and made a pitch to buy it out.

Mrs. Robinson was a founding co-editor of Integrity. She’s a convert from atheism and attends the St. Ignatius Retreat House Chapel in Connecticut. The magazine’s original intention was to “make a new synthesis of religion and life,” which is nothing more than unifying what is quite separate in most lives, that is, our Catholic Faith and our day-to-day living. Easier said than done, both then and now.

Integrity was not a Catholic “Dear Abby.” Dear Abby is first of all not a Catholic; secondly, she sells her opinion—which is a far cry from objective principles. This book gives you Integrity’s best attempts to visit the land of Metaphysics—a land that most of us would call “airy-fairy” at best or not even know is on the map—and bring down the timeless principles of St. Thomas Aquinas, into the practical job of living. Yes, into the home, into the workplace, into the town and country, but first, into your soul. So much for “airy-fairyness!” St. Thomas is eminently practical, and this collection of ­Integrity articles proves it. “. . . there is a bridge between the temporal, natural order of life and the supernatural life of grace, . . . . St. Thomas shows the harmony of the natural and the supernatural without ever blurring the two orders.”

Don’t go near this book unless you are prepared to become ­addicted to St. Thomas Aquinas. Mrs. Robinson writes in an easy style that makes sense of the 
M-word (i.e., Metaphysics) without sacrificing depth. She writes on ­every topic under the sun, just as 
St. Thomas did. Do not be ­mis-taken: St. ­Thomas is for today. 
In fact, Mrs. Robinson says that 
“St. Thomas’ greatest service to 
the Church may lie ahead,” . . . in the reconstruction of a ­Christian and human society in the future.”

She blames the Catholic Press for leading the lecture-circuits and the pulpits since the Fifties against St. Thomas and sealing his rejection at Vatican II. This rejection of the genuine St. Thomas is seen in a “general malaise” burdening the Catholic Church and reflected in the conciliar Catholic Press which seems “to be suffering from something that makes their papers and magazines hardly worth reading.” The “success” of Vatican II “was to get rid of Thomas Aquinas.” Of course he had to go. “Any good Thomist, for instance, could have straightened out the Pope’s false ideas of Catholic unity that were played out at Assisi, . . . . What has happened since the suppression of the authority of St. Thomas, is that the entire burden of truth as been shifted to charisma, the Pope’s and even ours, while our intellects hang useless. We live in an anti-intellectual age, that’s for sure. We can have offhand opinions, but they are just feelings.”

Mrs. Robinson shows that because the causality of God is denied in modern science by the denial of the higher sciences of metaphysics and theology, the physical sciences have become an easy basis for atheism and materialism. “That is why there are no more mysteries. Previously men placed their confidence in God Who controlled everything. . . . Modern science leaves nothing to a higher intelligence. It allows nothing to happen in the universe that it does not know about and control. . . . The supposed freedom (of the modern scientists) is nothing more than a myth. They are enslaved . . .to work out practical inventions. Not only are they told what direction their minds are to take, . . . they are made to concentrate on a minute part of a whole which they do not understand.”

The present crisis is due to “secularism.” St. Thomas says that the knowledge of God exists in a general (though foggy) way in our nature because God is man’s beatitude. When that knowledge is choked off or deliberately rejected by passion and pleasure, man becomes the most miserable of creatures.

The section on sin is especially timely with the release of Veritatis Splendor, the Pope’s newest encyclical on morality. Another discussion is on mental disorders.

Hard-hitting, bulls-eye, chunks of truth are everywhere here. Bold-faced section headings help direct attention. The Table of Contents lists the main chapter-sections. The same basic themes of nature and grace, sin and virtue are reviewed with fresh application and example under such headings as “A Christian Abnormal Psychology”, Why Aren’t Americans Contemplative?”, “The Death of Western Society”, “Contemporary American Protestantism” (–The country’s largest Christian book distributor, Spring Arbor, is carrying this book!–), “The Science of Temptation”, “About Television”, “The Age of Lay Sanctity”, and “Christian Vocational Guidance.”

Here is the print media at its best. The world cannot survive without this body of doctrine, period. This book is a good start to bringing back the authority of St. Thomas Aquinas. “Catholics will begin to think again.”