The Clear intention of following Saint Thomas Aquinas
Saint John Paul II wrote, “Philosophy … is the mirror which reflects the culture of a people.”[1] Therefore, the study of philosophy is for us—dedicated specifically to the evangelization of the culture[2]—of singular and eminent relevance. This is pointed out in our Constitutions, where we read that “philosophy … leads to a deeper understanding and interpretation of the person, and of the person’s freedom and relationships with the world and with God’ … in light of a particular cultural situation that exalts subjectivism as the criteria and measure of the truth.”[3] This is such that it is necessarily incumbent upon us, religious and missionaries of the Incarnate Word, to have a “certainty of the truth,” which is given only by a sound metaphysics and founded on the objective reality of things.[4]
Hence, following the example of the popes, the directives of the Second Vatican Council and of the current Code of Canon Law, which have given a privileged place to the teachings of the Angelic Doctor, it is our clear intention to follow Saint Thomas Aquinas; for that is what the specific end of the Institute demands of us, since only thus will we be able to discern, among the elements of a certain culture, what is suitable and can be assumed by the Gospel, in order to accept it, and what is not, in order to reject it. This entails, as well, an active judgment about human thought and about Thomism itself in relation to modern thought.
Therefore, our intellectual and philosophical formation is clearly and intentionally Thomistic as the Church commands[5] and as the most worthy task of “inculturat[ing] the Gospel”[6] requires. For it is “from the philosophy of being that man can find his true foundation, which is being, can find his last end, which is Being by Essence, and can also find his depth, which is freedom; and in this way, discover the true cultural values.”[7]
In this sense, Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote, “It is only accidentally that St. Thomas belongs to the thirteenth century. His thought is no more confined to that period of human history than is the multiplication table. Truth is eternal though its verbal expression be localized in time and space. If need makes actuality, then St. Thomas was never more actual than he is today. If actuality makes modernity, then St. Thomas is the prince of modern philosophers. If a progressive universe is a contemporary ideal, then the philosophy of St. Thomas is its greatest realization. Modern Idealism needs the complement of his realism; empiricism needs his transcendental principles; philosophical biologism his metaphysics; sociological morality his ethics; sentimentalism his theory of the intelligence; and the world needs the God he knew and loved and adored.”[8]
Saint Thomas, indeed, sheds perennial light on all the topics that touch man and human activity. His thought “aims to be the most vigorous expression of the possibilities of reason in its task of grounding science and faith.”[9] His metaphysics, as Saint Paul VI said well, is the natural metaphysics of human intelligence. Indeed, it “possesses a permanent aptitude for guiding the human spirit in the search for the truth, for the truth of the real being, which is its proper and first object, and for the first principles, until arriving at the discovery of their transcendent cause, God. Under this aspect, it escapes the particular historical situation of the thinker, who has identified and illustrated it as ‘the natural metaphysics of human intelligence.’ Likewise, we have been able to say that, ‘reflecting the essences of things really existing in their certain and immutable truth, it is neither medieval nor proper to any particular nation; but rather it transcends time and space, and is no less valid for all men today.’”[10] With all reason, then, the Holy Doctor has been called “the man of all times,”[11] homo omnium horarum.
Therefore, for us, there is no room for a vulgarized Thomism, from a textbook, as happens with those who know ‘something,’ generally superficial and shallow, and almost always impregnated with formalist or essentialist Scholasticism, which transmuted esse for existentia and from which arose the formalist or essentialist ‘spiritualities’ and ‘pastoral care,’ without teeth and without biting reality.[12] Rather, we insist on acquiring an authentically metaphysical intelligence that will equip our religious to know reality so that they will be capable of making accurate diagnoses and applying the appropriate remedies. That is, our goal is to acquire a metaphysics that bites reality, that is later projected for the good of souls and of the world, and that—precisely because it is objective and realistic—‘has teeth.’
Because of this, our proper law emphatically invites us to “transcend the manualistic method by means of constant recourse to the reading of the great philosophical works of antiquity; with a living Thomism, which implies: direct contact with Aquinas himself, in his principal and secondary works, thus reaching the authentic thought of Saint Thomas to the point of being able to think based off of him, entering into dialogue and into debate with contemporary problems and thinkers. A living Thomism that goes against a formalist and fossilized Thomism, and which Fr. Cornelio Fabro calls ‘essential Thomism.’”[13]
This we do “by reading the great commentators of Saint Thomas,”[14] among whom our proper law explicitly mentions Fr. Cornelio Fabro, arguing that he is more important than all of the commentators of the past “forasmuch as he knows all of them and possesses the most advanced authentic texts and historical studies about Aquinas, which put him in purer contact with the original thought of the Angelic Doctor.”[15] And also, “by means of the study of modern philosophy: for it is to the inquiries and questionings of the modern authors that we must respond. Especially, it is fundamental to know critically the thought of Kant and Hegel.”[16]
It is for this reason that, in various general chapters of the Institute[17] and according to the thought of our founder and to what is commanded by our proper law, we have emphasized—as a non-negotiable element adjoined to the charism—our clear intention of following Saint Thomas Aquinas and, within this framework, Fr. Cornelio Fabro, who, in our opinion, is “the most profound knower of Saint Thomas of all times.”[18]
Simply because the philosophy of Saint Thomas is the philosophy of being, that is, of the ‘actus essendi,’ whose transcendental value is the most direct path for elevating oneself to the knowledge of the subsistent Being and pure Act, which is God. Therefore we, who are disciples of the Incarnate Word, who appeared to the Apostles one day saying, I am,[19] thus want to be priests, religious, and missionaries of ‘being.’
[1] Saint John Paul II, Fides et ratio, 103.
[2] Constitutions, 26.
[3] Constitutions, 220, quoting Saint John Paul II, Pastores dabo vobis, 52.
[4] Constitutions, 220.
[5] “Notes from the V General Chapter,” 5.
[6] Constitutions, 5.
[7] Directorio de Evangelización de la Cultura, 11; our translation.
[8] Fulton J. Sheen, God and Intelligence, Preface (New York: IVE Press, 2008), 12.
[9] Cornelio Fabro, “Santo Tomás frente al desafío del pensamiento moderno,” in AA.VV., Las razones del tomismo (Pamplona: EUNSA, 1980), 43; our translation.
[10] Saint Paul VI, “Address to the members of the Pontifical Roman Academy of St Thomas Aquinas,” September 10, 1965; our translation; quoting Saint Paul VI, “Letter to the Master General of the Order of Preachers,” March 7, 1964; our translation.
[11] Saint Paul VI, “Letter to the Master General of the Order of Preachers,” March 7, 1964; our translation.
[12] Fr. Carlos Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, Part III, chap. 4.
[13] Directorio de Formación Intelectual, 56; our translation; quoting Cornelio Fabro, “Por un tomismo esencial,” in AA.VV., Las razones del Tomismo (Pamplona, 1980). “Un ‘tomismo essenziale’ e un tomismo che non ha carattere semplicemente storico ma è, anzitutto ed eminentemente, un tomismo speculativo che deve sapersi approfondire e radicalizzare tenendo conto anche delle esigenze legittime del pensiero moderno” (A. Dalledonne, Il tomismo essenziale nell’esegesi “intensiva” di Cornelio Fabro, in Renovatio, XVI, 1981, p. 118.).
[14] Ibid; our translation.
[15] Ibid; our translation.
[16] Ibid; our translation.
[17] See “Notes from the V General Chapter,” 5 and “Notes from the VII General Chapter,” 21 and 104.
[18] Fr. Carlos Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, Part III, chap. 4.
[19] Mt 14:27.
