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Feasting with St. Thomas

Thomas Joseph White contends that many modern Christologies, by scanting ontological reflection, lack sufficient resources to undergird the New Testament confession of Christ’s uniqueness and its elaboration in the Church’s creedal and conciliar Tradition. Continue Reading »

A Monastic Vice for the Internet Age

The Italian author Umberto Eco belonged to a rare breed—a medievalist of encyclopedic erudition, a creative philosopher and a talented novelist. Prompted by his recent death, Eco’s first novel, The Name of the Rose, has resurfaced in bookstands everywhere. The novel is a murder mystery set . . . . Continue Reading »

Aquinas & Homosexuality

Is a Thomism friendly to the gay lifestyle the wave of the future? Is it the next phase in a scholarly, sophisticated kind of theology? Such is the impression given by the medieval scholar Adriano Oliva in his new book Amours, published in French and Italian. Continue Reading »

Re-Styling Tradition

A new Roman Catholic church, dedicated to St. Thomas Aquinas, has risen at the Newman Center of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Designed by architect Kevin Clark, the church and center together came in at a cost-effective $25 million. St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church is a classic . . . . Continue Reading »

Inevitable Scholasticism

Introduction to Scholastic Theology by ulrich g. leinsle trans. michael j. miller catholic university of america, 392 pages, $29.95 The standard narratives of twentieth-century Catholic theology written in the past forty years typically depict the ways in which modern Catholic theologians managed . . . . Continue Reading »

Just War, As It Was and Is

The just war tradition came into being during the Middle Ages as a way of thinking about the right use of force in the context of responsible government of the political community. With deep roots in both ancient Israel and classical Greek and Roman political thought and practice, the origins of a . . . . Continue Reading »

What Aquinas Really Said About Women

In several passages in the Summa Theologiae and elsewhere, Thomas Aquinas asserts that the inferiority of women lies not just in bodily strength but in force of intellect. To top this off, he maintains that feminine intellectual inferiority actually contributes to the order and beauty of the . . . . Continue Reading »

Aquinas and the Heretics

Some time ago, I wrote an essay claiming St. Thomas as the first Whig, one of the founders of “the party of liberty.” One antecedent to this claim comes in the essays of Lord Acton on the origins of the idea of liberty, and other antecedents in the political writings of Jacques Maritain, Thomas . . . . Continue Reading »

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