Thoughts on Theology Today
The present essay was occasioned by preparations for a discussion that I would be having with some colleagues. I thought it would be useful for me to attempt to articulate my thought, in writing, with some presupposed technical detail, even if I ultimately would not use all of these technicalities in the course of my discussion in person. In the meanwhile, I’ve come to realize that a number of authors, from different perspectives, have been writing about the contemporary state of Catholic theology.1 A number of these authors approach the topic from the vantage point of its institutional and cultural standing today. Others are weighing in concerning the relationship between the spiritual life and theology (broadly, one might say, within the framework of discussions concerning “re-enchantment”).2 I cannot help but have these discussions in the back of my mind, but the purpose of this essay is merely to think through the implications of the “given” of faith, its relationship to discursive theology, and some present tasks—not the exclusive tasks, but some present tasks—that I think are important for my own reflection and work.3
We are living during an interesting time.4 Just recently, I was having a telephone conversation with a thoughtful lay Catholic who mentioned a shift that he noticed in Catholic intellectual culture. After the Second Vatican Council, a certain kind of “orthodox truce” was reached between the kind of theology that has come to be called (somewhat inexactly) “Ressourcement” and a kind of “broad consensus” Thomist vocabulary. In some sense, the very person of Pope St. John Paul II is an image for this consensus. Differentiating itself from the more progressive developments often associated with the journal Concilium, this more conservative wing of thought—often connected with the journal Communio (though, just like the term “Ressourcement”, this is too simplistic a genealogy)—sought to strike a balance during the upheaval of the 1970s and 1980s. Wielding a kind of simplified use of scholasticism—not stridently appealing to the arcana of later scholastic developments but, rather, more humbly reflecting on the great themes of Thomas, alongside other authors but always expressing, at least rhetorically, a kind of preferential option for Thomas’s general vocabulary—these thinkers sought to weave together a kind of resolution to the controversies that arose from the 1940s to the 1960s.
A great example of this “alliance” can be found in the catalog of Ignatius Press—whose importance cannot be overstated as regards the establishment of a stable orthodox Catholic culture in America. The press, heroically willed into existence by the indefatigable labors of Fr. Joseph Fessio,5 was always a bit of a mélange: a combination of widely accessible, and hence more profitable, texts alongside the less-profitable academic works of the great figures of the Communio world: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Joseph Ratzinger, Louis Bouyer, et al. Amid the many texts that Ignatius published, there were a number of volumes by Josef Pieper, whose humble but profound essays provided the press with a classical and scholastic voice that did not, however, threaten the rebirth of the tensions which existed between certain Thomists and the forefathers of Communio. Fessio’s was and it is a noble task, and the docile reception of John Paul II’s papacy (and that of Benedict XVI, in whose case academic publishing became quite profitable for Ignatius) in America would have been impossible without this immense labor, for the project itself was completely in sympathy with the Polish pope’s own modus operandi during the post-Conciliar period.
However, this truce was somewhat uneasy. And probably it was always destined to come to a head at some point. Under the surface was always the question: what do we do with the Tridentine Church and later Scholasticism? During the Papacy of St. John Paul II, most orthodox, Latin Catholics6 were merely glad that they were able to refer to the Latin Middle Ages and to Trent without being immediately dismissed as retrograde. And during the Papacy of Benedict XVI, it seemed that a kind of Liturgical-Patristic-Biblical renewal would deepen the somewhat disparate elements in the thought of St. John Paul II. And yet it was during this time that certain changes began to brew, especially in the Anglophone world.
A signal example of this can be found in the gradual rehabilitation of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange. He is not, of course, without his continued detractors, ready to remind eager Anglophone readers about reasons for his previous desuetude.7 However, in the wake of a kind of initial study of his thought by Fr. Aidan Nicols,8 a relatively brief biography by Fr. Richard Peddicord,9 and a broader distribution of his works outside of Roman Catholic Traditionalist circles, a gradual renewal in interest has taken place, not only regarding his particular thought, but, more tellingly, in a kind of general “ressourcement” of the post-Medieval scholastics.10 This seems quite a change from the implicit truce, for which it seemed best to have “just enough” Thomism (à la Pieper) to provide a kind of orthodox lingua franca, but not too much so as to become a closed circle of scholastic retrogrades.11
In 2015, David Bentley Hart could somewhat dismissively describe a “young, ardently earnest Thomist” as being “one of those manualist neo-paleo-neo-Thomists of the baroque persuasion you run across ever more frequently these days, gathered in the murkier corners of coffee bars around candles in wine bottles, clad in black turtlenecks and berets, sipping espresso, smoking Gauloises, swaying to bebop, composing dithyrambic encomia to that absolutely gone, totally wild, starry-bright and vision-wracked, mad angelic daddy-cat Garrigou-Lagrange…”12 Arguably, in 2025, the situation online has given rise to a scholastic culture, which is even more of a “wild west.” Far from the mainstream, but nonetheless exercising a particular influence among younger Catholics, there are certain influencers who are engaging with many Baroque scholastics outside of mainstream Catholic institutions, in a way that would have been unimaginable in the immediate aftermath of the Council, or even in the very early 2000s.
Simultaneously, many of the older guard—no insult is meant, for I respect deeply, the wisdom of age!—of Communio-adjacent scholars who lived through the core of the papacy of St. John Paul II are beginning to retire or at least to hand on the reins of whatever remains of Catholic education now to the next generation of orthodox scholars. The question is: are the battles of old in the past, or are they going to reignite anew?
I’m not sure. But I think that this entire problem of continuity within Catholic thought is important and it will need to be adjudicated in some fashion among the current generation. I share with others, including Fr. Cuddy, the concern that theology risks a kind of formal-perspectival problem through the prioritizing of sources as though it were the ratio formalis of theological speculation as such: the risk of a kind of “theologianology” in place of theos-logos.13 Although the modern academy is not the sole source of this development, I think that it does encourage it, though a full consideration of that musing would need much more reflection on my part. In any event, there is something quite tempting about the safety of retreating into an authority so as to say: this is what Thomas, or Garrigou, or Scheeben, or Journet, or Gilson, or Hugh of St. Victor, or St. Gregory Nazianzus, or St. Gregory Palamas, or Bérulle said…14
Rather, I can’t help but think about this current moment of transition within the Catholic mind. “Theological science”15 is not a kind of discourse which floats in the space of intellectualist expertise. Truth be told, I sometimes feel that discursive theology would do much better if it were taken out of the university system. At the very least, it does not flourish in the contemporary Germanic-research oriented system (which even echoes within the halls of small liberal arts colleges, whose professors are trained with the implicit bias that the research system is top-tier). All theological reflection is born of a very unique datum. It is born in the heart of the Church, in the reception of a message and a life that can only be received by those who allow grace to transfigure them. It is only by the “renewal of our minds” (Rom.12:2), by living a transfigured life, that we come to know the “depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10). Theology is born of the encounter with the Triune God through the living Church, who teaches by way of a slow pedagogy which unfolds within the life of grace.
“Theological science” serves this message and this life. There’s a reason why the Thomist school insists that the formal motive of faith is nothing other than the Supernatural Truthfulness of God who Reveals: faith puts us in touch with truth that the Triune God speaks to us. Normatively,16 the revealed message is received in the context of the ecclesial community. Yes, it is the Creed, but it is not the Creed floating in mid air, like a kind of agreement awaiting a signature. It is a Creed that is assented to in the context of a particular form of life: the Christian life, normatively lived out in the liturgy and flowering in divinized acts of holiness and, above all, the mystical life, which is the closest foretaste of heaven to be had here-below. Quite literally, the Creed is not completely understandable without being placed within this whole, within the “rotation” of the liturgical year. Each of its articles is unpacked by the liturgical cycle—throughout the whole tapestry of liturgy in each of the liturgical rites. It is interpreted by those Fathers and doctors whom the Church and churches propose to us as sure guides for the reception of the word of God. At certain critical moments, it is definitively proposed in greater explicitness by magisterial acts; and at other moments, it is more diffusely proposed in the form of various teachings and acts of governance that give shape to our current context of ecclesial life.
Whatever one holds concerning the exact noetic texture of discursive theology, it is born within this life of grace. Its truths are truths that are simultaneously concerned with reality and also concerned with the deification of our life, so that we might put off the old man and put on Christ (Eph. 4:22).
This is not to say that faith is a kind of pragmatic assent. Far from it! But it is a kind of taste of heaven. It is an impression of the light of the Vision of God even now upon our wayfaring minds; it is the illuminating of our “nous” or “mens”—the radical depths, or highest summits, apex mentis of our spirit—with an Uncreated Light that has a kind of continuity with the very light of eternity. Theology is to be signed with the light of the countenance of God.
Now, God’s own knowledge in a very important sense transcends what the philosopher rightly distinguishes as being “speculative” and “practical.” By one in the same knowledge, God knows Himself and all that He freely effects within the order of redeemed creation. If I might put it this way, God sees creation through Himself, by seeing it as an effected multi-form reflection of His inexhaustible riches. Faith gives us access to this sort of knowledge, a knowledge which transcends what we would normally distinguish as being speculative or practical.17 This is why the division between dogmatic theology and moral theology (or dogmatic theology and spiritual theology) is incredibly pernicious: the truths of faith are truths about reality and about life; the moral-spiritual life is dogmatic and the dogmas of faith are dreadfully important for the moral life.18 Who could ever understand the Redemptive Incarnation without seeing its profound connection to the humanity of which Christ is the Head? And who would understand our moral life aright without understanding that every grace that we ever received comes to us under the touch of Christ’s sacred humanity?
Thus, from the very beginning, dogma is a doctrina for life—it is at once Doctrine and Way. We do not need to contrast these two aspects, as some today seem eager to do, in their zeal to claim that hundreds of years of theology are nothing more than a kind of rationalist exercise in obsessing over propositions. But, whenever I see these sorts of arguments marshalled, I cannot help but think that they are not new. They were the same sorts of arguments that arose in the midst of the controversies in the 1940s, with scholastics being presented as rationalists who were concerned with propositions and not with a living God who speaks and acts within an incarnate salvation history.
But one of the reasons—among many—that I remain a Thomist even as a Byzantine Catholic is precisely because Thomism has the strength to remain itself and to grow. It has proven to me, over and again, the durability of its greatest principles, conclusions, and structure. From the start, in its very insistence that faith is motivated by God Who Reveals, this theology places faith on a sui-generis level. It is the personal response of the divinized human to the uncreated message of the Triune God and His Supernatural designs in the economy of salvation. Faith is the loving act of speaking God back to God, a knowledge whose own inner teleology is already oriented—if we do not prevent it—to fructification in charity, by which we give God back to God.19 This is its living impulse, not by a kind of anti-propositionalism or anti-“theologism,”20 but rather by the very nature of an assent that is motivated by a docility to a saving and divinizing message. The truths of faith are truths about both reality and life…
The perfection of faith, therefore, is not found through “theological science” but through the élan of charity which rests in God Himself, loved with His own Triune Love, poured into our hearts (Rom. 5:5), resting in Him in a way that surpasses the limits of human knowing. Faith is perfected through the perfection of charity. Most profoundly, this is experienced in the mystical life, where supernatural love comes to play an immensely important role in the intrinsic perfecting of the roots of the life of grace in our soul, as love enables us to “suffer divine things,”21 to undergo a kind of connaturalizing to God, active in the substance of our soul, there re-likening us to His image, and inviting us to the silence of communion with him, the peace of being but one with Him through knowledge and love.22
These are such obvious truths for any Thomist that it is surprising that they even need to be mentioned…!
This means that the vocabulary of the mystics (and, hence, more deeply, their very experience) has a higher status than does that of “scientific theology.”23 This does not mean that discursive theology is nothing other than the expression of the mystical experience had by a given thinker, unrepeatable and at best a kind of inspiration for each era.24 But it does mean that discursive, “scientific” theology must always present itself as being intrinsically ordered to this kind of mystical perfecting. The centrality of the mystical life must polarize discursive theology in a way that is always present. Discursive theology must always seek to give way to the life of Grace.25
Some would have this be a transition from the “exoteric” teaching of such theology to the “esoteric” path of the saints. I do not think that is a precise way to put it, especially given the elitist dangers of esotericism of any stripe. In point of fact, in Theology, the exoteric has the pride of place, which is nothing other than saying that the life of all, of the “mere believer,” is normative and the source of all the light we will ever have. A theology that is not moved by the perfection effected by charity26 will be at best an imperfect or even deceptive theology, for it will not understand the supernatural grandeur of its principles—which is nothing other than to say that the ascetical-moral-spiritual life is the only path to a true and profound, grasping of the very principles of faith
This brings us, therefore, to what I think might be the themes that I think might be of the greatest importance in theology today. First of all, I believe that shared fraternity—real fraternity, not merely abstract, online fraternity, but shared and living fraternity27—among different approaches of theology must be practiced among those who serve the Church. For the theologian, what we share is by far most important, for this is the life of grace, shared docility to the Church’s magisterium (both universal and more particular). This shared source is what we all serve. It is the divine life gratuitously bestowed on the mystical body of Christ; it is the light of God which illuminates all the undertakings of discursive theologizing. The spirit of that shared life of ascetico-mystical transfiguration and doctrine should be present throughout our labors. And I think it is particularly necessary that we work to share that together now, when the risk of fragmentation is great. But, note: this is unity on the level of faith. It is not an eclectic mélange of different traditions of theological discursion.
Secondly, I would like to note a point that might risk being overlooked, especially by scholastics. I think that a deeper sense for the contextually rooted ecclesiality of theology must be appreciated. Benedict XVI would often speak about the ecclesial character of theology, but I feel that many people interpreted this merely as meaning something like: theologians need to be “ecclesially minded” and docile to the Magisterium. But it’s more than that… There is a real sense in which Theology is born, for each person, from the particular life of liturgical and spiritual formation received within a given ritual tradition. A rite is not just a set of texts… it’s not even merely a “way of life.” It is the point of contact by which we regularly receive the voice of the Church through the centuries. This does not mean that we should privilege liturgical ritual to such an extent that we ignore the universal teaching of the Church. But, nonetheless, we should recognize the way that our encounter with the Church is contextualized by our particular Church and its patterns of ritual life (in the most capacious sense of “ritual,” including all factors of spirituality which are connected with a given liturgical form.)
Moreover, there are other factors of differentiation as well. There are particular spiritualities and schools of thought, certain Fathers and Doctors, sundry and various aspects of the long tradition of the Church, which could be said to “find” us. Due to a whole host of factors, we find that we are attuned to a given particular reception of the life of faith within the communion of the Church. This too is a factor of differentiation which cannot be denied and which, truth be told, is a necessary aspect of the Church’s Catholicity.28
I think it is useful to recognize that each of our theologies will forever be marked by the particular tradition where God has placed us. If my first “recommendation” focused on what is shared and common in theology, this second one focuses on a factor of differentiation within theologizing. The practices of faith and various traditions of Catholic thought and life give a particular “shape” to the explicitation and / or application of the objects of faith. This cannot but fail to have an impact upon how we theologize. If there is to be any sound response to contemporary concerns that theology be “contextual,” it must be animated by this ecclesio-centric insight.29 To do this, however, we do not need to become unduly post-modern30 and anti-propositional. This task is no mere capitulation to the reigning academic culture but, rather, something animated by a spirit of obedience to the Second Vatican Council itself, whose injunctions to Eastern Catholics to embrace their traditions and theologies in point of fact have implications throughout the whole Church. There is objectively only one Theology in the end—it is the “Theology” (as the Greek Fathers often put it) of the Trinity itself. But, there are various human practices of theology, for subjectively speaking, theology is a habitus, cultivated by particular acts, in a particular tradition, with particular points of inflection and emphasis. Perhaps, in this way, one can save what was true in the problematic position of those who would have had theology be nothing more than a spirituality that has found a way to express itself. Likewise, it would redeem the notion of “contextual theology” from its tendencies toward relativism and a kind of “bottom up” view of revelation. Doubtlessly, too, it would retain what is best in the methodological concerns of “post-liberal” theologians.
This brings me to a kind of sub-point, though it is important, insofar as I think it is a very concrete need in theological debates today. I find it to be of signal importance that the methodological questions classically discussed in treatises De locis theologicis be taken up in earnest today and that the classical treatment of these topics be given full consideration, both: 1˚ as regards the stabilization of the various data of theology not for the sake of studying sources but, rather, as principial “material” to be deployed in theological discourse; and 2˚as regards the nature of theological methodology itself. Both questions are, in point of fact, at the core of the concerns in this important methodological treatise, even if Melchior Cano never finished the latter. These matters are at the very heart of the conversations which have remained in stasis for decades in the Catholic world. Clear and open debates about the very nature of sources and of the methods of theology itself are quite clearly the implicit dividing line among various well-meaning Catholics. One way to force this discussion into a productive space is to engage with the tradition of De locis treatises in a way that recognizes the particular needs they were attempting to address and, more importantly, to ask: what does all of this imply concerning the data of theology, its sourcing, its certainty, and the methodological deployment thereof.31
Finally, and this also brings us back to the opening points of this essay, I think that we need to work toward a theological culture—not necessarily in the academy, but within the heart of the Church herself, in service to her—in which four different threads can learn to live side-by-side in a space of mature disagreement and honesty, rather than either siloing or overly hopeful attempts at rapprochement. Often, the Second Vatican Council is presented as “Ressourcement” vs. the “Scholastics,” with the former winning and then splitting off into Concilium and Communio, with the latter taking pride of place during the pontificates of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. I will admit that this narrative has gotten under my skin more than once. I’ve told people: stop presenting the Council as a kind of stake through the heart of Scholasticism by appropriating the authority of an Ecumenical Council.
It was Larry Chapp who changed my mind on this, however, in late 2024. There is a real sense in which a certain kind of “refocusing” took place theologically at the Council. I hesitate to call it “Ressourcement” or Communio, for it is not quite that (for all Councils involve some sort of consensus that does not neatly map on to any particular school). But it was a certain kind of shift from Leonine Thomism, or perhaps we could say it was a kind of shift within the Leonine renewal, in the sense that the Council wanted to emphasize the need for specifically theological renewal, which by its very nature will involve unique issues, due to the nature of the revealed supernatural datum. (Remember: Aeterni patris was concerned with “Christian Philosophy.” Granted, much theological renewal did take place in the wake of the document. However, the exact lineaments of that renewal probably needed time to take into account the much-greater complexities involved in theologizing, due to its supernatural “given,” the nature of its various loci, etc.) At most, the Council proposed a kind of general atmosphere to be taken up. In all honesty, many theologians failed to do so, although the papacy of St. John Paul II marked the start of an interpretation of the Council that bore many good fruits that some today seem all-too-ready to take for granted.
But, reactionary sentiments abound, looking for a single camp to “win the day,” as though to usher in the supposedly sunny uplands of a thousand-year reign of their particular tradition of discourse. I suspect, however, that the Communio, (orthodox…) Concilium,32 and Scholastic branches of theology represent something more than just passing sociological groupings. I think that they probably represent certain bents of mind seeking to grapple with the data of faith. Each has its own weakness. Scholasticism can tend toward a kind of buttoned up tradition with ready-made answers.33 But that is contrary to its deepest inclination.34 And history has shown rather manifestly that the Concilium approach has tended toward a certain risk of heterodoxy; yet, there is something advantageous to faith for it to have a kind of liberal confidence that the intellectus fidei opens up startlingly new vistas in each age. A certain theological narrativizing is at once the strength and weakness of Communio, at least to my Thomist eyes.
The reader will recall that I mentioned there being “four” broad camps of Catholic theological thought to be taken into consideration. The final one is somewhat more skeptical of the possibilities open to speculative theology as such. In its most over-emphasized claims, it takes the form of the “anti-rationalism” declared by a number of Orthodox authors and those influenced by them (but also in arguments echoing aspects of the anti-“theologism” found in the writings of the modernist George Tyrrell35). Nonetheless, there is a salutary tendency in certain Christians—both Eastern and Western—to decry the excessive pretenses of academic and discursive theology, focusing rather upon the life of ascetism and mysticism, emphatically promoting the mystic and saint to the central place deserving to receive the appellation “theologian.”36 Such persons will look upon academic theology with a critical eye and refuse to bestow upon the university and academy too central a place in theological culture and, moreover, will remind the other three camps of theology that their “theology” is much less elevated in formality than the mystical life of grace. They will be constant critics of the temptation to claim—if only implicitly by one’s methods—that speech about God is superior to speech to and with God. Such critics have an important—in fact, utterly essential—place in a sound theological culture, if it is to remain true to its Godward teleology.
But, in any event, I think that each of these broad “camps” offer positive resources and that any theological culture going forward must creatively combine the strengths of each. Note I said: any theological culture must combine these strands. We do not need, as individual theologians, to all try to glue together heterogenous practices and principles of theological discursion into a per accidens eclectic mess. Rather, a healthy ecclesial environment is one in which there is not an impending sense that these various impulses will try to eliminate each other at any given moment.
This does not mean that I’m calling for a kind of “quiet peace among all.” I have pretty strong opinions myself… and have very settled positions. But, it is the mark of a mature and healthy family to be able to have large boisterous disagreements without destroying the structure of that family. That’s what theological culture needs to be like today. Perhaps a bit like an ethnic Catholic Christmas in the Rust Belt of yore…
And the only way that that can be cultivated is by a shared commitment to loving the Church. We all have felt failed by institutions. Heavens indeed! Six times over since the pandemic, no matter what our political persuasion. But if we are Catholic, we must first and foremost love the Church: the Universal Church and the particular Church where we have found our spiritual home. This will not at all mean uniformity at the level of our ritual or devotional practices. But it will mean a kind of communion in the heart of the Church. Our theology should be born of the desire to render some account—stammering, never complete, but still truthful and truly “explanatory”—of the Uncreated Truth communicated to us in the form of many dogmas, doctrines, and practices. From within that unity, theologians can and must speak together and to others about the One Thing Necessary: God and His Saving Way.
In particular, see Thomas Joseph White, “The Future of Catholic Theology,” First Things (July 22, 2025), https://firstthings.com/the-future-of-catholic-theology/; Jason King, “Theology for the Drastic Changes Coming in Catholic Higher Education,” Church Life Journal (August 8, 2025), https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/theology-for-the-drastic-changes-coming-in-catholic-higher-education; Massimo Fagggioli, Theology and Catholic Higher Education: Beyond Our Identity Crisis (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2024).
Unsurprisingly, my sentiments are closest to those of Fr. White. Dr. King (whom I knew two decades ago as an undergraduate at St. Vincent College) is concerned with institutional matters in higher education which are not of my particular expertise, given that I do not labor in such institutions, though I am sympathetic to the overall concerns faced by Catholic higher education today, even if I am not sure that I agree with all of his policy recommendations regarding core theology. However, I admit that I have never taught a “traditional” 18-year-old student, so I will remain silent. Faggioli’s text is written from a much different perspective than my own, though I believe that it indicates important trends within the more progressive wing of Catholic theology which currently dominates much of the Catholic Theological Society of America. For that reason, it deserves consideration, but apart and not in an essay such as the present one, in order to discern the fault lines of the Catholic mind in our day and to identify those places where concerns of progressive theologians are being voiced in a spirit that is faithful to revealed truth and Catholic praxis.↩︎
In this regard, I have in mind, in particular, works, podcasts, and videos like those by Rod Dreher, Sebastian Morello, Jonathan Pageau, and others. For a partial genealogy of these discussions, prior to Dreher’s most recent popularization of McGilchrist, Harmut Rosa, Charles Taylor and others, see Jason Crawford, “The Trouble with Re-Enchantment,” Los Angeles Review of Books (September 7, 2020), https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-trouble-with-re-enchantment/. By saying that Dreher’s work is a form of “popularization,” I do not mean thereby to dismiss it. Even though I worry about a certain kind of renewed echo of Bergson-like epistemology in McGilchrist, it is nonetheless undeniable that this line of thought is exercising influence in Conservative circles today. Dreher’s text—as seems often to be the case for much of his writing—bears witness to his uncanny ability to capture something very important in the Zeitgeist and digest it for broad consumption. I wish that Thomists had among our ranks someone with a similar ability! See Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019); idem., The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2 vols. (London: Perspectiva Press, 2021); Harmut Rosa, Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, trans. James C. Wagner (Cambridge / New York: Polity, 2021); idem., The Uncontrollability of the World, trans. James C. Wagner (Cambridge / New York: Polity, 2020). The various major works of Taylor are well known, in which the themes of secularization and disenchantment, the modern conceptualization of the self, etc. are of central importance. Regarding McGilchrist, see comments in Cajetan Cuddy, “Nature, Grace, and Metaphysical Experience, or ‘Why the World Needs New Maritains’” on To Be a Thomist.↩︎
Some of the remarks in this essay echo what I presented as “Thoughts from a Byzantine Thomist” at the 2025 Sacra Doctrina Project. However, in my present essay, the focus is significantly different, and more universal in the scope.↩︎
Admittedly, every time is interesting. Such is the adventure of Providence.↩︎
For a recent biography of Fr. Fessio, see Cornelius Michael Buckley, Father Joseph Fessio, S.J.: California Blackrobe (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024).↩︎
I make the distinction of “Latin Catholics” here because, in the final analysis, the experience of Vatican II was very different in the Eastern Catholic Churches, most of whom vigorously set to the task of recovering their past heritage. The post-Conciliar difficulties in the East are different, for there has been a question of difficulties articulating our ecclesiological status as well as the status of a “recovered” patrimony which, in many cases, must be sought in a kind of reconstructed past. Thus, a romanticism for a 1000-year distant past has been the risk of contemporary Eastern Catholicism, as a reaction (understandable, but still not without its problems) to centuries of Latinization. For a good articulation of the issues involved in this dynamic, see the pre-conciliar essay by Cyril Korolevsky, Uniatism: definition, causes, effects, scope, dangers, remedies, trans. Serge Keleher (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2003). Similar observations have been made by numerous figures in the Melkite Catholic tradition. However, I personally have preferences for Korolevsky’s presentation, though he arguably places too much blame upon the shoulders of the Eastern Catholics themselves. Also, his ecumenical sensitivities are somewhat lacking and must be slightly reworked in view of post-Conciliar advances in this regard. (See the remarks of Keleher in the same volume.) For further citations, see Christopher Todd, Reclaiming Our Inheritance after Vatican II (Fairfax, VA: Eastern Christian Publications, 2023); also, several chapters in Andrew J. Summerson and Cyril Kennedy (eds.), Eastern Catholic Theology in Action: Essays in Liturgy, Ecclesiology, and Ecumenism (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2025).↩︎
See Philippe Chenaux, “Le père Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, un théologien "à la droite du Père,” Nova et Vetera (Swiss Edition) 100, no. 1 (2025): 59–75. Written in response to renewed Francophone and, especially, Anglophone interest in Garrigou-Lagrange, the article reads like a kind of reminder of the Dominican’s conservative politics and work in conjunction with the Holy Office. This narrative—which, obviously, contains truths that should be remembered, because truth should be remembered…—has been used for decades as an insinuation to prevent engagement with his thought. I invite the reader to read the political essays gathered in Philosophizing in Faith: Essays on the Beginning and End of Wisdom, ed. and trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019), 183–250. I do not agree on every political point with Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange (as I am far more sympathetic to the project of Journet-Maritain), and I am well aware of his involvement in Holy Office findings against Maritain (and of Garrigou-Lagrange’s concern that Journet himself expressed “a boundless veneration for Monsieur Maritain, who is constantly cited in [The Church of the Word Incarnate], from start to finish, as how the Thomists cite St. Thomas.” See Philippe Chenaux, “Maritain devant le Saint-Office: Le rôle du père Garrigou-Lagrange, OP,” 401–420 (here 411). It would seem, however, that the best spirit for considering the work of Maritain (and I also think Journet, even if the relations are different) is in the spirit of continuity (with development) in relation to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, as Maritain himself said late into his life, as recognized by Chenaux. Maritain remains a Thomist, in contrast to those whose methods are, as the French say, Thomasian, concerned solely with the historical thought of Thomas.↩︎
See Aidan Nicols, Reason with Piety: Garrigou-Lagrange in the Service of Catholic Thought (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria, 2008).↩︎
Richard Peddicord, The Sacred Monster Of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2015).↩︎
See Michael Root, “Overcoming Theological Amnesia,” First Things (December 1, 2024), https://firstthings.com/overcoming-theological-amnesia/. For certain important qualifications regarding the ressourcement of Baroque scholastics, see Fr. Cuddy’s own “Contemporary Academic Interest in the ‘Thomists’” here on To Be a Thomist. Also, see his forthcoming “Casuistry and Theology: Then and Now,” to be published in the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.
In many ways, we are still negotiating the dynamic diagnosed nearly twenty years ago by Russell Ronald (“Rusty”) Reno in his often-cited “Theology After the Revolution,” First Things (May 1, 2007), https://firstthings.com/theology-after-the-revolution/.↩︎
One point of wonder, during this period, is the way that the Western schools all basically dissolved. Scholasticism became a kind of general Thomism with an occasional smattering of this or that work of Bonaventure, though always presumed within a kind of general “scholastic synthesis” whose unity was overstated from the moment that authors like Maurice de Wulf wrote, decades earlier, about such a supposed “synthesis.”↩︎
David Bentley Hart, “Vinculum Magnum Entis” (April 1, 2015), https://firstthings.com/vinculum-magnum-entis/.↩︎
For example, see Cajetan Cuddy, “Garrigou-Lagrange and the Renewal of Catholic Theology,” in Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., On Divine Revelation: The Teaching of the Catholic Faith, trans. Matthew K. Minerd, vol. 1 (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2022), 1–43; “The Disappearance of Public Theology From the Public Sphere,” Church Life Journal, June 25, 2024, accessed August 1, 2024, https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-disappearance-of-public-theology/.↩︎
I reached this position through my gradual realization of how Jacques Maritain so greatly differed from the methods of Gilson and my own professor—eternal memory and blessed repose!—Msgr. John Wippel. However, given that I think that Fr. Cuddy has very ably exposited this issue elsewhere, I will not address it today.↩︎
I have reservations about the term “theological science” which I have set forth, a bit too lengthily but still in a form which I substantially hold today, in Matthew K. Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive: The Noetic Structure of Sapiential Knowledge,” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 18, no. 4 (Fall 2020): 1103–1146. I further explore certain particularities involved in the notions of science and wisdom in forthcoming essays (“Presence and Truth in Images” and “How to Defend Oneself Against the Accusation of ‘Theologism’: Nuancing Gardeil’s Response to George Tyrrell”) to be published in volumes of collected essays (publication details forthcoming). Nonetheless, as is also clear from these writings, I hold that discursive theology is, at its core, demonstrative (in the sense laid out by Gagnebet, Labourdette, Wallace, and Garrigou in the texts cited above), not dialectical, rhetorical, or poetical, even though the latter kinds of reasoning have their place therein, though under the sway of a logic which seeks, to the degree possible for wayfarers, some demonstratively certain articulation of the mysterium fidei.↩︎
We are here going to set aside the thornier issue concerning the proposition of truths to those who do not receive explicit external preaching of the Gospel. On this topic, I think that the noetic proposals in the line of Journet and Maritain are the most interesting and can be held in line with traditional Catholic teaching.↩︎
See ST II-II, q. 8, a. 3; II-II, q. 9, a. 3; and II-II, q. 45, a. 3, ad 1. See Cajetan In ST II-II, q. 4, a. 2, no. 3: “Moreover, note that St. Thomas says this about faith by comparing [that which is solely] practical to [that which is solely] speculative. Indeed, speaking more loftily and truly, we must say, in accord with his own thought and also with the truth, that faith is a habitus that is loftier than the practical and the speculative, having both kinds of truth in an eminent manner, just as the common sense is related to the proper sensibles, and hence does the tasks [habet opus] of both. However, speaking as many do, solely speaking of the speculative and the practical when speaking about the nature of faith [comparando ad haec duo], it is said to be speculative. However, the fact that the proposed interpretation corresponds to St. Thomas’s thought is clear on two heads. First of all, as was discussed in ST I, q. 1, a. 4, theological science, which is contained virtually in its principles (which are truths of faith), is something of this sort [namely, formally and eminently speculative and practical]. Secondly, it is confirmed by what he says regarding the gifts of the Holy Spirit that emanate from faith (see ST II-II, q. 8, a. 3 and q. 9, a. 3) namely that [understanding and knowledge] also are [formally and eminently speculative and practical].–The truth of this doctrine is clearly manifest in light of eminence of the divine cognition, of which faith is an impression belonging to the same order of knowledge [est impression propria ordinis], as was said concerning theology in ST I, q. 1, a. 4.” Also see Cajetan In ST I, q. 1, a. 4, nos. 7–8. Cajetan seems to hold this position rather firmly. He will refer to these two texts when he remarks on ST II-II, q. 8, a. 3 and also in his very brief comments on ST II-II, q. 45, a. 4: “In the third article, in response to the first objection, note that the practical and the speculative are united together in a superior order. To this end, see what we have written elsewhere about this in more detail.”↩︎
This point has been made, of course, by many during this past century. For my own presentation of this in a popularized form, see Matthew K. Minerd, Made by God, Made For God: Catholic Morality Explained (West Chester, PA: Ascension Press, 2021), ch. 7 (p. 51ff).↩︎
I draw this expression from Journet, himself drawing it from the Carmelite tradition.↩︎
I here have in mind George Tyrrell, for whom I have a kind of human fondness, even while thinking him to be pernicious. I will have more to say on him in a forthcoming article, “How to Defend Oneself Against the Accusation of ‘Theologism’: Nuancing Gardeil’s Response to George Tyrrell,” mentioned above.↩︎
This is a well-worn dictum taken from Pseudo-Dionysius.↩︎
Many works could be cited here merely within the Thomist tradition: John of St. Thomas, Thomas de Vallgornera, Garrigou-Lagrange, Gardeil (though I join those who slightly differ from him on certain important points), Maritain, Jean-Hervé Nicolas, Journet, Francis Cunningham, and others. Even though some believe that thinkers in this line become too “anti-conceptual”, I personally think that they do justice to the assent of faith alongside the noetic difference which marks the connatural knowledge of mysticism spoken of by so many mystics.↩︎
See Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “The Language of Spiritual Writers Compared with that of Theologians,” in The Three Ages of the Interior Life, vol. 2, trans. M. Timothea Doyle (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1948), 6–20; Yves Congar, “Langage des spirituels et langage des théologiens,” in Situation et tâches présentes de la théologie (Paris: Cerf, 1967) 135–58; Michel Labourdette, “What is Spiritual Theology,” trans. Matthew K. Minerd, Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 23, no. 3 (2025): 1103–1132.↩︎
Whether rightly or wrongly, such was how Chenu was interpreted by a number of his Dominican confreres Roman authorities in the 1930s and 40s. In addition to the works of Chenaux cited above, see Étienne Fouilloux, Une Eglise en quête de liberté: La pensée catholique française entre modernisme et Vatican II (1914–1962) (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2006); idem., “L’affaire Chenu (1937–1943),” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 98, no. 2 (2014): 261–352 (available online at https://shs.cairn.info/revue-des-sciences-philosophiques-et-theologiques-2014-2-page-261); idem., Le Saulchoir on Trial: (1932-1943), trans. Patricia Kelly (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2022). For Chenu’s own “manifesto,” see Marie-Dominique Chenu, A School of Theology: Le Saulchoir, trans. Joseph Komonchak and Mary Kate Holman (Adelaide: ATF Press, 2023). Of interest is also the forthcoming work of Mary Kate Holman, Marie-Dominique Chenu: Catholic Theology for a Changing World (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2025)↩︎
Theologizing on one’s knees was, after all, what Thomas Aquinas himself did. And it would be wrongheaded—to the extreme—to think that for seven-hundred years the Latin Church was subject to scholastics who only theologized “in their heads” or amid a welter of disincarnate propositions.↩︎
The moral and mystical life share a single continuity. As well summarized, albeit concerning a slightly different matter, by Henri-Dominique and Ambroise Gardeil in The True Christian Life, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022), 48–49:
↩︎Therefore, behold the mutual aid that the contemplative and active lives lend to one another. The first, the contemplative life, is the principle, the animating life, and, as it were, the mother of the second. There is no active life without the contemplative life. However, there is no complete contemplative life without the active life, nor is the contemplative life even practically possible without it. Indeed, the ways of God must be cleared out. Moreover, according to an even loftier order of necessity, the fullness of our superior life must spill over, thus finding in this external radiation, as it were, an overflowing perfection, as well as precious wages for growth as long as the time for meritorious work on earth has not come to its end.
You see how all this is organized in God’s thought and how it must all constitute a single life in us. The two parts of this life react on one another through charity, which is their bond, forming, as it were, a living cycle between them. The impulse coming from the theological virtues spreads out into the moral virtues, turns back, and returns to the theological virtues in which it facilitates the exercise of a loftier contemplation which once again triggers off toward the active life—it is a perpetual circle. Mary and Martha are made to mutually assist one another, each one maintaining, of course, her own proper function in the divine work in which they collaborate.
I have no program for how this should be brought about. Yet, I think it is of pivotal importance that such bonds be cultivated.↩︎
Concerning these factors of differentiation, I welcome the reader to consider some of the methodological remarks which I made in the talk “Thoughts from a Byzantine Thomist” cited above.↩︎
What I say here is meant to be a kind of counterbalance, to be read in filial obedience, to the desires for a “contextual theology” articulated by Pope Francis in his motu proprio “Ad theologiam promovendam,” https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/it/motu_proprio/documents/20231101-motu-proprio-ad-theologiam-promovendam.html.
Doubtless, this entire question involves matters related to the place of the “sensus fidelium” in theological reflection. To this end, it might be hoped that, in view of the recent elevation of St. John Henry Newman to the status of Doctor of the Church, the Spirit is moving the Church to have such discussions in view of the concerns famously voiced by Newman in his treatments concerning the consultation of the laity. Although I would welcome a consideration of synodality that is primarily concerned with the ecclesiological issue of collegiality and subsidiarity (a concern all Eastern Catholics feel with regularity), I also think that the current discussions of synodality—a bit free-floating and too inflected in the direction of progressive German concerns—are hitting on this open point which does, in point off act, need adjudication.
For some relevant sources related to the sensus fidei see, in particular, Bernhard Blankenhorn, “The Sensus fidei and Synodality: Theological Epistemology and the Munus Propheticum,” The Thomist 87 (2023): 311–338; International Theological Commission, “Faith and Inculturation” (1989), https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1988_fede-inculturazione_en.html ; idem., “Sensus fidei in the Life of the Church” (2014), https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_20140610_sensus-fidei_en.html; Ormond Rush, The Eyes of Faith: The Sense of the Faithful and the Church’s Reception of Revelation (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009). Finally, also important (for its explicit attempt to explain continuity and distinction in relation to the older scholastic treatises De locis), albeit brief, is Doronzo’s treatment of the Ecclesia credens and Ecclesia docens as two separate loci in Theologia dogmatica, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1966), nos. 407–411 (p. 439–443). Indeed, as will soon be discussed, it is evident that a renewal of discussion concerning the topics treatise in the treatises De locis theologicis is of pivotal importance for theology today.↩︎
Though, as Deely has shown, there is a very valid way, perhaps a very necessary way, to be post-modern.↩︎
Technically, such questions should only be answered after a full cursus of theology has been treated, lest a foreign methodology be foisted upon theological data. The owl of Minerva only flies at dusk… However, to begin such considerations, one can benefit from a living tradition, in which theologizing has been “sedimented” and presents us today with the shared, faithful labors of centuries of thought. I have provided some resources for such discussions and also am working on a translation of Emmanuel Doronzo’s De locis treatise. For some work here on To Be a Thomist, see: “The De locis theologicis: Its Nature, History, Aftermath, and Potential Future. An article by Fr. Ambroise Gardeil from the Dictionnaire de théologie catholique”, “Ambroise Gardeil, The Notion of a Theological Locus (Complete Text)”, “‘The Principles of Theology and Theological Loci,’ by Raymond Martin, OP”, “‘Melchior Cano and Modern Theology,’ by Mannès Jacquin”, “‘The Integral Object of Theology: According to Saint Thomas and the Scholastics,’ by Raymond Martin, OP. Also, see Matthew K. Minerd and John Kirwan (trans and ed.), The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie: Concerning the Truth of Dogma and the Nature of Theology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023). Likewise, too, see my “Wisdom Be Attentive.” I would update, in secondary (albeit important) details, certain points, in view of the works of Gagnebet cited variously in the translations and articles above.↩︎
“Concilium” is here standing in for a more progressive but nonetheless orthodox Catholicism.↩︎
See Michel Labourdette, “Theology and Its Sources,” in The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie, trans. Matthew K. Minerd and Jon Kirwan (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023), 136:
↩︎It is almost run-of-the-mill to note—and this is easily confirmed—that on many points the problematics involved in our theology have become [overly] academic [scolaire]. I mean, it is something learned and often remains bookish in character. Such theology indeed lends itself to reflection and real solutions, but nonetheless, it lacks a kind of dynamism [activation]. It is freighted, too hastily presuming itself to be completed and perfected. Only with difficulty does it escape the temptation to indolence and ease, merely resting on its past achievements. . . . Anyone who has had to teach theology will have had ample opportunity to experience this mental laziness, more the friend of formulas than of apprehension, more eager to rest on what has been achieved than to seek the first apperceptions of such truths so that one might then trace out anew the whole subsequent course of thought, doing so in a wholly personal way.
See Michel Labourdette, “Criticism in Theology,” in The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie, trans. Matthew K. Minerd and Jon Kirwan (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2023), 178n30:
Thomism is not only for us “the work of St. Thomas . . . historically considered.” It is a living doctrine that extends to truths that St. Thomas did not see, a doctrine that, of course, is also stripped of much adventitious data, outmoded conceptions, and forms of narrowness all inevitably connected to a number of historical influences and to the state of medieval culture and science. We believe that Thomism is perfectly open to the notion of history and that starting points for this sort of reflection are not lacking, even in the work of St. Thomas himself, “historically considered.”
Michel Labourdette, “Theology and Its Sources,” in The Thomistic Response, 141n8:
Scholasticism does not stand before modern thought as a closed system built upon “categories” which are irredeemably closed off from assimilating any new data. Its permanence is not that of a completed construction that has seen its day and whose scope, consequently, would remain limited strictly to problems historically considered, to solutions already given and to formulations that remain forever fixed. On the contrary, we believe that it is a perfectly living way of thinking, one that is both ambitious and capable of entering into and understanding new problems, able to assimilate everything contained in the most modern of doctrines. However, it has too much respect for the truth and is too concerned with its scientific rigor and with avoiding facile conformism for it to adorn itself immediately with ideas and “categories” that it would not have first carefully examined and critiqued.
And ibid., 160:
↩︎We expect a teaching to do something more for us than merely to awaken within ourselves a sense of beauty or merely to expose us to what is, in the end, an incommunicable experience. If it does this as well, we will be all the more indebted to such a teaching. However, its first responsibility is to raise us up to perceive—certainly, yes, with our own personal and living intelligence—truths that others have perceived before us, truths that have the same value for us as it had for them. We should not look upon theology as though it were a series of museum displays that, in the end, only function as an invitation for us to do something similar in our own era. For our part, we believe that definitive intellectual acquisitions are found in the domain of [human] knowledge. Nonetheless, no matter how much one might believe that something represents a form of progress, not all cases of apparent advance have in fact represented true steps forward. Many illusions and regressions can be found in the history of thought, but those cases of progress that have been tested and proven by time are to be counted among the most valuable riches that our culture has bequeathed to us.
Interestingly, as I pen these additional lines (added after the discussion for which this essay served as a means for personal reflection), I have found certain Roman Catholic traditionalist authors publicly embracing aspects of Tyrrell. I never thought I would live to see such a day. Nonetheless, I do understand why they are drawn to certain passages in him, regarding symbolism and its role in faith’s very data. In a forthcoming essay, mentioned earlier, I engage this very line of thought in Tyrrell and even critique Ambroise Gardeil for slight overreactions in his response to Tyrrell’s claims (while, also, recognizing that Tyrrell remains deeply problematic.)↩︎
A classic text considering this contrast, from a Western angle, is Dom Jean Leclercq’s The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1974). Many Orthodox authors make this point. For a classic articulation from the Slavic-Francophone world, see Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997).↩︎
