Thomas Aquinas

I had not originally intended to give two talks this week, but it's my own fault.

But I'm very happy to be speaking to you today on experiments in Aquinas.

Now, I'm being cheeky here.

There is a word, experimentum, that Aquinas uses.

If you read Aquinas in English, you will never see the word experiment, because experimentum is almost always in English translated as experience, and in one sense that is a better translation, because Aquinas is not thinking about experiments in the contemporary context of making a fancy device to test things.

And yet, again, in my perhaps rose-colored glasses, there's a sense in which his notion of experiment, which is much deeper than the general sense of experience that we would take for granted, actually comes close to, or at least is important for, I think, getting a sense of how experiments help us to understand the natural world.

And so that's what I'm hoping to do today.

So I won't actually be talking about making physical devices, but I'm going to be talking about an important aspect of how Aquinas understands how we learn about the world around us and the natural world.

So notice how Prudence discerns the true good, not the false goods, the authentic, deep, profound, true good in every situation, in every decision, in every circumstance.

prudence also chooses the right means to achieve it not just any means the best means most fruitful means most efficient most economical the book of proverbs says the prudent person looks where they're going saint thomas aquinas says and the prudence is recta ratio agibilium it's the right reason in action right reason applied to practice right reason in doing, ordering things according to their end or their purpose.

Doing things or using things for the purpose for which they have been created.

And so it's the virtue that has as its object to tell us what to do in each particular case.

Because actually, your saints and heretics are closer together than what anyone might think.

Because don't forget, Thomas Aquinas was studying Aristotle when Aristotle was banned by the Roman Catholic Church.

And Thomas Aquinas wasn't always Thomas Aquinas.

the way he's considered now.

And saints and heretics always have that edge to them.

You realize they are not just words we made up, they're real and solid, existing beyond our labels and names.

The great medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas believed in a heartfelt realism over and against nominalism.

He suggested that universal truths are eternally present in the divine mind before they find expression in the physical world.

When we talk about justice or love, we're not just creating practical social rules.

And our sin actually deserves eternity in hell.

And Thomas Aquinas said this.

He was considered the greatest theologian of the medieval church.

He said the higher the position the one sinned against, the graver the sin.

Let me just...

Okay, so when St. Thomas Aquinas says, the Jews, by reason of their faults, are sentenced to perpetual servitude, am I, like...

What is that? Doesn't he say that?

Rejection of logos.

He actually says this several times throughout his writings, including also in The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ.

And in case you don't believe him, he quotes St. Teresa of Avila to back him up, as well as St. Thomas Aquinas.

Commenting on scripture passages about prayer and perseverance, St. Alphonsus says, Those who do not ask with perseverance will not persevere.

He wrote guidelines for priests when hearing confessions and manuals to help priests with their own spiritual growth and to catechize the laity and teach them how to pray.

And this requires a priest hearing confessions to know the teachings of the church, but it also requires them to know people and what their people are really capable of, so as not to burden them with penances they will never carry out.

And St. Alphonsus found this balance by the combination of his rigorous training on the one hand, and his experience as a missionary with real people on the other.

And his moral theology would become the Catholic standard, making him a kind of counterpart to Aquinas, And this is actually the biggest part of his legacy as a doctor of the church.

What Thomas Aquinas was to philosophical theology, Alphonsus Liguori was to moral theology.

That's just, that's just, it's circular logic.

But, But then I read a Thomas Aquinas scholar who taught me that we love ourselves because God first loved us.

And we don't know better than God.

If God loves us and he sees all our flaws, then we should love ourselves.

One, he wants to thank the Blessed Virgin Mary big time.

Two, he wants to have some questions for Thomas Aquinas and also some of the Greek fathers questions about philosophy and then he said after my third one I want is after I take a little rest in heaven because I didn't rest much on earth I'm going to ask the good Lord to send me back down to bring souls back to the church

And that's exactly what he's doing now.

All right, Bella Dodd, folks, New York attorney, member of the Communist Party, USA, was another Sheen pupil.