St. Thomas had a habit of inviting his readers to think through objections by making distinctions
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
This week, as we celebrate Catholic Schools Week, we also observe the feast of St. Thomas Aquinas on Jan. 28.
Don’t worry — I’m not going to recommend that everyone needs to read St. Thomas’ masterpiece, the “Summa Theologiae.”
But I do think — especially as the nation turns 250 and the Archdiocese of St. Louis turns 200 — that everyone would benefit from adopting some of the Angelic Doctor’s habits of thought. Let me name two in particular.
First, St. Thomas had a tremendous capacity to listen to objections — and not only to listen to them, but to take them at their best. Every question in the “Summa Theologiae” begins with an objection to the position that Thomas wants to take — in fact, usually with at least three (and sometimes as many as 10!). St. Thomas did that for many reasons: in part because the objections were really out there and needed to be answered; in part because many of the objections were partially true, and those partial truths needed to be integrated into a more complete picture; in part because he thought the faith could stand up to those objections.
Whether it’s a political debate, a philosophical debate or a theological debate, we’d do well to take a page from his book.
Second, St. Thomas had a habit of inviting his readers to think through objections by making distinctions. Let’s make a distinction between what the Bible says and what the Bible teaches.
It says that some of the ancient patriarchs had many wives; it doesn’t teach that polygamy is OK.
If God is everywhere, does it really matter where we pray? Every place can be a place of prayer, but there’s a real difference for us when we pray before the Blessed Sacrament.
Aren’t we all God’s children? Yes, but there are multiple layers of that: God is the father of all creatures, all rational creatures, all the baptized and all the saints in different ways.
How does the distinction between object, intention and circumstance qualify every moral action? If you do a good deed, but for the wrong reason, in the wrong way or at the wrong time, the intention and circumstances make it less good.
Those are just a few examples of the power of distinctions in how the Catholic faith approaches the world. A complex world requires many distinctions.
Jesus said — and we read it this week in Mark 4 — “The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”
It’s fair to say that American public discourse has become characterized by not listening carefully to objections, by not making the most of them and by not making distinctions in reasoning. This measure has been measured out and measured back so many times that it’s spiraled into shouting matches and echo chambers. Can we do better?
St. Thomas’ habits are a school for something better. As the archdiocese turns 200 and the nation turns 250, he offers a model of maturity. We don’t need to know all the answers he knew; that’s a field for specialists. (And it’s good that we have specialists.) But we can all learn something by adopting his habits of thought. Schooling ourselves in those habits will benefit ourselves, the Church and American culture.
St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!
