This article is not intended to show that anything is actually missing from the Catholic religion itself. Rather, it is simply a commentary on the evident truth that an essential component of Catholicism’s intellectual heritage has largely “gone missing” from today’s Catholic culture.
For many Christians today, the essential content of their religious experience is based on their private interpretation of the Bible as inspired—according to their belief—by the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, history shows that this belief leads to conflicting interpretations which simply cannot be reconciled—especially since they lack any extra-biblical authority to decide which is correct.
The most famous example of this dilemma is that of the Marburg Colloquy of 1529 in which Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli held opposing interpretations of Scripture concerning the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. With no external authority to decide the issue, no agreement could be reached as to which side was correct. That is the inherent weakness of the Lutheran doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone). Lacking any external decisive authority, such as the Catholic Magisterium, no one can determine whose “inspired” reading of Scripture is correct.
Even for those who think they follow Sola Scriptura, supplementary rational presuppositions are unavoidable. For instance, how is one to know that Scripture is actually the inspired word of God? Because it says it is? Did you ever meet a liar who does not swear that he is truthful?
Moreover, the claim that Scripture is so intrinsically coherent and beautiful that it bespeaks its own authenticity suffers the same problem inherent in the inconsistencies of interpretation described above, as in the conflicting interpretations of Luther and Zwingli on the central question of transubstantiation. For, if different readers can competently defend contradictory readings, how can we be certain of internal coherence?
Better proofs for Scripture can be given through finding history consistent with biblically-reported events, early manuscripts, archeology, agreement between manuscripts, and other lines of external proof. But these supportive arguments are based on external evidence, not intrinsic to the Bible alone.
In fact, Scripture itself tells us that the existence of God is known—not by reading Scripture—but rather by reasoning from effects back to a First Cause: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:” Romans 1:20 (KJV). Thus Scripture itself points to a philosophical foundation for belief in God.
Protestant thought generally lacks the fully-developed, rich intellectual history of philosophical themes which mark the foundations of Catholic theology. This is not to deny the amazing intellectual contributions of certain individual Protestants, such as C.S. Lewis, whose insights are often and deservedly cited even by Catholic thinkers. Of course, Lewis himself was an orthodox Anglican—a religion whose own theology draws extensively from its Catholic origins.
It is true that some Protestants, such as William Lane Craig, attempt to prove God’s existence through the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which argues that science teaches that the world had a beginning in time, which proves the need for a Creator to start its existence. Ironically, the problem with this argument is that—as St. Thomas Aquinas himself points out—since the God of classical theism is claimed to exist from all eternity, he could have been creating things from all eternity, so that a first beginning point for the cosmos is not logically necessary.
This is not to denigrate all the sincere attempts by Protestant thinkers to ground their belief systems in some sort of rational foundations.
Catholicism’s Traditional Intellectual Culture
Just as the Bible insists in Romans 1:20, those who deny God’s existence are “without excuse,” since even the divine Godhead is evident from “the things that are made” by God. In other words, even without religious revelation, man’s mind has no excuse for failing to understand the necessity for God’s existence—simply by looking at the world and reasoning to the need for God’s “eternal power” to create it.
This is precisely why the Catholic Church, even from its inception, has always had saints and theologians who offered rational arguments for the existence of God, the spirituality and immortality of the human soul, and the need for some sort of natural law ethics emanating from God and binding on the very consciences of all mankind.
While there was major Platonic influence on the early Church Fathers, such as St. Augustine (354-430), the intellectual influence and power of Aristotle came to dominate more and more Catholic thought—achieving the universally-recognized pinnacle of theological and philosophical excellence in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). The preeminence of the thought of St. Thomas has been so evident in Catholic thought that it was virtually canonized by Pope Leo XIII in his landmark encyclical, Aeterni Patris in 1879, when he enshrined forever the central role of Thomistic philosophy as foundational to the authentic theology of the Catholic religion.
Indeed, after noting the central role of St. Thomas Aquinas in the theological development of the Catholic Church—a role affirmed time and time again by his pontifical predecessors and Church councils, Pope Leo XIII makes this central exhortation for the future role of St. Thomas in Catholic education:
“Let carefully selected teachers endeavor to implant the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of students, and set forth clearly his solidity and excellence over others. Let the universities already founded or to be founded by you illustrate and defend this doctrine, and use it for the refutation of prevailing errors” (Aeterni Patris, n. 31).
Catholic Education’s Thomistic Content
Well known is the successful development of Catholic education in America since the promulgation of Aeterni Patris. Catholic primary and secondary schools sprang up all over, while Catholic colleges and universities followed the exhortations of Leo XIII to spread the wisdom of Thomistic thought both in their departments of philosophy as well as theology.
Indeed, by 1960, Catholic education at all levels had so spread its influence that the Church itself was gaining new adherents at a dramatic rate—so great, in fact, that these large conversions themselves were used as an apologetic argument for the truth of the religion itself!
In Catholic universities and colleges, strong programs of philosophy and theology, imbued with Thomistic content, were to be found in every institution. In fact, about 1960, the Jesuits themselves noted the major cultural influence of the Catholic graduates of their thirty-eight colleges and universities firmly committed to spreading the solid and traditional intellectual content of the Faith.
At that time, just prior to the Second Vatican Council, the typical Catholic higher educational core curriculum entailed as much as twenty-four credits of orthodox Catholic theology as well as another twenty-four credits of philosophy courses deeply committed to incorporating the content of the various and ordered Thomistic sciences. These were not mere groupings of discussions drawn from various philosophical traditions, but rather were the highly organized and logically developed content of the traditional philosophical sciences taught in strict accordance with the doctrine, method, and principles of the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas.
Typically, a Catholic university philosophy core curriculum would contain a sequence of courses using standard undergraduate text books based on the original books of Aristotle as commented upon and perfected by St. Thomas:
- Aristotelian Logic—the science and art of correct reasoning, focusing especially on the formal deductive argument known as the syllogism.
- Philosophy of Nature—the general study of nature, introducing such notions as potency and act, form and matter.
- Philosophical Psychology—the study of the soul as the first principle of life in living things, the emotions and senses shared by man and animals, and the proofs that man has a spiritual and immortal intellectual soul possessing a free will.
- Epistemology—a critical analysis of knowledge and the conditions requisite for objective certitude about fundamental truths and extramental realism.
- Metaphysics—the science of being. The truth of the first principles of being, their analogical and transcendental validity.
- Natural Theology—the proofs for God’s existence and nature. God’s relation to the world of creatures.
- General Ethics—the science of the good in human acts—considered in terms of its general principles, including the modifiers of responsibility for free choices of good or evil acts.
- Special Ethics—the science of determining the objective moral goodness or evil of specific kinds of human acts, e.g., murder, fornication, theft, lying, and so forth.
The above undergraduate exposure to the central themes of the Thomistic philosophical sciences gave every graduate of a four-year Catholic college or university a thorough understanding that there is a firm rational foundation for certain core beliefs of Catholicism. This is not to say that such college graduates were, thereby, competent Thomistic philosophers! Still, at the very least, those students completing a bachelor’s degree now understood that there were entirely rational arguments for the spirituality of the human soul, the existence of the God of classical theism with all his traditionally-attendant attributes, and the existence of a natural law ethics instilled in the very fabric of our being by an omnipotent Creator.
Therefore, Catholic students who received this entire program of philosophy knew well that Catholicism has a solid and substantive rational foundation which comports fully with the doctrinal and moral teachings of their faith.
Catholic Colleges Reject Church Authority
About the time the Second Vatican Council ended, widely- reported controversies touching on the content of classroom teaching occurred at two Catholic universities, St. John’s University in Brooklyn, New York, and at the University of Dayton in Ohio.
At St. John’s University, the debate appears to have been about administration control of Thomistic teaching in philosophy classes. In the fall of 1965, thirty-one faculty members were summarily dismissed, leading to a faculty strike starting in January of 1966, with union claims of violation of academic freedom. The strike ended in June of 1967 without the professors being reinstated, but with the new American Federation of Teachers becoming the pre-eminent union representing American university professors.
The controversy at the University of Dayton concerned charges that theology and philosophy professors were teaching content against the Ordinary Magisterium, such as arguing in favor of situation ethics, contraception, and abortion. This controversy ultimately led to a direct investigation by Cincinnati Archbishop Karl J. Altar with findings reported to the University of Dayton and to the public. Records were also requested by the Vatican.
In the summer immediately following these events, University of Notre Dame President, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., led a conference of Catholic educators held in 1967 at Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin. This historic meeting concluded by issuing what is known as the Land O’Lakes Statement which included a revolutionary declaration of independence for Catholic universities even from any clerical authority. This logically would include rejection of the authority of the Magisterium itself.
“To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.” Land O’Lakes Statement, Section 1.
The Cardinal Newman Society summarizes the effects of this landmark declaration: “Over the course of just a few years following the statement, most Catholic colleges and universities in America shed their legal ties to the Church and handed their institutions over to independent boards of trustees. …The wound of secularization deepened over the next few decades: many Catholic colleges and universities weakened their core curricula in favor of the Harvard model of electives and specialization, adopted a radical notion of academic freedom, embraced relativism and political correctness, and largely abandoned the project of forming young people for Christ outside the classroom.”
While it is not the focus of this article to show the effects of this massive secularization of Catholic colleges and universities on the content of their theology curricula, its effect was profound and deserves full treatment in itself. The central concern of this essay is the profound effects of this trend on the traditional core requirements of the Thomistic philosophical sciences.
Profound Changes in Philosophy Core Requirements
As noted earlier, the full sequence of the traditional Thomistic sciences usually taught in Catholic colleges just before the Second Vatican Council required as many as twenty-four credit hours out of a standard one hundred and twenty credit hour bachelor’s degree. Normally, eight three credit hour courses were required.
In many institutions, changes did not occur all at once. Typically, a college changed the philosophy core requirements from twenty-four down to eighteen. Over time this was reduced to twelve, then, perhaps, to nine, then six. It was not unusual to require something like one introductory course, followed by a course in ethics.
The practical problem, though, was the content of the introductory course. So short a course cannot possibly contain all the content of the proper Thomistic sciences listed earlier. Moreover, with philosophy faculty typically no longer committed to Thomism anyway, the natural tendency of such courses would be merely to introduce students to several major philosophical topics, such as the person, freedom, immortality, and the possible existence of God. Moreover, since Thomism is no longer a major commitment, inevitably, the topics will be presented in terms of the views of conflicting major philosophical schools of thought.
The net result tends to be to create relativism, historicism, and pluralism in the minds of young students—hardly the solid rational foundations presupposed by Catholicism or any form of committed Christian belief.
Then, what about the subsequent ethics course? Natural law ethics presupposes several major philosophical foundations, for example, 1) the spiritual and immortal character of a fixed human nature and 2) the existence of an all good and intelligent Creator who gives man a nature ordered to its perfection through free choices aimed at goods proper to that nature.
Amazingly, even one well-reputed orthodox Catholic university appears to place metaphysics after ethics in its core curriculum. Frankly, this makes no sense, since the existence of God (which is proven in metaphysics) is presupposed as the foundation for any natural law ethics, since the natural law comes from the Intelligent Supreme Lawmaker, who is the God of classical theism.
Given the inevitable inadequacies of the introductory course described above, the now-confused students have no rational basis on which to erect any natural law science of ethics. The net result is an ethics course that simply presents the various historical positions, including natural law and utilitarianism—again leaving the student with no outcome but relativism and historicism.
In point of fact, many contemporary Catholic philosophy core requirements specify only a single introductory course followed by any upper division course of the student’s choosing! Such upper division courses may even include such “interesting” topics as the philosophy of feminism or racism!
In a word, the entire rational foundations for erecting a complete and mature Catholic, or even Christian, intellectual formation have simply been eradicated in most contemporary Catholic colleges and universities!
This is Catholicism’s “Missing Link.” It is not a defect in the God of classical theism’s sole authentic religious revelation: the Catholic Church. But it is a totally unnecessary and devastating loss of the essential rational foundation upon which that faith rests.
It is a loss of that essential intellectual cultural heritage that, when retained, sets Catholicism apart from the many sectarian forms of Christianity which are either weak or almost totally lacking in these critical philosophical components, for example, rational proofs for the spiritual and immortal soul, the existence of the God of classical theism whose nature comports perfectly with the world as he has created it, and the rational defenses of a natural law which comports perfectly with the revealed Ten Commandments.
The traditional intellectual history and culture of Catholicism rests on this solidly-proven rational foundation—a foundation generally lacking in many contemporary Protestant Christian sects. This philosophical foundation—most perfectly articulated in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and his more recent disciples—needs to be studied, not just by Catholics, but by all Christians. Moreover, it must be restored to the intellectual formation offered in all genuinely Catholic institutions of higher learning—so that the Church herself may achieve its full contribution to the intellectual formation and sustenance of a vibrant and glorious Christian culture.
Postscript
Now that most Catholic colleges and universities are governed by secular boards of trustees that act fully independently of any authority of their local bishops, no bishop can directly correct the deviations from Catholic teachings these institutions may now permit. And yet, since the 1967 Land O’Lakes Statement, such deviations now abound without restriction. Moreover, what was once the most substantial part of a core curriculum that contained very orthodox and philosophically-supported Catholic philosophy and theology is now—for all practical purposes—simply gone.
Today many parents are paying to send their children to what they think is a faithful Catholic university or college, when, unfortunately, the sad truth is that in most such institutions of higher learning what used to be a solid Catholic intellectual formation that has been largely emptied of its original Catholic theological and philosophical content. In a word, they are paying extra for something that does not give their children the rich Catholic intellectual heritage they expect.
The only remaining substantively-authentic Catholic colleges and universities are probably those listed in the Newman Guide, which amount to about seventeen American institutions of higher learning. Regretfully, it is also clearly evident that modern secular public colleges and universities are virtually designed to lead young people away from their religious beliefs and more toward the latest revolutionary political agendas.
Finally, while the secularization of the boards of trustees at Catholic colleges and universities may make it impossible for local bishops to intervene directly in the affairs of “Catholic” institutions, the 1983 Code of Canon Law states: “Even if it is in fact Catholic, no university is to bear the title or name of Catholic university without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.” (Canon 808)
Every bishop still retains the right and duty to inform his flock that he no longer judges that a particular college or university should call itself “Catholic.” And yes, even the failure to convey Catholicism’s “missing Thomistic link” may be sufficient reason to take such action.
Post Postscript
One final point of clarification should be made. While this essay consistently uses “Thomism” or “Thomistic” or “the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas” as the norm for acceptable philosophical foundations for genuinely Catholic doctrine and theology, this is not intended to contradict Pope John Paul II’s clarification made in his encyclical, Veritatis Splendor, 29: “Certainly, the Church’s Magisterium does not intend to impose upon the faithful any particular theological system, still less a philosophical one.”
The preeminence of Thomistic thought in the history of the Church is incontestable, as witnessed by Aeterni Patris, cited earlier. While there do exist other systems of thought that are compatible with Catholic belief, such as Augustinianism or Scotism, they do not represent what is by far the dominant and, based on the teaching of Aeterni Patris, most perfect theological and philosophical system of thought.
Moreover, since Vatican Council II, as Veritatis Splendor itself observes, “there have developed certain interpretations of Christian morality which are not consistent with “sound teaching” (2 Tim 4:3).
Therefore, wherever Thomism or Thomistic philosophy has been mentioned in this essay earlier, the reader should understand that this is intended as an expression of that philosophy which is “preferred and recommended” by the Church—not exclusive of those other systems of Catholic thought entirely compatible with sound teaching, which may also serve as legitimate intellectual foundations for Catholic doctrine.
The problem we face today is either 1) the failure to provide sufficient college courses in theology and philosophy which are genuinely capable of providing such Catholic intellectual foundations, or, worse yet, 2) the actual inclusion in college course work of systems of thought which are not consistent with sound Catholic teaching at all.
