Larry Chapp also invited me to say something to him on facebook regarding my rage about Weigel. I figured I would put it here for the record. To be clear: I think very highly of Larry
Glory to Jesus Christ!
Dear Larry,
First and foremost, you’re going to see that I’m quite saucy above in my response. (For quick reference: https://www.philosophicalcatholic.com/blog/2022/10/12/vexation-aimed-aroused-by-weigel
However, take it to be like the sauciness that you yourself like and do with such great Christian vigor.
Jon’s remark is mine too. He and I have a book that is a total of over 160k words on this topic. 40k word intro and then translations of all the major OP responses during the “nouvelle théologie crisis.”
On the term “neo-scholasticism”: I stick by my guns. Yes, it is post-leonine Thomism. But, first and foremost, I’ll just say it again: the only fully (note that adverb, which is before the adjective) real Thomism is the Thomism that doesn’t reject the Thomist school. For saying such things, I’ve had people from UST blow up at me online. Fine. I’ll never be hired somewhere “reputable”. If people are that petty, that’s fine. I’ve never said that they shouldn’t publish. I’m just saying that one will always be a schizophrenic Thomist who also reinvents wheels with a chronolatrous presentism that always goes back to Thomas’s texts as though we are the ones who only now can read them aright. Look at how many wheels have been reinvented these past decades. It’s so tiresome. Theology and philosophy seem to be the only disciplines that wish to condemn themselves to never progressing for real—for one never wishes to admit that some acquisitions can be definitive—lest one’s own libidinous desire for novelty might be limited by the cold hand of the past (a hand which in fact cradles us and provides the very conditions for any true progress).
I’m not anti-Gilson. I’m not even anti-Mercier. I’m not anti-De Finance. I’m not anti-Fabro. I’m not anti-Wippel. I’m not anti-UST. God in heaven, read Fr. Emmanuel Durand’s forthcoming book most of which I translated and all of which I edited. I found it profound throughout. It is not my style of Thomism, and I do think something is perhaps lacking when one doesn’t engage with the Thomist school. But, I think that it’s all profound and is utterly legitimate theology in a broadly Thomist heritage. (I am anti-Maréchal, but that’s because he seems to have gone way too far off the range…..). But, I am a staunch defender of the prerogative of the Thomist school. And damned be me if I hold my lips for fear of repercussions that I’ll never feel, given that I’ve long ago torched all possibility of a normal career.
Anyway, the expression “neo-scholasticism” is at best an extrinsic and very vague historical denomination. What’s the point. It’s just like saying, “Roman Catholic folks who wrote, in all sorts of ways, with all sorts of presuppositions, generally touching in with Thomas and other scholastics, all after Aeterni Patris.”
(To understand what I think about training in Thomism, see this essay by John Cahalan:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eda794851ef816b04d5f4d5/t/5ee5085ccda9177fb9184634/1592068188935/Hudson14.pdf
Also, this one by John Deely:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eda794851ef816b04d5f4d5/t/5ee4e5e88a33630b03883e73/1592059372145/Ciapalo05.pdf
On the manuals, take a look at my florilegium from Garrigou. This is my position. I’ll defend to death that he wasn’t a manualist. He was a Roman professor, and hence was marked by the limitations that came with that (and they were real limitations). But, I’ll fight unto the Ragnarök / Götterdämmerung to defend the claim that Garrigou wasn’t a manualist.
Florilegium: https://www.philosophicalcatholic.com/quotations/2022/10/12/florilegium-of-garrigou-quotes-on-the-manuals
I have more than once had Roman Catholic Traditionalists contact me to try to reinstate “the manuals”. I’m not interested in that. I think there are some good manuals (and _a lot_ of dross). In point of fact, just recently, when I saw that Prümmer’s short work was republished, I thought, “My dear Lord! Why wouldn’t they at least translate his 3-volume manual. But, even better than him was Merkelbach – though more technical and longer.” But, when people cry for the manuals, what they are crying for is a kind of saving from the nebulous state of theology today. You and I agree that is true. Good textbooks are what they want, but no few of old manuals were all too marked by the neat kind of mediocrity that is all too human—especially if you are going to teach a broad swath such as seminarians, who are not all looking to be theologians. Okay, so we need faithful textbooks. But that doesn’t mean that the silver bullet is found in something merely because it is called a manual. In any case, if the brief Prümmer were all that one used, it would at best be a useful factbook. But it would also distort one’s view of Moral Theology, even according Thomism. (From the start this is true, if you just read how briefly and superficially he discusses what falls the Thomistic treatise on beatitude.)
But, now that I’ve said that, I’ll draw down the ire of some trads around my neck…. I hope, though, it earns me some credibility as an independent party….