Thomas Aquinas and Priestly Formation: From His Life to Vatican II

2024

“Aquinas and Ignatius on the ‘Hierarchical Church,’” in Ignatius of Loyola & Thomas Aquinas: A Jesuit Ressourcement, ed. Matthew Levering, Justin Anderson, and Aaron Pidel (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2024), 197–216.

The future of the church depends mainly on the education and formation of seminarians today.1 Dean R. Hoge raises two questions, why does the Catholic church have fewer priests than it did twenty or thirty years ago? why there is a clergy shortage in every diocese? and he

In this chapter I discuss three different configurations of how both important goals have been articulated in the 1950s, in the first years of the Council and towards its end. In the decade before Vatican II a number of Catholic theologians contributed to a renewal of the self-understanding of the Church by applying the notion of sacrament to the Church. This self-understanding was at the same time a ressourcement since the Dominicans Congar and Schillebeeckx and the Jesuits Lubac, Rahner and Semmelroth engaged in a fresh reading of the third part of the Summa Theologiae to reflect (i) on the incarnated Son of God as mediator of God’s grace, (ii) on the Church as sacrament and (iii) on the ecclesial effects of Baptism, Confirmation and the Eucharist. A difference between these theologians could be observed in view of their openness to modernity and the world. Schillebeeckx, with his use of the terminology of ‘encounter’, Semmelroth, who insisted on the role of the laity in the sacramental mission of the Church and Rahner, who already anticipated his theory of anonymous Christianity, were most interested in this theme. The views of these theologians have been officially received – often with the cooperation of the same theologians as Council periti – in the central role the notion of Church as sacrament has received in Lumen Gentium. By giving this image a central place the Council fathers wanted to give up the self-centeredness of pre-Conciliar Roman Catholic ecclesiology. The Church has in first instance to be a sign and a modest instrument of God’s offer of grace to humankind. Interestingly, in the Council’s reflections on Christ as sacrament, the Church as sacrament and the effects of the sacraments, the very same key texts from Aquinas were cited that had been used in the works of the mentioned theologians. The term sacramentum mundi is not yet found in the preparation of Sacrosanctum Concilium, Lumen Gentium or Unitatis Redintegratio during the first and second session. The German scheme, which had a strong impact on the opening paragraph of Lumen Gentium, was particularly interested in the relationship of Church and world. In distinction from this, the quotations of LG 1 and LG 48 in Ad Gentes and Gaudium et Spes as well as Schillebeeckx’ interpretation of the notion of Church as sacrament as sacramentum mundi reflect a greater interest in the instrumental role of the Church. What Schillebeeckx has learned from St. Thomas, however, is never abandoned. For him Aquinas was an authority, as for his fellow theologians at Vatican II.

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2011

Wrocławski Przegląd Teologiczny, 2021

The article analyses the Thomistic understanding of Tradition in the context of the contemporary theological discussion on the extent of changes proposed by recent papal texts, which for one group of theologians is a change of Tradition, and for another a faithful development of it. By recalling the 19th-century understanding of “developing” Tradition forged on the dispute with modernism by Newman, Möhler or Blondel, and juxtaposing it with a Thomistic approach, a conviction is shown that fidelity demands the theologian to develop what is conveyed in the Revelation. Contemporary debates, however, reveal old theological problems, including ultramontanism, which is voiced when the primacy of the Bishop of Rome is reduced to guarding formulas, rather than receiving and illuminating the current problems with the light of Revelation. On the base of the biblical commentaries of St Thomas Aquinas to the Letters of St Paul, the vision of the exercising primacy of the Bishop of Rome will be analysed.

Religion and World Civilizations: How Religion Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present. Volume 2: Medieval and Early Modern Worlds, 2023

This is the final draft of the manuscript. I do not yet have permission from the publisher to upload the printed version. Please cite this as: Van Boom, Jason Cronbach (2023). “Theology of Thomas Aquinas,” in Religion and World Civilizations: How Religion Shaped Societies from Antiquity to the Present. Volume 2: Medieval and Early Modern Worlds. Andrew Holt, editor. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 53-54.

Biblica et Patristica Thoruniensia, 2017

Aquinas' Commentary on Hebrews explores the theological understanding of the priesthood of Christ, who alone is the 'true priest'. It as human, homo, that Christ is priest. One of the key insights of the Commentary is the way Aquinas relates Christ's high priesthood and the priesthood of the mystical body, the Church. Aquinas is clear: all the baptised have a share in the priesthood of Christ, all are sealed with the Holy Spirit. The ecclesial implications of this anthropology still are to be fully realised. Streszczenie. Komentarz św. Tomasza z Akwinu do Listu do Hebrajczyków wyjaśnia teologiczne zrozumienie kapłaństwa Chrystusa, który jest jedynym "prawdziwym kapłanem", w jaki sposób Chrystus, jako człowiek jest kapłanem. Jednym z kluczowych spostrzeżeń komentarza jest spojrzenie Akwinaty dotyczące arcykapłaństwa Chrystusa i kapłaństwa Mistycznego Ciała, którym jest Kościół. Przekaz Akwinaty jest jasny: wszyscy ochrzczeni mają udział w kapłaństwie Chrystusa, wszyscy są opieczętowani Duchem Świętym. Kościelne implikacje tej antropologii wciąż oczekują na pełną realizację.

There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead. Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith… The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy (Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy). Discuss.

God's Friar:

The Thomist, 2025