Thomas Aquinas

Pope Pius X, Promoting Piety, Rejecting Modernism
History

Pope Pius X, Promoting Piety, Rejecting Modernism

07/27/2025 Bruce Strom 0

After the long and momentous papacy of Pope Leo XIII, the cardinals sought a candidate who would be a pastoral pope. They chose Guiseppe Sarto, who had spent his entire priestly life as a pastor, last serving as patriarch of Venice. He was from a family of modest means, and for nine years he served as a priest in a country parish. His formal education was meager, he studied at a seminary in Padua.
Our author John O’Malley explains: “Pope Pius X had never set foot outside Italy. He saw things in terms of black and white. While still Patriarch of Venice, he wrote to a friend: ‘When we speak of the Vicar of Christ, we must not quibble. We must obey. We must not evaluate his judgments or criticize his directions lest we do injury to Jesus Christ himself. Society is sick. The one hope, the one remedy, is the pope.’ The words ring like an Ultramontanist manifesto.” […]

Pope Pius IX, 1848 Revolutions and First Vatican Council
History

Pope Pius IX, 1848 Revolutions and First Vatican Council

07/11/2025 Bruce Strom 1

Why did Pope Pius IX call the council? John O’Malley notes: “Some people speculated he wanted it solemnly to confirm the Syllabus of Errors. He may have wanted it as a show of Catholic strength worldwide against the church’s enemies, especially in Italy.”
O’Malley continues: “Despite the broad agenda that was anticipated, the council dealt with only two items. The first was the relationship between revealed truth and the powers of human reason.” The council affirmed both the distinction and compatibility between them. With that resolved, the council planned to discuss “church-state relations and the role of the bishops, but with the encouragement of Pius it bypassed them and moved directly to consider” “papal primacy and papal infallibility.”
Papal primacy was not new; the Catholic Church had held this view for fifteen hundred years. But the pope and many bishops felt that the church needed to definitively state that the pope had full authority, not only over matters of faith and morals, but also over discipline and governance for the church worldwide, for both clergy and laity. […]

Popes Between Trent and Vatican I, Including Napoleon, the French Revolution, and Pope Pius VI
History

Catholic Popes from Trent to French Revolution and Napoleon to Vatican I

07/10/2025 Bruce Strom 2

Negotiations for a Concordat between France and the Pope dragged on for thirteen months and over two dozen drafts. O’Malley writes: “Pope Pius VII and” his secretary of state “Consalvi stalled for time, intent on getting out of Napoleon every concession they could. The delay drove Napoleon crazy. He threw tantrums. He threatened to become a Protestant. He threatened to have his troops march on Rome. But finally, on July 15, 1801, the concordat was signed.”
What were the terms of the concordat? Although it acknowledged that most French were Catholics, there was freedom of religion, and Catholicism was not the state religion of France. O’Malley notes: “The buildings and real estate seized from the church during the Revolution were to remain in the hands of the new owners, but cathedrals and churches needed for worship were put at the disposal of clergy as needed. The clergy, who must swear to uphold the government, were paid by the state, which is the first time in history for such a provision.” It reaffirmed that “the state had the right to nominate bishops, subject to the approval of the papacy.” […]

Summary of Mere Christianity, WWII Ecumenical Broadcast: Morality, Not Polemics
CS Lewis

Summary of CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity, WWII Ecumenical Broadcast: Morality Not Polemics

06/14/2024 Bruce Strom 4

Many scholars speculate on whether CS Lewis was inspired by the writings of Richard Baxter, a Puritan and prolific author who first coined the phrase “Mere Christianity.” Baxter lived during the intense religious struggle in the late 1600’s, a century after Henry VIII split from the Catholic Church to form the Anglican Church. Baxter was appointed to the royal chaplaincy, but he left his post after the passage of the Act of Uniformity in 1662, which required that all pastors exclusively use the Book of Common Prayer and be ordained as Anglican ministers. Baxter was reluctant to adopt a denomination, proclaiming that “I am a Christian, a MEER CHRISTIAN, of no other religion,” and “I am against all sects and dividing parties.” He did not want to identify either with Catholics, or Anglicans, or Presbyterians. […]

Mere Morality and the Cardinal Virtues in CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Prudence, Temperance, and Justice
CS Lewis

Mere Morality and the Cardinal Virtues in CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity: Prudence, Temperance, and Justice

05/29/2024 Bruce Strom 0

CS Lewis has “two bits of evidence that the Somebody,” whom we worship as the Almighty God, truly exists. “One is the universe he made.” “The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other because it is inside information.” In the Judeo-Christian traditions, “we conclude that the Being behind the universe is intensely interested in right conduct: in fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness.” […]

Decalogue: Do Not Slander, Catholic Catechism 2465-2503, and St Thomas Aquinas
Command 8 Do Not Bear False Witness

Decalogue: Do Not Slander, Catholic Catechism and St Thomas Aquinas CCC 2465-2503

08/12/2023 Bruce Strom 1

The Eight Commandment in the Catholic Catechism exhorts, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Many people shorten this commandment to, You shall not lie, and although lying is usually sinful, this is a shallow understanding of this commandment. The positive form of the commandment is we should guard the reputation of our neighbor, it is possible to slander someone while speaking the truth about them. Gossip can be harmful whether it is truthful or not. […]

Modern Catholic Popes

Milestones: Memoirs of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Future Pope Benedict XVI

01/06/2023 Bruce Strom 1

Archbishop Ratzinger teaches us that “this psalm from the wisdom tradition shows the straits of faith that comes from the absence of earthly success. When you stand on the side of God, you do not necessarily stand on the side of success.” “When the psalmist stands in before God, in the presence of God, he grasps the ultimate insignificance of material wealth and success and recognizes what is truly necessary and what brings salvation.” […]

Book Reviews and Miscellaneous

Book and DVD Reviews on the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue

07/08/2022 Bruce Strom 0

These are book reviews on the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments. Our first sources are the Lutheran and Catholic Catechisms, they discuss each of the Ten Commandments. Pope Benedict, aka Cardinal Ratzinger when footnotes for the sources used in the Catechism between the eastern and western church fathers, which means that this is an excellent study program for the writings of the Church Fathers for both the Catholic and Orthodox religious traditions. […]

Civil Rights

Comparing Martin Luther King’s Letter From the Birmingham Jail with Hannah Arendt’s The Banality of Evil

04/13/2022 Bruce Strom 9

Many Americans are either unaware or do not want to make the connection between the Jim Crow system of racial segregation and the Nazi ideology of the master race. In fact, the Jim Crow statutes enforcing segregation was used as precedents by the Nazi lawyers drafting the Nuremberg Jewish Race Laws soon after the Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. […]