Teachings Of St Thomas Aquinas Quotes

Pipes are not to be used for teaching, nor any artificial instruments, as the harp, or the like: but whatsoever will make the hearers good men.

What distinguishes the saved from the damned is their relation to Christ. This is not St. Thomas’ opinion, this is Christ’s own clear teaching. What

A thing may be in order and ready to act in one way, and out of order and unready in another. Thus a blind man has his walking power in order and is able to walk: but wanting sight to guide his steps, his walking suffers defect in that he goes stumbling.

The act that anything evil puts forth is due to the strength of goodness, but a deficient goodness. For if there were nothing of good there, neither would there be any being, nor any action: again, if the goodness were not deficient, neither would there be any evil.

It needs must be that all things that a man desires are desired for the sake of the last end. Whatever a man desires, he desires in the light of a good thing. If it is not desired as perfect good, which is the last end, it must be desired as tending to perfect good, because always the commencement of a thing is directed to the completion thereof, as is apparent both in things of nature and in things of art, and thus every commencement of perfection is directed to the attainment of perfection in its full measure, which is the achievement of the last end.

Human government is derived from divine government, and ought to imitate it. But God, almighty and supremely good as He is, nevertheless permits sundry evils to happen in the universe that He might prevent; lest if they were taken away, greater good might be taken away, or even still greater evils ensue. So then also they who preside over human government, do right in tolerating sundry evils lest sundry good things be hindered, or even worse evils be incurred, as Augustine says: “Take away prostitutes from human society, and you disorder the world with lustful intrigues.” So then, though unbelievers sin over their rites, they may be tolerated, either for some good that comes of them, or for some evil that is avoided thereby.

In ends there is found a twofold order, to wit, the order of intention and the order of execution, and in both orders there must be some first point. That which is first in the order of intention is a sort of principle moving the desire: take that principle away, and desire would have nothing to move it. The moving principle of the execution is that from whence the work begins: take away that moving principle, and none would begin to work at anything. Now the moving principle of the intention is the last end: the moving principle of the execution is the first step in the way of means to the end. Thus, then, on neither side is it possible to go on to infinity: because, if there were no last end, nothing would be desired, nor any action have a term, nor would the intention of the [3] agent rest. On the other hand, if there were no first step in the means to the end, no one would begin to work at anything, and deliberation would never terminate, but go on to infinity.

There must necessarily be agreement between a reason coming from God and a revelation coming from God.46 Let us say, then, that faith teaches truths which seem contrary to reason; let us not say that it teaches propositions contrary to reason. The rustic thinks it contrary to reason that the sun should be larger than the earth. But this proposition seems reasonable to the scientist.47 Let us rest assured that apparent incompatibility between faith and reason is similarly reconciled in the infinite wisdom of God.

Aristotle's teaching on slavery was quoted implicitly and explicitly by the Fathers of the Church. It did not stop there. Through the collection of laws known as the Decree of Gratian (Bologna 1140), in entered into the official law book of the Church. St. Thomas Aquinas, the leading theologian of the Middle Ages, followed Aristotle. He agreed with all the pagan views, with just a dash of holy water. Slavery, he said, is 'natural' in the sense that it is the consequence of sin by a kind of 'second intention of nature'. He justified slavery in these circumstances: enslavement imposed as punishment; capture in conquest; people who sold themselves to pay off debts or who were sold by a court for that reason; children born of a slave mother.

The question of the teaching authority of the bishops in general was followed by that of Vatican II in particular, upon which the judgment of Fr. Pierre Marie, editor of the French Traditional Dominicans' quarterly magazine, Le Sol de la Torre, was quite severe. Proceeding in logical order, he examined first whether the Council documents come under the Church's extraordinary or ordinary infallibility - not under extraordinary infallibility, he argued, because both Pope John XXIII and Paul VI explicitly said the Council was making no definitive declarations; nor under ordinary infallibility, both because (see above) the Church's bishops were no longer scattered at Vatican II, but gathered together in such a group as to expose them to group pressures which could and did falsify their judgments; and because the bishops of Vatican II presented none of their doctrines as requiring defectively to be believed. Nor, Fr. Pierre Marie went on to argue, are these doctrines even part of the Church's authentic (i.e. ordinary, non-universal) teaching, because the bishops expressed no intention to hand down the Deposit of the Faith, on the contrary their spokesmen (e.g. Paul VI) expressed their intention to come to terms with the modern world and its values, long condemned by true Catholic churchmen as being intrinsically uncatholic. Therefore, concluded Fr. Pierre Marie, the documents of Vatican II have only a Conciliar authority, the authority of that Council, but no Catholic authority at all, and no Catholic need take seriously anything Vatican II said, unless it was already Church doctrine beforehand. Letter #148 March 1996

when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools—I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude;

University of Chicago is a Baptist school, where atheist professors teach Jewish students about St. Thomas Aquinas.