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Author Topic: U.S. Novus Ordo seminary using Protestant textbook!  (Read 454 times)

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Offline Geremia

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U.S. Novus Ordo seminary using Protestant textbook!
« on: May 25, 2017, 06:51:01 PM »
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  • Among Novus Ordo seminaries in the U.S., the Pontifical College Josephinum is supposed to be the most "conservative," but their "Philosophy for Understanding Theology" course requires the Protestant textbook Philosophy for Understanding Theology! Here's how the professor justifies it in the course syllabus:
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    I should note that Allen & Springsted [Philosophy for Understanding Theology] was written by a couple of Protestant theologians, and their perspective often shows in their assessment of certain theological views (for example, they are rather dismissive of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas). It will be a good exercise for you, I think, to keep this in mind as you read their book—philosophy is, by and large, nothing more than an engagement with reasons, and one must be prepared to answer one’s critics as well as to defend one’s own views!
    Granted, this course includes readings from the excellent multi-volume A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, S.J., but why waste time learning about false philosophies instead of devoting all the time to learning Thomism very well?

    Here's what St. Robert Bellarmine said (quoted from Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange's Essence & Topicality of Thomism p. 18):
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    Certainly, if everyone proposes with such order, facility, and brevity to us, as I venture to affirm, that he who diligently studies a few of St. Thomas’s questions finds nothing difficult either in Scriptures, the Councils, or the future Fathers of the Trinity; he will make more all-around progress in two months devoted to the Summa than in several months’ study of the Scriptures and the Fathers.

    [Tanto si quidem ordine, tanta facilitate, tanta brevitate nobis omnia proponit, ut ego affirmare audeam, si quis diligenter has D. Thomæ paucas quætiones incuмbat nihil ei difficile vel in Scripturis, vel in Conciliis vel in Patribus de Trinitate futurum; et plus omnino profecturum aliquem si duobus menses in scripturis et Patribus legendis versetur.]
    Pope John XXII said (ibid.):
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    He (St. Thomas) has illuminated the Church more than all the other Doctors; to read his books for a year profits man more than to study the doctrine of others for his whole life.

    [Ipse (S. Thomas) plus illuminavit Ecclesiam quam omnes alii Doctores; in cuius libris plus proficit homo uno anno quam in aliorum doctrina toto tempore vitæ suæ.]
    So much for Vatican II saying philosophical training should take into account modern (false) philosophies!
    St. Isidore e-book library: https://isidore.co/calibre