Wouldn't that be the instrumental cause but man in the place of God the final cause?

Weird thing is, I’ve read books about St. Thomas More, and he was known as a great humanist, which always struck me as odd.

That St. Thomas More was widely regarded as a humanist is attested to in both Catholic and Protestant literature, but it also appears tgat the term “humanist” was quite broad and varied, with many different aspects.

The following description of St. Thomas More’s humanism clearly does not contain anything against the faith:

”The humanism of the European Renaissance was subtle precisely because it was not an ideology or philosophy. Its adherents could indeed be passionate in pursuit of aims that could be widely varied, but in their origins, the central texts of their enterprise were the same as those of the medieval university: the magisterial legacy of Greece and Rome, of antique grammar and rhetoric, of Aristotle and, especially in the north, of the foundational texts of Christian antiquity, notably those of scripture and the Church Fathers. This was the bedrock of European culture, revisited from time to time in a ‘classical revival’ marked by a fresh resort to antiquity and a new period of intellectual achievement.”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-thomas-more/thomas-more-as-humanist/7C6BAD074E3F7EF39EE5E76DE12FB2BE

That being the case, it would seem that humanism thus described is not directly intersecting with Catholic doctrine.  Fr. Calderon’s legitimate identification of humanism as the root problem of Vatican II, therefore, must be something else.  It is a man-centered theology: humanism applied to theology, which would have horrified St. Thomas.

In other words, I think the humanism of St. Thomas More, and the humanism of the modernists, are not the same thing (even though they carry the same title).

Dear Ladislaus,
What is the true root cause of the V2 heresies?  How did Rahner explain?  Could you please cite the source, a book or quote?  Please share! Thank you.

I'm not sure what you mean.

Yes, anotger source describes St. Thomas’s humanism thusly:

”Thomas More was a Renaissance humanist in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. A humanist is a person who believes strongly in the study of history, poetry, grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy.”

Obviously, humanism thus defined has no direct bearing upon Catholicism.

According to the CE:

"The money for a trip to England he earned by acting as tutor to three Englishmen, from whom he also obtained valuable letters of introduction. During his stay in England (1498-99), he made the acquaintance at Oxford of Colet, Thomas More, Latimer, and others, with all of whom acquaintance ripened into lifelong friendship."

https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05510b.htm

And the article on St. Thomas More says, "In 1497 More was introduced to Erasmus, probably at the house of Lord Mountjoy, the great scholar's pupil and patron. The friendship at once became intimate, and later on Erasmus paid several long visits at More's Chelsea house, and the two friends corresponded regularly until death separated them." (Citation below)

The same article hints at an apparent opposition between the humanism of Erasmus and scholasticism:

"Like his teacher Lorenzo Valla, he regarded Scholasticism as the greatest perversion of the religious spirit; according to him this degeneration dated from the primitive Christological controversies, which caused the Church to lose its evangelical simplicity and become the victim of hair-splitting philosophy, which culminated in Scholasticism."

Therefore, there is a move away from scholaticism, at least among st the humanism of Erasmus, shared by the Protestants who arose at the same time, and shared this desire to shed religion of scholasticism, and recover the early simplicity of scripture and the Fathers.  And it survived anr reemerged at Vatican II.

I don't recall reading anything of St. Thomas rejecting scholasticism, however.  But Utopia is supposed to be his most humanistic work (I've not yet read it), so perhaps he addresses the matter there? 

Here's the CE article on St. Thomas More: https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14689c.htm