While many 20th-century fads in philosophy and theology have come and gone, McInerny's faith in Aristotelian-Thomism was boldly prophetic. His defenses of natural theology and law helped to create dialogue between theists and non-theists, and to provide a philosophical basis for Catholic theology.

St. Thomas Aquinas enables the reader to appreciate both Thomas's continuity with earlier thought and his creative independence. After a useful account of the life and work of St. Thomas, McInerny shows how the thoughts of Aristotle, Boethius, and Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius were assimilated into the personal wisdom of St. Thomas. He also offers a helpful study of the distinctive features of Aquinas's Christian theology.

McInerny revisits the basics of Thomas's teachings and offers a brief, intelligible, and persuasive summary.

CHAPTER I THE PROBLEM OF ANALOGY "Let lu start with a review of the theories of other thinkers; for the proofs of a theory are difficulties for the contrary ...

A patient and faithful working of primary Thomistic texts, this volume.

In this book, renowned philosopher Ralph McInerny sets out to review what Thomas meant by the phrase and to defend a robust understanding of Thomas's teaching on the subject.

In this article the author analyzes the different ways in which one can speak of an end of philosophy. He (she) shows the way in which the key to the continuation of philosophy in our days is only attainable through the overcoming of sophistry and skepticism.

On its release, the Instruction on Respect for Human Life was accused of obstructing the technological enhancement of human life by using slippery slope arguments to impose the Magisterium’s opinion that accepting certain new technologies, like homologous artificial fertilization, would weaken resistance to practices the Church traditionally has opposed. To the contrary, the instruction calls attention to the fact that by using these technologies, we have in principle accepted all sorts of thigs, with or without technology, which are destructive of (...) human life. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Leonine Revival Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson Realism Philosophy and Science Vatican II Works cited.

Like any other product of human thought, a philosophical system is conditioned by the contingent circumstances of its origins, and especially by sense experience, the origin of all human cognition. Catholic philosophy, moreover, is conditioned by the doctrine of the Church. Because both sense experience and the Catholic faith are true to their respective objects, and because truth for one is truth for all, the conditioning of Catholic philosophy by its contingent origins does not entail a lack of universal validity. (...) Such validity is in fact possessed by St. Thomas’s system, which is faithful both to Catholic doctrine and to the concrete facts of everyday experience. (shrink)

In this study of the relationship between Boethius and Thomas Aquinas,.