Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) June 19, 2011: In her new book RELATIONAL REALITY: NEW DISCOVERIES OF INTERRELATEDNESS THAT ARE TRANSFORMING THE MODERN WORLD (2011), Charlene Spretnak comes out swinging against modernity with the zest of a Roman Catholic pope. Because non-Catholic readers may not be aware of the zest with which certain Roman Catholic popes have denounced modernity, a brief digression is in order so that I can establish the Catholic cultural context out of which Charlene Spretnak comes.
If you think the justified rage of King Achilles at King Agamemnon, the commander in chief of the thousand ships that set sail to retrieve Helen from Troy, was of epic proportions, you should measure his understandable rage against the rage of the nineteenth-century and twentieth-century and twenty-first century Catholic popes and Charlene Spretnak against modernity. For them, modernity is a catastrophe. One nineteenth-century pope issued a document known as the Syllabus of Errors, denouncing one supposed error he associated with modernity after another.
Another nineteenth-century was far more shrewd in the way in which he expressed his rage against modernity. He called for a renewal of the thought of the study of the medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. To put this pope's call for renewal of the study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas in perspective, I should point out that one form or another of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy and theology had dominated Roman Catholic thought during the period of Western cultural history known as modernity (roughly from the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the 1450s onward). In other words, up to the time of this pope's call for renewal of the study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, more Catholics in Western culture had studied Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy and theology than non-Catholics in Western culture had studied any alternative philosophy and/or theology during the period known as modernity. Furthermore, more Catholic students in Western culture had been taught one form or another of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy and theology than non-Catholic students in Western culture had studied. But this nineteenth-century pope wanted to escalate the Catholic war against modernity, so he called for a renewal of the study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. As I say, this was a shrewd move, especially compared to the listing of denunciations in the Syllabus of Errors.
Arguably the greatest achievement of Catholic scholars in Western culture in the first half of the twentieth century was the renewed examination of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Not surprisingly, this renewal was accompanied by a strengthening of the Catholic war against modernity. For example, Philip Gleason of the University of Notre Dame titles his history of American higher education in the United States CONTENDING WITH MODERNITY: CATHOLIC HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (1995).
If we believe the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Kung, the recent Polish pope and the current German pope have continued the Catholic war on modernity, which is rooted in a pre-modern thought-world.
It is time to return to Charlene Spretnak. She comes from a Roman Catholic background, and so do I. She and I attended Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university in St. Louis, in the 1960s. But I do not recall actually knowing her at that time, although she and I had mutual acquaintances there. I do not know if she is a practicing Catholic at the present time. But I myself am not a practicing Catholic.
In any event, for most of the decades in the twentieth century, the big Department of Philosophy at Saint Louis University was one of the two leading centers in North America for the study of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. (The other was the University of Toronto.)
In any event, my favorite teacher at Saint Louis University was Walter J. Ong, S.J. (1912-2003). As part of his Jesuit training earlier in his life, he had done his philosophical studies (in Latin) at Saint Louis University. As a result, he is one outstanding Catholic scholar who had studied Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy extensively. Bernard Lonergan, S.J. (1904-1984) is another. But somehow or other Walter Ong did not succumb to advancing the anti-modernity war that characterized so much Roman Catholicism in the first half of the twentieth century.
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