Pio Nono

[ThomasPeter]

can you tell me what Thomas ment in hs thoughts on Mary and he conception? the last post on it confused me. it seemed like a great church father was going agasnt a core teaching. what was St. Augustine role in it (he was mentioned). thank you very much!

[Pio Nono]

JMJ
4/15 - Easter Thursday

ThomasPeter,

I am hesitant to answer this question due to the controversial nature of the subject; I mean not to tarnish good St. Thomas' name or philosophical/theological system.

[i]My[/i] point was that even the great philosophers of the Church can be mistaken on a subject. St. Thomas was not a disbeliever in the teachings of Holy Mother Church since the Immaculate Conception had not even enjoyed Church-wide recognition (as is evident from the article). The Church, in her wisdom, has looked at his argument and said, "As cool as you are, Tommy boy, your system contradicts the correct understanding of revelation." Does that mean he's a heretic? Of course not, since it was not a defined dogma of our Faith until the 1850s.

St. Augustine only comes in with my paraphrase of a famous saying attributed to him, namely, that he does not trust the words of any man as he trusts the Gospel. I hope this helps.

Yours,
Pio Nono

[cappie]

One of the great proponants of the Immaculate Conception was the great Franciscan Blessed John Duns Scotus. It is the official title of the Patroness of the whole Franciscan Order. Far be it from me to boast

[BLAZEr]

St. Thomas Aquinas was not against the teachings of the Church, his ideas about he Immaculate conception were not against Church teaching. In fact, Church teaching had not been defined at that point. He was engaging in theological speculation based on the understanding of science that they had at that time.

His beliefs about the Immaculate Conception were that Mary was not conceived immaculately, but rather that she was made immaculate. St. Thomas beleived that all human beings had a certain number of fomes as part of their make-up that were somehow genetically passed on to each offspring, since Mary's parents had fomes, he believed God wiped Mary free of them some time before her quickening (the first movement of a baby in the womb, which is when Midievals thought that life began).


We now know that St. Thomas was wrong about Fomes, the Immaculate Conception, and the beginning of Life . . . no big deal, since none of these things had been quite dogmatically defined.