Raimondo Spiazzi

Raimondo Spiazzi (1918–2002) was a Dominican friar, priest, theologian, and Italian university professor.

Quotes

L'autorità dottrinale di San Tommaso d'Aquino

Raimondo Spiazzi, L'autorità dottrinale di San Tommaso d'Aquino, in AA.VV., Somma del Cristianesimo, Edizione Paoline, Roma, 1960, vol. I, sez. IX, cap. III, art. 4, pp. 567-580.

• Against the current eclipse of moral values and the resulting oppression of the human person in a world dominated by moral relativism, St. Thomas points to conscience as the norm of action, the path to man's redemption from the powers of the age and victory over technocracy, materialism, and idolatry of the State, which, by denying conscience, have suffocated or enslaved the human person. (p. 572)

• [...] he [Thomas Aquinas] was neither traditionalist nor rationalist; he did not allow himself to be fascinated by intuitionist subjectivism, nor did he reduce intellectual life to cerebralism; he defended reason against those who, emphasizing its weakness, wanted to deduce the impossibility or danger of a relatively autonomous philosophy, but he was equally decisive and strong in affirming the transcendence of faith and the infinite height of revealed mysteries; he had a marked preference for Aristotle, precisely because of his fidelity to the most obvious data of reason and common sense, but he did not become an idolater to the point of confusing a divine religion with a philosophical system. (p. 575)

• Those who know St. Thomas and are accustomed to savoring the substance of his truth, the clarity of his reasoning, the precision of his method, and even his “discreet Latin” (as Dante said), who are familiar with the magnificent intellectual architecture represented above all by the Summa [...], cannot help but consider with melancholy the fact that St. Thomas has been rejected by Italian thinkers and their consequent aberrations from the golden thread of the Hellenic-Latin philosophical tradition [...]. (p. 577)

• There has been no shortage of great Italian thinkers. We remember above all Vico and, in his field, Galilei. But when we consider that, even more than these, Giordano Bruno, Nicolò Machiavelli, Ardigò and many others, even recent and living ones, whose most valid claim to fame is that they made history in the era of intellectual confusion, one wonders what we Italians have gained we Italians, in thought and in life, by stubbornly abandoning and banishing a thinker [Thomas Aquinas] who was authentically ours [...]; and what ignorance led us to deny a sublime genius who, together with Dante (who drew inspiration from him), gave us an unsurpassed primacy and an irrepressible influence in the world of thought. (p. 579)

• [...] if healthy realism, spiritual harmony, and Thomist balance—which became a spiritual attitude and lifestyle through the deepening of thought—flourishing among Italians, had been the backbone of social and political life, perhaps we would have acted more wisely and experienced fewer disasters. (p. 579)