Christian History Home > Issue 73 > Popes, Philosophers, and Peeping Thomists
Popes, Philosophers, and Peeping Thomists
Whenever it seems that Aquinas might recede into dusty memory, a new wave of truth-seekers brings him back.
Whenever it seems that Aquinas might recede into dusty memory, a new wave of truth-seekers brings him back. | posted 1/01/2002 12:00AM
A significant Catholic moment occurred in the middle of the twentieth century.
Consider these American success stories: Catholic Archbishop Fulton Sheen's TV program Life Is Worth Living (1951-1957) reached 30 million viewers and earned an Emmy. The great French Catholic philosophers Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson taught in major, secular, American universities and developed a wide lay readership.
Trappist monk Thomas Merton's autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), became an improbable best seller. Catholic fiction writer Flannery O'Connor began a promising career with her first novel, Wise Blood, in 1952. She was soon followed by fellow Southerner Walker Percy, also a Catholic, whose first novel, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award in 1962.
Few Americans, even Catholic Americans, realize that this mid-century flourishing of Catholicism was made possible by a papal encyclical, Aeterni Patris, composed in 1879 by Pope Leo XIII. Yet, nearly all the significant figures ... To view this item, you must be a member of ChristianHistory.net.
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