By David Torkington, Crisis Magazine, Jan. 24, 2025
David Torkington is a Spiritual Theologian, Author and Speaker who specializes in Prayer, Christian Spirituality and Mystical Theology. …
Just as the Catholic Faith has been reduced to little more than an intellectual philosophy of life for the clergy—all head and no heart—the same happened to the laity, who depend on them for their spirituality.
In the immediate aftermath of the Council of Trent, Catholic spirituality, in both theory and practice, reached a height never reached before since the early Church. Founded on the Council of Trent, this new Catholic spirituality was inspired and guided by such great saints as St. Charles Borromeo, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Francis de Sales, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross. Many new religious orders, and a galaxy of mystics and saints, rose to inspire the Council of Trent and to promote it. In modern times, great Catholic spiritual writers and historians such as Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Tanqueray, Pourrat, Poulain, Louis Bouyer, Msgr. Philip Hughes, Louis Cognet, and so many others have seen 17th-century Catholic spirituality as a high point in Catholicism. …