Whither Catholic Theology Now? An Evening With Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., by Matthew Becklo 

This past Tuesday evening, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP—Dominican priest, cofounder of the bluegrass band the Hillbilly Thomists, and the first American rector of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome (colloquially the “Angelicum”)—delivered the inaugural Aquinas Lecture on a vision for Catholic theology in the twenty-first century. The event, a collaboration between the Angelicum and First Things, took place at the elegant Union League Club in midtown Manhattan, but—in a fitting reflection of divine grace—the doors were swung wide open to the public without cost.

Fr. White’s talk to this packed room was, to a degree, exactly what you’d expect from a well-respected Catholic and theologian reflecting on Catholic theology; this great “science of God”—theos-logos—should, he remarked at the outset, “seek to explain the meaning of life in reference to God and the Incarnation.” Later in the talk, echoing Gaudium et Spes 22, he said that when theologians point to Christ, they get to the truth of both God and man, and that, conversely, the eclipse of Christ is the eclipse of both God and man. ….

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