Aeterni Patris vs. «hermeneutic of rupture» from Thomas Aquinas to Saint John Paul the Great

Abstract

The figure and thought of Thomas Aquinas are reaffirmed as the best version of Christian philosophy by Pope Leo XIII in 1879 and are recovered, consistently with the «official» line of the Ecclesiastical Magisterium, as model and antidote against the dechristianisation of society -divorce between Gospel and culture- crystallised in the 19th century. But the recognition of the role of his thought enjoyed an injection of historical vitality. A similar reading of the latest Ecumenical Council in the light of the «signs of the times» is the one embodied by Cardinal Wojtyla. However, chameleon-like secularism reappears: now it is the dechristianisation within the Church.