St Thomas Aquinas even questioned his own answers

The piece below is a letter in response to yesterday's blogpost. 

Dear Michael,

Your ‘Occasional Scribble’ for 15 October set me thinking.

It brought my mind back to those nineteen seventies, when, like you, I was a student of theology in Tallaght. The contrast between two contrasting and perhaps opposing attitudes to the search for God and/or for life’s meaning rings bells in my heart and mind as I picture my own ‘spiritual’ journey up to now and its current ‘state of health’.

Yes, I too occasionally hear the kind of ‘religious’ talk that gives the impression that all serious questions have already been answered satisfactorily and that the only ‘pastoral task’ still to be completed is to convince those who do not yet believe that paying close attention to official church documents and even occasional pronouncements from church authorities will clear their path to ‘contented discipleship’. 

And I also hear conversations that pose the big questions, conversations and discussions, discussions that may press the ‘pause’ button without having solved anything but also without losing hope or confidence that some ‘ongoing sense of life’s meaning’ may still be found and identified. 

I am often asked whether Thomas Aquinas or Thomas the Apostle is my ‘patron saint’. My answer, occasionally, is ‘it depends’! When I am or feel secure in my religious belief and thus sense I am moving along the best road forward, then I feel somehow closer to Aquinas, who produced such quality theology, born not only of an inquisitive mind but also of a heart that longed for the support of God’s presence. 

When, on the other hand, I find that doubts arising in my mind aren’t going away and seem even more securely embedded than the theological ‘certainties’ I had been taught by contemporary teachers and interpreters of Aquinas, then my answer might well be ‘the doubting Thomas’. 

Finally, I realised recently that I could call Aquinas my patron even on the darkest days, on occasions when my faith seemed less secure and even problematic. 

St Thomas Aquinas, you see, did not only answer thousands of theological questions convincingly and inspire others for centuries after his time to believe they could also face life’s questions with hope and with an expectation that darkness might yield to fresh daylight. Not only that: Aquinas, 

I realise, also courageously questioned the very answers he had outlined and shared.

Thomas McCarthy, OP