My life will be a continuous act of love, if only I pray as much as possible, I study as much as possible, I teach our faith as much as possible.

Father Coconnier (1846-1908)
Dominican

“The prodigious leap forward made in the 19th century by the experimental and historical sciences abruptly and urgently brought the problem of reconciling faith and reason before modern consciousness. Modernism, “an intellectual crisis of extreme gravity, so profound as to threaten foundations and basic principles” (Father Coconnier), was quietly brewing and already manifesting itself in several domains. Pope Leo XIII advocated a return to the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor as the only way to resolve, in a manner satisfactory to both the intellect and orthodoxy, the problems posed in all spheres by the brutal transformation of modern society… Father Coconnier didn’t need to be persuaded that salvation lay there… But other cultivated minds, eager to learn about Saint Thomas, needed a tool that would allow them to become initiated, without too much difficulty or time, into this mysterious and antiquated Thomism. In short, since the aim was to present Saint Thomas as a guide to modern intellects, it was necessary to provide them with a means to make his long-silent voice alive and relevant. Books did not meet this need. A book is primarily an individual endeavor, and the goal was too general and too difficult to be achieved except through a collective effort. A journal was needed. By christening it “Revue Thomiste” Father Coconnier, without ambiguity, showed the way. But he was afraid of being misunderstood: he was not founding an archaeological journal, and his goal was not the reconstruction of a dead past. This preacher, for whom scientific teaching was essentially a form of preaching, had a passionate concern for current events. He anxiously examined the contemporary world, the only one for which he was responsible, he, the son of those whom the Vicar of Christ has appointed forever “lights of the world and champions of the faith”. He knew that the illness from which the world suffered and was dying from was an illness of the intellect, for it is ideas that govern the world and ideas which save or destroy it. If the doctrine of Saint Thomas is profitable, it is not as a historical curiosity, but because it is eternal like truth, because it alone is capable of healing the contemporary intellect and providing current problems with the principles of a liberating solution. If one would refuse to know anything other than what Saint Thomas knew, he would be a Thomist, in a purely materialistic way. Saint Thomas himself, had he had the opportunity to learn anything else, would have seized it eagerly. Father Coconnier had a very keen sense of the unity of human knowledge and believed that all truths, like the cells of a living organism, are interconnected.”

Father J-H Nicolas (1910-2001)
Dominican