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Skip to contentStudia Superiora Thomistica. Veritas in Caritate. A school for the Summa.
The mission
Studia Superiora Thomistica is dedicated to the study and dissemination of authentic Catholic doctrine through valuable catechesis, sound philosophical inquiry, and the systematic study of St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica. A community devoted to the pursuit of truth, the cultivation of virtue, and the transmission of perennial Thomistic wisdom — Veritas in Caritate.
I
St. Thomas stands in continuity with Tridentine theology as its common doctor, not as a later commentator on the Council. He ordered the faith three centuries before Trent. The Council received that doctrine and defended it. The schools of the Catholic reform taught it by reading him. To study the Summa is to stand where the Tridentine Church judged the faith most sure.
II
Priestly and theological formation is not a private syllabus. The Church has already said how it is to be done, and she names St. Thomas as the teacher.
§1Theological formation, given in the light of faith and under the guidance of the magisterium, is to be imparted in such a way that the students learn the whole of Catholic teaching, based on divine Revelation, that they make it a nourishment of their own spiritual lives, and that in the exercise of the ministry they may be able properly to proclaim and defend it.
§2Students are to be instructed with special care in sacred Scripture, so that they may acquire an insight into the whole of sacred Scripture.
§3Lectures are to be given in dogmatic theology, based always on the written word of God and on sacred Tradition; through them the students are to learn to penetrate more deeply into the mysteries of salvation, with St. Thomas in particular as their teacher. Lectures are also to be given in moral and pastoral theology, canon law, liturgy, ecclesiastical history, and other auxiliary and special disciplines, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter on Priestly Formation.
Code of Canon Law (1983), can. 252.
How deplorable it is then that this philosophy, received and honored by the Church, is scorned by some, who shamelessly call it outmoded in form and rationalistic, as they say, in its method of thought.
III
The course is an in-depth scholastic commentary on the Summa Theologica. It keeps to the magisterial tradition, the phronema of the Fathers — their mind and sense of the faith — and the principles of biblical exegesis. Each article is read in its own order: objections, sed contra, respondeo, and replies. The commentary does not replace the text. It makes the argument visible, and it holds that argument inside the Church’s doctrine.
IV
The path is ordered. Students do not wander the Summa. They follow its own sequence. Exercises test whether the argument has been understood. The relevant sources are set beside the question: sacred Scripture, the Fathers, the magisterium, and the great commentators.
The order of study