The Thomistic Revival and the Relationship between the Jesuits and the Papacy, 1878–1914

2014/11/27 by Oliver P. Rafferty
Arts and Humanities · #Catholicism and Religious Studies #Classics #Encyclical #Epistemology #History #Holy See #Late modernity #Modernism (music) #Modernity #Papal infallibility #Philosophy #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity #Scholasticism #Social science #Sociology #Successor cardinal #Theology #Thomism

paper · doi:10.1177/0040563914548652

openalex publication_date 2014/11/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23

Abstract

The revival of Scholasticism by Pope Leo XIII with his encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879) had been in preparation for at least half a century. He hoped that Thomism would not only give the Church a complete program for revival of the sacred sciences but also enable the Church to effectively confront modernity. Leo’s chosen instrument to forward this scenario was the Society of Jesus. This hope continued under his successor, Pope Pius X, but the Vatican’s struggles against Modernism surfaced growing tensions both among Jesuits themselves and in their relationship with the papacy.

Related

• The Road of Charity Leads to the Picket Lines: The Neo-Thomistic Revival and the Italian Catholic Labor Movement
• Pius X, Merry del Val and the cases of Alfred Loisy and George Tyrrell
• The Reception and Application of the Encyclical <em>Pascendi</em>
• The Vatican and the Fallibility of Science: Augustine, Copernicus, Darwin and Race
• Catholicism