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Good morning most esteemed Father,
I am Michelangelo – the 15 year old lad who is non baptized due to difficult situations at home. I wrote to you a few months back requesting clarifications about the Letter of St. JAmes and  che le scrisse chiarimenti sulla Lettera di San Giacomo e about the miscomprehension behind the ‘’sale of indulgences’’  –as I don’t want to take up your time with multiple emails, I have two other topics to which I would like to receive a careful and clear response from you as happens with the other emails you receive, so here they are with their premises:

1. Lately, some debates on the relationship between Tradition and the Catholic Magisterium in pre- and post-Vatican II relations have received my attention. To learn more about this, I watched this series made by this pious Father Marcelo Bravo Pereira dealing precisely with this theological current which would be born in the 20th century with the name “Nouvelle Théologie
2. Could you explain to me a little about the relationships between the Church – in particular between the Popes and between the various religious orders – with this current?

Why was it initially rejected by Father Labourdette and suspected of heresy by great figures such as Father Garrigou-Lagrange? Why did it then come to the fore as a victorious current in the Second Vatican Council?

(…).
I recently asked myself the question about the use of capital letters and small letters within the ecclesiastical hierarchy: could you explain to me in schematic order the ecclesiastical hierarchy starting from the bottom up to the top?

Could you also kindly explain to me the various ecclesiastical titles with the use of capital/small letters?
Have a good day and thanks for your time Father.

Priest’s answer

Dear Michelangelo,


Only now I managed to go back to your email dated September 27, 2021. I’m sorry and I apologize.

I cut out some of your questions because otherwise we would go too far.

If you want, they can be the subject of a new answer.

1. Regarding the nouvelle théologie it must be said that it was a reaction to neo-scholastic theology.
Neo-scholastic theology must be distinguished from scholasticism because the latter is typical of the 13th century, whereas neo-scholasticism emerged after Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879).
Pope Leo, after the upheaval suffered by the Church starting from the French Revolution, intended to relaunch the study of theology and philosophy with St. Thomas Aquinas as his teacher.

2. However, unlike St. Thomas Aquinas who founded theology on Sacred Scripture and the Holy Fathers (whoever opens the Theological Summa sees a continuous citation of scriptural passages and references to the Holy Fathers) the neo-scholasticism got stuck in disputes between Thomists and Scotists, Dominicans and Jesuits.
The former referred above all to the comments of Saint Thomas made by the great Dominicans of the 16th century (Cajetan, D. Bañez, Francesco Silvestri known as the Ferrarese, John of Saint Thomas…), the Scotists instead referred to Duns Scotus, a Franciscan, aka Dr Subtle because of the almost uninterpretable distinctions found in his thinking.
Furthermore, it was a theology entirely expressed in the Latin language and in the form of a syllogism where one necessarily had to proceed with a major statement, a minor statement and a conclusion.
This way of doing theology was said to be “in form”, that is, in the most unassailable and therefore safest method.

3. The so called new theology aimed at becoming more engaged with the Sacred Scripture and to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, leaving behind the neo scholastic method.
Initially it gained the reaction of a few remarkable dominicans like Father Michel Labourdette, eminent moral theologian, and Father Reginald Garrigou Lagrange.
In the first instance it seemed to them that by becoming more closely linked to the Holy Fathers, theology would lose its now acquired status as a science.
I say in the first instance because I have in front of me the moral theology writings of Father Labourdette, in which the neo-scholastic method disappeared completely in the meantime.

4. Even moral theology, instead of starting from Sacred Scripture, started from the sentences of the probati auctores, that is, of the great masters who were the theologians of that time or shortly before.
It seemed that the sentences of probabilists, equiprobabilists and probabiliorists mattered more than Holy Scripture.

The Second Vatican Council rightly said about moral theology that it needed to be renewed by building ‘’more on the teaching of the Bible, should shed light on the loftiness of the calling of the faithful in Christ and the obligation that is theirs of bearing fruit in charity for the life of the world” (Optatam totius 16). 

5. Regarding theology in general, the Second Vatican Council says that Sacred Scripture must be the soul of theology.

That Sacred Scripture is the soul of theology is the most normal thing because theology is essentially the intelligence of faith, the intelligence of revealed data.

But in the meantime this was no longer the case. Theology was based above all on theologians and philosophers.

6. It must be said for moral theology that it was not everywhere developed according to the criteria of casuistry (of probabilistic theologians, equiprobabilists and probabiliorists).

This way of doing theology had not affected the Dominican Order which had always developed its teaching following Saint Thomas Aquinas.

The sequela Christi must emerge at the center of moral theology.

The center of moral theology is Jesus Christ, his life and his teaching.

He is the way that leads us to the Father.

7. Unfortunately, however, after the council, but not because of the council, there was a reaction not only to neoscholasticism, but also to scholasticism and in particular to Saint Thomas Aquinas of whom the council had just said that we must keep him as a teacher .

In seminaries and theological faculties, with the evident exception of Dominican theological studies, it was difficult to cite Saint Thomas. There was an allergy towards it, without having read it at all except for the references made in the texts used in neo-scholasticism.

Today, thank God, things are no longer like this.

8. What should be said finally?

The theologians opposed to the nouvelle théologie, if they were alive today, could in some ways say: you saw that we were right!

And yet their way of doing theology also needed to be renewed. The very nature of theology required it, which must be rooted in Sacred Scripture and in that Tradition which is expressed in a particular way in the unanimous teaching of the Holy Fathers, of those who were immediately close, even temporally, to the magisterium of Jesus Christ.

This is also required by the fact that theology must speak to the men of our time, with their own problems, with their now secularized culture, with the abandonment of faith.

Theology must respond to the questions of today’s men by illuminating them with the light that comes from Christ.

On this, at least in theory, everyone should agree.

9. I will be brief on the second question you asked me.

The degrees of the ecclesiastical hierarchy are the degrees of the Holy Order.

These degrees are three: diaconate, presbyterate, episcopate.

Among the bishops, Peter’s successor has a primacy as bishop of Rome.

All other titles are of ecclesiastical derivation. Many of them have lost their meaning and remain as honorifics.

Some of them, with all their distinctions, are abandoned, such as the title of reverend as distinct from that of very reverend and most reverend. If the title of reverend is still commonly given today, the distinctions between the “very reverend” which was given only to some and the title of “Most Reverend” which was used are completely abandoned.

But all this does not concern the essence of the Church.

10. I hope that in the meantime you have prepared for baptism and have finally become a Christian.

I wish it with all my heart.

In any case, I assure you of my cordial prayers for the progress of your Christian life and I bless you.

Father Angelo