By JUDE P. DOUGHERTY
Thought was the title of a highly respected Fordham University quarterly, published from 1926 to 1992. During that period, its website tells us, it published 267 issues containing over 5,000 English language contributions by philosophers, theologians, literary intellectuals, and others. Among its well-known contributors were Dietrich von Hildebrand, Bernard Lonergan, Jacques Maritain, Walker Percy, and Karl Rahner.
The journal was named appropriately for it carried essays that could not be classified strictly as theology or as philosophy, given the nature of their subject matter, and others that fell short of the scholarly apparatus demanded by technical journals such as The Modern Schoolman or Speculum. As a student, I valued my subscription and many years later I was sad to see the periodical go out of print, although I was never a contributor.
In The Legend of the Middle Ages, Remi Brague notes, “There are in history highly respected works that we would not call philosophical but which we could describe as wisdom literature.” He finds reinforcement for this judgment by reminding the reader that Heidegger places “thought” on a higher plane than philosophy.
Brague is particularly sensitive to the broad cultural context in which philosophy in any period develops. He finds that philosophy generally develops in the light of opinions generally held within a given community.
The Arab world, as Brague notes, makes room for something between faksafa (philosophy) and kalam (theology). The problem is how much credibility is to be assigned to thought or “true opinion,” a feature of human knowledge recognized by Plato. Absent demonstration, can we be certain, have any truth? Plato in the Meno, after introducing the notion of “true opinion,” has Socrates speak of the value of such knowledge. True opinion, although supported by fact falls short of demonstrative knowledge, but is nevertheless required by those who would govern.
“Men,” says Socrates, “become good and useful to the state, not only because they have knowledge, but because they have right opinion.”
Pope Benedict XVI said much the same thing in an address he gave to the World Culture meeting in Venice in 2008. Rejecting the notion that European culture is “liquid,” Benedict affirmed that judgment in matters of culture and economics depends not only on one’s assessment of the present but largely on one’s historical insight. He acknowledged that any argument based on history falls short of demonstration, yet knowledge of history enhances one’s ability to make informed judgments.
Then Benedict cautioned, “Men and women are free to interpret and give meaning to reality, but in doing so they must not be afraid to give the Gospels [their due],” aware of the tendency on the part of the European intellectual elites to ignore the Christian sources of Western culture as they advance their progressive agenda.
Anyone who has followed the lectures and essays of Joseph Ratzinger from his years as professor of theology in Regensburg to his discourse as Pope Emeritus, or “Father Ratzinger,” as he prefers to be addressed, will find in them a wisdom, a “true opinion,” one may say, rooted in both scholarship and experience. His is the type of knowledge which Plato prescribed for he who would govern.
One contemporary example of the employment of true opinion is found in the publishing industry. Many an editor is known for his success in judging the value of a book submitted for publication. We know of their success because presses often bear their names — Knopf, Scribner, Macmillan, Simon and Schuster, Wiley, Herder, Sheed and Ward.
To return to my theme, much of Professor Ratzinger’s work could have been published in Thought, but one will not find it there. One will find it instead in Communio, a journal he founded with Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac in 1972 shortly after he became professor of theology at Regensburg. Communio still exists as an International Catholic Review.
In the interest of promoting Catholic thought, Ralph McInerny and Michael Novak founded Crisis in 1982, and Robert Royal founded The Catholic Thing, an online daily, in 2008. Both carry short essays by Catholic scholars of note, but neither attempts to replace America, the Jesuit periodical itself. Word on Fire, founded by Fr. Robert Barron [now Bishop] is foremost a global media ministry making Catholic thought available on social and cultural issues as well as on Sacred Scripture.
Acknowledging present efforts, one cannot ignore the indispensable role that The Wanderer has played for the last century and a half as a vehicle of Catholic thought.
Founded in 1867 as Der Wanderer, a German language publication, by Joseph Matt, the great-grandfather of the present publisher, it was influential in advancing the liturgical movement of the late nineteenth century and the social teaching of Pope Leo XIII. Today The Wanderer is an online daily as well as a weekly print newspaper.
All of this attests to the fact that the Catholic mind is alive and well in spite of its exclusion from major media and much of the academy. It still has its contemporary Bellocs and Chestertons, advancing the true opinion that helps the faithful navigate age-old questions in the present era.
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