Fr. Josef Kleutgen, S.J. And St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor of the Church

On this day Jan 13, 1883: the German Jesuit theologian Josef Kleutgen, a great defender of Neo-Scholasticism, who influenced Pope Leo XII to order in his encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879) the study of Thomas Aquinas in Catholic schools and seminaries.

Neo- Scholasticism

seeks to restore the fundamental organic doctrines embodied in the Scholasticism of the thirteenth century. It claims that philosophy does not vary with each passing phase of history; that the truth of seven hundred years ago is still true today, and that if the great medieval thinkers -- Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Duns Scotus -succeeded in constructing a sound philosophical system on the data supplied by the Greeks, especially by Aristotle, it must be possible, in our own day, to gather from the speculation of the Middle Ages the soul of truth which it contains.

More on Neo-Scholasticism (here) , (here) , (here) , (here) and (here)