Fr. Gregory Pine

Have I thought about that in those terms?

It's interesting because like, you know, not just to be anecdotal, I experienced St.

Thomas's clarity of thought, his depth of insight, but I experienced it within the setting of his personal holiness for the first time.

And so like, I never considered another systematic thinker.

Like for me, it's always just been Thomas, Thomas, and Thomas.

I'm getting to learn how to navigate other traditions, not so much as a native speaker, but as a kind of dilettante.

But for me, it's just always been St.

Thomas' mystic tradition.

So I think that if we're making comparisons, we can, one, appeal to the authority of the church, which commends him as the common doctor, as the universal teacher of the Catholic faith, from whom we can all stand to profit.

So there is in a certain sense, a kind of a authority accorded to St.

Augustine, like St.

Augustine appears more on the catechism of the Catholic church than does St.

Thomas, because he's really the first one to engage a lot of these issues.

And St.

Thomas relies upon him an incredible amount.

So of the sources that St.

Thomas cites, obviously scripture is that which is cited most, but then next it's Aristotle and Augustine, which is fascinating.

So I think that,

What you have in St.

Thomas, which you don't necessarily have in patristic teachers and preachers, is that system or systematic approach to the whole of the faith.