Folia Theologica 20. (2009)

Barbour Hugh: The Cosmology of Catholic Worship: Pre-Socratic Sacraments? A Consideration by a disciple of St. Thomas Qauinas

FOLIA THEOLOGICA 20 (2009)

7

BARBOUR, Hugh

THE COSMOLOGY OF CATHOLIC WORSHIP: PRE-SOCRATIC SACRAMENTS?

A CONSIDERATION BY A DISCIPLE OF ST. THOMAS QAUINAS

Autobiographical Captatio Benevolentiæ:

Pázmány Péter and I

St. Thomas in the introduction to his Scriptum Super Sententiis says that the rhetorical art may be used in theology ut ratio quasi seducatur, "reason, as it were, may be seduced (viz. into believing)"1 and so I begin this paper with a little Augustinian captatio benevolentiæ following the method I adopted in 2006 when last I had the distinct pleasure of speaking here in this venerable faculty, one so rich with the memory of both the remote and more recent struggles of Christian Europe. I trust that you will find later that this brief, autobiographical introduction to our topic was not without relevance to it, indeed, that it was indicative of the deeper, and not so very speculative intuitions of the question of the Cosmology of Catholic Worship.

I finished this paper as I sat on the front porch at the house of my maternal grandfather, on a barrier island looking out directly on the Atlantic Ocean, the fiery sun had risen, the waves were crashing on the sandy shore and the breeze blew gently off the waters: in short a scene redolent of Pre-Socratic themes, the four elements all together in their grandeur and simplicity with a man to ponder them. My ancestors came to the coastal plains of the Carolinas at the end of the seventeenth century, to a new colony named for the Stuart "King and Martyr" Charles the First. I had just been handed the day before by a cousin of mine an obituary written in honor of one of these ancestors, a Calvinist of solid English and Scots Irish stock, a veteran of the ill-fated Confederacy, soon after his death. The obituary read: "here through all the years he has turned his steps to worship. Mr. Ward loved the House of

1 Cf. Super Sent., lib. 1 q. 1 a. 5 ad 3.