How did the West’s centuries-long journey from the Christian faith rooted in the tradition of the Church slide into atheism and outright theomachy, the war against God? In my twenties, I was completely invested in the fortified religio-philosophical system known as Thomism. Catholicism was an unassailable castle of argumentation that was impervious to any skeptical challenger that might bombard the system with (what I assumed were) futile attacks. I recall reading that  in his dissertation on Aquinas’ aesthetics, Umberto Eco commented that he, too, was once an ardent Thomist until he came to the conclusion that the system just didn’t work. At that time, I couldn’t understand why anyone would come to that conclusion. How could something so vast and, as my friend James Kelley said, “elegant,” be fundamentally flawed? That was some ten years or so ago, and in that span of time, Thomism was completely dismantled.

Furthermore, the Thomistic schema is precisely what led to…