chap 6 Benedict, Gilson and the "fideistic, subjectivist Christian."

Restating what was said in the last chapter:

The deceptive Gilson who is called by many "the chief scholar of Aquinas in the 20th century" not only apparently mislead John Paul II, but most of the orthodox conservatives (even seemingly some traditionalists) Catholics and Pope Benedict XVI to accept the equally dishonest or simply poor scholar Henri de Lubac who made the false claim that Thomas Aquinas didn't make a distinction between nature and the supernatural grace. 

As one reads the scholar McInerny's "praeambula fidei" it is obvious that he considers Gilson a real scholar who was dishonest in his discourses on Cajetan and Aquinas while he doesn't, it seems, appear to consider de Lubac "orthodox" or much of a scholar:

"'Supernatural' brought de Lubac... silenced... eventually De Lubac learned that it had been other Jesuits, not Dominicans, who had questioned the the orthodoxy of his views... If de Lubac got Cajetan's reading of St. Thomas wrong, what is to be said of De Lubac's own understanding of Thomas." ("praeambula fidei," Pages 70, 84)

The point is, as McInerny shows in his book, that Gilson and de Lubac were a team who worked to discredit Cajetan and ultimately St. Thomas' real teachings. The poor scholar de Lubac needed Gilson's reputation as a honest scholar to cover for his "question[able]... orthodoxy" and dishonest or poor scholarship. [https://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/09/was-pope-john-paul-ii-thomist-or.html]

It can be argued that part of what the nouvelle theologian de Lubac's teaching has done is replace the infallible teachings of the Church with Kantian teaching in which all human experience (pagan, heretical, mundane, etc...) is equal to the redemption, grace and teachings given to us by Jesus Christ's Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection as taught and administered through the Sacraments by the Church He established:

"The rejection of the proportionate human nature separate de Lubac more decisively from St. Thomas than anything else, doubtless because this rejection is at the basis of his thought... Grace, as the words suggests, is gratuitous, unowed, above and beyond what our nature is naturally ordered to. The supernatural, as the word suggests, is added onto natural... In de Lubac's account... [it] is almost as if for him the supernatural replaces the natural." ( "praeambula fidei," Pages 85-86)

The Feser and McInerny scholarship appear to show that the Gilson/de Lubac philosophy leads to the "fideistic, subjectivist" Christianity.

It appears that Benedict"s approach was in line with the Gilson/de Lubac philosophy which leads to the "fideistic, subjectivist" Christianity. Theologian Tracey Rowland wrote:

 "Far from wanting to keep philosophy and theology chastely separate, Ratzinger's often drew faith and reason into a symbiotic or intrinsic relationship. In this context it is said his approach accorded more with the Thomism of Josef Pieper and Etienne Gilson than with the so-called Aristotelian Thomism." (Newman Rambler Vatican II Special Edition No , Church & World, "Joseph Ratzinger in the era of Vatican II: A very German conversation in the European world of letters," Page 2)

 But it as we have seen the real Thomism is Aristotelian and not the so-called Gilson/de Lubac Thomism.