Mystic · Medieval
St. Catherine of Siena
1347–1380 · Dominican lay mysticism
Doctor of the Church, declared 1970 by St. Paul VI; patroness of Italy and of Europe.
A Dominican tertiary of Siena who never learned to write until late in life, Catherine dictated the Dialogue, in which God the Father speaks to the soul of the bridge that is Christ, the cell of self-knowledge, discretion, and the “blood” by which the Church is washed. She nursed plague victims, converted condemned men, rebuked and consoled popes, and persuaded Gregory XI to return from Avignon to Rome.
Why he matters: She is the witness that the mystic's love of Christ and love of His Church are one: fierce loyalty to the Pope as “sweet Christ on earth,” combined with equally fierce demands for his reform.
School of Thomism · Sapiential and spiritual Thomism
Pieper, Chenu, Pinckaers and Bouyer: Thomas as a spiritual master and a theologian of the Gospel, whose Summa is built on the beatitudes and the gifts of the Spirit, whose ethics is a morality of happiness and virtue, and who ended by calling all he had written straw. The recovery of Thomas's own spirituality against the manuals.
Others in this strand: Josef Pieper, Marie-Dominique Chenu, OP, Servais Pinckaers, OP, Louis Bouyer, Dante Alighieri
Reading
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The DialogueSt. Catherine of Siena (trans. Suzanne Noffke, OP) · The whole doctrine; begin with the treatise on Discretion.
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Letters (selections)St. Catherine of Siena · Especially those to Gregory XI and Urban VI.
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Catherine of SienaSigrid Undset · A novelist's biography, deeply Catholic and historically careful.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.