A Saint among the Theologians II

Extract

II

(3) The Acts of Blessed Bobert Bellarmine during the controversy de gratia.

In a preceding paper, we were concerned to show firstly what was the real mind of the theologian, Bellarmine, concerning the theories and teaching of his confreres, Lessius and Molina; and, secondly, how his own treatise called Controversies came to be altered and mutilated in order to be brought in line to some extent with the new theories. In the following pages, which are concerned with some of the moves in the heated debate between Molinism and the traditional Thomism, it is necessary to bring into light certain activities of Bellarmine, when the theological consensus in Rome was becoming more and more convinced of the necessity for passing condemnation upon the dangerous ideas then being promulgated. The account will largely serve to reveal the zeal of obedience which Blessed Robert Bellarmine gave to his superiors, and the extent of his efforts to shield the good name of his fellow religious from public condemnation.

After the third examination of Molina’s Concordia by the commission appointed by the Holy See, approximately sixty different passages taken from that work, were reduced to twenty, in which the whole of the doctrine condemned as heretical, erroneous, temerarious, and dangerous, was compendiously gathered together. It is said by Fr. Brodrick (vol. ii, p. 55) that as the examinations of the Concordia increased in number, so the numbers of propositions condemned decreased;