You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Taylor Cam. I am the director of

formed and with me today is Dr. Christopher Mooney. Hi Taylor. Thanks for having with you. It is great to have

you here. You are a professor of theology at the graduate school. Is that correct? Correct.

Very wonderful. Today we are talking about St. Thomas Aquinas, a name that many are familiar with, but hopefully

this episode sheds more light on.

So Dr. Mooney, what do we need to know about St. Thomas Aquinas?

Yeah, it's really hard to know where to start.

Thomas Aquinas is a giant in the history of Christian thought.

And I mean that actually somewhat literally first. If people have ever seen icons of Thomas,

he's usually actually quite large. And it's because the reports say that he was,

he was either, some people say he was sort of overweight or that he was just a really tall person.

He's a literal giant. People remember him that way. But even more, he's a theological giant.

And he's a theological giant because he's one of the most important, he's one of the most important thinkers in the history of the church.

Which is quite the thing to say.

Yes, absolutely. Well,

and it's not just me. The church has often held up St. Thomas as the common doctor or the universal

doctor. So doctor here in this case doesn't mean a physician. It means, as the Latin term, a teacher.

And so Thomas Aquinas has been held up as

this universal teacher, someone who is a teacher for the whole church. So what distinguishes him?

Because there's many doctors of the church, teachers of the church, but then so what differentiates

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