(The Conversation) — Some years ago, I was rushing past the treasures of the Louvre in Paris, on the way to the “Mona Lisa,” when a painting stopped me in my tracks. Massive and unusually elongated, ...

Hundreds of students travel annually to Rome to study the prodigious philosophical and theological works of St. Thomas Aquinas, the “Angelic Doctor,” whose feast the Catholic Church celebrates on Jan.

"He was the world's flower and glory, and has rendered superfluous the writings of doctors (of theology) who shall come after him." St. Albert the Great is said to have exclaimed these words upon the ...