In this article I would like to focus attention on the unique American religious experience as it relates to Thomas Aquinas. For the ideals articulated by Aquinas and his Dominican associates in the medieval university, especially the left bank academic institutions which eventually became the University of Paris, deeply influenced the founder of the American Dominicans, Edward Dominic Fenwick.

To remember, at this time, Fenwick and the historical context in which he devoted his life is quite appropriate. For not only is this the anniversary year of the founding of the Diocese of Columbus, which has offered one hundred and twenty-five years of service to central and southern Ohio, but it is also the one hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding and dedication of the first Roman Catholic Church in Ohio: St. Joseph’s near Somerset. The person who founded and dedicated St. Joseph’s was the Dominican friar, Edward Dominic Fenwick. It is, in addition, the one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the religious community of St. Mary of the Springs where this article was first delivered in lecture form.

In a recent review of Jean-Luc Marion’s God Without Being: Hors-Texte (Chicago, 1991), Graham Ward comments: ‘It is possibly presumptuous at this point to say whether Marion’s theological argument for a God without Being succeeds. This book will need considerably more digesting by theologians before a judgment can be made about its success.’ It is a point well made, and the argument I will make in this article is intended only as a further contribution to the appropriation of Marion’s work in a theological climate that remains famously resistant to the roots of his work. That this is an important, indeed even seminal book for Theology should, it seems to me, be granted. And even if it is to be branded ‘postmodern’—which is itself very debatable judgement—it most certainly does not exhibit any of ‘the enthusiastic naivete’ that has marked so much of this expanding genre. Rigorous, even orthodox it may be, but still new.

Ward depicts Marion’s ‘odyssey’ as a ‘relentless foray into sophisticated, abstract thinking’, which is true enough. But this should not allow us to dismiss it to the rarefied stratosphere inhabited by Parisian intellectuals. As I read it, its concerns are real and immediate, and by way of illustration of this fact I will begin with a brief anecdote.

A map of Italy showing the birthplaces of its principal composers reveals that nine of its twenty regions can boast of no one: Piedmont, Valle d’Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Umbria, Abruzzi, Molise, Basilicata, and Sardinia. Four of the nine are border regions; most are mountainous. Two regions have produced one composer: Calabria, Cilea (1866-1950); Liguria, Paganini (1782-1840) .Three regions have produced two: Sicily, Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) and Bellini (1801-1835); Puglia, Paisiello (1740-1816) and Giordano (1867-1948); Latium, Palestrina (1525-1594) and Clementi (1752-1832). Two regions have produced three: Marche, Pergolesi (1710-1736), Spontini (1774-1851), Rossini (1792-1868); Campania, Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), Cimarosa (1749-1801), Leoncavallo 1857-1919). Emilia-Romagna produced four, Frescobaldi (1583-1643), Corelli (1653-1713), Verdi (1813-1901), Respighi (1879-1936). Two regions have produced five: Veneto, Gabrieli (1557-1612), Vivaldi (1678-1741), Salieri (1750-1825), Boito (1842-1918), Wolf-Ferrari (1876- 1948); Lombardy, Monteverdi (1567-1643), Cavalli (1602-1676), Donizetti (1797-1848), Ponchielli (1834-1886), Menotti (1911- ). Tuscany is in first place with seven: Lully (1632-1687), Cherubini (1760-1842), Boccherini (1743-1805), Puccini (1858-1924), Mascagni (1863-1945), Busoni (1866-1924), Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968).

In terms of the Italian boundaries fixed by the Congress of Vienna (1815), eight of the above composers would come from both the Papal States and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies; one would come from the Kingdom of Sardinia.

All communities tend to develop an account of their own origins. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People has this advantage, that all but twenty-two chapters at the beginning of the first book deal with matters in his own lifetime or so near it that he could collect testimonies from eyewitnesses or from those who had seen and heard them, as well as from written materials. His history has therefore held its place as a source, despite some criticism of his selection of evidence. It remained in English libraries through the critical years of the Reformation, and was printed in the seventeenth century in England as well as on the continent, in Latin and in King Alfred’s and in another English version. This contributed something to the Anglican view of the origin of the Church of England, in tales of conflict and reconciliation between Celtic and Roman missions. On the question of Easter Bede’s details were relevant to disputes about the change in the Roman calendar in the sixteenth century. He also said that an Archbishop of Canterbury supplemented what was lacking in an ordination by bishops whose status was in doubt.

What came to be called The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was put into shape more than a century after the death of Bede, in the days of King Alfred. It was copied and continued at Peterborough until the end of the reign of Stephen, but it did not find favour with the Norman ruling class who occupied the important positions in church and state after 1066.

While reading Aidan Nichols’ book, The Panther and the Hind: A Theological History of Anglicanism (T & T Clark, 1993) I remembered the story of the country which decided that their young people should be taught to play football and that a national side should be fielded to compete with other countries. So they wrote to the Football Association in England for copies of the laws of football and sent them to their schools with instructions that the young people should learn the rules by heart, be tested in their knowledge and then be sent out to play. There was, apparently, some consternation in high places when chaos ensued and questions were asked as to why people who had learned the rules still could not play the game.

Aidan Nichols has certainly learned the rules of Anglicanism but still appears—at least to this Anglican reviewer who was taught the rules by one of those whom Nichols recognises as a “separated doctor” of the Roman Catholic Church, Eric Mascall—to be unable to play the game. For there is no doubt at all about Fr. Nichols’ scholarship and the acuity of his perspective on the history and development of Anglicanism since the Reformation. But none of his perception enables him to see how or why such a perverse—in his view—beast can continue to survive as it does with such vigour and obvious self-enjoyment, or why all right thinking Anglicans do not immediately see the error of their ways and at least join a Uniate Anglican Church and so regularise their position.