Pius X: Cf. Etienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac (later Cardinal) [July 21, 1965]

“For every Saint Thomas and a few others like him, who magnificently destroyed the obstacle [rationalism], there have been hundreds of low-flying ‘rationalists’ who foundered on it….

“This is what is frightening: orthodoxy in the hands of her destroyers. The tragedy of modernism was that the rotten theology promulgated by its opponents was in large part responsible for its errors. Modernism was wrong, but its repression was undertaken by men who were also wrong, whose pseudo-theology made a modernist reaction inevitable.

“I see redemption only in a Thomist theology as you perceive it, in the company of Saint Augustine, Saint Bonaventure and the great theologians of the East: they are all welcome because, despite unavoidable philosophical differences, they all try to draw an intellectus from the same Faith.”

April 1, 1964: “When I quote them Saint Thomas on the Faith, they accuse me of fideism. NO! Not of fideism, but ‘leaning dangerously toward fideism.’ I never respond to them. My great strength, alas! Is that I am not a priest. Had Maritain and I been monks or priests, neither of us would have been able to write the hundredth part of what we have written. We would have been, as they say, crucified. But I have nothing to teach you on that score… Nonetheless, there will have to be a new edition of Surnaturel” (H. de Lubac "At the Service of the Church" Communio Books - Ignatius (1993) 126-127.