Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Today is the Feast Day of the St. Thomas Aquinas. If one's size reflected one's influence, St. Thomas is just about right. Known as the Angelic Doctor and the Universal Doctor, his importance to philosophy, theology and ethics reigns supreme. He's pretty awesome. And a super-smart brainiac. And mondo pious. He'd crush you if he sat on you. He'd crush your high hopes of dissent with his logic and make you feel silly. He was so saintly and humble, he was gifted a  glimpse of the Beatific Vision.  He was the most reasonable guy out there, and at the same time was a mystic. He believed in miracles, and when he saw them, he didn't think it was out of the ordinary. Why should it be? He was the intellectual genius that lived in elfland and believed that "a tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree" as another man of considerable intellect and girth once noted.  Although talking about his body of work would and does take many lifetimes, I'd like to...

So I've been studying Latin since May. Probably not surprising–'tis a geeky Catholic thing to do. It's at the same time exhilarating and depressing, and always hard work. For instance, since Latin is one of the most conjugated languages, the word "to chew" (mandūcō, mandūcāre, mandūcāvī, mandūcātum) has at least, sigh, 141 ways one can write the word, and this is not counting all the different ways to write indicative/subjunctive passive perfect, future perfect and pluperfect, which are sort of like the middle ground between a noun and a verb, which can cause headaches, tears and feelings of emptiness and can ultimately lead to mental breakdowns,  but I digressiō. Because Latin is so precise, words seem to have richer and clearer meanings. For instance, look at English. Many of it's more weightier words stem from a Latin origin, like salvation, justice, virtue and intelligence. The use of conjugations allows for so much precision that you can subtly change ...