Petrified Neo-Thomism

"The student is bound to take Thomism largely on faith since there is no competition of rival schools, as in the medieval university, and so one is in danger of having a solid monolithic structure of infallible knowledge which includes philosophy as well as theology and treats the two as coequal, so that Catholic education becomes identified with an authoritarian ideology, like Marxism."

Christopher Dawson, "The Study of Christian Culture." quoted in Bradley J. Birzer Sanctifying the World: The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, Christendom Press: Front Royal, 2007, p.68.

This is a theme which was prevalent in the Munich University of Ratzinger's formation, hence his interest in Augustine and Bonaventure as a corrective, while continuing to study Thomas.

"Thomism may represent the philosophia perennis of the Western world, and it may be potentially the philosophia perennis of the whole world. But it is not so actually, and it cannot become so until it has incorporated the philosophical traditions of the rest of the world in the same way that it incorporated the philosophical traditions of Hellenism."
Ibid., p.66 quoting Dawson's "The Relation of Philosophy and Culture" article of September 7, 1955.

That idea of the need for the Catholic faith to appropriate the enlightenment has been often repeated by Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI as the most pressing need of our age!