Gordie-
I am not out of sympathy with the major points that the author makes -
but think that he simplifies St. Thomas' teaching rather recklessly.
Thomas was a professor who wandered up many avenues. He certainly was
influenced greatly by Aristotelian thinking, but he was also greatly
influenced by Plato, whom he defended in many cases against Aristotle. I
make no claims of being a Thomist scholar, but I have read enough to know
that he did not see faith and reason isolated from each other. His
commentaries on the scripture are not those of one who fails to see the
totality of truth (and the impossibility, because of our human
limitations, of our comprehending it).
Rather, I would place the blame on William of Occam and his rejection of,
for no better term at the moment, "form". It was nominalism in early form
and directly led to the problems to which your writer refers. By the way,
our cultural/social/political/religious problems of today can be traced
back, in my view, to this very mistaken turn. Although there were
obviously dissenters, there actually was something of a "medieval
consensus" which was broken, partly perhaps by economic causes but also
by Wm. of Occam and the secularism that his notions ushered in.
Anyway, we are now paying the price for intellectual mistakes made long
ago.
Dan