Thy Faith Hath Made Thee Whole by Carol Jackson Robinson (Book 5)

Foreword by Alan Fimister, Ph.D

Thy Faith Hath Made Thee Whole includes all of the articles Carol Jackson Robinson (1911–2002) wrote for Integrity, the magazine she co-founded with Ed Willock and others in 1946. A collection of many of her articles was published by The Angelus Press in the book, My Life with Thomas Aquinas, in two editions (1992 & 1995).

This volume not only includes all of her articles for Integrity but also all her book reviews and editorials (October 1951–March 1952). The preface has been taken from an article she wrote in 1962 in which she reflects on her work as editor of Integrity. In the preface, she stated: “…we were essentially right all the way across the board, but these are no longer burning issues.” We beg to differ and believe that many of the issues she raises in this book are still of concern for any thinking Catholic, so much has the world been taken in by a technocratic, liberal, impersonal, and un-Christian spirit. For Carol Robinson, mammon had replaced what should be the true object of our love and worship. As rational creatures we have as a natural end the perfection of our souls, and as baptized Christians, the Beatific Vision. Our lives are not meant to be lived on the purely natural level but on one which takes cognizance of grace. It is grace that will re-orient our lives towards God and, as a consequence, will re-orient the social order. Our priorities no longer lie where they should.

This volume will give the reader a greater insight into Carol Robinson’s prodigious mind, nourished as it was by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. Hers was a naturally inquisitive mind, formed by grace and her experience and later rejection of her bourgeois upbringing. It seemed as if her conversion to the Faith in 1941 lit a fire in her mind and heart.

* * * * * 

Sadly lost to recent Catholic memory—but no longer, thanks to the tireless work of Arouca Press—the pages of Integrity presented post-World-War-II American Catholicism with a vigorous critique of the flaccid complacency of Americanized Catholic life, the sequestering of the life of grace from public morality, and the ever-present temptation to prostrate before the gods of the marketplace as though they presented civilization with its highest good through the material progress that they promise.  Yet, Integrity’s message was not at all negative in its primordial inspiration.  Rather, as will be clear to any open-minded and fair reader of the honest essays (and numerous book reviews) presented in this volume, its founders, editors, and authors were striving to articulate a robust, adult, informed, and sane account of the lay state, lived in full maturity and in line with its complete supernatural grandeur.  Reflecting upon these pages, one will draw much inspiration for how to take up today—doubtlessly in a renewed manner, though sharing much with Integrity’s sane wisdom—the task of articulating the Christian life in the midst of a culture that is even more anti-Christian than that which Robinson et al. critiqued with such insight, force, and true charity. — Matthew K. Minerd, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy and Moral Theology, Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Ss. Cyril and Methodius, Pittsburgh, PA

Though written seventy and more years ago, these essays come across as amazingly fresh and timely. Indeed, Carol Robinson wrote in such a way that her contemporaries don’t seem to be Jacques Maritain and Thomas Merton so much as Rod Dreher and Eugene McCarraher. Running throughout the essays and reviews here collected is an earnest and sincere search for a properly Catholic anthropology as Robinson interrogates many of the spectres of the age—Capitalism no less than Communism, psychoanalysis no less than materialism. She does so with the combined zeal of a convert conjoined to the perspicacity of a resolute seeker after the truth. — Michael Martin, author of Transfiguration: Notes Toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything.

Carol Robinson's vigor and independence of mind is on full display in this collection, along with her love for the Faith and her concern for her fellow-countrymen. The pieces provide a vivid picture of the period after the Second World War and before the Sixties—of our failings as moderns and Americans, and the diversity, vitality, and seriousness of attempts among Catholic thinkers and activists to find a remedy. The result is a comprehensive collection, with never a dull moment and no end of lessons for Catholics today. — James Kalb, author of The Tyranny of Liberalism (ISI, 2008), and Against Inclusiveness (Angelico Press, 2013)

While she may not (yet) be a household name among Catholics, the resurrection and compilation of the work of Carol Robinson is an intellectual windfall for the Church. This volume is a must-read for the discerning and intellectually curious Catholic. Robinson’s work is characterized by a robust and wide-reaching critique of modernity which is remarkably pertinent to the challenges that Christians face in our own time. With a penetrating intellect and a deep knowledge of Catholic teaching (and especially the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas), Robinson’s writing is eminently readable, at once both clear and refreshingly bold! This collection is a veritable treasure trove of wisdom on culture, morality, the spiritual life, and all subjects of import to the thinking Christian. Certainly, the reader will not only read but will come back to this book time and again. — Taylor Patrick O'Neill, Ph.D., Teaching Faculty, Thomas Aquinas College, Northfield, MA.