Not only was natural law disembedded from moral theology, but moral theology was dis- embedded from the rest of theology. In his encyclical Aetemi Patris (1879), Leo XIII anticipated the problem of theology's being done piecemeal, with a lurching from issue to issue, and with the chief means of resolution being the application of authority. He wrote: "For in this, the most noble of studies, it is of the greatest necessity to bind together, as it were, in one body the many and various parts of the heavenly doctrines, that, cach being allotted to its own proper place and derived from its own proper principles, the whole may join together in a complete union." p. 15

(...)

Not only in the seminaries but also in the universities, the thought of St. Thomas was accorded great respect; yet it was extracted from the Summa Theologiae in a way that favored the rationalistic elements of law. Almost everyone who teaches Thomas today would agree with Pinckaers that Thomas's thought was deeply misrepresented when the first seven questions of the so-called Treatise on Law (S.t. I-II, qq. 90-97) were isolated from the questions on beatitude and virtue, and ultimately from the questions on the Old Law and the New Law.

The subject of natural law was placed in the most unfortunate position of being organized around two extreme poles. On the one end, it represented the conclusions of church authority; on the other, it represented what every agent is supposed to know according to what is first in cognition. We have Cartesian minds somehow under church discipline. p.16

cita del Papa en castellano: "En ésta, la más noble de todas las ciencias, es grandemente necesario que las muchas y diversas partes de las celestiales doctrinas se reúnan como en un cuerpo, para que cada una de ellas, convenientemente dispuesta en su lugar, y deducida de sus propios principios, esté relacionada con las demás por una conexión oportuna". parr. 6

cita del Papa en latín: "In hac enim nobilissima disciplinarum magnopere necesse est, ut multae ac diversae caelestium doctrinarum partes in unum veluti corpus colligantur, ut suis quaeque locis convenienter dispositae, et ex propriis principiis derivatae apto inter se nexu cohaereant; demum ut omnes et singulae suis iisque invictis argumentis confirmentur". parr. 6