There is an enormous distinction which must be drawn between the insights of Thomas Aquinas and the system which has come to be known as Thomism. The insights of St. Thomas are magnificent realistic flashes of  illumination which lay open a tremendous range of experience, cosmic, human and divine.  Like the authentic insights of every other great thinker, man will never allow these gifts to be lost. But the system, the pedagogical blueprint, that St. Thomas drew up for the purposes of an age of scholasticism, has needed constant revamping from the first day of publication. The manual tradition of Thomism has not done its homework. The invaluable insights have often been obscured by uncritical and useless accretions. It is the system, the demands of the cosmic order and the order of knowledge, into which all things known and all things knowable must fit, which I find so unrealistic and illusory.
 ~Raymond J. Nogar, OP