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The Summa Theologiae is a work of astounding breadth and scope: five folio vol-umes of closely packed print, and more closely packed thought; incredibly, it was a work intended, not for the learned and wise, but for beginners. Walter Farrell, O.P., fully honors that intention with his four Companion volumes to the Summa, which together offer an easy guidebook to St. Thomas's greatest work. These are not simply more books about St. Thomas or about the Summa; rather, they are a distillation of the Summa into popular and accessible form, a unique introduction to the thought of the Angelic Doctor and a defense of the truths, natural and divine, by which human life is lived. Volume II: The Pursuit of Happiness presents St. Thomas's profound study of the whole problem of human happiness. With each page, this study takes a step further down into the mundane world of human affairs; with every chapter, it confronts more directly the clamor and confusion of human activity. In neat and orderly fashion, Farrell once more follows the Angelic Doctor's lead, examining the essence of happiness and means of attaining it; the relationships between happiness and morality, happiness and passion, happiness and virtue; the various causes of unhappiness-running the whole gamut of human appetite and emotion, from love, desire, and hope to hatred, fear, and despair. A sharp challenge to the ethical caprices of the modern age, A Companion to the Summa, Volume II: The Pursuit of Happiness reaches for and grasps firmly the key to the mystery of human life: happiness.

The Summa Theologiae is a work of astounding breadth and scope: five folio vol-umes of closely packed print, and more closely packed thought; incredibly, it was a work intended, not for the learned and wise, but for beginners. Walter Farrell, O.P., fully honors that intention with his four Companion volumes to the Summa, which together offer an easy guidebook to St. Thomas's greatest work. These are not simply more books about St. Thomas or about the Summa; rather, they are a distillation of the Summa into popular and accessible form, a unique introduction to the thought of the Angelic Doctor and a defense of the truths, natural and divine, by which human life is lived. Volume I: The Architect of the Universe presents St. Thomas's rich and masterly study of God, man, and the world, as found in the first part of the Summa. In neat and orderly fashion, Farrell follows the Angelic Doctor's lead, considering the universal harmony of creation and its Creator, providing the arguments of God's existence, studying the divine nature and attributes, and examining the procession of creatures from their divine Creator, the manner of their production and their distinction into angelic, corporal, and human natures. A bold rebuke of the confusions and deceptions peculiar to the modern age, A Companion to the Summa, Volume I: The Architect of the Universe powerfully illuminates the fundamental truths about the nature of the human person and the orderly planning of the divine architect.

On July 17, 1794, a group of Carmelite sisters stand at the foot of the scaf-fold in the Place de la Révolution. Convicted of the capital crime of being fanatics-anti-revolutionary, anti-libertarian fanatics-they have been con-demned to death and now confront the final, fearful steps to martyrdom. Before this ultimate moment, their community has been sifted like wheat: the youngest among them, the aristocratic Blanche de la Force, afraid equally of life and of death, has run away. Now, in this final, fatal hour, the sisters pray that their faith not may fail, and that the anguish of fear might submit to the love that is as strong as death. "Fear is also God's daughter, redeemed on the night of Holy Friday.... She is man's intercessor." (Georges Bernanos)The Fearless Heart, an English translation by Michael Legat of Dialogues des Carmélites (originally published in 1950), was intended by Bernanos for film adaptation, the scenario of which had been prepared by the French Dom-inican priest Raymond Bruckberger. In its eventual movie form (1960), the complexity, beauty, and vitality of Bernanos's work is tangible; still more impressive, however, is the power of text in its own right to communicate just as powerfully those same characteristics.

No matter the stage, the career of Saint Gregory the Great was marked consistently by excellence. Appointed Prefect of Rome around the age of thirty, Gregory forsook his worldly success in favor of monastic silence and communion with God, establishing at his ancestral home the Monastery of St. Andrew. There, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, he lived a "life of permanent dialogue with the Lord in listening to his word." Providentially, Gregory was called in turn to leave the monastery for the See of Peter; there, his deep understanding of the Divine Word stood him in excellent stead-perhaps nowhere more tangibly than in his preaching.Selected from his work of forty homilies on the Gospels (Homilia XL in Evangelia) and translated by Nora Burke, Saint Gregory's Parables of the Gospel comprises an even dozen sermons on the parables of the Hidden Treasure; the Laborers in the Vineyard; the Marriage Feast; the Ten Virgins; the Talents; the Sower; the Great Harvest; the Barren Fig Tree; the Great Banquet; the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin; the Rich Man and Lazarus; and the Good Shepherd.

The Church of the Classical Age: The Era of Great Splinteringis the seventh installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' magnificent History of the Church of Christ. This volume surveys the eighteenth century's intellectual revolution, wrought by Galileo, Descartes, and Rousseau (among others); appraises the Church's missionary efforts-in Asia, with the Chinese rites controversy and the spirited work of de Nobili and de Britto in India; in Canada, with the heroic endeavors of Sts. Isaac Jogues and John de Brébeuf; in the New World and Africa, where clashing cultures and tumultuous race relations deepened the difficulty of evangelization; and in Russia, where the Jesuits labored to re-establish fraternity with the Orthodox Church; and, lastly, opens a candid examination of the "churches outside the Church," beginning with the proliferation of European Protestant sects and the emergence of new groups like the Quakers and the Pietists.The eighteenth century saw the Church-and, indeed, the world-stand as upon the knife's edge; "stray but a little" and they would fail. With Daniel-Rops' typical talent for engaging historical narrative, The Church of the Classical Age: The Era of Great Splintering chronicles the steps (and mis-steps) that brought the Church into the harsh light of the scaffold and reveals the grace which empowered her to "preserve her loyalties intact."

The Church's Liturgical Year reflects the fullness of Divine Revelation. In the various celebrations and commemorations of the Year of the Lord, the Church recalls the mysteries of faith: the Incarnation of God's only-begotten son, his passion, death, and resurrection which won redemption for mankind, and his institution of the sacraments and founding of his Church for the salvation of souls. Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, first published in 1958, is a masterful summary of the origin, history, development, and observance of the events on the Christian calendar as they developed to the mid-twentieth century. With warmth, wit, and due reverence, Francis X. Weiser, S.J., presents the liturgical and devotional aspects and the cultural expressions-the food and drink, music and dancing, and more-found in these salvific occasions. Set in three parts, the study progresses through the temporal rhythm of the seasons (Sundays and weekdays), the recollection of Christ's redeeming work (Advent and Christmas, Lent and Easter, Pentecost and Corpus Christi), and the jubilation over the fruits of that work (the Blessed Mother and the angels and saints).An easily accessible and richly detailed guide to the holy-days and celebrations of the Christian liturgical year, Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs remains true to its testament as "a key to a devout and meaningful observance of the Year of the Lord."

The atomic bomb marked a catastrophic leap in the history of human achievement. Never before had a man-made instrument dealt out, in an instant, such death and destruction. Once done, it could not be undone. The leap was made; the atomic age begun. To live in this new age, a new spirit was required-a spirit that would prevent mankind becoming the destroyer of all worlds. The father of the atomic bomb himself, J. Robert Oppenheimer, perceived this need, calling for "radical changes not only in spirit, not only in law, but also in conception and feeling" between nations and peoples. And what are those changes? The priest, not the scientist, gives the answer. In God and the Atom, Monsignor Knox re-states the ever-ancient, ever-new principles of God's revelation and commandments, and their application to the conditions of the atomic age.First published in 1945, amid the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, God and the Atom was one of the first theological considerations of the atomic age and the ramifications and risks of atomic weaponry and proliferation. To a world which refuses to let peace prevail, Knox's work remains deeply-and tragically-relevant.

"We are workers with you for your joy," states St. Paul, "because you stand firm in the faith." These words, declared Pope Benedict XVI in a 2008 ordination homily, are the very program of the priesthood. To fulfill this program, he told the ordinandi, "the fire of the Gospel must burn within you and the joy of the Lord dwell in you. Only then will you be able to be messengers and multipliers of this joy."Remarkably, the eight reflections of Ministers of Your Joy antedate that homily by thirty-plus years, yet each plays on the theme of that joy which comes only from the Gospel with the lucid brilliance and graceful authority typical of its author. The first seven-homilies for a First Mass, for the Feast of St. John the Baptist, for the Third Sunday of Easter, and for seminarians-meditate on the Scripture readings for the Mass of that day and their illumination of the priestly task. The last, a meditation for Cardinal Joseph Höffner's golden jubilee, clarifies the theology that supports the volume as a whole-that the purpose and power of the priesthood is to lead souls into the joyful salvation won by Jesus Christ.

As Ronald Knox was preparing to enter the Catholic Church, he took with him, as a spiritual-reading traveling companion, Virgil's Aeneid. The physical journey of Aeneas toward Rome provided a well-polished mirror to the spiritual voyage of Knox to that other, perfect Rome-the Eternal City of Christendom. "Ingeniously constructed on the Virgillian frame," as Evelyn Waugh writes in his Foreword, A Spiritual Aeneid is Knox's account of his conversion from the Anglican Church to the one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.As moving and memorable today as when it first appeared in 1918, A Spiritual Aeneid endures as the "essential introduction" to Monsignor Ronald Knox, a devoted servant to the One who makes all things new.

A translator, comments Monsignor Ronald Knox in his On Englishing the Bible, has two methods at his disposal: the literal and the literary. In translating Sacred Scripture "for the benefit of a person who wants to be able to read the word of God for ten minutes on end without laying it aside in sheer boredom or bewilderment," then only a literary translation will suffice. And such is the "Knox Bible," the fruit of nine years' solitary labor to craft a fresh translation of the sacred texts. That labor had a strong foundation in the abiding affection for and familiarity with Scripture on display in Meditations on the Psalms. In these fifty-two meditations, Knox leads his readers "from the less to the more 'interior' levels of the spiritual life," treating on select Psalms from the Douay-Rheims Bible as they pertain to the Christian life in general and the interior life in particular; observances of the Church; and "Songs of Ascents" toward ultimate unity with God.Pope Benedict XVI once described the Psalms as a "school of prayer." With Meditations on the Psalms, Ronald Knox serves as an excellent teacher in that school, cultivating with firm faith and deep conviction the capacity to speak to God in the words that God himself has given.

"And people go round saying, 'At least Catholics know what they believe,'" sarcastically remarks Charles Ryder of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. With The Belief of Catholics, Ronald Knox offers a stirring credo which puts the sarcasm of his friend and biographer Waugh's protagonist in its proper place. Building up the vast, intricate structure of Catholic doctrine from its foundation to its summit, Knox begins with a scrutiny of modernity's ill-founded aversion to religion and then proceeds, in measured, memorable style, to address those "essential and unavoidable" questions to which religion must provide the answers. Does God exist? Does he reveal himself to humanity? Is a loving relationship between God and human beings a myth or a reality? Is the Catholic Church what it claims to be: the means and end of salvation as promised by Jesus Christ?Celebrated since its first appearance in 1927 as a classic in Catholic apologetics, The Belief of Catholics offers a clear, stimulating, and persuasive presentation of orthodoxy. As a challenge to skeptics and a restorative for believers, Knox's work is the genuine article: the expression of the faith, freely received as it was freely given, ringing with the courage of one man's unflagging conviction.

The first of Ronald Knox's three "Slow Motion" collections, The Mass in Slow Motion comprises fourteen sermons preached during World War II to the students of the Assumption Sisters at Aldenham Park. Modest yet arresting in style, Knox explains the Mass from the opening psalm to the solemn words of conclusion: Ite missa est. While the liturgy Knox contemplates is that of the Tridentine Rite, the abundant fruits of his contemplation can be easily translated to the Ordinary Form of the present day. Indeed, their primary impetus is the powerful portrayal of the continuous action of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in which formula yields to mystery and man participates in his own salvation.Along with its "Slow Motion" companions, The Mass in Slow Motion proved the most popular of Knox's writings. Evelyn Waugh called it "the ideal present for a convert of any age or intellectual equipment." More than seventy years since it first appeared in print, the truth of these words holds fast: The Mass in Slow Motion is sure to assist any Catholic-let alone any convert-to more worthily and wisely go up to the altar of the Lord.

In his own variation on C. S. Lewis's trilemma of "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord," Ronald Knox writes: "I do not believe that, human nature being what it is, the immediate impression made by the preaching of the Gospel could have been so profound, if its first missionaries had only told to the world the story of a Man, clearly not mad, clearly not an Impostor, who was nevertheless prepared to accept the worship due to a God." The Gospel possesses a unique power to persuade its hearers to believe in Jesus Christ, to accept the friendship of the Son of Man whose Word is Truth itself. Differing from the continuous commentary-style of his other two Slow Motion books, Knox communicates the power of the Gospel in sermons brimming with his customary freshness, ingenuity, and anecdotal brilliance.Culled by Knox himself from the extensive archives of his preaching over the years, the twenty-three sermons in The Gospel in Slow Motion offer a ready-bound retreat for religious and laity alike, for they are "Gospel" sermons in the fullest sense: their aim is the making of good Christians.

In early-twentieth-century New York, a young boy enjoys a happy, ordinary childhood. Then, one by one, Richard sees his childhood securities crumble before the pitiless facts of a fallen world: the wanton cruelty of other children, the inconstancy of the "grown-ups" and inscrutability of their world, the overwhelming otherness of God, and the seemingly indomitable capacity in himself for sin. Things As They Are draws its thematic power from Richard's reflection that "children are artists who see and enact through simplicity what their elders have lost through experience. The loss of innocence is a lifelong process-the wages of original sin." As each pivotal event manifests, Richard must meet it with courage as much as faith, hope, and love, in order to safeguard his dignity and reach that maturity of stature for which he longs. Told with a rare lyrical power and an unaffected poignancy, Things As They Are achieves a unity of robust realism and profound spiritual acuity which makes it clearly deserving of its place "among the most beautiful and moving American novels" (David McCullough).

The Church in the Dark Ages is the second installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' monumental History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the first five chapters of that work, skillfully studying St. Augustine of Hippo, whose genius governed Christ­endom for centuries; the "Great Invasions" of the Barbarians and their conversion under the great popes, Gregory and Leo; the sanctifying influence of such saints as John Chrysostom, Patrick, and Boniface, and the scholars and missionaries of East and West; the grandiosity of Byzantium and its most illustrious leaders, Justinian and Theodora; and Christianity's descent into the "night of barbarism" and the heroic efforts of St. Benedict and the monastic expansion which sought to draw it from those dark depths.A magnificent presentation of six centuries' worth of Church history, The Church in the Dark Ages proves the aptness of the term les temps barbares. From 400 a.d. to 1050 a.d., the world endured-in Rops' eloquent phrasing-"a night in which humanity seemed to be groping blindly amid the bloody confusion of today and the anguish of the morrow. Only the Church, guided by a transcendent ambition, pursued her course unwaveringly, and in working to her own supernatural ends she became the most effective means of ensuring the salvation of civilization."

Per Étienne Gilson, "philosophy is a collective enterprise in which no one can pretend to take part unless he is first properly introduced." To provide that proper introduction vis-à-vis the modern period, Gilson and Langan move systematically through the landmark figures and ideas of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. Beginning with the vestiges of medievalism in Montaigne and Bacon, they then cover the interplay of science and philosophy (Descartes, Newton, and Vico); the emergence of a new political ethos (Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau); the installation of the golden age of modern metaphysics (Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff); the juxtaposition of materialism with idealism (Newton, Berkeley, and Hume); the Christian reaction (Pascal and Gerdil); and the rise of Romanticism (Lessing, Herder and Kant).With its emphasis on the doctrinal content of each philosopher, braced by healthy portions of biographical detail, Modern Philosophy is a comprehensive treatment of what it has meant and what it means to philosophize, the ambitious breadth of which is matched only by its absorbing depth.

The Church in the Dark Ages is the second installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' monumental History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the last five chapters of that work, surveying the threats to the Christian East, from the rise of Islam and onslaughts of jihad to the Iconoclastic Controversy, burgeoning heresy, and imminent schism; the greatness of Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance; the subsequent era of disorder in the West, counteracted by the first great medieval pope, St. Nicholas I; the Byzantine Revival, emergence of "Caesaro-Papism," and conclusive Great Schism; and, lastly, the tragic dawn of the new millennium, whose light finds the Church inspired by a spirit of renewal, manifest in the monastic reforms of the Abbaye de Cluny.A magnificent presentation of six centuries' worth of Church history, The Church in the Dark Ages proves the aptness of the term les temps barbares. From 400 a.d. to 1050 a.d., the world endured-in Rops' eloquent phrasing-"a night in which humanity seemed to be groping blindly amid the bloody confusion of today and the anguish of the morrow. Only the Church, guided by a transcendent ambition, pursued her course unwaveringly, and in working to her own supernatural ends she became the most effective means of ensuring the salvation of civilization."

J. Blue is a mysterious man. Charming and carefree, he goes from rags to riches after the inheritance of an unexpected fortune, only to forgo money and power for the love of Lady Poverty. This life of service leads him to embrace fully his Christian faith-loving the unlovable, instructing the ignorant, and remembering that it is by grace that we are saved.In this new edition of Connolly's 1928 novel, which features a special Preface by the author's daughter, readers can again encounter the mystery of "Mr. Blue." Stephen Mirarchi's Introduction places the book in historical context and explains its literary structure, and his exhaustive Notes reveal Connolly's sharp command of his craft. Readers will see more clearly than ever before how "Blue made one believe almost anything is possible," especially a life of joyful self-giving.

A good work of fiction, Caroline Gordon remarks in How to Read a Novel, is the competent fashioning of a story "out of the intangible, mysterious stuff of life." The House of Fiction, edited by Gordon and Allen Tate, is an anthology of short stories collected in the effusive light of that principle. Fiction is a craft; as such, they write, it has its "secrets of technique which not only appear in the works of all the masters of the craft but which have been handed down from master to master throughout the ages." Each of the twenty-three stories in this volume illustrates the various ways that those techniques can be (or ought not to be) employed, in the medium of the short story, in the pursuit of the art's final end. Most of these stories carry Commentaries to facilitate recognition of those techniques and their effects in a given story. Concluding the anthology is a brilliant Appendix of "Notes on Fictional Techniques," presenting the basic methods of the craft as well as the main faults of its inexperienced or impetuous practitioners.With its impressive array of stories, The House of Fiction powerfully displays the "vast front" of fiction's domicile. Its "windows" include the works of-among others-Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James; James Joyce and Franz Kafka; Stephen Crane and D. H. Lawrence; Katherine Anne Porter and William Faulkner; Truman Capote and Ernest Hemingway; and J. F. Powers and Flannery O'Connor.

Evolutionary theory has raised numerous disputed questions among Catholics and other Christians concerning the relationship between faith and reason and between religion and science. Thomistic Evolution shows that the Thomistic intellectual tradition provides insightful and compelling responses to these questions. This second edition includes a revised account of human evolution, an expanded defense of the the historicity of an original human being, and a new chapter in response to criticisms of the first edition of Thomistic Evolution.Along with its companion website (www.thomisticevolution.org), Thomistic Evolution seeks to remedy the poverty of knowledge and understanding regarding Thomistic responses to disputed questions in science and religion. The novelty and brilliance of the Thomistic approach to evolution will surprise believers and skeptics alike, transcending and reconciling the dichotomies that shape the contemporary science and religion debate.

The Church of Apostles and Martyrs is the first installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' magnificent and enormously popular History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the first six chapters of that work, surveying the first years of the Church until the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70; the peerless contributions of St. Paul; the relations between imperial Rome and the fledgling Church; the persecutions and first martyrdoms; the catacombs and development of the liturgy; and the genesis of properly Christian literature.An immersion into the infancy of the Church, The Church of Apostles and Martyrs offers an outstanding overview of the spread of the Gospel and the way of life of the first Christians in their original witness to the Good News. Indeed, what Daniel-Rops writes in reference to the Acts of the Apostles and its author might well be applied to himself and The Church of Apostles and Martyrs: "This book was not written with any intention of satisfying the curiosity of the future historian, but simply in order to exalt the faith. And yet, within the limits which it voluntarily sets itself, what an incomparable witness it is! No one who reads it can remain unmoved by it."

The Church of Apostles and Martyrs is the first installment in Henri Daniel-Rops' magnificent and enormously popular History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the first six chapters of that work, surveying the first years of the Church until the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70; the peerless contributions of St. Paul; the relations between imperial Rome and the fledgling Church; the persecutions and first martyrdoms; the catacombs and development of the liturgy; and the genesis of properly Christian literature. An immersion into the infancy of the Church, The Church of Apostles and Martyrs offers an outstanding overview of the spread of the Gospel and the way of life of the first Christians in their original witness to the Good News. Indeed, what Daniel-Rops writes in reference to the Acts of the Apostles and its author might well be applied to himself and The Church of Apostles and Martyrs: "This book was not written with any intention of satisfying the curiosity of the future historian, but simply in order to exalt the faith. And yet, within the limits which it voluntarily sets itself, what an incomparable witness it is! No one who reads it can remain unmoved by it."

Catholic Social Teaching (CST), or the Social Doctrine of the Church, is frequently mentioned but seldom understood and applied aright. To become intimately acquainted with CST, there is no substitute for reading the writings of the popes, who, from Leo XIII onwards, are the authentic sources for the subject, and whose ideas have left a permanent mark on Catholic and secular thought alike. CST is neither platitudinous social commentary nor assertions of economic utopianism. Rather, it takes seriously man's identity as both a "political animal" and a being created in God's image and likeness-one who matures within the family, inherits a culture, and participates in society for his own good and the good of all. CST therefore grapples with fundamental questions of human existence, and enunciates the principles that guide virtuous human activity and sustain a flourishing society.This collection, edited by Peter A. Kwasniewski, introduces the reader to the full breadth and depth of CST with a carefully chosen array of documents from Pope Pius IX to Pope Benedict XVI. Kwasniewski has, moreover, corrected hundreds of typographical errors, incorrect citations, missing phrases, and poor translations that are found in the standard editions. The result is a book excellently suited to bring its readers to an ever-greater appreciation of the nobility of man; the lofty purpose of our freedom, which finds its origin and its fulfillment in the truth that sets us free; and the Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who took on our human nature to share with us His divinity.

Under the Sun of Satan, Georges Bernanos's powerful debut novel, throws the reader headlong into the mystery of evil and the drama of salvation. Saturated with dramatic intensity and marked with Bernanos's inimitable fitful style, the novel follows young Fr. Donissan, a man of fervent faith but limited intelligence, striving to serve the Lord in his rural ministry. The priest's ability to plumb the depths of his flock's inner lives, along with his awareness of Satan on the prowl, grant him formidable opportunities of grace-with a girl fallen prey to prostitution, with a child on the cusp of death, and with his fellow priests struggling with doubt. Meditative, keenly insightful, at times alarming, Under the Sun of Satan displays the masterful scope of Bernanos's artistic vision, a vision which only grew in clarity with his later works.