Search results for ""The Catholic University of America Press""

Blessings were an integral and vital element of medieval Christian life and worship. Benedictions for homes and workplaces, the knight and the pilgrim, the city under siege, and the fetus in the womb, are but a small sample of the multitudinous and fascinating extra-sacramental blessings that fill the leaves of the liturgical books of the medieval Latin Church. While commonly acknowledged as a crucial element in the life of medieval people, the meaning and importance of these blessings for their authors and audiences have been frequently overlooked by liturgical and historical scholarship, which has focused instead on the textual transmission and long-term changes in the blessings and the rituals surrounding them. This present work corrects this omission by examining these blessings with modern eyes, and a new methodology.In ""Blessing the World"", Derek A. Rivard studies liturgical blessing and its role in the religious life of Christians during the central and later Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the blessings of the Franco-Roman liturgical tradition from the tenth to late thirteenth centuries. Through a careful and extensive study of more than ninety such blessings, many of them translated for the first time and accessible to a readership beyond specialists in medieval liturgy, the author argues that medieval blessings were composed as a direct response to the needs, anxieties, beliefs, and fears of the laity, and therefore these texts represent a rich and largely untapped source for the study of lay piety and of ritual in medieval Europe.Effectively drawing upon anthropology, ritual studies, the phenomenology of religion, and traditional textual study, Rivard explores the rich themes of medieval piety that flow throughout the blessings in order to produce a new understanding of the blessing as an attempt to tap the power of the sacred for use in daily life. Benedictions for spaces, places, persons, items, and events are each studied in turn to produce this new understanding of these blessings, and in the process these petitions and rituals reveal much about larger issues of medieval people's cosmology, their perceived role in their cosmos, their conceptions of God, and their connections to the divine and to the spiritual powers of God's creation.

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How does the Church realize its public mission? How do different theological and philosophical commitments influence the conception of the Church's role in the public square? This work casts light on contemporary arguments over social Catholicism and the believer's role in society by illuminating a similar dispute between French Catholics among the Modernist Crisis (1909-1914).In the first decades of the twentieth century French Catholics were sharply divided over what strategy the Church should adopt to re-Christianize society. This conflict of mentalities found expression in a polemical exchange between lay philosopher Maurice Blondel and Jesuit Pedro Descoqs that occurred at the height of the Modernist crisis. On the one hand, Descoqs offered a defense of a Catholic alliance with the proto-fascist, monarchist Action Francaise. On the other hand, Blondel defended the democratic, social Catholics against the charge of social modernism in his ""Testis"" essays. Blondel's trenchant analysis of the integralist mentality that he found in Action Francaise Catholics has been described as ""the most penetrating analysis of this phenomenon of Catholic integralism that...represents an ever recurrent temptation for militant Catholics. ""Peter J. Bernardi's study presents a thorough exposition and analysis of this significant controversy. While highly sensitive to historical context, Bernardi primarily highlights the philosophical and theological positions involved. He maintains throughout the book that political allegiances and orientations colored theological arguments and makes clear that the issues at stake then are still relevant in understanding ecclesial tensions today. As eminent historical theologian Joseph Komonchak notes in the foreword, ""the controversy analyzed and described addressed issues so basic in importance and so broad in implication that the work will also be read with profit by others outside of the historical guild.

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Spirit's Gift is the first book in English devoted to the philosophy of Claude Bruaire (1936-1982). Its focus is the notion of gift, a notion that has recently been the subject of lively debate involving Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Marion, Marcel Mauss, and others. What makes Bruaire's approach to this subject distinctive is that he treats it ontologically. This book critically examines the two main insights that govern Bruaire's ontology of gift (ontodology). First, gift is being in its spiritual way of being. ""Spiritual"" in this case does not stand for one quality among others, but, more radically, it is what makes being be itself. Second, being itself (ipsum esse) is gift only because, as Christian Revelation suggests, the fullness proper to pure act is first of all an absolutely free donation in itself and to itself before being donation to another (creation). The coalescence of being, freedom, and spirit grounds the claim that being is gift. Bruaire's thought is presented in dialogue with his two main sources: German Idealism (Hegel and Schelling) and Christian revelation. Bruaire spent the bulk of his career as a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris. Although not himself a Hegelian, he enjoyed and enjoys great standing as a scholar of and commentator on Hegel's philosophy. With Marion, Bruaire was a founding member of the French edition of the theological journal Communio, and he was held in high regard by the great Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Bruaire's metaphysical account of gift also has affinities to that offered by Karol Wojytla - and subsequently developed under his pontificate as John Paul II. While Bruaire's understanding of gift is decidedly philosophical, it is also of considerable theological interest, bearing as it does upon questions of Trinitarian theology, theological anthropology, and the Catholic sacrament of marriage. Rightly understood, his conception of gift sheds considerable light on the Thomistic understanding of Ipsum esse subsistens. It can also contribute to a philosophical retrieval of the category of causality and to the elucidation of the ontological ground of ethics.

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Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle (1896-1987) is largely remembered as the controversial leader of the Archdiocese of Washington during its first, formative quarter century. Combining considerable foresight about the Church's social concerns with a stubborn resistance to innovation, he countered opposition from those who reviled his progressive stand, especially his steadfast demand for racial equality and support of organized labor. At the same time he earned the opprobrium of those who resisted his firm support of the magisterium, in particular his controversial defense of the pope's ban on artificial birth control and his rejection of liturgical experimentation in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. Often overlooked is the fact that O'Boyle's Washington years followed a quarter-century participation in the modernization of the American Church's charity apparatus and the organization of its international relief effort. Such assignments placed him at the epicenter of the debate over the proper roles of church and state in providing social services. A product of the Catholic ghettoization of the early twentieth century, he was expected to lead his Church into fruitful partnerships with government and other organizations in support of society's most needy. This engaging biography seeks to explain O'Boyle's apparent contradictions by placing special emphasis on his formative years as the only child in an immigrant, staunchly pro-labor family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and his training as a seminarian and curate in the rigidly traditional Church of his adopted New York. These influences, combined with his subsequent work with the poor and orphaned, instilled in him a progressive economic and social outlook as well as a lifetime sympathy for society's neglected. At the same time they strengthened an unquestioned obedience and loyalty to those in authority that figured so prominently in his later Washington years, where he came to embody the paradox of simple faith and complex humanity.

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Don Alvaro, or the Force of Fate by Angel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas (1791-1865), premiered in 1835 in Madrid and changed the Spanish stage forever after. It was the benchmark Romantic play of early nineteenth-century Spain. In this English edition designed for either classroom use or performance, Robert Fedorchek presents a readable translation faithful to the tone and spirit of the original. Joyce Tolliver enhances the book with a rich introduction highlighting the work's lasting significance. The play tells of the torrid love of the mysterious Don Alvaro and the lovely Dona Leonor, and how fate intervenes - by way of Alvaro's role in the ""accidental"" death of Leonor's father - to bring about the extermination of Leonor's family at the hands of the man who loves her to distraction. Although chronologically not the first Spanish Romantic drama, Don Alvaro is generally considered the true exponent of the freedom of expression that Romanticism brought to the theater. It does away with all the Neoclassical rules: it exceeds twenty-four hours; the action takes place in two countries; it mixes high and low; prose alternates with verse; and the characters express, melodramatically and passionately, their innermost feelings. It is also generally considered the first play in the best trilogy, along with Antonio Garcia Gutierrez's El trovador (The troubadour, 1836) and Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch's Los amantes de Teruel (The lovers of Teruel, 1837).

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The Field Day Theatre Company has been a vital presence on the cultural and intellectual scene since its inception in 1980. This venture represented an attempt by a group of distinguished Irish artists to contribute to a resolution of Northern Ireland's political crisis. Founded by playwright Brian Friel and actor Stephen Rea, Field Day's board of directors has included writers Seamus Heaney, Seamus Deane, Tom Paulin and Thomas Kilroy, and documentary filmmaker David Hammond. Among Field Day's premieres are such modern Irish classics as Friel's ""Translations"" (1980), Kilroy's ""Double Cross"" (1986) and Stewart Parker's ""Pentecost"" (1987). In addition to producing new Irish plays and masterpieces of world drama, since 1983 Field Day has published literary and critical works ranging from pamphlets on Irish language and history to the multi-volume ""Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing"" and an on-going series of essays and monographs edited by Deane. In this study of Field Day, Marilynn Richtarik offers a narrative account of the early years of the company, during which its self-image and public reputation were formed. Drawing on contemporary reviews, pre-production publicity, pronouncements over time by the various directors, and personal interviews, she constructs a background for her discussion of Field Day's evolving aims and concrete achievements.

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John Paul's choice to yoke faith and reason together in an encyclical on the two sources of knowledge caught the world's By stressing ""the two wings"" of Catholic thought, the pope captures in the lively image of a soaring bird the same point that theologians like von Balthasar communicate by calling truth symphonic. This work aims to deepen the appreciation for the stereophonic approach to truth that the Holy Father recommends. The essays are in three sections: doctrinal themes; contemporary implications; and historical aspects. In the first, Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., discusses the 20th century answers to a question that has long haunted Christians who felt the attraction of pagan philosophy: Can philosophy be Christian? In the second section, Bishop Allen Vigneron considers the significance of this encyclical for Catholic intellectual life today. David Foster discusses the implications of ""Fides et ratio"" for Catholic universities. The final section reviews the importance of biblical wisdom literature for the encyclical.

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The chief aim of this primer is to give the student, within one year of study, the ability to read ecclesiastical Latin. Collins includes the Latin of Jerome's Bible, of canon law, of the liturgy and papal bulls, of scholastic philosophers, and of the Ambrosian hymns, providing a survey of texts from the fourth century through the Middle Ages. An ""Answer Key"" to this edition is now available. Please see An Answer Key to A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, prepared by John Dunlap.

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The Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith. What can we say about the divine nature, and what does it mean to say that God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three persons who are one in being? In this book, best selling author Thomas Joseph White, OP, examines the development of early Christian reflection on the Trinity, arguing that essential contributions of Patristic theology are preserved and expanded in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.By focusing on Aquinas' theology of the divine nature as well as his treatment of divine personhood, White explores in depth the mystery of Trinitarian monotheism. The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God also engages with influential proposals of modern theologians on major topics such as Trinitarian creation, Incarnation and crucifixion, and presents creative engagements with these topics. Ultimately any theology of the cross is also a theology of the Trinity, and this book seeks to illustrate how the human life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reveal the inner life of God as Trinity.

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Why do some people achieve ethical excellence while others fail? For example, how did Gloria Lewis overcome a lifetime of difficulty and go on to found a non-profit focused on feeding the homeless while Danny Starrett, despite a seemingly ideal childhood, became a rapist and murderer? Why did some Germans rescue their Jewish neighbors while others stood by?One recent study found that four personal variables, taken together, differentiated Nazi-era bystanders from rescuers with startling 96.1% accuracy: social responsibility, altruistic moral reasoning, empathic concern, and risk-taking—traits related to ethical excellences (virtues) like justice, benevolence, and courage. Drawing from the combined wisdom of classical Socratic and Confucian philosophy, recent work in psychology, and the lived experience of recognized moral heroes, the book focuses on how each of us can work toward ethical excellence, becoming more like Lewis and neighbor-rescuers than like Starrett and Nazi-era bystanders.The ancient Socratic and Confucian philosophical traditions offer surprisingly sophisticated advice regarding moral education. Because research in psychology helps us assess the feasibility of cultivating virtue in ourselves and those we influence, Ethical Excellence focuses on combining sound philosophical analysis of ethical virtue and related concepts with relevant empirical research on how these concepts are manifested and developed in everyday practice. Willpower, for example, contributes to development of temperance or moderation, grit relates to perseverance, and empathy is connected to benevolence.Finally, the study of ethically exceptional people—moral heroes or exemplars—serves as living proof that ethical excellence is possible, and exemplars can provide inspiration to attempt it ourselves and guidance regarding how to do so successfully. Relevant stories and excerpts from the author’s own interviews with award-winning ethical exemplars complement the use of philosophical virtue theory and psychological research on virtue-relevant practice. Together, these three approaches—philosophy, psychology, and biography—help to triangulate” ethical excellence and its achievement, presenting a much clearer and more complete picture than we can get from any one of these methods alone.

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This collection of essays places Flannery O’Connor’s work in constructive and collaborative dialogue with Spanish literature and literary aesthetics. The international scholars who contributed to this volume explore the ways in which O’Connor’s literary and religious vision continues to work in the imaginations of both American and European—mostly Spanish—authors. The subtitle of the collection—From Andalusia to Andalucía—is a play on the name of O’Connor’s family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia—Andalusia—where she spent the last sixteen years of her life living with her mother. It is said that the farm’s name was chosen because its location in Milledgeville was the farthest north the Spanish explorers of the sixteenth century traveled in the eastern U.S. before returning to Florida to establish permanent Spanish settlements. While perhaps colloquial in its origins, it is, nevertheless, a fitting and emblematic link between the Southern Gothic aesthetics of O’Connor’s Andalusia and the baroque heritage of southern Spain’s Andalucía.The essays in this collection explore O’Connor’s literary vision through three interpretive lenses: first, through the relationship of the literary grotesque (a genre that often defines her work) with the Spanish baroque aesthetics that have come to define Spain’s artistic heritage; second, through the relationship between O’Connor’s literary imagination and the literature of other European writers that broaden the intellectual conversation about her work; and, third, through comparisons with other writers whose Catholic imaginations made their work—as the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it—“counter, original, spare, strange.” As the essays contained in this volume show, the work of Flannery O’Connor continues to bear rich intellectual and spiritual fruit when engaging with enculturated literary and aesthetic traditions.

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Christian satisfaction stands at the center of the Church’s teaching about salvation. Satisfaction pertains to studies about Christ, redemption, the Sacraments, and pastoral practice. The topic also enters into questions about God and the creature as well as about the divine mercy and providence. Somewhat neglected in the period after Vatican II, satisfaction now appears to scholars as the forgotten key to entering deeply into the mystery of Christ and his work. Seminarians especially will benefit from studying the place satisfaction holds in Catholic life.Further, ecumenical work requires a proper understanding of the place that satisfaction holds in Christian theology. Various factors operative since the sixteenth century have worked to displace satisfaction almost entirely from reformed practice and theology. To address such concerns, The Godly Image, has, over the past several decades and more, done a great deal to put satisfaction within its proper context of image-restoration. That is, to interpret satisfaction within the context of the divine mercy and not the divine justice. This unique contribution to satisfaction studies owes a great deal to the achievement of Saint Thomas Aquinas. In this sense, the book enacts a retrieval of the theology of the high classical period. Like much of Aquinas’s refined teaching, a proper understanding requires appeal to the commentatorial tradition that follows him. Interested students will find in this study the touchstones for further studies of these authors.The Godly Image aims also to distinguish the theology of Aquinas from that of the medieval author with whom the notion of satisfaction remains mostly identified, that is, Anselm of Canterbury. Although not a developed focus of the book’s contents, the attentive reader will recognize that Aquinas treats Saint Anselm with a reverential reading, even as the Common Doctor moves significantly away from interpretations of satisfaction that suggest that an angry God exacts from his innocent Son a painful substitutional penalty for a fallen human race.

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As it developed an increasingly distinctive character of its own during the first six centuries of the common era, Christianity was constantly forced to reassess and adapt its relationship with the Jewish tradition. The process involved a number of preoccupations and challenges: the status of biblical and parabiblical texts (several of them already debatable in Jewish eyes), the nature and purposes of God, patterns of prayer (both personal and liturgical), ritual practices, ethical norms, the acquisition and exercise of religious authority, and the presentation of a religious “face” to the very different culture that surrounded and in many ways dominated both Christians and Jews.The essays in this volume were developed within that broad field of inquiry, and indeed make their contribution to it. For, among the many issues already mentioned, there was also that of persons. What was Christianity to do, not just with Adam or Noah, say, but with Abraham, David and Solomon, the great prophetic figures of Jewish history—and, of course, with Moses?As we move, chapter by chapter, across the early Christian centuries, we see Moses gradually changing in Christian eyes, and at the hands of Christian exegetes and theologians, until he becomes the philosopher par excellence, the forerunner of Plato, the archetype of the lawgiver, the model shepherd of the people of God—yet all on the basis of a scriptural record that Jews would still have been able to recognize.Written by a range of established scholars, younger and older, many of them highly distinguished, The Christian Moses will appeal to graduate and senior students, to those rooted in a range of disciplines—literary, historical, art historical, as well in theology and exegesis—and to everyone interested in Jewish-Christian relations in this early era.

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Peter of Blois pursued the life of a twelfth-century intellectual with vigor and passion tinged with anxiety. After a thorough education in the arts, theology, and law at some of medieval Europe's finest schools - including those at Chartres, Paris, and Bologna - he served in the courts of royalty and archbishops alike. He attended diplomatic embassies, advised princes, argued legal cases at the papal court in Rome, and may well have gone on crusade to the Holy Land. All the while, along with several treatises, he wrote, compiled, issued, and re-issued a collection of letters to the intellectual elite of Europe. These letters detail the spiritual and professional anxieties of an educated professional always looking for employment and in considerable despair over the fate of his soul. Peter's dilemma, essentially insoluble, was how to carve out a place in a rapidly changing intellectual and political landscape. ""The Clerical Dilemma"" is the first book-length study of Peter of Blois' life, thought, and writings in any language. John D. Cotts uses Peter's letters and treatises to recreate the thought of the twelfth-century literati, illuminating the ambiguities, contradictions, and fundamental dynamism of that world. Paying careful attention to the difficult manuscript tradition of the letter collection, Cotts explores how Peter brought classical, patristic, monastic, and scholastic traditions into an uneasy synthesis, and deployed them in letters whose recipients represent a cross-section of contemporary intellectuals - from cathedral canons, to prominent scholars, to cardinals and popes. The book will be of interest to all those interested in the religious, political, and intellectual history of the twelfth century, providing new avenues for studying the ways in which medieval writers composed and revised their texts.

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In a time of discouragement, how can the Church renew itself and its outreach to all people? Bishop Robert Barron, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, insists that a ""dumbed down"" Catholicism cannot succeed in today's highly educated society--instead, the Church needs to draw upon its great theological heritage in order to renew its hope in Christ.With Renewing Our Hope: Essays for the New Evangelization, Bishop Barron traces this renewal through four stages. ""Renewing Our Mission"" lays out the challenges that call for Catholics to become more aware of their own intellectual resources in encountering the ""Nones."" ""Renewing Our Minds"" showcases the importance of theological reflection as a font of wisdom and sanity in the Church, touching on Thomas Aquinas, Hans Urs von Balthasar, the recently canonized John Henry Newman, and Pope Francis. In ""Renewing the Church,"" he proceeds to look at how Scripture, the family, the seminary, and Catholic college graduates can each contribute to this renewal. Finally, in ""Renewing Our Culture,"" he returns to the judgments Catholics must make in assessing contemporary culture, specifically, family life, liberalism, relativism, and (surprisingly) the beauty of cinema.Bishop Barron, known as the host of the Catholicism PBS video series, was previously rector and professor of systematic theology at Mundelein Seminary outside Chicago, Illinois. He demonstrates again in Renewing Our Hope his ability to make the fruits of his wide reading accessible to a broad audience, while still giving his academic colleagues much to consider.

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The Light of Christ provides an accessible presentation of Catholicism that is grounded in traditional theology, but engaged with a host of contemporary questions or objections. Inspired by the theologies of Irenaeus, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman, and rooted in a post-Vatican II context, Fr. Thomas Joseph White presents major doctrines of the Christian religion in a way that is comprehensible for non-specialists: knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the atonement, the sacraments and the moral life, eschatology and prayer.At the same time, The Light of Christ also addresses topics such as evolution, the modern historical study of Jesus and the Bible, and objections to Catholic moral teaching. Touching on the concerns of contemporary readers, Fr. White examines questions such as whether Christianity is compatible with the findings of the modern sciences, do historical Jesus studies disrupt or confirm the teaching of the faith, and does history confirm the antiquity of Catholic claims.This book serves as an excellent introduction for young professionals with no specialized background in theology who are interested in learning more about Catholicism, or as an introduction to Catholic theology. It will also serve as a helpful text for theology courses in a university context.As Fr. White states in the book's introduction: ""This is a book that offers itself as a companion. I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable.

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Intestine Enemies: Catholics in Protestant America, 1605—1791, is a documentary survey of the experience of Roman Catholics in the British Atlantic world from Maryland to Barbados and Nova Scotia to Jamaica over the course of the two centuries that spanned colonization to independence. It covers the first faltering efforts of the British Catholic community to establish colonies in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; to their presence in the proprietary and royal colonies of the seventeenth century where policies of formal or practical toleration allowed Catholics some freedom for civic or religious participation; to their marginalization throughout the British Empire by the political revolution of 1688; to their transformation from aliens to citizens through their disproportionate contribution to the wars in the latter half of that century as a consequence of which half of the colonies of Britain’s American Empire gained their independence. The volume organizes representative documents from a wide array of public and private records—broadsides, newspapers, and legislative acts to correspondence, diaries, and reports—into topical chapters bridged by contextualized introductions. It affords students and readers in general the opportunity to have first-hand access to history. It serves also as a complement to Papist Devils: Catholics in British America, 1574– 1783 (The Catholic University of America Press, 2014), a narrative history of the same topic.

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“Learned ignorance,” the recognition that God is beyond us and our knowing capacities is the theological concept for which Nicholas of Cusa is most famous. Despite God’s apparent absence Nicholas offers original ways to think about God that would unite his presence with his absence. He called these proposals “conjectures” (coniecturae). Conjecture and conjecturing are central to the methodology of Nicholas’s philosophical theology and to his thinking about human knowledge.By using concrete examples from the everyday life of his times as symbolic imagery Nicholas makes what we say about God imaginatively available and theoretically plausible. He called such conjectural symbols “aenigmata” (= “symbolic or ‘enigmatic’ conjectures”) because they partially clarify and likewise point to an exact truth that is beyond us. Novel and imaginative, Nicholas’s conjectural examples break with the traditional medieval Aristotelian examples and provide further evidence of his role as a figure bridging medieval and Renaissance thought.Following his earlier book, Reading Cusanus (The Catholic University of America Press, 2003), Clyde Lee Miller here examines and comments on the meaning of “conjecture” in Nicholas of Cusa. The Art of Conjecture: Nicholas of Cusa on Knowledge explores what Nicholas meant by conjecture and its import as demonstrated in his treatises and sermons. Beginning with Nicholas’ On Conjectures, Miller analyzes a series of conjectural symbols and proposals across Nicholas’s less frequently discussed texts and recently published sermons. This early Renaissance thinker offers an original and ground-breaking way of framing speculation in philosophical theology and more generally in philosophy itself.

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Among the illustrious writers of the early Church, Saint Jerome (345-420) had a way with words few could equal. To honor the 1600th anniversary of the death of this patron saint of librarians and Scripture scholars, the Catholic University of America Press is releasing The Quotable Jerome, a well-organized collection of memorable wisdom from this early witness to Catholic truth.While Jerome is known for acerbic wits, editor Justin McClain shows that much of the time, Jerome's writings are instructive and even inspiring. Homilists will easily be able to find what Jerome said on any number of topics--Scripture, the Trinity, the sacraments, persecution, heresy, divine revelation, or chastity--just to name a few. All citations are clearly sourced if the reader wants to pursue the longer passage in question.“I am upset because I am human; I control my tongue because I am a Christian. Anger surges up in my heart, but I do not give vent to it.” - Homilies on the Psalms, Homily 10, Psalm 76 (77) (FOTC 48)“The doer of evil has, indeed, killed his own soul; but the heretic—the liar—has killed as many souls as he has seduced.” - Homilies on the Psalms, Homily 2, Psalm 5 (FOTC 48)“The Church does not consist in walls, but in the truths of her teachings. The Church is there where there is true faith.” - Homilies on the Psalms, Homily 46, Psalm 133 (134)“To err is human, but to lay snares is diabolical.” - Dogmatic and Polemical Works, The Apology Against the Books of Rufinus, Book Three, paragraph 33 (FOTC 53)“So much for what Scripture says; learn now what it means.” - Homilies on the Psalms, Homily 15, Psalm 82 (83) (FOTC 48)

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The presentation of the life and work of any great thinker is a formidable task, even for a renowned scholar. This is all the more the case when such a historical figure is a saint and mystic, such as Friar Thomas Aquinas. In this volume, Fr. Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, masterfully takes up the strenuous task of presenting such a biography, providing readers with a detailed, scholarly, and profound account of the thirteenth-century theologian whose works have not ceased to draw the attention of both friend and foe! In this volume, Fr. Torrell, an internationally renowned expert on St. Thomas, speaks to neophytes and experts alike: for those new to Thomas's works, he paints an engaging human portrait of Friar Thomas in his historical context; for specialists, he provides a rigorous scholarly account of contemporary research concerning Thomas's life and work. This new edition of Fr. Torrell's widely-lauded text involved significant revision, expansion, and bibliographical updates in light of the latest scholarship. The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to present such an eminent specialist's mature synthesis concerning Friar Thomas Aquinas.

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Goal! covers the history of the beautiful game from its origins in English public schools in the early 19th century to its current role as a crucial element of a globalized entertainment industry. The authors explain how football transformed from a sport at elite boarding schools in England to become a pastime popular with the working classes, enabling factories such as the Thames Iron Works and the Woolwich Arsenal to give birth to the teams that would become the Premier League mainstays known as West Ham United and Arsenal. They also explore how the age of amateur soccer ended and, with the advent of professionalism, how football became a sport dominated by big clubs with big money and with an international audience.There are intense rivalries in soccer, such as that in Glasgow, Scotland, between (Catholic) Celtic and (Protestant) Rangers, and the authors examine closely the social causes that make for such passionate fans. The book also discusses the use of soccer for political purposes, such as in Hitler's Germany and Franco's Spain. And - given the long-standing association of soccer as a man's sport and the rise of women's soccer, especially in the United States - the authors look at the gendered history of the world's most popular sport. This book, which will appeal to all connoisseurs of soccer, provides a lens through which to view the social and cultural history of modern Europe.The book is published by The Catholic University of America Press.

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The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to announce a new series, Early Modern Catholic Sources, edited by Ulrich L. Lehner and Trent Pomplun. This series – the only one of its kind – will provide translations of early modern Catholic texts of theological interest written between 1450 and 1800. The first volume in this series is On the Motive of the Incarnation, the first English translation of the seventeenth-century Discalced Carmelites at the University of Salmanca treatise on the motive of the Incarnation. Originally intended for students of their order, it became a major contribution to broader theological discourse. In this treatise, they defend the assertion that God intended Christ’s Incarnation essentially as a remedy for sin, such that if Adam had not sinned Christ would not have become incarnate, and that, at the same time, God intended all other works of nature and grace for the sake of Christ at their end. The Salmanticenses’ position thus combines elements of the Franciscan and Dominican traditions, stemming from the thought of Blessed John Duns Scotus and Saint Thomas Aquinas. This treatise is an exhaustive effort to show how the Scotistic emphasis on the primacy of Christ as the first willed and intended by God can be articulated within a Thomistic framework that acknowledges the contingency of the Incarnation on the need for redemption. In addition to the translation, the volume will include a brief introduction and extensive notes for theologians, historians, and students.

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The Catholic University of America Press is proud to present the third volume in its Sayings of the Fathers of the Church series. Featuring esteemed scholars and writers compiling material from our acclaimed Fathers of the Church volumes, each title is devoted to select areas of theology. The inaugural volumes covered the Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things, and now we turn to The Holy Mass.The documents of early Christianity are rich in mentions of the Mass and its component parts. Sometimes they’re detailed descriptions, sometimes quick allusions. In this volume Mike Aquilina, a popular author on early Christianity, takes readers step by step through the Mass, from the Sign of the Cross through the Dismissal, illuminating the way with the words of the Fathers. Along the way readers encounter familiar rites, words, and gestures, but also familiar complaints — about long homilies, bad singing, liturgical abuses, and distracted congregations.The Holy Mass is divided into chapters based on the parts of the Mass known to modern Catholics of the Roman Rite. The Mass did not follow this sequence through the entirety of the era of the Fathers. Gregory the Great moved the position of the Lord’s Prayer. There were geographic variants for the placement of the Sign of Peace. Some ancient liturgies lacked a specific penitential rite — though all the liturgies had a penitential dimension to their prayers.Mike Aquilina’s introduction provides historical context and describes the rich development of the liturgy through the Church’s first few centuries. A foreword by Thomas Weinandy, OFM, Cap., a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, speaks of the relevance of this material for worshipers today.

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The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to present the second volume in our Catholic Women Writers series, which will attempt to bring new attention to prose work of Catholic women writers from the 19th and 20th centuries. Sheila Kaye-Smith was a best selling author who had published over 50 books in her lifetime, few of which remain in print since her death in 1956.The End of the House of Alard (1922) documents the choices made by the final generation of the aristocratic Alard family and the ways in which they, both willingly and reluctantly, bring the long line of their ancestral blood to a complete and sudden end. For some of them, the end of the Alard line is as painful to enact as it is for others to witness; for others it is welcomed as a necessary modernization or a true realignment toward religious integity and universal human truth. Some of the family's children yearn for individual liberty; others have it forced upon them. But none of them can find it under the burden of the Alard name and its crumbling estate. The End of the House of Alard is a novel about the human need for purpose, for a truth by which to live and for which to die. It is a novel about faith and idolatry, love and death, freedom and bondage, nature and grace. Put another way, it is about how human beings cannot escape the great challenge of salvation, of breaking free from false, man made gods in order to unite instead with the divine love of Christ. The novel's characters span a breadth of options on this spectrum and their various outlooks on life continue to reflect those available to us today.

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The Catholic University of America Press is honored to publish the English Critical Edition of the Works of Karol Wojty?a/John Paul II. Under the auspices of an international editorial board, the English Critical Edition will comprise more than 20 volumes, covering all of John Paul's writings and correspondence in the years before and during his papacy.This collection is essential for several reasons. First, gaining access to the saint's writings has posed significant challenges. Except for official papal addresses and documents preserved and disseminated by the Vatican, St. John Paul's works have been published in a large number of different venues, often with limited dissemination. Many documents need a new translation. In addition, English-language audiences have faced the challenge—even in the case of published texts—of dealing with several languages, various translations, and textual idiosyncrasies.The second volume of the series presents Wojty?a's lectures at the Catholic University of Lublin and his works on Max Scheler. This volume consists of three parts: Karol Wojty?a's lectures at the Lublin University from 1954 to 1957 (during three academic years); Wojty?a's articles related to the ethical issues discussed in the Lublin lectures; and his habilitation thesis on Max Scheler, from 1953, with other essays related more closely to Scheler's thought.As was the case with Volume 1, Volume 2 also relies on the original manuscripts and typescripts of Wojty?a's works. These original texts were compared with the Polish published editions, and all significant differences between them have been marked in the scholarly apparatus. Some of the essays in this volume have never been previously published in English, while some others have never been published before.

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Patience and Salvation in Third Century North Africa: A Christian Latin Reader features the entirety of Tertullian's To Martyrs and The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, with selections from Cyprian's On the Good of Patience and a short appendix on Augustine's Commentary on Psalm 121.6. The Latin text has facing vocabulary and theological, historical, philosophical, and grammatical notes.In the first three centuries, Roman Carthage produced some of the earliest literature composed originally in Latin by Christians. Tertullian's Ad Martyras (197); Passio Perpetuae et Felicitatis (203), and Cyprian's De Bono Patientiae (256) all embody the force of this new genre of Latin literature. With this literature, we see a variant of Latin often denoted "Christian Latin." Christian Latin featured linguistic elements marked by characteristics of biblical Latin, later Latin, as well as vulgarisms.In addition to converging philologically, Tertullian, the author of the Passio, and Cyprian align themselves in topos: they all ask the question of how one can endure torment and anxiety in this world. Patience (patientia), derived from the verb for "to suffer" (patior), is a virtue that allows one to endure troubles, anxieties, and physical pains with the hope of eternal happiness and salvation in heaven. In this Reader, the student will find three different literary perspectives on this theme. The book also draws parallels to the works of Seneca and Cicero on patience and suffering.

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Whether to enlarge your general education, improve your English, or just because you are curious about the society that has had such a lasting influence on our history, our language, our thoughts, and our culture, you should and can learn Latin.Tamara Trykar-Lu’s charming and delightful introduction to Latin, From Puella to Plautus, Volume II, is designed for intermediate to advanced Latin study, at the high school or college level, either with the aid of a teacher and classroom or simply for personal enjoyment and enrichment. In this volume, the reader is introduced more broadly to the subjunctive mood, as well as a broad range of applications of the ablative, accusative, genitive, and dative cases. A wide variety of reading material is presented, including excerpts from the Carmina Burana, the writings of Catullus, the poetry of Ovid, the life of Saint George as told in de Voragine’s Golden Legend, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius from the account of Pliny the Elder, and Seneca’s story of the murder of Cicero. There follows an extensive summary of the grammar and syntax encountered in both volumes. Last, as a capstone, the reader can enjoy reading and understanding Plautus’s comedy Aulularia in the original Latin.Each chapter ends with a brief outline of some aspect of Roman culture, such as housing, fauna and flora, games, crafts, water supply, and cooking—with recipes. And last but not least there are informative tidbits, drawings, cartoons, jokes, riddles, crossword puzzles, and, of course, pictures distributed throughout the book. For while foreign-language study should be logical, coherent, and rigorous, it need not be heavy-handed or pedantic, and certainly not dull. Ideal for use in courses or for brushing up your language skills, From Puella to Plautus, Volume II is a lively and engaging book about the Latin language and life in the Roman Empire.

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In this collection of essays published by the American Maritain Association, leading philosophers address the project of civilizational renewal including its ethical, political, aesthetic, and religious dimensions. The authors provide a variety of perspectives, both critical and hopeful, concerning such questions as the common good, moral truth, the virtues, culture, art and the beautiful, Christian morality and metaphysics, and the vocation of a Christian intellectual.

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The essays in this volume, indebted in great part to Jacques Maritain and to other Neo-Thomists, represent a contribution to an understanding of beauty and the arts within the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition. As such they constitute a different voice in present-day discussions on aesthetics.

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Passionate about trying to create social justice in a time of crisis after the Black Plague, William Langland spent his entire life working on Piers Plowman, an epic study of the human quest for truth, justice, and community. The ""A Version,"" the first and shortest of the three versions he crafted, is wonderfully relatable and completely teachable to a modern student audience. Piers Plowman is becoming ever more relevant to students and scholars in English studies. Perhaps because the poem involves culture, religion, community, and work and engages explicitly with the histories of government and popular revolt, this allegorical tale of a wandering Christian named ""Will,"" searching for truth with the aid of a humble plowman named Piers, has found new critical and pedagogic life in the last 20 years. Currently there are no translations of the A-version of Piers Plowman in print, so readers, scholars and teachers have been longing for an affordable, student-centered translation. The apparatus includes a 30-page historical and critical introduction, footnotes, a bibliography, a note on translation theory and practice, and samplings of the original text in Middle English, with a guide to pronunciation of that language.Piers Plowman is an extraordinary important document about the issues dramatically relevant to this day. It confronts poverty and inequity in 14th-century England and explores the need for virtue and social justice, encouraging its readers to create equality with open access for people of all classes and abilities. Though a Christian poem, Piers addresses issues of inclusivity, social responsibility and communal duty, as the poem's protagonist wanders about the world, facing injustice and persecution as he looks for truth and salvation. Michael Calabrese, author of An Introduction to Piers Plowman and director of the Chaucer Studio's Middle English recording of the poem, brings Piers Plowman to life for 21st-century students and for all readers interested in the history of society, virtue, faith and salvation.

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In his monumental On Justice and Rights, the Jesuit Luis de Molina (1535-1600) discussed the legal and ethical aspects of the Portuguese trade in African and Asian enslaved persons. Molina surveys, develops, and problematizes the criteria necessary for the legitimate possession, sale, and purchase of human freedom. He insists that, even under legally valid slavery, persons who have sold or lost their freedom have inalienable rights as human beings, such as the freedom to make contracts, to marry, and even, under certain circumstances, to sue their owners in court. Molina also devotes attention to the ways in which slavery could be ended and whether and under what circumstances slaves had the right to escape from their owners. Well informed about the political structures and customs of many peoples in Africa, as well as Japan, China, and India, Molina paints a vivid and detailed picture of Portuguese trade. He gives specific accounts of the origins and development of the slave trade, region by region, and of the nature of the relationship between local rulers and the Portuguese kingdom. In doing so, he carefully describes the deception, coercion, and general indifference that pervades this trade regarding the rights to freedom of these people. It also attempts to identify the political, ecclesiastical, and market agents involved in this great injustice and their varying degrees of culpability. While Molina does not condemn slavery as a legal institution, the deeply flawed and even immoral behavior of sellers, buyers, regulators, and political rulers both in Portugal and in the slave-supplying regions that Molina denounces casts a heavy shadow on the morality of the trade.

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For Augustine, that the Word became flesh transformed a merely human understanding of the virtues and grounds all virtue in humility. The Way of Humility: Augustine's Theology of Preaching explores how this truth became a new paradigm for understanding the scriptures and thus, how Augustine embodied the virtue in the preaching of the scriptures. One of Augustine's most devoted students, Possidius, said that anyone can learn from reading Augustine, but ""those were able to profit still more who could hear him speak in church and see him with their own eyes. Truly, he was indeed one of those of whom it is written, 'speak this way and act the same way.'"" The Way of Humility searches for evidence of the virtue of humility in action through the preaching of the humble Word in the sermons of Augustine.Many know of Augustine through his more famous treatises but few have encountered the Doctor of Grace where he had his most immediate impact, preaching. The Way of Humility follows the sermons through several traditional theological loci, ecclesiology, Christology, soteriology to uncover what can be learned about Augustine's theology through the way he preached to a mixed audience of urbanites and rustics, many of whom did not have the benefit of a formal education. Throughout the book, we see the interplay between Augustine's action in speech and Augustine's more direct statements on his theology of Preaching. Through handing over Christ in his sermons, he became himself an example of humility for the congregation on their journey toward the final end for all people, the Beatific Vision.

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For several decades prior to his death in October 1992, Monsignor John Tracy Ellis was the most prominent historian of American Catholicism. His bibliography lists 395 published works, including seventeen books, most famously, American Catholics and the Intellectual Life, a scathing indictment of the mediocrity of Catholic higher education and a clarion call for American Catholics to make a greater contribution to American intellectual life. Ellis's ecumenically-minded scholarship led to his election in 1969 as the President of both the American Catholic Historical Association and the predominantly Protestant American Society of Church History.As a professor at the Catholic University of America, Ellis trained numerous graduate students, who made their own contributions to American Catholic history, and he also furthered the careers of several talented young church historians. Especially in his later years, during the polarized atmosphere that followed Vatican II, Ellis became an outspoken but balanced advocate of reform in the Church, urging greater transparency and honesty, collegiality on the diocesan level, a role for the laity in the selection of bishops, reassessment of church teaching on birth control, decentralization to provide an enhanced role for the local churches, and an eloquent defense of religious freedom and the American Catholic commitment to separation of church and state.His fellow church historian, Jay P. Dolan, remarked that Ellis "used history as an instrument to promote changes he believed necessary for American Catholicism...No other historian of American Catholicism matched Ellis in this regard.

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What is the Church? Some would answer this question by studying the Scriptures, the history of the Church, and contemporary theologians, thus addressing the theological nature of the Church. Others would answer based on statistics, interviews, and personal observation, thus focusing on the experience of the Church. These theological and experiential perspectives are in tension, or at times even opposed. Whereas the first might speak about the local church as the diocese gathered in the Liturgy presided over by its bishop, the latter would describe the local church as the parish community celebrating the Liturgy together with the parish priest, never experiencing a sole liturgy that gathers an entire diocese around its bishop. Whereas a theologian might abstractly describe the Church as a reflection of the Trinity, a regular church-member might concretely experience the Church as a community that manifests the Kingdom of God in its outreach ministries. Radu Bordeianu attempts to bring these two perspectives together, starting from the concrete experience of the Church, engaging this experience with the theological tradition of the Church, extracting ecclesiological principles from this combined approach, and then highlighting concrete situations that reflect those standards or proposing correctives, when necessary.Without pretending to be a complete Orthodox ecclesiology, Icon of the Kingdom of God addresses the most important topics related to the Church. It progresses according to one's experience of the Church from baptism, to the family, parish, Liturgy, and priesthood, followed by analyses of synodality and nationality. Arguing that the Church is an icon of the Kingdom of God, this volume brings together the past theological heritage and the present experience of the Church while having three methodological characteristics: experiential, Kingdom-centered, and ecumenical.

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Love and Friendship in the Western Tradition comprises a collection of essays written over a 25 year period by the late Rev. Professor James McEvoy on the theme of friendship. The book traces the genesis and development of philosophical treatments of friendship from Greek philosophy, through the Middle Ages, to modern and postmodern philosophy. The collection's three major concerns are: (1) the history of philosophical discussions of friendship; (2) the role of friendship in the cultivation of the philosophical life; (3) the marginalization of friendship as a theme for philosophical reflection and practice in the modern period.As the author was primarily a medievalist, a great deal of the focus of the essays is on the development of the theme of friendship in the Middle Ages (in the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, Aelred of Rievaulx, Henry of Ghent, Robert Grosseteste, etc.). However, this focus, while a value in itself, also serves to connect philosophical perspectives on friendship from before and after the middle ages. It connects to the time before inasmuch as much of the work done on friendship in the Middle Ages is anchored in interpretations of Aristotle and Plato, and it connects to the time after by providing a counterpoint to the modern paradigm of what constitutes the philosophical life.The collection combines historical with thematic approaches to scholarship on this issue and is one of the only books of its kind to do so. It is, perhaps, unique in its historical sweep and will prove to be a canonical source for further research on this topic.

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In recent years, interest in John Henry Newman as a philosopher hasgained momentum. This work places his philosophical insights in conversation with philosophers from the pragmatic tradition, particularly with C. S. Peirce, the classical pragmatists, and those who have followed their line, and shows several lines of concurrence. It argues that Newman overcame the modern philosophy of his time by reconnecting to the Aristotelian tradition in a very similar way to how Peirce did it fifty years later and the new pragmatists a century after.Without claiming that Newman is a pragmatist philosopher, pragmatism is used as a foil, or point of access, to delve into Newman's philosophy and bring forth the richness of his thought while placing him in the canon of philosophy. This approach deepens the understanding of his philosophical contributions and widens their reach to circles that have previously not engaged with him. Further, this study provides a means to understand pragmatism's resources from a seldom-used vantage point and perhaps appreciate its fruitfulness in a new way.Much emphasis is placed in Newman's texts that refer to his search for and commitment to the truth. The particular nuances of his thought that are brought to light showcase the effective intellectual resources that his writings contain. Newman does not provide ready-made answers to today's questions, but the way he analyzes and engages with the quandaries of his time can point us to creative and fruitful ways of engaging with those of our times.

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Spiraling into God: Bonaventure on Grace, Hierarchy, and Holiness offers a systematic account of the Seraphic Doctor's doctrine of grace across his speculative-academic, mystical, hagiographical, and pastoral texts. It does so by arguing that an account of this kind can only be provided by also attending to his theology of hierarchy, a methodology derived from Bonaventure's claim in the Major Legend of St. Francis that Francis of Assisi was a "vir hierarchicus," or hierarchical man. As the book explores in great depth, this appellation relies upon Bonaventure's reading of a Victorine Dionysian interpreter by the name of Thomas Gallus, whose "angelic anthropology"—or notion of the hierarchical soul—becomes a crucial component within the Seraphic Doctor's teaching on grace as he interprets the sanctity of St. Francis. Throughout the course of his career, Bonaventure will define sanctifying grace as a created "inflowing" (influential) that "hierarchizes" human beings by purifying, illuminating, and perfecting them from within, thus causing them to become a similitude of the Trinity. This book explains what this means and why it matters.Most existing scholarship on this subject in Bonaventure's thought interprets it as a subtopic with respect to other themes—for example, with respect to his Christology or his Trinitarian theology—rather than taking the time to understand his doctrine of grace in its own right. Alternatively, scholarly treatments of his doctrine of grace will treat it at length, but will only examine the topic as it appears in his more speculative-academic texts—most especially his Commentary on the Sentences or his famous Itinerarium Mentis in Deum—without bringing these into conversation with his pastoral works, sermon literature, or hagiographical texts. Spiraling Into God provides the first unified treatment of Bonaventure's doctrine of grace across all these different genres of his known corpus, and in so doing, fills a massive lacuna in both Bonaventurean scholarship and in the field of medieval historical theology.

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Justice After War is aimed especially to both undergraduate and graduate students, as well as the general audience who want to understand the significance of a recent development within the just war tradition, namely, the increasing attention given to the category of jus post bellum (postwar justice and peace). While examining the interrelated challenges of moral and social norms in both political and legal domains, as well as church practices, this work proposes an innovative methodology for linking theology, ethics, and social science so that the ideal and the real can inform each other in the ethics of war and peacebuilding. The main task of this project, then, is to identify what the author views as three key themes of jus post bellum, and three practices that are essential to implementing jus post bellum immediately after a war: just policing, just punishment, and just political participation.David Kwon endeavors to challenge the view of those who suggest that reconciliation, mainly political reconciliation, is the foremost ambition of jus post bellum. Instead, he attempts to justify the proposition that achieving just policing, just punishment, and just political participation are essential to building a just peace, a peace in which the fundamental characteristic must be human security. It thus demonstrates that human security is an oft-neglected theme in the recent discourse of moral theologians and that a more balanced understanding of jus post bellum will direct attention to the elements composing human security in a postwar context.

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Jesuit Colleges and Universities in the United States provides a comprehensive history of Jesuit higher education in the United States, weaving together the stories of the fifty-four colleges and universities that the Jesuits have operated (successfully and unsuccessfully) since 1789. It emphasizes the connections among the institutions, exploring how certain Jesuit schools like Georgetown University gave birth to others like Boston College by sharing faculty, financial resources, accreditation, and even presidents throughout their history. The book also explores how the colleges responded to common challenges—including anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States, the push from government authorities to modernize their shared curriculum, and the pull from Roman authorities to remain loyal to Catholic tradition.The story is comprehensive, covering the colonial era to the present, and takes a fresh look at themes like the rise of the research university in the 1880s and the administrative reforms of the 1960s. It also provides a modern and timely perspective on the role of Jesuit colleges in racial justice, women's education, and other civil rights issues, drawing attention to underappreciated Jesuit contributions in these areas. Michael Rizzi draws from both published and archival sources on the history of each institution to construct a single narrative, identifying common themes, challenges, and trends. Through the eyes of Jesuit colleges, it traces the evolution of American higher education and the role of Catholics in the United States over more than two centuries.

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In September of 2014 thirty new members were appointed for a five-year term to the Vatican's International Theological Commission. These theologians, clerical and lay, were chosen from twenty-six different countries and from five continents. The commission was charged with composing three documents of contemporary theological importance, one of which was that of the relationship between faith and the sacraments. This finished document was published, with the approval of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and by Pope Francis in Spanish in early 2020 under the title: La Reciprocidad entre Fe y Sacramentos en la Economía Sacramental. A subsequent English translation was published thereafter under the title The Reciprocity Between Faith and Sacraments in the Sacramental Economy.This present volume contains the text of the English translation. There follows an introduction by a member of the ITC, Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap., and subsequently followed by six explanatory and interpretive commentaries on various chapters of the document. Dr. John Yocum considers the contemporary relevance of the topic. Dr. Christopher Ruddy examines the dialogical nature of the sacramental economy of salvation. Dr. Jennifer Holmes Martin discusses the relationship between faith and the sacraments of initiation. There are two commentaries for section four concerning faith and the sacrament of marriage. Professor John Grabowski treats the strictly theological issues relating to faith and marriage. Canonist Timothy Cavanaugh takes up the canonical issues regarding faith and its relationship to enacting a valid sacramental marriage. Dr. Daniel Keating rounds off the commentaries by surveying the conclusion of the document, that is, the present need for evangelization so as to enliven the faith of the faithful, and the present relevance of the new ecclesial movements within the Church today.These commentaries are aimed at aiding priests and seminarians as they address or prepare to address the pastoral and theological concerns they encounter or will encounter on a daily basis. This volume could also be used in parish adult education groups as well, wherein the laity could better understand the relationship between faith and the sacraments.

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What is "A Law of Nature"? It's a question that's vexed philosophers and scientists ever since Descartes first coined the term. Fr. Andrew Younan explores it in this insightful book. After carefully reviewing the positions of Humeans and Anti-Humeans, he employs the philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas to argue for an essentialist understanding. His study leads him back to the beginnings of modern science and then forward to quantum mechanics. The philosophical account of how the laws of nature arise from observed regularities in the world is followed by a theological discussion of the nature and action of the Lawgiver."—from the foreword by Michael J. Dodds, OPTo borrow a phrase from Galileo: What does it mean that the story of the creation is "written in the language of mathematics?" This book is an attempt to understand the natural world, its consistency, and the ontology of what we call laws of nature, with a special focus on their mathematical expression. It does this by arguing in favor of the Essentialist interpretation over that of the Humean and Anti-Humean accounts. It re-examines and critiques Descartes' notion of laws of nature following from God's activity in the world as mover of extended bodies, as well as Hume's arguments against causality and induction. It then presents an Aristotelian-Thomistic account of laws of nature based on mathematical abstraction, necessity, and teleology, finally offering a definition for laws of nature within this framework.

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Francisco Suárez (1548–1617) was one of the most important philosophers and theologians of early modern Aristotelian scholasticism. Although Suárez spent most of his academic career as a professor of theology, he is better known today for his Metaphysical Disputations (Salamanca, 1597). The present volume contains a facing-page English translation of Metaphysical Disputation II, which is devoted to the nature of real being, the subject of metaphysics. In it, Suárez is especially concerned, first, to argue there is a single nature of being common to all real beings, and second, to show what this nature consists in. The Latin text contained in this volume introduces a significant number of corrections to the text of the Vivès edition, the one standardly used by scholars of Suárez, and thus more faithfully reproduces the text of the first edition. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction that provides a detailed survey of the disputation's principal claims and arguments.

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No other encyclical has generated as much conversation—both Catholic and non-Catholic—as Laudato si'. Often forgotten in these conversations is the theological heart and eucharistic vision of the encyclical and its integral ecology. Even the title of Laudato si'—"Praised be!"— signals the centrality of right praise in caring for our common home. Using Bernard Lonergan's theology of history, this book unearths the doxological, eucharistic vision that shapes the encyclical's integral presentation of social and ecological conversion. It offers the first book-length study that recovers the eucharistic nature of Laudato si'.In drawing out the eucharistic vision of Laudato si', the book accomplishes several feats for the reader. It roots the eucharistic dimensions of the encyclical in the writings of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, showing how Pope Francis develops their thought in notable ways. It introduces Bernard Lonergan's theology of history, showing how his framework can capture the eucharistic contours of caring for our common home; so too, in light of Laudato si', does the book expand his theology of history to incorporate both ecological concern and the doxological, eucharistic essence of the church. The book assembles a liturgically shaped, systematic account of the church's social mission. It joins poles otherwise sundered in a polarized church and world: between worship and justice, between concerns for human life and concerns for the natural world. Realizing the eucharistic vision of Laudato si' promises much for our contemporary moment. Pope Francis recently observed that the integral ecology of Laudato si' holds the key for the world's recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Catholic Bishops recently launched a Eucharistic Revival that aims to rekindle eucharistic devotion and praxis. The Eucharistic Vision of Laudato Si': Praise, Conversion, and Integral Ecology supplies a timely study that helps fulfill these intertwined calls.

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