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Sr. Mary Concilia O'Brien - Hardcover - 478 pages
This brilliantly concieved and executed textbook was published for Catholic High School & College students. It was published in 1941 and it is still one of the clearest and succinct summaries of Catholic Social teaching. It draws primarily on the teaching of St. Thomas in the Summa and the papal encyclicals of Leo III and Pius XI. There are chapter summaries, questions for further discussion, lists of primary sources quoted, an extensive index, and suggested reading for advanced students. This is an invaluable resource for neophytes in the study of the Church's social doctrines.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. - ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 464 pages
Volume ThreeOriginally, Fr. Farrell published Vol. Two and Vol. Three before Volumes One and Four. Chesterton, in his Saint Thomas Aquinas, has explained both my order of publication and the title of this volume. “He (Thomas) did, with a most solid and colossal conviction, believe in Life; and in something like what Stevenson called the great theorem of the livableness of life.… The medievals had put many restrictions, and some excessive restrictions, upon the universal human hunger and even fury for life.... Never until modern thought began, did they really have to fight with men who desired to die. That horror had threatened them in Asiatic Albigensianism, but it never became normal to them—until now.” The whole second part of the Summa, covered by Vols. two and three, deals precisely with the living of human life, the invaluable meaning of that life, and the secrets of the fullest success in the living of it. This part was published first, had to be published first, because of that unholy, perverted eagerness of modern men to throw away their lives and to discard their humanity. This is St. Thomas’ superb defense of the humanity of man. The remaining volumes of this work plumb the depths and scale the heights of the unutterable truths, the mysterious beginnings and glorious goals, that interpenetrate that human life with something of divinity, the truths that are the ultimate explanations of its incredible significance. This is not a book about the Summa, but the Summa itself reduced to popular language; and Thomas is not read in a day or a year, nor can we suffer an introduction to him, shake hands and then dismiss him from our lives. If we make the happy mistake of so much as smiling at him, he moves bag and baggage into our minds, to become an increasingly more delightful intimate as the years move on.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. - Ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 408 pages
This magnificent set of four books is an exposition and guide to the entire Summa of Saint Thomas Aquinas. It was written by one of the premier Dominican Thomistic scholars who were active in the scholastic revival of the 1930s and 40s. These books contain the entire Summa transposed into modern English prose, thereby making accessible, for those who are not trained philosophers, the complete theology of Saint Thomas’s Summa. The composition of these four books matches up perfectly with each of the 614 questions of the Summa. This book is meant to be read alongside the actual Summa in order to make it more easily understood by the average reader.Volume OneThis volume attempts to put in popular form St. Thomas’ masterly study of God, man, and the world in the Prima Pars of his Summa Theologica. His study is of extreme pertinence to our times precisely because we are the victims of a constantly increasing intellectual confusion. We have become more and more timid about digging beneath the surface of life, more and more emphatic about a knowledge of facts, less and less concerned with the wisdom of beginnings and ends. To put it baldly, we have concentrated more and more on the physical world and less and less on man and on God. The fact is, however, that exclusive concentration on a study of the world does not unearth the important truths about the world; an exclusive consideration of man and the world results in a blurred, distorted vision of both. We have tried to know only the world and remained most ignorant of it; to know only man and the world and have become entangled in a mass of meaningless detail. For the world is intelligible only in terms of man and God; man is intelligible only in terms of God; God is intelligible only in terms of Himself.
Don Pietro Leome - PB 246 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB
In our days the war against God and His Church has become deeper and broader than at any time in history. No longer are the powers of darkness content to attack only the institutional Church that God founded. The truth is that the human nature that God the Father created is now the subject of the adversary’s most violent persecution, and through the undermining of the very concept of human nature and the natural law enshrined in it the enemies of God hope to make any consideration of the concept of ‘super-nature’ and super-natural life disappear from the minds of men.
The Church has always been the true guardian of not only supernatural life, but of the natural law as well. Since the natural law is the law that God put into our nature and it is discernible in the light of reason, the Church, speaking for God, is the champion of sound reasoning. With the natural law as well as supernatural law governing human sexuality and family life under attack, Don Pietro Leone has risen to defend (and to properly distinguish) those areas, so that those who wish to defend the Church and human society in our age may have sound teaching upon which to base their actions.
In the course of this treatment of these topics he makes a detailed critique of certain novel presentations of themes found in the Magisterium from the time of the Second Vatican Council onwards. Amongst these doctrines is one he terms ‘Magisterial Personalism’ and another called the ‘Theology of the Body.’ Drawing upon scholastic philosophy and the perennial teaching of the Church, Don Pietro brings light to a subject recently plunged into obscurity and darkness that is not currently being dispelled sucessfully, even by the guardians of Truth themselves.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. -ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 412 pages
Volume TwoThere is a need felt by those who, having heard enough of St. Thomas to whet their appetite, suddenly discover that they cannot go directly to St. Thomas without the guidance of a professor; and for most of them the leisure days of the classroom are over forever.This, then, is the double purpose of this book: to furnish a rational defense of his faith for the ordinary Catholic and to open St. Thomas to the layman who has no professional philosophical or theological knowledge. It is not, then, intended only for the very learned, nor for a textbook. If it must be described in a phrase, it might best be called an easy guidebook to St. Thomas’s greatest work.Just as a guidebook to Paris can be best evaluated in the streets of Paris, so this guide book to the Summa can be best appreciated in the pages of the Summa, by comparing the individual chapters of the book with the corresponding questions of the Prima Secundae (First Part of the Second Part) of St. Thomas’ Summa, questions that are given at the head of each chapter. Any particularly striking point will be found more fully and more beautifully developed in the Summa itself; further proofs, explanations, and illustrations can all be had directly from St. Thomas.It is important to remember that it is the Summa reduced to popular language and not merely another book about St. Thomas or about the Summa. In fact, it is often more than that, for, particularly on difficult questions, the parallel passages in other works of St. Thomas have been freely used where the conciseness of the Summa might have caused some obscurity for one not wholly familiar with the thought of Thomas.
Father Farrell’s four-part Companion to the Summa has been responsible for much of the renewed interest in Thomism in the United States. It is required reading for many Catholic college students and “unrequired reading” for thousands of other lovers of St. Thomas.Its author was born in Chicago in 1902. He attended Dominican schools and was ordained in the Dominican order in 1927, then going to the University of Fribourg for his S.T.D. degree. In 1940 he was awarded the seldom given Dominican honor of the Master of Sacred Theology degree. He served as a Navy chaplain during World War II and was then stationed at the Dominican Houses of Studies in Washington, D. C. and River Forest, Illinois until his death in 1951.
Rev. T. J. O'Kane - Small book - 88 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB
This Catechism of 84 pages was originally published by the Catholic Social Guild of Oxford England in 1936. It contains all of the essential teachings of the Church on man’s nature, purpose, and destiny, as well as his fall and redemption. There are sections on the divine and natural law, the right to life—one’s own and that of others— as well as extensive Q&A sections on education, marriage, private property, wages, the family home, the state and Catholics in politics. This is a great teaching tool and very much needed today in America.
Dr. Godefroid Kurth - with an Introduction by Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp. — 64 pages - EBOOK - PDF
Is not the strategy of the enemies of God there to teach us a lesson? They want to destroy the faith in the hearts of individuals, it is true, but they direct still more vigorous efforts to the elimination of religion from social institutions. Even one defeat of God in this domain means the weakening, if not the ruin, of the faith in the souls of many”
This short essay on the workingman’s guilds by Professor Kurth was translated into English by Father Denis Fahey, who also wrote the introduction included here. The introduction is longer than the article since it introduces briefly the entire plan for a Christian social order, of which the economic life of the laboring man is only a portion.
When speaking of the economic life of a Christian society the most important principle to consider is that it—the economic life of society— must be subject to the moral law before all else. This subjection must be the first principle of the structure of society’s economic life and not simply something engrafted as an afterthought. Both politics and economics are disciplines subsidiary to the science of ethics. Without this subjection nations become ensnared by the terrible modern errors known as capitalism, communism, or socialism, all of which amount to the same thing, the destruction of the society operated according to their principles, and the end of Christian civilization.
Fr. Denis Fahey C.S.Sp. - 226 pages - EBOOK as PDF, EPUB, or Kindle
“I repeatedly promised Saint Peter that if I ever got the chance, I would teach the truth about his Master in the way he and his successors, the Roman Pontiffs, wanted it done. That is what I have striven to do and am doing.” —Rev. Denis Fahey
This is the last book published before Fr. Fahey’s death. It is an enduring testament to his love of the land and his firm belief that the best setting for most Catholic living is the family farm or small business, similar to the life lived by the Holy Family of Nazareth.The Church is greatly interested in farming because it is the most fundamental of all human occupations. Those who work the land are deeply immersed in, and must work in harmony with, the natural rhythms and processes of God’s creative handiwork. The harmony and balance of rural life are profoundly upset by industrialized living, both on and off the land. Father delves into many spiritual, chemical, technical, and scientific questions pertaining to the future of farming and the life of the Church and all human society, which depends completely on the land for its existence and prosperity.
