Product Review

This English translation from the original Latin, On the Sacraments in general. On Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance and Anointing is meant for seminarians and theology students who want to learn scholastic and Thomistic theology. This book is the first half of Volume IV of the four volume series under the title of Sacrae Theologiae Summa, which was published in Latin in 1956 by the Bishops' Conference of Spain. The Spanish publisher is called B.A.C. The four volumes contain the treatises that cover all the basic dogmas of the Catholic faith and it does it in a detailed and scholarly way, with a heavy reliance on the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. One advantage of this Summa is that it gives the student the "theological note," that is, the grade of certitude for each thesis. Here you will learn what is a defined dogma of the Church, what is theologically certain, and what is just a theological opinion. The original publisher has given permission to publish the individual treatises as separate books, instead of the four large volumes of about 1,000 pages each. The project will take a few years and, when finished, should add up to eight volumes covering all the traditional courses of dogmatic theology: Revelation, Church, Scripture, The One and Triune God, Creation, Sin, Christology, Mariology, Grace, Virtues, The Seven Sacraments, The Last Things. The text has not been altered from the original, with the exception of the references to Denzinger (D). The best available version is the 43rd Edition edited by Peter Hünermann and published by Ignatius Press. It is the translator's hope that this series will help theology students, whether seminarians or graduate students, to learn the great Catholic tradition of dogmatic theology which is based on the Holy Scriptures, the writings of the Fathers of the Church, the ecclesiastical Magisterium, and the works of St. Thomas Aquinas.