There are seven sacraments administered in the Catholic Church. What are they, and what do they do? Why do human beings require sacramentalized, visible realities to seal their confession of faith in Jesus Christ? Why does the Catholic Church administer the sacraments in the way that it does? Leading Catholic theologian Romanus Cessario, OP, offers an in-depth explanation of the seven sacraments celebrated in the Catholic Church. He addresses the rationale for the sacraments and provides detailed exposition of each one, highlighting the importance of the Catholic tradition--and of Thomas Aquinas, in particular--for contemporary reflection on the sacraments. This book examines why participation in the sacramental life of the Church is required for the believing Christian and helps readers understand the role the sacraments play in the sanctification of the world.

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.

Saint Thomas Aquinas showed the world that Catholic theology is not just something meant to stimulate the mind. Indeed, the authentic study of the sacra doctrina exercises a shaping influence on the whole of the Christian life. In this volume, Dominican theologian Father Romanus Cessario, OP, follows this precedent by considering the integration of theology and Christian living. Focusing on various aspects of Catholic theology and spirituality, the essays in this volume explore the essential relationship between truth and grace. With characteristic wisdom and insight, Father Cessario reveals how theology and sanctity share a common origin and end. Here the doctrine of Saint Thomas Aquinas and his exponents emerges as something eminently relevant to Christian living in the twenty-first century. Written for all those who take the theological life seriously, Theology and Sanctity explains how - and why - only the truth has grace.

Originally published in 2001, Introduction to Moral Theology responded to the need for a new introduction to the basic and central elements of Catholic moral theology written in the light of Veritatis splendor. Since then, it has become a standard text for students and a reputable resource on such topics as moral theology and the good of the human person created in God's image; natural law; principles of human action; determination of the moral good through objects, ends, and circumstances; and the virtues, gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the Beatitudes.

Since the first followers of Saint Thomas Aquinas took up the task of explaining and defending his writings, Thomists have influenced deeply the Western intellectual tradition. Together they form a school called Thomism that can claim an uninterrupted history since the end of the thirteenth century. Using carefully selected resources, Romanus Cessario has composed a short account of the history of the Thomist tradition as it manifests itself through the more than seven hundred years that have elapsed since the death of Saint Thomas. A Short History of Thomism, originally published in French as Le Thomisme et les Thomistes, supplies a need that has not been met in over a century, and is the first such comprehensive account written in English. The author, who has worked in the field for more than thirty-five years, brings to his study an appreciation for the place that Saint Thomas Aquinas holds as a perennial teacher of Christian theology, and for the influence that the Common Doctor has exercised on all stripes of theology and philosophy. The book suggests suitable criteria for including and excluding authors from the catalogue of Thomists, and proceeds to identify the principal periods during which Thomism fared both well and less well. Appeal to broader historical contexts helps the reader locate Thomism within the flow of intellectual history as it unfolds in the West. Representative figures in the history of Thomism are named and their literary compositions described in order to show the variety of ways that these authors have carried on the tradition. To enable the reader to learn the positions that are commonly identified with the Thomist school, the book includes an exposition of its major theological and philosophical themes.

Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) is one of the most important thinkers in the history of western civilization. A philosopher and theologian, a priest and preacher, Aquinas bequeathed to the world an enduring synthesis of philosophy, theology, and Christian spirituality. Aquinas championed the integration of faith and action, sound doctrine and right living, orthodoxy and orthopraxy. From the thirteenth century through the present day, his legacy has served as a blessing for the church and beyond. In the nearly eight hundred years since Aquinas's death, his thought has been studied, interpreted, criticized, reinvigorated, and anointed as the exemplar of Catholic theology. Thomas and the Thomists, a new volume in the Mapping the Tradition series, serves as an introduction to the life of Aquinas, the major contours of his teaching, and the lasting contribution he made to Christian thought. Romanus Cessario and Cajetan Cuddy also outline the history of the Thomist tradition-the great school of Aquinas's interpreters-from the medieval era through the revival of the Thomist heritage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume affords its readers a working guide to understanding the history of Aquinas and his expositors as well as to grasping their significance for us today.

What does it mean to believe in God? This question still provokes a recalcitrant world. In spite of the apparent disinterest of our age, the religious question continues to task and to vex, sometimes quietly, sometimes dramatically. When religious divisions occasion civil strife, believers are faced with an even more radical inquiry. Wherein lies the real truth about Christian doctrine and its place in our lives? Can we appeal to any authority for belief? How do we escape the suspicions of a skeptical age? In this book, Romanus Cessario explores these questions and suggests responses taken from the history of theology. He offers a readable account of the accumulated wisdom of the Christian tradition concerning the faith-question, citing as major authorities the saints, those who have realized the will of God throughout the ages. Faith supplies not only the assurance but also the substance of things hoped for. The experience of Israel teaches that "God has foreseen something better for us"; this "something better" resides in the Word of God that takes flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Because it keeps being born again in the heart of every believer, as St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us, it leads us to the blessedness of eternal life. Since the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, authors have dealt mainly with the existential dimensions of Christian life. This volume, the fruit of more than two decades of contemplation on the virtues of Christian life, complements these as well as historical studies about faith. It presents a coherent meditation on faith's principal concerns: its acts of belief and confession, and its character as a virtue in the Christian life. Father Cessario explains how the mysteries of faith--what the Christian believer professes each Sunday in the Creed--transform our lives and make us living images of the Triune God. Consequently, this book will meet a wide range of needs by answering the questions of the informed reader, animating study groups and parish seminars, and stimulating the ordinary believer to appropriate "the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God." ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Romanus Cessario, O.P., is professor of systematic theology at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts. Before assuming this post in the fall of 1995, Father Cessario taught at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. He served there as Academic Dean from 1979 to 1987. He is the author of numerous works, including The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, Le Virtu, and Perpetual Angelus: As the Saints Pray the Rosary, and presently serves on the editorial boards of The Thomist, the French journal Pierre d'Angle, and the National Catholic Register.

First published in 1991, "The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics"introduced readers to an approach in Christian ethics that was not then much in vogue. Although the Second Vatican Council had marked a departure from the legalistic code of proper conduct for Catholics (known since the Catholic Reformation as "casuistry"), few Catholic theologians had yet begun to explore an ethics based on moral virtues rather than one based on narrow, prescriptive rules.At the forefront of studies that would begin to recover virtue ethics--the ethical teaching of the church in the patristic, monastic, and scholastic traditions--"The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics"has been widely used to introduce both students and scholars to the relatively "new" idea of virtue ethics, now a dominant principle in Catholic moral theology. Following a brief new preface, the text of the six chapters in the original edition remains unchanged. However, Romanus Cessario, O.P., has substantially updated the citations in the notes to account for recent literature on the subject and has written a new chapter that accommodates his original study to the current ethos of moral theology. He draws on documents of the Catholic Church since 1991 to enrich the contemporary discussion of moral virtues and the dynamics of living a happy life. This second edition will inspire a new generation of readers, especially students and teachers of moral theology.

The chief characteristic of Christian morality is its being linked to the person of Jesus Christ who is himself the universal, personal and concrete norm of moral action. This book is about the virtues of the Christian life - both the theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity) and the cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance) - and it deals particularly with the question: how it is possible for believers to decide the moral good and to live accordingly? Reflecting on the basic questions of Christian morality, the book offers a commentary on the corresponding sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.