Servais Pinckaers, O.P., is one of the preeminent Catholic moral theologians of his generation. His highly acclaimed works, among them The Sources of Christian Ethics, offer a thoroughly Thomistic and contemporary vision of the Christian moral life. They reflect the philosophical and spiritual prowess of a moral theologian who is estranged neither from philosophical ethics nor from dogmatic theology, neither from Scripture nor from spirituality.
The first collection of its kind available in any language, this volume features the twenty most significant essays written by Pinckaers since his highly praised Sources. The essays offer profound reflections that are only possible by a contemporary moral theologian who knows the thought of Aquinas from lifelong study. Rather than taking a simply historical approach to Aquinas, Pinckaers seeks the basis of the intelligibility of the moral life, providing rich spiritual and theological insights along the way. He plumbs the depths of fundamental moral theology in these essays, where he treats Thomistic method and the renewal of moral theology, beatitude and Christian anthropology, moral agency, and passions and virtues, as well as law and grace. Such a detailed treatment of key issues in fundamental moral theology and Christian philosophical anthropology will certainly demand attention from every theologian and advanced student interested in Aquinas and in a virtue approach to Christian ethics.
Pinckaers's work has been an important source for the revival of interest in virtue-oriented moral theology in recent years and will continue to be a major source for debates over the place of Scripture and the Holy Spirit in moraltheology.
John Berkman is Associate Professor of Moral Theology and Area Director of Moral Theology/Ethics at The Catholic University of America. Craig Steven Titus is Research Fellow and Lecturer in the Department of Ethics and Moral Theology at the University of Fribourg and Visiting Professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences. The essays are translated by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P., Craig Steven Titus, Michael Sherwin, O.P., and Hugh Connelly.

Emphirical research and virtue ethics find a fitting match in their respective studies of resilience and fortitude. The concept of resilience involves personal and social capacities to cope with difficulty, resist destruction under hardship, and construct something positive out of an otherwise negative situation. Although the concept is new, the human phenomenon is ancient. It has been attested to for millennia by poets, philosophers, and spiritual writers who have praised it in the language of the virtues. In addition to examining empirical resilience research, this book offers - at philosophical and theological levels - a basis for a hearty understanding of the human person in terms of the virtues that enable human beings to overcome difficulty when they are faced with fear and suffering, or when they are in need of imaginative daring and hope. The primary such virtue is fortitude. The present study employs the thought of Thomas Aquinas and his sources on fortitude and its related virtues, while taking his dialogal method as a basis for critically appropriating reflections from other perspectives as well. The book offers a renewed, classic vision of the human person and the ordering of the sciences as read through the complementary and, at one level, corrective insights of empirical psychosocial studies on resilience. Such a vibrant natural-law approach to ethical norms and moral development offers guidelines and a framework for understanding human resilience. Moreover, it recognizes a theological transformation of such human capacities - a spiritual resilience - by proposing the New Law of grace, Christ's teaching, and the infused virtues as vital bases for Christian ethics.