Testimonials
To the Magisterium Summaries
Click the cover below to read the testimonial for each volume.
Volume I: Faith, Revelation, and the Bible
In this book will be found summaries of criticlly important documents on Faith and Divine Revelation issued by the Magisterium of the Church since the middle of the nineteenth century, when serious challenges to faith and revelation posed by the development of modern rationalism, skepticism and relativism faced Christ’s Church.
Volume II: Christ Our Lord, True God and True Man
This book, Christ Our Lord, True God and True Man, provides readers with the teaching of the Magisterium of the Church on Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer.
Volume III: The Church
This is volume 3 in our Magisterium Summaries series, as we continue in this effort, it is important that we keep before us the question: “What is the purpose?” Pope John Paul II puts his finger on the core of the problem in today’s society:”The temptation today is to reduce Christianity to merely human wisdom, a pseudo-science of wellbeing. In our heavily secularized world ‘a gradual secularization of salvation’ has taken place so that people strive for the good of man, but man is truncated, reduced to his merely horizontal dimension.”
Volume IV: Marriage, Family, and Sexuality
When we study the teaching of the Church on the family, we know that we have entered the most decisive area of human life. In the home, humanity’s issues are discussed long before politicians and statesmen decide. In the Catholic family, a “domestic church”, the future of the Church begins to unfold.
Volume V: The Sanctity of Human Life
It is particularly helpful to have in one place the three documents of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, respectively, on abortion, euthanasia and technological reproduction.
Volume VI: The Social Teaching of the Church
The book, which I have the privilege and joy of presenting, is a I précis of documents belonging to a period of one century, from Rerum Novarum (1891) to Centesimus Annus (1991).
There are eight Encyclical Letters and one Apostolic Letter, two documents of the Ecumenical Council Vatican II, one of a Synod of Bishops, and two from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Volume VII: The Ordained Priesthood
This Volume VII in the series of Magisterial Summaries is dedicated to examining “The Ordained Priesthood,” as it is presented and developed in Papal teaching documents of this century, starting with “Haerent Animo” of Pope Pius X up to the Apostolic Exhortation “Pastores Dabo Vobis” of Pope John Paul II, is an example of getting authentic and guaranteed light in our search for truth in matters that are a combination of the divine and human.
Volume VIII: Worship and Sacraments
In the twentieth century many official Church documents were published on the liturgy and sacraments. Therefore, the editors of this volume in our series decided to provide only a selection of the most significant texts. Even a summary of many more documents would run into several volumes. It is also impossible to prepare a summary of certain documents containing technical liturgical or rubrical instructions, without doing damage to their content and meaning. Therefore, this volume must omit such important documents as the General Instruction on the Roman Missal, the Instruction on the Correct Implementation of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (1970), Inaestimabile Donum (1980), and Ceremonial of Bishops (1984).
Volume IX: Christian Call to Personal Sanctification
Jesus calls us to follow Him and to be perfect, even as His heavenly Father is perfect. Through Baptism, we die to sin and rise to a new kind of life; one made possible by our union with Jesus, true God, and true Man. This call to sanctity, holiness, and perfection is addressed to all Christians, men and women, young and old, lay and religious, to Bishops, Priests, and the ordinary Faithful. This glorious truth is at the heart of the New Testament. Moreover, this truth has been repeatedly emphasized by the Magisterium of the Church over the centuries.
Volume X: Catholic Education
We have selected for this volume a number of Church documents which date from the turn of the century to the present day. Beginning with the Encyclical Acerbo Nimis, On Teaching Christian Doctrine, issued by Pope Pius X in 1905, and ending with the most recent document from the Pontifical Council for the Family, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality issued late in 1995, the documents which have been chosen are presented in chronological order. The mission entrusted to the Church by the Lord Jesus and perpetuated in every generation has remained constant: we are to make disciples of all the nations. Sound catechesis is a vital component to this mission. Catechesis is defined in the Catechism of the Catholic Church as “an education in the faith of children, young people, and adults which includes especially the teaching of Christian doctrine imparted, generally speaking, in an organic and systematic way, with a view to initiating the hearers into the fullness of Christian life” (CCC#5).
Volume XI: Marian Devotion and the Last Things
This work covers two topics which, at first glance, are quite distinct, but which, on a deeper and more faith-inspired level, share much in common. For, as we read in the CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, “the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son’s Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians.” (n. 966). By offering for our study and contemplation these official teachings both on “Marian Devotions” and on “The Last Things,” the compilers of these volumes bring to a conclusion the task they set out to perform some years ago, to present in a concise, readable manner the Official Teachings of the Catholic Church.
Volume XII: Supplementary Magisterial Documents (i)
Since 1987, when the work began on preparing these Magisterial Summaries of Official Catholic Teachings, many new documents and instructions have appeared. Therefore, it was not possible to include all recent documents in the eleven volumes according to the specific theme of each book. As a result, it has become necessary to update this series. This Supplementary Volume XII, therefore, includes these documents, in themselves a record of guidance of the Magisterium in the years leading into the Twenty First Century, the dawn of the Third Christian Millennium. The most significant documents included in this Supplementary Volume are the three major encyclicals: Evangelium Vitae, on the morality of human life issues, Ut Unum Sint, on ecumenism and Christian unity, and Fides et Ratio, on faith and philosophy. To these documents are added various apostolic exhortations of Pope John Paul II which were reflections on the work of the Synods of Bishops that met as the Millennium drew closer.
Volume XIII: Supplementary Magisterial Documents (ii)
Conclusion
“When we read and study the teachings of the Magisterium, we are not merely looking through a collection of man-made ecclesiastical documents. We are encountering life-giving interpretations and expressions of the Gospel of Christ. Given with the very authority Christ gave to Saint Peter and the Apostles, these teachings arise from that essential unity between the Holy Spirit and the visible Church. As the soul is to the body, so the Holy Spirit is to the Church (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 797,798). It is through the Holy Spirit that the Lord Jesus Christ still reaches us through His apostolic shepherds. Through the same Spirit, He is always guiding and inspiring God’s People as they carry out His mission in the world around them”.
† George P. Morse, K.G.C.S.G. President and Publisher (1917-2013)