Book Description

For those Catholics, who wish to go beyond the Catechism but not dive into deep theological works, this book was prepared. It is for the knowledgable layman and serves as an excellent companion to those wishing to do research along side The Sources of Catholic Dogma and Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. It is not in order to follow the fashion of our hurried day with its predilection for outlines, condensations, and telegraphic style, but to fill the need of a class of Christians for whom the catechism is too little and theology too much, that we have set about compiling this brief DICTIONARY OF DOGMATIC THEOLOGY for laymen. It should be judged according to its purpose: choice of the entries and their development, style, bibliography - all must be considered in relation to the reader, who is the cultured layman. To achieve brevity and clarity, we have sacrificed erudition, dialectic virtuosity, technical formalism, and many other things. What we have set our hearts on doing is to enlighten the mind of the reader by presenting the substance of dogmatic doctrine in a form that is pleasing to the nontheologian and that conveys synthetically but faithfully the riches hidden in the scholastic formulas. Both the choice of entries and their manner of treatment prove difficult in works of this kind. It has been our desire, in this first attempt, to present an all-inclusive work, but we do not presume to have successfully accomplished this end. The readers will judge and their observations and suggestions will be a guide in any future attempts. Two able colleagues have collaborated with me, and others have been generous in their counsels: Professor Piolanti, whose name I wish to place next to my own, has treated the sacramental and ecclesiastical material. We indulge the hope that our labor is not in vain.