The Light of Christ: An Introduction to Catholicism
Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.
Catholic University of America Press, 2017
In The Light of Christ, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., lays out the architectural shape of Catholicism in a single, digestible book.
In the manner of the late Pope Benedict XVI’s Introduction to Christianity, Fr. Thomas Joseph guides us through the great Christian doctrines: the knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the sacraments, the moral life, and finally eschatology and prayer. He also discusses modern apologetical issues, such as how faith should respond to the evidence of hard science, what the historical study of Jesus can tell us, and what modern relevance the Church has to the contemporary Christian.
Fr. Thomas Joseph draws on a range of weighty theological sources, St. Thomas Aquinas chief among them, but he does not write for specialists. The reader who wants a compact but serious summary of Catholicism will find everything they are looking for.
“This is a book that offers itself as a companion,” Fr. Thomas Joseph writes, “I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable.” Fr. Thomas Joseph serves as the Rector Magnificus of the Angelicum in Rome, where he teaches these topics in much greater depth to future priests and theologians. His book The Light of Christ is the perfect gift for a friend who wants a serious introduction to Catholicism that they can work through at their own pace.
The Summa Illuminated: A Guide to St. Thomas Aquinas’s Masterpiece
Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P.
Ave Maria Press, 2026
Many a serious Catholic reader has, at some point, taken the Summa Theologiae off the shelf, read three or four articles, and put it back. The difficulty is rarely in the content, but because St. Thomas Aquinas wrote for students who already knew his vocabulary, his method, and where any given question sat within the whole. The Summa Illuminated, by Fr. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., is a guide through the depths, intricacies, and principles of Aquinas’s great masterpiece.
Fr. Cuddy, who teaches at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., and serves as the general editor of the Encyclopedia of Catholic Theology, is among the Church’s foremost interpreters of Aquinas. In his book, he walks the reader through the structure of the Summa in the order St. Thomas himself laid out: Part I treats God and creation; Part II discusses the human person’s movement toward God through law, grace, and the virtues; and Part III ends the book with Jesus Christ and the sacraments. As each part is explained in detail, Fr. Cuddy ensures that its place within the unified whole is also clear.
Through The Summa Illuminated, readers come to understand that Aquinas’s original is not an encyclopedia to be consulted at random but a single, ordered account of everything coming from God and returning to Him. Indeed, it is a meditation on God’s action written with unusual clarity.
The Summa Illuminated is short, at 171 pages, and it is meant to be read alongside the Summa rather than in place of it. For anyone who has wanted to read St. Thomas and never known where to begin, this is a wonderful place to start.
