But this book can be read not only by priests and seminarians and formation directors. It will be helpful for anyone seeking to grow in virtue.
I especially liked the quotes the archbishop selected from St. Thomas Aquinas to support his eight themes about courage. One salient quote is this: “The acquired virtues ready one for civil life, but the infused virtues for a spiritual life, which comes only from grace as a result of the virtuous one’s membership in the Church.”
In general, Archbishop Gomez’ extensive treatment of St. Thomas treats him much more as a spiritual director than as an analytic philosopher or theologian, thereby making the great Church doctor more accessible to his readers.
Archbishop Gomez’s themes range from martyrdom, empowerment by Christ, letting go of fear. He insists that the traditional virtues — the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude — are the missing links in contemporary Catholic spiritual writings. His book is an urgent call to a return to the virtues. And it is a call he makes to those in families raising their children, in schools forming students, in seminaries forming future priests, and in convents shaping the future women religious of our country.
The popularity of “values” education in our country in recent years has resulted in focusing moral training on the subjective behavior of individuals; in the process, the traditional approach to character development and the development of virtues has been largely lost in the today’s education of the young. Archbishop Gomez links the need for virtues education to the Second Vatican Council’s “universal call to holiness.” And his call comes at a critical moment in the faith formation of our people. In plain language, he explains that there can be no holiness without virtue — and no growth in holiness without the specific virtue of courage.
Archbishop Gomez draws much of his thinking from his doctoral dissertation on courage where he reviewed the thinking of St. Augustine and other Church Fathers, as well as Aquinas. He adds to that academic background a deep understanding of the role of the virtues in the great spiritual writers of Church history. Nonetheless he has found a way to communicate this treasury of teaching in today’s idiom. He includes numerous inspirational stories of martyrs and other brave Catholics in Church history. His account of the “tough priest,” Jesuit Father Walter Cizek, is engaging, tragic and motivating — illustrating the truth that courage is based on radical dependence on God.
