The 38 readings in this collection are from primary texts expressing a broad humanist educational tradition and a reflection on the modern educational crisis that there is no longer a common Western tradition to initiate students into. They cover the aims of education, the matter of learning, the methods of teaching, and on renewal in our time. Among the readings are Thomas į Kempis from The Imitation of Christ, Plato from The Republic, Thomas Aquinas from Summa Theologiae, Maria Montessori from The Montessori Method, Dorothy Sayers from The Lost Tools of Learning, and Benedict XVI's Meeting with Catholic Educators. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Rarely does a book come along that so succinctly explains the decline of modern culture, articulates a defense of the Church's teachings, and offers a hope-filled path for building a civilization grounded in Catholic truth.

In these pages, Dr. Ryan Topping does all three, pulling back the curtain on the false philosophies of the secularists and showing that in the West today the most formidable threat to freedom is not failing economies or Islam, but secularism. Our best defense, he claims, is a vibrant Catholic culture, and our best hope for creating it lies in the principles found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

This book takes you on a masterful journey through the relevant portions of the Catechism, distilling sophisticated theological concepts into words that are simple, clear, and direct, while unpacking its core teachings on faith and morals that nurture true civilizations. In Rebuilding Catholic Culture, you'll also discover sensible ways to begin restoring Catholic culture -- right now -- in your own life and family, and in our larger communities as well: in the theater, the classroom, in our hospitals, and even in the public square. This profoundly accessible book will renew your confidence in the world-transforming character of our Creed and in the potency of our Faith to shape and redefine the culture of the West.

Immediately after his baptism Augustine set out to produce a Christianized
version of the ancient liberal arts curriculum. By an ordered
sequence of contemplation, moving from linguistic to mathematically
based disciplines, Augustine suggested that study in the liberal arts
could render the mind and heart docile before God. Though Augustine
later would shift his focus more directly toward biblical study, his early
reflections on secular learning remain an attractive and powerful model
for Christian thinking about the arts.
Happiness and Wisdom contributes to ongoing debates about the
nature of Augustine's early development, and argues that Augustine's
vision of the soul's ascent through the liberal arts is an attractive and
basically coherent view of learning, which, while not wholly novel,
surpasses both classical and earlier patristic renderings of the aims of
education.
Ryan N. S. Topping begins by embedding Augustine's educational
works within the historical and philosophical context of Christian and
pagan late antiquity. He then shows how Augustine's writings on education,
far from being irrelevant to the trajectory of his mature thought,
provide a key to interpreting many of his other explorations in ethics
and epistemology. Augustine's Christianized liberal arts curriculum is
vindicated as an outgrowth of his moral theology, an expression of his
abiding conviction that happiness is the end of human aspiration, and
that -- against both Ciceronian skepticism and Manichean dualism -- the
created order speaks to men of the mind of God.