By Cardinal Pietro Parente - 336 pages - Sewn Hardcover

This book is a standard reference for all priests and laymen who make the study of theology an important part of their lifetime reading. It is precise, concise, and very thorough. It was written by the Secretary of the CDF under Pius XII who was an important early 20th century orthodox Catholic theologian.

Pietro Parente (16 February 1891 in Casalnuovo Monterotaro, Italy – 29 December 1986 in Vatican City) was a long-serving theologian in the Holy Office of the Roman Catholic Church, and was made a cardinal on 26 June 1967. At his peak he was regarded as one of the foremost Italian theologians. He served as Secretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith from 1959 to 1965 succeeding Cardinal Ottaviani in that post.

During this period of seminary teaching, Parente wrote frequently for the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. He gained a reputation for his strongly worded, almost blunt, style of communicating official Church doctrine - something for which he is remembered by almost all those who studied under him. He was the first writer to use the term New Theology to describe the writings of Marie-Dominique Chenu and Louis Charlier in that paper in 1942, and was influential behind the encyclical Humani generis that condemned those theologians eight years later. He was the assessor of most of the cases done by the Holy Office during these years and knew Pope Pius XII personally.