Catholic Church, Clergy 

"A comprehensive work in which I hope to explain the Church from the standpoint of speculative theology, in terms of the four causes from which she results - efficient, material, formal and final." That is how the author describes the great treatise of which this is the first volume. Does it mean that this is another purely technical manual - indispensable in kind, of course, but strictly "for professionals only"?

The answer is, No. The Church of the Word Incarnate is indeed a work of vast learning, written at the level of the expert; yet it is also in itself a protest against that kind of professional theology which murders to dissect, and moves mechanically in a stifling world of mere words and concepts, instead of using these in order to draw us deep into the world of things and persons - bread and wine, men and Christ. "Nothing," says Msgr. Journet, "is more difficult than to rediscover beneath familiar, almost banal formulae, the deep intuition that gave them birth"; and here he begins his task of leading us to see the Church, not simply as this-or-that-as-opposed-to-this-or-that-heresy-or-denial, not simply in terms of this recorded definition or that chain of syllogisms, but as a living entity - to see her with that wonder which, Aristotle says, is the beginning of all philosophy, and which we owe to all that is because of the marvel of its mere existence.

In this volume he considers the efficient cause because of which this amazing thing the Church stands before us at this moment - the hierarchical power, in its twofold division into sacramental and jurisdictional. And at once, in accordance with his aim and method, he leads us through these forbidding formulae to the reality they express. It can be focused in two facts so shattering as to parallel that of the mere existence of anything at all. First, the sacramental fact; through her power the Church makes the living Christ really present to us in the consecrated Host, and round that wonder groups created things as "conductors" of that very power that holds them in being. Second, the jurisdictional fact; amid the pandemonium of conflicting theory and opinion the Church dares to say: "This, and this, and this, is the truth; in the name of it I claim your allegiance." Realization of what things like that imply is a bigger shock than a dive into ice-cold water. Yet just such a plunge into reality is the effect of this book, with all its massive scholarship. True, one doesn't habitually associate academic distinction with what produces a catch in the breath. Yet thinking whose end is not thinking, but being, does produce that kind of thrill; and this magnificent work provides an opportunity of experiencing it.

Taken from the inside flaps.