During this academic year, my family has been living outside Vienna, and I have been teaching at the International Theological Institute, the tiny powerful theology school where my husband and I met and studied 26 years ago.
The students in the ITI’s bachelor’s and graduate programs hail from every continent except Antarctica. What’s become clear from our classes with them is the terrible longing that arises in people of every nation and culture to ask and discuss the important questions.
Everywhere people are longing for a St. Thomas education—a training in which one learns by asking a question, raising objections, discussing opposing solutions, and arriving at an answer together with one’s classmates.
A classroom experience like this is available in several institutions of higher learning in the US, but unheard-of elsewhere. That’s why we are so honored to be part of ITI’s efforts to offer a seminar education to an international student body founded on discussion of primary texts. The testimony of our students, from Brazil, to the Ukraine, to China, is that this education has filled a thirst in their hearts that they could not remedy in their home countries.
In the same vein, we are thrilled to announce the Aquinas Institute’s publication of an international paperback edition of Aquinas’s Opera Omnia. It’s the same bilingual parallel text that has proved so useful to students, scholars, and everyone in between, but now it’s accessible outside the US through Amazon print-on-demand.
We’ve kept the same format, but the low-cost paperback binding will allow seminaries and universities to order copies for each student. We’ve been experimenting with this edition at the ITI last semester and students found the books perfect for highlighting and annotating, while the parallel Latin-English text facilitates fruitful discussion.
Since the launch of the Opera Omnia project, we have marveled at the orders for our books we’ve received from universities, seminaries, and individuals in Asia, Africa, and Europe. The affordable paperback international edition will enable thirsty hearts around the world to delve into the works of St. Thomas.
All our previous publications are being released in this edition, and will only be available in this format outside the US.
Happy feast of St. Thomas Aquinas!
See the new edition:
In Austria/Germany: https://www.amazon.de/stores/St.-Thomas-Aquinas/author/B0CP9R9HJX/allbooks
...and so on around the world (except in the USA).
What at great news and a grand project!
Why only abroad! What about all of us poor children here in the U.S.?
I am thrilled to hear the news. Now it is more convenient for one to study Aquinas. Thank you for your efforts. Happy feast of St. Thomas Aquinas. May he intercede on our behalf.
This is such good news. It's also nice, as a Canadian, to see the books available on Amazon, as I don't have to incur duty when going through them. Best wishes.