How to Think Like Aquinas
About St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope John XXII said:
"A man can derive more profit in a year from his books
than from pondering all his life the teaching of others."
And Pope Pius XI added:
"We now say to all who are desirous of the truth:
'Go to St. Thomas.'"
But when we do go to Thomas when we open his massive Summa Theologica or another of his works we're quickly overwhelmed, even lost.
If we find him hard to read, how can we even begin to "think like Aquinas?"
Now comes Kevin Vost the best-selling author of The One-Minute Aquinasarmed with a recently rediscovered letter St. Thomas himself wrote a brief letter to young novice monk giving practical, sage advice about how to study, how to think, and even how to live.
In this letter written almost 800 years ago, St. Thomas reveals his unique powers of intellect and will, and explains how anyone can fathom and explain even the loftiest truths.
Vost and St. Thomas will teach you how to dissect logical fallacies, heresies, and half-truths that continue to pollute our world with muddy thinking. Best of all, you'll find a fully-illustrated set of exercises to improve your intellectual powers of memory, understanding, logical reasoning, shrewdness, foresight, circumspection, and practical wisdom.
You'll also learn:
- The four steps to training your memory
- How to know your mental powers and their limits
- Why critical thinking alone is insufficient for reaching the truth
- Twenty common fallacies and how to spot them
- The key to effectively reading any book
- How to set your intellect free by avoiding worldly entanglements
- How to commit key truths to memory
Pius XI called St. Thomas Aquinas the "model" for those who want to "pursue their studies to the best advantage and with the greatest profit to themselves." Leo XIII urged us all to "follow the example of St. Thomas." Over the centuries, dozens of other popes have praised him.
Surely it is time to listen to these good men, time to "go to Thomas" to learn to think like him, and, yes, even to live like him.
More info →Memorize the Faith! (and Most Anything Else)
Yes, I know that memorizing the Faith is no substitute for living a holy life, but even devout people can t live by truths and precepts they don t remember.
That s why, over 700 years ago, St. Thomas Aquinas perfected an easy method for his students to memorize most any information, but especially the truths taught by Christ and His Church.
As the years passed, our need for this ancient art of memorization grew, yet somehow our culture largely forgot it . . . which is why today, when you and I try to remember a list of things, we have to repeat their names over and over. Or, to remember to call the dentist, we tie a string on our finger. And we clutch at any means whatsoever to recall our passwords for ATMs, credit cards, and voicemail, our login names for Yahoo, eBay, and Amazon, and the host of other names and numbers that clog our minds and clutter our days.
Now, thanks to the delightful pages of Memorize the Faith!, you can easily keep all these in mind and learn the Faith! by tapping into the power of the classical memory system that helped St. Thomas become the Church s preeminent theologian, and made it easier for him to become one of its greatest saints.
Here, Catholic scholar Kevin Vost makes available again Aquinas s easy-to-learn method the method Dr. Vost himself has used for decades to recall names, dates, phone numbers, the first dozen digits of pi (3.141592653589) and even whether, when his wife called him at work today, she asked him to bring home ice cream and toffee . . . or was it truffles and coffee?
Indeed, Dr. Vost will teach you to remember virtually anything, but he devotes most of his book to showing you how to improve your memory of Catholic truths so you can live the Faith better.
By the time you finish this book, you will have memorized dozens of key teachings of the Church, along with hundreds of precepts, traditions, theological terms, Scripture verses, and other elements of the Faith that every good Catholic needs to know by heart.
Memory is the foundation of wisdom. It makes holiness easier. To grow wiser in the Faith . . . and holier . . . turn to Memorize the Faith! today.
More info →Memorize the Reasons!: Defending the Faith with the Catholic Art of Memory
In his bestseller Memorize the Faith!, Kevin Vost rediscovered a memory method invented by the ancient Greeks and perfected by medieval scholars, and showed twenty-first-century Catholics how to use it to recall everything from the Ten Commandments to the Seven Deadly Sins. Now, in Memorize the Reasons!, Dr. Vost shows you how to remember information you need to explain and defend the Catholic Faith. Often when we re challenged by non-Catholics who always seem to be able to quote chapter and verse we stumble, and later think regretfully of what we might have said. The powerful mnemonic techniques found in Memorize the Reasons! will make sure it never happens again. In simple steps that even children can master, Dr. Vost teaches you how to build memory cathedrals inside your mind, and to fill them with vibrant images that will instantly recall reasons for the papacy and Church authority, for Catholic beliefs about the Blessed Virgin Mary, for Sacred Tradition (and against sola scriptura), and more!
More info →Memorize the Mass!
In Memorize the Mass! Dr. Kevin Vost harnesses the powerful memory methods of Sts. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to help readers learn and recall all the parts and rites of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, both the New Order and the Traditional Latin Mass. Memorize the Mass! will show you not merely how to memorize facts and repeat them like a parrot, but to come to know the names, the sequence, and the meanings of both forms of the Roman Rite of the Mass like a rational human being made in God's image and likeness with an intellect and a will. This completely guided and illustrated tutorial in the Catholic Art of Memory will enable you to engrave each and every one of those rites upon the tablet of your heart, knowing them literally forward and backward, and loving the Mass all the more for it!
More info →