FORWARD
    In the providence of God the extraordinary technological developments of the past hundred years have in their own way added a new dimension to the Christian life of Catholics.  It is a dimension which is by way of being a direct response to both the needs and possibilities created by the age of technology.

    Moreover in this last century the great Teaching Office of the Vicar of Christ has become an integral and, one might almost say, an intimate part of our daily lives.  Widespread literacy, mass production in printing, newspapers and the radio with their instant international and world-wide communications; all these have combined to give an immediacy of presence to the Papal Office as common Father of Christendom that it has never known up to this point.  And the Popes have responded generously to this opportunity for fulfilling Christ's injunction, "Feed My sheep."  In the face of widespread practical materialism and the consequent moral issues born of it, they have raised a clear and effective voice asserting the primacy of the spiritual and the permanent relevancy of the Word of God.

    No one has borne more effective witness in this development than the late Pope Pius XII.  Through countless audiences and by means of allocutions and broadcasts he has brought Christian truth and principle to bear on the manifold issues that confront our age.  Yet, because of the very immediacy of so many of the issues he had to deal with, it is easy to overlook Pius XII's guidance and teaching on the permanent doctrinal realities that constitute the inner life of Catholicism.

    It is for this very reason that Pope Pius XII's four Encyclicals, the Christmas of 1944 and the discourse on the World Community and Religious Tolerance collected here should prove of real and continuing value for students and teachers on every level.  For they apply revealed truth, develop theological principles, and give directions that will guide and determine Catholic life for generations.

    By its very nature, much of what Pope Pius XII taught in these timely documents has already become an integral part of the doctrinal and theological formation of Priests and laymen.  The teaching on the Catholic Church as the Mystical Body of Christ; on the principles and aims that must guide Catholic Scriptural Scholarship; on the nature and norms of the Sacred Liturgy and of Catholic Liturgical life; Catholic theology and its sources, methods and function; the formation of the principles that are to guide the modern Catholic in the complex issues of democracy, world peace and religious tolerance--all these have become part of that permanent, but living Tradition, which is the Ordinary Teaching of the Church "of which," writes Pius XII, "it is true to say, 'He who hears you hears Me.' "

    There is moreover, another aspect of these Encyclicals and Addresses that makes them of particular value to us here and now.  It is the fact that each of them represents a culmination of a long and rich doctrinal and theological development.  As such they are at once a point of arrival and point of departure.  On the one hand they sum up or explain or give precision to a large number of matters that were either debated or were only implicit or obscure.  On the other hand they make clear the areas where further study and development are needed by warning against false opiinions and dangerous tendencies that can undermine or impair the integrity of the faith.

    Nevertheless, they are essentially positive.  They call for a deepening of Catholic life and thought in those areas that are most immediately pertinent to the supernatural life and purpose of Catholicism.  They call upon all those responsible for the formation of Catholics to make their own the doctrinal realities set forth in these Encyclicals and Addresses and build a sure foundation upon which to confront the problems of the age.  Above all they seek to nourish every Catholic with the strong  meat of that doctrine upon which, as St. Paul tells us, the mature Christian should feed.
                                                                                    Eugene M. Burke, C.S.P.

The following are the names of the four Encyclicals plus
the Christmas Message and the Discourse:

CONTENTS OF BOOK:

Foreward

THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST (Mystici Coporis Christi)

BIBLICAL STUDIES (Divino Afflante Spiritu)

THE SACRED LITURGY (Mediator Dei)

FOUNDATIONS OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE (Humani Generis)

DEMOCRACY AND PEACE (1944 Christmas Message)

THE WORLD COMMUNITY AND RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE
    (Discourse to Italian Catholic Jurists, Dec. 6, 1953)

The True Answer To World Peace
Triumph Of Church