Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana
Hilarin Felder (1867–1951)
Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis
First published 1923
Hilarin Felder, O.M.Cap.'s Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I—Demonstratio Christiana—is the Christian-demonstration half of a two-volume Latin manual of fundamental theology. First published at Paderborn in 1920 and revised in the second edition of 1923, it presents a neo-scholastic case for the historical revelation of Christ and the credibility of Christianity, using Scripture, history, and theological argument for classroom formation. Felder's work belongs to the mature manual tradition that shaped Catholic apologetics before the mid-century renewal. Schola presents the 1923 Latin edition with an English translation.
Praefatio
Epistola I: SS. D. Benedictus PP. XV (s. m.) opus collaudat
From the Vatican, 9 November 1921.
Very Reverend Sir,
Your gracious kindness has recently moved you to offer to the August Pontiff, as a reverent token of devotion, two books on apologetics composed by your own hand.
With good reason did the Most Holy Father receive this gift with pleasure and favor; for as he perused your volumes, he learned with great delight that you have not only availed yourself of an approach and method well suited to benefit the many, especially the studious young, but also that you have written at length concerning those false doctrines which, in these times, so insolently strive to overturn the very principles of the Christian Faith.
His Holiness therefore congratulates you most warmly upon this fairest fruit of your intellect and industry; for while the things you have wisely gathered from the various writers on apologetics are outstanding, you likewise set them forth in so apt an order of treatment that, in this as in your other works, every most skilled reader admires at once the abundance of your learning and the clarity of your exposition.
Moreover, rendering you the thanks that are your due for this office of love and devotion, he prays from his heart that this defense of yours, so full of Faith, may profit many persons opportunely amid so great an iniquity of the times.
And as a token of heavenly gifts, and likewise as a pledge of fatherly benevolence, he imparts to you the Apostolic Benediction with all the fullness of his heart.
As for me, conveying these things to you, I gladly avail myself of this occasion to profess the sentiment of the greatest esteem that I bear toward you, with which I am, and rejoice to remain,
Your most devoted Pietro Card. Gasparri.