Virtues Abounding

Living a morally good life today is a challenge. But we become fully and authentically human precisely by the decisions we make every day--some of them relatively simple, others complex and difficult. Once a choice is made, we still must claim the moral resolve and strength of character to implement it. Virtues are precisely the sustained habits that help us maneuver life's many choices and to become the good people that we want to be. St. Thomas Aquinas offers the classic Christian presentation of the four principal virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance. But these are precisely cardinal or ""hinge"" virtues that provide the foundational framework for Aquinas's much broader presentation of a multitude of other virtues. Neglect of this larger array of moral attitudes for good living would miss the breadth of Aquinas's insights into a human life truly well-lived. Virtues Abounding explores, in contemporary language, the practical insights that Aquinas offers for the moral life today. Whether in university, seminary, or adult faith formation settings--whether for a deeper intellectual understanding of virtues or for personal reflection and growth--Virtues Abounding will provide new insight into a classic but too often overlooked storehouse of moral riches.

""In this wise, eminently accessible, and truly practical book, Mark O'Keefe demonstrates how the virtues form us into persons who know how to live truly good and happy lives. What distinguishes Virtues Abounding is that O'Keefe probes not only Aquinas's treatment of the four cardinal virtues, but also all the other virtues associated with them. In this way he breaks open the richness of Aquinas's analysis and reveals why it remains so relevant for us today.""
--Paul J. Wadell, St. Norbert College, De Pere, Wisconsin

""Fr. O'Keefe's Virtues Abounding manages to do the near impossible. He offers an account of the virtues that both closely follows St. Thomas Aquinas, and accessibly speaks to our contemporary situation. Though addressing nearly all of the myriad sub-virtues and opposing vices found in St. Thomas's Summa, Fr. O'Keefe manages to connect these to contemporary experiences such as 24-hour news, eating disorders, consumerism, and individualism. Scholars will recognize his stands on contested issues . . . but the reader new to Aquinas will find a penetrating and illuminating account of living virtuously, especially in the Christian life of grace.""
--William Mattison, University of Notre Dame

""For all teaching the virtues in colleges, universities, seminaries and parish settings, here is your new book: Mark O'Keefe's splendid Virtues Abounding. O'Keefe provides us with a cornucopia of virtues: not only justice, prudence, temperance and fortitude, but also their sub-virtues . . . Clearly the worthy, contemporary successor to Josef Pieper's The Four Cardinal Virtues, O'Keefe's work should now become the virtue handbook for the 21st century.""
--James F. Keenan, S.J., Boston College


Mark O'Keefe, OSB is Professor of Moral Theology at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology in Indiana. Among his books are Becoming Good, Becoming Holy: On the Relationship of Christian Ethics and Spirituality (1995) and most recently Love Awakened by Love: The Liberating Ascent of St. John of the Cross (2014) and The Way of Transformation: St. Teresa of Avila on the Foundation and Fruit of Prayer (2016).