Virtue scores
Review
SECTION ONE Some doctrinal questions carry more weight than most people realize when they first ask them: What exactly happened at my baptism? What was I receiving when I was confirmed? TAN Books' *Baptism and Confirmation* addresses these questions directly, offering Catholic readers a systematic account of the two sacraments of initiation. The book explains what each sacrament confers — the ontological mark of baptismal character, the grace of fortitude in confirmation — and why that matters for daily Christian life. Its audience is any Catholic who wants to move beyond a vague sense that these rites were important toward a clear understanding of their spiritual content and ongoing obligations. The treatment is doctrinal in structure but pastoral in aim: the goal is not merely correct belief about sacramental theology but a renewed commitment to living out what the sacraments actually accomplished in the soul. SECTION TWO - **Created**: The book grounds both sacraments in the dignity of the person as a being made in the image of God and capable of receiving divine life. Baptism does not merely enroll a person in a religious institution; it confers sanctifying grace and the infused virtues, treating the soul as genuinely ordered toward supernatural flourishing from the moment of creation. - **Fallen**: The book is honest about what baptism requires in a world of persistent concupiscence. Because the baptized retain a proneness to self-love and disordered creature-attachments even after the sacrament, baptismal promises must be actively renewed — a recognition that the Fallen condition does not simply evaporate at the font but requires ongoing reorientation of the will. - **Redeemed**: Confirmation is presented as the moment when the supernatural organism implanted at baptism reaches a kind of active deployment: the soul receives the grace of fortitude to witness to the faith publicly, to stand firm under pressure, and to defend Christian truth in the civic order. Redemption here is not passive but apostolic — the redeemed person is sent. - **Justice (worship and devotion)**: The book's account of sacramental character trains the reader in the virtue of religion — the proper ordering of one's entire life toward God through worship, commitment to baptismal promises, and the active exercise of the priesthood of the faithful in the Eucharistic sacrifice. - **Prudence (foresight)**: By situating confirmation within a developmental arc from baptismal infancy to mature witness, the book equips readers to anticipate what their sacramental identity calls them toward — a forward-looking practical wisdom about one's vocation as a Christian in the world. SECTION THREE Aumann's[^1] *Spiritual Theology* is the most direct conversation partner here: his account of baptism as conferring the entire supernatural organism — sanctifying grace, the infused virtues, and the gifts of the Spirit — maps precisely onto the sacramental theology this volume presents, and his insistence that baptismal promises require constant renewal because of our 'proneness to self-love and creature attachments' gives pastoral texture to what might otherwise read as abstract doctrine.[^1] Lumen Gentium's[^2] description of confirmation as binding the faithful 'more perfectly to the Church' so that the Holy Spirit endows them with 'special strength' to spread and defend the faith 'by word and by deed' supplies the conciliar warrant that any TAN Books treatment of this period should be read alongside.[^2] Pope Benedict XVI's[^3] catechetical framing of baptism and confirmation as successive moments of immersion in the paschal mystery — each deepening the soul's contact with Christ's death and resurrection — extends both Aumann and the TAN volume toward a Christocentric synthesis: the sacraments are not discrete spiritual acquisitions but one continuous encounter with the living Christ.[^3] ## References [^1]: Aumann, J. (1980). *Spiritual theology*. Sheed & Ward. [Passage 1 — on baptism, confirmation, and the supernatural organism of grace.] [^2]: Vatican Council II. (1964). *Lumen gentium* [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church]. Vatican. §11. [^3]: Benedict XVI. (n.d.). *Wednesday audiences* [Papal catecheses]. Vatican. [Passage 4 — on baptism and confirmation within the paschal mystery.]
✓ Strengths
- ✓Grounds both sacraments in the paschal mystery — the dying and rising of Christ — giving readers a theological framework that connects personal transformation to the objective work of redemption, not merely to subjective religious sentiment.
- ✓Treats baptismal character as a permanent ontological mark on the soul, which directly affirms the Catholic Christian understanding of the body-soul unity and the dignity of the person as one who bears a lasting spiritual identity.
- ✓Addresses confirmation as the personal Pentecost that equips the baptized for public witness, connecting the infused virtue of fortitude to concrete social and ecclesial responsibilities — a formation claim, not merely a doctrinal one.
- ✓Presents the sacraments of initiation as a structured developmental arc — from the infancy of baptismal grace to the adult witness of confirmation — which maps naturally onto the CCMMP's account of virtue as habituated growth over time.
- ✓Situates the renewal of baptismal promises within the liturgical cycle of Easter, training readers to understand ongoing conversion not as a one-time event but as the recurring reorientation of disordered desire toward sanctifying grace.