I've just finished reading My Way of Life. It is subtitled The Summa Simplified for Everyone, and I would say that the authors (Farrell and Healy) have admirably accomplished that goal. It is a fine distillation of the theology and philosophy of the Summa Theologica, written at a level that is more accessible to the modern layman and greatly condensed (604 small pages, compared to the 3000+ quarto-sized jam-packed pages of the full Summa). I commend it to you as an excellent summary of Catholic doctrine. It is a bit dated in certain respects; it was written before Vatican II and consequently is occasionally out of sync with the changes in Church Law that have taken place since then. But this is a quibble.
A second quibble is the occasionally florid prose of Father Farrell, who wrote the first part of the book (Dr. Healy completed the rest of the work upon Farrell's death). At times he seems to me to write in overly grandiose terms, but this may simply be a matter of personal taste.
In any case, the book is well worth its price and the time invested in reading it.
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