Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech by Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. | Ignatius Press, 2026 | 176 pages | $17.95

“Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise” (Ps 51:15).

If only that were true! If all things (as the Catechism teaches) were made by God for His glory and to communicate His divine life to all, then the highest purpose of our mouths is for things like consuming the Eucharist, singing hymns of praise, and simply communicating with God through prayer. We open our mouths countless times in the day: What percentage of these times do our mouths open for their created purpose? How could that percentage be higher?

This is the question Fr. Gregory Pine aims to answer in, Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech, from Ignatius Press. As a priest of the Order of Preachers (a.k.a. the Dominicans), Fr. Gregory’s ministry involves a good amount of speaking. Unlike, say, a Benedictine monk, it would be unrealistic for him (and many of us) to follow what St. Benedict writes in his Rule: “Indeed, so important is silence that permission to speak should seldom be granted even to mature disciples, no matter how good or holy or constructive their talk, because it is written: In a flood of words you will not avoid sin (Prv 10:19).”

Fr. Gregory takes a slightly different approach to overcoming sins of speech. Sure, it is important to root out sin. But when we focus on “cultivating our lives in grace and virtue,” he admonishes, then “sin and vice get pushed to the edges of the garden in the process.” Basically, we crowd out bad and sinful habits with a multitude of good and virtuous habits of speech—things like being truthful, listening, building each other up, instructing, and of course, talking to and praising God.

That said, Fr. Gregory does not omit a discussion of sin. In fact, this is one of those books you initially “regret” reading, because you can’t un-read what he says. And the things he says demand we do better. Once you realize that your conversations are meant for communion, you can’t not think about how your words fail to build—or worse, they break—communion with someone else. When you learn that needlessly harming someone’s reputation (even if what you say about them is true) is the sin called detraction, you can’t claim ignorance of the gravity of your words. When you discover that your attempts at correction must be motivated by love for the person you’re claiming to correct, you can’t get annoyed if he or she defies your assumptions and becomes a better person.

To put it briefly, this book is for those brave enough to train their tongues for the higher things.

In the penultimate chapter (on “Giving Instruction”), Fr. Gregory writes, “By helping students to see a subject in the right light, the teacher enables them to establish connections among facts and access the inner coherence of those facts. In this way, the teacher helps students to acquire the tools for future acquisition and unaided discovery. In doing so, the teacher has moved the student beyond the need for instruction.” In this insightful book, Fr. Gregory is an effective teacher, indeed.