Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholic Church Books

Book SynopsisDuring the Counter-Reformation, inquisition manual authors working in Italian lands adapted the Catholic Church’s traditional tactics of inquisitorial procedure, which had been formulated in the medieval period, to the prosecution of philo-Protestants. Through a comparison of the texts of four such authors to contemporary inquisition processes, Jane K. Wickersham situates the Roman inquisition’s prosecution of philo-Protestants within the larger framework of the complex religious upheavals of the sixteenth century.Identifying the critical role played by ritual practice in discovering and prosecuting heretical subjects, Wickersham uncovers two core reasons for its use: first, as a practical means of prosecuting a variety of philo-Protestant beliefs, and second, as an approach firmly grounded within the Catholic Church’s history of prosecuting heresy. Finally, Rituals of Prosecution provides an in-depth examination of the inquisitorial processes of ur

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Book SynopsisWritten in the mid-fifteenth century, Pope Pius II’s Commentaries are the only known autobiography of a reigning pontiff and a fundamental text in the history of Renaissance humanism.In this book, Emily O’Brien positions Pius’ expansive autobiographical text within that century’s contentious debate over ecclesiastical sovereignty. Presenting the Commentaries as Pius’ response to the crisis of authority, legitimacy, and relevance that was engulfing the Renaissance papacy, she shows how the Commentaries function as both an aggressive assault on the papal monarchy’s chief opponents and a systematic defense of Pius’s own troubled pontificate and his pre-papal career. Illustrating how the language, imagery, and ideals of secular power inform Pius’ apologetic self-portrait, The Commentaries of Pope Pius II (1458–1464) and the Crisis of the Fifteenth-Century Papacy demonstrates the role that PiTrade Review'This is a valuable study that serves to remind us of the importance of deep context and a thorough examination of historical evidence, not only in studying the papacy, but throughout the discipline.' -- Jennifer Mara DeSilva Sixteenth Century Studies vol 47:02:2016 'We have to give a lot of credit to O'Brien's efforts to untangle the complex political situation under Pius... This excellent study concludes with notes, the bibliography, and the most welcome index.' -- Albrecht Classen Mediaevistik vol 29:2016 'O'Brien's book is a fascinating example of humanist history studied through the lens of politics. It is sure to stand at the center of future conversations about Pope Pius II's Commentaries for years to come.' -- Brian Jeffrey Maxson Renaissance Quarterly vol 70: 01:2017Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. An Institution in Crisis: the Papal Monarchy on the Eve of Pius's Pontificate Chapter 2. The Conciliar Crisis in the Career of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini and the Pontificate of Pope Pius II Chapter 3. Papal Sovereignty and the Challenge of the Princes: the Experience of Aeneas and Pius Chapter 4. Pius II and the Triumph over Conciliarism: A New Reading of the Commentaries Chapter 5. The Triumph over the Princes and the Triumph of a Prince Chapter 6. Portraits of Princes in the Portrait of Pius II Conclusion

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Book SynopsisIn Poets, Players and Preachers, Anne James explores the literary responses to the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot in poetry, drama, and sermons. This book is the first full-length study of the literary repercussions of the conspiracy.Trade Review‘Masterful, nuanced, and at times almost overwhelming treatment of Gunpowder Plot.’ -- Leah Knight * Renaissance and Reformation vol 40:04:2017 *"Poets, Players and Preachers is an ambitious book, as rewarding as it is challenging, covering a wide range of genres stretching across a hundred years of history and drawing on a wide range of scholarship and theory." -- Brent Nelson * Seventeenth Century News *"[This book] is a fine example of the iterative relationship between literary and historical inquiry, as well as a complex account of how the memory of a single (and ultimately failed) historical event can come to serve widely divergent ends." -- Todd Butler * Seventeenth Century News *"Poets, Players and Preachers offers a captivating study of the literary repercussions of the Gunpowder Plot. James makes it clear that this is very much a historicist approach to literary studies and demonstrates the importance and advantages that a greater interdisciplinary relationship between literary and historical studies can bring to enrich our understanding of intention, transmission, and reception of early modern literature." -- Tatyana Zhukova, University of Nottingham * The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol xlix, no 2, Summer 2018 *Table of Contents1.Introduction: Writing the Gunpowder Plot 2."like Sampson's foxes": Creating a Jacobean Myth of Deliverance 3."And no religion beinds men to be traitors": The Plot on Stage 4."In marble records fit to be inrold": Epic Monuments for a Protestant Nation 5"fit audience find, though few": Militant Protestants and Forgotten Monuments 6."For God and the King": Preaching on the Plot Anniversary 7.Conclusion: Echoes and Reverberations Works Cited

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Book SynopsisThe Blackwell Companion to Catholicism offers an extensive survey of the history, doctrine, practices, and global circumstances of Roman Catholicism, written by a range of distinguished and experienced Catholic writers.Table of ContentsNotes on Contributors ix Introduction 1 James J. Buckley, Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, and Trent Pomplun Part I Catholic Histories 5 1 The Old Testament 7 Claire Mathews McGinnis 2 The New Testament 22 Luke Timothy Johnson 3 The Early Church 36 Angela Russell Christman 4 The Middle Ages 49 Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt 5 The Reformation 63 Carlos M.N. Eire 6 Modernity and Post-Modernity 81 Peter J. Casarella Part II Catholic Cultures 97 7 The Holy Land 99 David B. Burrell 8 India 112 Charles J. Borges 9 Africa 127 Emmanuel Katongole 10 Europe 143 Emmanuel Perrier 11 Great Britain and Ireland 159 Fergus Kerr and D. Vincent Twomey 12 Latin America 173 Angel F. Méndez Montoya 13 North America 189 Sandra Yocum Mize 14 Asia 205 Peter C. Phan 15 Oceania 221 Tracey Rowland Part III Catholic Doctrines 235 16 The Practice of Catholic Theology 237 Joseph A. DiNoia 17 The Development of Doctrine 251 John E. Thiel 18 God 268 Robert Barron 19 Creation and Anthropology 282 Mary Aquin O’Neill 20 Jesus Christ 297 Edward T. Oakes 21 Mary 312 Trent Pomplun 22 Church 326 Avery Cardinal Dulles 23 The Liturgy and Sacraments 340 Susan. K. Wood 24 Moral Theology 354 David Matzko McCarthy 25 The End 371 James J. Buckley Part IV Catholic Practices 387 26 Spirituality 389 Wendy M. Wright 27 Institutions 403 John A. Coleman 28 The Holy See 418 Francis A. Sullivan 29 Ecumenism 432 Michael Root 30 Inter-Religious Dialog 449 Gavin D’Costa 31 Art and Literature 463 Patrick Sherry 32 Science and Theology 477 Michael Heller 33 Justice and Peace 490 Kelly Johnson Index 505

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Book SynopsisHow did a thirteenth-century Italian friar become one of the best-loved saints in America? Drawing on a dazzling array of art, music, drama, film, hymns, and prayers, Patricia Appelbaum explains what happened to make St. Francis so familiar and meaningful to so many Americans.Trade Review“Representative of the best of modern historical scholarship. . . . The volume will undoubtedly be of interest to scholars, educated laity, atheist, agnostic, and religionist alike.”- American Historical Review“Appelbaum’s narrative is vigorous, and her analysis of the ways in which Francis has been read and contested is convincing.”- Church History and Religious Culture“Achieves success as both a work of careful scholarship and a delightful read.”- Choice“Makes an important contribution to American history of religion and to the field of Franciscan studies. . . . A must-read for historians of American religion and the Franciscan tradition alike.”- American Catholic Studies“A cultural history of how the medieval monk has been represented in U.S. culture over the past two hundred years.”- Journal of American History“An entertaining read [that] helps us separate the real figure from folklore- Francis the popular icon from Francis the man.”- Episcopal Journal“This well-researched biography is recommended as a case study of how the perceptions of historical individuals change over the course of time to fit and speak to contemporary issues.”- Library Journal

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Book SynopsisIn The Charismatic Gymnasium Maria José de Abreu examines how Charismatic Catholicism in contemporary Brazil produces a new form of total power through a concatenation of the breathing body, theology, and electronic mass media. De Abreu documents a vast religious respiratory program of revival popularly branded as “the aerobics of Jesus.” Pneuma—the Greek term for air, breath, and spirit—is central to this aerobic program, whose goal is to labor on the athletic elasticity of spirit. Tracing the rhetoric, gestures, and spaces that together constitute this new theological community, de Abreu exposes the articulating forces among evangelical Christianity, neoliberal logics, and the rise of right-wing politics. By calling attention to how an ethics of pauperism vitally intersects with the neoliberal ethos of flexibility, de Abreu shows how paradoxes do not hinder but expand the Charismatic gymnasium. The result, de Abreu demonstrates, is the productionTrade Review“The Charismatic Gymnasium is a rare work that refuses to simply stay on the safe page of a modernist critique of representation and instead enters the much weirder world of how things actually work. This brilliant and truly original book makes a major contribution to social, cultural, and political theory.” -- Kathleen Stewart, coauthor of * The Hundreds *“At every turn of the page, Maria José de Abreu helps us think outside of the box on issues of the rhythmical, spatial, theological, and charismatic-political dimensions of being in common from the point of view of a religious congregation and its presence in Brazilian media. Opening many different and innovative ways to understand the relations among mediation, theology, and politics, The Charismatic Gymnasium is a real jewel to read and to be inspired by.” -- Valentina Napolitano, author of * Migrant Hearts and the Atlantic Return: Transnationalism and the Roman Catholic Church *“De Abreu’s approach to pneumatic Catholicism is quite original and highlights important aspects of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. . . . The Charismatic Gymnasium makes an important contribution to the literature of this form of Catholic Christianity.” -- Eric Hoenes del Pinal * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"This is not the first book to discuss Brazil’s Catholic charismatic renewal, but it is assuredly the first to apply this particular approach. Working from the concept of pneuma, which connotes both breath and spirit, Maria José de Abreu studies the role of breathing human bodies in the culture and theology of pneumatic, Spirit-based faith. She makes innovative observations about the material environment of charismatic worship, including airy tents, arenas, and outdoor settings. . . . [H]er insights are provocative and demand application beyond the Latin American context." -- Philip Jenkins * The Christian Century *Table of ContentsPreface: Breathe In. Breathe Out. ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction 1 Part I 1. The Media Acts of the Apostles 21 2. Confession, Technically Speaking 51 3. Outstanding Elasticity 80 Part II. 4. The Aerobics of Jesus 109 5. Sanctuary Theotókos: A Conception 128 6. Ghost Chair 156 Epilogue: Theology on the Run 177 Afterword: On Bipolarity 181 Notes 189 Bibliography 211 Index 225

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Book SynopsisShannen Dee Williams provides a comprehensive history of Black Catholic nuns in the United States, tracing how Black sisters’ struggles were central to the long African American freedom movement.Trade Review“Deeply researched, elegantly written, and boldly argued, Subversive Habits is a brilliant excavation of the long political history of Black nuns. This is extraordinary scholarship that is as accessible as it is groundbreaking and illuminating. This timely and essential book widens the frames of Black women’s history, of religion and activism, and of Black Catholicism.” -- Barbara D. Savage, author of * Your Spirits Walk beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion *“Sweeping in its scope, exhaustively researched, and balanced in presentation,Subversive Habits is a seminal history of Black Catholic Nuns and their struggle for equality and justice in the Catholic Church.” -- Bettye Collier-Thomas, author of * Jesus, Jobs, and Justice: African American Women and Religion *"An awe-inspiring history book about Black nuns who fought for freedom and equality. . . . Subversive Habits is a stirring history text about the remarkable faith and conviction of Black nuns in America." -- Melissa Wuske * Foreword *(Starred Review) "Informative and often surprising, this should be required reading for scholars of Catholic and African American religious history and will undoubtedly become the standard text on its subject." * Publishers Weekly *"The 'uncommon faithfulness' of the nuns in Subversive Habits—taking the church at its word when it teaches that we are all one body—is a model of discipleship from which all Catholics can learn." -- Kathleen Manning * U.S. Catholic *"Shannen Williams's book chronicles the bold steps and persistence African-American sisters took to debunk their rejection by white orders that insisted Black women lacked souls and/or virtue suitable to be admitted to them. . . . This outstanding book, Subversive Habits, is well-researched, quite revealing and a set of history and reality lessons of how Black sisters kept the faith and made the Catholic Church change." -- Ralph E. Moore, Jr. * The AFRO *"This eye-opening, inspiring and thoroughly researched book unearths a history that few Americans know: the challenges and triumphs of Black Catholic nuns in the United States. It’s one of the most exciting new books in Black women’s history and powerfully captures the interconnections between race, religion and politics." -- Keisha Blain * Politico *"Subversive Habits demands a committed reader. However, it will reward the resilient and open-minded reader with apokalupsis—tremendous learning about the scope of racism throughout the American Catholic Church as well as the witness of these Black Catholic women and their contributions to the church and the world. Please take up the reading and stick with it. Draw some perseverance from the women the book depicts and take heart in their commitment to justice." -- Kevin Spinale * America *"Subversive Habits brings a very necessary balance to histories published in recent decades that focus on civil rights work by Catholics. It seems these historians were writing about the exception and not the norm. This is the story of courageous nuns, including those who felt they couldn't remain any longer, who are the true gems of American Catholic history. Every woman religious must read this book." -- Laura Swan * Magistra *"In Subversive Habits, historian Williams has given us a remarkable work of scholarship, one that may be distressing for many readers because she clears away any shred of doubt about the U.S. Catholic Church being racist from its very beginnings." -- Kathleen Finley * The Tablet *"I have never read a more thoughtful account of the Black Catholic experience than Shannen Dee Williams’ Subversive Habits. Williams’ book is a revelatory history of the experiences of Black religious women in understanding race, faith, and change in the Catholic church from the antebellum period through the various waves of civil-rights struggle to the contemporary era." -- Marcia Chatelain * Chronicle of Higher Education * "Williams seeks to tell the story of these women and of the Black and majority white sisterhoods in which they participated. The account is well documented, and Williams includes a look at the current departures of Black sisters from religious life and considers the likely future of Black female religious communities. Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty, and professionals." -- L. H. Hoyle * Choice *"Williams's book is the go-to work on Black women religious in the United States during and in the afterlife of slavery. Future scholars, practitioners, and interlocutors are indebted to this brilliant author for the treasure trove she has gifted us." -- Ahmad Greene-Hayes * Journal of Southern History *Table of ContentsAbbreviations ix Note on Terminology xiii Preface: Bearing Witness to a Silenced Past xv Acknowledgments xix Introduction. America’s Forgotten Black Freedom Fighters 1 1. Our Sole Wish Is to Do the Will of God: The Early Struggles of Black Catholic Sisters in the United States 23 2. Nothing Is Too Good for the Youth of Our Race: The Fight for Black-Administered Catholic Education during Jim Crow 61 3. Is the Order Catholic Enough? The Struggle to Desegregate White Sisterhoods after World War II 103 4. I Was Fired Up to Go to Selma: Black Sisters, the Second Vatican Council, and the Fight for Civil Rights 134 5. Liberation Is Our First Priority: Black Nuns and Black Power 167 6. No Schools, No Churches! The Fight to Save Black Catholic Education in the 1970s 200 7. The Future of the Black Catholic Nun Is Dubious: African American Sisters in the Age of Church Decline 231 Conclusion. The Catholic Church Wouldn't Be Catholic If It Wasn’t for Us 259 Glossary 271 Notes 273 Bibliography 345 Index 371

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Book SynopsisUncovers how the Civil Rights Movement and Vatican II affected African American Catholics in Atlanta The history and practices of African American Catholics has been vastly understudied, and Black Catholics are often written off as a fringe sector of the religious population. Yet, Catholics of African descent have been a part of Catholicism since the early days of European exploration into the New World. In the Shadow of Ebenezer examines how the Civil Rights Movement and the Second Vatican Council affected African American Catholics in Atlanta, Georgia, focusing on the historic Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in the Old Fourth Ward. Our Lady of Lourdes is a neighbor of major historic Black Protestant churches in the city, including Ebenezer Baptist Church, a block away, which during the Civil Rights era was the pulpit of Martin Luther King Jr. Featuring archival and oral history sources, the book examines the religious and cultural life of the parishioners of Our Lady of LourdesTrade ReviewWell-crafted studies of Black Catholic institutions are rare enough. To have such a study of a Black Catholic parish in Atlanta during the civil rights movement is an occasion for celebration. -- John McGreevy, Charles and Jill Fischer Provost and Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, Notre Dame UniversityUrgent and exciting. Mickens beautifully fills a huge gap in our knowledge of Black Catholicism. -- Diana Hayes, Professor Emerita, Georgetown University

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Book SynopsisTraces the development of Catholic cultures in the South, the Midwest, the West, and the Northeast, and their contribution to larger patterns of Catholicism in the United StatesMost histories of American Catholicism take a national focus, leading to a homogenization of American Catholicism that misses much of the local complexity that has marked how Catholicism developed differently in different parts of the country. Such histories often treat northeastern Catholicism, such as the Irish Catholicism of Boston, as if it reflects the full history and experience of Catholicism across the United States. The Making of American Catholicism argues that regional and transnational relationships have been central to the development of American Catholicism. The American Catholic experience has diverged significantly among regions; if we do not examine how it has taken shape in local cultures, we miss a lot. Exploring the history of Catholic cultures in New Orleans, Iowa, Wisconsin, Los Angeles, Trade ReviewThis well-researched book offers a compelling argument for the importance of regional, transnational, and local realities in understanding the history of U.S. Catholicism. -- Steven M. Avella, Marquette UniversityAn insightfully transnational study that assesses how factors such as the colonial legacies of French and Hispanic Catholic settlers, the homelands of European immigrants, and the international cult of Marian apparitions shaped Catholic communities that rooted themselves in particular times and places. -- Timothy Matovina, author of Theologies of Guadalupe: From the Era of Conquest to Pope FrancisPfeifer’s work shifts the focus from the traditional centers of the Northeast and industrial urban Midwest to places like New Orleans, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. In the process, Catholics of different ethnicities, race, and transnational ties assume new significance. Even New York's Hell Kitchen Catholicism gains fresh treatment in Pfeifer's rendering. An important book that advances the most exciting contemporary currents in the study of Catholics in the US. -- Anthony B. Smith, The University of DaytonFrom New Orleans to Iowa City and from rural Wisconsin to urban California, Michael Pfeifer asks us to think about the local particularities of the American Catholic experience. He shows us how the development of regional cultures played a crucial role in shaping the lives of Catholics from the colonial period to the present. -- Michael Pasquier, author of Religion in America: The BasicsA timely and important book. Pfeifer is an excellent, evocative writer, providing us with a treasure trove of fascinating details of twentieth century lived Catholicism, all the while showing the dynamic blend of transnationalism, regionalism, and nationalism that informs American Catholic identities. A must-read for anyone interested in American religious history. -- Kristy Nabhan-Warren, The University of IowaMichael J. Pfeifer’s The Making of American Catholicism: Regional Culture and the Catholic Experience is a fascinating exploration of the intersection of place, culture, time, and identity. In date- and place-bound situations, he surveys themes of contemporary concern (globally, but especially in the United States). Pfeifer’s skill in making connections across seemingly disparate places and events prompts the reader to extend the insights beyond the representative areas specifically addressed in the book. * Reading Religion *Lucidly written Pfeifer’s book will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers in religion, politics, and the sociology of the Catholic church in the United States. -- Christopher J. Akor, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa * Religion Book Reviews *

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Book SynopsisIn the wake of the Mexican-American War, competing narratives of religious conquest and re-conquest were employed by Anglo-American and ethnic Mexican Californians to make sense of their place in North America. This book deals with this topic.Trade Review"In clear prose and supported by abundant evidence, it interrogates one of the most important concepts in Chicana/o historyAztlánfrom a fresh perspective. The book will be welcomed by anyone interested in southern California, its history, and its relationship to Aztlán." * The Journal of American History *"This book is U.S.-Mexico borderland scholarship at its best. [] While written for an academic audience, Lint Sagarena writes with poetic elegance that could dance with even the most casual reader. This book is a must-read for any regional studies onSouthern California." * Review of Religious Research *"A brilliant study. Read about how 'American hispanophilia' was imprinted in buildings even as hatred for Mexicans reigned in the streets. Discover how Protestant fantasies about Spanish culture helped Americanize Catholicism and make Mexico seem more foreign. Learn how Mexicans projected their own fantasies of an idealized indigenous past onto their northern territories. See how the mythical homeland of the Aztecs became the political hope of Chicanos, who helped make California the site of new portrayals of the Mexican Virgen de Guadalupe. . . . A timely book for our national discourse about Mexico, immigration, and future cultural identities in the U.S." -- David Carrasco,Neil L. Rudenstine Professor of the Study of Latin America, Harvard Divinity School"A compelling study of an important and disturbing history with significant contemporary implications. Lint Sagarena demonstrates how various political, cultural, and commercial interests reimagined California's Spanish religious past in order to diminish its Mexican and indigenous present. Mining mission revival architecture, the mural movement, popular literatures, public festivals, and international expositions, this illuminating volume charts the invention, and reinvention, of an 'American' California." -- Sally M. Promey,Yale University"This book is for anyone who is fascinated by the layering of time, by the structuring of place, memory, and peoples in landscapes that are half fantasy in the storied terrain of Southern California. Lint Sagarena gives us a subtle investigation of how ethnicity and nationalism rely on material forms anchored in style and imagination. He shows how history is a tale of loss and imagined reconstitution. Myths are special kinds of stories, told and performed in ways that make their credibility visceral. Aztlán is one of these, a beguiling, wonderful, fantastic notion imbued in the architecture of homes and malls. This is a tale well told and a book that fills an enormous gap in the literature of religious life and imagination in America." -- David Morgan,Duke University"Lint Sagarena offers a multifaceted study of historical memory in California that examines how Euro-Americans and Chicanos created distinct and conflicting interpretations of the state's Spanish and Mexican heritage." * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 1. Conquest and Legacy 2. Building a Region3. The Spanish Heritage 4. Making Aztlan Conclusion

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Book SynopsisUncovers why Catholic organizations fail to foster civic activismThe American Catholic Church boasts a long history of teaching and activism on issues of social justice. In the face of declining religious and community involvement in the twenty-first century, many modern-day Catholic groups aspire to revive the faith as well as their connections to the larger world. Yet while thousands attend weekly meetings designed to instill religiosity and a commitment to civic engagement, these programs often fail to achieve their more large-scale goals.In Catholic Activism Today, Maureen K. Day sheds light on the impediments to successfully enacting social change. She argues that popular organizations such as JustFaith Ministries have embraced an approach to civic engagement that focuses on mobilizing Catholics as individuals rather than as collectives. There is reason to think this approach is effectivethese organizations experience robust participation in their progTrade ReviewAn illuminating case for anyone interested in civic engagement, religious or not, especially in the tensions between justice and charity. For sociologists and theologians alike, Day also offers thought-provoking discussion about the role of the Catholic Church in the American public square. * Sociology of Religion *With empathic sensitivity to the twists and turns in individuals’ lives and their spiritual journeys, Maureen Day illuminates the centrality of Catholic faith and purposeful community in cultivating impactful civic engagement notwithstanding the structural forces that foster economic and social inequality. Using thoughtful interview and observation data, her gentle, yet rigorous, narrative persuades us that individuals’ everyday decisions and actions have a ripple effect in the crafting of a better, more morally authoritative, society. -- Michele Dillon, Dean, College of Liberal Arts, University of New HampshireMasterfully captures the contemporary relocation of Catholic activism from institution-building to personal transformation. Catholic Activism Today offers vital lessons for modern religious practice, the public role of Catholicism, and the dilemmas of individualism for enacting justice. -- Tricia C. Bruce, author of Parish and Place: Making Room for Diversity in the American Catholic ChurchCatholic Activism Today provides an enlightening study of how Catholic organizations, like JustFaith Ministries, are transforming individuals to engage American public life in creative new ways. * Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses *Day’s analysis of Catholic activism is valuable ... sheds light on how religious actors can have unique impacts on their own local contexts * Catholic Books Review *An excellent book that contributes to a great legacy of Catholic sociology of religion ... Catholic Activism Today could be helpful not just for sociologists, but for pastoral programs, church planning offices, seminaries, and schools of theology and ministry across the country. * Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion *The hope among the leadership at JustFaith Ministries is that the caring and activism learned therein will ’ripple outward’ amid the everyday lives of its participants. Interestingly, it is just this sort of rippling that is so abundantly evident in Maureen Day’s thoughtful and engaging study. Flowing from her analysis of this discipleship-style organization come ever-widening insights regarding contemporary American Catholicism, the strategies and dilemmas associated with grassroots activism, and, undulating still further, the prospects of living meaningful, generative lives at a time when possibilities for doing so seem to be constricting. I hope this important book will find a readership proportionate to the impressively broad scope of its concerns. -- Jerome P. Baggett, author of Sense of the Faithful: How American Catholics Live Their FaithThis readable, professional treatment of JustFaith Ministries puts the organization in the context of a larger social movement within American Catholicism. * Choice *

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Book SynopsisExplores the shared parish through an in-depth ethnographic study of a Roman Catholic parish in a small Midwestern city demographically transformed by Mexican immigration in recent decades. Through its depiction of shared parish life, this book argues for new ways of imagining the US Catholic parish as an organization.Trade Review"The book is a welcome addition to the contemporary discussion about parish life in the United States." * Sociology of Religion *"Perhaps the greatest value of the bookis to be found in the chapter Hoover devotes to promoting a theory of the shared parish. He explores how this parish can function administratively as one church while maintaining & two distinct cultural communities operating in parallelEnglish and Spanish, Euro-American and Latino, each with its own masses in ministries." * Sociology of Religion *"[]The Shared Parishis a book that creatively presents the cultural and religious transformation happening in Catholic places of worship and challenges scholars from the social sciences and theology to engage in further research on this growing phenomenon of shared parishes." * Review of Religious Research *"Offers a full, rich, and highly satisfying analysis of the challenge of diversity in the Roman Catholic church of America. Yes, we know that broad demographic shifts are affecting the the Catholic church, but this book finally gives an intimate, contextually rich, and theologically astute presentation of ground-level workings of cultural diversity among faithful Catholics who strive to achieve unity amidst their clashing cultural heritages." -- Gerardo Marti,author of Worship across the Racial Divide"Trained in theology and social science, adept in Catholic culture and in Spanish, Brett Hoover brilliantly captures the distinctly Catholic phenomenon of the shared parish. He writes with insight and compassion about the alternately tense and calm encounters that take place when two different groups find themselves living religiously together." -- R. Stephen Warner,University of Illinois at Chicago"The Shared Parish: Lations, Anglos, and the Future of U.S. Catholicism, [is] an intriguing and much-needed addition to the growing body of literature on a theology of parish , is both ambitious and prophetic." * Horizons *"At the heart of this book, Hoover provides a careful study of a Midwestern parish transformed by immigration and the movement of Latina/os beyond the Southwest. . . . [A] welcomed contribution to a multifaceted problem that deserves further action and research." * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ixAuthor's Note about Terminology and the Identity ofPersons and Places xiIntroduction: Th e Shared Parish 11. All Saints from Village Church to Shared Parish 292. Making Sense of a Changed World: Th e Strategies of Shared 67Parish Life at All Saints3. Being Apart Together: Sharing the Shared Parish 1034. Theorizing the Shared Parish 1455. Challenging Cultural Encapsulation in the Shared Parish 175Conclusion: Whither the Shared Parish? 217Appendix: Research Methodology 225Notes 239Bibliography 275Index 295About the Author 299

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Book SynopsisA history of Catholic social thought Many Americans assume that the Catholic Church is inherently conservative, based on its stances on abortion, contraception, and divorce. Yet there is a longstanding tradition of progressive Catholic movements in the United States that have addressed a variety of issues from labor, war, immigration, and environmental protection, to human rights, women's rights, exploitive development practices, and bellicose foreign policies. These Catholic social movements have helped to shift the Church from an institution that had historically supported incumbent governments and political elites to a Church that has increasingly sided with the vulnerable and oppressed. This book provides a concise history of progressively oriented Catholic Social Thought, which conveys the Catholic Church's position on a variety of social justice concerns. Sharon Erickson Nepstad introduces key papal encyclicals and other church documents, showing how lay Catholics in the United Trade Review"A thorough and complex history of recent Catholic activism in the United States . … The rigor and breadth of Nepstad’s research and analysis makes this an excellent book for academic courses. Yet the page-turning readability also makes it valuable for everyday Catholics who look to deepen their understanding of Catholic social teaching and how our church has enacted it." * America Magazine *"Nepstad provides an excellent introduction to influential people and movements of Catholic social action in the US." * Choice *"Catholic Social Activism is a great resource for teaching (both undergraduate and graduate) students broadly about CST since the book highlights the social conditions and people (at various levels) influencing it across different causes and historical periods ... [Nepstad's] book nonetheless raises interesting questions that are likely to spur future research in different social science fields." * Sociology of Religion *

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Book SynopsisTraces the development of Catholic cultures in the South, the Midwest, the West, and the Northeast, and their contribution to larger patterns of Catholicism in the United StatesMost histories of American Catholicism take a national focus, leading to a homogenization of American Catholicism that misses much of the local complexity that has marked how Catholicism developed differently in different parts of the country. Such histories often treat northeastern Catholicism, such as the Irish Catholicism of Boston, as if it reflects the full history and experience of Catholicism across the United States. The Making of American Catholicism argues that regional and transnational relationships have been central to the development of American Catholicism. The American Catholic experience has diverged significantly among regions; if we do not examine how it has taken shape in local cultures, we miss a lot. Exploring the history of Catholic cultures in New Orleans, Iowa, Wisconsin, Los Angeles, Trade Review"This well-researched book offers a compelling argument for the importance of regional, transnational, and local realities in understanding the history of U.S. Catholicism." -- Steven M. Avella, Marquette University"An insightfully transnational study that assesses how factors such as the colonial legacies of French and Hispanic Catholic settlers, the homelands of European immigrants, and the international cult of Marian apparitions shaped Catholic communities that rooted themselves in particular times and places." -- Timothy Matovina, author of Theologies of Guadalupe: From the Era of Conquest to Pope Francis"Pfeifer’s work shifts the focus from the traditional centers of the Northeast and industrial urban Midwest to places like New Orleans, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Los Angeles. In the process, Catholics of different ethnicities, race, and transnational ties assume new significance. Even New York's Hell Kitchen Catholicism gains fresh treatment in Pfeifer's rendering. An important book that advances the most exciting contemporary currents in the study of Catholics in the US." -- Anthony B. Smith, The University of Dayton"From New Orleans to Iowa City and from rural Wisconsin to urban California, Michael Pfeifer asks us to think about the local particularities of the American Catholic experience. He shows us how the development of regional cultures played a crucial role in shaping the lives of Catholics from the colonial period to the present." -- Michael Pasquier, author of Religion in America: The Basics"A timely and important book. Pfeifer is an excellent, evocative writer, providing us with a treasure trove of fascinating details of twentieth century lived Catholicism, all the while showing the dynamic blend of transnationalism, regionalism, and nationalism that informs American Catholic identities. A must-read for anyone interested in American religious history." -- Kristy Nabhan-Warren, The University of Iowa"Michael J. Pfeifer’s The Making of American Catholicism: Regional Culture and the Catholic Experience is a fascinating exploration of the intersection of place, culture, time, and identity. In date- and place-bound situations, he surveys themes of contemporary concern (globally, but especially in the United States). Pfeifer’s skill in making connections across seemingly disparate places and events prompts the reader to extend the insights beyond the representative areas specifically addressed in the book." * Reading Religion *"Lucidly written Pfeifer’s book will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate students, and researchers in religion, politics, and the sociology of the Catholic church in the United States." -- Christopher J. Akor, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa * Religion Book Reviews *

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Book SynopsisThere are few religious figures more Catholic than Saint Thomas Aquinas, a man credited with helping to shape Catholicism of the second millennium. In Never Doubt Thomas, Francis Beckwith employs his own spiritual journey from Catholicism to Evangelicalism and then back to Catholicism to reveal the signal importance of Aquinas.Trade ReviewGiven its irenic character, its accurate exegesis of Thomas, and its timeliness for current debates, Never Doubt Aquinas is required reading for anyone interested in St. Thomas Aquinas or ecumenical dialogue. -- J.M Meinert -- ChoiceTable of Contents 1 Why Thomas Today 2 Aquinas as Protestant 3 Aquinas as Pluralist 4 Aquinas as Theologian 5 Aquinas as Evangelical 6 The Aquinas Option

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Book SynopsisIn Confessional Cinema, Jorge Pérez analyzes how cinema engaged the shifting role of religion during the last fifteen years of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Pérez interrogates the assumption that after 1957, when the Franco regime recast itself in a secular and modernizing fashion, religion vanished from the cultural field. Instead, Spanish cinema addressed the transformation within Spanish Catholicism following Vatican II and Spain’s modernization processes. Confessional Cinema offers the first analysis of a neglected body of Spanish films, nun films, which focus on the active role of religious women in the transformation of Spanish Catholicism. Pérez argues that commercial films, despite being less aesthetically accomplished, delved more than oppositional, art-house films into the fluctuating zeitgeist of the development years regarding the transformations within Spanish Catholicism. Confessional Cinema offers a provocative and originaTrade Review‘In this ground breaking study, Pérez explores the impact of Catholicism as a sociopolitical force in approximately 50 documentary and fiction features…. Highly recommended.’ -- D. West * Choice Magazine vol 55:05:2018 *‘Confessional Cinema is bound to be a most influential work and a fundamental referent in Spanish cultural and film studies for many years to come.’ -- Jorge Mari * Europe Now issue 16 published on April 17, 2018 *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction: Film, Religion, and the Desarrollismo periodChapter 1: Lighting Sainthood in the Time of Technocracy Chapter 2: Praying for Development in Post-Vatican II Comedies Chapter 3: Gender and Modernization in Nun Films Chapter 4: Narratives of Suspicion: Religion in the Nuevo Cine Espanol Conclusion Notes Works Cited Filmography

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Book Synopsis2019 Foreword INDIES Award, Gold for Essay With organized religion becoming increasingly divisive and politicized and Americans abandoning their pews in droves, it’s easy to question aspects of traditional spirituality and devotion. In response to this shifting landscape, Sonja Livingston undertakes a variety of expeditions—from a mobile confessional in Cajun Country to a eucharistic procession in Galway, Ireland, to the Death and Marigolds Parade in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Mass in a county jail on Thanksgiving Day—to better understand devotion in her own life.The Virgin of Prince Street chronicles her quest, offering an intimate and unusually candid view into Livingston’s relationship with the swiftly changing Catholic Church and into her own changing heart. Ultimately, Livingston’s meditations on quirky rituals and fading traditions thoughtfully and dynamically interrogate traditional elements of sacramental devotion, Trade Review“Livingston’s essays are light-hearted, witty, told in a comforting, sisterly voice, someone you can trust, someone who speaks her mind, someone who explores those things lost and found.”—Debbie Hagan, Brevity"Livingston is to be lauded for documenting an honest journey back home."—Nick Ripatrazone, Plough"If you think a woman’s quest to find a statue from the church of her childhood wouldn’t be that engaging a mystery, you’d be wrong. In The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion, Sonja Livingston refuses simple devotion as a motive and keeps digging for the source of religious impulse."—Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, Bookends Review"Liv­ing­ston's invitation to her expeditions is pitch perfect. She is skilled at laughing at herself, gently poking fun at the tradition that she's returning to with new eyes, and drawing us toward the mystery that ultimately cannot be spoken."—Amy Frykholm, Christian Century"As Livingston moves through the pews of her memory and her present, the authenticity of her pursuits captivates."—James M. Chesbro, America Magazine"The Virgin of Prince Street is beautiful in its craft. It is also important enough in its message that any Christian, indeed, any person of faith in the world right now, ought to encounter."—Kristina Marie Darling, Tupelo Quarterly"In examining the sustained power of a central icon of the Catholic church and an object of personal, sentimental attachment, Livingston’s linked essays highlight the irresolvable paradox of modern religiosity—that the seeker must follow an uncharted middle pathway when the old texts and their tropes, their patriarchy and their strictures, necessarily fall away."—Elizabeth Kadetsky, Literary Hub“In these lyrical sojourns Sonja Livingston contemplates the riches of the Catholic tradition along with its ongoing tribulations. In doing so the essayist discovers that devotion in imperfect circumstances is, in fact, the only devotion ever possible and has the extraordinary capacity to transform the human heart. Livingston’s essays illuminate while infusing nuance and generosity into an increasingly polarized religious landscape.”—Richard Rohr, author of Falling Upward “Sonja Livingston’s honest account of a halting return to the Catholic Church, and to its rich traditions of ritual and symbol, will speak to spiritual seekers of all stripes. Her reverence for every image, every phrase, and every idea in this book makes The Virgin of Prince Street its own act of devotion.”—Valerie Sayers, author of The Powers and Brain Fever “A captivating account. . . . Sonja Livingston’s spiritual detective story is rendered in vivid, sensual prose, filled with insight and gentle wisdom. In the end, Livingston has written a prayer—not the dull, recited kind, but a real prayer, a deeply personal song of hope.”—Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic and DesireTable of ContentsAuthor’s Note Search for the Virgin, Part I: Rochester 1. Absolute Mystery 2. The Heart Is a First-Class Relic Search for the Virgin, Part II: Rochester 3. Real Presence 4. Feast of Corpus Christi Search for the Virgin, Part III: Rochester 5. Altar Girl 6. Miracle of the Eyes Search for the Virgin, Part IV: Pittsburgh 7. Litany for a Dying Church 8. Feast of Saint Blaise 9. Devil’s Advocate Search for the Virgin, Part V: Buffalo 10. Act of Contrition 11. In Persona Christi Search for the Virgin, Part VI: Buffalo 12. Holy Water 13. The Marigold Parade Search for the Virgin, Part VII: Buffalo 14. A Brief History of Prayer 15. Feast of the Epiphany Search for the Virgin, Part VIII: Rochester Acknowledgments Sources

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Book SynopsisHeroic Hearts examines how young women in nineteenth-century France, authorized by a widespread cultural discourse that privileged individual authority over domesticity and marriage, sought to change the world.Trade Review"In this richly documented and lucidly written work, Popiel . . . shows how in the course of the nineteenth century, three strongly independent women changed the Catholic Church in France in ways that were important in their time and beyond."—S. Bailey, Choice“Jennifer Popiel’s book offers a fresh and illuminating perspective on the often maligned Catholic culture of the nineteenth century. Through a close analysis of devotional literature, fiction, images, and personal correspondence, Popiel moves beyond conventional assessments that emphasize patriarchal authority and female submission. Popiel shows us instead how Catholic women could find in intensely sentimental language and iconography centered on devotions such as the Sacred Heart models of heroic behavior and independence.”—Thomas Kselman, coeditor of Christian Democracy: Historical Legacies and Comparative Perspectives“Jennifer Popiel has rehabilitated language and imagery that both contemporaries and historians have interpreted as demonstrating women’s inherent emotionality and passivity. Heroic Hearts breaks ground in its consideration of nineteenth-century women’s spirituality and its serious discussions of sentimental literature and imagery.”—Sarah Curtis, author of Civilizing Habits: Women Missionaries and the Revival of French EmpireTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Pastel Saints and Powerful Women 1. Shaping the Sentimental Order: Martyrdom, Marriage, and Catholic Heroism 2. Contesting Oppression: Love, Suffering, and Sentimental Literature 3. Seeing the Path to Heaven: Sentimental Virtue and Visual Culture 4. Preferring Jesus Christ to Any Man: Chastity, Sacrifice, and the Religious of the Sacred Heart 5. Changing the World: Pauline Jaricot, Social Reform, and the Power of the Heart 6. Becoming a Saint: Zélie Martin, Suffering, and Heroism in a Consumer Society Conclusion: Roses, Elevators, and Modern Heroism Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisAcclaimed biographer John Loughery tells the story of John Hughes, son of Ireland, friend of William Seward and James Buchanan, founder of St. John's College (now Fordham University), builder of Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, pioneer of parochial-school education, and American diplomat. As archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York in the 1840 and 1850s and the most famous Roman Catholic in America, Hughes defended Catholic institutions in a time of nativist bigotry and church burnings and worked tirelessly to help Irish Catholic immigrants find acceptance in their new homeland. His galvanizing and protecting work and pugnacious style earned him the epithet Dagger John. When the interests of his church and ethnic community were at stake, Hughes acted with purpose and clarity.In Dagger John, Loughery reveals Hughes's life as it unfolded amid turbulent times for the religious and ethnic minority he represented. Hughes the public figure comes to the fore, illumTrade ReviewA comprehensive, insightful, and robust biography of a transcendent but neglected figure. * The New York Times *Loughery deftly narrates a life spent in defense of immigrants and as an imperfect advocate for tolerance and, yes, diversity. * Wall Street Journal *A timely insight into the man who founded St. Patrick's cathedral, providing a fascinating glimpse of the world of Irish America in the 19th century. * The Irish Times *Loughery's work deftly portrays a key period in US history and the role of one of the figures who helped to define that era. * Library Journal *In this superb biography by Loughery, Hughes takes his place among the movers and shakers of nineteenth century New York City. * The Bowery Boys *Excellent. * Catholic New York *Loughery has convincingly painted a portrait of both Catholic New York as well as the larger American culture of the mid-nineteenth century, while also weaving into his tapestry the strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and failures, of the prelate who led the archdiocese for over two decades.... Dagger John is a considerable contribution to United States Catholic history, the role of the Irish in it, and the character of one who never shied from controversy. * Catholic Historical Review *[A] magnificent biographical study of Hughes, one that plumbs the depths of his character, situates his own ethnic self-identity, and skillfully fits him into the lives of his contemporaries.... A fair and even-handed presentation of an important ecclesiastic of the nineteenth-century church, a man who served his adopted land well and to the end. * The Journal of Religion *This full, informative, and sympathetic treatment is written in an accessible style and will be required reading for anyone interested in the contribution of the Irish to 19th-century America. * Choice *Loughery has written an engaging contribution to the field of Irish American history that wears its erudition lightly and ought to be appreciated by scholars and general readers alike * Journal of American History *Table of ContentsPrologue: To the Tuileries 1. A Son of Ulster 2. A Vocation 3. Courting Controversy 4. Confronting Gotham 5. Who Shall Teach Our Children? 6. "The Baal of Bigotry" 7. War and Famine 8. A Widening Stage 9. The Church Militant 10. Authority Challenged 11. A New Cathedral 12. A House Divided, a Church Divided 13. Manhattan under Siege Epilogue: Legacy

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Book SynopsisIn The Lay Saint, Mary Harvey Doyno investigates the phenomenon of saintly cults that formed around pious merchants, artisans, midwives, domestic servants, and others in the medieval communes of northern and central Italy. Drawing on a wide array of sourcesvitae documenting their saintly lives and legends, miracle books, religious art, and communal recordsDoyno uses the rise of and tensions surrounding these civic cults to explore medieval notions of lay religiosity, charismatic power, civic identity, and the church''s authority in this period.Although claims about laymen''s and laywomen''s miraculous abilities challenged the church''s expanding political and spiritual dominion, both papal and civic authorities, Doyno finds, vigorously promoted their cults. She shows that this support was neither a simple reflection of the extraordinary lay religious zeal that marked late medieval urban life nor of the Church''s recognition of that enthusiasm. Rather, the historTrade Review"The Lay Saint offers the first substantive interpretation of the rise, development, and decline of the phenomenon of 'lay sanctity' in medieval Italy. It will become the book on medieval lay sanctity." -- Maureen C. Miller, University of California, Berkeley, author of Clothing the Clergy"This elegant, appealing book will be one that historians want to grapple with, as it weaves a rich and nuanced portrait of the challenges posed by lay religious life." -- Laura Ackerman Smoller, University of Rochester, author of The Saint and the Chopped-Up BabyTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Part One: Creating a Lay Ideal 1. From Charisma to Charity: Lay Sanctity in the Twelfth-Century Communes 2. Charity as Social Justice: The Birth of the Communal Lay Saint 3. Civic Patron as Ideal Citizen: The Cult of Pier "Pettinaio" of Siena Part Two: The Female Lay Saint 4. Classifying Laywomen: The Female 5. Zita of Lucca: The Outlier Part Three: From Civic Saint to Lay Visionary 6. Margaret of Cartona: Between Civic Saint and Franciscan Visionary 7. Envisioning an Order: The Last Lay Saints Epilogue Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn Reagan''s Gun-Toting Nuns, Theresa Keeley analyzes the role of intra-Catholic conflict within the framework of U.S. foreign policy formulation and execution during the Reagan administration. She challenges the preponderance of scholarship on the administration that stresses the influence of evangelical Protestants on foreign policy toward Latin America. Especially in the case of U.S. engagement in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Keeley argues, the bitter debate between U.S. and Central American Catholics over the direction of the Catholic Church shaped President Reagan''s foreign policy. The flash point for these intra-Catholic disputes was the December 1980 political murder of four American Catholic missionaries in El Salvador. Liberal Catholics described nuns and priests in Central America who worked to combat structural inequality as human rights advocates living out the Gospel''s spirit. Conservative Catholics saw them as agents of class conflict who furthered the soTrade ReviewOnce again, Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns is a fascinating study which places the messiness of religion at its center and illuminates the Catholic dimensions of U.S. policy towards Central America. For scholars of Catholicism, it offers insights into how to study lived religion and gender, as well as how to consider liberation theology in the American context. It is a thought-provoking work, inviting us to grapple with the significance of religion to this particular historical moment. * H-DIPLO *Keeley's narrative is a timely addition to the limited scholarly work on the Catholic dimension of Reagan's Central American policy. Her study is a highly readable, unbiased account of the contentious policy debates that divided Washington and the nation during the 1980s. * Journal of Church and State *Theresa Keeley has written a book that is well-researched, timely, and provocative. This is an excellent book and provides both scholars and the general public an opportunity to relook at the Cold War and Central America, which ultimately has become a prelude to the ongoing and current debates about how religion, gender, and culture intersect and shape the role of the United States in the world. * Church History Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Catholic Divisions, U.S.–Central America Policy, and the Cold War 1. From Senator McCarthy's Darlings to Marxist Maryknollers 2. Religious or Political Activists for Nicaragua? 3. Subversives in El Salvador 4. U.S. Guns Kill U.S. Nuns 5. Reagan and the White House's Maryknoll Nun 6. Real Catholics versus Maryknollers 7. Maryknoll and Iran-Contra 8. Déjà Vu: Jesuits and Maryknollers Epilogue: Women, the Catholic Church, and U.S.–Central America Relations after the Cold War

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsIntroduction: The Catholic Work of Nation Building 1. Reconstructing the Catholic West: Catholics, Protestants, and the State on the Mission Battlegrounds 2. Catholics in the White City: The Columbian Catholic Congress of 1893 3. American Catholicism and Philippine Colonization: A Study in Religious Imperialism 4. Catholic Gatekeepers: The Church, Immigration, and the Forging of an American Catholicism 5. Toward Tri-Faith America: Catholics Confront the Politics of Anti-Catholicism Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe Splendor and Opulence of the Past traces the career of Jaume Caresmar (17171791), a church historian and a key figure of the Catalan Enlightenment who transcribed tens of thousands of parchments to preserve and glorify Catalonia''s medieval past in the face of its diminishing autonomy. As Paul Freedman shows, Caresmar''s books, essays, and transcriptionssome only recently discoveredprovide fresh insights into the Middle Ages as remembered in modern Catalonia and illustrate how a nation''s past glories and humiliations can inform contemporary politics and culture.From the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, Catalonia was a thriving, independent set of principalities within what would become modern Spain. In the wake of the dismantling of its autonomy by the eighteenth-century Spanish state, Catalan scholars looked to the region''s medieval independence and wealth as a means of maintaining a distinct Catalan identity and resisting Castilian hegemony. Thro

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Book SynopsisOn the heels of an extremely lively U.S. presidential election campaign, this book examines the unusually serene relationship between the chief global superpower and the world's most ancient and renowned institution. The "Catholicization" of the United States is a recent phenomenon: some believe it began during the Reagan administration; others feel it emerged under George W. Bush's presidency. What is certain is that the Catholic presence in the American political ruling class was particularly prominent in the Obama administration: over one-third of cabinet members, the Vice President, the White House Chief of Staff, the heads of Homeland Security and the CIA, the director and deputy director of the FBI, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top military officers were all Roman Catholic. Challenging received wisdom that the American Catholic Church is in crisis and that the political religion in the United States is Evangelicalism, Manlio Graziano provides an engaging account of the tendency of Catholics to play an increasingly significant role in American politics, as well as the rising role of American prelates in the Roman Catholic Church.Trade Review"Graziano provocatively analyzes the Catholic Church as a political institution, drawing attention to the surprisingly robust presence of Catholics at the top of the American political structure while noting the powerful role that US citizens have played in shaping the contours of Catholic approaches to freighted issues at the transnational level. His convincing conclusions with regard to the current mutually influential relationship between United States and Rome make for fascinating reading." -- Timothy Byrnes * Colgate University *"This fascinating and astonishingly neglected subject is of immense importance, and I can think of no one better positioned than Manlio Graziano to treat it in all its complexity." -- Stanislao G. Pugliese * Hofstra University *"[Graziano's] book deserves attention both from scholars interested in religion and politics, broadly understood, and from intelligent citizens searching for new possibilities for civic life." -- David J. O'Brien * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"[Graziano] devotes much of In Rome We Trust to a tightly written, dispassionate and unsentimental account of American Catholic political history, one backed by substantial research." -- Jason K. Duncan * The Review of Politics *"[A]s the volume ably documents, Catholics have moved into the mainstream of national-level political life in America....The analysis is at its best in tracing the complex relationship between American and Vatican interests in international affairs. Graziano demythologizes the U.S.-Vatican relationship in the post-World War II era, particularly the cooperation between President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II." -- David T. Buckley * Political Science Quarterly *"Manlio Graziano's In Rome We Trust is much more than an erudite and well documented analysis of the relations between the Vatican and the United States, between Catholicism and the ultimate superpower. It is a priceless interpretation of the geopolitics that the Roman Church, appearing here in its worldly role, and America, the leader of the West, have recently practiced and will continue to practice in the post-Cold War era." -- Corriere della SeraTable of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Catholics in the United States: The Greek in the Midst of Troy chapter abstractThis chapter describes the essentially anti-Catholic nature of the 13 colonies and of the early years of the United States, as well as the specific role of the Catholics at that time. 2The Catholic Church and the United States: The Discovery of America chapter abstractThis chapter recounts the early stages of the relationship between the universal Catholic Church and the United States, and the long-term fundamental incomprehension of the nature of the United States by a Catholic Church still exclusively Eurocentric 3The Catholic Church and the United States: Parallel Empires chapter abstractThis chapter treats the relationship between the universal Catholic Church and the United States in the twentieth century before the establishment of diplomatic relations, and the global competition over moral values 4Catholics and American Politics: The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Coalition chapter abstractThis chapter describes the evolution of the political role of American Catholics from the World War I to the Reagan administration, with particular attention to Roosevelt's New Deal Coalition 5Politics and Religion in the United States: The Evangelical Meteorite chapter abstractThis chapter covers the political role of Evangelicalism in the United States, and shows how the Catholic Church was able to learn from this experience as well 6Catholicization of the United States: Shift of Power and Catholicization chapter abstractThis Chapter shows how American Catholics became more and more present at the top of the political power in the United States and puts this trend in relation with the general geopolitical frame of global power shifts and the relative decline of the US 7The Americanization of the Catholic Church: In America We Trust chapter abstractThis chapter presents the real condition of the American Catholic Church today, providing data and considerations that contradict commonplaces about the crisis of Catholicism. It also recounts the stages of the process of "Americanization" of the universal Catholic Church, not only in financial terms nor by the growing numbers of American cardinals, but essentially in terms of adoption of the American model of free competition on the market of faith: from social doctrine to freedom of religion, through to the condemnation of anti-Semitism. The election of an "American Pope" is the last stage of this process.

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Book SynopsisA sustained and systematic theological reflection on the idea that being a Christian is, first and last, a matter of the flesh, Christian Flesh shows us what being a Christian means for fleshly existence. Depicting and analyzing what the Christian tradition has to say about the flesh of Christians in relation to that of Christ, the book shows that some kinds of fleshly activity conform well to being a Christian, while others are in tension with it. But to lead a Christian life is to be unconstrained by ordinary ethical norms. Arguing that no particular case of fleshly activity is forbidden, Paul J. Griffiths illustrates his message through extended case studies of what it is for Christians to eat, to clothe themselves, and to engage in physical intimacy. Trade Review"Paul Griffiths, one of the few truly creative theologians of our time, has produced another brilliant and provocative work of speculative theology, demonstrating the centrality of the flesh to the mysteries and doctrines of the Christian faith and examining questions of the greatest significance today and always." -- Carol Zaleski * Smith College *"In this trenchant and careful theological treatment of our embodiment, Paul Griffiths puts the stress exactly where it should be put––on the possibility of transfigured touch. In doing so he does not shy away from the violence involved in all fallen caresses, nor the degree of caress that survives even in our violent touches. By focusing on the varieties of touch, he is able to untangle several unfortunate arguments between liberals and conservatives in a most refreshing way. One does not have to agree with all his conclusions to be immensely assisted by this book and grateful to him for writing it." -- John Milbank * University of Nottingham *"As ever, Paul Griffiths is almost alarming in his lucidity and intelligence. Very few theologians can boast a comparable combination of profound questioning and precise reasoning. This is a book worthy of the most serious reflection, debate, and admiration." -- David Bentley Hart * Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study *"Readers familiar with Paul J. Griffiths's work know they must be prepared to encounter provocation in his new book, Christian Flesh, for Griffiths is a provocateur in the best sense, someone who intends to leave the reader uncomfortable and thereby provoke conversation. Griffiths enjoys a good scrap of the clarifying kind, and in this book I think he has invited readers of various stripes to a variety of good scraps....This book has prompted me to ponder the issues it raises more deeply, for which I have its provocative author to thank." -- John Cavadini * Commonweal Magazine *"Christian Flesh can help Christians of all persuasions to think deeply and theologically about the body, and what it means to live as a faithful body cleaved to Jesus in the sacraments. Griffiths is driven by theology, not by the latest arguments from the political, legal, and scientific sphere, and in that, his work is both enriching and refreshing." -- Aaron Klink * Anglican Theological Review *"Christian Flesh possesses an integrity and exhaustiveness that evades condensed representation. There is much to recommend its reading, and I would struggle to find any reservations for recommending it. The writing is approachable, even when dense, and its honesty and transparency are commendable." -- Jonathan M. Platter * Reading Religion *"Christian Flesh is supremely lucid and beautifully austere....[In this review,] I have covered only a sample of the provocative, inventive, and profound speculations that make up Christian Flesh. I suspect its influence will be felt for many years as scholars work through its implications and pursue its many fascinating leads." -- Evan Sandsmark * Modern Theology *"[T]hose provocative proposals which linger with and even agitate the reader long after the turn of the last page – are among the cardinal reasons why [Griffiths's] books deserve close, careful attention. He has given us much to ponder in Christian Flesh, and in doing so has provided a model of well-reasoned, stimulating and enduring theology." -- R. David Nelson * International Journal of Systematic Theology *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Flesh Devastated chapter abstractThis chapter distinguishes body from flesh and shows the latter to be, first, haptic, which is to say constituted and maintained as flesh by touch in its many varieties; second, self-contiguous and bounded, separated in fact and experience from other bodies of flesh, while also located in time and space; third, a gift received from the caresses of others, without which flesh can neither come to be as such, nor continue in being; and fourth, fragile and mortal, located in a world in which fleshly pain is a constant threat and a frequent companion, and in which death, the end of flesh, is always close at hand. 2Flesh Transfigured chapter abstractThis chapter shows what human flesh would be like were it not damaged, and does so from a Christian point of view, by describing the flesh of Jesus Christ during the period from his conception to his death on the cross (natal flesh), from his resurrection to his ascension (resurrected flesh), and from his ascension onwards (ascended flesh). As natal flesh, the book argues, his flesh was exempt from the ordinary damage of pain and mortality except as these served particular purposes. The chapter shows, in its analysis of this and its engagement with counterviews, that human flesh's ordinary subjection to these things isn't essential to it, and begins to sketch what flesh would be like were it not so subject. 3Flesh Cleaved chapter abstractThis chapter shows what it means for human flesh to cleave to—to be made intimate with, incorporated into—the flesh of Christ through baptism. Baptism is depicted as a matter of the flesh and as an act that newly relates the flesh of the baptized to Christ's flesh. Paul's discussion of these matters in the Corinthian correspondence is interpreted, with special attention to what it means to say that the Christian's bodily members are, analogically and participatorily, Christ's. Being intimate with one kind of flesh—namely Christ's—means that some other kinds of fleshly intimacy are ruled inappropriate; the scriptural language of fornication and idolatry is presented and discussed as a way of clarifying this, and the chapter argues that appropriate Christian fleshly conduct is better presented by way of hagiography—writing the lives of those who exhibit it—than by way of argument or codification. 4Clothes chapter abstractThis chapter shows what it is to be clothed, and what functions the wearing of clothes serve in human life. It shows the importance of nakedness in baptism and argues that there is no distinctively or properly Christian clothing: no clothes intrinsically proper to, or improper for, Christian flesh. Local sartorial conventions, however, may be observed by Christians, and should be unless they carry with them a signal that they are more than conventional by being rooted in the order of being. If they carry that signal—as locally gender-specific modes of dress, for example, often do—then they can become both fornicatory and idolatrous. The chapter argues that Christians have a radical freedom with respect to dress because of their cleaving to the flesh of Christ. 5Food chapter abstractThis chapter shows what it is to eat and drink and asks what is appropriate in that sphere for Christian flesh. There are, for Christians, no forbidden foods, and none required. All are on a par at least in that all eating is intimate with slaughter (whether of plants or animals). The sole exception is eucharistic eating, and this shows that all non-eucharistic eating ought to be accompanied by lament as well as by delight. Fasting is analyzed, depicted as a proper Christian response to this situation, and articulated with both eschatology and eucharistic theology. Gluttony and other forms of scandalous eating are treated, and the mistakes evident in them shown. 6Caresses chapter abstractThis chapter analyzes the varieties of human fleshly exchange as these appear to Christians. Fleshly contacts fall on a spectrum from the life-giving caress to the life-taking wound. Fleshly wounding is concupiscent: it seeks domination and control, and caresses of this kind are inappropriate, it is argued, for Christian flesh, while celibacy and virginity are depicted as characteristically Christian modes of responding to the connection between copulation and death. But there are no caresses whose form specifically forbids them to Christians, and this is argued with respect to three examples: masturbation, cunnilingus, and sodomy. The topics treated in this chapter are framed by and aimed at a depiction of caressing the flesh of Jesus, with which the chapter concludes.

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Book SynopsisThere are few instances of a contemporary Western European society more firmly welded to religion than Ireland is to Catholicism. For much of the twentieth century, to be considered a good Irish citizen was to be seen as a good and observant Catholic. Today, the opposite may increasingly be the case. The Irish Catholic Church, once a spiritual institution beyond question, is not only losing influence and relevance; in the eyes of many, it has become something utterly desacralized. In this book, Hugh Turpin offers an innovative and in-depth account of the nature and emergence of "ex-Catholicism"—a new model of the good, and secular, Irish person that is being rapidly adopted in Irish society. Using rich quantitative and qualitative research methods, Turpin explains the emergence and character of religious rejection in the Republic. He examines how numerous factors—including economic growth, social liberalization, attenuated domestic religious socialization, the institutional scandals and moral collapse of the Church, and the Church's lingering influence in social institutions and laws—have interacted to produce a rapid growth in ex-Catholicism. By tracing the frictions within and between practicing Catholics, cultural Catholics, and ex-Catholics in a period of profound cultural change and moral reckoning, Turpin shows how deeply the meanings of being religious or non-religious have changed in the country once described as "Holy Catholic Ireland."Trade Review"Turpin weaves regression models together with detailed accounts of individual and institutional agency, and with turns of phrase both humorous and profound, to produce our most holistic account of secularization to date. An interdisciplinary gem of a book."—Jonathan Lanman, Queen's University, Belfast"This is not only the best, most insightful book on the situation of religion and secularization in contemporary Ireland—it is one of the best, most insightful books written on secularization in general that I have read in a long time. Sharp, engaging, informative, thoughtful, and fascinating—this book is a must for anyone wanting to understand the evaporation of religion in the Western world."—Phil Zuckerman, Pitzer College"Turpin tells the fascinating story of what ordinary people think and feel about the disintegration of Catholic hegemony in Ireland. The book is enthralling: deeply researched, full of insights and exceptionally well written, it deserves all the praise and prizes that will come its way, if there is any justice in this world."—David Voas, University College London"Prior to Turpin's research, there had been no systematic, in-depth studies of those who could be classified as nones in the Republic of Ireland.Unholy Catholic Irelandis a first and important step in what I hope and anticipate will become a topic of further research – by Turpin and by other scholars. Based on both qualitative and quantitative research, it lays a strong foundation for future studies."—Gladys Ganiel, Slugger O'Toole"This study is to be warmly welcomed. It is written beautifully and makes a significant contribution to the field of the study of Irish Catholicism—and its rejection. Believers and non-believers alike will learn much from Turpin's findings, which invite us to reconsider the complexities of Irish religion and irreligion anew."—Salvador Ryan, The Irish Independent"Unholy Catholic Ireland brings a fresh and rich analysis to the study of Irish Catholicism, especially in the wake of decades of scandals. As such, it will appeal to students of Catholicism but especially, and more generally, those interested in better understanding religious change. And its methodological approach—combining the 'deep' insight of ethnographic work with the 'wide' analysis of social surveys—will serve as a guidepost for social scientists studying secularizing processes in other societies."—Brian Conway, Contemporary Sociology"Hugh Turpin provides the most comprehensive description and analysis of this conundrum [at the heart of Catholic Ireland]. This is an innovative, insightful, well-written book."—Tom Inglis, Journal of Contemporary ReligionTable of ContentsIntroduction 1. Secularization, the Desacralization of the Church, and the Emergence of Ethno-Catholic "Nones" 2. "Hostages of Catholicism": Quantifying the Nature and Scale of the Rejection of the Church 3. "For Emergency Use Only": The Waning of Religious Socialization 4. "A Load of Shite": Hidden Cultures of Catholic Unbelief 5. "This Is Our Rising": Secularization as a Second Struggle for "Irish Freedom" 6. "Awakening from Conscription": Ex-Catholicism as Anti-Nostalgic Moralized Authenticity 7. "Blessed Are Those Who Are Persecuted Because of Righteousness": Coping with a Spoiled Religious Identity Epilogue: "Anyone Else Not Bothered?"

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Book SynopsisBy the end of France’s long seventeenth century, the seminary-trained, reform-minded Catholic priest had crystalized into a type recognizable by his clothing, gestures, and ceremonial skill. Although critics denounced these priests as hypocrites or models for Molière’s Tartuffe, seminaries associated the features of this priestly identity with the idea of the vray ecclésiastique, or true churchman. Ceremonial Splendor examines the way France’s early seminaries promoted the emergence and construction of the true churchman as a mode of embodiment and ecclesiastical ideal between approximately 1630 and 1730. Based on an analysis of sources that regulated priestly training in France, such as seminary rules and manuals, liturgical handbooks, ecclesiastical pamphlets and conferences, and episcopal edicts, the book uses theories of performance to reconstruct the way clergymen learned to conduct liturgical ceremonies, abide by clerical norms, and aspire to perfection. Joy Palacios shows how the process of crafting a priestly identity involved a wide range of performances, including improvisation, role-playing, and the display of skills. In isolation, any one of these performance obligations, if executed in a way that drew attention to the self, could undermine a clergyman’s priestly persona and threaten the institution of the priesthood more broadly. Seminaries counteracted the ever-present threat of theatricality by ceremonializing the clergyman’s daily life, rendering his body and gestures contiguous with the mass. Through its focus on priestly identity, Ceremonial Splendor reconsiders the relationship between Church and theater in early modern France and uncovers ritual strategies that continue to shape religious authority today.Table of ContentsNote on Translations Introduction: Priestly Performance, 1640–1730 Chapter 1. Clothing Chapter 2. Gestures Chapter 3. Ceremonies Chapter 4. Publics Chapter 5. Rivals Conclusion: Ceremonial Specialization and the Divergence of Performance RepertoiresNotes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisThis book tells the story of how a team of colleagues at Boston College took an unusual approach (working with a design consultancy) to renewing their core and in the process energized administrators, faculty, and students to view liberal arts education as an ongoing process of innovation. It aims to provide insight into what they did and why they did it and to provide a candid account of what has worked and what has not worked. Although all institutions are different, they believe their experiences can provide guidance to others who want to change their general education curriculum or who are being asked to teach core or general education courses in new ways. The book also includes short essays by a number of faculty colleagues who have been teaching in BC’s new innovative core courses, providing practical advice about the challenges of trying interdisciplinary teaching, team teaching, project-or problem-based learning, intentional reflection, and other new structures and pedagogies for the first time. It will also address some of the nuts and bolts issues they have encountered when trying to create structures to make curriculum change sustainable over time and to foster ongoing innovation.Table of ContentsPreface: Curriculum Revision and the Foundations of American Higher Education David Quigley | xi PART I: INNOVATION AND THE LIBERAL ARTS CORE | 1 Choreographing the Conversation: How Designers Helped Clear an Academic Logjam William Bole | 3 What Do We Know? Or, The Perils of Expertise Toby Bottorf | 13 Innovation Andy Boynton | 21 Ambitious Plans Meet Reality: How We Made the Renewed Core Work Mary Thomas Crane | 31 Slowing Down and Opening Up: Preparing Faculty to Co-design a General Education Course Stacy Grooters | 41 Core Renewal as Creative Fidelity Gregory Kalscheur, S.J. | 50 Reflection and Core Renewal Jack Butler, S.J. | 62 Surprised by Conversation: A Reflection on Core Renewal at Boston College Brian D. Robinette | 69 PART II: TEACHING THE RENEWED CORE | 73 Complex Problem Courses | 75 Teaching about a Planet in Peril Prasannan Parthasarathi and Juliet B. Schor | 77 Experimenting with Science and Technology in American Society Jenna Tonn | 82 Global Implications of Climate Change: Importance of Mentorship in a Core Education Tara Pisani Gareau and Brian J. Gareau | 104 Enduring Question Courses: Bringing Together Divergent Disciplines | 115 How to Live in the Material World: Two Perspectives Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace and Dunwei Wang | 117 Aesthetic and Spiritual Exercises, in and beyond the Classroom Daniel Callahan and Brian D. Robinette | 123 Enduring Question Courses: Differentiating Similar Disciplines | 133 Death in Ancient Greece and Modern Russia: Reflecting on Our Reflection Sessions Hanne Eisenfeld and Thomas Epstein | 135 Spending a Semester with “A Possession for All Time”: Justice and War in Thucydides Robert C. Bartlett | 144 Inquiring about Humans and Nature: Creativity, Planning, and Serendipity Holly VandeWall and Min Hyoung Song | 150 The Liberal Arts Core: Engaging with Current Events, 2016–2020 | 157 Crossings: Teaching “Roots and Routes: Reading/Writing Identity, Migration, and Culture” Lynne Anderson and Elizabeth Graver | 159 The Architecture of a Black Feminist Classroom: Pedagogical Praxis in “Where #BlackLivesMatter Meets #MeToo” Régine Michelle Jean-Charles | 167 Truth-Telling in History and Literature: Constructive Uncertainty Allison Adair and Sylvia Sellers-García | 178 Covid Core Lessons Elizabeth H. Shlala | 190 Acknowledgments | 199 Appendix A: The Vision Animating the Boston College Core Curriculum | 203 Appendix B: Boston College Core Curriculum Required Courses | 209 Appendix C: Complex Problem and Enduring Question Courses, 2015–2021 | 211 List of Contributors | 235 Index | 243

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Book SynopsisThis book tells the story of how a team of colleagues at Boston College took an unusual approach (working with a design consultancy) to renewing their core and in the process energized administrators, faculty, and students to view liberal arts education as an ongoing process of innovation. It aims to provide insight into what they did and why they did it and to provide a candid account of what has worked and what has not worked. Although all institutions are different, they believe their experiences can provide guidance to others who want to change their general education curriculum or who are being asked to teach core or general education courses in new ways. The book also includes short essays by a number of faculty colleagues who have been teaching in BC’s new innovative core courses, providing practical advice about the challenges of trying interdisciplinary teaching, team teaching, project-or problem-based learning, intentional reflection, and other new structures and pedagogies for the first time. It will also address some of the nuts and bolts issues they have encountered when trying to create structures to make curriculum change sustainable over time and to foster ongoing innovation.Table of ContentsPreface: Curriculum Revision and the Foundations of American Higher Education David Quigley | xi PART I: INNOVATION AND THE LIBERAL ARTS CORE | 1 Choreographing the Conversation: How Designers Helped Clear an Academic Logjam William Bole | 3 What Do We Know? Or, The Perils of Expertise Toby Bottorf | 13 Innovation Andy Boynton | 21 Ambitious Plans Meet Reality: How We Made the Renewed Core Work Mary Thomas Crane | 31 Slowing Down and Opening Up: Preparing Faculty to Co-design a General Education Course Stacy Grooters | 41 Core Renewal as Creative Fidelity Gregory Kalscheur, S.J. | 50 Reflection and Core Renewal Jack Butler, S.J. | 62 Surprised by Conversation: A Reflection on Core Renewal at Boston College Brian D. Robinette | 69 PART II: TEACHING THE RENEWED CORE | 73 Complex Problem Courses | 75 Teaching about a Planet in Peril Prasannan Parthasarathi and Juliet B. Schor | 77 Experimenting with Science and Technology in American Society Jenna Tonn | 82 Global Implications of Climate Change: Importance of Mentorship in a Core Education Tara Pisani Gareau and Brian J. Gareau | 104 Enduring Question Courses: Bringing Together Divergent Disciplines | 115 How to Live in the Material World: Two Perspectives Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace and Dunwei Wang | 117 Aesthetic and Spiritual Exercises, in and beyond the Classroom Daniel Callahan and Brian D. Robinette | 123 Enduring Question Courses: Differentiating Similar Disciplines | 133 Death in Ancient Greece and Modern Russia: Reflecting on Our Reflection Sessions Hanne Eisenfeld and Thomas Epstein | 135 Spending a Semester with “A Possession for All Time”: Justice and War in Thucydides Robert C. Bartlett | 144 Inquiring about Humans and Nature: Creativity, Planning, and Serendipity Holly VandeWall and Min Hyoung Song | 150 The Liberal Arts Core: Engaging with Current Events, 2016–2020 | 157 Crossings: Teaching “Roots and Routes: Reading/Writing Identity, Migration, and Culture” Lynne Anderson and Elizabeth Graver | 159 The Architecture of a Black Feminist Classroom: Pedagogical Praxis in “Where #BlackLivesMatter Meets #MeToo” Régine Michelle Jean-Charles | 167 Truth-Telling in History and Literature: Constructive Uncertainty Allison Adair and Sylvia Sellers-García | 178 Covid Core Lessons Elizabeth H. Shlala | 190 Acknowledgments | 199 Appendix A: The Vision Animating the Boston College Core Curriculum | 203 Appendix B: Boston College Core Curriculum Required Courses | 209 Appendix C: Complex Problem and Enduring Question Courses, 2015–2021 | 211 List of Contributors | 235 Index | 243

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Book SynopsisHow the South Bronx and Puerto Rican migration defined Fr. Neil Connolly’s priesthood as he learned to both serve and be part of his community South Bronx, 1958. Change was coming. Guidance was sorely needed to bridge the old and the new, for enunciating and implementing a vision. It was a unique place and time in history where Father Neil Connolly found his true calling and spiritual awakening. The Kingdom Began in Puerto Rico captures the spirit of the era and the spirit of this great man. Set in historical context of a changing world and a changing Catholic Church, The Kingdom Began in Puerto Rico follows Fr. Neil Connolly’s path through the South Bronx, which began with a special Church program to address the postwar great Puerto Rican migration. After an immersion summer in Puerto Rico, Fr. Neil served the largest concentration of Puerto Ricans in the Bronx from the 1960s to the 1980s as they struggled for a decent life. Through the teachings of Vatican II, Connolly assumed responsibility for creating a new Church and world. In the war against drugs, poverty, and crime, Connolly created a dynamic organization and chapel run by the people and supported Unitas, a nationally unique peer-driven mental health program for youth. Frustrated by the lack of institutional responses to his community’s challenges, Connolly challenged government abandonment and spoke out against ill-conceived public plans. Ultimately, he realized that his priestly mission was in developing new leaders among people, in the Church and the world, and supporting two nationally unique lay leadership programs, the Pastoral Center and People for Change. Discovering the real mission of priesthood, urban ministry, and the Catholic Church in the United States, author Angel Garcia ably blends the dynamic forces of Church and world that transformed Fr. Connolly as he grew into his vocation. The book presents a rich history of the South Bronx and calls for all urban policies to begin with the people, not for the people. It also affirms the continuing relevance of Vatican II and Medellin for today’s Church and world, in the United States and Latin America.Table of ContentsForeword | ix Introduction | 1 1. Puerto Rico | 9 2. The New Parish | 27 3. A Changed Church, a Changed Role | 57 4. Summer in the City | 80 5. World Struggles, Parish Struggles | 105 6. Organizing Priests | 140 7. Social Action, Political Power | 165 8. South Bronx—Commitment and Abandonment | 189 9. New Ministers | 213 10. People for Change | 239 11. Another World, a Larger Mission | 264 12. New Leadership | 293 Acknowledgments | 313 Notes | 319 Index | 347

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Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to be a community of difference? St. Mary of the Angels is a tiny underground Catholic parish in the heart of Boston’s Egleston Square. More than a century of local, national, and international migrations has shaped and reshaped the neighborhood, transforming streets into borderlines and the parish into a waystation. Today, the church sustains a community of Black, Caribbean, Latin American, and Euro-American parishioners from Roxbury and beyond. In People Get Ready, Susan Reynolds draws on six years of ethnographic research to examine embodied ritual as a site of radical solidarity in the local church. Weaving together archived letters, oral histories, stories, photographs, newspaper articles, and newly examined archdiocesan documents, Reynolds traces how the people of St. Mary’s constructed rituals of solidarity as a practical foundation for building bridges across difference. She looks beyond liturgy to unexpected places, from Mass announcements to parish council meetings, from the Good Friday Via Crucis through neighborhood streets to protests staged in and around the church in the wake of Boston’s 2004 parish shutdowns. Through ethnography and Catholic ecclesiology, Reynolds argues for a retrieval of Vatican II’s notion of ecclesial solidarity as a basis for the mission of the local church in an age of migration, displacement, and change. It is through the work of ritual, the story of St. Mary’s reveals, that we learn to negotiate the borders in our midst—to cultivate friendships, exercise power, build peace, and, in a real way, to survive.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Unstable Communities of the Faithful | 1 1 Beyond Unity in Diversity | 30 2 Urban Borderlands | 63 3 Receiving Vatican II in Roxbury | 88 4 Passion of the Neighborhood | 116 5 Ritualizing Solidarity | 161 6 Staying Alive | 188 Appendix: Interviews | 205 Acknowledgments | 213 Notes | 217 Index | 259

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Book SynopsisWhat does it mean to be a community of difference? St. Mary of the Angels is a tiny underground Catholic parish in the heart of Boston’s Egleston Square. More than a century of local, national, and international migrations has shaped and reshaped the neighborhood, transforming streets into borderlines and the parish into a waystation. Today, the church sustains a community of Black, Caribbean, Latin American, and Euro-American parishioners from Roxbury and beyond. In People Get Ready, Susan Reynolds draws on six years of ethnographic research to examine embodied ritual as a site of radical solidarity in the local church. Weaving together archived letters, oral histories, stories, photographs, newspaper articles, and newly examined archdiocesan documents, Reynolds traces how the people of St. Mary’s constructed rituals of solidarity as a practical foundation for building bridges across difference. She looks beyond liturgy to unexpected places, from Mass announcements to parish council meetings, from the Good Friday Via Crucis through neighborhood streets to protests staged in and around the church in the wake of Boston’s 2004 parish shutdowns. Through ethnography and Catholic ecclesiology, Reynolds argues for a retrieval of Vatican II’s notion of ecclesial solidarity as a basis for the mission of the local church in an age of migration, displacement, and change. It is through the work of ritual, the story of St. Mary’s reveals, that we learn to negotiate the borders in our midst—to cultivate friendships, exercise power, build peace, and, in a real way, to survive.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Unstable Communities of the Faithful | 1 1 Beyond Unity in Diversity | 30 2 Urban Borderlands | 63 3 Receiving Vatican II in Roxbury | 88 4 Passion of the Neighborhood | 116 5 Ritualizing Solidarity | 161 6 Staying Alive | 188 Appendix: Interviews | 205 Acknowledgments | 213 Notes | 217 Index | 259

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Book SynopsisStartling Figures is about Catholic fiction in a secular age and the rhetorical strategies Catholic writers employ to reach a skeptical, indifferent, or even hostile audience. Although characters in contemporary Catholic fiction frequently struggle with doubt and fear, these works retain a belief in the possibility for transcendent meaning and value beyond the limits of the purely secular. Individual chapters include close readings of some of the best works of contemporary American Catholic fiction, which shed light on the narrative techniques that Catholic writers use to point their characters, and their readers, beyond the horizon of secularity and toward an idea of transcendence while also making connections between the widely acknowledged twentieth-century masters of the form and their twenty-first-century counterparts. This book is focused both on the aspects of craft that Catholic writers employ to shape the reader’s experience of the story and on the effect the story has on the reader. One recurring theme that is central to both is how often Catholic writers use narrative violence and other, similar disorienting techniques in order to unsettle the reader. These moments can leave both characters within the stories and the readers themselves shaken and unmoored, and this, O’Connell argues, is often a first step toward the recognition, and even possibly the acceptance, of grace. Individual chapters look at these themes in the works of Flannery O’Connor, J. F. Powers, Walker Percy, Tim Gautreaux, Alice McDermott, George Saunders, and Phil Klay and Kirstin Valdez Quade.Table of ContentsIntroduction: “Surprise Me”: Going inside the “Black Box” of Catholic Fiction | 1 1 The “Blasting Annihilating Light” of Flannery O’Connor’s Art | 17 2 Disorientation and Reorientation in J. F. Powers’s Fiction | 34 3 Walker Percy and the End of the Modern World | 53 4 Tim Gautreaux and a Postconciliar Approach to Violence | 73 5 Belief and Ambiguity in the Fiction of Alice McDermott | 92 6 “Life Is Rough and Death Is Coming”: George Saunders and the Catholic Literary Tradition | 112 Epilogue: Phil Klay, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and the State of Contemporary Catholic Literature | 133 Acknowledgments | 147 Notes | 151 Works Cited | 165 Index | 173

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Book SynopsisStartling Figures is about Catholic fiction in a secular age and the rhetorical strategies Catholic writers employ to reach a skeptical, indifferent, or even hostile audience. Although characters in contemporary Catholic fiction frequently struggle with doubt and fear, these works retain a belief in the possibility for transcendent meaning and value beyond the limits of the purely secular. Individual chapters include close readings of some of the best works of contemporary American Catholic fiction, which shed light on the narrative techniques that Catholic writers use to point their characters, and their readers, beyond the horizon of secularity and toward an idea of transcendence while also making connections between the widely acknowledged twentieth-century masters of the form and their twenty-first-century counterparts. This book is focused both on the aspects of craft that Catholic writers employ to shape the reader’s experience of the story and on the effect the story has on the reader. One recurring theme that is central to both is how often Catholic writers use narrative violence and other, similar disorienting techniques in order to unsettle the reader. These moments can leave both characters within the stories and the readers themselves shaken and unmoored, and this, O’Connell argues, is often a first step toward the recognition, and even possibly the acceptance, of grace. Individual chapters look at these themes in the works of Flannery O’Connor, J. F. Powers, Walker Percy, Tim Gautreaux, Alice McDermott, George Saunders, and Phil Klay and Kirstin Valdez Quade.Table of ContentsIntroduction: “Surprise Me”: Going inside the “Black Box” of Catholic Fiction | 1 1 The “Blasting Annihilating Light” of Flannery O’Connor’s Art | 17 2 Disorientation and Reorientation in J. F. Powers’s Fiction | 34 3 Walker Percy and the End of the Modern World | 53 4 Tim Gautreaux and a Postconciliar Approach to Violence | 73 5 Belief and Ambiguity in the Fiction of Alice McDermott | 92 6 “Life Is Rough and Death Is Coming”: George Saunders and the Catholic Literary Tradition | 112 Epilogue: Phil Klay, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and the State of Contemporary Catholic Literature | 133 Acknowledgments | 147 Notes | 151 Works Cited | 165 Index | 173

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Book SynopsisA vital collection of interdisciplinary essays that illuminates the significance of Marian shrines and promises to teach scholars how to “read” them for decades to come. American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism is a collection of twelve essays that examine the historical and contemporary roles of Marian shrines in US Catholicism. The essays in this collection use historical, ethnographic, and comparative methods to explore how Catholics have used Marian devotion to make an imprint on the physical and religious landscape of the United States. Using the dynamic malleability of Marian shrines as a starting place for studying US Catholicism, each chapter reconsiders the American religious landscape from the perspective of a single shrine to Mary and asks: What does this shrine reveal about US Catholicism and about American religion? Each of the contributors in American Patroness examines why and how Marian shrines persist in the twenty-first century and subsequently uses that examination to re-read contemporary US Catholicism. Because shrines are not neutral spaces—they reflect and shape the elastic yet strict boundaries of what counts as Catholic identity, and who controls prayer practices—the studies in this collection also shed light on the contested dynamics of these holy sites. American Patroness demonstrates that Marian shrines continue to be places where an American Catholic identity is continuously worked on, negotiations about power occur, and Marian relationships are fostered and nurtured in spaces that are simultaneously public and intimate.Table of ContentsIntroduction | 1 Katherine Dugan and Karen E. Park Part I: Mapping Marian Places “Lourdes of the Southwest”: The Borderlands Transformation of a Nineteenth-Century French Shrine Adrienne Nock Ambrose | 21 “Guadalupe Represents La Cultura”: A Mexican American Mural-Shrine in California Lloyd Barba | 44 A Global Odyssey: Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the Promise to “Make Her Known” Patrick J. Hayes | 67 The Battle of Bayside: Contesting Religious Topographies in an Urban Apparition Site Joseph P. Laycock | 92 Part II: Shifting Marian Meanings Fatima Family Shrine: Reinterpreting Mary on the South Dakota Prairie Katherine Dugan | 117 Consolation’s Many Faces: Ethnic Intersections at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio David J. Endres | 139 American Czestochowa: Polish Piety and Haitian Hybridities of Marian Meaning in Pennsylvania Terry Rey | 159 The National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima: Meaning Making at a Cold War Niagara Falls Tourist Shrine Karen E. Park | 183 Part III: Devotional Creativity at Marian Shrines Digital Devotion: Marian Shrines Online Kayla Harris | 205 Our Lady of the Underpass: Sacred and Social Space in the City Stephen Selka | 222 Materiality and Attachment: Universality and Locality at Roman Catholic Pilgrimage Sites Claire Vaughn and James S. Bielo | 244 “These Are Our Saints”: A Lourdes Shrine, the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children, and the Catholic Remaking of Cognitive Disability Andrew Walker-Cornetta | 261 Acknowledgments | 287 Bibliography | 289 List of Contributors | 307 Index | 309

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Book SynopsisA vital collection of interdisciplinary essays that illuminates the significance of Marian shrines and promises to teach scholars how to “read” them for decades to come. American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism is a collection of twelve essays that examine the historical and contemporary roles of Marian shrines in US Catholicism. The essays in this collection use historical, ethnographic, and comparative methods to explore how Catholics have used Marian devotion to make an imprint on the physical and religious landscape of the United States. Using the dynamic malleability of Marian shrines as a starting place for studying US Catholicism, each chapter reconsiders the American religious landscape from the perspective of a single shrine to Mary and asks: What does this shrine reveal about US Catholicism and about American religion? Each of the contributors in American Patroness examines why and how Marian shrines persist in the twenty-first century and subsequently uses that examination to re-read contemporary US Catholicism. Because shrines are not neutral spaces—they reflect and shape the elastic yet strict boundaries of what counts as Catholic identity, and who controls prayer practices—the studies in this collection also shed light on the contested dynamics of these holy sites. American Patroness demonstrates that Marian shrines continue to be places where an American Catholic identity is continuously worked on, negotiations about power occur, and Marian relationships are fostered and nurtured in spaces that are simultaneously public and intimate.Table of ContentsIntroduction | 1 Katherine Dugan and Karen E. Park Part I: Mapping Marian Places “Lourdes of the Southwest”: The Borderlands Transformation of a Nineteenth-Century French Shrine Adrienne Nock Ambrose | 21 “Guadalupe Represents La Cultura”: A Mexican American Mural-Shrine in California Lloyd Barba | 44 A Global Odyssey: Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the Promise to “Make Her Known” Patrick J. Hayes | 67 The Battle of Bayside: Contesting Religious Topographies in an Urban Apparition Site Joseph P. Laycock | 92 Part II: Shifting Marian Meanings Fatima Family Shrine: Reinterpreting Mary on the South Dakota Prairie Katherine Dugan | 117 Consolation’s Many Faces: Ethnic Intersections at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio David J. Endres | 139 American Czestochowa: Polish Piety and Haitian Hybridities of Marian Meaning in Pennsylvania Terry Rey | 159 The National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima: Meaning Making at a Cold War Niagara Falls Tourist Shrine Karen E. Park | 183 Part III: Devotional Creativity at Marian Shrines Digital Devotion: Marian Shrines Online Kayla Harris | 205 Our Lady of the Underpass: Sacred and Social Space in the City Stephen Selka | 222 Materiality and Attachment: Universality and Locality at Roman Catholic Pilgrimage Sites Claire Vaughn and James S. Bielo | 244 “These Are Our Saints”: A Lourdes Shrine, the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children, and the Catholic Remaking of Cognitive Disability Andrew Walker-Cornetta | 261 Acknowledgments | 287 Bibliography | 289 List of Contributors | 307 Index | 309

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Book SynopsisA critical introduction to how the Nagasaki atomic bombing has been remembered, especially in contrast to that of Hiroshima. In the decades following the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the city’s residents processed their trauma and formed narratives of the destruction and reconstruction in ways that reflected their regional history and social makeup. In doing so, they created a multi-layered urban identity as an atomic-bombed city that differed markedly from Hiroshima’s image. Shadows of Nagasaki traces how Nagasaki’s trauma, history, and memory of the bombing manifested through some of the city’s many post-atomic memoryscapes, such as literature, religious discourse, art, historical landmarks, commemorative spaces, and architecture. In addition, the book pays particular attention to how the city’s history of international culture, exemplified best perhaps by the region’s Christian (especially Catholic) past, informed its response to the atomic trauma and shaped its postwar urban identity. Key historical actors in the volume’s chapters include writers, Japanese- Catholic leaders, atomic-bombing survivors (known as hibakusha), municipal officials, American occupation personnel, peace activists, artists, and architects. The story of how these diverse groups of people processed and participated in the discourse surrounding the legacies of Nagasaki’s bombing shows how regional history, culture, and politics—rather than national ones—become the most influential factors shaping narratives of destruction and reconstruction after mass trauma. In turn, and especially in the case of urban destruction, new identities emerge and old ones are rekindled, not to serve national politics or social interests but to bolster narratives that reflect local circumstances.Table of ContentsNote on Japanese Names | xi Introduction: Imagining Nagasaki: Religion and History in Postatomic Memoryscapes Chad R. Diehl | 1 Part I: Catholic Responses The "Saint" of Urakami: Nagai Takashi and Early Representations of the Atomic Experience Chad R. Diehl | 33 Loving Your Neighbor across the Sea: The Reception of the Work of Nagai Takashi in the Republic of Korea Haeseong Park and Franklin Rausch | 70 Faith, Family, Earth, and the Atomic Bomb in the Art of Nagai Takashi Anthony Richard Haynes | 93 "Love Saves from Isolation": Ozaki ToÅmei and His Journey from Nagasaki to Auschwitz and Back Gwyn McClelland | 112 Part II: Literature and Testimony "Nagasaki" in Akutagawa Ryu±nosuke's Taisho-Era Literary Imagination Anri Yasuda | 131 Lambs of God, Ravens of Death, Rafts of Corpses: Three Visions of Trauma in Nagasaki Survivor Poetry Chad R. Diehl | 151 Listening to the Dead and Filling the Void: The Prayer and Activism of Akizuki Tatsuichiro Maika Nakao | 179 Breaking New Ground in Nagasaki: Seirai Yuichi's Ground Zero Literature Michele M. Mason | 191 Part III: Sites of Memory Fragmented Memory: The Scattering of the Urakami Cathedral Ruins among Nagasaki's Memorial Landscape Anna Gasha | 215 One Fine Day: The Allied Occupation of Nagasaki and "Madame Butterfly House" Brian Burke-Gaffney | 243 The Titan and the Arch:Regulating Public Memory through the Peace Statue Nanase Shirokawa | 264 Part IV: Reflections How I Came to Criticize Nagai Takashi's Urakami Holocaust Theory Shinji Takahashi | 295 On Rereleasing The Bells of Nagasaki to the World Tokusaburo Nagai | 312 Acknowledgments | 319 List of Contributors | 323 Index | 327

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Book SynopsisExploring Latin@ theologies and the power of revelation. The Word Became Culture enacts a preferential option for culture, retrieving experiences and expressions from across latinidad as sources of theologizing and acts of resistance to marginalization. Each author in this edited volume demonstrates the many ways in which Latin@ theologies are disruptive, generative, and creative spaces rooted in the richness, struggles, texts, and rituals found at the intersections of faith and culture. With a foreword by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture, this book situates Latin@ theologies in the ongoing search for and recognition of the “Word becoming” within the particularities of diverse cultural experiences.Table of ContentsPreface to the Series | vii Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández, Gary Riebe-Estrella, Miguel H. Díaz Acknowledgments | xi Introduction: A Preferential Option for Culture | xv Miguel H. Díaz Foreword | xxi Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi 1. The Word That Crosses: Life-giving Encounters with the Markan Jesus and Guadalupe | 1 Miguel H. Díaz 2. Beyond Borders and Boundaries: Rethinking Eisegesis and Rereading Ruth 1:16–17 | 25 Jean-Pierre Ruiz 3. A “Preferential Option”: A Challenge to Faith in a Culture of Privilege | 49 María Teresa Dávila 4. (De)Ciphering Mestizaje: Encrypting Lived Faith | 71 Néstor Medina 5. Playing en los Márgenes: Lo Popular as Locus Theologicus | 93 Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández Index | 115

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Book SynopsisExploring Latin@ theologies and the power of revelation. The Word Became Culture enacts a preferential option for culture, retrieving experiences and expressions from across latinidad as sources of theologizing and acts of resistance to marginalization. Each author in this edited volume demonstrates the many ways in which Latin@ theologies are disruptive, generative, and creative spaces rooted in the richness, struggles, texts, and rituals found at the intersections of faith and culture. With a foreword by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Culture, this book situates Latin@ theologies in the ongoing search for and recognition of the “Word becoming” within the particularities of diverse cultural experiences.Table of ContentsPreface to the Series | vii Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández, Gary Riebe-Estrella, Miguel H. Díaz Acknowledgments | xi Introduction: A Preferential Option for Culture | xv Miguel H. Díaz Foreword | xxi Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi 1. The Word That Crosses: Life-giving Encounters with the Markan Jesus and Guadalupe | 1 Miguel H. Díaz 2. Beyond Borders and Boundaries: Rethinking Eisegesis and Rereading Ruth 1:16–17 | 25 Jean-Pierre Ruiz 3. A “Preferential Option”: A Challenge to Faith in a Culture of Privilege | 49 María Teresa Dávila 4. (De)Ciphering Mestizaje: Encrypting Lived Faith | 71 Néstor Medina 5. Playing en los Márgenes: Lo Popular as Locus Theologicus | 93 Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández Index | 115

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Book SynopsisAssociation of Catholic Publishers 2022 Excellence in Publishing Awards: First Place, Theology Catholic Media Association, Honorable Mention in Theology: Morality, Ethics, Christology, Mariology, and Redemption Unveiling divine mysteries across continents and centuries. Revelation in the Vernacular retrieves a hermeneutics of the vernacular that is rooted en lo cotidiano, in everyday life and experience. Traversing time and geography, Ruiz remaps a theology of revelation done latinamente, beginning with sixteenth-century encounters of Spanish colonizers with Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean. Drawing on the theology of the Incarnation articulated by Fray Luis de León (1527–91), he offers rich resources for interreligious engagement by believers in today’s religiously diverse world. Through an analysis of the documents of the 2019 Amazonian Synod, including Querida Amazonia, the Postsynodal Exhortation by Pope Francis, he explores a culture of encounter and dialogue that has been a hallmark of this pontificate. From the inscriptions in the caves of la Isla de Mona through the writings of the Latin American Bishops (CELAM), this book establishes a solid basis on which to discern the “Seeds of the Word” in our times.Table of ContentsPreface to the Series | ix Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández, Gary Riebe-Estrella, Miguel H. Díaz Acknowledgments | xiii Introduction: Revelation a Long Way from Patmos | xvii Charting This Book 1. Plura Fecit Deus: Colonial Encuentros on Mona Island | 1 Encuentros in Cave Eighteen | 8 Media and Message | 27 2. Verbum Caro Factum Est: The Vernacular and the Incarnation | 31 Fray Luis and the Americas | 37 What Fray Luis Read about the Americas | 37 What Fray Luis Wrote about the Americas | 48 Convergences: Fray Luis on the Vernacular and the Incarnation | 61 In Defense of the Vernacular | 61 The Impact of the Incarnation | 73 3. From the Amazon to the Tiber: Words Incarnate in the World | 77 Dios Te Perdone | 78 Contrition and Confession | 85 Seeds of the Word in Amazonia | 94 Seeds of the Word: Amazonian Synod 2019 | 100 4. “Seeds of the Word”: A Latin American Cartography | 107 CELAM and the “Seeds of the Word” | 107 Aparecida 2007 | 107 Santo Domingo 1992 | 110 Puebla 1979 | 116 Medellín 1968 | 120 Seeds of the Word: The Second Vatican Council | 126 Justin Martyr and Seeds of the Word | 136 Growing the Seeds: Amplifying Justin | 142 Querida Amazonia: Dreaming in the Vernacular | 146 Conclusion: Revelation, a Return to Amona | 153 Index | 159

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Book SynopsisAssociation of Catholic Publishers 2022 Excellence in Publishing Awards: First Place, Theology Catholic Media Association, Honorable Mention in Theology: Morality, Ethics, Christology, Mariology, and Redemption Unveiling divine mysteries across continents and centuries. Revelation in the Vernacular retrieves a hermeneutics of the vernacular that is rooted en lo cotidiano, in everyday life and experience. Traversing time and geography, Ruiz remaps a theology of revelation done latinamente, beginning with sixteenth-century encounters of Spanish colonizers with Indigenous peoples in the Caribbean. Drawing on the theology of the Incarnation articulated by Fray Luis de León (1527–91), he offers rich resources for interreligious engagement by believers in today’s religiously diverse world. Through an analysis of the documents of the 2019 Amazonian Synod, including Querida Amazonia, the Postsynodal Exhortation by Pope Francis, he explores a culture of encounter and dialogue that has been a hallmark of this pontificate. From the inscriptions in the caves of la Isla de Mona through the writings of the Latin American Bishops (CELAM), this book establishes a solid basis on which to discern the “Seeds of the Word” in our times.Table of ContentsPreface to the Series | ix Carmen M. Nanko-Fernández, Gary Riebe-Estrella, Miguel H. Díaz Acknowledgments | xiii Introduction: Revelation a Long Way from Patmos | xvii Charting This Book 1. Plura Fecit Deus: Colonial Encuentros on Mona Island | 1 Encuentros in Cave Eighteen | 8 Media and Message | 27 2. Verbum Caro Factum Est: The Vernacular and the Incarnation | 31 Fray Luis and the Americas | 37 What Fray Luis Read about the Americas | 37 What Fray Luis Wrote about the Americas | 48 Convergences: Fray Luis on the Vernacular and the Incarnation | 61 In Defense of the Vernacular | 61 The Impact of the Incarnation | 73 3. From the Amazon to the Tiber: Words Incarnate in the World | 77 Dios Te Perdone | 78 Contrition and Confession | 85 Seeds of the Word in Amazonia | 94 Seeds of the Word: Amazonian Synod 2019 | 100 4. “Seeds of the Word”: A Latin American Cartography | 107 CELAM and the “Seeds of the Word” | 107 Aparecida 2007 | 107 Santo Domingo 1992 | 110 Puebla 1979 | 116 Medellín 1968 | 120 Seeds of the Word: The Second Vatican Council | 126 Justin Martyr and Seeds of the Word | 136 Growing the Seeds: Amplifying Justin | 142 Querida Amazonia: Dreaming in the Vernacular | 146 Conclusion: Revelation, a Return to Amona | 153 Index | 159

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Book SynopsisThe story of a mixed-race family, Michael Healy, a white Irish immigrant planter in Georgia; his African American slave and wife Eliza, and their nine children, negotiating the terrain of race and ethnicity in 19th century America. Legally slaves these brothers and sisters were smuggled north prior to the Civil War to be educated. Working at the intersection of church history and racial and ethnic, James O'Toole demonstrates that racial categories have been more fluid than law and custom admit. The Healys found freedom and extraordinary achievement by embracing their Irish heritage and the Catholic faith, while distancing themselves from their African roots and slave status.

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Book SynopsisDuring the past four decades, radical changes have occurred in the personal and corporate lives of Roman Catholic nuns in the United States; in their institutions and ministries; in their relations with laity, clergy, and hierarchy; and in their presence in the public sphere. In this book, Lora Ann Quinonez and Mary Daniel Turner explore this transformation: the experiences that marked these changes, their effects on the women, and the future suggested by the nature of the reforms. The movement for change picked up speed in the decade after Vatican Council 11, which mandated the adaptation of religious communities to contemporary milieu. The impact of American culture on the sisters generated a struggle to reconcile American belonging and religious commitment into one identity. The Women's Movement caused a gradual awakening to the reality of gender as an element of personal and corporate identity. It made American nuns confront the structural questions that occur to awakened women and also confront the male Church hierarchy. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the forces that directed the process by which American sisters have redefined themselves. Lora Ann Quinonez, CDP, an education program specialist for the U.S. Department of Education, is a member of the Sisters of Divine Providence community. Mary Daniel Turner, SNDdeN, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur community is co-director of Joseph House in Washington D.C.Trade Review"Lora Ann Quinonez and Mary Daniel Turner once again serve American religious women well. Although their book focuses on the development of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, it...is also an account of the thought development of American women religious... Besides describing areas of change, Quinonez and Turner analyze and interpret them thoroughly and objectively and also compassionately, courageously, and readably." - Review for Religious "[Quinonez and Turner ] offer a privileged perspective on the transitions that have taken place in the past 25 years... [This] is an important work that will enlighten and challenge. It contains pieces of the ongoing transformation that are not found in the many other books on American women's religious life today. American sisters will appreciate this splendid effort to synthesize their experience. Others in the church will find that the experience of American sisters has much resonance with their own." - National Catholic Reporter "This well-written and well-documented book shows the energy, creativity, and highly organized response of these women to Vatican Council II and to the momentum which they themselves created. It is a testimony to the dynamism and creativity of the women in religious life in the past forty years. The book is a work of love and a tribute to all those women who have suffered and celebrated the transition thus far." - Marie J. Giblin, Maryknoll School of TheologyTable of ContentsPreface 1. Changing Times 2. On the Way to a Different Place 3. This Land Is Their Land 4. Their Name Is "Woman" 5. A Rightful Coming of Age 6. Not Without Struggle Afterword Notes Church Documents Cited Index

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Book SynopsisA broken family throws formidable stumbling blocks onto the path of life that a society as a whole must traverse. But the stones under the feet of the children in these situations are the most hurtful and most in need of redress. Gabriele Kuby answers the call and does so with an acute sense of responsibility. As a child of divorce and later divorcee, Kuby speaks to herself when she urges the men and women of her generation to consider how failing as spouses we fail as parents, and as such cause the most trouble for our children. Reading Kuby’s analysis of cultural, sociological and biological data, the danger is clear and present. Yet Kuby asserts that, generally, our plight goes unnoticed and is veiled from our eyes. We need to see children for who and what they really are to us, to the family, and society at large. In the words of Fulton Sheen, “Children play a redeemer role in the family. The represent the victory of love over the insatiable ego. They symbolize the defeat of selfishness and the triumph of giving love.” Tragically, children are increasingly less a part of Western culture. This leaves the family, in the best case scenario, an artifact, and in the worst case, a casualty. The topics addressed by Kuby cover towering influences in postmodern family life: Gender politics, the abortion mentality, daycare (“Socialism 2.0”), premature stress, rights of children, digital distractions, pornography, and divorce. A native German, Kuby’s work is, heartbreakingly, as relevant to American society as her own. This European perspective drives home the urgent need to recognize our situation as global and embedded, and one that requires more than political mobilization of mainstream efforts and responses. What really is good and normal, and how to we realize it? Listen to the heartstrings that yearn for true knowledge of oneself, Kuby implores, of God, and how in the surprise of God’s mercy we are guided through life. Kuby backs up this invitation to personal conversion and betterment with hard data.

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Book SynopsisWith great foresight and vision for the Church, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI carefully integrated theological, catechetical and pastoral themes in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Africae Munus. Maurice A. Agbaw-Ebai and Matthew Levering, in the introduction to this collection of reflections and studies focused on the Pope Emeritus’ themes, affirm the African continent’s status as a global center for the growth of the Catholic Church in the twenty-first century and the future of the international Catholic community. Building on the vitality and enthusiasm of the Church in Africa, it is important to lift their faith through scholarly research and academic reflections. We cannot fully appreciate the dedication, commitment and perseverance of the Catholic community throughout the African continent if we do not know the truth of their sufferings and persecution and understand their resilience in the light of faith. This collection, drawn from the halls of academia, provides an important contribution to the understanding and advancement of Catholic Africa, following the insights and enlightenment of Pope Emeritus Benedict. It is my hope that these essays will enrich your understanding and experience of the Catholic faith. — From the Preface by Seán Patrick Cardinal O’Malley

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Book SynopsisBeauteous Truth explores the inextricable connection between the Good, the True and the Beautiful. It is a book that makes the necessary connections between faith and reason and between theology, philosophy, history and literature. It presents a panoramic overview of Western Civilization, from Homer to Tolkien, and highlights the importance of the great figures of the Catholic cultural revival, including Newman, Wilde, Chesterton, Belloc, and C.S. Lewis. Ranging from Shakespeare to Solzhenitsyn, Beauteous Truth celebrates the marriage of sanity and sanctity, which is the fruit of the indissoluble union of fides et ratio. Early ReviewsWhat we have here is a glorious and compendious portmanteau of – well – of Everything, as it were. We have all long since discovered that Joseph Pearce is a polymath. But he has outdone himself with this volume. The subtitle is the cue: “Faith, Reason, Literature, and Culture.” And the text fulfills that promise. Readers are in for a bracing itinerary that will take them from Greek classicism through the Middle Ages, the Counter-Reformation, the Romantic Movement, and into modernity. The presiding factor in the whole thing is a robust Catholic orthodoxy. The author/guide speaks with both authority and brio. This book qualifies for the “Highly recommended” slot. – Thomas Howard (St. John’s Seminary, Boston, emer.)Joseph Pearce has not only written much on Catholic letters but on the whole tradition of letters in our culture. In this collection, he brings together his wide, amazingly wide reflections and considerations on literature and what it really stands for. While many paths to the highest things might be taken, the literary path is perhaps the most pleasant and the most engaging. Pearce not only draws us out, alerts us to authors who speak to us, but he also opens doors to writers and themes in Catholic and western literature that would be otherwise closed to us without his sensitive guidance and insight. We have here the whole of Pearce where he tells us everything about which he has been thinking. It is a great contribution to our understanding of reality, to the things that are.” – James V. Schall, s.j., Georgetown UniversityThis interdisciplinary collection of essays previously published in such journals as St. Austin Review, First Things, and Chesterton Review provides rich food for thought on an array of topics dealing with the intersection between beauty, truth, culture, and Catholicism. Brief yet pithy, each essay can stand alone, inviting wide ranging meditation on the modern situation in light of history, literature, science, and religion. Taken together, the essays offer an epic sweep of a culture at crossroads urgently needing to reclaim the illumination of Christ. This is a book to savor and return to, time and again. – Dr. Mary Reichardt, Professor of Catholic Studies and Literature, The University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.

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Book SynopsisThe Catholic “thing” – the concrete historical reality of Catholicism as a presence in human history – is the richest cultural tradition in the world. It values both faith and reason, and therefore has a great deal to say about politics and economics, war and peace, manners and morals, children and families, careers and vocations, and many other perennial and contemporary questions. In addition, it has inspired some of the greatest art, music, and architecture, while offering unparalleled human solidarity to tens of millions through hospitals, soup kitchens, schools, universities, and relief services. This volume brings together some of the very best commentary on a wide range of recent events and controversies by some of the very best Catholic writers in the English language: Ralph McInerny, Michael Novak, Fr. James V. Schall, Hadley Arkes, Robert Royal, Anthony Esolen, Brad Miner, George Marlin, David Warren, Austin Ruse, Francis Beckwith, and many others. Their contributions cover large Catholic subjects such as philosophy and theology, liturgy and Church dogma, postmodern culture, the Church and modern politics, literature, and music. But they also look into specific contemporary problems such as religious liberty, the role of Catholic officials in public life, growing moral hazards in bio-medical advances, and such like. The Catholic Thing is a virtual encyclopedia of Catholic thought about modern life.Table of Contents ContentsForeword: “No Higher Vocation, No Greater Joy,” by Charles J.Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.Introduction: “A Thing Not a Theory,” by Robert RoyalI. Fundamental Things1. “Implicit Philosophy,” Ralph McInerny 12. “A Man Like No Other,” Anthony Esolen 33. “The Grounds of Civilization,” James V. Schall S.J. 64. “Two Mistakes on the Human in Nature,” Hadley Arkes 85. “The Book of Life,” Robert Royal 116. “One God: No More, No Less,” Michael Baruzzini 137. “Understanding First Philosophy,” Francis Beckwith 168. “The End of the Science/Religion War,” John O’Callaghan 189. “The First Freedom and the First Right,” Austin Ruse 2110. “The Catholic Principle,” Robert Royal 23II. Catholica1. “Preparing to Pray,” Michael Novak 262. “Saints, Columns of Light,” Fr. John Jay Hughes 283. “The Immaculate Conception,” James V. Schall S.J. 304. “Faith’s Greatest Threat,” William E. Carroll 335. “Guadalupe, a Reset,” Brad Miner 356. “Lourdes, a Simple Theory,” Brad Miner 387. “On Foot to Santiago,” Matthew Hanley 408. “Mythical Thinking,” Bevil Bramwell OMI 439. “Lost in Translation,” Anthony Esolen 4610. “Can We Stop Telling God What to Do?,” Randall Smith 4811. “The Eucharist and Cannibalism,” Michael P. Foley 5112. “More Doctrine, Please,” Todd Hartch 5413. “Advent Resolutions,” David Warren 5614. “Mrs. Christ, Teacher of Theology,” David Bonagura 5915. “Amateur Night,” Fr. Bevil Bramwell 6116. “Lent, Monkey Mind, and E-Asceticism,” Robert Royal 6417. “Faith is not a Checklist,” Randall Smith 6618. “Catholic Social Teaching—without Fear,” Joseph Wood 6919. “The Golden Age Cometh,” Fr. C. J. McCloskey 72III. Controversies1. “Is Obama Worth a Mass?”, Ralph McInerny 762. “Politicians, Old Buildings, and Whores,” Austin Ruse 783. “Scandal Time,” Robert Royal 814. “The John Jay Report,” Brad Miner 845. “A Different Priestly Scandal,” Michael Novak 876. “Tim Russert: The Story Untold,” Hadley Arkes 897. “Russert II: Every Man His Own Church,” Hadley Arkes 918. “Catholic Charities: A Two-Fold Challenge,” Matthew Hanley 949. “The Economic Crisis: We’re All Responsible,” Sean Fieler 9710. “The Witness of Pius XII,” George J. Marlin 9911. “Justice and Charity,” Roberto de Mattei 10212. “Excommunicate Pelosi,” Brad Miner 10513. “The Seamless Garment, Revisited,” Peter Brown 10814. “Catholic Identity,” John W. Carlson 11115. “Pornography and Marriage,” Patrick Fagan 11516. “AIDS and Risk-Reduction,” Matthew Hanley 11717. “Beyond the Dictatorship of Relativism,” Robert Royal 12018. “With Backs Unbowed,” Fr. Philip de Vous 12319. “The Bioethics Gang,” Hadley Arkes 12520. “Six Things the Bishops Must Do,” Michael Uhlmann 127IV. Church and Culture1. “Gray’s Anatomy,” Robert Royal 1312. “A Dark Knight of the Soul,” Richard Doerflinger 1333. “Empty Cradle, Empty Gallery,” Mary Eberstadt 1364. “Cormac McCarthy’s The Road,” Joan Frawley Desmond 1385. “Teachers as Witnesses,” Aaron Urbanczyk 1416. “Are Catholics Creationists?,” George Sim Johnston 1447. “Two, Three, Many Charlotte Simonses,” Mary Eberstadt 1468. “Sin – and Pet Lions,” Brad Miner 1499. “Of Doubtful Humility,” Robert Royal 15210. “A Defense of Organized Religion,” Howard Kainz 15411. “The Nation with the Soul of a Church,” John B. Kienker15712. “The Power of the Third Commandment,” Patrick Fagan 16013. “Mother of the Unborn,” Greg Pfundstein 16214. “A Callus on the Soul,” Anthon Esolen 16515. “Why Catholics Are Right,” Michael Coren 16716. “Les Miserables as Via Crucis,” Karen Goodwin 17017. “Should Catholics Have to Pay for Anti-Catholic Bigotry?” Fr. Val J. Peter 17318. “The French Debate on Gay ‘Marriage,’” Jean Duchesne 17519. “The Life of B.,” Robert Royal 17820. “Oracular Politics,” David Warren 18121. “Steve Jobs and the New Evangelization,” Fr. C John McCloskey 18422. “The Limits of Subsidiarity,” Peter Brown 18723. “The Shell Game in Modern Culture,” Bevil Bramwell OMI19024. “The Sound of Faith,” Robert Reilly 19225. “The Real News about Stem Cells,” Damiano Rondelli MD19526. “Obama Proposes a Toast,” William Saunders 19727. “The Divine Child,” Anthony Esolen 20028. “How Civilizations Die,” Matthew Hanley 203V. Conversions and Conversations1. “Third Person Singular,” Brad Miner 2072. “Finalmente: Coming into the Church,” Hadley Arkes 2093. “Outreach to the Homeless,” Charlotte Hays 2124. “Then I confessed, I Can Do No Other,” Francis Beckwith2145. “A Banquet of Truth,” Todd Hartch 2176. “Come, Let Us Reason Together,” Emina Melonic 2197. “A Dialogue between Christ and a Muslim,” Robert Reilly2228. “In the Beginning. . .”, William E. Carroll 2269. “When Prides Masquerades as Humility,” Tom Bethell 22910. “The Problem of Good,” Howard Kainz 23111. “An Ancient Letter,” Joseph Wood 23412. “Bold, Benedetto, and Bello!,” Robert Royal 237VI. Personal Portraits1. “JFK: Charm or Character?,” George J. Marlin 2402. “Remembering Fulton J. Sheen,” George J. Marlin 2433. “Our Brother, Paul,” Peter Brown 2464. “Rediscovering St. Mugg,” Daniel Mahoney 2495. “A Singular, Ordinary man,” Robert Royal 2526. “Nino: A Memoir,” Hadley Arkes 2547. “Karol Wojtyla, Bishop,” Bevil Bramwell OMI 2578. “When Life Becomes Intolerable,” Damiano Rondelli MD 2599. “William F. Buckley Against the World,” Jeremy Lott 26210. “Marie Dolan, Guerrilla Catholic,” Kristina Johannes 26411. “Fathers and Sons,” Brad Miner 26712. “The Importance of Vocation,” Andreas Widmer 270Appendix: In Memoriam1. Richard Neuhaus (Robert Royal, Ralph McInerny, Brad Miner, Michael Novak, Austin Ruse, Mary Eberstadt,William Saunders, James Schall, Michael Uhlmann, Hadley Arkes) 2732. Ralph McInerny (Robert Royal, Michael Novak, Bruce Fingerhut, John O’Callaghan) 2863. “A Nobel Heart: Joe Sobran,” Robert Royal 2944. “A Faithful American, Avery Dulles,” Robert Royal 2975. “R. Sargent Shriver,” George J. Marlin 3006. “The God-Haunted Christopher Hitchens,” Francis Beckwith 3037. “Bob Bork’s Lingering Presence,” Hadley Arkes 3058. “Michael Schwartz: Son of Thunder,” Austin Ruse 309Contributors 311

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