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Priests are called to be worthy spiritual fathers to the souls entrusted to their care. Years of seminary formation ideally forge them into faithful, generous, healthy priests, ready to serve the needs of the Church. But priests are not immune to the busyness, pressures, and distractions of a life of ministry. Over time, the lessons from their formation can fade into the background. Forming Fathers: Seminary Wisdom for Every Priest seeks to remind priests of the lessons so greatly needed to fulfill their calling faithfully. Originally delivered by Fr. Carter Griffin as talks to seminarians, this series of short, inspiring vignettes can help rekindle a priest’s first love and awaken the aspirations that brought him into the seminary in the first place. Much of what is contained in these pages is also applicable to Catholic laymen, themselves called to the virtues of Christian manhood, the responsibilities of discipleship, and the dignity of spiritual fatherhood. Fr. Griffin covers such central topics as the life of prayer, offering Holy Mass well, the importance of priestly friendships, and the need for fortitude. He addresses challenging issues, such as chaste celibacy, loving the Church, and living material simplicity, with simple truth. Priests may benefit most, however, from some of the themes that might have been overlooked in their seminary days: the importance of courtesy, the vital role of order and daily exposure to beauty, the virtue of magnanimity and its impact on priestly happiness, and exercising priestly leadership.
Much like A Midwife's Tale and The Unredeemed Captive, this novel is about power relationships in early American society, religion, and politics--with insights into the initial development and operation of government, the maintenance of social order, and the experiences of individual men and women.
“The Church today demands a profound renewal of celibate priesthood and the fatherhood to which it is ordered.” Priestly celibacy, some say, is an outdated relic from another age. Others see it as a lonely way of life. But as Fr. Carter Griffin argues in Why Celibacy?: Reclaiming the Fatherhood of the Priest, the ancient practice of celibacy, when lived well, helps a priest exercise his spiritual fatherhood joyfully and fruitfully. Along the way, Griffin explores: the question of optional celibacy some pitfalls of celibate paternity the selection and formation of candidates for celibate priesthood why biological fathers are also called to spiritual fatherhood the powerful impact of celibacy on the Church and the wider culture In a critical moment for the Catholic priesthood, Fr. Griffin brings light and hope with a new perspective on the Church’s perennial wisdom on celibacy.
While social norms and political movements are rapidly changing, the truth of the Catholic faith stands firm. In Cross-Examined: Catholic Responses to the World’s Questions, readers are equipped to address even the most sensitive topics, from the existence of God to the existence of hell, from women’s ordination to Marian devotion, from assisted suicide to transgenderism. In Cross-Examined, Fr. Carter Griffin begins each discussion not with Catholic teaching but rather with its most common objections. Articulating these objections serves several purposes. First, it helps Catholics to respect those who do not share their beliefs by identifying intelligent grounds for disagreement. Pointing out objections also helps believers respond more persuasively in discussions with non-Catholic friends. Perhaps most importantly, knowing the common objects instills confidence that the Church is committed to the truth and unafraid to engage with those who dispute her teaching. After identifying principal objections, each discussion continues with a brief summary of relevant Catholic teaching and then responds to each objection in turn. In our shrill age that seems ever less capable of rational discourse, the method used in Cross-Examined can offer a way to remain faithful to our beliefs while acknowledging, respecting, and responding to alternative points of view.
Self-initiation is killing our young men. Without strong mentors, boys are walking alone into a wilderness of conflicting messages about who they should be as men. It's no wonder that our sons are confused about what the world expects from them and what they should expect of themselves. The Intentional Father is the antidote. This concise book is filled with practical steps to help men raise sons of consequence--young men who know what they believe, know who they are, and will stand up against the negative cultural trends of our day. Jon Tyson lays out a clear path for fathers and sons that includes specific activities, rites of passage, and significant "marking moments" that can be customized to fit any family. It's not enough to hope our sons will become good men. We need them to be good at being men. This book shows how fathers, grandfathers, and other male mentors can lead the way.
All across America, angry fathers are demanding rights. These men claim that since the breakdown of their own families, they have been deprived of access to their children. Joining together to form fathers' rights groups, the mostly white, middle-class men meet in small venues to speak their minds about the state of the American family and, more specifically, to talk about the problems they personally face, for which they blame current child support and child custody policies. Dissatisfied with these systems, fathers' rights groups advocate on behalf of legal reforms that will lower their child support payments and help them obtain automatic joint custody of their children. In Defiant Dads, Jocelyn Elise Crowley offers a balanced examination of these groups in order to understand why they object to the current child support and child custody systems; what their political agenda, if enacted, would mean for their members' children or children's mothers; and how well they deal with their members' interpersonal issues concerning their ex-partners and their role as parents. Based on interviews with more than 150 fathers' rights group leaders and members, as well as close observation of group meetings and analysis of their rhetoric and advocacy literature, this important book is the first extensive, in-depth account of the emergence of fathers' rights groups in the United States. A nuanced and timely look at an emerging social movement, Defiant Dads is a revealing investigation into the changing dynamics of both the American family and gender relations in American society.
How can we transmit a living, personal Catholic faith to future generations? By coming to know Jesus Christ, and following him as his disciples. These are times of immense challenge and immense opportunity for the Catholic Church. Consider these statistics for the United States. Only 30 percent of Americans who were raised Catholic are still practicing. Fully 10 percent of all adults in America are ex-Catholics. The number of marriages celebrated in the Church decreased dramatically, by nearly 60 percent, between 1972 and 2010. Only 60 percent of Catholics believe in a personal God. If the Church is to reverse these trends, the evangelizers must first be evangelized-in other words, Catholics-in-the-pew must make a conscious choice to know and follow Jesus before they can draw others to him. This work of discipleship lies at the heart of Forming Intentional Disciples, a book designed to help Church leaders, parish staff and all Catholics transform parish life from within. Drawing upon her fifteen years of experience with the Catherine of Siena Institute, Sherry Weddell leads readers through steps that will help Catholics enter more deeply into a relationship with God and the river of apostolic creativity, charisms, and vocation that flow from that relationship for the sake of the Church and the world. Learn about the five thresholds of postmodern conversion, how to open a conversation about faith and belief, how to ask thought-provoking questions and establish an atmosphere of trust, when to tell the Great Story of Jesus, how to help someone respond to God's call to intentional discipleship, and much more. And be prepared for conversion because when life at the parish level changes, the life of the whole Church will change.
Origen’s On First Principles is a foundational work in the development of Christian thought and doctrine: it is the first attempt in history at a systematic Christian theology. For over a decade it has been out of print with only expensive used copies available; now it is available at an affordable price and in a more accessible format. On First Principles is the most important surviving text written by third-century Church father, Origen. Origen wrote in a time when fundamental doctrines had not yet been fully articulated by the Church, and contributed to the very formation of Christianity. Readers see Origen grappling with the mysteries of salvation and brainstorming how they can be understood. This edition presents G. W. Butterworth’s trusted translation in a new, more readable format, retains the introduction by Henri de Lubac, and includes a new foreword by John C. Cavadini. As St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Doctor of the Church, wrote: “Origen is the stone on which all of us were sharpened.”
Critical studies of Turgenev have tended to focus on his realistic portrayals of nineteenth-century Russian life and have therefore closely allied Turgenev with the dominant literary movement of that time, Realism. By contrast, this book reveals the non-Realist literary patterns that distinguish Turgenev's fiction. In so doing, it newly uncovers an intricate, imaginative vision of human experience that unites poetics and ethics. The first part of the book identifies and assesses the ethical values associated with Realism, finding them rooted in the virtues of the traditional rural community. It then elucidates the very different ethical values that inform Turgenev's art, which are rooted not in the virtues of the community but in those of the individual who creatively conceives and independent ethical stance. Turgenev is thus shown to prize art not as a means of merely representing reality but as a means of demonstrating how human lives can be artistically shaped to achieve psychological and moral fulfillment. In its second part this study addresses various facets of Turgenev's poetics, and the ethical motives behind them, as exemplified in disparate works. One chapter examines how Turgenev orchestrates time and space to illuminate the moral advantages of self-constraint. Another explores Turgenev's adroit management of language to foster imprecision and ambiguity and thereby to prevent explicit articulation of psychologically and morally threatening ideas. Still another chapter concentrates on Turgenev's manipulations of narrative points of view as he displays the benefits of bringing multiple perspectives to bear on painful experience. And a final chapter probes the techniques of characterization Turgenev employs to evaluate varieties of success and failure in pursuit of self-fulfillment. The book concludes by indicating how Turgenev faltered in his last novel precisely by undertaking the Realist enterprise, and how he then reasserted non-Realist aesthetic and ethical principles in his final literary creations, prose poems. Throughout this book, a series of close reading discloses the very rhythm of Turgenev's thought—the nexus between his aesthetic and moral imaginations. These reading reveal Turgenev's belief in "secular salvation," a belief inspired not by faith in otherworldly redemption but by confidence in individual human beings' ability to save themselves from suffering in this world. This study therefore shows Turgenev to be at once more complex and more creative, more modern and more moral, than readers confining him to the realm of Realism have acknowledged.