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It is surely true that 'reclaimed' spiritual wisdom from the pre-Vatican II era can enrich the faith lives of Catholics today. The American Catholic community prior to the Second Vatican Council can be numbered among the most vital expressions of Catholicism in the history of the church. The contributors are a who's-who of the top theologians and spiritual writers today. other essays cover devotional practices, such as prayer to the saints, devotion to Mary, the Rosary, the Eucharistic Fast, and the Angelus, as well as profiles of figures such as Thomas Merton, Theodore Hesburth, Teilhard de Chardin, and Dorothy Day.
Winner of a first-place award for a first time author and second-place in popular presentation of the faith from the Catholic Media Association. During the past five decades, the Second Vatican Council has been alternately celebrated or maligned for its supposed break with tradition and embrace of the modern world. But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong? Have Catholics—both those who embrace the spirit of Vatican II and those who regard it with suspicion—misunderstood what the council was really about? Fr. Blake Britton discovered the truth and beauty of the council while he was in seminary and he has witnessed firsthand the power of its teachings in the life of his own parish. In Reclaiming Vatican II—a partnership between Ave Maria Press and Word on Fire Catholic Ministries—Britton presses beyond the political narrative foisted upon the post-conciliar Church and contends that Vatican II was neither conservative nor liberal, but something much more beautiful and challenging. Britton clears up misconceptions about the council and reveals how—when properly understood and applied—it fosters a richer experience of being in the Church. Britton says Vatican II promotes a radical return to the Church Fathers and the Scriptures, holding both a commitment to tradition and the need for constant renewal in life-giving balance, recenters the Church on sacred liturgy and encourages both active participation and genuine encounter with transcendence, and charts a clear path for the Church’s renewal and empowers it for evangelism and transformative engagement with the world. Britton invites all Catholics to step beyond the polarization and embrace Vatican II as one of our greatest resources for being in the Church in a way that is faithful, engaged, and effective if we answer its radical call to worship and renewal.
Many claim that Catholic Social Teaching implies the existence of a vast welfare state. In these pages, Anthony Esolen pulls back the curtain on these false philosophers, showing how they’ve undermined the authentic social teachings of the Church in order to neutralize the biggest threat to their plans for secularization — the Catholic Church. With the voluminous writings of Pope Leo XIII as his guide, Esolen explains that Catholic Social Teaching isn’t focused exclusively on serving the poor. Indeed, it offers us a rich treasure of insights about the nature of man, his eternal destiny, the sanctity of marriage, and the important role of the family in building a coherent and harmonious society. Catholic Social Teaching, explains Pope Leo, offers a unified worldview. What the Church says about the family is inextricable from what She says about the poor; and what She says about the Eucharist informs the essence of Her teachings on education, the arts — and even government. You will step away from these pages with a profound understanding of the root causes of the ills that afflict our society, and — thanks to Pope Leo and Anthony Esolen — well equipped to propose compelling remedies for them. Only an authentically Catholic culture provides for a stable and virtuous society that allows Christians to do the real work that can unite rich and poor. We must reclaim Catholic Social Teaching if we are to transform our society into the ideal mapped out by Pope Leo: a land of sinners, yes, but one enriched with love of God and neighbor and sustained by the very heart of the Church’s social teaching: the most holy Eucharist.
It is surely true that 'reclaimed' spiritual wisdom from the pre-Vatican II era can enrich the faith lives of Catholics today. The American Catholic community prior to the Second Vatican Council can be numbered among the most vital expressions of Catholicism in the history of the church. The contributors are a who's-who of the top theologians and spiritual writers today. other essays cover devotional practices, such as prayer to the saints, devotion to Mary, the Rosary, the Eucharistic Fast, and the Angelus, as well as profiles of figures such as Thomas Merton, Theodore Hesburth, Teilhard de Chardin, and Dorothy Day.
Prominent scholars from Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestant evangelicalism attempt to discover the core of their common belief and ask what it would mean for them to affirm together the Great Tradition they share.
What makes a man? This is a question many men in our society today do not feel equipped to answer, because they were never initiated into manhood themselves. They do not know how to pass on authentic manliness to their sons, so boys get stuck in unending adolescence. Everyone suffers from the resulting crisis of male immaturity, and we see its effects everywhere in our society. Leaving Boyhood Behind shows how we can actually do something to address this crisis. Author Jason Craig, cofounder of Fraternus, a Catholic mentoring program for boys, walks through each stage of initiation into manhood, helping readers understand: • What rites of passage are and why they are necessary for men • Christ’s own rites of passage and initiation • What it means for a young man to put away childhood • The importance of belonging vs. isolation in the life of men • The important role both mothers and fathers place in initiation • Discipline and the masculine identity • Living the ultimate rite of passage, and much more “This book is an invaluable resource for all Catholics who care about the intellectual, physical, and spiritual development of the next generation of men.” — Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers, author of Behold the Man: A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality
Winner of a 2020 Catholic Press Association book award (first place, best new religious book series). Suspense, politics, sin, death, sex, and redemption: Not the plot of the latest crime novel, but elements of the true history of the Catholic Church. Larger-than-life figures such as Athanasius of Alexandria, Augustine, and Constantine played an important part in the history of the Christianity. In The Church and the Roman Empire (AD 301–490): Constantine, Councils, and the Fall of Rome, popular Catholic author Mike Aquilina gives readers a vivid and engaging account of how Christianity developed and expanded as the Roman Empire declined. Aquilina explores the dramatic backstory of the Council of Nicaea and why Christian unity and belief are still expressed by the Nicene Creed. He also sets the record straight about commonly held misconceptions about the Catholic Church. In this book, you will learn: The Edict of Milan didn’t just legalize Christianity; it also established religious tolerance for all faiths for the first time in history. The growth of Christianity inspired a more merciful society: crucifixion was abolished; the practice of throwing prisoners to wild beasts for entertainment was outlawed; and slave owners were punished for killing their slaves. Controversy between Arians and Catholics may have resulted in building more hospitals and other networks of charitable assistance to the poor. When Rome fell, not many people at the time noticed. Books in the Reclaiming Catholic History series, edited by Mike Aquilina and written by leading authors and historians, bring Church history to life, debunking the myths one era at a time.
The first rule of life is "survive." And since we are necessarily social we must add the corollary, "together." All "oughts" derive from this two-part rule. Most of us understand this intuitively if not explicitly. The only issue to be resolved is how inclusive is our togetherness. Is it just our tribe, our nation, the northern hemisphere? Or, must we include the whole human family? These are the moral issues we must answer and they are empirical questions. Behavior has consequences. We have to ask ourselves, "Will such and such behaviors promote survival?" The answer can only come from the experience of the community. Present demographics will not allow us to elude the question much longer. Church rules can be faulted on a number of counts, not the least of which is that God gave us the rules so they can't change, even when experience indicates that they should. Also, the church leaders think the purpose of the rules is to save our souls and so our life here has been seriously neglected in many respects especially for the poor and the underclass because everything is supposed to be made right in the hereafter. This I regard as backward. It affirms those who oppress the poor. Scientists make inferences from empirical data and the results are always subject to revision. Church officials make inferences from myths and they are set in stone. A good example is the doctrine of Original Sin that is presented as an occult event that causes all our problems and about which we can do nothing. The church approved of slavery for the better part of two millennia because it was in place when the church was created and St. Augustine justified it as one of the punishments resulting from Original Sin. Clearly, our problem is ignorance, the kind we are born with and the kind we acquire through learning falsely. I call this Ignorance II after Gregory Bateson's Learning II (learning how to learn). Ignorance II is a learning dead end, learning how not to learn. We very obviously do not always know how to act in our own best interests. Our best chance of breaking out of this mold is through sharing the best of our communal experience to discover how to act in our own best inerests in the long run. This is how to develop a proper morality, one we can all live with. With a superior organization in place the church is positioned to unite us in the task of developing a proper morality. However, the church as presently structured can only evolve by backing into the future. It claims to already know everything that is necessary to know so it has difficulty learning, thus denying it's human origin and makeup. To change, the church requires a "spin" on history that demonstrates a development and continuity with the past instead of just saying, "We have been wrong." The People of God, the true Church, show signs of reclaiming religion through various dissident groups. These groups do not yet recognize the intimate connection between morality and survival. My hope is that this book will guide them toward that recognition.
“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.
These past two decades, modern technology has brought into being scores of powerful challenges to our interior peace and well-being. We’re experiencing a worldwide crisis of attention in which information overwhelms us, corrodes true communion with others, and leaves us anxious, unsettled, bored, isolated, and lonely. These pages provide the time-tested antidote that enables you to regain an ordered and peaceful mind in a technologically advanced world. Drawing on the wisdom of the world’s greatest thinkers, including Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, these pages help you identify – and show you how to cultivate – the qualities of character you need to survive in our media-saturated environment. This book offers a calm, measured, yet forthright and effective approach to regaining interior peace. Here you’ll find no argument for retreat from the modern world; instead these pages provide you with a practical guide to recovering self-mastery and interior peace through wise choices and ordered activity in the midst of the world’s communication chaos. Are you increasingly frustrated and perplexed in this digital age? Do you yearn for a mind that is more focused and a soul able to put down that IPhone and simply rejoice in the good and the true? It’s not hard to do. The saints and the wise can show you how; this book makes their counsel available to you.