The meditations of St. Francis of Sales on the loving nature of God and the Holy Spirit contain abundant spiritual insight - this edition contains all twelve of his books, complete and unabridged with annotations. A superb compendium of thoughts which examine the multi-faceted nature of holiness in the Christian religion, the Treatise on the Love of God is lauded for its immense expressions of emotional and spiritual depth. The supreme will of God, acting in myriad ways, is shown to be the origination of all love on the Earth. The author discusses topics such as God's influence over his creations, the manner in which men often shun or repulse the love of God, and how such love - when accepted - can progress a living soul's fulfillment. Following the lessons of God will result in benevolence, yet such a following requires humbleness: we must concede to God being the source of all that is good, loving and worthy in the universe.

Japan on the Jesuit Stage offers a comprehensive overview of the representations of Japan in early modern European Neo-Latin school theater. The chapters in the volume catalog and analyze representative plays which were produced in the hundreds all over Europe, from the Iberian Peninsula to present-day Croatia and Poland. Taking full account of existing scholarship, but also introducing a large amount of previously unknown primary material, the contributions by European and Japanese researchers significantly expand the horizon of investigation on early modern European theatrical reception of East Asian elements and will be of particular interest to students of global history, Neo-Latin, and theater studies.

An archive-based account of the developmental years of the University of Notre Dame. During these years, university leaders strove to find the additional resources needed to transform their succesful boarding school into an ethically diverse modern Catholic university. The history of the University of Notre Dame from 1842 to 1934 mirrors in many ways the history of American Catholicism during those years. For reasons having to do more with football than religion, most Americans think first of Notre Dame when they think of Catholic universities. Burns, a former Notre Dame faculty member and longtime columnist for U.S. Catholic magazine, traces the emergence of American Catholics from a minority status in society to the elevation of Notre Dame as a great American university. He argues that having one of the most successful college football teams in history helped establish Notre Dame's popularity and reputation in American culture and history. Burns keeps the reader entranced with a narrative filled with lively characters and events. Here we meet Notre Dame founder Reverend Edward Sorin, the KKK in Indiana, Knute Rockne and a host of other heroes and cowards, mountebanks and millionaires, all of whom played a part in the astonishing years covered by this story.

The papacy of Pius XII (1939-1958) has been a source of near-constant debate and criticism since his death over half a century ago. Powerful myths have arisen around him, and central to them is the dispute surrounding his alleged silence during the years of the Holocaust. In this groundbreaking work, historian Paul O'Shea examines the papacy as well as the little-studied pre-papal life of Eugenio Pacelli in order to illuminate his policies, actions, and statements during the war. Drawing carefully and comprehensively on the historical record, O'Shea convincingly demonstrates that Pius was neither an anti-Semitic villain nor a "lamb without stain." Ultimately, Pius's legacy reveals the moral crisis within many parts of the fractured Christian Commonwealth as well as the personal culpability of Pacelli, the man and pope.

On January 16, 1599, the Most Holy Mother of God appeared to Mother Marianna of Jesus Torres in the convent of the Convent of the Immaculate Conception in Quito, Ecuador, asking her to have a statue made of herself as she appeared, with the Child Jesus in her left arm and a crosier and the keys of the cloister in her right hand. Our Lady holds the crosier as a sign that she herself governs the convent and likewise asked that that her statue be placed in the throne of the abbess, where this statue is still kept to this day. The statue was consecrated by the bishop of Quito on February 2, 1611 with title, "Mary of Good Success of the Purification or Candlemas." During the various apparitions granted to Mother Marianna until her death on January 16, 1635, Our Lady of Good Success foretold the evils of our times in great detail. She was told that her visions and life would only be known beginning from the twentieth century, and was asked to help by her prayers and penances the souls of that time in which there would be an enormous decadence of the faith. It was God's will to reserve these revelations and the story of the life of Mother Mariana for our time, when the corruption of behavior is universal and the precious light of the faith is almost extinct, fulfilling the prophecies of Our Lady. The Mother of God also foretold that this devotion would obtain mercy and pardon for all sinners who have recourse to her with a contrite heart since she is the Mother of Mercy. Likewise she said, "The consoling title of Good Success... will be the support and safeguard of the faith in the presence of the complete corruption of the twentieth century." The novena presented here was written by Fr. Jose Urrate which has an imprimatur by the Archbishop of Quito, Carlos Maria de la Torre, on July 31, 1941.

The history of HVJ, Vatican Radio, is discussed in this work along with its role in propagating church policies in all areas. Central to the discussion is the interrelation between leadership and social change as well as the necessity of creating a propaganda machine to maintain the existing system or to create a new order. Vatican Radio has served as one of the major media instruments of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church since its beginning in 1931. Scholars in either media or religion will be interested in this ground-breaking work.

John Foxe's ground-breaking chronicle of Christian saints and martyrs put to death over centuries remains a landmark text of religious history. The persecution of Christians was for centuries a fact of living in Europe. Adherence to the faith was a great personal risk, with the Roman Empire leading the first of such persecutions against early Christian believers. Many were crucified, put to the sword, or burned alive - gruesome forms of death designed to terrify and discourage others from following the same beliefs. Appearing in 1563, Foxe's chronicle of Christian suffering proved a great success among Protestants. It gave literate Christians the ability to discover and read about brave believers who died for expressing their religion, much as did Jesus Christ. Perhaps in foretelling, the final chapter of the book focuses upon the earliest Christian missions abroad: these, to the Americas, Asia and other locales, would indeed see many more martyrs put to death by the local populations.

In Crossings and Dwellings, Kyle Roberts and Stephen Schloesser, S.J., bring together essays by eighteen scholars in one of the first volumes to explore the work and experiences of Jesuits and their women religious collaborators in North America over two centuries following the Jesuit Restoration. Long dismissed as anti-liberal, anti-nationalist, and ultramontanist, restored Jesuits and their women religious collaborators are revealed to provide a useful prism for looking at some of the most important topics in modern history: immigration, nativism, urbanization, imperialism, secularization, anti-modernization, racism, feminism, and sexual reproduction. Approaching this broad range of topics from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, this volume provides a valuable contribution to an understudied period.

The papacy of John Paul II was phenomenal, and not least for the fact that many evangelicals came to honor and respect him. Tim Perry calls on some of the best evangelical minds to offer their assessments of the thought of John Paul II as expressed in his major encyclicals.

"Practicing Catholic "brings together top scholars from various backgrounds to explore methodologies for studying ritual and Catholicism. The essays focus on particular aspects of ritual within Catholic practice, such as liturgy and performance and healing rituals.

"How the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Victorian Church of England overcame opposition to establish itself as a legitimate form of Anglicanism."

A thorough, compelling, and often amusing account of how the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Victorian Church of England overcame vehement opposition to establish itself as a legitimate form of Anglicanism.

From working class tenements to the pages of Punch to the very Houses of Parliament, the Victorian Anglo-Catholic movement provoked bitter debate and even violence throughout Victorian times. Rotten vegetables were thrown at priests as they spoke from their pulpits, and fistfights broke out among families over whether dear departed ones would be buried "High Church" or "Low Church." In this innovative critical study, John Shelton Reed provides the first comprehensive treatment of the rise, growth, and eventual consolidation of this controversial movement within the Victorian Church of England.

Reed identifies Anglo-Catholicism as a countercultural movement, in some ways not unlike the counterculture of the 1960s, one that championed practices that were symbolic affronts to some of the central values of the dominant middle-class culture of its time. He identifies certain members of the clergy (including John Henry Newman and his circle), the urban poor, women, and youth of both sexes, expecially those who were put off by "muscular Christianity," as those most attracted both to what the movement had to offer and to the shock value it gave to the institutions, classes, and individuals whom they despised. Each of these component groups can be seen as culturally subordinate or in decline--threatened, oppressed, or at least bored by the Victorian values that the movement challenged--and thus ready to hear subversive messages.

A distinguished sociologist, best known as a major interpreter of the American South, Reed here explores new ground with characteristic scholarly acumen, thorough and meticulous research, fresh perspective and insight, and a remarkably engaging literary style. He has uncovered and taken full advantage of a wealth of largely untapped archival material, from the library of Pusey House, Oxford, as well as the Bodleian Library and the British Library, and has fashioned this into a cogent analysis that will enhance understanding of the subject for both scholars and general readers. His conclusions will shed light on many aspects of Victorian studies and the related disciplines of history (social, cultural, political, intellectual, and ecclesiastical), literary studies, women's studies, and the study of social movements. All future work on Anglo-Catholicism and related subjects will be indebted to Reed's "Glorious Battle."

This book has been supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Blaise Pascal's account of the cognitive consequences of the Fall is clearly set out by William Wood in the first book on Pascal's theology to appear in English in more than forty years. Wood's central claim is that for Pascal, the Fall is a fall into duplicity. Pascal holds that as fallen selves in a fallen world, human beings have an innate aversion to the truth that is also, at the same time, an aversion to God. According to Pascal, we are born into a duplicitous world that shapes us into duplicitous subjects, and so we find it easy to reject God continually and deceive ourselves about our own sinfulness. Pascal's account of the noetic effects of sin has long been overlooked by theologians, but it is both traditional and innovative. It is robustly Augustinian, with a strong emphasis on the fallen will, the darkened intellect, and the fundamental sin of pride. Yet it also embraces a view of subjectivity that seems strikingly contemporary. For Pascal, the self is a fiction, constructed from without by an already duplicitous world. The human subject is habituated to deception because it is the essential glue that holds his world together. This book offers more than just a novel interpretation of Pascal's Pensees. Wood demonstrates, by exegetical argument and constructive example, that 'Pascalian' theology is both possible and fruitful.

Church Ethics and Its Organizational Context is the first book to provide a broadly interdisciplinary approach to understanding the leadership crisis in the Catholic Church in the wake of the sex abuse scandal and how it was handled. Well-known scholars, religious clergy, and laymen in the trenches of church formation and leadership come together from the disciplines of organizational behavior, theology, sociology, history, and law, to foster the creation of a new code of ethics that is both ecclesial and professional. Touching on issues of governance, authority, accountability, and transparency, this volume goes on to specifically explore whether and how professional ethics can shape the identity and actions of Church leaders, ministers, and their congregations. While evoked by the sex scandal in the Church, the essays in this book raise questions that have implications far beyond this current issue, to much broader issues such as the role of professionalism in ethics and what it means for an organization to engage in moral action.

Cardinal James Gibbons' famous and eloquent defense of Catholicism stands as one of the finest religious documents of his era, employing the Bible and devotional wisdom much more than arcane or complex theology. Writing in the 19th century, Cardinal Gibbons was moved to author this book after working for years in the priesthood. Seeking to remind readers of the vitality and merits of Catholicism, Gibbons attempts to both clarify the principles of the faith and spurn unjust criticisms. Religious concepts such as The Holy Trinity, and the important relationship the Bible has to the life of the church is investigated. The festivals and ritual sacraments that Catholics undertake, such as the taking of bread and wine to symbolize the flesh and the blood of Christ, are described in detail for their founding principles. Other traits of Catholicism, such as celibacy among the priesthood and the customs of matrimony, are explained.