He loves the tango, was trained as a Chemist, and in his youth he had a regular girlfriend whom he planned to marry. For a pope, Francis has an unusual life story. Drawing on conversations, interviews, inside information and the Pope's own writings and talks, A Call to Serve offers first-hand information, moving reflections, and profound insights into the life and character of Jorge Bergoglio, his ministry in Buenos Aires, the challenges he faces in Rome, and his vision for renewing the church and serving the world. Over one hundred and fifty full-colour photographs accompany the Pope's remarkable story, capturing key moments and people in his upbringing and former life in Argentina. They also chronicle the historic events surrounding the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the extraordinary series of surprises that followed the election of the first pope from the Americas.

This book investigates the response of the Catholic Church in Northern Ireland to the conflict in the region during the late Twentieth Century. It does so through the prism of the writings of Cardinal Cahal Daly (1917-2009), the only member of the hierarchy to serve as a bishop throughout the entire conflict. This book uses the prolific writings of Cardinal Daly to create a vision of the 'Peaceable Kingdom' and demonstrate how Catholic social teaching has been used to promote peace, justice and nonviolence. It also explores the public role of the Catholic Church in situations of violence and conflict, as well as the importance for national churches in developing a voice in the public square.Finally, the book offers a reflection on the role of Catholic social teaching in contemporary society and the ways in which the lessons of Northern Ireland can be utilised in a world where structural violence, as evidenced by austerity, and reactions to Brexit in the United Kingdom, is now the norm. This work challenges and changes the nature of the debate surrounding the role of the Catholic Church in the conflict in Northern Ireland. It will, therefore, be a key resource for scholars of Religious Studies, Catholic Theology, Religion and Violence, Peace Studies, and Twentieth Century History.

Originally published in 1996 Religious Higher Education in the United States looks at the issue of higher education and a lack of a clearly articulated purpose, an issue particularly challenging to religiously-affiliated institutions. This volume attempts to address the problems currently facing denomination-affiliated institutions of higher education, beginning with an introduction to government aid and the regulation of religious colleges and universities in the US. The greater part of the volume consists of 24 chapters, each of which begins with a historical essay followed by annotated bibliographical entries covering primary and secondary sources dating back to 1986 on various denomination-connected institutions.

Children of God in the World is a textbook of theological anthropology structured in four parts. The first attempts to clarify the relationship between theology, philosophy and science in their respective approaches to anthropology, and establishes the fundamental principle of the text, stated in Vatican II's Gaudium et spes, n. '', "Christ manifests man to man". The second part provides a historical overview of the doctrine of grace: in Scripture (especially the teaching of the book of Genesis on humans 'made in the image of God', as well as Paul and John), among the Fathers (in particular the oriental doctrine of 'divinization' and Augustine), during the Middle Ages (especially Thomas Aquinas) and the Reformation period (centered particularly on Luther and the Council of Trent), right up to modern times. The third part of the text, the central one, provides a systematic understanding of Christian grace in terms of the God's life present in human believers by which they become children of God, disciples, friends and brothers of Christ, temples of the Holy Spirit. This section also provides a reflection on the theological virtues (faith, hope and charity), on the relationship between grace and human freedom, on the role of the Church and Christian apostolate in the communication of grace, and on the need humans have for divine grace. AftYer considering the relationship between the natural and the supernatural order, the fourth and last part deals with di erent philosophical aspects of the human condition, in the light of Christian faith: the union between body and soul, humans as free, historical, social, sexual and working beings. The last chapter concludes with a consideration of the human person, Christianity's greatest and most enduring contribution to human thought.

The Catholic Church through the Ages, now in its second edition, is a one-volume survey of the history of the Catholic Church from its beginning until (and including) the pontificate of Pope Francis. The book explains the Church's progress by using Christopher Dawson's division of the Church's history into six distinct "ages," or 350-400 year periods of time, each cycle beginning with great enthusiasm and advancement and ending in decline and loss. Writing with the experience of thirty years of teaching, the author has fashioned an ideal text that combines substance with readability. Undergraduates, graduates, and interested lay people have given the author an idea of what topics should be emphasized. As a result, he has emphasized such areas monasticism, the Crusades, medieval theology, the Inquisition, Reformation, French Revolution, the nineteenth century, and the Church in the United States. And he has added material on the Oxford Movement, John Henry Newman's contributions to the Oxford Movement and to the Catholic intellectual tradition, and the Catholic literary revival that took place in several countries in the early twentieth century, as well as on the last three popes. As a supplement to each chapter, the author has included an updated the recommended readings and bibliography, as well as the audio-visual materials.

Offers the opportunity to spend a month with Julian of Norwich, with readings for both morning and evening

'Priestdaddy caused a sensation when it hit bookshelves in 2017' Vogue 'Glorious' Sunday Times 'Laugh-out-loud funny' The Times 'Extraordinary' Observer 'Exceptional' Telegraph 'Electric' New York Times 'Snort-out-loud' Financial Times 'Dazzling' Guardian 'Do yourself a favour and read this memoir!' BookPage WINNER OF THE THURBER PRIZE FOR AMERICAN HUMOUR The childhood of Patricia Lockwood, the poet dubbed 'The Smutty-Metaphor Queen of Lawrence, Kansas' by The New York Times, was unusual in many respects. There was the location: an impoverished, nuclear waste-riddled area of the American Midwest. There was her mother, a woman who speaks almost entirely in strange riddles and arnings of impending danger. Above all, there was her gun-toting, guitar-riffing, frequently semi-naked father, who underwent a religious conversion on a submarine and found a loophole which saw him approved for the Catholic priesthood by the future Pope Benedict XVI, despite already having a wife and children. When an unexpected crisis forces Lockwood and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, she must learn to live again with the family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of her religious upbringing. Pivoting from the raunchy to the sublime, from the comic to the serious, Priestdaddy is an unforgettable story of how we balance tradition against hard-won identity - and of how, having journeyed in the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact. 'Destined to be a classic . . . this year's must-read memoir' Mary Karr, author of The Liars' Club 'Irrepressible . . . joyous, funny and filthy . . . Lockwood blows the roof off every paragraph' Joe Dunthorne, author of Submarine 'Beautiful, funny and poignant. I wish I'd written this book' Jenny Lawson, author of Furiously Happy 'A revelatory debut . . . Lockwood's prose is nothing short of ecstatic . . . her portrait of her epically eccentric family is funny, warm, and stuffed to bursting with emotional insight' Joss Whedon 'Praise God, this is why books were invented' Emily Berry, author of Dear Boy and Stranger, Baby

Why is the Resurrection of Christ so remote, almost non-existent in many early Christian writings of the first 140 years of Christianity? This is the first Patristic book to focus on the development of the belief in the Resurrection of Christ through the first centuries A.D. By Paul, Christ's Resurrection is regarded as the basis of Christian hope. In the fourth century it becomes a central Christian tenet. But what about the discrepancy in the first three centuries? This thought provoking book explores this core topic in Christian culture and theology. Taking a broad approach - including iconography, archaeology, history, philosophy, Jewish Studies and theology - Markus Vinzent offers innovative reading of well known biblical and other texts complemented by rarely discussed evidence. Christ's Resurrection in Early Christianity takes the reader on a fascinating journey through the wilderness of unorthodox perspectives in the breadth of early Christian writings. It is an eye-opening experience with insights into the craftsmanship of early Christianity - and the earliest existential debates about life and death, death and life - all centred on the cross, on suffering, enduring and sacrifice.

The story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God
In the mid-twentieth century four American Catholics came to believe that the best way to explore the questions of religious faith was to write about them-in works that readers of all kinds could admire. "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" is their story-a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us.
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk in Kentucky; Dorothy Day the founder of the Catholic Worker in New York; Flannery O'Connor a "Christ-haunted" literary prodigy in Georgia; Walker Percy a doctor in New Orleans who quit medicine to write fiction and philosophy. A friend came up with a name for them-the School of the Holy Ghost-and for three decades they exchanged letters, ardently read one another's books, and grappled with what one of them called a "predicament shared in common."
A pilgrimage is a journey taken in light of a story; and in "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" Paul Elie tells these writers' story as a pilgrimage from the God-obsessed literary past of Dante and Dostoevsky out into the thrilling chaos of postwar American life. It is a story of how the Catholic faith, in their vision of things, took on forms the faithful could not have anticipated. And it is a story about the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience, about the power of literature to change-to save-our lives.

In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in religion and religious issues. Some have linked this to a neo-liberal form of individualism, while others noted that secularism has left people bereft of a humanly necessary link with the transcendent. The importance of identity issues has also been remarked upon. This book examines how liberal forms of religion are allowing people to engage with religion on their own terms, while also feeling part of something more universal. Looking at liberal approaches to the Abrahamic faiths - Judaism, Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity and Islam - this book teases out how postmodern culture has shaped the way in which people engage with these religions. It also compares and contrasts how liberal thinking and theology have been expressed in each of the faiths examined, as well as the reactionary responses to its emergence. By considering how liberalism has influenced the narrative around the Abrahamic faiths, this book demonstrates how malleable faith and spirituality can be. As such, it will be of interest to scholars working in Religious Studies, Theology, Sociology and Cultural Anthropology.

The Unknown Relatives analyses a large body of Victorian literary texts dealing with the topic of Catholicism and Catholics, written from the non-Catholic perspective. The readings of these texts are inspired by psychoanalytic criticism, primarily by the work of Freud and Kristeva. Kristeva's work on abjection, the paradoxical repulsion mixed with attraction, provides the framework for the first part of the book, which argues that Victorian depictions of Catholicism exhibit the same mixture of fascination and attraction. The second part of the book is constructed largely around Freud's idea of the uncanny, showing how Catholicism was cast in the role of the archaic religion, profoundly strange and yet at the same time somehow familiar. The book includes the readings of a number of Victorian authors, both canonical (Charlotte Bronte, William Thackeray, Charles Dickens) and lesser-known ones (George Borrow, John Shorthouse, Mrs Humphry Ward). The book will be of interest to scholars of cultural, literary and religious studies, as well as to readers interested in the matters of religion in literature and religious prejudice.