Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, written by Paul from prison in the middle of the first century, were addressed to specific Christian communities facing concrete challenges. What did these letters mean at the time, and what do they mean for us today?
In this addition to the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, seasoned New Testament scholar Dennis Hamm explores the significance of these letters and their enduring relevance to the life and mission of the church. Based on solid scholarship yet readily accessible, the book is enriched with pastoral reflections and applications and includes sidebars on the living tradition and biblical background.

On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic Christians, representing over sixty percent of the community. In this collective biography, nine Catholic survivors share personal and compelling stories about the aftermath of the bomb and their lives since that day. Examining the Catholic community's interpretation of the A-bomb, this book not only uses memory to provide a greater understanding of the destruction of the bombing, but also links it to the past experiences of religious persecution, drawing comparisons with the 'Secret Christian' groups which survived in the Japanese countryside after the banning of Christianity. Through in-depth interviews, it emerges that the memory of the atomic bomb is viewed through the lens of a community which had experienced suffering and marginalisation for more than 400 years. Furthermore, it argues that their dangerous memory confronts Euro-American-centric narratives of the atomic bombings, whilst also challenging assumptions around a providential bomb. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki presents the voices of Catholics, many of whom have not spoken of their losses within the framework of their faith before. As such, it will be invaluable to students and scholars of Japanese history, religion and war history.

This book explores the endeavors and activities of one of the most prominent early modern Irishmen in exile, the Franciscan Luke Wadding. Born in Ireland, educated in the Iberian Peninsula, Wadding arrived in Rome in 1618, where he would die in 1657. In the "Eternal City," the Franciscan emerged as an outstanding theologian, a learned scholar, a diplomat, and a college founder. This innovative collection of chapters brings together a group of international scholars who provide a ground-breaking analysis of the many cultural, political, and religious facets of Wadding's life. They illustrate the challenges and changes faced by an Irishman who emerged as one of the most outstanding global figures of the Catholic Reformation. The volume will attract scholars of the early modern period, early modern Catholicism, and Irish emigration.

A Visual Approach to the Study of Religious Orders applies visual methods to the exploration of various facets of religious life, such as everyday lived experience, contemporary monastic identity or monastic architecture. Presenting a series of visual essays, it treats images not as simple illustrations but as an autonomous form of expression, capable of unveiling vital and developmental layers of experience, while inviting readers to examine and interpret the data themselves. The first book of its kind, it brings together case studies from various locations across Europe to demonstrate what the use of visual methodologies can contribute to social scientific research on religious orders. As such, it will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, religious studies and theology and anyone with interests in religious orders.

This book explores the rhetoric and public communication of the Catholic Church in the United States in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals and offers a demonstration of how large organizations negotiate a loss of public trust while retaining political power. While the Catholic Church remains a major political force in the United States, recent scandals have undoubtedly had an adverse effect on both its reputation and moral authority. This has been exacerbated by the public responses of Catholic clergy, which have often left supporters of the Church, let alone critics, profoundly unsatisfied. Drawing on documents - voting guides, pastoral letters, sermons, press releases, and other materials - issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as well as American nuns, the book explores Catholic political statements issued after the sexual abuse crises entered the public consciousness. Using approaches from linguistics and rhetoric, it analyses how these statements compare to similar materials issued before this time. This comparison demonstrates that for the American Catholic Church persuasion is less important than maintaining the impression that there has been no loss of authority. This is a timely study of the Catholic Church's handling of the recent revelations of abuse within the Church. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of religious rhetoric, contemporary Catholicism, linguistics, rhetoric, communication, and religious studies.

It is because Catholicism played such a formative role in the construction of Western legal culture that it is the focal point of this enquiry. The account of international law from its origin in the treaties of Westphalia, and located in the writing of the Grotian tradition, had lost contact with another cosmopolitan history of international law that reappeared with the growth of the early twentieth century human rights movement. The beginnings of the human rights movement, grounded in democratic sovereign power, returned to that moral vocabulary to promote the further growth of international order in the twentieth century. In recognising this technique of periodically returning to Western cosmopolitan legal culture, this book endeavours to provide a more complete account of the human rights project that factors in the contribution that cosmopolitan Catholicism made to a general theory of sovereignty, international law and human rights.

A 216-page hardcover book that makes the case for women in the Catholic priesthood - even though the hierarchy of the Church has traditionally opposed the idea, based largely on their belief that Christ wanted a male-only priesthood for all time. The author, a renowned theologian, disputes that ultra-conservative viewpoint and explains why it is in the Church's best interest to ordain women.

Included in this bibliography, originally published in 1989, are books, pamphlets, dissertations, and articles from periodicals and collections, published for the most part since 1900, which present Catholic development in the nineteenth-century as its major theme. Each entry is annotated with the major idea or theme of the work as expressed by its author or editor. This title will be of interest to students of European History and Religious Studies.

This title, first published in 1988, examines accounts of religious conversion contained in the personal narratives of nineteenth-century American coverts to Roman Catholicism. Given their newly acquired status as members of an unpopular religious minority, a number of converts recorded their conversion stories in an effort to justify becoming Catholic and to defend the teaching and practice of their Church. This title will be of interest to students of nineteenth-century religious and social history.

This volume, first published in 1982, examines the attempts of English liberal Catholics to reconcile their Church with secular culture and provides an account of the development of liberal Catholicism in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This work was written not only for specialists in religious history but for all readers who might be interested in this seminal period of Catholicism. It is a study in religious, intellectual, and cultural history.

Originally published in 1988. The new-found freedom and changing attitudes towards Catholics after the American Revolution presented the Catholic Church with its first real opportunity to prosper in the English speaking "new world". But the Catholic Church could not take advantage of this opportunity unless it shook off some of its "old world" characteristics and became accustomed to the American environment. This study attempts to analyse the very nature of American Catholicism by investigating the impact of the American environment on the development of the Catholic Church in American during the episcopacy of John Carroll. This title will be of interest to students of history and religious studies.

Originally published in 1988. This study examines women religious in the American community in the first half of the nineteenth century. The primary aim of this research was to determine who the women were who entered eight religious communities, and whether there was any clear relationship between who they were and their choice of community. This title will be of interest to students of history and religious studies.

In this book, first published in 1984, Paul Cohen examines the Catholic revival among the young French intelligentsia prior to the First World War. He explores this intellectual revival by studying that period's "talas", the Catholic students at the elite Ecole Normale Superieure, and devotes his attention to some of the highest-profile coverts, such as Charles Peguy and Jacques Maritain. This title will be of interest to students of nineteenth- and twentieth-century religious and social history.

A must for every Catholic bookshelf, this fresh and inspiring book distils the essential thoughts of Pope John Paul II on matters of belief and conscience into one volume. Throughout his more than two decades as the leader of the world's Catholics, John Paul II has spoken both officially and informally on all aspects of life in the modern world. Whether defining the Church's teachings or passionately espousing the basic human rights of all people, he has always eloquently and clearly stated his hopes for the Church and the world. Collected from his encyclicals, speeches, homilies, and statements to fellow bishops, this book includes the pontiff's thoughts at the beginning of the third millennium of Christianity.

Catholicism has had an important place in Macau since the earliest days of Portuguese colonization in the sixteenth century. This book, based on extensive original research including in-depth interviews, examines in detail the everyday life of Catholics in Macau at present. It outlines the tremendous societal pressures which Macau is currently undergoing - sovereignty handover and its consequences, the growth of casinos and tourism and the transformation of a serene and somewhat obscure colony into a vibrantly developing city. It shows how, although the formal structures of Catholicism no longer share in rule by the colonial power, and although formal religious observance is declining, nevertheless the personal piety and ethical religious outlook of individual Catholics continue to be strong, and have a huge, and possibly increasing, impact on public life through the application of personal religious ethics to issues of human rights and social justice and in the fields of education and social services.