Here, women live within stringently enforced doctrines of wifely submission and male headship, and live by the Quiverfull philosophy of letting God give them as many children as possible so as to win the religion and culture wars through demographic means.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    At a time when many Catholics are disillusioned, questioning their faith, and filled with doubts about the relevance of Catholicism in the modern world, the voice of one man cries out to the world's largest faith community with a clarity that is rare and inspiring.

    He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity, exploring one of the biggest stories of our time: the collapse of religion in the world that it created. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and makes his way overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain towns of France, Switzerland and Italy. The goal: walking to St. Peter's Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together the church through the worst crisis in half a millennium.Making his way through a landscape laced with some of the most important shrines to the faith, Egan finds a modern Canterbury Tale in the chapel where Queen Bertha introduced Christianity to pagan Britain; parses the supernatural in a French town built on miracles; and journeys to the oldest abbey in the Western world, founded in 515 and home to continuous prayer over the 1,500 years that have followed. He is accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by some of the towering figures of the faith--Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Martin Luther.A thrilling journey, a family story, and a revealing history, A Pilgrimage to Eternity looks for our future in its search for God.One of Oprah's Must-Read Books of Fall 2019

    (First Place). With atheism on the rise and millions tossing off religion, why would anyone consider the Catholic Church? Brandon Vogt, a bestselling author and the content director for Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, shares his passionate search for truth, a journey that culminated in the realization that Catholicism was right about a lot of things, maybe even everything. His persuasive case for the faith reveals a vision of Catholicism that has answers our world desperately needs and reminds those already in the Church what they love about it. A 2016 study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 25 percent of adults (39 percent of young adults) describe themselves as unaffiliated with any religion. Millions of these so-called “nones” have fled organized religion and many more have rejected God altogether. Brandon Vogt was one of those nones. When he converted to Catholicism in college, he knew how confusing that decision was to many of his friends and family. But he also knew that the evidence he discovered pointed to one conclusion: Catholicism is true. To his delight, he discovered it was also exceedingly good and beautiful.Why I Am Catholic traces Vogt’s spiritual journey, making a refreshing, twenty-first century case for the faith and answering questions being asked by agnostics, nones, and atheists, the audience for his popular website, StrangeNotions.com, where Catholics and atheists dialogue. With references to Catholic thinkers such as G. K. Chesterton, Ven. Fulton Sheen, St. Teresa of Calcutta, and Bishop Robert Barron, Vogt draws together lines of evidence to help seekers discover why they should be Catholic as an alternative.Why I Am Catholic serves as a compelling reproposal of the Church for former Catholics, a persuasive argument for truth and beauty to those who have become jaded and disenchanted with religion, and at the same time offers practicing Catholics a much-needed dose of confidence and clarity to affirm their faith against an increasingly skeptical culture.

    In Spring of 2010 Sally Read was heralded as one of the bright young writers of the British poetry scene. Feminist, atheist and deeply anti-Catholic, she was writing a book about women's reproduction and sexuality when, during her research, she spoke with a Catholic priest. That mysterious encounter led Sally on a dramatic journey of spiritual quest and discovery which ended up at the Vatican itself, where she was received into the Catholic Church in December of that year.This story of her conversion is one that, unsurprisingly, has the vivid flavor and beauty of poetry. Read relates her encounters with the Father, the Spirit and then the Son, exactly in the way they were given to her--timely, revelatory and compelling. These transforming events throw new light onto the experiences of her past--her father's death, her work as a psychiatric nurse, her life as a single woman in London, as a mother and as a writer. She reveals how she developed a close intimacy with the new love that erupted into her life, Christ himself, and how she comes to accept and embrace a doctrine she had previously rejected as bigoted and stifling.Read confronts head on the burning question for God that every true Christian harbors: -What do you want me to do?- In an age of increasing secularism, and in the wake of disillusionment with the Catholic Church following disclosures of abuse, the book takes us to the core of what the Church is all about: Christ and the yearning to be near him.Read's book captures the ecstasy of first knowing God's love and charts how it changes us. It takes the massive energy that was given her during those nine initial months of conversion and crystallizes it so others can taste it. It is a testimony to the powerhouse of Christianity: love and the life-changing encounter with Christ.

    As he did in his previous bestsellers—Jesus: A Pilgrimage, Between Heaven and Mirth, and The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything—Martin once again crafts a book that incarnates deep spiritual wisdom while being accessible and full of humor and grace. Through the characters' struggles, we see firsthand how God uses our worries, questions, and even anger to help us become whole.

    They come armed with arguments to show that belief in God is absurd and dangerous. In the name of societal progress, they promote purging the world of all religious practice. And they claim that people of faith are mentally ill. Some of the new atheists openly declare their hatred for the Judeo-Christian God.Christian apologists have been quick to respond to the new atheists’ arguments. But there is another dimension to the issue which begs to be addressed--the root causes of atheism. Where do atheists come from? How did such folks as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens become such ardent atheists? If we are to believe them, their flight from faith resulted from a dispassionate review of the evidence. Not enough rational grounds for belief in God, they tell us. But is this the whole story?Could it be that their opposition to religious faith has more to do with passion than reason? What if, in the end, evidence has little to do with how atheists arrive at their anti-faith? That is precisely the claim in this book. Atheism is not at all a consequence of intellectual doubts. These are mere symptoms of the root cause--moral rebellion. For the atheist, the missing ingredient is not evidence but obedience.The psalmist declares, “The fool says in his heart there is no God” (Ps. 14:1), and in the book of Romans, Paul makes it clear that lack of evidence is not the atheist’s problem. The Making of an Atheist confirms these biblical truths and describes the moral and psychological dynamics involved in the abandonment of faith.

    Without this discovery we will always be restricted in some way and will never taste true happiness. Author Jacques Philippe develops a simple but important theme: we gain possession of our interior freedom in exact proportion to our growth in faith, hope, and love. He explains that the dynamism between these three theological virtues is the heart of the spiritual life, and he underlines the key role of the virtue of hope in our inner growth. Written in a simple and inviting style, Interior Freedom seeks to liberate the heart and mind to live the true freedom to which God calls each one.

    Ron Sider does. He has, since before he first published Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger in 1978. Despite a dramatic reduction in world hunger since then, 34,000 children still die daily of starvation and preventable disease, and 1.3 billion people, worldwide, remain in abject poverty. So, the professor of theology went back to re-examine the issues by twenty-first century standards. Finding that Conservatives blame morally reprehensible individual choices, and Liberals blame constrictive social and economic policy, Dr. Sider finds himself agreeing with both sides. In this new look at an age-old problem, he offers not only a detailed explanation of the causes, but also a comprehensive series of practical solutions, in the hopes that Christians like him will choose to make a difference.

    Both a comical read, as well as an indispensable resource for observing the Feast Days of the Saints, The Bad Catholic's Guide to Good Living is for anyone who is interested in celebrating the history and humor behind the Catholic faith.

    The problem with these libraries is that they contain books that are generally written by professionals for their peers. Where the Hell Is God? combines the best of the professional's insights with the author's own experience and insights to speculate on how believers can make sense of their Christian faith when experiencing tragedy and suffering. Starting with a very personal story of the author's sister being left a quadriplegic from a car accident twenty years ago, Where the Hell Is God? gently leads the reader through some "take-home" messages that are sane, sound, and practical. Among these messages are: God does not directly send pain, suffering, and disease. God does not punish us; God does not send accidents to teach us things, though we can learn from them; and God does not will earthquakes, floods, droughts, or other natural disasters. This concise, accessible, and experience-based book will help people who are suffering as well as those who minister to them and their families.

    The Bible According to Mark Twain is vintage Twain and is sure to surprise, delight, and perhaps shock modern readers.Description from back cover

    Although Riess begins with great plans for success (“Really, how hard could that be?” she asks blithely at the start of her saint-making year), she finds to her growing humiliation that she is failing—not just at some of the practices, but at every single one. What emerges is a funny yet vulnerable story of the quest for spiritual perfection and the reality of spiritual failure, which turns out to be a valuable practice in and of itself.

    Yet many Christians still rely on cookie-cutter approaches to evangelism and apologetics. Most of these methods assume that people are open, interested and needy for spiritual insight when increasingly most people are not. Our urgent need, then, is the capacity to persuade to make a convincing case for the gospel to people who are not interested in it. In his magnum opus, Os Guinness offers a comprehensive presentation of the art and power of creative persuasion. Christians have often relied on proclaiming and preaching, protesting and picketing. But we are strikingly weak in persuasion--the ability to talk to people who are closed to what we are saying. Actual persuasion requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. Guinness notes, "Jesus never spoke to two people the same way, and neither should we." Following the tradition of Erasmus, Pascal, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge, Guinness demonstrates how apologetic persuasion requires both the rational and the imaginative. Persuasion is subversive, turning the tables on hearers' assumptions to surprise them with signals of transcendence and the plausibility of the gospel. This book is the fruit of forty years of thinking, honed in countless talks and discussions at many of the leading universities and intellectual centers of the world. Discover afresh the persuasive power of Christian witness, from one of the leading apologists and thinkers of our era."

    In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son's crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel—her keepers, who provide her with food and shelter and visit her regularly. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was “worth it;” nor that the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye,” were holy disciples. Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the Cross until her son died—she fled, to save herself), and is equally harsh on her judgment of others. This woman who we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes, in Toibin’s searing evocation, a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. This tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.