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Cardinal Mahony: A Novel

ISBN: 9780964664296
Author(s): Robert Blair Kaiser, Publisher: Humble-bee Press

As serialised on Catholica. An excellent Christmas gift for a friend.
BOOK DESCRIPTION
An American bishop gets kidnapped outside his cabin in the High Sierras one snowy morning in November 2008 by three liberation theologians who look like terrorists. They take him off to southern Mexico in his own helicopter and put him on trial for his sins in front of an international television audience. A jury of his peers, six retired Latin American bishops, find him guilty, and give him a surprising sentence. The bishop falls in love with his kidnappers and leads the American Catholic Church into a radical new way of being, still Catholic but aggressively accountable to the people, which is to say, aggressively American. Now Available for only $22.25!

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Church : Living Communion (Engaging Theology: Catholic Perspectives series)

ISBN: 9780814659939
Author(s): Paul Lakeland Publisher: Liturgical Press

BOOK DESCRIPTION
Drawing on the wisdom and teaching experience of highly respected theologians, the Engaging Theology series builds a firm foundation for graduate study and other ministry formation programs. Each of the six volumes — Scripture, Jesus, God, Discipleship, Anthropology, and Church — is concerned with retrieving, carefully evaluating, and constructively interpreting the Christian tradition. Comprehensive in scope and accessibly written, these volumes, used together or independently, will stimulate rich theological reflection and discussion. More important, the series will create and sustain the passion of the next generation of theologians and church leaders.

Paul Lakeland's recent award-winning books on the place of the laity in the contemporary Roman Catholic Church have prepared him well to take on this "ecclesiology from below." While paying close attention to the classical "marks of the Church," Lakeland's focus is on what we can learn about the nature of the Church as living communion by examining the values and practices of ordinary believers. Following the advice of Bernard Lonergan, Lakeland adopts a resolutely inductive approach to ecclesial reflection. He explores ten questions that the Church must address, both those that affect the internal workings of the faith community and those that have to do with its relationships to other groups, religious and secular. Finally, he offers a constructive proposal for a contextual ecclesiology of the U.S. Catholic Church that utilizes the images of hospice, pilgrim, immigrant, and pioneer.

Paul Lakeland is the Aloysius P. Kelley S.J. Professor of Catholic Studies, and director of the Center for Catholic Studies at Fairfield University. He is active in the American Academy of Religion, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Workgroup for Constructive Theology. His two most recent writings, both winners of Catholic Press Association awards, are The Liberation of the Laity: In Search of an Accountable Church and Catholicism at the Crossroads: How the Laity Can Save the Church.

REVIEWS
"Paul Lakeland's brilliant account of ecclesiology may well come to be recognized as the first truly twenty-first-century analysis of the Church. His study addresses the events and insights of the last decade and then transposes into a new key historical-critical readings of the New Testament, themes from Vatican II, ecumenical consensus statements, Lonergan's methodology, and postmodern concerns. In an engaging, refreshing style, he also faces up to the Church's failings in hard-hitting language, marked by stark realism. Finally, he gently poses ten challenges to the Church, which he deems eternal." ...Michael A. Fahey, SJ, Professor, Boston College

"This is a teaching moment in the Church and this is a teachable book on the Church. In this eminently readable book, Paul Lakeland offers his readers only what they need to know to think and talk intelligently about the identity and mission of the Church. With honesty, he describes the challenges facing the Church that perplex and polarize in a way suitable for debate in the classroom and in reading groups. He invites his readers to develop an inductive approach to ecclesiology, and in the process he promotes the cultivation of practical wisdom that can help communities respond to these challenges with genuine hope." ...Bradford Hinze, Professor of Theology, Fordham University

"Paul Lakeland's Church: Living Communion seizes the moment of a church on the brink of change and points the direction forward. He defines the church realistically through its marks, and leads us through the serious internal and external challenges to its authentic witness. Attentive to the laity, he then builds a practical strategy for moving beyond survival to revival. All this in limpid accessible prose: brilliance in simplicity. This authoritative book will appeal to everyone who has a stake in the Catholic Church in North America today." ...Roger Haight, SJ, Scholar in Residence, Union Theological Seminary

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Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church : Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus

ISBN: 9781920721473
Author(s): Bishop Geoffrey Robinson Publisher: John Garratt Publishing

BOOK DESCRIPTION
Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church is now in its fourth reprint! The book has been published in the UK, USA, and in translated into other languages.

Drawing on his own experience in responding to abuse, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, in this explosive work, methodically offers a critique of the church's use and misuse of power, from the pope proclaiming infallibly down to the preacher claiming a divine authority for every word spoken from the pulpit. Going back to the bible and, above all, to the teaching of Jesus, he presents an approach to sexual morality that is profound, compassionate and people-centred. He stresses the priority of the hierarchy of holiness over the hierarchy of power. He offers nothing less than a vision for a church of the third millennium — a church that wants to see in its members the responsibility appropriate to adults rather than the obedience appropriate to children, and wants to help all people to grow to become all they are capable of being.

Readers will love or hate this book, but will not be able to be neutral.

Each chapter ends with a relevant meditation. Click here to read the introduction.

New thought-provoking questions ideal for individual reflection or small groups. To view click here
 

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Say Sorry — A Harrowing Childhood in Catholic Orphanages

ISBN: 9780143011842
Author(s): Ann Thompson, Publisher: Penguin Group New Zealand

'I have written this book because I believe those of us who have been abused by the nuns and priests need to tell our stories so the abuse of children will never happen again. This crime and our shame will never go away until we stand together as one and say to the Catholic Church, 'No more abuse; no more lies; tell the world the truth.'

Conceived out of wedlock in 1941, Ann was just two months old when she was placed in the care of a Catholic orphanage in Christchurch, New Zealand. From the beginning, she was taught her mother was sinful and that she would be too unless the devil was beaten from her soul. She was physically and sexually abused by religious and lay staff at the orphanage from an early age and was forced to work long hours on the orphanage farm and later in the laundries. In 1997, when Ann watched a Prime Television documentary exposing the decades of abuse by the Good Shepherd nuns at the Christchurch orphanage, she realised hers wasn't the only lost childhood.

Say Sorry documents the abuse inflicted on Ann and its ongoing consequences. It is also the story of her battle to get authorities within the Catholic Church to accept responsibility for the past institutionalised abuse of children and young people in its care; to acknowledge culpability and admit — unconditionally — that there was wrongdoing.

The book includes a powerful appendix by Fr Thomas Doyle

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ann Thompson is a regular contributor to the Catholica Forum and other discussion boards. She now lives in Whangarei, on the North Island of New Zealand with her husband and children.
 

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Reach for the Stars: NSW Knights of the Southern Cross (1919-2009) Bold Men of Faith, Hope and Charity

ISBN: 9781921421280
Author(s): Cliff Baxter Publisher: Connor Court Publishing

Did you know?

• The Knights of the Southern Cross of New South Wales are NOT secret "Catholic Masons".
• They once gave a Pope record egg-laying hens.
• Why Catholic schools went on strike.
• How Sir Henry Parkes wore a gun to protect himself against Irish Aussies.
• Why the KSC used passwords and took on Freemasons, bigots, communists, atheists and discriminating capitalists.
• The reasons behind strict secrecy and ritual.
• The Pioneer Knights and how they fought those who held power in politics and business.
• Why the Knights never apologize for defending Pope and Mother Church.
• How they serve Australia.
• Their role in the Labor Party split.

In this history Cliff Baxter lifts the veil of secrecy on the Knights and tells for the first time the stories of the Knights of the Southern Cross in New South Wales over ninety years.

Cliff Baxter B.Ed., author, journalist, broadcaster and adult educator, a native of New South Wales, is a graduate of the University of Technology, Sydney and won the UTS Mechanics Institute Medal in 2003.