Pope Benedict's final days and Francis' battle to set the church on a new path. Pope Benedict made history when he announced his resignation, becoming the first Pope to step down voluntarily in six hundred years. In his wake he left a bitterly divided Vatican mired in scandals. But is Benedict's successor, Pope Francis, taming the forces that helped destroy Benedict's papacy? Is he succeeding in lifting the Church out of crisis? Nearly a year in the...

An account of the alliance between the Catholic Church and the Italian Fascist regime in their campaign against Protestants Based on previously undisclosed archival materials, this book tells the fascinating, untold, and troubling story of an anti-Protestant campaign in Italy that lasted longer, consumed more clerical energy and cultural space, and generated far more literature than the war against Italy's Jewish population. Because clerical leaders...

A recapitulation of his earlier work Seeds of Contemplation, this collection of sixteen essays plumbs aspects of human spirituality. Merton addresses those in search of enduring values, fulfillment, and salvation in prose that is, as always, inspiring and compassionate.

The author relates how in September, 1943, Adolf Hitler, furious that his ally and friend, Benito Mussolini, had been toppled from power in Italy, sends German troops into Rome and outlines a mission to SS General Karl Wolff to seize the Vatican and kidnap Pope Pius XII.

Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills has been asked more than once why he remains in the Church, especially in the wake of his bestselling book Papal Sins, which examined the darker side of the religion's history. In Why I Am a Catholic, he offers some persuasive and heartfelt answers. Beginning with a reflection on his early experiences as a child, and later as a Jesuit seminarian, Wills reveals the importance of Catholicism in his own life. He discusses...

A new study edition of the classic that has sold over 150,000 copies.

What makes a Catholic a Catholic? According to Thomas Groome, an expert on the essential ingredients of Catholic Christianity, Catholics share certain vital features of life and identity. What Makes Us Catholic explains and illuminates that character, and invites Catholics of all kinds to connect more deeply and imaginatively with their own culture and spirituality.

A fascinating apologetic work by writer of fiction and nonfiction Robert Hugh Benson.

Theology for Beginners is one of the most outstanding presentations of the central doctrines of the Catholic faith ever penned. For those to whom these doctrines once seemed formidable, Sheed's is a fresh voice of lucid and carefully reasoned prose. To read Theology for Beginners is to have one mind's awakened to the spiritual realities at the center of human existence.

Radical Conversion utilizes both analytic and normative philosophic/theoretical frameworks to study the relationship between Christian-Catholic conceptualizations of politics, citizenship, faith, and religion as viewed through a quasi-theological lens. The work is situated in the context of the American liberal tradition and in conversation and debate with the public philosophy that attempts to sustain it and provide a rationale for its perpetuation....