Books Published by Angelico Press

The Truth of Mankind draws on Cesáreo Bandera's long lifetime of critical experience and literary scholarship. Bandera is not only a celebrated and distinguished interpreter of Latin and Greek literature, of Cervantes and Calderón, and many other seminal figures, but was also a friend and colleague of the late René Girard, the celebrated Catholic theorist of the "scapegoat mechanism" as the fundamental logic underlying all human communities and polities; and in the field of literary studies, ...

Olier's The Mystical Meaning of the Ceremonies of the Mass, first published in 1657, and presented here with an Introduction by Abbé Claude Barthe, is an outstanding example of the application-to the liturgy and its actions-of the search for a deeper meaning that has also been so influential throughout the history of contemplative Christianity in the resonant, anagogical reading of the Bible. Olier shows us that there is nothing in the traditional Catholic Mass that lacks its own progressivel...

Communist factory owners; a law-breaking priest; a speed-skating religious sister. These are just a few of the notable characters Roy Peachey meets as he travels around Great Britain and Ireland in search of counter-cultural Christianity, finding groups as diverse as Opus Dei and the Bruderhof, the Catholic Worker Movement and the Transalpine Redemptorists. Part reflection on the Benedict Option and part exploration of what it means to return to orthodox Christian roots, Travels in Radical Ch...

"It seems to me that there is room for a book which has for its purpose to point out the true setting of the Eucharistic mystery in the economy of the supernatural life, and this is the task I have laid upon myself." So begins A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist, the most notable work by abbot and theologian Dom Anscar Vonier. Throughout this book, Vonier contemplates the true nature of the sacrifice of the Mass, examining precisely what is meant when the priest proclaims, "This is My body...

"Whoever contemplates our Mother Nature in her full majesty and luster is alone able to value things in their true estimate." Written in 1943, The Tree of Life, by H. J. Massingham, is a passionate and theologically based plea for preservation of the English countryside. With a deep concern for increasing environmental degradation, this work calls on the Christian church to unite in countering the destruction of natural, domestic, and sacred landscapes. Massingham also analyses the historical...

Warriors of God: The Great Religious Orders and Their Founders, by church historian Walter Nigg, is a detailed and lively account of eleven of the great Christian monastic and religious orders and the fascinatingly diverse figures who launched them. The author begins with St. Anthony and the desert fathers, and continues with St. Pachomius and the development of cenobitic monasticism, St. Basil, St. Augustine and the common life of the clergy, St. Benedict and the Rule, St. Bruno and the Cart...

Stella Tęsknota was ready to marry Blake Yourrick, the troubled if earnest protagonist of Infinite Regress. In this stand-alone novel (and loose sequel), set after Blake abruptly-and inexplicably-breaks off their engagement, Stella throws herself into a tough South Chicago teaching assignment. There she meets Peter Clavier (P.C.), a psychologist-activist whose uncle-a pastor-has long prophesied for Peter a future of otherworldly greatness. As Stella draws out Peter's past, the novel follows P...

One of the most eminent poets and essayists of the last century in Italy, Tito Casini (1897-1987) devoted the last years of his life to a passionate protest against the desecration of the centuries-old Roman liturgy, the spiritual home of millions and a cultural treasure that could never be rivaled, let alone replaced. His defense of tradition was unique in mode, combining lampoon, lamentation, and lyricism in a philosophic poetry that transcends mere polemic. Perhaps the most unique of his w...

The End of the Modern World, by the Italian-German priest Romano Guardini, is a somber, even dire, treatise on the future of modernity. Written in the aftermath of the Second World War, it argues that the modern world has emerged from the values of the medieval world, while rejecting the faith that gave rise to those values. For Guardini, we now inhabit a world unhinged and untethered, where ideology and materialism have replaced the meaning and certainty found in Christ. As Frederick Wilhelm...

This book is the result of a life-long companionship with William Shakespeare. Annie-Paule de Prinsac has never been in doubt about his mannerism, whose many guises she reveals through close readings of selected plays. Such mannerism, however, in a kingdom torn by religious conflicts, violent oppression, and censorship raises questions. It seems out of step with the spirit of the Elizabethan Court, but also seems to belie the views of so many critics regarding his alleged social background an...

The history of mysticism has always been accompanied by reports of otherworldly bodily phenomena such as levitation and luminosity. While many may be inclined to relegate such accounts to the realm of rumor and superstition, Patricia Treece here argues that the physical phenomena of mysticism are reflective of the body's participation in extraordinary holiness. Treece spent over ten years thoroughly investigating nineteenth- and twentieth-century occurrences of these mystical experiences, the...

Metaphysics for Everyone is the first in an exciting new series of interviews with prolific French religious philosopher and metaphysician Bruno Bérard, whose work Angelico Press first introduced to anglophone readers with the publication in 2018 of his important work, A Metaphysics of the Christian Mystery: An Introduction to the Work of Jean Borella. Further volumes of this series will include Theology for Everyone, Esotericism for Everyone, Jean Borella for Everyone, and Wolfgang Smith for...

Is free will a reality, or just a popular belief discredited by science? Whether the will is free or not, it can have uncomfortable consequences in either case; but in this book these alternatives are not regarded as evenly balanced. The author is guided, rather, by a conviction that a denial of free will means as well a denial of the intelligence needed for this purpose. He concludes that the possibility of knowing the will to be free is a genuine one, while knowing that it is not free leads...

While much modern poetry seems to deny or ignore our culture's religious heritage, Gene Fendt's Eternal Life and Other Poems boldly celebrates biblical figures, Church fathers, and saints. They grapple with the glittering, erotic, crisp cruelty of the physical world-all the time demanding the angelic blessing of the numinous within.

This Tremendous Lover was first published in 1946 and has since become known as a classic of Catholic spirituality and a heartfelt guide to strengthening our relationship with Christ. Author Dom Eugene Boylan introduces us to a love story between God and man, revealing how various aspects of day-to-day life shed light on Christ's all-consuming love. Boylan guides the reader through a series of meditations on how Christ can be found through prayer, humility, the sacraments, and even such munda...

In the catechetical ressourcement now underway, the Church is recovering traditional Christian wisdom for her practice of the craft of catechesis. In this new work, Petroc Willey argues that the Church in Alexandria offers a rich and compelling vision of Christian culture to assist in the renewal of pedagogy and the mending of ecclesial life. Under the leadership of Clement and Origen, the Christian community of Alexandria founded a catechetical school that shaped a distinctive Christian paid...

One day in the early 1990s, while praying the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary on his knees in front of the Tabernacle, Fr. Bradley heard the Holy Spirit telling him: "Write this down!" He was given a meditation about the Annunciation. Thus was born a 10-year journey of inspired meditations on every bead of the Traditional Rosary. From then on, not knowing when the Holy Spirit would give him another meditation, Father brought a yellow legal pad with him for his Rosaries by the Tabernacle. He sa...

At a time when poetry has little regard for anything beyond the commonplace realities of everyday perception and sentiment, these studies propose a restoration of balance as between outer and inner worlds. For too long, in the wake of our attempt at a rational, scientific civilization, it has been readily assumed that the centre of gravity of reality and truth falls within the realm of the physical world. But for the poets discussed in these pages the opposite is the case. For them the centre...

Marriage for God's Sake, a practical guide for Catholic couples to live marriage according to God's plan, is filled with examples of spouses overcoming difficulties and living out their holy vocation of matrimony by serving each other in generosity and bringing forth and nurturing holy children. Fr. Morrow includes in the book as well an explanation of Pope St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body. Author Bio: FR. THOMAS MORROW graduated from St. Charles Seminary in Philadelphia and was ordain...

What is truth and what is fiction? In this optimistic play, of uncertain origin, Goobet enquires into the nature of truth, encountering a range of philosophical characters who happen to be passing by the village green. The play is upbuilding for Goobet, an unlettered bumpkin, but also for us in our own day. It turns out that a "walkynge-trewth" is one that is lived and performed in real time, rather than statically mirrored, which means that our work of reading is implicated in the general af...

The final published book by Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941), La pensée et le mouvant, "Thought and Movement"-here translated as The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics-is a masterly "autobiography" of his philosophical method. Through essays and lectures written between 1903 and 1923, Bergson retraces how and why he became a philosopher, along the way crafting a fascinating critique of philosophy itself. Until it leaves its false paths, he demons...

In Grace and Glory, Eric Mascall insists that "if we are living in the grace of God, heaven is the destination to which our journey is leading us. It is therefore the merest folly for us to behave as if our whole destiny was contained within the limits of this present life." Secularists, whether committed to individualism or collectivism, err in thinking that this worldly happiness, prosperity, and welfare constitute the final end of man. Mascall offers a sobering rejoinder to this immanent f...

In The Importance of Being Human: Some Reflections on the Christian Doctrine of Man, Eric Mascall explains how the Christian account of creation, the fall, the incarnation, and the redemption of human persons in Christ provides the fullest and most truthful explanation of man's present condition and eternal purpose. Addressing the key distinction between human persons and other animals, Mascall insists that humans are not only highly evolved biological organisms. They are highly evolved biolo...

In the entire history of the Church, no saint has performed as many miracles as Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. "The greatest saint of modern times" (as Pius X described her) is doing what she promised: "spending her heaven doing good on earth." Among the fourteen thousand testimonies of apparitions, healings, and conversions preserved in the Carmel of Lisieux since the saint's death, archivist Camille Burette has selected the most meaningful and moving among them to include in this volume. Like th...

The central theme of Via Media is that, on each of the cardinal points of Christian faith, orthodoxy consists in holding together two notions which, though not in fact incompatible, at first sight appear to be so. It is by enquiring in each case how this apparent irreconcilability is to be removed that a real understanding of the doctrine is achieved. The theme is illustrated by a lucid discussion of the four fundamental doctrines of Creation, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Grace. In the c...

Based upon Richard Johnson's work, which first appeared in print in the 1590s and was widely read for over three centuries after its publication, The Seven Champions of Christendom whisks the reader away to a bygone age of mythic heroes and warrior saints engaged in earthly battle against evil. The Seven are St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St. James of Spain, St. Anthony of Italy, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick of Ireland, and St. David of Wales. Subsequently rewritten in mod...

Many devotional books present different ways to participate in the Mass, but relatively few preseor which there are no fixed prayers. An excellent help in this domain is a short work, Seven Ways of the Cross (1958), by Jesuit Father Jean (John) Galot (1919-2008), who was to become a prolific writer and professor of theology, first at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, then at the Angelicum in Rome, where he regularly contributed to the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano. Father ...

Awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1935, Raymond Chambers's acclaimed biography of Saint Thomas More stands as one of the finest accounts of this great figure of English history. Beginning with his early life in late 15th century England, Chambers tracks More's rise through Parliament and the British social hierarchy, culminating in his appointment as Lord Chancellor in 1529. The result of this chancellorship is of course widely known: following the disagreement between King Henry...

"Everywhere the sense for the holy suffered from the manifold persecutions of its previous form, its former personality. The end product of the modern manner of thinking was termed 'philosophy, ' and under that head was reckoned everything that was opposed to the old, hence primarily every objection against religion. The initial personal hatred of the Catholic faith passed gradually over into hatred of the Bible, of the Christian faith, and finally of religion in general. Still further, the h...

In this book, János Csák explores the enduring intellectual and spiritual legacy behind America's achievement, the very essence and history of the American genius. Americans see freedom as the ultimate human good, but it is precisely around the principle of freedom and its misuse that much drama has unfolded in recent years. This drama manifests in a creeping cognitive dissonance rationalizing (seemingly at every turn) practices and injustices that contradict America's original ideals. Yet Th...

The Vision of God by Nicholas of Cusa is one of the foundational texts of late medieval Christian mysticism. Known for his negative theology, particularly as displayed in the seminal work De Docta Ignorantia (Of Learned Ignorance), Nicholas shows how accepting the limits of man's rational understanding leads to a fuller experience of the divine. Man, he believed, is capable of comprehending God's inner being, an experience he characterized as a "coincidence of opposites." Unlike his previous ...

The crowning achievement of Symbolist poet and philologist Sergey Solovyov, Vladimir Solovyov: His Life & Creative Evolution remains the most comprehensive critical biography of the great nineteenth-century Russian philosopher, mystic, and ecumenist Vladimir Solovyov. Intended for publication in 1923, this work remained in manuscript until 1977, when it was first published in Brussels, and then finally in Moscow in 1997. This complete English translation is based on both the Brussels and ...

Mama mouse wants nothing more than to share a happy home with a happy human family. She may finally get her wish when the barren cottage she inhabits with Papa and her mouselings is sold to a family with four lively children. Can the mice really endear the family to the cottage while always using their best survival skill, that of invisibility? It's a bumpy ride to a happy home as mice and human children begin to mix. Woodland forts, cattail canoes, soaring rocket flights, poetic inventions, ...

Passion Partners is based on a postgraduate study on Gerard Manley Hopkins by the Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown at Edinburgh University in the 1960s that has only recently become accessible at the National Library of Scotland after purchase at auction in 2018. "Passion Partners" refers to the medieval liturgical fragment from the primers so popular with the laity: "Grant that I may carry within me the death of Christ, make me a partner in his Passion, let me relive his wounds." And inde...

With Between Rome and Rebellion, Yves Chiron, acclaimed author of dozens of biographies and historical studies, once again proves himself a master historian. Drawing upon a vast fund of information gathered over the course of three decades, including numerous interviews, correspondence, diaries, and archives, Chiron tells the thrilling, at times gut-wrenching, story of the "loyal resistance" of Catholics-especially in France, but soon all over the world-who held fast to the old forms of worsh...

"A Defence of Monarchy: Catholics under a Protestant King" by Joseph Shaw offers a profound exploration of the monarchy's role as a unifying symbol of national identity and its significance within Catholic tradition. This work delves into the monarchy's place in balancing tradition with modernity, the evolution of coronation rites, and the constitutional functions of British monarchs. It critically examines the monarchy's impact on Catholic tradition and its position as a neutral entity that ...

The life and work of John Henry Newman makes abundantly clear that the work of a true theologian is not conjured in the void of an ivory-tower mind, but emerges co-creatively from mind informed by heart-heart, that is, as an organ of a deep experiential truth-discernment lying beyond conceptual expression. With heart and mind thus attuned, discernment of the heart comes into alignment with that of the intellect. This leads to the discovery of the experience of love in the truest sense, which ...

In the ancient Christian Apostles' Creed, we speak the fourth line that Jesus Christ "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he went down to the dead (ad inferno-to hell)." This mysterious line of Christ's descent to hell generated a deep mystical spirituality in Adrienne von Speyr (d. 1967), a Swiss laywoman, physician, wife, mother, and spiritual writer. Her extensive, speculative mysticism influenced the critical work of the Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Ba...

A Pope for All Seasons: Testimonies Inspired by Saint John Paul II contains reminiscences by people who admired this saintly man as student, actor, professor, mentor, author, priest, pope, political leader, uncle, and friend. Among the nearly 50 men and women who share their intimate thoughts on the Polish pontiff are internationally recognized figures such as Maestro Placido Domingo, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Michael Reagan, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Newt...

Among the giants of the Benedictine Order in modern times, Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster stands out as a scholar, churchman, and saint—one who deeply researched monasticism and liturgy, and, in spite of being elevated to the archbishopric of Milan, kept the heart of a monk whose childlike faith, ascetical self-denial, and all-embracing charity were recognized in his beatification. Schuster's commentary on the Holy Rule of St Benedict of Nursia (first published in Italian at the end of W...

Imagine some personal hours face to face with Pope Benedict XVI, one of the greatest Catholic thinkers and spiritual writers of the twentieth century. In this slim volume, hundreds of short quotations and sayings taken from Benedict's papal writings, addresses, and homilies have been classified by the Christian virtues of which they speak, and then categorized according to the mysteries of the Rosary and the great themes of prayer, the Church, the Mass, the papacy, Sacred Scripture, the pries...

The World Council of Churches does not limit its conception of ecumenism to what unites or divides Christians. In a famous 1997 text entitled "Common Understanding and Vision," ecumenism is more broadly defined as "everything that relates to the whole task of the whole church to bring the gospel to the whole world." Moreover, further steps have since been taken toward integrating other religions and faith traditions, leading to a new discipline offering a fully realistic and fully spiritual e...

"Nature and history, the Liturgy and the Kalendar, contemporary events both public and personal-all snake their way through the thickets of metaphor in these poems. And the relation between time and Eternity is never far away."-AIDAN NICHOLS, OP, formerly Pope John Paul II Memorial Lecturer in Roman Catholic Theology, University of Oxford"Anna Rist's second volume of poems is a joy to read. The collection exalts not just in the Body of Christ but in people and places of importance to her. All...

In his famous series of four paintings, the great American "father" of the Hudson River School of art, Thomas Cole (1801-1848), depicted the life of a single representative human Soul as a voyage from birth to death-each painting illustrating a further bend in the river of life: Childhood, Youth, Manhood, and finally, Old Age. Cole supplemented his series with a long poem (reproduced at the end of this volume) along the lines of Dante's Divine Comedy or Newman's Dream of Gerontius, elucidatin...

The Christian liturgy-and the Roman liturgy in particular-developed and thrived within a tradition of commentary and meditation that was fundamental for its understanding, running parallel with the same way of approaching Scripture. The rationalist influences that led to the decline and eventual rejection of the mystical or spiritual senses of Scripture in favor of a narrowly-conceived literal sense led to a narrowing of liturgy as well, which was reduced to its material parts and their vario...

"A sequel of sorts to Bradley Birzer's Beyond Tenebrae (Angelico Press, 2019), Mythic Realms seeks to pursue excellences in the last hundred years of literature and film. Still rooted in Christian Humanism and Burke's moral imagination, Birzer offers here a series of autobiographical vignettes, following which he analyzes fiction from Willa Cather to J.R.R. Tolkien to Stephen King to Frank Miller, and considers everything from the novel to the graphic novel. From the world of film he explores...

This is a memoir, yes, fictionalized (as all of them are in some way) because the facts don't matter nearly as much here as the Holy Spirit who moves the furniture, the physical world, and everything in it. This unvarnished book tries to do more than offer a happy or easy conversion. It foregrounds the Beat movement too, a movement that has long been way station and home to many excellent Catholic poets. The list is a long one: Kerouac, Merton, Everson, Fabilli, Berrigan, Baxter, Kavanagh, Le...

Letters to the Duchess of Orléans and Meditations on Christian Life The present volume presents a wide selection of letters glowing with affection that Mectilde addressed to Marguerite de Lorraine, Duchess of Orléans (1615-1672).