Books on Culture

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, there has been a heightened fascination with "Celtic Christianity," construed by some as a spirituality of semi-pagan sensibilities -- without rules, never united with Rome, and aligned with ecological and feminist concerns. Celtic prayers and "Celtic liturgies" continue to be fashionable in certain circles. This groundbreaking book presents a comprehensive authentic history of Christianity in Ireland in late antiquity for the first time. It is a li...

Nowadays the inclusion of hymns, chants and sequences in Eucharistic worship is a well-established and much-loved feature of liturgical celebration that we tend to take for granted. How this came about is the subject of this present fascinating study in which John Blakesley guides us through the growth and development of chant, office hymns, sequences and tropes and their increased use in the Church of the Middle Ages. St. Ambrose is credited with introducing hymns into the Western Church in ...

This long-discredited economic philosophy is making a comeback, not only on college campuses and political talk shows but among sincere Catholics. Some think it could be the answer to greed, and globalism. Some even argue that it's the best way to obey Christ's command to help the poor.Let's give socialism a fresh chance, they say. A democratic socialism this time, friendly to religion and ordered to the common good, as the Church says the economy should be. In Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?,...

Published by renowned Tolkien scholar Joseph Pearce, Bilbo's Journey: Discovering the Hidden Meaning of The Hobbit is an eye-opening guide to one of the world's most beloved stories. This book offers readers an opportunity to both relive the captivating adventure of Bilbo Baggins and discover the hidden Christian meaning of The Hobbit. Going beyond Smaug and elves, Bilbo's Journey delves further into a story that speaks to us through ages.The journey follows Bilbo as he ventures out with a ho...

"The ecological movement discovered that 'nature' prescribes for us a moderation that we cannot ignore with impunity. Unfortunately, 'human ecology' has still not been made concrete. A human being, too, has a 'nature' that is prescribed for him, and violating or denying it leads to self-destruction."-- Benedict XVI, from the preface This collection of selected works is Benedict XVI's heartfelt call for Europe to rediscover its true origin and identity, in order to become once again a beacon o...

First-ever translation of Essai sur la fin d'une civilisation originally published in 1949.Our contemporary civilization is in distress. Society is unraveling, with rampant individualism, moral dissipation, identity crises, unchecked consumerism, and social isolation. De Corte, writing in the mid-twentieth century, studies these trends and discerns their causes: the prevalence of philosophies rooted in idealism or materialism, the reign of ideologies inspired by these philosophies, objectific...

The Church's Liturgical Year reflects the fullness of Divine Revelation. In the various celebrations and commemorations of the Year of the Lord, the Church recalls the mysteries of faith: the Incarnation of God's only-begotten son, his passion, death, and resurrection which won redemption for mankind, and his institution of the sacraments and founding of his Church for the salvation of souls. Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs, first published in 1958, is a masterful summary of the orig...

The atomic bomb marked a catastrophic leap in the history of human achievement. Never before had a man-made instrument dealt out, in an instant, such death and destruction. Once done, it could not be undone. The leap was made; the atomic age begun. To live in this new age, a new spirit was required-a spirit that would prevent mankind becoming the destroyer of all worlds. The father of the atomic bomb himself, J. Robert Oppenheimer, perceived this need, calling for "radical changes not only in...

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...

In this incisive work, Bill Donohue pulls no punches as he contends that our moral crisis is a reflection of two competing visions of morality -- one religious and the other secular. The former is grounded in our Judeo-Christian tradition, the latter in radical notions of liberty and equality that are tearing us asunder. Donohue explains how the religious vision acknowledges belief in God, truth, human nature, natural law, moral absolutes, and Original Sin. It understands the limits of the hu...

Christian Humanism in an Age of Crisis By early 1943, it had become increasingly clear that the Allies would win the Second World War. Around the same time, it also became increasingly clear to many Christian intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic that the soon-to-be-victorious nations were not culturally or morally prepared for their success. A war won by technological superiority merely laid the groundwork for a post-war society governed by technocrats. These Christian intellectuals-Ja...

In the words of a 1944 review, written well in advance of twenty-first-century outcomes of educational malpractice: "It is for man that education must exist. Such a statement may seem too obvious to make at all. Yet its meaning is rarely understood today." Education at the Crossroads fully comprehends that meaning. Bringing to bear the full weight of his wisdom, Jacques Maritain argues for education as objectively ordered toward man "in his personal life and spiritual progress, not in his rel...

Many people today desire a simple life that is closely connected to land, whether it be gardening, farming, or ranching. There is a spiritual draw to a non-consumeristic lifestyle that places God, the family, and the home at the center of all activity. This "agrarian conversion" has led many families to seek out rural communities and leave behind the suburban life. Over ten years ago two Catholic friends, Jason M. Craig and Thomas D Van Horn, experienced a similar agrarian conversion inspired...

A Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and devout Catholic tells you everything you need to know about keeping your faith at a modern university. Drawing on her recent experience, Aurora Griffin shares forty practical tips relating to academics, community, prayer, and service that helped her stay Catholic in college.She reminds us that keeping the faith is a conscious decision, reinforced by commitment to daily practices. Aurora's story illustrates that when you decide your faith matters to you,...

The Catholic Faith possesses a treasury of devotions, prayers, and rituals to draw us deeper into the spiritual life. Among these gifts, sacramentals hold a unique and vital place in the lives of all who seek God's grace. From rosaries and crucifixes to medals and relics, from bells and candles to salts and scapulars, these seemingly ordinary signs, when woven into our everyday lives, sanctify us and better prepare us to "receive the fruit of the sacraments" (CCC 1677). Compendium of Sacramen...

Hold on to your horses and get ready for the ride of your life! World Champion surfer Bear Woznick connects us to that deep call in every man's heart to live the heroic way and champion a cause greater than himself. Bear reveals ways to become an everyday hero, someone who goes beyond the ordinary in the little and big moments of life, who rides high in the saddle, rides for the brand, come hell or high water, and pursues God's call in his life. Cowboys and manliness fit together like a well-...

"Mysteries Made Visible: Praying the Rosary with Sacred Art" by Lawrence Lew, O.P., offers a unique devotional experience that combines sacred art with the contemplation of the Rosary's Mysteries. With a foreword by the Master of the Order, Fr. Gerard Francisco Timoner III, O.P., this book invites readers to deepen their prayer life through the visual and spiritual meditation on sacred images. Fr. Lew, a Dominican friar known for his photography, captures the essence of each Mystery with stun...

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...

"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...

The Collected Works of Carol Jackson Robinson, Volume 1 From the Foreword: In Designs for Christian Living, Carol Jackson Robinson practices what she preaches. Designs is not primarily a theological work but an essay into what Catholics can do in the here and now to begin the transformation of society. Interestingly, Robinson does not propose the formation of Catholic political parties or movements; she avoids the fallacy of urging the erection of a political house on the foundation of a cult...

Nine Tasks for Every Catholic Revitalizing Catholicism in America provides nine practical action items every faithful Catholic can undertake - nine steps which form the building blocks of a renewed Catholic subculture. No matter what your specific gift or walk of life, you have a role to play in revitalizing Catholicism in America. This book will show you how.

New Nations and a Transatlantic Discourse of Empire Why is the capital of the United States named in part after Christopher Columbus, a Genoese explorer commissioned by Spain who never set foot on what would become the nation's mainland? Why did Spanish American nationalists in 1819 name a new independent republic "Colombia," after Columbus, the first representative of the empire from which they had recently broken free? These are only two of the introductory questions explored in The Lega...

Writing of his real-life pilgrimage on the Camino, Nick Maione offers sharp-eyed detail and characterization, incisive poetic image, humor, and wisdom.

​"Suppose for a moment that Catholicism had been dead for centuries, that the traditions of its worship had been lost. Only the unspeaking and forlorn cathedrals remain; they have become unintelligible yet remain admirable." So begins Marcel Proust's Death Comes for the Cathedrals (La mort des cathédrales), originally published in Le Figaro (1904). Proust addresses the political and religious debate concerning the "the Briand bill," a parliamentary proposal which imperiled the fate of French ...

An Old Layman Questions Himself about the Present Time At eighty-five, Jacques Maritain, the most distinguished Catholic philosopher of the twentieth century, has written what he offers as his last book, and it turns out to be a shocker. The "peasant," as Maritain calls himself in the title, is a man who calls a spade a spade; and a storm of controversy descended immediately on the book's publication in France, as both Right and Left reeled from the force of Maritain's criticism.The Peasant ...

The Collapse and Revival of American Community Updated to include a new chapter about the influence of social media and the Internet--the 20th anniversary edition of Bowling Alone remains a seminal work of social analysis, and its examination of what happened to our sense of community remains more relevant than ever in today's fractured America. Twenty years, ago, Robert D. Putnam made a seemingly simple observation: once we bowled in leagues, usually after work; but no longer. This seemingly...

St Benedict and the European Future St. Benedict has been called the Father of Western Monasticism and Patron of Europe. In this masterful work, Christopher Derrick brings forward the relevance of the values in the Rule of St. Benedict for the temporal as well as the spiritual future of the Western world.

What Old Books Can Tell Us (And Warn Us) About Living in the 21st Century Fake news, genetic engineering, designer babies, Big Pharma, incipient totalitarian rule, the destruction of books, transhumanism, the desire to play God, and the serial misuse of the word "science"-it may sound a lot like America in the 2020s, but these politically charged modern concerns have been probed deeply in classic fiction by a host of prescient authors over the past two centuries. The Art of Being Human draws ...

St. Cecilia's, Brooklyn, 1871-1930 Here, in these pages, first published in 1931, is the story of the first sixty years of St. Cecilia's parish in Brooklyn, NY. Under the stewardship of Msgr. Edward McGolrick (1857-1938), an impressive network of social support that touched practically every aspect of a parishioner's life was built: a maternity hospital, a daycare center (the first of its kind in the country!), the largest Catholic parochial school building in America, a sports facility for h...

From the Medieval Bank to Financial Globalization This book, perhaps startlingly, is about finance from a Christian point of view, taking its start from the Gospels and moving forward to modern Catholic Social Teaching and today's opaque money markets, pausing along the way to delve into the origins of finance in the Christian Middle Ages. Not only those with a Christian orientation, but anyone looking for a coherent, moral view of finance will profit from its keen insights. Markets represent...

A Historical Study It may be useless to deny that most of the West functions under the reign of capitalism, but despite this fact the question of the origin of this paradigm and how it came to such a prominent position in our society remains unclear. This is the vital question.  Religion and the Rise of Capitalism aims to address. In what has proven something of a minor classic, R. H. Tawney sets his sights high, returning to the Middle Ages to examine the history of both capitalism and reli...

Passages From the Writings of Eric Gill Eric Gill (1882-1940) is well known as a sculptor, wood and stone carver, letter, engraver, typeface designer, and graphic artist. But he was also a radical religious and social philosopher-a Christian revolutionary-for whom "life was more than art," because it was the highest art, the art of being human. Thus his interests were never theoretical and his view of life was holistic, involving the whole person in a unity of art, work and spiritual values. ...

Liturgy, Education, and Inspiration for Family, School, and College In The Way of Beauty, David Clayton describes how a true Catholic education is both a program of liturgical catechesis and an inculturation that aims for the supernatural transformation of the person so that he can in turn transfigure the whole culture through the divine beauty of his daily action. There is no human activity, no matter how mundane, that cannot be enhanced by this formation in beauty. Such enhanced activity th...