Catholic Books

"'For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?'" Set in the English countryside at the turn of the 19th century, Pride and Prejudice opens upon the excitement of the Bennet family of Longbourn Estate when a rich, eligible, and unsuspecting gentlemen has taken residence at nearby Netherfield. In the interest of financial security, little can deter Mrs. Bennet from doing all she can to encourage a marriage between amiable Mr. Bingley and one her five ...

A Novel Based on the Life of St. Augustine of Hippo "You say, the times are troublesome, the times are burdensome, the times are miserable. Live rightly and you will change the times. The times have never hurt anyone. Those who are hurt are human beings; those by whom they are hurt are also human beings. So, change human beings and the times will be changed." -St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 311, 8 Growing up on the northernmost edge of the African continent, young Augustine had never known a ...

A Novel Based on the Life of Luca Pacioli An orphan from a small town in Italy, Pacioli came of age during the Renaissance seemingly destined for a life of struggle and obscurity. But Pacioli had the good fortune of meeting mentors who recognized his uncanny ability with numbers and introduced him to renowned artists and philosophers, royalty, and popes. At a time when many still used Roman numerals and colleges didn't even teach mathematics, Pacioli was determined to share his passion and ma...

A Novel Based on the Life of St. Francis of Assisi His neighbors thought he was spoiled and lazy. His teachers found him incorrigible. His own father believed he was crazy. His mother never doubted that he was a true son of God. Arrogant and grandiose, young Francis di Bernardone was an embarrassment to his family and a source of amusement to his community. He led a lavish, undisciplined life, squandering his father's fortune on the finest food, wine, and late-night parties with his coterie o...

A Novel Inspired by the Life of Guido d'Arezzo It was too big a secret to keep and too great a price to pay. Though few details are known of 11th-century Benedictine monk Guido d'Arezzo, he is widely recognized for inventing the language of music. Music's Guiding Hand offers a fictional account as to how an unlikely friendship between two medieval monks might have inspired one of the most important and enduring innovations of the Western world. When a fellow monk continually struggles to lear...

A Novel Based on the Life of Thomas Aquinas Entering the world with a burning desire for knowledge, Thomas Aquinas set out on a quest for truth that forced him into captivity. But his thirst for truth never wavered. Known today among many as the most brilliant light of the church, Aquinas was a Catholic priest and a Doctor of the Church. His influence on Western thought as he attempted to synthesize Aristotelian philosophy with the principles of Christianity is considerable. Aquinas is distin...

A Novel Based on the Life of Father Eusebio Kino Through a great and terrible wilderness, with serpents, scorpions, and thirsty ground, he sowed peace and sustenance and left an enduring mark on the New World. A celebrated teacher of mathematics and astronomy, Eusebio Kino's future promised to be comfortable and secure. Jesuit elders urged the young priest to continue his ministry in education. But a greater voice called, and Father Kino answered by pursuing a lifetime of danger and uncertain...

A Novel Based on the Life of Father Matteo Ricci The Forbidden City--home to the opium-addicted Ming Dynasty emperor and protected by thousands of ruthless eunuchs--no European had ever been inside. Would a simple Jesuit priest be the first? Armed with a homemade clock, a wealth of patience, and an uncompromising drive to share his faith with a new people, Father Matteo Ricci would overcome one barrier only to be met by another: treacherous seas, a complex language, and a culture with an unsh...

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 ...

This book tells the story of a girl from a small convent in Normandy, who lived a life of complete seclusion, known only by a few close friends, and yet today is a canonized saint known throughout the world. Her convent in Lisieux is visited by pilgrims from around the globe, churches in nearly every country are dedicated to her, and her simple spirituality has resonated with people from all walks of life. This is the story of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Yet, as with any person of such fame, it...

The life of St. John Vianney, also known as the Curé d'Ars (priest of Ars), is marked by boundless humility and obedience to God. When this simple French priest was assigned in 1818 to the parish of Ars, a town of just 250 people, few would have guessed that it would lead to his international recognition. Disturbed by the religious ignorance and indifference brought about by the French Revolution and openly displayed by his congregation, John Vianney began work in his parish that quickly flow...

First published in 1962, The Metaphysics of Love is both a concise study of Thomas Aquinas's existential metaphysics and a demonstration of the enduring influence of Thomism on Western thought. Penned by distinguished Thomist scholar Frederick Wilhelmsen, this book explores the ontology of the human person, placing it in dialogue with philosophers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas to Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. Wilhelmsen ultimately narrows his discussion to an examination of human l...

Poems by David Craig "This is a book of joy, an Easter of jubilation. Holiness infuses these poems: holy flights of imagination, holy laughter, holy living in the everyday, and holy resurrection hope. Even the punishing season of winter is 'a glass of chilled champagne.' And angels everywhere-materializing to sing a Bach mass in the middle of the night on an empty street, or maybe dropping in for a summer swim. The energy, the down-to-earth reverence-is all of a piece, creating an abundance o...

Identity means being the same and being different. It is a one-word oxymoron. How on earth can the concept make sense? This brilliant exposition of the question goes-by way of literature, philosophy, and psychology-to show that it can only be answered metaphysically. Identity is the mystery at the heart of creation, and, ultimately, the mystery of its Creator. Personal anxieties about who we are and political tensions about who others are melt before the radiance of God's truth. In that truth...

The Ancient Art of Memory Meets the Timeless Art of Living Memorize the Stoics! The Ancient Art of Memory Meets the Timeless Art of Living. The title says it all! Extolling the powers of God-given human reason, Stoic philosophers such as Roman knight Musonius Rufus and his student, the former slave, Epictetus, developed powerful practical lessons for living tranquil, virtuous, loving lives. These lessons were praised by such early Church Fathers as Justin Martyr and Origen. Epictetus's Handbo...

A Primer on Ascetical Theology Do you want to dive deeper in your relationship with Jesus Christ? Are you looking for the deep springs of our spiritual nature? Do you suspect that you're missing the fuller picture of our supernatural life? If so, Glory Unto Glory: A Primer on Ascetical Theology was written for you. Most such books today limit themselves to the practice of prayer or a broad introduction to the spiritual life. Some address moral truth. But few, if any, situate all these aspects...

Navigating the Spiritual Life with Blessed Columba Marmion In the early twentieth century, Blessed Columba Marmion's dogmatically-grounded spiritual theology, expressed in artful prose, set the Catholic world on fire. A century later, in The Grace of "Nothingness," Fr Cassian Koenemann seeks to rekindle that fire for a new generation with his inspired presentation of Marmion's key spiritual insights. To this task he brings a monk's sensitivity to friendship with God, a schoolteacher's focus o...

The Theology of the Christmas Mystery In Cradle of Redeeming Love, John Saward returns to the mystery of Christ's incarnation and birth. Drawing upon both the rich traditions of the Church and the writings of the great Christian mystics, he fashions a work both new and old, revolutionary and orthodox. This profoundly moving meditation on the meaning of the Incarnation will enrich any contemplation on the life of Christ. The subject of this book is the "Christmas" dogma: the divinely revealed ...

An Introduction to Thomistic Epistemology First published in 1956, Frederick Wilhelmsen's Man's Knowledge of Reality remains a classic study in Thomistic epistemology. Wilhelmsen begins with an examination of what he refers to as Descartes' "critical problem"; namely, the supposed inability of philosophy to procure what Descartes calls "certain knowledge." Using Descartes' argument as a starting point, he then launches into a comprehensive examination of Thomistic Metaphysical Realism, focusi...

Advent Poems Each Advent season is new. Those most recent have been tumultuous: COVID, bitterly cold snows, visionaries speaking frankly of a coming apocalypse. But other things as well: our own issues, the creeping age factor, the death of loved ones. Advent, like a creaking old metal gate, corrects us every time. It lets us know that only one thing matters: the stable, that little crib where cows chewed hay. Children, and childlike adults, still find all the consolation they need there. We ...

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...

Edith Stein was a figure most singular and rare. Even within the purview of the illustrious history of the Church's saints, few can lay claim to so powerful a marriage of faith and intellect. Born into a devout Jewish family in 1891, her intellectual abilities did not long go unnoticed and in 1913 she moved to Göttingen in Germany to study philosophy under Edmund Husserl. There, as destiny would have it, she encountered a work on the life of Saint Teresa of Ávila, which lead her to a profound...

Few religious figures have enjoyed such notoriety as John Henry Newman. His conversion from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church, chronicled in his extensive writing, has been the source of endless debate and discussion. The difficulty confronting the modern reader when faced with such a controversial figure is the task of accurately deciphering his precise thoughts and ideas. In A Newman Synthesis, Erich Przywara has done us exactly this service. In these pages the reader will find an extensiv...

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...

Originally published in 1925, Alfred North Whitehead's Science and the Modern World was a groundbreaking work that redefined the concept of modern science. It is a work not only of the first importance but also of great beauty in which the author dramatically describes what had long engaged his meditations; namely, the rise, triumph, and impact of "scientific materialism," according to which nature consists of nothing else but a flux of purely physical energy, while at the same time criticizi...

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. ...

MYTH. WISDOM. APOCALYPSE. Three words of ancient pedigree offering the seeker a promise: to unlock the door of understanding to the highest things-the divine things. Three keys, then, for a "Philosophy in Word and Name" that wants, simply, to comprehend whatever makes the meaning of our humanity take on its fullest scope and significance.

Beneath the Silent Heavens reimagines the story of the Flood and the Ark, with epochs whirled together, populated with patriarchs and hipsters, artists, intellectuals, peasants, high rhetoric and hearthside banter, words of passion and skepticism, and animals who still have the way of speech-all against the backdrop of Noe's struggles.

Chivalry, Christendom, and Catholic Culture Portraits of Spiritual Nobility is a timeless collection of stories, homages and reflections written by world-renowned theologian Tracey Rowland. In this stimulating volume, Rowland illuminates the mysteries and morals espoused by Catholicism and how they are applied in daily life to promote spiritual nobility and charity. From Pope John Paul II to Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Portraits of Spiritual Nobility takes the reader on an incredible journey th...

500 Years of Protestantism and Its Consequences for Church, State, and Society With essays from John Rao, Chris Ferrara, Brian McCall, and eight others, Luther and His Progeny is a signal contribution toward understanding the full import of the Protestant revolt, and the best guide available for Catholics to the meaning of Luther's decisive break.

The Hidden Laws of World History In The Order of the Ages, Robert Bolton explains the principles that relate the modern world to earlier ages, and the position of our own era in a universal time-cycle, revealing the essential nature of time. He shows that time imposes patterns of its own on the order of events, which reveal themselves by numerical regularities. By means of a Platonic view of creation--which connects temporal with non-temporal realities--we come to see how man's inner life hol...

The Little Way to Jesus The prayer of the heart is one of the dearest treasures of Christianity. It transforms any prayer by the fire of God's love, allowing for an immersion in Christ whereby He is able to communicate to us the Holy Spirit. In his new book Praying with the Heart: The Little Way to Jesus, Jean Khoury entrusts to us the secret of the sustainable and successful way of practicing prayer of the heart. While remaining rooted in the living Tradition, the book offers new and abundan...

From Medieval miniatures to Renaissance paintings to modern Christmas cards, few Western images are as evocative and enigmatic as the Three Wise Men at the Nativity. After twenty years of research and travel by the author, this new novel explores why and how these mysterious figures braved such dangers and survived such fearsome challenges that they have endured in our minds and culture for two thousand years. The Test of the Magi reveals the timeless emotional bond between student and teache...

The Prayer Life of Jesus and How to Make It Our Own "Lord, teach us to pray"--the petition of the most intimate followers of Jesus--remains the heartfelt petition of every Christian disciple down to the present day. The divine gift of the Our Father is the foundation of our life of prayer, but it is only the beginning of how Jesus leads us through himself to the Father: then as now, he teaches the Church to pray, and he does the same for us in our individual prayer lives. Shane Kapler's Throu...

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...

Newman on Evangelizing the Nones In post-modern society the "nones" have become our new poor. The West still commands vast markets and militaries but our culture has long been living off of borrowed moral capital with no foreseeable schedule of repayment. In Thinking as Though God Exists, Catholic philosopher Ryan Topping draws upon St. John Henry Newman's voluminous insights to present a far-ranging cultural strategy for the New Evangelization. The conversion of secular culture requires many...

How to Spread the Faith Like Jesus Did In The Old Evangelization, Sammons goes back to the source, taking a look at what Jesus did (and didn't do) when he preached the Good News and drawing out the lessons he taught us. All evangelization begins with a personal "encounter." And so Sammons examines Jesus' most instructive Gospel encounters - with the Samaritan woman at the well, for instance, or with the rich young man- and discovers within each a particular truth that, even 2,000 years later,...

How Medical Science Proves Evolution by Natural Selection is a Failed Theory Most people intuitively understand that Darwin's theory of evolution-natural selection acting upon random mutations is a wholly inadequate theory for the creation of a human being. And most people feel unprepared to debate those scientists, professors, and scholars who use their academic authority to defend Darwinism, often bullying and belittling those of us who dare doubt Darwin. Now, Bredemeier identifies and succ...

Thinking on death is the most profitable meditation we can make.Indeed, Our Lord's most holy passion and death offers us the greatest meditation, but pondering our own imminent death can bring us great fruit as it prepares us for the most important thing we will do: enter into eternity."Remember man that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."By meditating on their deaths, many have renounced this fleeting world for the monastery and cloister. By meditating on their deaths, many have con...

The seven sacraments are the principal channels of God's grace to His Mystical Body, the Church. Among these is one that washes us of sin and restores us to friendship with God. All this is accomplished by this one sacrament, this excellent channel of God's grace: Confession. Here is the single volume you need to guide you through making a good Confession and fruitful reparation thereafter. You'll learn the numerous monumental advantages that frequent Confession brings to your soul as well as...

For the Salvation of the DyingThe Pious Union of St. Joseph was founded many years ago for the purpose of effectually helping the Dying to obtain through the intercession of St. Joseph, the Patron of the Dying, the grace of a Happy Death. This Pious Union already existed some years when Pope St. Pius X, by an Apostolic Letter, dated February 12, 1914, raised a similar Association, erected in the newly built church of St. Joseph in Rome, to the dignity of an Arch-Confraternity with the faculty...

St. Thomas More, by E.E. Reynolds, is a complete life of the saint based on primary source accounts, state papers and contemporary registers. Reynolds leaves no written source uncovered in drawing together for us the man who became one of the most famous men not only in England, but even in Europe, who gave his life for the rights of the Church over the tyranny of the state. Reynolds traces More's life and environs, as well as More's writings and poetry, to bring out the man and the hour in w...

Ignatian Wisdom for Husbands and Wives To navigate the inevitable ups and downs of our spiritual lives, countless souls have found comfort and guidance in St. Ignatius of Loyola's Rules for Discernment. For the past forty years, popular retreat master and author Fr. Timothy Gallagher has been at the forefront of making St. Ignatius's Rules understandable and applicable to hundreds of thousands of Catholics seeking greater sensitivity to the "movements" of their souls. Now Fr. Gallagher return...

Who is the Queen of Fire? Prince James, Prince Zachary, and Princess Georgiana find themselves asking that question after they are captured by a mysterious woman claiming that title. But they have a mission that cannot be delayed--is there any chance their captor could be persuaded to help them?

The Breviary of Fire is a powerful tome of wisdom. It chronicles the deep friendship between two devoted women—the mystic Mectilde and grand lady Marie. Through an extensive exchange of letters, which took place over twelve years, they explored the multifaceted intricacies of mysticism and psychology in depth. This fascinating record was eventually compiled by Marie de Châteauvieux into a single volume now known as The Breviary of Fire.This classic book is set apart by its ability to deliver ...

Discover the life of Benedict of Nursia in a unique and insightful way with Saint Benedict and His Times, written by Ildefonso Schuster, one of the outstanding ecclesiastical scholars of the twentieth century. Piece together the puzzle of one of the most important figures in Church history with this comprehensive look at the times he lived. A millennium and a half have passed since Benedict penned his great Rule that has guided countless God-seeking souls ever since. Dig deep into history, ju...

St. John Vianney, the Cure d'Ars, though he was not thought competent to preach or hear confessions, became one of the greatest preachers and confessors of his age.The 19th century was one of optimism for French Catholicism, but, following the horrors of the French Revolution, there was also a feeling of lukewarmness and an approach to the moral life that felt sin could not be all that bad.St. John Vianney, on the other hand, would not suffer to see souls be damned for lukewarmness. His preac...