Books Published by Ignatius Press

"Hugh O'Flaherty: The Irish Priest Who Resisted the Nazis" by Fiorella De Maria tells the courageous story of Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, an Irish priest working in the Vatican during the Nazi occupation of Italy in 1943. Known for his heroic efforts to save lives during World War II, O'Flaherty's story was popularized by the movie, The Scarlet and the Black. This Vision Book highlights his bravery and moral conviction in the face of grave danger, making it a compelling read for young readers ...

"The Sexual Revolution: History, Ideology, Power" by Peter J Elliott explores the profound shifts in sexual ethics over the past two centuries, examining the ideological underpinnings of these changes and their impact on society. Drawing from his extensive experience, Bishop Elliott provides a comprehensive history of the sexual revolution, from Enlightenment thought through Marxist movements to contemporary debates. Highlighting the Catholic Church's steadfast position amidst changing societ...

Removable and Suitable for Framing. "The Catholic Home Art Gallery" curated by John Herreid and featuring a foreword by Emily Stimpson Chapman, presents 18 removable works of art by contemporary Catholic artists, bridging the rich tradition of sacred art with modern expressions of faith. This collection serves as a testament to the ongoing act of worship and evangelization through art, offering a unique opportunity to integrate Catholic culture and beauty into the home. Each piece, suitable f...

"The Gaze of Jesus" by Riccardo Bacchelli, translated by Anthony Esolen, explores the life of the Gerasene demoniac after his miraculous healing by Jesus. Rejected from following Jesus closely, he struggles with his newfound freedom and seeks understanding of who Jesus truly is. Through encounters with figures like Herod, Herodias, and Judas, and amidst the complexities of first-century Jewish society, he embarks on a psychological, historical, and theological journey towards faith. This nove...

"Heart of the Christian Life: Thoughts on the Holy Mass" by Pope Benedict XVI gathers his profound reflections on the Eucharist's central role in Catholic faith. This collection, derived from addresses and homilies, emphasizes the Eucharist as the source of the Church’s life, unity, and fruitfulness. Pope Benedict XVI shares insights on the Eucharist’s power to draw believers into God's life and the communal body of Christ, urging the faithful to recognize the transformative potential of rece...

"Twelve Great Books: Going Deeper Into Classic Literature" by Joseph Pearce invites readers on an enlightening journey through twelve pivotal works that have shaped Christian civilization and the landscape of world literature. Pearce, an acclaimed literary critic, explores the profound truths rooted within these classics, offering insights into their historical, biographical, and spiritual contexts. From the tragic depths of "Othello" to the redemptive beauty of "A Christmas Carol," Pearce ac...

"The Moral Wisdom of the Catholic Church: A Defense of Her Controversial Moral Teachings Volume 3" by Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D., offers a robust defense of the Catholic Church's teachings on moral issues. As part of the trilogy "Called Out of Darkness: Contending with Evil Through the Church, Virtue, and Prayer," this volume tackles the foundations of the Church's moral teachings, engaging both theological and philosophical perspectives. Spitzer enriches his defense with empirical evidence ...

"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...

The highly regarded French philosopher, Etienne Gilson, brilliantly plumbs the depths of Thomistic Realism, and false Thomisms as well, in this answer to Kantian modernism. The important work, exquisitely translated by Mark Wauck, brings the essential elements of philosophy into view as a cohesive, readily understandable, and erudite structure, and does so rigorously in the best tradition of St. Thomas. Written as the definitive answer to those philosophers who sought to reconcile critical ph...

The Guide to Thomas Aquinas, by Josef Pieper, is an incredibly detailed look into the life and works of one of the most acclaimed philosophers in history – St. Thomas Aquinas. Pieper mixes his genius with faith to comprehensively explore the 13th-century world of Thomas Aquinas and his famous synthesis of Christian spirituality balanced against objective knowledge and Aristotelian theory. Striking a perfect balance between the religious and the secular, this book from one of the great twentie...

How Catholic Priests Helped Build--And Can Help Rebuild--Western Civilization  With stubborn facts historians have given their verdict: from the cultures of the Jews, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and Germanic peoples, the Catholic Church built a new and original civilization, embodying within its structures the Christian vision of God and man, time and eternity. The construction and maintenance of Western civilization, amid attrition and cultural earthquakes, is a saga spread over sixteen hundred y...

Contemplative Provocations, by Father Donald Haggerty, is a must-have resource for any spiritual seeker looking to deepen their faith and devotion. This book will take you on a journey towards a deeper encounter with God, exploring the sometimes difficult obstacles that come with seeking Him out. Utilizing rich examples and insights from men and women of the past, this work encourages the reader to stay focused on the ultimate adventure: discovering the living God beyond our human knowledge.C...

"Women Mystics" by Louis Bouyer explores the lives and contributions of five women mystics who have significantly influenced Christianity. Through the stories of Hadewijch of Antwerp, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Elizabeth of the Trinity, and Edith Stein, Bouyer illustrates the unique and creative spiritual missions of these women, emphasizing their role in shaping and steering Christianity. Highlighting the continuity and individuality of their experiences, Bouyer presents these myst...

After twenty-five years of leading pilgrim groups to Catholic shrines across Europe, tour guide K. Troy has seen it all--long lines, strikes, broken-down buses, rebellious tourists, and countless experiences of God's immense providence. Crafted with wit and charm, this book gives a first-hand account of Christ's hand at work in all the beautiful messiness of pilgrimage. The stories unfold in some of the most evocative Catholic settings: Vatican City, the Holy House of Nazareth in Loreto, and ...

After a terrible misjudgment in the delivery room, Dr. John Bruchalski realized that with every pregnant woman he attends, there are two patients: the mother and her unborn child. In addition to this discovery, two remarkable spiritual experiences deepened his understanding of the kind of man he had become and the one he was called to be. Two Patients is the story of how a physician who practiced abortion came to question the medical status quo and to pioneer an approach to reproductive medic...

This book takes us into the heart of the Soviet Union, where Alexander Krylov grew up as an underground Catholic in the 1970's and 1980's, never even entering a church until he was a teenager. How does faith in God live on when God is outlawed? 'How I Became a Man' shows us, offering glimpses at the everyday reality of Communism through the eyes of a child, with humor, irony, and a keen sense of human goodness. 

Maximilian Kolbe's decision to take the place of a condemned man in the Auschwitz concentration camp is one of the greatest stories of heroism to emerge from the Holocaust. This book brings to life for a younger audience the incredible story of a Polish weaver's son who grew up to be a priest, a missionary, and a martyr.Kolbe lived amid the political unrest, the social change, and the spiritual battles that shaped the modern world. In the thick of it all, he had one goal--to share the love of...

What does the Catholic Church teach about racism? What should Catholics think about Critical Race Theory, which is currently being widely promoted in the name of antiracismAll One in Christ lucidly explains the Church's clear and consistent condemnation of racism, showing that the condemnation is not a recent development but deeply rooted in centuries of papal teaching and Scholastic theology.This book also demonstrates that Critical Race Theory, far from being a remedy for racism, is, in fac...

The question of gender--who we are as men and women--has never been more pressing, or more misunderstood.Weaving personal experience with expert knowledge, Dr. Abigail Favale provides an in-depth yet accessible account of the gender paradigm: a framework for understanding reality and identity that has recently risen to prominence. Favale traces the genealogy of gender to its origins in feminism and postmodern thought, describing how gender has come to eclipse sex, and how that shift is reshap...

For over two decades, Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, has been blasted in the public square as "Hitler's Pope", accused by bestselling authors of cowardice in the face of the Nazi regime. Some have even said that the pope was complicit in Hitler's grab for power, privately fueled by a hatred for the Jewish people. And if they are right, who would not join in condemning a leader like this, especially one who claims to represent all Christians?But what if this image of Pius XII is completely ba...

Father Gabriel spends a few days of relaxation at his old Cambridge College, the guest of friend Arthur Kingsley from his student days. Kingsley is now a respected scientist and a Fellow of St Stephen's College, but after an enjoyable evening dining at High Table, Gabriel receives the shattering news that Daphne Silverton, Kingsley's brilliant young protégée, has been found dead in her laboratory after what appears to have been a tragic accident. Daphne was universally loved, but Gabriel's in...

One day, philosopher Peter Kreeft reads an open letter published by a friend, Nat Whilk. He's Catholic, but he sees the Church as unsteady, outdated, obsessive. As a challenge to the "True Believers", Nat pens a twenty-point manifesto for "cafeteria Catholics", who pass up certain Church teachings and scoop up others like a diner in a buffet line."I find in [Catholicism] both much to accept and even love and also much to refuse and even despise", he asserts. "If you insist on tying God to the...

One morning, attorney Dan Geary, seventy-seven years old, finds himself in the middle of a rolling, polychrome landscape. The greens are bold and bright. Birds sing in the distance. Tall grasses surge like a sea before the wind. He has never seen anything quite like it. But somehow--with the doctors and beeping monitors suddenly gone--he knows exactly where he is: the afterlife.What a relief not to be floating on a cloud, playing a harp. Instead, a hiking pack full of gear sits on his back, a...

When it comes to movies, people of faith often focus on negative assessments of the film industry and certain style elements that they find objectionable, such as violence, nudity, or harsh language. While these criticisms are important, they are not the whole story. A film's message and its method are not always the same thing.By discussing the cinematic techniques and the genre considerations filmmakers use to communicate their ideas, this book helps Catholics and other Christians to become...

The Catholic Church has been a part of English history since the arrival of Christian missionaries to Roman Britain in the first century after Christ. England was evangelized in these early centuries to such an extent that, by the time the Romans withdrew in the fifth century, the Celtic population was largely Catholic.Anglo-Saxon England, prior to the Norman Conquest, was a land of saints. From St. Bede, with his history of the early Church, to the holy king St. Edward the Confessor, Saxon E...

Saint John of the Cross is the Church's premier teacher on contemplative prayer. Catholic tradition even calls him the Mystical Doctor. The sixteenth-century Carmelite priest not only wrote four massive treatises on the spiritual life, along with some of the finest poetry in the Spanish language, but also worked alongside Teresa of Ávila in renewing the Carmelite order. Thérèse of Lisieux claimed she found no other spiritual reading that could satisfy her soul like John of the Cross.Yet the v...

"My Father, I put myself in your hands", wrote Charles de Foucauld in his journal. "Whatever you make of me, I thank you, I am ready for everything, I accept everything, I thank you for everything."When he was killed by bandits in 1916, the French aristocrat-turned-monk was virtually unknown. Over the course of a century, however, the radiance of Foucauld's hidden life has spread more and more, and the Church now recognizes him as a saint.His youth and early adulthood read like a novel--the l...

This book presents the chief insights concerning the mystery of atonement in the works of four theological guides: John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Norbert Hoffmann.The author argues for the central importance and perennial value of a theology of atonement, even as she explains the modern aversion to it. The book's central aim is to deepen our understanding of the biblical claim that God shows himself to be love precisely by sending his Son as atonement...

"The disintegration of rational society started in the drift from the hearth and the family", wrote G. K. Chesterton in 1933. "The solution must be a drift back."In a world that has lost touch with normality, it takes a pioneer to rediscover the wonders of the normal. This masterful compilation of texts and quotes from the prolific G. K. Chesterton, edited by Dale Ahlquist, illustrates the glory of the family--the heritage of romance, love, marriage, parenthood, and home. It is a hymn in prai...

In 2019, Peter Kreeft published Socrates'' Children, a four-volume series on the hundred greatest philosophers of all time, spanning from ancient Greece to contemporary Germany. But he made a terrible mistake: he somehow left out women, and with this, he overlooked the greatest mind of them all.He forgot her--a mysterious housewife from a desert village--because he had forgotten what "philosophy" means. "Philosophy is not the cultivation of cleverness," Kreeft explains, "or the sophistication...

Italian Carmelite Antonio Maria Sicari''s vibrant biographies of saints--from Augustine to Catherine of Siena to Faustina Kowalska--have been read across Europe for decades. In How Saints Die, Sicari turns to the most difficult challenge in the life of a Christian: the hour of death.What he uncovers in this darkest moment, however, is not desolation, but inexplicable joy. I have recounted the death of many saints, he writes, but all of them have confirmed for me the truth of this ancient Chri...

With the luminous insight that we have come to expect from his writings, Robert Cardinal Sarah helps spouses rediscover the deep source of their love--God Himself--and the means for letting love between them grow.This book presents the essentials of a retreat that the cardinal preached to married couples in Lourdes, France. It is meant for all couples, including those who are struggling. There is a path to renewal for everyone, and couples in every situation can find again the preciousness of...

This colorful memoir offers a rare, up-close glimpse of the life and personality of St. Pio of Pietrelcina, the beloved Italian monk who was blessed with extraordinary gifts.The late Fr. Amorth--well-known as an exorcist --enjoyed over two decades of a close friendship with the holy, quirky Padre Pio, whom he considered his spiritual father. Adding his own personal experience to a foundation of biographical research, Amorth gives an entertaining and illuminating account of perhaps one of the ...

Hollywood, 1956. Journalist and war widow Evangeline Kilhooley is assigned to write a star profile of the fading actor Bela Lugosi, made famous by his role as Count Dracula. During a series of interviews, Lugosi draws Evi into his curious Eastern European background, gradually revealing the link between Old World shadows and the twilight realm of modern horror films. Along the way, Evi meets another English expatriate, Hugo Radelle, a movie buff who offers to help with her research. As their ...

Dr. Owen Whitfield is the elderly Oxford professor of history who first appeared in Michael O'Brien's novel The Father's Tale. In the events of The Sabbatical, which occur sometime later, Dr. Whitfield is looking forward to a sabbatical year of peace and quiet, gardening in his backyard, and tinkering with what he calls his latest unpublishable book. As the year begins, he is drawn by a series of seeming coincidences into involvement with a group of characters from across Europe, including a ...

Thérèse of Lisieux is one of the most popular modern saints in the world, but the details of her life and spirituality are still not widely known and are somewhat of a mystery even to her devoted followers.With over 150 stunning photographs, in-depth text, and plentiful sidebars on history, geography, and themes, this gorgeous work helps us enter into the universe of the greatest saint of modern times to discover the simplicity, yet depth of her daily life and of her relationships, both human...

This volume in the popular Ignatius Catholic Study Bible series leads readers through a penetrating study of Deuteronomy using the text itself and the Church's own guidelines for understanding the Bible.Ample notes accompany each page, providing fresh insights by renowned Scripture scholars Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch as well as time-tested interpretations from the Fathers of the Church. These helpful study notes provide rich historical, cultural, geographical, and theological information per...

The Catholic deposit of faith and tradition is wide and deep! There are so many different devotions and ways to pray that it's impossible for anyone to ever use them all, let alone in a busy family. Fortunately, the liturgical calendar is here to help!In this companion to her bestselling book about liturgical living traditions in the home, The Catholic All Year Compendium, Kendra Tierney lays out hundreds of prayers, devotions, practices, blessings, indulgences, novenas, hymns, Bible readings...

The fruit of much pastoral experience, this book addresses both perennial and current challenges facing Catholics, giving reasons for hope and joy. Touching on a wide range of topics, from prayer to evangelization, it offers insights into living the Catholic faith with humility and heroism as it focuses on the person of Jesus Christ--his identity, mission, and presence in our lives. Having been a pastor of souls in a variety of settings--the suburbs, the inner city, the mission field, and the...

Peter Kreeft presents a series of brilliant essays about many of the problems that undermine our Western civilization, along with ways to address them. "These essays are not new proposals or solutions to today's problems," he says. "They are old. They have been tried, and have worked. They have made people happy and good. That is what makes them so radical and so unusual today."In his witty, readable style, Kreeft implores us to gather wisdom and preserve it, as the monks did in the Middle Ag...

Cur Deus Verba unfolds a systematic theology of Scripture from a single key question: What did God seek to accomplish by making the Bible? The answer requires seeing why the Holy Trinity made anything at all, why the Word became flesh, and finally why the Church needs an inspired text. As Christ is more fully man than any mere man, so his Church is more fully society than any merely human society. And as every society has its literary tradition, so the Church needed a canon of literature that...

Before Austen Comes Aesop presents an in-depth examination of the Children's Great Books, that is, the literature that has made the most profound impact on the lives of children throughout Western history. In addition to its invaluable chronological list of titles, from ancient times to the present, the book provides both students and their parents the guidance they need to read leisurely or study formally the Children's Great Books at home. The book's premise is that children often do not sp...

All of us need to return to Nazareth.-- Pope Benedict XVI, from his visit to Nazareth, 2009After the best-selling archaeological biography Mary of Nazareth, Michael Hesemann sets out once again for the Holy Land, this time seeking traces of perhaps the most mysterious figure in human history: Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians believe to be the Son of God, the Messiah.In this unique book, Hesemann walks the streets of Israel in order to put historical, archaeological, geographical, and script...

In this second volume of the Called Out of Darkness trilogy, Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., draws together some of the best advice given by Catholic spiritual masters across the ages and brings it into harmony with modern scientific research, offering practical ways to live out the gospel in our busy days. It is a roadmap to a deeper relationship with the Lord and to authentic transformation through the imitation of Christ.Giving evidence that Jesus established just one Church, with Peter as it...

We all want true friends. But how many of us really know what friendship is, or where to find it? In these pages, philosopher John Cuddeback weaves together the timeless wisdom of Scripture, of the ancient Greeks, and the saints to map out the steep and beautiful path to man's greatest joy--true friendship.Following Aristotle's teachings on the unbreakable connection between happiness and virtuous living, Cuddeback sees friendship at the very center of the human drama. Although there are diff...

Spiritual writer, theologian, and philosopher Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D., tackles the topic of recognizing and overcoming spiritual evil. His focus is the human heart. His goal: our spiritual and moral transformation, which leads to true peace and genuine happiness.The book is divided into two main parts: (1) the realities of God's goodness and of spiritual evil, and (2) recognizing and overcoming the diabolical tactics of deception, temptation, and sin. The author synthesizes the best a...

The Politics of Heaven and Hell makes an invaluable contribution to the understanding of classical, medieval, and modern political philosophy, while explaining the profound problem with modernity.Christianity freed men from the overwhelming burden of ever thinking that their salvation will ultimately come from the political order, writes Fr. James Schall, S.J. Modernity, on the other hand, is a perversion of Christianity, which tries to achieve man's salvation in this world. It does this by p...

Assaults on the dignity and rights of the human person have been central to the ongoing crisis of the modern era in the last hundred years. This book takes a searching look at the roots of this problem and the various approaches to it by the eight men who led the Catholic Church in the twentieth century, from Pope St. Pius X and his crusade against Modernism to Pope St. John Paul II and his appeal for a renewed rapprochement between faith and reason.Thus it offers a distinctive, illuminating ...