Current Issues - Catholic Books

Current Issues

Battle for the American Church
(Revisited)

by Msgr. George Kelly

Fifteen years after his eye-opening book, The Battle for the American Church revealed what Monsignor Kelly called a "guerrilla-type warfare going on inside the American Church", he now revisits that battle within the Catholic Church and the struggle to change its mission, its nature and its Gospel.

154 pp, Sewn Softcover, $12.95, BACR-P (ISBN 0-89870-5320)
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Beyond Modernity
Reflections of a Post-Modern Catholic

George William Rutler

Any attempt to deify progress and look at modernity as a goal in itself is vain and empty. The various essays in this book examine this theme. Rutler provides a theological and sociological commentary on the bankruptcy of progressivism.

250 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, BM-P (ISBN 0-89870-135X)
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The Catholic Church at the End of an Age
What is the Spirit Saying?

Ralph Martin

Ten years after his best-selling book, A Crisis of Truth, Ralph Martin has again taken a look at the situation of the Catholic Church throughout the world from a quite different angle, and has offered a persuasive analysis of the spiritual factors at the heart of both the Church's difficulties and the hoped for renewal. In what reviewers have called an "awesome" marshaling of vital information about the Church's condition around the world, Martin puts us in touch with information that most of us have no access to, but is vital for understanding "what the Spirit is saying to the Church today."

This book doesn't just leave us with an impressive and startling look at the Church's actual situation. It shows us how we can respond to what we see in a way that can bring great blessings to all. This book is an amazingly rich source of documentation of what actually is happening in the Church around the world as well as an inspiring presentation of the great power of faith, hope and love to "conquer the world."

While focused on the situation of the Catholic Church, much of what the book deals with is relevant to Christians in other churches as well. A ``must read'' if we are to be ready for what awaits us at the end of one age and the beginning of another.

"Martin has gathered an awesome amount of evidence in support of his thesis, which I find both convincing and important. This book serves both to shatter our complacency and to rekindle our hope that in the midst of the current spiritual crisis God is indeed renewing his Church through the Gospel and preparing a new springtime." -- Fr. Avery Dulles, S.J., Professor of Theology, Fordham University

"I have been deeply enlightened and often convicted of sin myself by reading Ralph Martin's book. I hope many Catholics, including church leaders, will benefit as I have from reading these pages. No matter what one's stand on the issues facing the Church today, this book will be helpful to all." -- Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. Cap., Preacher to the Papal Household

"Ralph Martin has given us a timely, challenging, and provocative analysis of Catholic life. While the statistical and analytical evidence of the Catholic crisis is overwhelming, it is the penetrating power of the answer or solution that dominates the book and equips the reader with hope. An impressive and prophetic work. I heartily endorse it."

-- Fr. Michael Scanlan, T.O.R., President, Franciscan University of Steubenville 309 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, CCEA-P (ISBN 0-89870-524X)
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The Church and the Culture War
Secular Anarchy or Sacred Order

Joyce Little, Ph.D.

Theologian Joyce Little examines the conflict between American secular culture and the Catholic faith, helping Catholics to understand why such a conflict exists and what is at stake for both Catholics and all Americans. The book looks at the feminist movement because feminism exemplifies in so many ways that relativism and individualism which characterizes the thinking of so many Americans today. Little argues that the secularism of our times is fundamentally anarchic and nihilistic and, as such, constitutes a frontal assault on the Catholic faith.

215 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, CCW-P (ISBN 0-89870-5479)
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A Crisis of Saints

Fr. George Rutler

As we approach the end of the second Christian millennium, Fr. George Rutler takes a penetrating look at the moral and spiritual condition of late twentieth-century society and the Church. He analyzes how moral weakness has been the bane of this era, and he shows that what we most need to counteract this are saints who practice heroic virtue in their daily lives.

204 pp, Sewn Softcover, $12.95, CS-P (ISBN 0-89870-5568)
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Degenerate Moderns
Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior

E. Michael Jones

In this groundbreaking new book, Jones shows how some of the major determining leaders in modern thought and culture have rationalized their own immoral behavior and projected it onto a universal canvas. The main thesis of this book is that, in the intellectual life, there are only two ultimate alternatives: either the thinker conforms desire to truth or he conforms truth to desire.

In the last one hundred years, the western cultural elite embarked upon a project which entailed the reversal of the values of the intellectual life so that truth would be subjected to desire as the final criterion of intellectual value. In looking at recent biographies of such major moderns as Freud, Kinsey, Keynes, Margaret Mead, Picasso, and others, there is a remarkable similarity between their lives and thought. After becoming involved in sexual license early on, they invariably chose an ideology or art form which subordinated reality to the exigencies of their sexual misbehavior.

"Degenerate Moderns is a marvelous tour de force. Jones provides the reader not only with an overview of the sources of modern culture but also with a way of understanding what otherwise might seem simply surprising--at the root of many of the most influential books and theories lies the sexual problems of their authors. Sophisticated, informative and learned as this book is, it can be read as a high level corroboration of what your mother always told you. Jones is one of the most readable writers I know." -- Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame "A fascinating blend of biography, intellectual history, and investigative reporting. This book takes up where Paul Johnson's Intellectuals leaves off. It should be required reading for anyone who wishes to understand the intellectual fashions of the Twentieth century."

-- William K. Kilpatrick, Author, Psychological Seduction

280 pp, Sewn Softcover, $19.75, DEM-P (ISBN 0-89870-4472)
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Dionysos Rising

E. Michael Jones

Following up his best-seller, Degenerate Moderns, Jones reveals how major figures connected with modern music projected their own immorality into the field of music which has been the main vehicle of cultural revolution in the West. For the first time ever, a unified theory of music and cultural revolution links the work of figures like Wagner, Nietzsche, Schönborg, Jagger and others to show the connection between the demise of classical music and the rise of rock 'n' roll. Beginning with Nietzsche's appropriation of Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde, music became the instrument for cultural upheaval. What began at the barricades of Dresden in 1849 found its culmination at Woodstock and Altamont and the other Dionysian festivals of 1969. Jones shows the connection between the death of classical music and the rise of the African sensibility which Nietzsche saw as the antidote to Wagner prostrating himself before the cross in Parsifal.

Nietzsche prophesied the end of the age of Christ/Socrates and the return of the spirit of music to philosophy. That return took place at the end of 1969 at an abandoned racetrack outside of San Francisco, and the world has never been the same. "And a man who has not `music' in him is apt to disintegrate states since music is equally suggestive of personal love or political concord." -- G. Wilson Knight, The Shakespearean Tempest

204 pp, Sewn Softcover, $18.95, DR-P (ISBN 0-89870-4847) Ordering Information

God or Goddess?
Feminist Theology: What is it? Where Does it Lead?

Manfred Hauke

Hauke, author of the definitive Women in the Priesthood?, provides a tour de force study of the history and basic characteristics of modern feminism. Hauke presents an objective, detailed study of the facts of feminist theology around the world, using their own words and writings. He looks at the distinctiveness of feminist theology, what its image of man is as a fundamental point of departure, its basis from the experience of women as ``formal principle'', its views of the image of God, Christ, Mary, the Church, liturgy, ecology and eschatology. After carefully describing what the feminist position is, Hauke gives a critique from the point of view of the Catholic tradition. "This work is not a kind of `encyclopedia' on feminist theology, but a representative survey of central themes to help one form a personal opinion. Addressed here are not just specialists in theology but all who desire to inform themselves about the powerful historical current that is feminist theology." --Manfred Hauke

343 pp, Sewn Softcover, $19.75, GOG-P (ISBN 0-89870-5592)
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To Hunt, To Shoot, To Entertain
Clericalism and the Catholic Laity

Russell Shaw

This important book probes the theological and historical roots of clericalism that has affected the Catholic laity, along with contemporary expressions of clericalism.

201 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, THTS-P (ISBN 0-89870-4553)
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Idylls and Rambles
Lighter Christian Essays

James V. Schall, S.J.

The English or French essay has been in many ways the most delightful of literary expressions. Moreover, the essay has been particularly adapted to Christianity, to its concreteness, to its awareness of the importance not just of ideas or thoughts, but of little things, particular moments wherein salvation and joy more especially take place. Idylls and Rambles takes its title from the two journals of Samuel Johnson, The Idler and The Rambler. Johnson was the most insightful and original of men. Too, this book takes its form, the number of its chapters, from Belloc who loved the essay and who wrote so charmingly and profoundly about everything he saw. These particular essays are moments Father Schall has seen, people he has known. They are often lightsome, yet they bear the sense that it is in joy that our most perplexing moments occur for joy, more than sadness perhaps, leads to the highest things in which we exist.

"Hurrah for Fr. Schall. He is keeping alive in our time one of the noblest, and most ancient, forms of literature, namely, the short essay. But if `noble' and `ancient' suggest solemn, think again. `He who has the faith has the fun,' said Chesterton. We readers are the beneficiaries of this maxim in Fr. Schall's essays. There is fun--and substance, and serious reflection, and all of it in good prose, and all of it suffused with the spirit of a robust Christian orthodoxy." -- Thomas Howard, Author, Chance or the Dance

"James Schall inherits the talents of the authors of The Idler and The Rambler and other eighteenth-century periodicals of that character. Like Samuel Johnson, he is moved by a profound religious conviction that suffuses his reflections." -- Russell Kirk

240 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, IR-P (ISBN 0-89870-4561) Ordering Information

Living Machines

by E. Michael Jones

Following up his best-selling books Degenerate Moderns and Dionysus Rising, E. Michael Jones completes the trilogy as he reveals in this book how modern architecture arose out of the disordered moral lives of its creators.

Beginning with the simultaneous collapse of both his marriage and the Austro-Hungarian empire, Walter Gropius formulated an architectural rhetoric that would speak to the needs of the newly emerging modern man. As a sexually liberated social monad, modern man would have no need for home or family, no need to be rooted in a particular time or place. He was to live henceforth in the "international style." Soon that deeply materialistic, sterile architectural vision would conquer the world.

From the suburbs of Moscow to the south side of Chicago, the new man would live in machines--living machines, to use Gropius' words. Living Machines is an explanation of where that vision came from, where it led, and why it ultimately failed. Illustrated.

202 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, LM-P (ISBN 0-89870-4642)
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John Paul II and the New Evangelization

Edited by Ralph Martin and Peter Williamson

Many experienced teachers, theologians and evangelizers spell out a vision and strategy for implementing at the local level the "new evangelization" called for by Pope John Paul II. Leaders like Ralph Martin, Avery Dulles, S.J., Fr. Tom Forrest, Chuck Colson, Susan Blum, and many others give sound, practical insights on evangelization for all who want to heed the Pope's call to proclaim the good news in preparation for the year 2000.

296 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, JPTNE-P (ISBN 0-89870-5363)
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The Politics of Prayer

Feminist Language and the Worship of God - Edited by Helen Hull Hitchcock

Feminism and related ideologies have exerted unparalleled influence on organized religion--and on nearly every other aspect of Western culture--for about three decades. Nowhere is evidence of this dominant influence more obvious than in worship of the liberal mainline denominations. The transformation of the language of worship began almost imperceptibly with relatively peripheral liturgical elements, such as prayers incorporating approved feminist language and concepts, and with "corrected" lyrics to existing hymns and words of prayers.Encountering no effective resistance to these achievements, the feminists' objective of radical destruction of ``oppressive, patriarchal'' religion has now accelerated into an all-out attack on the Scripture and on the core beliefs it incorporates which are common to both Christianity and Judaism--essential beliefs about the nature of God, of the nature of mankind's ``imaging'' of God, of the meaning of human sexuality and of the relationship of men and women with one another and with God. According to their view, the power of these teachings (the Judeo-Christian ``Myth'') must be destroyed--and not only destroyed, but replaced with a changeling Myth concocted to conform to their own politically charged notion of reality and presided over by a god (or goddess) of their own construction and which they claim the right to name. So far there has been sparse and ineffective resistance to the relentless undermining of the worship of God. The contributors to this timely and critically important volume include Catholic, Protestant and Jewish believers, men and women, scripture scholars, theologians, translators, linguists, poets, clergy and laity who have in common, in addition to a shared regard for and interest in the integrity of language--an unambiguous affirmation of their religious faith, and a clear-eyed and objective view of the nature of the Cosmic War in which we are all now engaged. These essays offer important insights into the function of language and objectives of translation, as well as penetrating analysis of the effect of ideologically motivated linguistic innovations on new Scripture translations and on the worship of God.

300 pages, Sewn Softcover, $16.95, POP-P (ISBN 0-89870-4189)
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The Ratzinger Report

An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori

Cardinal Ratzinger speaks candidly and forcefully about the state of the Church in the Post-Vatican II era.

205 pp, Sewn Softcover, $12.95 ... RR-P (ISBN 0-89870-0809) Ordering Information

The Reform of Renewal

Benedict J. Groeschel, C.F.R.

This clear and unequivocal call for personal reform as the basis of authentic renewal in society and in the Church is rooted in several sources. The work of an internationally recognized Biblical scholar (Rudolph Schnackenburg) is woven in with the observations of contemporary social critics as well as behavioral scientists. The author does not spare anyone's feelings in an attempt at a critical and objective analysis of the serious problems of the Catholic Church and "mainstream" religious denominations in America.

This book definitively places the onus for reform on the individual Christian striving to follow the Gospel in our materialistic and selfish culture. Because of its roots in Scripture and in the long history of reform in the Church, this book offers the reader a well-founded hope that the first signs of real renewal in the Church are beginning to appear. Includes index.

"Father Groeschel has written *the* book for the Church in the '90's. He is right on target! He has said clearly and prophetically what must be said before it is too late: namely, that all true Christian renewal must be rooted in personal, on-going conversion. I found reading the book as valuable as making a retreat." -- Father Richard Roach, S.J., Marquette University "By his frequent use of appealing concrete examples and comparisons, Groeschel shows conclusively that true, lasting renewal in the Church can only happen by continual repentance and reform in our individual lives." -- Father Kenneth Baker, Editor, Homiletic and Pastoral Review

232 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, ROR-P (ISBN 0-89870-2860)
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A Short Primer for Unsettled Laymen

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Von Balthasar addresses the critical issues facing today's Catholic layman in a clear and readable manner. Speaking plainly on those ideas and questions which have unsettled many of the Catholic faithful, he brings much needed clarity into the contemporary confusion.

137 pp, Sewn Softcover, $11.95, SP-P (ISBN 0-89870-037X)
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A Turning Point for Europe?

The Church in the Modern World--Assessment and Forecast - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Cardinal Ratzinger addresses the challenges and responsibilities that both the Church and society in Europe face after the collapse of Marxism. Both liberalism and Marxism have denied religion the right to have any influence on public affairs and the common future of humanity. Since there is also a great spiritual emptiness growing in the West with the increased secularization, consumerism and hedonism, Ratzinger's comments apply as much, if not more, to the United States as well.

With the downfall of Marxism, religion has been discovered anew as an ineradicable force for both the individual and society. While there is renewed interest in religion, the dangers also exist to lay hold of religion as an instrument to serve various political ideas. Ratzinger, whose theological work has often dealt with the "reasons for our faith," reflects upon the various problems facing humanity at this turning point of our history and offers genuine hope based upon a deep Christian faith. He also addresses the critical role that the Church has in relationship to the world and the essential task of bringing Christ back into our culture.

"In the present situation it is an absolute obligation for the theologian and for the pastor of the Church to enter the disputation about the correct understanding of the present time, and to both clarify faith's own proper sphere and to do justice to the share of responsibility that lies on him at this hour." -- Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger,

177 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, TPE-P (ISBN 0-89870-4618)
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Ungodly Rage

Donna Steichen

Written by a Catholic journalist who has investigated feminism on its own ground, this remarkable book fully exposes the hidden face of Catholic feminism for the first time, revealing its theoretical and psychological roots in loss of faith. Extensively documented, this is the definitive account of a movement impelled by vengeful rage to revolt against all spiritual authority, providing detailed information on Catholic feminist theologians, organizers, the movement's defense of abortion, its connections with witchcraft and New Age rituals, and its disastrous effects on the Catholic faithful.

This book should be welcomed by Catholic men and women striving to understand the disarray in the Church, and what can be done about it. "Donna Steichen leaves no doubt that the `Catholic' feminists, mostly nuns, who control much of what is presented to the laity as official episcopal teaching, now actually practice, in Cardinal Ratzinger's words, `another religion'--goddess religion, witchcraft. Her documentation of what the Bishops' salaried feminists are up to, with the Bishops' knowledge, is so massive and firsthand that I am forced to accept the truth of her expose. Shocking though her indictment is, Steichen's tone throughout is calm, non-pejorative, genuinely Catholic. A ground-breaking achievement." -- Anne Roche Muggeridge, Author, The Desolate City "Donna Steichen's penetrating account, based on hours of personal interviews and attendance at feminist gatherings, sounds a necessary alarm. It should be read attentively by all who are concerned about or responsible for the religious welfare of others." -- Helen Hull Hitchcock , Women for Faith and Family

"Steichen's zealous research has produced this incisive critique indispensable for all Catholics confronted or puzzled by this destructive movement."

-- Ronda Chervin, Consultant to U. S. Bishops Pastoral on Women's Concerns Donna Steichen, a wife and mother, is a Catholic journalist and teacher who has long been a leader in Catholic, pro-life, community and education organizations. Her numerous articles have appeared in many Catholic and secular publications. She lives in St. Cloud, Minnesota.

420 pages, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, UR-P (ISBN 0-89870-3484)
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The Vatican & Communism in World War II

What Really Happened? - Robert Graham, S.J.

The discrediting of Communism as a world ideology also put in crisis a certain way of writing history. The legacy is a massive load of manipulated history with a hidden agenda. One of the victims of this process was the Catholic Church, specifically the Vatican and the Pope. Fr. Robert Graham illustrates with chapter and verse how the Communist interpretation grievously corrupted the record. Communism and its sister ideology, National Socialism, had a radical and venomous hostility to religion. It is time for cleaning up the fallout of the defunct ideologies of World War II. The material developed here is from studies published by Graham over the years in the Rome-based fortnightly La Civilta Cattolica, which was based on research in the Vatican archives and in official archives of Europe and the U.S.

199 pp, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, VC-P (ISBN 0-89870-5495)
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What's Wrong with the World

G. K. Chesterton

Chesterton gives his remarkably perceptive analysis on social and moral issues more relevant today than even in his own time. In his light and humorous style, yet deadly serious and philosophical, he comments on feminism and true womanhood, errors in edication, the importance of the child and other issues, using incisive arguments against the trendsetters' assaults against the family.

Chesterton possessed the genius to foresee the dangers if modernist proposals were implemented. He knew that lax moral standards would lead to the dehumanization of man, and in this book he staunchly defends the family, its constituent elements and character over against those ideas and institutions that would subvert it and thereby deliver man into the hands of the servile state. In addressing what is wrong, he also shows clearly what is right, sane and sensible and how to change things in that direction.

205 pages, Sewn Softcover, $14.95, WWW-P (ISBN 0-89870-4898)
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When Conscience and Politics Meet

A Catholic View - Edited by Msgr. Eugene Clark

Catholicism does not suggest political systems nor does it disapprove all pragmatic solutions to difficult questions. But conscience does draw a line. The Wethersfield Institute invited sensitive observers of unadorned politics to find the line that conscience draws between the clever and the destructive. Six fine thinkers, Russell Kirk, Russell Hittinger, Fr. Francis Canavan, William Bentley Ball, James Hitchcock and Mary Ellen Bork carried their studies beyond contemporary practice into those particular strengths required of any good citizen, especially a Catholic, wanting to serve the nation through politics and survive the process.

Russell Kirk surveyed the concept of the establishment of religion from which Catholics have suffered and, of whose advocacy, Catholics are now oddly accused; Russell Hittinger raises the unthinkable: will a politically hostile majority cause Catholics to decide they have no political home here? Father Canavan asks an intensely personal question of candidate and voter; when does private conscience limit political choice? William Bentley Ball charts the course of judicial tides sweeping religion out of public life; James Hitchcock sifts the moral values in current issues; and Mary Ellen Bork describes pressures that tend to drive persons of principle out of the political world.

104 pp, Sewn Softcover, $12.95, WCPM-P (ISBN 0-89870-4774)
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Book:
The Apostolate of Holy Motherhood
By S.T.D. Mark I. Miraville
Published in 1991, Riehle Foundation (Milford, OH)
Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint — Apparitions and miracles — United States.
Jesus Christ — Apparitions and miracles — United States.
Motherhood — Religious aspects — Catholic Church.

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