American Catholicism

In the late 1800s, discrimination against American Catholics was widespread. Many Catholics struggled to find work and ended up in inferno-like mills. An injury or the death of the wage earner would leave a family penniless. The grim threat of chronic homelessness and even starvation could fast become realities. Called to action in 1882 by his sympathy for these suffering people, Father McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus, an organization that has helped to save countless families from the indignity of destitution. From its uncertain beginnings, when Father McGivney was the only person willing to work toward its success, it has grown to an international membership of 1.7 million men.

At heart, though, Father McGivney was never anything more than an American parish priest, and nothing less than that, either -- beloved by children, trusted by young adults, and regarded as a "positive saint" by the elderly in his New Haven parish.

In an incredible work of academic research, Douglas Brinkley and Julie M. Fenster re-create the life of Father McGivney, a fiercely dynamic yet tenderhearted man. Though he was only thirty-eight when he died, Father McGivney has never been forgotten. He remains a true "people's priest," a genuinely holy man -- and perhaps the most beloved parish priest in U.S. history. Moving and inspirational, Parish Priest chronicles the process of canonization that may well make Father McGivney the first American-born parish priest to be declared a saint by the Vatican.
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Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement, once declared: “Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” Nevertheless, the cause for her canonization began in 2000, and her prophetic example remains a provocative challenge to the status quo that cannot be easily dismissed. This intriguing biography of the highly controversial journalist and social activist draws from her voluminous writings and the testimony of people who knew her well. It explores the connections between Day’s formidable public achievements and her private life of prayer, Scripture study, and devotion to the Sacraments. The result is a stirring portrait of a champion of justice for the poor and oppressed who worked tirelessly to awaken the conscience of a nation. Paperback 146 Pages Servant Publications, October 2002
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When author David Carlin was a young man, it was scandalous for a good Catholic to be anything but a good Democrat. In the pews, pubs, and union halls of America’s cities, millions of poor European immigrants and their children pledged allegiance to the Church of Rome and the party of FDR.

All that changed in the 1960s, with the rise of a new kind of Democrat: wealthy, secular, ideological. Even as Carlin served the party he loved — twelve years as a Rhode Island state senator and once a candidate for Congress — he could only watch in dismay as its national leaders abandoned their blue-collar, pro-life, and religious constituencies and took up with NOW, Hollywood, and the abortion lobby.

So complete has been this transformation that we no longer speak of a natural alliance between Catholics and the Democratic Party. Indeed, Carlin here asks whether today it’s even possible to be both a faithful Catholic and a Democratic true believer.

A veteran sociologist, philosophy professor, and author of The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, Carlin shows how his party and his religion have taken opposite sides in the Culture War. On issues of human life, sex, faith, morality, suffering — and the public policies that stem from them — the modern, secularist Democratic Party has become the enemy of Catholicism; indeed, of all traditional religions.

So complete has been this transformation that we no longer speak of a natural alliance between Catholics and the Democratic Party. Indeed, Carlin here asks whether today it’s even possible to be both a faithful Catholic and a Democratic true believer.

Carlin shatters the excuses that Catholic Democratic politicians employ in a vain attempt to reconcile their faith and their votes, and then, with what he calls the “political equivalent of a broken heart,” he examines his own political conscience. As a faithful Catholic and a Democrat approaching his seventieth year, must he now leave the party he’s called home since birth?

David Carlin’s arguments challenge all religious Democrats to ask themselves the same question.

256 pages paperback
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Which Catholic was involved in the Lincoln assassination? Who was the first Catholic woman to demand the right to vote? Care to guess when the first Catholic ceremony was performed in the White House?

This fun, informative calendar spotlights the Catholic men and women who helped build America.

370 pages, 6 in. high X 4 1/2 in. wide. Spiral binding; table stand.
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by Jacques Maritain
Compiled & Edited by James Kelly

Some Americans claim we should exclude Christian values from the public square. On the contrary, argues philosopher Jacques Maritain, good Christians make good citizens.

They live by gospel values: honesty, integrity, and compassion. They obey the law. They resist the selfishness that unbelief and materialism breed. And they subordinate their own interests to the common good.

No wonder, says Maritain, that American democracy — which arose from a Christian people — has served so well and lasted so long.

Here Maritain shows that in a society unleavened by religious ideals, an enduring democracy can never take root. And once a religious people abandons its faith, even the greatest democracy must wither and die. Untethered from transcendent values, democracy becomes little more than a struggle to be won by the most powerful and the ruthless.

The hour is late. Too long have we stood by while politicians promise never to let their religious beliefs influence their political judgments. Too long has a false understanding of democracy cowed us into laying aside our Christian values when we vote.

As Maritain demonstrates in these lucid pages, Christians are vital to democracy. Good Christians make good citizens, and good citizens make strong democracies. If America and her ideals are to endure, says Maritain, Christians and their values must not be excluded from public discourse, but eagerly welcomed into it.

160 pp paperback
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Father Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R., addresses all these questions in his new book, The Cross at Ground Zero. He reassures us that the iron cross, found at the world trade center, leads to the cross of Jesus which stands at the center of all pain, all suffering, indeed all history. He explains that Jesus did not come to take away suffering. He came to sanctify suffering by His presence. He was at Ground Zero in the World Trade Center. He will be with you in your own personal Ground Zero whether it is the death of a child, a cancer diagnosis, the loss of a job.

This assault is not happening from accident or whim. It is happening because disaffected liberals have deliberately set out to upend our Judeo-Christian traditions. Indeed, they are determined to tear down the traditional norms, values, and institutions that have been part of American society from its founding. The cultural debris that these saboteurs have created will take decades to clean up.

In feisty prose, Donohue explores our nation where a college student is threatened with expulsion because she prayed on campus, a civil rights organization protests a statue of Jesus found on the ocean floor and a housewife sues a school district to stop the singing of Rudolph The Red-nosed Reindeer at a school choral production. These are just a few examples cited that demonstrate a culture descending into madness.

Donohue takes no prisoners as he digs out and exposes the groups behind this all-out attack on our Christian traditions. Among these are the radical atheists, the proponents of multiculturalism, the sexual libertines, the Hollywood elite with their not-so-hidden agenda and lawyers who collaborate for profit.

Publisher: FaithWords/Hachette Book Group
Author: William A. Donohue
Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
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Hawaii normally brings idyllic scenes of blue skies and white beaches to mind. But Hell invaded Paradise when the incurable disease leprosy was discovered there. An 1865 law segregated lepers by forcibly exiling individuals--even children--to the island of Molokai. It was onto these forlorn shores that Father Damien de Veuster stepped in the spring of 1873.

In an age in which an increasing number of people suffer their own personal exile on account of illness, handicap, or emotional distress, the shining example of Father Damien shows the true power of one person and how, when anchored in God's love, one person can impact the world--even among the horrors of decay and slow death. In so doing, he brought hope to the hopeless, ironically losing his own life for serving theirs.

Authers: Margaret & Matthew Bunson

Paperback; 288 pp.; Pub.: Our Sunday Visitor, 2009
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Physical Info: 1.01" H x 8.06" L x 5.52" W (1.02 lbs) 360 pages
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