Congregations & Orders Books - Page 12

Personal Writings (Penguin Classics)

Ignatius of Loyola

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Subjects -> Religion & Spirituality -> Authors, A-Z -> ( I ) -> Ignatius

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Spiritual Classic 5 out of 5 stars.
23 of 29 people found this review helpful.

Saint Ignatius was a Basque military officer from Loyola, a great saint, and the founder of one of the most influential religious orders in world history: the Society of Jesus(the Jesuits). His personal writings reveal a truly gentle, emotional man who gave up all the pleasures of nobility to become a poor, wretched pilgrim for the sake of Christ. His Reminisces recounts all the main events of his life, from his bravery in the battle that left him crippled for life, to his conversion in his recovery bed, and finally to his founding of the Jesuit order. His journal reveals his spirituality and describes his mystical experiences, his letters reveal his patience, wisdom, and kindness, and his tremendously popular Spiritual Exercises gives advice on how to dedicate your life to God and see His action all around you. Ignatius's writings resonate with the tender devotion and the firmness of purpose found only in the writings of the Saints. Reading this book, one can see the guiding hand of Providence in the life of Ignatius and in the history of the Church, a hand that can use even the worst sinner to bring a shattered world back to His Son.

Editorial Review:

One of the key figures in Christian history, St. Ignatius of Loyola (c. 1491 1556) was a passionate and unique spiritual thinker and visionary. The works gathered here provide a first-hand, personal introduction to this remarkable character: a man who turned away from the Spanish nobility to create the revolutionary Jesuit Order, inspired by the desire to help people follow Christ. His Reminiscences describe his early life, his religious conversion following near-paralysis in battle, and his spiritual and physical ordeals as he struggled to assist those in need, including plague, persecution and imprisonment. The Spiritual Exercises offer guidelines to those seeking the will of God, and the Spiritual Diary shows Ignatius in daily mystical contact with God during a personal strugg;e. The Letters collected here provide an insight into Ignatius' ceaseless campaign to assist those seeking enlightenment and to direct the young Society of Jesus.

Forget Not Love: The Passion of Maximilian Kolbe

Andre Frossard

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

"Forget Not Love" is Special 5 out of 5 stars.
32 of 32 people found this review helpful.

"Forget Not Love" is the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Franciscan who offered to die in the place of a married man at Auschwitz, yet this book is about so much more. It creates a portrait of Kolbe as a real human being, it tells of one man's zeal for his faith and country, and it is about what love really is. This book is one of the best I have read on St. Maximilian. Frossard's beautiful writing is an added plus. I HIGHLY reccomend this book to all!

Simply excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 24 people found this review helpful.

Maximilian Kolbe was one of the 20th century's greatest witnesses to truth and what it means to be fully human, an extraordinarily courageous man, and yet so humble that few will have heard of him. This book is superb in conveying his greatness, and what it means to say that someone is a great saint. Suffering from chronic tuberculosis and with less than one full lung's capacity, he went as a missionary to Japan where he published his first newspaper within a month, in Japanese. During the war, his monastery gave shelter to 1,500 Jews. When the Gestapo were taking him and other Franciscan brothers to Aushwitz, he managed to stay cheerful saying that for once, their mission was paid for by someone else. What mission? Survivors of all beliefs remember his constant smile, his kindness in the dark of the night (he would go to the side of the dying to comfort them). In the end, he volunteered to die of starvation in the place of a young father so he might live to see his family again. When it comes to witnessing Christ, Kolbe was simply awesome. Inspiring yet sober. In one word, moving.

Editorial Review:

The famous French author's unique writing style captivates the reader with the heroic story of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a modern apostle of Catholic evangelization, Marian spirituality, and a martyr of charity. With the encouragement of Pope John Paul II, Frossard chronicles the dramatic life of this Polish Franciscan who volunteered to die in place of a fellow prisoner in Auschwitz.

Prepare Your Church for the Future

Carl F., George

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Must-read book for churches that want to grow. 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Many churches have adopted small group ministry as a way to connect Christians and to provide support and growth for their members. George shows how small groups can become an engine for evangelism and leadership development and enable churches to break through barriers to growth. Essential reading for any church wanting to grow -- in both numbers and depth. I also recommend the follow-up book by George, "The Coming Church Revolution," which goes into greater depth and detail and provides examples of many churches from several denominations that have successfully used this model.

Shows the way for vital churches in the 21st Century 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Carl George's "Prepare Your Church for the Future" is a must-read for those who desire to approach ministry in fresh ways in the coming years. His emphasis on the keys for developing groups for meaningful relationships and growth are second to none!

Editorial Review:

By analyzing the present-day church and examining societal trends, Carl George presents a model that can mobilize your church for outreach. The author draws from his own extensive church-planting and church-growth experience to provide you with step-by-step strategies, based on a biblical understanding of the church and its mission.

Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son

Peter Manseau

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A compelling look into Boston Catholicism 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Far from being some clichéd memoir about a nun and a priest leaving their respective orders to marry one another and then turning against their religion, this memoir goes so much deeper than such simplistic platitudes. It provides a compelling fascinating look into what Catholic Boston was like in the Fifties and Sixties, examining the forces that shaped Mary Doherty and Bill Manseau and which eventually led them to take vows, the forces that led them to become radicalised while ministering to the largely poor and African-American community in Roxbury (one of the cities that was struck by horrible race riots in the late Sixties, along with other tinderboxes of racial tension such as Newark, Detroit, and Los Angeles), the forces which led them to give up those vows for vows of a different sort, and the forces which continue to influence their lives, as well as the lives of their children, particularly Peter, the author.

Though Boston isn't some monolithic community, there is a huge community of Catholics there, many of them Irish like Mary Doherty's family. It was into this vibrant closeknit religious and ethnic community that Bill and Mary were born and raised in the decades just prior to Vatican II. Religion pervaded every aspect of their lives, with a clear-cut set of rules and distinctions between different groups of people. There was no gray territory in this world, yet they still managed to become influenced by the new European Catholic thinkers who were making waves in the late Fifties. Both Bill and Mary took their religious vows at the age of 17 (five years apart), at a time when the enrollment numbers of novitiate nuns and priests were at an all-time high in America. No one could have foreseen then than within the next few decades, the amount of young new postulants would slow to a trickle. Most of these hopeful novitiates entered fresh out of highschool, going straight from childhood and adolescence into religious life, as opposed to today when young people who may feel the beginning of a call are encouraged to go to college first and spend some time living a life in the secular world, so that they'll know for sure that they really want this life and vocation.

The radical changes sweeping the nation in the Sixties, coupled with the breath of fresh air that came in with Vatican II, quickly got around to Bill and Mary. Since they were already living in Roxbury, they had come to see a whole different sector of the population, people with whom they had had no prior experience. Before long they and their friends who were also priests and nuns had devoted their ministries to these poor disenfranchised people, feeling that this was the best way they could live up to their religious beliefs. In the midst of all of these changes, Bill began to feel that he needed to be married to become a full man and a full Christian. To him, the right to be married and to love a woman was a fundamental human right, a right that shouldn't be fully extended to some yet denied to others, particularly since celibate unmarried priests were the exception and not the norm for over a thousand years. He also, perhaps naïvely, truly believed that the Church would soon allow priests to marry and remain priests, the way they had up until the Middle Ages (things only changed for political reasons), and to radically rethink their teaching on celibacy. Though Mary, like many other women in that era, had left the sisterhood without similar thoughts, Bill never stopped considering himself a priest and was very active in groups of former priests and people working for the ordination of women and the right of priests to be married. Both of them also have never stopped being devout faithful believing Catholics, even after how they had been treated by the Church and many individual Catholics on account of their marriage.

In addition to the stories of his parents, there's also Peter's own story of his search for a religious faith and spirituality. By his teenage years, he had grown apart from the faith he had been raised in, as many teenagers are wont to do, and didn't want anything to do with Catholicism anymore. Things began to change when he was a student at UMass-Amherst (my own alma mater, which he attended only a few years before I did; he was there in the mid-NIneties and I went there in the early Aughts). He explored Buddhism, the writings of Thomas Merton, and a number of other faiths before taking a trial run at a nearby monastery. This simple lifestyle really appealed to him and helped him to get back in touch with his own religious roots, though in the back of his head he couldn't help wondering if he really wanted to be a monk and if it seemed so easy and alluring that he couldn't trust it. The fourth story, which ties all of the others together, is the one that swept the nation (in particular Boston) starting in 2002, that of the vast coverup of pedophilic priests who had just been moved from one diocese to another without even warning the new parishioners or punishing these priests. This story ends up hitting very close to home for the Manseau family.

Overall, it's a great book for those who are interested in American Catholicism, or Boston Catholicism in particular, how the religion has evolved over the past few decades, and the universal search for a religious or spiritual identity. Instead of falling into the trap of clichés or anti-Church rhetoric like similar books might do, this one brings up tough complex questions and issues, many of which don't have any easy or simplistic answers.

Editorial Review:

Vows is a compelling story of one family's unshakable faith that to be called is to serve, however high the cost may be. Peter Manseau's riveting evocation of his parents' parallel childhoods, their similar callings, their experiences in the seminary and convent, and how they met while tending to the homeless of Roxbury, Massachusetts, during the riot-prone 1960s is a page-turning meditation on the effect that love can have on profound faith.

The Collar

Jonathan Englert

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The journalist Jonathan Englert goes inside a seminary to follow five men who have left their careers and lives behind in pursuit of the priesthood.

There are now a record sixty-four million Catholics in the United States, yet the number of priests is plummeting so fast that hundreds of parishes nationwide are closing down. Against this turbulent backdrop, Englert charts the journey of five men toward the priesthood at a seminary that specializes in "second-career" priests -- men who come to their vocation later than their college years. We meet a divorced father and avid hunter from Wyoming, an ex-salesman and Marine with ADHD, a recently widowed father of four, a blind musician, and others. With wit and sometimes heartbreaking candor, they face the challenges of priestly life -- from the traditional hurdles of obedience and chastity to more modern travails, like the bad press let loose by recent sexual abuse scandals and the skepticism of their friends and families. For each man, these challenges are intensified by their past experiences as they sacrifice familiar comforts to answer their calling.

Englert is ideally qualified to write The Collar, both professionally, as a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, and spiritually, as a convert to Catholicism who has walked the tortuous path of faith. His empathy with the spiritual journeys of the men he portrays recalls The Cloister Walk. His deft, evenhanded unveiling of a compelling, little-observed culture will resonate with both the faithful and the merely curious.

God's Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power--A History of the Jesuits

Jonathan Wright

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Throughout history members of the Society of Jesus, popularly known as Jesuits, have been accused of killing kings and presidents, have traveled as missionaries to every corner of the globe, founded haciendas in Mexico, explored the Mississippi and Amazon rivers, and served Chinese emperors as map makers, painters, and astronomers. As well as the predictable roll call of saints and martyrs, the Society can also lay claim to the thirty-five craters on the moon named for Jesuit scientists. Jesuits have been despised and idolized on a scale unknown to members of any other religious order; they have died the most horrible deaths and done the most outlandish deeds.

Whether loved or loathed, the Jesuits’ dramatic and wide-ranging impact could never be ignored. By the mid-eighteenth century, they had established more than 650 educational institutions. They were also strongly committed to foreign missions, and like the secular explorers and settlers of the Age of Discovery, they traveled to the Far East, India, and the Americas to stake a claim. They were especially successful in Latin America, where they managed to put numerous villages entirely under Jesuit rule.

The Jesuits’ successes both in Europe and abroad, coupled with rumors of scandal and corruption within the order, soon drew criticism from within the Church and without. Writers such as Pascal and Voltaire wrote polemics against them, and the absolute monarchs of Catholic Europe sought to destroy them. Their power was seen as so threatening that hostility escalated into serious political feuds, and at various times they were either banned or harshly suppressed throughout Europe.

God’s Soldiers is a fascinating chronicle of this celebrated, mysterious, and often despised religious order. Jonathan Wright illuminates as never before their enduring contributions as well as the controversies that surrounded them. The result is an in-depth, unbiased, and utterly compelling history.

Magdalene's Lost Legacy: Symbolic Numbers and the Sacred Union in Christianity

Margaret Starbird

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Magdalene’s Lost Legacy, author Margaret Starbird decodes the symbolic numbers embedded in the original Greek phrases of the New Testament--revealing the powerful presence of the feminine divine.

The New Testament contains wide use of gematria, a  literary device that allows the sums of certain phrases to produce sacred numbers. Exploring the hidden meanings behind these numbers, Starbird reveals that the union between Jesus and his bride, Mary Magdalene, formed a sacred partnership that was the cornerstone of the earliest Christian community.

Magdalene’s Lost Legacy demonstrates how the crucial teaching of the sacred marriage that unites masculine and feminine principles--the heiros gamos--is the partnership model for life on our planet and the ultimate blueprint for civilization. Starbird’s research challenges the concept that Christ was celibate and establishes Mary Magdalene as the human incarnation of the sacred bride. The author also explains the true meaning of the “666” prophesied in the Book of Revelation. Through this potent reclaiming of the lost legacy of Mary Magdalene, Margaret Starbird offers the opportunity to restore the divine feminine to her rightful role as bride, beloved, and sacred partner. 

Madre Angélica: La historia notable de una monja, de su nervio, y de una red de milagros

Raymond Arroyo

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Editorial Review:

La historia extraordinaria de la Madre Angélica, fundadora de la multimillonaria Cadena de Televisión Eternal World y “la católica más influyente de Estados Unidos”, según la revista Time.En 1981, un año después de que Ted Turner creara CNN, una sencilla monja, sólo con sus instintos empresariales y doscientos dólares, fundó en el garaje de un monasterio de Birmingham, Alabama, lo que se convertiría en el imperio religioso de medios de difusión más grande del mundo. Bajo su guía, la Cadena de Televisión Eternal World (EWTN) creció a un ritmo asombroso, tanto en número de televidentes como en influencia, hasta el punto de que ahora llega a más de cien millones de televidentes en cientos de países de todo el mundo.Nacida como Rita Rizzo en Canton, Ohio, en 1923, la Madre Angélica fue abandonada por su padre y criada en la pobreza por una madre que padecía de depresión. De joven, Rita sufrió fuertes dolores abdominales que los médicos pensaron que se debían a un “problema de los nervios”, pero sus síntomas desaparecieron cuando una mística de su localidad rezó por ella. Al darse cuenta del poder de la oración, Rita juró dedicar su vida a Dios y se hizo monja de clausura, con la esperanza de pasar toda su existencia lejos del mundo. Pero muy pronto, la fe de Rita la impulsó a realizar obras increíbles, desde establecer un monasterio en Alabama hasta dar inicio a la primera cadena católica de televisión por cable. Confiando únicamente en “la providencia de Dios”, la Madre Angélica construyó un imperio sin prestar atención a presupuestos ni a campañas de recaudación, y logró lo que ni los más altos prelados de la Iglesia Católica habían logrado hacer.
Raymond Arroyo combina su objetividad periodística y su habilidad para captar los detalles en los más de cinco años de entrevistas exclusivas con la Madre Angélica, para traernos esta increíble historia. En su narración, Arroyo sigue el tortuoso ascenso al éxito de la Madre y saca a la luz por primera vez la feroz oposición que ella enfrentó, tanto dentro como fuera de la Iglesia Católica. Esta es una inspiradora historia de supervivencia y una prueba de que la fe de una mujer puede mover mucho más que montañas.

Knights Templar

Stephen Howarth

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Don't buy if you're looking for a conspiracy theory 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This was an excellent history of the Templars and the Crusades. No conspiracy theories are present; Howarth just gives the known history of the Templars, and he does it in a very, very good manner. This was the most interesting history book that I have ever read, and one of the most enjoyable books I can ever remember reading. I had no idea the Crusades were so interesting before reading this book. Stories like King Richard (the Lion-Hearted) trying to steal a peasant's hawk and almost getting killed by the owner make this book a delight to read. Reynald de Chatillion and Richard were definitely the best characters in this book. Their exploits are simply amazing (and hilarious). I got this book to study the Templars and ended up getting so interested in the Crusades that I got some more books on the subject.

As for the content about the Templars, I cannot imagine a better presentation of their deeds. He does not hypothesize about their having the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant; he simply gives what we know with reasonable certaintly about the development and actions of the Knights Templar, and he does not give it in a vacuum as conspiracy theorists do. Conspiracy theory books about the Templar tend to just report the Templar's deeds and take them out of context. Howarth gives the context. In fact, he gives about as much context as he does actual information about the Templars. Conspiracy theory books point to the fact that the Templars got away with nearly anything as evidence that they had some dirt on the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, they fail to mention that anyone else also got away with nearly anything back then: Crusading kings (i.e. Richard) would sack Christian cities on the way to the crusade and receive not even a scolding. This context is important for understand the Templars. They cannot be viewed in a vacuum, or else conspiracy theories start popping up. They look very strange to us nowadays, but when looked at in the company of other Medieval events and people, they look far more normal.

To the best of my knowledge, Howarth is very accurate in his presentation of the Templars (I especially liked his treatment of the Templar trials when the order was dissolved by Pope Clement). He cites a large number of primary sources, and I do not think that he makes conclusions beyond the merits of the evidence. If you are interested in studying the Knights Templar, this is an excellent book to begin with. With the context that this book provides, you will be able to critically examine the claims made about the Templar by other authors. The only complaint I have is that it should have included a map of the Holy Land.

Overall grade: A+

Childhood Interrupted: Growing Up Under the Cruel Regime of the Sisters of Mercy

Kathleen O'Malley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

There but for fortune... 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

For obvious reasons, it isn't easy to read this book. It shouldn't be, of course. That said, one thing comes across even more than the sickening conditions O'Malley had to live through, and that is the resilience she has shown in getting on with her life after surviving the horrors of her childhood.

That is perhaps the only reason why I was able to make my way through the graphic descriptions of what life at Moate was like. O'Malley wisely makes each of her descriptions of the various forms of abuse fairly brief, so there is nothing gratuitous about the ugliness of it all. She tells you what you need to know - which is more than anyone would want to know - and moves on to the next example. Though horrible, the details need to be told. While she acknowledges throughout the book that she remains "unutterably angry" at the system that destroyed her childhood, she often sounds less so than one would expect. It's probably something only a survivor could understand.

It's not all gloom and doom. The undying love and admiration of her mother, who was persecuted throughout her life for being a single mother, shines through everywhere. I often found myself thinking that had a lot to do with why O'Malley survived it all with her sanity intact. I am also filled with admiration for how she was able to get her life together when it was all finally over. Naturally, her journey of self-discovery as a young adult is an unusual one, but that's a key part of the story and a vivid illustration of how the abuse she suffered did not end when she was finally released at age 16. As the final pages - dealing with her continued efforts to find justice for her family and others like it - make clear, it still hasn't ended. She also relates the stories of many other survivors who haven't fared anywhere near as well as she has, which is one reason why her story is so important.

Above all, whether she meant it to or not, this becomes a story of a person who fought back and won. Like I said, it's not an easy story to read. But it is an inspiring one!

Editorial Review:

A deeply moving memoir of a young girl’s harrowing abuse in an Irish industrial school run by the Sisters of Mercy.

In 1950, Kathleen O’Malley and her two sisters were legally abducted from their mother. The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen by a neighbor triggered their removal. Kathleen’s mother successfully prosecuted the man, but it was her daughters who received a much harsher sentence when they were committed to Mount Carmel Industrial School in County Westmeath, Ireland. It was run by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, who also ran the notorious Magdalene Homes. Kathleen and her sisters were subjected to beatings, humiliation, hard labor, and near-starvation, until they were finally permitted to leave at the age of sixteen. Childhood Interrupted is her inspiring, profoundly affecting story.