What sets Catholicism apart from other Christian faiths? What does it mean to be Catholic today? Is the Bible a "Catholic" book? An Invitation to Catholic Faith gets the Catholic conversation rolling. You'll learn about the rich traditions, awesome mystery, and fascinating people of the Catholic Church. In clear and concise language, the author explains Catholic approaches to Scripture, Tradition, the sacraments, spiritual practices, and more. Wise and lively commentary plus discussion questions make this book perfect for individual or group study; for RCIA inquirers, catechumens, and candidates, and for returning or practicing Catholics. When life is confusing, troubling, or disappointing, the author says, "faith assures Catholics that there is more meaning to their existence than they could possibly know". Book jacket.

This work examines the interplay between the city of Sacramento and the Catholic Church since the 1850s. Avella uses Sacramento as a case study of the role of religious denominations in the development of the American West. In Sacramento, as in other western urban areas, churches brought civility and various cultural amenities, and they helped to create an atmosphere of stability so important to creating a viable urban community. At the same time, churches often had to shape themselves to the secularizing tendencies of western cities while trying to remain faithful to their core values and practices. Besides the numerous institutions that the Church sponsored, it brought together a wide spectrum of the city’s diverse ethnic populations and offered them several routes to assimilation. Catholic Sacramentans have always played an active role in government and in the city’s economy, and Catholic institutions provided a matrix for the creation of new communities as the city spread into neighboring suburbs. At the same time, the Church was forced to adapt itself to the needs and demands of its various ethnic constituents, particularly the flood of Spanish-speaking newcomers in the late twentieth century.

Are we on the brink of a theological war between Conservative Protestant Christianity and the new Charismatic Protestant Christian movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, (NAR)? Are they as demonic as some well known pastors say? A very debated question. This is a book that must be read by every ex-Catholic that perhaps has second thoughts. Reading this book is assurance the decision was right. And let us not forget those Prosperity preachers who constantly ask for money. This book exposes them even to their very core beliefs which are shocking and unbelievable.

First published in 1905 and written as an official chronology of the Diocese of New York then one of the powerhouse regions of the Catholic Church in America, as the Archdiocese of New York is today this two-volume work remains an important document of the Church. Useful in both the historical and cultural dimensions, this highly readable but powerfully biased account reveals the prejudices and partialities of the time as filtered through the viewpoint of one of its most influential institutions. Volume I explores: the first Catholics in the State of New York the early years of the organization in the state the first bishop and early administration anti-Catholicism and the Knownothing Party the growth of the parishes politics and Catholicism and much more. American clergyman and author REV. JOHN TALBOT SMITH (1855 1923) also wrote The Training of a Priest, The Chaplain Sermons, and other religious works, as well as the novels Woman of Culture (1882) and Solitary Island (1888).

“The Catholic Church saved my marriage and, quite possibly, my life.” So begins David Anders in this remarkably forthright book. In it, David reports that by the early 2000s, his marriage was so painful he actually longed for death. It wasn’t simple incompatibility; he and his wife had just one thing in common: contempt for each other. Today, David and his wife are happy together – not because of marriage therapy, but because they came to know and fully embraced the Catholic Church’s teachings on marriage. Many people who encounter such teachings are shocked by their rigor. Yet the Church offers much more than rules about sexual restraint; she offers a way to make marriage into something supernatural, even mystical. Here Dr. Anders shares his personal discovery of the Church’s teaching on marriage and offers a robust defense of the Church’s most controversial teachings, including divorce, remarriage, gay marriage, and contraception. With the Church’s teachings and the writings of the saints as his guide, he also offers practical, time-tested ways to improve your marriage, such as how to live in peace despite an unhappy marriage, the value of suffering, and ways to overcome your reluctance to forgive grave offenses. In a culture that breaks apart marriages and undermines human dignity, Dr. David Anders offers a hope-filled alternative for those who live moral and spiritual lives in union with Christ and His Church.

It is no secret: the body of Christ in the United States is broken. While universality and unity amid diversity is a fundamental characteristic of Roman Catholicism, all-too-familiar issues related to gender, sexuality, race, and authority have rent the church. Healthy debates, characteristic of a living tradition, suffer instead from an absence of genuine engagement and dialogue. But there is still much that binds American Catholics. In naming the wounds and exploring their social and religious underpinnings, "Polarization in the US Catholic Church" underscores how shared beliefs and aspirations can heal deep fissures and the hurts they have caused. Cutting across disciplinary and political lines, this volume brings essential commentary in the direction of reclaimed universality among American Catholics."

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the sure norm for teaching the faith (Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum ). Still the language and wording of both the Catechism and the Second Vatican Council is one full of poetic beauty and soft diplomacy. This style of poetry and diplomacy is not the most appropriate for clarity. In many places the language results hard to understand and multiple contradictory interpretations are possible due precisely to the language full of charity but not of clarity. The purpose of the Compendium of the Traditional Catechism of the Catholic Church is to provide absolute clarity about the Faith of All times and less room for open interpretations and ambiguity. The world today in order to keep the Faith of All times needs more than poetic words. It needs clear teachings with full power, strength, and clarity above: no room for misinterpretations, no wiggle room for heretical interpretations at all. That is the purpose of this work: high clarity above all. With total clarity several subjects are covered: the definition of schismatic, the Limbo, Freemasons, heretic, the so called marriage among homosexuals, the doctrine of the Church regarding the liberal freemasonic Democracy, the responsibility that Catholics must have when voting or taking action on the political field, the so called New Atheists movement, the Consecration of Russia according to Our Lady of Fatima, the future of the world according to the City of God of St. Agustin, etc. All of these subjects of today and many others are addressed in this work with extreme and total clarity. Here there is no room for error and no room for misunderstanding. This is the Traditional Catechism that is really needed in the Year of the Faith and in any year!

Walter Kasper is already well-known and loved throughout the English-speaking world. He has held high office in the Vatican but until his recent retirement has felt constrained from publishing what he really thinks and his vision of the Church for the future. Kasper brings to conclusion a project that has been pursued for years, as it joins together his greatest monographs on the subject of God's teaching and Christology. The book covers three main topics: Nature, Reality and the Mission of the Church. The introductory section is autobiographical and the reader can see Kasper's personal and theological way in to and with the Church. He develops the actual ecclesiological exegesis - for Kasper the representation of the Being of the Church is not about empirical description, but rather a testimony of being. He emphasizes that nobody is able to apply the stereotypical and idealistic image of the heavens to the critical acknowledgement of the church's present. The program of the Church is ultimately not self-directed but rather remains oriented towards the finalization of the arrival of the kingdom of God and the spiritual healing of the human race.