An enthralling guide to the largely unrecognised treasures of England's remarkable Parish Churches, 'the supreme treasury of English vernacular art and memory'. Our parish churches constitute a living patrimony without precise European parallel. Their cultural riches are astonishing, not only for their quality and quantity, but also their diversity and interest. Fine art and architecture here combine unpredictably with the functional, the curious and the naïve, from prehistory to the present day, to form an unsung national museum which presents its contents in an everyday setting without curators or formal displays. Because church treasures usually remain in the buildings they were created for, properly interpreted they tell from thousands of local perspectives the history of the nation, its people and their changing religious observance. John Goodall's weekly series in Country Life has celebrated particular objects in or around churches that are of outstanding artistic, social or historical importance, to underline both the intrinsic interest of parish churches and the insights that they and their contents offer into English history of every period. Parish Church Treasures incorporates and significantly expands this material to tell afresh the remarkable history of the parish church. It celebrates the special character of churches as places to visit whilst providing an authoritative and up-to-date history at a time when the use and upkeep of these buildings and the care of their contents is highly contentious.

A “heart wrenching and beautiful” adventure in the series set on the rugged Welsh coast from the bestselling author of From Across the Ancient Waters (Eclectic Reading). Join Percy Drummond on a search that takes him from Scotland to Ireland and a treasure that is closer than imagined. Having accepted his uncle’s dying request, Percy begins an unforgettable quest to solve the hidden mystery of the Westbrooke estate. Meanwhile, circumstances in Wales threaten his success—and the future. As the key to the mystery seems to slip further from him, will Percy discover that the treasure might be within his own heart? Praise for Michael Phillips and The Green Hills of Snowdonia series “Phillips has the unique ability to re-create not merely the feel but the impact of the classic George MacDonald novels.” —Bodie and Brock Thoene, bestselling authors of the Zion Covenant series “From the shipwreck on the first page to the lovely tapestry of characters and setting, From Across the Ancient Waters, Michael Phillips’s latest novel, is a do-not-miss masterpiece!” —Kathleen Y’Barbo, award-winning author of the Daughters of the Mayflower series “Stories like this simply have me longing for more. I love the history, the scenery, and the passion showed through the delightful characters created by Michael Phillips. If it were possible to demonstrate a standing ovation in a book review, this one definitely deserves it!” —Janet Hovis, Along the Way “This series stirred my soul and challenged my thinking while it entertained.” —Rachelle Sperling, Journey Sojourner

In the discussions and debates surrounding liturgical music of the past fifty years, music theorists, critics, and historians have contributed little, and their counsel has rarely been sought. Whenever the matter of liturgical music arises, most often in parishes, but sometimes in episcopal conferences or in the academy or in Vatican documents, the nature of the music, as music, almost never affects the discussion. With Sacred Treasure, Joseph Swain, a distinguished musicologist and accomplished performer, attempts to change that. He offers a theory for building authentic traditions of liturgical music for Roman Catholic parishes. This book is an exercise in pragmatic music criticism. By providing a rational basis for evaluating the essential issues, Swain seeks to show how a spiritually wholesome stability might supplant the confusion. Sacred Treasure shows how the hard facts of music must be taken into account in any holistic conception and any lasting form of liturgical music.

This is a true story told by some of the people who lived it. It is the account of the creation of a small Catholic church in a small town in western Oklahoma. The creation of the building took place during the late 1950s and illustrates the growth of the Lay Apostolate Movement during the years leading up to the time of Vatican Council II.

A fascinating insight into the historic churches of Herefordshire, Shropshire and the Welsh Marches.

Winner of the 2002 Anna Pidruchney Award For New Writers On a visit to Ukraine to retrieve a family heirloom secretly buried by his grandfather during the Second World War, Yaroslaw, a Ukrainian-Canadian university student, stumbles into a world full of spies and secret organizations, peril and political intrigue. His discovery of the hidden cache yields clues to the location of a fabled lost treasure-the greatest in all Europe. Working against time, Yaroslaw and a small band of accomplices struggle to uncover and save a nation’s heritage, operating in secret to prevent the corrupt leaders of the government and the Russians-from stealing it. Yaroslaw’s Treasure is a thrilling suspense story set against the gripping drama of the Orange Revolution, the 2004 popular uprising that saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in Ukraine to overthrow a corrupt government and reinforce democracy in a land long occupied by repressive and foreign regimes. Rich with history, romance, politics, and danger, Yaroslaw’s Treasure superbly captures the wonders and horrors of Ukraine’s past, swirls through the treacherous currents of its present politics, all the while providing entertainment as a first-rate thriller.

Augustine Roberts is a New England Yankee, transplanted by circumstance first to Argentina and then to Rome, from where frequent travel took him to nearly every part of the globe. The historical era into which he was born, so fraught with personal and communal soul-searching, also made him wrestle with all the tensions of the contemporary church and world. Finding the Treasure tells of Dom Augustine's conversion to the Catholic Church while attending Yale and of his remarkably varied monastic experience during the turbulent years of church renewal following Vatican II. These letters from a global monk will not disappoint anyone fascinated by the paradox of a monk who, rooted by vow to his monastery, becomes a globe-trotter precisely out of deep obedience. Augustine Roberts, OCSO, has been a Trappist monk since the early 1950s. After serving as abbot of St. Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, he became Procurator General of the Trappist Order. In the 1960s he was one of the founders of the first abbey of his Order in South America, later serving as its abbot. Today he is a much sought-after guide, called to help many communities in the delicate task of adapting the perennial monastic way of life to the needs of the twenty-first century.

This book recaptures the experience of exile and religious radicalisation among sixteenth-century Catholic refugees during the Dutch Revolt.