This book is a popular overview and study guide to the history of the Catholic Church. Written for non-scholarly readers with little historical background, it includes descriptions of society in different historical eras in order to make the history of the Church more understandable. The book explains important doctrinal, spiritual, and historical questions and developments. It identifies many popular saints and includes interesting historical characters. Catholics seeking a deeper spiritual life and a closer relationship with God will find many helpful ideas to trust God's love and care for them. The story of how the Church survived earlier trials will encourage people struggling with current challenges in the Church or discouraged by difficulties in their own lives. This book is useful in RCIA and religious education classes, for personal study, Catholic high school or college classes, or discussion groups.

Roman Catholicism stands at a crossroads, a classic ''best of times, worst of times'' moment. On the one hand, the Catholic Church remains by far the largest branch of the worldwide Christian family, and is growing at a remarkable clip. Yet the Church has also been rocked by a series of scandals related to the sexual abuse of minors by clergy, and, even more devastating, the cover-up by the Church hierarchy. The decade-long crisis has taken a massive financial toll, but the blow to both the internal morale and the external moral standing of the Church has been even steeper. Today, the Church has enormous residual strength and exciting future prospects, but also faces steep internal and external challenges. The question of ''whither Catholicism'' is of vital public relevance, for believers and non-believers alike. In The Catholic Church: What Everyone Needs to Know, John L. Allen, Jr., one of the world's leading authorities on the Vatican, offers an authoritative and accessible guide to the past, present, and future of the Church. This updated edition includes a new chapter on the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, the election of Pope Francis, and his extraordinary tenure thus far.

The United States Catholic Church has swung from being distinct and easily identifiable to a church that has blended quite well with the prevailing American culture. The forces of assimilation and the choices of Catholics have produced a mainstream church. But is the American Catholic Church accomplishing its mission? Is the church that was once peculiar more effective as the church that accommodates? The disordered condition in which the United States finds itself with materialism that dominates our culture, a landscape of relational life that has become a wasteland, destructive violence, crippling skepticism, blindness to the value of human life, and a scandalous gulf between rich and poor cannot be healed and redeemed unless there is a community of believers willing to invest the goodness and virtue that is needed to bring about what God intends. The country needs a vibrant Catholic Church. How can the United States Catholic Church be that church? Avoiding Martyrdom examines the state of the American Catholic Church and the disquiet felt by many Catholics, while looking toward how Catholics might fulfill the churchs mission in the years ahead.

Behind the lurid headlines: why the Church in America declined. Forty years ago, three powerful forces capsized the Catholic Church in America. These pages detail those forces, and map the path that you and I - and our priests and bishops - must walk if we are to make the Church in America vigorous again.