A historical biography that "illuminates a remarkable churchman who was in the vanguard of his time," written by New York's archbishop ( Publishers Weekly).A man far ahead of his time, Archbishop Edwin V. O'Hara of Kansas City (1881–1956) orchestrated numerous initiatives that profoundly affected American Catholic life. His ceaseless activity as both priest and bishop sowed seeds that flourished long past his lifetime, f...

AN INVESTIGATION OF EPIC FINANCIAL INTRIGUE, RENDER UNTO ROME EXPOSES THE SECRECY AND DECEIT THAT RUN COUNTER TO THE VALUES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.The Sunday collection in every Catholic church throughout the world is as familiar a part of the Mass as the homily and even Communion. There is no doubt that historically the Catholic Church has been one of the great engines of charity in history. But once a dollar is dropped in that basket, where does it go? How are we...

Jay Dolan of Notre Dame University is one of America's most acclaimed scholars of immigration and ethnic history. In THE IRISH AMERICANS, he caps his decades of writing and teaching with this magisterial history of the Irish experience in the United States. Although more than 30 million Americans claim Irish ancestry, no other general account of Irish American history has been published since the 1960s. Dolan draws on his own original research and much other recent scholarship to weave an ...

The legendary Episcopal Bishop tells of his lifelong struggle to champion an authentic christianity based on love, not hatred.

The Faithful Departed traces the rise and fall of the Catholic Church as a cultural dynamo in Boston, showing how the Massachusetts experience set a pattern that has echoed throughout the United States as religious institutions have lost social influence in the face of rising secularization.The collapse of Catholicism in Boston became painfully apparent in 2002, with the full explosion of the sex-abuse crisis. But Lawler brings an insider’s knowledge and a journalist’s sense of dra...

What has the Reformation ever done for us?A lot less than you might think, as Rodney Stark shows in this enlightening and entertaining antidote to recent books about the rise of Protestantism and its legacy.‘Rodney Stark takes no prisoners as he charges through five hundred years of history, upsetting apple carts left and right. Almost everything you thought you knew about the Reformation turns out to be a false narrative. . . In future, anyone who makes sw...

In a lively challenge to mainstream history, Michael Parenti does battle with a number of mass-marketed historical myths. He shows how history's victors distort and suppress the documentary record in order to perpetuate their power and privilege. And he demonstrates how historians are influenced by the professional and class environment in which they work. Pursuing themes ranging from antiquity to modern times, from the Inquisition and Joan of Arc to the anti-labor bias of present-day hist...

Mark A. Noll presents a fresh and accessible history of Protestantism from the era of Martin Luther to the present day. Beginning with the founding of Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Anabaptist churches in the sixteenth-century Reformation, he also considers the rise of other important Christian movements like Methodism and Pentecostalism. Focussing on worldwide developments, rather than just the familiar European and American histories, he considers the recent expansion of Protestant mo...

The National Shrine in Washington, DC has been deeply loved, blithely ignored, and passionately criticized. It has been praised as a "dazzling jewel" and dismissed as a "towering Byzantine beach ball." In this intriguing and inventive book, Thomas Tweed shows that the Shrine is also an illuminating site from which to tell the story of twentieth-century Catholicism. He organizes his narrative around six themes that characterize U.S. Catholicism, and he ties these themes to the Shrine's mate...

In 1962 a group of Catholic leaders traveled to Rome, charged by Pope John XXIII with the task of making the gospel of Christ relevant in a modern world. The Second Vatican Council transformed the lives of Catholics through sweeping reforms -- yet its effect on the daily lives of practicing Catholics has never been fully understood.In this illuminating study, religious historian Colleen McDannell presents new insight into Vatican II by shifting the framework of its analysis: from m...

The medieval guild is deconstructed into political theory and social commentary in this contemporary look at one of the most important social institutions of the Middle Ages. Essential principles and values underlying the guild system are discussed with a view toward applying them to current societal ills such as unemployment, absentee corporate ownership, and employee disenfranchisement. The system, adapted to the needs and circumstances of the 21st century, is discussed as a serious econ...

Michael Davies shows how Fr. Annibale Bugnini--before his dismissal by Pope Paul VI under suspicion of being a Freemason--was able to "reform" the Catholic Mass into the constantly evolving liturgy. Quoting Bishops and Cardinals as well as liberal "experts" and Protestant observers, he exposes the "time bombs" which were built into the Second Vatican Council's document on the liturgy by a few revolutionaries in order to be exploited later--and which have been detonating ever since. "I am c...