American Catholic

American Catholic
Author: Charles Morris
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 529
Release: 2011-08-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0307797910

"A cracking good story with a wonderful cast of rogues, ruffians and some remarkably holy and sensible people." --Los Angeles Times Book Review Before the potato famine ravaged Ireland in the 1840s, the Roman Catholic Church was barely a thread in the American cloth. Twenty years later, New York City was home to more Irish Catholics than Dublin. Today, the United States boasts some sixty million members of the Catholic Church, which has become one of this country's most influential cultural forces. In American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church, Charles R. Morris recounts the rich story of the rise of the Catholic Church in America, bringing to life the personalities that transformed an urban Irish subculture into a dominant presence nationwide. Here are the stories of rogues and ruffians, heroes and martyrs--from Dorothy Day, a convert from Greenwich Village Marxism who opened shelters for thousands, to Cardinal William O'Connell, who ran the Church in Boston from a Renaissance palazzo, complete with golf course. Morris also reveals the Church's continuing struggle to come to terms with secular, pluralist America and the theological, sexual, authority, and gender issues that keep tearing it apart. As comprehensive as it is provocative, American Catholic is a tour de force, a fascinating cultural history that will engage and inform both Catholics and non-Catholics alike. "The best one-volume history of the last hundred years of American Catholicism that it has ever been my pleasure to read. What's appealing in this remarkable book is its delicate sense of balance and its soundly grounded judgments." --Andrew Greeley

Dilemma

Dilemma
Author: Albert Cutie
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2011-01-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1101475293

He was a Roman Catholic priest whose love affair became headline news. Now, he shares his explosive story-in his own words... In this deeply personal and controversial memoir, Father Albert Cutié tells about the devastating struggle between upholding his sacred promises as a priest and falling in love. Already conflicted with growing ideological differences with the Church, Cutié was forced to abruptly change his life the day that he was photographed on the beach, embracing the woman he would later call his wife. Once a poster boy of the Roman Catholic Church-loved and admired by millions-Cutié found that he was not happy and able to live as a celibate priest, especially having to defend the number of positions he was no longer in agreement with. For years he kept his relationship a secret, while he soul searched and prayed for answers. The love that he deemed a blessing was bringing him closer to God, but further from the Church. In Dilemma, Cutié tells about breaking that promise, reigniting the very heated debate over mandatory celibacy for Catholic priests, beginning a new way of life and discovering a new way of serving God.

American Catholic

American Catholic
Author: D. G. Hart
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2020-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501751972

American Catholic places the rise of the United States' political conservatism in the context of ferment within the Roman Catholic Church. How did Roman Catholics shift from being perceived as un-American to emerging as the most vocal defenders of the United States as the standard bearer in world history for political liberty and economic prosperity? D. G. Hart charts the development of the complex relationship between Roman Catholicism and American conservatism, and shows how these two seemingly antagonistic ideological groups became intertwined in advancing a certain brand of domestic and international politics. Contrary to the standard narrative, Roman Catholics were some of the most assertive political conservatives directly after World War II, and their brand of politics became one of the most influential means by which Roman Catholicism came to terms with American secular society. It did so precisely as bishops determined the church needed to update its teaching about its place in the modern world. Catholics grappled with political conservatism long before the supposed rightward turn at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Hart follows the course of political conservatism from John F. Kennedy, the first and only Roman Catholic president of the United States, to George W. Bush, and describes the evolution of the church and its influence on American politics. By tracing the roots of Roman Catholic politicism in American culture, Hart argues that Roman Catholicism's adaptation to the modern world, whether in the United States or worldwide, was as remarkable as its achievement remains uncertain. In the case of Roman Catholicism, the effects of religion on American politics and political conservatism are indisputable.

American Catholic Social Teaching

American Catholic Social Teaching
Author: Thomas Massaro
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2002
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780814651056

Accompanying CD-ROM contains Adobe Acrobat PDF files of the documents in the first half of the book. CD-ROM held in office. Ask at reference desk.

Catholics and Contraception

Catholics and Contraception
Author: Leslie Woodcock Tentler
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2018-09-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1501726676

As Americans rethought sex in the twentieth century, the Catholic Church's teachings on the divisive issue of contraception in marriage were in many ways central. In a fascinating history, Leslie Woodcock Tentler traces changing attitudes: from the late nineteenth century, when religious leaders of every variety were largely united in their opposition to contraception; to the 1920s, when distillations of Freud and the works of family planning reformers like Margaret Sanger began to reach a popular audience; to the Depression years, during which even conservative Protestant denominations quietly dropped prohibitions against marital birth control. Catholics and Contraception carefully examines the intimate dilemmas of pastoral counseling in matters of sexual conduct. Tentler makes it clear that uneasy negotiations were always necessary between clerical and lay authority. As the Catholic Church found itself isolated in its strictures against contraception—and the object of damaging rhetoric in the public debate over legal birth control—support of the Church's teachings on contraception became a mark of Catholic identity, for better and for worse. Tentler draws on evidence from pastoral literature, sermons, lay writings, private correspondence, and interviews with fifty-six priests ordained between 1938 and 1968, concluding, "the recent history of American Catholicism... can only be understood by taking birth control into account."

The Truth at the Heart of the Lie

The Truth at the Heart of the Lie
Author: James Carroll
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2021-03-23
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593134729

“Courageous and inspiring.”—Karen Armstrong, author of The Case for God “James Carroll takes us to the heart of one of the great crises of our times.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve An eloquent memoir by a former priest and National Book Award–winning writer who traces the roots of the Catholic sexual abuse scandal back to the power structure of the Church itself, as he explores his own crisis of faith and journey to renewal NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY James Carroll weaves together the story of his quest to understand his personal beliefs and his relationship to the Catholic Church with the history of the Church itself. From his first awakening of faith as a boy to his gradual disillusionment as a Catholic, Carroll offers a razor-sharp examination both of himself and of how the Church became an institution that places power and dominance over people through an all-male clergy. Carroll argues that a male-supremacist clericalism is both the root cause and the ongoing enabler of the sexual abuse crisis. The power structure of clericalism poses an existential threat to the Church and compromises the ability of even a progressive pope like Pope Francis to advance change in an institution accountable only to itself. Carroll traces this dilemma back to the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, when Scripture, Jesus Christ, and His teachings were reinterpreted as the Church became an empire. In a deeply personal re-examination of self, Carroll grapples with his own feelings of being chosen, his experiences as a priest, and the moments of doubt that made him leave the priesthood and embark on a long personal journey toward renewal—including his tenure as an op-ed columnist at The Boston Globe writing about sexual abuse in the Church. Ultimately, Carroll calls on the Church and all reform-minded Catholics to revive the culture from within by embracing anti-clerical, anti-misogynist resistance and staying grounded in the spirit of love that is the essential truth at the heart of Christian belief and Christian life.

The Faithful

The Faithful
Author: James M. O’Toole
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 385
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674034880

Annotation Here, James O'Toole offers a panoramic history of the American Catholic laity. From the first settlements of Catholics in the colonies, to the turmoil of modern scandals, we see Catholics' complex relations with Rome and with their own nation, the institutional changes and the daily life of America's Catholics.

The Protestant's Dilemma

The Protestant's Dilemma
Author: Devin Rose
Publisher: Catholic Answers
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2014-02-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9781938983610

What if Protestantism were true? What if the Reformers really were heroes, the Bible the sole rule of faith, and Christ's Church just an invisible collection of loosely united believers? As an Evangelical, Devin Rose used to believe all of it. Then one day the nagging questions began. He noticed things about Protestant belief and practice that didn't add up. He began following the logic of Protestant claims to places he never expected it to go -leading to conclusions no Christians would ever admit to holding. In The Protestant's Dilemma, Rose examines over thirty of those conclusions, showing with solid evidence, compelling reason, and gentle humor how the major tenets of Protestantism - if honestly pursued to their furthest extent - wind up in dead ends. The only escape? Catholic truth. Rose patiently unpacks each instance, and shows how Catholicism solves the Protestant's dilemma through the witness of Scripture, Christian history, and the authority with which Christ himself undeniably vested his Church.

Catholic Bioethics and Social Justice

Catholic Bioethics and Social Justice
Author: M. Therese Lysaught
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2018-11-16
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0814684793

Catholic health care is one of the key places where the church lives Catholic social teaching (CST). Yet the individualistic methodology of Catholic bioethics inherited from the manualist tradition has yet to incorporate this critical component of the Catholic moral tradition. Informed by the places where Catholic health care intersects with the diverse societal injustices embodied in the patients it encounters, this book brings the lens of CST to bear on Catholic health care, illuminating a new spectrum of ethical issues and practical recommendations from social determinants of health, immigration, diversity and disparities, behavioral health, gender-questioning patients, and environmental and global health issues.