Ward Books

This book is a steal. I picked it up at library sale just as the other reviewer did. Thinking I would give it to one of my nephews. No way! It is as much a social history as an architectural history. The going ons inside the castle can be pieced together by the numerous entries and their definitions. Any person interested in the Middle Ages would be thrilled to have this title.

I bought a used version... 1983 printing, 249pages, 5.5" by 8" hardcover.

From the cover: "A guide to everything there is to know about exploring castles in England, Scotland and Wales." ...Believe it, this book has a glossary of hundreds of details about castles with black & white sketches for most entries.

If you are a castle enthusiast like I am, you will learn a great deal of castle architecture, history, daily life, etc. I keep it by my bed and browse thru it sometimes before I go to sleep.

I got this from a library sale, thinking it was likely another skim the surface books, instead was delighted to find it so much more. If it has to do with Castles you will find it in here. It has a guide to the notable Castle of Britain for those on the tour, giving you details about its layout and history. It covers the architecture and its reasons and purposes, it goes into the feudal system and how lords, barrons, knights were made and ruled.

Compact, but incisive book that is well written in an interesting fashion for those just now wishing to learn about all aspects of Castle life, weapons and warfare, but also a handy reference guide to writers working with that period.

Highly recommended WISE WRITERS AND READERS History Pick.

In the visual West, we have a tendency to segment much that we do into spheres of specialization, much to the detriment of the whole, while much to the aggrandizement of the parts. The dynamic between the part and the whole has often been a problem in Catechesis in the Catholic Church, often teaching subjects like "sacramental theology" in such a way that it is only briefly related to the wider realms of Ecclesiology, Christology, and Soteriology (let alone the varied other psychological, sociological, etc. relations). While perhaps in one area or during one time period some of these relationships are made, nowhere have I ever read as fine of a synthesis as in this text by Schillebeeckx.

The greatest strength in Schillebeeckx's discussion is derived from the fact that he approaches the questions of sacramental theology by always reminding the reader that the primary Sacrament is the person of Jesus Christ. The implication is that Christology is the font of all sacramental theology, for Christ is the visible face of God on Earth. (To use the somewhat-scholastic phrase: He is the visible manifestation of the invisible Father.) However, by placing the sacraments in something of a subordinate role to Christ, the question of continuation is raised. It is in this way that the nature of the Church, as the Body of Christ, is explained in wholly sacramental terms, as the extension of Christ's resurrected body through time. It is from this point that the author reflects upon the nature of ecclesial action, the relationship between objective and subjective reception of the sacraments, the nature of the priesthood in relationship to the sacramental life of the Church (and Christ), and the effects of sacramental grace.

On the whole, the text is very accessible, even to one who is untrained in theology. I think that such a unified synthesis (although somewhat abridged from its full form) provides an excellent view of the Church and of Christ as the visible manifestation of God's grace in the world to this very day in the Sacraments.

It's nice to know that this classic work by one of the great Catholic theological minds of the 20th century is back in print. Originally published in 1960 (1963 in English), this is perhaps the best book written on sacramental theology last century.

Schillebeeckx's thesis is simple: Jesus Christ is the God-Man, and salvation is only possible through a personal encounter with Christ. Christ, however, has risen and ascended into heaven. The question remains: how are people saved who have not had this personal encounter? The sacraments -- which are an extension of the primordial sacrament, Christ himself -- are established by Christ in the Church so that people of all ages may have an encounter with Christ and be saved.

The book is a little over 220 pages (at least the 1963 edition is), and has seven parts: Part 1: Christ, Sacrament of God; Part 2: The Church, Sacrament of the Risen Christ; Part 3: Implications of the Ecclesial Character of Sacramental Action; Part 4: The Sacraments in their fullness: The Fruitful Sacrament; Part 5: Encounter with Christ in the Church as Sacrament of the Encounter with God: The Effects of a Sacrament; Part 6: Sacramental Encounters with Christ: Culminating Moments in the Ecclesial Character of Christian Life; Part 7: The Mystical Quality of the Sacraments.

On a personal note, this book profoundly changed my sacramental spirituality. I highly recommend it to all Catholics and students of the faith. And if you are a theology student beyond the undergraduate level, you should consider this book to be required reading.

to which I merely can add this book was first written by the great Dominican preacher and teacher the Reverend Father Schillebeeckx in 1960, to be first published in English by Sheed and Ward in 1963. Father Schillebeeckx is long well known as a scholastic theologian in the line of his fellow Dominican Saint Thomas Aquinas, who also used a massive and keen intellect to render understandable the mysteries of our Faith. Unfortunately such a learned and logical approach requires equal effort on the part of the reader, who may wish to study this book as part of a serious study or course in theology of the kind so rarely available in our late age.

Needless to say, this careful and comprehensive study bears the Imprimatur of Rev. George Craven, Vicar of Westminister with the Nihil Obstat of John Barton, Doctor of Divinity. I add this information for those who may dare question the orthodoxy of this monumental and important treatise. The generous personal testimony of conversion to deepening understanding of our Faith in Jesus Christ which appears in the earlier review should be all the approbation and confirmation we require to read it carefully and with all of our attention.

Truly this work traces all of salvation history of human seeking the Encounter with God and finding it at last within Jesus Christ. This study then explores every aspect of this Encounter with God in Jesus in life, and after the Ascension, within the Sacraments. Thus we come to understand the profound meaning and import of our sacramental life, and how we meet GOd within them. This book therefore carries us to a closer realization of our Encounter with God in the sacraments, and thus a greater devotion and more serious prayer life, seeking to know and to experience fully awakened that Encounter with God which is ours through Christ.

This work was grown so essential in our understanding and discussion of our Faith that Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI refers to it obliquely by employing its phraseology in his own landmark Apostolic Exhortation Sacramento de La Caridad: Sacramentum Caritatis, within a quote from his own earlier God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est: "The eucharistic mystery thus gives rise to a service of charity towards neighbor, which 'consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God' . . ." .

Father Schillebeeckx remains therefore a prophet of our deepest theology. Read him here in the original and his other comprehensive and astutely scholarly works, including Mary, Mother of the Redemption which so influenced and invigorated the earlier Pope.

Elizabeth Ward is victorious in her debut novel. The narrative voice with which her characters speak becomes a gift to the reader. Rae, the main character, has a toughness that protects her inner core of sadness and it is her story that will remain with the reader for many years. A thoroughly entertaining and enlightening novel.

What a great new author. I bought the book on a recommendation by a friend and was pleasantly surprised. She has a great way of conveying the characters feelings, be it good or bad. You will find yourself completely in touch with her, all the way through. A great read, can't wait for the next book Liz.

"City Boots" is an impressive literary debut for Elizabeth Ward and a great book for readers everywhere. The characters are real -- sometimes achingly so. The story moves swiftly and surely, pulling you right along, making you want to know what's going to happen next. This is the sort of book I'll buy extra copies of to give to friends as gifts.

I will teach some concept about hospital accountiny at the Nursey School in my University, I think this book could help me to improve my knowledge about thgis topic. I

As an Information Technology consultant working w/health care professionals, I needed a standard reference to better understand my clients' needs.

I was working on my Masters of Accountancy after finishing my MBA, and I was lucky enough to find a Health Care Accounting course which used this text book.

I cannot recommend the book highly enough. If you take the time to read the different sections of the book, and read the (copious) scenario problems at the end of the section where the lessons are applied, you will acquire a much richer understanding of the accounting dynamics in health care.

I work in a health care administration postion and found the book to be very useful for refreshing me on basic accounting concepts as well as covering more complex topics of health care finance and cost accounting. I would highly recommend this book as a reference for health care institutions (especially hospitals) for orientation and as a way to educate their managers. The real-life examples and problems are invaluable for explaining the topics covered in each chapter.

For those out there who still refuse to put anything nylon on yer hoss - this is the book for you. In an age when "horse whisperers" dominate the public's view on training their mounts, it's good to still pay attention to the wisdom and insight passed on by men who rode for a living, day in and day out, on green mounts in rough country. Also includes sections on handling a herd, packing, campfire cooking, leather work, saddles, tack, early rodeo, and a few long-forgotten loops for those of you who think you know how to throw a rope! True buckaroos as well as greenhorns will love this book.

This book is like a desktop encyclopedia devoted to nearly everything about the modern-day (1950s) working cowboy. As John Erickson, himself a working cowboy and writer, notes in his foreword, Ward has left us a treasure trove of cowboy know-how mostly passed on by word of mouth and that would have been lost without Ward's writing it down and illustrating it with his meticulous drawings.

There's a bit of history everywhere, as Ward traces the evolution of practices that mark the cowboy work of his day, but mostly he sticks with what he knows from what seems to be first-hand experience - how to braid leather, shoe a horse, throw a rope, make a bed roll. Chapters are devoted to varieties of equipment and cowboy gear. The detail is often amazing, for instance eight full pages devoted to descriptions of 134 different earmarks used in the branding of cattle. And for the noncowboys among readers, there are many little-known facts, like when and why to shoe only the back hooves of horses and why chaps are held together in front by a string instead of a belt.

The volume of information in the book is leavened by the author's conversational style and dry humor. There's a barely suppressed grin in his description of how to pull a cow from a bog, and in describing a pair of fancy chaps he remarks, "Chaps like these make a hundred-dollar bill look like thirty cents if you're going to buy 'em." Thanks to the University of Oklahoma Press for keeping this fine book in print.

TO GOOD TO BE TRUE IF YOU ENJOY COWBOYS THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YO

I am a Lutheran Church librarian in Florida who bought this book for our church library. This is a detailed fascinating look at the foundation of Fisk University and how its Jubilee Singers raised money for their college at a cost of superhuman personal dedication and hardship. If only we had recordings of this group! The beauty of their music made grown men weep!

Those who are interested in choral singing, in the post-Civil War era, or in the development of traditionally-black universities will find much to enjoy in this book. It so well expresses the era in which the Jubilee Singers sang, the racism they stood against, the effects of their singing on audiences, personality conflicts within the group, how they even sang on street corners for spare change, toured in Europe, performed for heads of state and monarchs, etc. Just a neat book that evokes the time about which it was written in so many ways.

BIRTH OF A JOYFUL NOISE: Long-forgotten Jubilee Singers Brought Spirituals to the World by ...The Seattle Times, April 30, 1999

Seattle journalist and novelist Andrew Ward was doing research for a Civil War novel in local libraries when he stumbled on a wonderful, little-known American story. A discovery in the University of Washington's Suzzallo Library collection sent him to Nashville, Tennessee, where he found archives of material on the Jubilee Singers, a remarkable troupe of African American students who sang spirituals to audiences around the world after the Civil War, countering racial stereotypes wherever they went.

"The Jubilees were front-page news during the 1870s," says Ward. "From newspaper clippings it's obvious that their performances gave audiences everywhere their first exposure to authentic African American music. And at a time when it was risky for blacks to assert themselves in public, these young people (many of them former slaves) stood on stages and denounced any segregation they encountered. It astonished me that I had never heard of their contribution to American history."

History isn't Ward's field, though he won a Washington State Governor's Award in 1997 for Our Bones Are Scattered, a historical account of the 1857 Indian Mutiny against British rule. Local readers are more likely to remember his NPR monologues about living in the Seattle area, broadcast ten years ago on "All Things Considered" and collected in the volume Out Here: A Newcomer's Notes from the Great Northwest.

Ward says, "I'm an essayist and novelist, not an academic, and I don't have a historian's training. But I like to tell stories. When writing history I try to stay close to the experiences of people who were there."

Ward's "Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story of the Jubilee Singers" tells a deeply American story that shows the "can-do" national character at its best: people uniting to save something they love.

In this case it was Nashville's Fisk School, established for the education of African Americans after the Civil War. While many comparable schools offered only agricultural or industrial training, Fisk boasted a liberal arts curriculum meant to produce teachers and missionaries. But like other black schools of that era it was underfunded. When Fisk faced financial ruin, with teachers and students falling ill from poor food and bitter cold in buildings virtually rotting away, the choir and their director went on the road (another resonant American theme) to raise what today would be millions of dollars.

The story is also American in featuring people who work together despite divergent backgrounds and conflicting aims. Ward observes, "Many of the missionaries who helped build black colleges and the white teachers who staffed them were Northern abolitionists who thought they'd find in black people a kind of blank slate to write on. What they found were real African American persons in all their human variety, with a complex, vital culture of their own." Yet in spite of mistakes, quarrels, and mixed motives on the part of all, black and white, the Jubilees succeeded.

"'We were nothing but a bunch of kids,' wrote soprano Maggie Porter. 'All we wanted was for Fisk to stand.'"

But they were a savvy, resilient bunch, too. Tenor Benjamin Holmes had taught himself to read and write by studying the letters on city signs. Soprano Georgia Gordon had learned to read by memorizing a Bible verse she heard in church, comparing it with the text until she could match each word's sound with its shape, and finding other words like it. Bass singer Greene Evans had built a schoolhouse for black children from discarded lumber, wryly noting that the building "'did not lack for ventilation, for a bird could fly through anywhere.'" Like Evans, Porter had taught in a country school, until it was burned down by the KKK.

On their first U.S. tour the Jubilees wore shabby clothes and lacked winter coats. Critics confused the slave songs that, in soprano Ella Sheppard's words, "'were sacred to our parents'" with the vulgar comedy of blackface minstrels. Railroad conductors ignored the singers'coach tickets and banished them to the smoking cars. Hotels that didn't turn them away often provided rooms which, Sheppard wrote, were "'so well occupied' with insects 'that a part of us only could sleep while the others slew the occupants.'" Some innkeepers were more welcoming - - one tied his wife to the upstairs banister to keep her from throwing the singers out of the parlor.

Despite fears, threats, exhausting schedules, and serious illnesses (contralto Julia Jackson had a stroke; tenor Benjamin Holmes developed TB), the Jubilees persevered. Their gracious ways and marvelous music inspired newspaper reporters to write articles that shamed hotel and restaurant owners into admitting black customers, and several railways, steamship lines, and schools integrated.

Through incessant rehearsals the singers had developed a sweet, stirring sound "that rose and soared and faded like a passing breeze." They sang for royalty throughout Europe, they sang in the Taj Mahal. Packed audiences listened to their praise songs and sorrow songs with astonished joy, weeping and applauding.

It was the first truly American music, and it would influence music everywhere in the next century. In these spirituals, Mark Twain observed, America had "'produced the perfectest flower of the ages.'"

The songs live on in such favorites as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "This Little Light of Mine." No Jubilee performances were recorded, but every student choir at Fisk University has sung the original arrangements, and the present choir will appear in Ward's TV documentary, Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory, on May 1 at 9pm on KCTS-9.

Ward may either finish his Civil War novel or write about another historical event his work on the novel turned up, the massacre of African American soldiers at Fort Pillow. Writing history, he says, reminds him how his life is linked to the lives of others. "Driving to Silverdale, I'm haunted by a sense of being an interloper on Suquamish soil. We're all interlopers to some extent, and we shouldn't fool ourselves with a proprietary sense about America that none of us has a right to." Ward adds, "We even treat African Americans like guests in this country. Though some of us try to make the 'visitors' feel comfortable, history shows us we're in no position to do this."

History also shows us, in Ward's inspiring book, a triumph of great music and personal courage.

BIRTH OF A JOYFUL NOISE: Long-forgotten Jubilee Singers Brought Spirituals to the World by JUDY LIGHTFOOT The Seattle Times, April 30, 1999

Seattle journalist and novelist Andrew Ward was doing research for a Civil War novel in local libraries when he stumbled on a wonderful, little-known American story. A discovery in the University of Washington's Suzzallo Library collection sent him to Nashville, Tennessee, where he found archives of material on the Jubilee Singers, a remarkable troupe of African American students who sang spirituals to audiences around the world after the Civil War, countering racial stereotypes wherever they went.

"The Jubilees were front-page news during the 1870s," says Ward. "From newspaper clippings it's obvious that their performances gave audiences everywhere their first exposure to authentic African American music. And at a time when it was risky for blacks to assert themselves in public, these young people (many of them former slaves) stood on stages and denounced any segregation they encountered. It astonished me that I had never heard of their contribution to American history."

History isn't Ward's field, though he won a Washington State Governor's Award in 1997 for Our Bones Are Scattered, a historical account of the 1857 Indian Mutiny against British rule. Local readers are more likely to remember his NPR monologues about living in the Seattle area, broadcast ten years ago on "All Things Considered" and collected in the volume Out Here: A Newcomer's Notes from the Great Northwest.

Ward says, "I'm an essayist and novelist, not an academic, and I don't have a historian's training. But I like to tell stories. When writing history I try to stay close to the experiences of people who were there."

Ward's "Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story of the Jubilee Singers" tells a deeply American story that shows the "can-do" national character at its best: people uniting to save something they love.

In this case it was Nashville's Fisk School, established for the education of African Americans after the Civil War. While many comparable schools offered only agricultural or industrial training, Fisk boasted a liberal arts curriculum meant to produce teachers and missionaries. But like other black schools of that era it was underfunded. When Fisk faced financial ruin, with teachers and students falling ill from poor food and bitter cold in buildings virtually rotting away, the choir and their director went on the road (another resonant American theme) to raise what today would be millions of dollars.

The story is also American in featuring people who work together despite divergent backgrounds and conflicting aims. Ward observes, "Many of the missionaries who helped build black colleges and the white teachers who staffed them were Northern abolitionists who thought they'd find in black people a kind of blank slate to write on. What they found were real African American persons in all their human variety, with a complex, vital culture of their own." Yet in spite of mistakes, quarrels, and mixed motives on the part of all, black and white, the Jubilees succeeded.

"'We were nothing but a bunch of kids,' wrote soprano Maggie Porter. 'All we wanted was for Fisk to stand.'"

But they were a savvy, resilient bunch, too. Tenor Benjamin Holmes had taught himself to read and write by studying the letters on city signs. Soprano Georgia Gordon had learned to read by memorizing a Bible verse she heard in church, comparing it with the text until she could match each word's sound with its shape, and finding other words like it. Bass singer Greene Evans had built a schoolhouse for black children from discarded lumber, wryly noting that the building "'did not lack for ventilation, for a bird could fly through anywhere.'" Like Evans, Porter had taught in a country school, until it was burned down by the KKK.

On their first U.S. tour the Jubilees wore shabby clothes and lacked winter coats. Critics confused the slave songs that, in soprano Ella Sheppard's words, "'were sacred to our parents'" with the vulgar comedy of blackface minstrels. Railroad conductors ignored the singers'coach tickets and banished them to the smoking cars. Hotels that didn't turn them away often provided rooms which, Sheppard wrote, were "'so well occupied' with insects 'that a part of us only could sleep while the others slew the occupants.'" Some innkeepers were more welcoming - - one tied his wife to the upstairs banister to keep her from throwing the singers out of the parlor.

Despite fears, threats, exhausting schedules, and serious illnesses (contralto Julia Jackson had a stroke; tenor Benjamin Holmes developed TB), the Jubilees persevered. Their gracious ways and marvelous music inspired newspaper reporters to write articles that shamed hotel and restaurant owners into admitting black customers, and several railways, steamship lines, and schools integrated.

Through incessant rehearsals the singers had developed a sweet, stirring sound "that rose and soared and faded like a passing breeze." They sang for royalty throughout Europe, they sang in the Taj Mahal. Packed audiences listened to their praise songs and sorrow songs with astonished joy, weeping and applauding.

It was the first truly American music, and it would influence music everywhere in the next century. In these spirituals, Mark Twain observed, America had "'produced the perfectest flower of the ages.'"

The songs live on in such favorites as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "This Little Light of Mine." No Jubilee performances were recorded, but every student choir at Fisk University has sung the original arrangements, and the present choir will appear in Ward's TV documentary, Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory, on May 1 at 9pm on KCTS-9.

Ward may either finish his Civil War novel or write about another historical event his work on the novel turned up, the massacre of African American soldiers at Fort Pillow. Writing history, he says, reminds him how his life is linked to the lives of others. "Driving to Silverdale, Washington, I'm haunted by a sense of being an interloper on Suquamish Indian soil. We're all interlopers to some extent, and we shouldn't fool ourselves with a proprietary sense about America that none of us has a right to." Ward adds, "We even treat African Americans like guests in this country. Though some of us try to make the 'visitors' feel comfortable, history shows us we're in no position to do this."

History also shows us, in Ward's inspiring book, a triumph of great music and personal courage.

This adventure is a descent into the bowels of the earth. Philosophy meets adventure. One of the most interesting books I've read in a long time. Like all great epics it deserves the big screen. The words great literature comes to mind. Before that scares you off, I'll use some other words, great story, wonderful adventure. This book has everything you'd expect to pop up if you were on your way to meeting God while still alive. Beautiful and sexy spirits and demons who bring joy, horror and a great chase, all with the trappings of fine writing. Movie people where are you? Why do we have to wait so long for the great ones to be noticed?

DIVINE MURDER draws the reader ever deeper into a
spellbinding web of mystery. It is sheer escapism yet with a disturbing
plausiblility and philosophical logic underpinning each strange twist of the
tale. The two central characters are well-developed, especially Zoe, who is a
strong and resourceful woman, always one jump ahead of her husband in
unravelling the truth behind everything that happens on her journey with him.

I thoroughly recommend this compelling story concerning the divine, the
diabolical and the struggles of two mortals to discover their momentous
destiny.

Ward Kelley's Divine Murder is an odyssey on a par with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. His style of examining circumstance and perpetuity and the graves we dig in terms of soul is a cross between C.S. Lewis and Dante, an engaging mix of speculation and inner truth. Kelley's poetic pen has an eroticism reminiscent of Nabokov, where scenery is more than scenery. It is a playground for temptation and a test of moral cues.

Kelley opens the novel near the sea, travels through a veritable galaxy of emotion, and the reader falls in love with the complexity of both his protagonists and his villains. In Divine Murder, you will meet both the devil and the god, the beams of light and the complex shades of darkness, but they are at times indistinguishable, and rightly so. It's the reader's job to intuit and draw the line, which adds nothing but fascination to the experience of reading this book. Science fiction has never seen such a startling command of both the earthly and the imaginative.

Once at home among many dozen children's books, this title was frequently requested. Appropriate for 4-year-olds yet informative for adults.

i loved it. my kids loved it. even mr. fish (our goldfish) loved it (We think.).

My kids really enjoyed this book. Not only is the text well written and informative, but the illustrations are colorful, whimsical and evocative. I highly reccomend this book as a fun read and a good learning text. A must buy!

Brian Doyle is simply one of the two best essayists writing today. This book proves it--- once again.

I discovered this author when I picked up a copy of his book of essays - "Credo" in a used book store a few years ago. I was stunned at the power of his prose, read the book cover to cover twice, and gave copies to family and friends. I bought this book thinking it was more essays. At first I was disappointed to have been 'tricked' into buying poetry (what an embarrassing admission) - but what a brilliant and pleasant trick. Some of this writing left me close to dumbfounded. Certainly speechless. Amazing, amazing stuff. I anxiously await more.

Wonderful! But then I love anything Brian Doyle writes. He makes you laugh, he makes you cry. He makes you just feel good.

There is nothing here, especially not on the uncited page 120, which in any way opposes the official teaching of the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church. There is nothing here which has been found by the Chruch's own censors to obstruct its publication. This is the meaning of the Nihil Obstat.

For anyone to contend they find something here which offends their Faith, if they have seen this book at all, is to claim to know the Catholic faith better than the Catholic Church's own hierarchy and Censor Librorum. This therefore is no longer the Roman Catholic Faith, but some schism, if they are serious at all, which is not apparent. They are following there own gleeful lights, and not the Catholic Faith as established and maintained in the Holy See. To so mock the the official pronouncements of our heirarchy is against Canon Law, and cannot be taken seriously. To mislead "faithful Catholics" to avoid this book is to oppose the official pronouncements of the Church, and thus to deceive the faithful, and is clearly contemptible. I hope such joking receives its just reward, which it apparently shall not upon the amazon.

I quote from page 120, which is one paragraph, or rather partial paragraph which begins on page 119 and ends on page 121 (in the 1995 sixth impression by London's Sheed and Ward). Let me first point out these pages present not the Reverend Father Schillebeeckx's own conclusions, but his summary of an article by another Catholic theologian, which had been published in the well-known and respected academic Catholic theological journal Verbum. Thus this quote begins with a quote from the other theologian:

"'It is interpersonal - the host mediates between the Lord (in his Chruch) and me (in the same Church). I kneel, not before a Christ who is, as it were, condensed in the host, but before the Lord himself who is offering his reality, his body, to me through the host.' The host is Christ's gift of himself, and Christ's persence is that of the giver in the gift, as J. Moller and, later, L. Smits have argued. The gift here is food and drink, but these are not a gift from an ordinary man, but from Jesus, the Christ, and they are therefore the non-deceptive, but irrevocably authentic gift of Christ himself. It is, of course, true that Christ also gives himself in the other sacraments. But this gift of himself is realised in the most supreme way in the Eucharist - the bread and the wine become fully signs. 'What takes place in the Eucharist is a change of sign.' Transubstantiation is a transfinalisation or a transsignification, but at a depth which only Christ reaches in his most real gift of himself. Bread and wine become(together with the words of consecration) the signs which realize this most deep gift of Christ himself. Schoonenberg concludes: 'Those among us who are older rightly regard their faith in Christ's presence under the species as a great treasure. ( . . .)'"

This book from beginning to end defends and explains the Thomistic and official Church dogma of the transubstantiation.

This book bears the official Imprimatur of our Hierarchy, and also passed the official Censor Librorum, receiving the Nihil Obstat, which clearly designates there is nothing in this book which opposes official teaching of our magisterium, and that there is nothing in this book which would block its publication (nihil obstat).

This book remains one of our finest documents explaining clearly the history and meaning of the transubstantiation of the Blessed Sacrament, and one of the best ways for Catholics and converts and initiates and the curious to come to grips and comprehend this mystery of our Faith, in our Eucharist.

Please read this book as a glorious and brilliant and officially approved theological document essential to our Theology. You will not be disappointed. Great reading for Lent our any other time of the year.

Highly recommended and officially approved.

Written forty years ago already, the great and influential Dominican priest and preacher and professor the Reverend Father Edward Schilebeeckx clearly covers the history of the Eucharist, past, present and future, foreseeing even the exciting developments in our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI's Sacramento de La Caridad: Sacramentum Caritatis.


Please note as well this book, the Eucharist, by the REverend Father Edward Schillebeeckx, bears the IMPRIMATUR of His Excellency Robert F. Joyce, Bishop of Burlington, as well as the NIHIL OBSTAT of Father Leo Steady, Censor Librorum. For anyone to suggest this book should be banned is to place oneself above and beyond the judgment of the Catholic Church's own magisterium and hierarchy, which blesses this essential and comprehensive and still informative study. Such a person might then either accept the learned judgment of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, or reconsider their own relationship to this Church.

In defending the revolutionary (for his times) statements of his brother Dominican Saint Thomas Aquinas (now our standard theological touchstone), Father Schillebeeckx asks how Saint Thomas and especially Saint Bonaventure's scholastic discoveries would be received in our persent instant media age, in which the majority of the Church might still reject their orthodox theology, maintaining still as then that the EUcharist is actual flesh and human blood rather than the mystery of transubstantiaion of aristotilean phenomeom of accident as explained carefully and subtly by Saint Thomas. Fr. Schillebeeckx writes without writing, between the lines, the difficulties encountered by the theologian now pursuing the Thomistic Eucharistic dogma, and the care and balance required in new restatements of the theological truths.


For instance, Father Schillebeeckx quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas's then extraordinary statement: "Corpus autem Christi non manducatur in sua specie, sed in specie sacramentali. (p. 15)" a dangerous writing when most Catholics still believed they were chewing actual human flesh rather than the "accidental appearances" of bread bearing the Real Presence of the Body of Jesus Christ. In this book, Father Schillebeeckx clearly, carefully, cleverly, completely explains, among several other orthodox Catholic Church dogma, this Thomistic concept of Sacramental species, and thus supplies us an excellent background for understanding and for living Our Holy Father's recent restatement of these truths of our Faith.

Briefly, and I strive here to write impossibly briefly, after this excellent introduction of the issues involved, Father Schillebeeckx devotes the first part of this book to explaining clearly the Tridentine approach to Faith, as defined at the Council of Trent which set so many other standards for our Church. He concludes this first section with a discussion of the Aristotelian doctrine of substance and accidents and their relevance to our Church and to the Eucharistic mystery, and asks the essential question "What is Reality?"

His second part brings the Tridentine principles up to date, in light of our scientific age. He breathtakingly explores the conflict between Aristotle and modern physics, and humbly displays the breadth and depth of his knowledge and faith in his defense of Trent and of Aquinas in the face of our modern perspectives. Any true believer may find here in this section sufficient response to those empirical philosophers and scientists who cannot "see" nor "sense" the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. If a host sits alone in a tabernacle, with no one to see and to hear and to pray and to adore, is it any less loved and loving? The empiricist might question whether the tree falling ni the wood with no one to hear makes any sound, but Saint Thomas Aquinas makes it clear that Christ is in no way confined in Real Presence by the Tabernacle.

Father Schillebeeckx then provides current anthropological and Lacanian concepts of Sacrament as Sign, sacramental symbolic activity, and the religious sacramental act, returning resoundingly to the Tridentine Concept of Substance. He then discusses how the One Real Presence of Christ can have manifold realizations. He touches on the Eucharist in the light of the then desire for Christian Unity, even with denominations which refuse to recognize the real presence in the Eucharist. He again underscores the Distinctively Eucharistic Manner of the Real Presence, and returns to Scriptural sources for exploring the Biblical assumptions.

Upon this foundation he develops the Basic Principle: "Reality is Not Man's Handiwork." We do not decide what is real and what is not. Christ is Really Present in the Eucharist. This is a Reality we did not make, but must recognize. To deny Reality is insanity (These are my own observations, not relections from Father Schillebeeckx, but inspired by him, who writes so much better, so much clearer, with such greater discipline and learning and structure).

Father Schillebeeckx concludes this great and good book by explaining the ways in which we seek to give meaning to the undeniable realities. We cannot deny the reality of an event, of a phenomenom, of a substance, but we diverge in our understanding of its meaning, and in our expression of that understanding. After explaining various aspects of this meaning-filling process, Father Schillebeeckx again returns to exposing this in light of the "Real Presence of Christ and of His Church in the Eucharist." and the Body of the Lord appearing in sacramental form, through transubstantiation, transsignification or a new giving of meaning.

An excellent and comprehensive conclusion closes this book, which is essential for any thinking Catholic seeking the ever unattainable understanding of the mystery of the Holy Eucharist and the Real Presence of Christ, which has fascinated and challenged our Church from the first days of Christianity, and continues to do so, as evidenced in the urgent interest around the Pope's recent Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist.

Other important works to consider, along with our Holy Father's, include Eucharist and the Hunger of the World and The Eucharist and Human Liberation and of course The Living Bread by FAther Thomas Merton.


It is important here to note that at no point does Father Schillebeeckx suggest replacing the traditional Thomistic doctrine of the Transubstantiation with some new formula of transignification and in fact there is no contradiction between the two beyond the process of hermeneutics. In fact repeatedly at every point in this imformative and Faithful treatise, Father Schillebeeckx explains clearly and with conviction the concept of Transubstantiation as first written and taught by his brother Dominican Saint Thomas Aquinas, and held as a central doctrine of our Faith with some literalist grumblings ever since. Father Schillebeeckx in fact transmits a greater and more clarifying understanding, confirmed belief beyond all understanding, and conviction in the very orthodox and subtle and mystical doctrine of Transubstantiation than most Catholics then or now. Any restatement in terms of transfiguration seeks to address the contemporary concerns of the highest echelons of academic philosophers, including the Lacanian psychologists (as in for example, most accessibly Lacan for Beginners (Writers and Readers Beginners Documentary Comic Book) or Introducing Lacan (Beginners)) or even Bahtkin. At no point does Father Schillebeeckx deny in any way the dogma of the Transubstantiation, but rather explains more clearly and completely than in any other text available. Should the average Catholic come to encounter in this way the full implications of the Real Pressence in Transubstantiation, he may experience a mind-numbing shock similar to that experienced by the average American first reading carefully and with comprehension our Bill of Rights.