Ward Books

As Peale was a wonderfully typical yet extraordinary Enlightenment man, so David C. Ward reflects these sometimes complex combinations in his multi-layered style. Written with elegant poeticism yet laiden with fact and academic detail, this book is a joy to read. A wonderful balance between autobiographical insight into Peale's character and a scholarly take on 'enlightened' American society, Ward triumphally balances both the subject and the reader's attention. By applying, for example, philosophical insight to his subject, to art and to historical events with seamless ease, Ward makes a great contribution to the study of an age and a man.

There are no words worthy to describe this incredible collection of poems by the genious of L.E. Ward. Take my word for it, buy this collection. There is no other poet past or present that even comes close to the raw passion of L.E. Ward.

Originally published in 1960, Christ and Apollo: The Dimensions of Literary Imagination is a classic examination of the works of Greek dramatists, Dante, Shakespeare, Proust, Camus, Graham Greene, and other great writers in light of their gravitation toward two opposing tendencies. One aspect, symbolized by Apollo, is the tendency to desire escape from the finite real world and the human condition of embodiment. The other tendency is symbolized by Christ, and offers a glimpse of the infinite world. Christ and Apollo evaluates these traits with articulate philosophical reasoning, and educated author and literary critic William F. Lynch explains why he feels limitation and finitude is the great human good. An erudite and deeply thought out compendium, intended especially for advanced literature and philosophy students.

Get in tune! More than a primer on playing the guitar, this book is encouragement to seek the Lord with your whole heart and use the talents He's given to HIS glory. The format for instruction and the keys to growth - both musically and spiritually - are superb. I've only played the guitar for 3 weeks - already showing improvement and learning a new dimension to praising God! You can too!

I have owned this book, in its original edition, for a number of years and was very pleasantly surprised to see it being republished. Thomas Huxley's essays on agnosticism are widely known, but they really snap to life when presented, as here, with the essays of Henry Wace which form the other half of the debate.

To give this book a bit of background: in 1888, Henry Wace addressed the Anglican church congress at Manchester with a speech "On Agnosticism," in which he argued, essentially, for intolerance of the agnostic point of view. He took the view that "agnostic" was no more than a fancy name for "infidel," and that agnostics were guilty of denying the claims of christianity in a way calculated to relieve themselves of what he seemed to think was the heavy burden of having to say that Jesus was wrong. In making this address, Wace reckoned without the tremendous talents of advocacy of Thomas Huxley, who had himself coined the term "agnostic." I should point out that "agnosticism" such as is under discussion here is not what most people take the term to mean--a sort of indecision or indifference about the existence of gods--but rather is the more intellectually robust idea that the claims of religion are claims about reality, and must be tested by the same criteria that other claims about reality are tested by, and that there is no good reason to believe those claims (or to insist that others believe them) if they do not hold up under such scrutiny. "Agnosticism" in this original, Huxleyan sense is much closer to what people today would call "atheism."

Huxley responds with an essay in The Nineteenth Century (a sort of political/intellectual journal), and the fire rages back and forth for a few rounds. The debate is a delight. Wace is overmatched from the standpoint of both raw intellectual skill and skill in debate, which gives Huxley the opportunity to box him in on multiple levels. The whole discussion has an almost otherworldy nineteenth-century-English-gentlemanly aspect to it, though, in which expressions of great hostility and reproach are made in the most polite terms imaginable. Huxley's skill, in particular, in using humor, irony, and literary and biblical allusion where a less-sophisticated combatant would use insult and invective is genuinely impressive; he wasn't called "Darwin's Bulldog" for nothing.

As a defense of rationalism and empiricism against ecclesiasticism, it is a monumental work. As a work of debate, it is practically a playbook, with all manner of tactics on display. As philosophy, it is robust and full-blooded, unlike the excessively wordy, arcane stuff that so often passes for philosophy. I have found this book worthy of reading over and over again, and there is always something new in it.

The Church is not any building. The Church is not even any particular institutional structure imitating past secular structures such as the monarchical or the imperial.

As this excellent and approved book presents: Our Church is the Pilgrim People of God. Our Church is the unfolding, on-going creation of the Holy Spirit. Our Church is the Mystical Body of Christ.

In this scholarly, well-researched and considered tome (My Image Book reprint of 1976 covers 655 very full pages), Professor, Theologian and Catholic Priest, the Reverend Father Hans Kung explores the Bibilical essence of Church and how our post-conciliar ecclesiology may more honestly and integrally recapture that essence and Holy Spirit of God which entered through the window flung open by good Pope John XXIII at the beginning of his Ecumenical Council.

It goes without saying that this book bears the Nihil Obstat (Nothing Obstructs its publication doctrinally nor morally) of the learned Doctor of Theology and of Legal Studies John Barton, Censor, as well of course as the IMPRIMATUR ordering its publication by the Vicar General of Westminister. It is in fact dedicated in the post-Conciliar ecumenical spirit to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Michael Ramsey. The search for ecumenism and the unity of our Faith was once a goal set by the Second Vatican Council.

The great Catholic Priest and Bibilcal Scholar Fr. Robert McAfee Brown endorses this important work with these words (which I quote in part): "Kung's most significant and enduring work thus far, which is saying a lot ( . . .). 'The Church' seems to me destined to become the work from which both Catholics and Protestants will begin new formulations of a doctrine of the church."

Fr. MacAfee Brown is of course the famous mainstream Catholic scholar whom we must thank for such important works as Speaking of Christianity: Practical Compassion, Social Justice, and Other Wonders.

Further endorsement falls from the learned pen of the famous Father Avery Dulles, brother of John Foster, etc., who writes: "'The Church' is a very important and valuable book. It brings together an almost unbelieveable amount of exegetical and historical information, and effectively shows its bearing on the renewal of the Church today. Kung is profoundly committed to the renewal of the Church according to the Gospel. This authentic evangelical motif should make this book as appealing to Protestants as it is necessary to Catholics."

The orthodoxy of the theologian, professor and Reverend Father Dulles, later Cardinal, falls far beyond question, and his endorsement of this great book must bear much weight. Father Dulles wrote a good number of accepted texts, including the influential Models of the Church as well as several lesser known works including Models of Revelation. Also "necesssary to Catholics" seriously seeking a deeper understanding of our Faith is his The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System. See also his important work for the Woodstock Theological Institute.

This profound and lengthy work, therefore, by Professor, theologian, Doctor of Theology, Doctor of Law, Doctor of Humanities, and Reverend Father Kung, bearing these bright shields of Imprimatur, Nihil Obstat and the public endorsements of at least two well-resepcted colleagues, presents his comprehensive examination of the nature and meaning of Church.

He begins in section A by explaining the authentic esence and image of the Church, and the distortions of that Image. Section B explores the most exciting aspect for me: The ministry of Jesus, and his preaching the message of the reign of God. Notice throughout the use of the rather generic term Reign rather than the specific Kingdom of God, as the latter term imposes a secular misconception and distortion which is not found in translations of the Our Father, for instance, in tongues other than English: Adveniat regnum tuum, and might therefore more faithfully transmit the original sense of Jesus's preaching and teaching and mission.

We then consider with Father Kung the foundation of the Church, the nearness of the reign, which remains already yet not yet, reminiscent of Saint Bernard's famous formulation of the soul seeking God in love, whom it already possesses. Then we enter the apostolic era of the earliest Church, which is compared with the reign of God. We see the ekklesia as congregation, community and Church, and how we serve.

Section C explores various aspects of the Church structure, as People of God, as a Creation of the Spirit, and as Body of Christ. Section D presents Dimensions of the Church, its unity in diversity, its catholic (universal) identity, which causes some to declare no salvation outside the Church, a question Father Kung dares explore. He continues his examination of contradictions and paradoxes by showing the Church both sinful yet Holy, and how the dynamics of forgiveness and renewal maintain the vitality of our pilgrim Church. He finishes this rather Credo section with a treatise on apostolic succession. His final section looks at the offices of the Church with Christ as High Priest in whom we all share, the nature of ministerial service in the Church, and the meanings of the Petrine ministry. A summary epilogue concludes this great work, followed by a number of indices by scriptural reference, by name and by subject.

Anyone interested in gaining a greater understanding of the nature and history of our Church must read this book, which strongly deserves an easily accessible spot on your reference shelf, bearing as it does so many endorsements, including by the officials of our Church. This book may be happily supplemented by his later work: The Catholic Church: A Short History (Modern Library Chronicles)

In this 1974 book, Frank Sheed presents a narrative which is half auto biography, half history of the Catholic Church in the 20th century.

Sheed came to England from his native Australia in 1920 as a enthusiastic but unevenly catechized young Catholic and became one of the key organizers of the Catholic Evidence Guild, a lay group dedicated to presenting rigorous defenses of Catholic teaching in public speaking areas such as parks and street corners. In the process, he learned a great deal of theology, and in a manner suited towards providing rigorous explanations still accessible to the common man. He also learned a great deal about the state of catechesis and spirituality in the Catholic Church at that time.

He and his wife, Maisie Ward, founded the Catholic publishing house Sheed & Ward, and in the process became friends with and publishers of many of the authors of the Catholic literary/intellectual revival of the 1920s through the 1950s, including Belloc, Chesterton, Waugh, Knox and many others.

Writing in 1974, as the chaos that followed the implementation of Vatican II was at its height, Sheed writes this history very much from the point of view of trying to answer: How could it all have fallen apart so quickly?

He conveys both the incredible excitement and optimism of the Catholic communities in the English-speaking world in the first half of the last century, and also the danger points which should have warned people that more difficult times were coming.

This is an inciteful book by an orthodox and faithful Catholic, and provides a unique set of insights into the history of the Church immediately before and after the council.

This is a pleasant surprise of a book. Instead of rounding up the usual suspects (Powell&Pressburger, Carol Reed, David Lean, Ealing comedies) this book selects 24 films from the late silent era to the end of the 90s that reflect developments in British cinema. These are films that most Americans are not familiar with. Hammer horror, for example, is represented by "Demons of the Mind," while Ealing is represented by "Pink Sting and Sealing Wax," a gaslight noir. When a famous movie is in the book, such as "Tunes of Glory," it is one that has become a bit obscure in recent years.

Consequently, "Cinema of Britain and Ireland" points the American reader in the direction of some very interesting films that are both well-made and not overexposed. The contributors all avoid academic jargon in their discussions, and the book reads quickly and makes you want to see these unfamiliar titles as soon as possible.

The eighth installment of Ken Burns' Civil War documentary deals with (among other things) these main topics within the North/South conflict:

-Union General William T. Sherman's destructive march through Georgia and South Carolina, burning everything in his path so as to leave nothing behind for the Confederates to possible regroup with.

-The ultimate breakthrough of Union forces at Petersburg, leading to the takeover of Richmond, foreshadowing the eventually Confederate surrender.

-After initially vowing to fight on in spite of being severely outnumbered and on the run, Southern President Jefferson Davis finally realizes his cause is futile and surrenders, with Robert E. Lee and U.S. Grant official signing the resignation documents at Appomattox Court House.

There are many editions of this great spiritual classic, but Cardinal Gasquet's translation of the Rule of Saint Benedict has been out of print for too long. It is a delight to see it reprinted - and so handsomely - leatherbound, gold blocking, silk ribbon, noble endpapers. Baronius have done a great service in publishing it so beautifully.

Its pocket-size renders it particularly useful for the laity who may wish to read a portion each day as they travel, and the dignity of this edition makes it an ideal gift. Cardinal Gasquet's introduction, too, offers valuable insights to the rule and to Benedictine spirituality.