This innovative new biography by Kevin Burns will remind readers why they loved Henri Nouwen’s books years ago and provide a welcome guide to his spirituality, introducing one of the most important Catholics of the second half of the 20th…
Christianity, Church History, History of Religion, Joseph Martos, Lived Religion, Prayer, Sacraments, Theology
The Sacraments: An Interdisciplinary and Interactive Study, by Joseph Martos
What are the sacraments, really? For centuries, the religious lives of Catholics and other Christians have revolved around church rituals with generally accepted individual and social effects. What, precisely, are those effects, and how are they produced? Traditional theology used…
Jerome Miller, Lived Religion, Philosophy, Prayer, Spirituality, Suffering & evil, Theodicy, Theology
The Way of Suffering: A Geography of Crisis, by Jerome Miller
This book can best be described as an extended meditation on suffering, phenomenological in method and dialectical in point of view. The angle the author takes is that of moral self-examination rather that conventional scholarly inquiry, and his aim is…
Images of Hope: Imagination as Healer of the Hopeless, by William Lynch
Lynch says he bases the book on two assumptions. First, he believes whatever is ill with the mentally ill is human. Second, he says that the well can put off the impossible burden of trying to be as well as…
A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis
Written after his wife’s tragic death as a way of surviving the “mad midnight moment,” A Grief Observed is C.S. Lewis’s honest reflection on the fundamental issues of life, death, and faith in the midst of loss. This work contains…
Where Is God?: Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, And Hope, by Jon Sobrino
Jon Sobrino’s book takes its starting point from tragedy and violence: a devastating earthquake in El Salvador, the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the subsequent bombing of Afghanistan. The topic of suffering and death has traditionally raised questions about…