2022 Catholic Planner: Black


Book Description

The Catholic Planner is the perfect tool for Catholics to organize their busy lives while keeping Christ at the center. The Catholic Planner was created to help you accomplish all of your goals, stay organized, make time for yourself and your loved ones, and stay grounded in your faith throughout the year. Features include Sunday's mass readings, reflection space, saint feast days, and more. It's a journal. It's a planner. Stay on track with your goals and your Catholic faith.




2022 Catholic Planner: Black, Compact


Book Description

The Catholic Planner is the perfect tool for Catholics to organize their busy lives while keeping Christ at the center. The Catholic Planner was created to help you accomplish all of your goals, stay organized, make time for yourself and your loved ones, and stay grounded in your faith throughout the year. Features include Sunday's mass readings, reflection space, saint feast days, and more. It's a journal. It's a planner. Stay on track with your goals and your Catholic faith.




2021 - 2022 Catholic Planner Academic Edition: Spiral


Book Description

The Catholic Planner is the perfect tool for Catholics to organize their busy lives while keeping Christ at the center. The Catholic Planner was created to help you accomplish all of your goals, stay organized, make time for yourself and your loved ones, and stay grounded in your faith throughout the year. Features include Sunday's mass readings, reflection space, saint feast days, and more. It's a journal. It's a planner. Stay on track with your goals and your Catholic faith.










Fat Luther, Slim Pickin's


Book Description

Featured as an Essence magazine "56 New Books We Can’t Wait To Read In 2022." Awarded a third place by the Association of Catholic Publishers for spirituality and an honorable mention by the Catholic Media Association for inclusion in the Church. What does musical icon Luther Vandross—and his physical appearance—have to do with appreciating the people and cultures that make up the Catholic Church? Marcia Lane-McGee and Shannon Wimp Schmidt, hosts of the Plaid Skirts and Basic Black podcast, explain that Christmas celebrations of Black Catholic families are not complete without the annual argument about which version of Luther—fat or skinny—created better music. The light-hearted debate is also about remembering the past and providing hope for the future. In Fat Luther, Slim Pickin’s, the duo share their faith and reflections on the liturgical year to honor the Black Catholic experience and to help other Catholics understand Black culture. With the humor, vulnerability, honesty, and pop culture references that their podcast is known for, Lane-McGee and Schmidt explore the Church as an important model for how to welcome diversity while maintaining and celebrating culturally distinct traditions and practices. As our nation continues to confront racism, including within its churches, this ground-breaking book examines the intersection of faith, race, culture, and identity with hopefulness, humor, and joy. Lane-McGee and Schmidt share their experiences as Black women in the Church and invite Catholic women from all walks of life to look with new eyes at the feasts and seasons of the liturgical year through the lens of Black Catholic culture. The Church is a communion of many cultures, languages, and ethnicities, yet it has been unified for more than two-thousand years. Black Catholics bring unique gifts of culture and history to the Church and the United States that provide an essential perspective on the work for racial justice, a strong framework for addressing the sin of racism, confident guidance for embracing diversity, and a beautiful demonstration of faith infusing even the darkest moments with hope. In Fat Luther, Slim Pickin’s, you will learn that: You can embrace liturgical celebrations even if they’re a little janky—that is, haphazard and messy—by making do with what you have and focusing on actually doing something and being human rather than doing it perfectly. Soul food epitomizes the genius of Black Americans who can make sustenance even from “slim pickin’s”—the scraps. Ordinary Time offers us a chance to cultivate our “Catholic Shine”—finding beauty in the everyday stuff of life, revealing the mystery of God. As we remember afresh Christ’s suffering on the Cross each Lent we see the parallel to how racism in America can be both history and an ongoing suffering. The laity, especially women, have an important role as the “neck of the Church”—turning the head toward the most urgent needs of our time and working as Christ in the world. Fat Luther, Slim Pickin’s offers examples of holy people—including Servant of God Sr. Thea Bowman, Venerable Fr. Augustus Tolton, St. John XIII, St. Martin De Porres, and St. Joan of Arc—as companions for the liturgical journey. You will also learn more about Black history and experience, and your own faith, through primers on “one drop” laws, appreciation vs. appropriation, Black hair, the legacy of slavery, code switching, and the three-fifths compromise. Reflection questions are included in each chapter, making this book perfect for individual or group study.




The Hermits of Big Sur


Book Description

Between World War II and Vatican II, as Italy struggled to rebuild after decades of Mussolini’s fascism, an eleventh-century order of contemplative monks in the Apennines were urged by Thomas Merton to found a daughter house on the rugged coast of California. A brilliant but world-weary ex-Jesuit, who had recently withdrawn from a high-intensity public life to go into reclusion at the ancient Sacro Eremo of Camaldoli, was tapped for the job. Based on notes kept for over sixty years by an early American novice at New Camaldoli Hermitage, The Hermits of Big Sur tells the compelling story of what unfolds within this small and idealistic community when medievalism must finally come to terms with modernism. It traces the call toward fuga mundi in the young seekers who arrive to try their vocations, only to discover that the monastic life requires much more of them than a bare desire for solitude. And it describes the miraculous transformation that sometimes occurs in individual monks after decades of lectio divina, silent meditation, liturgical faithfulness, and the communal bonds they have formed through the practice of the “privilege of love.”




Saints Around the World


Book Description

The lives of the Saints are one of the most powerful ways God draws people to himself, showing us the love and the joy we can find in him. But so often, these Saints seem distant—impossibly holy or dull or unlike us in race and age and state in life. In Saints Around the World, you’ll meet over one-hundred Saints from more than sixty countries, including Saints with different disabilities, strengths, and struggles. The beautiful illustrations and captivating storytelling will introduce you and your children to new heavenly friends while also helping you fall more in love with Jesus. Each story in this book is written not only to capture the imagination but also to speak about God’s tremendous love and our call to be saints. There are stories in Saints Around the World for when you feel like life isn’t fair, when people are being unkind to you, when you’ve made a terrible mistake, when you’re struggling at school, when prayer is hard. And there are stories of shouting down Nazis, of fleeing a murderous villain, of making scientific discoveries, of smoking a cigar while enemy soldiers amputate your leg. There are scared Saints, brilliant Saints, weak Saints, adventurous Saints, abused Saints, overjoyed Saints, disabled Saints—and the point of every one of them is the love of God. Whether you’re checking the map to find Saints who look like you or perusing the extensive indices to find Saints with your skills or struggles, you’ll find countless stories in this book that remind you how very possible holiness is.




The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (National Book Award Winner)


Book Description

A New York Times bestseller—over one million copies sold! A National Book Award winner A Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Bestselling author Sherman Alexie tells the story of Junior, a budding cartoonist growing up on the Spokane Indian Reservation. Determined to take his future into his own hands, Junior leaves his troubled school on the rez to attend an all-white farm town high school where the only other Indian is the school mascot. Heartbreaking, funny, and beautifully written, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, which is based on the author's own experiences, coupled with poignant drawings by Ellen Forney that reflect the character's art, chronicles the contemporary adolescence of one Native American boy as he attempts to break away from the life he was destined to live. With a forward by Markus Zusak, interviews with Sherman Alexie and Ellen Forney, and black-and-white interior art throughout, this edition is perfect for fans and collectors alike.




The Catholic Gentleman


Book Description

What it means to be a man or a woman is questioned today like never before. While traditional gender roles have been eroding for decades, now the very categories of male and female are being discarded with reckless abandon. How does one act like a gentleman in such confusing times? The Catholic Gentleman is a solid and practical guide to virtuous manhood. It turns to the timeless wisdom of the Catholic Church to answer the important questions men are currently asking. In short, easy- to-read chapters, the author offers pithy insights on a variety of topics, including • How to know you are an authentic man • Why our bodies matter • The value of tradition • The purpose of courtesy • What real holiness is and how to achieve it • How to deal with failure in the spiritual life