James Joyce and Catholicism


Book Description

James Joyce and Catholicism is the first historicist study to explore the religious cultural contexts of Joyce's final masterpiece. Drawing on letters, authorial manuscripts and other archival materials, the book works its way through a number of crucial themes; heresy, anticlericalism, Mariology, and others. Along the way, the book considers Joyce's vexed relationship with the Catholic Church he was brought up in, and the unique forms of Catholicism that blossomed in Ireland at the turn of the last century, and during the first years of the Irish Free State.




The Life You Save May Be Your Own


Book Description

Elie tells the story of four modern American Catholics who made literature out of their search for God: Thomas Merton; Dorothy Day; Walker Percy; and Flannery OConnor.




Catholic Modern


Book Description

Catholic antimodern, 1920-1929 -- Anti-communism and paternal Catholicism, 1929-1944 -- Anti-fascism and fraternal Catholicism, 1929-1944 -- Rebuilding Christian Europe, 1944-1950 -- Christian democracy and Catholic innovation in the long 1950s -- The return of heresy in the global 1960s




James Joyce and Catholicism


Book Description

James Joyce and Catholicism is the first historicist study to explore the religious cultural contexts of Joyce's final masterpiece. Drawing on letters, authorial manuscripts and other archival materials, the book works its way through a number of crucial themes; heresy, anticlericalism, Mariology, and others. Along the way, the book considers Joyce's vexed relationship with the Catholic Church he was brought up in, and the unique forms of Catholicism that blossomed in Ireland at the turn of the last century, and during the first years of the Irish Free State.




The Best Catholics in the World


Book Description

THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards 2021 'A great achievement . . . brilliant, engaging and essential' Colm Tóibín 'At once intimate and epic, this is a landmark book' Fintan O'Toole When Dubliner Derek Scally goes to Christmas Eve Mass on a visit home from Berlin, he finds more memories than congregants in the church where he was once an altar boy. Not for the first time, the collapse of the Catholic Church in Ireland brings to mind the fall of another powerful ideology - East German communism. While Germans are engaging earnestly with their past, Scally sees nothing comparable going on in his native land. So he embarks on a quest to unravel the tight hold the Church had on the Irish. He travels the length and breadth of Ireland and across Europe, going to Masses, novenas, shrines and seminaries, talking to those who have abandoned the Church and those who have held on, to survivors and campaigners, to writers, historians, psychologists and many more. And he has probing and revealing encounters with Vatican officials, priests and religious along the way. The Best Catholics in the World is the remarkable result of his three-year journey. With wit, wisdom and compassion Scally gives voice and definition to the murky and difficult questions that face a society coming to terms with its troubling past. It is both a lively personal odyssey and a resonant and gripping work of reporting that is a major contribution to the story of Ireland. 'Reflective, textured, insightful and original ... rich with history, interrogation and emotional intelligence' Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times 'An unblinking look at the collapse of the Church and Catholic deference in Ireland. Excellent and timely' John Banville, The Sunday Times 'Engaging and incisive' Caelainn Hogan, author of Republic of Shame 'Remarkable . . . Essential reading for anyone concerned about history and forgetting' Michael Harding 'Fair-minded . . . thoughtful' Melanie McDonagh, The Times 'Very pacey and entertaining . . . and it changed how I regard Ireland and our history for good. Fantastic' Oliver Callan 'Original, thought-provoking and very engaging' Marie Collins 'A provocative insight into a time that many would rather forget' John Boyne 'Challenging' Mary McAleese 'Explores this subject in a way that I've never seen before' Hugh Linehan, Irish Times




James Joyce's Catholic Categories


Book Description

From the Introduction by Declan Kiberd, author of Ulysses and Us: "Francini Bruni, friend to Joyce in Trieste, wrote that 'he only completely admires the unchangeable: the mystery of Christ and the mute drama that surrounds it.' Colum Power, in a study of remarkable patience and rigour, traces Joyce's deep engagement with the more articulate forms which that necessarily mute, often mystical drama has sometimes taken when reduced to the humiliations of language . . . " "I am delighted to learn of this work about Joyce, being one of a relatively small number of Joyce critics who see him as having a very substantial religious sensibility; a topic that I continue to find of great interest and importance." -Weldon Thornton, The Antimodernism of Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man "A very important book. I now understand Joyce better. Critiquing Joyce and Joycean critics is always perilous, affording many opportunities to tumble ignominiously from the tightrope of true balanced perspective. This book crosses that abyss with awe-inspiring aplomb! Leaves one almost breathless, the masterful handling of the material." -Joseph Pearce, The Quest for Shakespeare "A wonderful book, I have read it with great pleasure. The author has surely done his homework. The arguments are compelling and expressed with grace and sty≤ an excellent contribution to Joyce studies." -Mary Lowe-Evans, Catholic Nostalgia in Joyce and Company "A book of enormous significance not only for students of Joyce but for our coming to grips as a nation with Irish Catholicism, but it has enormous potential way beyond the special local Irish interest, considering the widespread influence of Joyce on world literature." -Father Vincent Twomey "A work of impressive quality, not only a matter of knowledge and extensive readings of Joyce's critics. The substance and course of the reflection is really interesting... So many of the observations made are absolutely remarkable." -Father Antoine Levy, O.P. Fr. Colum Power, born in Cork, Ireland, in 1965, is a religious missionary priest. He obtained a Master's degree in Anglo-Irish Studies (1st hons.) at University College Dublin in 1991, a Licentiate in the History of Theology (9) at the San Vicente de Ferrer Faculty of Theology in Valencia, Spain, in 2011, and a doctorate in the History of the Church (9.2) at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome in 2013.




The Sympathetic Alien


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Practicing Catholic


Book Description

A personal examination of the Catholic faith, its leaders, and its complicated history by a National Book Award–winning, New York Times-bestselling author. James Carroll turns to the notion of practice—both as a way to learn and a means of improvement—as a lens for this thoughtful and frank look at what it means to be Catholic. He acknowledges the slow and steady transformation of the Church from its darker medieval roots to a more pluralist and inclusive institution, charting along the way stories of powerful Catholic leaders (Pope John XXIII, Thomas Merton, John F. Kennedy) and historical milestones like Vatican II. These individuals and events represent progress for Carroll, a former priest, and as he considers the new meaning of belief in a world that is increasingly as secular as it is fundamentalist, he shows why the world needs a Church that is committed to faith and renewal. “Carroll, a former Catholic priest who wrote of his conflict with his father over the Vietnam War in An American Requiem, revisits and expands on that tension in this spiritual memoir infused with church history . . . Readers who, like Carroll, remain Catholic but wrestle with their church’s positions on moral issues will most appreciate his story.” —Publishers Weekly “Thought-provoking.” —San Francisco Chronicle “[An] engrossing faith memoir . . . a page-turner.” —Kirkus Reviews




To Change the Church


Book Description

A New York Times columnist and one of America’s leading conservative thinkers considers Pope Francis’s efforts to change the church he governs in a book that is “must reading for every Christian who cares about the fate of the West and the future of global Christianity” (Rod Dreher, author of The Benedict Option). Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1936, today Pope Francis is the 266th pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Pope Francis’s stewardship of the Church, while perceived as a revelation by many, has provoked division throughout the world. “If a conclave were to be held today,” one Roman source told The New Yorker, “Francis would be lucky to get ten votes.” In his “concise, rhetorically agile…adroit, perceptive, gripping account (The New York Times Book Review), Ross Douthat explains why the particular debate Francis has opened—over communion for the divorced and the remarried—is so dangerous: How it cuts to the heart of the larger argument over how Christianity should respond to the sexual revolution and modernity itself, how it promises or threatens to separate the church from its own deep past, and how it divides Catholicism along geographical and cultural lines. Douthat argues that the Francis era is a crucial experiment for all of Western civilization, which is facing resurgent external enemies (from ISIS to Putin) even as it struggles with its own internal divisions, its decadence, and self-doubt. Whether Francis or his critics are right won’t just determine whether he ends up as a hero or a tragic figure for Catholics. It will determine whether he’s a hero, or a gambler who’s betraying both his church and his civilization into the hands of its enemies. “A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism…To Change the Church is a fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis” (Kirkus Reviews). Engaging and provocative, this is “a pot-boiler of a history that examines a growing ecclesial crisis” (Washington Independent Review of Books).




Joyce's Misbelief


Book Description

Roy Gottfried takes a controversial approach to the study of James Joyce's relation to religion by examining the author's 'misbelief' rather than the 'disbelief' so many scholars claim he professed. He argues that Joyce in fact had a great deal of respect for the Catholic Church though he did not accept the orthodox dogma he learned as a youth. Instead, Joyce was most interested in actual schisms that challenged the authority and universality of Catholic dogma.