New Insights on the Gospels - Volume I


Book Description

“New Insights on the Gospels” Volume I is part of a collection that enables you to accompany Our Lord Jesus Christ throughout every Sunday of the liturgical year, together with the founder of the Heralds of the Gospel. Dr Scott Hahn, Fr. Scanlan Chair of Biblical Theology and New Evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH, comments: “What a remarkable movement is the Heralds ! I spent my time this afternoon at JFK airport and my flight back to Pittsburgh reading New Insights- with great profit and excitement. I am so impressed by Msgr. Scognamiglio’s profound insight into Scripture as well as the spiritual wisdom that he communicates so clearly.” The work “New Insights on the Gospels,” beyond being exegetical and pastoral, has the merit of making theology accessible to all readers regardless of social status or academic level. To soar in the heights of Theology, what is needed, more than culture or intelligence, is faith. Faith enables us to penetrate truths and mysteries that lie beyond the reach of human understanding. When it comes to believing, higher learning or intellectual capacity is not of consequence; what truly matters is having a soul that is open to God’s light. It is only in the Catholic Faith that today’s world will find answers to the problems that perturb it. Perhaps this explains the growing interest among the faithful in deepening their knowledge of Catholic Doctrine. Could this be the reason for the successful publication of the first volumes of this collection? Published in four languages—English, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese—its first edition quickly ran out, achieving a circulation of almost seventy thousand copies. Saving precious teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church from falling into oblivion, it is a response to the worthy and emphatic recommendation of the Second Vatican Council of giving primacy to Thomism (cf. Optatam totius, n.16) in the study of the mysteries of salvation. The work has met wide acceptance among priests, for whom it is mainly intended, to serve as a resource in homily preparation. But it has met an equally warm reception among the lay faithful who are eager to broaden their religious knowledge. This may be a unique symptom of the spiritual condition of our age: the thirst for the divine. It is a thirst that increases as it is quenched, causing neither distress nor pain but only joy for those who seek to satisfy it in the crystalline springs of the Word of God.




Introducation to Mariology


Book Description

In Introduction to Mariology, Fr. Manfred Hauke provides a synthesis of Mariology and the biblical fundaments and development of Marian doctrine. While it works as a comprehensive introduction suitable for courses on the subject, it is in reality a panoramic view on the entire Marian doctrine, and as such will be essential for the theological formation of seminarians, priests, theologians, and all kinds of educated Catholics. With an unparalleled bibliographic citation of Marian literature across a dozen languages, it is also a perfect gateway to further research on the subject. It begins with Biblical doctrine, which is important especially for the dialogue with Protestant denominations: Catholic Mariology can be traced in its “embryonic” state already in Holy Scripture. From there Hauke presents a historical overview of the whole development of Marian doctrine, before developing further historical details in the subsequent chapters dedicated to systematic issues. The first systematic step approaches the figure of Mary through her role in the mystery of the Covenant between God and redeemed humanity; her being “Mother of God” and companion of the Redeemer is the “fundamental principle.” Then the four established Marian dogmas are presented: divine maternity, virginity, Immaculate Conception (in a chapter on Mary’s holiness more broadly), and bodily Assumption. A close look is given to maternal mediation which includes a part dedicated to the “Mater Unitatis”. A stand alone chapter is dedicated to Marian apparitions; authentic apparitions are presented as a part of prophetic charisma. The last chapter presents the basics on Marian devotion which culminates in the consecration to Mary (as a response to her maternal mediation). Already available in Spanish, Italian, Portugese, and Korean, this landmark work is published here for the first time in English.







St. Maximilian Kolbe


Book Description

Volume six of the Collected Essays of Peter Damian Fehlner, entitled simply, St. Maximilian Kolbe, gathers together Fehlner's essays on the great Conventual Franciscan saint and martyr. These works come mainly from the journal founded by Kolbe, Miles Immaculatae, and were composed in the 1980s when Fehlner was editor of said journal. Readers of this volume will note the close connection to the themes of ecclesiological renewal and the Conventual Franciscan charism treated in volume five, as Fehlner worked to integrate and synthesize Kolbe's Mariological and pneumatological insights in a context of ecclesial mission and evangelization. The essays in this volume form a mosaic of Kolbean theology and spirituality, mapping out the geography of Fehlner's own theological itinerary that will reach, in terms of scholarly output, its final destination in his posthumous Theologian of Auschwitz (2019). Themes addressed, among others, in this volume include Kolbe's understanding of the history and unity of the Franciscan Order, the Trinity in relation to Immaculate Conception, creation and evolution, consecration, Kolbe's vision for Niepokalanow, Kolbe and the contemporary magisterium, and Kolbe's relevance for a contemporary retrieval of Bonaventure's theology of history.




Immaculate Sounds


Book Description

"It was mid-December 1610 in Mexico City. The Church was in its preparatory season of Advent, leading up to the celebration of Christ's birth at Christmas. The nuns of the Encarnacion convent had just celebrated the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, on 8 December. But now, in this time usually filled with joy, some of the nuns were nervous. Their choirbooks were missing. Without them, the nuns would not be able to celebrate the anniversary of Christ's birth adequately. A musician priest of the metropolitan cathedral, located just three blocks from the convent, had caused the nuns' alarm: Antonio Rodríguez Mata (d. 1643) had all five of the missing books. He had borrowed them from Sister Flor de Santa Clara, the convent "vicaria de coro" (choir vicar) but had failed to return them despite the convent's repeated requests. The diocesan vicar general and the attorney general were summoned. The nuns of the Encarnación demanded that Mata be imprisoned if he failed to return the books immediately following the denunciation. The threat of jail time was serious, but so too was the alleged offense: Mata was impeding the nuns from performing their liturgical music for Christmas"--




Immaculate Conceptions


Book Description

Immaculate Conceptions examines devotional writings, religious and literary texts, and visual art that feature the mystery of the immaculacy of the Virgin Mary in the culture of early modern Spain. The author’s analysis is motivated by the complexity and multivalent capacity of the doctrine and its icon at a time when the debates around Mary’s conception imbued all levels of religious and social life. She considers the many interests – political, doctrinal, artistic, and gender-driven – that intersect and compete in the exegesis and textual and visual representations of the Immaculate Conception. She argues that the Immaculate Conception of Mary proved to be a fertile conceptual and ideological field wherein the identities of the Spanish state, local communities, and individuals were negotiated, variously defined, and contested. The study’s broader aim is to delineate a speculative category, the religious imagination, defined as a spiritual, intellectual, or artistic pursuit in which the individual is committed to sacred truth yet articulates this truth through contingent, partial, and contextually determined theological propositions. The representational status of the image and its relationship to theories of physical sight and spiritual vision are central to the author’s formulation of this category.




New Insights on the Gospels - Vol. VII


Book Description

“New Insights on the Gospels” Volume VII, is part of a collection that enables you to accompany Our Lord Jesus Christ throughout every Sunday of the liturgical year, together with the founder of the Heralds of the GospelThe work “New Insights on the Gospels,” beyond being exegetical and pastoral, has the merit of making theology accessible to all readers regardless of social status or academic level. To soar in the heights of Theology, what is needed, more than culture or intelligence, is faith. Faith enables us to penetrate truths and mysteries that lie beyond the reach of human understanding. When it comes to believing, higher learning or intellectual capacity is not of consequence; what truly matters is having a soul that is open to God’s light. It is only in the Catholic Faith that today’s world will find answers to the problems that perturb it. Perhaps this explains the growing interest among the faithful in deepening their knowledge of Catholic Doctrine. Could this be the reason for the successful publication of the first volumes of this collection? Published in four languages—English, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese—its first edition quickly ran out, achieving a circulation of almost seventy thousand copies. Saving precious teachings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church from falling into oblivion, it is a response to the worthy and emphatic recommendation of the Second Vatican Council of giving primacy to Thomism (cf. Optatam totius, n.16) in the study of the mysteries of salvation. The work has met wide acceptance among priests, for whom it is mainly intended, to serve as a resource in homily preparation. But it has met an equally warm reception among the lay faithful who are eager to broaden their religious knowledge. This may be a unique symptom of the spiritual condition of our age: the thirst for the divine. It is a thirst that increases as it is quenched, causing neither distress nor pain but only joy for those who seek to satisfy it in the crystalline springs of the Word of God.