Book News

The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances Fitzgerald, Simon and Shuster, 2017, 740 pages, $35.

Although a child of evangelicalism (my father J.H. Hunter was the longtime editor of a magazine The Evangelical Christian), I learned much about the origins and development of evangelicalism from this incisive and fascinating book by Pulitzer Prize winning author Frances Fitzgerald.

Five hundred years of division in the Western Christian tradition has yielded 50 years of striving for unity — and some of the best theology of our times, Regina Archbishop Don Bolen said at the launch of a new book of essays on ecumenism.

It smacks us in the face pretty much every day — that sluggish, sinking-in-the-quicksand sensation of knowing what we should be doing, but not doing it.

The Vatican’s point man on family issues and a U.S. cardinal who is close to Pope Francis have both blurbed a new book by a Jesuit priest and popular author that calls on the Catholic Church to be more respectful and compassionate toward gay people.

OTTAWA – An idea that took root 15 years ago is now a reality for Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher.

Given the Church’s steep decline in the Western world in the past 50 years, one would expect defensiveness from a staunch supporter of what Pope Benedict XVI called the “hermeneutics of rupture” interpretation of Vatican II.

This quote from Tom Watt, former NHL and Canadian Olympic hockey coach, left me intrigued: “Fr. Bauer is a great Canadian, but I could never get it straight — sometimes when you thought you were talking about hockey, the priest came out of him and sometimes when you thought you were talking to a priest the hockey came out of him.”

What do the last phrases of Christ from the cross teach today’s world?

No parish or individual Catholic should have to walk into Lent blind.

Experts in Humanity: A Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing, by Josephine Lombardi, (Novalis, softcover, 143 pages, $18.95).