Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know - Hardcover

Learn about everything from the Greek epics to Shakespeare’s plays to Tolkien’s famous trilogy. Visit Dante’s Italy, Cervantes’s Spain, Dostoevsky’s Russia, and Jane Austen’s England along the way.

Part of the What Every Catholic Should Know series, this book is an insightful introduction to the world’s rich depository of stories. It directs the reader back to The Story—the Story of Salvation History—because this is what great literature does. Great literature directs us back to the Storyteller, God himself. Allow Joseph Pearce to be your joyful guide on this brief pilgrimage through the literature every Catholic should know.

About the Author

Joseph Pearce is Director of Book Publishing at the Augustine Institute, editor of the St. Austin Review, and the author of books on Shakespeare, Tolkien, Chesterton, and other Christian literary figures.

About the Series

The new “What Every Catholic Should Know” series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic readership. Forthcoming titles planned for this series include: mercy, history, art, music, and philosophy.

Product Details

– 210 pages
– 5.25" x 8"
– Published 2019
– Paperback

Praise for Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know

“Joseph Pearce’s introduction to literature will be immediately valuable to homeschoolers and college freshmen, but also to the general reader who knows it is as important to know how to read as it is to know what to read.”

–Dutton Kearney, PhD,
Associate Professor of English,
Hillsdale College

“Learned and accessible, witty and wise, this volume should be a required textbook for every Catholic high school and college student and a must read for all who wish to mine the depths of truly Catholic literature.”

–Fr. Dwight Longenecker,
Blogger, speaker, and author of
The Romance of Religion: Fighting for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty

“This is an eloquent, keenly reasoned, aptly documented, and indisputably cogent book that belongs in every undergraduate library.”

–Philip C. Kolin, PhD,
Distinguished Professor of English (Emeritus)
University of Southern Mississippi

Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know - Hardcover

At every Sunday Mass, Catholics confess that Jesus came down from heaven “for us men and for our salvation.” But what does “salvation” mean? In this robust and accessible book, Scripture scholar and theologian Michael Patrick Barber provides a thorough, deeply Catholic, and deeply biblical, answer. He deftly tackles this complex topic, unpacking what the New Testament teaches about salvation in Christ, detailing what exactly salvation is, and what it is not. In easy and readable prose, he explains what the Cross, the Church, and the Trinity have to do with salvation. While intellectually stimulating, Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know is deeply spiritual, and at its core is the salvific message that God is love, and his love is one of transformation and redemption.

The “What Every Catholic Should Know” series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic readership. Forthcoming topics planned for this series include: literature, mercy, history, art, music, and philosophy.

About the Author

Michael Patrick Barber is Associate Professor of Theology and Scripture at the Augustine Institute in Denver, CO. In addition to teaching, academic research, and publishing, he also gives popular presentations at Catholic conferences and parish events around the United States.

Product Details

208 pages
5.25" x 8"
Published year: 2019
Hardcover

Praise for Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know

“What does it mean to be ‘saved’? I have often been asked this question. Michael Barber gives the much needed and impressively thorough answer. It fills a acuna in Catholic literature! It is well grounded in scholarship but written in a manner that is accessible to every baptized Christian.”

–Nina Sophie Heereman,
Assistant Professor of Sacred Scripture,
St. Patrick’s Seminary and University

“Dr. Barber has given us all a very precious gift: a book that shows both what Jesus Christ came into this world to save us from and, equally important, what he came to save us for.”

–Dr. Brant Pitre,
Distinguished Research Professor of Sacred Scripture,
Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology

“Dr. Michael Barber is an outstanding scripture scholar and theologian! This book proves it.  Want a deeper understanding of the purpose and mission of Jesus? Look no further. Want to know what redemption and salvation are all about? This incredible book has the answers you’ve been looking for!”

–Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC,
Author of 10 Wonders of the Rosary

God: What Every Catholic Should Know - Hardcover

If we want to love God and make him the center of our lives, we would do well to settle this question at least in some small way. This book serves as a starting point for understanding what Christians mean when they say “God,” and to whom they are referring when they use this name. Part of the What Every Catholic Should Know series, God: What Every Catholic Should Know is born out of the recognition that God is central to the Faith, but we encounter misconceptions about God all the time. In an effort to clear up these misconceptions, this book addresses three major concepts—the nature of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation—so that we may strengthen our faith and our ability to communicate it to other people.

Some of us might protest that we are not smart enough to do theology and that less is more when it comes to contemplating the divine. But if God is perfect, wonderful, all goodness, love itself—as the Bible tells us in 1 John 4:8—it would be strange indeed if we did not want to give our whole selves to God, including our minds. After all, the Lord himself tells us: “you shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).

Series Summary

The new What Every Catholic Should Know series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic readership.

About the Author

Elizabeth Klein is an Assistant Professor of Theology at the Augustine Institute in Denver, CO. She received her doctorate from the University of Notre Dame in 2016 and is also the author of Augustine’s Theology of Angels (Cambridge University Press, 2018). She is originally from Ontario, Canada, and now lives in Denver with her husband and two sons.

Mercy: What Every Catholic Should Know (Hardcover) - Book

In Mercy: What Every Catholic Should Know, Fr. Daniel Moloney covers a broad range of topics regarding mercy that are prevalent for our society today. Beginning from an unexpected perspective in the first half of the book, Fr. Moloney approaches mercy from a political point of view, explaining how mercy is in fact truly and intimately interwoven with politics and power. Through this lens, he touches upon pertinent topics such as legal punishments, the death penalty, and self-defense. He also assesses the clergy scandals, laying out why they occurred, what went wrong in how they were dealt with, and how the Church can improve moving forward for the greater glory of God. He eloquently explains how mercy is not synonymous with leniency, but is an act of responding to a privation, a lack of something which ought to be there. Sometimes the road to this may have to be tough love for the good of all involved.

Fr. Moloney invites the reader to wrestle with the supposed contradiction of God saying that he is merciful, yet killing and punishing his creation. Moloney ultimately resolves this apparent contradiction by highlighting God’s identity as the loving Father, explaining how, similar to good earthly fathers, sometimes the most loving route to take in truly loving your children and bringing them to their ultimate good is through the course of tough love. God is always good and loving, and his justice and mercy go hand-in-hand. 

Fr. Daniel Moloney, PhD, a priest for the Archdiocese of Boston, is the Catholic chaplain at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before his ordination in 2010, he earned a doctorate in Philosophy from Notre Dame, worked at think tanks in Princeton, Washington, D.C., and New York, and served as the associate editor of First Things.

Being Catholic: What Every Catholic Should Know-(Hardcover)- Book

Series Summary

The new What Every Catholic Should Know series is intended for the average faithful Catholic who wants to know more about Catholic faith and culture. The authors in this series take a panoramic approach to the topic of each book aimed at a non-specialist but enthusiastic readership. Previously published titles in this series include what every Catholic should know about Literature, Salvation, and God.

Book Summary

In Being Catholic: What Every Catholic Should Know, Suzie Andres focuses on those doctrines, customs, traditions, and practices which have been, for centuries, at the very heart of Catholic faith and practice. 

Topics covered include:

The Seven Sacraments
The Layout of a Church
Details and Process of the Mass
Catholic Doctrine on Mary
The Communion of Saints
Angels
The Liturgical Year
Popes, Bishops, Priests, and Religious Life
Different Rites (Latin, Byzantine, Alexandrian, etc.) 

“Cradle Catholic, Convert, or Curious Inquirer . . . you will quickly find there are more Catholic customs, traditions, habits, and points of etiquette than articles of the Creed, and so, for easier access, my bet is that you will find it handy to have all this lore in one short book.” —From Being Catholic: What Every Catholic Should Know 

About the Author

Suzie Andres, a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College and the University of Notre Dame, lives and writes in Southern California. She is the editor of Selected Sermons of Thomas Aquinas McGovern, S.J., and author of Homeschooling with Gentleness, A Little Way of Homeschooling, and the Catholic romantic comedy The Paradise Project. You can find her blog, “Miss Marcel’s Musings” at suzieandres.com, where you’ll also find links to her books, online articles, and book lists for all ages.