John W. O’Malley SJ The Education of a Historian: A Strange and Wonderful Story. Philadelphia: Saint Joseph’s University Press, 2021, 192p. O’Malley says that The Education of a Historian is not an autobiography. Yet it is definitely a biography. It is more a sharing of growth as a historian. He taught history as a young […]
Ecumenical Corner Blog: Book Reviews
Mass Exodus
Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II. By Stephen Bullivant. Oxford University Press, 2019. (Kindle edition) This is a book asking the question: “Why have Catholic people in the UK and America left the Catholic Church, especially those who have not returned?” Do any of them still say they are still […]
Discernment:Theology and Practice
Discernment: Theology and Practice, Communal and Personal. By Ladislas Orsy, SJ. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2020. This work is a slightly amended version of his 1976 volume, “Probing the Spirit: A Theological Evaluation of Communal Discernment. This earlier monograph was written for Jesuits who followed their founder, St. Ignatius Loyola, SJ. How does one discern […]
Learned, Experienced and Discerning
Learned, Experienced and Discerning: St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross on Spiritual Direction by Mark O’Keefe OSB. The author gives us a historical and cultural view of the sixteenth century and the insights of two outstanding mystics and doctors of the Church who have learning, experience and ability to discern for themselves and […]
Christology of Religions
Christology of Religions by Gerald O’Collins, SJ. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2018. xiv, 177 p. O’Collins in his Introduction tells us that Heinz Robert Schlette launched the term “theology of religions” ((p. vii). He continues “But so far as I know no one has proposed a “Christology of religions.” This is his contribution to theology of […]
When Bishops Meet
When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II. By John W. O’Malley. Cambridge, MA and London England: Harvard University Press, 2019. O’Malley is an author who is an outstanding church historian, whose doctorate studies sermons delivered in the Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican during the sixteenth century. He […]
The Common Good
The Common Good By Robert B. Reich. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018. At fourteen years of age, Robert Reich heard John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech…” What can you do for America?” Seven years later he took a job as summer intern of his brother Robert F. Kennedy, and he felt he was doing something […]
Eating Together Becoming One
Eating Together Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis’ Call to Theologians. By Thomas O’Loughlin. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic, 2019. p. xiv, 174. On November 15, 2015 Anke de Bernadinis, a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic husband, asked Pope Francis if her husband could receive the Eucharist when they attend the Catholic Mass together. […]
John Henry Newman and His Age
Owen F. Cummings. John Henry Newman and His Age. Eugene, OR: 2019, p. xvi, 180. Archbishop John C. Wester of Santa Fe, NM, describes Cardinal Newman in the Forward of Cummings’ book as “a man for all seasons”. Cummings speaks of Newman as a complex person who not only influenced the last quarter of the […]
Eating Together Becoming One
Eating Together Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis’ Call to Theologians. By Thomas O’Loughlin. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press Academic, 2019. p. xiv, 174. On November 15, 2015 Anke de Bernadinis, a Lutheran woman married to a Catholic husband, asked Pope Francis if her husband could receive the Eucharist when they attend the Catholic Mass together. […]