By Cecilia Cicone

“The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: History in Three Dimensions”
Joseph Pearce, Ignatius Press (2023)
300 pages, $19.95

Whether it’s the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition or Galileo, the apparent missteps of the Catholic Church within history are commonly used as arguments against her claim to be the one true path to salvation. In his latest book, Joseph Pearce sets out to work through all of church history in hopes of identifying where God was actually at work, as opposed to where human impulses and evil influences appeared as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Each chapter of “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful” summarizes one of the centuries making up the 2,000-year history of the church. Pearce takes a trinitarian formula, based on Jesus’ identity as “the way, the truth, and the life” and identifies where the church, in that century, had been “Good,” serving as the way of salvation; where she went “Bad,” distorting the truth of God’s love; and “the Beautiful” thing she produced as a lasting testament to God’s majesty and the wonder he is due.

“The Good” of each century of Catholic history is what the reader is most likely to expect. The saints, most especially martyrs who witnessed to the faith with their lives and their service to the poor and vulnerable, kept the church on the right path. Scholars such as Irenaeus and Thomas Aquinas revealed the divine through theological works. Widespread practice of the sacraments meant that people were continually given access to the grace they needed for salvation.

And yet, from even the first century of the church, Pearce acknowledges that there have been forces working against the Holy Spirit, seeking to confuse, divide, and even destroy the Bride of Christ, beginning with rampant heresies and persecution. From the fall of Rome to Martin Luther — continuing to the Enlightenment and then two world wars — throughout her history the church has been impacted by political and cultural events. “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful,” demonstrates that although she is tossed and thrown at every age, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).

When Joseph Pearce discusses what is beautiful about each century of church history, he looks primarily at the creation of art as a participation in the transcendental good of “beauty” without excluding secular art. What is beautiful, he says, reflects not only human culture but also brings insight into the divine as the Creator has revealed himself in that particular age. From Augustine’s “City of God” to Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” Trilogy — with many artists, writers, composers, architects, and more in between — the subsections of “The Beautiful” that close out each chapter are delightful expositions of how the popular culture of the day has continually and surprisingly fostered an encounter with God.

Pearce ends the book in the 20th century, however, without mentioning the realities that we now know and must face regarding clerical sex abuse and the cover-ups surrounding all kinds of clerical misconduct. Given the cacophony of the other evils that took place in the last century, and that fact that the abuse and misconduct issues primarily came to light in the 21st-century, this makes some sense, but at least mentioning the apparent evils being faced almost daily by the church faithful might have made the book feel a bit more current and complete.

While “The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful” may be a bit dense for the casual reader, it is a real treasure trove for the history buff or a budding Catholic apologist. Each century is covered briefly, in only a few pages, hitting the highlights of the time without getting bogged down in unnecessary details. In this book, Joseph Pearce has given the church an incredible assist in seeing Catholicism’s sometimes turbulent history within the light of God’s loving plan.

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Cecilia Cicone is an author and communicator who works in diocesan ministry in Northwest Indiana.

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“The Woman in Me”
Britney Spears, Gallery Books (2023)
288 pages, $32.99

Were you to go to Britney Spears’ Instagram page, you’d find video after video of the early-aughts star wearing bizarre outfits and appearing to do some kind of interpretive dance. It has been a long journey for Spears to get to a point where she can freely express herself as an artist. In fact, Spears would probably smile knowing that people don’t understand her posts and the plethora of emojis that she uses in the captions.

In the pages of her memoir, “The Woman in Me,” Britney Spears gives readers an understanding of why she did the things that fueled tabloid headlines for years and the very real effects fame and gossip had on her as a vulnerable young woman. From her childhood home in Louisiana to the 13-year conservatorship that was the subject of the #FreeBritney movement, readers journey with Spears through decades of traumatic experiences and behind-the-scenes details that give a fuller picture of the star, who is now in her early 40s.

One story from the memoir has recently made headlines: Spears writes of having an abortion at the encouragement of her then-partner Justin Timberlake. Calling the abortion “one of the most agonizing things I have ever experienced in my life,” Spears expresses remorse for having given up her child to appease Timberlake, especially upon coming to realize that he did not have her best interests in mind when he encouraged the decision.

Scripture says, “God understands every human deed” (Sir 15:19). Throughout the book, it is clear that Britney Spears was motivated from a very young age by a desire to please the people around her. Whether it was trying to avoid conflict with her alcoholic father, wearing explicit outfits that stylists picked out for her, overlooking a boyfriend’s infidelity, or shaving her head in an attempt to outwardly express the grief she felt after losing a close relative to cancer, Spears was always looking for acceptance and validation.

God, however, saw Britney Spears, understands her every deed, and desires to give her the love and affirmation she craves. And as she testifies to in story after story, she realizes that God is the one who carried her through years of pain and the many regrets that she has even today. Like someone who has truly experienced the Cross, Spears says she has no other explanation for how she made it through so many trials.

For Catholics especially, reading “The Woman in Me” provides a valuable opportunity to look at “the other side” and there find compassion for someone whose lifestyle seems to go against everything that we believe. Spears is vulnerable in her new book, providing insight into why she was willing to be sexualized in her public appearances, her masquerading as a hardcore partier, and the experience of having her capabilities as a mother constantly questioned publicly.

It would be a mistake — perhaps even a tragedy — to read Spears’ memoir simply as tabloid fodder. What Britney Spears has provided us with in this book is a catalyst for conversion — for readers to move beyond what they see or hear about individuals and to better understand them, to see them as God sees them.

Some readers may be put off by some of the book’s content; there are mentions of suicidal ideation, alcohol abuse, sexual encounters and some occasional explicit language, but these details are not salacious in any way. They all serve to paint the picture of the life of a woman who grew up in the public eye and has reflected on her experiences.

Growth is always difficult; done within the public eye and amid the judgements of strangers the process must become distorted and drawn out. Spears’ journey is unimaginable to most of us, but we can wish her well, praying that her trek eventually leads her further away from her indiscretions as she moves into a life of maturity, freedom and (hopefully) a deeper acquaintance with faith.
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Cecilia Cicone is an author and communicator who works in diocesan ministry in Northwest Indiana.

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By Charlie Camosy | OSV News

Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno is the director of the Vatican Observatory. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he earned undergraduate and masters’ degrees from MIT and a Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard and MIT, served in the U.S. Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College before entering the Jesuits in 1989. Brother Guy’s research explores connections between meteorites, asteroids and the evolution of small solar system bodies. He has observed Kuiper Belt objects with the Vatican’s 1.8 meter telescope in Arizona and measured meteorite physical properties to understand asteroid origins and structure.

At the Vatican Observatory since 1993, Brother Consolmagno was appointed its director in 2015 by Pope Francis.

Charlie Camosy: You’ve written yet another great book! This one is titled “When Science Goes Wrong: Desire and the Search for Truth.” What led to your writing this topic?

Jesuit Brother Guy J. Consolmagno: Chris Graney and I both do a lot of public outreach where we talk about science, and address faith-science questions. Over the years, we’ve discovered that a lot of people have some fundamental misconceptions about what science actually is, and how it does what it does. How can you talk intelligently about science to someone whose idea of science is missing some important concepts?

For example, most of us learn science in a classroom where we pass the course by being able to do problems and come up with the answers in the back of the book. But real science is not about facts that can be found in a book; it’s about all the stuff we don’t know yet, the stuff that will be in the backs of future textbooks! That’s where the fun lies. And inherently this means that a lot of what we think we know now isn’t quite right just yet. It’s wrong.

We’ve also learned that the best way to address these issues is by telling stories from the history of science that shows how science progresses precisely because it is not afraid to “go wrong”.

Camosy: I must ask about this in the context of the pandemic. This was obviously a foundational moment regarding several different issues, including the role and reputation of science and scientists. What do you think happened and/or is happening here? How does it overlap with the themes and goals of your book?

Brother Guy: The pandemic was a moment when we needed science the most. Science suddenly became an issue of life and death. To understand what a vaccine was and how much to trust it meant knowing what to expect from the science, and what not to expect. And that’s when it became so obvious to us that these misconceptions about science — both on the side of those who would deny the power of science, and those who gave it too much credence — got in the way of letting science grow and improve and help us out of the pandemic.

Camosy: Most of your book, unsurprisingly, has a focus on astronomy. Can you give us one brief story or anecdote that might suggest to possible future readers what else they will encounter when it comes to science going wrong?

Brother Guy: One of my favorite stories comes from the arguments against Copernicus’ idea of Earth spinning on its axis as it goes around the sun. It turns out, these challenges were mostly not based on the Bible at all; they were based on really good science that was only missing some subtle point no one at the time could have known about.

For example, several scientists of the day pointed out an effect about motion on the surface of a spinning globe, turning towards the east (to make the sun appear to move from east to west, from sunrise to sunset). In such a case, the actual speed at which the surface of the earth moves eastward should get less and less as you move north — the surface moves fastest at the equator, while at the north pole it isn’t moving at all.

But if you shot a cannon due north, the cannonball would have an inherent speed to the east. So, the path of the cannonball would appear to bend towards the east once it was traveling over a surface that was moving less quickly towards the east.

That very subtle effect actually happens; it is now called the Coriolis Force and it is what makes hurricanes swirl around. But for a cannonball the effect is so tiny that in practice it’s all but impossible to measure. Since no one had ever seen such a deflection in the 16th century, they concluded that Copernicus was wrong, and the Earth did not spin!

As you note, the early chapters deal with astronomy, where in a certain sense the stakes are low. It doesn’t matter to most people if they know whether the earth is spinning! But the fifth chapter looks at a much more serious case, where scientists — and worse, science’s “fan club” — attempted to use a brand new insight of science as a way of ranking and controlling people who were different from them.

The people who followed the eugenics movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — when it was all the rage in the Sunday supplements — thought that they could “breed” superior human beings. Besides the obvious immorality of manipulating human beings that way, the science behind it was absurd from start to finish. For instance, what do you mean by “superior” and how could you rank it? You can breed cows to give more milk or German shepherds to have pointy ears, but there is no such simple algorithm to rank human beings.

Yet in America, immigration from supposedly “inferior” nations (like Italy!) was restricted, and thousands of women, usually minorities, were forcibly sterilized. And, of course, we saw the ultimate outcome of eugenics in the death camps of Nazi Germany.

Camosy: You have a provocatively titled conclusion: “When Faith Goes Wrong.” What are you trying to get across here?

Brother Guy: Both faith and science are ways that we human beings try to search for truth. In both cases, because we are human, we can get it wrong. In fact, because of our human nature, we’ll never get it completely right!

But rather than being afraid of being wrong, or despairing of ever finding the truth, we can use the lessons we learned when we looked at how science could go wrong, and then as it grows, corrects itself and comes closer to the truth. How can that teach us about where our understanding of our faith might go wrong, and where we can find opportunities for our faith to grow?

The key insight is that our experience of faith — like truth, like love — is not something in a fixed and static state but something that we forever grow into, come closer to, appreciate more deeply. We learn from the very love or truth that we have managed to experience, how rich that experience can be, and how important it is to never give up seeking ever deeper ways to believe, to love, and to know. That is where we find God: God who is love, and who is the way, the truth, and the life.

Along with more than 250 scientific publications, Brother Guy is the author of several popular books including “Turn Left at Orion” (with Dan Davis) and “Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial?” (with Paul Mueller). In 2000, the International Astronomical Union named asteroid 4597 “Consolmagno” in recognition of his work. In 2014 he received the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences for excellence in public communication in planetary sciences. Aside from his work at the Vatican Observatory, Brother Guy currently serves as chair of the IAU Mars Nomenclature Task Group and vice president of the Meteoritical Society.

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Charlie Camosy is professor of medical humanities at the Creighton School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska, and moral theology fellow at St. Joseph Seminary in New York.

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Few pieces of English literature are more closely associated with Christmas than Charles Dickens’s novella, “A Christmas Carol.” For many people, the stage production or its many literal or analogous film adaptations are more familiar than the book. “A Christmas Carol” has provided characters and turns of phrase known even by people who scarcely know of the story. Scrooge and his exclamation “Bah! Humbug!” are common tropes even apart from the context of Christmas. Christmas ghost stories are perennial traditions for some families. And how many people have prayed “God bless Us, Every One!”, the last words of “A Christmas Carol,” uttered by Tiny Tim Cratchit?

But “The Christmas Carol” is only the most prominent of Dickens’s several Christmas stories, my favorite of which is “The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home,” published on Dec. 20, 1845.

Other than by reference to the date of its publication, it may seem odd to call “Cricket” a Christmas story. It is set in late January. Christmas is never mentioned, and the story is devoid of explicit Christmas symbols or images. But the message of “The Cricket on the Hearth” places it squarely within any consideration of the spirit of Christmas. The fundamental themes of “Cricket” are selflessness, sacrificial giving, and disinterested gestures of love and grace. The journey to the conclusion is filled with hardship, bewilderment and disenchantment. And the narrative is constructed around an extravagant, mysterious surprise, carefully concealed and delightfully revealed.

Many characters in “The Cricket on the Hearth” have characteristics that are strikingly similar to those in “A Christmas Carol.” For example, big-hearted toymaker Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter, Bertha, are similar to Bob and Tim Cratchit. Caleb is employed by the mean, ill-tempered, Scrooge-like toyshop owner, Tackleton. John and Mary Peerybingle, at whose hearth the cricket chirps, are this story’s Mr. & Mrs. Fezziwig (although the Peerybingles are more central to “Cricket” than are the Fezziwigs to “Carol”).

Unsurprisingly, the dynamic relationships among these characters are analogous to the interactions in “A Christmas Carol.” And I am giving nothing of the story away to say that its ending is satisfying and joyous. It is, after all, a Christmas story.

The cricket from “The Cricket on the Hearth” is both an insect in the Peerybingle’s living room and metaphor for John and Mary’s hospitality and generosity. Along with the teapot, it supplies the chorus for the comedic dialogue and narrative of the tale.

The cricket makes the Peerybingle’s house more than “four walls and a ceiling.” It’s the symbol of a hospitable and welcoming home. When the cricket stops chirping, “somehow the room was not so cheerful as it had been. Nothing like it.” For the Peerybingles, it is a comforting companion; for Tackleton a noisome nuisance. Tackleton: “Why don’t you kill that Cricket?” John: “You kill your Crickets, eh?” Tackleton: “Scrunch ’em, sir.”

Thus is Tackleton’s bleak house, by his own description, nothing more than “four walls and a ceiling.”

Part of the contentment of reading “The Cricket on the Hearth” is the felicity of Dickens’s prose. For example, after Mrs. Peerybingle fills the tea kettle in the outdoor fountain on a cold January evening, she sets the kettle on the fire. “In doing which she lost her temper, or mislaid it for an instant; for the water, being uncomfortably cold, and in that slippery, slushy, sleety sort of state wherein it seems to penetrate through every kind of substance . . . had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle’s toes.”

Similarly, Dickens’s anthropomorphisms are a continuous delight. The kettle “wouldn’t hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal,” for example. It “WOULD lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble … on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at the fire.” The “sullen and pig-headed” kettle was defiant, “cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, ‘I won’t boil. Nothing shall induce me!’”

Delightful to the ear and eye as these and many other passages are, however, the virtue of its characters and the power of its narrative are what make “The Cricket on the Hearth” such a delightful tale. The story radiates the light of Christian charity, echoing themes of generosity and joy, focusing the luminosity of God’s gift to man in the unique event of the Incarnation. God’s grace came to us through a Man and he calls us participatively to share that grace with one another. If that is the message of Christmas, “The Cricket on the Hearth” is a complete Christmas story.
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Kenneth Craycraft is an associate professor of moral theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology in Cincinnati.

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“Theology of Style: Expressing the Unique and Unrepeatable You”
Lillian Fallon, Ascension Press (2023)
126 pages, $15.95

Proper dress that shows respect for the institution and its members recently won out in the U.S. Senate, an outcome author Lillian Fallon would likely appreciate.

Pennsylvania’s junior senator, John Fetterman, who favors shorts and hoodies, and his supporters had proposed changing an unwritten requirement that men and women members wear business attire on the floor of the chamber. The move failed. By unanimous consent, senators passed a resolution to formalize business attire as the dress code inside the chamber.

“Clothing ourselves requires an understanding of appropriateness for our environment,” Fallon writes in her new book, “Theology of Style.”

But Fallon’s “Theology of Style” is about more than picking the right outfit for the right setting. She melds her fashion and style knowledge with her deep study of St. John Paul II’s theology of the body. “But what if I told you that this innate pull toward certain items of clothing is actually a sign of being made in the image and likeness of God? I know, this sounds like a bit of a leap, but trust me, it checks out,” she writes.

In his theology of the body, St. John Paul lays out his integrated vision of the human person. Made in the image and likeness of God, he writes, the human body has a specific meaning, “making visible an invisible reality.”

For Fallon, “a ‘theology of style’ shows how we live out being made in the Image every day — even in simple things, such as how we dress.”

She also draws on the pope’s 1999 “Letter to Artists.” “The artist has a special relationship to beauty,” the pope writes. “In a very true sense it can be said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of ‘artistic talent.'”

Style is a “creative act,” Fallon writes, that “combines the beauty of a material item with the beauty of the human person. In this creative act, the beauty of a garment unites with the beauty of a person’s identity and emphasizes her unique personhood.'”

In Part 1, “Fashion Girl in a Catholic World,” she recounts being a fashion-obsessed teen growing up in Pennsylvania, aching to be part of the fashion world in New York City. But a tension existed between that world and her Catholic upbringing in a house filled with books on saints and reminders that “Catholics should be in the world but not of the world.”

She wasn’t sure she could be both Catholic and a “fashion girl.”

Attending Ave Maria University in Florida, Fallon was introduced to St. John Paul’s theology of the body and was absorbed by it. Then fashion drew her back in: She landed an internship at a fashion magazine in Manhattan. She became editorial assistant, then associate style editor and finally style editor.

Four years later she lost that job and returned home to Pennsylvania, returning to New York for a couple of short stints — once to help with a Fashion Week show. But that world had lost its allure. Fallon saw more of the industry’s cut-throat nature (think “The Devil Wears Prada”) and had learned more about what goes on behind the glam: garment industry sweatshops and ill-treated workers.

Back home, praying for direction, a thought popped into her head: “You’re a writer. So write!”

Fallon covers a lot of ground in her book. Part 2 is devoted to “Theology of Style,” drawing more connections between the theology of the body and style. She also discusses masculinity and femininity and the important distinctions between the two.

Part 3, “Personal Style and You,” includes what she titles, “The Dreaded Modesty Section,” discussing how modesty has been approached in Scripture, and by the church and society. “Immodesty is just an indicator of a greater issue — a manifestation of a fractured sense of self-worth,” she writes.

Fallon prefers the word “reverence,” over “modesty,” because it “implies a positive truth about the female body, rather than negativity.”

She concludes with “The Real Purpose of Personal Style,” offering “pillars” for developing one’s personal style, which for her “is a tool for growing in understanding of your identity. It doesn’t define who you are. You come first; clothes come later.”

Fallon has been writing and speaking on “the intersection of faith and style” since 2015. It’s a unique niche. A reader won’t have to be a clothes horse or a theology-of-the-body devotee to find a few takeaways from this book, subtitled, “Expressing the Unique and Unrepeatable You.”

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Julie Asher is senior editor for OSV News. Follow her on X (formally Twitter) @jlasher.

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“If you have once accepted Christianity, then some of its main doctrines shall be deliberately held before your mind for some time every day. That is why daily prayers and religious reading and churchgoing are necessary parts of the Christian life. We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.” C.S. Lewis, brilliant Christian author that he was, understood the importance of spiritual reading to bolster a person’s faith. To use his analogy, without it, we will starve.

In this year’s annual fall book review, we offer seven selections support you in your faith journey:

“Scrupulosity: Heal Your Mind, Unbind Your Soul, and Let God Work”
By Kevin Vost, Psy.D.
OSV, $18.95
In “Scrupulosity: Heal Your Mind, Unbind Your Soul, and Let God Work,” author and psychologist Dr. Kevin Vost — who passed away in April 2023 — provides a comprehensive overview of both ancient and current psychological and theological understanding of scrupulosity and how those who suffer from it can find peace and healing. If you’ve ever wondered what causes scrupulosity, or if you fear you have it, Dr. Vost not only addresses those concerns but reassures readers that “faith will be the front and center as we’ll strive to fly like eagles, moving away from scrupulosity upon the angel’s wing of faith.” Drawing on the strength of Christ and the understanding that comes from knowledge, each chapter concludes with a “Saintly Lesson for Scrupulous Souls,” counsel from those we know have made it to heaven after their own battles with the “snares of scrupulosity.”

“The Leaven of the Saints: Bringing Christ into a Fallen World”
By Dawn Marie Beutner
Ignatius Press, $19.95
You’ll come to know and appreciate the heroic yet very human lives of a wide variety of saints in this new book by Catholic convert and author Dawn Marie Beutner. “Leaven” is defined as “a pervasive influence that modifies something or transforms it for the better,” and “The Leaven of Saints” contains dozens of examples of saints, religious orders and topics related to saints that did just that. Conveniently organized around Christian witness, with chapters for Doctors of the Church, “Shepherd Saints,” religious life, popes, the Virgin Mary, married saints and more, the book also includes a bibliography to expand your reading and a names index.

“Church Councils: 100 Questions and Answers”
By Paul Senz
Ignatius Press, $16.95
More than a history of the 21 ecumenical councils, author Paul Senz uses a question-and-answer format to provide a practical and theological explanation of these important Church meetings. Over the course of the 100 questions — divided into four sections (general, historical, theological and controversial) — Senz gives the historical context that led to each council, the reasons it was convened, the major events that happened during the council, and the impact of its teachings, both historically and for the present day. Readers will also discover the foundations of the teaching authority of the bishops as successors to the apostles as a body in union with the pope under the protection of the Holy Spirit.

“Love in Recovery: One Woman’s Story of Breaking Free from Shame and Healing from Pornography Addiction”
By Rachael Killackey
Ave Maria Press, $17.95
When people discuss the raging monster of pornography in our culture, most often it is in reference to men. But women, too, struggle with addiction to pornography; in fact, some studies suggest that 1 in 3 porn addicts is a woman. Rachel Killackey was one of those women. However, since finding hope and healing in Christ, she has made it her mission to help other women out of the dark through her ministry, Magdala Ministries. Her new book, “Love in Recovery,” is a continuation of her ministry where Killackey shares her story and offers compassionate, down-to-earth advice about identifying the gateways to pornography addiction, its complexities, and the path to healing. In a review of the book, licensed clinical psychologist Julia Sadusky said the book “is an important contribution to a much-needed conversation in our Church about female sexual addiction.”

“Oriens”
By Father Joel Sember
OSV, $20.95
“Oriens” invites us all to embark on a life-changing journey beginning on the First Sunday of Advent, through the Feast of the Presentation on Feb. 2. Oriens is a Latin word that means “rising” and “dawn.” Each day, this pilgrimage takes you one step closer to “the dawn from on high,” as you learn to pray and reflect more deeply with Scripture. Father Joel Sember provides daily Scripture passages, guidance on how to pray with each passage, and questions for reflection and journaling. “Oriens” is a wonderful guide to intensify your Advent preparation and Christmas celebration, allowing God to speak directly to your heart.

“Science, Reason, and Faith: Discovering the Bible”
By Father Robert J. Spitzer, SJ
OSV, $34.95
Father Spitzer is an internationally-recognized Jesuit philosopher, who in this new book grapples with the heart’s yearning for answers to life’s most profound questions: Who are we? What is our purpose in this vast universe? How can we reconcile the existence of evil with the search for meaning in life? In the pages of “Science, Reason, and Faith,” readers are invited to confront the tensions and conflicts that often arise when these realms intersect. Father Spitzer’s thoughtful and illuminating analysis leads us to see that it is precisely in this intersection that the Truth is found. “Science, Reason, and Faith” is a must-read for those who seek to reconcile their thirst for scientific knowledge with their longing for religious faith.

“Confession of a Catholic Worker: Our Moment of Christian Witness”
By Larry Chapp
Ignatius Press, $17.95
In a world seemingly overrun by capitalism’s unchecked excesses, cultural decay and ideological polarization, Chapp’s view is refreshingly unconventional. He contends that crisis is an inherent facet of the Christian experience, and it is through this perspective that he urges a profound reevaluation of our values and actions. In a society choked by materialism and greed, Chapp challenges us to embrace the Gospel’s call for radical love and unwavering commitment to living by the principles of the Sermon on the Mount. The choice to embrace Jesus Christ and his Gospel over all worldly concerns is the crux of Chapp’s message, and he delivers it with compelling urgency.

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