"Based on interviews with young Australian girls who lived in Sacred Heart convent boarding schools between 1940 and 1965, this illuminating study provides insight into the Catholic model of education before Vatican II, when obedience, conformity, and repression were used to teach young girls how to be ladies and become “good.” The school's social order and the ways that students responded to the regimen of study and religion are explored. The narratives of one particular school provide a critique of gender fashioning, traditional Catholic symbols and myths, and effective methods of education."

The widely exposed transgressions of priests within the Catholic Church stunned the faithful and sent a new surge of energy through the progressive church reform movement in the United States. Despite the movement's growing profile, the world has only recently learned that Catholic women are the driving force behind reform. Good Catholic Girls is a lively account of these courageous women, as seen through the eyes of an impassioned journalist, Angela Bonavoglia. They include Joan Chittister, the Benedictine nun who refused to obey a Vatican order not to speak at an international conference for women's ordination groups; Mary Ramerman, ordained a Catholic priest before 3,000 jubilant supporters; Frances Kissling, whose fight for women's reproductive rights has shaken the Church at its highest levels; Barbara Blaine, a priest abuse survivor who created the nation's most powerful voice for victims; and Sister Jeannine Gramick, who built a pioneering ministry to gays and lesbians, despite Vatican orders to silence her and ban her work. Backed by supporters worldwide, these and other women are rethinking Catholic theology, changing the face of ministry, and resurrecting the lost lives of female church leaders. As Bonavoglia shows, the hierarchy ignores them at its peril.

Three parts sexual license, two parts corporate I ladder, with a dash of Monolo Blahnik. If a woman's single years were a cocktail, that would be the f culture's preferred recipe.

A Harvard graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and devout Catholic tells you everything you need to know about keeping your faith at a modern university. Drawing on her recent experience, Aurora Griffin shares forty practical tips relating to academics, community, prayer, and service that helped her stay Catholic in college. She reminds us that keeping the faith is a conscious decision, reinforced by commitment to daily practices. Aurora’s story illustrates that when you decide your faith matters to you, no one can take it away, even in the most secular environments and under strong peer pressure. Throughout the book, she shows how being Catholic in college did not prevent her from having a full “college experience,” but actually enabled her to make the most of her time at Harvard. Aurora encourages students who are about to begin this formative journey, or those now in college, that the most valuable parts of college life -- lasting friendships, intellectual growth, and cherished memories -- are experienced in a more meaningful way when lived in and through the Catholic faith.

A new examination of how and why American religious parents seek to pass on religion to their children The most important influence shaping the religious and spiritual lives of children, youth, and teenagers is their parents. A myriad of studies show that the parents of American youth play the leading role in shaping the character of their religious and spiritual lives, even well after they leave home and often for the rest of their lives. We know a lot about the importance of parents in faith transmission. However we know much less about the actual beliefs, feelings, and activities of the parents themselves, what Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk call the "intergenerational transmission of religious faith and practice." To address that gap, this book reports the findings of a new national study of religious parents in the United States. The findings and conclusions in Handing Down the Faith are based on 215 in-depth, personal interviews with religious parents from many traditions and different parts of the country, and sophisticated analyses of two nationally representative surveys of American parents about their religious parenting. Handing Down the Faith explores the background beliefs informing how and why religious parents seek to pass on religion to their children; examines how parenting styles interact with parent religiousness to shape effective religious transmission; shows how parents have been influenced by their experiences as children influenced by their own parents; reveals how religious parents view their congregations and what they most seek out in a local church, synagogue, temple, or mosque; explores the experiences and outlooks of immigrant parents including Latino Catholics, East Asian Buddhists, South Asian Muslims, and Indian Hindus. Smith and Adamczyk step back to consider how American religion has transformed over the last 100 years and to explain why parents today shoulder such a huge responsibility in transmitting religious faith and practice to their children. The book is rich in empirical evidence and unique in many of the topics it explores and explains, providing a variety of sometimes counterintuitive findings that will interest scholars of religion, social scientists interested in the family, parenting, and socialization; clergy and religious educators and leaders; and religious parents themselves.

The truth about parenting is that you don't have to get everything right and your family doesn't need to be perfect. Colleen Duggan learned those lessons through years of struggling with unrealistic expectations. In this frank and intimate story, Duggan explores the emotional and spiritual healing that needed to take place in her life in order to be the parent, spouse, and follower of Christ God created her to be. Sharing both funny parenting moments and difficult times of self-scrutiny, Duggan invites us to join her in experiencing God's healing mercy and shows how to allow that healing to rejuvenate our lives and revitalize our families. As a child, Duggan smoothed over the jagged edges of her difficult home life with good grades and perfect behavior. By the time Duggan was an adult, her drive to constantly be in control was her way of life. It was only when she began raising her family that she realized how damaging this compulsion was for both her and the people around her. That's when she began her faltering journey toward letting God be in control. In Good Enough Is Good Enough, Duggan shares her heartaches—learning her child has a genetic disorder that might lead to cancer; realizing that her drive to do and be everything for everyone strained her marriage; and struggling with feelings of worthlessness after leaving her job to become "just" a stay-at-home, homeschooling mom. She also shares parenting difficulties we've all faced—trying to keep her kids quiet during Mass; wondering whether she's giving them enough opportunities for growth; and balancing time spent on herself, her kids, and others. With each story, we feel the brokenness she tried to cover by being a "perfect" parent and the eventual realization that she needed to find healing. Through the saints, the Sacraments, and Catholic traditions and literature, Duggan found the Church a place where God's love and healing grace embraced her. She invites us to the same conclusion: whether we are dealing with everyday frustrations or life-changing tragedies, it is in the heart of the Catholic Church that we are finally free to let go of our facades in order to embrace our brokenness and find healing.

After a week of hearing ghostly noises, a man is visited in his home by the spirit of his mother, dead for three decades. She reproaches him for his dissolute life and begs him to have Masses said in her name. Then she lays her hand on his sleeve, leaving an indelible burn mark, and departs... A Lutheran minister, no believer in Purgatory, is the puzzled recipient of repeated visitations from "demons" who come to him seeking prayer, consolation, and refuge in his little German church. But pity for the poor spirits overcomes the man's skepticism, and he marvels at what kind of departed souls could belong to Christ and yet suffer still... Hungry Souls recounts these stories and many others trustworthy, Church-verified accounts of earthly visitations from the dead in Purgatory. Accompanying these accounts are images from the "Museum of Purgatory" in Rome, which contains relics of encounters with the Holy Souls, including numerous evidences of hand prints burned into clothing and books; burn marks that cannot be explained by natural means or duplicated by artificial ones. Riveting!