For Cardinal Francis George, the Catholic Church is not a movement built around ideas but a communion built around relationships. In A Godly Humanism, he shares his understanding of the church in lively, compelling prose, presenting a way to understand and appreciate the relationships of God to human beings and of human beings to one another. These loving relationships are continually made present to us in and through the church, from the time of Jesus' first disciples down to our own day.

We are introduced to how the spiritual and intellectual life of Christians, aided in every generation by the Holy Spirit working through the Apostles and their successors, resist the danger of splitting apart from one another. God is the nonstop giver, we are nonstop recipients of his gifts, and the recent popes, no less than the Father of the Church, have made every effort to make us aware of the graces - that is, of the unearned benefits that God confers on us as Catholics, as Christians, as believers, and simply as human persons.

Pope Francis, he reminds us, contrasts human planning with God's providence, and this book is at once an exposition of that providence and a personal response of gratitude for the way it has operated in one man's life. This persuasive book, imbued with the thoughts of profound thinkers from the ancient world, from St. Augustine and other church fathers, and steeped in the wisdom of church teaching from earliest times through to the Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis.

The book is published by The Catholic University of America Press.