Spirituality Catholicism

Truth is stranger than fiction...and scarier! This audiobook contains accounts of real Catholic exorcisms. Many of these exorcism were made into movies, but even Hollywood with all its special effects and spinning heads couldn’t recreate the true horror experienced by these possessed children. These true stories of exorcisms are meant to inoculate you against the tricks and traps of evil. It is highly recommended that you listen to the Pray of St. Michael the Archangel (provided) before embarking on these accounts.

The Catholic Church is on the threshold of a bold new era in its two-thousand-year history. As the curtain comes down on the church defined by the 16th century Counter-Reformation, the curtain is rising on the Evangelical Catholicism of the third millennium: a way of being Catholic that comes from over a century of Catholic reform; a mission-centered renewal honed by the Second Vatican Council and given compelling expression by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

While many Catholics are aware of great female saints such as Catherine of Siena and Thérèse of Lisieux, a view persists that, over the centuries, women played a limited role in the development of Catholic traditions and institutions. In this innovative survey of Church history, Bronwen McShea demonstrates instead that faithful women have always been at the heart of the Church's common life, shaping it and the course of entire civilizations.

Scott Hahn crafts a powerful message that extols the virtue of confession. According to Hahn, the sacrament of reconciliation is the key to spiritual growth. Through each act of forgiveness, we are able to more closely resemble the divine life.

Joseph is the most hidden of the saints a simple, retiring, and humble man of Nazareth. His exterior life reveals nothing extraordinary or striking. Drawing not on private revelations or pious legends, this beautiful and edifying work unearths many truths about St. Joseph hidden in the Gospel, to bring them to light and make use of them in Joseph's honor.

Like most things we take for granted, the Catholic Creeds have an amazing story—actually a lot of stories. What seems a simple prayer or statement of faith has a fascinating origin. And there is a reason it’s precisely worded the way it is and each word was fought over with great passion.

Catholic Stories of Faith and Hope provides a Catholic response to the big question, "Why would a loving God allow evil, pain, and suffering?" This includes exploring why God would allow disease and natural disasters (natural evil) and evil human behavior (moral evil), as well as how suffering can help us find a deeper meaning and purpose in life. This book contains poignant and inspiring personal testimonies of present-day Catholics who have dealt positively with significant suffering. These stories provide accounts of how suffering can lead to personal and spiritual growth.

The Middle Ages in Europe were some of the most precarious centuries in recorded history, bristling with war, excitement, and chaos. The Western Roman Empire had crumbled, territories were rapidly expanding, and heavy ploughs, hourglasses, spectacles, tidal mills, and more pioneering inventions were popping up across the continent. It was also a time of extreme prejudice, when women were treated as second-class citizens. Their only purpose in life was to procreate by the dozen.

The Middle Ages remains one of the most defining eras of human civilization. It is an era characterized by illustrious monarchs, valiant knights in shining armor, and magnificent Gothic architecture. It is also an era characterized by fervent friction, brutish barbarism, frequent famines, pestilent plagues, and of course, death. Some say the mortality rate in medieval times was like no other; with about a third of all children dying before the age of five, it was nearly miraculous for one to live past their 40s.

As human beings we are constantly engaging and disengaging in everything we do. We engage and disengage at work, in marriage, as parents, in our quest for health and well-being, in personal finances, environmentally, politically, and, of course, we engage or disengage spiritually.

St. Dominic Savio (1842-1857) was an Italian adolescent student of St. John Bosco. He was studying to become a priest when, at 14, he became ill and died. He was noted for his piety and devotion to the Catholic faith. St. John regarded Savio very highly and wrote this biography of his young student. This book, along with other accounts of him, assess the critical factors into his cause for sainthood.

How can Christianity touch the imagination of our contemporaries when ever fewer people in the West identify as religious? Timothy Radcliffe argues we must show how everything we believe is an invitation to live fully. God says, ‘I put before you life and death: choose life’. Anyone who understands the beauty and messiness of human life - novelists, poets, filmmakers and so on - can be our allies, whether they believe or not. The challenge is not today’s secularism but its banality.

During the months of May and October—as well as throughout the rest of the year—the Church advises that we perform simple acts of piety to increase our devotion to the Blessed Mother. One great way to do this: pray the Rosary. This short booklet features meditations by St. Josemaria Escriva on the twenty mysteries of the Rosary. It is a great resource for teaching others to pray the Rosary in private, as a family, in a small group, or as a parish

"We are to love God for Himself, because of a twofold reason; nothing is more reasonable, nothing is more profitable." On Loving God is first a touching description of God's love for us as unmistakenly demonstrated in the death of His Son. Second, it is a call for us to joyfully respond to God like the child who runs and embraces her father whose love is sure. As St. Bernard writes, "They love all the more because they know themselves to be loved so exceedingly."

It has been said that John Henry Newman "stands at the threshold of the new age as a Christian Socrates, the pioneer of a new philosophy of the individual person and personal life." Newman's personalism is found in the way he contrasts the "theological intellect" and the "religious imagination."

Have you ever found yourself tongue-tied in the presence of someone who has just buried a loved one or experienced some other loss? What do we say? What should we not say? How do we best care for children who face sadness or heartache? What can we expect of ourselves - or others - when we are grieving? Where is God to be found in the midst of a world filled with so much pain and loss? What difference does it make to pray? No One Cries the Wrong Way offers some glimpses into these great questions.

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan offers a powerful, universal message on God’s grace and the healing power of Jesus to get us through tough and turbulent times. Drawn from sermons and writings offered during the early days of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, I Am with You provides solace, hope, and healing for anyone suffering through illness, grief, job loss, isolation, or anxiety.

Gratitude and Grit tells the startling story of the simple friar whose loving concern for everyday people dramatically transformed thousands of lives. A warm, straightforward account of Casey’s life from someone who knew him personally, this book is a testament to the fact that God is present in even the most unlikely places.

When he was elected pope in the fall of 1978, few people had ever heard of the charismatic Karol Wojty³a. But in a very short time he would ignite a revolution of conscience in his native Poland that would ultimately lead to the collapse of European communism and death of the Soviet Union. What even fewer people knew was that the KGB, the Polish Secret Police, and the East German Stasi had been waging a dangerous, decades-long war against Wojty³a and the Vatican itself.

"No!" cries author Kevin Wells in this compelling audiobook that showcase how heroic priests can faithfully tread the narrow path of holy self-sacrifice first blazed by the apostles themselves. From scores of insightful interviews with modern priests, exorcists, seminary formators, and even disillusioned laity, Wells here draws forth a blueprint for priestly holiness that can once again fill our church with priests abounding with sincere, supernatural faith, on fire with God's love, and moved by the irresistible impulse to save souls, no matter the cost to themselves.