Yours Is the Church focuses on the key role the Catholic Church has played in culture, history, and science, detailing the many reasons we can be proud to be Catholic. While not skirting the issues and failures that have plagued the Church, the author’s goal is to inspire everyday Catholics to recognize the Church’s proactive role in courageously preserving spiritual freedom and nourishing culture from its inception through the present day. Yours Is the Church is a breath of fresh air, sure to renew the confidence of Catholics everywhere. By Mike Aquilina.

Leisure is an attitude of the mind and a condition of the soul that fosters a capacity to perceive the reality of the world. Author Josef Pieper shows that the Greeks and medieval Europeans, understood the great value and importance of leisure. He also points out that religion can be born only in leisure — a leisure that allows time for the contemplation of the nature of God. Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. Pieper maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the ability for non-activity, unless we substitute true leisure for our hectic amusements, we will destroy our culture — and ourselves.

In this magnificent volume, students and faithful alike will come to comprehend the Catholic Church’s monumental impact on society and western civilization as a whole. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization uncovers the lost truth of the Church’s contributions to our history, including: How the father of atomic theory, the father of aviation, and the father of Egyptology were all Catholic priests; How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith; How the Catholic Church was the great defender of the sanctity of human life and the individual against the state; How the Church invented charitable work—and the charitable spirit—as we know it in the Western world; How the Church bestowed the most unique gift to the World—what we now know as the university. New Paperback Edition.

The history of the Catholic Church is long, complicated, and fascinating, and in this book it is expertly and ably told by historian James Hitchcock. The Catholic Church is the longest-enduring institution in the world. Beginning with the first Christians and continuing in our present day, the Church has been planted in every nation on earth. The Catholic Church claims Jesus Christ himself as her founder, the teachings and redemptive works of Jesus as told in the Gospels are expressed by the Church in a coherent and consistent body of doctrine, the likes of which cannot be found in any other Christian body, and she remains in the twenty-first century the steadfast guardian of belief in his life, death, and resurrection. Hardcover.

This book is essential reading for understanding the legacy behind the Catholic Worker movement, and its founders Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, who met during the Great Depression in 1932. Mark and Louise Zwick’s thorough research reveals who influenced Peter and Dorothy and how the influence materialized into a counter-revolution much like that of the early Church, monasticism, and the great reform movements of the Church: Dostoevsky, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Therese of Lisieux, Jacques and Raissa Maritain, and many others.

Page after page you will discover the on the surprising Catholic origin of just about everything in holidays, entertainment, plants and animals, politics, and the English language. This book is an impressive body of fascinating study proving the indelible yet often unrecognized mark of Catholic belief in the present-day world, even in non-Catholic societies like the US, which resonate with the influence of Catholic ways and words... An interesting thing happens when you read this book. All of a sudden, you become aware that the littlest and most common things and events of the day are echoes of the Catholic Faith and spark your recollection. What a find! Worthwhile table-talk.