General Reading

In Responding to Evil Joseph Kelly treats evil as a force in our personal lives. He talks about the impact of September 11 on the American consciousness and how that brought the question of evil front and center. Professor Kelly then looks at what evil does to us and how previous generations have dealt with it. By focusing on the sins people commit rather than the questions psychologists tend to focus on, such as murder or theft, or on tragedies that occurred in Rwanda or during the Holocaust, Kelly makes the discussion of evil relevant to readers like us who are not really "evil" but who face the problem of our own sinfulness every day.

In taking up the intellectual question of how God and evil can coexist Kelly relates the ideas in the book to real-life situations, especially of good and caring people. Finally, he shares how we can respond to evil and looks at how some modern Christians, often ordinary people, have done so.

Chapters are “What Evil Does to Us,” “How Can God and Evil Co-Exist?” “Responses to Evil,” and “Some Final Thoughts.”

Joseph F. Kelly, PhD, (1945-2023), was the chair of the department of religious studies at John Carroll University and was also active in religious education for the Diocese of Cleveland. Of his eight previous books, with Liturgical Press he has published The Problem of Evil in the Western Tradition and The World of the Early Christians.

Details: 96 pgs, 6 x 9 x 1/4
Publication Date: 11/01/2003

Still Called by Name

Why I Love Being a Priest

By Dominic Grassi

In Still Called by Name, Father Dominic Grassi, an urban priest, natural storyteller, and author of the popular Bumping into God books, reflects on his vocation and recalls the reasons he became a priest. Through poignant and often humorous recollections from his thirty years as a priest, Grassi celebrates the special moments of grace he has witnessed and the special people who have touched his life.

Grassi pulls aside the veil of mystery shrouding the priesthood and breaks down barriers between priests and lay people. Grassi shares simple stories that reveal the incredible joy, profound awe, and overwhelming peace he finds in his life as a priest. Still Called by Name, restores faith and trust in priests at a critical time for the Catholic Church.

"At the end of C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters (1941), the recipient of those missives on the art of temptation, the junior demon Wormwood, was in a pickle--indeed, might become a pickle, so to speak, for his uncle-advisor's hellish delectation. Forest reveals that Wormwood survived and now advises yet-more-junior tempters, including one Greasebeek, whose first case is the subject of these e-mails. The "client" is a young married man who, when the correspondence begins, has bought a Gregorian chant CD. Not to worry, says Wormwood; most who buy such things "barely listen to what is being sung" and even "give up on Christianity simply because the music in actual churches doesn't measure up." Besides, the client disfavors "organized religion": "What a useful phrase that's been!" Wormwood crows. But, as in Lewis' classic, things go from bad to better for the client. As they do, Wormwood's comments on both contemporary spiritual fashions and age-old temptations illuminate by contrast the strengths of orthodox Christian belief. A worthy sequel to a perdurable popular-theology masterpiece."-- Ray Olson, Booklist

By means of a series of intercepted e-mails from a senior demon (Wormwood) to his junior protégé, this deceptively entertaining book offers wise reflections on Christian life. Through Wormwoods counsel on how to handle a wavering client, we see how many ways there are to deceive the wayward believer. As Wormwood observes, "The battleground is the human mind. Reshape what he thinks and the deeds you intend for him will follow. There are ideas with wider jaws and sharper teeth than any dragon."

Jim Forest (1941-2022), a co-founder of the Catholic Peace Fellowship, was author of many Orbis books, including All Is Grace, Living with Wisdom, At Play in the Lions' Den and Eyes of Compassion (his biographies of peacemakers Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Daniel Berrigan, and Thich Naht Hanh). His other bestselling titles include Praying with Icons, The Ladder of the Beatitudes, and Writing Straight with Crooked Lines: A Memoir.

Pages: 128

Binding: Softcover

SURVIVING DEPRESSION: A CATHOLIC APPROACH