‘Word on Fire Bible (Volume III): The Pentateuch’ Word on Fire, 2023 830 pages $99.95 (leather bound) The church has historically embraced the “three transcendentals” of truth, beauty and goodness. Even apart from any expressly theological references, when something is true, beautiful or good, it necessarily participates in, and is an expression of, the eternal mind of God. We Catholics believe that God created our hearts to crave these transcendentals, and that they may lead us to love him or to live him more deeply. This is, at least in part, what St. Augustine meant when he famously declar ..read more

“Arise to Blessedness” by Jen Norton. Ave Maria Press: January 2023. 160 pages, $18.95 By Elizabeth Scalia | OSV News So, my Lent had been pretty easy pedaling in 2023. Declaring it an “Old Testament Lent,” I’d found instructive food and consolation in meditating on the word “shalom,” and imagining Jesus greeting his disciples with that word, both in life and in his glory. I’d actively sought morsels of beauty from my Jewish ancestry (both spiritual and genetic) by studying John Altar’s translation of the Hebrew Bible, and lingering with emotion over the staggeringly expressive and knowi ..read more

By Maria Wiering | OSV News (OSV News) — Before he died in 2015, media often asked Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago about his legacy. It was a question he had answered along the lines of having “tried to be a good priest and a good bishop.” It also was a question he had dismissed as “trying to make sense of my years here by fitting them into a narrative, a story line.” However, in 2014, at what would be his last public Mass, he gave the congregation a more robust answer. “Different people, of course, will have different takes on my years here as archbishop,” he said in his homily. “Some o ..read more

By Kenneth Craycraft | OSV News Jessica Hooten Wilson, “Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice” BrazosPress, 2023 208 pages, $24.95 (hardcover) In 1989, Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles published a book called, “The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination,” accounting for the place of literature in forming his own intellectual and moral life. Combining a description of his use of fiction in various Harvard courses (including in the medical, business and law schools), Coles made a compelling case for the importance of great literature for the formation of ..read more

By Elizabeth Scalia, OSV News Anthony Mancini, “Ashes” Tolmitch Press, 2023 278 pages $16.00 “To love, it is the most creative and godlike act of all.” In Anthony Mancini’s “Ashes,” the line is uttered by a Concetta, a Sicilian woman living in post-war Taormina. It is 1949, and she has spoken those words to a German Jesuit priest, Father Anton Weiss, who has recently retired from ministry and moved into a rectory in this small, picturesque town with plans to “write and meditate.” Yet uncertain of exactly what he will write, Father Weiss — having spent decades producing scripts for Vatican Radi ..read more

By Russell Shaw | OSV News Father Urban turned 60 last year. Which is to say that 2022 brought the 60th anniversary of publication of J.F. Powers’ 1962 novel about a priest — “Morte d’Urban.” A year later the book received the prestigious National Book Award for fiction. By the measure of literary prizes, that was truly a golden age for American Catholic fiction. Besides “Urban” the list includes: Edwin O’Connor’s “The Edge of Sadness,” a novel about priestly life and the complexities of relationships in Irish-American families — it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1962; Walker Percy’s “The Moviegoer ..read more

By Charlie Camosy, OSV News In his recent book “Preaching to Latinos: Welcoming the Hispanic Moment in the U.S. Church” (The Catholic University of America Press), Father Michael Kueber, director of Hispanic ministry for the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, and adjunct professor of homiletics at Mount Angel Seminary, reflects on the Hispanic moment in the church. He recently spoke with Charlie Camosy about the book for OSV News. Charlie Camosy: What exactly is the Hispanic or Latino “moment” in the U.S. Catholic Church that you’re writing about? Father Michael Keuber: The Hispanic or Latino “m ..read more

By Mike Mastromatteo | OSV News “The House at the End of the World” Dean Koontz, Thomas & Mercer, 2023, 409 pages Since publishing his first book in 1968, bestselling author Dean Koontz has been described as a horror genre specialist, a sci-fi writer with a yen for the paranormal and a master of the suspense novel. More recently, critics have recognized a subtle but persistent Catholic flavor in his work. Koontz’s latest release, “The House at the End of the World,” might be categorized as “any or all of the above.” Catholic readers are certain to pick up on such faith-related themes as th ..read more

“Demon Copperfield,” HarperCollins, 2022. By Cecilia Cicone | OSV News In 1850, Charles Dickens exposed the dark realities of the life of the parentless child in coastal England with “David Copperfield.” In 2022, the clever Barbara Kingsolver set out to do the same for rural America through “Demon Copperhead.” Raised by an opioid-addicted mother in a single-wide trailer and never having known his father, Damon Fields finds inclusion in his Appalachian community through the nickname he is given: Demon Copperhead. In the mountains, he explains, you are only truly accepted once you have received ..read more

By Maria Wiering | OSV News (OSV News) — Before he died in 2015, media often asked Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago about his legacy. It was a question he had answered along the lines of having “tried to be a good priest and a good bishop.” It also was a question he had dismissed as “trying to make sense of my years here by fitting them into a narrative, a story line.” However, in 2014, at what would be his last public Mass, he gave the congregation a more robust answer. “Different people, of course, will have different takes on my years here as archbishop,” he said in his homily. “Some o ..read more