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Biographies & Lives of the Saints

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Mario Peterson & Tom Concert, 96, Paperback

Mario Peterson & Tom Concert — 96 Pages - PB

Searching for Fine Pearls is an easy-to-read summary of the monumental Catholic classic The Mystical City of God that was written by Venerable Mary of Agreda, a 17th century Franciscan abbess, who had mystical visions and revelations concerning many intimate details of the life of our Lord and his Blessed Mother not revealed in the Gospels. These revelations were described and published in four volumes, in Spanish, during her lifetime.
For those readers who might be daunted by the thought of reading the full work of over 2,000 pages, this short summary may encourage them to make the effort. Many saints, popes, religious, and other holy men and women, as well as humble laymen from all walks of life have found great grace and consolation in the pages of The Mystical City of God.
This work has received the approbation of seven popes and has been read and meditated upon by millions in the four centuries since its original publication. An English translation was produced in 1912 and has enjoyed a wide readership.
Mary of Agreda’s incorrupt remains and the well documented facts of her evangelizing bilocations to the New World attest to her holy life. Fray Junipero Serra, the founder of so many of the famous California missions, and a brilliant scholar and theologian, was profoundly influenced by her inspirational writings. He always carried with him three books; his breviary, a copy of the bible, and The Mystical City of God.

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$14.95
Archbishop Alban Goodier, 280, Soft Cover

Archbishop Alban Goodier - PB 280 pages - 8.5" x 5.5"

These pages remind us that God's grace can conquer every human flaw . . .

Christ came not to call saints but to make them — often out of weak, stupid, and sinful men. That’s why the saints are not only models of holiness for us to imitate; they’re reminders that God’s grace can outshine every human flaw.

As Alban Goodier’s classic Saints for Sinners shows us, even the greatest saints had to battle the same stubborn vices, temptations of the flesh, and bouts of spiritual dryness that afflict you and me today. In these pages, with a style that perfectly blends hagiographical detail, spiritual meditation, and a skilled storyteller’s touch, Archbishop Goodier brings us the tales of:

•The mercenary fighting man and itinerant gambler who left behind his rough soldier's habits and founded a religious order to care for the sick
•The backward, sickly teenager, disowned by his family and dogged by the Inquisition,who became a miraculous healer and paragon of humble simplicity
•The willful Tuscan beauty with a bad reputation who forsook vanity and lust to answer God's call to live in poverty and penitence
•The brilliant, brooding Spanish nobleman who gave up everything to be a missionary — only to see most of his efforts fail
•The royal chaplain and daring Counter-Reformer who escaped the gallows but had to endure a lifelong interior martyrdom of doubt and discouragement
•The hedonistic heretic and womanizer who traded worldly pleasure for divine happiness, and became one of the Church's greatest theologians
•And other inspiring tales of imperfect souls "made perfect in infirmity"
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$24.95
Roberto DeMattei, 444, Paperback

By Professor Roberto de Mattei - Paperback - 444 pages

Few Catholic writers have been as prolific as University of Rome Professor Roberto de Mattei. Over decades he has produced a wealth of incisive analyses about the Catholic world’s collapse and charted an authoritative path back to health and sanity.

He has now written an exceedingly compelling and powerful biography of Pope Pius V, widely recognized as one of the boldest and most courageous popes of the past millennium, who decisively defeated the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto and fought head-on the Protestant Reformation, which had assailed the Church.

The life of every Christian is a battle, and St. Pius V offers us a luminous example of leadership in a time of trial. In these pages, you’ll learn:

  • How the “Revolution of Luther” was met with a papal shrug — that is, until Pius V became pope
  • The inside story of how Pope Pius V led the Counter-Reformation on multiple fronts
  • How the devastating Sack of Rome in 1527 forever changed the Holy See and had deadly consequences for clergy and religious alike
  • Why St. Pius V’s no-compromise approach toward both the Renaissance and Humanist corruption preserved the Church to this day
  • The behind-the-scenes story of the Council of Trent — the most dramatic conclave in the history of the Church
  • The role inquisitions played in the time of Pope Pius V and what they enabled him to accomplish
  • How St. Pius V dealt with stray bishops and how his rebukes and mandates led to meaningful reform of both their lives and the Church
  • How St. Pius V dealt with rebellious Catholics in France and England and what led to the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth

You’ll also learn of Pope Pius V’s remarkable spiritual life and regimen, his foresight and prudence in dealing with the iconoclastic fury of the Huguenots in France, and the way he handled the trials of excommunicated heretics and reformed the rotting religious orders of his
day.

Professor de Mattei makes clear that Pope Pius V was so effective and so holy that no pontificate can be judged accurately without measuring it against his. In page after fascinating page, he shows contemporary Catholics what it means to be “a great pope” or “a saintly bishop.” Here, at last, is the complete life and times of one of the Church’s greatest prelates by one of her finest historians.

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$34.95 $29.95
Anthony Cooney, 320, Softcover
A compelling historical novel about England’s patron, and an evocative picture of 3rd-century Christianity and Roman life in general.
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$22.95 $19.95
Doña Emilia Pardo Bazán, 568, Softcover

Dona Emilio Pardo Bazan

Much more than simply “another life of Saint Francis,” this book will dazzle and enthrall, and educate all readers, from the most erudite to those who have only rudimentary knowledge of (or interest in) the life of one of the greatest and most exceptional saints. Aptly titled, this author provides the reader with a deeply spiritual and radically historical framework in which she illumines the uniqueness of this soul and the depths of the effects upon the world produced by the sanctity of this one human being who cooperated so magnanimously with the ever present grace of God.

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$32.95 $25.95
1930278071, Dom Prosper Guéranger , 404, Paperback

Also Available as Ebook

By Dom Prosper Guéranger - PB - 404 pages

In the nineteenth century there was a concerted effort on the part of liberal revisionists to undermine the Church’s history by challenging the veracity of the Acts of the Martyrs. Some miraculous events associated with the lives of very popular saints, whose names were canonized in the Roman Missal, were treated with ridicule by scholars more concerned with documents than the living evidence of common tradition.
It was righteous indignation that moved Abbot Dom Guéranger to defend the cause of Saint Cecilia, whose holy celebrity had spanned fifteen centuries. The abbot’s strategy was to validate the traditional accounts of all the martyrs’ lives by exonerating just one. He achieved this in the holy virgin Cecilia’s case by presenting in book form every morsel of factual evidence available, especially that which modern archeological excavations offered.  As a result of his labor, there arose a refreshing new devotion to the young martyr, and – at least for a time — the cynical scoffs of the proud were silenced. This particular biography was written in response to the request of his co-reformer and friend, the Benedictine Abbess Cécile Bruyère.

Prospér Louis Pascal Guéranger was born in France, in 1805, at Sablé-sur-Sarthe. In the Napoleonic era, 1827, during the continued anti-clerical aftermath of the French Revolution, he was ordained a parish priest.  As a young curé he authored several works on church-state relations. In 1836, having purchased an abandoned priory that was for sale in Solesmes, he and five other parish priests took solemn vows as Benedictines, with the intention of restoring the monastic life in France according to the ancient rule of Saint Benedict. Until his death there in 1875, Abbot Dom Guéranger devoted himself to restoring the cenobitical life as originally cultured thirteen centuries earlier by the father of western monasticism. He did much by his writings and prayers to keep the church in France loyal to the person of the Sovereign Pontiff and away from the dangers of both Gallicanism and Jansenism.

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$21.95
Hilaire Belloc, 272, Softcover
Originally subtitled “A Study,” Belloc’s Richelieu is a compelling sketch of the Cardinal’s character — specifically of his Will — seen through his background, the figures surrounding him, and his line of action. It is also, above all, a compact chronicle of the making of modern Europe, and the tragedy of its rupture into Catholic and Protestant camps. In attempting to achieve for France the leadership of Europe, Richelieu, Belloc says, “loosed forces stronger than he could deal with,” with the consequent weakening, if not destruction, of Catholicism: “. . . he had almost ruined it in the Empire, and had in any case left it permanently unable to recover its old supremacy there.” This gripping permanently unable to recover its ld supremacy there.” This gripping tale, unfolding at the heart of the European story, is a candid look at Richeliu’s uncanny statesmanship and undoubted sincerity, and the unintended but disastrous effect of these upon the soul of Western civilization.

“. . . Once [Gustavus Adolphus] took the field, Richelieu found that he had called up the devil, and that the devil was too much for him.” Hilaire Belloc, 1930

by Hilaire Belloc
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$13.95
Rev. Charles B. Garside, M. A., 218, Softcover

Written by
Rev. Charles B. Garside, M.A.
Preface by
Rev. Edward F. Garesché, S.J.

Garnering his material from the last two of the four Books of Kings, Father Charles Garside, M.A., paints a portrait of a thundering visionary, who lights up the Old Testament perhaps more brilliantly than any other Biblical figure. A man of prayer and solitude, celibate and chaste, he moved courageously with every heavenly summons, never failing, never daunted. So much a contemplative and a teacher of eternal truth that, even though his inital mark on history falls in the Old Dispensation, he is nevertheless justly claimed as "the founder" of the Carmelite order. Taken by God, who came to seize him in a whirlwind, he was assumed into the heavens by way of a fiery chariot, and placed in the Garden of Eden from whence he shall come in the last days to do battle with the Antichrist.

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