Apologetics

Scripture is your guide to what matters most in life. If you're not familiar with it, Patrick Madrid's choice of 150 key verses can ease you in. If you regularly read and pray with Scripture, these verses will provide you rich food for thought. No matter what your situation, the Bible will help you evaluate the choices and make the decisions that confront you every day. Either explicitly or implicitly, Scripture addresses all of life's problems, worries, dangers, questions and uncertainties.

150 Bible Verses Every Catholic Should Know offers you a window into Scripture revealing how God's eternal wisdom relates to your life.

"I don't want to impose my beliefs on others."

And thus the Dictator of Relativism speaks as he has always spoken to seduce humanity into a false sense of freedom.

Pope Benedict XVI, Christ's personally chosen defender of the Truth is fighting back. He recognized this in his homily on April 18, 2005, "We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires."

Through a down-to-earth, easily accessible Question-and-Answer format, Stefanick's book shows:

Why relativism inherently contradicts its own claims.

What makes it one of the worst ideas in the history of ideas.

How relativism has a direct influence on the morals and virtues of a nation.

Why relativism doesn't even work "in real life."

How relativism is counterproductive to the true practice of tolerance

Why religion which makes claims to absolute truth is finally more tolerant than relativism.

What Christianity has almost singlehandedly done to foster true tolerance in the world.

How all laws legislate morality

What the true meaning of "open-minded" means it's not what you think!

Many good people reject the Catholic Church for what they consider to be its absurd teachings. In these pages, Archbishop Patrick John Ryan shows that these souls are mistaken not in condemning absurd teachings, but in believing those teachings to be Catholic.

Archbishop Ryan considers the most common charges levied against Catholicism, showing that not only are those scorned doctrines not Catholic, they're condemned by the Church! Here are just a few of the common misconceptions that are corrected in this book:

If you're a Catholic who sometimes gets intimidated by the Bible (especially scriptural challenges from Protestants), The Bible Is a Catholic Book will help you better understand and take pride in this gift that God gave the world through the Church. We are the original "Bible Christians"!

And even non-Catholics will appreciate the clear and charitable way that Jimmy explains how the early Church gave us the Bible ...and how the Church to this day reveres and obeys it.

The Catholic Church has in recent decades been associated with political efforts to eliminate the death penalty. It was not always so. This timely work reviews and explains the Catholic Tradition regarding the death penalty, demonstrating that it is not inherently evil and that it can be reserved as a just form of punishment in certain cases.

Drawing upon a wealth of philosophical, scriptural, theological, and social scientific arguments, the authors explain the perennial teaching of the Church that capital punishment can in principle be legitimate--not only to protect society from immediate physical danger, but also to administer retributive justice and to deter capital crimes. The authors also show how some recent statements of Church leaders in opposition to the death penalty are prudential judgments rather than dogma. They reaffirm that Catholics may, in good conscience, disagree about the application of the death penalty.

Some arguments against the death penalty falsely suggest that there has been a rupture in the Church's traditional teaching and thereby inadvertently cast doubt on the reliability of the Magisterium. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, the Church's traditional teaching is a safeguard to society, because the just use of the death penalty can be used to protect the lives of the innocent, inculcate a horror of murder, and affirm the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures who must be held responsible for their actions.

By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed challenges contemporary Catholics to engage with Scripture, Tradition, natural law, and the actual social scientific evidence in order to undertake a thoughtful analysis of the current debate about the death penalty.

Do you feel uncertain about how to share your Catholic faith with others, especially as society increasingly rejects religion? Why not follow examples from the scriptures and saints to guide you?

In this five-week guide to becoming a daily disciple of Jesus in a post-Christian culture, popular speaker, bestselling author, and experienced FOCUS missionary Kevin Cotter presents thirty-five brief and engaging meditations that provide Catholics with the conviction and tools for sharing Jesus with others.

Called is an accessible guide to evangelization for the average Catholic. Through short and simple daily meditations, you will gain everything you need to begin sharing the Gospel, including the conviction that you can and should be evangelizing their faith.

Based on the principles of evangelization taught by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS)--where Kevin Cotter is the senior director of curriculum--Called invites you to delve into powerful scenes from Jesus' life, plus stories from the lives of saints such as Augustine, Mother Teresa, and Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, as you explore how the call to discipleship is at the heart of scripture in ancient Israel, the life of Jesus, and the apostolic Church.

Cotter leads you on this five-week journey as someone who understands the challenges of talking about faith with friends and the sacrifices needed to invest in others. He encourages you to step outside your comfort zone as you open your eyes to Jesus' call to discipleship.

You will come away with the understanding that being a disciple of Jesus is not optional for Catholics: it is essential to our identity as members of a missionary Church. Jesus showed us how to evangelize and called us to be his disciples. Now, more than ever, it is time to be just like him.