RESOURCES FOR EVANGELIZING

What if we taught young people that they can measure success by how they follow Christ rather than by how much money they make or where they go to college?

In What Matters Most, University of Notre Dame theology professor Leonard J. DeLorenzo urges youth ministers, teachers, and parents to help young people redefine success in light of their call to discipleship--completely saying yes to God.

In Luke's account of the Annunciation, Mary offers a true model of discipleship for young people to follow. Her example will empower them to make choices about how to live their lives as a courageous yes to God in everything they choose--just as she did.

DeLorenzo, who served as the long-time director of Notre Dame Vision--a program designed to help young Catholics find their true calling as disciples of Jesus--shows how Mary exhibited four habits that will guide young people to make important life decisions:

Listen carefully and practice patience.

Remember who we are and what we value most.

Respond with compassion to choices we face.

Embrace sacrifice for the sake of love.

DeLorenzo includes personal stories from his experience as a father and working with youth and young adults with spiritual wisdom to equip teachers, mentors, pastoral ministers, and parents to reexamine the way they encourage and help form young Catholics approaching significant life choices such as college and jobs. He presents ways to remedy spiritual deficits in these young people created by cultural realities such as the fast pace of tech-driven lives and the looming pressure to succeed with worldly accomplishments.

Discover and Embrace the Extravagant, Unconditional Love of the Father


How is it that so many believers get stuck when it comes to entering into a relationship with God the Father? Rather than basking in the Father's endless love, compassion, and delight, we seem to hesitate, like orphaned children unsure of a place to call home.

Neal Lozano breaks through the obstacles that keep us from growing in this pivotal relationship. He shatters fear and estrangement in his joyful exploration of Jesus's promise to show us his Father--and ours. It is a heartwarming journey, starting with the universal experience of loss and ending in the Father's welcoming arms as dearly loved children.

What's the one thing that defines your life and brings you the most good, the most love?

Pat Gohn knows what her one thing is: "More than any single factor in my life, belonging to Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church has had the greatest impact on me. Faith gives meaning to everything in my life."

In this passionate and unapologetic account of why her faith in Christ and the Catholic Church are the source of meaning and joy in her life, Gohn--popular speaker, retreat leader, catechist, and author of Blessed, Beautiful, and Bodacious--invites you to become more confident in the power of the Catholic faith to transform your life as well.

Being a cradle Catholic, cancer survivor, wife, and mother are all a part of Gohn's story. But in this appealing, personal book, she shares why her relationship with Jesus and her confidence in his Church are so much bigger than her medical diagnosis, more powerful than her family history, and more significant than her career path.

Gohn ardently shares why belonging to the Church will strengthen and nurture your relationship with God. It will keep you connected with Jesus and the sacraments--conduits of grace, forgiveness, healing, wisdom, and renewal. Belonging to the Church connects you to millions of others around the world, to the saints, and to your loved ones in heaven. These relationships are at the heart of Catholicism. In this time when life and society are so fragmented, the joy of belonging to a community--as imperfect as it can be--easily outweighs the agony of separation or isolation.

Gohn's confidence in her faith emerged despite and even out of a struggle with disillusionment. Working in a parish when news of the sex abuse scandals broke in Boston, she confronted heartbreak and anger within herself and her fellow parishioners. Yet she never left the Church and relates how she found a way to dig deeper and discover reasons to stay faithful.

Each of the nine chapters identifies a dimension of the Catholic faith that is a source of Gohn's confidence, including the Incarnation, God's plan, the Fatherhood of God, the friendship of the Holy Spirit, and the love of neighbor. Each chapter also features reflection questions to challenge you.

In the new, groundbreaking book Becoming a Parish of Intentional Disciples, author and Catherine of Siena Institute co-founder Sherry Weddell has gathered fellow Church workers whose years of service in parish ministry have yielded hard-earned wisdom and enthusiasm for the work of transforming Catholic parishes into lively, faithful centers of apostolic outreach.

Through personal stories, research, and practical steps, readers will discover the fruits of living out the Catholic faith beyond Sunday. This resource explains how to integrate faith into daily life, no matter where one is in his or her faith life.

Concerned parents will learn from these remarkable pages how they can raise their children to live the Faith dynamically.

his is the most up-to-date, comprehensive, and thorough defense of the Catholic Church against Protestant objections in print. This book is especially relevant as the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation draws near and discussion of the arguments made against the Church during that time in history receive renewed interest.

The Case for Catholicism answers arguments put forward by early Reformers like Luther and Calvin as well as contemporary defenders of Protestantism like Norm Geisler and R.C. Sproul. It provides a meticulous defense of the biblical and historical nature of Catholic doctrines from Scripture and church history. Finally, in both answering Protestant objections to Catholicism and in providing evidence for the Faith, The Case for Catholicism cites modern Protestant scholars who question Reformation assumptions and show how evidence from Scripture and church history support aspects of Catholic theology.

This book is divided into four sections, with each answering a key question Christians have asked about the nature of their faith. Those key questions are:

What is my authority?

What is the Church?

How am I saved?

Who belongs to the body of Christ?

The Case for Catholicism will become a reliable, resource for any Catholic who desires a well-researched, readable, and persuasive answer to Protestant arguments made against the Catholic faith.

Learn to "catch" people for the Lord using THE SEVEN PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE EVANGELIZATION, tested and proven principles that allow for effective evangelization, all modeled in the life of Jesus.

In this book, Chesterton's brilliance as a writer and thinker again shine through as he explains his understanding of Catholicism and the Catholic Church and how its appeal to reason and truth eventually won him over. For Chesterton, two essentials lay at the heart of conversion, and without these, a man misses the point of it all. He describes these in his own words: "One is that he believes it to be solid objective truth, which is true whether he likes it or not; and the other is that he seeks liberation from his sins." That is why Chesterton became a Catholic, and what he describes in his unique and colorful way in this book.

What I propose to do in this book is to take you on a guided exploration of the Catholic world, but not in the manner of a docent, for I am not interested in showing you the artifacts of Catholicism as though they were dusty objets d art in a museum of culture. I want to function rather as a mystagogue, conducting you ever deeper into the mystery of the incarnation in the hopes that you might be transformed by its power. Father Robert Barron

What is Catholicism? A 2,000-year-oldliving tradition? A worldview? A way of life? A relationship? A mystery? In Catholicism Father Robert Barron examines all these questions and more, seeking to capture the body, heart and mind of the Catholic faith.
Starting from the essential foundation of Jesus Christ s incarnation, life, and teaching, Father Barron moves through the defining elements of Catholicism from sacraments, worship, and prayer, to Mary, the Apostles, and Saints, to grace, salvation, heaven, and hell using his distinct and dynamic grasp of art, literature, architecture, personal stories, Scripture, theology, philosophy, and history to present the Church to the world.
Paired with his documentary film series of the same title, Catholicism is an intimate journey, capturing The Catholic Thing in all its depth and beauty. Eclectic, unique, and inspiring, Father Barron brings the faith to life for a new generation, in a style that is both faithful to timeless truths, while simultaneously speaking in the language of contemporary life.
Includes over 100 black and white and color photos."

The widely read author and philosopher Peter Kreeft presents a unique book about the important beliefs that Catholics and Protestants share in common. Inspired by Christ's prayer for unity in the Gospel of John and Saint John Paul II's encyclical Ut Unum Sint, Kreeft demonstrates that Christian reunification is possible. While he acknowledges that there are still significant differences between Catholics and Protestants, he emphasizes that they agree on the single most important issue: justification.

The style of this book is modeled on Pascal, Solomon, and Jesus: short answers and single points to ponder rather than long strings of argument. The writing is direct, simple, and confrontational, but vertically rather than horizontally by directing arrows not against each other (Protestant or Catholic) but against our own hearts and minds and wills.

The purpose of this book, writes Kreeft, is to be like an Australian sheepdog, herding and hectoring Christ's separated sheep back to His face. For that is the only way they can ever return back to each other.

Peter Kreeft believes that Baise Pascal is the first post-medieval apologist. No writer in history, claims Kreeft, is a more effective Christian apologist and evangelist to today's uprooted, confused, secularized pagans (inside and outside the Church) than Pascal. He was a brilliant man--a great scientist who did major work in physics and mathematics, as well as an inventor--whom Kreeft thinks was three centuries ahead of his time. His apologetics found in his Pensees are ideal for the modern, sophisticated skeptic.

What does it mean to be a complete thinker? It means being able to take on a wide variety of ideas and disciplines and put them all together in a way that they work together. It means thinking like G.K. Chesterton.The English author G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) was one of the most prolific and well-known writers of his time, and one of the most widely quoted in our own. For newspapers and magazines, he wrote social commentary, literary criticism, and poetry with poignancy and wit. Creator of the beloved detective Father Brown, Chesterton also wrote novels and short stories. Thinking, wrote Chesterton, means connecting things. His ideas are not only connected to each other, they are also connected to us, showing that the thought of Chesterton is timeless. In a world of increasing specialization, Chesterton connects us to the big picture by helping us see how the many and varied elements within our experience fit together. He sheds light on almost every subject and opens doors from one thing to another with dazzling clarity. Drawing on literally hundreds of references from Chesterton's vast writings, Dale Ahlquist conducts a symphony, with Chesterton playing all the instruments in perfect harmony. Chesterton's thoughts on almost everything--from east to west, from old to new, from politics to economics, from Shakespeare to Dickens--are woven together to create an illuminating whole.