Books published by Gracewing

This accessible little book is a study of spiritual theology, and so a reflection on the spiritual life as found in Christianity. Christian spirituality embodies in personal living the biblical revelation received in the Church of the Fathers and transmitted to its successors in every age. Like everything else in Christian doctrine and practice, Christian spirituality depends on Scripture and Tradition-the two intrinsically inter-related ways in which that revelation is communicated. Using a fusion of sources-Catholic and Orthodox, Latin and Byzantine-Aidan Nichols breaks open Spiritual Theology through eight essential themes: the Word of God as Source; the Liturgy as the Context; Meditation and contemplation; Principles of Asceticism; Asceticism: monastic, lay, and 'pastoral'; Purification; Illumination; Union. Christian spirituality is biblical in its source, it is liturgical in its context, it is ascetical in its development, and it is mystical in its outcome. 'Mystical' is a strong word, but the Dominican school does not accept the opinion that this final issue of spirituality is extra-ordinary-in the words of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, theologically speaking it is 'eminent, but normal'. These four adjectives-biblical, liturgical, ascetical and mystical-explain the structure of this present book and its content too.

During the Middle Ages the shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury was the third most important shrine in Europe, after Rome and Santiago de Compostela. St Thomas's murder on the 29 December 1170 caused shock and outrage throughout England and beyond, but it also ushered in an extraordinary cult of devotion to the martyred archbishop who became a symbol of liberation against tyranny. Through the extraordinary wealth of miracles worked through his intercession, he quickly became a refuge and advocate for the sick and afflicted. This little book offers new devotions to St Thomas with the aim of encouraging Christians to rediscover this martyr's life and to count him among their companions on the pilgrim road we now walk. Among these devotions is a new novena for Christmas, beginning on Thomas's birthday and ending on his heavenly birthday-his dies natalis: the day of his martyrdom and feast day. There is also a programme for a pilgrimage to Canterbury based on the Catholic tradition of the Stations: this pilgrimage can be undertaken in the city itself, or spiritually at home or in one's local church. Other little prayers are offered for various needs: a new litany to the Saint, prayers for the sick, for the Church and for our priests. When Thomas was invoked miracles were poured out upon the faithful, there is no reason to discount that they can be again-physical miracles, yes, but perhaps also in this time, when the afflictions of so many are those of the mind, heart and soul, Thomas can be as effective in soothing the infirmities of modern men and women, many of whom suffer in silence and alienation.

James Ambrose Cotham OSB (1810-1883) was a Douai monk of the English Benedictine Congregation, active as a missioner monk and colonial official in early colonial Tasmania, or Van Dieman's Land as it was then called, and later as a missioner in England. When he arrived in Tasmania in 1835 local society was striving hard to shake off its despised reputation as 'the sole gaol of England' for transported convicts, and the social climate around his mission was one of hostility. Nevertheless, he was highly effective in working with transported convicts, especially women, despite inadequate resources from government departments and the personal antipathy of his Benedictine superior, Archbishop Polding of Sydney. At the start of his ministry in Tasmania he built Australia's earliest Catholic parish church, St John's in Richmond (later remodelled to plans provided by the English architect A. W. N. Pugin) On leaving Tasmania in 1851 Cotham returned to England and from 1852 to 1873 worked in the fashionable spa town of Cheltenham, which had a strong Evangelical tradition. In Cheltenham he used his mission to reconcile the aspirations of the rising professional class of English Catholics, predominantly converts, with the needs of alienated Irish immigrants, and he was responsible for building Charles Hansom's Gothic Revival church of St Gregory the Great. Cotham had a reputation for simplicity and a direct and uncomplicated manner which today we might identify as a sign of personal integrity: these stayed with him throughout his life, as did his tenacity, humour, combativeness, and an intense dislike of rain. He remained close to his family, in Lancashire and Australia, withstanding the censure this brought from some of his Benedictine confrères when he used personal financial resources for their benefit. His brother Lawrence died as an 'old colonist' whose family had become thorough-going Australians within one generation. Making extensive use of his surviving papers, Joanna Vials's new biography explores Cotham's work in both Europe and the Antipodes, and by focusing on the wide reach of his life allows us insight into the interlocking relationships of family, religion and society in developing the spirit of an age.

Allan Chapman has had a life-long fascination for ghost stories, with an imagination fired from a childhood spent in a tiny, initially gas-lit cottage in Lancashire. This imagination lies at the heart of Ghosts that Never Haunted Christ Church. With the exception of the story of the revival of Anne Greene, a welldocumented true story from 1650, and the recent 'Ghosts that might well haunt Christ Church', all the tales in this book are a curious mixture of genuine historical fact, legend, and fiction. For while many of the ghosts in these tales may not have haunted Christ Church-or at least not in the way described- the historical setting which they haunted is largely true. The names of real historical figures and Christ Church buildings which either still exist or were later demolished to be replaced by more recent ones all intermix to form an entertaining combination of fact and fiction. Over the centuries, Christ Church has displayed three notable features: the Cathedral Church, with its Canons and clerical dons; a rich and glorious musical tradition; and great distinction in scientific and medical research. They all appear, in various guises, in these ghost stories. Clergymen, choristers, organists, chemists, scientists, heroic College porters, inventors, animals, and anatomists are all there. Yet whether a tale be heart-warming, grisly, or downright horrific, each resolves into its own positive ending. For Christ Church has never been a bleak or negative place, preferring good fellowship to angst and misery; and so with its ghosts. For at the end of the day, peace comes to all. So read on, and prepare to be affrighted, amused, and delighted!

MGR TONY PHILPOT, one of the most gifted British priests of recent times, shared in his preaching and talks what flowed from faithful prayer and his years of parochialministry. As Spiritual Director at the English College in Rome and throughout the British Isles and beyond, he helped form and renew seminarians and priests alike. This book of spiritual conferences is drawn from talks to those training to become priests or to those already serving as diocesan priests. For seminarians and priests this volume will be a resource for spiritual reading, days of recollection and retreats. Any Christian, however, will be nourished by the reflections contained within these pages.

So much research in the history of medicine has been devoted to the development of medicine as a progressive science. The Medicine of the People, however, looks at the medical perceptions of lay people over the last four centuries. Lying at the heart of these perceptions is a set of ideas first formulated by Hippocrates, Aristotle and other ancient Greek physicians, which tried to understand illness in terms of vital properties. These included the four Humours of Yellow Bile, Black Bile, Blood and Phlegm, the centrality of the heart as a 'sensitive' organ, the brain as a cooling plant for the blood, and health as a state of balance between hot, cold, moist and dry forces. Such a notion of disease runs through Chaucer, Shakespeare and the early academic physicians, though it lost scientific credibility in the eighteenth century.Seventy years after the institution of the National Health Service in Great Britain, The Medicine of the People traces the persistence of the old traditions before its foundation - through popular writers, preachers like John Wesley, Victorian quack advertising and even music hall songs. Based on extensive archival research and interviews with elderly people and doctors, The Medicine of the People looks at an approach to medicine originating in the ancient world, widespread in mediaeval times, familiar to Shakespeare's groundlings, part of the culture of Victorian factory-workers and which came to be re-invented as alternative medicine.

In the last century the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius gave to Russian Orthodoxy an opportunity, in a sustained encounter with the Christian West, to speak with a voice never heard as powerfully before in the western world, and from the date of its foundation in 1928, the Journal of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius, later Sobornost, sought to strike a good balance between Western and Eastern contributions to Christian thought. It provided an ecumenical encounter principally between the exiled Orthodox intelligentsia of the Russian diaspora and the Catholic party of the Church of England, but also on occasion with Presbyterians, Methodists and other Protestants. In this fascinating account of the work and mission of Sobornost, Aidan Nichols shows how this was to change significantly as the Western tradition began to be seen as taking too many wrong turnings to be a reliable guide for Christian theology at large, and he divides this study into two parts: the first forty years of the journal as a time of encounter more or less on equal terms, and the last fifty years where the meeting of East and West would be increasingly on the East's terms-and, in another striking development, this meant the Greek East rather than the Russian. This process of transformation was only gradual, but by the start of the twenty-first century, Sobornost was fast becoming, especially through its mediation of modern Greek philosophy, theology and spirituality, as well as the more traditional discipline of Byzantine studies, a largely monophonic voice for Orthodoxy in the West. This was a far cry from its origins, even if that voice was also much needed in an often disoriented English, European and North American Christianity. Throughout its history, Sobornost has been invaluable for Western readers in the provision of information about the Eastern Churches, and especially the Byzantine or Chalcedonian Orthodox-always the more important part of both Fellowship and journal. A definitive role for the present and for the future, as they both celebrate their 90th anniversary.

Dating from the fifteenth century, The Book of Margery Kempe is the first known autobiography in English. In it the author describes, in unembarrassed, down-to-earth detail, her madness, financial ruin, religious ecstasies, marital problems and dangerous treks to distant shrines. The result is a unique portrait of a strange medieval character, living out a colourful life in a turbulent, often tragic world.Margery Kempe was born about 1373 in the then bustling port of King's Lynn in Norfolk. She married a merchant and was mother to fourteen children, but a streak of worldly ambition led her into ill-fated businessventures in milling and brewing. Chastened by their failure, and by a vision of Christ, she became prone to ecstatic weeping and crying and was shunned, tormented and even put on trial. With the encouragementof saintly individuals such as Julian of Norwich, she undertook pilgrimages to Rome, Santiago de Compostela and the Holy Land, and journeyed widely in England, France, Germany and Poland - making an offering at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham before the dangerous sea-voyage to the Baltic. Kempe's religious life belongs in that rich vein of spirituality expressed by women who, debarred from theological training or any official position in the church, cultivated the more immediate authority of mystical experience.Her Book, which was dictated to two scribes beginning in about 1431, shows an extraordinary recall both of external events and of her inner life over a span of forty years. After being lost for centuries it was onlyrediscover ed in 1934, in a fifteenth-century manuscript. Previous translations of her Middle E nglish prose have not captured Kempe's authentic voice; this present one brings her fully and volubly alive formodern readers.

The Year of Thamar's Book is set in the months from the spring of 2015 to thesummer of 2016. An elderly recluse living in a quiet village in Burgundydiscovers he is not as alone in the world as he has for many years assumed.His grandson, well-educated but ignorant, comes to the village to help the old manmake a book of the pile of chaotic manuscript that tells the story of a difficult,painful yet luminous life. As he writes, and listens, the young man learns a gooddeal, and begins to comprehend not only how French colonial history and thehorrors of war in Algeria formed and hurt his grandfather, but also how their lastingconsequences are still damaging his country and his own family. At the same timehe begins to understand his grandfather's faith.

In this book Deborah Castellano Lubov explores the personality and thinking of Pope Francis. Drawing on interviews with major figures in the Roman Curia and the universal Catholic Church, as well as with the friends and family of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, she presents a vivid portrait of the Pope, both as a man and in his treatment of current issues, particularly that of the dignity of the human person. The book contains an exclusive interview with the sister of the Pope, along with those closest to him: ¿ Maria Elena Bergoglio ¿ Cardinal Charles Maung Bo ¿ Cardinal Timothy Dolan ¿ Archbishop Georg Ganswein ¿ Cardinal Kurt Koch ¿ Archbishop Joseph Edward Kurtz ¿ Father Federico Lombardi ¿ Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Muller ¿ Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier ¿ Adrian Pallarols ¿ Cardinal George Pell ¿ Rabbi Abraham Skorka ¿ Cardinal Peter Turkson ¿ His Beatitude Fouad Twal

Conscience before Conformity tells the story of German students who dared to speak out against Hitler and the Third Reich, and died for their beliefs. Operating under the name of the White Rose, they printed and distributed leaflets condemning Nazism and urging Germans to offer non-violent resistance to the 'atheistic war machine'.By looking at the cultural and religious journey of the protagonists, Hans and Sophie Scholl, we can see what made them change from active participants in the Hitler Youth to leaders of the White Rose resistance. These modern-day heroes were deeply influenced by intellectuals they met in secret, and by the writings of great Christian thinkers such as St Augustine, Pascal, Georges Bernanos, and Bl. John Henry Newman. What they learnt gave them the strength to put their consciences before conformity to the Nazi lie.

Since the publication of its predecessor volume Contemporary Catholic Education in 2002, the Catholic education landscape has experienced significant developments and challenges. The notion that the perennial, in the form of the rich heritage of the Catholic education tradition, must remain in constant dialogue with the transitional educational landscape permeates this publication. This is rooted in a sacramental vision of the human person and is anchored in three core principles: the dignity of the individual, the call to human flourishing and the promise of a divine destiny. The extent to which Catholic school teachers, leaders and governors embrace the challenge to embed these core principles, while acknowledging a range of factors challenging the holistic perspective canonised in Catholic tradition, features prominently in this volume. The structuring of Contemporary Perspectives on Catholic Education around three themes, context, Religious Education and leadership and governance is designed strategically to enable the authors to address contemporary challenges, principal among which is the maintenance of the integral mission of Catholic education. In these contexts the value of the witness of Catholic teachers, leaders and governors is accentuated and, in the words of Pope Francis, 'teaching ultimately has to be reflected in the teacher's way of life, which awakens the assent of the heart by its nearness, love and witness'.

The Spencers reached the peak of their wealth in the eighteenth century; in the nineteenth century they achieved the commanding heights of political power; by the end of the twentieth century they knew the extremes of celebrity. Ignatius Spencer (1799-1864), great, great, great uncle of Princess Diana, renounced his wealth and position in society in order to serve the poor, begging his way around the British Isles and beyond, wearing the rough black habit of the Passionists, the austere religious order he had joined. He was welcomed by popes, cardinals, and aristocrats and loved by the poor and destitute, particularly in Ireland where, even during the famine of 1845-52, and against the rising tide of Irish nationalism, this son of a former First Lord of the Admiralty, brother of both a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and of the governess to Queen Victoria's children, aroused the warmth and admiration of tens of thousands of the Irish as he travelled the length and breadth of Ireland preaching in hundreds of churches and chapels. This is the story of a remarkable nineteenth-century figure who for some was 'a dirty, mad mendicant' and for others no less than a saint. Today Ignatius Spencer, already recognized for his life of heroic virtue, is under consideration for canonization.

Why do some religious believers slaughter those who refuse to convert to their faith, refuse scientific evidence for an ancient universe, or hold God to be an utterly arbitrary being? Why do some scientists believe that universes pop into existence from nothing, that aliens seeded life on earth, or that fish turn into reptiles by chance processes? The answer, for both, is the same: the abandonment of realism, the human way for knowing reality. In The Realist Guide to Religion and Science, Fr Paul Robinson explains what realism is all about, then undertakes an historical exploration to show how religion and science become irrational when they abandon realism and intellectually fruitful when they embrace it.

Written some fifteen centuries ago, The Rule of St Benedict is still read and studied by thousands of men and women throughout the world. In recent years more and more lay people have turned to the Rule, and have found within its pages a deep and practical spirituality which is helpful to them in coping with the problems and challenges they meet in their everyday lives. This edition of the classic Parry translation of the Rule has been prepared for a general audience and comes complete with an introduction by Esther de Waal which offers a commentary both on the underlying themes of the Rule and on the contents of specific chapters. We come face to face with St Benedict himself and appreciate anew the magnificent combination of spirituality and practicality that make the Rule a uniquely valuable source book for us today. Abbot Parry OSB was for many years the Abbot of St Augustine's Abbey Ramsgate, and the author of Households of God, which included both his translation of the Rule and an invaluable commentary. Esther de Waal is the author of a number of books, including Living with Contradiction and Seeking God, which explore the spirituality of the Rule of St Benedict and of the Benedictine life itself.