These books are the first two titles in The Ignatian Impulse Series a new series offered by Ave Maria Press ldquo By providing brief readable and engaging books rdquo the publisher tells us the series ldquo presents the spirituality of Ignatius of Loyola as a practical resource for spiritual

It is no secret that in the last 40 years there has been a steep decline in the number of clergy working in parishes as well as religious congregations staffing schools and other Catholic institutions In parishes the women and men filling the roles once performed exclusively by clergy and religiou

The novelist Michael Cunningham leapt into the spotlight with The Hours 1998 a meditative spinoff of Virginia Woolf rsquo s Mrs Dalloway Cunningham rsquo s book won the Pulitzer Prize and enjoyed a successful second run in a filmed version four years later Now he has written another trio of in

A generation ago the rock band The Who venerated and mocked their spiritually restless Baby Boomer peers in their song The Seeker bragging that I rsquo ve got values but I don rsquo t know how or why According to a major new study of teenagers and religion spiritual seekers have all but vanished

ldquo But what if Scola becomes pope rdquo Such was my e-mail response to America rsquo s request that I do this book review John Paul II had just died Benedict XVI had yet to be elected And Angelo Cardinal Scola was on the papabile list Needless to say Scola the patriarch of Venice did not

Thomas Carlyle might not have called the study of economic matters dismal if instead of debating the gloomy Thomas Malthus on population growth he had come across the economist Steven Levitt and his often humorous takes on whether drug-dealing really pays or the effect that the name a parent selec