Books

Charlotte, N.C. -- A proposed North Carolina school textbook that described Roe vs. Wade as a ruling against government oppression of rights has been altered following opposition from Catholics and other pro-life advocates.

More than 1,800 participants in the Catholic Voice campaign e-mailed the state's Department of Public Construction with their concerns. The material was removed on Feb. 18.

Bishop of Raleigh Michael F. Burbidge and Bishop of Charlotte Peter J. Jugis wrote a letter of thanks to those who e-mailed their protest.

Many people consider an annulment to be the Catholic version of divorce. However, this is not the case. An annulment declares that a marriage never existed in the first place. The authors of "Annulment: 100 Questions and Answers for Catholics," Peter Vere and Jacqui Rapp, are canon lawyers who are able to offer detailed insight into how an annulment is processed and obtained. They are able to explain this with quotes from Canon Law. They also offer unique anecdotes from their own experiences.

Have you thought about going to eucharistic adoration, but just didn't know quite what to do when you got there?

Well look no further -- Vandy Brennan Nies has your answer.

Nies, a longtime member of St. Joseph Parish in Manchester, recently penned "In the Silence: Meditations for Eucharistic Adoration" (Liguori Publications, $10.99), a collection of more than 50 prayers designed for those quiet times in adoration with the Lord.

“Have a Little Faith: A True Story” by Mitch Albom, Hyperion (New York, 2009), 249 pp., $23.99.

The young Mitch Albom, raised and bar-mitzvahed in a conservative synagogue in New Jersey, ran from his rabbi — he feared that the “man of God” would condemn him for his sins.

Albom kept running through college and the early stages of his successful sportswriting career anchored in Detroit until the 82-year-old rabbi collared him one day with the request to give his eulogy.

Uncertain how to say no to a man of God, Albom agreed. That set him on a course of getting to know his subject, Albert Lewis. The relationship they developed over eight years, a sort of spiritual apprenticeship, forms the basis of “Have a Little Faith.”

Silvia Evangelisti, a lecturer in history at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, is a specialist in women’s religious life of the early modern period, and in this masterful study she identifies and explains the impact of secular and ecclesiastical history on female monastic communities.

Her concise analysis of these broad issues is coupled with precise details that afford a glimpse into the richness of convent life. “Nuns: A History of Convent Life” is a tapestry that succeeds in combining serious scholarship with a writing style that is accessible to the lay reader.

“Enclosure” was the most important defining factor of convent life in the period Evangelisti explores, 1450-1700, and appropriately it is the cohesive theme of this study. Cloister was an early feature of monastic communities and especially stressed for women, who were “radically exhorted never to leave their convent and to practice full, unbroken enclosure.” These practices “relied on a long-standing Christian tradition that associated female chastity with the protection of a closed environment, whether this was a domestic one or a monastic one.”

Pope John Paul II in his 1995 encyclical “Ut Unum Sint” opened a “patient and fraternal dialogue” with fellow Christians on how best to renew the function of the papal office to serve the unity of Christian churches.

This invitation has generated a flurry of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox studies on the history, theology and practice of this office. This volume is a substantive critical Catholic contribution to the retelling of this fascinating tale.