Using societal patterns of exploitation that are evidenced in agrarian societies from the Bronze Age to modern-day corporate globalization, Re-Reading the Prophets offers a new approach to understanding the hidden contexts behind prophetic complaints against economic injustice in eighth-century Judah.

This interdisciplinary study integrates textual analysis of the Hebrew Bible and comparable ancient Near Eastern material with social theory and archaeology in order to articulate the ancient Israelites' taken-for-granted understandings of natural disasters, their intellectual and theological challenges to those understandings, and their intellectual and theological reconstructions thereof.

The Bodleian Library in Oxford currently holds an unpublished historical document in Syriac containing precious historical information about the ordination of bishops, priests, monks, and deacons. Bcheiry gives the text and translation, and focuses on the importance of the data found in this historical list which he compares with other historical data found in other sources.

The prayer of the heart is an early Christian contemplative tradition of striking profundity and beauty. Christian authors of the Greek- as well as the Syriac-speaking world placed the heart at the center of a mystical theology that viewed the body as a God-given instrument of divine ascent and the relational setting of Christian existence as an important means of experiencing God’s abiding inner presence. This work sheds light on the Syrian church’s approach to the mystery of the divine encounter.

Una O Higgins OMalley was born in Dublin on 25 January 1927 and was less than six months old when her father Kevin OHiggins, was shot dead on his way to Mass by fringe Republicians. A committed political activisit who campaigned to end the violence in Northern Ireland, Una resolved to help people from both sides of the breach in their efforts to forgive, as she had done those killers of her father. This steadfast mission resulted in the opening of the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation. Contributors include Garrett Fitzgerald, Mary Robinson and Linda Hogan. Remembering to Forgive celebrates the rich, rewarding and rewarded life of Una OHiggins OMalley.

John Quinn presents a comprehensive selection of entertaining, thought-provoking and insightful programmes taken from many of his RTE radio series, spanning a twenty-five-year period. Writers, philosophers, entertainers, educationists, activists, politicians, business people, John has interviewed some of the most interesting personalities. Seamus Heaney, Spike Milligan, Maeve Binchy, Peter Ustinov, Bernadette Greevy and many, many others have offered up personal anecdotes in conversation with John, with a plethora of topics ranging from childhood, to education, to economics, to place and landscape. Also included are excerpts from a number of documentaries on topics ranging from Eskimoes to All-Ireland Final Day. Every short essay a perfect story in itself, this surely is a gem of a book.

This book is a classic in the history of the Oriental Churches, which are sometimes portrayed as heretical in general church history books, if mentioned at all. Written by a Copt, it portrays the history of the faith of these non-Chalcedonian Churches with first-hand knowledge of their traditions. The author covers Alexandrine Christianity (the Copts and the Ethiopians), the Church of Antioch (Syriac Orthodox), the “Nestorian” Church of the East, the Armenian Church, the St. Thomas Christians of South India, the Maronite Church, as well as the Vanished Churches of Carthage, Pentapolis, and Nubia.

Spanning the twenty-five years of the Cork and Ross mission to South America, Children of the Sun details the new life, culture and challenges the missionaries encountered on their arrival to the infamous Land of the Incas.Beginning in Cork, where the mission was founded by Bishop Lucey in the 1960s, the story travels thousands of miles to the Diocese of Trujillo in Peru, the Andes, and later on to Ecuador, where the Irish missionaries dedicated themselves to addressing the needs, spiritual and material, of the indigenous people.Monsignor Leonard O’Brien’s book gives a wonderful account of a place of harsh landscapes, political instability and poverty, as well as a land steeped in ancient history, beauty and a warm and welcoming people.

The Catholic Guides of Ireland, an all-female organization, was founded in 1928 in Dublin and soon spread throughout the thirty-two counties. This colorful history is essentially a history of women in Ireland during the 20th and early 21st centuries. It moves through the formative years of the 1930s, charting its sometimes fractious relationship with the Catholic Church, to the war years of the 1940s, when the Girl Guides, through participation in activities not normally open to them, grew in confidence and camaraderie, sowing the seeds for the women's liberation movement of the next generation.

Unpeel the layers of your spiritual life… In the realm of the Spirit, and when dealing with our own souls and the souls of others, we are often at a loss for words. We have a sense, maybe even an image, of what we want to share, ask or communicate, but words are harder to find and express. Stories are the glue that holds us together in whatever groups we belong to, even if we only visit or find ourselves on the margins. In a sense, our god is a story being told and god is seeking for all of us to listen, to enter into the story and become one. Megan Mckenna uses images of Russian nesting dolls to illustrate the many layers of the stories that exist in each of our lives, particularly in relation to the Spirit. Stories are critical to living and are intertwined with truth in such a way that we can carry them with us, remember them and pass them along, sharing them as needed. We live inside a story. We live inside God.

In this study, the experience, spirituality and teaching of St Paul are made available for today. As we search for new ways of being Church, we can be inspired again by the earliest and perhaps greatest Christian writer of the first century. In particular, Paul of Tarsus models spirituality, pastoral practice and practical theology in a way that can be very helpful for todays believers. Through the prism of his experience, the light of Christ can be refracted again today, and just as previous generations found resources for new vision and courage in the apostle to the Gentiles, so can we in our time and culture.

In an increasingly health-conscious society, it often seems that people, when faced with the dying process, view it as an oddity, an aberration, rather than a natural part of life. This book takes a fresh look at the way that Jesus walked, and gives practical suggestions on how to take that experience and make it our own in a positive, loving way. It gives hope that we are not alone in our final hours, that we are filled with Divine love as we journey together. Growing out of the author’s experience as a hospice chaplain companioning the dying and their families, these meditations and prayers are based on the fears and hopes, and joys and sorrows of these individuals, and of the hospice staff who accompanied them.

A factual account of the origins and development of Catholic anti-Semitism from its beginnings at the time of the first schism with Judaism c. 135 to the present time. This book is intended as a receptacle through which to facilitate the confession and the repentance of the sins against the Jewish people and open the way for a new and vibrant evangelization. Ena Gray was born in Dublin in 1937. She joined the Dominican Sisters when she was seventeen and trained as a secondary school teacher. She is currently living in Ferns, Co. Wicklow, where she works as a Parish Sister.

This book offers a reflective journey through life and scripture toward inner peace, acceptance, and a more fulfilling existence. It includes reflections, scripture passages, life-questions, and some practical ways of responding to them. This book can be used alone in quiet personal reflection or with others in-group situations. John A. Flanagan is a priest from Co. Monaghan serving the Diocese of Clogher. He is currently the Diocesan Advisor for Primary Religious Education in the diocese. ""Exemplifies the best of contemporary Irish Catholicism-simple, fluent, and direct. Ideal for the traditional Catholic reader in Ireland or America."" -Library Journal

A constant theme running through the ten Céifin Conferences since 1998 has been changes in family life. A key question to emerge from the first conference was, Who is rearing the next generation? and that question has not gone away. The family now needs to be examined, not as an argument for or against anything, but in itself. What does it really mean to our society and what does it contribute to human, social and spiritual development? The economic miracle, 1994, 2007, brought undreamed-of affluence. We welcomed it. However, there is no doubt that relationships suffered, particularly in the area of family and community. We are currently experiencing the beginnings of a recession. Food and fuel prices are escalating; jobs are threatened. The family will once again be on the frontline of experiencing difficult economic changes, coming on the back of a period when it experienced significant social and religious changes. How resourceful are family units after a period of consumerism? This conference should enable delegates to broaden their awareness of the current state of family life and the changing nature of relationships between home, school, and work-place , placing particular emphasis on a new vision for the changing family.

Opium addiction in China during the closing decades of the Ch'ing dynasty afflicted all segments of society. From government officials to farmers, the population fell prey to the effects of the drug. Some provinces reported addiction rates as high as eighty percent. With the birth of Chinese nationalism, reformers -- missionaries who had witnessed the effects of opium on Chinese society, students who had studied abroad and returned to their native land with broader perspectives, families who had lost all through the addiction of a loved one, doctors who had firsthand knowledge that opium use led only to death -- cried out against the drug.Even though many were convinced that opium use had sapped the strength of China, ending the use of the drug was a complicated problem. Opium trade financed the colonial government of India, and imports amounted to many tons annually. Domestic poppies were also cultivated as source of income.Kathleen Lodwick examines the intersecting efforts of Protestant missionaries, particularly medical doctors, who had long denounced opium use, the British Royal Commission on Opium, which was decidedly pro-opium, the U.S. Philippine Commission, which denounced not only the trade but the Chinese people, and the British officials who finally undertook the task of ending the importation of opium to China.China kept few records on the amount of drug use or its effects. Missionary medical doctors conducted the first scientific survey on the effects of the drug, and their findings provided clear evidence of its perniciousness. Such evidence could not be ignored, whatever the fortunes involved, and missionaries conducted a campaign of education and awareness in China and abroad. As a result of their efforts, China and Britain entered into a treaty that called for all opium trade to cease by 1917, and both governments as well as the missionaries become immediately active toward that end. The suppression campaign was among the most successful of the late Ch'ing reforms.Lodwick tells a fascinating story of imperial exploitation and of a strain of honest crusaders who sought to right some of the wrongs their own nation was perpetrating. This book represents a strong argument against legalization of addictive drugs, a topic being discussed today in the United States as a solution to the societal problems our own drug use has caused.