Catholic Book of the Dead [Paperback]

Ann Ball (Author), Edward Wakin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1977

Death. The one journey we must all take from this earth to the new life beyond.   Join author Ann Ball as she explores ways we have tried to explain and cope with death throughout history. Discover how Roman and Hebrew funeral customs influenced early Christian rites; how the Middle Ages and the "Black Death" gave rise to customs we maintain today; and how the Protestant Reformation helped shape our modern funeral practices.   Explore how different cultures view death - from an Irish wake to a Japanese Catholic funeral, from Mexican ceremonies to Native American Catholicism and tribal beliefs. Catholic Book of the Dead looks at the heritage of the final journey in the joyful light of the Resurrection. Through the intercession of Mary, the angels and saints, we come to realize that death is the beginning, not the end of life.     Ann Ball is a well-known Catholic writer and the author of Our Sunday Visitor's best-selling A HANDBOOK OF CATHOLIC SACRAMENTALS and CATHOLIC TRADITIONS IN COOKING.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Praying to the dead, purgatory, limbo--the customs and notions associated with death by the Roman Catholic Church are well known, but often poorly understood. Ball's book will correct that situation, taking both Catholic readers and the merely curious into the underpinnings of these funerary rites and ways of marking our losses. Ball emphasizes the positive as well, explaining, for example, how the Church has tried to disassociate popular understanding of purgatory from notions of ``pyromanic phantasms'' and position that state more properly as the ``forecourt of heaven.'' Exploring Roman Catholic ways of dealing with death in varying cultures, as, for example, the venerable Irish wake or the Mexican Day of the Dead, the author explains as well the historical development of many customs: why All Souls' Day follows All Saints' Day; the theology behind praying for the dead; the Roman Catholic tradition of providing a full burial for the poor, etc. All of which is to say that, despite its rather foreboding title, Book of the Dead just may surprise and delight as well as inform.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor (December 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879737441
• ISBN-13: 978-0879737443
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,920,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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