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The Resilient Church: The Glory, the Shame, & the Hope for Tomorrow
 
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The Resilient Church: The Glory, the Shame, & the Hope for Tomorrow (Paperback)

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4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Beginning with the earliest martyrs and ending with the twentieth century, The Resilient Church offers a fascinating look at the trials and triumphs of the Catholic Church over the past two thousand years. Fast-paced sketches of critical periods in church history give readers perspective on the challenges faced by the church today. Short selections in each chapter highlight some of the great heroes who influenced the course of history. Mike Aquilina does not shrink from the realities of the past, including badly behaved leaders and those who betrayed the Lord. Yet he also leaves readers with well-founded hope for the future: God remains faithful in every circumstance and fulfills his promise to remain with his church always.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

This book presents a handful of episodes from Christian history. They are sketches of moments of crisis, and they illustrate how God remains faithful in every circumstance, even when his people have betrayed him and forgotten his covenant.. . . This book is not a chronicle or even, strictly speaking, a history. It covers only a sampling of years from just a few spots on the globe. I've tried to select the stories that enthusiasts of history have found most memorable. They are not always edifying stories, since Christians--and even Christian leaders and clergy--sometimes behave badly. But Christian history never shrinks from these realities. At the end of the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XIII said, quoting Cicero, "The first law of history is not to dare to utter falsehood; the second, not to fear to speak the truth."3 At the end of the twentieth century, Pope John Paul II apologized publicly for the sins of Christians in the long-ago past. None of this should shock us. We tell the Christian story in the same way that we live our Christian lives, with a critical and repentant eye on the past, but with well-founded hope for the future.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: Word Among Us Press (May 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1593251041
  • ISBN-13: 978-1593251048
  • Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #276,738 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

14 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.9 out of 5 stars (14 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A new standard for popular writing about the Catholic Church, June 21, 2007
By David Scott (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This book sets a new standard for popular writing about the Catholic Church--smart, brightly written, faithful.

Mike's a great storyteller and he weaves the story of the Church against the backdrop of world history. We see how popes, saints, and ordinary clergy and laypeople lived and spread the faith in the face of Caesars, czars, revolutionaries, fuhrers, dictators, and all manner of fanaticism, heresy, and false ideology. His chapters on the rise of the early Church, the Reformation, and the Crusades are brilliant and reflect the best of recent scholarship. If you think you know what these events were really all about, think again.

Mike's clear-eyed about the failures of Catholics over the centuries. But he's also intelligent and faithful enough to remember that the Church is no ordinary human institution--that it's the family of God, the sign and instrument of our Father's plan for the world.

"The Resilient Church" should be required reading for every pastor and everyone who works for the Church. Not to mention every Catholic who wants to know his birthright and family heritage.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Tells Stories with Perfect Amount of Detail, June 20, 2007
I read this over the course of two days waiting around on jury duty. After each chapter, I'd call up my wife and say, "did you know...?" and repeat the whole chapter to her from memory. The writing is that good--the sketches from church history stick in you head and make you want to tell someone else.

I never made the connection that the Cure of Ars was the Church's answer to Napoleon.

Or that anti-Catholicism was so bad in the U.S. that in 1844 the mayor of Philadelphia, John Morin Scott, lead a group to prevent St. Augustine's Church from being burned down. Instead he was beaten senseless and the church was burned anyway. And they mayor wasn't even Catholic--he was Protestant.

Or the Vatican had blank baptismal certificates printed up during WW2 to help save the lives of Jews. It is estimated that the Church saved 800,000 Jews in Italy.

and on and on. A fantastic book.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Scenes from a Marriage, June 26, 2007
By Penn Jacobs (Rutherford, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
  
Mike Aquilina's books on Catholic culture and history (e.g., The Fathers of the Church, Expanded Edition) are not to be missed. The Resilient Church is an effortless, respectful look at a number of episodes in the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Not a comprehensive history (or even an attempt at a concise one), this book offers readers a number of vignettes from the life of the Church, through its encounters with heresy and holiness, scandal and salvation. Political events find their way in, but Aquilina's focus is on the Church as exemplifying one particular virtue: perseverance. Inasmuch as all Christian history is the story of a divine marriage, Christ and his Church, consider this book as an honest and sometimes humbling memoir of how that, as yet not fully consummated, marriage plays out in the lives of the faithful across millennia. It's an excellent read, and while not scholarly, the reader is bound to find something of interest. I particularly enjoyed the treatment of the Crusades. Inasmuch as the history of the West largely cannot be understood outside the history of the Church, this book is recommended for all.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent humanized portrayal of Catholic history
I greatly enjoyed this book, as I have other books by this same author. Having read several other longer works on Catholic history, I was not sure how much of this book would be... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Shontz

5.0 out of 5 stars Open look at Church history
I took the book to read while on a trip to Italy and it helped deepen my faith while on the trip. Reading much about Rome, being there, and hearing history that coincides with the... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Mike

4.0 out of 5 stars A good anecdotal summary
Though there are much more thorough and more entertaining books summarizing Church history, this is a good one for people who don't wish to go too deep and do not wish to be too... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Charles Normal

5.0 out of 5 stars Another Favorite of Mine
I admit that as with all the other books I've read of Mr. Aquilina, my only disappointment is that it is too short. I found myself engaged from the first page. Read more
Published 22 months ago by D. Ross

5.0 out of 5 stars Critical eye on the past, hope for the future
As the author says in the Introduction: "This book is not a chronicle or even, strictly speaking, a history. Read more
Published on August 22, 2007 by Richard J. Grebenc

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful in Fighting the Good Fight of Faith
A great resource in the good fight of religious literacy. Minor points of clarification needed (e.g. Read more
Published on July 18, 2007 by Nek Kerogo

5.0 out of 5 stars An Engaging History
This pint-sized page-turner hits point after point of Church history and at the same time successfully invites the reader to view something of a Catholic family album. Read more
Published on July 15, 2007 by Brenda Polk

5.0 out of 5 stars "Behold, I make all things new"
What a lovely book!

It could be subtitled "A brief history of the Christian world," but with much more reverence than Mel Brooks could muster. Read more
Published on July 8, 2007 by Brian W. Donnelly

5.0 out of 5 stars God in charge
Aquilina does a fantastic job of "tip toeing" through Church history and weaving together a meaningful and enjoyable "family story" which leaves one with a sense that through it... Read more
Published on July 2, 2007 by Joseph S. Nawrocki

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview
Quick overview of the trials of the Church and how they were overcome. A good reminder that the Church has always had sinners who drag her down and also the saints provided by God... Read more
Published on June 29, 2007 by Julie D.

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