Kirjahaku

In this popular presentation, Royal guides us through The Divine Comedy, a literary classic that is enjoying a renaissance as a spiritual masterpiece. In the course of exploring the human pilgrimage on Earth, Dante charts a vivid path through the canticles of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven in his legendary poem. Robert Royal presents a careful but reader-friendly approach to the poetry of the texts themselves and a biographical sketch of Dante, the man, the writer, and the spiritual lover extraordinaire.

From the Catholic martyrs at Auschwitz to Oscar Romero; from Ita Ford and her companions to the recent murders of Christians in India, it is estimated that more than one million Christians died for their faith in the “century of progress” we have just experienced. In The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, Robert Royal presents a wide-ranging history of these martyrs.The book traces the specific situation of each incident and studies the political system and the reason for confrontation. Regions and topics include the Calvary of Romania, the death of Edith Stein, Miguel Pro and the Mexican tragedy, Soviet Russia, and China.

In this wide-ranging and ambitious volume, Robert Royal, a prominent participant for many years in debates about religion and contemporary life, offers a comprehensive and balanced appraisal of the Catholic intellectual tradition in the twentieth century. The Catholic Church values both Faith and Reason, and Catholicism has given risen to extraordinary ideas and whole schools of remarkable thought, not just in the distant past but throughout the troubled decades of the twentieth century. Royal presents in a single volume a sweeping but readable account of how Catholic thinking developed in philosophy, theology, Scripture studies, culture, literature, and much more in the twentieth century. This involves great figures, recognized as such both inside and outside the Church, such as Jacques Maritain, Bernard Lonergan, Joseph Pieper, Edith Stein, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, Romano Guardini, Karl Rahner, Henri du Lubac, Karol Wojtyla, Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Charles Peguy, Paul Claudel, George Bernanos, Francois Mauriac, G. K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christopher Dawson, Graham Greene, Sigrid Undset, J. R. R. Tolkien, Czeslaw Milosz, and many more. Royal argues that without rigorous thought, Catholicism however welcoming and nourishing it might be would become something like a doctor with a good bedside manner, but who knows little medicine. It has always been the aspiration of the Catholic tradition to unite emotion and intellect, action and contemplation. But unless we know what the tradition has already produced especially in the work of the great figures of the recent past we will not be able to answer the challenges that the modern world poses, or even properly recognize the true questions we face. This is a reflective, non-polemical work that brings together various strands of Catholic thought in the twentieth century. A comprehensive guide to the recent past - and the future."

Secular humanists and other "progressives" have been predicting the demise of religion for the past 250 years. But they keep running into a problem: those who were supposed to be liberated by the secular gospel that God is Dead aren't buying it. Except for some parts of western Europe and in countries culturally destroyed by Communism, secularization in the radical sense has not occurred. While it has not obliterated the religious impulse, however, the drive towards "progressive irreligion" has, Robert Royal believes, encouraged ignorance of religion's central role in the development of the West. In The God That Did Not Fail, Royal offers an original reading of religion in ancient Greece and Rome, of Christianity and Judaism, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, the several modern Enlightenments, culminating with a profound assessment of our current postmodern moment. He concludes that since religion is a permanent part of human nature and of the particular character of the West, our efforts should be directed not into a quixotic effort to deny the undeniable, especially as we face challenges from Islamic fundamentalism, but into promoting a well thought out and dynamic interplay of faith, reason, and modern freedoms.

After decades of politically charged controversy, the reputation and standing of Christopher Columbus lies battered beneath mountains of misjudgments and distortions. The surge of historical revisionism now ravaging the legendary explorer insists that his daring adventures brought only tragic consequences: disease, death, subjugation of native peoples, incitement of the African slave trade, destruction of the environment, and other horrors. But is this a legitimate assessment of Europe's inevitable western expansion? In Columbus and the Crisis of the West, Dr. Robert Royal carefully examines the mind and motives of Christopher Columbus, distinguishing him as the greatest explorer of his age, whose courage and vision extended Christian Europe and inspired the American spirit. Yet you won't find here a full-throated defense of Christopher Columbus. Rather, Dr. Royal examines what actually happened in the decades following 1492, when two widely divergent cultures met and mingled. Refusing to ignore or underplay the tragedies of America's origins, Royal masterfully places these events in historical context, protecting them from the contemporary biases that are moving forward at ramming speed to crush fragile truths. In these pages you'll explore Columbus's spirituality and the apocalyptic vision that guided him, as well as the disparate ways in which Puritans and Catholics viewed and approached the indigenous peoples. You'll also discover what life was really like for them, the truth about Indian environmentalism, the essence of the "noble savage," and the soundness of the claim that the native peoples were innocents living in harmony with nature. Here is the book that cuts through the fashionable pieties of our time by boldly refuting the most popular indictments of Columbus and early America. Finally, a serious classical scholar who confronts with power the crusading revisionist historians who are leveraging the Native American conquest in an effort to defile, dishonor, and ultimately upend Western civilization.

The Catholic “thing” – the concrete historical reality of Catholicism as a presence in human history – is the richest cultural tradition in the world. It values both faith and reason, and therefore has a great deal to say about politics and economics, war and peace, manners and morals, children and families, careers and vocations, and many other perennial and contemporary questions. In addition, it has inspired some of the greatest art, music, and architecture, while offering unparalleled human solidarity to tens of millions through hospitals, soup kitchens, schools, universities, and relief services. This volume brings together some of the very best commentary on a wide range of recent events and controversies by some of the very best Catholic writers in the English language: Ralph McInerny, Michael Novak, Fr. James V. Schall, Hadley Arkes, Robert Royal, Anthony Esolen, Brad Miner, George Marlin, David Warren, Austin Ruse, Francis Beckwith, and many others. Their contributions cover large Catholic subjects such as philosophy and theology, liturgy and Church dogma, postmodern culture, the Church and modern politics, literature, and music. But they also look into specific contemporary problems such as religious liberty, the role of Catholic officials in public life, growing moral hazards in bio-medical advances, and such like. The Catholic Thing is a virtual encyclopedia of Catholic thought about modern life.

With a challenging foreword by Richard John Neuhaus on Christians as "resident aliens" of any earthly city, the book will interest those who wish to think more closely about the Christian contribution to social questions after the fall of communism, as it explores and critically examines a century of Catholic reflection and argument on human freedom, the just society, and the international order.