Publisher Description

For Cardinal Francis George, the Catholic Church is not a movement, built around ideas, but a communion, built around relationships. In A Godly Humanism, he shares his understanding of the Church in lively, compelling prose, presenting a way to understand and appreciate the relationships of God to human beings and of human beings to one another. These loving relationships are continually made present to us in and through the Church, from the time of Jesus' first disciples down to our own day. We are introduced to how the spiritual and intellectual life of Christians, aided in every generation by the Holy Spirit working through the Apostles and their successors, resist the danger of splitting apart from one another. Though they take different outward forms at di erent times, both wisdom and holiness are made possible for everyChristian of every station of life. Sign-posting his conversation by the milestones of his own spiritual and intellectual journey, Cardinal George invites us to view the Church and her history in ways that go beyond the categories of politics—through which we find merely human initiative, contrivance, and adjustment—and rather to see the initiative as God's first and foremost. God is the non-stop giver, we are non-stop recipients of his gifts, and the recent popes, no less than the Father of the Church, have made every e ort to make us aware of the graces—that is, of the unearned benefits—that God confers on us as Catholics, as Christians, as believers, and simply as human persons. Pope Francis, he reminds us, contrasts human planning with God's providence, and this book is at once an exposition of that providence and a personal responseof gratitude for the way it has operated in one man's life.

This persuasive book, imbued with the thoughts of profound thinkers from the Ancient world, from St. Augustine and other Church fathers, and steeped in the wisdom of church teaching from earliest times through to the Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, invitesand persuades the reader to reimagine the church as communion and the life of faith that we live as part of it.

Author Biography

Francis, Cardinal George OMI is Archbishop Emeritus of Chicago, USA.

Review

"A Godly Humanism is a book of great learning of a mind equally at home with Irenaeus and David Tracy, St Homas and Jean-Luc Marison, and able to comment astutely on the Polish original of Karol Wojtyla's The Acting Person. The subject matter can be austere, yet the style is always lucid, and often profound: 'The Church is where you go when you want to be free.'"--Margaret Atkins, The Tablet " this wonderful collection of essays written with a happy combination of intelligence and piety; intended for anyone who, he tells us, 'is striving to integrate wisdom and discipleship, ' in a life rooted in Christ and the Church he fashioned to be his Body and Bride in the world... To read this book is to wrestle with those questions one-self and, at the same time, to watch a wise and holy man as he shows us how it may be done with nerve and vision."--Regis Martin, Franciscan Univ Steubenville, StAR "this handsomely produced, concise volume offers eight essays tracing Cardinal George's intellectual journey since the Second Vatican Council, as he endeavored to assimilate its theological teaching and spiritual wisdom according to popes Paul VI, St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.... Each chapter introduces a horizon of meaning and living within the history of the church... I recommend it highly for upper-class university students, informed laity, professors, and church ministers and pastors. It will certainly generate lively discussion and perhaps, as George wished, a resurgence or continuation of Catholic intellectual life."--Gabriel Scarfia, OFM, Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society

Review Quote

"A Godly Humanism is a book of great learning of a mind equally at home with Irenaeus and David Tracy, St Homas and Jean-Luc Marison, and able to comment astutely on the Polish original of Karol Wojtyla's The Acting Person. The subject matter can be austere, yet the style is always lucid, and often profound: 'The Church is where you go when you want to be free.'"--Margaret Atkins, The Tablet " this wonderful collection of essays written with a happy combination of intelligence and piety; intended for anyone who, he tells us, 'is striving to integrate wisdom and discipleship,' in a life rooted in Christ and the Church he fashioned to be his Body and Bride in the world... To read this book is to wrestle with those questions one-self and, at the same time, to watch a wise and holy man as he shows us how it may be done with nerve and vision."--Regis Martin, Franciscan Univ Steubenville, StAR "this handsomely produced, concise volume offers eight essays tracing Cardinal George's intellectual journey since the Second Vatican Council, as he endeavored to assimilate its theological teaching and spiritual wisdom according to popes Paul VI, St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis.... Each chapter introduces a horizon of meaning and living within the history of the church... I recommend it highly for upper-class university students, informed laity, professors, and church ministers and pastors. It will certainly generate lively discussion and perhaps, as George wished, a resurgence or continuation of Catholic intellectual life."--Gabriel Scarfia, OFM, Horizons: The Journal of the College Theology Society

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