Heidi Hess Saxton has rejoined Ave Maria Press as an acquisitions editor.
Under this new arrangement, Saxton, who worked as an editor at Ave from 2013 to 2015, will acquire and edit approximately six books a year. She was recently editorial director at Servant Books, an imprint of Franciscan Media, and she previously served as editorial director at Ascension Press. Saxton is the author of several books, including two meditation books, Advent with Saint Teresa of Calcutta and Lent with Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
She lives in the South Bend, Indiana, area with her family, and she may be reached at heidi.hess.saxton@gmail.com.
Catholic author, speaker, retreat leader, and social media consultant Mary DeTurris Poust wants to form a “tribe” of like-minded folks who want to skip the New Year’s resolutions in favor of a “personal revolution” in 2017.
Poust, the author of Cravings: A Catholic Wrestles Food, Self-Image, and God, will be the group’s “cheerleader-in-chief” to help participants focus on reinvigorating spiritual and physical practices such as regular prayer, healthy eating, more exercise, and less distraction during the new year. The tribe will use Poust’s book as a guide.
“Cravings is about how we fill the empty spaces in our lives with things we don’t really want or need because it’s easier than facing our demons and living our lives with more attention and intention,” Poust said. And it’s not just about food: It can be shopping, alcohol, social media, gossip, gambling, TV, or other activities that get the best of us.
Each week for eight weeks, Poust will focus on a new chapter of the book, posting on her website, Not Strictly Spiritual, and on Facebook and Twitter with discussion and practical exercises. Look for the hashtags #CravingsTribe and #SoulSurvivor. She’s planning Facebook Live events with the community as well. Having a copy of the book is not mandatory to participate in the tribe.
The internal and virtual journey begins on Jan. 2, 2017. Find out more on Poust’s website.
Cravings is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Ave Maria Press, and at local Catholic bookstores.
The Angelus is a centuries-old Catholic devotion that recalls the annunciation of Christ’s birth by the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary.
Named for the opening words of the devotion's first prayer in Latin, “The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary,” the Angelus is typically prayed at 6 a.m., noon, and 6 p.m. each day. It takes about two minutes. What better way to prepare for the coming of Christ Incarnate than to pray this beautiful devotion with thousands of others each day?
Jared Dees, Catholic author and creator of the popular The Religion Teacher website, wants Catholics to incorporate the Angelus in to their prayer lives during Advent. Already almost 500 people have committed to opening themselves up to “let it be done” according to God’s Word.
The goal is to help others experience a deep conversion as they prepare for Christ’s birth. "The mystery of this prayer is that God works through the words that you say even when you do not realize it," Dees said. "That openness leads to things you may least expect."
Anyone who joins the Advent Angelus movement will have access to resources and periodic mediations on the devotion throughout the season. Many of the reflections are included in Dees’ forthcoming book from Ave Maria Press, Praying the Angelus (March 2017), but others are unique for Advent.
You can connect with The Advent Angelus community on the website AdventAngelus.com or on The Angelus Prayer Facebook page, where Dees will lead the prayer on Facebook Live throughout Advent.
Earlier this year, Dees successfully spearheaded the Easter Evangelist movement—a campaign to extend 5,000 personal invitations to attend Easter Masses to those who are lukewarm about the faith or are fallen-away Catholics.
Dees is the creator of the popular website The Religion Teacher, which provides practical resources and effective teaching strategies to religious educators. A respected graduate of the Alliance for Catholic Education program at the University of Notre Dame, Dees earned master’s degrees in education and theology, both from Notre Dame. He has volunteered for and worked in a wide variety of Catholic ministries, including Catholic schools, parish religious education, youth ministry, campus ministry, RCIA, and adult faith formation.
Dees is the digital marketing manager at Ave Maria Press and the author of 31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator, To Heal, Proclaim, and Teach, and the forthcoming Praying the Angelus (March 2017). His articles have appeared in Momentum, CATECHIST, Catechetical Leader, and on numerous websites. Dees lives in South Bend, Indiana, with his wife and four children.
Jesus used questions throughout his ministry—not to find out something he didn’t know—but to probe into people’s deepest, most unsettled places.
Catholic author, speaker, and educator Allan F. Wright identified 25 of those questions and organized them into five spiritual stages that will lead you on the road to discipleship. Ave Maria Press asked him about how people can relate both to the questions and the people Jesus questioned.
Ave Maria Press: What is the most important thing you want people to come away with after reading 25 Life-Changing Questions from the Gospels?
Allan Wright: “I love the quote attributed to Dorothy Day, ‘I want to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’ It’s my hope that those who have been away from the Church or those who have never before seriously considered Jesus, spirituality, or the life of faith may come a step closer to a relationship with Jesus through reading this book and answering for themselves the questions of Jesus. For the committed believer, it’s my hope that the middle chapters will rattle them a bit and challenge them to go deeper in their faith.”
Ave: How will readers relate to those Jesus is questioning?
Wright: “These questions from Jesus are divine questions which I believe continue to resonate deep within each and every human being and call for a response. The reader can easily change places with the original audience to hear the question in the context Jesus posed it. However, the beauty and simplicity of how Jesus taught was very often straightforward. Even through the use of parables Jesus turns to us and asks us for a response. Jesus trusts that the questions he asks will stir something within us and He trusts that we can come to the proper conclusion."
Ave: Can you talk about the five stages of spiritual development that you outline in the book?
Wright: “In my work as a teacher and in evangelization, I have found that we encounter people who come to us from a myriad of starting points. Some people have never been exposed to anything religious through no fault of their own, others have had some exposure to the faith, Jesus and Christianity (for better or worse), and others are on the road of discipleship following Christ in the providence of their daily lives.
“Due to these various starting points and considering the 100-plus questions Jesus asks throughout the four Gospels, I wanted this book to be accessible and meaningful to the seeker and to the committed disciple. I wanted to lead people through a natural progression—from A to Z if you will—using a selection of the questions Jesus asks. So for each of the five sections I choose five questions that would ask the reader to consider, reflect upon or ponder. These initial stages of spiritual development that I concentrated on were: spiritual curiosity, spiritual openness leading to deciding for Christ, interior spiritual discipline, moral discipline and union with Christ’s body . . . the Church.”
Ave: How will these questions lead us on the road to discipleship?
Wright: “Maps and GPSes provide direction to destinations. The Church certainly has answers but I’ve found that great questions assist people in discovering the answers for themselves. The roadmap to discipleship gently leads us to God one step at a time for it can’t be forced. Through consideration of these questions of Jesus and answering them from the heart, the reader will be welcomed, encouraged, and challenged on the road which Jesus asks us to follow.”
Bestselling author, popular blogger, and Catholic keynote speaker Brandon Vogt will release his new book, Why I Am Catholic (And You Should Be Too), with Ave Maria Press in the fall of 2017. Ave Executive Editor Jon M. Sweeney acquired and will edit the title.
Vogt, content director for Word on Fire Catholic Ministries, was one of the millennial “nones” when it came to religion—that is until he began a passionate search for truth as a college student, a truth that led him unexpectedly to the Catholic Church in 2008.
Why I Am Catholic traces Vogt’s journey and makes a refreshing, twenty-first-century case for Catholicism. “For most people in our culture, Catholicism isn't on their radar. They're absorbed with other things—work, family, entertainment,” he said. “Millions have fled organized religion, and many more have rejected God altogether (atheists and agnostics are among the fastest growing religious groups). What we need is a fresh, reasonable case for Catholicism, one that leads people to consider it anew or perhaps for the first time.”
Written especially with atheists, agnostics, and religious “nones” in mind, Vogt will present the evidence of how Catholicism is good, beautiful, and true and help any seeker discover why they should be Catholic as well. Vogt also will provide examples from the work of G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Bishop Robert Barron, Michelangelo, and the saints to reinforce his arguments.
“My hope for this book is that it will serve as a compelling re-proposal of the Catholic Church to many jaded people who are disenchanted with religion, while offering current Catholics a much-needed dose of confidence and clarity to firm their faith against an increasingly skeptical culture,” said Vogt, who established the website Strange Notions, the central place for dialogue between Catholics and atheists.
Ave Maria Press is pleased to work with Vogt to make the case for Catholicism to a growing number of people who have left religion behind. “Brandon Vogt brings passion, energy, intelligence, and an entrepreneurial spirit to every project he undertakes,” said Ave publisher Thomas Grady. “From the very first moment that we began talking about Why I Am Catholic, I knew that its message would resonate with broad audience of both seekers and believers.”
Vogt, was named one of the “Top 30 Catholics Under 30,” and is the author of six books, including Return: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church and Catholicism: The New Evangelization. His work has been featured by media outlets including NPR, Fox News, CBS, EWTN, Vatican Radio, Our Sunday Visitor, National Review, and Christianity Today. He is a regular guest on Catholic radio.
Vogt and his wife, Kathleen, live in Oviedo, Florida, with their five children.
What are the sources of anxiety, stress, and fear you experience in your life? Popular Catholic speaker and author Sonja Corbitt believes that these often-paralyzing emotions are the direct result of our everyday battles against sin and temptation.
In her new book Fearless, Corbitt equips us with the spiritual tools we need to restore our spiritual well-being. She talked with Ave Maria Press about the goals of the book.
Ave Maria Press: How is Fearless different from Unleashed?
Sonja Corbitt: The process of allowing the Holy Spirit to unleash us from toxic relationships, self-medicating and other bad habits, repeating circumstances, and overwhelming desires begins painfully. We assume things are going to get better right away since we’re truly trying to follow God, but instead they seem to get worse! Why is that?
That’s when we become fearful and are tempted to all sorts of giving up and acting out and anxiety and depression. Fearless shines the light of God’s Word on our discouragement and anxiety in the process of following God and helps dissipate the fear of it.
Unleashed helps us identify where we’re stuck in patterns. Fearless offers tools for the battles we are facing and will face in following God out of our destructive patterns, especially in our time in history.
Ave: What’s the most important thing you want readers to come away with after reading Fearless?
Corbitt: Freedom from fear through a more complete abandonment to God. I show my readers how to risk big, and pray they do, that they leap the chasm of fear straight into His arms.
Ave: Explain what “spiritual warfare” means in the context of our everyday lives. It seems like a frightening concept.
Corbitt: Fear is a deficit of love. C. S. Lewis said we are always tempted simultaneously in opposite extremes. We can be afraid of spiritual warfare, or we can deny it completely. At its most basic, biblical spiritual warfare is fighting fear, because fear motivates sin. God, ourselves, the other—we sin against those we fear; we do not sin against those we truly love. Satan’s only real power is deceiving us into sin. And even in sin, there is no place dark enough that the Light of the World cannot penetrate. Spiritual warfare, then, is discerning and fighting temptation with the Word of God. In Fearless, I arm my readers to the hilt with truth so they can grow out of fear into a deeper love and awareness.
Ave: If someone has not been a regular reader of the Bible but wants to start, what’s a good way to begin?
Corbitt: The saints tell us we should always begin with daily lectio divina in the daily readings of the Church. If there is little time, just read, meditate, pray, and rest in the Gospel. But there’s more on that in the book!
Are you a Catholic confused about how to find your true love? Do you want to work on a current dating relationship, preparing it for engagement and marriage? How do you spot red flags in yourself and your potential spouse?
Jennifer Roback Morse and Betsy Kerekes offer advice for all stages of your relationship in their new book, 101 Tips for Marrying the Right Person. They shared their inspiration and aspirations for the book with Ave.
Ave Maria Press: What’s the most important thing you want readers to come away with after reading 101 Tips for Marrying the Right Person?
Jennifer Roback Morse: “There is hope for finding the right person. Dodge the bullets of the stupid stuff that society is suggesting for you. The Church has better answer than the culture.”
Betsy Kerekes: “Confidence that it can be done—that they can find the right person for them and that they can make a well-informed decision about whether the person they’re with is or is not the right one.”
Ave: What was your inspiration for writing this book?
Morse: “We felt we had to try and help the number of really good young people who are eligible and interested in marriage but who cannot find spouses. The success of 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage made us believe that we could help people.”
Kerekes: “I literally dreamed this book. I woke up immediately from thinking of what I would write in it and called Jennifer. She asked me my ideas, which were a few things I remembered from my Christian Marriage class at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Then she said something to the effect of, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ I pulled a lot from my experience at Steubenville, more from how my fellow students and I behaved than anything. I also utilized the experiences of various people I’ve met since then, not knowing I’d filed away their stories for this purpose—to help others learn from them in their own search for a spouse.”
Ave: Is this book geared more toward a certain age group or is it applicable to anyone in any stage of life looking to build a strong and lasting relationship?
Morse: “The book is primarily targeted towards young adults aged 18-30, but we are well aware that people of all ages may be looking for spouses and trying to dodge the cultural bullets. We had them in mind as well. We have a brief message to people who may be purchasing this book for young friends who are searching for spouses: we encourage those people to try to create more opportunities for young people to gather, so they have a chance to socialize and meet each other.”
Kerekes: “I would say anyone. As I wrote, I was thinking of college students, but that may not be noticeable. I’m certain these tips are applicable for anyone. We even included some special tips for older seekers or those for whom it won’t be their first marriage. There’s definitely something for everyone.”
Ave: This book is similar in style to your first book with Ave, 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage. What makes this format appealing?
Morse: “The beauty of this book is that it is easy to read and easy to digest. A person can take one tip, implement it, and begin to see real progress.”
Kerekes: “The utility of it. It’s so handy and easy to use. If this can be considered a self-help book, its unique quality is that it’s not long-winded. It cuts to the chase as in: This is what you need to do and why. As with the first book, 101 Tips for a Happier Marriage, it gives simple, bite-sized pieces of advice that anyone can easily handle and implement. They’re also easier to remember because the meat of our message isn’t hidden in a lot of excess verbiage.”
Ave: What are some of the unique features of this book?
Morse: “Instead of reporting on the studies showing that cohabitation is harmful, we speak to the couple that may already be cohabiting. We tell them, ‘The research suggests that you are at risk for certain kinds of problems. Here are some things to watch out for.’ I don’t know of any other marriage prep resource that takes this perspective.”
What is the origin of life? Hasn’t the Catholic Church always been hostile to science? Can a Christian accept the scientific theory of evolution? How can Catholics explain what the Church teaches about the relationship between science and faith?
In her new book, Particles of Faith, scientist, writer, and scholar Stacy A. Trasancos gives us ways we can talk about how science and our Catholic faith work together to reveal the truth of Christ through the beauty of his creation.
We asked her to put together the questions she is most frequently asked about science and faith:
What’s your #1 advice for navigating science?
“If you pray ‘I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible,’ then your faith comes first. For you, Christianity is not a hypothesis or a theory; it is everything—a pervasive worldview. As Catholics, we do not call some things intelligently designed and declare other things mere random chances of nature, as if nature was not the handiwork of God, but we see everything as a consistently interacting totality, a Creation, including every last particle and force governed by the laws of physics.”
Can a Christian accept evolution?
“Catholics should not frown when people say humans evolved from atoms and primates. We should add that we evolved from the beginning. Atoms constitute the matter that makes us up, and every atom in our bodies came from the Earth, whose particles seem to have come from supernovas, whose matter and energy probably came from the earliest moments after the Big Bang.”
Can we see evolution happening?
“Biologically, we see a single evolutionary step every time we see a baby. Evolution is the progression of a series of events by which living organisms accumulate changes over successive generations due to genetic inheritance and adaptive variation. Every child is genetically like its parents but also genetically unique as an individual. As such, every child responds to his or her environment in unique ways, however slight the differences may be. Environments change over time, further affecting genetic expression. These are facts.”
Can evolution disprove Adam and Eve?
“No, evolutionary science cannot identify a first man, first woman, or original sin committed in a moment, because evolution deals with populations over thousands and millions of years. Expecting evolution to find our first parents is like expecting a bulldozer to find the first two grains of sand on a beach. Not only is it the wrong tool, it is the wrong scientific concept. We do not think of beaches forming one grain of sand at a time. So if Adam and Eve began to live, literally, as a fully grown man and woman through a miraculous act of God, or if they came to exist some other way, science can only shrug and keep on digging. A Catholic can both explore what evolutionary science has to reveal and, simultaneously, believe in the reality of Adam and Eve. What a Catholic, or anyone else, cannot do is expect evolutionary science to find them.”
Was science was born of Christianity?
“The belief that the universe was created by God with an absolute beginning in time and a faithful order is an ancient Judeo-Christian belief forming an unbroken thread all the way back to Genesis. The Old Testament people held a belief in Creation in time. The early Christians defended that belief against the pantheistic ideas of ancient Greek philosophy, even to martyrdom. If the biblical cultures and early Christianity are taken as the womb that nurtured and protected this fundamental belief about Creation, then the Christian West can be taken as the culture that gave birth to science—upon the works of scholars such as Adelard of Bath, Thierry of Chartres, Robert Grosseteste, William of Auvergne, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Siger of Brabant, Étienne Tempier, and Fr. Jean Buridan who postulated the impetus theory, which was the precursor to Newtonian mechanics.”
But does modern science still need Christianity?
“Since that time in the 11th – 14th centuries, physics has grown exponentially with new insights, understandings, capabilities, and realms of observation and measurement at unimaginable scales of minuteness and grandeur. Science today, as independent as it has become, is like the prodigal son in need of its, well . . . its mother. The Church guards truth and is there to guide her children.”
Couldn’t science have been born in a non-Christian culture?
“Maybe, but the fact is, it was not. The revelation of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ taught us the reality of the nature of God and the divinity of Christ. No other religion has ever come close to such a Trinitarian and Incarnational worldview. God is one God and three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son who became man. Christ is the Word, the Logos, the reason. And science relies on order. Without faith in Christ, science does not make sense.”
What if science says it disproves something about faith?
“We need to be absolutely clear about the limits of science. Nothing a scientist says should shake our faith. If a scientist claims we are nothing but atoms, have no free will, or the world is eternally cycling (as all the other ancient cultures did), then we simply do not agree. What we can do is hear those people out, and if (only if) they are amenable to a leap of faith, lead them to the fuller truth. In this way, we can evangelize through science, the study of Creation.”
What is the best analogy for faith and science?
“Consider the way we bless our meals. We do not examine the pepperoni pizza to decide whether it is a gift from God before we cross ourselves and pray. Rather, in faith we see every meal with a confident acceptance that ‘these Thy gifts’ come from God. It is the same for atoms and energy.”
How do dogmas help navigate science?
“The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, ‘Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure’ (89). You cannot navigate science in the light of faith if you do not have the lights on, so to speak. We can never accept a conclusion that the soul does not exist or that God did not create the world with a beginning in time. Most of the discussion happens where theological opinions are proposed and science can increase comprehension.”
What if we cannot find an answer?
“Think of the process of navigating science in the light of faith as a dive into complementary mysteries. Faith and science are two different manifestations of the same reality. When they seem to have conflicting conclusions, it is because our knowledge is not complete. There are many questions that will not have clear answers, which is why they are debated.”
Can science prove what we hold in faith?
“Scientific evidence can only provide inductive proofs of faith. For example, the Big Bang affirms a beginning in time; it does not absolutely prove the ultimate t=0. On the contrary, deductive proofs narrow from broad statements to conclusions; that is, they confirm. These are, in general, the proofs provided by philosophy and theology. Therefore, do not invoke science as any kind of absolute proof of a theological conclusion. The Big Bang, fine-tuning in nature, design in living things, and order in the periodic table are all inductive proofs of the opening lines of the Christian Creed, but only in the same way rainbows, sunsets, and yellow Labrador puppies are proofs of God. Science should inspire awe and wonder because we see it as the study of Creation.”
Do miracles break the laws of physics?
“God’s law is the ‘supreme law.’ If He moves matter in ways that are outside the natural order known to us, He still acts according to His supreme law. Miracles are simply beyond the laws of physics.”
Does physics explain free will?
“If there were no other created being with any kind of will and intellect, then the material realm would follow, to the elementary unit, the laws of physics as God designed them. Physical scientists think (determine) within this strictly physical realm. But scientists themselves act beyond the physical realm because they are human persons with rational souls. Humans move matter through acts of free will, so physical determinism does not apply to humans. Free will is a spiritual power.”
Does free will break the laws of physics?
“As Christians we understand that the total system of reality includes both the natural and the supernatural. In his 1947 book Miracles, C.S. Lewis refers to nature as a ‘hostess’ (94). If a tomato sauce is invaded with basil, for example, nature rushes to accommodate the newcomer. If the sauce is stirred, heated, or spread on a crust and topped with cheese, physical laws follow suit, and these physical laws are the same throughout the universe. If you (like me) prefer not to think of nature as a female serving up munchies, think of matter and energy as the physical medium in which we live. This medium, nature, accommodates the actions of our free will. Indeed, with every choice, we alter the course of a great many atoms.”
Does science disprove the soul?
“No, the soul is not a physical thing and science only studies the physical realm. We are body and soul. With our free will, we can move matter in limited ways. For instance, we can kick rocks, control anger, create symphonies, and build smart phones, but we cannot turn paper into gold, flap our arms and fly, live without food, or ungrow children. We pursue knowledge by ‘discursive intellectual operation’ by advancing from one thing to another rationally, as we do using the scientific method (ST I.58.3). Actually, the scientific method is a perfect example of how body and soul unite. We take in data with our senses. We process it abstractly with our intellects. So you could say that science would not exist without the human soul.”
