Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know shows that since the first days of Christianity God has intervened and given strength to those who were faithful to Him.

Here's an unabashedly Catholic history that documents scores of sustained and unprecedented assaults on our Catholic Faith these past five centuries and delineates our Church's brave response to each one. For five hundred years, from Luther to Marx, through Darwin, Hitler, and Rousseau, wave after wave of cynical anti-Catholic men and movements have wrought havoc even worse than that of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, leaving our once noble Christendom a ruined city, devastated politically and spiritually, morally and intellectually. They've ripped the heart from our culture's chest: the Catholic Faith that once gave life and strength to her body. They've wounded even the Church herself. Celebrated Catholic historian Diane Moczar counters here with an unflinching sketch of these five woeful centuries with sound reasons for hope. For, as she demonstrates, even after five hundred years of sustained persecution, our Church has not merely survived but continues in many places to flourish. Almost two thousand years ago, Tertullian noted that the "blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church," a truth borne out these past five hundred years. Time after time, as Moczar shows, persecution has not snuffed out the Faith but has brought forth great saints whose holy deeds and brave examples frustrated their persecutors by communicating to the besieged Church a vigor greater than that of her persecutors. These pages will renew your confidence that the Church is indeed Christ acting in the world and that no matter how strong or ruthless or vicious her opponents, she will not be vanquished but will endure to the end of time.

Ten Battles Every Catholic Should Know offers readers richly detailed accounts of pivotal engagements--many little known in the West--in the centuries-long defense of Christendom against militant Islam. Join military historian Michael D. Greaney as, in gripping prose, he describes the struggle, primarily on Christendom's eastern borders, against the dreaded Ottoman Turks in places such as: - Manzikert, which marked the beginning of the fight, - Wallachia, where Vlad II, the real "Dracula," carried out a personal crusade against the Turks to such good effect that his name strikes terror down to the present day, - Mohács, "the Tomb of Hungary," - Vienna (the siege of 1529), the first setback experienced by Süleymân the Magnificent, perhaps the greatest ruler the Ottoman Turks ever knew, - Szigetvár (known as the "Hungarian Alamo"), - ...and five others. The accounts of battles are enlivened and expanded with historical footnotes and introductions. Though less well known than the struggle to retake Spain and Southern France, the battlefields of Armenia and Eastern and Central Europe were just as crucial to preserve Christendom. Includes 12 battle maps.

100 Things Every Catholic Teen Should Know-Mark Hart & Todd Lemiux (Equipp Conference Only)

The world hates the Church that Jesus founded, just as He said it would (John 15:18). It reviles her doctrines, mocks her moral teachings and invents lies about her history. In every age, but especially in our modern day, historians and political powers have distorted the facts about her past (or just made up novel falsehoods from scratch) to make the Church, and the civilization it fostered, seem corrupt, backward, or simply evil. In Seven Lies about Catholic History, Diane Moczar (Islam at the Gates) tackles the most infamous and prevalent historical myths about the Church popular legends that you encounter everywhere from textbooks to T.V. and reveals the real truth about them. She explains how they got started and why they re still around, and best of all, she gives you the facts and the arguments you need to set the record straight about: The Inquisition: how it was not a bloodthirsty institution but a merciful (and necessary) one Galileo's trial : why moderns invented a myth around it to make science appear incompatible with the Catholic faith (it's not) The Reformation: why the 16th-century Church was not totally corrupt (as even some Catholics wrongly believe), and how the reformers made things worse for everybody and other lies that the world uses to attack and discredit the Faith. Written in a brisk style that's fun and easy to read, Seven Lies about Catholic History provides the lessons that every Catholic needs in order to defend and explain not just apologize for the Church's rich and complex history.

" ... raises important questions you should consider. Supplying answers from the sacred Scriptures, it explains how you can have a close relationship with God and know His plan for you"-- Cover back.

The popular blogger and publisher of Envoy magazine offers 10 key reasons why he loves being Catholic (and you should too). Drawing heavily on poignant anecdotes from his own experience as a life-long Catholic born in 1960s, Madrid offers readers a way of looking at the Church--its members, teachings, customs, and history--from perspectives many may have never considered. Growing up Catholic during a time of great social and theological upheaval and transition, a time in which countless Catholics abandoned their religion in search of something else, Patrick Madrid learned a great deal about why people leave Catholicism and why others stay. This experience helped him gain many insights into what it is about the Catholic Church that some people reject, as well as those things that others treasure. Drawing upon Madrid's personal experiences, Why Be Catholic? offers a deeply personal, fact-based, rationale for why everyone should be Catholic or at least consider the Catholic Church in a new light.

Part of the What Every Catholic Should Know series, God: What Every Catholic Should Know is born out of the recognition that God is central to the Faith, but we encounter misconceptions about God all the time. Foggy thinking about God can deeply affect our faith and our ability to communicate it to other people. In an effort to move us from foggy to clear thinking, God: What Every Catholic Should Know addresses three major concepts: the nature of God, the Trinity, and the Incarnation. Some of us might protest that we are not smart enough to do theology and that less is more when it comes to contemplating the divine. We might even think that too much theology detracts from simple faith. But if God is perfect, wonderful, all goodness, love itself-as the Bible tells us in 1 John 4:8-it would be strange indeed if we did not want to give our whole selves to God, including our mind. After all, the Lord himself tells us: "you shall love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30). Book jacket.

After meditating on the Apostles and then on the Fathers of the early Church, as seen in his earlier works Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church and Church Fathers, Pope Benedict XVI devoted his attention to the most influential Christian men from the fifth through the twelfth centuries. In his first book, Church Fathers, Benedict began with Clement of Rome and ended with Saint Augustine. In this volume, the Holy Father reflects on some of the greatest theologians of the Middle Ages: Benedict, Anselm, Bernard, and Gregory the Great, to name just a few. By exploring both the lives and the ideas of the great popes, abbots, scholars and missionaries who lived during the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Christendom, Pope Benedict XVI highlights the key elements of Catholic dogma and practice that remain the foundation stones not only of the Roman Catholic Church but of Christian society itself. This book is a wonderful way to get to know these later Church Fathers and Teachers and the tremendous spiritually rich patrimony they have bequeathed to us. "Without this vital sap, man is exposed to the danger of succumbing to the ancient temptation of seeking to redeem himself by himself." -- Pope Benedict XVI