Catholic Treasury of Prayers: New eReader (Kindle) Edition

This treasury of prayers, now released on Kindle, will help you go to the Lord with courage and pray to receive God's grace.


Sometimes, the Pope said of prayers and devotions, one goes to the Lord "to ask something for someone;" one asks for a favor and then goes away. "But that," he warned, "is not prayer," because if "you want the Lord to bestow a grace, you have to go with courage and do what Abraham did, with that sort of tenacity."

This comprehensive treasury of Catholic prayer includes everyday prayers, devotionals, how to pray the rosary, litanies, the Stations of the Cross, Eucharistic prayers, prayers to prepare for confession, prayers to the saints, Marian prayers, family prayers, and more.

Pope Francis and Our Crisis Today

I'm not one to quote popes, but these words from Pope Francis deserve to be spotlighted as a positive indication of the man he may be and the tone he might set.

“If investments in the banks fail, ‘Oh, it’s a tragedy,’ ” he said, speaking extemporaneously for more than 40 minutes at a Pentecost vigil last weekend, after a private audience with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the architect of Europe’s austerity policies. “But if people die of hunger or don’t have food or health, nothing happens. This is our crisis today.”

In a recent speech to diplomats accredited to the Holy See, Francis also spoke of the need for more ethics in finance.

Pope Francis, Saint Benedict Press

“The financial crisis which we are experiencing makes us forget that its ultimate origin is to be found in a profound human crisis,” he said, adding: “We have created new idols. The worship of the golden calf of old has found a new and heartless image in the cult of money and the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.”

Ethics in finance. The cult of money akin to worship of the golden calf. And "the dictatorship of an economy which is faceless and lacking any truly humane goal.” To indicate these weren't throwaway lines, Francis told Father Lombardi before the speech to diplomats, "Pay attention, this is important. I want people to understand it’s important."

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The War against Catholicism, an Important Study

After the defeat of liberalism in the Revolution of 1848, and in the face of the dramatic revival of popular Catholicism, German middle-class liberals used anti-Catholicism to orient themselves culturally in a new age. Michael B. Gross 's study shows how anti-Catholicism and specifically the Kulturkampf—the campaign to break the power of the Catholic Church—were not simply attacks against the church, nor were they merely an attempt to secure state autonomy. Instead, Gross shows that the liberal attack on Catholicism was actually a complex attempt to preserve moral, social, political, and sexual order during a period of dramatic pressures for change.
By offering a provocative reinterpretation of liberalism and its relationship to the German anti-Catholic movement, this work ultimately demonstrates that in Germany, liberalism itself contributed to a culture of intolerance that would prove to be a serious liability in the twentieth century. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars of culture, ideology, religion, and politics.
Michael B. Gross is Associate Professor of History at East Carolina University.

Praise / Awards

"A lucid, innovative work of top-flight scholarship. Gross shows us the depths of anti-Catholicism in nineteenth-century Germany; he explains why the German Kulturkampf had such force and why prominent liberals imagined it as a turning point not only in Germany but in world history."
---Helmut Walser Smith, Vanderbilt University

"A marvelously original account of how the Kulturkampf emerged from the cultural, social, and gendered worlds of German liberalism. While not neglecting the 1870s, Gross's analysis directs historians' attention to the under researched 1850s and 1860s---decades in which liberals' anti-Catholic arguments were formulated against a backdrop of religious revival, democratic innovation, national ambition, and the articulation of new roles for women in society, politics, and the church. The drama of these decades resonates in every chapter of Gross's fine study."
---James Retallack, University of Toronto

"Michael Gross has put the culture back into the Kulturkampf! Integrating social and political analysis with illuminating interpretations of visual and linguistic evidence, Gross explores the work of religious cleavage in defining German national identity. An emerging women's movement, liberal virtues, and Catholic difference come together to explain why, in a century of secularization, Germany's Catholics experienced a religious revival, and why its liberals responded with enmity and frustration. Vividly written and a pleasure to read, this groundbreaking study offers real surprises."
---Margaret Lavinia Anderson, University of California, Berkeley

"Gross has read all the pertinent archival sources for this trenchant, revisionist study of nineteenth-century German liberalism and the Kulturkampf. His sensitivity to such varied, often neglected aspects of the topic as the role of women in the community and the impact of Catholic missionaries on German Protestantism, is a refreshing expansion of focus."
---American Catholic Historical Association, announcing The War Against Catholicism as the 2004 John Gilmary Shea Prize winner

"Michael Gross has written a fascinating account of the centrality of confessional polemic to the development of nineteenth-century German liberalism, offering not only new and important insights into the nature of the liberal 'imagination' between the 1850s and 1870s, but also demonstrating with impressive verve, the extent to which the scholarly study of religion in modern Germany has progressed over the past couple decades."
---German Studies Review

"Whatever the course of future debate, it is certain that all future discussions of Germany's conflicted, confusing path to modernity will have to take note of Gross's powerful, outrageous, and disturbing exploration of the troubled liberal imagination."
---American Historical Review

"The studies of Catholic piety, associational life, and political movements have...promoted major revisions in our understanding of modern German society, culture, and politics. Historians have devoted much less attention, however, to the equally impressive reaction to this Catholic revival, namely, the unleashing of a lively and wide-ranging anti-Catholic polemic...a thoroughgoing analysis of nineteenth-century anti-Catholicism has long been lacking. With the publication of Michael B. Gross's [book], this lacuna has been finally addressed, and in a first-rate fashion."
---Journal of Modern History

Winner: 2004 John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association
from the University of Michigan Press by Michael B. Gross

Dominican Sisters of Mary: Billboard Hit

The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist’s debut CD, MATER EUCHARISTIAE, has once again toppled Billboard magazine’s charts, securing the No. 1 spot on the Classical Overall and Classical Traditional Charts for the third consecutive week, and landing the No. 9 spot on the Christian Contemporary and Christian Gospel charts.

The album also is No. 10 on the bestselling albums on the Internet chart and No. 149 overall of every recording on the Billboard magazine chart.

“To say we are amazed at this outpouring of affection for the music of The Dominican Sisters of Mary is an understatement,” said Kevin Fitzgibbons, cofounder of De Montfort Music. “To hold these incredible chart positions proves that this collection is one that is connecting with hearts everywhere.”

The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles’ album, “Angels and Saints at Ephesus,” still is holding steady on the Billboard magazine Classical Traditional Chart, landing the No. 3 spot.

Please tune in to watch the Dominican Sisters discuss their hit debut album on “Fox and Friends” on Fox News at 8:20 a.m. ET Sunday, Sept. 8, 2013, the feast of The Nativity of Our Lady.

The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist are a young, vibrant community of consecrated women. Through the witness of their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and a life of prayer and of apostolic service, the Dominican Sisters of Mary seek to transform the world for the good of souls.

Pope Calls for World Peace, Prayer & Fasting