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Writing Straight with Crooked Lines: Jim Forest’s Memoir

Jim Forest, Writing Straight with Crooked Lines: A Memoir. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2020. 326 pp.  + ix. For three decades, Jim Forest has written books on prayer, friendship, forgiveness, and a string of biographies on Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and Daniel Berrigan, all of which offer snippets from his personal experiences. But in this… continue reading

Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century

Book Review John Loughery & Blythe Randolph, Dorothy Day: Dissenting Voice of the American Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020. Can any single work capture and convey the story of Dorothy Day’s endlessly fascinating and significant life?  Religiously precocious child born to nominally Christian parents.  Radical journalist and activist in her teens.   Bold bohemian in… continue reading

Oscar Romero: God’s Glory in the Poor – and In the 36 New Men at Casa Juan Diego

Oscar Romero’s Theological Vision: Liberation and Transfiguration of the Poor, by Edgardo Colón-Emeric. Notre Dame University Press, 2018.  Reviewed by Louise Zwick As we recently received thirty-six Central American men as guests in our house in one day,not only paying for their travel to get here, feeding them, acquiring extra mattresses, providing hospitality bags, answering… continue reading

Newly Available: Father Hugo’s A Sign of Contradiction

A Sign of Contradiction by Fr. John J. Hugo (author) and Rosemary Hugo (foreward) published by Catholic Castle.com:  http://catholiccastle.com/CatholicPages/FatherHugo.php This foreword is written and copyrighted © by Rosemary Hugo Fielding This excerpt from the new Foreward to Fr. John J. Hugo’s,A Sign of Contradictionis published here because of the profound effect that Fr. Hugo and… continue reading

Blessed Are the Refugees: Spiritual Tools for Accompanying Migrant Children

Blessed are the Refugees:  Beatitudes of Immigrant Children by Scott Rose, Leo J. O’Donovan, S.J. and Staff and Volunteers of Catholic Charities Esperanza Center, Orbis Books, 2018 Reviewed by Susan Gallagher Currently some 14,000 minor children are being held in detention in the United States while their immigration cases are pending.  The number is growing… continue reading

Finding the “Tenderness of God” In Gang Intervention Work

Two literal books were the figurative bookends of my arriving to and exiting from Casa Juan Diego in the form of Father Gregory Boyle’s Tattoos on the Heart and Barking to the Choir. In the back of my copy of Tattoos on the Heart there are phone numbers of group leaders and outlines of a schedule. The… continue reading

Portraits from the Early Catholic Worker Movement

Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker: The Miracle of Our Continuance. Photographs by Vivian Cherry, Text by Dorothy Day, Edited, with an Introduction and additional text by Kate Hennessy Reviewed by Susan Gallagher More than 80 years have passed since the founding of the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 and despite myriad challenges, its work… continue reading

Called to Be Saints: John Hugo, the Catholic Worker, and a Theology of Radical Christianity

Benjamin T. Peters. Called to Be Saints: John Hugo, the Catholic Worker, and a Theology of Radical Christianity. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2016, 586 p. Reviewed by Mark and Louise Zwick In this landmark study of Fr. John Hugo and the retreat that had a profound influence on Dorothy Day, Benjamin Peters argues that Hugo’s… continue reading

Rutilio Grande, SJ: Homilies and Writings

Book Review: Rutilio Grande, SJ: Homilies and Writings. Edited, Translated, and Annotated by Thomas M. Kelly. College-ville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2015. Reviewed by Mark and Louise Zwick On February 13, 1977, Mark stood next to Rutilio Grande, the priest who would soon be assassinated, as he waited in the procession to begin Mass. It was… continue reading

The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins Now Available in Spanish

Mark and Louise Zwick’s book, The Catholic Worker Movement: Intellectual and Spiritual Origins, is now available in Spanish. To receive a free copy, write to Casa Juan Diego, P. O. Box 70113, Houston, TX 77270.