Beyond The Altar

Beyond the Altar illustrates how women religious overcome sexist subjugation by side-stepping the patriarchal power of the Roman Catholic Church. This book counters the stereotypical image of Catholic nuns as being loyally compliant with their church by showing how a number of current and former women religious in Canada challenge their institutional religion’s precepts and engage in transformative strategies to effect change both within and outside the Roman Catholic Church. The sisters’ testimonials reveal never-before-shared details about their painful experiences of male domination, their courageous efforts to move beyond such sexist stifling, and the women-led and women-centered spiritual, governance, and activist practices they have engendered in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Featuring many examples of the sisters’ resourcefulness, resilience, and resistance, this book fills a void in international scholarship on what Canadian Catholic women religious have endured and accomplished. Through interviews and in-depth accounts of the complexities and nuances present in the current and former sisters’ lives, readers will discover their steadfast indomitability as they strategically, and sometimes subversively, innovate their spiritual spaces.

Fascinatingly insightful and hopeful page-turning account of one woman's encounter with ultimate rejection. TV journalist Kimberley Kennedy went from having it all to complete devastation, rejection, and public humiliation when, like a Lifetime movie scenario, her fiance literally left her at the altar. Fortunately, her story did not end at the church. With candor and humor, Kimberley shares the most personal details of her life as she journeys from devastation to a deeper understanding of what happened and how she found not only healing but hope to someday find her Mr. Right. The intimate woman-to-woman inspirational journey includes: Stories of women who were left at the altar How to deal with feelings of anger towards God The little black dress analogy How not to let your rejection define who you become Tools for healing and moving on How to laugh, love again, and return to dating Ultimate insight from men who have been rejectors

Kenady sat behind Damien at their church for several years, not knowing he would one day ask for her hand in marriage. Through personal stories full of honesty, vulnerability, and humor, this couple shares their journey and testimony with others who are thinking about having a godly marriage. Instead of doing things the way the world expects, Damien and Kenady had a heart to do things God's way, including a covenant not to have sex before marriage. In #CompletelyMarried, you'll discover: ● How to establish the right boundaries for your relationship● The crucial importance of vision● The key requirements in finding the right accountability for your relationship● How to prepare yourself as husband or wife before "I Do"● Experience-based tips on practical tasks like shopping for an engagement ring and planning your wedding The reality is that there are plenty of bad examples of marriage out there, whether in the media or in our own families. Damien and Kenady provide a biblically sound blueprint for laying the foundation of your marriage as God intended. If you are tired of seeing or experiencing one failed, purposeless relationship after another, and yearn to understand a better approach, #CompletelyMarried is the book you've been waiting for! Also, you can follow them on YouTube @Damien and Kenady.

Collection of classic macabre and fantastic tales from a master of pulp fiction.

In all the coverage of the priestly sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, one story has been left untold: the story of the everyday lives of Catholic priests in America, which remain so little understood as to be a secret, even as one priestly sexual predation after another has come to light. In The Other Side of the Altar, Paul Dinter tells one priest's story--his own--in such a way as to reveal the lives of a generation of priests that spanned two very different eras. These priests entered the ministry in the 1960s, when Catholic seminaries were full of young men inspired by both the Church's ancient faith and the Second Vatican Council's promises of renewal. But by the early 1970s, the priesthood--and the celibate fraternity it depended upon--proved quite different from what the Council had promised. American society had changed, too, particularly in the area of sexuality. As a result, there emerged a clerical subculture of denial and duplicity, which all but guaranteed that the sexual abuse of children by priests would be routinely covered up by the Church's bishops. Dinter, now married and raising two stepdaughters, left the priesthood in 1994 over the issue of celibacy, but not before having occasion to reflect on the whole range of priestly struggles with celibacy and sexual life in general--in Rome and rural England, on an Ivy League campus, and in parish rectories of the archdiocese of New York. His candid and affecting account--written from the other side of the altar, so to speak--makes clear that celibacy, sexuality, and power among the clergy have long been intertwined, and suggests how much must change if the Catholic Church hopes to regain the trust of its people.