Every Saint A Sinner

"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future." ~ Oscar WildeVeronica Matthews is on a mission to get the Catholic Church to accept its share of blame for Father Paul Peña's rape of her son. While Peña himself is remorseless, it's salt on the wound that the Church she's always loved won't admit that institutional failures enabled repeated abuse of its flock. Instead, it acts like every other litigious corporation: offering carefully worded statements of sympathy while refuting any responsibility.By all words and deeds Father Frank Muncy is Peña's opposite: a humble servant loved by all for his extraordinary empathic gifts, which he puts to use as a drug addiction counselor. But when a grave accusation against Father Frank coincides with the reappearance of a figure from his past, Frank, a fervent believer in God's ability to forgive and ultimately redeem, chooses to reveal a shocking secret about himself that is sure to ruin his reputation.When a miraculous event connects the lives of Veronica, Paul, and Father Frank, it also poses a great challenge to the Church. Survivors of the clergy abuse scandal are vehemently divided: some feel that for the Church to acknowledge the miracle is to effectively minimize the clergy's abuse against children, while others believe that the miracle is God's mysterious creative repurposing of tragedy into a lesson about just how far his love extends-a lesson that will facilitate survivors' healing.Told with unflinching bravery and compassion, Every Saint a Sinner asks what greater good can be done not just despite but because of man's sinful nature. It's an emotionally resonant and morally complex meditation on transformation, empathy, and forgiveness. DISCRETION ADVISED: This work contains scenes of abuse against children and adolescents.

“Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” ~ Oscar Wilde Veronica Matthews is on a mission to get the Catholic Church to accept its share of blame for Father Paul Peña’s rape of her son. While Peña himself is remorseless, it’s salt on the wound that the Church she’s always loved won’t admit that institutional failures enabled repeated abuse of its flock. Instead, it acts like every other litigious corporation: offering carefully worded statements of sympathy while refuting any responsibility. By all words and deeds Father Frank Muncy is Peña’s opposite: a humble servant loved by all for his extraordinary empathic gifts, which he puts to use as a drug addiction counselor. But when a grave accusation against Father Frank coincides with the reappearance of a figure from his past, Frank, a fervent believer in God’s ability to forgive and ultimately redeem, chooses to reveal a shocking secret about himself that is sure to ruin his reputation. When a miraculous event connects the lives of Veronica, Paul, and Father Frank, it also poses a great challenge to the Church. Survivors of the clergy abuse scandal are vehemently divided: some feel that for the Church to acknowledge the miracle is to effectively minimize the clergy’s abuse against children, while others believe that the miracle is God’s mysterious creative repurposing of tragedy into a lesson about just how far his love extends—a lesson that will facilitate survivors’ healing. Told with unflinching bravery and compassion, Every Saint a Sinner asks what greater good can be done not just despite but because of man’s sinful nature. It’s an emotionally resonant and morally complex meditation on transformation, empathy, and forgiveness.  DISCRETION ADVISED: This work contains scenes of abuse against children and adolescents.

There are many complexities associated with ministering to another person. Where does a helper begin? What’s important to notice? Is there an overall ministry strategy that’s beneficial? Saints, Sufferers, and Sinners by author and counselor Michael R. Emlet outlines a model of one-another ministry based on how God sees and loves his people. Emlet helps readers use Scripture to find foundational categories for understanding and approaching one another, which serve as guideposts for wise care. Filled with everyday illustrations as well as counseling examples, Emlet demonstrates what it looks like to approach fellow believers simultaneously as saints, sufferers, and sinners. As part of CCEF's Helping the Helper series, this guide for ministry provides an overall framework for wisely helping any person, balancing all three aspects of our experience as Christians.

Sharing a message of hope, abundance, and healing, a step-by-step program for a life filled with God's goodness reveals how to transform one's life through prayer, meditation, and spirituality.

*A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * One of The East Hampton Star's 10 Best Books of the Year* From the New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Book, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The Sinner and the Saint is the deeply researched and immersive tale of how Dostoevsky came to write this great murder story—and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There, he spent years studying the criminals that were his companions. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of those closest to him, and literary banishment to craft an enduring classic. The germ of Crime and Punishment came from the sensational story of Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egoist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Dostoevsky began creating a Russian incarnation of Lacenaire, a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas. His name would be Raskolnikov. Lacenaire shaped Raskolnikov in profound ways, but the deeper insight, as Birmingham shows, is that Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer's perspective, but his character couldn't be a monster. No. The murderer would be chilling because he wants so desperately to be good. The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer to dictate the final chapters in time. Anna Grigorievna became Dostoevsky's first reader and chief critic and changed the way he wrote forever. By the time Dostoevsky finished his great novel, he had fallen in love. Dostoevsky's great subject was self-consciousness. Crime and Punishment advanced a revolution in artistic thinking and began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky's career. The Sinner and the Saint now gives us the thrilling and definitive story of that triumph.

A Saint and a Sinner is the revealing true story of the rise and fall of a beloved Catholic priest; a hopeful story of a flawed man and his redemption. With a dominant presence and larger-than-life persona, ex-priest Stephen Donnelly, shares a brutally honest account of his personal journey of sinfulness; a cautionary tale of the struggle between good and evil that exists within all of us. Step behind the curtain of the mighty and mysterious Catholic Church as Stephen recounts his relationship with God, the faithful, the institution, bishops and accused pedophile priestsIn 1997, at the age of forty-two, Stephen was ordained a Roman Catholic priest. Standing before God, the bishop, his family and the congregation he made promises he struggled to keep. Three years into his priesthood he descended into a world of cocaine and alcohol abuse. After fellow priests intervened and after multiple stays in rehab, Stephen turned his life around and became well-known in Alcoholics Anonymous circles as the "Irish priest with a problem."During his seven years as Associate Pastor at St. Patrick's Church, Huntington, New York he was known among parishioners as a "rock star." They were among the best years of his life. He was Stephen; the man, the Catholic and the priest at his absolute best.But, in 2017, while assigned to a new parish, the unthinkable happened which threatened to destroy everything he held dear.

Raise Your Spirits and Toast the Saints! It's the full-color edition of Drinking with the Saints! Recipe for a liturgically correct cocktail: mix Bartender's Guide and Lives of the Saints, shake well, garnish with good cheer. Drinking with the Saints is a concoction that both sinner and saint will savor. Michael Foley offers the faithful drinker witty and imaginative instruction on the appropriate libations for the seasons, feasts, and saints' days of the Church year. A guide to wine, beer, and spirits, with more than three hundred cocktail recipes Lively full-color sketches of scores of saints, from the popular to the obscure Tips on giving the perfect toast and on mixing the perfect drink Even includes drinks for Lent!