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.

Burning with passion and zeal for Jesus, and driven by a vision to see the church revived, pastor and author, Jeremiah Johnson offers a prophetic plea to the people of God: "Come to the altar! Purify yourselves for the coming Bridegroom!"

One Sunday morning in 1993 a 16-year-old girl named Eliza Claps goes missing from a church in the centre of Potenza, Italy. Shortly before her disappearance, Elisa had met Danilo Restivo, a strange local boy with a fetish for cutting women's hair on the back of buses. Elisa's family are convinced that Resitvo is responsible for their daughter's disappearance, but he is protected by local big-wigs: by his Sicilian father, by a doctor with links to organised crime, by a priest who had vices of his own. Years went by and Elisa's family could find only false leads. 2002, and Restivo is now living in Bournemouth. In November that year, his neighbour is found murdered, with strands of her own hair in her hands. Once again the police are at a loss to pin anything on him. It's not until 2010, when Elisa's decomposed body is found in the church where she went missing, that the two cases are linked and Restivo is finally dealt with. Blood on the Altar combines a gripping true crime case with Jones's deep understanding of Italian culture - the impunity it offers to the powerful - he so expertly demonstrated in his bestseller: The Dark Heart of Italy.

In her third and most important work, Juliet Diaz, the bestselling author of Witchery, offers an approach to Magic, spirituality, and healing like no other and takes readers through the deep work of decolonizing their spirituality. The Altar Within: A Radical Devotional to Liberate the Divine Self is a work of spiritual revolution for all peoples, offering them practices and rituals in the arts of self-worship, self-discovery, and self-activism. The Altar Within is like no other approach to Spirituality, breaking through the vicious cycles of harmful and toxic spiritual practices and beliefs. Diaz speaks for those victimized and enslaved by colonization and offers a new take on personal development based in the resounding plea of our ancestors to live our Divined lives, the ones they could not have for themselves. In the book, Diaz leads the reader through an exploration of: Self-Worship: Here, the reader comes to ritualize the experiences of self-compassion, mindfulness, self-acceptance, and radical self-honesty, creating practices that help them to see their Divinity and Altar within. Through these rites, readers will have a better understanding of what it means to decolonize their Spirituality, giving birth to new spiritual practices while honoring the experiences of our ancestors. Dismantling the idea that Divinity must only exist from without, Diaz takes readers on a journey of powerful Self-Worship, connecting them into the Divinity that resides within all of us. Self-Discovery: In this section, Diaz helps the reader to discover their Divined lives, but in a way that most teachers haven't offered. As Diaz shares, it isn't through our achievements that we find our purpose but through understanding the Divine self. Here, Diaz leads readers through practices in self-love, self-patience, and self-forgiveness, helping them to experience the stillness and wholeness needed to hear the messages shared by the Divine. Self-Activism: Unlike traditional manifestation teachers, Diaz recognizes that manifestations are not brought forth by #goodvibesonly but by a real and committed process of activism, standing in our deep worth and sharing our humanity. In this section, Diaz offers a series of Devotionals to guide readers in the practice of Community Care, connecting the work not only with the Magic of manifestation but with our communities, our ancestors, and the Divine Self within. Pushing back on #lightandlove and #goodvibesonly, Diaz dismantles the wellness industry, releasing readers from the practice of spiritual bypassing into a far more powerful experience of self, healing, hope, and Spirit. This book is for anyone, including those who can't afford to buy all the tools, pay for the expensive memberships, people who have real-life issues, illnesses, and hardships. Through The Altar Within, Diaz brings the Magic to real life, acknowledging our humanness by connecting with our Spirit. The Altar Within will help readers create success in every area of their lives—from wealth, health, relationships, and personal development, to the nourishment of their relationship with the Divine self. As Diaz explains, when we can finally decolonize our spiritual beliefs, Divinity can be a super force in our lives, making us whole, stronger, wiser, and setting us on a path of transcendent activism. #magicalaf Bonus Gifts: Your copy of The Altar Within comes with a very special gift for readers. Look inside for a QR-Code that leads you to a magical space full of bonus content created just for the book. You can expect mini-courses, video tutorials, downloadable worksheets, journaling prompts, meditations, workbooks, and more!

Few believers experience God's altar--a place of pure and wholehearted relationship and worship where our holy God can meet with us and the fire of his presence can fall. But such an altar is necessary in our personal lives, our marriages, our churches, and our nations so that we are strengthened, empowered, and equipped for every good work. In this influential, modern-day call back to the altar, Chuck D. Pierce and Alemu Beeftu invite readers to find their way to rebuild the place of God's presence to allow the fire of God--his presence and power--to fall. When we rekindle the altar fire, our lives, prayer, and worship are transformed. The time to rebuild altars for fresh fire is now!

The voices of great saints and holy teachers of the past ring out clearly in a unanimous chorus of praise and adoration for the supreme sacrament of the Eucharist. In Mystery of the Altar: Daily Meditations on the Eucharist, Kenneth J. Howell and Joseph Crownwood have brought together these voices to demonstrate the unwavering faith of the Church in the Real Presence of Christ. Aligning daily readings with the liturgical calendar, Mystery of the Altar will enlighten and enliven readers as they contemplate the wide-ranging applications of Eucharistic truth to their lives. A worthy companion for Eucharistic adoration or personal prayer, Mystery of the Altar will ignite love for the Eucharistic Lord in the hearts of all who savor its wealth of meditations.

Boys with everything to live for ... A community betrayed ... The whistle-blower priest who paid the ultimate price **Shortlisted for the 2020 Walkley Book Award** **Shortlisted for the 2021 NSW Premier's Community and Regional History Prize** ** Shortlisted for the 2021 Prime Minister's Award** Glen Walsh and Steven Alward were childhood friends in their tight-knit working-class community in Newcastle, NSW. Both proud altar boys at the local Catholic church, they went on to attend the city's Catholic boys' high schools: Glen to Marist Brothers, Hamilton, and Steven to St Pius X. Both did well: Steven became a journalist; Glen a priest. But their lives came to be burdened by secrets kept and exposed. Glen discovered that another priest was sexually abusing boys and reported the offender to police, breaking his vows to the Catholic 'brotherhood' in the process. His decision to give evidence regarding the cover-up of clerical abuse at a landmark trial ended in tragedy. Meanwhile, Steven was fighting his own battle to overcome a traumatic past, a battle that also ended in tragedy. Ensuing investigations revealed that at least 60 men in the region had taken their own lives. What had happened, and why were so many of those men from the three Catholic high schools in the area? By six-time Walkley Award-winning investigative reporter Suzanne Smith and shortlisted for the 2020 Walkley Book Award, The Altar Boys is the explosive expose of widespread and organised clerical abuse of children in one Australian city, and how the cover-up in the Catholic Church in Australia extended from parish priests to every echelon of the organisation. Focusing on two childhood friends, their families and community, this gripping story is backed by secret documents, diary notes and witness accounts, and details a deliberate church strategy of using psychological warfare against witnesses in key trials involving paedophile priests.

Ellie Quicke, newly widowed, is sure she saw something the night a body was left in the church opposite her house, but now her own life seems to be under threat.