Ecclesiology in The Books Store

The book is based on two years of work and over 200 interviews with people in urban, suburban, and rural congregations around the United States. Each chapter introduces specific congregations and their challenges, and lays out the theological underpinnings of tackling fears head-on and embracing change as a welcome part of community life.

What must a person believe to be a Christian? Dorothy Sayers lays out age-old doctrines without prettying-up or watering-down. She brings them vividly to life by showing how the Bible, history, literature, and modern science fit together to make religion not only possible but necessary in our time.

So whether you are reading the great works of Western literature, thinking about your place in God's universe, or simply dealing with the thousand-and-one problems of daily living, this powerful book has words of both challenge and comfort for you.

Excerpt:

Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore--and this in the Name of One who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which He passed through this world like a flame. 

 Let us, in Heaven's name, drag out the Divine Drama from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set it on an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction.

Here is an entirely new and comprehensive commentary by canon lawyers from North America and Europe, with a revised English translation of the Code. It reflects the enormous developments in canon law since the publication of the original commentary.

New features:

o A focus on the lived experience of the Latin Church since the promulgation of the 1983 Code
o Inclusion of significant canonical developments made since 1983 by the Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, as well as recent Papal statements
o An accounting of disputed canonical questions such as lay exercises of jurisdiction
o An effort to take into consideration the 1990 Eastern Code
o An effort to engage other commentaries on the 1983 code that have been published since its promulgation

An indispensable pastoral reference work, this book belongs in every parish, rectory, university and seminary library.