Michael W. Higgins – författare

An intimate look at this important spiritual writer’s life, enriched with the personal accounts of some of the people closest to him: friends, family, and colleagues. A twelve-page photo section is included.†

Here is a collection of papers that were presented at a conference, Vatican II: A Universal Call to Holiness, sponsored by Paulist Press and Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut. Seven of the presentations are based on the seven speeches given by several cardinals at the conclusion of the council on December 8, 1965.The conference was not a critique of the council documents but rather creative ways in which the energy of the council can be marshaled in establishing the agenda and needs of the twenty-first century.The presenters and their topics:Anthony Ciorra: IntroductionMichael W. Higgins: Afterword: Holiness in the Future; Holiness as FutureMassimo Faggioli: Keynote: The Vision of the Second Vatican CouncilR. Scott Appleby: To RulersNancy A. Dallavalle: to WorkersSarah L. Heiman and Peter Denio: To YouthRoberto Goizueta: To the Poor, the Sick, and the SufferingJohn Haught: To Men and Women of ScienceDiana Hayes: To WomenFr. Michael Himes: To Artists†

People of God is a brand new series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men have known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us, but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each of them offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day. Thomas Merton was the consummate post-modern holy one: flawed, anti-institutional, a voice for the voiceless. But he was also a classical traditionalist: centered, obedient, in search of stability. He was a religious thinker of remarkable insight, a social commentator of courage and conviction, and a writer of startling virtuosity. Michael W. Higgins recounts the life of this insatiable wanderer. He explores the various layers of influence and evolution in Merton’s thought and spirituality. This book tells the remarkable story of a life that remains to be understood from its beginnings and long after its premature ending.

People of God is a brand new series of inspiring biographies for the general reader. Each volume offers a compelling and honest narrative of the life of an important twentieth or twenty-first century Catholic. Some living and some now deceased, each of these women and men have known challenges and weaknesses familiar to most of us, but responded to them in ways that call us to our own forms of heroism. Each of them offers a credible and concrete witness of faith, hope, and love to people of our own day. Thomas Merton was the consummate post-modern holy one: flawed, anti-institutional, a voice for the voiceless. But he was also a classical traditionalist: centered, obedient, in search of stability. He was a religious thinker of remarkable insight, a social commentator of courage and conviction, and a writer of startling virtuosity. Michael W. Higgins recounts the life of this insatiable wanderer. He explores the various layers of influence and evolution in Merton’s thought and spirituality. This book tells the remarkable story of a life that remains to be understood from its beginnings and long after its premature ending.

A fresh look at a complex pope with a simple agenda: radically reforming the Catholic Church.Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the consummate disruptor, disrupting archaic modes of church governance, disrupting our collective spiritual complacency in the face of new challenges to our human flourishing while at the same time remaining deeply faithful to the organic traditions of the church. He is the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, but beyond that he is a universal leader with commanding moral presence, able to connect with laypeople and with non-Christian faiths. Pope Francis is also a credible moral voice on issues of immigration, economic inequity, the devastating consequences of political populism, and the accelerating threats to the environment, in spite of the fact that he faces deep infrastructure and governance scandals in his organization.In his determination to reform the Vatican and ensure the Catholic faith evolves in a way that is relevant to the 21st century, Francis is very much carrying on the tradition of the Jesuits, an order known for their work in education, humanitarian missions, and social justice. A deep understanding of the Jesuit order informs Michael W. Higgins’s approach in this novel reading of a papacy unlike any other.

Thirty years after his death, we are finally catching up to Thomas Merton as one of the greatest spiritual figures of the twentieth century. The genius and spirituality of this unusual man could not be contained in his life as a monk but spilled over richly into his life and work as a poet, critic, rebel, sage, and even artist and photographer. Merton was aware that he had heretic blood within him, and it soon became apparent to the world. The balding French-English intellectual living as a Trappist monk at Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky took a vow of silence, yet corresponded with and befriended such luminaries as Joan Baez, Jacques Maritain, John Howard Griffin, Martin Luther King Jr., Erich Fromm, and Boris Pasternak. His famous autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, captured the imagination of a generation, selling more than six hundred thousand copies in its first year. Merton also took a vow of obedience, yet feuded constantly with his second abbot. As a monk he promised to remain celibate, yet he found himself passionately in love with a nurse he met while in hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. And at the end of his life, Merton, a monk within the western Roman Catholic tradition, was moving closer and closer to Eastern spirituality. This brilliant new book is the first to use recently released diary entries and correspondence by Merton and includes new insights about the recently published diary of his episode of the heart. Higgins compares Merton with William Blake, the monk's intellectual and spiritual hero, and comes to startling conclusions about the emotional and intellectual passions that drove Thomas Merton, a man and thinker for all seasons.