From the Publisher’s Desk

Publisher’s Letter For December 2011

By Robert Ellsberg, Publisher

December 2011 - Dear Friends,

Searching for the perfect gift? When you share the gift of Orbis Books, you offer more than a few hours of distraction or entertainment; you are sharing a new perspective, an opening to reflection, a guidepost on the path of spiritual growth. Imagine the delight on Christmas morning as your friends and loved ones, jaded by too many gift certificates, wool scarves, and figgy puddings, unwrap one of the top-ten bestselling Orbis titles from 2011:

1. Joe Girzone, The Homeless Bishop. Readers who loved Fr. Girzone’s famous Joshua books will enjoy the story of Carlo Bruni, an Italian bishop who chooses to live among the homeless and experience the gospel through the eyes of the poor. What happens when he returns to his episcopal office? How does his experience change him, and in turn contribute to world peace AND the renewal of the church?

2. Jim Forest, All is Grace: A Biography of Dorothy Day. Forest, an editor of The Catholic Worker in the early 1960s, he has written the best introduction to a woman described as “the most interesting, important, and influential” American Catholic of the 20th century. With over 200 photographs and extensive quotations from her writings, All is Grace is an inspiring portrait of the radical gospel in action.

3. James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree. The “father of Black Theology,” and the author of Martin & Malcolm & America has written his most challenging and personal book to date. Rooted in his own experience growing up in the Jim Crow South, Cone’s book traces the parallels between the essential symbol of Christian faith and the most terrible symbol of African American oppression. This is a book that will stir your heart and wound your conscience.

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In the News

From the US Catholic - Online Edition

The editors interview Jim Forest, biographer and friend of Dorothy Day—and a former Catholic Worker himself, about Dorothy Day's abortion, conversion to Catholicism, and what she might think about women's ordination.

How did Dorothy Day become Catholic?

One of the events in the background was that Dorothy had had an abortion when she was a young woman. Her partner, a journalist with whom she was passionately in love, enjoyed having his sex life with her but wasn’t at all interested in having children or being married. Desperately trying to save her relationship with the man, very reluctantly Dorothy decided to have an abortion. It seemed the only solution, but he left her anyway. Soon after, she attempted suicide.

Dorothy thought she had been made sterile by the abortion and, several years later, was amazed when, having fallen in love a second time, she became pregnant by the man she was living with. This seemed to her a miracle. This time she was determined that she would not have an abortion, despite the fact that her partner wanted her to.

That was really the beginning of her conversion, though for years she had been inching her way little by little to the Catholic Church in a mysterious way. She just felt comfortable in Catholic churches and would go and sit in the back and enjoy being in a place where the warmth of prayer was occurring, where the Blessed Sacrament was reserved. She wasn’t especially interested in the catechism or in Catholic teaching at that point in her life, but there was something like the smell that pulls you into the bakery shop that drew her.

When she discovered that she was pregnant -- for her a capital-M Miracle -- she realized the one thing that she wanted most of all for her daughter was to have the faith that she longed for herself.

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