Publishers Newsletter - September 2024

Dear Friends,

I just returned from the annual assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a gathering of representatives from most Catholic religious congregations in America. I always look forward to gathering with some of our most informed, discerning, and avid readers. Not surprisingly, their favorites this year—all by women religious--were also are our bestselling titles of the year.

First of these is Elizabeth Johnson’s Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth. Johnson, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph, is without doubt one of the leading Catholic theologians in the United States, best known for her feminist reading of God, Mary, the saints, and other Christian doctrines. Ten years ago she received the LCWR’s Outstanding Leadership Award. In her recent books she has focused on the theological theme of creation, and in this book, her most popular to date, she offers a series of stunning scriptural meditations on care for the earth.

Joyce Rupp is a member of the Service Order. Her latest book, Vessels of Love: Poems and Prayers for the Later Years of Life, was published only a few weeks ago and is already scheduled for reprint, making it one of our fastest-selling titles ever. The Sisters snapped up all my copies on the first day, making me wish I had brought twice as many.

Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio is a favorite with the LCWR, and many remember the 2013 assembly that was entirely devoted to her presentation on the evolving universe. The Sisters eagerly welcomed her latest book, The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole.

     It was good to see many other friends and authors, including our neighbors from the Maryknoll Sisters, as well as Sister Maria Cimperman (currently working on the Synod in Rome), and plenary speaker Bryan Massingale, whose talk previewed his next Orbis book: “Dreaming While Black.”

     Meanwhile, we are happy to announce the publications of the first titles of Fall 2024, both of them dealing with ethics. Bothering to Love: James F. Keenan’s Retrieval and Reinvention of Catholic Ethics (edited by Christopher P. Vogt and Kate Ward) is a comprehensive review of the themes covered by the great Jesuit ethicist—all demonstrating the many ways that God calls Christians to bother to love one another and the world.

     And in To Love Our Neighbors: Radical Practices in Solidarity, Sufficiency & Sustainability, Rev. Dr. Joe Blosser asks how we can better understand our motives, resources, and communities so the impact of our efforts to “love our neighbors” does not harm but benefits the good of all. Wes Granberg-Michaelson calls it “A radical call to transforming the forces and values that determine whether our neighbors are valued or imperiled.”

With good wishes for all our neighbors, for our world, for all creation,