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  Dear Friends, As we approach the season of Lent, several new Orbis titles invite us on a journey of conversion—or at least a fresh examination of traditional beliefs and engrained narratives. In Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth, Elizabeth Johnson, one of the foremost Catholic theologians today, continues her project of examining Christian faith in relation to the natural world, the earth, and the threats posed by climate change. In each of these luminous meditations, most inspired by the Psalms and other scriptural texts, she offers a snapshot of God’s care for Creation—a planet in peril—with...

JANUARY 2024   Dear Friends,   We enter a new year fraught with peril and suffering on many fronts: ongoing wars, the effects of climate change; the plight of migrants and refugees; racial injustice and threats to democracy. Many of our new titles this past year have spoken to such issues. (See Henri Nouwen, Ukraine Diary; Mitri Raheb, Decolonizing Palestine; Elizabeth Gandolfo, Ecomartyrdom in the Americas; Why We Can’t Wait: Racism and the Church; Leo Guardado, Church as Sanctuary; and Pope Francis’s warning on the climate crisis, Laudate Deum.   All of these titles reflect the longstanding, prophetic mission of...

 Dear Friends,  You may have noticed our first online Christmas Sale, featuring savings up to 75%. Along with many classics, this sale features our bestselling titles of the year, including James Finley’s The Healing Path,, James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Henri Nouwen’s Ukraine Diary, and biographies of Father Ed Dowling, the spiritual sponsor of Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill W., and “peace bishop” Thomas Gumbleton, Already have these books, you say? Now is a perfect time to think of gifts that can change the lives of your friends and family!             When Pope Francis addressed the U.S. Congress...

In his historic encyclical of 2015, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home, Pope Francis firmly established ecological concerns as central to the agenda of Catholic Social Teaching. Along with a spiritual framework on care for creation, he outlined issues of climate change, biodiversity, the peril facing our oceans, access to fresh water, and sustainable food, and offered a comprehensive guide to integral ecology.   Eight years later comes a shorter but even more urgent call in the form of this new apostolic exhortation, Laudate Deum, which focuses specifically on the “climate crisis” of our time. Disappointed that not enough has been done in...

Dear Friends,  In Laudato Si’, his historic encyclical of 2015, Pope Francis firmly established care for creation  as central to the agenda of Catholic Social Teaching. Now, eight years later, he has issued a shorter but even more urgent call to address the “climate crisis” of our time: Laudate Deum. Disappointed at the lack of progress in the intervening years, Francis addresses the irreversible effects of increasing global temperatures, the decrease in ice sheets, and other signs of the times. He critiques the “technocratic paradigm,” the ongoing addiction to a fossil-fuel economy, and the “weaknesses of international politics,” while leveling...