It's almost here!

UPDATE: Books will be here within a few days. They shipped last night. Time is running out for the pre-2nd printing special. Of course most of you are waiting and anxious to pay full price. I am sure we will have traffic jam later on here in the week as people swell the streets of Bethune trying to get the first copies off the truck!- Oremus pro invicem!

The 2nd Printing of Russell Shaw's Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church is almost here! We've been running a pre-order special on it ($11.95 + $2.50 S&H --regularly $14.95 + S&H)-but time is running out. Once the full shipment arrives (We got the proof copies today) the special ends. So you have a week or less to get your early Christmas shopping done. Order it at the Requiem Press website today! (or you can call our toll free number: 1-888-708-7675) .

Here's what people are saying about this book:

"On the problem of clericalism, no analysis has been more clear or constructive than that of Russell Shaw. His is a voice crying out in the wilderness." —Dr. Scott Hahn from Ordinary Work, Extraordinary Grace

"His insights in his new book help the reader not only to understand the role of "Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church" but also the role of the laity in evangelizing the culture."
—Fr. C.J. McCloskey III, research fellow at the Faith and Reason Institute

"The content and organization of the 12 chapters in the book make it a good choice for parish-based faith-sharing groups." (Catholic News Service 05/06)

"Its quiet magisterial tone has the mark of a classic." —Jude P. Dougherty, Dean Emeritus, School of Philosophy, Catholic University of America

"The reality of Catholic teaching is and always has been that, at the altar, the priest presides, but in the world, the layperson presides. As many of us laity waste time and energy making a lunge for the altar, we are forgetting our true dignity and thereby missing the call and the gifts the Spirit has given us to carry out our God-given vocations to win the world for Jesus Christ. Russell Shaw shows us how to recover our sanity and live out the awesome vocation of the lay saint that the world so desperately needs." —Mark P. Shea, Senior Content Editor, Catholic Exchange

Here's an excerpt:

Meanwhile, though, the Church in the United States and in other Western countries is in crisis. The challenge this presents to the Catholic laity is clear. They are called to do more than struggle individually against the temptations that come from the sinful world around them, in hopes of saving their souls (although certainly they need to do that). Lay people also need to shoulder and carry out their part in the mission of the Church, especially in the "new evangelizationg" and the evangelization of culture of which Pope John Paul II spoke of so often.

John Paul returned to this theme in Novo Millennio Ineunte ("At the Beginning of the New Millennium"), the Apostolic Letter he published on January 6, 2001, the Feast of the Epiphany, to mark the start of the third millennium of the Christian era. "Even in countries evangelized many centuries ago," he pointed out, "the reality of a ‘Christian society’…is now gone."

Rather than being a cause for discouragement, he argued, this troubling state of affairs should provide impetus for a fresh outburst of evangelizing fervor not unlike that of Christianity’s early days: "This passion will not fail to stir in the Church a new sense of mission, which cannot be left to a group of ‘specialists’ but must involve the responsibility ofall the members of the People of God….A new apostolic outreach is needed, which will be lived as the everyday commitment of Christian communities and groups" (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 40).

The Pope was describing an evangelizing Catholic community, made up overwhelmingly of lay women and men, which in many respects would resemble the Christian community as we glimpsed it earlier in another historic document. Recall the words of the Epistle to Diognetus, written around 200 A.D.: "What the soul is in the body, that the Christians are in the world….Such is the important post to which God has assigned them, and they are not at liberty to desert it." (And we might add: Neither then nor now.)