Suzanne Carpenter, Associate Professor of Nursing at Our Lady of the Lake College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the National Association for Associate Degree Nurses (NOADN).  This award afforded her the opportunity to speak to over 500 nurses from around the country about respecting life from conception to natural death and about Blessed John Paul II's vision for Catholic higher education.  Additionally, she received Our Lady of the Lake College's 2011 Distinguished Faculty Member award.

 

Margarita A. Mooney has published a book, Faith Makes Us Live: Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora (University of California Press, 2009). Based on fieldwork in Haiti and in three cities of the Haitian diasporaMiami, Montreal, and Paristhis study offers a vivid portrait of the power of faith for immigrants. Drawing on extensive interviews and including rich details of everyday life, Mooney explores the struggles and joys of Haitian Catholics in these three very different cities. She finds that religious narratives, especially those about transformation and redemption, provide real meaning and hope in what are often difficult conditions. However, Mooney also finds that successful assimilation into the larger society varies from country to country, having less to do with private religious beliefs than with cooperation between religious and government leaders. In the United States, the Catholic Church is able to offer services and advocacy that help immigrants succeed, but it is not able to do the same in France or Canada. Presenting a powerful picture of traditional Catholic piety that overturns many assumptions about Vodou practice in Haitian Catholicism, this work also provides a groundbreaking comparative perspective on how immigrants experiences and opportunities vary greatly across different nations. Mooney is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. To see more about this book, visit www.faithmakesuslive.com. To see links to Mooneys recent publications on the Haitian earthquake in The Miami Herald, America, and for the Social Science Research Council, visit her blog at www.margaritamooney.blogspot.com.

 

 

In July of 2010, Lexington Press will be publishing The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism: And Why Philosophers Cant Solve it, a study of the ethical and political thought of John Rawls, Jacques Maritain, and Alasdair MacIntyre. The author is Thaddeus J. Kozinski, a professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Wyoming Catholic College. Philosophy alone cannot solve the political problem of religious pluralism, Dr. Kozinski argues, because it is essentially a theological problem; however, philosophy can demonstrate that and why this is the case.

 

 

Advance praise for Glenn W. Olsen's new book, The Turn to Transcendence: The Role of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), describes it as brilliant and based on an amazing amount of scholarship (James Hitchcock, St. Louis University). Prof. Olsen has also recently published: The Middle Ages in the History of Toleration: A Prolegomena, Mediterranean Studies 16 (2008): 1-20. Why We Need Christopher Dawson, Communio 35 (2008): 115-44. The Two Europes, The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 14:2 (2009): 133-48. Also to be published in the Actas of the Ninth International European Culture Congress, Pamplona, Spain. Routledge, the publisher of the former journal, has posted the article as one of three samples of the journal for prospective purchasers. The Natural Law: The First Grace, Communio 35 (2008): 354-73. Introduction, in Christopher Dawson, The Crisis of Western Education, (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010). Sex and the Romanesque in Occitania-Provence, (In Festschrift for James Brundage, forthcoming, 2010). Canon Law, in The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, gen. ed. Karla Pollmann (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2010).