Time is running out!

I received my proof copies of the 2nd Printing of Russell Shaw's Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church yesterday. Once the entire shipment arrives (sometime next week) the pre-order special will be over. Regularly $14.95, you can get it now for $11.95 (+$2.50 S&H). (You know why we have pre-order specials? It is to help pay for the book upfront for cash-strapped publishings houses like ourselves.) Place your advance order here !

Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite chapters in the book:

But granting all that—there is no shortage of vocations. What we are witnessing are the consequences of a shortage of vocational discernment. That is a very serious problem, too, but it needs to be understood as what it is, not mistaken for something else.

If many more Catholics—ideally, all—made it a practice to discern, accept, and live out God's particular will for them, the shortfall of new candidates for the priesthood, the consecrated life, and other forms of Christian witness and service would soon disappear. Far
and away the larger number, of course, would find that God was calling them to lives of witness and service as lay people in the world; but many more than now do would find themselves called to be priests and sisters.

Mr. Shaw goes on the give guidelines on discerning vocations. But the book is much more than that. He gives a history of the lay vocation in the Church from apostolic times to the present and suggests areas which the laity may live out their vocations in the world.

My other blog has another excerpt and endorsement statements from some people most of you will know. Check it out.

Finally, you can read another good piece by Russell Shaw today at Catholic Exchange. Here's the opening line: A Catholic father, an intelligent and conscientious man, was explaining why he and his wife took their daughter out of a Catholic high school: "They told the kids that the gospels weren't true."