Any Catholic books with great stories?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Youngling11
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Y

Youngling11

Guest
The Church has been around for 2000 years and I’m sure there have been some incredible things that have happened involving the Church. Now I know I can find the big stuff in history books and some of the Saints biographies and autobiographies can be a bit dry.

Instead I’m looking for some of the not so well known stories. Stories that would really captivate you. Similar to the book of acts which is very much a real life story of the beginning of the Church.

Any book suggestions out there?
 
I’m not a believer but there are some good stories in the Bible. I always liked David and Goliath.
 
I love Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh but it doesn’t qualify as little known. How obscure do the books you are looking for need to be?
I also like The Dark Horse, The Kitchen Madonna, and Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden.
How about The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor?
These are literature selections: are you taking both fiction and non-fiction?
 
Last edited:
Two books pop to mind.

“Holy Man” is the story of St Damien. Moves me to tears every time I read it, also, gives me courage to go to confession!

“The Shadow of His Wings” by Goldman is another must read!

While it is fiction, a very good look at the English persecution is “Come Rack, Come Rope”.

“The Silence” is another novel that helps us understand real persecution.

“With God in Russia” introduces us to the sufferings of the Church (more martyrs in Russia during that century than in the entire history of the Church).
 
Last edited:
The New Testament is “a hard act to follow”. Hopefully someone ca recommend a biography of a saint - that seems as close as you’d come to the NT. I’d suggest Story of a Soul, but I have a feeling that you’re looking for a (true) story that involves awesome events (ie, not interior).
 
Check out Louis de Wohl’s novelizations of the lives of the saints. Start with “The Spear”, the story of St. Longinus.

“Lay Siege to Heaven” St. Catherine of Siena
“The Joyful Beggar” St. Francis of Assisi
“The Last Crusader” the Battle of Lepanto and Don Juan of Austria
“The Living Wood” Emperor Constantine and St. Helena

and too many more to mention!

What you get here is church history and lives of the saints presented as a novel, so it’s not a dry recital of facts.There are so many to choose from - St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Joan of Arc, St. Francis Xavier, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, etc.
 
Last edited:
Raised from the Dead by Father Albert J. Hebert
True stories of 400 resurrection miracles.
 
Exiles by Ron Hansen…“tells the story of a notorious shipwreck and five exiled nuns that prompted Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ to break years of self-elected silence with an outpouring of dazzling poetry.”
 
The Collected Stories of Flannery O’Connor, for one.
There’s a lot of Catholic literature out there.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top