What to Read

Raising Catholic Kids for Their Vocations
John and Claire Grabowski
TAN Books, 165 pages

“As parents, our goal is to raise our children to be saints,” state authors John and Claire Grabowski. “If we lead them to the Lord and work to foster their relationship with Him, they will be able to hear God’s call to them and enter the state of life He desires for them. But above all, they will hear God’s call to them to live a life of holiness.” That’s the fundamental thesis of this excellent guide designed to help parents build their domestic church in a way that forms their children in faith and assists them in discerning their God-given vocation.

The Eight Paradoxes of Great Leadership
Tim Elmore
Harper Collins Leadership, 227 pages

As Bob Dylan once sang, “the times they are a-changing” — and that goes for the kind of leadership skills necessary in today’s workplace. Tim Elmore, a longtime protegé of leadership guru John C. Maxwell, spells out the novel strategies and mindset required in the modern business environment. The “paradoxes” he lays out involve how to manage teams and inspire employees to greater collaboration by using one’s emotional and social intelligence — or how to become what he calls a “next generation leader.” This new kind of leader learns from and builds upon the great leadership styles of the past. It’s a great study for upping one’s leadership game.

There and Back Again: A Somewhat Religious Odyssey
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
Ignatius Press, 210 pages

Who knew converting to Catholicism could be so fun? Father Dwight Longenecker’s lighthearted account of his spiritual journey entertains even as he describes his process of discernment — with a healthy dose of divine providence — that led him from his Evangelical Protestant childhood to his years as an Anglican clergyman to his reception into the Catholic Church and eventual ordination in 2006 as a married Catholic priest under the pastoral provision. His testimony in his final chapter to how his marriage and his priesthood complement and enrich each other is particularly enlightening. 

“[A] conversion story is like any good story,” Fr. Longenecker writes in his introduction. This, indeed, is a good story.