Review of..2011 Catholic Almanac

Ok everyone so I am back to reviewing books again..And I read a very informative book for anybody..It's by Our Sunday Visitor and it's called 2011 Our Sunday Visitor's Catholic Almanac.

When I first received this book I thought to myself "What did I get myself into?" The book is huge!! It's over 600 pages long! But as I started to delve into it, I couldn't believe what a treasure I stumbled upon. This book is wonderful. It's a great resource. I can't go into great detail about it, but I will focus on a few things.

The book is broken into 4 parts. Part One ~ News and Events, Part Two ~ The Teachings of the Catholic Church, Part Three ~ The Church Universal & Part Four ~ The Life of the Church in the World. I will go into some of these parts now.

Part One: In this part the Year in Review talks about what happened between the dates of 9/09-8/10. Then talks about the News in Depth (i.e. Papal Travels, Vatican Documents & Announcements, Special Reports, Life Issues and lastly the USCCB)

Part Two: This part discusses the Doctrine of the Catholic Church, The Church Calendar, Movable Feasts, Liturgical Life of the Church, The Sacraments of the Church, & Communion of Saints (i.e. Patron Saints, Intercessors & the people who were Canonized or Beatified in 09/10)

Part Three: Deals with Dates & Events in Church History, The Papacy and the Holy See, Roman Curia, Hierarchy of the Catholic Church, The Universal Church, Eastern Catholic Churches, The Church in the U.S., The U.S. Hierarchy, Biographies of American Bishops, the USCCB, Cultural Diversity in the Church, Statistics of the Church in the U.S., The Church in Canada, & finally ends with the Church in Mexico.

Part Four: In Part Four you can read about Consecrated Life, Apostalates & Ministries, Catholic Social Services, Education, Catholic Communications, Ecumenism, Inter religious Dialogue, Separated Eastern Churches, Reformation Churches, & Inter religious Dialogue.

There is also a Church Calendar, Glossary & Index for you to review things that you may have missed.The sections are broken into little paragraphs.There are so many that I can not write about all of them but if you look in the parts you can clearly see what they are talking about.

I HIGHLY recommend this book for Catholic Homeschoolers. It has been a great resource for my children to look up things we normally would have to look up on the Internet or some other source. But this book is great for anyone who just wants to learn more about the Faith & what's going on with it. This is a book (or resource) that every Catholic home should have in it. Kudos to Our Sunday Visitor for publishing these books every year.

As always this review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from the Catholic Company. Visit the Catholic Company to find more information on 2011 Catholic Almanac. They also are a great source for all kinds of religious gifts, books, etc.