Böcker av Walter Adams

"Seek the Kingdom, Love the Kingdom, Defend the Kingdom!"This book is a testimony to how St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux authenticated my life. It is devoted to Traditional French Catholicism through the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the combined spirituality of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Le Royaume offers a program with personal reflections designed to cultivate devotion to these two great saints, the Mother of God and the Renaissance of Catholic France, for the glory of Jesus Christ the King. This effort aims to inspire others to follow St. Joan and St. Thérèse on the Trail of the Dogmatic Creed to "Le Royaume," the mystical Kingdom of Catholic France, in the center of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.Le Royaume inspires souls to seek, grow, and persevere in sanctifying grace through True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the beautiful combined spirituality of St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and the noble counterrevolutionary pedagogy of Traditional French Catholicism.

"Joan of Arc," I thought to myself. The name was familiar, for sure. Yet, I really could not recall much that I had learned about her. I remembered something about burning at the stake. Yes. Did she not burn at the stake? The rest was a blank sheet. I would not have done well on a French history exam, even after my six weeks in Brittany.I turned with a typical "whatever" shrug and walked at a clip to catch up with the group, not realizing that she, Joan of Arc, was the reason that the French defeated England at Orléans. She was the reason the French routed the English from the Loire Valley. She was the reason that the Dauphin, Charles VII, marched to Rheims to be crowned King of France, rather than run away. She was the reason that France kept her independent crown. She was the reason France would remain Catholic after the Protestant revolution. She was the reason France developed into the nation state we know today. That is who Joan of Arc was. I did not realize the historical, religious, and spiritual significance in Western Civilization of the person whose image that curious statue represented. I also did not realize the historical, religious, and spiritual significance she would have in my personal life. Joan of Arc had saved France's life. I had no "earthly" idea at that time that she was going to save mine.

Royaume France is my attempt to make sense of a single phenomenon. It is as if my entire life up to that day in October of 2008 was leading to it, and every day after has been an attempt to understand it. The phenomenon was a powerful instant whereby St. Joan of Arc permanently entered my life story through the Jehannian hermeneutics of St. Thérèse's plays and poetry. I refer to it, using the terminology of St. Edith Stein, as a "divine glance" and an encounter with the combined hearts of St. Joan and St. Thérèse. For the next decade or more, this encounter transformed my life.Royaume France is an attempt to explain this transformation. It is not about St. Joan of Arc and St. Thérèse of Lisieux as much as it is about their influence on me and on the meaning of that encounter. This journey led me through religion to philosophy and phenomenology and back again. Royaume France is a record of this intellectual and spiritual journey through the influence of the combined hearts of Joan and Thérèse.Despite the very philosophical language the reader encounters along this way, the work remains highly devotional in nature. There is philosophy and phenomenology but no attempt to make this "divine glance" a purely philosophical affair. The astonishing moment imbuing my soul with a lifelong devotion to St. Joan of Arc is supernatural in nature and a grace from Our Lord Jesus Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I have done my best in Royaume France to explain its meaning which I hope will be a catalyst for a similarly powerful devotion to St. Joan and St. Thérèse in others.

This new edition has a thoroughly updated variety of issues, examples, and new developments, including government bailouts of the airline industry; regulation of biotechnology; the fiasco of recent electricity deregulation; and mergers and consolidations in oil, radio, and grocery retailing. The analysis is framed in the timeless context of American distrust of concentrations of power.