Salted With Fire

Like a good gumbo from the author's hometown of New Orleans, this book is rich fare. SALTED WITH FIRE blends the realities of social justice and the burdens of working for justice and peace with a hopeful spirituality, all brewed in the cauldron of the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. The book is for the young, who dream dreams of a more just world, and for their elders, who have grown bone weary fighting the good fight for justice and peace.
Community organizers, social service workers, political activists, and parish social justice ministers will find here a sympathetic spirit. The author is himself a social service practitioner, who can deal both with the intracacies of social analysis as well as with a sprituality of coping, hoping, surviving, and even flourishing amidst often discouraging conditions and bureaucratic red tape. Adopting a four-fold ""pastoral circle"" as his conceptual tool, Kammer offers a solid, practical, and pastoral primer for those seeking to build a more humane and just society. Readers will find here a resonant voice and a spiritual diet to nourish ans sustain them over the long haul.

FRED KAMMER was president of Catholic Charities USA, the nation's largest voluntary social service network, from 1992 to 2001. From 2002 to 2008 he has served as provincial superior for the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province, guiding their post-Katrina recovery and service to the devastated region's poor and needy. An attorney, a Jesuit priest, and an advocate for the poor and powerless, he writes personally and passionately to encourage and strengthen those committed to make this a more just and compassionate world. A former legal services attorney, Catholic Charities director, and Washington public policy advocate, this New Orleans native received his J.D. from Yale University and M. Div. from Loyola University in Chicago.