In recent years the popular Catholic apologetics industry has been relatively stalled with material aimed at the neophyte, or those who have little knowledge about the Catholic faith. Most of the books that are marketed these days that are classified as being "apologetic" in nature are usually of this type. They are usually very elementary and do not penetrate the Catholic faith or tradition far beyond the surface. Most of the material in these books is narrowly confined to Vatican II documents, and it seems that the continuity that Pope Benedict XVI is calling for, in reference to tying together the Church before Vatican II, and the Church after it, is slow in becoming a reality. Vatican II is often quoted and interpreted without the light of the past 2000 years that preceded it. In order to bring Catholic apologetics to a new level, it will take each individual Catholic who is willing to put in the time and effort to doing their own research. We have to go back to the Church sources ourselves, and return to reading real Catholic scholars and theologians, instead of relying on the same shallow arguments and regurgitated interpretations of the same material that has been presented over and over by the same circle of laymen over the past 15 to 20 years.
It is important to remember that the reason for Catholic apologetics is to spread the truth of Jesus Christ to people who have not heard the full Gospel in order to save their souls. It is not primarily for the purpose of making a living off of selling books and booking speaking engagements, although those actions do have their place and can be useful. Instead of relying on other people to relay compilations of Catholic apologetic material for you, I would suggest doing some homework yourself. If you are well read in Catholic theology, spirituality, and Church history, then you can do pretty well for yourself by talking to family and friends about the Catholic faith without having to rely on someone else to do the work for you. In my opinion, much of today's Catholic apologetics has made people lazy. They become followers of a particular Catholic apologist instead of followers of the Church. As a result they often take these apologist's opinions on things rather than looking to more reliable sources, like the Church, or faithful theologians who have served the Church for many years. It is time for Catholics to buckle down and educate themselves about their faith by doing some research of their own, instead of relying on a particular apologist to sum up the faith for them.
The best place to start your research is by using faithful, well educated scholars and clergy to compile your material from, as well as the original sources of the Church, Church Fathers and the Saints. I firmly believe that Saint Thomas Aquinas has been the key that has been missing in today's Catholic apologetic works. But in order to use the Angelic Doctor's works and principles, it requires much time and effort. You can go back and quote St. Thomas yourself, but if you are not familiar with the background pertaining to his writings. and the style and audience for which he wrote, you will never be able to communicate what he had to say very well. The same goes for the Church Fathers. It is quite easy to surf around the internet, cutting and pasting quotes from the Church Fathers to prove some doctrine of the Catholic faith, but if you are not well educated in the particular era and circumstances surrounding the particular writer, all you are doing is compiling a shallow list of quotes without really understanding the entire thought that the Church Father was trying to convey. The problem with this is, when you are pressed for information beyond the quote, you end up stuck with your foot in your mouth. So we must go to the sources, yes, but we must also be familiar with the background of the sources. To solve that problem we can look to the great theologians to help us.
I recently put together a list of recommended reading material. If you notice, there are few "lay-apologists" on the list. Most of the books are written by good faithful theologians who have spent years studying the Catholic faith like Dom Prosper Gueranger, Fr. John Hardon, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Cardinal Journet, and Pope Benedict XVI. While it takes a bit more time and effort, I believe that reading these theological works, which are normally specific to a particular topic of Catholicism and are not compilations, benefit the reader by really understanding each aspect of the Catholic faith in an in depth manner, rather than reading a jack of all trades apologetics book that never scratches the surface of anything in particular. If we put our efforts towards understanding our faith in this manner, I believe that we will be able to go out and have meaningful conversations with those who are not Catholic, and with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, win some souls for Christ! What I am getting at here is cutting out the middle man. I know some may take this the wrong way, but the Church herself is not really lacking in apologetic material. We have good theologians to read and we have access to the Church documents. We just need more priests and bishops who have the authroity of the Church behind them to present and defend the material in public forums. The void has unfortunately been filled by laymen, who many times simply do not have the education or formation needed to do a good job of it. Sorry if I offend anyone, that is not my intention. In an effort to point you in a different direction I provided a book list in my earlier post.
In the last post, I provided some book recommendations that were divided into focused subjects of study. Below is an explanation of why I laid the book recommendations out in the subjects that I did. The order of the subjects is not in order of importance. As far as I know, all of the books that I recommended are faithful to Church teaching. You have to be careful when you buy "catholic" books these days. There are "theologians" who think they know more than the Church.
1. The Church or Ecclesiology- It is important to have a grasp on this subject to effectively communicate what the Church actually is, how it operates, under what authority it operates, and how it defines doctrine and dogma. This then helps us to understand why we worship God the way we do.
2. The Papacy- This goes further in depth to study the origins and arguments for the Papacy based on Church history, Tradition and Sacred Scripture.
3. Scripture and Tradition- In order to understand how Divine Revelation is preached and communicated to the world you have to study Scripture and Tradition.
4. The Mass- The center point of our faith is Jesus Christ, and that is Who presents Himself at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. If we do not understand our liturgy and what happens during the liturgy, then we are totally lost.
5. The Theotokos, or Mother of God- Devotion to Our Blessed Mother is one of the most contested aspects of the Catholic faith, so we must devote our time to learning about the honor that we give to her as Catholics. We must approach not only the historical arguments pertaining to our devotion to her, but the theological principles that tie it all together concerning Jesus Christ Himself.
6. Sacred Scripture- Catholics are often accused of not being interested in Scripture, yet we have access to the best Scripture Commentaries available anywhere. If we are ignorant of Scripture we will certainly not progress far in our evangelization efforts.
7. Sacred Images- I believe it is important that we understand the role that sacred images have on our faith, our devotion, and our theology. This also helps us to understand proper church architecture and proper church adornment.
8. Salvation, Grace and Predestination- These subjects get down to the core of how we are saved by God's grace. It sets up the core principles to understanding why God created us and how we can be deified by his grace and ultimately be lead to salvation. These tools help us to apply our spiritual reading, our reading of Sacred Scripture and the spiritual methods we apply to our daily devotion.
9. The Sacraments- Understanding the Sacraments also lays a foundation explaining further how grace is given to us through His Church. We must understand how the origin of each Sacrament is in Christ Himself.
10. Moral Theology-In today's society we have to be armed with the truths of our faith that help us to overcome the immorality of the secular culture. We need to understand how to defend the core Catholic principles of morality concerning abortion, contraception, medical ethics, social ethics, etc, if we are going to evangelists for Christ.
11. The Spiritual Life- These books will help you deepen your relationship with God by building up your prayer life. Without this important relationship, the rest of the above is quite useless! Knowing about God and knowing God are two different things. We need to keep this in proper perspective.
12. Church History- In order to understand Catholicism today, we must understand how the Catholic Church operated and taught the faith in the past. We must not perceive the Church in a mentality which separates the last 40 years from the previous 2000 that came before it. Once we see the truths of our faith being lived out consistently over the course of history, then we will have little trouble in defending the Catholic Church to those who remain separated. To understand Church history is to most certainly be Catholic.
13. Patristics- The Church Fathers are certainly a fountain of wisdom for the Church today. If we read the Church Fathers at length, and not in chopped up quotes cut and pasted from the internet, we will advance in leaps and bounds concerning our Catholic faith. There are some compilations that are worth getting so that you can reference to the entire works concerning a certain aspect of the Catholic faith. Never take someone's word on a Church Father quote, especially when it comes to Calvinist's. Go and read the entire text for yourself. Most of these are available online. Catholic sources are preferred.
14. Reference- It is always important to have good reference books like the Catechism or Church documents in your library. Much of it is available on the net, but it is always nice to have a copy you can take with you, or sit down and read.
On a final note, I want to address the topic of apologetics in reference to today's Catholic clergy. In my opinion there has been a great void left open by the lack of clergy engaging in defending and proclaiming the Catholic faith. There are not many bishops or priests who are writing books and making videos, or going to parishes to speak on Catholic apologetics. It is my hope that more clergy would be able to put forth efforts in this arena so that the laymen and women could spend more time living out their vocations as Catholics in marriage, etc, rather than being "professional apologists." I know that priests and bishops are busy, but I believe that increased efforts in this arena would serve the faithful well.
In regards to my own blog and website, the intention has never been to be an authority of any kind in regards to the Catholic faith, but only a resource that people can use to hopefully become better educated in the Catholic faith. I always try and present my material from reliable sources in an effort to direct you to the credible sources themselves rather than my own opinions. It is time for Catholics to revolutionize the Catholic apologetic world by going to the Church documents and faithful Catholic scholars to get their information from, and put together their own research library so that we can all become apologists for the faith in whatever situation we may find ourselves in our day to day lives. There is nothing more important than God, so our efforts will not be in vain.
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