I hate to say it but I’ve been sitting on this review for some time now. I wanted to wait until I was sure I’d be back to blogging at regular intervals again – this book is too important to surround a review with dead air for any length of time. Mea culpa.
Many of you know that I volunteer my time to help my parish RCIA team every year – technically, I guess, that makes me a catechist in some form or another. RCIA is a little different than most other forms of religious education though in that it’s a balance between formation, catechesis and apologetics, the latter being something more rarely found in other forms. In the past few years I’ve worked with those of the Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian faiths as well as those who have attended non-denominational churches and those who haven’t attended any church at all and have variously self-identified as “Christian” or “Protestant” or “Spiritual” or even “Agnostic”. It’s a dizzying array of potential confusions, but thankfully most are willing to admit the Bible has at least some level of authority – maybe they’re not ready to dive into Evangelium Vitae or Lumen Gentium as authoritative sources just yet, but the Bible by and large is recognized as some sort of self-supporting authority. That’s where this book truly comes in handy.
Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths offers fifteen chapters ranging from Abortion to Marriage, Apostolic Tradition to the Eucharist. Is it a thoroughly exhaustive compendium of cross-references for Catholic dogma? No, but then even the Summa Theologica doesn’t pretend to be that. What it does cover is a great number of the “hot-button” topics people need to understand and shows their basis in the Bible and then offers a brief explanation of how the Church went from the passage in Scripture to the dogma, doctrine or practice in question. Every week as I prepare for our meeting I take the time to look through this book to see what questions or objections might come up and where in the Bible this particular issue finds its basis. Have a question about the indissolubility of marriage? Look at and around page 405. Papal infallibility? Start at page 153. Purgatory? Page 239.
I would heartily recommend that anyone who deals with non-Catholics, and indeed anyone that deals with Catholics in these days of not-always-perfect catechesis, have this book on their shelf as a handy reference. Our faith is supremely Biblical and we ought to know the sources of what we believe and profess. Buy and use this book and before you know it you’ll be reaching for your Bible to explain things you once thought clouded in the mists of medieval theology. People might even start coming to you with their own questions in ways you never before thought possible.
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 Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths and be sure to check out their great selection of baptism gifts while you are there.
