The Vent Pipe

50/50 Challenge – Book 1

A colleague at the high school where I teach challenged the staff to get involved with the 50-50 Challenge.  The basic goal is to read 50 books and watch 50 movies in 2012. You can start at any time, but you have to finish by December 31, 2012 to have your participation count. There are no awards or rewards (excellent self satisfaction and bragging rights). Here are the official rules.

When I was in grad-school (seems like years ago, just finished last month…) reading 50 books in 16 weeks was not a-typical.  (Well 50 might be hyperbolic, but probably 35 or 40 plus journal articles).  One thing I did not want to happen after graduation was for me to stop reading as frequently.  So this challenge, then, represents an opportunity to keep myself honest when it comes to reading.  And since we are encouraged to share our reading material with our students and colleagues–many of us are posting what we are reading and what we recently watched on our doors — it will also hopefully inspire me to read educational, mind enhancing rather than numbing material (and the same with movies).

I have not watched a single movie yet since January 1, 2012, so my movie list is short.  I figure I’ll use this year to watch movies that I’ve never seen, but should.  You know, movies like The Godfather or The Last of the Mohicans. 

I have several books that I have started, but I’ve only finished one so far since Christmas.  So here is my brief review:

FiftyFifty Book 1/50: Peter J. Kreeft, Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefes based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Ignatius Press, 2001. pp. 425.

I bought this book a few years ago.  I have been interested in Catholicism since I was college.  Having been raised a Protestant in a non-denominational church, I’ve always been a bit perplexed by Catholicism, mostly out of ignorance I think.  This book, I hoped, would clear up much of my ignorance, and for the most part the book did just that.

Kreeft organizes his book into three parts.  Part I: Theology explores “What Catholics Believe,” going in depth into basic Catholic ideas about Faith, creation, mankind, Christ, the Holy Trinity, forgiveness, and heaven.  Part II: Morality offers insight into “how Catholics live.” It discusses the basis for morality, the central role of religion in understanding and defending/defining morality, and walks the reader through the Catholic Church’s official position on many of the most important social issues including abortion, contraception, capital punishment, and others.  Finally, it examines how the Church interprets and seeks to follow the Ten Commandments.  The final portion looks at Sacraments and Prayer, or “how Catholics Worship.” It offers a step-by-step look at what I believe is often most intimidating and difficult for Protestants to understand, things like Catholic liturgy, the Eucharist/ the idea of Transubstantiation, and penance/confession.

When looking at a book like this, I think it is also important to point out what the book “doesn’t do.” This book does not provide a history of the Catholic Church.  This is not a relentless list of popes and church councils.  It is also not a defense of Catholicism against Protestantism, nor is it an attack on Protestantism.  It is wholly and completely a simple, topic-by-topic of explanation of what Catholics believe and why the believe it.  In many, but not all, passages Kreeft offers in-text references to applicable passages in the Bible.  From a Protestant viewpoint, this is important given Sola Scriptura as what is usually given as an explanation for the major difference between Protestantism and Catholicism. (Kreeft does get a bit preachy in discussing sola scriptura, noting that it is, after all, the Catholic Church that provided leadership in terms of writing the Bible.  He basically contends–and I think from the way he wrote it that this is the Catholic position–that if one questions the Church one must therefore also question the Bible, since–in his view–without the Church there would be no Bible.)

This book is incredibly readable and useful for people who are curious about the tenants of the Catholic faith or, I suspect, folks who are considering converting or have recently converted.  It was easy to understand and logically organized.  It does a great job of explaining some of the tougher issues for Protestants like me to understand. What I found as I was reading this is that many of these tougher issues to understand–issues of Faith like transubstantiation or Papal Supremacy, and social issues like Catholic views on contraception–are often misunderstood.  It is this misunderstanding that,  I think, scares people more than anything else.  (I won’t divulge my own views on this, mostly because I still struggle to understand and to come to terms with these kinds of issues.) Kreeft’s book goes a long way to clearing up these misunderstandings and taking away the sense of Catholicism as some sort of “foreign other” from Protestant viewpoints.

Next up on my 50-50 reading list (I’m already half way through): Mark Levin’s Ameritopia.  

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