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R e v i e w s
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This Rock
Volume 3, Number 2
 February 1992 
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A give-away book
SOME years ago I worked in a bank. On All Saints Day I told a fellow worker I would be checking out of the building at the lunch hour to go to Mass. He asked why I was going to Mass on a weekday. I explained what a holy day of obligation was and what this particular holy day meant. I even had to explain what a saint was.
These and other things I found myself explaining to a young man who had gone through twelve years of Catholic schools. This was not a surprise. He and I (as of a few years before that incident) could be described as victims of a catechetical collapse that began in the 1960s.
I recall, as a child, learning my First Communion catechism by rote. That method continued for a little while in subsequent CCD classes. Later a change took place. The standard catechism and the rote learning of doctrine were replaced by other materials and techniques. There were sessions of clipping magazine pictures for collages and baking our own bread for liturgies--such things seemed to become the norm at the expense of the basic doctrinal substance and understanding.
As I entered my teens I became, like millions of others in my generation, a lapsed Catholic. In my early twenties I was led through a sequence of events that brought about my conversion. I basically read my way back into the Catholic Church after encountering writers such as Ronald Knox, G. K. Chesterton, Arnold Lunn, and Frank Sheed.
Shortly after my conversion I began subscribing to Catholic periodicals. One carried a conversion story each month. I was amazed at how many converts mentioned a particular book that was instrumental in their conversion. The book was The Faith Explained by Leo J. Trese. I made it a point to get a copy.
The Faith Explained had seen several editions, but at that time, like so many other solid Catholic books, it had been allowed to go out of print. That didn't deter me. I had encountered this problem before and was well acquainted with used-book shops and dealers. I located a copy of The Faith Explained and discovered why so many were affected by it. I found myself picking up copies at book shops and parish flea markets, so I'd always have a stock of copies readily at hand.
My own conversion made me conscious of the need to be able to explain the faith to others. This could take place in conversation, but eventually even a long conversation, at some point, has to be broken off. The chance to pick up on it again might not arise. I got in the habit of giving away copies of The Faith Explained.
I AM delighted to report that The Faith Explained is back in print. Millions of Catholics have lapsed or have been snatched up by the sects. Most have left the Church not knowing what they were leaving. Many still-practicing Catholics don't know what they believe and so are vulnerable. The Faith Explained helps all these people. I'd rank it as one of the best explanations of Catholic belief and practice you can give the average person.
I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to any practicing Catholic who wants a clear, solid, and satisfying explanation of the faith, nor would I hesitate to give it to a lapsed Catholic, a non-Catholic, or an anti-Catholic.
Its style is clear, easy, and engaging, and it avoids theological jargon that might confuse the reader yet doesn't speak down to the reader either. It's a smooth narrative with explanations structured around the articles of the creed, the commandments, and the sacraments. Included is a key to the catechism so it can easily be referenced for particular questions.
Having The Faith Explained back is like having spring return--it's a familiar and welcome breath of fresh air. Next to the New Testament there is no book that I have given more copies of to friends and inquirers.
-- Clayton F. Bower, Jr.
The Faith Explained
By Leo J. Trese
(Manila: Sinag-Tala Publishers, 1991)
479 pages
$9.95
Unearth this book
ONE f the best books I have never written has the same title as this book--or it will, once I reduce my book from potentiality to act. I like the title Winning Converts because using it would produce such a stink today.
The title would throw thousands into a snit. "Why should we try to win converts? We're all going to heaven anyway!" That's a common attitude, even in the Church--the attitude of people who can't see any reason to promote Christianity because they see nothing distinguishing in Christianity. For them Christianity is an amorphous goodness, nothing more.
I am reminded of the American delegate to the United Nations (this is a true incident, by the way) who was interviewed by the press about the Mideast situation. He said the solution was simple. "All we have to do is convince the Arabs and Israelis to sit down together and talk things over like good Christians." He didn't blink, didn't smile, and wasn't jesting. He saw no incongruity in his remarks.
Most Americans, even Christian Americans, wouldn't. To them a "good Christian" is simply a nice guy, the twentieth-century analogue of the nineteenth-century gentleman. They way they look at it, you can be a Hindu or an animist or a New Ager and still be a "good Christian." What counts is attitude, not doctrine.
Little wonder, then, that people with such a mindset see no reason to evangelize. For them the world is filled with Rahner's "anonymous Christians." Why try to convert the saved? (The Immaculate Conception of Mary doesn't rile them, as it riles Evangelicals--they think everyone has been immaculately conceived.)
Titling a book Winning Converts would cause a minor sensation today, but it didn't in 1948 when John A. O'Brien, then teaching at the University of Notre Dame, edited this "symposium on methods of convert making for priests and lay people." That subtitle was a little misleading, since the only contributor who wasn't a priest was the only one who couldn't be a priest, Clare Boothe Luce.
The dust jacket notes that "in 1946 it took an average 250 Catholics to produce one convert. Winning Converts tells us methods whereby in that same year individual Catholics were producing 250 converts apiece." Square 250 and you'll see those convert makers were 62,500 times as effective as the average Catholic. What were their secrets? How did they bring in such prodigious numbers? How was it that a pair of parishes in Harlem (hardly a hotbed of Catholicism) brought in 450 converts in a single year?
Perhaps we see a clue in the opening words of Paulist John T. McGinn's contribution: "The writer takes the view that the American clergy are visibly aware of the necessity of a more systematic and energetic apostolate to the non-Catholics of our country." Could anyone make such a sweeping statement about American priests today? (Ditto for laymen, of course.)
Certainly the throng of converts wasn't the product of a glitzy public relations campaign. O'Brien reproduces advertisements inviting non-Catholics to inquiry classes. The artwork is execrable. (You can tell at once it's from the forties, but you're not sure if it's from the 1940s or the 1840s.) The typefaces are dull, the body copy impossibly small, the headlines hardly able, on their own, to capture attention.
(Sample: "Believe it or not, but the Catholic Church has the truth, satisfaction and happiness you desire in life"--one headline in 18 words, two clashing fonts, and four mismatched sizes!)
The closest these convert makers came to high technology and major expense was the outfitting of a trailer as a portable Hyde Park platform. Down went the tailgate of the trailer, up went a pair of oversized loudspeakers, and onto the tailgate stepped a soutaned Paulist ready to spread the faith in such metropolises as Winchester, Tennessee.
So what was the secret? It was the conviction that the Catholic faith is the patrimony of all mankind, that it's the most precious thing in the world because the truest thing in the world. From this conviction came a record of success that shames even today's best convert makers, who have the advantage of resources and means not available two generations ago.
Few books are truly motivational--that is, few move us to action--but this is one of them. I wish it were in print so you could borrow from it as I borrow from it:--ideas, techniques, and thoughts not of what once was, but of what might yet be. If you can unearth it from a library or used-book dealer, do so.
-- Karl Keating
Winning Converts
By John A. O'Brien
(New York: Kenedy, 1948)
248 pages
Available, if at all, through used book sellers and at libraries.
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