Being Catholic: How We Believe, Practice and Think

by Archbishop Daniel E. Pilarczyk

St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2006

246 pages, $17.95

To order: (800) 488-0488

americancatholic.org

“Professing the Catholic faith — being Catholic — is a rich and complex thing. People who have been Catholics all their lives still find themselves discovering new depths in their faith, and people who become Catholic in adulthood often find themselves moving into a new world in which things previously familiar take on a whole new light and meaning.”

So writes Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk of Cincinnati in his new book. The resource isn’t a one-stop shop for the serious seeker interested in plumbing those rich depths, and I would have liked to see the hot-button issues of our day confronted more bluntly. Yet it is a handy and useful overview of three major facets of faith: believing, practicing and thinking.

Being Catholic is a revised version of a series of columns he wrote for the Catholic Telegraph, newspaper of his archdiocese, and later published as three books by St. Anthony Messenger Press.

Archbishop Pilarczyk writes well, and his personal faith is evident. And, although it is couched in an olio of objective thought and subjective feeling, the orthodox and enthusiastic exposition that one expects from a shepherd of the Church is there.

In the first two sections, “Believing Catholic” and “Practicing Catholic,” each chapter is followed by a reference to the applicable section from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, along with a series of questions for discussion and reflection. It might be helpful for readers to read the suggested paragraphs from the Catechism before beginning each chapter. As for the questions, they seem to ask things that even the most casual reader would have thought about while reading the text — but may have avoided answering. For example: “How are you active in your parish? Who had the greatest influence on the early development of your faith?”

In the final section, “Thinking Catholic,” the archbishop begins by regretting the culture that “doesn’t give the kind of support to Catholic Christian belief and behavior that it once did.” Calling the American obsession with consumption “an exercise in futility,” he writes: “Equally shallow are many of the commonly accepted ideas about success, work, comfort, education and human relationships. … The world seems to have gone crazy.”

His answer? Admitting that knowledge of the faith is important, he writes, “Something more … seems to be called for.” That something is “thinking Catholic” — “a mindset, an attitude of the heart, a bundle of insights and presumptions and priorities and directions that are derived from faith and which, in turn, strengthen and vitalize the practice of faith … like a hidden file in a computer program that may never appear on the screen but that governs the whole operation of the program.”

The ensuing chapters discuss celebrating God in the natural world, respecting the gift of life, practicing the presence of God, hoping for heaven, understanding a Catholic’s priorities, dealing with our sinfulness, treasuring other people, using possessions with detachment, praying and “being in love with the Church.”

At book’s end, the archbishop suggests that, while faithfulness in a crazy world is not easy, it is “an enterprise of eager confidence.” The same could be said of this uncomplicated and uplifting book.

Ann Applegarth writes from

Roswell, New Mexico.