Harry Crocker is author of the recent book Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, A 2,000-Year History.

He is an editor at Regnery Publishing by day, and he is a convert to the faith. Register correspondent Kathryn Jean Lopez talked to Crocker about his new book, his faith and much more.

You've written a number of books, editing many more. What got you into the book business?

Serendipity. I started life as a newspaperman, an editorial writer. I left that job and went to England to get a master's degree in international relations so I could credential myself as a foreign correspondent, which is what I thought I wanted to do. But somehow, while I was in England, I decided I wanted to be a book editor.

When I came back to the states, my friend, author Dinesh D'souza, introduced me to Al Regnery, who had just taken command of Regnery Publishing and was moving its editorial offices to Washington, D.C. Next thing I knew I was the editor in chief of Regnery Publishing.

Which do you prefer, writing or editing?

Writing.

You are a convert. What were the previous Crockers?

Episcopalians.

Why are you Catholic?

Well, there are several overlapping answers to that, but here are the three most important: First, when the Anglican church ordained women, I felt that Anglicanism had forfeited any claims to orthodox Christianity. Second, I was taken by Chesterton's defense of the faith — among others — and, like Newman, another Anglican convert, I came to understand that the Catholic Church is the Church of history, the Church founded by Jesus and his Apostles. Finally, the woman who is now my wife asked me to place my bet, which I did, on the Church. And I have never regretted it.

Why write a history of the Church? You're not a Church historian. Aren't there other things you could have been doing?

It's true that I'm not an academic historian, but I am a professional writer whose interest is in historical subjects — rather like Paul Johnson in that regard. Moreover, I thought a Catholic history such as Triumph needed to be written because there is nothing else out there like it. The usual one-volume history you'll find in most Borders and Barnes & Nobles is dull and oddly dated precisely because it tries to be hip.

And then there's the torrent of anti-Catholic best sellers that keep pouring out of New York. I wanted to write an affirmative, accessible, exciting one-volume history that gloried in the drama of the Church and focused on great battles and extraordinary men and women — after all, that is the history of the Catholic Church. I relied as much as possible on secular sources and published the book with a secular press (a division of Random House) because I wanted to meet the critics on their own ground. I also wanted to speak not just to Catholics but also to secular and Protestant readers because I believe the historical argument for Catholicism is irrefutable. Of course, people will deny it, but they'll do so for reasons of prejudice or convenience or other reasons.

Did anyone try to discourage you?

Yes. Well-meaning friends told me that I was attempting the impossible, but I kept at it like a diligent soldier — boots, boots, boots, marching up and down again. And to keep the reader eagerly marching with me, I tried to shoot off fireworks on every page.

How did you land a secular publisher?

Triumph is published by the same publisher — Prima Publishing — that did my first book, Robert E. Lee on Leadership, which was a success. My editor there and I had a very good — and non-bureaucratic, an essential thing for me — relationship. He was eager to get another book out of me, and he liked this outrageous idea of doing an accessible, affirmative, swashbuckling, one-volume history of the Church. In between Lee and Triumph I published a comic novel, The Old Limey.

How long does it take to write a 2,000-year history?

In my case, a year and a half of working weekends, at least 16 hours per two-day break from my day job.

In the process of writing, were there things that surprised you to learn about Church history? Anything you're glad to know you didn't? Anything you wish you hadn't learned?

Eastern Christianity and its discontents surprised me. I had expected, in the Pope's words, to treat the East as the second lung of the Church. What I found in history among those Eastern Christians not in union with Rome was fanaticism and the sort of rhetorical and nationalistic extremism that we saw when the Pope visited Greece last year and was compared by a group of Greek Orthodox priests to the “two-horned grotesque monster of Rome.” Or [it was similar to what] we've seen in the Russian Orthodox response to the re-establishment of Catholic dioceses in Russia. This is a historical continuum, and I regret to say that I think the Eastern Churches suffer from what Freud called the narcissism of small differences.

Short of writing a history of your Church, how does your faith make its way into your daily professional life?

Like the Teutonic Knights that made Prussia and the Baltic States safe for Christianity, I pray the rosary. Though in my case, I pray it before and after work rather than before and after Crusades. And I keep the Litany of Humility posted in my office. I call it “The Editor's Prayer.”

In a book review for the Register, Father John McCloskey likened Triumph to a Belloc book. Do you agree? Who are your writing inspirations? Whom do you style yourself after?

I take the comparison to Belloc as a compliment. He was a literary pugilist for the faith. Among Catholic writers, Evelyn Waugh and his son Auberon Waugh, Graham Greene and Siegfried Sassoon have all had a big impact on me. I'm also very fond of Kipling. Among living novelists, I'm quite partial to the profane adventure-comedies of George MacDonald Fraser.

How old are your children now?

Seven, 5, 3 and 2 months — all boys.

If your oldest were to ask you about Father So-and-So in the news about clergy abuse, what would you say?

I would say that he was a “bad guy.” My boys think in cowboy terms — bad guys and good guys.

As a convert, I imagine you have friends who say, “How can you remain Catholic?” in light of the recent scandals. What do you tell them?

The only thing to say is what we know to be true: The Church is a divine institution served by fallible human beings who are as subject to sin as everyone else. Even the Pope has his confessor.

But however sordid and terrible the current scandal, I'm convinced the Church will come out of these troubles stronger and renewed, because the moral laxity and confusion that allowed these crimes to occur will be repudiated. We need to take the long view. Every age is an age of crisis. Right now we have a crisis of faith, which includes faithfulness to holy vows — from priest-ly celibacy to marriage.

As I say in Triumph, we have fallen a long way from the days of the Crusades when the Pope could count on the response of Christian knights from the Mediterranean to distant Scandinavia. But the Church is a great force and a great and proven force of renewal. Perhaps through it — indeed, only through it — Christendom will rise again.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is executive editor of National Review Online and an associate editor of National Review.