THE TIDE IS TURNING TOWARD CATHOLICISM

by David J. Hartline

Catholic Report, 2006

305 pages, $15.99

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According to conventional wisdom, trouble knocks on every Catholic door. Priest shortage. Low morale. A lukewarm laity that doesn’t accept key Church teachings. Diocesan financial trouble. Continuing fallout from the abuse scandals. In short, say the conventionally wise, pessimism reigns — and for good reason. The Church as we’ve known it is dying.

First-time author David Hartline sees something else altogether. His quick-reading book points out enough shoots and blossoms to make a compelling case that the Catholic Church is undergoing a greening — an extended Easter moment in history, if you will — that promises to yield great harvests in the future.

Starting with John Paul II’s enormous popularity — which, he points out, has carried over to Benedict XVI, thereby refuting secularist claims that Catholics’ affection for JPII was merely a “personality cult” — Hartline catalogues many of the things that are going right for the Church. EWTN, Catholic radio, the resurgence of Catholic apologetics, the vibrant Catholic blogosphere, World Youth Day, a spontaneous renewal of Catholic traditions like Eucharistic adoration and Gregorian chant, courageous Catholic celebrities like Jim Caviezel and Dick Vitale, new Catholic colleges and elements of revival at old Catholic universities. Hartline even finds bright spots in the much-criticized parochial school system.

In the vanguard of all these developments: youth. Young people are, in a sense, driving the Church back home. And, Hartline notes, the younger generations are having large families, building momentum for the future. Adherence to Catholic moral teaching tends to have that effect. Nor should it come as a surprise that the leaders of tomorrow are solid in their Catholicity today. They dislike dissent, find riches in the Church’s traditions and embrace Pope Benedict’s condemnation of moral relativism.

Discussing the rise of the new apologetics, Hartline asks, “Who spends time defending something about which they are not passionate? And if one’s view of religion is [relativistic], there is even less reason to spend time defending one’s own faith.”

If I have one complaint about the book, it’s that it doesn’t stick to its subject. Hartline takes a lot of detours. There’s a discourse about Marian veneration, a history of the Crusades, a brief apologetics course for dealing with Protestants. These digressions are enjoyable enough, but they smack of “filler” — and this book doesn’t need filler.

Hartline’s book makes a positive-thinking person feel good to be a Catholic. It’s not a feeling a lot of Catholics get these days. For that alone, Hartline deserves applause.

I suspect this work will find opponents who will dismiss Hartline’s optimism. They’ll say he doesn’t prove his thesis that the Church is strong and getting stronger. Indeed, the book offers mostly anecdotal evidence. There’s a ton of it and much of it is solid, but it’s true that anecdote is the weakest type of proof. It’s rarely sufficient to convince an objective observer, much less a skeptic. But that need not deter the reader who comes to the presentation with an open mind.

By bringing together many inspiring signs of renewal into one book, often throwing light on movements that have been laboring beneath the proverbial radar, Hartline makes a surprisingly convincing case that the Catholic Church is greening. Happy Easter moment. God willing, it’s going to be a long one.

Eric Scheske writes from

Sturgis, Michigan.