Defenders of the Faith in Word and Deed

By Fr. Charles P. Connor

Catholic-ometer: 4.5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4 of 5

History books, for the most part, can be a chore to get through, because they tend to either under-emphasize pivotal aspects of what happened, or over-emphasize minutae, or just outright lie.  Sometimes, they just make the mistake of leaving out key information that would have been helpful in understanding what happened.

Firstly, this book does not make any of those mistakes, which would earn it high marks from me already (anything over a three is high marks in my book.)  It's a book about the lives of many of history's greatest saints, as well as some relatively-recent, and less-known people who did their best to defend the faith, most of whom have not been canonized.

While I read this book, I admit that I found many of its decisions for who to focus on baffling.  It seems to skip right over a tremendous period of history, simply because divisions in the faith were less frequent then.  I could not comprehend how Hilaire Belloc could merit a whole chapter, while Francis of Assisi gets no significant mention (except once, when talking about the franciscans, and even then, only in passing.)  In hindsight, though, this book was clearly meant to cover a broad spectrum of different kinds of service, which people have rendered to the Catholic Church; not to be an exhaustive tome of the history of hagiography.

The book itself is really rather short.  A book this size could be written about any of the people mentioned herein, or what they taught, so explanations and descriptions are, of course, kept brief.  However, Father Conner seems to touch on the most important points of their lives, even if the brevity he uses prevents us from really getting attached to any of them.  Still, I've seen worse approaches in much thicker history tomes.

No, the reason for the half point down on the Catholic-ometer is because I don't feel that Father Conner goes out of his way to express a strictly Catholic perspective on some of the events surrounding the lives of these great people.  A good example is his frequent use of the phrase "the Reformation."  The term, though in wide use in modern, historical circles, was coined by protestants to attempt to legitimize their break from the church.  Calling it "the Reformation" implies that some "reform" took place, which is completely and utterly false.

My reason for not enjoying it as much as, for example, the Life of Christ has something to do with this sort of thing as well, but also with an overall failure to properly outline certain terms relating to doctrine.  In one particular instance, he refers to "change" as being acceptible, without establishing precisely what kind of change he means (a very dangerous mistake to make in these dark times,) and in another, he quotes an evangelist expressing the difficulties in dealing with a modern crowd, but fails to mention how, or even whether he overcame those difficulties.  This could be discouraging to new Christians, who are looking for an effective means of evangelization.  It certainly isn't constructive.

On the whole, though, my main reason for not enjoying this book more is that it really only gives you half the picture.  Births, lifetimes, sufferings and deaths are all well and good.  Our Blessed Lord talked about those a lot as well, but never without also mentioning the glory that awaited at the end of that long, hard road.  The one thing that might just make all such unfulfilling, torturous, spiritually-debilitating suffering worth it.

Now more than ever, we need to keep reminding ourselves of the prize that God offers, because we don't lack examples of suffering in this world.  No matter what, people will always suffer.  The issue is that we're easily-distracted by the things of this life.  More now than ever, since those distractions are so much louder, shinier and more numerous in the 20th and 21st centuries than they ever have been before.  Keeping God's promises in front of our noses, like a carrot before a horse, is absolutely essential to our continued faith and sanity, to say nothing of our souls, and it's a pity that this book takes that tack so infrequently.

Still, when you get right down to it, it's a very strong Catholic book, and a decent introduction to many saints, and other inspiring figures of the distant past (as well as a few recent champions.)  I didn't get much out of it, but I'm a tough audience.  For any other Catholic who wants to learn about the saints, it'd be a good idea to check it out.