Catholic-ometer: 4.5 of 5
Enjoyability: 5 of 5
I once again find myself forced to make a hard choice. Whenever I see a problem with faithfulness to the church, or with inadequately explaining the church's teachings, I have a tendency to explain it to death; a practice that I intend to continue, because these things need to be clarified by someone. The question really winds up being "is this serious enough to merit a whole star down?"
In this case, the answer is "probably not; no." Father Barron has put together a most impressive series of homily transcripts, which actually amazed me by the depth of their understanding, and their clarity of teaching. That, by itself, becomes slightly less surprising when you learn that, like myself, Father Barron is something of a Thomist, and treasures the writings of Thomas Aquinas.
I was very impressed by several points in this book. In particular, he amazed me with the clear messages that he drew from Nehemiah, his defense of the real presence, and his descriptions of the theological dilemmas of the recent past and how they were solved; particularly the ones relating to glory; who gets it and why. I can also say with absolute confidence that I have never in my life heard anyone sufficiently describe the notion of catholic "worship" in the normal work of a lawyer, a doctor, etc, until Father Barron did it. In nearly every objective sense, this book is truly excellent.
I have only one issue to bring against it. More than once, as an example of the good work done by holy men and women, Father Barron mentions Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, and the organization which they founded; the Catholic Worker Movement.
I don't know nearly as much about Dorothy Day as I would like to, but Peter Maurin held a radical belief, which he implemented into the Worker Movement; he believed that evildoing or immorality on the part of a government official removed their God-given authority to govern their citizens, and that therefore, it was perfectly acceptable for people to ignore the rules of a corrupt government and form their own communes, making up their own rules for social collaboration as they went along. Today, we call this by the popularized name of "liberation theology," but perhaps it would be easier to understand if I just sum it up by saying that it's basically Marxism with a cross on top.
The Worker Movement has a number of other problems as well, but I target its involvement in liberation theology because that's a belief that has been specifically condemned by at least the last two popes.
Father Barron's understanding of Catholic theology is truly amazing, and for the most part, I was astonished by the quality of his book; almost to the point of refusing to believe any ill of him. For the moment, therefore, I will simply assume that this one aspect of the book was probably just imperfectly-researched, and I'll give it the best score I can.
Understanding the church's position on social teaching isn't really so difficult. It's all about loving God first, then our neighbor second. We love them by doing what's best for them; putting them first and ourselves afterwards. However, let's not deny that many agencies claiming to be Catholic subsist only by lying about church teaching; claiming that the vatican never specifically condemned communism, socialism, marxism, liberation theology and so forth. This is a technical tidbit of the faith that anyone could be forgiven for overlooking, since it's not out there in the culture like it once was, but that doesn't negate church teaching. Until further evidence comes up, this is all I'll say for now.
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