Why I Am Catholic (And You Should Be Too) by Brandon Vogt, Ave Maria Press, £16.99
Eight years ago, Brandon Vogt was “a young man with an apparently well-functioning brain”. But then he became a Catholic. Friends and family were, and remain, profoundly confused: anything but Catholic, surely?
These days Vogt works for his mentor Bishop Robert Barron’s Word On Fire ministries. Although it does include a moving account of his first Confession, his book is not a conversion memoir. Instead, it is an appeal for others to think hard about what the Church has to offer, an appeal structured around the three great transcendentals. Catholicism, Vogt argues, is true, good and beautiful. These are the things that ultimately drew him in. They are three paths that “all converge at the door of the Catholic Church”.
His book is also an appeal to “join the rebellion”. Choosing to be Catholic is provocative. Vogt points out, probably rightly, that one might announce that one was exploring almost any other major religion or sect and be confident of a positive or at least polite response. Not so with Catholicism.
Vogt, therefore, like Rod Dreher of The Benedict Option, positions traditional Christianity as the one true counter-culture of our time, something it’s becoming harder and harder to deny. He is aiming at a US audience, but this shouldn’t get in the way of non-Americans with an open mind appreciating what Vogt has to say.
Why I Am Catholic romps through the arguments for believing with a rapid accumulation of “key takeaways”. This helps to make the book an easy and compelling read. The author brings a tone of peppy encouragement to his serious and intelligent passion for the truth. Every now and then, he lays it on the line with aplomb: “The Church is not an evil force out to condemn the world. It is a beacon of mercy, offering pardon and peace to the worst failures among us.” To many existing Catholics, his book will feel like a welcome shot in the arm.
However, in places, Vogt does end up skimming across pretty deep waters. Transubstantiation, a defining feature of Catholicism and surely one of the bigger stumbling blocks to acceptance of the faith, is done and dusted in the space of a page.
Equally, he doesn’t really address the problem of pain, or indeed the specific problem of the pain caused by clerical child abuse – two other important obstacles, one would have thought, on the road to belief in general and Catholicism in particular. And the accessible style occasionally leads to errors of thought: did past cultures “happily” embrace human sacrifice or ethnic genocide?
Not all of his analogies succeed, either, but several do. His comparison between the Bible and the American constitution, for instance, sticks in the mind – both required new authorities that would interpret and apply them – as does his use of Isaiah (and basketball coaching) to explain the potential of Christianity and humanism to complement one another. The section refuting sola scriptura is one of the strongest, reflecting perhaps the journey Vogt had to make from his Protestant background.
Chesterton is clearly a source of continuous inspiration. He makes his first appearance on page four (“The difficulty of explaining why I am a Catholic is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true”) and is never far away thenceforth. He is joined at various stages by John Henry Newman, CS Lewis and even James Joyce.
Socrates is invoked too. Like the philosopher, we should assess the evidence and follow wherever it leads, even to conclusions that are unpopular or uncomfortable. That is what truth demands and what the author demanded of himself.
Just as important as the writers and philosophers, however, for their demonstration of heroic charity, are the saints. And so there are portraits of St Lawrence, the man who defied the Emperor Valerian; St Damian, who poured his life out in service to lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai; and Mother Teresa.
Vogt does not expect, I think, that anyone will finish his book, drop everything and convert. The purpose is to stimulate interest and then begin guiding this interest towards the ultimate goal. He has done a good job and should meet with some success.
I wonder, though, whether most non-believers will still need, aside from argument, apologetics and persuasion, some tangible encounter with the faith to make the first breach in their scepticism, to trigger a change of mind and heart – an encounter with Catholic art or liturgy, perhaps, or directly witnessing an act of charity, large or small, inspired by the Church.
One thinks again of Rod Dreher and his life-changing visit to Chartres Cathedral. I wonder whether anything in this vein occurred to Vogt. Perhaps the conversion memoir is still to come.
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