Confessions of a Catholic Street Evangelist by Fred Marks is just that. It is a book conveying practical suggestions to Catholics on how to present their faith to non-Catholics in the most charitable and effective way. Fred Marks, who has a PH.D in history and has spent decades as a street evangelist, mostly in Manhattan, speaks from a wealth of experience. This makes his book both interesting and useful.
His suggestions, however, are meant for every Catholic, not only for the very few who are called to street preaching, as were many Catholic intellectuals, especially in the Catholic Evidence Guild, which is the organization to which Fred Marks belongs. Perhaps Frank Sheed is the best-known of these Catholics who gave much of their time to speaking for the Catholic Evidence Guild.
The greatest strong point of the book is the way it combines sincere charity with absolute fidelity to Catholic doctrine, and even, if I may use the word, with traditional rigor. The charity is evident in the politeness, respect, and patience that characterize Fred Marks’s account of his interactions over the years with non-Catholics who expressed an interest. The unfashionable rigor is directed toward Catholics themselves, especially when he writes about fraternal correction and the importance of avoiding bad company. He bases this on incontrovertible Biblical injunctions to correct a sinner with charity, but if he refuses to listen to shun him, to exclude him from the company of Christians. This imperative occurs over and over in the Letters of St. Paul and in the earliest writers of the Church. As Fred Marks remarks, the early Church was not one that expected good to overcome evil through association.
The entire book is very practical, but at the same time based heavily on the Bible, both the Old and the New Testaments.
There are also sections on conveying the Catholic faith within the Catholic community, by parents and by priests, and these sections are excellent also and based on real experience.
The book is very readable precisely because it is concrete and logical. His insights are based on the experience of decades. It is religious material that deals in vague comfortable generalities, all too frequent in our age, that is boring.
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Le recensioni migliori da altri paesi
P. Haywood
Readable, Practical, Sound
Recensito negli Stati Uniti il 10 febbraio 2017