Fr. James Schall, S.J., has been gracing the world with his erudition for fifty years. In his latest book, Catholicism and Intelligence for Emmaus Road’s Living Faith Series, we are presented with articles from various periodicals, mainly from the last five years. Just shy of ninety years of age, he shows that he is still among the foremost intellectuals in the Catholic world (and I probably should drop that qualifier).

The two premises the book is based on are stated by the author in the introduction: “what the faith holds is intrinsically intelligible even if not always understood by given persons” and “intelligence has its own structure or form rooted in the principle of contradiction...understandings that maintain that everything is true even if contradictory cannot stand.” (xviii)

Fr. Schall then spends the rest of the book vividly explicating these premises. The reader can hone in on chapters with enticing titles such as “Why Do I Exist?,” “On What Replaces Christianity,” “Ongoing Catholic Intelligence,”(worth the price of the book itself) and “Truth Comes by Conflict.” Or one can read it straight through as I did. In any case, be prepared to receive piercing insights and quotable turns of phrase. While, at times I found the arguments not entirely convincing or I was challenged to fully grasp certain concepts, I found much to commend this work (he describes his own book aptly with this line in the appendix: “{R]eading any book, even a good book, can be both a chore and a pleasure, probably something of both.” [161]). I will share just a few quotes (one per chapter – a nearly impossible task of selecting) of the several pages of references I jotted down while reading. This will give you some flavor of the work’s offerings.

• “The purpose of Catholicism is not to confuse but to enlighten us so that we can live as we ought to.” (xxi)

• “’Why do I exist?’...to know all that is...[and] to be given eternal life.” (15)

• “[I]nstead of correcting himself so that he returns to the reason in things as the criterion or measure of his mind, the modern atheist or relativist thinks the world itself out of existence. It is too much a threat to the way he wants to live.” (26)

• “...Catholicism is nothing if it is not a personal encounter with Christ.” (46)

• “Catholicism claims to be true but only on the basis of evidence, reason, and dependable testimony...Catholicism almost alone defends reason that is based on the integrity of the mind related to what is.” (50)

• “Perhaps the central idea that replaces Christianity is the idea that man can save himself, or better, that he needs no savior other than himself to be what he is.” (68)

• “All truth has the same origin, no matter what its particular status or avenue to our minds.” (91)

• “What seems to be lacking is a standard, be it of reason or natural law, whereby the text and tradition of violence that are found in Muslim practice can be judged as objectively wrong.” (107)

• “The phrase ‘Judge not lest you be judged,’ was not designed to reduce us to complete silence or idiocy. If we made no effort to judge the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, we would live in a world in which everything is justified, good or evil.” (113)

• “Sustainability, in effect, is an alternative to lost transcendence. It is what happens when suddenly no future but the present one exists.” (134)

• “This book is written with a certain confidence both in reason and revelation. It is not merely that they belong together in a coherent relationship but that their rigid separation unbalances and corrupts both not merely in logic but in the way we live.” (148)

I found myself nodding in approval often and pondering certain insights that I had not before considered. Even the skeptic, at the very least, will be doing the latter.

A final note: the appendix is valuable in that the author provides two short lists of books (and a number of honorable mentions) in which can be found “Catholic intelligence in [a] meaningful form” (160). The stressful part: Where to begin reading?! (We would do well to start with Saint John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio – and it’s not even on the lists although it is clearly influential in the author’s thinking here.)

Undoubtedly, some will believe that having “Catholicism” and “Intelligence” in the same sentence is oxymoronic. The life’s work of Fr. Schall, and in particular the insights in this volume, gives lie to that notion.

In a world that seems to have turned upside down, this addition to your library will provide a safe harbor from the capsized ship of today’s culture. ( )