This story comes down from The Catholic News Service:
Bishop Edward K. Braxton of Belleville, Ill., speaking to Catholic educators in Atlanta April 18, cited four areas where a new apologetics is needed: to counter what he called "the new atheism"; to use during times of "human suffering and the search for meaning"; to understand "the rapid growth of Islam and the uniqueness of Christianity"; and to realize "the priority of Scripture and tradition."
Apologetics has always been one of my favorite ways of learning the Catholic faith and the Christian faith. CS Lewis' masterpiece Mere Christianity is the first book I ever read that actually convinced me of the intellectual soundness of Christianity, followed by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli's Handbook of Christian Apologetics. It is in the recognizing the need to defend the faith that we are really forced to closely examine precisely what the faith teaches.
This is why it makes me glad to see leaders of the Church like Bishop Braxton and the US Bishops' Catholic Communication Campaign encouraging educators to verse themselves not just in what the Church teaches but in why she teaches it, and not just in what the truth is but in precisely how to fight against all the lies, DVC for example, that challenge the truth.
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