Al Kresta - Dangers to the Faith: Recognizing Catholicism’s 21st-Century Opponents

Endorsements for Dangers to the Faith

The great need today is to love our enemies into the saving power of Jesus Christ. How can we do that unless we know who they are? Many thanks to Al Kresta for showing us the field of our love with Dangers to the Faith. He treats mainly of ideas, but it is people who hold these ideas. Some of these may even have taken a small root in our own hearts. Let us allow Christs love to root them out and then help us be a sign of salvation to our whole world.

Bishop Earl Boyea, Diocese of Lansing, Michigan

Al Kresta is like a powerful satellite for Catholics in this country. He picks up the signals of cultural trends and he beams us the message we need to take home. Hes open-minded yet discriminating, culturally fluent yet profoundly Catholic. This book is a useful tool for those who are called to the New Evangelization and that means all of us.

Scott Hahn, Father Michael Scanlan Chair of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at Franciscan University of Steubenville

In this primer on the intellectual potholes in our increasingly bizarre culture, Al Kresta helpfully scouts some of the roughest terrain on which the New Evangelization must contend for the soul of the West. Fasten your seat belt for a bumpy but essential ride through the wastelands.

George Weigel, author of Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21st-Century Church

Al Kresta has saved you about 10,000 hours of study and research with this book. Read it. It is incredibly informative and will awaken you to the work we have to do if we are to awaken the people of our times to the genius of Catholicism.

Matthew Kelly, founder of DynamicCatholic.com and author of Rediscover Catholicism

As intense as his research is in detailing the worldview of those who mean the Church harm, Al Kresta never forgets that we are called by Christ to love them, pray for them, and even give our lives in proclaiming the truth to them. That may be the most powerful lesson of this wonderful book.

Matthew Bunson, author of Pope Francis and general editor of the Catholic Almanac

Al Krestas new book is studded with delightful sections on Oprah, Carl Sagan, evolutionists, reincarnationists, and other popular gurus. It offers a quick tour through todays pretenders to spiritual superiority over Jesus Christ. An informal, cheerful guide to our enemies, by a warrior who takes our age as a wonderful time to be alive.

Michael Novak, former George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute

Al Kresta has answered How do we stand up against the constant attacks on Catholicism? brilliantly in Dangers to the Faith. This book should be right next to your Bible and Catechism, as it helps us clearly identify those challenges and attacks and then lays out clear, concise, and loving responses for a world so desperately in need of Jesus and the teachings of His Church.

Teresa Tomeo, best-selling Catholic author and syndicated talk show host

Dangers to the Faith is for our century what Chestertons Heretics and Bellocs Great Heresies were for the last century. It is a damning indictment and demonstrative demolition of the major errors of our age. Al Kresta shows us whats wrong with the world and that the Catholic Church is the only thing that can put it right.

Joseph Pearce, literary biographer and writer-in-residence at Thomas More College

This is an extremely interesting book compelling, thoughtful, insightful, respectful, charitable, measured, bold, and unafraid. Al Kresta is as fearless as he is comprehensive, covering everything from Islam to New Age, from reincarnation to relativism to consumerism, from evolution to the Catholic Churchs misunderstood yet seamless integration of faith and reason. Through it all, Al Kresta remains well, orthodox. When I tune in to Als show on the radio, Im pleased to occasionally catch a Best of Kresta. Well, this book may be the ultimate Best of Kresta.

Paul Kengor, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science at Grove City College

DANGERS TO THE FAITH

Recognizing Catholicisms 21st-Century Opponents

Al Kresta

Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division
Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.
Huntington, Indiana 46750

Nihil Obstat
Msgr. Michael Heintz, Ph.D.
Censor Librorum

Imprimatur
Kevin C. Rhoades
Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend
January 21, 2013

The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that a book is free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions, or statements expressed.

Unless otherwise stated, Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Second Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (RSV), copyright 1965, 1966, and 2006 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) for the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Quotations from papal statements, Vatican II, and other Vatican documents are copyrighted, 2013, Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

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Copyright 2013 by Al Kresta. Published 2013.

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All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts for critical reviews, no part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without permission in writing from the publisher. Contact: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., 200 Noll Plaza, Huntington, IN 46750; 1-800-348-2440; .

ISBN: 978-1-59276-725-0 (Inventory No. T1046)
eISBN: 978-1-61278-325-3
LCCN: 2013933894

Cover design: Rebecca J. Heaston
Cover art: Shutterstock
Interior design: Sherri L. Hoffman

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

This book is dedicated to Sally Morris Kresta, my beloved partner in mission for 36 years. Her eager expectation, her innumerable suggestions, and, finally, her graceful application of pressure to get my thoughts straight, my words out, and the book done testify to her immense worth, which extends far beyond the great pleasure of her company.

May this book afford her a flash of the light and joy with which she has blessed our home, her domestic church. Through her brood Alexis Lynne, Nicholas Joseph, James Logan, Albert Evan, and David Sterling, their wonderfully game and enjoyable spouses and offspring may we continue to glimpse Christs Kingdom in some small, mustard seed-like way.

At any given moment, there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas, which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is not done. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, whether in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.