Catholic Room

This book helped bring me into the Church, April 19, 2000

By	Tim Drake "Author and Journalist" (Saint Joseph, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This book was sitting in the Eucharistic Adoration Chapel at the Catholic Church I was attending with my wife. I was Lutheran at the time, but desiring more time in prayer I signed up for an hour each Sunday night to spend in prayer.

Each week I would read a chapter in this eye-opening book. The book, coupled with who it was that I was kneeling before in the Blessed Sacrament brought me to the Truth so beautifully expressed in the Catholic faith.

Countless others have similar stories to tell. I challenge anyone to confront the Truth expressed in this book.

It features chapters by well known converts Steve Wood, of the Family Life Center and St. Joseph's Covenant Keepers, Marcus Grodi of the Coming Home Network, noted author, professor and apologist Paul Thigpen, apologist James Akin, Tim Staples, and several others. They give moving personal testimonies of finding the historical and Biblical evidence for Christ and His Church. It's not a book you will forget.

For those who have already read the book a sequel is on its way yet this year (2000).

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Come On In - the Water's Fine!, June 10, 2003

This is the first in the series and caused a sensation (for a Roman Catholic book) when published. The fact that so many moving to Rome cite Surprised by Truth provides some evidence of Patrick Madrid's astuteness in selecting testimonials - a point further confirmed by reading it. The essays blend together remarkably well and Madrid adroitly avoids the danger of stifling uniformity by drawing upon those who approached Rome from across the ecclesial spectrum. Another plus in this regard is an intermingling of those who were initially drawn by different concerns so the approach is not completely one-dimensional.

Protestants often criticize the essays as insufficient to prove the Roman case and highly emotional in character. Both these claims are quite true but this is not the detriment the critics make it to be. One could hardly expect a new convert to prove within twenty pages what the greatest theologians have employed years and many volumes to attempt. As for the emotional content, conversions always have an emotional aspect to them and a presentation that attempts to ignore this is built upon dishonesty. The essays contained here are more or less emotional depending upon the makeup of the individual, the amount of "surprise" experienced, and the sense of betrayal felt by discovering what you had been told what was of the Apostles is actually of recent origin. A positive sign by these converts is despite the emotional upheaval, they display no evidence of lasting anger at their former ecclesial homes.

The one flaw in this book is shared by the genre - shallowness. New converts are not always the best ones to express the riches of the faith. Even if they have done much prior study, reading about the grace of God and receiving the grace of God are not equivalent experiences. While the "let's have the new guy go up and give his testimony" approach may suffice in the superficial environs of modern Evangelicalism, those more mature in their faith are probably better witnesses in richer traditions.

Any expectations of an exhaustive defense for Roman Catholic beliefs in a book like this are remarkably wrongheaded. Madrid planned neither a work of systematic theology nor a catechism. Collections like this are usually read by those already on their way but unsure if things are quite what they seem. The message given is not "this is all you need to see we are right" but "come on in - the water's fine". Given that limitation, Surprised by Truth can only be viewed as a rousing success.

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