I’ve been reading Francis de Sales’ The Catholic Controversy for some time now. Actually, I found it so interesting that I immediately started re-reading it. What a cool book!

Francis de Sales was a young priest, who at the age of 27 – only about a year after his ordination – took on a daunting mission: to re-evangelize the Chablais region of France that had fully converted to Calvinism. He came to discover that the people there did not want to hear him preach, so he began writing pamphlets or tracts, which he posted on walls and slipped under doors. The technique worked. After four years, almost the entire region of 72,000 people had returned to the Catholic Church.

The tracts have been collected in a single volume and titled The Catholic Controversy. TAN Books has republished the 1886 translation. I highly recommend it, whether you are a Catholic wanting to learn more about your faith or a Protestant trying to understand why the Catholic Church didn’t go along with the so-called “reforms” of the 16th century.

I think that if I’d read this book years ago, I would have likely converted in my teens rather than in my late thirties.

Today is known as Reformation Day among Lutherans because October 31, 1517 was the date Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses — a date that historians consider to be the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

When I was a Lutheran (from my early 20s until my late 30s), I read the Augsburg Confession, which is the primary confession of faith for Lutherans, as well as the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, written in response to Catholic objections to the Augsburg Confession. I must admit that in reading these two documents, I did not understand why the Catholic Church objected to them. I had to deduce what the Catholic position was through the arguments made in the Apology.

Fortunately, I eventually was able to find the “missing link” — the Catholic rebuttal to the Augsburg Confession which prompted the writing of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. This document is known as The Roman Confutation against the Augsburg Confession and is available from the Lutheran Project Wittenberg. If you are curious why the Church said “No” to many of the Lutheran positions back in the 16th Century, I encourage you to read this document (available as a free PDF). It’s only 24 pages, and it proved to be a powerful influence on me becoming a Catholic. If you’d like to study it alongside the Lutheran documents, both the Augsburg Confession and the Apology are part of the Book of Concord, also available as a free PDF online.

Even though I attended the Atlanta Eucharistic Congress this past June, I did not get the chance to hear Matthew Kelly speak. It’s been a few months, but I finally picked up a one of his books and now I wish I would have heard his presentation.

I’m about 70 pages into his book Rediscovering Catholicism which was published in 2002. I think it’s fantastic! It’s one of those books that if I tried to highlight my favorite passages, about 80 percent of the text would be soaked in yellow ink. Here’s just one:

The authentic life begins with the simple but profound desire to play the part God has designed for us in human history. The unfathomable adventure of salvation begins when we stop asking, “What’s in it for me?” and turn humbly to God in our hearts and ask, How may I serve? What work do you wish for me to do with my life? What is your will for my life?

Our modern times have revolted violently against the idea of “God’s will.” Desperate to maintain the illusion of being in control of their lives, many modern Christians have either turned their backs on God, or created a new spiritual rhetoric that allows them to determine selectively God’s will for their lives. And yet, it is the very surrendering of our own will to God’s designs that characterizes the whole Christian struggle. The interior life is primarily concerned with this single dynamic of turning our individual will over to God.

God calls each of us to live an authentic life. He has designed this life to perfectly integrate our legitimate needs, our deepest desires, and our unique talents. The more intimately and harmoniously these three are related, the more you become truly yourself.

God doesn’t call you to live an authentic life so he can stifle or control you. He calls you to live an authentic life so that, from an infinite number of possibilities, you can become the-best-version-of-yourself. By calling you to live an authentic life, God is saying, “Be all you can be.” (pp. 57-58)

This book is deep and thought provoking, but written in a style that is inviting and allows for a quick read. Highly recommend!