Patrick Madrid

This collection of testimonies by people who've found new life in the Catholic Church is one of the most potent weapons for the Faith ever crafted! These authors don't just tell their stories they also give you an insider's view of the fatal weaknesses in the creeds and belief systems that beckon unwary Catholics every day.

Growing up Catholic during a time of great social and theological upheaval and transition, a time in which countless Catholics abandoned their religion in search of something else, Patrick Madrid learned a great deal about why people leave Catholicism and why others stay. This experience helped him gain many insights into what it is about the Catholic Church that some people reject, as well as those things that others treasure.

Drawing upon Madrid's personal experiences, Why Be Catholic? show more offers a deeply personal, fact-based, rationale for why everyone should be Catholic or at least consider the Catholic Church in a new light. show less

The first volume in the Surprised By Truth series seemed pretty repetitious to me - nearly everyone was a white male protestant and their thinking was awfully similar. This one has more variety, which is important to me, since I was never a white male protestant in my life.

I don't think this book was as good as the first Suprised By Truth although I did enjoy reading most of the conversion accounts. The subtitle explains the essays, but I wish the writers had spent more time explaining their thought processes during conversion rather than going through Bible verse after Bible verse. From the account of a Jewish convert: "My family members whose attachment to the Jewish Faith was primarily cultural were the most distressed by my conversion....Interestingly, show more those family members with a deep Jewish faith knew that God does change lives, and they understood that I had to follow God's call obediently...One of my cousins, a serious Orthodox Jew...asked, 'you've come much closer to God, haven't you...Good. Being Close to God is the most important thing.'" show less