If you're a reader who likes to be challenged by a book, bullied even, if you like to laugh out loud at the boldness of expression on every page or snap your fingers and exclaim, "That's exactly what I've thought all along, or at least meant to!" If a book makes you want to grab a friend, or even a stranger and hold him fast while you read a passage, then I implore you to treat yourself to a copy of A Crisis of Saints.

The author explains the title in the Preface, and qualifies his explanation in the closing sentence. But the firework display in between defies a title. It's a sort of compendium of both the Summas, John Chrysostom, Ambrose Bierce, Savonarola and Dorothy Parker, but mostly of Newman and Chesterton. He devotes two of the seven chapters in this book to these giants and in doing shows himself a worthy bearer of the flame.

Each chapter has its own target and consists of series of short essays. The central themes are God, the Church and the liturgy. The tools are humour, orthodox learning and delicious, readable prose. The enemies are modernism, willful ignorance and malice born of smiling materialism.

If he convinces those who have been thinking along the lines he is attacking, they have a lot of solid meat here to chew on. Those who already concur with his thought, however, are not simply listening to a sermon for the converted. They are presented with a banquet of wit and erudition that will still be a wonder on the second, (keep it in the bathroom), tenth or umpteenth reading, for it is the sort of feast that stimulates but doesn't satiate.

I'm rearranging my cosmic dinner list. Machiavelli, the dear, sweet, misunderstood fellow, will have to step down. I need the place for George William Rutler.

© Leo Madigan - Leo Madigan Homepage

To buy this book follow these links

A Crisis of Saints $12.95, US

A Crisis of Saints - £9.95 - UK and Europe

Theotokos Catholic Books - Book Reviews Section - www.theotokos.org.uk