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U p F r o n t
By Karl Keating
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 3
 March 1993 
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Once I came across a deacon who explained that he didn't read books written before Vatican II. I suppose his homilies established that beyond doubt. I had to empathize with the people who had to listen to him Sunday mornings. After all, what is less useful than a speaker with no feel for the day before yesterday?
A far better attitude was shown by Cardinal James Gibbons (1834-1921), certainly one of the brightest ecclesiastics in American history. He claimed that in his whole life he had read only one hundred books, but they were the world's best books, and he read them over and over again. He wasn't afraid of old books, because he knew that in them lay wisdom and comfort and plain sense.
If that's true of old books, it's also true of old booklets. From time to time we republish in these pages long-forgotten booklets. Their original publication may predate most of our readers, but we think they still speak to us, over the decades, with power and clarity.
In this issue we reprint the first half of a booklet issued for the Catholic Evidence Guild, a society of laymen who stood on street corners and explained and defended the faith. Some of the terms may seem old-fashioned, and the deference accorded to priests as apologists might strike some as quaint (apologetics is almost exclusively a lay task today), but we think you will find in this booklet much to rejoice in.
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