This book is one of the best I’ve read all year, and maybe longer. I can already tell that it’s one I’ll come back to, time and again–it’s that good. The author, a cradle fundamentalist, converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult, and wrote a book about it entitled Evangelical is Not Enough. Ten years later, he wrote this book, an extended meditation on what it means to be a Christian of the Catholic variety.

Any religion has three components: a moral code, a set of beliefs, and the day-to-day practices. Howard skips over the moral code, which Catholics and other Christians largely agree about it; and he discusses doctrine only to the extent that Catholics and other Christians disagree about it. By far the largest chunk of the book is about the day-to-day Catholic practices that give serious non-Catholics the heebie-jeebies: praying with the saints, for example, but most especially and beautifully the Sacrifice of the Mass. He goes into great and beautiful detail about the Mass, and what it means, and why we Catholics do what we do.

This is not a dry, technical book, I hasten to add. What this is, really, is a love-letter to the Roman Catholic Church, and to Christ its Head, in thanksgiving for all of His many and great blessings. I learned a lot from it, not so much in terms of specific facts, but in terms of how everything in Catholic practice works together. He didn’t just show me the landmarks; he revealed all of the terrain between them.

If you’re a Catholic, and you want to get more out of your faith, I’d suggest reading this book; and if you’re a Protestant who’s worried that his Catholic friends might not be saved, I’d definitely suggest reading this book. And if you’re no kind of Christian at all, you might find it interesting to see what all the noise is about. Highly recommended.