Dr. Frederick Marks, Ph.D., has taken many of the misconceptions of the Catholic faith and explained them in easy-to-understand terms for the average Catholic in the pew. Dr. Marks uses scriptural references and covers a range of topics from the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of Confession, the Virgin birth of Our Lord to contraception and abortion and many others.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pass the Agenda,
By
This review is from: A Brief for Belief: The Case for Catholicism (Paperback)
This Just a correction of previous reviews "obvious slant". First, the calling Raymond Brown and John Mier as "Conservative Catholic Scholars" is ridiculous. The work of Brown in particular is notorius for its liberal modernistic tendecies. For Example, an article about Brown and his co-horts can be found on the website of WWW.EWTN.COM (The Conservative Catholic TV Network) about R. Brown called "Destroying the Bible" Brown and Mier's "science" is built on a stack of assumptions like the hypothetical "Q" source. See the work of the well respected Biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson in "The Real Jesus : The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus" for more on this.
Second, when criticizing Walsh's Philip II as "anti-semitic" , the same can said for the writings of Luther who was notorious in his anti-semitic rhetoric. Yet we do not discount everything he had to say. However, secular historans such as Edward Peters ("INQUISTION") acknowledge the degree of exaggeration of the Inquistion has played in Polemical tracts since the 16th Century. The BBC has recently produced a TV documentary on the gross historical exaggeration in Inquistion histories for Propaganda purposes in the 19th Century. This not to say that wrongs did not occur but impact of the Inquistion was greatly distorted by 19th century historians for highly partisan purposes. Modern, Non-Partisian Historians are sifting the records now available concerning the proceedings of the Inquistion for a more "objective appraisal" One further Point-The previous reviewer criticized the idea that Christianity improved the Roman Empire. Well, for one thing it was the Christian Emperor Constantine who abolished the extreme penalty of crucifixion as a matter of law. However, to cite Gibbon on this point is extremely suspect since Gibbon is well known for his unremitting anti-christian bias and his association with certain "enlightment figures". The issue of Slavery is more complex. The Pope as early 1435 condemned slavery in writting to various Bishops. Catholic clergy such Bartholew de Las Casas were unrelenting in their crusade for Indian Rights. Even Spanish Ecclesistical academics such as Vitoria wrote against applying Aristotle's Natural Slavery Theory in the New World. The actual picture of the church's role on the issue of Slavery is more complicated than the demagoges want to make it.
4 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
No, no, no,
By pnotley@hotmail.com (Edmonton, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Brief for Belief: The Case for Catholicism (Paperback)
I am not a Catholic but if I were one this would still not be a good book. Frederick W. Marks is best known as a diplomatic historian, whose books on Theodore Roosevelt and John Foster Dulles were endlessly adulatory, while his book on FDR was unremittingly critical. These books were unusually tendentious for a professional historian, and that vice has cropped up in his defence of Catholicism. Much of his book is based on Catholic apologies that are six to ten decades old. Many sources are not properly footnoted at all, such as his claim that Pope Clement (d. 98) quoted the Gospel of John or the statements on p. 65 about Jewish connection to usury. Much of his work on the Inquisition is based on William T. Walsh's 65 year old life of Philip II, which has no standing in scholarly circles, and which is anti-Semitic to boot. His comments on how Christianity improved the Roman Empire ignore every historian on the subject, starting with Gibbon, but also G.E.M. De Ste. Croix, Ramsay MacMullen, and Robin Lane Fox. He asserts that Catholic treatment of slaves was especially generous, and ignores those scholars such as David Brion Davis and C.R. Boxer who have undermined that. A more up to date apologist would note that Eamon Duffy and Geoffrey Parker make arguments about the Reformation which would be more useful than Marks dated authorities. A more literate scholar would have used Henry Kamen's book on the Inquisition. He makes apologetic claims that more intelligent Catholics do not make. For example, even conservative Catholic scholars such as Raymond Brown and John P. Meier are well aware that Isaiah 7:14 does not refer to a virgin birth, and that the siblings of Jesus mentioned in the Bible were not his cousins. There is also a certain sloppiness. Jefferson supposedly supports a bill against Sabbath-breakers that was passed nine years before he was born. The reign of the emperor Hadrian is given as 183, when it was 138. Marcion's heresy is predated by thirty years. And Woodrow Wilson, who died in 1924, supposedly announced a national day of prayer for World War Two. At one point Marks argues that all great artists and statesman were moral believers. Confronting the counter-example of Wagner, he claims that he had composed all of his major works after his adulterous liaison with Cosima von Bulow. Dead wrong, since he was clearly working on the Ring cycle while conceiving two children out of wedlock, and "Parsifal" was written after his wedding to Cosima. Elsewhere Marks tries to give the Catholic Church the credit for abolishing slavery in French colonies, ignoring the fact that slavery was abolished by the Convention at the height of the Terror, was reinstated by Napoleon, was allowed by three Catholic monarchs, and was abolished once and for all by the anti-clerical democrats of the Second Republic. And he does not mention that American Bishops criticized Lincoln for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. One could go on. Although Marks' book is a militant defense of Catholicism, he claims as believers people he would denounce as heretics if they were not secular saints; people such as Jefferson (a deist), Lincoln (not a churchgoer, who almost never spoke of Jesus), Einstein (a socialist) and Churchill. He cites as evidence of Peter's primacy, 2 Peter, unaware of the scholarly consensus that this was the last book of the New Testament to be written, five to seven decades after Peter's martyrdom. He argues, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, that Peter was widowed when he met Jesus, and ignores 1 Corinthians 9:5 where Paul says Peter brought his wife along with him during his travels. He tries to find a biblical basis for the Catholic condemnation of birth control by arguing that all New Testament objections to sorcery are to contraception. This clearly does not follow. It is one thing to object to contraceptive medicines as sorcery, but the reverse does not follow. And how are condoms sorcery? He gives the examples of Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo as examples of celibacy, apparently unaware that both men were probably homosexual. Confronting Isaiah 7:14 he argues that the Greek translation is better than the Hebrew original. He praises the supposedly peaceful heritage Catholicism has given Latin America. He bases this on the supposedly merciful 1954 coup in Guatamela, and does not mention the tens of thousands slaughtered by its ostensibly Catholic elite over the next few decades. The Sadducees are described as "theologically liberal" when clearly they were theologically conservative in opposing such innovations as a resurrection and the scriptures after the Torah. All, in all, this is not a very reliable book.
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