Customer Reviews

Nuts & Bolts: A Practical, How-To Guide for Explaining & Defending the Catholic Faith

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(After the Bible and the Catechism, of course.) This book is an excellent starting point for people seeking to learn more about their Catholic faith. It's short enough to read in its entirety in a few evenings, yet it's chock-full of valuable, orthodox teaching presented in a down-to-earth, average-Joe style. In fact, I think that's just the point: we don't need advanced degrees in theology to understand and explain our Catholic faith.

Tim Staples focuses on the Bible to support Catholic Doctrine. All of the chapters and arguments are in the context of debates between a Catholic and a non-Catholic. Even though Staples portrays the Catholics in the debates as negative and severally critical individuals towards the Catholic Church, his picture is fairly accurate. I am of course speaking from personal opinion. I found the arguments made in "Nuts and Bolts" to be similar, if not identical to those that are always made by fundamentalists and non-denominationals towards Catholics.
A previous reviewer seemed to think that this was very imaginitive and that Staples wasn't speaking from personal experience. However I can tell you that from personal experience that the situations he describes are arguments that most passionate Catholics have with fundamentalists and non-denominationals. Chances are that Staples is speaking from experience.

Truth be told, I am Catholic. I loved this book since it sets up so many real life scenarios of how a Catholic can defend the faith to non-Catholics. Tim has an addictive way of writing. And having heard him lecture I know where this energy comes from - his love for the Catholic Church.

While I can imagine how some would take offense to the "Catholics always win the argument" style of the book I will only respond by saying this...

When I hear anti-Catholic arguments such as silly statements like, "why do you 'worship' Mary" my faith grows stronger since I know the truth. For someone to take offense to this book they may want to make sure they aren't really upset because the arguments Mr. Staples make are difficult, if not impossible, to dispute.

Buy the book and judge for yourself.

Pax Christi

Tim Staples is one of the most well-known "Protestant Becomes Catholic" speakers active today. He has produced many audio series for St. Joseph Communications, and has written other books such as Twisted Scripture, Catholic Anwers To Common Objections, Five Non Negotiables, and Last Call. This 1999 book contains reprints of his columns for 'Envoy' magazine.

Here are some quotations from the book:

"(I)f Jesus was not speaking literally in John 6 ('My flesh is real food; My blood is true drink,' etc.), He would have been a poor teacher. After all, everyone listening to Him speak those words understood that He meant them literally. They responded, 'How can this man give us His flesh to eat?'" (Pg. 33)
"You're about to embark on another topic: the communion of saints... you mention the fact that kneeling before and kissing does not necessarily equal worship. There's an abundance of biblical evidence to support this." (Pg. 58)
"Scripture is clear. Jesus is the One we go to for forgiveness. Where does the Bible say there's a priesthood with the authority to forgive sins? ... read John 20:21-23 to the group ... 'What does this text say to you?' you ask. Andrea speaks up: "I think it says Jesus gave His authority to forgive sins to His disciples, which we read about in Mark 2.'" (Pg. 74)
"James 2:24 CLEARLY tells us that we're justified 'not by faith alone.' Yet, as Father said, some Catholics deny the necessity of good works in the Christian life. This is, no doubt, an example of the influence of the notion of 'justification by faith alone' popular in Protestant ministries.'" (Pg. 109)
"We already said that this grace is ENTIRELY unmerited. My heavens, the Catholic Church baptizes babies! Hom much more can she do to demonstrate this truth. What kind of works could a newborn baby have done to merit anything?" (Pg. 115)

When non Catholics have challenged me with questions about our faith and the Bible, I have not always been able to explain properly. Nuts & Bolts lays things out in black and white and gives you the honest answers. I also listened to Tim Staples speak. Just like his book....dynamic.

The Tim Tebow of Catholic Apologetics... Good read, and coming from a Protestant background myself, I can relate with Tim on a lot of stuff... Tolle Legge Brethren...

Having benefited from the insights of Catholic writers in the past, and wanting always to learn "from the horse's mouth," I bought this book to learn more about Catholic doctrine. Tim Staples has defended fourteen distinctives of the Catholic faith (though a couple of the doctrines examined are those in which conservative Catholics and Protestants would find no disagreement). To do so, and for readability, he has presented fourteen different scenarios in which a Catholic's belief is challenged on a particular point. He then sets out to defend the Catholic position basing his argument predominantly on Scripture. Staples is to be commended for his obvious high view of Scripture and his determination to examine it in context. From time to time, however, his hermeneutic falls short. As I followed his arguments and the scriptures on which he based them, I had to ask myself if it would be possible to reach the conclusions he had without a preconceived notion of what the outcome would be. To be sure, it is difficult for anyone to start at zero, for we don't always recognize our own biases. It is even more difficult for one who is defending a particular point of view that he has long since adopted as his own. On doctrines such as those concerning baptismal regeneration, the use of statues and imagery, praying to the dead, confession to priests, the papacy and other matters, Staple's arguments curve away from consistent exegesis.

While it seems that Mr. Staples has a bone to pick with those he defines as Evangelical Protestants, his understanding of Protestantism is both narrow and stereotypical. One can only assume that he is reacting most strongly to the Pentecostal group with which he was formerly aligned and has as a result thrown all Protestants into that same camp. Time and again, he stages his Protestant detractors as pulling out their King James Version of the Bible. Mr. Staples might be surprised to learn that most Protestants no longer use the King James Version. He has made a similar error in his effort to refute the "faith alone" doctrine held by Protestants. This is understandable since there exists a sizeable community that has mistakenly understood faith as just getting the right idea about Jesus. Therefore Staples insists that salvation comes by faith plus works. However, the core teaching that came out of the Protestant Reformation is that works is the evidence of true faith, not something that comes in addition to it. Staples would do well to examine works such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship or John MacArthur's Gospel According to Jesus, The before proposing that all Evangelical Protestants believe in a cheap grace that has no real effect in their lives.

While I remain convinced that many Protestants and Catholics will one day be singing the same song around the throne of the Lamb that was slain (although many of both camps who have failed to truly embrace a living relationship with Christ will not), I am disappointed to have learned from this book that some doctrines of questionable basis and which serve to divide us are of such importance to the Catholic Church.

I am awed by the theological, doctrinal, linguistic, and scriptural dexterity of Mr. Staples (and others affiliated with Envoy). And perhaps this awe is what makes me doubt the utility of this work.

If apologetics is the frontline of ecumenical engagement, and the "straw men" that serve as examples in this book are indicative of real evangelical challenges, then count me out. My memory is far too shoddy to recall chapter, verse, and number, let alone the variations in ancient Greek and how its gender-sensitive derivations impact our interpretation of Aramaic. Even if I had this book on hand during an apologetics confrontation, I'd spend more time thumbing through it than actually arguing.

Still it's a great read, and provides a converted-Catholic perspective to us poorly catechized (and never scripturized) cradle-Catholics.

So, to Mr. Staples, et al... go get 'em! As I see we're in good hands, I'll just go back to reading St. Augustine. Let me know how the whole ecumenical outreach thing goes...

Tim Staples is a wonderful apologist and a lucid writer! A great book!

Given that the stated purpose of this book is to provide a guide for explaining the Catholic faith, one would think that the author would rely heavily on personal experiences with believers and non-believers to illuminate the subject matter, thus providing a real-world context which would be of greater practical use for the reader. However, what Tim Staples has chosen to do instead is embrace the "straw man fallacy": he has constructed a series of imaginary scenarios and populated them with equally imaginary non-believers whose negative sentiments about Catholicism he is able to handily discredit because those sentiments were manufactured and assigned to those characters by him. Kind of hard to lose an argument when you define your opponent's position yourself, isn't it?

Among the tiresome slurs offered in place of truthfulness or reasoned argument are the implication that those who reject the Catholic faith do so out of a secret personal hatred for the Church rather than any genuine non-belief, and the equating of skeptical criticism of Church teachings with insanity. The arrogant nudge-nudge-wink-wink subtext could not be more blatant: "Those silly old highfalutin' skeptics sure do have some crazy ideas, don't they? Good thing we know better!" (The irony of accusing non-believers of intellectual dishonesty while simultaneously putting words in their mouths is apparently lost on Mr. Staples.)

This facile approach -- which presumes the audience to have the intellectual capacity of gullible children -- mainly serves the purpose of allowing Staples to avoid getting his hands dirty; knocking down straw men from the safety of a fictional world is a lot more convenient (not to mention less risky) than dealing honestly with skeptical inquiry from actual people. The end result of all this disingenuous posturing is that the book comes across as nothing more than fundamentalist propaganda.

If the Catholic Church wants us to believe that it has anything worthwhile to offer, it had better find much more convincing spokesmen than Mr. Staples.