Gratitude

is under discussion over at the National Catholic Register.

To that, I want to add my gratitude for the work of Karl Keating and Catholic Answers.  He is really and truly the Patriarch of the Renaissance of Apologetics in the US (and, to be honest, the world) in the years after Vatican II when that whole project went into the doldrums as the Church tried to figure out the New Normal.  As the story goes, he left Mass one morning to find the cars in the parking lot leafletted with anti-Catholic rubbish and, instead of doing nothing, started writing replies to that rubbish in a little newsletter that became This Rock.  This was sometime in the 80s.  Then he founded Catholic Answers and started the arduous task of replying to the great fountain of anti-Catholic rubbish coming from multiple sectors of American culture.  Fundamentalism, the New Age, atheism, Radical Traddery, Scientism, you name it: Karl Keating was there to give his measured, thoughtful replies.  His Catholicism and Fundmentalism was helpful to me on my way into the Church back in the late 80s.  And he has been a huge help to millions of other souls too.

CA calls itself, rightly, the largest evangelization and apologetics organization in North America, but this is not quite accurate.  The truth is, it’s the largest in the world.  I hear constantly from people in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia who use and look to Catholic Answers materials for their own work.  Karl’s work has already had and will continue to have eternal consequences for the good of countless souls, including mine, and I will be forever grateful to him and the good folks at Catholic Answers for choosing to serve Christ so faithfully.