Why I Am a Catholic (1932) is a collection of essays by Hilaire Belloc, Archbishop Alban Goodier, Ronald Knox, C.C. Martindale and novelist Sheila Kaye-Smith. Their collective defense of the faith is well worth studying. Another reason for studying Belloc and friends is that much has happened in the world to make us wonder how the Church has lasted two thousand years and still offers us a safe and sane path out of an increasingly unsafe and insane age.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953)
Belloc begins by admitting frankly that the first reason he is a Catholic is that he was born a Catholic. This, of course, is not a decisive reason for being a Catholic, any more than it would be a decisive reason to be an adult atheist who since childhood has learned to avoid religion like the plague. So, Belloc asserts, the real questions to be answered are the adult questions: what we are, why we should exist, how we should exist, and where we are going. When all other distractions are put aside, these are the fundamental and inescapable questions that every human being must address sooner or later; the questions that make all of us, whether we like it or not, philosophers of one school or another.