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One can look at this as a Catholicism 101 and it is best read this way. Trent's purpose is to evangelize, hoping to convert but willing to settle on creating tolerance for the Catholic faith (which, honestly, is a first step to conversion).

For the reader, it gives a broad view of Catholic faith, beliefs and practices. This book, by its apologetic nature, is going to present the basics in as good a light as possible. To Trent's credit, he does not treat the reader like an idiot and mostly succeeds in good faith (guffaw) engagement.

So if you are looking for a readable and short introductory overview of Catholicism, this wouldn't be a bad choice.

Part 3 and part 4 deal with some basic mechanics of Catholic belief and organization. It is in part 4 Trent addresses the "first controversial Catholic topic", in addressing the pedophile priest scandal.

The final part will deal with the other basic controversial Catholic beliefs.

Part 2: Jesus and the Bible.

As expected, the book continues to funnel down from addressing general atheist/deist questions that may be asked of Catholicism and through the course of this part, narrows it down to questions that may be asked by a Trinitarian Christian. First, Trent tries to go from the general argument for a God to the argument that Jesus is God incarnated into man. These arguments are weak sauce. Next, he gets more specific and defends a Trinitarian view of God. This is much better (provided you ignore the previous step of proving the divinity of Jesus) After that, he goes into why he believes in the Bible but not in Sola Scriptura, which will flow nicely into the next part about the "whys of Catholic church structure"

Part 1: Truth and God Pretty much opens up with addressing questions that might be brought up by an atheist or general dontgiveafuck person. Structured to be built upon to funnel from the general "there is God and Truth" to specific claims like "God is the Catholic God" further down the book.

Can't really blame him for my refusal to read him, though. Had a bad experience with a Russian Orthodox constantly invoking him instead of engaging in actual discussion.

But those were almost certainly from Chesterton's apologetic works and this was fiction! Fun detective stories of theft and murder!

All the stories were mostly enjoyable and minimal blackface and n-wording were to be found. Aside from that, Chesterton does seem to try a bit hard to be witty at times and it comes off as...forced? For a specific audience that doesn't think much about atheists, feminists, Scottish Presbyterians and the French? Like if you don't like one of those, you'll laugh when he does his "Calvinists, amirite?" bit and probably slap your knee to help control your hooting and hollering, ya uncultured plebian! Why don't you stick with your fart jokes instead of lying to yourself? You aren't fooling anybody, you couldn't recognize wit even if Oscar Wilde slapped you in the face with his giant- cough But I digress!

When it is good, the stories are very entertaining, and if nothing else, folks should read At the Sign of the Broken Sword which is legitimately a masterful piece of literature.

The Sign of the Broken Sword might be my favorite story in this collection. One more before it's official!

Big surprise, I loved this book. It was an entertaining yarn with humor and poignancy, insight and farce, accessible mystery and esoteric theology!

It is interesting that I read it now instead of years ago when I bought it. In that time between purchase and reading, I have read other works that prepared me for this!

Some books truly are better further along in one's reading career