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Summary: A useful introduction to the Catholic expression of Christianity.

As I continue on my project of reading about Catholicism, I stumbled on a book that is a companion to a documentary series.  I did not watch the documentary, but I picked up the book because the point of the documentary and companion book was to explain Catholicism to those that are inside and outside the church.

My first thought is that this is not about Catholicism, it is about Christianity. But the author of the book and documentary is not primarily explaining Catholicism, as opposed to Protestantism or Orthodoxy, but explaining Catholicism as an expression of Christianity.  So parts of this book read more like a basic systematic theology.  Barron is explaining who God is, why we worship him, the basics of the Trinity, the revelation of God, basic teachings of Jesus, end times, heaven, hell, purgatory, etc.

There were three areas that I found particularly helpful. Most helpful is Barron’s discussion of the church. He takes three different looks at it. One is a discussion of St Peter and Paul as exemplary of the tension between the organizational care of the church and the outreaching mission of the church.  Both are essential and a focus on either one to the exclusion of the other weakens the church as a whole.

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Takeaway: Real life is usually not like the movies.

Joy Davidman is best known, not for her own work, but as the wife of CS Lewis. The story of their marriage was featured in the movie Shadowlands. It is a good movie, but it seems as much fiction as reality.

I have previously read a short biography by Lyle Dorsett that was the rough basis of Shadowlands and I have read several biographies of Lewis which include discussions of Joy and her life.

This new biography is the first full fledged biography of Joy Davidman and is the product of much new documentation (primarily newly discovered letters) and research. It is hard to think more documentation would become available to warrant another biography.

Santamaria has written a highly readable and interesting biography of a complicated and not always likable woman. Davidman was a child prodigy, a promising young author and poet. But she was swept up with communist fervor, atheism, and her art became primarily focused on her causes.

Davidman was brilliant, but troubled. After strings of affairs, starting as a fairly young awkward teen she started a relationship with Bill Gresham. They were married in August 1942 and had two children. But it was a turbulent marriage. Bill was an alcoholic and likely had other mental health issues. But Joy was an equal partner to the turbulence.

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Summary: A great overview of the New Testament in less than 150 pages.

I love the idea of the Very Short Introduction series. Short books, around 150 pages, written by experts in the field for a general reader that has little or no background in the field. The reality is that the series (now over 300 books) is wildly inconsistent. Luckily, this is one of the better from the series that I have read, not as good as Mark Noll’s book on Protestantism, which is the best in the series that I have read, but it is close.

My main complaint about the Very Short Introduction to the Bible is that it did not talk at all about the content of the bible. Luke Timothy Johnson spends the majority of time in this book on content. Much of that is focused on the synoptic gospels. Then there is an overview of Paul, with an in-depth look at of Paul and an overview of Johannine books (including the Gospel of John and Revelations).

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