Personal Picks - Patrick Madrid

The Real Braveheart
An English Hero, the Ancient Papacy, and the Early Fathers

St. Edmund Campion: Priest and Martyr

By Evelyn Waugh

Courage consists not so much in facing danger as in conquering it. St. Edmund Campion did both with extraordinary zeal and charity. He converted to Catholicism in the dark days of 16th-century England when Catholics were persecuted, imprisoned, and forcibly "converted" to Protestantism by the government. In abandoning Protestantism he abandoned wealth, status, and a bright career as an Oxford scholar. He was ordained a Jesuit priest and returned to England on a mission for Christ: to keep the Catholic Faith alive - or die trying. By God's grace and his own steely courage in the face of evil men, he did both. After a brief and dangerous ministry, he was captured, savagely tortured, tried for "treason," and martyred. His prowess as an apologist was unmatched by the squads of Protestant ministers assembled to debate him at his public trial. He routed them as thoroughly as his bloody and brave martyrdom routed the Crown's attempt to stamp out the True Faith on English soil. St. Edmund Campion was one of Britain's real "Brave Hearts." Written by the author of Brideshead Revisited, this gripping book tells you the whole, inspiring, true story.
(Softback, 236 pages, $14.99)

Jesus, Peter & the Keys: A Scriptural Handbook on the Papacy

By David Hess, et al.

It's said that the most disappointed people in the world are those who get what's coming to them. If that's true, this book is going to disappoint a bunch of folks, namely those who argue that the papacy is a medieval Catholic "invention" and that the early Church knew nothing of popes or infallibility. David Hess and his co-authors have marshaled an amazing array of biblical and historical evidence that leaves this claim in tatters. Dr. Philip Blosser says it "serves up an avalanche of incontrovertible evidence, more overwhelming than any single argument [for the papacy]; much of it, remarkably, culled from Protestant sources. This book is a bombshell." Dr. Scott Hahn says, "The amount of useful and pertinent data in this compendium is simply staggering." I say it's a book every Catholic should have and study. I'd like to see Houdini try to squirm out of the airtight evidence for the papacy that's presented in these pages. He couldn't do it, and the anti-Catholics you encounter won't be able to do it either - if you have this book at the ready.
(Softback, 432 pages, $14.99)

The Apostolic Fathers

Edited by Michael W. Holmes

Wouldn't you love to go back in time and see what the early Church was like; what it taught and how it lived and worshipped? You can, by reading this splendid collection of major writings from the first-century Christian Church. Each of these works was composed during or immediately after the time of the Twelve Apostles: Pope St. Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Ignatius of Antioch's seven Epistles, the Letter of St. Polycarp to the Philippians, the majestic Martyrdom of Polycarp, The Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, the Epistle to Diognetus, and fragments of the works of Papias. In this one volume you get a vivid snapshot of the early Church - its liturgy, its disciplines, its martyrs.
(Softback, 432 pages, $14.99)