SecretAgentMan's Dossier

Shea in Michigan

Courtesy of Fr. Rob's Thrown Back we learn the happy news that Mark Shea, published author, public speaker, and mainainer of the Catholic and Enjoying It! blog (voted darn near Best of Everything in the 2003 St. Blog's Awards), will be coming to St. Joseph's Catholic Church in St. Joseph, Michigan and to St. Bernard Catholic Church in Benton Harbor, Michigan, on May 3-4, 2004. Rumor has it that Mark will also be speaking, sometime in May, at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Coldwater Michigan.

I had the good fortune to invite Mark to address a local college Catholic students' group back in 2002. I invited him out of the blue, more or less, having met him on the great Catholic Converts' Message Board (Old Calendar). He stayed at my house, ate with the students, and gave a really great talk about being Catholic. Then he flew back to Washington, leaving us all wondering when we might ever see such a knowledgeable, genteel, witty, pleasant, and impassioned defender of the faith again.

If anyone within a 50-mile radius of these churches has, or can make, the time to attend one of Mark's speeches, I highly recommend it. If you can, bring one or two lukewarm Catholics, or just persons interested in Catholicism, with you. But go yourself in any event and, if you don't have them buy all his books. I have them, and they not only repay reading, they repay re-reading as well. Half of Mark's speciality as an apologist is, well, himself -- he exposes you to some truly Catholic ways of thinking about the things we already know. One always learns something new and interesting from hearing Mark talk. So go, please, and force these churches to set up PA systems in the parking lot to handle the overflow.