An Intelligent Person's Guide to Catholicism Review
             In Alban McCoy's book, he tries to point out and answer all the questions about religion, God, and all that seems to exist in the Catholic religion. He gives a very strong account of religion in an interesting way, a way that was thought of by no other.
             Sloth, Alban McCoy points out, is often concealed by workaholism. Since sloth consists in spiritual inactivity, it is quite compatible with rushing around doing things all the time. And, in workaholism, sloth finds useful allies among the other deadly sins: the motivation of covetousness; the angry denunciations of others who do not reach our own high standards; the energetic undermining of the good names of competitors prompted by envy.
             I mention sloth because the approach to it here is a pleasant surprise, and because it is one of the many indicators that this is no predictable introduction to the Catholic faith. By including a section on the seven deadly sins, Fr McCoy feels that there is much to be gained, by way of facing up to the reality of the human nature we all share. Certainly his worn-out discussion of the deadly sins will be of great value to experienced Catholics as much as to those interested in the faith from the outside.
             It is not to be attempted by the un-intelligent or the uninformed. Not only does Fr McCoy happily throw in passing references to the five ways of Thomas Aquinas, or to the Augustinian-Anselmian dictum credo ut intelligam, but he is utterly fearless in tackling the most difficult questions head on.
             Nearly half the book is given to 'common questions', which are pretty well 'common difficulties' about Catholicism. The big one is the problem of evil. This may be the fundamental difficulty to address in discussing Catholicism, because it is a question that the religion itself poses. Original sin, moral evil and physical evil are the very stuff of this broken world, for which Cathol...