Book review: Enchanted by Eternity: Recapturing the Wonder of the Catholic Worldview

Enchanted by Eternity: Recapturing the Wonder of the Catholic Worldview by Fr. William Slattery is a stunningly insightful read.

The author, whose name you might recognize from his earlier and also very fine book Heroism and Genius: How Catholic Priests Helped Build—and Can Help Rebuild—Western Civilization, is an unusual combination: a fiery Irishman, a cold-blooded PhD in epistemology who specialized in alethic logic, a professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville, a historian – and a priest who is passionately in love with the Traditional Latin Mass. Listen to these words in the Acknowledgments section of his book:

Why the Latin Mass Matters in the Real World: A Review of Dr. Kwasniewski’s Powerful New Book

(A guest review by Fr. William Slattery)

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright: The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass (Angelico, 2020) is not about “liturgy” in some kind of remote or abstract sense. Rather, it’s about why the concrete reality of the Traditional Mass matters to living and lifestyle, for you and for your children. Why the Latin Mass is a matter of Catholic identity.

In writing this review, I am seeking to pay off a debt I owe to Dr. Kwasniewski. It was largely due to his first Angelico book, Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis (2014), that I converted to the Traditional Latin Mass.