C.s. Lewis and the Catholic Church

C. S. Lewis has been called the “Apostle to the Skeptics”—responsible, perhaps, for bringing more people to Christianity than any evangelist of the 20th Century.

Through his writings, Lewis has converted, or deeply influenced a veritable Who’s Who of prominent Christians, including: President Nixon’s “hatchet man,” Chuck Colson; Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal; bestselling author Sheldon Vanauken; and thousands more.

Although Lewis was a staunch Ulster-born Anglican, although he invariably eschewed denominational questions in favor of what he called “Mere Christianity,” and although he refused to convert to Catholicism, a surprising phenomenon has occurred over the years: many of those whom Lewis influenced most deeply have become Catholic.

In C .S. Lewis and the Catholic Church, Joseph Pearce digs into Lewis’s life, writings, and relationships to answer the nagging question of why so many Lewis converts have crossed the Tiber—and why Lewis himself, despite subscribing to many essential “Catholic” teachings in his faith and devotion, never did.

Leaving no stone unturned, Pearce examines the historical, biographi-cal, theological, and literary elements of Lewis’s life to shed light on the beguiling question of Lewis’s relationship to the Catholic Church.

This revised edition contains a new introduction by Fr. Dwight Lon-genecker, and a new appendix, written by Pearce, profiling many well-known converts to Catholicism who credit Lewis with leading them to the Catholic Church.

JOSEPH PEARCE is the author of the spiritual memoir Race with the Devil, and is one of the foremost literary biographers writing today. He has chronicled the life and works of, among others, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and William Shakespeare.