Always Have an Answer Ready: A Question-and-Answer Catechism to Help You Live Your Faith

Should I attend your brother’s gay wedding? How do I deal with the dilemma of deciding whether or not to switch off the life-support machine for elderly mother when the doctors are recommending that I do so? How much should I give charitably and how do I decide who or what to give it to? Do biblical tithes still apply? Will God refuse to forgive me if you I am unable to forgive others?

This book contains answers to such questions that people today regularly ask about the Faith. It began as a weekly newspaper column in which Catholics and non-Catholics alike wrote in and asked Fr. Jeffrey Kirby about Church teaching. He responded to each, with charity and clarity, by drawing on the wisdom of the Church and applying those principles to particular situation of each questioner. The collection of over 100 questions and answers  is representative of what many people in Western society today want to know about the Faith. They ask about matters that relate directly to their own lives as much as they do on the understanding of abstract principles. As such it is that has great pedagogical value, especially if read in conjunction with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is why it is described as a ‘catechism’ and has been structured in the same fourfold division of topics:

• The Faith – The Profession of Faith, 
• The Celebration of the Christian Mystery
• Life in Christ
• Christian Prayer 

Always Have An Answer Ready will be invaluable in answering many questions you will have about the Faith. But it’s value goes beyond this. It also gives us a model on how to answer questions in such a way that people might listen to the answers. Fr Kirby’s approach is simultaneously charitable and clear. His answers are carefully nuanced and sensitive to the questioners’ particular situations, yet unambiguously orthodox.