Hello,

I was talking with a Catholic apologist via email (going over some objections towards Catholicism). He told me that he personally feels that Jimmy Akin is possibly the best modern day Catholic apologist in regards of answering criticisms lodged towards Catholicism). I have not read much on Akin (yet). But I was curious if others on this board would agree with that sentiment.
Or if there are any other apologists you'd advise me to seek out to read.

Jimmy is good and so are:

Steve Ray
Dave Armstrong
Scott Hahn
David Currie
Patrick Madrid

There's more I am sure.....

Karl Keating

I would say yes, he's probably the best. A pretty close second, however, is Mark Shea. Dave Armstrong is good too, but he likes to present his arguments as a dialogue, which is not a format that I enjoy reading.

I was over at a reformed message board and when ever someone would mention Pat Madrid the response was usually, (paraphrased) "He's a cradle Catholic, you can't take his word for it.".
Well, you have a hard time getting more biased than that!
I'm not very familiar with him, but it's upsetting that the issues he raised are ignored because of the assumption of some bias that he must have, because he was raised Catholic. Not incredibly fair.

So does that mean they trust a convert's word?

At least once each week, I check out www.jimmyakin.org - good stuff.

Jimmy Akin used to post here. Jimmy where are ya?!

He started his blog. I don't remember him posting here too much. Perhaps it was before I joined.

Yeah, he posted here sometimes. Back in the old days, Mark Shea was a regular, and Dave Armstrong posted occasionally, too. In fact, we even had at least one visit from James White, using a pseudonym that looked strangely like "Nazi."

Peter Kreeft is good. He is great at offering the 'soft apologetic.' He does alot of speaking and writing on general subjects of Christianity - doesn't just always focus on polemics. He was instrumental in my conversion actually for just this reason. His understanding of the thought of C.S. Lewis was profound, and it dawned on me that his Catholicity was an aid to his understanding, not an impediment.

Jimmy is awesome ... one of the best. I like Mark Shea and Dave Armstrong as well. My beef with Dave is that his brand of parody is offensive to some and I think that detracts from his work. His content outside of that is outstanding and I think his verbosity is necessary because he covers most of the angles. If I am looking for the exhaustive defense, I head to Dave first.

My guess is that Dave will show up in a few moments to defend himself with a long disertation providing a mountain of evidence as to why I am wrong. He also is good at finding out when people are talking about him ...

mark brumley I also like John martignoni marcus grodi too.

Gerry Matatics is hands down the most eloquent and gifted apologists of our day.

Didn't Matatics become a sede?


SV

He would only drop by occasionally to give me whomp up the side of the head. Good for you to get a whomp every once in awhile.

He did, but I agree with Matthew that he was one of the best formal debators we had as far as style and ability to explain the faith on the fly in a calm way.

FJ

matt1618 is very good as well... I don't know his real name...

http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/

FJ

Whoa!!

I didn't know who he was before his name being mentioned on this thread, but Dave Armstrong has alot of critics.
But the thing is, they only make him seem that much more interesting.
Out of all of the negative attitudes that I have read in regards to Catholic apologists.... Dave Armstrong seems to catch the brunt of it.
But it's funny, because considering how passionate the criticisms are.... they mainly attack his character.
One guy was trying to deride him by saying "He's a newspaper boy!". I guess that means Dave can't be intelligent. One place was attacking the fact that Dave has criticisms towards anti-Catholics. It wasn't addressing the actual critique.... just the fact that Dave had criticisms.
The irrationality of the critics made me think, "Wow.... there must be something special with this Dave Armstrong to attract such negative emotion".

Now I'm interested to read something by him.

What's the opinion on Dave Armstrong here?

http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZINDEX.HTM

Dave Armstrong's site