As Newman once famously remarked, the Church would look foolish without the laity. Here Higgins offers the reader a model of the serious engagement he urges and permission to think clearly and rigorously about the Catholic tradition. In the age of Pope Francis and his desire for a less clerical, more synodal church, and in the midst of a pandemic in which the laity is cut off from the celebration of the sacraments and is left to their own devices for their spiritual needs, the thought of Newman provides direction as we face the future.
