Disarming Beauty is an unusual and unique book because it crosses so many different disciplinary areas. It presents a strikingly original and bracing view of what it means to be a Christian today, and the implications of that for living in a pluralistic world, for marriage and family life, for the meaning and ends of education, for labor, for politics, ... Read moreand other aspects of daily reality. Parts of the collection are reminiscent of recent books of cultural criticism by authors as different as Richard John Neuhaus or Christopher Lasch, but its critique is neither narrowly sectarian nor drily academic; rather, it presents in the first instance a broadly attractive, personal proposal of life. - Paolo Carozza, University of Notre Dame Disarming Beauty offers an incisive, much-needed analysis of the ironic fruit of the secular Enlightenment: in setting out, apart from Christianity, to ensure man's freedom and to bolster his reason, it ended up chaining or perverting freedom and disconnecting reason from its necessary foundations in truth, history, and reality. Carron writes with reference to Europe, but we in America must read carefully and be warned. - Louis Markos, Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities, Houston Baptist University Fr. Carron reminds us in Disarming Beauty that Christianity is not a set of concepts or ethical prescriptions but an encounter with a person. He echoes Pope Francis in asking us 'to think of reality first as beautiful, and only later as good and true.' This is the meaning of the incarnation: that Beauty is made flesh. - John Garvey, president, The Catholic University of America These essays inspect with candor urgent problems like the ardent expression of a personal desire in a globalizing world, the disengagement of young people from an experience of personal transformation in the educational process, the spread of global terrorism and consumerism, and the loss of a palpable sense of the connection between Christian marriage and the common good. In sum, they are original and full of surprises for an educated reader trying to make sense of a cultural situation that challenges basic Christian claims on multiple levels. The book contains serious theological reflection upon the mystery of Christ presented in a wholly novel way. - Peter Casarella, author of Jesus Christ: The New Face of Social Progress Show Less