PRACTICING CATHOLIC is a personal history of the American Catholic Church during James Carroll's lifetime. It traces the transformation of a medieval institution suspicious of American ideas of freedom and democracy into a church that has begun to embrace basic American principles of pluralism and respect for conscience. The books tells the story of heroes (Pope John XXII, Thomas Merton, Cardinal Richard Cushing, William Sloane Coffin), and great events (Vatican II, the Kennedy’s, the end of the Cold War). Considering the new meaning of belief in the secular world, it stands against fundamentalisms of "neo-atheists", as well as of born again Christians. The book shows how and why the world needs a renewed, rational, vital Catholic Church. All of this is centered in the life-journey of its author, who embraced the priesthood in his youth, but who finds in the writing life a renewal of religious belief. For James Carroll faith is a practice--like all practice, it aims at getting better.