''The Faith of Our Fathers: a Plain Exposition and Vindication of the Church Founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ'' is a book by archbishop

James Gibbons James Cardinal Gibbons (July 23, 1834 – March 24, 1921) was a senior-ranking American prelate of the Catholic Church who served as Apostolic Vicar of North Carolina from 1868 to 1872, Bishop of Richmond from 1872 to 1877, and as ninth ...

which was published in Baltimore in 1876,The Faith of Our Fathers
/ref> which became a best-selling conversion manual in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and by 1980 was in its 111th printing. In his 1917 preface to the 83rd edition, the

Cardinal Cardinal or The Cardinal may refer to: Animals * Cardinal (bird) or Cardinalidae, a family of North and South American birds **''Cardinalis'', genus of cardinal in the family Cardinalidae **''Cardinalis cardinalis'', or northern cardinal, the ...

noted that "since the first edition appeared, in 1876 up to the present time, fourteen hundred thousand copies have been published and the circulation of the book is constantly increasing. The work has been translated into nearly all the

languages of Europe Most languages of Europe belong to the Indo-European language family. Out of a total European population of 744 million as of 2018, some 94% are native speakers of an Indo-European language. Within Indo-European, the three largest phyla are Rom ...

." The well-known agnostic, literary critic and fellow Baltimorean H. L. Mencken wrote, in his survey of religion ''Treatise on the Gods'', that "the best exposition of

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

doctrine is probably ''The Faith of our Fathers, by the late Cardinal Gibbons."

References

Catholic Church in the United States Religious studies books

External links

* * {{RC-book-stub