Apologetics and the Eclipse of Mystery is presented as an aid to those who wish to make the Christian faith intelligible and credible to their contemporaries. Our era is impoverished by a diminished sense of the mysterious depths of human existence, and Father Bacik shows that the apologist must first awaken in individuals the mystery dimension implicit in all human experience before Christian doctrines can be an object of concern.

At the same time, this book is a study which interprets and applies the thought of the German theologian Karl Rahner, who appropriates the classical liturgical term "mystagogy" to the initiating of people into a sense of mystery as the preparation for the reception of Christian doctrines. Father Bacik highlights Rahner's interest in religious experience, employs his theological anthropology in responding to the contemporary eclipse of mystery, and develops his seminal ideas of mystagogy.

This book also offers personal enrichment for those of an age suffering from a lessened or distorted sense of mystery. It points out the depth dimension in even our ordinary experiences, for religious experience is not confined to a few on special occasions. By revealing the mysterious depths of our self-experience through confrontation with our true self, we can offset both a secular culture absorbed in the superficial, as well as current religious expressions which seem to cater to the extraordinary and spectacular

types of religious experience. James J. Bacik is Associate Pastor of St. Thomas More University parish and lectures at Bowling Green State University.