Lent 2017: 20 Answers Challenge

I wanted to take some time to tell you all about an exciting opportunity to grow deeper in your Catholic faith and learn more about Catholicism. In this post, I’m going to talk about the Catholic Answers Challenge, tell you my plan, and share a free download of my reading plan.

Before I got any further, I want to make it clear that I am not associated with Catholic Answers in any way. I am sharing this opportunity because I think it is so awesome.

Catholic Answers 20 Answers Challenge

The challenge is simple: read all 20 books in the 20 answers series by the end of the Easter season (June 4). If you don’t have the books, you can purchase all of them at 50% discount, and Catholic Answers will donate $10/purchase to Saint Paul Street Evangelization. You can get either hard copies or electronic copies. It took me exactly a week to get mine in the mail. Again, I’m not linked to Catholic Answers so I won’t get anything for recommending this to you, but I think Catholic Answers and Saint Paul Street Evangelization both do such important work that they are deserving of support.

Opinion on Resources

Obviously, I haven’t read all the books so I can’t speak to the quality of the content. However, I can say that the bits and pieces I’ve read from the Atheism book are excellent, and having read other works from Trent Horn who wrote a number of the books and listening to Catholic Answers in general, I am confident in recommending these books. If my opinion changes about this collection after I read it, I will share an update.

My General Plan

I developed a reading plan that involves reading five answers a day on Mondays-Saturdays. You can use Sundays for breaks or catching up. Following my plan, you should be able to finish on June 1- three days early!

I plan on sharing my progress through this challenge on Twitter and Instagram.

I will update this post if anything changes.

Reading Plan

Starting on Ash Wednesday, I will be reading five answers everyday Monday-Saturday. Being a big reader, I was tempted to finish all the books during Lent (OK, so I actually wanted to dive in and read them all this weekend), but I think pacing myself through this is good for several reasons.

The most important is that it will give me time to reflect on what I’m reading. I think having a smaller reading load will also be nice so if I would like to dig deeper on a topic, I can feel comfortable spending time looking into it rather than worrying that I still have quite a bit of reading to do. I also figure there are bound to be days where I won’t get a chance to read (as demonstrated by my falling a little behind in my Bible reading plan for the year), but having a smaller reading load will make it easier to catch up.

I tried to put the books in an order that made sense to me. I started with general Christian topics, then moved into more Catholic-specific beliefs.  Next is the other religious beliefs (or lack thereof). I end on Catholic social issues. I have included my reading plan below. You can download it at no cost. The first three pages are a table and the last three pages are pretty bare-bone calendars. I know they aren’t the prettiest, but they should be able to help you stay on track.

Download the Reading Plan: Kate’s 20 Answers Challenge Reading Plan for Lent 2017

If you’ll be participating in the 20 Answers Challenge, please let me know! I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts.

Updates

Posts about Progress

I’ve shared 4 posts about my progress and thoughts.

Update 1

Update 2

Update 3

Update 4

All the book reviews are linked at the end of this post.