I commenced my writing career, roughly 25 years ago, as a critic of liberal Catholicism, which I referred to, in one of the first articles I ever published, as "beige Catholicism." By this designation, I meant a faith that had become culturally accommodating, hand-wringing, unsure of itself; a Church that had allowed its distinctive colors to be muted and its sharp edges to be dulled. In a series of articles and talks as well as in such books as "And Now I See," "The Strangest Way," and especially "The Priority of Christ," I laid out my critique of the type of Catholicism that held sway in the years after the Second Vatican Council as well as my vision of what a renewed and evangelically compelling Church would look like. I emphasized Christocentrism as opposed to anthropocentrism, a Scripture-based theological method rather than one grounded in human experience, the need to resist the reduction of Christianity to psychology and social service, a recovery of the great Catholic intellectual tradition, and a robust embrace of evangelical proclamation. In all of this, I took as my mentor Pope John Paul II, especially the sainted pontiff's interpretation of Vatican II as a missionary council, whose purpose was to bring Christ to the nations.