If it’s Monday, then my son is hearing the same refrain from me: “If you keep your bedroom clean this week, you get a pack of baseball cards.” On Sunday I check his room, and if it’s clean, he gets his pack of baseball cards. If it’s not clean…then he gets a pack of baseball…
“This is my body, which is given for you . . . This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Lk 22:19-20). Of ecstasy—that is, standing outside oneself or going out of oneself—Our Lord Jesus Christ is the supreme model: He pours out his very life for us…
Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis…
“Imagine there’s no heaven / It’s easy if you try / No hell below us / Above us only sky / Imagine all the people / Living for today… Imagine there’s no countries / It isn’t hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for / And no religion too / Imagine all…
“The real reason I cannot be in communion with you [Catholics] is not a disagreement with this or that Roman doctrine, but that to accept your Church means, not to accept a given body of doctrine, but to accept in advance any doctrine your Church hereafter produces. It is like being asked to agree not…
The rise of liberal Protestantism and its later Catholic equivalent, Modernism, sowed many seeds of doubt in the minds of Christians about the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. If ‘error’ is defined as a false assertion, it is not uncommon to find Catholic teachers today who nonchalantly maintain that Scripture contains plenty of errors.…
God willed to reveal Himself and to enter into an intimate personal relation with mankind. This revelation and plan of salvation began to unfold through Moses and the prophets, but only in Jesus Christ do we find the fulfillment. He is the Incarnate Word of God, the embodiment of all God wants us to know…
The universality of Catholicism implies a socially inclusive Church. From its revelation in the institution of Christ and the preaching of the apostles, the New Testament reveals the Church as the home of every natural identity. She embraces women as well as men, the poor as well as the rich, the learned and the simple,…
I began life in the broad mainstream of American Evangelicalism, a tradition quite similar in many respects to the Baptists, the notable differences being the contemporary worship style of my denomination and the greater freedom of theological speculation enjoyed by local communities. Later in life and late in my search for more authentic religion, which…
Today marks the 50th anniversary of ‘Lumen Gentium‘, the Vatican II constitution on the Church. With this brief post I present its highlights, while encouraging you to read the document in its entirety. The First Vatican Council was preparing to give a definition of the Church but was forced to an abrupt end in 1870…
“Every moment of our lives we stand on the brink of eternity.” – Dom Lorenzo Scupolli There are many precious traditions in the Sacred Liturgy that almost entirely disappeared after the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council. We realize that our Liturgy becomes more and more anthropocentric instead of theocentric. This protestanized liturgy is…
