Scott Hahn's wife Kimberly was once asked what were the three most difficult things about the Catholic faith that she had to overcome to enter full communion with the Catholic Church. She answered, "Mary, Mary and Mary." It is certainly true that for many converts overcoming the Anti-Mary bias in Protestantism is a big hurdle. As [...]
By concrete Catholicism I am NOT referring to the sort of Catholic Church in the illustration. Instead I’m writing about the solidity of our Catholic faith. I can best explain what I mean by comparing Catholicism to other forms of religion. Most other forms of religion in our day deal with personal, subjective emotions or personal [...]
I remember learning about the Gnosics when studying early Christian heresies, and reflecting back on it, it strikes me that we live in an age awash with Gnosticism. Its not surprising since our age is so similar to the first centuries of the church. The vast Roman Empire dominated the known world enabling trade, travel and [...]
We were talking movies and my friend Rick told the story of watching the fantastic movie, The Mission with a group of parishioners in a progressive parish in some city up North. They had a discussion about the film afterwards and Rick said, "I just found it amazing the lengths the missionaries would go to bring the gospel [...]
I remember clearly my feelings on leaving the Anglican Church to become a Catholic. It was a trepidation--the knowledge that I was launching out into the deep in a way I never had before. It was an awareness of what I call the impossibility of Catholicism. Here was a religion that (in theory) held to the [...]
In reading the gospels I am always struck by the elusiveness of Jesus Christ. It is extraordinary how realistic the portrait of Jesus is in the gospels. On the one hand he is incredibly complex, but then on another glance he is totally simple, straightforward and clear. You can't figure him out, and then you realize [...]
Calling Mary the “Queen of Heaven” seems to most non-Catholics a title too far. How can the simple girl from Nazareth be “Queen of Heaven”? Isn’t that a pagan term? In fact, isn’t the “Queen of Heaven” actually condemned in the Bible? In Jeremiah 44 the Hebrews are blamed for turning back to false gods and [...]
Some years ago I watched an amazing reality TV show. The producers took five men to the Gulf coast of Central America and they had to trek across the jungle to the Pacific coast. What made it interesting is that all five suffered from a disability. One fellow--a muscular African-American-- was in a wheelchair having lost [...]
I've got this theory that one of the great signs of authentic Christianity is comedy. I'm reading the letters of Flannery O'Connor at the moment and one of her great gifts is a razor sharp wit. She's funny, and one of the reasons she's funny is that she makes fun of herself. She takes herself lightly...even [...]
I was brought up in Evangelical Protestantism which has always been strong on individualistic religious experience, and often that experience was highly emotional, and whenever the emotions are involved, manipulation of some sort is always around the corner. We've all experienced the emotional blackmail imposed within families: "All I've done for you and this is the [...]