Would a good God send anyone to hell? Some folks tootle on about the Christian God being some sort of "invisible moral enforcer". He's the big school monitor in the sky; the eternal policeman. They reject that sort of God, and that's okay because that's not really the God of the Catholic faith anyway. We believe [...]
Atheists like to tell us that they can be "good without God." What they rarely do is define what they mean by "good". If they mean they can have good manners, do volunteer work, give to worthy causes to make the world a better place, then of course they can be "good without God." If they [...]
In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice Caroline says to Mr Bingley, I should like balls infinitely better, if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing were made the order [...]
Evelyn Waugh has been mis quoted as saying, "There are only two choices: suicide or Catholicism." I believe what he really said was in a letter responding to a friend who asked why, if the Christian faith was supposed to make you happy, Waugh was such a miserable character. Waugh replied, "If it weren't for my [...]
Yesterday at Mass for Corpus Christi I spoke about the real presence of the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. It reminded me that many Catholics use an abbreviated form of this theological mouthful and refer to "the Real Presence". The problem with this is that "the Real Presence" [...]
The Protestants in Greenville got together with the Catholics for today's Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally. For the most part it was an example of cordial co operation. However, there was a fervent Catholic lady handing out literature laden with Bible verses that prove Catholic doctrine, and across the street some Protestants were protesting that [...]
You may remember that episode in Peter Pan when Tinkerbell is about to perish and all the children in the audience are asked to clap their hands if they believe in fairies. Their clapping makes Tinkerbell come back to life. Tinkerbell seems to have invaded the mindset of modern man. That is to say, too many [...]
A year after Rev Harold Camping's followers messed up on doomsday and the rapture didn't happen Patrick Archbold links to a sympathetic article on the followers who were "left behind" when Jesus didn't turn up in glory. They didn't experience the rapture, but they did experience a rupture--in their belief system. Matt notices that this article observes [...]
There's a delicious scene in Brideshead Re-visited where the spiritually illiterate Rex Mottram is being instructed in the Catholic faith and the priest asks, "If it were raining and the Holy Father said it was sunny, how would you then explain papal infallibility?" Rex ponders for a moment and says, "I suppose I would say that [...]
Who are the "snake handlers" and where do they come from? "Snake handlers" are a small group of Pentecostal Christians--started in Appalachia during the Holiness revival movements and still operating today. They get all worked up and get "the anointing" which means they enter a trance like state through hyper emotionalism then they pass around live [...]