The teenaged guys are down in the basement on X-box and when I go down I realize they are playing some horrible game where they have to slaughter everybody in sight. When I remonstrate they call out cheerfully, "It's okay Dad. They're Nazi Zombies." Have you ever thought about the meaning behind horror movies and games? [...]
Understanding the Sins of Sodom in a post some time ago made for some pretty grim reading from the Old Testament. If you have the stomach for some even harsher language and more shocking imagery--but which reads like yesterday's newspaper from our society take a look at Ezekiel chapter 16. You thought Sodom was bad, the [...]
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 [...]
I am no moral theologian, but I understand some basics, and if more people understood the basics of Catholic moral theology they would understand (even if they did not agree with) the Catholic teaching on certain moral actions much debated in our society. The basic principle is this: every action is always either objectively right or [...]
Where does the word "Sodomy" come from and what does it mean? The word refers to the city of Sodom--a city in the Book of Genesis which, along with Gomorrah, was known for the wickedness of its inhabitants. In Catholic moral theology sodomy is one of the sins that "cry out to heaven". These four grave [...]
Recently I have been increasingly drawn to the Divine Mercy devotion. At the Catholic leadership conference in Philadelphia I met Fr Michael Gaitley--who is the director of the Divine Mercy shrine in Massachusetts and listened to his powerful talk on the Divine Mercy. I have begun praying the Divine Mercy chaplet every day, and have experienced [...]
Is now posted at the Why I'm Catholic website. Go here. You can also read other versions of my conversion story at the Archived Articles section of this blog here, and you can download audio versions of My Journey to the Catholic Church and the story of how I ended up as a Catholic priest at [...]
I had been on the path to becoming a Catholic for nearly twenty years. Coming from an Evangelical, Protestant background I had become an Anglican priest, learned to pray the rosary, understood and accepted the Catholic understanding of the Church, the sacraments and the priesthood. I spent a lot of time in Catholic Benedictine monasteries and [...]
Today we celebrate St Athanasius, and can somebody beam him down? The place is crawling with Arians again. The simple version is that Arius--a Bishop of Alexandria--taught that Jesus Christ was not fully divine. Nearly the whole church followed this new teaching. It made sense, after all for lots of reasons it was a bit of [...]
The ceaseless smiling Mormon ads on Patheos have generated a fair bit of discussion on these blogs, and I have learned a good deal about this new religion. One of the details was the authorship of the Book of Abraham--one of the books in the Mormon scriptures. It's a fascinating story. In 1830 or thereabouts a [...]