I've got this exciting new theory I want to try out on you. I've just thought of it myself, and maybe it's old hat and been around forever, but I'm only a convert, so if it is the classical spiritual teaching of some great monastic teacher or spiritual director and I've never heard of it, then [...]
The fat prophet said "All arguments are theological arguments." The fat prophet, of course, being G.K. Chesterton. So it is with the present political debate in the United States. The country seems divided between those who pay taxes and those who receive benefits--those who take responsibility for themselves and those who cannot or will not. It [...]
When I was a child I was taught the Sunday School song, "Trust and Obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to Trust and Obey." So this morning at Mass this song comes back to me in the reading of the gospel. It is the story of the healing of the [...]
In seminary we had to study modern Biblical scholarship, and one of my great blessings was that at Bob Jones I learned to be skeptical of the fundamentalists, but at Oxford I learned to be skeptical of the modernists. Both groups seemed to me to be like two madmen strapped back to back. Both the fundamentalists [...]
It is easy to exchange convinced assertions: "The gospels are 100% God's holy Word and every bit is historically accurate!" or "The gospels are fairy tales!" However there is a discipline called "Biblical scholarship" in which scholars do some very interesting work determining just which parts of the gospels they think are reliable and which they [...]
Anyone who wishes to engage in a thoughtful and intelligent exploration of the Christian faith will have to ask whether the gospels are historically reliable. Can we believe that the stories in the gospels are a true and accurate account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth? In answering this question the first thing to understand [...]
An interesting story has popped up about miracles taking place in India. I've heard church workers report that the growth of the church in Africa is also attributed to a rush of miracles happening there. So why no miracles here? First of all, to see a miracle you have to believe in miracles. C.S.Lewis said he [...]
I know what your problem is. In fact, I know what everyone's problem is. Furthermore, I not only know the problem, I have the solution. Maybe your problem is that your are greedy or selfish or lustful. Maybe you are insecure or you are arrogant (which is another way to be insecure). Maybe you are confused [...]
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 [...]