I had a Southern Baptist friend who thought it was amusing, when visiting Catholic churches, to wave to the image of Mary and say, "Hi Mary!" When I challenged him on what seemed a mark of disrespect he said cheerily, "Y'all say, 'Hail Mary' and 'Hail' just means 'Hi', so it's my way of saying 'Hail [...]
Toppling the Pagan Idols Did the pagans really worship idols? If so, what was going on? To be precise, they did not worship idols as such, but they worshipped the gods who they believed the idols represented. But it was more than that. They also believed that the idols became the channels for the [...]
During the twenty years it took me to convert from a Bob Jones University student to a Catholic I considered many of the Marian dogmas to be pious opinions. It was okay for Catholics to believe them, but why did they have to go and make them dogmas and therefore make it more difficult for me [...]
The Cowper Madonna by Raphael "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant" wrote Bl. John Henry Newman. As part of my research for a book on married priests I am reading Christian Cochini's tome Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy. It's a masterful piece of scholarship which examines the early church's views [...]
Tim Staples explains how the title Mother of God has it's foundation in Scripture. It all goes back to the story of the Visitation when Elizabeth calls Mary "Mother of my Lord." First, when Elizabeth “exclaimed with a loud cry… why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me” (Luke [...]
Mrs Brady, Catholic Old Lady is one of our guest bloggers... Why look who it is! Sylvia! Come in dear! Come in! I am so glad to see you, and little Charlie too! I was just taking a few minutes to sit here on the porch. Well, I say a few minutes, but I've been here [...]
In my own journey from Protestant fundamentalism to the Catholic Church the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was a stumbling block. I understood the doctrine--that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived in the natural way, but by direct action of God was preserved from the stain of original sin. I also understood the reasoning for it [...]
Remembering that the New Testament is hidden in the old and the old is made manifest in the New, yesterday's feast provides three powerful images from the past that converge at Pentecost: Wind, Fire and Witness. The mighty rushing wind connects back to the first day of creation where in the first verses of the Bible [...]
A spirited conversation has been going on in the combox about the existence of God. I said here that God does not exist--and went on to say, at least he does not exist as we exist. He is, instead, the very ground of all existence. He does not exist so much as he IS existence. Commenters [...]
Do you remember that stylish film The Matrix? The hero, Neo Anderson, exists in a dull, conformist, monotone and monochrome world. Then he wakes up and is "born again" and enters the world of adventure and risk which is the real world. What I find curious about modern American Catholicism is that it is similarly monotone and [...]