How a former Evangelical came to love the Rosary. Here's my latest article for Integrated Catholic Life. Please read and share! Read: Do Catholics Pray to Mary?; Do Catholics Honor Mary Too Much?; Do Catholics Worship Mary?
Last week in New Jersey some of the faithful flocked to see something strange and wonderful--the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in a tree trunk. The story is reported here. Then there was the face of Mother Teresa in a bun in Tennessee. You can see that here along with an image of Jesus on [...]
May Magnificat by G.M.Hopkins MAY is Mary’s month, and I Muse at that and wonder why: Her feasts follow reason, Dated due to season— Candlemas, Lady Day; But the Lady Month, May, Why fasten that upon her, With a feasting in her honour? Is it only its being brighter Than the most are must delight her? [...]
There are very few Catholic titles for the Blessed Virgin Mary more likely to get Evangelical Protestants upset than Mary Co-Redemptrix or Mary Mediatrix. Immediately the Bible Christian will quote I Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God and one mediator between God and Man--the man Christ Jesus." For them it is a done deal. "The [...]
I was brought up as an Evangelical fundamentalist Christian and when we read the verses in the Bible that spoke of Jesus' "brothers and sisters" we concluded that they were the other children of Joseph and Mary. What I didn't know is that this idea was unheard of in the early church, and that even 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 [...]
Having a sandwich with my buddy--a former Baptist--when we were discussing the Mother of God. "Mary is the defender of Christian orthodoxy" I explained. "If you have the wrong view of Mary you will almost certainly have the wrong view of Christ. If you have the right view of Mary you will almost certainly have the [...]
It is often said that the longest journey is from the head to the heart. In other words, we can sometimes understand something intellectually, but until it gets into the heart--the seat of emotion and the seat of our will--it will only ever be a good idea. This is what happened to me with the dogma [...]
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 [...]
Do Catholics pray to Mary? It sure looks that way! But there is more to it than that. An increasing number of Protestants are ready to be more open minded about this controversial topic. "I'm ready to honor Mary more than we usually do" said a Protestant friend, "but I'm not going to pray to her." [...]