A common notion floating around in Pop Culture is that “modern scholarship” has somehow proven the Gospel of John is more or less unhistorical fantasy written by a pseudonymous author. Here’s the facts: the tradition of the Church, supported by the unbroken line of patristic testimony, as well as internal
A man I know has grappled his entire life with self-hatred. And like salt in the wound, he has absorbed a notion which has only served to exacerbate all the suffering. Once, he told me, “I don’t feel like I’m allowed to express any pain over how bad I hurt
Fr. Simon Tugwell notes that the very first thing we should know about prayer, according to St. Paul, is that we do not know how to do it. Paul makes this fact clear when he tells the Romans that the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not
Last week, I chronicled something of the bafflement that ensued as I was confronted with the weirdly malleable term “neo-Catholic”. Judging from the combox discussion that followed, many readers share the tremendous confusion surrounding the term. Did it denote converts or those who loathe converts? Was it code for “neocon” or for
Over the past decade, the mysterious epithet “neo-Catholic” has been tossed around now and then. I first ran across it from Fr. Joseph O’Leary, the famed “Spirit of Vatican II” combox denizen who seems to have endless amounts of time to troll the net on behalf of gay causes and
For most of my Evangelical family of faith (I am an Evangelical who entered the Roman communion in 1987), the very word “merit” as a theological term is as sinister as it is (for most lay Catholics) unintelligible and disused. At best, many Evangelicals feel a sort of uneasy truce
It’s an exhilarating and strange thing for a chubby suburbanite like me to find I am a dangerous man. But somebody named Robert M. Zins, Th.M. has deduced that I am and has written an exciting expose of me called “The Marketing of Merit in the Roman Catholic Religion” published
When Christians write about science, they are imposing their religion on the free pursuit of TRVTH. When scientists pontificate about religion, they are just innocently writing about science with no agenda at all. Nope. None whatsoever. Really. Case in point: This little bulletin from the Ministry of Truth in the
Two years ago, the Mainstream Media (MSM) gathered in a special conclave in Rome to discuss the disastrous election to the Papacy of Ratzinger the Enforcer, God’s Rottweiler, the hardliner, inflexible, rigid, etc. blah blah. Some of us suggested to our television screens that the Talking Heads might want to
St. Thomas Aquinas was once tricked by his fellow students who cried out, “Look! A flying ox!” Thomas dutifully went to the window to look and his peers all laughed at him heartily. Thomas’ reply (and one of the many reasons he’s a saint): “I thought it more likely that
It is a strange fact of the Christian life that one of the surest marks of God’s favor is trouble. In the scene just preceding Luke’s account of the temptation of Christ we have seen one of the most overt revelations of Jesus’ true identity. The heavens are torn open,
Recently I ran a series of articles on The Incoherence of Atheism in the Register. As a result, I’ve received inquiries for advice from readers with loved ones tempted by atheism. Not infrequently such inquiries center on what arguments are effective. This is understandable. Arguments are important. The existence of God is a philosophical, not a religious
The explosive growth of the Information Superhighway has introduced millions of Catholics to the Internet (or more simply, the Net). As a result, an vast world of Catholic theology, philosophy, art and culture is rapidly going “on-line” and becoming available in a way that was impossible even two years ago.
There is no greater scandal among moderns than the Catholic Church’s claim to infallibility. And who can blame them? For as this century drags to a close, it does look as though only a cretin could seriously believe any institution possesses modest integrity, much less infallibility. We’ve been so schooled in cynicism since
Most Catholics live and die blissfully unaware that the Church even offers indulgences anymore. (A Catholic friend to whom I mentioned I was writing this article said, “They went out with Vatican II, didn’t they?”) Practically no Catholic gives much thought to them. They languish in the Church’s attic of
The discovery that indulgences are still taught by the Catholic Church is one of the more “queasy-making” things a modern Protestant, curious about Rome, can stumble upon. The thought “But… but… I thought Rome repented of this centuries ago!” rises up in the mind and leaves curious Evangelicals with a dark sense
Pope John Paul II once observed that: “Original sin attempts… to abolish fatherhood… leaving man only with a sense of the master/slave relationship.” In all the 19th Century Philosophies of Pride ranging from Marx to Nietzsche to Freud to Darwin were founded on the denial of God as Father, and the
My nephew Tom came home from first grade in anguish. At dinner he could barely keep the tears out of his six year old eyes. When his parents pressed him to find out what was wrong, he replied that “this kid at school says I have a funny name.” His
For some reason, I still seem to mystify people in my views on the American political scene. Indeed, the most mysterious criticisms I get are the ones illustrated in the comments here, for instance, which say (in mixed tones of bafflement, rage and disappointment), “How can you simultaneously be a Catholic
Christmas is closely associated with coziness, and reasonably so. It happens at the time of year (in the northern hemisphere) when we are all snugged up like badgers while it snows, blows and rains outside. What with all the lights, hot chocolate, lovely fires, and beautiful music of the time
The book of Sirach tells us to be humble with the counsel: “What is too sublime for you, seek not.” However, just as we have this lesson under our belts, the author of Hebrews, rather mysteriously, holds up for our contemplation “Mount Zion and the city of the living God,
A Holy Hour is an hour of time we dedicate to the Lord and ask him to bless with his presence as we make ourselves present and available to him. The image of an “hour” has been part of the Christian tradition since the very beginning. Jesus, in the Garden
“Let me just tell you about my friend Cassie (Bernall). She was in the — in a classroom, I believe, and she ended up standing up for the greatest thing ever…. She completely, completely stood up for God when the killers asked her if there was anyone who had faith
When C.S. Lewis was approached by a publisher and invited to write a book about the problem of pain, he asked to be allowed to write it anonymously, since, he said, “if I were to say what I really thought about pain, I should be forced to make statements of
James Franklin is a man with a truly impressive forehead. If you were going only by the photo on his homepage you might suspect he was the next Bond supervillain. But in fact, he’s a Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at University of New South Wales, so you know he’s pretty
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