“We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church,” says the Creed. Roy Blount, Jr. tells the joke about the Southerner who was asked, “Do you believe in infant baptism?” The Southerner replies, “Believe in it? I have seen it done!” Some people might feel equal bemusement about the clause in the
Many people want to know where the Church “came up with” the Holy Spirit—as though he is something the Church invented in a spasm of needless complexification. Such people forget that Revelation is like falling in love, not like designing a car. It happens—then you spend the rest of your
The creed tells us that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” Many aspects of Catholic faith are not amenable to the modern mind and this is one of them. There is a distinct fairy tale quality
The Creed tells us Jesus “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” Psalm 68:18-20 reads: Thou didst ascend the high mount,leading captives in thy train, and receiving gifts among men,even among the rebellious,that the Lord God may dwell there.Blessed be the Lord, who daily
When Jesus “came down from heaven” it was not simply to be born in Bethlehem. He came further and further down, to poverty, rejection, pain, betrayal, death, and finally, to the depths of the grave through crucifixion, the very worst form of death Hell ever invented. There is no abyss
The Creed says of Jesus of Nazareth, “Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” Christmas has so many happy associations that we
The creed tells us that Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, is “eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” This theologically dense language was forged in the crucible of a controversy
In Annie Hall, a reporter gushes about some Indian guru that “He’s God!” Woody Allen echoes five thousand years of wry Jewish humor toward the idolatrous enthusiasm of paganism when he replies, “I can’t get with any religion that advertises in Popular Mechanics.” Then he says, “Look!” as the Maharishi, a small,
The very first thing we do as Christians is believe and speak. The two go together like the deity and humanity of Christ. And so the very first words of the Creed are “We believe” and they are meant to be spoken aloud in public assembly by the Body of
I became a Christian with the help of a small group of believers on my college dorm floor. As is common in such circles, we believed that “the Bible alone” was sufficient to know Christ’s revelation and live as he wanted us to. We didn’t recite the words “No Creed
The devil, so the saying goes, is the ape of God. And so one of his standard methods for deceiving is to create parodies of good things and send them into the world in pairs. Why parodies? Because he cannot make, he can only mock. So instead of love, he
It is a favorite trope among the dissenters on the Pelvic Left to say, “The Church is larger than the flawed people who run it. We need to shed these dogmas of a bygone past and blahblahblah.” When people say things like this, I always have a strange vision enter
Somehow many people have the strange notion that the Old and New Testaments are opposed and that Jesus supposedly came to get rid of all that Law stuff and preach a gospel where “all we have to do is love each other.” In reality, Christ did not come to abolish
My dear Slimemold: I note with pleasure the High Command is proceeding apace in its inducement of profound spiritual torpor in the American humans. The humans themselves, though made for union with the Enemy and therefore always in search of Him, are still half ready to embrace such torpor, especially
My Dear Slimemold: I am gratified at your latest report concerning the spectacle of fratricidal malice among the patients who participate in the Christian email list we are monitoring. I see that Pusfang has got one of the hairless bipeds into that delightful state where it can set out to
If you had collared me before I was Catholic and asked my opinion of Rome’s teaching about artificial contraception, I would have said something like this: “I understand and applaud the Magisterium’s opposition to abortion since abortion kills people. But I’m not comfortable with the Church’s stodgy stand about artificial
St. Paul teaches there are nine fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Some of those fruits are sweet as peaches in August. After all, who wouldn’t want fruits like love, joy and peace? That’s why they get most of the press and decorate all those baptismal and confirmation cards from Hallmark. But
One of the reasons I so much appreciate the Catholic Church is that its lifeblood is Apostolic Tradition, which ensures against running around after The Latest Thing. However, I am also aware of the long history of Catholics trying to bind God to contracts he has never signed. Many times
One of the things that is most difficult to communicate to the atomized yet highly homogenous Cult of the Imperial Autonomous Self which is America in Third Millenium is the idea that the Catholic Faith is a seamless weave or tapestry which cannot have threads yanked from it without being
It’s not that our Chattering Classes have no actual opportunities for courage. It’s that they assiduously avoid them wherever possible (after all, you could get hurt!). Case in point, dig this “No, I’m not making this up” blurb for atheist Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation: “I can’t sign my
Ask any fan of Douglas Adams, “What is the meaning of the universe?” and you will be told: “42”. Adams, author of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, was an atheist. Indeed, Adams cheerily explains in a last collection of his work called The Salmon of Doubt how he not only lost his faith
God often comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. For Israel, toiling under Pharaoh’s lash, the revelation to Moses is good news indeed: “I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a
“Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind?” “Hush,” said he sternly, “Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind-ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the
One of the more interesting collisions waiting to happen is the coming head-on crash between those who believe in the American dogma of equality and those who believe in pure empiricism and skeptical rationalism. Often, these people occupy the same head, but they do not seem to realize that their
God creates from nothing, we create using the stuff God supplies us. As creatures in his image and likeness, it is our right and proper office to be “sub-creators” as J.R.R. Tolkien called us. Therefore, teaching our children how to cooperate with God in the work of creation is a
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