Purify Your Bride

Last week Pope Benedict talked about justification in his Wednesday audience. It is interesting how protestant he sounds:
The Letter to the Philippians offers us a moving testimony of Paul’s transition from a justice founded on the Law and acquired by his observance of the required actions, to a justice based on faith in Christ.
Then he [...]

Read a post about Gay Marriage from Michael Scherrer on Time magazine’s Swampland blog. His words are in green:
Arguments against gay marriage tend to fall into three broad categories: it is a threat to tradition (the idea is historically not sanctioned; the bible does not approve); it is a threat to children (kids will learn [...]

I am reading CS Lewis’s book Miracles. I blogged on the subject over a year ago. Lewis seems to structure his whole book around the idea that we need to argue for openness to miracles. That if we exclude them from our thinking we are limiting God. That we are making the assumption that God [...]

George Wiegel talks a bit here about how Catholicism effects the way we think about history. It reminds me a a post I made a while back. It seems that another thing protestants have in common with atheists is they have lost connection with the Christian story. That has not been replaced with any story. [...]

This is a longer reply to a thread below so I gave it its own post. Ken’s words are in green.
a form of “apostolic succession” in the early centuries is a much different understanding than what it later became in the Roman Catholic Church. Irenaeus and Tertullian are the first to trace the bishops back [...]

I have written on the parallels between protestants and atheists before. Arguing the existence of God with an atheist is quite similar to arguing the existence of a visible church with a protestant. There is skepticism that comes out that they do not apply to other areas of life.
Recently reading the Abolition of Man [...]

I thought I might try a post on Unam Sanctam just because Ken Temple has brought it up a few times in comments on other posts. I don’t normally make a lot of posts on the classic anti-Catholic objections. First of all, because they have been dealt with hundreds of time by better writers than [...]

It seems like protestants and Catholics talk past eachother when discussing Sola Scriptura. I was noticing this in the recent backand forth between Kevin Davis and Dave Armstrong. Protestants try to prove Sola Scriptura by marshaling as much evidence as they can about scripture being the inerrant word of God. But Catholics agree with that. [...]

There is so much optimism in our society about how many people are going to heaven. Some say they think everyone will be in heaven. Some suggest that Vatican II teaches that only the most evil minority will be in hell. We would all like to think so. But when I read the gospels that [...]

Thanks to Steven Bauer for reminding of a Thomas Merton quote I blogged about over a year ago. I thought it would be good to reflect on it again. Here it is:
I think if there is one truth people need to learn, in the world, especially today, it is this: the intellect is only theoretically [...]

When I contemplate questions on my spiritual journey I almost never get complete answers. But I do get answers. Just more things to keep churning through my mind trying to make sense of it all. So when I reflected on what God wants us to do in terms of asking questions of protestants that are [...]

Rebuilding the country from the top down rather than the bottom up. This is what Obama says and it makes for a nice political speech. But it is an important reality. In a democracy, political parties cannot impose their will on the people forever. Eventually somebody puts a stop to it. They are able to [...]

People tend to read to much into elections. They assumed that the social conservatives were dead after Bill Clinton won twice. They assumed liberalism was dead after Bush won twice. Both were premature obituaries. In some ways this election shows how strong the Republicans are. McCain should lose big. I doubt he will. So after [...]