Recent events are inspiring me to dust off this blog. I was not a great fan of Charlie Kirk before his assassination last week. I liked him; I listened to him sometimes; but in my daily rationing of time, he was not someone I focused on. But I’ve been deeply affected by what happened to …
Author Archives: Joseph T. Richardson
More Objections to Catholic Biblical Interpretation
Previously we examined the claim made by anti-Catholics that “Catholics cannot interpret Scripture for themselves.” I showed, by the teachings of Vatican II, that Catholics are not only able to read and interpret Scripture, but encouraged to. There are, however, other objections and other texts that I’ve seen raised to pursue this claim. I’d like …
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The Claim that Catholics “Cannot Interpret Scripture for Themselves”
A claim that I’ve often heard made by anti-Catholics is that “Catholics cannot intepret Scripture for themselves, but must submit to the Catholic magisterium.” The claim is that the Catholic faithful cannot, are not able, or especially are not allowed to read and interpret the Bible for themselves, but are bound and constrained in every …
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Sin: The Wound and the Remedy (Grappling with Protestant Theology)
The latest in a series of “Grappling with Protestant Theology,” a path in my ongoing conversion story, dealing with how, in my life growing up, Protestant theology prepared the path for my coming to the Catholic Church. The Wound So yes, I struggled for a long time with sin and fell into complacency on account …
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Does Grace Give License to Sin? (Grappling with Protestant Theology)
This will be intensely personal. Where I left off, I had more or less fallen away from the Christian faith as a young adult. I still claimed to be a Christian, but I stopped praying; I stopped going to church; I stopped striving for holiness. I had fallen into complacency about sin, and was tired …
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A Pentecostal Discovers the True Working of the Holy Spirit
[I outlined this post a few Saturdays ago but got busy and didn’t finish it. It refers to the day’s prayers at Mass. For the record, they are from Saturday, March 18.] Growing up as a Pentecostal youth, pretty much the sum of my Christian experience was in waiting for, proclaiming, or savoring the presence …
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Justification, unity, and papacy: A blind spot
One of the most frequent charges I hear, when I point out the inherent chaos and disunity of Protestantism, is that “there is a lot of disagreement in the Catholic Church, too” — that somehow disagreements within the Catholic Church are equivalent to, or excuse, the fundamental doctrinal disagreements between diverse Protestant churches. In particular, …
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On life, apologetics, and Reformation
It’s been a little while since I’ve posted, so I wanted to give you an update. I graduated in December with my latest degree, in computer science. I’ve gone to work as a research scientist in information technology for a research center at my university. For the first time in my life, I consider myself …
Grappling with Sola Fide, Part 1
So as I journeyed to the Catholic Church, sola scriptura didn’t put up much of a fight. I don’t remember ever even considering, at the earliest stages, whether a particular doctrine could be found in Scripture: if it could be found among the teachings of the early Church Fathers, that was good enough for me. …
Reformation Day: Reflections on the Heritage of the Protestant Reformation
Today, October 31, is the 499th anniversary of the start of the Protestant Reformation, the day Martin Luther is said to have nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church door, the beginning of the “protest” — celebrated as, in Lutheran and Reformed churches, Reformation Day. Yesterday was known in those churches …
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