A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
The third and last part of my reflections on grappling with sola scriptura as a Protestant journeying to the Catholic Church. Part 1. Part 2. Part of my ongoing conversion story. This part proved to be really long, but the pieces were so dependent on each other that I wanted to post the rest of …
Continue reading “Grappling with Sola Scriptura, Part 3: An Authoritative Church”
The second part of my account of how I, as an Evangelical Protestant journeying to the Catholic Church, grappled with sola scriptura. I decided to split the post into three, so there is still more to come! Part of my ongoing conversion story. So this idea of authority — which I had never really thought …
Continue reading “Grappling with Sola Scriptura, Part 2: Sources of Authority”
In this post, I relate how, as a Protestant journeying to the Catholic Church, I came to terms with the doctrine of sola scriptura. I have been trying to write this post for months, and have started over from scratch several times — mostly because it rambled at too great length, or strayed into trite …
Continue reading “Grappling with Sola Scriptura, Part 1: Paralysis”
Hi! No, I haven’t abandoned my blog. Real life has been keeping me pretty busy, but I do have some ideas in pots boiling for articles to share. A few months ago, I friend asked me to tell my conversion story. On the fly, I came up with what I thought was a pretty good, …
Continue reading “The Church, Lost and Found: My First Concise, Complete Conversion Narrative”
We have examined how the word “priest” in English is actually a translation of the New Testament Greek word πρεσβύτερος [presbyteros] (“elder”), etymologically distinct from the concept of a ἱερεύς [hiereus] or sacerdos, the sacrificing minister of the Old Testament; and thus “priest” is an appropriate title for the office of Christian ministry. We have …
Why do Catholics call their ministers priests? Is this concept of priests as ministers of the New Covenant of Christ valid and scripturally sound? In my last post, I demonstrated that the English word “priest” derives etymologically from, and was originally a translation of, the Greek word πρεσβύτερος [presbyteros]), attested in the New Testament Scriptures …
Continue reading “Ministers of the New Covenant: Why Christian Ministers Are Priests”
A recent commenter complained, as Protestants often do, that there is “no biblical basis” for the New Testament priesthood. My immediate response: Of course there is. There is ample demonstration throughout the New Testament of ministers — deacons, presbyters, and bishops — who are called to serve the Lord and the Church in a special …
This is a bit heavier than my usual posts here, but it answers an important question that Protestant apologists have posed to me and other Catholic converts: Was I only drawn to the Catholic Church because its claims to authority offered an “easy out” to the difficulties of weighing Scripture and doctrine for myself? Paralysis …
The next chapter in my conversion story, and the continuation of my post about the first time I went to Mass in Oxford, Mississippi. So I checked the Catholic Church in Oxford off my list. Before I even moved to Oxford, I had made an informal list of churches I wanted to visit. It included, …
The other day was the three-year anniversary of my entering the Church. And as I’ve been helping dear ones through their own conversions this year, it occurs to me that once again, I’ve left my own conversion story hanging. Here is another chapter. The first week I moved to Oxford, Mississippi, for graduate school, I …
Continue reading “I went to Mass and didn’t like it: Faltering steps in my journey to the Church”