A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
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 …
Continue reading “Sin: The Wound and the Remedy (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 …
Continue reading “Does Grace Give License to Sin? (Grappling with Protestant Theology)”
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, …
Continue reading “Justification, unity, and papacy: A blind spot”
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 …
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. …
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”
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”
No, I haven’t abandoned my blog. I just have way too much on my plate. I’m trying to get back into it, at the request of several dear friends. So I thought I would start with an update of where I am and what I’m up to. Back to school As you may know, I …
This past Thursday morning, one of my dearest friends and brother pilgrims, Sam Campbell III, passed away. I met Sam some ten years ago during my travels on LiveJournal, as a fellow Christian journeying on this road. Over the years we grew close, sharing in some of the same struggles, grappling with temptations, and grasping …