A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
I posted these in a comment to somebody, and thought they might be worth sharing: The best analogy I can think of to the Catholic understanding of salvation — and this has made all the difference in my life and in my Christian walk — is that we are trapped in our sins at the …
Continue reading “Analogies for the Catholic view of grace and salvation”
(I was accused of heresy today. I’m sure it won’t be the last time, but since it’s the first time, I’m rather upset, and was interrupted from writing your regularly scheduled post. Rather than leave this as a lengthy comment on an innocent bystander’s blog, I thought I would post it here.) Oh, so you …
Yesterday, I exposited in detail the Catholic doctrine of indulgences — what the Catholic Church actually teaches. Indulgences, of course, were at the heart of Martin Luther‘s criticisms in his Ninety-Five Theses, which sparked the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Today, I will examine Luther’s criticisms, which offer a vivid window into the abusive teachings and …
One of the most misunderstood doctrines in the history of the Church, by both Protestants and Catholics, is the doctrine of indulgences. The mere mention of the word to Protestants conjures ideas of the worst corruptions of the Roman Church, the heights of decadence and depravity and abuse. For it’s well known that indulgences were …
Tradition, I think, is a scary word for evangelical Protestants. But all it means on its letter is something handed down — from Latin trado: trans (over, across) + do (give) — something passed from one generation to the next, from one group to the next. As I’ve pointed out before, all Protestants, whether they …
Today at Mass we celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. According to the Roman Missal, the actual date of the feast worldwide was last Thursday, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday; but in countries in which Corpus Christi is not a Holy Day of Obligation, …
(I am afraid this one gets a little preachy; possibly a little critical. As always, my heart is not to attack, but to rebuild.) So continuing from my thoughts yesterday: One of the most strident cries of the Protestant Reformation, and of Protestants to this day, is sola scriptura: by Scripture alone. Scripture, the Bible, …
This weekend I met with my friend Josh the Baptist, my oldest and dearest Christian friend. Over the years he has not been the most amenable to Catholicism — he once told me, years before either of us had any idea I would end up here, that he didn’t believe Catholicism was Christian. But he …
I’m about to enter the scriptorium exeuntis, the paper-writing cave, from which there may be no return. But I suppose I shouldn’t leave everyone (all one or two of y’all?) hanging. Here is the second half of my post about Calvin. I have felt pretty bad about the tone of that last post. I very …
Last Christmas, I received a couple of books of theology: For Calvinism by Michael Horton and Against Calvinism by Roger Olson. I had asked for them; they had come highly recommended. I had never given Calvinism a fair shake, I felt. Every time I had tried to approach it through personal study in the past, …
