A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
The broken WordPress app misdated my last entry, and rather than break all the links I’ve already made, I thought I would share a link to it. When Protestants read the history of the early Church, do they understand the faith of those early Church Fathers to be the fruit of the Apostles, or rather …
Continue reading “Reading Church History as a Protestant: The Early Church, Apostolic or Apostate?”
(This is a matter I’ve written about before, but not all in one place. And it’s come up in a conversation, so I thought I would put it all together here.) Anti-Catholics often claim that there is no evidence in Scripture that the Apostle Peter died in Rome or even ever went there. After all, …
Continue reading “Biblical Testimony to St. Peter’s Ministry and Death in Rome”
Part of a series on Baptism in Depth. Get ready, y’all! I have a burst of inspiration, and thoughts coming out my ears — both to finish my thesis and to share on Baptism. The Acts of the Apostles, the continuation of St. Luke’s Gospel narrative recounting the earliest history of the Christian Church, is …
Continue reading “Believe and Be Baptized (Baptism in Depth)”
This started out as a response to someone’s blog, but I got carried away. Here are some answers to some common misunderstandings regarding the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church, especially with reference to the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. Pardon me for just dumping it here with so little introduction or conclusion, but I …
Continue reading “What Sacred Tradition Is and Is Not: 7 Answers to Common Misconceptions”
Today is the feast day of St. Irenaeus (ca. A.D. 125–ca. 200), one of the earliest witnesses we have to the authority of the Church and to the doctrine of apostolic succession. I’m still trying to dig my way out from under this thesis, but I thought I would bring you a few quotes I’ve …
Wowzers, you get two posts by me in just two days! I couldn’t help myself. I wrote this piece in response to another post, and come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever posted this argument here before. The title “pope,” to which you objected on the grounds that it can’t be found …
Continue reading “A Biblical Argument for the Authority of the Papacy”
It being Christmas, the celebration of Nativity of the Lord, it seems appropriate that I make this post that has been on my mind for a week or two, regarding the Perpetual Virginity of Mary. The Perpetual Virginity of Mary is one of those Marian dogmata that over much of my conversion, I affirmed more …
Continue reading “Some light on the Perpetual Virginity of Mary”
In my RCIA class, Father Joe posed the question of which of the Sacraments is the most universal Christian sacrament. I guessed the Eucharist; just about everybody practices the Lord’s Supper, I figured. But no, the answer is Baptism, he said. My church growing up didn’t place much emphasis on Baptism, so I often tended …
This is a little reflection I meant to make a few months ago on May 3, the Feast of Saints Philip and James, regarding the confusion about who that particular Saint James, the son of Alphaeus, actually is. But I got busy that day and didn’t post. Today is the Feast of Saint James the …
Continue reading “Too Many Jameses: Untangling Jesus’s Family and Friends”
Today is the feast day of Saint Thomas the Apostle. For most anyone who was raised on Bible stories, including myself, the most memorable thing about St. Thomas is his skepticism at Jesus’s Resurrection. Indeed, the figure of “Doubting Thomas” has entered our cultural parlance. Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was …
Continue reading “Doubting Thomas and the Ends of the Earth”