A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
(Here is a note that originated as a comment to a friend on Facebook, voicing my concerns about something I’ve never spoken about here before: “Hebrew Roots” Christianity or “Messianic Judaism.”) I have mixed feelings about the Messianic and “Hebrew Roots” movements. (I don’t know if it’s fair to lump those together or not. I …
Continue reading “A Note on “Hebrew Roots” or “Messianic” Christianity”
The more I read of Protestant apologetics, the more I am convinced that Protestantism exists only as a rejection of the Catholic Church. It is wholly a negative; it has nothing substantive or positive to say in support of itself. When it comes down to the issues that define the Protestant tradition, the venerated “five …
Continue reading “Protestantism as a Negative: No Reason for Being in Itself?”
(Today is All Souls’ Day, the commemoration of the holy souls in purgatory. As it happens, I had this post half-brewed already after a recent e-mail conversation with an anti-Catholic.) One of the most frequent charges I hear from anti-Catholics against the doctrine of purgatory is that it “nullifies the finished work of Christ on …
(I’m going to attempt to write the post I tried to write yesterday before I lost it to a tangent.) Recently I’ve been talking to Protestants, especially those who present themselves as being of an apologetic bent, and asking them to defend the principles of the Reformation. St. Peter exhorts us to “always be prepared …
(I shouldn’t write much today. I stand poised to wrap up a draft of the last chapter of the thesis. But I know it’s been a little while and I wanted to share a little bit lest you forget about me. I have a bit of previously written material I may share over the next …
Part of a series on Baptism in Depth. Growing up as an Evangelical Protestant, I didn’t have much of a theological foundation. But if there was any doctrine that I knew well and understood, it was Original Sin: Because Adam and Eve chose to reject God and sin, we have all inherited a fallen nature, …
The next post in my spiritual autobiography, and the conclusion(?) to my account of my struggle with Calvinism. I don’t know; maybe there will be more. I thought I would nudge a couple of Reformed friends in case they might be interested in my thoughts. I grew a lot as a person and as a …
Continue reading “The Sovereignty of God, or, My Brush with Calvinism, Part 2: A Crisis of Faith”
Here’s a little something that I shouldn’t spend a lot of time on by way of introduction (I’m presently nearly at the honest-to-goodness final attack of my thesis) — but it is nonetheless an important apologetic topic: Did Catholics change the Ten Commandments? The presentation of the Ten Commandments (or Decalogue) used by Catholics is …
[The fruit of another discussion somewhere.] The Real Presence of Christ does not appear in Scripture? You must be stretching really hard not to see it. 😉 As I said above, Jesus makes painfully clear his literal intentions in John 6: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, …
[This originated as a response to a comment on my own blog, but I thought it might be worth sharing with everyone.] Well, even the language you are using exhibits that you are misunderstanding the Church’s teachings about Mary. And I can relate, because these are some of the same misunderstandings and objections I had. …
Continue reading “Mary and the Living Tradition of the Church”