A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
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)”
In response to a question on Facebook, after I shared this article from Catholic Answers. I might say that “faith plus works” can be a valid but misleading generalization — but not “grace plus works” (even though the article does clumsily put those side by side). Catholics do (and the Council of Trent did) fully …
Continue reading “Why the Catholic Understanding of Justification Is Not “Faith Plus Works””
I’ll be honest: I’m not sure about this post. It comes across as more critical than I meant it to be. I do not mean to “bash” anyone’s faith; only to point out what I see to be honest, practical difficulties in particularly Evangelical Protestantism, as I’ve witnessed and I myself experienced. As usual, if …
Continue reading “Assurance for Today: God works through the Sacraments”
The conclusion of what I originally wrote concerning grace and justification and “Falling from Grace,” in preparation for a discussion of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. There’s a lot more where this came from! [Part one. Part two. An aside. Part three.] Baptism: Initial Justification Our Baptism is the moment of our initial justification, the beginning …
Continue reading “Falling from Grace, and God’s Mercy and Forgiveness”
Part three of a longer thought on grace and justification and “Falling from Grace.” [Part one. Part two. An aside.] So, then, is justification merely a forensic declaration acquitting the sinner of sins, as the Protestants say? Or is it, as the Catholic Church teaches, an actual infusion of grace that cleanses and purifies the …
Continue reading “The Catholic View of Grace and Justification”
Today is the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Early in my journey as a Catholic seeker and convert, I didn’t know quite what to make of this belief and this observance; but as the years go by, and I continue to reflect on it, it is coming to have deeper meaning for …
Continue reading “The Assumption of Mary: The Redemption of the Flesh”
Part one of a series on “Falling from Grace.” Lately the Lord has been putting it on my heart to begin a series on the Sacrament of Reconciliation, also known as Confession. But first there are a few prickly issues which, approaching the subject from a Protestant perspective, I felt I needed to address beforehand. …
[Part of a series on Baptism in Depth] One of the clearest evidences to me of the existence of Sacred Tradition — of the idea that the Divine Revelation of Christ is not contained wholly and exclusively in Sacred Scripture, and that essential elements of Jesus’s teachings were not written down explicitly by the Apostles …
Continue reading “Baptism in the Early Church: Proof of Extrascriptural Tradition”
(Part of an in-depth series on Baptism. Part 1. Part 2.) When we left off, we were examining the Baptist view of Baptism, that it is merely a symbol, a sign of a work of grace that has already taken place in the believer by faith, an ordinance of the Church, not necessary for grace …
Continue reading “Does Baptism Regenerate? A Look at the Times It Didn’t (Series on Baptism)”
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all. Yeah, I’m a little late on that one, but it’s been a busy and stressful few weeks. I’m still trying to settle back in at home, and re-situate my books and my life, and make progress on my thesis. I’ve been stressing, too, you know, about the …
Continue reading “The Eucharist: The Source and Summit of Our Faith”