A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
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 …
Hi! No, I haven’t abandoned my blog. Real life has been keeping me pretty busy, but I do have some ideas in pots boiling for articles to share. A few months ago, I friend asked me to tell my conversion story. On the fly, I came up with what I thought was a pretty good, …
Continue reading “The Church, Lost and Found: My First Concise, Complete Conversion Narrative”
Recently I’ve been writing about assumptions and presumptions that Protestants make in reading the early history of the Church: particularly the presumption that if the Church they observe in early documents does not resemble their Protestant one, then it must have apostatized from the true, apostolic faith of Christ that they read in Scripture. Scripture …
Continue reading “Reading Church History as a Protestant: The “Great Apostasy” Narrative”
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?”
I suppose there are only two or three ways for the Protestant reader of Church history to understand the Early Church (by which I mean the subapostolic Church, the Church of the first several generations of Christians after the Apostles). The inherent thesis of the Protestant Reformation is that the changes brought about by the …
Continue reading “Reading Church History as a Protestant: The Early Church, Apostolic or Apostate?”
Friends, here’s a very detailed post I’ve been working on, answering as comprehensively as I could, from Scripture and history, a question often asked by Protestants: Was Peter really the first pope? I’ve been working hard on this for a couple of weeks, so I hope you enjoy it. If anyone has any further questions …
Continue reading “Was Peter the First Pope? A Comprehensive Response”
Cardinal Newman famously stated, “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.” If any single sentence could sum up the reasons for my conversion, that would be it. Yet there are many, many well-educated and thoughtful Protestants, who seem thoroughly versed in the facts of the history of the Church, for whom …
Continue reading “Reading Church History as a Protestant: The Catholic Church, Dead in “Religion””
This came out of the blue, off the cuff, just as you read it, when a friend on Facebook asked me to sum up in one point why I converted to Catholicism. This is probably the most succinct account you’ll ever read from me. It’s hard to narrow down to just one. But I’ll give …
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 …