Farewell to a Brother Pilgrim

This past Thursday morning, one of my dearest friends and brother pilgrims, Sam Campbell III, passed away. I met Sam some ten years ago during my travels on LiveJournal, as a fellow Christian journeying on this road. Over the years we grew close, sharing in some of the same struggles, grappling with temptations, and grasping …

Your Sacred Heart within me beating

I have other things to do today [insert other usual disclaimers which I then go on to ignore], but my dear friend Laura of Catholic Cravings and my new friend Ryan of the Back of the World are inaugurating their splendid new effort, O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and tomorrow, by my reckoning, being …

Twelve Reasons I Love Resurrection Chapel

This is a post I’ve been thinking of for a little while. Here are a few reasons why I love my new parish, Resurrection Chapel: My connection: The sudden revelation of a deep, historical connection with the church here — one that God knew I would appreciate and be attracted by — lit my path …

Blog of the Year

Please bear with me, friends. Last week I moved out of my apartment and back home to Alabama, my graduate coursework being at an end and it being expedient for the completion of my thesis. My whole life has been taken apart and put in boxes, and I’m now faced daily with the disconcerting feeling …

One in Christ, but not a Visible Unity: A Thought on Christian Love and Reunification

In talking to a dear friend the other night, who is a new Christian, I realized that sometimes my complaints about Protestants and Protestant theology can be taken in the wrong spirit. (Sometimes I fear they’re made in the wrong spirit.) My friend was confused and worried that in my lashing out against “Protestants,” I …

Off the map

(It’s been months since I last posted an entry in my personal story. That’s because this next chapter is one of the most painful, and most personal. I was nearly inclined to skip over it — but it’s an important prelude to the events that followed. I’ve written three or four entries and discarded each …

The Year of Faith

Today begins the Catholic Church’s Year of Faith, proclaimed by Pope Benedict as “a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world.” It’s a time for the study and teaching of the Christian faith and for dedication to the New Evangelization. I invite all believers to join …

Faith and Love

For the past little while, since I’ve been engaging with hostile Protestants, I’ve been increasingly troubled. Because to my Protestant-steeped brain, their reading of the Apostle Paul sounds correct—the way I’ve been raised up to read him. I’ve struggled to read the Catholic idea of “justification through faith plus works” in his thought (even though …

The Sacred Heart of Jesus

I feel like I’ve been on the offensive a lot lately. I apologize for that. I’ve made three posts in the past two weeks against sola scriptura — and I have to confess, it’s been partly out of annoyance at the closed-mindedness the doctrine engenders. Forgive me for that. My deeper aim, in this blog …

Community and Communion

In the year or so before I moved to University, I began making an earnest, systematic effort to find and join a church. I wrote a lot of lists to myself about what I was looking for in a church (I am a maker of lists). And always near the top of the list was …