A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward
Here’s the beginning of something I’ve been pondering for a while now (or really the last post may have been the beginning). I’m going to try to be a little more brief than I usually am, both for your sake and mine. The ministry of the Roman Catholic Church to her people is focused in …
Continue reading “Sacrament and Schism: The Media of Grace and Our Separated Brethren”
Hello, dear friends. I’m still around. I’m continuing to struggle with some things — not least of all a real terror of a paper — but I think the sun is beginning to shine through the clouds, and I hope, I pray, that I’ll soon be able to return to you on a more regular basis. I …
Continue reading “The Outpouring of Divine Mercy: A thought on the Work of God among all Christians”
(This is a little bit I wrote as a comment to a post of my dear blogfriend JessicaHof, “Why go to Church?” The discussion there is worth reading, but I also thought my response here might make a rare, short, succinct post for The Lonely Pilgrim.) The deeper Catholic reason why Catholics must go to …
Today I am once again deeply thankful for God’s overflowing grace. Not only did I receive the grace of absolution and the empowering strength of the Eucharist, but the membership chair of the Knights of Columbus approached me at the breakfast after Mass, put on by the Knights, and invited me to join. I am …
Continue reading “Amazing Grace: Saved a wretch like me? The Catholic Church and total depravity”
Often when it comes to the Scripture readings at Mass — especially in early morning Masses — I must confess, my eyes sometimes tend to glaze over a little and I don’t absorb them as well as I should. This is why it’s important for me to have read them beforehand, something I often don’t …
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 …
This is the seventh post in my series on James R. White’s The Roman Catholic Controversy. This post is the second part of my review of Chapter 6, “The Thousand Traditions.” Part One. I should thank James White for introducing me to a new concept in the understanding of Catholicism, of which before I was …
Continue reading “The Roman Catholic Controversy: Catholic Epistemology”
This sixth post in my series on James R. White’s The Roman Catholic Controversy. I am really getting bogged down with this. White’s chapters aren’t getting longer, but my responses to them are. I reckon his accusations are growing more and more onerous and his tone more and more condemning, and I feel there is …
Continue reading “The Roman Catholic Controversy: Tradition and the Magisterium”
A little flash that just occurred to me: Protestants argue sola fide, that we are justified by faith alone. The Catholic position is often presented as fide et operis, by faith and works. But Catholics and Protestants agree that it is not our action or operation, either in having faith or doing works, that saves …
One of the most iconic phrases of the English New Testament, one of the Apostle Paul’s great quotes that has always echoed in my ears growing up, is to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). But what does that even mean? Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so …