Early in his pontificate, Pope Francis likened the Catholic Church to a field hospital. Rather than a stuffy religious organization, the Holy Father urged us to view the Church as a kind of guerrilla movement—tending to the sick and wounded on the battlefield. Frankly, this sounds an awful lot like the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed. I have a feeling Pope Francis is on to something. A wise, non-Catholic friend of mine, once remarked that if the Church truly is like... Read more
I didn’t know about the saints until my thirties but I came by my ignorance honestly. As an Evangelical we didn’t talk about the saints. If we did, it was to condemn those idol-worshiping Catholics who named and adorned their places of worship with statues of these long dead heretics. Who prayed to mere men and women in the place of Christ. Who worshiped the dead. (We were rather crude in our assessment.) Now, as a Catholic, I find myself enamored... Read more
When Jesus prayed, in the Gospel of John, for all future Christians he prayed, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.” (John 17:21a) This kind of closeness—this kind of unity—is difficult to imagine. God, as we understand Him, is triune: Jesus, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit existing in one and the same Being. One beautiful old hymn reminds us, “The Godhead, three-in-one.” This is a closeness... Read more
As I stood in what seemed like the longest line on earth—penance for something, somewhere, I’m sure—I couldn’t help but notice the exaggerated golden crucifix hanging around the neck of the nearest cashier. The cashier who ever… so… slowly bagged item after agonizing item for the shoppers ahead of me as if she were a robot whose batteries were just… about… fully… drained. In the twelve eternal minutes I spent waiting, I rolled my eyes so many times I’d be surprised if... Read more
One of the ever-bearing gifts of the Catholic Church is incredible depth of her teaching. Spanning over two thousand years the Church boasts incredible thinkers from Augustine to Aquinas; from Henri Nouwen to Cardinal Newman; from St. Francis of Assisi to, one of my personal favourites, St. Francis de Sales. Living and writing some 400 years ago, St. Francis de Sales was Bishop of Geneva at a time of crisis for the Christian Church. He stands out for his poignant responses to the... Read more
The prosperity Gospel movement is bizarre given that Jesus was unequivocal about wealth but, like the secular spirituality of many popular American celebrities, the movement soldiers on. While it might be a stretch to say that someone like Creflo Dollar made me a Catholic it would be accurate to say that the possibility of theological interpretations like Dollar’s are, in large part, what’s driven me in my search for deeper truth. A search which has landed me on the... Read more
In a Church that celebrates the Rosary, changes its liturgical vestments for every season, and upholds a historic teaching of the Real Presence in the Communion celebration it’s not a stretch to call Catholicism a physical faith. That physicality, among other things, remains a serious draw for converts like myself—the tug of a faith which emphasises not just the head and the heart but the hands, too. So it makes sense, especially during the Lenten period, that Catholics are called to... Read more
Every Lent, for the past several years, I’ve given up complaining. It’s liberating. And soul-making. And hard. Complaining is one of those things that just doesn’t seem very Christian. Complaint is the salve of the soul, said no saint ever. And although a fairly sufficient argument could be made that Job, one of the most famous characters in the Old Testament, was a voracious complainer he was, likewise, roundly rebuked. By the Almighty, nonetheless. No, complaining does no good. It solves no problems,... Read more
As an Evangelical Christian I understood the “Body of Christ” or “the Church” (capital C) to be an invisible collection of believers. The idea was beautiful, really, because it meant that somehow all Christians across the whole world no matter how important or obscure were connected by Christ into one universal Church. But this isn’t how it was understood by Early Christians and when I found that out I was a little alarmed, disappointed, and completely unprepared for what came... Read more
Somewhere in those early days of university I made a definitive choice not to drink coffee. It wasn’t hard; anytime I even caught a whiff of the stuff it turned my stomach. It smelled disgusting. I had no interest. But I set my sights against it regardless. While many of my friends were pulling all-nighters and buoying themselves through their early morning classes with caffeine I was groggily drinking my orange juice or plain old water. Even when my good friend James... Read more
The Cordial Catholic
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