Truth seems like such an amorphous thing these days. In the United States, the wife of a President who—for all intents and purposes—lied to the nation about his infidelity is up against a businessman cum politician who’s changed his mind about his own politics and policies enough times that he’s practically, at this point, running against himself. Yes, there’s a video. But truth wasn’t always such a difficult and flimsy thing to grasp hold of. At the beginning of the Christian... Read more
Every day my friend Lindsay and her four children pray for the safety of Jason, her husband and their father, while he’s at work. Jason is a police officer and, on a good day, that can be frightening enough. But these are strange and scary times. Over on her Facebook page, Lindsay decided to start up a novena to St. Michael, Patron Saint of Police Officers and an important intercessor for Lindsay, Jason, and their family. I asked Lindsay if I... Read more
The belief of in ability of our deceased Christian brothers and sisters to pray for us has roots in the very beginning of Christianity. St. Polycarp, a disciple of St. John himself, wrote of the very special power held in the relics of the earliest deceased Christians. The prayers, in Heaven, connected to their physical bodies still on earth. By 787AD, the special place of the saints was solidified enough for the Church to declare, we adore and respect God... Read more
What would the Early Christian Church look like if through the miracle of time travel we went back to the very beginning? What would it look like if we had a time machine? I first heard that question put by Dr. Peter Kreeft an Evangelical convert to Catholicism and intellectually gifted professor of philosophy at Boston College in the United States. I really hadn’t thought about it before. But it’s a upon closer inspection it’s a profoundly interesting question and it brought, for... Read more
For fifteen years I was an evangelical Protestant. Then, two years ago at Easter I became a Roman Catholic. I began thinking about the Catholic Church nearly a decade ago. Then I began reading. First, from other Protestants who converted to Catholicism. I had questions similar to theirs. Then, from the Early Church Fathers, those closest to Jesus and His apostles, writing just after the time of the New Testament. And then, I read what Catholicism great thinkers and theologians had to... Read more
It’s all but too late. Today, much to the shame of our entire country, Parliament passed the first version of its assisted dying bill. The Bill, now due to be reviewed and wrangled by the country’s upper chamber of government, will shortly become the law of the land. State-sponsored euthanasia, within spitting distance of becoming a reality. But it only begins here. When the Canadian courts were forced with tackling the issue they ruled much more broadly than did our politicians.... Read more
If we give the Church Fathers the full weight they deserve, then we need to do some serious thinking. Read more
It was a Sunday morning after our ten o’clock service. I was in my final year of high school, maybe first year of university. It was billed as, I think, a “family Bible study” and part of a rigorous Adult Sunday School program which my Pentecostal church took great pride in. It was my first encounter with praying to the dead. The Senior Pastor leading the Bible study was working his way, slowly and methodically, through the anonymous Letter to... Read more
Dr. Peter Kreeft is a brilliant theologian, philosopher, and a Evangelical Protestant convert to the Catholic faith. I’ve listened to several of his lectures, read many of his articles, and become a devotee. He’s got a lot of great stuff to say, and he isn’t afraid to say it. His appeal, to me, is that Kreeft is not a man who’s afraid to mince his words. Still, I was floored by a comment he made in a lecture on ecumenism—that... Read more
When I think about my journey into the Catholic Church an old song by Pedro the Lion comes to mind. It’s a great tune called “Letter from a Concerned Follower,” and the line I’m thinking of unfolds like this, And I hear that you don’t change How to you expect to keep up with the trends? You won’t survive the information age Unless you plan to change the truth To accommodate the brilliance of men, the brilliance of men. Written from... Read more
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