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
As an Evangelical Protestant convert to Catholicism one of the most common objections I hear to the Catholic Church is an earnest one, “The Church lost its way when it began to add stuff.” The line of thinking runs like this: Somewhere along the way, usually in the very early centuries, the Church got confused. They fell into a Old Testament legalistic tangle, they began to venerate the saints and Mary, and they effectively Romanized, becoming unrecognizable as the Church of the... 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 Protestant 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,... Read more
As an Evangelical Protestant I had a lot of misconceptions about the Catholic Church. I’ve written about that before. One of these misconceptions—and a rather popular one—was that Catholics didn’t know their Bibles. They didn’t read their Bibles, at least not like we evangelicals did, and they certainly couldn’t support any of their superstitious beliefs and rituals using Holy Scripture. As it turns out, I was mostly wrong. Mostly. (more…) Read more
As an Evangelical Protestant, spontaneous, heartfelt prayer was the bread and butter of the expression of our faith. It was our lifeline; our direct means of communication with God. Our spontaneous, unrehearsed prayer was what moved God to our causes and concerns on earth. So, as a convert to Catholicism I approached the Church’s vast litany of pre-selected and written prayers with an equal measure of incredulity and skepticism. Remarkably, however, after scratching below the surface, after taking a good look,... Read more
Yesterday, in the Catholic churches across North American, we celebrated the Ascension of our Lord into Heaven. As an Evangelical Protestant, we paid little attention to the wider liturgical calendar—apart from Christmas and Easter—but today in Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant churches this incredible occasion was, I’d argue, rightly marked. And rightly given its place of importance as we commemorate the life of our Lord. While this pivotal day may have gone unnoticed in many evangelical communities it’s the defining event,... Read more
As an evangelical Protestant it would’ve surprised me, greatly, to learn that some Christians believe Mary was “ever virgin.” Maybe I was sheltered, but I would’ve reacted with equal credulity if you had told me that Joseph, her spouse, was believed to be a unicorn. The perpetual virginity of Mary just wasn’t on my radar. But, as I began to explore the Catholic Church and to dig into its rich treasury of Marian doctrine the discovery of her alleged perpetual... Read more
The Catholic Church is a powerhouse of prayer. I wouldn’t have known it before becoming a Catholic. Or, at least, before reading more about Catholicism from Catholic authors themselves. But it’s true. Prayer is the fundamental lifeblood of the Catholic Church. Prayer is at its very core because at the core of the Church’s most central form of worship—the celebration of the Mass—is fundamentally prayer. And, as highlighted, sadly, with the recent disaster in Nepal, the powerful prayers of devout... Read more
The s-word. As an Evangelical Protestant we rarely spoke about sin. I know that’s not the experience of all evangelicals—maybe not even the majority—but it was certainly my experience. Sin was something we knew about. Sin was something for which we were all culpable. Sin was even preached about the occasional Sunday morning—or whispered about on a Wednesday night. But it was always sin in the sense of, “This is what you shouldn’t be doing. You need to ask God for forgiveness, and... Read more
I’m a Catholic so before we go any further, please let me confess something. It’s just what we do. For most of my Christian life I didn’t take unity seriously. Not at all. Heck, I didn’t even think about Christian unity. It didn’t even cross my mind. And if I did, by some complete fluke, I’d shrug. Meh, someone else’s problem. Above my pay grade. Not it! But I was wrong. My journey through evangelical Protestantism and into the Catholic Church, more... Read more
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