This year my Lenten experience is going to be weird. At Easter, baring supernatural intervention, I’ll be joining the Catholic Church. That means this is my last Lent as a Protestant. My final forty days. For myself, if no one else, I need to stop right here and let that sink in. (more…) Read more
It was a friend from elementary school, a guy I hadn’t seen in some fifteen or sixteen years. He let me in through the door of what must’ve been his house—a nondescript suburban bungalow of seventies vintage. He led me into his living room, a wooden-paneled situation decorated without any sense of semblance, or taste, with over-sized puffy couches and a television that took up most of one wall. It was dirty, sticky, and I sat down only reluctantly. Hurriedly, as... Read more
Satan cannot drive out Satan. A house, or a kingdom, cannot be divided against itself. The synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record this profound event in the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. After healing a demon-possessed man, Jesus is confronted by the Pharisees, the pious religious leaders of the time, who question what authority Jesus has to cast out demons. They suggest, since Jesus certainly can’t possibly be working through the power of God, that it must be... Read more
I’ve written before about digging deep into Church history and the sort of dangerous pursuit that it can turn out to be. Indeed, lots of those diggers before me have dug around and wound up, like myself, on the rapid road to Rome. This in and of itself is fascinating. One observation I’ve made, while digging into the history of Christianity, is the confounding reality of just how amnesiac we are about the history of our own faith. I say... Read more
It goes nearly without saying that the prime objection of the Protestant to Catholicism is a fourteen year-old Jewish girl who said, “Yes,” and became the bearer of God. Rather, the prime objection of the Protestant to Catholicism is exactly what Catholicism has done with that 14-year old Jewish girl who gave birth to Jesus Christ—and that is to give her supreme esteem, an honour, and love. And that, on the face of it, sounds like a pretty decent thing to... Read more
When I originally set out on this journey from Protestantism to Catholicism I didn’t know exactly what to expect. At a certain point, however, I became Catholic. At a certain point in the journey I found the claims and practices of the Catholic Christian faith to be, as I put it, historically, intellectually, and spiritually compelling. I told this to a Catholic friend I met a couple of months ago and he suggested, politely, that I consider adding aesthetically compelling as well. I... Read more
Since digging deeper into Catholic theology it’s become clear to me that, for those who swear by a literal interpretation of Scripture, the Catholic understanding of the Lord’s Supper should be the most preferable. The sixth chapter of the Gospel of John is a fascinating one for a number of reasons. First, John records Jesus turning a little’s boys meager offering of five loaves and two fish into enough food to feed five thousand men (not counting women and children). Next, John... Read more
I’ve written recently about how the setbacks and difficulties I’ve experienced while becoming Catholic have all, in the end, served to create in me something new—something better than what was there before. This experience, in itself, has been fairly remarkable. When I hit a low, when I encounter a significant challenge to my journey, or experience a particularly seasonally-depressing day, God uses this to do something great. It’s happen time and time again and, I guess, I shouldn’t be terribly surprised.... Read more
Somewhere along the way I picked up this quote by Henri Nouwen and, lately, it’s been deeply resonant, You don’t think your way into a new kind of living. You live your way into a new kind of thinking. I came at this whole Catholicism thing, initially, as a way of better understanding my own faith. I remember rationalizing it that way, at first. There are some great ideas in the Catholic Church, to be sure, and I wanted to... Read more
I’ve written a lot about sola scriptura, the Reformation belief that Scripture—the Bible—is the ultimate authority on matters of faith. I’ve written a lot about it because it’s been one of the primary drivers of my journey towards Catholicism. In a nutshell, I don’t believe that a God who is who He says He is would leave each individual up to their own interpretation. (Yes, He left us the Holy Spirit but we still end up with a multitude of differing private... Read more
The Cordial Catholic
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