I had been on the path to becoming a Catholic for nearly twenty years. Coming from an Evangelical, Protestant background I had become an Anglican priest, learned to pray the rosary, understood and accepted the Catholic understanding of the Church, the sacraments and the priesthood. I spent a lot of time in Catholic Benedictine monasteries and attempted to follow the way of St Benedict. But I got stuck on the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.... Read more
In the combox a reader asks, Father, regarding your reference to the “personal relationship with Jesus” that evangelicals emphasize … what is that? I hear that a lot in Catholic circles now also … but I have never seen it explained. How does one recognize that experience or how does it feel? The evangelicals seem to mean a type of emotional experience … which I am grateful to the Catholics not to be under that obligation of emotionality … but... Read more
Being brought up in a fundamentalist home, our family were not exactly “anti-Catholic” but we assumed that Catholics needed to “get saved”. Certainly I had never seen a set of rosary beads, and didn’t know what they were for. I had never been into a Catholic church, but was told by my pastors that “Catholics prayed to Mary” and that had to be wrong because you were only supposed to worship one God and how could Mary be God? She... Read more
Today we celebrate St Athanasius, and can somebody beam him down? The place is crawling with Arians again. The simple version is that Arius–a Bishop of Alexandria–taught that Jesus Christ was not fully divine. Nearly the whole church followed this new teaching. It made sense, after all for lots of reasons it was a bit of a stretch to say that God himself took human form. Athanasius stood up for the historic teaching and suffered great hardship and persecution until... Read more
Do Catholics pray to Mary? It sure looks that way! But there is more to it than that. An increasing number of Protestants are ready to be more open minded about this controversial topic. “I’m ready to honor Mary more than we usually do” said a Protestant friend, “but I’m not going to pray to her.” I have already written on the question of whether Catholics worship Mary. You can find that post here. But what about the idea that... Read more
Guest blogger Mantilla Amontillado is the founder of Veritas Vestments. She holds a degree in Ecclesiastical Haberdashery from Salamanca University. She has done the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella three times on horseback and is engaged to the famous matador, Senor Augusto Torquemada. Listen to me for a minute hon. I am coming back from United States where I have been visiting this big fashionista show for church peoples. Many beautiful vestments and I am taking many orders for our... Read more
The ceaseless smiling Mormon ads on Patheos have generated a fair bit of discussion on these blogs, and I have learned a good deal about this new religion. One of the details was the authorship of the Book of Abraham–one of the books in the Mormon scriptures. It’s a fascinating story. In 1830 or thereabouts a traveling sideshow entrepreneur turned up at Joseph Smith’s fledgling Mormon community in Ohio and sold Smith some Egyptian mummies and a couple of papyrus... Read more
Guest blogger Ed Blanch writes for RED– the Intercollegiate Marxist Review. An activist with the Occupy Chick-Fil-A movement, he is also a member of Citizens for Rap Music. He comments regularly on the PETA website and blogs at There’s No Sky Fairy. Ed is a sophomore at North Jersey College of Technology majoring in media studies. Somebody commented on my blog: There’s No Sky Fairy that I should look into the ridiculous habit of these Catholic bishops wearing pointy hats.... Read more
Is there a contradiction in the gospels? In John 6 Jesus is asked the question, “What must we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answers, “Believe on the one whom he sent.” But in Matthew’s gospel in the parable of the sheep and goats, Jesus says we will be judged according to our works–“Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these you did it to me.” So what is more important–Faith in Jesus Christ... Read more
I’ve enjoyed welcoming a good number of new readers to the blog since coming over to Patheos. The comment box has been filled with lively discussion, and I always enjoy attracting some of the err, more eccentric readers who are out there. Here’s a comment in response to a picture post I had of Pope Benedict. What nonsense – the Pope is a demonstration of the old fish hat from Philistine times and the worship of Mithras the mythical son... Read more
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Fr. Dwight Longenecker
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