Today I was interviewed by a newspaper reporter who, it turned out, was a fellow Bob Jones University graduate. Among other set questions she asked, “What is your most important belief?” My reply: For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, so that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might... Read more

  I hadn’t read a Graham Greene novel in years, but remembering the tale of the ‘whiskey priest’ in The Power and the Glory I got it down and re-read it last week. I can remember reading Greene as an Anglican student and asking my Catholic friend, June Reynolds what she thought of him. She chuckled and said, “I’m afraid he’s too complicated for me. Catholicism’s simpler than that.” Now as a Catholic of ten years, and as a priest,... Read more

C.S.Lewis once observed, “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints!” Therese of Lisieux wrote, ” All the saints will be indebted to each other…Who knows the joy we shall experience in beholding the glory of the great saints and knowing that by a secret disposition of Providence we have contributed there unto…and do you not think that on their side the great saints, seeing what they owe to quite little... Read more

St Elizabeth Ann Seton proves that the following types of people can be saints: Mothers Wives Schoolteachers Americans Americans who go to live in Europe Americans who go to live in Europe and move back to America Anglican converts. Five out of seven…. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable…. Read more

David Palmer, a former Anglican priest, tells a great tale going from a nominally Anglican family, to New Age hippy, converted by a Baptist, drawn further by Anglican Franciscans, ordained, next stop Anglo Catholicism, and finally Home to Rome. His story highlights the life changing witness and work of our Evangelical brothers and sisters. If the Free Church Sunday School teachers and Baptist missionary to New Age hippies hadn’t done their work David may never have found Christ at all.... Read more

‘Apocalypse’ stands for the end of time, but the word also means ‘Revelation’. Was Mel Gibson making a prophetic movie about our culture, a heroic underdog film or just a good old action picture with more gore than usual? Some friends and I debated this after seeing the film a few weeks ago. My own opinion is that Mel Gibson told us right up front what the movie was about. The opening quotation said something to the effect that a... Read more

After my ordination a perky seventeen year old girl at school said, “Fr Longenecker, do you feel ontologically different?” A delightful question which goes to show the high level of orthodox catechesis at St Joseph’s Catholic School. A parishioner asked a similar question, “Does it feel different saying Mass as a Catholic priest than it did as an Anglican?” Personal feelings are, on the one hand, totally unreliable indicators of the truth, and on the other hand they are perfectly... Read more

Some of my Evangelical friends argue that the Catholic Church is not a missionary Church. Amy Welborn has a post with statistics on the number of Catholic missionaries who gave their life for the faith in 2006. When we take the trouble to read the history of the Catholic Church we learn that in every age it has been a missionary church, and that in every age these missionaries gave their lives for the gospel. This is not to say... Read more

One day last summer I got into a conversation with a woman at our community pool. She was an Evangelical Presbyterian, and was intrigued to hear that I was Catholic. Before long I got all the questions fired at me, and we finally got to Mary. The woman asked why we worship Mary. I said we didn’t, but if you consider who she really is, she must be pretty special right? I then went on to explain that Mary was... Read more

In all the discussion of how terrible (or not) the execution of Saddam was, maybe we didn’t pray enough. Remember the story of Therese of Lisieux’s answer to prayer with the murderer Pranzini. If she was a human little flower he was a most noxious weed. Here’s the story: In the early summer of 1887 Pranzini, was convicted of the murder of two women and a child. He was sentenced to the guillotine. The convicted man, according to police reports,... Read more