One of the charges I often hear from my non-Catholic Christian friends is that I seem to be undermining the inspiration and sufficiency of Scripture in my constant critique of the Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Nothing could be further from the truth! To quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church: The inspired books teach […]
Before I was a Catholic (and the entire 12 years I was the senior/teaching pastor at our congregation) I encouraged people to judge everything they believed and to judge what I was teaching them on Sundays, by the Bible — especially if there was a dispute between two contrary ideas that needed to be resolved […]
If the past three years of my life have been anything, they have been an almost daily exercise of frequently using the phrases “but the Catholic Church doesn’t teach that,” and “I wouldn’t have become Catholic if that is what the Catholic Church taught!” That’s because I have found that one has to constantly confront […]
It’s almost Father’s Day here in the U.S., so I want to use the occasion to remind everyone that God is not like a Father. Stick with me. Read on. Be encouraged. This holiday, along with Mother’s day, is both a wonderful and a difficult time for parents and children alike. It is especially hard for those […]
I just finished reading through the book of Genesis again — this time with tens of thousands of Catholics who are spending 2021 reading the entire Bible together with Father Mike Schmitz (along with Jeff Cavins) via the “Bible in a Year” podcast. To read Genesis is to read an epic drama! At some points […]
People love formulas. Religious people really love them! We love creeds, propositions, systems, and theological conclusions that help us to make sense of the bible, the world, God, life, good, evil, right and wrong. And don’t get me wrong. Sometimes, those things will keep us out of big trouble. When we make conclusions based on […]
Do you believe a person becomes a Christian as the result of saying a “sinner’s prayer”? If so, I have five questions. Question 1: Then what? After I say the “sinners prayer” to be saved, then what? When I went to Navy boot camp in 1987 one month after my eighteenth birthday, and just one […]
If you haven’t read the introductory post yet, you can pause and read it here first. It will help give a little context to where I’m headed in this second post in the series. I decided to do this series on the conscience for a variety of reasons. Here are three that stand out in […]
INTRODUCTION – The Conscience – Every Person’s “Mental Moral Monitor” “Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.” – John 8:9 In his popular Catholic Dictionary, Father John A. Hardon […]
HAVE YOU EVER HEARD THE PHRASE, “THE BIBLE IS SUBJECT TO INTERPRETATION?” I’ve heard it more times than I can count, and honestly it makes me wonder what the people who say it think the Bible actually is. My own passion to learn to interpret the Bible carefully and properly led me to take both […]