Today in the liturgical calendar we celebrate the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter the Apostle. According to an ancient tradition, February 22 was the day Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, and gave to him the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. (Matt. 16:19) The Catholic Encyclopedia article on the chair of St. [...]

Where is the Catholic Church? If you are curious then I might first suggest that you try this exercise: If you live in a small town, go to the corner store on the main street and ask the first people you meet, ‘Where is the Catholic Church?’ If you live in a big city, go [...]

Advent is not only about the coming of Christ into the world, it is also about the coming of His Kingdom, the Church that He establishes. This is why the first reading on the first Sunday of Advent is about the Church, from the prophet Isaiah:

We ain’t gonna lie. Many of us on Called to Communion were drawn to the Catholic Church after we had reassessed the “salvation issue” through the lens of the “New Perspective on Paul.” Three years ago, a few friends of mine (including Sean Patrick of Called to Communion) were lamenting that there wasn’t a book [...]

Today, November 23, is the memorial of St. Clement I, pope and martyr. St. Clement was the third bishop of Rome, after St. Peter. He is known to us mostly through his famous letter to the Church at Corinth. Here I present a brief summary of what we know from later Fathers about St. Clement, [...]

In February of this year Ryan Glomsrud, the Executive Editor of Modern Reformation, invited me to participate in a roundtable discussion on the subject of sola scriptura, with Michael Horton, editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation, a co-host of the White Horse Inn, and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary [...]

Today is the memorial of St. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch who was martyred in Rome in AD 107. What does St. Ignatius reveal to us about the Church? According to the early fourth century Church historian Eusebius, St. Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch (from approximately AD 70 to 107) after Evodius, about [...]

The idea that the Church is a spiritual communion, identified and unified by sharing the same faith and sacraments, while excellent as an affirmation, is inadequate as a definition of the Church that Christ founded, since this idea fails to account for the governmental and hierarchical principle of the Church, as symbolized by the keys [...]

Today is the memorial of St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage in North Africa, from about AD 249 until his martrydom on September 14, 258 under the Emperor Valerian.

Within the Reformed blogosphere there has lately been put forth some pretty bold claims regarding the structure of the church in the first century, particularly the structure of the Roman Church. Basically the argument is that in the first century the church did not have a monarchical bishop and was instead ruled by a group [...]