My cousin’s husband who also teaches at Auburn came into the Church last week. He had been going to Mass with them but never showed any interest. We asked how he got interested and his answer was that the sermons were so horrible, he knew there must be something else there to make the people [...]

When I was younger, I used to think that God actually could lie if He wanted to, but He simply chose not to because of His goodness. I didn’t realize, and I think many people still don’t, that He literally cannot lie. Some theological errors can be avoided by understanding that God cannot lie. For [...]

When I was a child the gospel seemed to be something that merely floated on top of my human existence. I did not perceive it as going to the very heart of my existence. I knew that I was mortal, and from the Bible I understood that when I died I would go either to [...]

St. Augustine, God rest his soul, can’t be happy about how Western Christians have been fighting over the rights to his theological legacy for the last five hundred years. This in-fighting notwithstanding, a few issues make Augustine stand out as decidedly Catholic. Recently we discussed the issue of the canon, and Augustine clearly supports the [...]

This past Sunday we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension, the day Jesus ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives. I was sitting in St. Clement of Rome parish church, attending the first mass offered by Fr. Eric Olson, who had been ordained a priest the previous day, listening to the homily by Monsignor [...]

I was recently in a discussion in which someone was claiming that the beatific vision was natural to unfallen man.1 He was at the same time advocating a complete separation of Church and State, and denying the notion that the State resulted from the Fall. Here I argue that those three claims are incompatible with [...]

What did Christ do for us through His Passion, according to Aquinas? Was it necessary that He suffer? How do we receive the salvific benefits of Christ’s Passion? Was His Passion sufficient? Does God hate sinners?

Growing up in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), I was taught that the five solas were the central doctrines separating the Reformers from the Catholic Church, and that the convictions revealed in the five solas provided the impetus that triggered the Protestant Reformation. In this paper, I consider one such ‘sola’ — namely, sola [...]

The Divine goodness is the end of all corporeal things because the entire universe, with all its parts, is ordained towards God as its end, inasmuch as it imitates, as it were, and shows forth the Divine goodness, to the glory of God. Reasonable creatures, however, have in some special and higher manner God as [...]

It is quite difficult to distinguish God’s actions from those of his creatures. Some think that God does everything; others imagine that he only conserves the force he has given to created things. How far can we say either of these opinions is right? – Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics VIII