There are some ancient Christian doctrines that only the Catholic Church has retained. One such doctrine is her teaching on contraception, which was the unanimous teaching of the Church Fathers, and which all Christians shared for nineteen centuries until the Lambeth Conference of 1930. At that conference the Anglican Church decided to permit the use [...]
In a class at Reformed Theological Seminary I had a professor address the issue of internet pornography among seminarians. According to my professor, around fifty percent of seminary students view internet pornography on a weekly basis. I’m not sure where this stat comes from, but I do not doubt its accuracy. I appreciated my professor’s [...]
Protestants often caricature the Catholic doctrine on sacramentalism as if it taught that a sacrament was something like a magic wand waved over the recipient regardless of his disposition. But this is not an accurate description of the Catholic doctrine. In this short article, I will explain why. On this day, March 7, 1274, St. [...]
What is the basis for the “treasury of merit” and indulgences? These can be explained in the following ten steps.
From the letter Cum, sicut ex to Sigurd, Archbishop of Nidaros (a city in Norway), July 8, 1241: Since as we have learned from your report, it sometimes happens because of the scarcity of water, that infants of your lands are baptized in beer, we reply to you in the tenor of those present that, since [...]
Recently I was asked to explain how a Catholic would respond to the indicative-imperative theology explained briefly in the following video by Darrin Patrick, lead pastor of The Journey, an emergent church with four campuses in the St. Louis area.
This article is intended to be a resource showing the support for the doctrine of Transubstantiation in the Church fathers, and not a robust defense of the doctrine as defined by the Council of Trent.1 The Church fathers did not believe in a mere spiritual presence of Christ alongside or in the elements (bread and [...]
If the Catholic view of the efficacy of grace is correct, why are “bad Catholics” so prevalent (and so bad)? As I considered conversion from the Reformed faith, this was a question to which I returned regularly. But since being received into full communion with the Catholic Church, and viewing things from a Catholic frame, [...]
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 [...]
As a Reformed Christian, my lips pursed at the very idea of 7th graders beginning “seminary.” Only the Catholics could come up with such a bizarre scheme, I thought. It made as much sense to me as gifted monks spending all of their earthly days milling about in silence. I didn’t get it. But two [...]
