This is a guest post by Jason Kettinger. For the past ten years Jason Kettinger was a member of the Presbyterian Church in America. He received baptism in 2001, and spent his college days as a fruitful member of Reformed University Fellowship, before graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a degree in political science […]
Catholics and Protestants agree on many points regarding sin, but the Catholic Church makes a distinction generally not found in Protestant theologies: the distinction between mortal and venial sin. John Calvin rejected the distinction between mortal and venial sin, and Protestantism has largely followed Calvin on this point. Calvin rejected it because he did not […]
On September 21, Professor Lawrence Feingold of Ave Maria University’s Institute for Pastoral Theology and author of The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and his Interpreters gave a lecture titled “The Natural Desire to See God and Man’s Supernatural End” to the Association of Hebrew Catholics. The audio recordings of the […]
The Catholic Church has stood, since its inception, firmly against the use of any artificial methods of contraception. In fact, it is the only Christian institution that, as a whole, has held this teaching consistently for all of Christian history.
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 […]
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?
In this fifth post in this series, I examine what St. Thomas Aquinas says about the third of the three effects of sin, namely, debt of punishment. Why does sin cause a debt of punishment? Is the debt the same for mortal and venial sins? Is sin the punishment for sin? Does the debt remain […]
In this fourth post in our series on Aquinas and the Council of Trent, I examine what St. Thomas Aquinas says about another effect of sin, namely, stain in the soul. How does sin cause a stain in the soul? What is this stain? Is it caused by all sins or only mortal sins? Does […]
In this third post in this series, I examine what St. Thomas Aquinas says about the effects of sin, and in particular his discussion of the corruption of human nature by sin. Is human nature entirely corrupted by sin? If not, how can human nature be partly corrupted and partly uncorrupted by sin? What are […]
