Just kidding, the Catholics don’t have anything wrong about justification; I was just getting your attention. :-) Now to be serious. The primary way we both [Catholics and Protestants] talk about justification and about any of God’s operations is based on the way that the Scriptures speak of God. Let me say at the outset […]

Catholics, following St. Augustine, differentiate between coveting a neighbor’s wife and between coveting a neighbor’s goods. Protestants follow Judaism and Origen in combining both types of covetousness into the tenth commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.” Now the species of a sin is defined by its object (Summa 2a.72.1) just as an action takes its species […]

“For this reason Luther’s phrase: “faith alone” is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love.” – Pope Benedict XVI Reformed Professor R. Scott Clark in response to Pope Benedict: “That conditional, that “if,” makes all the difference in the world. That one little conditional is the difference between Rome and […]

We make judgments about corporeal objects because they are below us, and we say not only that they are or are not this way, but also that they ought to be this way or ought not to be… We make these judgments according to the inner rules of truth which we perceive in common. But […]

The period of persecution under Decius in the middle of the third century and the subsequent controversies in Italy and Northern Africa is one of the most confusing periods of ante-Nicene Church history. So much writing has survived that we are able to bring a lot of characters into play. To make things more confusing, […]

St. Paul’s Apostleship was unique because he was not part of the original twelve nor was he, like St. Matthias, ordained to fulfill a vacancy in the twelve. 1 In my recent article on Holy Orders, it may not be clear how some of the claims I made about the Apostolic office apply to St. […]

In my recent article on Holy Orders, I gave a condensed explanation of the male-only priesthood in footnote #233. For further reading, I’d like to recommend the following recent posts on the topic: Jeffrey Steel: Women priests? A Marian Church in a fatherless and motherless culture, by von Balthasar Dr. Edward Feser: God, man, and […]

At the heart of the separation of Catholics and Protestants lies a disagreement about the ecclesial hierarchy. Who are the rightful shepherds of Christ’s flock? This article will examine the Catholic Church’s doctrine of the sacrificial priesthood, and in doing so, will lay the foundation for our subsequent discussion on the critical issue of apostolic […]

Consider the following argument. Protestants have an inerrant source for the faith, the Scriptures. But it does not make one more confident of the true interpretation of the faith to add another layer of infallibility (the Church or magisterium) because the individual receiving instruction in the faith is fallible. Whatever is received, regardless of whether […]

In response to a recent comment by a regular guest here at Called to Communion, I’d like to take a brief moment to re-visit the basic vision behind this site. I’ve remarked several times in combox discussion that certain interlocutors don’t seem to grasp what we’re trying to accomplish.  This recent comment confirms my suspicion.