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 […]
Just a few months before I was certain I needed to enter the Catholic Church, I wrote the following post on a blog I had been using to write out my thoughts about discerning the Church. I re-post it here, with some edits that seem appropriate now that I am Catholic, to reach Called to […]
In the third part of the Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas asks the question whether it is proper to Christ to be the Head of the Church and answers in the affirmative. Protestants often claim that the Catholic Church has set the pope as the head of the Church instead of Christ. But St. Thomas […]
The Second Vatican Council taught that non-Catholic Christians were to be recognized as “brothers” in light of their valid baptisms “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Some traditionalist Catholics look askance at this teaching, but it is worth noting that Saint Augustine also recognized that non-Catholic […]
In our contemporary culture, church-shopping has become entirely normal and even expected. Not only when moving to a new location, but if persons have some falling out with a pastor or other individual or family in their church, or even if their church-experience starts seeming dull or dry, they visit and try out other churches, […]
The following is an excerpt of an article I wrote for the Italian newspaper, Ilsussidiario. These categories of person flow out of an Incarnational ecclesiology. We see this duality in the life of our Lord. He is both the manifestation of God’s faithfulness to humanity and humanity’s faithfulness to God. Jesus Christ is God’s answer […]
The Catholic Church teaches that nature is ordered by God. The heavens are superior to the earth, and angels are superior to men.1 Even within the angelic order, not all are equal; for there are angels and arch-angels, cherubim and seraphim.2 Men naturally arrange (order) themselves into hierarchies as the ancients knew well and accepted […]
I once heard a Protestant pastor preach a “Church History” sermon. He began with Christ and the apostles, dashed through the book of Acts, skipped over the Catholic Middle Ages and leaped directly to Wittenberg, 1517. From Luther he hopped to the English revivalist John Wesley, crossed the Atlantic to the American revivals and slid […]
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 […]
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 […]
