Start here.
I have written here since 2010 on evangelization, parish life, Scripture, apologetics, and the moral life. These six are the best place to begin.
Go Home and Live as Missionary Disciples
If your faith feels humdrum, you may not have entered the mission yet. A talk to men on what that asks of you.
Formed By Distraction
Eliot described minds pulled from one distraction to the next. We now carry that in our pockets. What is it forming in us?
What Is a Catholic?
A plain answer: who belongs to the Church Christ founded on the Apostles, and what holds that Church together.
Why You Need Your Men’s Group
Before asking whether men’s groups work, ask what problem they are meant to solve.
Why Protestants Are Becoming Catholic at My Parish
What draws evangelicals and mainline Protestants into the Catholic Church, as they told me in class.
How God Speaks in Human Words
The first of four articles on how the Bible is at once a human book and the Word of God.
I don't evangelize. I'm Catholic.
Intro: I got it all wrong
Evangelization, evangelism and evangelical are all pretty much Protestant words for most American Catholics today. I considered myself one of those Catholics for a while. Catholics did not preach on street corners, did not pass out pamphlets, and did not knock on doors to spread the Gospel. If we did anything, the most we did was toss in the collection plate a few bucks on Mission Sunday in order to donate to those religious orders who were taking the Gospel to strange lands on the otherside of the world. Not the average pew-sitter's vocation.
Evangelization Before Catechesis
I talk a lot about the new evangelization and approaches that we take here at LayEvangelist.com that are based upon the new evangelization, but it occurred to me that some people might not understand what is so different about this approach than others.
In typical parish-based catechesis in the past it was safe to assume that parents knew the faith and were communicating it to their children and that, at least to some point, the culture was by-and-large supporting the Church's moral vision, and things like the Rosary and mass attendance were just another part of the average Catholic's life.
These assumptions can no longer be made, yet it seems that so much of our theology curricula come from this perspective.
Book Review: The Search to Belong, by Joseph R. Meyers
"This book focuses largely on the language we use to communicate to others a sense of belonging or the lack thereof."Every human person needs community, needs a place they know they belong. In youth ministry programs we struggle to create the perfect small group situation where teens can know they belong and can contribute. We pull out every trick in the book to, honestly, force the teens to belong, and we fail. What we need is not another trick, but is, perhaps, a refined understanding of what it means to belong...
Apostolate of the Laity, excerpts
Here is our lovely Ambrosian Rite Pope Paul VI.What is the point of this website, and of my ministry in general? The Second Vatican Council released a document entitled Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity or Apostolicam Actuositatem. Promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965, this document builds upon Lumen Gentium's understanding of the role of the Laity in the Church by speaking directly to the activity of the laity in spreading the Gospel and living it out.
This document, in my opinion, is deep, timely, and prophetic, but is largely forgotten from Vatican II history. I think, more so than anything I have come across lately in Church documents, this Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity sums up the mission and purpose of LayEvangelist.com and what I believe my mission is for the Church today.
From the first paragraph, the Council Fathers state their intent for this document:
In this decree the Council seeks to describe the nature, character, and diversity of the lay apostolate, to state its basic principles, and to give pastoral directives for its more effective exercise. All these should be regarded as norms when the canon law, as it pertains to the lay apostolate, is revised. (AA, 1)