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.
mission and confidence
The message of Christianity is one of self-distrust. You cannot do it on your own. We hate hearing this because we feel like it denies or limits our power. "I have the power" we say to ourselves, "I'm confident I can do this, build this, become this." Jesus doesn't think so.
Confidence is a compound word meaning With Faith, to have faith in one's own ability to accomplish, to succeed. The gospel tells us to stop having confidence in ourselves. We cannot accomplish. We cannot succeed. Apart from Christ, "you can do nothing."
I said this is a part of the gospel message, which means that it is supposed to be "Good News". How is this good news? Are not the greatest and most powerful among us men and women who had confidence in themselves, who excelled in their abilities?
Fears, Challenges, and the Grace of Being Ticked Off
Me. Yesterday.
I hate being fat. I've been fat for most of my life, pretty much since the third grade when I found out that I had aesthma. I let that little factoid become an evolving excuse why I couldn't, just couldn't! do this or that active thing.
The lazier and fatter I got, the more I relied on my own excuses why I should not have to do active, fun things with active, fun people.
Excuses only last for so long. Sometimes they do not work at all. And when that happens, now completely out of shape, I would be forced into situations where I had to be active, fun, and athletic. And of course I was just embarrassed by my inability and failure. No one wants to be embarrassed like that, so I withdrew further.
Embarrassment turned into fears, all sorts of fears, especially that common fear of failure.
And I liked those fears, because they kept me from those things that I thought were demanding far too much from me. I was not running from God, I just was running from... running. I feared demanding things because I did not know if I truly had what it takes.
Vatican on the death of Osama bin Laden
This comes from the Catholic News Service on May 2, the day after President Obama announced the execution of Osama bin Laden.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, released a brief written statement reacting to the news.
"Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions to this end," Father Lombardi said.
"In the face of a man's death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for the further growth of peace and not of hatred," the spokesman said.
Liturgical Catechesis
The new and corrected translation of the Roman Missal is coming at Advent to a parish near you. This means that the changes in wording, call and response, will be a difficult and lengthy process of adjustment. There are already a bunch of people who are angry that it is even happening at all. Catholic publications and secular press alike have expressed reservations or have outright attacked the new translation and warned against its widespread use.
I think such concerns are way overblown in every way except one. This could actually be a smooth transition, a teachable moment, and a great source of renewal in the English speaking world were it not for that one thing that concerns me.
I just don't think the Catholic Church in America is all that great with liturgical catechesis.
apathy, half-way houses, and the revolution of faith
Pope Paul VI ignited the flame of Catholic evangelization with both Vatican II and "On Evangelization in Our Time"A Conversation with My Cousin
Recently I had a conversation with my cousin who runs a pro-life ministry helping unwed pregnant mothers who are in broken situations to find a home and a life. He does amazing work and has helped heal a lot of lives and saved a lot of babies from the abortion mills of Houston, Texas.
He was asking me about the in’s and out’s of being a Catholic lay evangelist and how it was going. “Too often,” I told him, “Catholics are so busy catechizing- which means taking a person deeper into the mystery of Jesus Christ- that we overlooked the fact that they have never, ever been invited to fall in love with Jesus in the first place. That initial proclamation and invitation just never happened.”
“I never heard a Catholic talk like you,” He said to me. “My parents left the Catholic Church because no one mentioned having a personal relationship with Jesus.” The practice of the Faith was just mechanical, mindless, and culture-based.