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.
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...
Merry Christmas
This is my first Christmas with my daughter, Kateri Marie. She is the most beautiful little girl that God has ever created and is such a happy baby that it seems effortless to raise her. Shannon and I hope to build traditions this year that will last her the rest of her childhood. As she gets older, we always want to emphasize the spiritual reasons for the season, so that means we have to think "Advent" and not just "Christmas".
We could not afford to buy an Advent wreath or a decent manger scene (next year!), but we have made do with a 3 foot plastic tree from Target plopped on our end table. Though we didn't buy gifts for each other this year, we bought Kateri a toy and about 10 other people "just had" to buy her something as well, so those are the gifts under the tree.
My favorite part of these last few days of Advent is reading to Kateri about the meaning of Christmas. Sure she is only six months old and has no idea what I'm saying, but it still makes this dad so happy to share our Faith with her! We have several books that a friend and school teacher purchased for us regarding Christmas, both religious and not-so-religious (Clifford's First Christmas fits this description!). Reading to my daughter is definitely a highlight of my day, even when she is trying so hard to shove the corner of the book into her mouth.
Catechesis and Holiness
One's holiness is dependent upon their discipleship, which may depend on our catechesis! Thus the Pope starts out his section on the integrity of the content with these words in CT 30:
"In order that the sacrificial offering of his or her faith should be perfect, the person who becomes a disciple of Christ has the right to receive 'the word of faith' not in mutilated, falsified or diminished form but whole and entire, in all its rigor and vigor."
We cannot be mistaken here. As a catechist you bear awesome responsibility that echoes loudly into eternity. Catechesis that mutilates parts of the deposit- for whatever reason- interferes with the disciple's ability to be conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ. This affects worship, the "sacrificial offering" of ourselves!
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)