Category: Apologetics

Life Changing Marian Apparitions
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Life Changing Marian Apparitions

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by on May 16, 2020 in Apologetics, Canon Law, Catechesis, Evangelization, Featured, History, Live in Christ
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To know the Virgin Mary is to love her. One way we can get to know her better is through her visits from Heaven to Earth. Marian apparitions are simply ‘private revelations’ illuminating aspects of faith but not revealing new ones since, according to Catholic doctrine, the age of public revelation ended with John, the last […]

Lenten Reflection: What Is Salvation?
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Lenten Reflection: What Is Salvation?

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by on Apr 03, 2020 in Apologetics, Featured, Live in Christ
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Shortly before his martyrdom, St. Paul penned a letter to his friend Timothy. The great apostle seems to have known that death was near, and his bittersweet words are imbued with a sense of urgency. St. Paul comforts and commends his young protégé, while exhorting him to sacrifice. “Do not be ashamed of the testimony […]

How Are Your Fridays Going?
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How Are Your Fridays Going?

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by on Oct 29, 2019 in Apologetics, Canon Law, Catechesis, Cooking & Food, Evangelization, Featured, Health & Fitness, Live in Christ, Parenting, Resources, Society & Common Good, Women
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What are you doing this Friday? I’m asking about your penance, not that it’s my business, but the business of the Church is something I care about. And it seems that Friday penances largely disappeared along with the long lines outside Brown’s Fish and Chips every Friday. That was the fish restaurant in my neighborhood […]

The Assumption of Mary for Converts and non-Catholics
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The Assumption of Mary for Converts and non-Catholics

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by on Aug 15, 2019 in Apologetics, Evangelization, Featured
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Mary was assumed into heaven. It’s one of the more difficult teachings for converts to grasp. But there are ways to approach the Assumption so that non-Catholics may come to believe. In 1995, I wrote an article for Protestant newspapers called “Trends in Christian Fiction” which considered the possibility that a Christian fiction book might […]

The 4th of July, Human Dignity, and the Catholic Church
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The 4th of July, Human Dignity, and the Catholic Church

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by on Jul 04, 2019 in Apologetics, Columnists, Featured
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Fireworks.  Baseball games.  Picnics.  This is what the 4th of July means to most Americans today.  But July 4th, 1776, was a very solemn day for the 55 men who affixed their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.  For in so doing, they were risking their lives and fortunes to defend the proposition that “all […]

Being in Love
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Being in Love

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by on Feb 01, 2019 in Apologetics, Featured
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Aristotle observed that all was in motion. Everything was in a process of change. Whatever stage you observed, there was always a prior movement and prior change. Aristotle realized that we could not go back like that forever. At some point we had to come to an originator of all this motion.

Why <i>Sola Scriptura</i> Still Matters, Part One
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Why Sola Scriptura Still Matters, Part One

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by on Dec 28, 2018 in Apologetics, Featured
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We are now just over 501 and one years since Martin Luther’s posting of his ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg Germany, the spark that lit the fire of what many Protestants still proudly call the “Reformation.” The Banner of the “Reformation” Still Flies Given the climate of cooperation and dialogue […]

Why <em>Sola Scriptura</em> Still Matters, Part Two
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Why Sola Scriptura Still Matters, Part Two

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by on Dec 28, 2018 in Apologetics, Featured
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In part one we discussed the importance that the Protestant principle of sola scriptura still has this close to the 500th anniversary of the “Reformation.” Now it is time to get into the meat of the argument by examining the classic Protestant interpretation of two key verses of Scripture. “All Scripture Is Inspired” The Bible verses […]

Why <em>Sola Scriptura</em> Still Matters, Part Three
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Why Sola Scriptura Still Matters, Part Three

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by on Dec 28, 2018 in Apologetics, Featured
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In part two, we left this discussion asking exactly what the point was of 2 Timothy 3:16-17, if it is not the sola scriptura conclusion that Protestants often draw. What exactly was this apostolic authority, St. Paul, saying to Timothy about the Scriptures? Was St. Paul saying that “the Bible” would make the man of God […]

Beginner's Guide to Understanding Catholicism
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Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Catholicism

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by on Nov 08, 2018 in Apologetics, Catechesis, Featured
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Christianity is one of the world’s largest religious groups, with nearly 2.5 billion people following one of its five major denominations—Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant, and Roman Catholic. Roughly half of all worldwide Christians identify as Catholic, making it the largest of the Christian churches. That number continues to grow as worshippers share their […]

About Those Christmas Animals
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About Those Christmas Animals

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by on Dec 25, 2017 in Apologetics, Featured
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The Classic manger scenes always include cows (or oxen), donkeys (or mules), and sheep. The Egyptian god Apis was a bull who was believed to be a king and who would become a god after his ritual slaughter. The Roman god Consus was a protector of grain, who had an altar underground, and who considered mules […]

Defend the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity!
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Defend the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity!

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by on Jun 11, 2017 in Apologetics, Featured
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Every time we make the sign of the Cross we make an invocation of the Holy Trinity: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Those who grew up as Catholics, or in other religious communities with an orthodox understanding of this Triune nature of God, may take […]

Bl. John Henry Newman, 1880
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Newman: The Praise of Men

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by on Apr 26, 2017 in Apologetics, Catechesis, Featured, History
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In the sermon The Praise of Men,1 after indicating that ridicule is a powerful weapon used by the devil, Blessed John Henry Newman describes a case in which it is the cause of much pain: when a person who had shunned religion turns by God’s grace back to the practice of religion and meets the […]

Bl. John Henry Newman, 1880
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Newman: Patron of Adult Faith Formation

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by on Oct 09, 2016 in Apologetics, Catechesis, Featured, History
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Today is the Cardinal’s feast day.

Augustine: Father of Heresies or Truly Catholic Doctor?
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Augustine: Father of Heresies or Truly Catholic Doctor?

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by on Aug 01, 2016 in Apologetics, Evangelization, Featured
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Many Protestant rebels from Luther forward placed mistaken reliance on the works of St. Augustine of Hippo as providing a patristic Fathers-of-the-Church warrant for their new teachings and heresies. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and other adherents of the Augsburg Confession (a document that set forth the beliefs, including some heretical beliefs, of Lutherans and others) employed […]

Don’t Feed the Trolls – It Just Encourages Them
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Don’t Feed the Trolls – It Just Encourages Them

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by on Jul 01, 2016 in Apologetics, Featured, The Homosexual Agenda
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As an observer of the human species, I believe I have discovered a new type. I call them “paid internet protesters,” or “PIPs” in internet-speak, who are all armchair culture warriors. Dr. Rachel Lu, a senior contributor at The Federalist, wrote an article called, “The LGBT Movement Will Self-Destruct.” My response was titled, “The LGBT […]

Truth, Treason, and Marriage
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Truth, Treason, and Marriage

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by on Apr 26, 2016 in Apologetics, Canon Law, Catechesis, Evangelization, Featured, History, Marriage
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The early part of the first century A.D.: Herod was the one who had John arrested and bound in prison on account of Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, whom he had married. John had said to Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’ Herodias harbored a grudge against […]

Beyond Us and Beside Us
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Beyond Us and Beside Us

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by on Mar 07, 2016 in Apologetics, Catechesis, Evangelization, Featured
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In the Book of Isaiah the prophet recounts his vision: He saw God, sitting before him on a “high and lofty throne”while the Seraphim stationed above cried out: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts. All the earth is full of his glory.” Then at the sound of that cry “the frame of the […]

Book Review: <em>The Apostasy that Wasn't</em>
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Book Review: The Apostasy that Wasn’t

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by on Feb 18, 2016 in Apologetics, Featured, History, On Books
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We are supposed to love the Catholic Church. After all, Christ is in love with her.  She is his bride. St. Paul desired to present the Church to him as a pure bride (2 Cor. 11: 2) and St. John in mystical vision saw her, glorious and radiant, adorned as a bride ready to be […]

Examining Our Consciences and Lent
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Examining Our Consciences and Lent

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by on Feb 10, 2016 in Apologetics, Catechesis, Evangelization, Featured
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Lent is our time to be with Jesus in the desert, where He, in His humanity, experienced weakness, hunger and temptation. Jesus entered fully into our humanity and was like us in all things except sin. This is the unique mystery of the Incarnation, where our God suffers as one of us. Jesus can identify […]

Broken (Liturgical) Windows
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Broken (Liturgical) Windows

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by on Jan 25, 2016 in Apologetics, Evangelization, Featured, Live in Christ
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In a large urban parish which I attended some years ago I have noticed that the liturgical life seems to be shrinking in both action and attitude. The priests no longer hear confessions before Sunday Mass. On minor federal holidays the two regular daily Masses are reduced to only one mid-morning when most working people […]

Little Lies, Big Lies, and Narratives
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Little Lies, Big Lies, and Narratives

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by on Jan 19, 2016 in Apologetics, Featured, History
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Recently I read a collection of essays by various Catholic historians published in a book entitled Catholicism and Historical Narrative, edited by Kevin Schmiesing. As Schmiesing says in his introduction to the book, the fundamental job of historians is to “uncover the truth about the past.” “Yet,” he reminds us, “most historical debate occurs not […]

The Lonely Road of the Church's "New Minority"
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The Lonely Road of the Church’s “New Minority”

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by on Dec 01, 2015 in Apologetics, Evangelization, Featured
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A religious once said, “Being a missionary is like taking a pearl of inestimable value into a land where the people don’t want it, even as a gift.” The sad truth is that today, everyday faithful Catholics are called to be missionaries  in their own churches. Why? Because our fellow parishioners are often as in need of evangelization […]

All Saints Icon (detail)
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Is Praying to the Saints Idolatrous?

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by on Oct 30, 2015 in Apologetics, Featured, History
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Praying to the Saints is the opposite of idolatry.