Last Autumn was the tenth anniversary of the Church of England's vote to ordain women as priests. The week after the momentous vote, a short letter appeared in an Anglican weekly. It read, 'Dear Sir, Please note that all the arguments used for the ordination of women can also be used for the ordination of practising homosexuals.' It might seem astounding to link the two issues, but the author of the letter was correct in his analysis.
Freedom of speech is a great thing. Unfortunately, it comes at an unavoidable price: When citizens are free to say what they want, they'll sometimes use that freedom to say some pretty silly things. And that's the case with the 12 claims we're about to cover.
As Catholic apologist G. K. Chesterton said, the purpose of an open mind, like that of an open mouth, is to close it on something solid. For the mind, that something solid is truth.
I was visiting relatives over Easter, and sadly they do not attend Mass. I went to Mass, and reminded them that missing Mass was a mortal sin. They said, "Oh, that was in the old days. Missing Mass is no longer a mortal sin." What do you say? Please give me some ammunition.
To many of us, the modern religious landscape appears increasingly confusing, even strange or frightening. No matter how strong in faith and regular in religious practice our families may be, we are not insulated from contact with a bewildering variety of religious expressions, a Babel of prophetic voices and a dizzying array of competing world views.
Jeannie Mills seemed to have beaten the odds when she defected from Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple cult before the 1978 mass murder/suicides of 911 adults and children in Jonestown, Guyana. She had the chance to reflect upon her involvement in the group.
Jehovah's Witnesses want you to live forever with them in paradise on earth. To entice you into accepting their offer of a "free home Bible study", they will show you brightly colored pictures of idyllic garden scenes, beautiful lakeside homes and children romping with lions. The Jehovah's Witness will ask: "Wouldn't you like to live in conditions like these?"
A number of my professors seem to be saying the same thing. That faith isn't intellectually honest. That the only stance worthy of an intelligent person is skepticism.
The Church, made up as she is of people, is constantly in need of renewal and reform. Any living thing be it a plant, a human body or a social organism needs constantly to be renewed, or it will become moribund. Spiritual renewal, when it occurs in human life and is done under the impulse of the Holy Spirit, often is also a reform, that is, a return to basic principles, a refocusing on basic goals.
Why do Catholics believe in the Immaculate Conception? The belief means that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was preserved without sin for her entire life.