As a Christian I have always been against abortion. As a Catholic I am learning to understand and appreciate the more comprehensive package of “respecting life” rather than just opposing abortion. My protestant friends think artificial birth control has no connection to “religion” or God, and think that the Catholic insistence on opposing it is [...]
Entries from April 2009
April 27, 2009
Pomp and Circumstance
It’s the end of the semester and I am inundated with schoolwork. Exams, papers, more than this student/mom/wife can handle in a graceful way, but I am muddling through. The topic of whether or not churches should be ornate comes up from time to time. I have also been taking classes that mention medieval churches/cathedrals [...]
April 23, 2009
The Magical, Infallible Pope
It seems that certain urban legends will never die. Today my art history professor informed an auditorium size class that papal infallibility means that the Pope can never be wrong. Really? In 2009 people are still repeating that garbage? Doesn’t anyone ever check their facts before they make statements like that? Even Wikipedia knows that [...]
April 21, 2009
Conversion
This past weekend our parish welcomed a few dozen new members into communion with the “One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” It also marks my second anniversary as an official Catholic. Reading Marian’s account of her journey of the past year brought me back. I’ve been thinking this morning about my first Easter as a [...]
April 20, 2009
Who Can Forgive Sins?
This began as a response to one of the comments on my post “Evangelism”. I decided to do it here because it was going to be long, and I don’t want it to get lost among comments.
Sunday mornings Gospel reading gave me chills. Here I was, trying to explain to my son how the Church, [...]
April 17, 2009
Evangelism?
We went to confession as a family on Wednesday night. Ace informed us on the way there that there was really no point in him going to confession because he didn’t believe that it did anything.
That was kind of a shocker. He’s complained about confession before, sure, but not because he didn’t believe [...]
April 16, 2009
Mary as Prayer Partner
I’ve still been thinking about the conversations of last week that I posted on yesterday. Mary was a big obstacle for me in my conversion. I had grown up being taught that Catholics worshiped her, and that the honor they gave her was the honor that was due to God alone.
With time and study, and [...]
April 14, 2009
To Bead or Not To Bead, That Is the Question
There were some interesting conversations going on across the internet last week. Big fights here and there over the use of prayer beads, aka rosary beads, etc.
Some folks screaming, “idolatry!” Others, “aids to prayer”.
“But why do you need aids, don’t you know it’s all about Jesus?” the nay sayers ask.
“um yes, but I [...]
April 12, 2009
Astarte will never die
How ironic is it that my last post was on the “Easter Goddess” and today I was yet again informed that Easter was indeed based on the “Anglicization of the word/goddess Astarte.” She refuses to go quietly.
I was sitting at lunch with my father, brother, and youngest son, when my son asked, “where did we [...]
April 9, 2009
The “Easter Goddess”
This is Easter week and Taylor Marshall has a blog post about the common myth that the word Easter has pagan roots at his blog Canterbury Tales . So I thought I would trot out my overly verbose post (that takes about 40 pages to make the same point as Mr. Marshall does in 5 [...]
