De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

The Catholic Biblical Association has elected as its president a distinguished scholar who openly says: “I do not believe in Jesus as Lord.” There is nothing scandalous about Amy-Jill Levine saying that, she is admirably honest. She is a practising Jew. The extraordinary question is why an association constitutionally committed to Catholic biblical scholarship thinks the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord is apparently unnecessary for its highest office. At some point, we have to ask: what is the word “Catholic” actually doing? See my full report on this at Regina Unscripted

Most Christians have been taught that the goal of faith is to “go to Heaven when you die.” But that isn’t actually the Christian hope. In a recent piece, I engage with N.T. Wright’s critique of Western Christianity and his insistence that the New Testament points not to escape from the world, but to resurrection, new creation, and God coming to dwell with humanity. Along the way, I look at why rapture theology and End Times speculation miss the heart of the Gospel, how Greek ideas about the soul distorted popular belief, and why the Catholic vision of resurrection still makes better sense of Scripture than the evangelical escape story ever did. This isn’t about scoring points against other Christians. It’s about recovering the hope the Church has always proclaimed, even when we’ve failed to explain it well. If you’ve ever felt that something was off with “fly away to Heaven” Christianity, this piece is for you. 👉 Read the article HERE

Leaving aside the arguments about reduced culpability for a moment, I would like to post, for the record, some of my more fundamental concerns regarding the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia . Reading this document was, I found, not like reading anything else promulgated by the Church, and I have read a lot of Church documents! Even a perfunctory reading left me feeling uneasy with simple and obvious errors contained therein, it felt like it was a different faith! As I cited in this post , the Professor who taught me Moral Theology has pointed out some of these glaring and obvious errors with respect to the misrepresentation of Magisterial texts: Magisterial texts in AL are distorted when quoted selectively or ignored almost completely. Repeatedly presenting conscience as the sanctuary where man finds himself alone with God ( Gaudium et spes , 16) suggests it is only a private matter between the individual and God, while references to invincible ignorance and to other ...

"Who are you gonna believe? God or logic?" Foul Mouthed Atheist Dusty Smith, AKA #CultofDusty This is the challenge issued by the 5th most popular Atheist on Youtube, known as "CultofDusty". In this video, he manages to embody pretty much all of the things that concern me most about society in the new age of instant internet answers where, if you want to know something, you hit Google first. Because of the instantaneous nature of information from such sources, we think we are much more intelligent and better informed than any generation who went before us. But we have failed to understand that knowing something is different from reading it and making up a subjective opinion on what it means. This is obviously all the more appropriate when one is reading a book which contains numerous literary genres, written thousands of years ago. I do bang on about this quite a bit, I know, but I think it is because of the benefit formal study has been to my own faith. I...

David waged a sacred war of extermination against the Amalekites This Sunday , (29th in Ordinary Time, year C) the first reading is about the Israelites conflict with the Amalekites. In a new video, Fr. Robert Barron addresses the claims of the New Atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, et al ) that the God of the Bible is a dreadful entity because of the violence in the Old Testament, which seems so out of step with the God of the New Testament. Of course, this is not a new problem in the Church. The Marcionites, founded in 144 AD, thought that there were two gods, the horrible god of the OT and the cuddly god of the NT and they jettisoned the OT from their Canon of Scripture. They taught that Christ was not the Son of the God of the Jews, but the Son of the good God, who was different from the God of the Ancient Covenant. They anticipated the more consistent dualism of Manichaeism and were finally absorbed by it (both were condemned as heresy of course). Fr. Robert here state...

My friend Blake shared this today. I found it incredibly moving and felt I had to share it with you all. An extraordinarily well spoken young man who makes a point about the quintessential truth of the Bible far more eloquently than I feel I could. It's not so much about literalism, it's about the sensus plenior : the truth it contains when you walk it's paths, know its ways and understand its message. The truth of the Bible is not recorded in the way the news reports facts today, it is far more subtle, but its truth is only more potent because of that. In the film, Douglas encourages us to Tweet and blog about it, so that's what I am doing. Surely this young man will go far! Well done indeed sir!

This man is an Anglican. Just to be clear. It appears I was not alone in feeling somewhat dismayed at reading the man who pretends to be the bishop of Salisbury's letter to Lord Alli of Norbury in the Telegraph. I was made aware of the existence of this letter by Peter Tatchell on Twitter who put it as follows: Perhaps it is too obvious to even point out, but clearly Peter is disinterested in the integrity of what people say as long as what they say supports his skewed view of the world. Let me explain: It seems, in a tour de force of relativism, The 'Bishop' of Salisbury, the Rt Rev Nicholas Holtam, suggested Christians should “rethink” their interpretation of Scripture in light of changing attitudes towards homosexuality in society. In a strongly worded intervention as members of the House of Lords prepare to debate the Government’s draft legislation introducing gay marriage, Bishop Holtam told peers that allowing gay couples to wed would be a “very str...

On Sunday, I got up early and gathered the family. We jumped in the car and drove up the M1 to Birmingham to Maryvale for a special day celebrating the life of Canon John Redford. He has developed Pancreatic cancer and is increasingly unwell. It was wonderful to have a day like this, perhaps before he withdraws completely from public life. Maryvale is an International Catholic Distance-Learning College for Catechesis, Theology, Philosophy and Religious Education. It has been erected by the Holy See as an Ecclesiastical institute so that it can also offer degrees of the Holy See, at undergraduate and postgraduate level. I studied theology at Maryvale for five years, graduating in 2011 with a level 2:1 BA (Hons) in Divinity (73%). I had lots of questions about my faith and found a lot of the more controversial aspects challenging and difficult to accept. I think like many people, I had slipped into a position where, never having heard the reasons for the Church's teaching on...

The 'Wailing Wall' in Jerusalem when I visited. I had the honour of reading at Mass this morning, a powerful reading from 2nd Kings 19:9b-11, 14-21, 31-36. One of those passages that had me reaching for my study Bible as soon as I got home because it mentions a couple of things that always fascinate me. One is 'the Ban', the ancient custom of slaughtering every man woman and child of a people in order to avoid retribution. The other is the survival of an Israel loyal the to the Covenant despite overwhelming odds. The Assyrians suffer the loss of one hundred and eighty-five thousand men and struck camp without firing an arrow. Wow! My analytical mind immediately wonders what is the history behind this passage? Did this really happen? Psalm 91 seems to say that the Assyrians were struck by plague and thus decimated. The theological ramifications are serious. Think about it in this context: Today, more than half of the six billion people alive in the world trace thei...