One of the most common objections against the Catholic Church is it is corrupt and full of wicked shepherds. This supposedly justified the protestant revolt, and people leaving the Church to this day…
But as I discovered when I began studying the Church Fathers, this is not a new objection. In fact, it’s a very old one, to which the Fathers offered a unanimous and resounding answer: separation from the Church is never justified.
Read MoreWhile I had assumed my whole life that Christians could differ in Faith, in government, and in sacraments (though I could not harmonize this with Scripture), I found the ancient Church universally believed the opposite, and everywhere asserted that the Catholic Church was the one true Church established by Christ.
Read MoreI discovered when I read the Church Fathers they did not disagree on what baptism was, or what it did. In fact, in every single instance, the Church Fathers unanimously asserted their belief in baptismal regeneration—a doctrine affirmed by the Catholic Church, but denied by virtually all protestant sects.
Read MoreAfter consider the Urim and Thummim, I became even more convinced that neither God’s authority, His sovereignty, or the authority of the written Scripture are in any way necessarily threatened by the existence of human authorities who govern with divine authority. Nor is such governance incompatible with the ongoing and active assistance of God given to particular offices, as was the case with the Urim and Thummim. Such a model is everywhere in the Old Testament. As such, I realized it could not be dismissed outright in the New Covenant context. Therefore, the burden was on us protestants to show that it had been clearly and explicitly disavowed by Christ or the Apostles. If it wasn’t, then the Catholic idea of authority would be far more plausible than I previously thought.
Read MoreThis Quote Archive on Baptismal Regeneration is part of the Becoming Catholic series. It is intended to be a reference source for those who are open to hearing why they should become Catholic.
Read MoreThe deeper I dug, the more I discovered that the Catholic notion of authority had very Jewish roots, which only shed light on the many places in the New Testament when Christ and the Apostles delegated authority to others. Indeed, the Hebrew Bible is deeply instructive on the topic of how God exercises His authority among His people.
Read MoreThe first lesson of understanding why nations collapse is this: study history.
Read MoreIn the 2nd century, around AD 155, St. Justin Martyr described, in stunning detail, the early mass, and the Church's Eucharistic doctrine. There are only two possibilities for living out this very same doctrine to this day: either among the eastern apostolic churches (who, as the Church has acknowledged, have valid sacraments), or the Catholic Church.
Read MoreIn these days of shut-down economies, massive government aid to a majority of the population, and the propping up of institutions and corporations by a central bank and government, it is perhaps necessary to ponder this prophecy by one of the grandfathers of Soviet Communism, Leon Trotsky, about how America would spearhead the advance of Communism in the future…
Read MoreToday, 75 years ago, Allied armies stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, to begin the final liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny…May we in the West today become worthy of our ancestors. Because right now—we are not.
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