Catholics Come Home

There are many worrying statistics concerning the Catholic Faith in the USA. One in ten Americans consider themselves ex-Catholics. In fact, if “ex-Catholics” were counted as their own religious group, they would be the third-largest denomination, right after Catholics and Baptists. As many as 100,000 drift away from the Faith each year. These figures should give us serious pause for thought since, as Christians, we are called to evangelize the world, to witness to Jesus Christ and His Church.

leave church

Today I’d like to begin a series of posts which are based on a talk I recently gave at my parish. The talk was entitled “Catholics Come Home”.

Over the next two posts, I would like to tell a little bit my own story, of my journey away from and eventual return to the Catholic Church. I’ve told parts of this story before, but in this retelling I hope to focus on some of the things which attracted and repelled me along the way. In subsequent posts, I’ll attempt to pull these experiences together and distill them into a list of suggestions as to what can be done to draw people back to the Church.

Read more

Get thee to a nunnery!

This is exciting news 🙂 My friend Jenna has been accepted into the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, an order of nuns who care for terminal cancer patients who can’t afford care. I’ve known Jenna for over three years now and, trust me, she’s going to be a seriously epic kind of nun:

nuns

Before Jenna can join the nuns, however, she has to expunge her student debt. So, if you’d like to help get her to the convent, I’d invite you to visit the website below, read her story, look at the pictures and make a donation:

Jenna

As one of her friends put it, the sooner we can get her to the convent, the sooner we can get her praying for us  and the sooner we can get holy 😉

The article Get thee to a nunnery first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net

Does the Church think that Scripture is important?

During my various apologetic endeavours I have often heard the assertion that that Catholic Church doesn’t think much of Sacred Scripture. I have been told by well-meaning non-Catholics that the Church doesn’t care about God’s word and that our clergy do everything they can to keep the Bible out of the hands of their congregations.

When meeting with these assertions, I invite my interlocutors to peruse the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which is the official compendium of all that we believe as Catholics. The section concerning Sacred Scripture begins at paragraph #101. It draws heavily from a Second Vatican Council constitution “Dei Verbum” (“Word of God”) and is a nice summary of that conciliar document.

So, what does the Church actually believe and teach about Sacred Scripture?

Bible

Read more

1 388 389 390 391 392 550