Category: Catholicism

Pray He finds figs

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If you’ve ever had the chance to speak about the Christian faith with a Muslim, chances are that you will have heard the following objection raised to the divinity of Jesus (whom they call “Isa”):

“Does God know everything? Of course He does! If so, why did Isa (Jesus) not know when you can get figs? In Mark’s Gospel he goes to a fig tree looking for fruit, but he didn’t even know they weren’t in season! Isa therefore cannot be God”

If you’re a Christian who knows his faith, it’s tempting to laugh at such an objection and ignore it. However, today I would like to respond to this argument. I would like to do this for two reasons. Firstly, Scripture commands us to “be ready to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15). Secondly, I think that the Biblical text being referred to here is really interesting and one upon which we would do well to meditate.

Fig Tree

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Travel Log: Keeping it weird in Portland

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Today I’m in Oregon for Oktoberfest and it reminded me that I never wrote about my trip here last month. After a week on retreat at Mount Angel, I spent the weekend in Portland:

Portland

I got to visit the famous Powells, a three-story bookstore covering an entire city block. I was so proud of myself, I managed to leave without buying anything – quite an achievement!

Powells

I spent most of Saturday morning visiting the extensive Saturday market down by the waterfront.

I also took an “Underground” walking tour of the city where I heard about some of the rather quirky history of Oregon’s most well-known city.

During our tour we went past one Portland’s iconic locations, Voodoo Donuts. The lines outside were crazy, with people waiting over an hour just to get a donut! During the tour we heard the story of how the business began. It turns out that a club owner created donuts which he said were hang-over cures. He could say this because the sugar frosting was replaced with crushed-up aspirins and the jam filling with pepto-bismol! The government discovered what he was doing and freaked out because he was putting drugs in the food he was selling. Rather than letting it sink his business, he then used the media storm as free advertising. He switched to making the kind of delicious sugar-filled treats they sell today and people flocked to buy them!

Walking

Finally, while in Portland I went to Mass at the Grotto on the outskirts to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. I returned the following day to spend some quiet time in the grotto grounds:

Grotto

Most Popular Posts of All Time

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PopularI’ve recently been writing to different Catholic sites offering to write some guest posts. As I’ll be taking my book manuscript to publishers shortly I thought it’d be good to get my name appearing on more websites 🙂

As I wrote my first email to an editor, describing the kind of topics I typically discuss, I wondered which of my articles have been the most popular. I knew which of my posts I most enjoyed, but what were the posts which were most popular among the readers?

Fortunately, WordPress has a variety of admin tools which allow you to gauge this. I found some of the entries rather surprising, so I decided to write a post identifying my top eleven most popular posts…

#1 OSAS and three cups of tea (11,000 views)
I was initially surprised this post came out on top. It was the first part in a three-part response of a rebuttal to my post on Eternal Security. I think it received so many views because it was reproduced in its entirety over at Shameless Popery.

#2 He-Man, Christian Allegory and Transubstantiation (9,000 views)
This is one of my favourites! This was a post I wrote for April Fool’s Day. Earlier in the year I had been visiting Washington DC and gone out for a drink with Joe Heschmeyer where I shared my tongue-in-cheek theory about He-Man. At his urging this insanity finally made it down on paper.

#3 IC XC (8,000 views)
This was one of my early posts about the the letters found all over the interior of most Byzantine Churches. Apparently a lot of people want to know what they mean and Google sends them to me!

#4 Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Catholic (5,000 views)
I think this one got all this traffic purely because of the title.

#5 What is the significance of “IHS”? (3,000 views)
This was another post about Church decoration. Posts like this unfortunately attract the conspiracy theory loving, Jack Chick reading, surfers of the Internet (see the comments), but still, these posts seem to be very popular and I think I’ll write some more articles on symbolism in the next few months.

#6 Discernment with Fr. Matt Spahr (3,000 views)
On my blog I host the recordings from the local Theology On Tap sessions and this has, by far, received the greatest number of downloads, even beating a talk on relationships by Jackie Francois-Angel! Fr. Matt is the pastor of the Immaculata in San Diego and is, in my humble opinion, one of the best homilists in San Diego.

#7 The end is nigh (3,000 views)
Remember when Harold Camping said that the world was going to end?

#8 What Planned Parenthood does and does not do (3,000 views)
This was a very recent post but got shared a bunch on Facebook. I feel a bit bad since it was originally Abby Johnson’s material, but still, it was good to get the information out there.

#9 Jesus, the New Moses (3,000 views)
This was a real surprise! I’m not sure why, but apparently a lot of people want to read about the parallels between Jesus and Moses.

#10 Catholic Dating: Not wanting to be “that guy” (2,000 views)
I had guessed that at least one entry from my “Catholic Dating” series would make the top-ten list. It turns out the most popular is the post where I talk about Catholic guys not wanting to be creepers…

#11 Vatican Wealth (2,000 views)
This last entry also gained most of its popularity through Facebook shares. In this article I address the common assertion that the Pope lives like a king and that the Vatican should just sell everything they have…

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