Tag: Catholic Church

Catholic Family Tree

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Last Thursday I celebrated the Feast of Theophany at Holy Angels Byzantine Catholic Parish with four of my Roman Rite friends. While we were there I attempted to explain how all the different rites of the Catholic Church relate to one another. I don’t think I did a very good job at explaining it, so I’m going to have another go now…

The Church began in Jerusalem (Acts 2) and, over time, major Christian centres developed in the cities of Rome, Antioch and Alexandria. It was from these cities that the major rites of the Church developed. This can be seen more clearly from the following diagram I found on a friend’s Facebook page:

Catholic Rites

The Second Vatican Council had this to say concerning the different rites of the Church:

“[In] faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that Holy Mother Church holds all lawfully recognized rites to be of equal right and dignity, and that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way”

– Sacrosanctum Concilium

So, although the Catholic Church is one Church, it is also a communion of Churches.

“If Protestantism Is True” Review

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About a month ago I received my copy of Devin Rose‘s new book “If Protestantism Is True”. I’ve been a subscriber to Devin’s blog for some time, distributed some of his podcasts at the JP2 Group and occasionally interacted with him over the Internet.

I was therefore looking forward to read his book. Unfortunately, I had Vocation Director prescribed reading this month and that had to be done first! Last week I finally completed my reading assignments and so I finally got started on Devin’s book and, since it’s nice and compact at 162 pages, I read it from cover-to-cover this weekend.

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A year of blogging

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Today marks my blogging anniversary. I have now been writing this blog for one year exactly.

[Pause for applause]

Over of the 365 days of this blog’s existence I have written 137 posts, which works out at about a post every two or three days. Not bad at all.

Not a lot of people know this, but I was officially declared dyslexic at school when I was ten years old. As such, writing has never come easily to me.  Even if you see a post on this blog which is composed of even just a few sentences, I can guarantee you that I put quite some time into its composition. Therefore, the fact that I’ve managed to regularly write on this blog every two or three days for a year is really quite an achievement for me 🙂

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Introduction to Islam (Part 5 of 5): The Catholic Response

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Today I would like to conclude my introductory series to Islam. This series wasn’t intended to be an apologetic response to Islam, just an accurate and objective description of Islamic belief and practice. It is my hope that this will lead to a better understanding of Islam by Christians.

Over the course of this series we have looked at the origins of Islam, Muhammad, the teaching of the Qur’an, as well as the faith and obligations of Muslim life.  I would now like to conclude by looking at what the Catholic Church had to say about Islam at the Second Vatican Council.

The Catholic Church sets forth its binding teaching regarding Islam in the “Declaration on the Relation of the Church with Non-Christian Religions” (also known as “Nostra Aetate”, literally “In our time”):

#1 In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.

One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God…

The church says that she sees it her task to “promote unity and love”. This unity and love is fostered by considering what unites humankind and, in this “big picture” vision of the world, we are reminded that every single person comes from God and every single one will, some day, return to Him.

#2 … The Church, therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men.

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Know your Rites

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The other week I resumed a former “hobby” of mine.  When I was living back in London I would often go and visit Eastern Rite Catholic churches…

What’s Rite?

A “Rite” in this context generally refers to a group within the wider Catholic Church which is associated with a particular liturgical tradition.  The main Rite with which most people will be familiar is the “Latin Rite”.  This is what is followed in most Catholic churches in Western Europe and the United States.  However, what most people don’t know is that there are six other Rites in the Catholic Church. The Catechism in paragraph #1203 lists these other Rites as Byzantine, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Maronite and Chaldean. The majority of married Catholic priests (yes, you heard me right) will be found in these Eastern Rite Catholic churches where the discipline of celibacy is not exercised in the same way.

I love visiting Eastern Rite churches – I get to explore an unfamiliar liturgy, but unlike when I visit Protestant churches, I also am able to receive communion because the churches which I visit are in full communion with the Bishop of Rome.  So far, I have participated in Maronite and Byzantine (Melkite & Ukrainian) liturgies.

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Catholicism’s Best Kept Secret: Fathers Know Best

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father-knows-bestI would now like to share with you what I regard as one of the best kept secrets in Catholicism, a group of men called the “Early Church Fathers”.

I myself only discovered the Fathers about ten months ago. Despite going to Mass each week of my entire life (that’s approximately 1,534 sermons), going to Catholic school for six years, and taking part in adult formation throughout my twenties, I can never remember any of these men being discussed or even mentioned with the exception of St. Augustine and, even then, he was only mentioned in passing.

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Hello world…

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…and so to my first blog entry. So what’s the point of this blog? Several years ago I blogged fairly regularly about whatever was on my mind, but then Facebook came along and almost overnight I stopped blogging.

Facebook was an infinitely more convenient way of sharing news and photographs with my friends, but my blog served other purposes too. I wrote about my work in software development and about things going on in my spiritual life and, of course, life in general. I intend to re-launch my old blog at some point to write exclusively about technology, but what about everything else?

The title of this blog is “This Restless Pilgrim” and it describes well how I’ve felt over the last few years.  These years have certainly been interesting ones,  filled with uncertainty, adventure, frustration, heartbreak and excitement. I moved to London for the first time and moved around a lot before ultimately leaving England and travelling 5,489 miles away to live in the United States. Living a rather rootless life like this tends to teach you some important life lessons and the whole experience has left me with the feeling that they should be shared.

Also over the last few years I have also found myself increasingly called upon to explain and defend Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. Pope Benedict recently spoke about the use of technology to proclaim the faith and search for truth. As a consequence, I would like to share some of my exchanges regarding the faith.

It has been said that a wise man learns from his mistakes, but a wiser man learns from the mistakes of others. So, if you would like to learn from my mistakes and get a little wiser (or just feel like having a bit of a laugh at my expense) please feel free to stick around.

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