Tag: Catholicism

TEA: Evangelization For The Terrified (SPC Retreat)

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Terrified

I know I said I wouldn’t be posting during Lent, but this weekend I gave a talk, “Evangelization for the terrified”, at the San Pedro Calungsod Young Adult Retreat in San Diego and promised that I’d upload the audio the following week, together with links to the resources I mentioned in my talk.

The Talk

Evangelization For The Terrified – Extended Edition (Download)

Unfortunately, the original recording has the last ten minutes cut off… 🙁 Fortunately, I just re-recorded the entire talk here at home. Since I didn’t have the time restrictions I had on the retreat, this recording is a little longer. Think of it as the Director’s Cut or the Extended Edition, which includes ten minutes of never-before-heard material!

Referenced Resources

David and SarahI began my talk by referencing the Papal Encyclical Evangelization In The Modern World.

When I speak about learning your faith, I mention a number of low-cost services which will help you learn the Catholic Faith:

FORMED (Catholic Answers)
ClaritasU (Brandon Vogt)
New St. Thomas Institute (Dr. Taylor Marshall)

I also mentioned recommend the following sites which are completely free:

Institute of Catholic Culture
St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology

I mention that you can buy cheap books/CDs/DVDs to give away from Dynamic Catholic.

For staying up-to-date with Catholicism in the media, I recommend listening to Hearts & Minds and the Don Johnson Show.

If you would like lots of good examples of how seasoned apologists engage non-Catholics, please check out Catholic Answers Live.

The talk was concluded with a retelling of the story of the Sun and the Wind from Aesop’s Fables.

TEA: How I met your Blessed Mother (St. Brigid)

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Mary

Last night I led Bible study at a local parish and I was asked to give an informal talk beforehand on the Virgin Mary.

My talk was entitled “How I met your (Blessed) Mother” and in it I told a little bit of my story and explained how I overcame my deep-seated resistance concerning Mary and how I ultimately came to embrace the Catholic teaching concerning the Blessed Mother.

Some friends couldn’t make it last night and asked me to record the talk, so for anyone who would like to hear it, the audio is available below.

How I met your (Blessed) Mother (Download)

This post is not for you

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I wanted to write a short follow-up to my post to an article earlier this week: Analysis Paralysis and making the first move. In that post I shared a quotation from the TV show “Person of Interest” about playing the game of chess:

“No one could possibly predict [all the possibilites]… Which means that that first move can be terrifying…there’s a virtually infinite sea of possibilities… But it also means that if you make a mistake, there’s a nearly infinite amount of ways to fix it. So you should simply relax and play.” – Harold Finch

This post was one of my most popular, so thank you to all of you who shared it on Facebook. It’s always great to know that something I’ve written has been of interest and encouragement 🙂

What has prompted this current post is a discussion I saw about the post Reddit. On one of the threads there were concerns that this quotation could simply be an excuse to avoid making careful decisions. I would like to respond to this concern by telling a story from my time at school…

Headmaster

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Protestantism: Agreeing on essentials?

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Reformers

When Catholics critique the contradictory beliefs held in different parts of the Protestant world, we are often told that “Protestants agree on all the essentials”. A statement like this, of course, this begs two questions:

1. Which doctrines should be considered “essential” and which “non-essential”?

2. Who gets to make that categorization?

The second question is particularly important. Who gets the final say as to what is “essential” and what is “non-essential”? After all, what happens when two Protestants disagree on what is “essential”?

To pick an example from the dawn of the Reformation, Luther and Zwingli came into conflict concerning their respective understandings of the Eucharist, so much so that this ruptured their relationship. Could we still say that these two fathers of the Reformation agreed on “essentials”?
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“But that’s not in the Bible!”

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As a Catholic, I often hear  from Protestants the exclamation of “But that’s not in the Bible!” during our discussion of Catholic doctrine and practice. Now, while I think that Catholicism can be more than adequately defended from the Bible, during these conversations I always feel that it’s necessary to point out some general issues with this objection. In today’s post I would like to outline the three main problems that can be highlighted…

Bible

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