This past weekend, I drove out to Imperial Valley, a couple of hours east of San Diego, to give a talk at “Java & Jesus”. The event was rather similar to a traditional “Theology On Tap”, except that it was held at a coffee shop.
Practical Tools for Everyday Evangelism (Download)
You can subscribe to “Theology With An English Accent” manually, or any place where good podcasts can be found (Feed | iTunes | Google Play).
Timestamps
01:34 – Introduction 01:50 – Prayer 03:13 – The Purpose of the Church 08:25 – Tool #1: Your Life 11:19 – Tool #2: Your Testimony 30:08 – Tool #3: Your Community 47:00 – Conclusion and Prayer
“How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate someone to believe everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?”
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!
Can you imagine what twelve more Mother Teresas would do for this world? If twelve more people gave Christ 100% of their hearts 100% of the time and held nothing back, absolutely nothing?
I was fortunate enough to spend Christmas 2015 with my family back in England. One of the many things I enjoy about taking trips to England is the plane ride because the time spent at 30,000 feet is usually very productive! I’m not sure if it’s simply because I’m stuck in a seat for nine hours, or because people are waiting on me hand and foot, but for whatever reason I tend to get a lot of writing done. The fruits of previous transatlantic plane rides have included my series on Catholic dating, the top 11 reasons why every man should learn to dance and, one of my personal favourites, the article which explains how the He-Man cartoon teaches transubstantiation.
This last return trip to the States was a little different, however. Rather than spending my time writing, I spent it reading. Over the course of this flight, I read Room 24: Adventures of a New Evangelist by Katie Prejean from cover-to-cover. The book is available through Ave Maria Press and Amazon, and hopefully after you’ve read this review you’ll go order a copy, visit her website and follow her on Twitter.
On the return flight to America, I had the entire row of seats to myself which made for a much more comfortable flight. As I write this review, I am once again on a plane, this time from New York City, and once again I have the entire row of seats to myself. Now, I’m not promising that if you buy this book it will automatically entitle you to extra leg room, but please allow me a few minutes to explain why I enjoyed this book so much…
Earlier this week I posted an article Critics of Matthew Kelly? where I discussed some of the criticisms of Matthew Kelly I’ve seen recently on the Internet. If you recall, there has been some complaints about a passage in Matthew Kelly’s latest book, “Rediscover Jesus”:
Was this some sort of vision, perhaps prompted by the apostles’ grief over their leader’s execution? This wouldn’t explain the dramatic conversion of Saul, an opponent of Christians, or James, the once-skeptical half-brother of Jesus. – Rediscover Jesus (Page 99)
There was one article in particular that caught my eye which I thought deserved a short post of its own. It was written by a chap called Jeff from Traditional Roman Catholic Thoughts. Jeff’s criticism of the passage from the book was as follows:
“It implies one of two things; either Mary was not a virgin throughout the rest of her life or Joseph had other children…. Mary’s virginity is not even up for debate as the Church declared her perpetual virginity as Dogma. The issue with Joseph having other children is that Catholic tradition holds that he too was a virgin.” – Traditional Roman Catholic Thoughts
I’m not really sure how confidently we can say that “Catholic tradition holds that [Joseph]…was a virgin”. It is true that certain Fathers did assert that St. Joseph was a virgin, beginning, I think, with St. Jerome in the late 4th Century. However, mid-Second Century traditions point to St. Joseph’s having children from an earlier marriage. The earliest surviving account of this is the Protoevangelium of James.
The narrative that St. Joseph was a widower is one which is vigorously upheld in the East, among both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. In fact, you’ll notice that in icons of “The Flight Into Egypt” there are often four people depicted: Christ, the Theotokos, St. Joseph and also St. Joseph’s son, St. James.