"We are travellers…not yet in our native land" – St. Augustine
Since today is the Feast of the Annunication, I thought I’d post a quick response to a recent question asked by a non-Catholic:
“1 Timothy 2:5 says ‘For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus’. How does Mary fit into this?”
Quite some time ago I remember reading an article at Called To Communion where I was presented with the positive case for Catholic salvation and I had my mind blown. I hadn’t realized quite how many non-Catholic concepts had crept into my brain.
During this past Lenten season I sent an email to Nick over at Nick’s Catholic Blog. Nick writes a lot on the subject of justification so I asked him to write a post putting forward the positive case for the Catholic view of salvation. The Protestant identity is often a negative one i.e. “Not Catholic” and I didn’t want to see Catholic soteriology go in the same direction i.e. “Not Sola Fide”. Here’s what he wrote:
If you’d like to understand more about the Protestant Reformed view of salvation and Penal Substitution, Joe recently did an article on this subject over at Shameless Popery.
I was recently corresponding with someone who kept bringing up the recent scandals in the Catholic Church. Here’s how I replied:
Your constant refrain concerning scandal in the Church suggests to me that this is a significant issue for you. It’s understandable. It is for many people. In fact, during the early centuries of Christianity this was an extremely important and controversial question: should those who denied Christ under persecution, or who surrendered the Holy Scriptures to be burnt, be readmitted to the Church if they repented? Should those ordained members who renounced their faith be able to return to ministry? There was a schismatic group called the Donatists who said “Absolutely not!”
At the heart of the matter was the question: what is the Church? The Donatists viewed the Church as a Museum of Saints. The Catholic Church rejected this limited and narrow understanding. Instead, She said that the Church was a Hospital for Sinners. She would therefore readmit fallen away Christians if they repented.
As a consequence, the Church often looks (and smells!) like a hospital. The Church is full of medicine, nurses and doctors, but She is also full of damaged people and the walking wounded. There are often outbreaks of disease. It often doesn’t look pleasant, but it is the best place to be for those who need healing. For this, I’m grateful, otherwise I fear I could never be admitted.
At the Easter Vigil last night I was Godfather to my friend Mike who was baptized and received into the Church. Please pray for us 🙂
I was going to post this video after my Lenten desert time was over, but instead I’ve decided to do it now…
The above video is for the song “Intertwined” which was written by Ken Yasinski, sung by Janaya Trudel and produced by Clark Jaman. The MP3 of this song is available for download here.
Upon falling in love with the chorus’ harmonies, I’ve pretty much had this song on a continuous loop for the last few days. Since Lent is a time for renewed dedication to prayer, and this song makes me want to go do a Holy Hour, I figured that I should post it now! Well, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it… 😉
Last month was the anniversary of Roe v Wade, the landmark abortion legislation here in the United States. In response to this, there were various pro-life events such as the March for Life in Washington DC and the Walk for Life in San Francisco.
I was over the moon to find out that there was a special event being organized here in San Diego‘s Balboa Park. The turnout was quite good, approximately 3,000 people attended and many organizations were represented.
I remember thinking how nice it was to be back around non-Catholic Christians again. In England I had a lot of contact with Christians of other denominations, both from attending non-Catholic services and from various ecumenical activities. But what with one thing and another, this hasn’t happened so much since I moved to the United States, my religious social circle being made up almost exclusively of Catholics. It was therefore really wonderful to see Christians of different denominations coming together on a Saturday morning to bear witness to the sanctity of human life.
