Tag: featured

Quick Apology: “Better than back-alley abortions”

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Today I would like to continue this pro-life blog series by briefly responding to something which is regularly brought up during discussions on abortion.

Objection

I have often heard it said, even by people who think that abortion is terrible and wrong, that they would prefer to see abortion remain legal for fear that, if it were made illegal, it would just drive the abortion industry underground:

“I think abortion is wrong, but I think it’s much better to keep it legal so that we can make it as safe as possible”

On the Internet, this is often expressed in images such as this:

Never-Going-Back

Of course, whenever a person says he doesn’t like abortion but still wants to keep it legal, a really good starting place to begin the discussion is to ask him first why he don’t like abortion… But does the logic presented here stand up to scrutiny? Is it better for abortion to be legal and regulated?

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What my legs tell you about Jesus’ Baptism

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As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently part of a Bible study in which we are working through St. Matthew’s Gospel. A couple of weeks ago we read Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism…

Baptism

This event is something of a head scratcher. I mean, who was it that had been coming to John for baptism? Sinners! So why did Jesus, the sinless Son of God, come to be baptized? What business had he there? In our perplexity, we are in good company since John the Baptist thought it kinda barmy too:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” – Matthew 3:13-14

So why did Jesus come to be baptized? During our discussion in the Bible Study I pointed at my legs and asked “What do these tell you?”

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Just in case…

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Just in case you didn’t you didn’t realize it, yesterday was April Fools’ Day.

About a month ago, Joe Heschmeyer sent out an email to a number of Catholic bloggers inviting us to do something a little different for April Fools’ Day this year. Rather than doing the typical “fake news story”, he suggested we do some kind of satirical analysis:

…[the] Catholic issues that maybe have crossed your mind, but you think, “This is much too stupid to write a blog post about.”  It treads the fine line between the serious and the absurd.

I had shared with Joe my theories on He-Man, Christian Allegory and Transubstantiation when we got to hang out last November. It seemed to perfectly fit the criterion of “too stupid to write a blog post about”  🙂

Anyway, just in case you missed them, here are some of the other April Fools’ Day offerings out there:

Shameless Popery: How the Summa might address Zombie Uprising
The Thin Veil: “Pope To Blogosphere”
St. Joseph’s Vanguard: “The New Perspective on Peter”
Almost Not Catholic: I Relent!
Young, Evangelical and Catholic: Pope Excommunicates All Of Us!

TOT: What does it mean to be a restless pilgrim?

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Our three-part “Theology On Tap” series came to a conclusion tonight. The Associate Young Adult Director, Pamela Poe, had tasked me to give a talk which answered the question “What does it mean to be a restless pilgrim?”. In this presentation, I recount the story of my own faith journey, I describe the story of Salvation History as a pilgrimage, and I explain why we’re all restless pilgrims…

“What does it mean to be a restless pilgrim?” (Download)

“Q&A” (Download)

If you would like to hear audio from other San Diego “Theology On Tap” sessions, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play or manually via the RSS feed.

— Questions —

• “What’s the next journey you have in mind?” (Winner of the box of fine tea)

• “How long were you on the Camino before you started to regret it?!”

• “Do people really die on the Camino?!”

• “Before you reverted, what did you believe about the Eucharist?”

• “How did your Protestant friends explain John 6, where Jesus speaks about eating and drinking his Body and Blood?”

• “Does the restlessness ever come to an end? Should we ever be able to settle?”

• “What is the Byzantine Church?”

• “What is the difference between an English and an Australian accent?”

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