March 31, 2016

When the image at right showed up yesterday in my Facebook newsfeed, I imagined the groans and eye rolls of some of my Catholic friends. (And it wasn’t long before the responses—“Very Protestant” said one—started popping up.) According to the Catholic News Service story, members of EWTN’s Rome bureau brought a photo of Mother Angelica, the network’s founder, who died on Easter Sunday, to Pope Francis’s general audience yesterday.

The pope saw the photo in the crowd and blessed it when asked by an EWTN staff member for a blessing for Mother Angelica’s soul.

“She’s in heaven,” he said to the EWTN people, pointing to the sky.

The CNS article tried...

Christ's Appearance to Mary Magdalene after the Resurrection by Alexander Ivanov
March 30, 2016

When confronted with the early Christians’ testimony about the Resurrection of Jesus, it is natural to question whether it’s credible. A healthy skepticism demands we test the claims of such an event.

One way to do so is by offering alternative explanations, and one such explanation is the conspiracy theory. This theory purports to explain Christ’s empty tomb and postmortem appearances by claiming the early Christians stole the body and made up the Resurrection story.

I don’t fault anyone for raising the question, because it's natural to ask, “Did the early Christians make this stuff up?”

I contend they did not, and there are two good reasons to think so.

The apostolic dilemma

First, the early Christians had nothing to gain and...

March 28, 2016

It was with great sadness that Catholic Answers learned of the passing of Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, popularly known as Mother Angelica. She was a Poor Clare nun and a Catholic media pioneer, founding the Eternal Word Television Network—EWTN—which grew to include not only television but also radio, print, and the Internet.

She passed away on Easter Sunday.

More information about her amazing life is available here.

After learning the news, Catholic Answers’ president, Christopher Check, said:

Mother Angelica was a lioness of the New Evangelization. Historians will one day place her alongside other...

March 25, 2016

In parishes throughout the world on Sunday, Catholics will proclaim, “He is risen, alleluia!”

But what will most have in their minds when they speak those words? Probably something along these lines: “Jesus Christ rose from the dead and now in him we have the forgiveness of sins. Thank you, Lord!” Or maybe, “Jesus Christ rose from the dead. This is a fact of history. Christianity isn’t a cleverly devised story but is really true!”

These are both good responses. But I want to add something here. When we look at the teaching of the New Testament, the Resurrection isn’t only about the forgiveness of sins, or evidence that Jesus was who he claimed to be and who the earliest believers claimed him to be. In the New Testament, the Resurrection is about power to become holy....

Would there be a Last Judgment if Christ did not die for all?
March 23, 2016

No Christian I know would deny that some doctrines are more or less clear than others in Scripture. But when it comes to the atonement of Christ, Scripture is remarkably clear: Jesus Christ died on the cross for the entire world. The redemption that Christ merited through his passion and death was for every single human person who has ever and will ever live.

The Calvinist teaching of "limited atonement" denies this simple truth. We find this teaching in the Calvinist confessions' emphasis on the sacrifice of Christ being only for the sins of the elect and not for the sins of the whole world. The Westminster Confession of 1643, for example, declared:

In this sacrament Christ is not offered up to his Father, nor any real sacrifice made at all for...

The Resurrection of Christ by Paolo Veronese, c. 1570
March 21, 2016

Many skeptics assert that the early Christians believed in miracles because theirs was a primitive, prescientific culture where people were ignorant of the course of nature. As such, it is argued, they were not able to perceive a miracle as being contrary to nature and thus readily accepted miracle claims.

For instance, in his work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, eighteenth-century Scottish skeptic philosopher David Hume argues for a strong presumption against the supernatural and miraculous based on the idea that miracles “chiefly abound among ignorant and barbarous nations.”

There are three ways to respond to this claim.

First

St. Joseph’s plan to divorce Mary quietly when she turned up...

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Absolute Relativism: The New Dictatorship And What To Do About It
In his best-selling booklet Absolute Relativism: The New Dictatorship And What To Do About It, Chris Stefanick tackles all the tough qu...