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May 13, 2013

It would seem at first that the hard work of evangelization is getting people to make the leap into the Tiber. Once they’re convicted that the Catholic Church offers the fullness of Christian truth, getting them to complete their swim across should be, relatively speaking, cake. Right?

Ye converts out there, forgive this cradle Catholic for his naiveté. Because apparently it’s not so easy—at least, so says theologian and apologist Taylor Marshall,...

May 10, 2013

Tomorrow marks the thirty-third anniversary of my first Holy Communion, a day that I remember vividly and with great fondness. My firstborn son, Joshua, is preparing for his first Communion, and over the last few months we have been engaged in some wonderful conversations as he explores the mystery of the Eucharist.

For years now, our family bedtime ritual has included time for Scripture reading, followed by some basic theological reflection and prayer. I have always marveled at how...

May 10, 2013

Forty-five years ago, a quiet gentlemen from Northern Italy named Giovanni Battista Montini caused a big stir with a little pamphlet. The stir was not because his pamphlet said anything new but because many people were hoping that it would say something new, and it did not. Instead, it courageously restated what the world had known for (I do not exaggerate) thousands of years. History remembers Giovanni Battista Montini as Pope Paul VI and his pamphlet as Humanae Vitae,...

May 9, 2013

I was never fed in the Catholic Church.

How many times have you heard a former Catholic say this? When I was an Evangelical Christian it was probably the most common response I heard from Catholics when asked why they had left the Church. The sad truth is that most of these lapsed Catholics were never properly catechized, so they became easy targets for Protestants who were only too eager to help them abandon the sacraments and join a church that "feeds you...

May 9, 2013

My blog post "Should I Attend the Wedding or Not?" prompted several questions and comments last week that I would like to address.

One reader asked about the validity of a Catholic marrying an Orthodox Christian in an Orthodox Church without a dispensation from his bishop. In the interest of ecumenism, the Code of Canon Law is less rigid in such a case. The Catholic party still has a...