“You only believe in God because you want to go to Heaven.” This is the basic accusation leveled at many believers in this skeptical age. Heaven is the ultimate wish fulfillment fantasy. As Karl Marx called it, it is the…
On the Necessity of Heaven
Advent and the Second Coming
Despite what the local radio stations and giant retailers say, we are not yet in the season of Christmas. We are now in that glorious season of Advent. “Advent” comes to us from the Latin word “adventus” which roughly translated…
On the Necessity of Hell
“Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.” These are the words above the gates of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy. And that is the true horror of hell: the loss of all hope. Even here in this valley of tears…
C.S. Lewis and the New Evangelization
If you’ve read any of my earlier articles, you may have noticed that I quote heavily from C.S. Lewis. I first encountered Mr. Lewis as a child. I was very young and I caught the tail end of a cartoon…
Can Non-Christians Go to Heaven?
It never fails that in each of my high school religion classes someone asks, “Can a non-Christian go to heaven?” It is an important question that preys on many of us. We have seen people of heroic moral virtue in…
The God-Shaped Hole
St. Augustine said, “We were made for You, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” The human heart is a puzzle, to be sure. But Augustine gives us the answer. To understand the profundity of…
5 Disclaimers When Talking about Sin
There is a reluctance on the part of many to talk about sin. That is understandable. It is not a pleasant topic of conversation. People being told about it often feel lectured to or judged. People talking about it feel…
Wagering on Pascal
Why should we believe in God? I usually start my first theology class by asking my students this. Most of them have spent years in Catholic school, but they are flummoxed to find an answer. “Because the Bible says so.” …
Opinion, Knowledge, Faith
Often in class we will talk about controversial things. I will say that the unborn child is human from the moment of conception or that sex before marriage is a mortal sin. Sometimes I will say something which I don’t…
How a One-Eyed Man Taught Me to See Love
In the movie You’ve Got Mail, there is a wonderful line where a character says, “You are what you read.” Just as we digest food and make it a part of our bodies, we digest books and make them a…