In my first post at New Evangelizers, I used the analogy of fatherhood to understand why God may allow pain and tolerate bad behavior. God is the source of fatherhood, so human fatherhood tells us something about God, and God’s…
The Forgiving Father
Don’t Believe Everything You Read
You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the Bible… At least if you’re reading without considering the speaker or the context, that is. Perhaps you’ve been troubled by a passage you read, or, while spreading the good news, been confronted…
Our Mother the Church
In my first post for New Evangelizers, I wrote the Analogy of Fatherhood – how fatherhood has taught me something about God. In Lumen Fidei, the Holy Father wrote that “The Church is a mother…”. There is another analogy! What can motherhood…
Losing the Mission
The word “mass” comes from the same route as “mission”. At each Mass, we are sent forthwith a mission. What is that mission? What is our primary mission as Catholics? The words I remember concluding most Masses in my life were “go forth,…
We Are the 1%
We have a problem, you and I. We too often take for granted what we have. We have come into personal wealth that the world, as a whole, is impoverished of. Most of us have never even earned it. We’re…
What You Say, What They Hear
In my article “Let Freedom Ring“, I asked “What does it mean to be free?” How can we do that? How can we ask what a word means? The answer is simple — that words have meanings. Those meanings can…
The Power of Story: An Interview with Joseph Pearce
I recently had the pleasure of talking with Joseph Pearce about the power of personal stories, especially as a means of evangelism. He’s uniquely well-suited to the topic: he has taught and written on fictional characters’ journeys, and he has shared others’ stories…
Let Freedom Ring
In the United States, we’ve just celebrated the Fourth of July, or Independence Day. It’s a day celebrating the freedoms for which our forebearers fought and died. Around the world, peoples are protesting, fighting, praying, and working for greater freedom….
Resolving Contradictions
John Paul the Great said the Church is a “sign of contradiction,” after the warning of Simeon in Luke 2:34. We, as the Body of Christ, must stand in visible, tangible opposition to anything wrong in the spirit of the…
Learning 21 Ways to Worship (& a Giveaway)
In a brief review of Vinny Flynn’s 7 Secrets of the Eucharist, I wrote that it is a “conversational and easy read that is in no way light in weight,” one that “feels like a passionate conversation… rather than a theology…