Objective Truth

Why do we care about words like “objective” and “subjective”? This isn’t a grammar site. The words aren’t particularly theological, but they do come into play when talking about our faith. Many people opposed to the faith see it as…

The Bread of Life

Recently, I received an emailed “essay” attacking, specifically, transubstantiation. The author claimed to have had an “intellectual epiphany” based on the “unshakable Scriptures”. We, however, choose instead to follow the word of Scripture, which calls the Church–not the Bible–the bulwark…

The Bible: the Good Books

When you go to your shelf or nightstand to read the Bible, what do you grab? (You do grab something, right?) You take down one bound volume — a book. If you read Sacred Scripture on your tablet or computer,…

The Ladder to Heaven

St. Maximilian Kolbe said of our Blessed Mother, “What a marvelous ladder for climbing to Him… And it is the very same whereby He came down to us!” (Roman Conferences, IV) According to the saint, she is a ladder for…

Kolbe’s Free Will Equations

St. Maximilian Kolbe presented the way to holiness as a simple equation involving free will: V + v = S Each V stands for “voluntas”, Latin for “will”. The large V is the will of God. The small v is…

For freedom He set us free

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Gal 5:16) Why has Christ set us free? For freedom. Think about that; parse it. Christ did not set us free for some other reason and we got freedom as a bonus or…

Life and Life Jackets

A “petition” has been created to ban life jackets, because “(t)he only 100% effective way to prevent drowning is total abstinence from going in the water.” Though the creator has replaced logical argumentation with sarcasm, I’ll give the benefit of…

Rules of the Game

The Church is often cut down for having too many rules–or for having rules at all. Jesus came to set captives free; His true Church would never hold people back like this. In her sacraments, her liturgy, her exegesis, and…

Post-truth

Oxford dictionaries named “post-truth” their word of the year. It is defined as “relating or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” The usage of the word…

Fire Doesn’t Rest

St. Maximilian Kolbe teaches us that “(l)ove does not rest, but spreads like fire consuming everything.” (Aim Higher, 68) In a fire, one tongue may go out but the rest — the fire as a whole — keeps burning. The…

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2019/11/09 By

Growth Beneath the Snow

“The plants were hidden under the snow. And the farmer…remarked with satisfaction: ‘Now they’re growing on the inside.’ I thought of…your forced inactivity…Tell me, are you also growing on the inside?” St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way, #294 The plants cannot…

2019/01/11 By

Physical minimalism, spiritual excess

Almost a year ago, I wrote about Seasons of Change and how, in the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis tells us that “(t)he horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable possessions we have produced in the…

2018/12/14 By

Faith in Receiving the Word

God asked faith of Abraham and Isaac. He asked it of St. John of the Cross, of Mother Theresa, and others. Sometimes their extreme examples seem just that — extreme. They seem to be on the edges of what’s possible,…

2018/11/09 By

Cowardice to Shame to Anger: A Lesson from Screwtape

“But hatred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful–horrible to anticipate, horrible to feal, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses…

2018/10/12 By

There is No Third Way

Tertium non datur. That’s the law of the excluded middle. It is used in philosophy, especially logic, but there is a lot of other “middle” that we can exclude besides philosophy. In my last post, There is a Third Way,…

2018/06/08 By

There is a Third Way

A while back, I had an exchange with a disheartened young man. He said that he keeps encountering 5 types: “(o)ld, rambling and cynical men; bored, cliquey housewives; clueless and hard-headed men; disinterested and troubled women; and unhelpful, indifferent men…

2018/04/13 By

On Pride and Christian Privilege

In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape educates a lesser demon on using a new Christian’s pride: “He must be made to feel (he’d better not put it in to words) ‘how different we Christians are’; and by ‘we Christians’…

2018/03/09 By

Seasons of Change

In the Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis tells us that “(t)he horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable possessions we have produced in the human heart…” We hate monotony, sameness. Some of us constantly ask “what’s…

2018/02/09 By

Proof and Belief

In my last two posts, we’ve thought about the words “absolute” and “relative”, as well as “objective” and “subjective”. Another word that gets thrown around lightly is “proof”. “Set forth your case, says the Lord; bring your proofs, says the…

2017/10/13 By

Absolute Truth and Relativism

Last time, we thought about objective and subjective statements. Let’s look at a similar (and sometimes confused) pair of words: absolute and relative. Why do we care about these words? In 1884, Pope Leo XIII wrote against the relativistic philosophy…