Here Comes the Bride

Eleven years ago, I married my wonderful wife, Michelle.  I have it on good authority that her dress shopping some months before our wedding was an overall positive experience.  Emotional, yes, but positive. It seems, though, that plenty of similar…

The Need for More Creed

“They will know we are Christians by our love,” as the song goes.  Or as Jesus put it, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (Jn 13:35 RSV)  The…

Apologetic Evangelization

Recently, I’ve been overviewing the USCCB’s “Disciples Called to Witness.” In one post at my blog I diagrammed where evangelization and catechesis come into play. Those who have never heard the Gospel or have fallen away from it need evangelization….

Behold Your Mother

Earlier this month, we celebrated the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. It is a great feast day of Mary’s maternity, of her motherhood of Christ. What kind of mother is she?  She is, like any mother, the kind that…

Dogmas: Road Signs of Our Faith

Lots of people can’t spell dogma because they think it’s a four-letter word. When the word is mentioned, conversation stops.  Tempers flare.  Moods become icy. Why do words like “dogma” and “dogmatic” carry such a negative connotation?  And, more importantly,…

Language Barriers in Evangelization

Archbishop Fulton Sheen famously said: “There are not even 100 people in this country who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they think the Catholic Church to be.” Where do they come from, these things…

The Analogy of Fatherhood

Editor’s note: Today we welcome Joe Wetterling to the New Evangelizers blogging team! I love analogies. If you aren’t familiar with them (or have blocked them out of your memory ever since the SATs), here is the idea: an analogy compares…

Search results for 'wetterling' across all New Evangelizers Network sites.

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…