Blog

Let's take a look at the differences between the Catholic and Protestant understanding of the Sacrament of Confession. If Protestantism is true, the power that Jesus gave men to forgive sins died with the apostles.  For Protestants, it seems clear from the New Testament that God forgives sin directly, without agents or intermediaries. The whole point of Jesus’ becoming man, after all, was to reveal to us that we now had direct access to God. Matthew’s Gospel describes …

In 1986, Peter Gabriel had a hit with the song “Big Time,” in which a man with an inflated self-worth declares his liberation from the provincial values of his community of origin. He aspires to be what the American writer Tom Wolfe called a “master of the universe” in his 1987 novel Bonfire of the Vanities. The protagonist of Gabriel’s song declares, “There’s so much stuff I will own” and “I’m on my way, I’m making it.” Mo …

In 1964, Pope Paul VI issued the Second Vatican Council’s “Decree on Ecumenism,” called Unitatis Redintegratio, which translates from Latin as “The Restoration of Unity.” Right there, we see that the whole notion of denominationalism is wrong. And to their credit, the mostly Protestant thinkers involved in the “Baptism, Eucharist, Ministry” document from the World Council of Churches would agree. As most Christians—not just Roman Catholics&md …

The Nature of Faith: Trust in Relationships In general, faith can be understood as the acceptance of something as true based on the trustworthiness of the one revealing it. Any kind of deep friendship requires a trust between friends. Otherwise, the relationship will remain superficial, without any deep intimacy and communication of what is most important to both. In true friendship, each person speaks from the heart, revealing what is of deep significance. To accept as true what a frien …

Luther and the Doctrine of Sola Scriptura The doctrine that Scripture is the Christian’s only infallible rule of faith was popularized and promoted by Martin Luther, who, the story goes, affixed his Ninety-five Theses to the church door at Wittenberg’s Castle Church in 1517. His Theses put forth a series of propositions for debate, focusing prominently on the doctrine of indulgences—see the Catechism of the Catholic Church(CCC), paragraph 1471—which he sought to challenge. Since indulgen …