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How to Answer Protestant Misunderstandings on Baptism
The vast majority of Christians believe that baptism is a means of salvation—Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, and even some Calvinists. Only Baptists and those springing from the radical side of the Reformation reject this.On the part of Catholics, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that baptism is “necessary for salvation” because “God has bound salvation to the sacrament” and that the Church “does not know of any means other than bapti
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Aug 27th 2022
What Did the Early Christians Believe About Baptism?
Everett Ferguson, a Protestant elder, biblical scholar, and Church historian, has written what’s perhaps the definitive work on the subject, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries. Ferguson spends hundreds of pages carefully combing through the evidence to expose the first five hundred years’ worth of Christians thought about baptism.His findings are neatly summarized on page 854: Although in developing the doctrine of baptism different authors ha
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Aug 1st 2022
The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things
Throughout my priestly ministry, I have always heavily preached the importance of frequent confession. In my homiletics, I stress the spiritual goods of the sacrament and their effects on our souls. Regrettably, many of the faithful dismiss the invitation and settle for the oftentimes tragic minimum of once a year. Every once in a while, however, someone will be stirred by the Holy Spirit and will start going to regular confession.On one such occasion, a middle-aged woman (not from my current pa
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Apr 15th 2021
Advent Apologetics: How Can Words and Material Objects Give God’s Grace?
God
is eternal: he is outside of time, he has no beginning and no end. As described
in the very beginning of the Bible, he created the universe and everything in
it by his word, by willing it all to be. But creation does not just exist as a
neutral construct. Because it is conceived, created, and kept in existence by
God, it is good in itself; the very existence of God’s creation glorifies him.
This is seen in the cry of the Seraphim heard by the prophet Isaiah: “Holy,
holy, holy, the Lor
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Dec 8th 2020
Why Do We Have Sacraments?
CHALLENGE: If what is ultimately important is our faith in God, there is no reason for the Church to have sacraments.DEFENSE: Interior dispositions like faith are not the only thing that is important. We are also physical beings. The Church has sacraments because they correspond to human nature and thus Christ instituted them.Every religion has certain rites it regards as sacred. Such rites are a human universal, found in every religion, in every culture, which means they are rooted in human nat
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Feb 25th 2020