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“What you people do is child abuse! You should be ashamed of yourselves!” a woman screamed at me while I was engaged in evangelism at a college campus.  I was genuinely confused so I asked her, “What exactly should I be ashamed of?” She fired back, “Hell! Telling little children they might go to hell traumatizes them!”  I’ll admit this scares me! It’s almost too difficult to imagine the possibility of being in agony not just for a while, …

How can you tell if you have the right understanding—the biblical interpretation, Jesus’ interpretation—of the Eucharist? I’d suggest five things to look for: your beliefs should be strange, sacrificial, serious, sacramental, and shocking. First, as we’ve already seen, the proper Christian understanding of the Eucharist must be strange, and hard to accept. * Even after all of this discussion about John 6, there’s one important dimension that we still haven&rs …

In Romans 3:23, St. Paul famously declared, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” 1 John 1:8 says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us,” and Romans 3:10 adds, “None is righteous, no not one.” In light of these Scripture verses, our Protestant friends will say, Mary couldn’t have been sinless as Catholics believe she was. She must have been a sinner like every other human being, and needed redemptio …

THE PROTESTANT CHALLENGE: How can the Catholic Church teach that some Christians have more authority than others when Scripture says that we’re all one in Christ?  The Catechism teaches that in the Church there are “hierarchy and laity” (873), and that the Lord wills such differences between the members of his body. Paragraphs 874 and 877 speak of the Church as having a “variety of offices” and being …

Spiritual or Religious?  Challenge: I consider myself spiritual rather than religious. Why isn’t that enough?  Defense: Because God loves you and wants even better things for you.  When people say they are spiritual rather than religious, they frequently mean that, although they don’t practice a specific religion, they recognize there is more to the world than matter, that it has a spiritual dimension. This is good! But it doesn’t go very far. Wouldn’t it …