BIG C CATHOLICS

Jesus defines eternal life as knowing God (Jn 17:3). What are the ways? In how many different ways can we know God, and thus know eternal life? When I take an inventory, I find twelve. The final, complete, definitive way, of course, is Christ, God himself in human flesh. His church is his body, so we know God also through the church. The Scriptures are the church's book. This book, like Christ himself, is called The "Word of God." Scripture also says we can know God in nature see Romans 1. This is an innate, spontaneous, natural knowledge. I think no one who lives by the sea, or by a little river, can be an atheist. Art also reveals God. I know three ex-atheists who say, "There is the music of Bach, therefore there must be a God." This too is immediate. Conscience is the voice of God. It speaks absolutely, with no ifs, ands, or buts. This too is immediate. [The last three ways of knowing God (4-6) are natural, while the first three are supernatur

H/T A Catholic Mom in Hawaii

Prior to the thirteenth century, the dominant school of thought in Catholic theology was that of St. Augustine. Early in the fifth century, Augustine refuted the heresy of Pelagianism. Pelagius taught that Adam’s original sin did not taint human nature. For that reason, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was neither necessary nor redemptive. A neo-Platonist, Augustine uses the philosophy of Plato, together with the deposit of faith, to oppose Pelagianism and create a new way of looking at everything. The resulting synthesis, Augustinianism, is objective. It acknowledges truth, including moral truth, as outside of us, not a matter of personal opinion, therefore, universal, not particular to individuals, cultures, or circumstances. According to Augustine, we can know truth through Revelation, right reason, and the Church. Augustine’s theology is also deductive. Deductive reasoning begins with a general idea and ends with a specific one. Father Richard Hogan describes this approach (later us

This is an excerpt from the book Arise From Darkness: What To Do When Life Doesn’t Make Sense by Benedict J. Groeschel C.F.R. Just think of some of the ways a person can mess up things for himself. The most obvious is precipitous behavior – going ahead and doing something and not considering the implications, all of the things that are going to be consequential from it. Many devout people say, “I can’t figure it out, so I’m going to take the great leap of faith and jump . . . into an empty swimming pool.” I hear people saying, “I’m going to step out in faith!” Why don’t they step out in common sense at the same time? Don’t blame God if you walk off the end of the dock. The opposite mistake is thinking things out so carefully and being so cautious that we don’t do what we’re supposed to do. As Christians we are supposed to step out in faith, but we often sit down in confusion. Many, not knowing what to do, simply don’t do anything. I call this dangerous trait the Titanic phenomenon.

This is an excerpt from the book Arise From Darkness: What To Do When Life Doesn’t Make Sense by Benedict J. Groeschel C.F.R. Perhaps the Church has hurt you. The Church has hurt me. It has hurt most people near it for any length of time – not the whole Church, but part of it. I assure you that you and I will know, at the end of our days, that great Church which is the Mystical Body of Christ when it comes to its full reality. That is what eternal life is – when all who are saved from every nation and race and people will be gathered into the Mystical Body of Christ. We are preparing now for the heavenly Church, but our own spiritual life will be very weak and very narrow indeed if we do not loyally struggle for the Church in this world and try to be faithful to her even when others are not faithful. On Judgment Day no one is going to ask you about what anybody else did for the Church, only about what you and I did as individuals, as members of the Church of Christ in this wounded worl

Sexual difference is not like any other kind of difference. It’s a primordial difference. It allows for and opens the entire human person to a true and authentic communion of persons. The heart of marriage, the good that marriage consists of, is the bond that arises from the vows of husband and wife to give one’s self in love fully to the other who is similar yet different.  The sexual difference between man and woman, that is, husband and wife, opens love to an utterly unique reciprocity and communion. “It is not good that the man should be alone; I want to make him a help similar to himself” (cf. Gn 2:18).25 Because marriage is a union that essentially includes the gift of the entire “body-person,” it inherently and necessarily is a union of male and female, of husband and wife.  The Church has always and everywhere taught that sexual relationships between people of the same sex, as well as any sexual relationships or activity outside of marriage, are morally wrong, contr

The human reproductive system is the one system that is never individual. It is a system — an impulse, appetite, longing, and physical and personal reality — that can be completed only by going “outside” of one’s own body — by joining with the body of another. Think for a minute about the body. By their sexual acts a man and woman become a single procreative unity. The two become “one flesh.” Only in marriage does this physical act constitute a true joining of persons, one where, in a human fashion, husband and wife commit not just physical organs but heart, mind, body, and soul to one another. This is why sex is intrinsically ordered to be a conjugal act, which is to say an act of true union. Children are the “ultimate crown” of marriage, one that the husband and wife promise to be open to, and, as mother and father, to care for and educate together. Marriage is deeply and intrinsically oriented towards the good of children — the good that is the creation of new life and also the care