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Since then we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession –HEBREWS 4:14 This is a valuable text to consider. Its value is that it summarizes much of the teaching of the book of Hebrews. It enables us, in other words, to get a handle on the whole of Hebrews. Further, it provides us with this summary, not in a remote, academic way, but in a way that bears very directly on our lives. In particular, we will see, it has a crucial bearing on the...

When I was a child, there was a popular game show on television called “To Tell the Truth.” In the game, three contestants would claim to be the same person — Bill Smith, for example. Four celebrities would question the contestants in an attempt to determine who was telling the truth. Finally the host would ask the big question, “Will the real Bill Smith please stand up?” I do not remember how the game was actually won or lost, but I do think about the host’s final question sometimes when I think about the church. We confess in the Nicene...

Ooh,ooh, he said ‘chair’” – “Florilegia” (“assertions of authority”) vs. the Reformation discipline of Textual Criticism When you’ve been involved with the sort of Protestant-vs-Roman-Catholic argumentation that we deal with on a daily basis, it’s easy to discern some patterns. As Turretin noted in the 17th century, the Roman Catholic method of defending itself is to make a claim of over-arching authority; this claim is asserted and re-asserted, as if the re-assertion carries more weight than the original assertion. This method of argument-by-authority was very common in the early medieval years. In fact, the long lists of patristic citations that...

Few Catholics think about this question. The reason is that most Catholics are not aware that the Church teaches that the Mass is an actual sacrifice. They know that the rite is called the Sacrifice of the Mass, that it is performed by a priest, that the congregation assembles before an altar, and that the consecrated bread wafers are called hosts. Nevertheless, most Catholics do not seem to realize that the Church teaches that the Mass is a real and true sacrifice, that a prime function of the Catholic priesthood is to offer sacrifice, that an altar is a place...

Most Catholics know we are supposed to attend Sunday Mass every week and observe various holy days of obligation throughout the year. It’s an obligation, however, that many do not observe. As my parish priest joked years ago when the pews of our sleepy rural parish were unexpectedly full, “There must be nothing going on in Tweed [Onterio] today.”I suspect part of the reason so many Catholics ignore the Sunday obligation is, counter intuitively, the very word “obligation.” Our culture is not one that deals well with concepts like duty and obedience. The words “I was just following orders”...

Over the past few weeks, I have received no less than three inquiries regarding the early church’s celebration of the Lord’s Table and its implications for the evangelical church today. Two of these inquiries have come from Roman Catholics, each of whom has suggested that the Roman Catholic practice of transubstantiation best represents the way the Lord’s Table was observed in the first few centuries of church history. Over the past few weeks, I have received no less than three inquiries regarding the early church’s celebration of the Lord’s Table and its implications for the evangelical church today. Two of...

The Absurdity of Separated Brethren Before Protestants were "separated brethren"... Q. Does the Lord make use of apostate Catholics, such as Martin Luther, Calvin, John Knox, Henry VIII., King of England, to reform the manners of the people? A. The thought is absurd. The lives of those men were evil, and it is only the devil that makes use of them to pervert the people still more. The Lord makes use of His saints, such as a St. Francis of Assisium, a St. Dominick, a St. Ignatius, a St. Alphonsus, to convert the people and reform their evil manners...

As a church history professor, I am sometimes asked how certain practices developed in church history. For example: When did the Roman Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) emphasis on praying to saints and venerating relics and icons begin? A somewhat obscure, but extremely helpful, book by John Calvin answers that question directly.In his work, A Treatise on Relics, Calvin utilizes his extensive knowledge of church history to demonstrate that prayers to the saints, prayers for the dead, the veneration of relics, the lighting of candles (in homage to the saints), and the veneration of icons are all rooted in Roman paganism. Such practices infiltrated...

>>No, he said, Catholics don't have to "be like rabbits" and have more children than is safe or responsible. << >>Francis said he would have loved to have entered the U.S. via the Mexican border, saying it would have been a "beautiful thing, as a sign of brotherhood and of help to the immigrants."<< >>"But you know that going to Mexico without going to visit the Madonna (of Guadalupe) would be a drama. A war could break out!" he said, laughing. He said a Mexico visit would come in the future.<<

In a very small whiff of fresh air in the stench in which we are living, Pope Francis has said two or three things which really sound Catholic. Look at the Patheos crowd delighting in being able to tell themselves the Pope is orthodox, after having waited 12 hours for the broken clock to show the right time. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s as bad as that: Francis must only say a couple of words vaguely resembling Catholicism every couple of months, and the enthusiastic following of the blind is assured to him. The words aren’t even so strong, not...

Pope Francis has obliquely but sharply criticized how financially stable nations lend aid to developing countries, saying they sometimes require concessions that strike echoes of 20th century dictatorships. The pontiff has also made what appears to be an unprecedented statement that Catholics may have a moral responsibility to limit the number of their children, while reaffirming Pope Paul VI’s ban on artificial means of birth control. Francis’ statement about development aid was a clarification of an earlier warning against what he called an "ideological colonization" of family life, made during a meeting with families in the Philippines last week. Speaking...

While firmly upholding Church teaching regarding contraception, Pope Francis clarified that good Catholics need not mate “like rabbits, or wasp spiders, with the female devouring the male following the procreative act.” “Openness to life for the husband,” the pontiff said to reporters on his return flight from the Philippines, “is a condition for the sacrament of matrimony.” Catholic couples should practice mutual love and tenderness, he explained, rather than the female “catching her partner in a web and slowly gnawing on him while he’s still alive, resulting in his slow, agonizing death.”

This is a refutation regarding some anti-Catholic statements that were made in a history class that I attend. The history class is based on ancient civilizations to the 16th century. The professor originally stated that the reason that the Catholic Mass used to be completely in Latin was because the Church did not want the people to understand what was going on, since the Church wanted to oppress the people. I refute this argument in my first response. In this response I describe the use of Latin in the Catholic Mass and why it continues to be used.The professor then...

Thirty-five years ago I was delivered from the bondage of Roman Catholicism. That may sound somewhat unkind to many evangelicals today, but it is nevertheless true, as all former Catholics who have been saved by faith alone in Christ alone will attest. Why would we claim that we were set free from bondage? IsnÂ’t that an insult directed at a long-established professing Christian Church that has more than a billion followers? Or is it a reality for all of them? Those who grew up Catholic, as I did for thirty-some years, know what itÂ’s like to have experienced spiritual bondage....

Something I was reminded of when I heard about World Vision deciding to hire those in "gay marriages" is how Catholic Charities has long promoted homosexuality. I know this because when I was living as a lesbian 15 to 20 years ago, I went to Catholic Charities several times for counsleing, and I found that the counseling was purely secular. When I went with a "partner," our lifestyle was embraced by the counselor. When I went to a couple other counselors myself later on, I was beginning to have doubts about this life, but one counselor even tried to encourage...

A 61-year-old Catholic priest has been jailed for seven years for systematically sexually abusing a boy in Co Wicklow over a five year period beginning in 2007 when the boy was 12. Denis Nolan, with an address at Carrigmore, Tinahely, pleaded guilty to sexual assault at that address between 1 January and 30 June 2007. He also pleaded guilty to a total of ten counts of defilement of a child between 1 July 2007 and 25 August 2011.

In a meeting room under Holy Name Cathedral, a rapt group of black Roman Catholics listened as Barack Obama, a 25-year-old community organizer, trained them to lobby their fellow delegates to a national congress in Washington on issues like empowering lay leaders and attracting more believers. “He so quickly got us,” said Andrew Lyke, a participant in the meeting who is now the director of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Office for Black Catholics. The group succeeded in inserting its priorities into the congress’s plan for churches, Mr. Lyke said, and “Barack Obama was key in helping us do that.” By the...

As I Have Been Screeching for Years, Timothy Dolan is an Unmitigated Jackass Really, what more is there to say? Anyone with a brain knew years ago that Timothy Dolan was a craven, politicking imbecile. Presiding at the “gay” Mass at St. Francis Xavier parish in Manhattan and CHEERING the unrepentant sodomite club introduced at said Mass – yeah – that was a SUBTLE CLUE. Inviting antichrist forerunner Obama to the Al Smith dinner and slapping his back while wearing a perpetual ****-eating grin the whole time was another SUBTLE CLUE. But now, ol’ Tracksuit Timmy has officially jumped the...

Pope Francis urged anti-austerity protesters who attended his weekly Angelus blessing to use dialogue and not violence to press their demands. Addressing a group of protesters among the pilgrims gathered Sunday in St. Peter's Square, the pope appealed for `'a constructive contribution, rejecting the temptation for conflict and violence and following always the path of dialogue." The pope read aloud one of their banners: `'The poor cannot wait." He urged everyone from charities to Italian authorities `'to do everything possible so that every family can have a house" this holiday season.

YouTube video here.