Blog Posts

There is an increasingly popular phenomenon today in which people, especially younger generations, claim to be “spiritual but not religious.” They acknowledge the existence of God or a higher power in the world, but they don’t subscribe to any specific religion, and in many cases tend to be suspicious of any type of organized religion. This attitude of being “spiritual but not religious” is taken on by many well-meaning and searching people, but the attitude is nonetheless ve

A question we as Christians must ask today is this: given the changes that have happened in the modern world and are still happening, how should we act to best evangelize people today? There are two different questions embedded here: 1) what are the changes that have happened in the world, and 2) how do we best respond to those changes? There are many ways to tackle this question; however, I think it is prudent to start with how the Church herself has responded. We can study

Christianity in the United States seems to be undergoing a somewhat conflicted phase. At the same time, it is easy to argue for both its decline and its revival. How can these two realities coexist at the same time? Could it even be the case that the decline is one of the chief reasons for its revival? I was recently made aware of a C.S. Lewis article from 1946 discussing this phenomenon of religious decline and revival in England, and it struck me as extremely pertinent toda

My first son, Joseph, gave me the most incredible gift ever, the gift of being a father. One of the best parts of this gift has been coming to a deeper understanding of what God the Father must be like. There are a couple of moments in my son’s short life that God has used to reveal how he is as our Father. One such moment happened when we first took Joseph to a water splash pad at a local park. When we arrived, he was so excited that he didn’t know what to do with himself.

I have argued before that culture always creates disciples. It is just what culture does. In a similar way, I believe that culture is always revelatory. Culture always reveals something; it reveals deeper beliefs held by that culture, and this is true of every culture that currently exists or has existed. As an example, someone could examine the movies and TV shows that are produced and are popular in America today and see that our culture is obsessed with sex and that we ten

Let’s play a game and try to fit these two statements together: “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance.” "The needs of the poor take priority over the desires of the rich; the rights of workers over the maximization of profits; the preservation of the environment over uncontrolled industrial expansion; the production to meet social needs over producti

The prevailing cultural belief is that the Catholic Church has been oppressive (or at the very least held back) women throughout history. This is simply not true, and below are 8 ways that the Catholic Church has been the greatest promoter of women’s dignity throughout history. 1. The Catholic Church campaigned against polygamy, which has always favored men over women. In polygamy, it was always men who had multiple wives and not women who had multiple husbands. 2. Due to the

Our secularized Western world today doesn’t know what to do with religion and culture and the relationship they are supposed to have with each other. Many people think that even with the decline of Christianity in the West, we can still keep much of our cultural identity that has formed the Western world. It is here that I think it would be prudent for us to listen to the words of the British poet, T.S. Eliot. In his book Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, he reflects on

The call of St. Matthew is a fascinating moment in the Gospel of Matthew and offers a glimpse of what effective evangelization can look like. The story is told in Matthew 9: 9-13: "As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his d