Happy 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea! Perhaps this day, when the bishops assembled May 20, 325 AD, is the most important of all in the history of Christianity. Throughout this council, the bishops under the direction of a secular ruler, the Emperor Constantine, laid the groundwork for what would later become the Trinity….
The cult Opus Dei and its sappy founder
There’s a docuseries on Max exposing the Roman “Catholic” cult named Opus Dei (Latin for “work of God”) titled How I Left the Opus Dei. The subjects were women from poor families, recruited when they were young. Opus Dei housed them in a fancy estate (all under the auspices of Christian poverty, of course), and…
God’s 1 million justifications of one soul
As a native in the former American frontier, just west of Appalachia in what we today call the South, having been exposed to numerous forms of so-called Biblical Christianity, the fact never ceases to amaze me that the Church of Christ shares historical roots with its rival groups next door. The religious fervor of the…
Even Evangelicals preach works
Martin Luther revolutionized western society five centuries ago with a gospel message of salvation as God’s free gift. His good news fragmented the Christian West after centuries of doctrinal calcification under Rome’s watchful eye. To a certain degree, however, Luther continued the Pauline tradition of mental gymnastics in regards to justification. Evangelical preachers, five centuries…
Habent papam
They have a pope, another papa … again. He calls himself Leo. That’s an interesting name for an American pope, but the choice shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, the last pope named Leo complained about “Americanism” to Cardinal Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore. Granted, Leo was critical of the ideals of the Age of…
‘Convicted’? So what?
“He is convicted.” No, that’s not a reference to someone found guilty of a crime. Rather, it’s a statement I’ve often heard about a Gospel preacher or a believer giving testimony. It’s what a church pastor wants to hear when he listens to a prospective member giving his testimony on “how he came to Christ,”…
Leaving the commune (aka seminary)
This month it’s been 14 years since I left the Roman commune known as seminary. You could say I lost my faith in Rome during my final semester, the spring of 2011, having been in Roman communes for a total of four years. Those final two years were in Rome itself. I returned stateside and…
The next pope? Wait, I’m not supposed to care
Who will be the next pope? A good Catholic would avoid asking such a question. In the recent past, if he had heard someone observe a drastic difference between Francis and Pius XII, the last pre-Vatican II pope, he would have performed mental gymnastics to say, “Despite the difference between those two men, the papal…
Illiterates in Hell
If reading the Bible is a necessary means toward faithful discipleship, then Christians of the modern fundamentalist persuasion can only conclude that Hell is very likely full of most of their Christian ancestors since they were illiterate. Too bad they lived in the wrong century, right? This brings to mind Augustine of Hippo asserting that…