“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,”…
Category: Christianity
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…