Happy St. Patrick’s day! I know things aren’t too cheerful out there with the coronavirus but now is a good time to grow in the faith. Many people are isolating themselves and many that aren’t should. We shouldn’t go to unnecessary gatherings. This gives us a chance for prayer, holy reading, and a little Catholic YouTube. I recently interviewed Timothy Flanders who runs the website meaningofcatholic.com.
Allan Ruhl
Faith and Politics with Jackie Chea
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I try to avoid politics as much as possible on this blog. I do that because the Catholic faith doesn’t mandate certain political views, save for a few key issues. About two weeks ago, I came to a shocking realization. Pretty much all of North America, South America, and Western Europe have been taken over by hordes of raging leftists. These leftists are super anti-Christian and are working to undermine the Church at every point.
Forget the Crusade Nonsense and Grow Up
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I really hate talking about issues like this because I expect better reasoning from Muslims and even from secularists. Muslims know that their religion spread by the sword and offensive conquests so they try and do one of two things. The first one is to say that it was defensive and the second one is moral equivalence. How are their expansions equivalent? Well, we have the crusades. If a Muslim ever brings this up again, here is how to answer him. I recently had to do this to some Muslim on Twitter who tried to justify Islamic conquests and say that Christians did similar things.
Jonathan Brown on Ezra as the Son of God
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A couple weeks ago, Islamic apologist Paul Williams posted an article from American Islamic convert Jonathan Brown. It deals with the extremely awkward claim in Surah 9:30 that Uzayr(usually translated as Ezra) is the Son of God. A lot of converts like to listen to lectures by Jonathan Brown since he’s a really good speaker, and is completely Western in look and dress. He’s also pretty clever in a lot of his explanations. However, in his article he’s really grasping at straws.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem and Sola Scriptura
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St. Cyril of Jerusalem
Many Protestant scholars such as James White and William Webster have tried to prove the doctrine of Sola Scriptura from the Church Fathers. I’m unimpressed with a lot of the quotes that they provide. The quotes stress the authority of Scripture. I certainly believe in the authority of Scripture, just not in the same way that they do. There are only a couple quotes from the Church Fathers that I believe can be used to support this doctrine. One of them(and the best one in my opinion) comes from the great fourth century father St. Cyril of Jerusalem.
A Question to Protestants About Sola Scripura
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Pope Eugene IV who presided over the Council of Florence
I’m currently reading The History of the Council of Florence by Ivan Ostroumov. It’s the Greek Orthodox account of what happened at the Council of Florence in the 1400s. Four issues were discussed at this council between the Greek and Latin bishops. These are the papacy, the filioque, azymes, and purgatory. The last of these will be very important to this discussion.
Proper Catholic Dialogue with the Jews
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In the last few days there has been a Jew named Joshua who has been commenting on some old posts. He then went off-topic and demanded that I say whether I agree with certain publications by Dr. E. Michael Jones. Although I had referenced Dr. Jones in passing, the post wasn’t about him. In addition to that he said:
Interview With Derya Little
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On Thursday I had an interview with ex-Muslim turned Catholic Derya Little. There are a few reasons why I wanted to interview Little. The first was that I really enjoyed her book From Islam to Christ. I reviewed the book some time ago on this website.
Female Deacons or Female Demons?
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In the last few years there has been a surge in the demand for female deacons(or deaconesses) and surprisingly not just in the Catholic Church. I’ve read articles about certain Eastern and Oriental Orthodox jurisdictions that are experimenting with it. Liberal Protestant movements have been doing this for a long time and it has yielded anything but positive results.
Catholic Phyletism and New YouTube Videos
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Some people may have heard the term Phyletism before. It’s a heresy that the Eastern Orthodox Church has had to deal with. While we Catholics typically don’t worry about it, we have a sort of pseudo-phyletism of our own. It’s not identical to what the EOC deals with but it might be just as dangerous in a different way.