Icon of St. Anne and the Blessed Virgin Mary
I had some dialogue with two people after my recent post on the second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD and the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. They both pointed out to me that this doesn’t refute the Eastern Orthodox position because they believe that the Virgin Mary was made spotless and Immaculate at the annunciation.
An Eastern Orthodox reader of this blog recently posted the following in the comments section on one of my previous posts:
I was recently discussing with a muslim gentleman on twitter, and he constantly stated that Mohammed was mentioned in the Book of the Prophet Haggai, specifically Chapter 2 verse 7. Have you come across this further example of rather peculiar Islamic exegesis?
There is a clip going around of the well known Evangelical Francis Chan saying that for the first 1,500 years of the Church, the unanimous belief was that the Eucharist was the body and blood of Jesus Christ. I want to say that I don’t agree that it was unanimous. It was about 95% but still a strong majority. When Protestants start to read the Church Fathers their jaw drops at the early view of the Eucharist. They clearly viewed it as the body and blood of Christ and Francis Chan sees that.
About a month or two ago, the former Catholic Michael Coren received ordination as a “deacon” in the Anglican Church. He loves to wear his clerical collar and simply can’t stop talking about it. On the other hand, the Queen’s former chaplain Gavin Ashenden is being received into the Catholic Church on the fourth Sunday of Advent. The Anglican Church got Michael Coren and the Catholic Church got Gavin Ashenden. I’d say that the Catholics won this swap hands down.
Both the Catholic and Orthodox Church have been debating an issue called the Filioque for centuries. Basically the Orthodox Church claims that the Catholic Church has innovated in saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son(Filioque in Latin). This caused a small controversy in the 7th century but erupted in the 9th century with a guy named Photios of Constantinople. Today the Orthodox Church reveres him as a Saint and Pillar of Orthodoxy while the Catholic Church doesn’t think much of him. Photios wrote a book called Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit which argues against the Filioque doctrine.
I love English Catholicism. The writings of Aelred of Rievaulx have always been spiritually comforting. However, English Catholicism predates him by centuries. I had read some of the commentaries of Venerable Bede before but reading his Ecclesiastical History of the English People was a true delight.
I research a lot of Jewish apologetics so I usually watch whatever Jews for Judaism puts out. A man who does videos for them recently put out a video of his conversion testimony which you can see above. In the above video at 7:40 he talks about going from Catholic to Evangelical and having a “born again” experience. He essentially describes it as an indescribable feeling.
Bede the Venerable
I’ve been having quite good conversations online with English Catholics recently, both convert and cradle. I know that English Catholics are required to do the fast every Friday of the year with no exceptions. In Canada we’re allowed to substitute a penance while in America you only have to fast on Fridays during lent. A priest told me that England is pretty unique in this regard as not many countries actually require the strict fast anymore.
Last night I happened to catch the end of a livestream by Vocab Malone. It was on the Protestant reformation but he dabbled in the Inquisition as well. I want to clear up some inquisition myths. I love Vocab Malone’s work but I don’t think that he understands the Inquisition, particularly the Spanish Inquisition. Here’s the story of the Spanish Inquisition.
Jesus Christ
What evidence would I accept for the Injeel? According to orthodox Islam, there was a document given to Jesus Christ called the Injeel. The truth is that there is no Injeel. The Quran assumes that the document with the Christians today is the one that was supposedly given to Jesus Christ. Since this is an obvious impossibility and since the Injeel with the Christians contradicts Islam, this myth was born.