St. Paul The Apostle
As we know, Muslims like to blame St. Paul for Christianity turning out how it did. In other words, if the documents that tell us about Jesus Christ and the early Church tell us something different than what a 7th century illiterate Arab from the Hijaz tells us, St. Paul is the culprit. This wasn’t always the case. Early Muslims didn’t talk negatively about St. Paul. It took a few centuries to put this narrative in place.
The fourth crusade is the crusade where the crusaders sacked Constantinople and end up occupying it for half a century. It’s a very low point in relations with the Greek Church and only added fuel to the fire of the Humbert vs. Cerularius episode in 1054. I’ve been reading primary sources on this crusade and it turns out there is another blunder that the crusaders made.
Whenever there is a bestseller I always need to read it. If a book has been on the top of the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks or so I have to read it; even if I’ve never read anything by the author, if anything just to know what the culture is thinking. The same applies to books in the religious realm in which the book Pope Peter by Joe Heschmeyer fits the bill. Catholic and Protestant YouTubers are talking about this book and Heschmeyer is having quite a few interviews. I decided to take the plunge and read it.
I want to give a follow up on the book that I talked about in my last post; the St. Robert Bellarmine book on purgatory. To make a long story short, that book really changed me. St. Robert Bellarmine makes an airtight case for purgatory using both testaments, the Church fathers and Church councils. To make a long story short, purgatory exists and St. Robert Bellarmine has proved it beyond reasonable doubt.
I’ve been reading a lot of St. Robert Bellarmine lately thanks to the brilliant translating done by Ryan Grant at Mediatrix Press. I’ve been reading his book on Purgatory and think that it tells some pretty interesting things about Church history. I want to comment on one thing that he said and draw some other historical conclusions with other examples.
A fellow apologist that I know highly recommended The Church and the Papacy by Trevor Jalland. Jalland was an Anglican scholar who lived in the 20th century. The more I do research, the more I realize that Anglicans in the 1800s and the early 1900s wrote some pretty amazing stuff. I’ve scoffed at Anglicans before but I honestly do want to take that back because they have a rich intellectual tradition. This book was originally published in 1942. I’ve typically only reviewed newer books on this website but I couldn’t let this one go. It’s out of print but used copies are available.
When you study the early Church, you find that Peter is affiliated with three cities. Ironically these three cities became the three early Patriarchates of the Church. These are Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria. Peter had a hand in the early stages of each Church.
The Catholic Church has many formidable enemies. Obviously in a place like Brazil, Evangelical born-agree Christianity is making headway. In other parts of South America we see similar trends. Then of course there is secularism which is very successfully at attacking both movements and having much success. In places like the Middle East, Islam continues to chip away at dwindling populations in places like Syria and Iraq. So we’re not short of enemies. However, I wouldn’t consider Anglicanism to be an opponent in the slightest. Even in the second half of the 16th century it wasn’t the Anglican Church persecuting the Catholics, it was the monarch.
In late September I joined William Albrecht and Erick Ybarra on Reason and Theology to talk about the monarchial episcopate in the early Church. Together we looked at the early documents to show that in fact, the Church of Rome had a monarchial bishop from the very beginning. The idea was to disprove the revisionist theory that the early Roman Church was governed by a college of presbyters as opposed to having one monarchial bishop above the presbyters.
I wish he was still Pope
We all know that Pope Francis has taken it in himself to declare war on the Catholic teaching on the death penalty. He has changed the catechism and has further expanded on this in his recent encyclical Fratelli Tutti. Sadly though, in his efforts to promote heresy, he contradicted himself. Let’s be honest, Francis isn’t known for his orthodoxy in terms of Church teaching. It’s no surprising that in opposing the teachings of the Church(found in scripture, tradition, and magisterial documents), he contradicts himself.