The Christian Vanguard

It is a common Catholic talking point that there seems to be no essential definition of Protestantism. It reduces to a kind of relativism, thus demonstrating the need for a magisterium. And the common reply is something like, "We are united in those doctrines necessary for salvation" or that "We are united on the obvious doctrines". Sometimes you hear "The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things."  It doesn't escape the issue being pressed. You ask different Protestants what's necessary for salvation and you'll get different answers. "Believe in Jesus." But which Jesus? The Jesus of Mormonism? I think not. "Sola Fide." Okay, does that include baptism being necessary for salvation? Protestants will disagree on that. Which is exactly the problem we're trying to highlight.  What of the "obvious" or "clear" issues like the Nicene Creed? Or the Trinity? Obviously you can...

 Hey, it's been a while. Graduated school, and stopped some of my reading and writing. But I have few thoughts. Hopefully I can get this back up and running again. If not, whatever, a place to jot down some thoughts.  Suppose that the Catholic doctrine of the Papacy were false. Would it follow that Catholicism is false? Or would it follow that Catholicism isn't the place to be? On one hand, it would seem that the Papacy is one of the core or essential doctrines of the Catholic church, and yeah, to have that be false would seem to falsify the entire institution. But that may be too fast of a move. If it were false, then that would put Catholicism in the same boat as Protestantism. How do I mean? I mean that since Protestant churches do no claim to be infallible, then possibly some part of their doctrine is wrong. And most Protestants would agree that there is SOMETHING about their doctrine that is incorrect, even if they cannot currently identify exactly what that is. It would ...

No. The quotation some people have in mind when they think that he did is the following.  But in Europe, in the nineteenth century, the two models were joined by a third, socialism, which quickly split into two different branches, one totalitarian and the other democratic. Democratic socialism managed to fit within the two existing models as a welcome counterweight to the radical liberal positions, which it developed and corrected. It also managed to appeal to various denominations. In England it became the political party of the Catholics, who had never felt at home among either the Protestant conservatives or the liberals. In Wilhelmine Germany, too, Catholic groups felt closer to democratic socialism than to the rigidly Prussian and Protestant conservative forces. In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness. The quotation from B16 is take...

It is a common anti Catholic argument to point out that Pope St. Gregory (540-604 AD) denied the title of "Universal Bishop." If the Pope himself denied the title, then how can the Pope claim to have universal jurisdiction over the entire church? This argument has been around since at least the reformation, as we see it in John Calvin's Institutes , and it still made today by people like James White, Geisler and MacKenzie. So what exactly did Pope St. Gregory say? In a few different places, he says things like,  None of my predecessors has consented to bear this profane title, for when a Patriarch adopts for himself the title of 'universal' the title of Patriarch suffers discredit. No Christian, then, has the desire to adopt a title that would cause discredit to his brethren. And  Was it not the case, as your Fraternity knows, that the prelates of this Apostolic See, which by the providence of God I serve, had the honour offered them of being called Univers...

The other day, I shared a quotation from a saint recognized in the East, St. Maximos the Confessor (about 649 AD). It read,  For the extremities of the earth and all in every part of it who purely and rightly confess the Lord, look directly towards the most holy Roman Church and its confession and faith, as it were to a sun of unfailing light, awaiting from it the bright radiance of the sacred dogmas of our fathers, according to what the six inspired and holy councils have purely and piously decreed, declaring most expressly the symbol of faith. For from the coming down of the incarnate Word among us, all the Churches in every part of the world have possessed that greatest Church along as their base and foundation, seeing that, according to the promise of Christ our Savior, the gates of hell do never prevail against it , that it possesses the keys of a right confession and faith in Him, that it opens the true and only religion to such as approach with piety, and shuts up and ...

A protestant friend of mine was expressing his worry of the term "heresy" being thrown around too loosely among his other protestant friends. This is a fair worry. Even within Catholicism, the word gets tossed around too easily among the laity, in my opinion. However, there is a difference between my friend and I: our criteria for what counts as heresy. My protestant friend said, "If I am not contradicting any of the ecumenical councils, I am not a heretic." I pointed out he denies the Council of Trent. His response was that Trent was not ecumenical. "Which Orthodox bishops ratified Trent?" he asked me, which of course isn't really a question, but an argument. He believes that enough Bishops have to be present in order for a council to be ecumenical, and since the Orthodox were obviously not present in Trent, Trent cannot be ecumenical. This makes some sense. The big 7 ecumenical councils that all Christians believe, even the Protestants, were ratifi...

Years ago, when I was still a Protestant, I attended a panel discussion at my school on the topic of homosexuality. One woman, a mother of a lesbian, and a professed Catholic, said that a topic that the Catholic Church does not like to bring up concerning homosexuality is that of conscience. Since the Church teaches that we should obey our conscience, and for some, and participating in the homosexual lifestyle is in accord to ones conscience, one should continue being homosexual. This clearly would make some Catholics uncomfortable. So, what's going on here? First, terms. Conscience is our judgment of what is right and wrong, and it is our only contact with the moral realm. This is why we must always obey our conscience, because to disobey our conscience is to disobey what we judge to be right. It is saying that we will to do evil, and we should never will to do evil. If conscience is a judgment of what is right and wrong, it is possible that our judgments can be incorrect. It ...

My Anglican friend believes in open communion, that is that in virtue of him being a Christian, he should be allowed to partake in the Eucharistic sacrifice of the Mass. He has a great appreciation for the Church Fathers, and so I wonder what he will make of some of the following quotations (and I do intend to ask). St. Ignatius of Antioch views the Eucharist as a sacrament of Ecclesial Unity.  St. Ignatius in Letter to the Philadelphians 4  says,  Take care, therefore, to participate in one Eucharist (for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup that leads to unity through his blood; there is one altar, just as there is one bishop , together with the council of presbyters and the deacons, my fellow servants), in order that whatever you do, you do in accordance with God.   In his letter  Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8 , he writes, Only the Eucharist which is under the authority of the bishop (or whomever he himself designates) is to be co...

We do a brief overview of the sacraments and take a look at baptism. Three videos.

Talked about the Eucharist and John 6 in class. Here are the videos.

I was having an exchange with a Protestant friend of mine on Facebook on whether Peter is the rock Jesus says He will build His church upon. I took the time to copy some choice quotations from the book Jesus, Peter, and the Keys    which I have been meaning to keep on file somewhere because they're useful, but I finally managed it, and I am copying them here for future reference.  William Hendriksen, Th.D from Princeton, a Reformed Protestant Professor of New Testament Literature at Calvin Seminary writes, “The meaning is, ‘You are Peter, that is Rock, and upon this rock, that is, on you, Peter, I will build my church.’ Our Lord, speaking Aramaic, probably said, ‘And I say to you, you are Kepha,’ and on this kepha I will build my church.’ Jesus, then, is promising Peter that he is going to build his church on him! I accept this view.” - New Testament Commentary: Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew, pg 647 Even some Lutherans, the original Protestants, h...

I recorded my class session at Holy Innocents. I may do this regularly. The topic for today was on marriage and divorce.

My friend Kyle interviewed me on his podcast, where we discussed my conversion from atheism, to protestantism and into Catholicism, and asks me how I answer some common Protestant objections. Have a listen here .

The iconic soup can. What is the big deal? Well, it's not really a big deal, and that might be the point. This paper on Andy Warhol's possible Eastern Christian aesthetic has helped me see that. It's an interesting paper, and I think it's worth a read, especially if you are Catholic or Orthodox. The basic idea is this: the aesthetic style of icons, no context and no space, is present in some of Warhol's work, as evidenced by the soup can, Golden Marilyn Monroe, and Silver Liz. Okay, I see that. I think that's pretty plausible. And I didn't really see that before, but I did have some vague sense of it. I just never really unpacked it because...it's a can of soup. Icons help us encounter a transfigured and holy person. That is why icons lack space and context. Is Warhol trying doing this too? Well, if he is, it doesn't work. Yes, in some sense, all of creation is good, and goodness is convertible with beautiful, so in some sense, all of creation is b...

This last year I had the honor of helping teens at my parish go through their Confirmation. I put some work into it, and I want to share that work with others. We used the St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism and below are my lesson outlines and quizzes. Let me know if this benefits you in any way!  Lesson Outlines Quizzes 

Matthew 23:9 is cited as contrary to the Catholic practice of calling priests "father". This is not a good understanding of the text. First, this would exclude calling even our biological fathers "father" and clearly Jesus didn't mean that (Matt 15:4-6). Nor does he mean this in a spiritual sense as he also warns us to not call other people teachers (v. 8 & 10), but clearly we have hundreds of well accredited and trained theological professors at seminaries all across the world. So what does Jesus mean? As indicated in v. 11, he means that we do not take these titles so that they supplant the place of God, because that is pride. The preceding two paragraphs starting at the beginning of the chapter make this evident that this is the issue with those whom Jesus is criticizing and why. With that in mind, consider the second problem with this understanding of the text, which is that it is actually done with approval elsewhere in the Bible. In the parable of...

Here is my Amazon review for this short book.

So I decided to go see Milo Yiannopoulos at UCSB yesterday. I was really hesitant to do so, and decided not to go, but a few of my friends wanted to go, and they're all losers who don't drive, so, I had to take everyone. I didn't know much about Milo, and I still don't, but I did learn some things. In some of the more, ahem, colorfully conservative pages of facebook that I follow, Milo has been something of an iconoclast, destroying the feminist narratives left and right. But I also know that he is an active homosexual and he is a rabid Trump supporter (even calling him "Daddy"). So, for those reasons, I was never interested in what he had to say. He was, to take a phrase from Lenin, a useful idiot. That was my impression. But I was wrong. A few days before the event, I had read somewhere on these pages I follow but wont name, that Milo believed himself to be a Christian, and a Catholic at that. I dismissed this immediately, and my opinion of him stoppe...

I met this guy, let's call him Tom, at an engagement party, and he is a member of the ICOC, which I used to be a member of. We had a discussion about Original Sin (which they deny) and Infant Baptism (they're Anabaptists) and he sent me some Bible verses which he believed denied Original Sin, and I said I would think about it and get back to him. Of course, I've heard it all before, being a former member of the ICOC, but I was just being polite since I didn't want to get into the nitty gritty there at a mutual friends party. He has stopped responding to me, and it's been a while now, so I'm sharing our exchange here. Some arguments I was toying and experimenting with here with, so a ny feed back is appreciated. His emails are in Blue , while mine are in Red . 

A while ago, I had a conversation with a guy. We both commented on a mutual friends Facebook post, and this friend was from the ICOC. I initiated conversation with him because his profile picture looked like something you would see an Orthodox person put up, and people from the ICOC tend to be isolated from that kind of stuff, so I was intrigued. The man's name is Joey Harris, and I have his permission to make this public. I have cleaned up some of the grammar and spelling errors, but the substance is faithful to the original. I've decided to put this up for a few reasons. One, it's probably the best attempt by a member of the ICOC to stop me from being Catholic. Or at least, it's the more informed attempt. Two, there's a certain intellectual humility in the conversation, which I think other members of the ICOC should follow. I've talked to many of my friends from this group, and they simply don't know how to approach me about this, and I briefly give a...