Today is known as Reformation Day among Lutherans because October 31, 1517 was the date Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses — a date that historians consider to be the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

When I was a Lutheran (from my early 20s until my late 30s), I read the Augsburg Confession, which is the primary confession of faith for Lutherans, as well as the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, written in response to Catholic objections to the Augsburg Confession. I must admit that in reading these two documents, I did not understand why the Catholic Church objected to them. I had to deduce what the Catholic position was through the arguments made in the Apology.

Fortunately, I eventually was able to find the “missing link” — the Catholic rebuttal to the Augsburg Confession which prompted the writing of the Apology of the Augsburg Confession. This document is known as The Roman Confutation against the Augsburg Confession and is available from the Lutheran Project Wittenberg. If you are curious why the Church said “No” to many of the Lutheran positions back in the 16th Century, I encourage you to read this document (available as a free PDF). It’s only 24 pages, and it proved to be a powerful influence on me becoming a Catholic. If you’d like to study it alongside the Lutheran documents, both the Augsburg Confession and the Apology are part of the Book of Concord, also available as a free PDF online.

In the UK, atheists are getting aggressive…but not exercising much conviction.

The news article Atheists Plan Anti-God Ad Campaign on Buses reports that thirty buses in London will feature posters that read, “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

So this was offensive for, like, half a second. When I read it again, the part about “probably” made me laugh. Here we have an atheist group that can’t even be fully convinced that God doesn’t exist. I guess that would make them more agnostic than atheists. Sounds like an organization with a slight identity crisis.

[Side note: If you ever encounter a self-professed agnostic, ask why they describe themselves using the Greek term instead of the Latin equivalent. Many don't realize that agnostic (Greek) is the same as ignoramus (Latin). Both mean "one who does not know."]

Back to the news story.

Now, I admit that this is a sad state of affairs and that a few people might be negatively influenced by this. Some will miss the underlying false assumptions of the ad: if you are worried and not enjoying life, it could be because religion might be oppressing you. Therefore, pretend that maybe God doesn’t exist after all — even we atheists/agnostics/ignoramuses can’t decide — and now you’ll be happy. Hopefully, most people will see through this lie. I tend to agree with one believer who was quoted in the news article: “Stunts like this demonstrate how militant atheists are often great adverts for Christianity.”

The truth of the matter is that God does exist and their are at least 20 solid, rational arguments for the existence of God. If you’d like to see them, they are summarized by philosophy professors Peter Kreeft and Ron Tacelli in their book, Handbook of Christian Apologetics. This same Dr. Kreeft makes a handful of these arguments available on his website’s featured writings section (see the article series Arguments for God’s Existence, beginning with Can You Prove God Exists?) and in free mp3 audio form (listen to Argument for God’s Existence and the separate lecture God’s Existence). So, if you don’t think that theism is rational, be open-minded enough to explore Dr. Kreeft’s arguments.

And if you’re searching for the meaning of life, I’ve not seen it better summarized than this:

God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven. (from the Baltimore Catechism)

If your life is miserable, living like an atheist is part of your problem, not part of the solution. The answers you seek are in being conformed to God’s will, not in conforming God to your will or pretending that God doesn’t exist. As St. Augustine put it in the opening of his Confessions:

Thou hast made us for Thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in Thee.

Catholic apologist and author Patrick Madrid has a free video available on his website answering the question “Is it a sin to vote for a pro-abortion candidate?” The site’s promo:

In an effort to help raise awareness among Catholics and other Christians about the importance of voting pro-life, here is a 10 minute non-partisan discussion of key Scripture verses pertaining to abortion.

Download it here (WMV, 17.4MB)

One aspect of the Catholic faith that Protestants don’t understand – or at least, I didn’t understand when I was Protestant – is the idea that the righteous departed (i.e., the saints in heaven) pray for us.

Where do we get this idea that the saints in heaven are even aware of our prayers? Consider this passage from scripture:

And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints (Revelation 5:8).

Scholars commonly understand that the “twenty-four elders” mentioned are men, most likely the twelve apostles and the twelve sons of Jacob who headed the tribes of Israel. Note what these men do: they take the “prayers of the saints” (i.e., the saints on earth) in the form of incense to the Lamb (i.e., Christ). We see here scriptural support for the Catholic understanding that saints in heaven not only hear the prayers of Christians on earth, they deliver our petitions to Christ’s throne on our behalf.

Other passages in the Old Testament also show how the saints in heaven pray for us. For example, Baruch 3:4 petitions God to hear the prayers offered by the dead:

O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, hear now the prayer of the dead of Israel and of the sons of those who sinned before thee, who did not heed the voice of the Lord their God, so that calamities have clung to us (Baruch 3:4).

In the book of 2 Maccabees 15, a vision is recounted involving two of Israel’s righteous dead – the departed high priest Onias and the deceased prophet Jeremiah – praying on behalf of the Jews on the earth:

Onias was stretching out his hands and praying for the whole Jewish community (2 Maccabees 15:12).

And Onias spoke, saying, “This is a man who loves the brethren and prays much for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah, the prophet of God” (2 Maccabees 15:14).

The saints in heaven are indeed interceding for us. How comforting to know that we have friends in high places!

If you didn’t catch the TV show live this past Monday night, you need to hear the audio recording (mp3, 6.5MB) from EWTN’s The Journey Home.

This week’s guest was Dr. Scott Hahn, the well-known speaker and author. If you are unfamiliar with Scott Hahn’s story, he was once an anti-Catholic Protestant scholar, professor and pastor. But in the 1980s, his study of scripture led him to embrace the Catholic faith that he once staunchly rejected. In this Journey Home episode, Hahn does a magnificent job talking about his background and fielding several questions from viewers.

Rather than post some really long blog entries, I’ve created a separate section for Essays, which you can access from the top navigation bar. My first was just posted, entitled Catholic Evidence that Demands a Verdict. An excerpt:

What started in my teens as an interest in defending the Christian faith in general eventually led me to the conviction that the church Jesus founded was the Catholic Church, and to be fully Christian, one must be Catholic.

Football season is just around the corner, and in these parts, anticipation is high: the Georgia Bulldogs are expected to do great things. The USAToday Coaches’ Poll just issued their preseason NCAA rankings and the Dawgs are at the top of the heap: preseason #1, baby!

As a UGA alumnus and the curator of DawgFan.com, I proudly sport many rather obnoxious Georgia Bulldogs items – not the least of which is a statue of Uga, our beloved mascot, which is prominently displayed just outside our front door.

Living here in the Bible belt, it’s not unusual for door-to-door missionaries to drop by. But it just occurred to me that none of them has ever mentioned anything about our family’s Uga statue. I’m sure if it were a statue of the Virgin Mary or some other saint, this would have set off the missionary’s graven-image-worshipping-Catholic radar. Their spiel would have quickly brought up Exodus 20:4-5 and its supposed prohibition against making statues, then accusing me of some form of idolatry. My response would have pointed out that God forbade the worship of statues, not the use of statues – not even the religious use of statues. In fact, scripture reveals that God commanded the use of statues in worship (see Exodus 25:18-20…a mere five chapters after the supposed condemnation of statues mentioned above). [If you’re interested in reading more, see Catholic Answers’ helpful article Do Catholics Worship Statues?]

But our statue of Uga never had an effect on these missionaries. Why not? Perhaps the statue isn’t large enough to notice. Maybe I need to upgrade to something that might be closer to waist height to get their attention? Who knows? Maybe I’ll ask them what they think of my “graven image” of Uga the next time they come a-callin’. It could spark an interesting conversation that might steer them in the direction of the Catholic Church. Or at least turn them into Dawg fans.

Sometimes a well-designed T-shirt just says it all…

[Free plug: get it at AgnusGiftShop.com]

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae (Latin: Of Human Life), the encyclical promulgated on July 25, 1968 by Pope Paul VI. I know that many people could go their entire lives without ever reading a papal encyclical. But I must urge you to read at least this one.

Carrying the subtitle On the Regulation of Birth, this letter from the pope reaffirmed the Church’s teaching on the topics of abortion, contraception and other human life issues. Many consider this letter to have been prophetic, in that its four predictions about the social effects of contraception were accurate and have unfortunately come to fruition in our world: infidelity and moral decline; lost respect for women; government imposed birth control; and irreverence to human life.

It isn’t a long document: this free ebook of Humanae Vitae (PDF, 340 K) is only 16 pages. So don’t be intimidated. Read it! This is a critical document in understanding why the Catholic Church opposes contraception.

Last December, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Protestant magazine Charisma. It was in response to the article “Take Up Your Scepter”. My letter did not run, but I thought it would be worthwhile to post it here:

In the “Take Up Your Scepter” article on spiritual authority (Charisma, Dec. 2007), Rebecca Greenwood is right in identifying that the “keys of the kingdom” in Matthew 16:18-19 signify Christ’s authority, but wrong in her understanding of where these keys reside today.

Christ did not give these keys to all believers; instead, He gave them specifically to Peter and only to Peter – all three times “you” is used in verse 19, it is singular [Greek: soi], not plural.

Greenwood correctly wrote, “the handing over of keys implies promotion to full authority.” In the Davidic kingdom, the king delegated his authority to the prime minister or prefect of the palace – an office that not only carried authority, but succession. We see this in Isaiah 22:22 when “the key of the house of David” is removed from Shebna and given to Eliakim in King Hezekiah’s court.

Anticipating the end of His earthly mission, Christ established His church upon Peter (Matthew 16:18) and delegated His authority to Peter (Matthew 16:19). Just as the keys were transmitted from one prime minister to the next in the Davidic kingdom (Isaiah 22:22), so the keys in Christ’s kingdom have been handed down since the founding of the church from Peter to his successors – the popes of the Catholic Church.

In Hebrews 13:17, we are commanded to obey those who have been placed in spiritual leadership over us: “Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give account” (RSV).

As we individual Christians engage the culture of this fallen world, let us not claim too much authority for ourselves. Instead, let us be humble and operate within the proper framework of the church Christ established.