A few months back, I started doing most of my Bible and Catechism reading on my computer. I find that it’s especially helpful while traveling, but even at home, I get great benefit from the search capabilities and other features.

I’ve been using Accordance, a Macintosh program. (It supposedly also works on Windows with an emulator program, but I haven’t tried that.) I like how this company offers a Catholic Collection of products, with the Catechism, the Order of Mass, the Documents of Vatican Councils I and II, etc. Accordance is also endorsed by a well regarded Catholic writer Jeff Cavins.

They even have a try-before-you-buy program, so check it out.

A recent email exchange with a non-Catholic accused Pope Pius XII of silence during the Nazi era. I explained that his claims against the Catholic Church seem to be based on urban legends, and I provided these links to articles he might want to read to get the Catholic perspective:

A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Jews
By Rabbi David Dalin
http://www.catholicleague.org/pius.php?id=11

Pius the Good: The brief for a much-maligned pope
By William Doino Jr.
http://www.catholicleague.org/pius.php?id=3

Pope Pius XII saved well over half-a-million Jews from Nazi extermination and was considered to be a “righteous gentile” by Jewish leaders of his day. As the Jewish Rabbi David Dalin wrote in the article above:

For Jewish leaders of a previous generation, [the modern] harsh portrayal of Pope Pius XII, and the campaign of vilification against him, would have been a source of profound shock and sadness. From the end of World War II until at least five years after his death, Pope Pius enjoyed an enviable reputation amongst Christians and Jews alike. At the end of the war, Pius XII was hailed as “the inspired moral prophet of victory,” and “enjoyed near-universal acclaim for aiding European Jews.” Numerous Jewish leaders, including Albert Einstein, Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett, and Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog, expressed their public gratitude to Pius XII, praising him as a “righteous gentile,” who had saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust. In his meticulously researched and comprehensive 1967 book, Three Popes and the Jews, the Israeli historian and diplomat Pinchas Lapide, who had served as the Israeli Counsel General in Milan, and had spoken with many Italian Jewish Holocaust survivors who owed their life to Pius, provided the empirical basis for their gratitude, concluding that Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.” To this day, the Lapide volume remains the definitive work, by a Jewish scholar, on the subject.

The campaign of vilification against Pope Pius can be traced to the debut in Berlin in February 1963 of a play, by a young, Protestant, left-wing West German writer and playwright, Rolf Hochhuth. The Deputy, in which Hochhuth depicts Pacelli as a Nazi collaborator, guilty of moral cowardice and “silence” in the face of the Nazi onslaught, is a scathing indictment of Pope Pius XII’s alleged indifferences to the plight of European Jewry during the Holocaust.

Hochhuth’s play ignited a public controversy about Pius XII that continues this day. Despite the fact that The Deputy was a purely fictional and highly polemical play, which offered little or no historical evidence for its allegations against Pope Pius XII, it was widely discussed and acclaimed. Indeed, it inspired a new generation of revisionist journalists and scholars, who were intent on discrediting the well-documented efforts of Pope Pius XII to save Jews during the Holocaust. Their denunciation of Pius received widespread publicity with the commercial success of Hitler’s Pope, in which John Cornwell denounced him as “the most dangerous churchman in modern history,” without whom “Hitler might never have…been able to press forward with the Holocaust.” Although an unusually harsh and bitter judgment, it was one with which Pius XII’s other recent detractors, such as Wills and Zucotti, implicitly concur. Moreover, in their persistent efforts to vilify Pius, and defame his memory, his detractors have largely dismissed or completely ignored Pinchas Lapide’s seminal and comprehensive study that so conclusively documents the instrumental role played by Pope Pius XII in rescuing and sheltering Jews during the Holocaust.

The man I was corresponding with didn’t like my comment that his beliefs were based on “urban legends.” But I consider any revisionist history based on a fictional play an “urban legend.” Don’t you?

A non-Catholic (actually, a quite anti-Catholic) fellow recently asked me in an e-mail, “Do you pray to dead people?” Below is my response:

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Do I pray to dead people?

I worship God alone and pray directly to him frequently. I also ask for living saints in heaven to pray for me to the Lord, just as I ask living believers on earth to pray for me.

An aspect of the Catholic faith that many 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, God is asked 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!

I’ve been involved in an email dialogue with a non-Catholic, and thought I’d share some of my messages on this blog and in the Essays section. Here is one recent writing:

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Just as God worked through men to write individual books of inspired Scripture, He worked through the authority of the Catholic Church’s Bishops to determine for us what books belong in the Bible.

All Christians must admit that their confidence that the Bible is Sacred Scripture – the inerrant and divinely inspired Word of God – stems from the authority of the Catholic Church. God made Scripture holy…but we know this because He revealed it to us through the Catholic Church.

No Consensus In the Early Church

The Bible as we have it today did not exist when the Church was first founded (circa A.D. 33). For the first decade, no book of the New Testament was written, and it was at least thirty years (perhaps several decades longer) after the Church’s founding before all of the New Testament writings were completed.

For the first several centuries, there was disagreement among Christians about which books belonged in the New Testament. Some Christians thought that certain books that are regarded today as Scripture were not inspired – such as Revelation, Hebrews, Jude and 2 Peter. Others thought that certain books were inspired, which are not considered inspired today – these included St. Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas.

The Catholic Church Decided the Matter

To settle the matter about which books were Scripture and which were not, the Bishops of the Catholic Church met in the 4th Century and, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, determined the canon. At the Synod of Rome (A.D. 382), the Council of Hippo (393) and the Council of Carthage (397), the Bishops of the Catholic Church defined the canon of Scripture to be that which Catholics use today: 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament, totaling 73 books. In A.D. 405, Pope Innocent I approved the 73-book canon, closing discussion on the matter.

Protestants cite the Council of Carthage as the authority for the New Testament canon, yet most don’t realize that the 46-book Old Testament (the Alexandrian canon) was canonized at the same time.

Protestants Violated Scripture by Removing Books

The 73-book canon of Scripture was uncontested for the next 1,100 years until Protestants began publishing Bibles that contained only 39 Old Testament books. Even among Protestants, however, there was disagreement. Martin Luther included 73 books in his edition of the Bible (he placed the seven so-called apocryphal OT books in an appendix between the OT and NT), while his contemporary Ulrich Zwingli produced a Bible with only 66 books. The Gutenberg Bible – the first printed Bible – was a complete 73-book Catholic edition.

In English, the 73-book Bible was the norm until the 1800s. The first edition of the King James Bible in 1611 contained the so-called apocrypha (treated as an appendix between the OT and NT, but nevertheless included). It wasn’t until 1827 – more than 300 years after the Reformation – that the first major edition, published by the British and Foreign Bible Society, eliminated the deuterocanon/apocrypha altogether. It wasn’t until 1885 that the King James Bible was published as a 66-book edition.

God Used the Catholic Church’s Leadership

God worked through the Bishops of the Catholic Church, meeting at the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397), to authoritatively determine what books belong in the Bible.

One must admit that the Bible does not in and of itself tell us which books belong to it. An outside authority is necessary to determine the canon of Scripture. Fortunately, Christ left us the Catholic Church to serve as that authority.

The existence of the Bible proves the necessary authority of the Catholic Church.

Why belong to a group of Christians (Protestants) who tampered with the canon of Scripture and removed books, when you can belong to the Catholic Church, which not only codified what books are in the Bible but has protected the complete Bible down through the ages?

There are many Christians that understand “being saved” as a one-time event. A moment comes when a person repents of their sins and accepts Jesus Christ as their “personal Lord and Savior” – a phrase which is never used in Scripture, oddly enough. This once-in-a-lifetime conversion event removes all penalties for past sins and is a guarantee that no matter what happens afterward, the new believer is destined for heaven – nothing whatsoever can undo salvation. Some adherents to absolute assurance describe it in the slogan, “once saved, always saved.”

Those who think that believers have an absolute assurance of salvation cite two key passages to support their view:

1 John 5:13 – “I write this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.”

John 10:27-29 – “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”

At first glance, these passages seem to make the point that believers cannot lose their salvation. However, when viewed in the context of the rest of the New Testament, this assurance needs to be understood as a moral assurance, not an absolute one.

In writing “you have eternal life,” John is stating that every Christian can have an assurance of salvation. John also explains that no other person or external force can snatch a believer out of Christ’s hand. However, individual believers can sever that relationship on their own. In 1 John 5:16-17, John explains mortal sin. Anyone who dies unrepentant in that state will have lost their salvation because they will have, in a sense, jumped out of Christ’s hand of their own volition. Other parts of the Bible emphasize that remaining in a “saved” state is conditional on our continued belief and fidelity to the Lord:

Romans 11:20-22 – They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast only through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness; otherwise you too will be cut off.

Hebrews 10:26-31 – For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries…. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the Son of God, and profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

2 Peter 2:20-21 – For if after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.

These passages explain that if a believer returns to a life of serious sin, they lose their salvation. Paul also writes of this in 2 Timothy 2:11-13: “If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful – for he cannot deny himself.”

Christ also speaks of believers falling away:

Matthew 18:21-35 – In the parable of the unforgiving servant, Jesus told that although the merciful king forgave his debt, the unforgiving servant proceeded to mistreat a fellow servant. When the king discovered this, he reinstated his debt and threw him into prison! Jesus stated, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

Matthew 7:21 – “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

John 15:5-6 – “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned.”

Knowing that our infidelity to Christ can sever our relationship to him, Christians ought to remain faithful to our Lord and take comfort in his words: “He who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13).

I just posted an essay entitled “A Second Look at Sola Fide,” which I originally wrote in late 2006, as I entered RCIA (I joined the Catholic Church at Easter 2007). One of the key factors that led me to reject Protestantism was the shortcomings of the idea that we are justified by faith alone (sola fide). Martin Luther taught that justification was the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. But I discovered that Luther’s teachings on justification contradicted Scripture: we are taught in James 2:24, for example, that “man is justified by works, and not by faith alone” (RSV). It’s a long one — about 5,000 words — but hopefully a worthwhile read on your part. Enjoy!

I’ve been reading Francis de Sales’ The Catholic Controversy for some time now. Actually, I found it so interesting that I immediately started re-reading it. What a cool book!

Francis de Sales was a young priest, who at the age of 27 – only about a year after his ordination – took on a daunting mission: to re-evangelize the Chablais region of France that had fully converted to Calvinism. He came to discover that the people there did not want to hear him preach, so he began writing pamphlets or tracts, which he posted on walls and slipped under doors. The technique worked. After four years, almost the entire region of 72,000 people had returned to the Catholic Church.

The tracts have been collected in a single volume and titled The Catholic Controversy. TAN Books has republished the 1886 translation. I highly recommend it, whether you are a Catholic wanting to learn more about your faith or a Protestant trying to understand why the Catholic Church didn’t go along with the so-called “reforms” of the 16th century.

I think that if I’d read this book years ago, I would have likely converted in my teens rather than in my late thirties.

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)