Sorry for the lack of posts in recent days. I have been experiencing hosting problems and hope to have them resolved soon.

Last Thursday’s passing of Father Richard John Neuhaus — the noteworthy editor of First Things and ex-Lutheran minister who became a Catholic priest — is marked by a nice article by George Weigel in Newsweek.

I enjoyed Fr. Neuhaus’ commentary on EWTN this past April when Pope Benedict XVI visited the United States. That was the first time I saw him on television, and I liked his dry wit!

Two or three years ago, on my own journey toward Catholicism, I read an article Neuhaus wrote entitled, “How I Became the Catholic I Was.” (I later learned that it was an excerpt from his book Catholic Matters.) The article is available as a PDF in the Coming Home Network‘s Feb. 2003 newsletter (beginning on page 3) and as HTML on the First Things site.

He recalled the story of how “the great confessional Lutheran theologian Peter Brunner regularly said that a Lutheran who does not daily ask himself why he is not a Roman Catholic cannot know why he is a Lutheran.” Neuhaus also pointed out how Lutheranism “turned against the fulfillment of its destiny as a reforming movement within the one Church of Christ. Lutheranism in all its parts, both in this country and elsewhere, had settled for being a permanently separated Protestant denomination; or, as the case may be, several Protestant denominations.”

That hit me hard — especially as someone who was a proud member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod since the early 1990s. The original idea of the Reformation was to work toward reform of and reconciliation with the Catholic Church, not to establish a permanently separated state. This original idea has been lost over the past 490+ years.

I cannot say that Fr. Neuhaus’ writings immediately prompted me to join the Catholic Church, but he did get the old wheels turning in my head at a much faster rate than they had in the past.

Thank you, Father Neuhaus, for all that you did in this life, and may you enter into eternal rest!

Today is the 41st anniversary of my baptism!

Christ taught us that to enter heaven, we must be “born again of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5) – a statement that from the earliest days of the Church have been understood to refer to baptism. St. Peter taught that “baptism…now saves you” (1 Peter 3:21), and St. Paul wrote that God “saved us…by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). So, when I was baptized 41 years ago, I was “born again” the Bible way!

I was four months old when I was baptized. The Methodist congregation our family attended shared the same belief in infant baptism that is practiced in the Catholic Church. In fact, most non-Catholic groups also practice infant baptism – Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed/Presbyterian, Anglican/Episcopal, Methodist and more. Infant baptism is not followed by some Protestant groups, in particular those that stem from the Anabaptist movement that came later in Reformation history.

Interested in learning why we baptize infants? Here are two helpful articles from Catholic Answers and Steve Ray (in addition to his blog post, which is about baptism in general, read the PDF of his article on infant baptism which he links to in one of the comments).

Today’s email from Townhall.com has a great message:

We Need to Hear the Message of Christmas
—Albert Mohler

Christmas comes as many Americans seem anxious and all-too-aware of challenges that face us all. Economic uncertainty, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a constant barrage of news create a strange context for Christmas.

Then again, maybe this is very much like the first Christmas. When Jesus came, the world hardly noticed. It was filled with anxiety and very few, it seemed, were thinking about what God was then doing as Christ was born in Bethlehem’s manger.

Christmas is a gift. This season of celebration interrupts our lives and reminds us that our anxieties and uncertainties do not have the last word. Instead, “the hopes and fears of all the years” are put in their place by the coming of the Christ.

We need to hear the message of the angels again–unto you is born a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.

I decided to “Pope My Ride” recently with a sticker I bought at The Catholic Shoppe at Belmont Abbey College. It reads “One Holy Catholic Apostolic” and features the papal crest: sure to be a magnet for fundamentalist literature being placed under my windshield wiper at some point in the future.

This was my first visit to Belmont Abbey, and it was somewhat spur of the moment. I was driving between Winston-Salem and Atlanta this past Thursday. It was a dreary, rainy day, and I felt like taking a break just past Charlotte. I knew that Belmont Abbey was in the area (thanks to all of the “Got Monks?” ads I’ve seen and Patrick Madrid’s frequent plugs on his radio show), so I decided to stop, stretch my legs, and check out the campus. In spite of the rain, the campus was quite pleasant and the manager in The Catholic Shoppe very friendly. Hopefully, I’ll be able to visit again…in better weather!

The current edition of The Georgia Bulletin celebrates the 25th anniversary of Archbishop Wilton Gregory’s ordination as a bishop (Dec. 13, 1983). The issue also has a nice biographical timeline, listing his birthday as Dec. 7, 1947…Happy Birthday, Archbishop!

Have you ever noticed that many — perhaps most — angels in artwork are female? Why is this?

In the Bible, only three angels are mentioned by name and they are all masculine names: Raphael (Tobit 3:17, Tobit 5:4 and elsewhere in that book), Gabriel (Daniel 8:6, Daniel 9:21, Luke 1:19, 26) and Michael (Jude 9, Revelation 12:7). Even angels who aren’t named are referred to using the male pronoun “he,” such as in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:1ff. and in the account of the empty tomb in Matthew 28:2-4.

So I have to wonder what inspired artists through the ages to paint or sculpt female angels so frequently, almost to the exclusion of male angels.

Anyone with answers or speculations out there, let me know your thoughts.

Yesterday was the start of Advent, the beginning of the Catholic liturgical year (at least for us Westerners). So, tell everyone Happy New Year this week. Sure, you’ll get strange looks, but that can make life interesting.

The blog at Credo brings some interesting historical facts about America’s Thanksgiving celebrations to light:

The history books will tell you that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated by the pilgrims in 1621. Not true.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the first American Thanksgiving was actually celebrated on September 8, 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida. The Native Americans and Spanish settlers held a feast and the Holy Mass was offered.

A second similar “Thanksgiving” celebration occurred on American soil on April 30, 1598 in Texas when Don Juan de Oñate declared a day of Thanksgiving to be commemorated by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The Catholic origins of Thanksgiving don’t stop there.

Read the full article, “Is “Thanksgiving” Catholic?” by Taylor Marshall (and thanks to Opinionated Catholic for binging this gem to my attention on his blog).

National Geographic has an interesting article, explaining that “The remains of an ancient gate have pinpointed the location of the biblical city Sha’arayim” — the city mentioned in 1 Samuel 17:52 during the account of David’s battle with Goliath. Interesting. Thanks to the Practicing Catholic for bringing it to my attention in her post.