“He who marries the spirit of the times will soon find himself a widower.” — G.K. Chesterton. Everything changes. Empires rise and fall. People come and go. Fades vanish as quickly as they appear. What about Catholicism? Are the teachings of the Catholic Church as fixed as the stars, or are they subject to the change that engulfs our lives? A Changing Church? It can be reasonably argued that the Catholic Church is a result of change. While the Church... Read more
In his famous poem, T.S. Eliot posits that the world ends not with a bang but with a whimper. Eschatology, too, has theories on how the world will end. Eschatology is that discipline within theology that is concerned with the end of the world. The purpose of this paper is to examine the four most prominent theories promulgated by eschatology about the process leading up to the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world. Before beginning, a... Read more
I recently came across a post on X (formerly Twitter) showing a woman wearing a t-shirt with the words, “I’ve had 21 abortions!” There has been much ink spilled on the topic of abortion, and I will not add much more in this essay. Rather, I want to use the subject of abortion as a point of departure and place it into the broader context of original sin and human volition. I will commence by examining will in a philosophical... Read more
As anyone familiar with the New Testament knows, Jesus frequently spoke in parables, and his statements often had a mysterious air to them. In this paper, I want to examine one such comment. “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27). I will begin by explaining the Sabbath’s meaning and history. I will then seek to place the Sabbath within the greater context by contrasting the letter of the law with the spirit of the... Read more
I have long thought that a comprehensive understanding of Catholicism requires at least some basic knowledge of the Old Testament and Judaism. This is as true in Christology as in any other aspect of theology. In this essay, I want to examine one such connection between the Old and New Testaments: the teaching that Jesus Christ is the new Adam. To do so, I need to discuss biblical typology. Typology Biblical typology refers to when a person, event, or thing... Read more
A strong case can be made that politics has replaced baseball as America’s pastime. Regardless of where one lives or whom one interacts with, politics seems to have infected the lives of almost everyone. At the same time, there has been a noticeable decline in religiosity in American life. This is, in my view, not a coincidence. In this paper, I want to question this obsession over politics and suggest that politics, divorced from religion and faith, has led to... Read more
One of the most persistent fallacies of our time is the genetic fallacy. More specifically, the problem is an appeal to an illegitimate authority. How often are the political or religious opinions of celebrities considered expert? In a similar vein, should a biologist be considered an expert on philosophy and theology? In this paper, I will discuss The God Delusion, a book written by a self-proclaimed “expert,” Richard Dawkins. Who Is Richard Dawkins? Richard Dawkins is an Oxford-educated evolutionary biologist... Read more
This paper, the final of three essays on Christian apologetics, shifts the focus to presuppositional apologetics, a unique approach that sets it apart from classical and evidential apologetics. As previously stated, apologetics seeks to explain and justify religious doctrine. It shows the reasonableness of faith and doctrine in the face of the objections offered by atheists and non-Christians. I will begin by reviewing the history of presuppositional apologetics and its proponents. Finally, I will examine the method used by this... Read more
The following paper is the second of three on Catholic and Christian apologetics. Having previously discussed classical apologetics, I turn to the method called evidential apologetics. As indicated in part one, apologetics is a religious discipline concerned with offering an intellectual defense related to religion and faith. For the most part, evidential apologetics is a response to the rise of deism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Eschewing revelation for reason, deism envisioned a universe created by God but then... Read more
As Catholics, we should “be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” (1 Peter 3:15). How can this be done? Enter apologetics. Because the word apologetics sounds very similar to the word apology, it may seem that Catholics are to express regret or remorse for their faith. This could not be farther from the truth. Apologetics is the English translation of the Greek word apología, which means to give a systemic... Read more
