Why Did God Become Man? A Simple Explanation
Would the Eternal Word have become incarnate if Adam had never sinned? Some religious in the Middle-Ages answered in the negative to this. However, the Franciscans answered in the positive. The latter view would become known as the Absolute Primacy of Christ. I hold to this view, namely, that the Second Person of the Trinity would have indeed become Jesus Christ even if Adam and Eve had never sinned. However, even for those who hold to the Absolute Primacy of Christ (like the Franciscans and me) we clearly assert that the propitiation for our sins was a major reason for the Incarnation. Of course, the Incarnation is when God the [...]
The Incarnation
“One will be sent in the flesh,” thundered the most beautiful Trinity to the angels and all the courts of heaven eons ago. In perfect harmony they rejoiced. But later they wondered if anyone but a lowly archangel like Raphael (still more glorious than a burning star) could dare condescend again to take flesh as Raphael did for Tobit. Their best guess for the new assignment was Gabriel. God said “Gabriel will go…but in spirit as preparation. One much higher than he will become flesh.” “But how?” the angels wondered, “A cherubim's eyes would melt the trees and mountains. No human warrior's body could even instantaneously hold the power of [...]
Ancient Pagan Prophesies Describing the Savior of the World
Not only did the Hebrew Scriptures describe that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, but so did pagan oracles. Ven. Archbishop Fulton Sheen describes some of them: History is full of men who have claimed that they came from God, or that they were gods, or that they bore messages from God – Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ, Lao-tze, and thousands of others, right down to the person who founded a new religion this very day. Each of them has a right to be heard and considered. But as a yardstick external to and outside of whatever is to be measured is needed, so there must be some permanent tests available [...]
The Darkness Fears the Light
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.—Lk 2:1-2 Notice that Joseph and Mary had to go through a census or registration (ἀπογραφὴ or apographé in Greek in Lk 2:2 above) as Jews living under the foreign occupation of the Roman Empire. Herod, a half-Jew who was in cahoots with the Roman government that had invaded, presumably used this registration to track Jesus in his attempts to kill Him: Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all [...]
Mental Prayer vs. Centering Prayer
A good friend recently asked me to explain the difference between traditional Catholic mental prayer (meditation on the life of Jesus that the Spanish mystics called oración mental) and New Age centering prayer (amorphous meditation promoted by pseudo-Eastern groups.) My online series on mental prayer called Video Lectio Divina tries to teach the former, but I have never tackled the difference in definitions. So what is the difference between mental prayer and centering prayer? A decent answer would be that that mental prayer looks outwards to God and centering prayer looks inward to self. This would be a decent answer. However, it's not a perfect answer because great mystics like [...]
Planned Mass Psychosis
Here's two excellent resources I would like to share to prove that the totalitarian overreach (using the pretext of COVID-19) is actually a planned mass-psychosis. The first is surprisingly a podcast with Joe Rogan and Dr. Peter McCullough MD. The second is a list of medical and sociological facts compiled by Kit Knightly. 1. Joe Rogan and Dr. Peter McCullough MD, MPH (See above picture) were in a three hour podcast here on Spotify. This is so incredibly important that someone as mainstream as Joe Rogan (admittedly less and less mainstream every day) has given a forum to one of the strongest medical voices on the truth of COVID-19. Rogan [...]
Exceptions to Being Pro-Life?
Even in high school, long before my conversion to traditional Catholicism, I was pro-life. I remember one guy from my high-school with whom I would work in the soup-kitchen in downtown Denver. He was part of the young Republican club and he told me that he was "pro-life except in cases of rape and incest." Even back then, before I had studied the defense of the pro-life position, I knew that a child should not have to pay for her life for the crime of her father. I knew he was wrong. If the unborn baby were human, then murder could never be justified based on any crime that led [...]
The First Week of July 1963
My mother's four grandparents moved from Ireland to Chicago in the first half of the 20th century, so I grew up hearing from extended family and peers what great men Cardinal Bernadin and President Kennedy were. I also graduated Boston College in 2000. So, even though I was raised in Denver, the fact is that Chicago Catholicism and Boston Catholicism are in my bloodstream. I trusted this version of Catholicism. But to rebuild traditional Catholicism and understand who to trust, perhaps we have to expose some of this evil, for St. Paul writes, "Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them."—Eph 5:11. The following [...]
Advent Message to Benefactors and Listeners
Dear friends, family, readers, listeners and benefactors—both spiritual and material, Ave Maria! I wanted to thank you all for all of your support this past year. First, some great news: My VLX (Patristic Bible Study) and CPX (Catechism of Pope St. Pius X) and TCE (Theology and Current Events) reached it's first year of production about midway through 2021. Across all forums like YouTube and Apple podcasts, it is now getting about a million listens a year! It has been my dream for a long time to teach Scripture and catechesis as a traveling missionary, so this was an answer to a prayer in a roundabout way. I thank God (and [...]
The Door to Fatima’s Modesty is Unlocked by Pope Pius XI
In 1917 in Fatima, Portugal, Mary, the Mother of God, appeared to three shepherd children named Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco. One of the things they saw in this apparition was demons and humans in hell. At an apparition later that year, 70,000 people (including atheists and communists) saw the miracle of the sun. A few years later, on the topic of modesty, Our Lady of Fatima said to the young visionary Jacinta Marto before her death in 1920: “Certain fashions will be introduced that will offend Our Lord very much,” and “Woe to women lacking in modesty,” and “More souls go to Hell because of sins of the flesh than for [...]