Apologetics

Defending the Papacy In the Age of Francis

Perhaps the greatest apologetical challenge for Catholics today is defending the papacy when its occupant is doing such a poor job. How can Catholics still support the papacy from the attacks of Protestants, Orthodox, and others?

The Last Temptation of the Lay Apologist

Lay apologists today, because of the media environment and other circumstances in society, face temptations that their predecessors did not; primary among them is the clickbait temptation.

Overcoming Today’s Woke Moralists (Guest: Karlo Broussard)

Years ago Pope Benedict warned against the “Dictatorship of Relativism,” but it seems today the problem is with woke moralists who appear to be absolutists in their wokeism. But when we look deeper we’ll see they are actually the dictatorial relativists Benedict warned us about.

The Death of Catholic Apologetics?

The art of apologetics—giving a reasoned defense of the faith—has always been part of Catholic evangelization. After hitting a lull in the 1970’s and 1980’s it revived in the 1990’s and beyond. But it seems that today Catholic apologetics is becoming less effective. Why is that?

The Jesus Movement: From Bust to Boom

By all immediate measures, Jesus’s ministry was a total failure. But it wasn’t for lack of effort or commitment. At the prime of life, Jesus left his carpentry bench in Nazareth for the dusty roads of Palestine. For three years he promoted his brand, wowing crowds with miracles and captivating them with his teaching. On … Read more

He Is Risen! Evidence Beyond Reasonable Doubt

Some time ago, literary critic Stanley Fish observed that religion was “transgressing the boundary between private and public and demanding to be heard.” And that’s a dangerous thing because, as Mr. Fish sees it, religion is based on claims that are excluded from tests of “deliberative reason.” Take the resurrection of Jesus Christ. “The assertion … Read more

A Remedy for the Catechetical Poverty of Our Time

Amidst the divisions and frustrations that mark the Church of our time, there are, quietly dispersed throughout the Mystical Body, clergy and laymen striving for the recovery and promotion of the Apostolic Faith. Their good work—and the renaissance it will bring about—is easily obscured, as it is rarely offered a proper place in the tired … Read more

We Have a Better Story

There was a time when it was nigh impossible not to believe in God—not because of man’s irrational superstitions, as atheist popularizers tell it, but because of nature’s rational design. To early thinkers, the intelligibility of nature pointed to an ineluctable fact: a prime, non-contingent source of reality (i.e., the uncaused Cause, the One, Apeiron, … Read more

Ground Rules When Dialoguing with Mormons

I recently wrote an article offering a different approach to communicating with Mormons. Instead of the often confrontational stance of trying to prove their theology wrong on biblical grounds, or, even less effective, mocking their unusual beliefs, I suggested Catholics work within a paradigm of hospitality and empathy, inviting LDS members into their home, feeding … Read more

Why Clerical Corruption Does Not Justify Apostasy

In a recent article in The Federalist regarding the current sex abuse scandal rocking the Catholic Church, Dr. Korey Maas, a Lutheran and professor of history at Hillsdale College, asks, “Is there any church abuse too far for the Catholic faithful?” The answer, quite simply, is no. Elsewhere, Maas presses, “What abuses, both physical and spiritual, might the [Catholic] hierarchy not … Read more

Critics of Christianity Aren’t So Clever

On cue, my recent article, “The Mercy of Intolerance,” prompted some, um, spirited responses outside the general Crisis readership. One gentleman, “Paul,” who was particularly exercised by the piece shot me an email (excerpt below) in hopes of educating me. My response follows. Regis, you and I live in two different worlds. In my world tolerance … Read more

A Catholic Convert’s Case for Religion Over Mere Spirituality

The spiritual-but-not-religious phenomenon has its roots in the Reformation, but it has taken flight in the United States, fanned by the ego-affirming consumerism, democratic individualism, and the atomizing effects of mass media and modern technology. Now, more than a quarter of Americans identify as “spiritual but not religious,” according to the latest survey from the … Read more

Why Are You Catholic? 

Some people call me a street preacher. I’m not a street preacher. The label does roll off the tongue, but it also carries a fairly negative connotation. I could be more accurately described as a street questioner. I spend about a dozen Saturday mornings each year, standing on a street corner adjacent to the Farmer’s … Read more

How Monasticism Testifies to God’s Reality

Over the years, I have become acquainted with various logical arguments for the existence of God—some I find more convincing than others. Of course, the strongest evidence comes from direct experience, for God is a person to be mystically encountered, not an abstraction to be logically deduced. This should not be taken to imply that … Read more

Mona Lisa’s Mustache

The other day on an obscure channel on TV I saw a fundamentalist preacher interviewing two young Catholics at the Minnesota State Fair. The two Catholics were utterly unable to match wits with the Protestant old-time-religion preacher. It was painful to watch, almost as painful as reading Vatican press releases over the last several years … Read more

Why I Remain a Catholic

“Something had given him leave to live in the present.”  ~ Walker Percy A friend of mine sent me an email with this subject line: “A challenge for your blogging….” She included Elizabeth Scalia’s invitation to Catholics everywhere in the internet cosmos to write about “Why Do YOU Remain a Catholic”—an invitation itself prompted by … Read more

Retrieving Apologetics

A number of Catholics, including theologians, think that the Church should not engage in apologetics. These critics claim that Vatican II made apologetics obsolete by calling for the Church to embrace, and no longer turn its back on, the modern world. They say theology is supposed to engage pressing contemporary issues that affect everyone, but … Read more

How to Accentuate the Positive

In recent decades the Church has tried more than ever to accentuate the positive. As a result, she talks less about rules and prohibitions than in the past. Those things are important, the thought seems to be, but they exist for a purpose, and the positive teachings tell us what the purpose is. After all, … Read more

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