Think

A little something to ponder

• Beam me up Scotty – There is a sense of desperation that has become obvious amongst some of the Reformed camp, as evidenced by their regular and ridiculous attacks on the Catholic Church. The irony of the phenomenon is that those men flailing their arms and making the most noise are the very ones who, having dared to somewhat loosen their ties to the Westminster Divines, appear horrified to realize that they are in a much closer theological orbit with the “Death Star” known as Rome than they ever dreamed they would be. Good news boys: The tractor beam has been engaged, resistance is futile, prepare to be beamed aboard the “Mother”ship. Yeah, I know I mixed Star Wars & Star Trek lingo.  Sorry about that. – Kevin Branson

• We’ve got friends in high places - I consider it impossible then, for those who believe the Church to be one vast body in heaven and on earth, in which every holy creature of God has his place, and of which prayer is the life, when once they recognize the sanctity and greatness of the… Blessed Virgin, not to perceive immediately, that her office above is one of perpetual intercession for the faithful militant… - John Henry Newman

• Ecumenical wheel spinning – The starting point is to read and understand Catholic theology from Catholics not Protestants because they almost all of the time get it wrong. When one is willing to engage in this process of understanding and openness, I believe we get somewhere down the road. If not, then it is simply always best to agree to disagree and not waste one another’s time and agree to love one another in Christ Jesus while seeking the Truth in love. My prayer is for all of us to be able to do that with integrity. – Fr. Jeff Steel

• Shake and bake! – When men of the sort that were in my classes at Covenant Theological Seminary are reconciled to the (Catholic) Church, the results are going to surprise a lot of Catholics, because it is going to revitalize the Church. These men are like the ecclesial version of the Marines. When they’re grafted back in, after 500 years of separation, fasten your seatbelt. – Bryan Cross

• Who do you think you are, old dead guy? – Saint Augustine, whose genius helped rid the Church of the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian heresies, would not be welcomed …as a faculty member at virtually any evangelical seminary, because the Bishop of Hippo accepted the deuterocanonical books as part of the Old Testament canon, the deposit of Sacred Tradition, apostolic succession, the gracious efficacy of the Sacraments, the Real Presence of the Eucharist, baptismal regeneration, and the infusion of God’s grace for justification. – Dr. Francis Beckwith

• High five! - I stinkin’ love being Catholic. It’s the best way to be a Christian, hands down. – Neal Judisch

• I couldn’t have said it better myself – Sects then owe it to themselves, as soon as they have fulfilled their historical vocation, to fall back again to the general Church communion from which they have seceded, as in no other way can their spiritual acquisitions be either completed or secured, and they must themselves otherwise stiffen into monumental petrifacations, never to be revisited with the warm life pulse of the one universal Church. -  Principle of Protestantism by Philip Schaff

• It’s a love/hate relationship - It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair. – G.K. Chesterton

• Honor your father, until you decide he is old and busted – As a Fundamentalist I had discovered while I was in college that it is possible to dismiss the entire Church as having gone off the rails by about A.D. 95. That is, we, with our open Bibles, knew better than did old Ignatius of Antioch or Clement of Rome, who had been taught by the very apostles themselves, just what the Church is and what it should look like. Never mind that our worship services would have been unrecognizable to them, or that our govenance would have been equally unrecognizable; we were right, and the Fathers were wrong (about bishops, and about the Eucharist). That settled the matter. - Lead, Kindly Light by Thomas Howard

• So the Church was a total wreck from day one? – It might well be asked, indeed, why any one accepting the Bethlehem tradition should object to golden or gilded ornament since the Magi themselves brought gold, why he should dislike incense in the church since incense was brought even to the stable. But these are controversies that do not concern me here. I am concerned only with the historical fact, more and more admitted by historians, that very early in its history this thing became visible to the civilization of antiquity; and that already the Church appeared as a Church; with everything that is implied in a Church and much that is disliked in a Church … It was certainly not in the least like merely ethical and idealistic movements in our time. It had a doctrine; it had a discipline; it had sacraments; it had degrees of initiation; it admitted people and expelled people; it affirmed one dogma with authority and repudiated another with anathemas. If all these things be the marks of Antichrist, the reign of Antichrist followed very rapidly upon Christ. - The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton
  

• Now you see it, now you don’t? – Further, the idea of a dead past in which the Church was united, and a present in which it is not, means really that the original Church, founded by Christ, has ceased to exist. A society that has become three or more separate societies no longer exists. This is so obvious that no one would think of disputing it, unless he had some controversial axe to grind. Consider the case of any other society, where no one has anything at stake in his view of what happened. In 1914 there was an Austro-Hungarian State. Now, that state broke up into a German-Austrian Republic, a separated Hungary, a Czecho-Slovak Republic, part of Poland, a kingdom of Southern Slavs. What was the result? Where is the original Austro-Hungarian State? It no longer exists. – Adrian Fortescue

• Are you sure about that? – We do not really want a religion that is right where we are right. What we want is a religion that is right where we are wrong. – G.K. Chesterton

• I have an important job for you – Peter will live in his successors and will speak, when need arises, through them, till at the end the last Pope hands back to his Master the heavy burden of those keys that the first Pope received on the shore of the Lake of Galilee. - Adrian Fortescue

• Oh ye of little faith – It is perfectly true that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross still at the top. This is the amazing thing the religion did: it turned a sunken ship into a submarine. The ark lived under the load of waters; after being buried under the debris of dynasties and clans, we arose and remembered Rome. – Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton

• I know where you’re coming from – Since there is but one Christian truth, Catholic truth in the real sense of the word, that is, a truth complete and whole, it is by making this effort of total fidelity to our own patrimony, and making it fully, that we shall be best prepared to make the required effort of opening our minds to the truths rightly cherished by our separated brethren. – Louis Bouyer

• Going once, going twice, sold to the only bidder – There are plenty of reasons to be a Catholic, and the mix of motivations can have as many variations as there are people. For me, however, the very first reason that comes to mind is that Catholicism is the only religion in the entire world that has a logical and consistent approach to the problem of Revelation….Even the Protestant reliance on the Book provides no guide to the Book’s interpretation, as the incessant splintering of Protestantism itself attests. Because a principle of authority is essential to Revelation, and because only the Catholic Church makes a clear and consistent claim to such authority, something very important follows. What follows is not that the Catholic Church must be right, but that the Catholic Church is the only religion which advances a credible claim. – Dr. Jeff Mirius

• He talks real good, don’t he! - The difficulty of explaining “why I am a Catholic” is that there are ten thousand reasons all amounting to one reason: that Catholicism is true. -  G.K. Chesterton

• I don’t get it – Sin makes you stupid. – Mark Shea

• Catholics Don’t Believe That, Do They! – By grace alone, in faith in Christ’s saving work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts while equipping us and calling us to good works. – Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification

• The Whore of Babylon – There are not over a  hundred people in the United States who hate the Roman Catholic Church; there are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church. – Archbishop Fulton Sheen

• Is Your Mother Home? – The breakaway Christian churches that diminish Mary’s role inevitably end up feeling like a bachelor’s apartment: masculine to a fault; orderly but not homey; functional and productive – but with little sense of beauty and poetry. – Hail, Holy Queen by Scott Hahn

• The Catholic Imagination - Why are the Reformed so unimaginative? Artists tend to arise from traditions that allow mystery, not from traditions that see mystery as a threat to the “system” and therefore always seek to explain (or define) it away. – The Avenue