1: Introduction- My Task

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted anything, I’m sorry about the gap. But I’m back. And this time, I have a mission. Last week, I saw the results of a Pew Research Poll that saw an 8% drop in faith among Americans. As I wondered why that was, I also began to look at some of the reasons people consistently cite for leaving the faith they grew up in. For many of them, the faith didn’t hold water to the modern scientific theories, thinking that science had disproven their faith somehow or that it was a mark of intelligence to leave that faith.

Meanwhile, in much of today’s culture, the world is becoming more and more hostile to any sort of faith, with anti-theists replacing atheists by and large. Instead of simply not believing in any sort of God, the line has been crossed to ridicule and deride those that do until they abandon that same faith. It’s a cycle of virulent anger that does little except tear down what already exists.

I’ve decided to undertake this journey to try to restore what is being destroyed. For well over a thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire (410 AD, Visigoths sack Rome), the Catholic Church held on to the intellectual traditions of the ancient Romans. The Byzantine Empire, which survived Rome, was explicitly linked to its Catholic heritage for the next six hundred years, by which time those Greek and Roman writings had made their way back to Europe. Since that time, the Catholic Church had formed the underpinnings of Western Civilization, until a fateful Halloween night in 1517 led to the creation of the first major Protestant denomination.

In the five hundred years since then, the West has completely forgotten her background. It’s time to bring that back. From the Reformation, removing authority, the Enlightenment came and threw man off the precipice of certainty into a world of skepticism, confusion, and chaos. Since then, humanity has been floundering to try to find that stability that was lost, but in his arrogance, refuses to consider the possibility that he left his Mother wrongly.

So here begins my project. I endeavor to show how it is that the Church has been teaching truth for the last two thousand years, despite objections, that the Church has kept those foundations of civilization, despite the attempts to flee those very foundations. And I’ll do it by restoring the philosophical basis to what it was before all the straw men appeared, through attacks from both atheism and Protestantism.

The first topic I’ll be covering is the existence of God, as well as trying to remove any misconceptions or confusions about who God is. I’ll lightly tap the surface of the Trinity, then from there, move on to the conception of the human person. After that, there are a number of different roads to go down, so we’ll see where this series takes us. I hope you’ll join me.

Rejoice, Let Them Rejoice

“What makes this night different from all other nights? Because once we were slaves and we are slaves no longer.” This line from the movie, The Passion of the Christ, taken from the Jewish Passover commemoration, is an excellent question to begin the night of Holy Saturday with. Tonight marks the celebration of the Easter Vigil around the world, the greatest Mass of the year, the great celebration of the Resurrection of Christ and our deliverance from the slavery of sin. The first thing said at the ambo tonight is a great reflection of this idea.

Three Holy Days

Today is Holy Thursday. It is officially the last day of Lent and the beginning of a new season, the Triduum. However, just because Lent is over doesn’t mean that Lenten penances are over. No, the next few days mark the holiest days of the year. Good Friday marks the day of the Crucifixion of Christ. Holy Saturday holds the Easter Vigil, the greatest Mass of the year. Easter Sunday is the highest holy day of the Church calendar, marking the Resurrection of Christ, without which, Paul says, our faith is in vain.

Happy Sunday

Last time, we talked about a few of the reasons behind the idea of a Sabbath in general, and more specifically, what it was meant to be as a celebration of God. Today, we’re going to see how we went from celebrating the Sabbath to Sunday.

Keeping the Sabbath

It’s time to take a little break from history and go in a different direction. So today, we’ll begin to discuss a certain trend in the history of the Church that we in modern times, and especially in America, have forgotten: Sunday.

Macedonianism

After the Council of Nicaea in 325, during the reign of Emperor Constantius, a man named Macedonius came to power as the Bishop of Constantinople (unlawfully). Macedonius was a Semi-Arian, but a very specific type of Semi-Arian. He took the ideas of Arius to their fullest logical extent. These new ideas became known by the name of their founder, the followers called “Macedonians.” And no, we are not talking about people from that country here.

The Beginning of the End

It’s time to pick up the series. Sorry about the gap, there’s a little project I’m working on that you all will get to see hopefully around May. Anyways, back to history.

So when we left, Athanasius was in exile, two bishops claimed authority in Constantinople, and the Emperor was against Orthodoxy, which had already ben formally established.