De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

I enjoy reading Dr Ian Paul's blog , and this one caught my eye. It is a review of a book by Savvas Costi, a graduate from the London School of Theology who currently leads the Religion and Philosophy department at a secondary school in East Sussex. It caught my eye because it pertains to one of the key issues for me growing up and thinking about faith: what's the point of following Jesus? Born in 1971, and raised as a Catholic by my Irish mother, I accepted the practices of the faith and found prayer a natural and easy thing. I formed a real relationship with Jesus and this has always been part of my life. I always really enjoyed thinking and talking about religion and faith. In youth discussion groups, with priests and even with Jehovah's Witnesses or Latter Day Saints who knocked on the door of my family home. Despite this, I found it difficult to connect the friend I had made in my prayer life with Mass and what we did "in" the Church. I don't really mea...

Over the weekend I read this article on the rise of secularism. It looks at the way that society in Britain is developing towards a secular majority which promotes a kind of equality & tolerance which accepts no dissenters -- I have to say that fear of this continues to grip my heart in a growing way. I find daily that even switching on breakfast TV or listening to Radio 4 projects a diet of pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-transgender ideology directly into my home in a way that really is most disturbing. It is disturbing because it is radical, becoming normalised and is constantly promoted despite the fact that no one understands what potential consequence such radical changes in family norms will have on society. This new "tolerance" comes with a disturbing sub-text. Dr Sharon James, a social policy analyst at the Christian Institute (CI) says that “intolerant secularism” among a small but “hard core” group is gaining traction in the UK, with one of the main batt...

This post was inspired by a discussion between two of my Catenian brothers at a meeting on Monday about the literal truth of the Genesis narrative, I know my brother John sometimes reads my blog, so John if you're reading this--it's inspired by you! Also the first reading at Mass this morning made this doubly pertinent. So the basis of this post is the teaching that the only way that the earth could have been populated was for the children of Adam and Eve to marry each other. God would have protected them from the consequences of this intermarriage so that the human race could be propagated. It is defined Church teaching that all humans are descended from the single pair, Adam and Eve. The Papal Encyclical of Pope Pius XII  Humani Generis , promulgated in 1950 teaches that the question of the origin of the human body is open to research by natural scientists and theologians. The pope insists on the careful weighing of the pros and cons of the grounds for its orig...