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A Season of Hope December 7th, 2009 by Marcellino D'Ambrosio, Ph.D. Faith, hope, and love. St. Paul, in I Corinthians 13:13, says these three are the bottom line. They are called the theological virtues, the qualities that make us most like God.We hear plenty about faith and love. But when is the last time you heard a rousing homily on hope? Why is hope important? And what is it precisely?To accomplish great things in life, you need a future goal that is big enough to keep you motivated. The promise of a diploma makes college students stay up late writing...

Please do not attempt to wake me up from what seemed like a dream from the very first day. Do not try and wrestle away my simplistic and unsophisticated faith which suggests that Jesus is the way to a place called heaven. I have heard all the new voices and all the new and fresh theologies that call us like sirens to rise above the ancient ideas, and I am a spectator to the ever changing and ever increasing nebulous and intangible faith that is being taught in today’s newer spiritual classroom. When I became a Christian I experienced one...

How many of us --- indeed, all of us --- have at one time or another said, "Ah ... would that I had never done that! Could I only go back in time!Confucius, in one of his well known Analects, summarized it best: "What is said cannot be unsaid." How true. What is more, in so many, many ways, what is done cannot be undone ...We are prisoners of our past --- and Time, the stern warden, it appears, has thrown away the key. We are prisoners to what we have said and to what we have done. In...

Editor's Note: Originally written in 1927, Ronald Knox's The Belief of Catholics remains a fresh, engaging, and timely work of apologetics. Part of the reason is that Knox was a brilliant stylist. Another is that he had a gift for going to the heart of a matter. In this excerpt he considers the growing skepticism and faddish denial of dogma of his time, and in so doing sheds light on problems that continue to perplex Christians today. It appears, then, that the two processes are going on side by side, the decline of Church membership and the decline of dogma;...