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The nineteenth century witnessed the conversions of two prominent Anglican clergymen to Roman Catholicism. Both men would ultimately become cardinals in the Roman Church, and both men would profoundly influence Roman Catholic theology. The first was John Henry Newman (1801–1890). The second was Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892). Newman is probably most well known for his involvement in the high church Oxford Movement and for his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845). Manning is best known for his advocacy of social justice and for his strong support of the doctrine of papal infallibility following his conversion to Rome. He...

Okay, so it isn't really Catholic thing per se, but the origin of April Fool's Day is actually found in the Church. A lot of people don't know this, so here's how the story goes. On February 24, 1582, Pope Gregory XIII issued the papal bull Inter Gravissimas which established the Gregorian calendar (which gets it's name from this pope) as the official calendar for the Christian world. With this pronouncement, the Julian calendar was replaced and the first day of the new year was moved to January 1. Those who continued to observe it on April 1, whether out...

“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”  But how does one know such a danger exists unless one already possesses an interest in, and respect for, people who lived and thought and wrote in the past?  And in order to avoid this historical pitfall, the assumption must exist that people in the past actually have things to say to us that we need to know, an assumption that may not be as accepted as it once was.  C.S. Lewis talked about the threat of “presentism,” the idea that our current time is the most developed and that...

FacebookTwitterEmailMore Obama, like many before him, excuses Islamic State because the Christians did it first President Obama took to the floor during Thursday morning’s National Prayer Breakfast. He defended IS by saying the Christians did it first with the Crusades. So let’s actually look at how Islamic Jihad has spread across North Africa and Europe.  The image above shows the Muslim conquest battles and by comparison, the image below shows the areas where the Crusades took place.That seems a lot less than President Obama would have you believeNow what the short video that explains the difference between an aggressive Muslim expansion...

"And so we encounter another oddity of Hanukkah: Jews know the fuller history of the holiday because Christians preserved the books that the Jews themselves lost. In a further twist, Jews in the Middle Ages encountered the story of the martyred mother and her seven sons anew in Christian literature and once again placed it in the time of the Maccabees."

It has laid largely unstudied in a university library for more than 100 years. But now a 1,500-year-old papyrus has been identified as one of the world’s earliest surviving Christian charms. The ‘remarkable’ document contains some of the earliest documented references to The Last Supper and sheds new light on early Christian practices, experts say.

As a Crusade historian, I found the tranquil solitude of the ivory tower shattered by journalists, editors, and talk-show hosts on tight deadlines eager to get the real scoop. What were the Crusades?, they asked. When were they? Just how insensitive was President George W. Bush for using the word "crusade" in his remarks? With a few of my callers I had the distinct impression that they already knew the answers to their questions, or at least thought they did. What they really wanted was an expert to say it all back to them. For example, I was frequently asked...

Pope Francis incenses the altar during Mass in the Upper Room on May 26, 2014. Credit: EWTN. Jerusalem, Israel, May 26, 2014 / 09:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At the conclusion of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Pope Francis focused his homily at Mass on the significance of the Upper Room, held to be the site of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus' apostles. “It is a great gift that the Lord has given us by bringing us together here in the Upper Room for the celebration of the Eucharist,” said Pope Francis on May 26 in Jerusalem....

. . . . For centuries, the English have been taught that the late medieval Church was superstitious, corrupt, exploitative, and alien. Above all, we were told that King Henry VIII and the people of England despised its popish flummery and primitive rites. England was fed up to the back teeth with the ignorant mumbo-jumbo magicians of the foreign Church, and up and down the country Tudor people preferred plain-speaking, rational men like Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin. Henry VIII achieved what all sane English and Welsh people had long desired ­– an excuse to break away from an anachronistic subjugation...

Pope Francis and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded words on Monday over the language spoken by Jesus two millennia ago. "Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew," Netanyahu told Francis, at a public meeting in Jerusalem in which the Israeli leader cited a strong connection between Judaism and Christianity. "Aramaic," the pope interjected. "He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," Netanyahu shot back. Like many things in the Middle East, where the pope is on the last leg of a three-day visit, modern-day discourse about Jesus is complicated and often political. A Jew, Jesus was born in...

Many skeptics assert that Paul of Tarsus (the apostle Paul) hijacked the early Christian religion, changing the theology from what Jesus originally taught. Usually offered as proof for this claim are the doctrines found in Paul's great theological work, his letter to the Romans. Without a doubt, the book of Romans contains the most complete exposition of orthodox Christian doctrines. Are these doctrines contrary to what Jesus taught? Do they conflict with the teachings of the Old Testament from which they were purportedly derived? If Paul really "invented" Christianity, then one would expect that his teachings would be different from...

In my college years I worked with a company that built and serviced pipe organs around the Washington DC area. During those years I probably entered some 300 different churches both Catholic and Protestant.Of course, as a Catholic, I particularly loved going to the Catholic churches. I especially loved visiting the older city parishes that were built back before the revolution. I had grown up in the suburbs where almost every church was built after 1955, when church building took a decided turn for the worse: Ugly bland, beige buildings with carpeted floors and potted plants. A plain wooden table...

Observers say that by granting citizenship to all descendants of expelled Muslims, Spain, virtually overnight, would end up with the largest Muslim population in the European Union."Is Spain aware of what might be assumed when it makes peace with some but not with others? Is Spain aware of what this decision [not to include Muslims in the return] could cost?... Does Spain have alternatives to the foreign investment from Muslims? — Ahmed Bensalh, Morisco-Moroccan journalist. "Persecution of Jews was just that, while what happened with the Arabs was part of a conflict. There is no basis for comparison." — Jose...

Dr. David Jeremiah, senior pastor of Shadow Mountain Community Church in El Cajon, California, in his book entitled "I Never Thought I'd See The Day," which is listed as a "# 1 New York Times Bestseller," engages in historical revisionism as he attempts to portray William Tyndale as a "martyr" for the Bible. On page 161 of his book, Dr. Jeremiah asserts that, "..because TYndale believed that every English-speaking person deserved to have access to the Bible in English, he labored to produce the first complete New Testament (and part of the Old Testament) in English translated directly from the...

More than 500 years after the Spanish Inquisition, the Spanish government has voted to facilitate the naturalization of Jewish families of Spanish descent, without demanding they give up their other citizenship. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain must be rolling in their graves: The government in Madrid on Friday approved legislation that would allow descendents of Jews who were exiled from Spain to be naturalized in the country without having to give up their former citizenship, which had been the law until now. Spanish Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon said that Spain "is indebted to Spanish Jews for spreading the...

Remembering the Early ChurchGEORGE SIM JOHNSTONLately, I have been hearing a lot about how the primitive Church was not Roman Catholic. Virgin and Child from the catacombs Rome, 4th century I don't know why it is, but this information keeps bursting upon me in the most unlikely settings — a lunch party near the sand dunes, cocktails on the upper east side — where a kindly soul informs me between sips of Dubonnet that the Catholic Church really began as an episcopal conspiracy centuries after Christ. My interlocutor has usually been reading a book by Garry Wills or Elaine Pagels,...

Not so long ago, casually throwing the Knights Templar into polite conversation was a litmus test of mental health. One of Umberto Eco’s characters in Foucault’s Pendulum summed it up perfectly. He declared that you could recognise a lunatic "by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars". But all good things come to an end. The enigmatic medieval monk-knights are no longer a fringe interest for obsessives. They are now squarely mainstream. And as 18 March 2014 draws closer, Templarmania is going...

For millennia the Catholic Church has consistently opposed unnatural vice. Here is a brief sampling of useful quotes from Saints, Doctors of the Church, Church Fathers and Ecclesiastical Writers who condemn homosexual vice in their writings. 1. Athenagoras of Athens (2nd Century) Athenagoras of Athens was a philosopher who converted to Christianity in the second century. He shows that the pagans, who were totally immoral, did not even refrain from sins against nature: "But though such is our character (Oh. why should I speak of things unfit to be uttered?), the things said of us are an example of the...

The Christians of the first century were rebels with a cause. They weren’t the hair-spray-addicted, religious sponges of pop culture and oppressive governments looking to be ogled by an Oprah-addled crowd or breastfed by some big government tit . Oh, no, senorita. The primitive church was out to change the world. After Jerusalem fell in AD 70, the church, birthed by the Holy Spirit during Rome’s heyday, exploded with growth in Asia Minor — which happened to be Ground Zero for Caesar worship. The punch-drunk citizens of Roman rule thought the various Caesars, their laws, and their government were...

Archaelogists excavating a medieval church in a dales village have found further evidence that the site was an Anglo Saxon settlement. A carved section from an eighth century stone cross was unearthed during a dig at St Botolph"s field in Frosterley in Weardale this week. The discovery was met with great excitement from the archaeologists and volunteers who were digging on the site as part of the Altogether Archaeology project... Mr Frodsham said Frosterley was largely a post-medieval village but recent finds have suggested people lived in the area much earlier... It has already attracted more than 500 volunteers who...