Check with the cardinal newman society or you will regret it.
Informational ping only.
Villanova University was full to the brim with Marxists when I attend in the early seventies. It must be worse now.
I grieve for this young man and, his parents. I’m sure they are baffled and heart-sick over what this young man has done.
But, there is always hope for him. If he ever really DID have a relationship with God, God the Holy Spirit will keep after him. Needling him in his spirit. C.S. Lewis speaks of the “Hound of Heaven” who never gives us up.
I have no idea what this young man’s background is, but since he is attending BC, I’m assuming his parents raised him in a Christian home, with a Christian upbringing, and regularly attended church.
My wife and I raised our children in the church, read the Bible with them, prayed with them, explained as best we could the Gospel to them, and, as they grew older, began to train them in preparation for the opposing non-Christian worldviews they were going to be facing in the secular world.
We did the best we could to live out our Christian faith at home and in our dealings with them. However, I would be a liar if I said we didn’t fail in that from time to time, but, I think that is probably true of most Christian parents.
Our kids have turned out well in that they do think for themselves, they have strong work ethics, and they are loving, caring, and generous people.
However, only our oldest stayed committed to his Christian faith. He is now married with two beautiful boys (don’t get me going on grandkids) and he and his Christian wife regularly attend worship at a strong conservative Christian church.
Our daughter and youngest son have both strayed from their once professed beliefs and faith. They are not hostile to God, but, like many young people I’ve worked with who were raised in the church, are quite “indifferent” to God and His kingdom. They seem to be of the mindset that God may exist, probably does exist, but He’s way, way, down on their priority list.
We are heartsick over this and pray continually that they will come back to Christ - that they will see their sin, their need for forgiveness, and His love for them. We thought they understood that, because we did teach them all those things.
But, at some point, your kids will start making decisions about what they believe FOR THEMSELVES. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always come out matching our Christian faith. I wish I could make my faith theirs, but I can’t. My wife and I gave them the truths of the Gospel, we tried to live that Gospel out in our own lives as best we could, but THEY have to receive it on their own. We pray that they will.
I pray that this young man will do the same.
I think ministers (pastors and priests) must include in their preaching and teaching, solid Christian apologetics to address some of the issues this young man brought up.
I was raised in a time when the Bible was generally respected and believed to be God’s Word. That is was trustworthy in spiritual matters as well as in historical matters.
We all know that has not been the case in our nation for several decades. Many people sitting in church may never vocalize some of their questions or doubts because they don’t want to be thought of as being ignorant, or a “problem”, or disrespectful, or whatever.
The point is, many Christians do not know how to gracefully, accurately, and boldly stand for their faith. Many Christians probably harbor “doubts” or questions about God that need answering in their own hearts. Once these things are addressed in their own lives, then I think they will be able to follow Peter’s command for “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15).
Highly educated into stupidity.
I am not Catholic, far from it - a Southern Baptist, but I would be hesitant to blame all this on Boston College.
We all know this world, our nation itself, no longer tolerates the Bible or a Christian worldview. Institutions of higher learning have been that way much earlier than the general population. Granted, BC is supposed to be a “Christian” college. But, unfortunately, many supposedly “Christian” colleges teach the same falsehoods as the secular institutions.
Now, hear me out. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing - IF THEY GIVE THEIR STUDENTS SUFFICIENT TOOLS TO OPPOSE THOSE FALSEHOODS!! But, they don’t!
When I attended seminary, I assumed I would be taught how to answer the world’s false claims regarding God, the Bible, and the Gospel. That was a very naive assumption for I got none of those things at seminary.
Fortunately, I was strong enough in my own faith, and knew of Christian authors and scholars who could counter the heresy I was exposed to. Seminary students would sometimes ask their professors why were they teaching us this stuff - they told us that they wanted us to be prepared for the falsehoods we would face in the real world.
Again, all of that is fine and good, if they then help you find how to counter these falsehoods. But, they really didn’t. They told us they expected us to do that on our own.
I can appreciate working and digging out information on my own, but without guidance and ignorance of resources, just sink or swim - well, the result was that some students sank. On top of that, the faculty didn’t seem to care.
That seminary, and several others, were finally revamped (during the 1980’s) and solid Christian scholars were placed in charge of those institutions (or, at least they were - I don’t know what they are like now).
My point is that many Christian colleges and seminaries do well at teaching their subjects - but, they don’t, for the most part, teach Christian apologetics. Either the faculty are unaware of those resources, or, they really believe the anti-Christian, ungodly stuff that’s being taught as “scholarship” regarding Biblical inerrancy, the integrity of Biblical manuscripts and scholarship, and orthodox Christian doctrine.
You must train students in solid Christian doctrine (what we believe and why we believe it), the absolute integrity of the Biblical manuscripts that we have today and the strong foundation for the inerrancy of Scripture - and, how to counter, be aware of, and how to answer the world’s falsehoods regarding these issues.
I thought that what Nietsche was saying in his writings is that if there were no God as a higher being whose rules we respected, what rose from mankind to take that place was evil. I thought Nietsche was saying "God is dead" because man killed any positive belief in a greater being by worshiping very ungodlike things. Man can either believe or not believe in a God that inspires good lives. That belief is not dependent on whether or not God exists.
Pascal, an agnostic, turned to God. With his logical mind, he realized that even though he thought the chance of there being a God is slight, even with long odds he didn't want to risk being judged by one whose existence he denied. (paraphrasing)
To this author I would say that there's something out there that's more than us, and that being leaves footprints and whispers, affirmation of its existence. When mankind is too busy banging the war drums and worshipping everything that drowns it out, we miss God's subtle approaches.
That was weird....I just channeled my paper from Philosophy of Religion class in the 1960s.
Way to go, Stephen. It took you less than a semester to be able to see right through the shallow scholarship of Thomas Aquinas. You can now assume the place as one of the great minds of the 3rd Millenium A.D., er, C.E.
Comparative Religion 101 does tend to have this effect.
I wonder if it’s intentional?
Not having a personal relationship with the Loding one's religion is not such a terrible thing.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
creator of the universe, YHvH, is however.
The ironclad reasoning of this seasoned philosopher and theologian is sure to change the beliefs of millions of believers in a Supreme Being.. In fact his arguments are so powerful that God himself now has doubts about his own existence.