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Question: "Catholic vs. Protestant - why is there so much animosity?" Answer: This is a simple question with a complicated answer, because there are varying degrees of, and reasons for, animosity between any two religious groups. This particular battle is rooted in history. Degrees of reaction have ranged from friendly disagreement (as reflected in the numerous ecumenical dialogues produced between the two groups), to outright persecution and murder of Protestants at the hands of Rome. Reformation teachings that identify the Pope as the Beast of Revelation and / or Roman Catholicism as Mystery Babylon are still common among Protestants. Clearly,...

PROBLEMS WITH THE DOCTRINE OF SOLA SCRIPTURA A. IT IS A DOCTRINE BASED UPON A NUMBER OF FAULTY ASSUMPTIONS An assumption is something that we take for granted from the outset, usually quite unconsciously. As long as an assumption is a valid one, all is fine and well; but a false assumption inevitably leads to false conclusions. One would hope that even when one has made an unconscious assumption that when his conclusions are proven faulty he would then ask himself where his underlying error lay. Protestants who are willing to honestly assess the current state of the Protestant world,...

Question: How can all these denominations claim to follow the bible yet all come to different conclusions? How can I possibly know which one of those above teach the truth when they can't even agree on what the Bible says? Protestants believe a variety of doctrines and all claim to take their doctrines from the Bible. That doesn't really sound like perspicuity to me. 'Bible alone' has created so much havoc in this world. Answer: You rashly attribute the differences of opinions among Christians to 'Sola Sciptura' - namely, the Protestant belief that the Holy Scripture is the only infallible...

THE LADY OF FATIMA- Introduction Some Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the mother of Christ, has actually appeared to people in places like Fatima and Medjugorje. Well, did she? THE LADY OF FATIMA- Biblical? In evaluating the alleged appearances of Mary, our primary concern would be to determine whether these apparitions are indeed biblical. Interestingly enough, these “Marian apparitions” (as they are commonly referred to) are inextricably woven together with the official Catholic teachings about Mary which, by the way, is known as Mariology. In fact, it would be fair to say that Catholic Mariology is the very foundation of...

The 2009 CINO (Catholic In Name Only) Award Nominations are now open.  Due to the sheer volume of possibilities, the 2009 CINO awards will be limited to elected officials in the United States, given their unique ability to affect and influence our lives.  (I certainly encourage folks in others countries to start their own CINO awards.) The purpose of this exercise is NOT to place ourselves in judgment of others, but rather as observers of behavior within the context of Catholic teaching as set forth in the Catechism.  There is only one ultimate Judge and we are not Him.  Please...

The argument is often made that the Catholic Church gave us the Bible, but this could not be further from the truth. Only God could give us the Bible. It was originally authored by Him (II Tim. 3:16) and then preserved by Him (Psalm 12:6-7). The confusion, however, comes from the two streams of Scripture that came out of the Middle East after the time of Christ. The Christians were first called Christians at Antioch, where they diligently copied the Scriptures, and spread them throughout the world. However, Alexandria was the home of “scholars” who gloried in their knowledge (Jer....

You can tell a lot about a man’s moral or spiritual compass by what offends him. For example, many Catholics are oddly thin-skinned when it comes to criticism of their own denomination. At say that’s odd for a couple of reasons. For one thing, their hypersensitivity is strikingly lopsided. After all, a number of Catholic epologists are hardly paragons of decorum in their characterization of the Protestant faith. And, of course, it’s not as if their denomination was conspicuous for its tender treatment of theological opponents in the past. I suppose we could chalk this up to standard issue hypocrisy....

Born Irish, in a family of eight, my early childhood was fulfilled and happy. My father was a colonel in the Irish Army until he retired when I was about nine. As a family, we loved to play, sing, and act, all within a military camp in Dublin. We were a typical Irish Roman Catholic family. My father sometimes knelt down to pray at his bedside in a solemn manner. Most evenings we would kneel in the living room to say the Rosary together. No one ever missed Mass on Sundays unless he was seriously ill. By the time I...

Roman Catholic theology often parallels Mary the mother of Jesus with Jesus Himself in His work of redemption. For example, Jesus is born without the stain of original sin, and so is Mary. Jesus lives a sinless life; so does Mary. Jesus remains a virgin all His life; Mary is Ever-Virgin. Jesus is the Redeemer; Mary is Co-Redemptress. Jesus is the one Mediator between man and God, yet Mary, too, is Mediatrix. Jesus is bodily assumed into heaven; so is Mary. Ascribing Christological attributes such as these to Mary historically has been a source of contention between Protestants (who see...

WASHINGTON, DC, February 17, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has been forced to give up the foster care program it ran with the aid of public funds, after repeated warnings that there would be no other choice should the D.C. City Council insist that the archdiocese recognize gay "marriage" partners in its employment practices. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Catholic Charities handed over the foster-care program intact to the National Center for Children and Families on February 1. Catholic Charities, whose foster program included 43 children, 35 families and seven staff, runs more than 20 social...

(CNSNews.com) -- The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. has ended its 80-year tenure as a public foster care provider because of a same-sex marriage bill in the nation’s capital that allows children to be adopted by homosexual couples. On Feb. 17, Catholic Charities transferred its foster care and public adoption programs in D.C. to the National Center for Children Families (NCCF), a private, non-profit organization that has been serving the less fortunate for 95 years. The move by Catholic Charities and Archbishop Donald Wuerl came in the wake of the D.C. Council approving a same-sex marriage bill on Dec. 16...

Mary E. Hunt, who runs a group called the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER), has launched a vile assault on the Catholic Church. The pretext of her article is the decision of the Archdiocese of Washington to discontinue its foster-care program; the archdiocese maintains that as a condition of public funding it would have to compromise Church teachings on gay marriage. In a piece posted on the website Religion Dispatches, Hunt accuses the entire Catholic Church of “bigotry” and says that the Church’s position on gay marriage “is but one among differing Church theologies of sexuality”; she...

WASHINGTON -- Nineteen Catholic scholars of theology and history are asking Pope Benedict XVI to slow the process of the sainthood cause of Pope Pius XII. Saying that much more research needs to be done on the papacy of the mid-20th century pope, the scholars said in a Feb. 16 letter to Pope Benedict that "history needs distance and perspective" before definitive conclusions can be reached on the role of Pope Pius during World War II and the Holocaust. Leading the effort are Servite Father John Pawlikowski, professor of ethics at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and Holy Cross Father...

(Editor’s note: The following is the full interview with Sister Joan Chittister who is to deliver a Lenten mission for the Canada’s National Catholic Broadcasting Council (NCBC), which airs the daily Mass on Vision TV.  LifeSiteNews reported on the upcoming on the mission here)LSN: It's been reported that you hold positions that are divergent from Catholic magisterial teaching.  Would you say that's correct?JC: Well, yes, I guess it is correct.  It's not an opposition position.  It is a position of query, of theological and scriptural commitment and search.  I'm asking the question, for instance, how do we understand God...

I just witnessed a couple of Orthodox posters get kicked off a "Catholic Caucus" thread. I thought, despite their differences, they had a mutual understanding that each sect was considered "Catholic". Are not the Orthodox considered Catholic? Why do the Romanists get to monopolize the term "Catholic"? I consider myself to be Catholic being a part of the universal church of Christ. Why should one sect be able to use a universal concept to identify themselves in a caucus thread while other Christian denominations need to use specific qualifiers to identify themselves in a caucus thread?

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- When it was unveiled in late January, the insider book about the "real" Pope John Paul II looked at first glance like the Vatican's own effort at a pre-beatification biography. But as the fallout over the next two weeks made clear, the Vatican was not directly involved. Nor was everyone happy that the book was co-authored by the official postulator, or promoter, of Pope John Paul's sainthood cause, using information that is generally considered confidential. In addition, several officials thought the book's simple presentation of the late pope's reported penitential practices, with little explanation or context,...

San Jose, Calif., Feb 12, 2010 / 07:08 pm (CNA).- Catholics in Costa Rica continue to express disgust following the actions of Deborah Formal, the girlfriend of presidential candidate Otto Guevara. Last Sunday, Formal broke off a piece of the Eucharist and placed it in her boyfriend's pocket.The Costa Rican media has continued to air footage of the Mass which shows Formal receiving Communion, bringing a piece of it back to her seat, and giving it to Guevara.Being divorced, Guevara did not present himself for Communion.The video shows that as she approached the archbishop to receive Communion, the two briefly...

Lindsay Lohan is in the news again, and this time she's posing as Jesus Christ on the Spring-Summer 2010 cover of Purple Fashion magazine. (published in France - oh don't you just love the French!) This girl seems to invite criticism and controversy into her life every way possible. Lindsay Lohan was once known as an aspiring actress and a singer, now she is known as a drunkard and a lesbian - but I guess that just wasn't enough. In case you don't see the resemblence in the picture, or think "Certainly that is not who she is imitating", upon...

Over 750 "tea parties" were held on April 15 of last year, protesting the excesses of the Obama administration -- in particular, the pork-stuffed stimulus bill. Initially, the mainstream media tried to ignore the movement. They downplayed its size and influence, until the steady slide of President Obama's popularity, the growing opposition to Congress's health-care reform proposals, and Republican victories in New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts forced them to acknowledge its influence.Since then, the media strategy has been to portray the tea party as a gathering of disgruntled extremists, in spite of the fact that the limits on government...

A group of lawyers in the Spanish city of Murcia (Autonomous Community of Murcia) has asked the Government Delegation in Murcia to remove a statue of Our Lord, the "Cristo de Monteagudo" (built in 1951 in the fashion of the Christ the Redeemer of Rio de Janeiro). The statue is "a relic of the Catholic totalitarianism imposed by the Franco regime, and remains on top of the Muslim castle of Monteagudo, whose beauty it ruins," according to the Association for the Precedence of the Law, an association of secular lawyers, and its president, José Luis Mazón. The Association mentioned...