2021

No matter how good we have it, no matter how wealthy we are, or how many good friends we have, or even how holy we are, all of us will experience sorrow in this life. A couple of years into my marriage when my wife, newborn child, and I were living in Ireland, I experienced a great deal of sorrow. I was never diagnosed as having depression, but the symptoms were similar to what other depressed people experience. 

At the end of our days, the Catholic Church teaches that every human person must reckon with the same realities. She calls these the “Four Last Things”: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. We all will die. We all will meet Christ the Judge. And we all will enter into the eternity which we freely chose through our actions in the world. 

Martin Luther rejected the Catholic Church’s declared authority to be the interpreter of Scripture for two reasons. First, in his eyes, the evident corruption of the Church, especially the papacy, entirely undermined the Church’s claim to be the divinely ordained, magisterial caretaker of orthodoxy through its tradition (traditio) of interpretation. 

What Christians are currently witnessing is that the gods of burgeoning postmodernity are not, in the end, interested in sharing space with the Lord God. Even if Christians are willing to leave these gods alone, the gods themselves have no intention of leaving Christians alone. Pagans sooner or later realize that Christianity cannot really be just another cult, that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob can never really be just another god in their pantheon. Pagans recognize— often, it seems, before Christians themselves—that true Christianity just can’t fit in.  

How much do you know about the Mass? Test your knowledge with this quiz from Parousia: The Bible and the Mass!