In Support of Pope Francis.

It took me by surprise when I read that there are going to be changes to the Catholic Catechism in regards to our teaching on the death penalty. I remembered back to 1999 as I watched on the news back then of a person who was being murdered for a crime was publicly broadcast. Up until that point in my life, I had never witness someone being condemned so openly and I was upset at our world for not promoting the culture of life, that the Catholic Church was and still is fighting for. Back to now and our present world of hyper connectivity and open discussion of almost anything, the culture of death is everywhere. It finally took three popes to help change things in my church.

I am so happy that the Catholic Church is fighting for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide. Unlike the evangelical church, the Catholic Church is changing it's dogma not necessarily to keep up with the times but to bring more life into our already death saturated culture. Never before has there been a culture so obsessed with the culture of death, and everywhere you look people are looking to our leaders to lessen the pain and the stress of a world gone mad. It is about time that the Church took a stance against the killing and the murder by bringing into our teachings that anyone can be forgiven and reconciled to God.

Human dignity was one of the reasons why this new teaching about the death penalty is happening, and that no sinner is too far away from being rescued by the love and the forgiveness and the grace of God. Under the leadership of the Church's recent popes, we have seen the church stress over and over again that Christ's church should give life. The term the 'culture of death' was made popular by saint Pope John Paul II, and it made the Church aware that if things were to continue the way they were then entire populations would be killed off (in my opinion) and you see this happening in war torn countries. But the culture of death affects our lives still in the twenty first century, where human dignity is not being taken seriously anymore. I applaud Pope Francis and the Church for taking a stance for life, even the lives of those who have committed serious crimes. This is Mike.

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Catholic Identity.

I was born into the Catholic Church and was baptized as an infant, I had my first communion and reconciliation as a child, and was confirmed as a teenager. Although I was never devout, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour when I was 21 through an evangelical Christian radio ministry, which in turn gave new life to my Catholic faith. Although I remained a Catholic, I identified as a born again Christian. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I learned the difference between the two denominations and what they taught about being born again. Regardless, there was a significant change in my life back then, which continues to this day. Being Catholic is much like an identity to me and I remember growing up under the papacy of St. Pope John Paul II. The culture I grew up in was largely affected by his papacy, and the way the culture viewed the church was significantly different from the way the current culture views it. Growing up, the pope didn’t try to be rele...

Age of Brokenness.

We are living in an age of brokenness, no matter what age you are, you probably have been touched with relationships falling apart, which causes more and more people to live in isolation. In this generation there is less of an incentive to heal and reconcile relationships, but that doesn’t excuse the amount of people who are broken. Why people don’t seem to be motivated to heal relationships is because our beliefs about faith and God have changed, really giving us less of an incentive to do what our religion says. If I act from my personal beliefs, but the person that I am responding to has abandoned religious beliefs, than the response to my wanting things to be better can be misinterpreted and rejected then by someone else. Generally when a society has expectations about broken relationships, loneliness and isolation, and the beliefs are generally accepted, society becomes a more compassionate society, because all value the same things. When religious values are undermined and ...

The Biblical Meaning of “Life in the Spirit.”

“Life in the Spirit” is an example that the Apostle Paul gives in the book of Romans starting in chapter 5 and going through to chapter 8. He begins by telling us we are justified by faith (5:1), and have gained access by faith into the grace of God (5:2). We have been delivered from God’s wrath (5:9) and we have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son (5:10). He goes on to explain that through Adam all die (5:12), and that the free Gift of God brings justification and righteousness to the believing sinner (5:15-17). Through our conversion we are baptized into Christ and into his death, which frees us from the law and makes us dead to sin (6:2-4). He explains that just as Christ was raised from the dead, we are given new life in Christ (6:4). Our old unregenerate self was crucified with Christ so that our body of sin might be done away with (6:5-6). Because we have died to sin, we now submit ourselves to God being that we are now under grace, not the law (6:8-1...

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