This topic is kind of involved, and starting in midstream to boot. If you haven’t already, I recommend reading the first and second posts in this series before starting on this one. … Oops Before I proceed, I need to make a pretty substantial correction. In my post on the two-source hypothesis, I went over the background of the proposed Q document. Several days ago, I saw a comment from someone saying that I was wrong—Q was not supposed to... Read more

I. I’m continuing work on my next Gospel sources post. For those who want something a little more on the professional scholarly side, I was inspired partly by Anglican Bishop John A. T. Robinson’s book Redating the New Testament. It was published in 1976—more or less the zenith of the influence of mainline Christian liberal theology, and Robinson did not have a generally conservative reputation as a churchman. Nonetheless, Redating the New Testament makes the serious case that the entirety... Read more

If you missed the setup, it’s pretty important, so I advise going back and reading it. Why Q? First of all, there’s no reason to postulate Q in the first place. If I’m brought up on some important fact I missed about this, I will of course edit the above remark. (The image stays.) This is not to say that there wasn’t a body of sayings of Jesus that were recognized as genuine, and from which Christian authors both orthodox... Read more

I Looked, And Behold, a Disk Horse I’ve been thinking for a while about the authorship of the Gospels. The more I think about it, the more it seems like the two-source hypothesis (the current scholarly near-consensus on the topic) is dumb and bad, and that the Augustinian hypothesis (the view that prevailed among the Church Fathers, and which St. Augustine expounded in The Harmony of the Gospels1) is smart and good. I’m therefore going to court scholarly ire by... Read more

CONTENT WARNING This post deals with pastoral and other forms of abuse, and contains some discussion of pedophilia; due to the nature of the topic, it has not been possible to mark out those sections of the post more particularly. Please read and share only with extreme caution. Nothing Fails Like It I said in my last that the Catholic Church in the US has a bad case of corrupted values. Grouchy Catholics love saying this, semper, ubique, et ab... Read more

But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of John. And the Lord said, “Whereunto then shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the marketplace, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating... Read more

The Abomination Which Causeth Desolation I’m now concluding my series on Pride month celebrations. It began with my case for why Pride is in reality a pro-life idea, and I rebutted a number of common Catholic objections to Pride in the second installment. I intentionally waited until after June ended to finish this series; I did not care to post any critiques or concessions during Pride month, partly to drive home the point that the critiques and concessions could wait.... Read more

THIS POST DEALS WITH SEXUAL ABUSE. PLEASE READ WITH CAUTION. The Image of Gog The Vatican reached a new low the other day. (Well, a new low to my knowledge.) I speak of a recent pronouncement made on the subject of Slovenian priest Fr. Marko Rupnik. You may have heard of him. In addition to being a Jesuit priest and author of several books, he is also a liturgical artist of considerable repute, whose mosaics grace the shrines of Our... Read more

This continues my discussion of Pride celebrations from last week. Ye Have Heard That It Was Said To review, the objection to Pride celebrations we had next to consider ran along these lines: What about all the sexual immorality? You make such a virtue of accepting Catholic teaching about homosexuality—which is the least you should be doing, and you’ve admitted many times to not actually observing this teaching. Can’t you at least admit that the “identity” Pride festivals celebrate is rooted... Read more

A Summer Festivus How should Catholics respond to Pride festivities? A classic question for the apologist, which we can only assume slipped the minds of the Apostles, else it would surely be addressed in the New Testament. In order to give any sincere, intelligent answer to this question, we need to know what Pride is. Social media abounds in Catholics who are eager to tell us that pride is one of the seven capital sins.1 Luckily, words only ever mean... Read more