Saturday, February 27, 2010

Anew

Ever have to step back and rethink your whole approach to a particular thing? Thats what I've been doing with the Catholic Journeyman podcast (since 08 apparently). I initially barreled into narrating the discovery of Conscience as the map to my heart (in a broad view), and what stopped production was studying and living this new perspective, new constant insight, new ongoing reality of the Conscience effect.


It became confusing at times tracking a coherent path that I could fit into a narrative, that is, my conscience became such an active driver of all the human levels of living. This way of thinking continued evolving. This led down several different, but individually critical means of living out the new internal reality of the rightly forming conscience.

Upon discernment of the aspect that the conscience, motives and behaviors were under a consistent right formation, my outlines for future podcast episodes had to be put aside. They went too quickly into the intellectual and theological areas of study, at the expense of that which is more personal, meaningful and revealing. There was an overwhelming amount of Grace evidence to be mined, organized into narratives and then shared.

It is here that I begin back to the Cast Anew. Retracing the meaningful changes and endless affects of rightly forming Conscience. Brushing against it without sufficient depth would diminish the intimate for the theological and intellectual.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

The Altar Call fails

If all Christians, Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox believe that Salvation is purely due to Gods Grace alone, isnt the human act of "accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior" a work in itself...contradicting this core biblical understanding?

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

An Essay on a Path to Christian Unity

I have been blessed to participate in the vigorous work over at Called To Communion, where they have chosen my Essay as considerable. While the challenge to unite remains elusive, the steep climb is being made by both sides. This excerpt provides the size of the slope and why it is critical that real efforts like CTC are mandated:

"In an interview in 2003, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus said the following:
“The Catholic Church preserves itself as the most fully and rightly ordered through time and this in no way means that the Church is the totality of Jesus Christ. Vat II says everyone who is baptized and accepts Christ as their Savior is truly, but, imperfectly in union with the Catholic Church (sic). A lot of Conservative and Orthodox Catholics are nervous about Unity and Ecumenism and they view Ecumenism as a liberal project and a very suspect one riddled with people who want to water down the Catholic Faith in order to agree on doctrines. But In fact, JP II had one of the most striking and persistent and strongest efforts in Ut Unum Sint. The quest for Christian Unity is not a program of The Catholic Church, it is inherent in being the Catholic Church. If we have this deeply biblical Christ centered understanding of what “The Church” is, then we have the key to that door. (Neuhaus continues his take further): We should say to our Protestant friends ” Look, we’re not engaged in this quest for Christian unity because it is something we have to create, we have already a unity in Christ which is the gift of God. The reason ecumenism is necessary is not that we are not Brothers and Sisters in Christ, it is rather because we are Brothers and Sisters in Christ , but live as though we are not.”