Back in January 1994 I entered the M.A. in Theology program at Franciscan University of Steubenville. I was six months out of college, having gotten a B.S. in Systems Analysis at Miami University (Ohio). After a brief stint in a pro-life organization, I decided to return to school in a subject that I loved – theology. Little did I know that it would take me over seventeen years to complete the program.

Because my undergrad was unrelated to theology, I had to take almost all the prerequisites for the program. This meant taking six undergrad theology classes. For the next year and a half, I took these classes, along with four graduate foundations classes. During this time, I was the consummate bookworm. I often meet people today who attended Franciscan during the time I was there, but I neither remember them nor do they remember me. I literally had my head in a book more than 10 hours a day. Each day would run something like this:

• Prayer/Mass – 1 hour
• Breakfast – 30 minutes
• Class – 1 hour
• Personal study of New Testament Greek – 1 hour
• Class – 1 hour
• Studying – 1 hour
• Lunch – 1 hour
• Class – 1 hour
• Theological Reading – 2 hours
• Studying – 2 hour
• Dinner – 1 hour
• Theological Reading – 4 hours

During this time I also became engaged (why she wanted to marry such a bookworm was beyond me). Needless to say, we didn’t go out much. But by Spring of 1995, I had run out of money and I didn’t want to get married and immediately get into wads of debt. So I made the hard decision to stop the program, still needing eight grad classes to finish. I moved to Maryland and got a computer programming job and hoped that it would be a minor pit stop before returning to the program.

And after two years, it appeared that I would go back to school. I got a job at a small (i.e. one-person) Internet company (before many knew what exactly the Internet was), and was allowed to move back to Steubenville and try to complete my degree while working from home. However, this was late 1997, right before the great Internet boom. The company I worked for went from 2 employees to 300 in less than two years, and I soon was managing a staff of 100 in Steubenville. Not surprisingly, I didn’t ever find time to actually take a class. After three years, I had given up my dream of a Master’s degree and decided to transfer back to the company’s headquarters in Maryland. However, things didn’t work out and I left the company to start my own software development company a few months later. Also, my wife and I continued to be blessed with children, which of course re-arranges one’s priorities very quickly.

During this whole time, however, I never lost my love of theology. I continued to read theological books in my free time, from authors such as Congar, de Lubac, von Balthasar, and Ratzinger. My time at Franciscan had introduced me to a whole world of brilliant theological minds which I couldn’t get enough of. I was especially thankful for Dr. Scott Hahn’s reading lists, which listed authors I had never heard of but were great thinkers and theologians.

I continued to work at my software company, but it always nagged at me that I had not completed my Master’s degree. I hate starting something and not finishing it. Then I discovered that I could take classes via distance education from Franciscan, and would not have to take any on campus since I had already taken all my foundational courses there. In 2007, although it had been over ten years since I left the program, I got special permission to start back up. So I began to take classes in my free time from home. For the next four years, I took my eight remaining classes (while writing two books). Finally, last Fall I finished my last class, and then took my comprehensive exams a few weeks ago.

Just today, I found out that I passed my comprehensive exams and completed my degree! I plan to go out to the graduation ceremony in May (ironically, the speaker at my graduation happens to be U.S. Representative Jeff Fortenberry, who was in the program with me in the mid-90′s [we even worked in the computer lab together]). How many people have their graduation speakers be someone they were in the program with?

I don’t usually write about my personal achievements on this blog, but I am very happy to have completed this degree so many years after beginning it and I wanted to share it with others. Praise be to God for giving me this wonderful opportunity!

The May 8th issue of OSV Newsweekly includes an article I wrote on how to respond when a loved one leaves the Church:

I had just finished a speaking engagement in a parish when a lady approached. She was in her late 50s, and seemed a bit apprehensive about speaking with me. After a few pleasantries, she came to her point: She was distressed because her two children — a son and a daughter — were no longer practicing Catholics.

She had been a faithful Catholic her whole life and simply didn’t understand how both of her children had turned their backs on their childhood faith. The two of them had taken very different paths away from the Church. Her son was now an evangelical missionary serving overseas, and her daughter was an agnostic with no interest in religion. She was slightly less concerned about her son, but clearly the abandonment of Catholicism by both troubled her deeply.

Unfortunately, this scenario is all too common today. In fact, I would estimate that this is the most common thing I am told by audience members when speaking to groups of Catholics. There are thousands of hurting Catholic moms and dads out there, begging God to bring their children back to the Church and dealing with immense feelings of guilt over the possibility that they are responsible for their child’s lack of faith. A recent Pew Research Center study found that 10 percent of all Americans — 10 percent! — are former Catholics. This makes former Catholics the third-largest “religious group” in the country behind Catholics and Southern Baptists.

So, what can a parent or sibling or cousin do to help his fallen-away family members return to the Church’s fold? Although individual situations are unique, there are some fundamental principles that we can follow to help the former Catholics in our families reconsider the Church.

Continue reading…

In today’s first reading, we hear of Peter’s Holy Spirit-inspired preaching, and the effect it has on the people:

On the day of Pentecost, Peter said to the Jewish people, “Let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and they asked Peter and the other Apostles, “What are we to do, my brothers?” (Acts 2:36-37)

Before we see what Peter’s response is, let’s look at a few things Peter did NOT say:

• Accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.
• Be the best “you” that you can be!
• Take care of your mother, the Earth.
• Be nice to everyone.
• Strive for social justice.
• Nothing – you are okay just the way you are!
• Elect the right leaders.
• Be baptized in the Trindentine rite and only attend Latin Masses…and be suspicious of anything I say from now on.

No, what Peter said was, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.” (Acts 2:38). We must completely change the direction of our lives in order to be saved, and the only way to do this is through God’s grace, which is why baptism is necessary. During this Easter season, let us all renew our baptismal vows, repenting of the ways we have followed the wisdom of this world rather than the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

For everyone in the Washington, DC area, I’ll be speaking at a Theology on Tap for the Diocese of Arlington next Monday. If you’re able to stop by, I’d love to say hello! Here are the details:

Topic: Defending Catholic Biblical Hermenuetics
Date: Monday, 5/2/2011
Time: 7:00pm
Location: Pat Troy’s Ireland’s Own
111 N. Pitt Street
Alexandria, VA 22314

Hope to see you there!

For years I have been a fan of alternative history – those fictional books which start with a premise such as “What if the South had won the Civil War?” or “What if Hitler had been assassinated in the 1920′s?” and then projects the “future” after that event. One of the values of these exercises is that it allows us to see how pivotal certain events in history are. So what about the most pivotal event in all of human history? What if Christ had not risen from the dead? What would the world look like?

• Most obviously, with no Resurrection, there is no Christian religion. Jesus is rejected as a failed Jewish prophet, for his most famous prophecy – that he would be raised on the third day – never came to pass.
• The Jewish Temple is still destroyed in 70A.D., and the Jewish people – God’s chosen people – are a small, persecuted minority with little influence in the world.
• The Roman Empire falls, but there are no Christian monasteries to keep Western civilization alive and we are living in a post-Barbarian, pagan, world.
• The calendar does not read “2011,” but instead is based on the foundation of the barbarian conquest. It is currently the year 1560.
• Concepts such as care for the poor, tolerance of other beliefs and mercy to criminals are absolutely foreign concepts to us all. Rule by the strongest is all that matters. There are no hospitals or soup kitchens or food pantries.
• There has been no scientific revolution, as no one in the West sees the world as the one God’s creation. Technology today is still at the level of a millennium ago. The “new world” has yet to be discovered.

Most importantly,

• The whole world has no hope of escaping from their sins. Most people have no concept of an afterlife in which their bodies will be gloriously raised and in which they will be united to a loving God for all eternity. Darkness reigns.

Praise be to God that, in the real world, His Son defeated death and raised gloriously to life on the third day. He is risen!

From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday:

The Lord’s descent into hell

What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.

Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam’s son.

The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.

‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.

‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden.

‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image.

‘See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one.

`I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.

‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.

“The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages.”

One of the most profound insights from Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week is his meditation on the words of the crowd when they condemned Jesus to crucifixion: “His blood be upon us and upon our children” (Matthew 27:25). This passage has famously been used throughout history to condemn the Jewish race for the crime of deicide, but Benedict sees something far deeper at work here. Unlike the blood of other innocent men, it does not condemn, it redeems. The truth is that we all have his blood on upon us, for every time we sin, we crucify our Lord. But this is the blood of mercy, which cleanses us of our sins. This is the blood which Christ tells us we must drink or we do not have eternal life. This is the life-giving blood which pours out from the pierced side of Christ and forms the Church. This is the blood which is our salvation.

May it be upon us and upon our children.

(The following is from Who is Jesus Christ? Unlocking the Mystery in the Gospel of Matthew, pp. 133-134.)

In Acts, Luke relates that the Church in its earliest days was united in purpose and action:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
— Acts 2:42

This description shows the vital relationship between the “breaking of the bread” and achieving true fellowship. As the Shepherd of the Church, Jesus has remained with his sheep, keeping them united in one flock, primarily through the sacrament of the Eucharist — the “breaking of the bread,” which is the sacrament of unity. The Eucharist binds the Church into a mystical communion that is impossible through any human means. Simply put, without the Eucharist, there is no Church: “The Eucharist makes the Church” (CCC 1395). Examining the history of the Church, one cannot but marvel that it still even exists today; the attacks from both within and without have been constant and, at times, brutal. From heresies arising from the bosom of the Church to persecutions launched by the state, the gates of hell have not relented in their assaults (cf. Mt 16:18). How could a purely human institution survive through the centuries against such opposition? But the Church has the benefit of a divine Shepherd who not only watches over his flock but gives his body as the very food by which it can remain united and strong.

From the very origins of the Church, her Eucharistic unity is clearly visible. St. Paul writes to the church in Corinth:

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
—1 Cor 10:16-18

It is through participation in the Eucharist that Christ’s followers become more than just a likeminded group of people — they become one body. The Eucharist unites the Church to the saving act of Jesus on the cross, making her part of the world’s redemption.

The Eucharist binds its recipients not only to the Lord but also to each other. In a very real way, the bond a partaker of the Eucharist has with his fellow communicants is deeper than that of flesh and blood. Biological unity is of the flesh, but Eucharistic unity is of the Spirit of God. Christ said in his Eucharistic discourse, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail” (Jn 6:63). Each member of the Church is a true brother and sister in the Lord, and the Church is the family of God. A family may have arguments or disagreements, but nothing can make two of its members cease to be part of the same family. Likewise, the Church cannot be divided as long as it is united in the Eucharist.