Catholics and "Providentialism"

A friend of mine recently encountered a Catholic who is critical of Natural Family Planning.  His complaint was:

“Why bother trying to take control of family planning?    No child comes into existence without God's agency.  Why don’t you just trust in the will of God?”

The man was espousing a philosophy known as “Providentialism”.  And today I want to discuss why it ought to be avoided.

My "Ideas of the Reformation" Presentation

Over the weekend I gave another presentation at a parish in Peru, IN – a sort of follow up to one in Wabash.  This one focuses on the ideas under discussion between the Protestant leaders and the Catholic bishops. 

• Sola Scriptura
• Grace and Free Will
• Sola Fide

Two Passages Which Everyone Gets Wrong...

Odd things happen when the Bible enters into pop culture.  Sometimes you hear a verse used again and again in a certain way... only to look it up and see that's not what it means.

Today I want to look at two examples of that.

My 95 Theses

It was five hundred years ago that Martin Luther purportedly posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg cathedral.  You can imagine each "thesis" as a debate point which Luther was willing to defend in public.

Well, today I wanted to commemorate this event by posting a 95 Theses of my own.  Following the style of the original, it can be read like a lecture broken into various points.

Whereas the original 95 Theses was directed mostly at the indulgence abuses of the 16th century, mine addresses many points of controversy which now exist between different Christian bodies after half a millennium.

Here we go!

My "Reformation" History Presentation

Last weekend I finally gave that presentation in Wabash IN.  Here is the video:

Do Christians and Mormons Worship the Same God?

In the past we asked whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God.  The answer was:  YES.  They may have some very mistaken ideas about God, but insofar as we are both referring to the one infinite, eternal, uncreated, source of all reality... we are indeed worshiping the same God.

By way of analogy, imagine asking a person if he knows your father.  He first demonstrates enough knowledge that he's clearly thinking of the right person.  However, as you begin to ask more questions, it becomes clear that he's been given some bad info about your dad.

Lately a few of the kids I work with have asked me if the same is true of Mormonism.  So today we'll be taking a look at that.

Five Useful Pro-Life Analogies

The Pro-Life position is characterized by two foundational principles:

1. The child-in-utero is a real living human with moral value.
2. Parents have duties to their children, even when they are in the womb.

Thus, the responses by Supporters of Abortion Legality (SALs) will tend toward the opposite of those principles.  They will either deny the humanity of the child-in-utero or insist the parents don't have moral obligations to them.

Moral values and obligations are not things which can be proven like the facts of biology.    Thus, the argument often hinges on showing the existence of certain ethical truths by isolating them in situations with key similarities.

Today I want to look at five situation which I think are useful.