Protestant errors on grace

Protestant errors on grace

This is the third article in a five part series: What grace is The teaching of the Council of Trent: Decree on Justification The Protestant errors regarding grace and justification The controversies between the Jesuits and Dominicans in the 16th century and...

Controversies between Dominicans and Jesuits

Controversies between Dominicans and Jesuits

This is the fourth article in a five part series: What grace is The teaching of the Council of Trent: Decree on Justification The Protestant errors regarding grace and justification The controversies between the Jesuits and Dominicans in the 16th century and...

Monument of faith

Monument of faith

Over the past year the words ‘Christchurch’ and ‘earthquake’ have become synonymous. Mention one and the other springs to mind. The effects of three major earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks have changed the face of Christchurch. Just how much it has changed and...

Three great apologists

Three great apologists

Fr Holden’s survey of great apologists originally formed part of his lecture, Apologetics and Evangelisation but is published here separately. The original survey also included C.S. Lewis, Frank Sheed, Peter Kreeft, and Karl Keating. These four...

St Mary of the Cross and the clergy

St Mary of the Cross and the clergy

God has shown his favour to the woman born Mary Helen MacKillop by confirming her sanctity and presence with him in the glory of heaven. Through the authority of the Church and in particular an authentic exercise of the infallibility of the Roman Pontiff, we now...

The Father of Christian Mysticism

The Father of Christian Mysticism

How wonderful that we should invoke the most holy Trinity at the beginning of our talk on St Gregory of Nyssa, who was one of the greatest champions in the 4th century of this foundational dogma of our Christian faith. But first, the title of my talk: “Saint Gregory...

A patristic and pastoral trilogy

A patristic and pastoral trilogy

From the vast patristic literary corpus, three works stand out as classic texts on the priesthood: Gregory of Nazianzus’ Second Oration, otherwise known as the De fuga; John Chrysostom’s De sacerdotio; and Gregory the Great’s Regula Pastoralis. These three works are...

The hermeneutics of inquisition

The hermeneutics of inquisition

The title of this presentation has already created some surprise, so I have to clarify from the start that, in actual fact, it will not deal with the Roman Inquisition as a historical institution, but rather with the right method of [theological] inquisition; that is,...

Preaching to priests: wisdom from the Middle Ages

Preaching to priests: wisdom from the Middle Ages

The exclusive focus of attention, in this article, will be on the preaching to priests by two of the greatest saints of the Middle Ages, two Doctors of the Church, one from the 12th century, and one from the 14th; a man in one case and a woman in the other: St Bernard...