De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

I have just read this from the Protestant  Desiring God website and I think it raises a very interesting issue which I might summarise as follows: the danger of a disconnect in the matter of faith and discipleship between the head and the heart, i.e. the danger that the knowledge (biblical, theological, philosophical…) one might accrue in one's studies becomes an end in itself and a source of pride, preventing one from having "eyes that see and ears that hear" the presence of Christ in one's life. It is an attitude which results in an insensitivity to the action of the Holy Spirit, the source of all true enlightenment for the mind and heart. Knowledge is very important but it can only take us so far. We might know about Jesus, but do we truly know him in the sense of having had a deep personal encounter with him?     The Irony of the Epiphany :   January 6 has long been the date the Western church has observed the feast of the Epiphany. From the Greek for “a...

Ola! While waiting in Madrid airport for a connecting flight to Bilbao (not boasting, honest) for a weekend of De La Mennais Brothers meetings for the "younger" elements amongst us, I thought I would post this classic tale that I was sent by a friend the other day but that I first read some time ago: **************************************** Why Go To Church? A Church goer wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday. "I've gone for 30 years now," he wrote, "and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons.. But for the life of me, I can't remember a single one of them. So, I think I'm wasting my time and the pastors are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all." This started a real controversy in the "Letters to the Editor" column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher: "I've been married for 30 years ...

Back to that blog debate with an atheist... the other day it got to the point where I'd had enough of being polite and reasonable. I boiled over when a particular person used a very offensive word to describe myself and another catholic. This was after having had a very amicable, friendly discussion with another atheist, so don't think I've got it in for non-believers!! :-) Anyway, this was my reply, not that I'm necessarily proud of the tone of what I say, it does nevertheless address perhaps better than I have managed to do before some of the issues I get challenged with when in discussion with non-believers. See here for the complete discussion thread. ****************** "Yes OF COURSE the Church has throughout the centuries contained people who've got it badly wrong, committed atrocities even. WE CHRISTIANS ARE HUMAN BEINGS, for heaven's sake, not robots... imperfect, at times weak, forever sinners in need of conversion. Get over it!! And believe you m...