Dufflepuds and Sola Scriptura

The Dufflepuds are servants of the wizard Coriakin in the C.S. Lewis book Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Coriakin is actually a benevolent teacher, but out of fear they rebel against him. They later read an invisibility spell over themselves because they hate their own appearance. 

I couldn't help but to see a parrallel in these characters with certain types of Christians.  As the Dufflepuds view their master as an evil tyrant, many Christians view the Pope similarly. No matter how much Pope Francis tries to reach out in kindness, these Protestant Christians will not be convinced. After centuries of Catholic misinformation, distrust of the Pope is deep seated. Also, the Dufflepuds have only one foot to stand on. This reminds me of the practice of Sola Scriptura, Bible-Alone. Whereas Catholics stand on Sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture as protected by the Magisterium, many Christians stand only on the Bible. This practice leads many Christians to differing interpretations of Scripture and church splits. 

Will Bible-Only Christians who distrust the Pope ever stop fearing the bishop of Rome as the Dufflepuds feared the good wizard Coriakin in Prince Caspian, or will they continue to hop with one foot.

500 Years is Enough

As we approach the 500 year anniversary of Luther posting his 95 thesis on the doors of Wittenberg Church there are some things we should consider. Isn't 500 years enough protest? Has the protest worked? Is the church stronger now that it has been splintered and divided into thousands of denominations?

Personally, I think the witness of Christian truth suffers when the churches are speaking contradictory things to our world. When the church is divided the enemy wins.

I want to invite my Charismatic brothers and sisters who are not Catholic to intensely consider coming home. Most Charismatic Christians I know do not think they are protesting the Catholic church and believe themselves to just be Christian. I would venture to say that a Christianity not rooted in Catholic past is wildly tainted by the modern spirit and philosophy. It is nearly impossible to figure out what is American culture, and what is Holy Spirit truth.

Put aside the conspiracy theories and misinformation you have heard about the Catholic Church. You know what I'm talking about, things like, the Pope is the Anti-christ, the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon, mother of Harlots, etc. These lies are unashamedly taught by other denominations when you study their theology. Enough is enough, the heart of Christ for unity demands you stop being complacent and accepting of division. Christ established the Catholic Church on the Apostles in the Upper room in 33 AD. Study your misconceptions away.

Where do you start? One place is this lady's blog journey investigating Catholic teaching. At the end of her study she didn't choose to become Catholic, but nobody's perfect, right? Just kidding.

Another place is Catholic Answers. Just type in your wildest accusation about the Catholic Church and read the answer/rebuttal.

I believe what Cardinal Newman, a convert from Anglicanism said:

 I also believe what Bishop Fulton Sheen said:

Why stay out of the Catholic Church my Charismatic Christian friends? The Catholic Church embraces Charismatic phenomenon like tongues, praise and worship, etc. It also respects the Latin Mass. It is a universal church that has scholars, educated, uneducated, laborers, rich, and poor from every culture, the contemplative and quiet to the boisterous. They all find a home in the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is also full of signs and wonders. Never have signs and wonders stopped in the Catholic Church. Some see Pentecostalism as a new beginning to Supernatural ministry after the spirit of the Enlightenment quenched the supernatural teaching in churches, but the Catholic Church never gave in to Enlightenment thinking like Protestant churches did. The Catholic Church is supernatural and yet also full of reason and respect for science. Stop the protest and come home. Don't be complacent. Desire unity, study, pray and come home. 500 years is enough. You won't be sorry you did. Wait until you encounter Jesus in the Eucharist, the blessed Sacrament. 

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

I sometimes consider if Christ allowed the Protestant splintering to happen much as he allowed the division of Israel in to the Northern and Southern kingdoms due to the sin of David and Solomon. Northern Israel split away and created their two golden calves to worship so that they wouldn't have to follow the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Judah had committed sins and perhaps God allowed the splintering, but the Northern kingdom then entered into graver sin with its calves once they broke away from the true worship in the Southern kingdom God had established. Perhaps more harm, heresy and confusion has come from the Reformation than good even though there were issues in the Catholic Church that needed correcting. Come home and help reform the Church, don't leave Peter because of Judas.

Major Change at MajorChange.org

Keith and Iwona Major, two ecumenical reverts to Catholicism, are stirring up change in the body of Christ. This past December 2015, they spearheaded at ecumenical Catholic Track at the charismatic Onething Conference in Kansas City. Their apostolate/ministry is called MajorChange. If you like what they are doing, please make a donation to their work.

Here is one of the sessions where Mike Bickle director of The International House of Prayer came and shared a story on stage. Watch all the recorded Catholic sessions at this link.
http://majorchange.org/onething/

Catholics attending could participate in Catholic teaching and praise and worship in the mornings and join the main conference in the evening.

A second major event that MajorChange mobilized Catholic ecumenical involvement for was the Azusa Now event in California. Lou Engle, director of The Call, lead the event.

Can the charismatic movement be used by God to bring unity to the body of Christ? It's interesting that Jesus in John 17 prayed for unity in the Church yet some Christians today are quick to label any movement towards reconciliation and unity in the body of Christ as the work of AntiChrist and an attempt to bring about a one world religion. What do you think? Should the church be reconciled and come together or would that be moving the world towards a demonic one world religion?

The Modern Mind in Art

Modern man is asked by the zeitgeist of the times to live life open-minded and accepting of multiple possible world views and perspectives. In today's pluralistic culture of the West, to believe that there is one correct view on life and morals is considered closed-minded. Relativism in the West opens our minds to multiple simultaneous and contradicting truths. Multiple perspectives on life and truth are valued even if contradicting. This type of mindset can be confusing, but confusion is the home of the modern mind. Instead of confusion one can call it possibility, potential, freedom. In this state though, our perspective on life is much like this painting by Picasso, The Poet. Its hard to know what we are looking at, but one is supposed to be ok with that and find the beauty in ambiguity. This is the mind of modern man, he doesn't know what we are or where we are going but isn't that kind of pretty in itself, just the weird wonder of it? Concrete meaning and definite truths are blurred and blended. What is truth? What is man? What is God? What is reality?

Cubism paints reality from multiple perspectives at once, after all one perspective can't be right. All perspectives at once are true even if this leads to no perspective. This type of painting can be a metaphor for the mental state of how reality appears to the modern man who is open to all-truths since no truth is absolutely true to everyone. Being open to all-truths, even contradictory truths is like having no truth.

Representational art traditionally has one viewpoint. Traditionally societies have had a majority viewpoint. Art tended to have meaning and represented real things and ideas. As in cubism, the modern liberal mind tends to shun a single narrative of truth unless that narrative is that there is no one truth. Ambiguity, open-mindedness, pluralism, "tolerance", is the ideal. I think that is why modern art is so ambiguous and hard to understand. Modern Western society thinks life should be hard to understand, at least a life with meaning. It tends to say that each person makes his or her own personal meaning and no one narrative encompasses all as true.

Then we have abstract expressionism. This type of art seems to promote the idea that meaning is not important in life, only self-expression and freedom to do whatever you feel. The need to communicate ideas and connect to others in a rational way is not important. What seems to be encouraged is the expression of the self at the expense of a shared experience with others with actual understood meaning. Can you think of any people in your life that live this way?











Am I reading to much into art and what its style promotes or can you see that values of a society materialized in the artworks it creates?

My Journey on the Coming Home Network Newsletter

The Coming Home Network featured my story on their June 2015 issue.  The Coming Home Network has been a tremendous resource of encouragement on this journey.

Finding the Vanishing Point: My Journey to the Catholic Church – Conversion Story of Enrique Crosby

A Pentecostal Art Aesthetic Fulfilled

I wrote in the past about my desire to develop and explore a Pentecostal art aesthetic, a form of principles that express the purpose and state of being of art created in a "Spirit-filled" way. What I meant by Pentecostal was that this art would have a supernatural quality capable of the miraculous and the revelatory, that the artist him/herself would intentionally in a mystical and prayerful way submit to the leadings of the Holy Spirit with the intent that he/she would become a conduit for God's work and that the resulting artwork would be imbued with a supernatural grace to touch the viewer.  Now that I'm Catholic, I believe the word I was looking for was that this art would be "Sacramental", a physical reality that conveys grace to us here on earth.

Looking at the world now through Catholic "goggles", I see that the artwork I was seeking to define is very Catholic. For example, the Catholic mind has accepted the history of religious art/icons that were created in grace by artist and that these icons in many places and times have played a part in supernatural occurrences and protection.

As a Pentecostal, I had been impressed when I heard a story of a woman in California associated with the Jesus Culture movement and Bill Johnson's Church in Redding, CA, who had been healed of blindness when she had walked past a painting created by a prayerful Charismatic. I wanted to see more of this physical creative art releasing the supernatural. I wanted to explore and define this phenomenon of art and the supernatural. This issue has long been a part of Catholic Church history. This is very much the historic Catholic understanding of the arts. Why was I trying to recreate the wheel as though it was a new phenomenon?

For one example of a supernatural work of grace being associated with an artwork, read about the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. There are many more examples of such occurrences, they may just not fit in with typical Protestant theology. A picture of Mary or a Saint releasing a miracle, well I would just have assumed it was demonic to lead the world into idolatry of the art object and away from true Protestant theology. One has to deal with the anti-Catholic mindset to see with clarity the beauty of grace working through art, or else one will overlook these historic occurrences as demonic and only look to the modern occurrences of miracles associated with art created by Protestants that fit Protestant theology, and like I was, will be left thinking this is a new phenomenon yet to be explored. 

A warning to the Charismatic artists, or Prophetic Artists as we used to call each other. Be careful in your journey to see grace work through physical artworks because you are moving into a theology of Sacraments and Sacramentals that is very close to a Catholic understanding of matter and grace. Protestants have tended historically to view an either/or, Grace vs. Matter conflict, and Catholics a Grace and Matter relationship of Grace perfecting matter. Pentecostals may believe that the Holy Spirit may work through anointing oil or a handkerchief that has been prayed over, but has to stretch their minds to believe in God working through a man made art object.

I look forward to exploring this topic more in depth and studying miracles associated with and around art objects.

What are stories of God supernaturally working through art that you have heard of?

Beautiful Churches

Here's a sketch I made after mass today.

It's a drawing of St. Mary's in Mexia, TX. 

Something cool about being Catholic is being able to travel the country and attend any Mass and know the reading for the day and the liturgy ahead of time. Each church has its charm and beauty, but the overall liturgy is the same. 

Here are some photos of parishes I visited for Mass.

St. Edward's in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

This sculpture of Purgatory was at St. Edward's in Little Rock. 

St. Andrew's in Roanoke, Virginia.

St. Catherine of Sienna in Wake Forest, North Carolina.

I still love my little Parish of Saint Mary's though. 

Oh, look at some of the saint statues at St. Catherine of Sienna's. 

St. Peter of Verona. 

Not a statue but a beautiful mosaic of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  

St. Louis de Montfort. 

St. Dominic who received the rosary. 

Comparing Protestant and Catholic Ideas

I wanted to share an informative blog of a woman who is trying to honesty investigate historic Christianity and the claims of the Catholic Church. She is trying to remain neutral since she has come to the point of realizing she doesn't feel Protestant anymore. I recommend reading her series.