Fountain of Reason

There are important issues I want to address in this reflection and I believe God will help us understand the scriptures as it relates to them: 1.        Did the angel Gabriel treat Zechariah unfairly, with regard to how he treated Mary, since they both sought clarification on the message he brought to them from God?    2.     Did Mary bear other children after Jesus Christ? The answers are ingrained in these words which are part of Mary’s own question: “since I am a virgin”. The analysis of this expression, using the scriptures, will unearth volumes of answers for the various misconceptions and uninformed challenges against various catholic beliefs and teachings related to these two index questions. (1)   The story behind the first question is found in the Gospel of St Luke (Luke 1:5-37). Zechariah asked the angel, "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years. The an...

The issue of “Purgatory” is a contentious one in some quarters but it is well understood in the Catholic Church.   It ought not be controversial at all having recourse to logical reasoning but the antagonists of the idea hold that it is a spiritual matter that may not necessarily be subjected to the test of reason. They would rather look upon the scriptures for reliable indications in such spiritual claims. It is easy, using logical reasoning, to infer that since punishments for offences are according and proportionate to the type and magnitude of the offence, and even to the disposition and attitude of the offender following the incident, punishments should necessarily differ in type and magnitude. A petty pick-pocket cannot be sentenced to death or life imprisonment along with an armed robber who robs and kills his victim in the process. There are criminal offences and there are civil offences and the different categories attract different types of sanction proportion...

“Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen”. This common part of our daily prayers, like some in the Liturgy of the Hours and elsewhere, contain the phrase “world without end”. What does this imply? We are experiencing the world in space and time and so it may imply “visible creation will never cease to exist” or/and “time will never end”. The scriptures reveal that the world shall end in both space and time. Those words in our prayers do not contradict the scriptures but mean something else, as simply explained by Fr Vincent Serpa OP: ‘ “World without end" is an idiom that means "forever" and is not meant to be taken literally. In Latin, the phrase saecula saeculorum means "ages of ages" (i.e., forever). In the current edition of the Liturgy of the Hours, it is translated "and will be for ages unending.” ’ 1 There is, however, another aspect of w...