The Bible frequently extols "fear of the Lord."

Does that mean God want us to be scared of him?

No. The truth is much deeper.

Let's dive in:🧵 Proverbs 9:10 tells us, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

That means we should explain what both “wisdom” and “fear of the Lord” are.

We have a pope!

Here are the basics on Leo XIV, the Catholic Church's new pontiff: 🧵 1. Augustinian spirituality

Robert Provost professed his solemn vows with the Augustinian order in 1981

In his first papal address, he quoted the great saint:

"I am a son of Saint Augustine, an Augustinian. He said, 'With you I am a Christian, for you a bishop.'"

The LDS missionaries are at your door, and you don't know what to say to them.

...unless you've prepared beforehand.

Here's a calm, effective three-step approach:🧵 Longtime Catholic apologist Tim Staples says he has found that "this approach does at least two things: It fosters a conversation without causing an abrupt end to it, and it has never resulted in anything close to a cogent response"

Cardinals are gathering in Rome to prepare to elect the next pope.

You might be wondering exactly what a papal conclave is, and how it works.

Here are the answers.🧵 A papal conclave is the election process by which a new pope, the visible head of the Catholic Church, is selected.

After a pope dies or resigns, a papal conclave commences within three weeks to elect his successor.

A conclave is the gathering of the College of Cardinals in which these papal electors choose the next pope.

This point can't be overstated.

In paragraph 17 of Humanae Vitae, Pope St. Paul VI prophesied—yes, prophesied—three catastrophic social consequences of widespread contraception.

It's chilling to read today:🧵 1. "[F]irst consider how easily this course of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards."

There is much we could say here, but just the divorce rate alone—compared to where we were in 1968—is staggering. (Graph via allianceformarriage.org)

Its sharp rise began in the late sixties, when the development and legalization of modern contraceptives joined with the Sexual Revolution to create a perfect environment for easy, seemingly-consequence-free adultery and the accompanying rise in marital unhappiness and breakdown.

Then “a general lowering of moral standards”?? We don’t have enough space here even to scratch the surface.

"How can I believe that Jesus even existed when
the only evidence for him comes from the Bible?"

Here are three ways to approach this question:🧵 Many skeptics doubt the Gospels because its authors were believers.

Since these Christians had an investment in Jesus’s life, they argue, they probably used those writings to push an agenda rather than relate accurate history.

When the Church is rocked by scandals and immorality, remember that she has been here before, and God always leads his people into light.

In the late eleventh century, the evils of clerical corruption and sexual immorality plagued the Church extensively, weakening the influence of the Gospel and obstructing the Church’s salvific mission.

But God brought forth a stalwart defender of purity and truth, St. Peter Damian, who exhorted the pope to reform the clergy. The monastic reform produced holy men later elected to the papacy such as Pope St. Leo IX, who initiated one of the most comprehensive ecclesial reforms in history.


In his Liber Gomorrhianus (Book of Gomorrah), Peter Damian shed light on the rampant sexual sins of the clergy, calling them a “diabolical tyranny” that produced a “cancer of sodomitic impurity.”

He remarked that these sins were “raging like a cruel beast within the sheepfold of Christ” and believed that unless the pope “opposes it as quickly as possible, there is no doubt that when [he] finally wishes for the unbridled evil to be restrained, [he] may not be able to halt the fury of its advance.”

He also penned his Liber Gratissimus (Most Gracious Book) against simony, in which he remarked “the custom of simony was so widespread that hardly anyone knew it was a sin.”

The abuse was of grave concern because it rooted priestly ordination in greed and made clerics susceptible to secular control. Peter was so incensed at the sin he discussed it in frank language: “hardly any festering wound causes a more intolerable stench for the nose of God than the excrement that is greed.”

This is a great question, and it highlights a difference between how many modern Protestants understand “worship,” and what the Bible means by “worship.” 🧵

https://twitter.com/iWomansplainer/status/1676426849310605312

First, we need to distinguish three distinct things, which happened in three distinct places in the New Testament:

1. Preaching/Teaching (Synagogue)
2. Prayer (“Lonely Place”/Upper Room)
3. Worship (Temple) twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

THREAD OF CATHOLIC ANSWERS APOLOGISTS/SPEAKERS IN 100% REAL HALLOWEEN COSTUMES

1. @Trent_Horn as a very real horn 2. @CyKellett donning an extremely convincing Buzz Lightyear costume

Reminder: the Catholic Church did not "baptize" a pagan festival into Halloween/All Saints Day. All Saints Day originates from Pope Gregory III (731-741) dedicating a chapel in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to all the saints and fixing its anniversary as November 1. "Hallow" comes from the Germanic root word for "holy," and a person who is hallowed is a saint—someone who has been made holy. “E’en” is a contraction of the word "even," an older way of saying “evening.” Halloween is thus “All Hallows’ E’en” or “the evening of All Saints’ Day.”

What is the Mass? (thread 🧵)

There are two ways we can define it. First: the Mass is the ordered observance of the Lord’s passion and death using the outward signs he determined for doing so. We can look for this definition in Church texts. For example, we have the very brief, succinct statement from the Roman Missal (“Mass book”) of 1962 approved by Pope St. John XXIII...

Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned for seventy years as Queen of the United Kingdom and fourteen other realms, including Canada and Australia, has died at ninety-six years of age. Let us pray for her soul’s repose. She was united for seventy-three years to her consort, the Duke of Edinburgh. She was above all a clear model of faithfulness and stability in marriage. This was her greatest merit, considering the universal visibility of her example. May the Lord reward her for it.

St. Thomas Aquinas is sometimes cited by pro-choice individuals to argue a "Catholic" case for abortion. Let’s lay this out in the depth it deserves. 🧵 Thomas’s writings contain no endorsements of abortion and no mention of intended abortion. In fact, the unborn child is mentioned in only a few places in the Summa Theologiae, in the context of other issues.

"If God has a plan, prayer is pointless."

This is true if our prayer is an attempt to make God change his mind or his will. That's contrary to sound philosophy and biblical faith: “I the Lord do not change” (Mal 3:6). So what IS the goal of intercessory prayer?🧵 A correct understanding of the nature of prayer teaches us that prayer does not change God’s will but accomplishes it. We might say that prayer attempts to fulfill the conditions of God’s will by which he has ordained that certain goods be given to us.

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 1963:
"Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws." (1/9) "One may well ask: 'How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?' The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws." (2/)

Has Pope Francis banned the traditional Latin Mass? Is there still an option for those who prefer the pre-Vatican-II liturgy? What informed the Pope's decision? Here's our overview of Traditionis Custodes and its immediate impact: catholic.com/magazine/onlin… Under the provisions of Benedict XVI’s 2007 document Summorum Pontificum, the individual priest was the primary decision-maker concerning when Mass would be celebrated according to the older form. Under the new document, the bishop has this responsibility.

There is better historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ than there is for Plato, Julius Caesar, and Alexander the Great. If you doubt the existence of Jesus because "the New Testament was written decades after he existed," you also have to doubt the other three. The best biographical source for Plato comes from Diogenes Laërtius' "Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers," written over 500 years after Plato’s death. The oldest extant copy dates from the late 11th century. Historians consider it a crucial source of history.

"Easter is a pagan holiday. Its timing is based on the full moon and the spring equinox, and it’s named after the goddess Ishtar."

No matter how widespread this claim has become, it has no basis in history or reality. (THREAD) (1/10) The word Easter is of English origin. Ishtar was worshipped in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), not England, which is thousands of miles away. Despite sounding similar, the two words are unrelated. (2/)

Okay, in this thread we are posting early Church sources against abortion (A.D. 400 or earlier)👇

https://twitter.com/Kate_Kelly_Esq/status/1362046686093324292

The Didache (A.D. 70)

The Contingency Argument for God's existence, in simple language (thread):

When we look at the world around us, we see many things that change. For example, at one time a man may be standing, but at another time he may be sitting. Yet he is the same man. (1/) Philosophers express this fact by saying that the man's posture is contingent, i.e. that it could be different than it is. Humans are contingent beings because they could be different than they are at any given moment. The same is true of everything we see in the universe. (2/)

Catholics and pro-lifers are being forced to make a difficult discernment in conscience regarding the currently available COVID-19 vaccines, because no completely ethical vaccines are available. With that in mind, today we are featuring... ...a point-counterpoint series about how Catholics can respond to vaccines developed with aborted fetal tissue. These should not be read as a debate over what all Catholics must do; rather, they are a discussion of prudential judgements we should make as witnesses to life.