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In honor of Father’s Day, coming up on Sunday, I’m watching and sharing a video by Scott Hahn, Understanding the Our Father, from the Coming Home Network’s conference series, Deep in History, based on his book by the same name. (I’ve had this book in my Verbum library for at least a couple of years and I’ve only just now begun to read it. I don’t know how long it was there before I realized it. Correction: I did start reading this a while back but life intervened and I didn’t finish it. Story of my life.) Video below, links at the end of this post.

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Pentecost, by Anthony van Dyck. From Wikimedia, public domain.

I couldn’t stand it. I’ve been eyeing that  book, A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: Old Testament, by John Bergsma and Brant Pitre, and I finally bought the Kindle version. (Yes, I did want the Verbum edition, but I have no idea when that will be out or even if it will be. And patience is not my strong suit.)

One of the first things I did when I started reading this one was run a search for Pentecost. One of the search results, a passage worth quoting at length, was about Pentecost as the undoing of the Tower of Babel. (Links at the end of this post.)

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A post in the What is all this stuff? series

When I was either in seventh or eighth grade (could have been freshman year in high school) I picked up the Bible I’d gotten at the Methodist church my family attended, and I read it from cover to cover. It was an RSV. I still have it, though the red dye on the edges of the pages got damp in the trunk of my car (accidentally left it there) and bled onto some of the pages. That was careless and I regret that it happened. I treasured that little book. But did I understand what I read all those years ago? Nope. Not most of it. But I was convinced that someday somehow I would find a way to understand it. 

And one day I did. (Links at the end of this post.)

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Dr. Brant Pitre kicks off my new series, Books I Want Right Now. Dr. Pitre has become one of my favorite Catholic author-speaker-teachers and his new book is due out in August 2019,* Paul, a New Covenant Jew: Rethinking Pauline Theology. (Links at the end of this post.)

Protestants have tended to think of Paul as a proto-Protestant, because he rebuked Peter once, though they tend to ignore the fact that he submitted to Peter before he set out to preach. He allowed himself to be sent, in other words, by the Church which, yes, was already in existence before he was sent to preach and before he began to write probably the earliest of the New Testament writings. And because they misinterpret things he wrote about faith, grace and works. Paul was (and, as he is a saint and alive in Christ, is) Catholic and as far from being a Protestant as it is possible to be.**

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A post in the Something About Mary Every Day In May series

Contrary to what many non-Catholic Christians charge, we do not honor Mary at the expense of Jesus. We do not give her too much honor thereby taking away from the honor due her Son, as if it were some zero sum game with only so much honor to go around. “Oh, no, I’ve given too much honor to Mary, now I don’t have enough left to give Jesus, oh, no!”

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A post in the Something About Mary Every Day In May series.

As Eve played an essential role in our downfall, Mary played an essential role in our redemption. And she still does. How, you ask? Consider these parallels. First, concerning Eve, then Mary as the New Eve, some points from the second chapter of Brant Pitre’s book, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary.

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