My brothers and sisters, welcome. As you know, we live in a world that’s increasingly hostile to our faith. More than ever we need to stand together as much as we can. We need each other, and the world needs Jesus. When the world looks at us, it needs to see the face of Jesus. But we are so divided, we’re like looking into a broken mirror, and the face of Jesus is difficult to see.
We must make every effort to understand each other, to agree wherever we can, and when we must disagree, to do so in love and with a sincere desire to overcome our differences so that we can present a consistent image of Christ to the world.
My background
I was an Evangelical Protestant for 13 years, and I have been Catholic for 25 years. One thing I’ve learned is that both sides agree on a lot more than either of them think they do. Unfortunately, there are a lot of misunderstandings on both sides.
I’m not saying there are no real and important differences between us; there are. But I’m convinced they are fewer than most of us think. My goal is to show where we have common ground, and to explain the Catholic faith in those areas where we really do disagree. It may be more biblical than you think.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ, it’s my goal to bring people to him and to make him better known. It is my hope that if you don’t already know Jesus, you will meet him here, and if you do know him, you will get to know him better in these pages.
What you will find here
I write about what interests me, and what I think are the most important issues that separate Christians today. Not every aspect of the faith interests me equally, or seems equally important, so this site will not be a balanced presentation of the faith.
Also, this site is under construction. You’ll find some dead links indicated by being grayed-out. These are either papers from my old site that I need to rewrite before they’re fit for human consumption, or they represent papers I intend to write soon but haven’t yet.
Links to external sites are indicated by a link icon preceding the title of the page:
Quotations and capitalizations
Every quotation from Scripture features a blue border, like this:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:8-10).
Quotations from any other source feature a gold-colored border, like this:
[W]e are therefore said to be justified by faith, because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God and to come to the fellowship of His sons; and we are therefore said to be justified gratuitously, because none of those things that precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace of justification. For, if by grace, it is not now by works, otherwise, as the Apostle says, grace is no more grace (Council of Trent, Decree Concerning Justification).
Some people capitalize pronouns referring to God: He, Him, His, etc. Others don’t. I’ve chosen not to capitalize them, for two reasons. First, when I’m reading, and a pronoun is capitalized in the middle of a sentence I find it distracting. Second, when I’m writing, I often forget to capitalize, and I have to go back and correct it. I don’t always catch every instance, and so my writing ends up being inconsistent. I note that many translations of the Bible do not capitalize pronouns referring to God, including the venerable King James Version, and that’s good enough for me.
The old “Catholic Outlook”
Twenty years ago, I hosted a similar website with the same name. I was a new convert then, and eager to explain why I left Protestantism and why I thought Catholicism was true. There’s value in that, but now that I’m (hopefully) 20 years wiser, I’m more interested in looking for areas of agreement between Catholics and Protestants and helping both sides clear away the disinformation we may have internalized about the other. It’s my hope that if we can focus on the few, but important, issues that really do divide us, we may someday be able to resolve them.
Nevertheless, some of you may remember the old site and you may want to read some of the old material. I’ve included it here, and each of the links to the old pages is clearly marked with an “archive”’ icon
If you’d like to leave some feedback on anything you see here you can email me at:
