The Narrow Gate Blog

This article was originally published at catholicweekly.com.au American speaker Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers has no plans for sightseeing during his ninth visit down under since 2012, touring eight Sydney parishes in six days for a series of motivational Catholic talks.“From my observations being here a number of times now is Australia’s experiencing some of the same troubles we’re having in the United States—attracting and keeping people in church, the passion and enthusiasm to really see th …

This article first appeared at: spiritualdirection.com My co-workers at the large Christian Apostolate where I worked as Director of Strategy Development used to call me “Nuke.”That’s because I was always one irritation away from going off, raining emotional shrapnel on everyone in the vicinity. In some ways, my rage was working for me. Professionally, I was challenging and piercingly to the point to those in authority. I was solving problems and saving the company millions of donor dollars. Bel …

This article first appeared at: stpaulcentre.com So what is the difference between a heretic and a schismatic? St. Optatus, another of the great African Christian writers, wrote a surprisingly polite argument against a Donatist named Parmenian, in which he makes the important distinction clear. The Donatists are schismatics, but not heretics. They believe the same fundamental truths that Catholic Christians believe. They have the same sacraments. But because their predecessors broke away from th …