9 things you need to know about “Maria Divine Mercy”
Jimmy Akin March 3, 2013 The visionary “Maria Divine Mercy” claims that Pope Benedict was the last pope and the next one will be the False Prophet. What should we think of this? Here are 9 things you should know. Many people have been talking about a woman who calls herself “Maria Divine Mercy.” She […]
THE DIVISION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Jimmy Akin The Ten Commandments are, aside from the Two Great Commandments (“Love thy God…” and “Love thy neighbor…”), the most fundamental biblical expression of Judeo-Christian morality. Unfortunately, they have become a focus of some rather trivial controversies, including how they are to be divided and abbreviated. They have also been subject to some not-so-trivial […]
All About Lent
James Akin Q: What is Lent? A: Historically, Lent is the forty day period before Easter, excluding Sundays, it began on Ash Wednesday and ended on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter Sunday). In recent years, this has been modified so that it now ends with evening Mass on Holy Thursday, to prepare the way […]
A Tiptoe Through TULIP
James Akin Predestination means many things to many people. All Christian churches believe in some form of predestination, because the Bible uses the term [1], but what predestination is and how it works are in dispute. In Protestant circles there are two major camps when it comes to predestination: Calvinism and Arminianism [2]. Calvinism is […]
Jewish and Christian Boasting in Romans
James Akin I. Jewish Boasting In Romans A theme in Romans that deserves special mention is boasting of one’s relationship to God. Many Protestants seize on passages in Romans which speak of Jews boasting and use them to argue that this describes a Jewish self-righteousness and an attempt to earn one’s place before God by […]
Hunt-ing the Whore of Babylon
James Akin PART I Anti-Catholic writer Dave Hunt is at it again. Large portions of his previous books have been devoted to attacking the Catholic Church. Now he has written an entire book doing so. In his advance publicity for “A Woman Rides the Beast: The Catholic Church in the Last Days”, Hunt proclaims that […]
How to Explain Purgatory to Protestants
James Akin Suppose a friend or co-worker comes to you and says: “The Catholic Church has this massive doctrine of purgatory, invented in the middle ages. The Church used to even sell indulgences to shorten your time in purgatory by a fixed number of days. This doctrine is based on books that don’t belong in […]
Isn’t baptism a good work, and since Catholics claim that one normatively needs baptism for salvation that Catholics teach salvation by works?
Jimmy Akin A: There are several issues here that ought to be touched on. First, baptism is a normative necessity–not an absolute necessity–for salvation. An absolute necessity is one which admits of no exceptions. Baptism is not that kind of necessity, for God can and does save people who do not know that they should be […]
How Pius XII Protected Jews
Jimmy Akin The twentieth century was marked by genocides on an monstrous scale. One of the most terrible was the Holocaust wrought by Nazi Germany, which killed an estimated six million European Jews and almost as many other victims. During this dark time, the Catholic Church was shepherded by Pope Pius XII, who proved himself […]