Author: S&P

We are not used to thinking about owing anything to God. In many ways, religion has become focused on “me,” going to Church therapeutically to feel good about oneself. In reality, we owe God everything. Religion, traditionally understood, sought to render to God the worship, homage and thanksgiving that was due to him as God, the one who made us, cares for us and saves us. In Catholic theology, th...

Pope Benedict XVI has often said that the most effective apologetics for Christianity are the lives of the saints and the art that the Church has grown in her womb. For that reason, the Church must always take both seriously: forming disciples to be saints and creating a culture in which beauty is cultivated and appreciated.   When and where the Church has thrived, both have normally come tog...

Deborah Samuel was a 19-year-old Christian from Tungan-Magajiya in the Rijau Local Government Area of Niger State. She was in her second year studying home economics at the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto.  Four days ago, Deborah was killed by a mob of her Muslim classmates who claimed she had blasphemed against the Prophet Muhammad. A video of this religious execution circulated o...

Tertullian, the first major Christian theologian to write in Latin, is thought to have coined the maxim Semen est sanguis Christianorum, typically (and rather freely) translated as “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Martyrs, we usually think, are those who shed their blood “in hatred of the faith”: the definition of martyrdom used by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Sain...