The Catholic doctrine of the intercession of saints holds that saints who have passed on from this life can pray on behalf of the living and intercede with God for their benefit. This belief is based on a number of passages from the Bible that demonstrate the power of the saints to act as intercessors between God and humanity. One of the most important examples of this doctrine can be found in the book of Revelation. In Revelation 5:8, John describes a vision of the saints in heaven offering prayers to God on behalf of those on earth: “And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatur ..read more

Misa De Gallo is celebrated in countries heavily influenced by Spanish missionaries over a hundred years ago. In Misa De Gallo 9 consecutive Masses are celebrated at dawn in anticipation of the birth of Jesus Christ on the 25th of December. This serves as a form of preparation by the people in welcoming the Incarnation of the Son of God on earth. However, such a pious and jubilant celebration is without misconceptions, some people have the idea that once you completed the 9 dawn masses your wish, especially temporal wishes, will be granted by God. This is far from what the intention of the ..read more

Since the start of the Protestant reformation, we have seen the never-ending emergence of various “churches” that claims to be “Christian” but were not personally and historically founded by Jesus Christ. A quick glance at the Almanac, we can see who are the different founders of these “churches” are. For example, the Lutheran church was founded by Martin Luther, a former priest, who was excommunicated because of his heretical teachings. The Latter-day Saints, whose founder was Joseph Smith, or the Iglesia Ni Cristo, a local cult founded by Felix Manalo in 1914 in the Philippines, and the ..read more

In one of the discussion boards, online someone stated that we should not assert the fact that the Catholic Church is the true church Jesus Christ founded because it would offend non-Catholics, by non-Catholics he meant the protestants. This line of reasoning is typical of those engaging in ecumenical dialogue with non-Catholic Christians. They are more concerned about not offending Protestants so that their “ecumenical” relationship will not be broken. Their aim in ecumenism is to establish a common ground; indeed any assertion that puts the Catholic faith above the Protestant faith is seen a ..read more

In a discussion in one of the Facebook page wherein I am a member of, there was a talk about the supreme court overturning Roe v. Wade which strips abortion of its legality. A person asserted that the unborn is not independently alive therefore it has no rights and to terminate its growth and development in the womb is not murder. This reasoning stems from the idea that the fertilized egg in the womb is not a human being but just a “clump of cells”. “Dependence” is not a scientific criteria for one to be considered alive or not. It is a scientific fact that the unborn is alive. They have c ..read more

A video of a born again street preacher went viral for preaching that religion is not necessary for salvation and that all you need in order to be save is to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and personal savior. Anyone who antagonize religion from faith in Jesus Christ simply isn’t reading the sacred scriptures clearly. Not a single verse in the Bible ever say that religion is not important; if you notice the girl in the video did not cite even a single passage from the bible which says that we do not need religion or that religion is not necessary for salvation. The word religion is derived from ..read more

The Catholic faith defenders, San Pedro Cathedral chapter conducted a seminar about the Blessed Virgin Mary particularly the four Marian dogmas. The Immaculate Conceptio Mary, the mother of God Mary’s perpetual virginity The bodily Assumption of Mary to heaven This is by far the first major seminar conducted by the Catholic faith defenders, Davao city chapter as the pandemic is winding down. Fortunately I have been invited to give a lecture about Mary’s bodily Assumption to heaven. Pope Pius XII defined Mary’s bodily assumption to heaven as a dogma of faith on November 01, 1950. This doe ..read more

A controversy has been going around Catholic cirlces about the nature of Christ’s death. There are those people who are having a hard time reconciling Christ’s death with his Divine nature. They argued that since Jesus Christ possesses a Divine nature he is not capable of dying otherwise it would violate the attributes of his Divine nature. In order to reconcile their understanding of the nature of Christ’s death they proposed the following: That the statement in the Roman Catechism “God died, God was born of a virgin and God was buried” was merely a figure of speech and not a literal one. Th ..read more

The sign of the cross is one of the most ancient Christian devotions that we inherited from the early Christians. This practice was passed down from one generation of Christians to the next until it made its way into our contemporary Christian community. The early Church father Tertullian 250 A.D attests that making the sign of the cross was a common practice among early Christians. “In all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out, in putting on our shoes, at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down, in sitting down, whatever employment occupies us ..read more

One of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church is the sacrament of Confession wherein the Catholic faithful approaches the priest in the confessional box in order to confess his sins and be absolved from it. What the church teaches: Sin is before all else an offense against God, a rupture of communion with him. At the same time it damages communion with the Church. For this reason conversion entails both God’s forgiveness and reconciliation with the Church, which are expressed and accomplished liturgically by the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. CCC 1440 In brief: The Catholic Chur ..read more