The Sacramental Pilgrimage

I’m at a point in my seminary studies where I’m looking at Christology, namely, the branch of theology relating to the nature, role, and person of Christ.  I need to confess that in my youth, I seemed to have a stronger knowing, a somehow more basic belief or even sense of who Jesus was.  I’m…

Logs and Splinters: How to Improve the Independent Catholic Movement

There is a volume that, when the title is mentioned, still gives me the chills. “Bishops at Large” (Peter F. Anson, Apocryphil Press, 2006), is a heavy, heavy tome dedicated to the various Independent Catholic denominations that sprang up in the 19th and 20th centuries in the UK, Australia, and parts of America and Canada.…

The First Candle

Two years ago, at age forty-five, I celebrated my first Advent and Christmas as a baptized Catholic within an Independent Catholic denomination. The first candle was lit on my small oratory table in my bedroom before I prayed Matins and Lauds, the official beginning for my day as, at that time, a Franciscan postulant. The…