Why not Catholic?

Or Catholic apologetics that is. Though I will touch on issues in the Church, or maybe defend against this or that accusation, or even kick around some blessing I have received as a Catholic Christian, I won't be diving too deeply into the world of Catholic apologetics. Why? Because there are others who do it better. Some of those are links on my sidebar. Others I will link to as they come to me. But Scott Hahn, Patrick Madrid, Mark Shea, Zippy Catholic, and Jimmy Akin, to name a few, are already there. In addition, many readers on those blogs are well informed, making them good places to kick around questions and thoughts about the Catholic Faith.

For me, I was a pastor before I was a theologian. I learned that all theology is ultimately pastoral, but pastoring is never only theological. So I tend to see things from that pastor-in-his-office-helping-someone-out lens. If we get into a debate about consequentialism, for instance, I'm inclined to think 'how can we reason with these folks and reach out to them by seeing it from their point of view.' Try that in some places and I'd be run over! Which is OK. That comes from not everyone being a pastor. And there's nothing wrong with that. But sometimes I find, when it comes to Church issues, my old pastoral counselor side kicks in and if folks want a nitty-gritty debate about what the Church teaches, there might be better places somewhere else to find it. And when I think it will, I'll refer the discussion accordingly.

I'll save my barbs and jabs for things like history (that I love and have studied and taught for decades), or the news, or media, education, or anything about popular culture. Those are where my feet will dig in and, hopefully through the prism of Catholic teaching, I'll let fly with the best commentaries that might give readers something to think about.