Justification

There's been a lot of discussion (to put it in the best light possible) about the conversion of Dr. Francis Beckwith, and I haven't really got a lot to say about it. I'm happy that another person has come home to the Church that was founded by Christ, but everything else is really his (and his family's) business. I'm sorry that he was "outed" by someone who is none-too-pleased with his decision to return to his Catholic faith, and I have mixed feelings about all the attention he received before I saw anything from him on the topic.

Anyway, I read part of an interview with him today at Ignatius Scoop, and I really loved this quote from him. If I had a quote journal like some bloggers I know, I'd add this to it. :)

The Catholic Church frames the Christian life as one in which you must exercise virtue—not because virtue saves you, but because that's the way God's grace gets manifested. As an evangelical, even when I talked about sanctification and wanted to practice it, it seemed as if I didn't have a good enough incentive to do so. Now there's a kind of theological framework, and it doesn't say my salvation depends on me, but it says my virtue counts for something. It's important to allow the grace of God to be exercised through your actions. The evangelical emphasis on the moral life forms my Catholic practice with an added incentive. That was liberating to me.

Yeah...what he said!