We might encounter someone who says, “Sure, the worship style is similar, but the early Church didn’t think that Jesus was really present in the bread like modern Catholics do. That was a later invention by the Catholic Church.” But they couldn’t be further from the truth!

Mercy meets sorrow in the sacrament. Chapter 14 of Matthew’s gospel tells of the story of St. Peter asking Jesus to allow him to walk on water. Because of fear of drowning and lack of faith, Peter sinks.

Through temperance, we are free to live to the fullest because our humanity is not enslaved to its own flesh. This same temperance liberates us so that we can seek the highest and loftiest purposes for which God created us; that is, so that we can seek God himself.

Too often we see the gloom of our culture, a world fractured by division that stems from so many sources they are too numerous to count, and we become despondent; that is, we begin down the road of despair.

For many who believe in the “Great Apostasy,” this is where the story ends. But Bennett gives us the rest of the story, showing that much of the support that existed for Arius’s teaching was more about political power than a search for truth.