MSI Press Blog

“My grace is enough for you, For in weakness power reaches perfection.” --St. Paul   I’m in the business of compassionate healing. As a psychologist, my patients come to me in emotional and mental pain. They feel broken and want to be whole. They want relief from their suffering--their depression, anxiety, tempers, compulsions, and disturbing obsessions. Coming to me, they ask me to witness their suffering and bring them relief. Two questions often haunt them: “Why is this happening to me? How can I fix it?” In their desperation, they look for answers from me, whom they consider “the expert.” Contrary to their expectations, I direct those questions back to themselves and assure them, “You have the answers, but don’t know it yet.” I invite them to pay close attention to their own experience, to listen to the subtle voices speaking within, and to engage in open and honest dialogue with themselves. For many, that is a new experience. These voices have been drowned out by the...

  God’s grace and God’s forgiveness are inseparable in Catholic theology because they are two movements of the same divine action: God restoring a broken relationship. Grace is God giving Himself; forgiveness is God removing what blocks that gift. You cannot have one without the other. God’s Forgiveness as the Opening of the Relationship Catholic teaching begins with a simple but profound truth: sin ruptures communion with God , and only God can repair that rupture. Forgiveness is God’s act of clearing away the barrier so that divine life can flow again. Two core teachings shape this: Forgiveness removes sin, which the Church calls the “obstacle” to grace. Grace is the very life of God shared with the soul, so forgiveness is what makes room for that life to enter. This is why the Church insists that forgiveness is not merely a legal pardon. It is a relational restoration. God forgives so that He can give Himself. Grace as God’s Self‑Gift Catholic theology defines grace a...

  Elizabeth Mahlou’s Blest Atheist unsettles some readers because it refuses to obey the moral binaries that secular storytelling depends on. She recounts childhood experiences that today would trigger immediate CPS removal: physical abuse, emotional cruelty, and sexual violation ignored by the adults who should have protected her. She describes her own resistance — embarrassing her parents publicly, striking back physically, refusing to be cowed. That fierce ego likely saved her life. And then, later in the memoir, after her conversion, she writes a chapter in which she sees her parents not as monsters but as overwhelmed, under-resourced, emotionally limited people raising eight children in poverty. She does not excuse them. She does not soften the truth. But she sees them through a different lens. She names their fear, their incapacity, their brokenness. In essence, she forgives them — though she never uses the word. For many religious readers — Christian, Jewish, Muslim — thi...