The Tulip Driven Life

By: Nathan Fox Introduction to the Book and the City As promised in my previous blog post, I have begun a personal study series into the book of Colossians and have thus decided to write for the next few weeks on little lessons that God is teaching me from the book. Before I dive into today’s blog content, I feel it very important that we have a somewhat firm knowledge of the background behind this Pauline epistle. Naturally, we would assume that this book was written to the people of Colosse, and we would be correct. Knowing this, there are several interesting characteristics to note about the city of Colosse. First of all, Colosse was a very influential city, and likewise was influenced by other cities. We know this because of some of the content from Paul in this letter. Several times Paul warns the people of Colosse to hold firm to true doctrine, and to not be swayed by false teachings such as Gnosticism (of which we will cover in greater detail in future blogs)...

In 1997, a group of Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland drafted a study document, outlining ways to deal with the sexual child abuse crisis which was becoming endemic in the Church. Under the new rules these bishops maintained that there would be mandatory reporting of offending priests and instant removal of the positions of those behind the abuse.  The Vatican shut these bishops' reforms down .  The letter the Vatican sent in response (linked to in orange) read, " In particular, the situation of 'mandatory reporting' gives rise to serious reservations  of... a canonical nature."[1] To make it more clear, the letter raised "particular" concern about mandatory reporting because of issues with canon law. WHAT IS CANON LAW? According to  The Catholic Encyclopedia , canon law is "the body of laws made or adopted by [the Roman Catholic Church] for the government of... its members."[2] Also, "The ultimate source of canon law is God...