About - Fiercely Catholic

Fiercely Catholic™ is a Catholic apostolate dedicated to teaching and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Catholic faith through evangelization, faith formation, catechesis, and apologetics.

Why Fiercely Catholic exists

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”
GK Chesterton – What’s Wrong with the World

Everyone needs doctrinal and apostolic training to follow his Christian calling. The Church has a duty to teach, and the faithful have a parallel duty to make that teaching their own. Therefore, every Christian should avail of the facilities for training which the Church offers him–which will vary according to each person’s circumstances.
The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries (Matthew 10: 5-15)

“There is no longer the conflict and opposition which is supposed to characterize us. We are influencing the world less than the world influences us. There is no apartness.”
Did Fulton Sheen Prophesy About These Times?

“I know your works; I know that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”
Revelation 3: 15-16

“The answer is simply Catholicism, in all its fullness and depth, a faith able to distinguish itself from any culture and yet able to engage and transform them all, a faith joyful in all the gifts Christ wants to give us and open to the whole world he died to save.”
Cardinal Francis George – How Liberalism Fails the Church

“Piety has its own good manners. Learn them. It’s a shame to see those ‘pious’ people who don’t know how to attend Mass — even though they go daily, nor how to bless themselves (they throw their hands about in the weirdest fashion), nor how to bend the knee before the Tabernacle (their ridiculous genuflections seem a mockery), nor how to bow their heads reverently before a picture of our Lady.”
St. Josemaría Escrivá – The Way

“Children arriving at high school age today are often found to be on a level of religious ignorance comparable with that of the ancient pagans.”
Sr. Mary Anastasia, OSF – Catechizing the New Pagans

“The Catholic tradition is a very smart tradition. Intellectually profound…rich. We will not tell our own story effectively if we turn away from that richness. We must stop dumbing down our tradition if we’re going to make this story compelling.”
Bishop Robert Barron – Dumbed Down Catholicism

“How many and how grave are the consequences of ignorance in matters of religion! And on the other hand, how necessary and how beneficial is religious instruction! It is indeed vain to expect a fulfillment of the duties of a Christian by one who does not even know them.”
Pope Pius X – Acerbo Nimis

“The process of secularization tends to reduce the faith and the Church to the sphere of the private and personal. Furthermore, by completely rejecting the transcendent, it has produced a growing deterioration of ethics, a weakening of the sense of personal and collective sin, and a steady increase in relativism.”
Pope Francis – Evangelii Gaudium

“Sadly, it is not unusual to encounter Catholics who were raised in Catholic families, educated at institutions that identify themselves as ‘Catholic,’ and who may attend Mass regularly, yet do not necessarily know or understand their faith or believe it.”
Cardinal Donald Wuerl – Being Catholic Today

“Today the current is against us. And today the mood of the world is, ‘Go with the world, go with the spirit.’ Listen, dead bodies float downstream. Only live bodies resist the current. And so the good Lord is testing us.”
Archbishop Sheen’s Warning of a Crisis in Christendom

“In my lifetime, I’ve had the privilege of knowing many good men and women of my generation—Christians, Jews, and people with no religious faith at all; people who have made the world better by the gift of their lives and their joy in service to others. But the biggest failure, the biggest sadness, of so many people of my generation, including parents, educators, and leaders in the Church, is our failure to pass along our faith in a compelling way to the generation now taking our place.”
Archbishop Charles Chaput – Erasmus Lecture

“In our politically correct world, we think everyone’s going to Heaven. ‘Do whatever you want.’ ‘Try to be a nice person.’ ‘Everyone’s going to Heaven.’ Where does it say that in the Bible? What great saints of the Church proclaimed that, ‘Oh, everyone’s going to Heaven. You don’t have to strive to be holy.’ That’s never been said in the last 2000 years so why does everyone believe this today?”
Fr. Mark Goring

“So we are at war and we have two options. We can fight or we can go to hell.”
Matt Fradd – Save Yourself From This Wicked Generation

“In the past, in the West, in a society deemed Christian, faith was the context in which people acted; the reference and adherence to God were part of daily life for the majority. Rather, it was the person who did not believe who had to justify his or her own incredulity. In our world the situation has changed and, increasingly, it is believers who must be able to account for their faith.”
Pope Benedict XVI – General Audience

“Young people need clear guidance to navigate the complexities of today’s world while remaining rooted in their Catholic identity. We must provide them with a solid foundation in Catholic moral thought. By offering instruction that addresses their unique challenges, we equip them to face societal pressures, temptations and moral dilemmas with confidence and wisdom.”
OSV Editorial Board – Helping young people to be fiercely Catholic in today’s world

“Faith that is just a cultural or social habit is no longer enough today; we need a faith that is a radical personal decision for God that will allow us to discover the light and the strength we need to face the challenges of today.”
Fr. Jacques Philippe – Trusting God in the Present

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
GK Chesterton – What’s Wrong with the World

“To truly live, to live a noble life…. How many young people try to ‘live’ and destroy themselves by following things that are fleeting. Some think that it would be better to extinguish this impulse — the impulse to live — because it is dangerous. I would like to say, especially to young people: our worst enemy is not practical problems, no matter how serious and dramatic: life’s greatest danger is a poor spirit of adaptation which is neither meekness nor humility, but mediocrity, cowardice. Is a mediocre young person a youth with a future or not? No! He or she remains there, will not grow, will not have success. Mediocrity or cowardice. Those young people who are afraid of everything: ‘No, this is how I am…’. These young people will not move forward. Meekness, strength, and not cowardice, not mediocrity.”
Pope Francis – General Audience

The faith of which our Lord speaks is not just intellectual acceptance of the truths He has taught: it involves recognizing Him as Son of God, sharing His very life and surrendering ourselves out of love and therefore becoming like Him. But this faith is a gift of God, and we should ask Him to strengthen it and increase it as the Apostles did: Lord “increase our faith!”. While faith is a supernatural, free gift, it is also a virtue, a good habit, which a person can practice and thereby develop: so the Christian, who already has the divine gift of faith, needs with the help of grace to make explicit acts of faith in order to make this virtue grow.
The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries (John 3: 14-15)

About Dr. Marc Tinsley

Dr. Marc Tinsley is the director of Fiercely Catholic™. Dr. Tinsley is not a perfect Catholic, a great Catholic, and maybe not even a good Catholic. But he wants to be Fiercely Catholic.

It is too true that I who write about the devout life am not myself devout, but most certainly I am not without the wish to become so, and it is this wish which encourages me to teach you. A notable literary man has said that a good way to learn is to study, a better to listen, and the best to teach. And St. Augustine, writing to the devout Flora, says, that giving is a claim to receive, and teaching a way to learn.
St. Francis de Sales, An Introduction to the Devout Life

He is tired of the world influencing the Catholic Church instead of the Catholic Church influencing the world.

For decades, he has served his parish as a lector, extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, catechist, RCIA leader, newsletter publisher, social media coordinator, Baptism preparation instructor, and in a variety of other ways.

In 2003, he was nominated by his pastor and awarded the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh’s Manifesting the Kingdom Award by the Bishop of Pittsburgh.

He is a husband, a father, a son, and a brother.

He is a professional speaker and writer.

He looks forward to presenting a Fiercely Catholic program at your next conference, retreat, or other Catholic event.