Manage Account

Regarding Harrison Butker’s recent <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/harrison-butker-speech-at-benedictine">commencement speech at Benedictine College</a>, I’m inclined to agree that a great deal of the controversy surrounding the talk wasn’t over what the Kansas City Chiefs kicker said, but over <a href="https://emilystimpsonchapman.substack.com/p/the-heresies-of-the-manosphere-part-db1">what exactly he meant</a>. (Full disclosure: Butker is my favorite player on my hometown team, and he deserved the MVP award in every Super Bowl the Chiefs appeared in. Yes, including the one they lost.)
For instance, were his remarks about there being “nothing natural about Catholic birth control” a reference to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/catholic-contraception">contraception or NFP</a>? When he said that his wife &#8220;would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,&#8221; was he implying that every woman&#8217;s life doesn&#8217;t truly start until that point? It’s so easy for people to read or hear the same words and come to different interpretations.*
But I think that all Catholics can agree on the true theme of the speech: vocation. From the Latin word for “calling,” vocation is Catholic jargon for the idea that God is inviting you to live in a certain way. As <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/vocations/documents/20230430-messaggio-60-gm-vocazioni.html">Pope Francis</a> has observed, there’s always something invitational about God’s call:
<blockquote>Vocation is “the interplay between divine choice and human freedom,” a dynamic and exciting relationship between God and the human heart. The gift of vocation is like a divine seed that springs up in the soil of our existence, opens our hearts to God and to others, so that we can share with them the treasure we ourselves have found.</blockquote>
We respond to God’s call in our life not because we’re forced to, but because we believe that God knows and loves us perfectly and has good plans for us. As Butker put it, “I have seen it firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life.”
We can think about “vocation” in three levels. At the broadest level, it’s easy to discern God’s vocation for our lives: each of us is called to love, to be holy, and to be saints (CCC 1533, 1998, 2392). More particularly, some of us are called to pursue the vocation to holiness by a particular vocation like marriage, or priesthood, or celibacy, or religious life (CCC 908-945). And at the most granular level, we should be discerning God’s will in our life each day.
Pursuing our vocation is rewarding but it’s often not easy. In <a href="https://youtu.be/Qm1jR2b398k?t=198">interviews</a>, Butker has described some of the sacrifices he has experienced as a working father: from putting the phone away in order to be present to his family, to getting up early on Sundays to  have Mass and family time before the afternoon game.
Often, vocation includes our career pursuits. But other times, being faithful to our vocation can require professional sacrifices that the world doesn’t understand. I left behind a career as a lawyer to go to seminary to discern priesthood. And—in an experience to which I know many homemakers can relate—I had well-meaning people who worried that I would “waste” my law degree. That’s a bad view of both education (a college education should be more than job training) and vocation. Pursuing God’s call may be costly, but it’s never wasteful.
Those of us similarly tempted to judge smart women who choose to marry, have children, and stay at home should resist that temptation. In his 1910 book What’s Wrong with the World, G.K. Chesterton observed a strange paradox: that society praised women for caring for other people’s children (for instance, as a schoolteacher) while denigrating women who care for their own children. This led him to ask,
<blockquote>How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.</blockquote>
In different words, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio.html">Pope St. John Paul II cautioned</a> us against this same type of thinking:
<blockquote>The mentality which honors women more for their work outside the home than for their work within the family must be overcome. This requires that men should truly esteem and love women with total respect for their personal dignity, and that society should create and develop conditions favoring work in the home.</blockquote>
Some women are called to work outside of the home, and in doing so, they’re serving God and their families. That’s wonderful. Other women desire, and are called to, serve God and their families within the home, and this fidelity is something that should be praised and encouraged.

Harrison Butker and Vocations

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DAY 73
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CHALLENGE
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“What proof do you have that God exists?”
DEFENSE
One popular proof proceeds from the existence of change in the universe.
The argument can be framed this way:
1. Some things in the world change.
2. Everything that changes is caused to do so. 
3. Nothing is its own cause. 
4. Therefore, things that change are caused to do so by something else. 5. There cannot be an infinite regress of such causes. 
6. Therefore, there is an ultimate, unchanging cause of change. 
7. God is the ultimate, changeless cause of change 
8. Therefore, God exists.
The premises of this argument are lines 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7. The conclusions (lines 4, 6, and 8) follow from them.
Line 1 is proved by observation: we see constant change in the world around us.
Line 2 is a truth of metaphysics. It is also verified by observation. Whenever we see something change, there is a cause for this change. Line 3 is a truth of metaphysics. The idea of one thing ultimately being its own cause is incoherent.
Line 5 is a truth of metaphysics. Consider an analogy: if a painting is being made then paint is being applied to a canvas. The paint is moved by the bristles of a brush. The bristles are moved by the wood of the first inch of the handle to which they are attached. The wood of the first inch of the handle is moved by the wood of the second inch, which is moved by the wood of the third inch. However, the handle cannot go on forever. Ultimately, the handle is moved by an artist. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest “that a brush can paint by itself, provided it has a very long handle” (Antonin Sertillanges, quoted in Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and His Nature, 265). In the same way, there cannot be an infinite regress of simultaneous causes.
Line 8 is true by definition.
TIP
This is a version of St. Thomas Aquinas’s “first way” of demonstrating God’s existence (ST I:2:3). It’s sometimes called the argument from “motion,” since Aquinas refers to what we call change as motion.
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The Argument from Change

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DAY 302
CHALLENGE
“There is no such thing as mortal sin.”
DEFENSE
The concept of mortal sin is clearly taught in Scripture.
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First, the language of the doctrine is drawn from Scripture itself: “If any one sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that. All wrong-doing is sin, but there is sin which is not mortal” (1 John 5:16–17).
The phrase here translated “mortal” (Greek, pros thanaton) literally means “unto death.” It can be understood to mean a sin that causes spiritual death, a sin so grave that it causes physical death, or grave sin continued to the point of death. In any case, the text envisions the possibility of a Christian (a “brother”) sinning this way.
A full exegesis of this passage is beyond what we can cover, but the New Testament indicates Christians can commit sins costing them salvation. Paul warns: “Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—unless you believed in vain” (1 Cor. 15:1–2). This indicates it is possible for Christians to believe the gospel in vain. Here Paul names one cause for this—failure to adhere to the gospel.
Elsewhere he is more specific, saying: “Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9–10). The fact that Paul felt the need to warn his Christian audience against deception on this indicates both that Christians can commit sins costing them salvation and that they could deceive themselves on this point.
Many similar New Testament passages could be cited, but we should note that the need to avoid mortal sin is stressed by our Lord: “If you would enter life, keep the commandments. . . . You shall not kill, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 19:17–19).
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Mortal Sin

Nobody goes to the movies anymore

Weight loss drugs

Crisis of institutions

Migration

Rise of AI

The Flannel Panel continues its 2025 year-in-review by examining major cultural and technological shifts, including the collapse of moviegoing, the explosion of weight-loss drugs, the growing crisis of trust in institutions, and the ongoing debates over migration. The panel also tackles the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and what these trends mean for society, culture, and the future.
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Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Weight-loss Drugs, AI and 2025 in Review | Flannel Panel

The Original airdate for this episode was Easter Monday but with the passing of Pope Francis, we pushed the episode back to Easter Wednesday
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>
Celebrate Easter Wednesday with the Flannel Panel on this special episode of Catholic Answers Live! Join host Cy Kellett, apologist Joe Heschmeyer, and Catholic Answers president Chris Check as they reflect on the joy of the Resurrection, the meaning of the Easter Octave, and the profound relevance of Jesus&#8217; triumph over death.
From theological insights on the empty tomb and the significance of liturgical traditions to real-world news of a remarkable resurgence in Catholicism—especially among young men in Great Britain—this conversation dives deep into the signs of hope across the global Church.
Whether you&#8217;re a convert, cradle Catholic, or someone exploring the faith, this lively episode offers encouragement, challenge, and practical takeaways for living the Resurrection all year long.

Flannel Panel | Easter Edition

Get the JOE NOTES, sources for this episode, and more Shameless Popery on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/ShamelessPopery

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Stop missing the point of the flood in Noah's Ark.

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CHALLENGE
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“Even if we grant that the unborn are living human beings, that doesn’t mean abortion is wrong. Why would it be?”
DEFENSE
A fundamental principle of morality is that you can never deliberately kill an innocent human being. It is a human universal that you cannot slay the innocent. If a society failed to recognize this principle—so its ordinary, innocent members could be killed at will—then that society would descend into anarchy and break apart.
The basic moral intuition that killing innocents is wrong is so strong that when genocides have killed large numbers of innocent people, the killers have had to argue one of two things:
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<li>that the people they were slaughtering were not really innocent but guilty of some present or historical wrongdoing, or</li>
<li>that they were not really human but somehow subhuman.Sometimes both have been argued, as when the Nazis killed millions of Jewish people, claiming that they were subverting German society and that they were racially inferior. The fact that they felt the need for such rationalizations pays tribute to the strength of the basic moral intuition that innocent human beings must not be killed.This is the fundamental insight that lies behind every society’s prohibition on murder.
To deny that we must respect the right to life of every innocent person is to violate a universal human moral norm. It is to embrace an inhuman and fundamentally immoral principle.
Of course, not every form of killing is murder. It is not murder to kill a plant or an animal. Similarly, it may not be murder to kill an aggressor in wartime, or someone who is trying to take your own life. Killing an aggressor in self-defense can be morally permissible.
Yet it is always wrong to deliberately take the life of an innocent human being, which raises the real question in the abortion debate: Do the unborn count as innocent human beings? It is clear that they are innocent. The unborn do not have the ability to harm anyone. Few things could be more innocent than an unborn baby in a mother’s womb.
The question thus comes down to the issue of whether the unborn are human beings. As we show elsewhere, the scientific evidence is unambiguous that they are (see Day 185).</li>
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Killing Innocents

In this episode Trent shows how modern atheism commits one of the fallacies it claims is typical among arguments for the existence of God.

One Question Atheists Can’t Answer

Will the brown scapular alone save you from hell? What is the brown scapular, and what does it actually do?

Does Galatians 3 mean that we are all the chosen people?

What book do you recommend making the jump from atheism to theism?

What does St. Ignatius of Antioch mean when he introduces himself as God Inspired in his letters?

What’s the Catholic response to people who use the bible to claim the earth is flat?

&#8220;Can The Brown Scapular Save You from Hell?&#8221; In this episode, we explore the significance of the brown scapular and its role in salvation. Additionally, we tackle questions about Galatians 3 and its implications for the chosen people, recommend resources for transitioning from atheism to theism, and discuss St. Ignatius of Antioch&#8217;s self-identification in his letters.
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Can The Brown Scapular Save You from Hell?

If you’ve been an American Catholic, or even just followed Catholic news, for the last several decades, you might have the impression that Catholic priests in America have gotten a lot more orthodox, and a lot more politically conservative. But you might not realize just how right you are.
After polling thousands of Catholic priests and engaging in in-depth interviews with one hundred of them, the Catholic Project at CUA released a report examining “polarization” and “generational dynamics” within the American Catholic priesthood. The results were striking. On both theological and political issues, there is a chasm separating the views of older and younger priests.
Back in 1972, Paul Simon could sing, “When the radical priest / come to get me released / we was all on the cover of Newsweek,” in an apparent reference to the pacifist activist Daniel Berrigan, S.J., who had been on the cover of Time (not Newsweek) the prior year. The lyric made sense: priests like Berrigan were beloved figures on the left, and they were hardly alone. The Catholic Project study found that a majority of priests ordained before 1970 self-describe both as “somewhat liberal” or “very liberal” politically and “somewhat progressive” or “very progressive” theologically. In contrast, only about 20 percent of priests from that era consider themselves either politically or theologically conservative.
But the “radical priests” of the sixties and early seventies gave way to a new type of priest . . . or, perhaps more accurately, new types of priests. As one of the surveyed priests describes it,
<blockquote>priests in their seventies and sixties now would be one cohort. And then you have the JPII-generation that would be very orthodox, but still have some, you know, free-flowing-liturgy-stuff. Then you get in the Benedict stuff, which is like, you know, the hard-on-everything kind of guys. And the young guys now, I’d say, you have a lot in common with those last few cohorts, but no one’s really—the super-progressive wing really didn’t replicate themselves.</blockquote>
That priest accurately describes what are really three distinguishable shifts within the priesthood: a trend toward theological orthodoxy, a trend toward more traditional forms of liturgical praxis, and a trend toward political conservativism. For the sake of clarity, I’ll use “progressive” and “orthodox” to refer to one’s theological leanings, and “liberal” and “conservative” to refer to one’s political orientation. (Apart from this priest’s comments, the survey largely ignored the accompanying liturgical shift, but it’s worth bearing in mind as we consider these questions.)
To me, what’s most striking isn’t any of these three shifts, but the utter collapse of theological progressivism within the priesthood. Saying that “the super-progressive wing really didn’t replicate themselves” is almost an understatement when you look at the data. As the report highlights,
<blockquote>a full 85 percent of the youngest cohort describes itself as “conservative/orthodox” or “very conservative/orthodox” theologically, with only 14 percent (the smallest percentage of any cohort) describing themselves as “middle-of-the-road.” Theologically ‘progressive’ and “very progressive” priests once made up 68 percent of new ordinands. Today, that number has dwindled almost to zero.</blockquote>
With 85 percent of the priests describing themselves as conservative/orthodox, and another 14 percent describing themselves as “middle-of-the-road,” that leaves only about 1 percent of new priests who would be considered “progressive.” And bear in mind: these are priests who spent most or all of their time in seminary during the pontificate of Pope Francis, yet they self-describe as more conservative (both politically and theologically) than their brother priests ordained under John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Nor is this a fluke. As the study authors point out, “self-described liberal or progressive priests, considered both politically and theologically, have been declining with every successive cohort for more than 50 years. Self-described liberal or progressive priests have all but disappeared from the youngest cohorts of priests.” Make no mistake: while there are plenty of gray- and white-haired progressive Catholic priests still making headlines in the U.S., there are hardly any younger Catholics following them (particularly into the priesthood). Unless some radical reversal occurs in the near term, we’re witnessing the virtual extinction of the progressive Catholic priest.
So what accounts for the half-century-long death of the progressive priest? Progressive priests have been on the decline during the pontificates of Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and now Francis. But although an inspiring pope might account for more conservative/orthodox men wanting to become priests, it doesn’t explain the failure of theologically progressive young men to pursue the priesthood. Nor can one simply blame (or thank) the bishops, since in many cases, the seminarians and newly ordained priests have been more traditional, conservative, and orthodox than the bishops ordaining them.
Instead, there seems to be something within theological progressivism itself that is to blame. Tentatively, I would point to three possible factors. First, many of the beliefs of theologically progressive Catholicism are antithetical to the priesthood. Take a progressive Catholic like Garry Wills (the former Jesuit seminarian), who wrote a book called Why Priests?: A Failed Tradition, arguing against the divine and apostolic origins of the Catholic priesthood. Perhaps needless to say, a Catholic who accepts the thesis of that book is unlikely to also think that God is calling him to become a priest.
Second, there may be an ironic effect at play in which the weakening of Catholic culture has destroyed much of progressive Catholicism. The older generations of progressive Catholics often grew up in Catholic enclaves in which daily life centered on Catholic devotions, the local parish, and the parish priest. One of the older priests interviewed described it this way: “I liked the lifestyle of the priest and recognition and respect that the priest had.” That draw might endure even if the young man stopped believing in aspects of Catholic teaching.
But for a variety of reasons, that world no longer exists. Owing to demographic shifts (there are fewer Catholic ghettos in the U.S. anymore), the fallout of the sexual abuse scandal (priests no longer enjoy that “recognition and respect”), and perhaps even the success of progressive Catholic priests in quashing much of the traditional devotional life with which they had grown up, a young man who stops believing in aspects of Catholic teaching today is likely to simply stop identifying as Catholic, or at least to stop bother going to Mass. Put more positively, this means that young men discerning the priesthood now are more likely to be there because they actually believe it, not simply because they want recognition and respect.
Third, even among those progressives who continue to consider themselves Catholic, the priesthood is not an obvious option. Progressive Catholics were (and are) right to see that many of their traditional Catholic peers stressed (and stress) the dignity of the priesthood to the near exclusion of the universal call to holiness. But in many cases, the reaction to this has been to blur the distinction between the priesthood and laity.
To take an extreme example, Trent Horn points out in <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/confusion-in-the-kingdom/">Confusion in the Kingdom</a>, “For some feminist theologians, even the concept of priests as mediators between God and man is oppressive.” As Jill Peterfeso points out in her book Womanpriest, this creates a Catch-22; because groups like “Roman Catholic Women Priests” really aim “to dissolve the boundary between clergy and laity, womenpriests cannot simply uphold their own ontological specialness if they wish to empower the laity.” So they’re left arguing both that they are and aren’t ordained Catholic priests.
A more moderate version of this is to speak and think of the priesthood as if it consisted principally of community organizing or social justice activism. But one can do those things without spending years in seminary, promising celibacy (or vowing poverty, chastity, and obedience), and being under the authority of a bishop or religious superior. For instance, Philip Berrigan started out as a “radical priest” like his brother Daniel, but he continued to be a radical anti-war activist even after he was (briefly) excommunicated in 1973 for eloping with a nun. It turns out he could <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/dec/12/guardianobituaries">continue to be</a> “one half of the famous and militant Roman Catholic Berrigan brothers” even after leaving the priesthood behind.
Perhaps the survey data on young and old Catholic priests should give all of us pause. With the extinction of the theologically progressive Catholic priest, we also find the near extinction of the politically liberal priest. These aren’t the same thing—it’s true that priests with a “leftward” political leaning have tended to pair that with theological dissent in a way that has proved fatal to their liberal Catholicism, but it’s possible to conflate theology and politics in the opposite direction as well, as if fidelity to Jesus Christ meant the same thing as fidelity to political conservatism, or the G.O.P., or Donald Trump.
In an age in which the Church finds itself at odds with the state on issues ranging from abortion to immigration to war, we should be at least mindful of what’s been gained and what’s been lost in the near extinction of the liberal Catholic priest.

The Death of Liberal Catholicism

One of the most common objections to the idea of hell is that it&#8217;s incompatible with the idea that God is both all-powerful and all-loving. But is that the case? To answer this, we need to reconsider what we mean about God, heaven and hell, and goodness.

Is Hell Consistent with the Idea of a Loving God?

The Mormon belief in the Great Apostasy is false. It's contrary both to scripture and to history.

Is devotion to the Divine Mercy an innovation or something consistent with the traditions of the Church? We sat down to get the answers from Fr. Hugh Barbour on Catholic Answers Focus.

The Divine Mercy (Part 1)

<div>Can the priest ask the congregation to leave the pew to welcome others after the homily?</div><div><blockquote>Therefore no other person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority. (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html">Sacrosanctum Concilium</a> 22,3).</blockquote>
I&#8217;m not sure what justification a priest would use to defend such a request. There is nothing in the rubrics for Mass that would permit such an action.
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Welcoming Others After the Homily?

Why does Hebrews 9:4 claim the two stone tables of the Ten Commandments, Aaron’s miraculous staff, and the pot of manna were in the Ark of the Covenant, when 1 Kings 8:9 says, “There was nothing in the Ark except the two tables of stone which Moses put there at Horeb”? Does this represent a contradiction in Sacred Scripture?
There are four key points that should suffice here to answer.
1. God gave the original design of the Tabernacle (or “Tent of the Testimony”). In the context of designing and building the Ark, God commanded Moses to place (or have Aaron place) a sample of the manna, Aaron’s rod, and the two tables of the Ten Commandments in the Ark. So there is no doubt that all three of these holy relics were in the Ark, at least in the beginning, when it was designed, built, and consecrated.
How do we know that? From Hebrews 9:4. And the word of God is inspired and inerrant. Simple enough.
But the question here concerns those who claim that the Old Testament presents a contrary view from Hebrews 9:4. How do we respond to this? Well, there is no contradiction.
Notice first that in Exodus 25:16, God commands Moses to place “the testimony” or “the tables of the testimony” (31:18) into the Ark, as part and parcel of God’s personal design. In verse 16, God says, “And you shall put into the ark, the testimony which I shall give you.” Testimony can also be translated as covenant inasmuch as the Ten Commandments represent the heart of the covenant between God and Israel.
Thus, it is clear: the Ten Commandments as “written with the finger of God” are revealed to have been in the Ark (see also Exod. 25:21-22). In fact, that is why the Ark is called “the Ark of the Testimony,” or “the Ark of the Covenant.” It is because it contained the two “tables of the testimony,” also referred to simply as “the testimony.”
2. We also clearly see that an “Omer” (almost one gallon) of manna was commanded by God to be placed in the Ark. In Exodus 16:32-34:
<blockquote>And Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Let an omer of [manna] be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord, to be kept throughout your generations.” As the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony, to be kept.</blockquote>
Notice that when God says to place the manna “before the testimony,” that does not mean “in front of,” nor, certainly, “apart from” the two tables of the Ten Commandments. “Before” means in a close, even intimate proximity. Thus, when Moses first tells Aaron to place the manna before the Lord, that would mean in intimate proximity. And then notice that Aaron obeys Moses by placing the manna not just before the Lord, but before the testimony. “Before the Lord” and “before the testimony” indicate proximity. Thus, if the Ten Commandments are “in the Ark”—and we know they were—then the manna would be “in the Ark” as well, before the testimony that was in the Ark. There can be no doubt about this.
3. We also see clearly that Aaron’s miraculous rod, or staff, was in the Ark according to Exodus 17:6-10. The chapter begins just after the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram is quite definitively put down by divine intervention. These rebels were calling into question Aaron’s authority (and therefore Moses’ . . . and therefore God’s!). God crushed their rebellion and killed all involved.
Yet the people of Israel were shockingly still not ready to come on board with God’s plan. They then started accusing Moses of killing their people, as if they were somehow innocent. To say they were still in rebellion mode would be an understatement.
That is when God had all of the heads of the twelve tribes present their staffs (or rods), along with Aaron’s, declaring that the one whose staff miraculously was to bud flowers would be the one God had chosen to be the high priest of God. Well, we all know the story. Aaron’s rod miraculously budded flowers (Num. 17).
Number 17:7 first says the rods of the tribal leaders, along with Aaron’s, were placed before the Lord in the tent of the testimony. If they are to be laid “before the Lord,” that would most likely (though not definitively) refer to the most intimate of places. But because it then says “in the tent of the testimony,” it becomes a little less precise.
The “tent of the testimony,” sometimes called “the tabernacle,” consisted of three parts: the outer court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Thus, in the tent of the testimony could mean something other than in the Ark, which was in the Holy of Holies. However, the text clarifies things for us when, in verse ten, after the miracle, “the Lord said to Moses, ‘Put back the rod of Aaron before the testimony, to be kept as a sign . . . lest they die.’” That language makes clear that Aaron’s miraculous staff was placed in the Ark of the Covenant along with the pot of manna and the two tables of the Ten Commandments.
4. So now we are left with the question: “Why are the pot of manna and Aaron’s rod not there in 1 Kings 8:9?” Well, Scripture does not give us how it happened that two of the three relics were not there. It just tells us that they were not there. We can only speculate.
My take—and there are many scholars who agree with me on this—is that the other relics were lost. More specifically, the Philistines stole them. But the fact that they could be lost or stolen should not be surprising when we consider that Scripture tells us, in 2 Maccabees 2:7-8, that the entire Ark of the Covenant was lost to the people of God during the time of Jeremiah, and by God’s design. In fact, Jeremiah hid the Ark, and when some among the people of God tried to find the cave he had placed it in, and when
<blockquote>Jeremiah learned of it, he rebuked them and declared: “The place shall be unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. And then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear.”</blockquote>
And, of course, that time of fulfillment came . . . at the time of our Blessed Lord and our Blessed Lady, the true fulfillment of Ark of the Covenant (see Luke 1:26-45).
But most likely, sometime between the initial consecration of the Ark and the placing of all three relics within it and the revelation that two of the relics were gone at the time of Solomon, they had been lost, stolen, destroyed, or all three. Because “the tent of the testimony” was designed to be moveable and the people of God broke it down, carried it about, and put it back together again over and over again over the centuries, there were many opportunities for these relics to be lost. But my personal opinion is that it may well have happened during the time of David, when the Philistines and “the men of Bethshemes” stole the Ark and kept it for seven months (1 Sam. 4:14-6:21). The two lost relics were never seen again after that time.
The bottom line is this: precisely when Aaron’s rod and the pot of manna were lost to the people of God is not revealed. But three things are certain:
<ol>
<li>The fact that they were lost, destroyed, stolen, or all of the above is implied in the texts we examined.</li>
<li>We know that it happened sometime between the placing of the three holy relics in the Ark and the revelation that two of those relics were no longer present in 1 Kings 8:9.</li>
<li>There is nothing in the controverted texts of Scripture that even imply a contradiction.</li>
</ol>

An Ark of the Covenant Mystery

What to Do When A Spouse Is Addicted to Pornography

You don’t hear of a lot of Muslim Convert

What would It take to Evangelize a Muslim Effectively?

What are the most effective arguments for a Muslim?

What does the saying “without reason” mean?

How is the person of Jesus himself an argument against Islam?

What is meant by “The Muslim Dilemma”?

Is Islam pretty unified or divided?

Has the Koran been changed?

How does the Muslim view of heaven compare with the Christian view?

Why did you decide to start sharing your testimony?

Growing up as a Muslim in Canada

Watching the livestream of the killing of the Coptic martyrs.

Slavery in the Koran

I asked Jesus if Christianity is true.

How did your family react to you leaving Islam?

How did the Christian missionaries introduce you to Jesus?

How would you invite a Muslim to consider Christianity?

Every religion has to deal with Jesus.

In this interview, Catholic Answers Producer Edgar Lujano talks about Islam with Muslim to Catholic convert Ismail Youseff.
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Why I Left Islam w/ Ismail Youseff

<div>will food be eaten in heaven ?</div><div>In heaven, we will not, strictly speaking, have need of food for our sustenance as we do on earth, because there will be no death in heaven, nor any suffering (see CCC 1044), both of which occur on earth when adequate food is not consumed.
However, we will have glorified bodies (see CCC 1038ff.), and Jesus consumed food in his glorified, post-Resurrection bodily state (Lk. 24:36-42). Scripture also speaks of “the marriage supper of the Lamb” in heaven (Revelation 19:9), although what that supper entails is not clear.
In summary, it’s possible we could eat food as part of our heavenly joy, even though it won’t be required. In addition, given our glorified bodies, we will have no worry about issues of digestion or discharge.
</div>

Will We Eat Food in Heaven?

Is there a place for faith in the workplace? Professional baseball pitcher Trevor Williams stops by to talk about pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates and living as a Catholic.

Professionalism and Faith

Trent Horn explains why Catholics, while required to recognize the dignity of all humans, can reasonably disagree about how to implement immigration policies.
Transcript:
Host: Michael in Sacramento, California, listening on 1620 KSMH. Michael, why do you reject Catholic morality?
Caller: I don&#8217;t entirely, but I look askance at it when I see numerous bishops, especially in our western states, calling for this acceptance of illegal immigrants, which&#8211;if I were in those immigrants&#8217; shoes, I would probably jump the border too, because I would be desperate to escape the situation they&#8217;re in. I understand that, I relate to that as a human being. However, the argument is to respect the dignity of the human being, which is good, but how do we embrace the illegal immigrant while telling the legal immigrant, &#8220;Oh you&#8217;re a chump because this guy gets cut in line in front of you.&#8221; We tell the rancher in Texas and Arizona, &#8220;You&#8217;re a chump because these guys get to just trash a property on the way through,&#8221; and we get to tell the taxpayer, &#8220;You&#8217;re a chump because we&#8217;re going to support these people even though they&#8217;re undocumented, they don&#8217;t belong here.&#8221; And they&#8211;and the bishops don&#8217;t seem to have these same harsh words for Mexico, which fiercely protects its southern border. It seems like a double standard, I don&#8217;t get it.
Host: Alright Michael, let&#8217;s let Trent try and take a shot at that.
Trent: Okay, Michael, I guess I don&#8217;t want to single any bishops out, we&#8217;re not here in the business of policing what bishops and other clerics say necessarily; but I haven&#8217;t really heard anyone say we ought to welcome illegal immigrants or not have borders at all. I&#8217;m not familiar with any bishop saying that. In fact, recently, Pope Francis, in an interview&#8211;this was back in January 22nd&#8211; he said, &#8220;Can borders be controlled? Yes.&#8221; Each country has a right to control its borders, who enters and who leaves; and countries that are in danger of terrorism and the like have have more right to control them more. So I would say&#8211;would you agree that there&#8217;s a balance here? Do you see the value and a moral duty we may have the migrants in general, to those who would, let&#8217;s say they&#8217;re refugees from a war-torn country?
Caller: Well, yes, and at the same time I&#8217;m not hearing bishops in the United States saying, &#8220;Hey if you&#8217;re here illegally, go home. You don&#8217;t belong here. Come back, follow the rules.&#8221; Do you?
Trent: I haven&#8217;t heard any bishops talking about encouraging people to deport themselves, but we also have to take into account, for example, the common good; that people may already be entrenched within a community, and if they were to leave, that could cause extreme hardships for families, plunge them to severe poverty; or, for example, it could be very bad for the country that they&#8217;re in. So do you think, for example, there would be negative economic consequences if the 11 million undocumented workers in this country simply left tomorrow? Is it possible there would be negative economic consequences?
Caller: Well, of course there are always going to be consequences to every action, Trent. But let me point this out: if a father is driving drunk, and he creates for himself and his family a civil and criminal penalty, a lawsuit and jail time and legal expenses; does the state need to come along and say, &#8220;Oh gee, you know, that&#8217;s really gonna suck for your kids, so we&#8217;re going to bail you out, I&#8217;m going to make everything right pretend like it didn&#8217;t happen so your kids can still have their college funds instead of having to spend them on legal expenses?&#8221;
Trent: Well, I think what you&#8217;re saying is if someone commits a crime, it would be unjust if they were to suffer no punishment at all. Is that what you&#8217;re saying?
Caller: Somebody comes into this country illegally, they have committed a crime. They have broken U.S. law. So by&#8211;
Trent: Michael, can I ask you a question? Could we have a reasonable di&#8211;here&#8217;s the thing: the Church teaches about the dignity of migrants, and the general right to migrate, and the moral duty of countries to accept immigrants as they can, as they&#8217;re able to, and the duty and the justice of maintaining borders. So it seems to me our disagreement&#8211;I would agree with you that if someone breaks the law, they need to be held accountable for that. Would you agree there can be reasonable disagreements, you know, we can have a discussion about &#8220;What would that be?&#8221; Some people may say, &#8220;Well, if you are here illegally, the punishment should be deportation.&#8221; Others may say, &#8220;Perhaps the punishment could be a form of fines,&#8221; or things like that. Do you see how a Catholic could engage in a debate about what punishment is best? It doesn&#8217;t necessarily have to be deportation?
Caller: Well, yes I understand that. But at the same time, if you were an immigrant who came here legally, and you came through the channels, you waited, you applied, you waited, you did all the things according to US law; and then somebody basically jumps in line ahead of you having skirted the law, received some&#8211;call it amnesty, call it what you will, but it amounts to amnesty&#8211; don&#8217;t you feel like, you know, &#8220;What a chump I am. I went through the channels, I obeyed U.S. law, and here this guy gets to&#8211;he gets in without having to go through all that stuff.&#8221;
Trent: It sounds like your&#8211;a chump&#8211;it sounds like you&#8217;re describing someone who may be mad that a government or other people are merciful towards others. Should we be mad if mercy is granted to other people?
Caller: But where is the mercy toward the law-abiding citizen? Where is the mercy to the taxpayer who&#8217;s footing the bill? Where is the mercy to the rancher in Texas whose property is trashed and littered and his animals threatened? Because all these things happen, and if you&#8217;re not aware of those&#8211;it&#8217;s a tension. It&#8217;s a tension, and I don&#8217;t pretend that there is a one solution, &#8220;one-size-fits-all&#8221; answer; but what I&#8217;m not hearing from bishops is this insistence that people need to&#8211;well, it would be helpful, fix your own country. Because if Mexico&#8211; Mexico should be a paradise, given its resources. It should not be a parasite.
Trent: Okay, well, I think we&#8217;re gonna move on, I think, from the call here, though I&#8211;actually I&#8217;ve&#8211;my understanding, and I&#8217;m willing to be corrected by other callers later in the show or by email, is that actually, net immigration from Mexico in recent years has actually gone down. More people go from America to Mexico than the other way. That&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve heard in that regard. But yeah I think we&#8217;ll have to move on, probably, from this this call.
But notice, I think, what&#8217;s happening here, is that we have&#8211;and this is important when people discuss issues in Catholic morality, that there are sort of these sub-facets. There are issues where Catholics must agree; things that involve intrinsic evils, for example, or basic rights. Then there&#8217;s other things where there can be disagreement. You know, Catholics can reasonably disagree among themselves, &#8220;What is the best policy to secure the common good?&#8221; So for example, Catholics must agree that there is, in general, the Church teaches a right to migrate; that someone who&#8211;especially in the case of someone who is trying to protect their family from things like ethnic cleansing, for example, or war, has a right to seek safety and shelter elsewhere. And there&#8217;d be a corresponding duty for other nations to accept these immigrants as they can. If they&#8217;re not able to do that, if that destabilizes their own societies then they just can&#8217;t.
But then&#8211;so that&#8217;s the basic principle, but then there&#8217;s&#8211;what do we do, then, about the sub-facets? You know, if somebody illegally immigrates, should there be a punishment? What should that be? As I said to the caller, some people might say &#8220;Well, deportation;&#8221; others will say, &#8220;No, that causes more harm, there&#8217;s other punishments that would be, you know, more just;&#8221; and that&#8217;s a disagreement Catholics can have among themselves. And, you know, I&#8217;m not going to speak to the bishops and what each of them individually has said about this, but I would recommend going to the Catechism&#8211;and I think this actually may come up more on in the show, but the Catechism talks about immigration in paragraph 2241, though we may talk about that with one of our next callers.
So yeah, I think that we can disagree about&#8211;there are the sub-facets, that&#8217;s fine, we can have discussion and debate; but let&#8217;s also keep our focus on the main issue about the dignity of the person, and always underscore that.

Do the Bishops in America Have a Double Standard When It Comes to Illegal Immigrants?

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DAY 250
CHALLENGE
“Christmas is based on a pagan holiday.”
DEFENSE
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There are multiple responses to this challenge.
First, which pagan holiday are we talking about? Sometimes Saturnalia—a Roman festival honoring the god Saturn—is proposed. But Saturnalia was held on December 17 (and later extended through December 23). It wasn’t December 25.
Another proposal is Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (Latin, “The Birthday of the Unconquerable Sun”), but the evidence this was the basis of the dating of Christmas is problematic. The Christian Chronography of A.D. 354 records the “Birthday of the Unconquerable” was celebrated on that date in 354, but the identity of “the Unconquerable” is unclear. Since it’s a Christian document that elsewhere (twice) lists Jesus’ birthday as December 25, it could be the Unconquerable Christ—not the sun—whose birth was celebrated.
Second, correlation is not causation. Even if Christmas and Sol Invictus were both on December 25, Christmas might have been the basis of Sol Invictus, or the reverse, or it might just be a coincidence. If you want to claim the date of Sol Invictus is the basis for the date of Christmas, you need evidence.
Third, that evidence is hard to come by. Even if the Chronology of A.D. 354 refers to Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25, this is the first reference to the fact, and we know some Christians held that Jesus was born on that date long before 354.
For example, St. Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170–c. 240) stated in his commentary on Daniel that Jesus was born on December 25, and he wrote around a century and a half before 354 (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., §562). Further, Sol Invictus wasn’t even an official Roman cult until 274, when the Emperor Aurelian made it one.
Fourth, if Christians were subverting Sol Invictus, we should find the Church Fathers saying, “Let’s subvert Sol Invictus by celebrating Christmas instead.” But we don’t. The Fathers who celebrate December 25 sincerely think that’s when Jesus was born (ibid., §§562–567).
Finally, even if Christmas was timed to subvert a pagan holiday, so what? Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, and celebrating the birth of Christ is a good thing. So is subverting paganism. If the early Christians were doing both, big deal!
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Is Christmas Pagan?

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Why Don’t You Think Catholicism Makes Sense?

Twenty years after John Paul the Great went home to the house of the Father, I&#8217;ve noticed that many of his teachings have still not been received.
It’s not that Catholics have entirely forgotten the remarkable, world-shaping pontiff who led the Church for nearly twenty-seven years. It’s that much of the world has shrugged and moved on from the life-giving vision the man from Poland proposed.
First, a brief history lesson.
When he was elected to the throne of Peter in 1978, Cardinal Karol Wojtyła became the first Slavic pope and the first non-Italian in 455 years.
During his pontificate, he became not only one of the most prolific pontiffs in history, but also the most visible. John Paul holds the distinction of being the most seen human being in history, having visited 129 countries during his papacy. More than a billion people saw him at the Vatican and around the world.
He was an athlete, scholar, and polyglot (he spoke as many as eleven languages fluently), and he had a decidedly sharp sense of humor. He gave us the revised Code of Canon Law, the first universal catechism in 426 years, World Youth Day, the Luminous Mysteries, the New Evangelization, and 482 new saints—more than all popes of the previous 500 years combined.
With a résumé like that, you might think he changed the world so profoundly that apologetics and catechesis would be largely unnecessary today.
As it turns out, we still have work to do.
<h2>1. Theology of the Body: Known by Few, Needed by Many</h2>
It seems clear that our culture has yet to absorb much of the Polish pope’s teaching—especially on human sexuality.
Even before his election, Wojtyła diagnosed a deep misunderstanding of the human person. His 1960 book Love and Responsibility anticipated the Sexual Revolution and offered a Christian anthropology ordered to authentic love.
That confusion erupted in dissent from Pope Saint Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae among bishops, clergy, and laity alike. Seeking to place that prophetic document on solid anthropological footing, John Paul II launched a series of 130 catecheses, beginning on September 5, 1979, later known as the Theology of the Body (TOB).
TOB presents an integrated vision of the person, especially in the realm of sexuality. The body, he taught, has a nuptial meaning: it makes visible an invisible reality, revealing both God and the truth about ourselves. Marital love, read through Christ’s love for the Church, is a total self-gift that demands sacrifice.
“Man, whom God created male and female, bears the divine image imprinted on his body ‘from the beginning,’” he said in 1980. “Man and woman constitute two different ways of the human ‘being a body’ in the unity of that image.”
This is luminous teaching—widely embraced in faithful homes and schools, yet largely unknown elsewhere. Surveys of younger adults suggest growing comfort with post-Christian sexual norms, which means many never even encounter the freedom that Christ and his Church propose. A 2019 GLAAD study found that 45 percent of Gen Z (ages 18-34) were comfortable with all LGBTQ-related scenarios.
<h2>2. Truth and Freedom: Moral Absolutes vs. “My Truth”</h2>
Reception of John Paul&#8217;s sexual ethics has been limited; likewise, parts of his moral theology are contested—or quietly ignored. The noisy dissent on sexual morality that followed Vatican II has receded, but a softer, more pervasive resistance has settled into Church life in many dioceses.
John Paul answered that resistance with clarity. He insisted that moral theology must be rooted in the dignity of the human person, oriented to truth, and ordered to holiness—uniting moral absolutes with a deep respect for freedom and responsibility.
Truth and freedom, he argued, stand or fall together because both are found in Jesus Christ. “There is no liberty without truth,” he said during Vatican II. He would later open Fides et Ratio in 1998 with the line “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth,” because God has planted in every heart the desire to know him.
In Veritatis Splendor, he called truth “the light of human reason” that “enlightens man’s intelligence and shapes his freedom.” Sin darkens the mind, but hearts opened to God find truth compelling.
At World Youth Day in 1997, he said Christ “has called you . . . to live in the freedom of the children of God. Turn to him in prayer and in love. Ask him to grant you the courage and strength to live in this freedom always. Walk with him who is the way, the truth, and the life!”
Interestingly, a Barna research study last year found that nearly two thirds of Gen Zers say they pray at least weekly. The study also found that 57 percent of them agree that there are facts we can know about scientific questions, but religious or moral questions require treatment that goes beyond just the technical or empirical.
That conviction about objective moral truth was not abstract; it was forged in a century when regimes tried to erase it. During the Soviet era, two Americans—Ronald Reagan and Bishop Fulton Sheen—stood out for warning the world about socialism and communism. The Stalinist regime that ruled John Paul’s home country forced him to be guarded in his criticism. But when he was elected to the See of Peter, the gloves were off.
<h2>3. Socialism Rebranded: Why His Warning Still Applies</h2>
Sadly, many of the warnings Reagan, Sheen, and John Paul gave us have gone unheeded. Young people continue to seek Utopia. Earlier this year, a Cato Institute/YouGov poll reported that 62 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds hold a favorable view of socialism.
John Paul argued that Marxism misjudges the human person. In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, he said Marxist socialism’s “fundamental error” is anthropological—it turns persons into cogs, undermines freedom and responsibility, and rejects private property.
Because socialism builds on Marx&#8217;s atheism, “the denial of God deprives the person of his foundation.” Socialism, he said, necessarily deprives human beings of their value.
His analysis wasn&#8217;t just academic. As a young man, he experienced both Nazi and communist regimes ruling his homeland. His firsthand witness of both flawed ideologies gave rise to his firm defense of the inalienable dignity of each human person, created in God&#8217;s image and likeness. That defense is woven like a golden thread throughout John Paul&#8217;s teaching from the time he was a bishop in Poland.
Given the challenges to authentic Church teaching John Paul gave us, what would he say from heaven about the state of the world and the Church—and about his great New Evangelization?
The answer is simple: we still have much work to do.

3 John Paul II Teachings that the World Should Learn

Do We Leave Time When We Die?

Discover the fascinating possibilities of demonic influence on technology with Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin. Learn about demonic infestation, psychokinesis, and the importance of evidence-based reasoning when exploring the connection between smartphones, algorithms, and mental health.
Transcript:
Ani in New Mexico, listening on the Catholic Answers Live app. Welcome. Go ahead with your question for Jimmy. Hello. Hello. So, me and my friend were talking and we noticed that we were doing a research paper on the increased depression rates, especially in the rides and smartphones, and it got us thinking on if it&#8217;s possible for demons to possess objects, and if so, could they manipulate the algorithms in our phones to potentially cause this? Okay. So, demons can attach themselves to locations or physical objects. This is a form of demonic activity known as infestation. So, if a person is possessed, we call it possession, but if an object is possessed, we&#8217;ll say it&#8217;s infested. Demons, like good angels, have the ability to manipulate matter through their mental efforts, and mind over matter is known as psychokinesis. Psychokinesis comes in different forms. If it affects a macroscopic object, like let&#8217;s say a book flies off the shelf, it&#8217;s called macropsychokinesis. If it affects something that&#8217;s too small to see with the naked eye, it&#8217;s called micropsychokinesis, and we have evidence that good angels have micropsychokinetic abilities. For example, when David has performed his census and against God&#8217;s will and God sends a plague, an angel is the one distributed in the plague, which we would understand in terms of the manipulation of microorganisms, which are too small to see, and therefore even good angels have micropsychokinetic abilities. Well, electrons that run around in electronic devices are also too small to see, and so it would appear that demons being bad angels would also have micropsychokinesis and could potentially affect the operation of electronic devices, including phones, and that could take, that could include rewriting the algorithms in them so that they behave differently. It could just involve manipulating the flow of electrons, but it would seem to be possible for them to do so.
My question would be, do we have good evidence that this is happening, or could it be something else? Like humans have just designed the algorithms and the devices in such a way that it has the unintended consequence of making people depressed in some cases, and you know, there&#8217;s an old saying of don&#8217;t presuppose malice when incompetence will do. Humans do a lot of things that have unintended consequences, and unless you have specific evidence that a demon is involved with a particular smartphone, like you know, it starts talking to you with an alternative personality, and it can&#8217;t stand the holy, and so forth, and it can do preternatural things, then I would say we should attribute negative mental health consequences in conjunction with smartphones to just the way humans have designed them, rather than to demonic involvement in them. I mean, I can&#8217;t rule out that demons are involved, but we need to see evidence for demons before we propose demons as a solution. If you&#8217;d like more information about why that&#8217;s the case, I would suggest that you and your friend listen to episode 188 of Jimmy Aiken&#8217;s Mysterious World, which you can get to by going to mysterious.com slash 188. I&#8217;m sorry, mysterious.fm slash 188.
Hey, thanks for watching! If you like this Catholic answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 pm Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

Have Demons Possessed Phones & Social Media?

How does one become a Doctor of the Church?

There&#8217;s been a LOT of buzz about Pope Leo XIV, both in Catholic media and secular media. Everyone has been digging into Leo&#8217;s past and online history (which in itself is very surreal) and we&#8217;ve found a lot. Here&#8217;s why Joe believes Pope Leo XIV could be an excellent Pope&#8230;
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer and like everyone else, I&#8217;m still waiting to see what Pope Leo the XIV pontificate is going to be like.
CLIP:
Is he woke? We still don&#8217;t know. The new Pope is American. We still don&#8217;t know if he&#8217;s woke. He criticized JD Vance in a tweet, so maybe he&#8217;s woke or maybe he just doesn&#8217;t like the guy who killed his boss,
Joe:
But I&#8217;m very excited. But one thing that I&#8217;m hopeful and even confident that we&#8217;re going to see, namely the restoration of greater unity amongst Catholics. It&#8217;s no secret the Catholics have been very divided over the past few years. Not only squabbling factions of so-called liberals, conservatives, and traditionalists, but the internet is replete with examples of so-called conservative Catholics turn one another apart, either for not loving Pope Francis enough or for loving him too much. It seemed like every time Pope Francis would speak off the cuff or he&#8217;d say something a little ambiguous, it would lead to a new fight over what he meant and how you were meant to feel about it. I think it&#8217;s fair to say that this was one of the chief reasons that Pope Leo was chosen to restore unity to the church and that there are actually several positive signs that should give us hope that he&#8217;ll succeed at least somewhat in that mission. Speaking of incredibly positive signs, I&#8217;ve seen some over on shameless joe.com. Your support there over the last few months has been overwhelming, but I am
CLIP:
Once again asking for your financial support.
Joe:
I&#8217;ve been very grateful to our supporters over on Patreon. I love interacting with you guys. I&#8217;ve gotten some great video ideas from your questions and your comments, and I want you to know that by becoming a member, you get access to exclusive q and a live streams as well as ad free videos hand you directly helped keep this ministry going, so please go to shameless joe.com and become a member today. Alright, so here are six reasons that I&#8217;m hopeful that Pope Leo is going to bring greater unity to the church. First, we&#8217;ve already seen some of this unity in action in his papal election. I&#8217;d venture to say most Catholics had never heard of Cardinal Privos when he became Pope Leo the 14th. And so they didn&#8217;t know how excited to be about his election and many Catholics who are more conservative leaning theologically and politically were alarmed when they saw how excited liberal Catholics like Cardinal Blaise Cupich or Father James Martin were when Pope Leo was announced to the world. But since then, a very different picture has emerged. The Washington Post reported this weekend that conservative cardinals like Cardinal Mueller were pleased with the choice of pontiff and the Italian press is crediting, or in their case, maybe blaming Cardinal Dolan, calling him the king maker for organizing conservative and liberal cardinals alike to support. Now Pope Leo drawing support from the us, from Africa and from Asia. Now Cardinal Dolan himself hinted that there was actually a pretty quick consensus amongst Cardinals of all stripes that Cardinal Privos was the right choice.
CLIP:
You all as seasoned journalists would know, and you&#8217;ve done your background. This kind clay was rather quick.
Yes,
Right? That would lead a savvy observer like yourselves to say there must have been some unanimity from the beginning. There was no shock here. So yeah, if that leads you to think that hey, there was a great sense of unity, there was kind of appeal that this guy exerted right from the beginning.
Joe:
So what would draw people of such varying viewpoints to rally around the same choice for Pope? Well, the attributes they point to Cardinal Soch, for instance, praised him as a missionary pastor. These are precisely the things that all Catholics should desire in a Pope, someone who loves Jesus and loves the downtrodden. In other words, the Cardinals seem to have gone looking for and may have actually found someone who couples Pope Francis&#8217; most attractive qualities, but with some important differences.
CLIP:
So he was obviously close to Pope Francis. We can already tell by the times he loved him very much and listened to him, but we&#8217;ll see some changes as well. And that&#8217;s refreshing, don&#8217;t you think? Yeah.
Joe:
So what are those differences between Pope Francis and Pope Leo? That leads to the second reason. I&#8217;m hopeful because I think we actually got a sense of some of those differences right away, ranging from what we might call his papal style to his papal motto and even his name as Pope. Now, Pope Francis from the beginning seemed to have a desire to shake the church up. He was content to buck small tea traditions that he found cumbersome. He took a totally new papal name, and from the very moment that he emerged on the balcony after his election, we see him in a bare white caic without the traditional red mella or stole. And we find out from him very quickly that he&#8217;s not going to live in the traditional papal apartments, but instead he&#8217;s going to live in the Caza Santa Maria. Well, Pope Leo has returned the papacy to more of a sense of normalcy as it were. He emerged in the traditional garb. He took a surprisingly traditional name more on which in a moment, and he&#8217;s living in the same place that Pope&#8217;s lived before. Pope Francis. Now Liturgically, I&#8217;m going to let the man speak for himself, whether it&#8217;s by the Reverend Way in which he celebrates mass and crisp, clear Latin
CLIP:
Re,
Joe:
Or in his reminder to the
CLIP:
Church that moreover, the church should resist the temptation to believe that it can compete with modern mass media by turning the sacred liturgy into spectacle. Here again, church fathers such as Tertullian remind us today that visual spectacle is the domain of the Secm and that our proper mission is to introduce people to the nature of mystery as an antidote to spectacle. As a consequence, evangelization in the modern world must find the appropriate means for redirecting public attention away from spectacle and into mystery.
Joe:
A third reason that I think Pope Leo&#8217;s pontificate is going to be a mission of reuniting. The church is right there in his papal motto. Now, Pope Leo&#8217;s motto, which he first adopted when he became a bishop is in ilo uno unum, which means in the one we are one, it is a perfect model for him for several reasons. First of all, it&#8217;s a quotation from Saint Augustine and Leo was the prior general of the Augustinian order. He is a son of Augustine to use his own words from his introduction to the world,
CLIP:
I&#8217;m a son of Saint
Joe:
Augustan, but second Augustine is saying that although we Christians are many in the one Christ, we are one. Now back in 2023, then Cardinal Prevost explained that he chose this motto because unity and communion are truly part of the charism of the order of Saint Augustine and also of my way of acting and thinking. So he&#8217;s stressing the need for unity, but also pointing out how it is that we get there. We become unified precisely through our communion with Jesus Christ. In the words of St. Paul, we are one body because we partake of the one bread. The more we draw close to Jesus, the more we draw close to one another and it&#8217;s only in the one Christ that we can ever truly be one. So this isn&#8217;t a unity at the expense of the truth, but a unity in the truth himself. Biblically, this mission of unity in the truth is critical to the success of Christianity.
Remember, Jesus prayed for his future disciples that we would become perfectly one so the world would know that the Father had sent him. When we are divided as Christians and as a church, we don&#8217;t just hinder Christian unity, we cripple our efforts of evangelization. We endanger even our own battles for holiness. After all, one of the reasons that Christ gives us a church is so we can fight the spiritual battles together. And it&#8217;s a great sign that Pope Leo seems to take this call to holy unity. Seriously, this connection between unity and evangelization was one of the themes that Pope Leo hit in his first homily as Pope, but with a fascinating twist, he&#8217;s preaching to the College of Cardinals and the new Pope reminded them that we preach Christ in a hostile world and that we do this first of all in our personal relationship
CLIP:
With the Lord in our daily commitment to the journey of conversion. But then we have to do so as a church experiencing together that our belonging to the Lord leads to our bringing the good needs, good news to all.
Joe:
Now, the Pope Himself obviously plays a special role in bringing people together in this way. And so Leo quotes in Ignatius of Antioch who famously existed and said that the church in Rome presides in charity over the universal church and one way that we are, one is by being united to the Pope, the successor of Peter. That&#8217;s been an important part of Christian theology for 2000 years. But Leo chose to focus on something else, something beautiful in his letter to the Romans. This same saint Ignatius writes,
CLIP:
Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ when the world no longer sees my body.
Joe:
Now in context, Leo meant this quite literally, he was about to be martyred in Rome by being fed to wild beasts. But Leo suggests that we can find in his words a reminder.
CLIP:
It&#8217;s to move aside so that Christ remains to make oneself small so that Christ may be known and glorified to spend oneself even to the utmost so that all may have the opportunity to know him and to love him.
Joe:
In other words, as John the Baptist said, he must increase and I must decrease. Now, those who know the new Pope describe him as shy and less outgoing than Francis, but that profile might be perfect for someone trying to ensure that the eyes of the church are on Jesus Christ rather than on the Pope. Pope Leo&#8217;s papal name definitely matters. Now, I love the fact that he didn&#8217;t choose Paul III or John Paul III or Francis ii, that instead he reached back further into the church&#8217;s history to take his name after one of the most beloved popes in the modern era. Much of the energy in the church over the past few decades has been wasted in intra Catholic fights over how best to properly interpret Vatican ii. But Pope Leo the IV was only 10 years old at the close of Vatican ii. He&#8217;s simply too young to have been a partisan in many of these fights.
Instead, Cardinal Privos one to identify his papacy with that of Pope Leo the 13th, and he explained why in the midst of the first industrial revolution, Pope Leo the 13th wrote the 1891 and Cyclical Rum Navarro in it, Leo the 13th, decried the greedy capitalist of his age, lamenting that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring. Poor, a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. But in that document, he also warned that to remedy these wrongs, the socialists working on the poor man&#8217;s envy of the rich are striving to do away with private property. And the Pope warned this goal must be utterly rejected since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit and is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind and would lead only to confusion and disorder.
Now, in explaining why he chose the name Leo, the new Pope argued, I think correctly that we find ourselves in the midst of a second industrial revolution this time a digital one in which artificial intelligence threatens to create new challenges to human dignity, to justice and to labor, and it might just be this external threat. That&#8217;s precisely what we as Catholics need to come together. And I, for one, am grateful that we have a Pope who seems aware of the dangers and well-equipped to chart what are certain to be uncertain waters. Now, like I said before, it&#8217;s no secret that the church is more divided than in times past. It seems as though the culture wars that have been raging throughout America and the West have crept into church dialogue with increasing polarization. It would&#8217;ve seemed impossible, at least to me even a week ago, to find a pope who both Patrick Coffin and Father James Martin seemed excited about. And yet here we are.
CLIP:
We&#8217;ll see what happens. I&#8217;m, I am generally optimistic, encouraged and I was shocked, but I was also shocked when they read out his name Leo the 14th, and that was the name I wanted the Pope to take. So I&#8217;m glad that he did. That&#8217;s a great sign. It was a comfort to me.
What a rush. This is the first American Pope Robert Prevost, who we&#8217;ve followed for some years at American Magazine. This is truly historic. It feels like a dream.
I&#8217;m going to keep paying attention to what he does because there are good things that he&#8217;s done. I&#8217;m going to show you some of those today. They&#8217;re actually some pretty crazy good things and there are some signs that we need to be cautious, but it&#8217;s day two, as the kids say, let the man cook.
Hey everyone, it&#8217;s Jim Martin, and just sort of stunned by the news of the election of Pope Leo the 14th former Cardinal Prevost. I got to know him a little bit at the Senate. He was at my table, and I know him to be a down to earth kind, modest, reserved guy, hardworking, decisive, not afraid of speaking his mind. It&#8217;s a great choice. I also think it&#8217;s really important to note the choice of the name Leo the iv. A nod to Leo the 13th is the father of Catholic social teaching. So just an amazing choice.
There&#8217;s some signs afoot that this guy is not the neo modernist activist. He just looked like someone in continuity with things that are traditional, things that are anchored in the past. And I think the fact that he has signaled so many things that angle him in a more traditional way gives me sign of hope.
Joe:
Now, if this feels uncanny or almost surreal, then you&#8217;re in good company. As I say, I never would&#8217;ve predicted this, and that&#8217;s not to say that Pope Leo isn&#8217;t going to do something that&#8217;s going to upset one side or another, or both sides of the theological and political isles. I suspect that&#8217;ll happen. But it is surprising and it is heartening to see so many Catholics of all stripes upbeat and encouraged by the new Holy Father. Perhaps this will all turn out to be a honeymoon phase. Perhaps we&#8217;ll go back to the circular firing squad the minute Pope Leo says, or does anything remotely controversial, but we don&#8217;t have to. Now, of course, as many as you know, right before becoming Pope Cardinal Privos was in charge of the Dicastery for Bishops, meaning that he helped to advise Pope Francis on the selection of new bishops.
And so one of the first tests of Leo&#8217;s own pontificate is going to be who he chooses as his own replacement and the kinds of bishops that he begins to appoint. Now that he has a free hand, it&#8217;s an understandable concern, one that I&#8217;m sure the Cardinals took into consideration when electing him as Roman pontiff, but I think that there&#8217;s a very important angle to this that most people are missing. You see, the face of the priesthood is rapidly changing, particularly here in the United States, and this critical sea change in the clergy is going to have a major impact on who Pope Leo chooses to elevate to the Episcopate. Now, what major trend is that you&#8217;re going to have to click here to find out in the meantime, through the intercession of St. Augustine, let&#8217;s pray that we shall become more fully one in Christ Jesus. For Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
&nbsp;

6 early signs Leo XIV could be a GREAT Pope…

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Tips for Defending the Faith

Pornography is one of the most confessed sins in confession. Therefore, I will share some insights for penitents and confessors when it comes up.
<h2>How Should I Confess the Sin of Pornography? Applying Church Requirements</h2>
In confession, the Church requires that we confess each mortal sin that we can remember in kind and the number of times we committed it. If you intentionally viewed pornography <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-counts-as-pornography">in any form</a>, you must confess that you viewed pornography and how many times. If pornography was accompanied by masturbation, you must confess that, too, along with the number of times.
Another item that must be included in our confession is any intention, factor, or circumstance that increases the sinfulness of the act we have committed. In the instance of viewing pornography, it would be necessary to mention anything about the material that increases the gravity of the viewing. For <a href="https://wdtprs.com/2018/01/ask-father-if-i-confess-to-watching-porn-must-i-say-it-was-homosexual-porn/">example</a>, if the pornography was homosexual, then it would be necessary to mention this in the confession, as homosexual acts are contrary to natural law to a degree greater than are acts of fornication. This is necessary even if one viewed homosexual pornography that was not the same sex as the viewer, although whether this is the case ought to be specified in confession also. I hope this principle is clear enough that I need not specify each way that pornographic material in itself could be more grave. This principle also applies to circumstances surrounding its display, such as if the viewer viewed it with someone else or at the workplace.
One temptation for those who fall once is thinking, “I fell and I cannot get to confession for several days. I might as well do it again before I go to confession.” One problem with this, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl7MpiqRnX4">among others</a>, is that it can easily turn into presumption of God’s mercy. If this temptation is given into, it should also be mentioned in confession.
<h2>What If I Try to Access Pornography but Am Unable?</h2>
One wise practice for those who struggle with pornography use is to install software on their devices that can provide filtering and accountability. <a href="https://www.covenanteyes.com/">Covenant Eyes</a> is an example of this.
Sometimes people who install these products on their devices will be tempted to find a way around the filter. Here is the question: if we begin to sin, but are unable to carry out the act, are we guilty of the sin? Here is the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GohSU4bKyo">answer</a>: we become guilty of sin when we make an act of the will that is offensive to God. If a person commits to viewing pornography, then even if he is unable to do so due to the effectiveness of the filter, that an attempt was made to get around it should be confessed. However, if a person is tempted to work around the filter but decides of his own free will not to give into the temptation, then it is not sinful, and moreover, it is the virtuous act of resisting temptation. The difference may be hard to discern in this case, so mentioning it in confession is advised.
<h2>I Keep Confessing This Over and Over Again!</h2>
The Church requires for confession a sincere contrition for sins committed, a desire to sin no more, and a firm purpose of amendment of one’s life. Pornography is a sin that people confess repeatedly, and that can be discouraging. However, it is important not to despair and to keep going to confession. On a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/ive-confessed-this-1000-times">Catholic Answers Live call</a>, a man who struggled with pornography and mentioned it in all of his confessions at the time spoke with Matt Fradd, who said,
<blockquote>In order to have the contrition needed for absolution, we do not need to twist our mind in such a way that we are convinced we will never fall again. We can confess that we have fallen to something, and so long as our will desires never to fall to it again, even though we may recognize that we likely will fall to it again, it is still a valid confession, and you are forgiven.</blockquote>
As long as a person who struggles with the same sin repeatedly truly desires not to sin again, that person can and must continue to bring those sins to confession and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness.
<h2>Some Tips to Make Confession More Effective, Plus Some Limitations of Confession</h2>
The following suggestions are not necessary for confession, but they are helpful tips to implement for both priests and faithful together who want to the sacrament of confession to be an impactful experience that truly inspires the penitent to make progress. First, Fr. Sean Kilcawley offers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j75UX8jmd_M">a series of questions</a> that priests can ask penitents in confession to help them. Penitents who are not asked these questions can also volunteer this information when confessing the sin of pornography. The questions are as follows:
<ol>
<li>How often do you fall into this sin in general?</li>
<li>When was your first exposure to pornography?</li>
<li>Are you speaking to someone outside confession at this time about this?</li>
<li>Do you want to stop?</li>
</ol>
Another suggestion, which comes from my friend Fr. Allen Hoffa, is to offer the penitent the opportunity to make an appointment outside confession. This cannot be required for absolution, but it can be offered to the penitent as an option.
Although confession grants forgiveness of sins, confession alone is often not enough for someone with a habit to overcome pornography use. To make progress, it needs to be discussed with loved ones and possibly a therapist. The seal of confession is a gift, but if the person who has developed a habit of viewing pornography talks about it only in confession, the habit can remain a secret.
The sin of pornography thrives in shame and secrecy. Regular use becomes a vicious cycle of viewing pornography, feeling ashamed, going to confession, and eventually falling and beginning the cycle again. Although confession forgives the sin, this pattern can also make confession part of the cycle, as a tool the person uses to ease his guilt from the previous fall. This can be exacerbated if the person goes to confession to different priests so he doesn’t increase his shame by repeatedly confessing the same sins to the same priest. Having a priest as a regular confessor who also offers help outside of the confessional is much more helpful in healing from shame, being held accountable, and making true progress. Also, having people you trust in your life who know and are there to help is essential to the process of recovery from a habit of viewing pornography.
<h2>A Common but Dangerous Omission—Worth Mentioning in Confession If It Applies</h2>
One <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/sins-of-omission">sin of omission</a> that relates to the sin of pornography is when parents and Church leaders neglect, intentionally or not, to proactively address this subject with their children and with the faithful. We can assume this on the part of many parents, since the average age of first exposure to pornography is eight years old.
Parents, as the first and primary educators and protectors of their children, have the duty to make sure their children are protected from pornography on devices, to educate their children about pornography, and to encourage their kids to talk with them if they come across pornography. Also, Church leaders must equip parents in their preparation and follow-up of these conversations and occasionally address the topic publicly so that people know the Church is opposed to pornography but is also there to help those who struggle.
If you are a parent or church leader reading this, and you recognize that you have not been as proactive as you should have been, it may be worth mentioning in your next confession as you prepare to start those conversations.
<h2>Final Word: Persevere in Hope, Keep Going to Confession, but Talk About It Outside Confession, Too!</h2>
I hope this article had valuable insights for both priests and faithful for addressing pornography in confession. Due to the shame felt by pornography users, it can be difficult to discuss both in and apart from confession. However, it is a common struggle for people today. This does not reduce its sinfulness, but it should reduce any stigma around getting help. Many people who fall into a habit of pornography use do so because of woundedness, or to meet other needs. Pornography is a perfect example of the kind of problem that recalls Pope Francis’s vision of the Church as a field hospital.
Those who view pornography should go to confession, trusting in God’s mercy and recognizing that shame and the temptation to keep it a secret is from the devil. Priests regularly hear this sin, andthis article offers them some ways to make confession more impactful, along with insights to recognize when more must be done outside of confession.
For more information about pornography and talking about it, priests and parents should check out organizations like <a href="https://www.covenanteyes.com/">Covenant Eyes</a>, <a href="https://integrityrestored.com/">Integrity Restored</a>, and <a href="https://roadtopurity.com/">Road to Purity</a>, which have more resources.

Advice for Confessing the Sin of Pornography

<div>where is the Magisterium in the Bible? </div><div>The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/tradition-and-living-magisterium">Magisterium</a>, the teaching authority of the Pope and the bishops in union with him, is illustrated in various places in the New Testament.
All of the apostles have the power to bind and loose (Matt. 18:15-18), but only St. Peter—the first Pope—had “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” illustrating his primacy re: teaching and governing in leading the Church (Matthew 16:18-19).
We also see the teaching authority of Peter and the apostles affirmed in the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20) and in Acts 2:42.
For a deeper treatment of the subject of the Magisterium, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pentecost-and-the-papacy">my “Pentecost and the Papacy” article</a> and our tracts <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/pillar-of-fire-pillar-of-truth">“Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth”</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/scripture-and-tradition">“Scripture and Tradition”</a>.
</div>

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&#8220;Could a marriage involving conjoined twins be valid in the Church?&#8221; This intriguing question opens a discussion that also explores the origins of rock and roll, the phrases &#8220;up north&#8221; and &#8220;down south,&#8221; and the nature of baptismal water in relation to transubstantiation.
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Could a Marriage Involving Conjoined Twins Be Valid and More

<div>Is it appropriate for a priest to say Mass with his back to the congregation?</div><div>Yes, it is an acceptable option in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM). However, I would take issue with the notion that in this option the priest is saying Mass &#8220;with his back to the people.&#8221;  Does a bus driver drive the bus &#8220;with his back to the people&#8221;?  Does the pilot &#8220;turn his back on the people&#8221; to fly a plane?
In this option, the priest and the people are facing the same direction. It symbolizes the priest leading the people in the offering of the Eucharist, and through their prayers the people assist. This is called ad orientem; symbolically both the priest and the people are facing east (the direction from which Scripture says Jesus will return).
In the more common modern scenario, the priest is technically not facing the people. Both the priest and the people are facing Christ in the Eucharist.
The GIRM does not forbid ad orientem. It is silent on which direction the priest faces except for the times that he addresses the congregation. On those occasions the GIRM explicitly states the priest &#8220;faces the people and . . . ,&#8221; which would make no sense if the priest was always facing the people. This instruction is useful only if the priest is not always facing the people.
Both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have celebrated Mass ad orientem on certain occasions, and every priest has the right to celebrate the Mass in this way.
</div>

May the Priest Have His Back to the People?

<div>When we say the prayer to the Holy Spirit, we pray for him to fill the hearts of the faithful. Later in the prayer, we say, ". . . and they will be created." Why do we say they will be created when they are already created?</div><div><blockquote>Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And you shall renew the face of the earth.</blockquote>
The origins of the prayer are not well known. The line &#8220;send forth your Spirit and they shall be created&#8221; is a direct quote from Psalm 104:30. The context of the Psalm is that all good things come from the Lord, and he drives away evil.
The prayer resembles the words of St. Paul that in Christ we become a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17).
The prayer also echoes the words of Ezekiel:
<blockquote>And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh (Ez. 36:26).</blockquote>
The prayer is asking God to send the Holy Spirit to give us a new heart. This is different from just a fresh start; it is asking for a true transformation of our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is asking God to create us as his people.
</div>

What’s Up with the Holy Spirit Prayer?

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The recent story of a priest who discovered he had never been baptized unleashed a torrent of anxieties and questions around <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/sacraments">the sacraments</a>. We ask Father Hugh, why is the Church so inflexible about how sacraments are celebrated?

Why the Fuss About Sacraments?

A caller claims that the only way God can create women is to be female. Jimmy answers this claim and explains the reasons God was able to create both man and woman.
Transcript:
Caller: The Holy Spirit is really female, and there can be no other way because there&#8217;s no other explanation for the universe to happen, and it would have to have some type of concept of male and female in order to do the marvelous, wonderful thing in its creation.
Jimmy Akin:
There are aspects of what you&#8217;re saying that are true. It is true that God is not limited by this, by the sexes the way we are. The catechism talks about this. The catechism talks about how, in His essence, God is neither male nor female.
God does not have sex in his essence. He in fact he includes and it has within himself the virtues of both sexes. So he has the virtues of masculinity and the virtues of femininity. Now he&#8217;s chosen to reveal himself to us, using for two of the three persons of the Trinity using masculine imagery.
So that&#8217;s why we read about the father and the son that those are God&#8217;s own terms for himself. So we&#8217;re not at liberty to just completely reconceptualize those. So it&#8217;s good that you&#8217;re still using those when it comes to the Holy Spirit.
The situation is a little more complex and it&#8217;s more complex than most people realize. But I want to correct something, which is the idea that God would have to incorporate a female person in order to be able to conceive of females.
That is not true. God is omniscient. He knows everything. And therefore, he knows things that he knows things automatically. He doesn&#8217;t even have to think about them. He doesn&#8217;t think. He doesn&#8217;t have to reason his way through things.
In order to have ideas. He has an infinite number of ideas, including things that, as far as we know, he chooses not to create. So, for example, God doesn&#8217;t have to create a unicorn in order to have the idea of a unicorn and God.
So there doesn&#8217;t have to be a person of the trinity who is a unicorn for God to be able to create unicorns if he chose, he already knows the idea. And in the same way, God doesn&#8217;t have to have a person of the Trinity who is a woman in order to be able to understand the idea of
women and be able to create women. And the same thing is true of everything else in creation. So I would caution you against the idea of supposing that the persons of the Trinity must be a certain way in order for God to be able to come up with created realities that are like that.
That&#8217;s actually not the case. God doesn&#8217;t have to incorporate something as one of his persons in order to be able to think of the idea and being able to think of the idea is all he needs in order to be able to create it.
So what about the gender of the Holy Spirit? Well, for a long time, I just, based on cultural impressions, would think of the Holy Spirit as masculine and I didn&#8217;t see any alternative to that. And I would resist when people proposed that, you know, the Holy Spirit could be understood in non-masculine terms.
And eventually, I did a study of scripture, both Old and New Testament. And what I found was more complex, actually the so in Greek, they have three genders masculine, feminine and neuter. Now, these are grammatical genders. They don&#8217;t necessarily tell you what the gender of a biological being is.
But in terms of the pronouns that get used in the New Testament, they aren&#8217;t all masculine. The Greek, what they do and this is true of of languages like this is the pronouns and the and in Hebrew as well.
The verb forms will take the gender of whatever noun they&#8217;re referring to. At least that&#8217;s the typical way it works. And so when the authors of the Greek New Testament refer to the Holy Spirit using the word for spirit in Greek, which is pneumatos or pneuma they well, pneuma is a neuter word, and so they will
use the pronoun it or the Greek equivalent of it. And so you&#8217;ll have the Holy Spirit being described as it in the Greek New Testament. But sometimes they use other words besides the word for spirit. Sometimes they use the word for counselor or a comforter or paraclete.
Which in Greek is Parakletos and Parakletos is masculine. And so when they refer to the Holy Spirit as the Parakletos, they use the Greek equivalent of he. So you have in the Greek New Testament, you have both it and he being used for the Holy Spirit.
Depending on the passage. What about what about the Old Testament in Hebrew? The word for spirit is ruach, and in Aramaic it&#8217;s rucha, and both ruach and rucha are feminine and they take female pronouns in Hebrew and Aramaic when the Holy Spirit&#8217;s being referred to either in the Hebrew sections or in the Aramaic.
There&#8217;s a little bit of Aramaic in the Hebrew in the Old Testament, but also we have the Aramaic translation of the Old Testament and the New Testament. And we have the targumin that were the Aramaic translations of the Old Testament they used in the synagogue.
And when the Holy Spirit gets referred to in Aramaic as rucha the Spirit, it takes female pronouns. And so whereas with the father and the son, we have very definite masculine imagery that&#8217;s used not because God is intrinsically masculine, but just because this helps us understand certain things about God.
He&#8217;s like a father. The son is like a son. We don&#8217;t have a definite consistent gender that&#8217;s used grammatically in the revealed materials for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit gets alternately described using masculine, feminine or neuter language, depending on the context.
&nbsp;

Caller Claims “The Holy Spirit is Female”

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Does Jesus as sole mediator mean there’s no place for the Pope or priests?

Why is Hebrews 10 crucial to properly understanding the torn temple veil?

Is priesthood abolished in the New Testament?

What does 1 Corinthians 10 tell us about sacrifice, the Eucharist, and priests?

Why is there a structural Protestant objection to the papacy?

&#8220;Every Objection to The Papacy Answered&#8221; This episode explores the complexities of papal authority, addressing questions like whether the papacy is unbiblical and if Peter was ever in Rome. Tune in as we also delve into the implications of Paul&#8217;s relationship with Peter and the significance of &#8220;Babylon&#8221; in 1 Peter 5:13.
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Every Objection to The Papacy Answered – Part 1

Somewhat famously, Pope St. Gregory the Great suggests that the forty days of Lent, or rather the thirty-six days of fasting in Lent, constitute a kind of tithe of the year—that is, ten percent of 365 days. This is one explanation of how Lent makes sense.
Many of the older commentaries focus on the whole time, beginning at <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-septuagesima">Septuagesima</a>, of what, among those of us who still observe it, is called <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/sanctify-your-drinking-in-pre-lent">Pre-Lent</a>. So you can pick your favorite number: seventy or forty. Then again, the great medieval commentator Amalar manages to find some significance in sixty and fifty as well.
The committees that produce modern liturgical books tend to chafe at this sort of thing. Allegory, they insist, may have been useful for all those illiterate medieval people, but modern man needs meaning, which usually seems to consist of cold hard facts, not poetry.
Fortunately, it is pretty difficult to expurgate all the poetry from things. All things are created, after all, which means they have meaning, which means they exist not just in and of themselves, but rather from God, their creator. As such, they are always tending away from nothingness toward being, always telling a story by their bare existence.
Certainly, Lent is a practical time full of practical disciplines. We can talk a lot about how ascetical discipline is good for us, how fasting brings us closer to God and detaches us from transient things, how hunger gives us solidarity with the poor, how offering sacrifices prepares our hearts for Easter. In a way, the story of the Lord’s temptation in the wilderness reinforces this practical emphasis. Jesus is an example to us because he was “tempted in every way as we are yet did not sin.” He shows us how to resist the world, the flesh, and the devil.
In other words, there’s information embedded in the story. Facts. We like that. There is likewise a modern way of reading the old medieval allegory as just another layer of information. So one traditional gloss on the temptation in the wilderness suggests that the wilderness in question is the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, depicted in the parable of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-to-take-away-from-the-good-samaritan">the Good Samaritan</a>. The wounded man, in that story, is traditionally a symbol of humanity beaten and left for dead by the devil, saved unexpectedly by the Samaritan, a symbol of Christ. And so it is fitting that when Christ goes out to do battle with the devil, he goes to the place where the devil, symbolically, won this great victory.
But knowing all that isn’t really the point of Lent, is it? If so, do we really need it? I think often we remain at that surface level, where we appreciate, for example, the numerical connections of forty—forty days and nights with Noah and the Flood, forty years of wandering the wilderness—but we miss what we are supposed to do with this apart from just accumulating trivia. This is where the renovating liturgists often have a point: Surely, there is something more to it than just being clever about historical similitude.
There is more to it, but it takes a pretty big shift, because the modern world teaches us that there really is nothing but trivia and that meaning is whatever we want to do with the trivia. That is, as Joseph Ratzinger once put it, the problem with people going around thinking the Church needs to be “creative” in her worship. Creativity becomes necessary because the world is meaningless. It is only trivia. It is up to us to make it meaningful through force of will. It means what we want it to mean.
But what if the world is not merely the accumulation of meaningless facts? What if all things have a purpose in the will of a loving God? The old instinct to allegorize the liturgy, as well as Scripture, stems from this basic conviction that God loves us and wants us to know him, and that the entirety of creation is filled with the signs of his presence. The entirety of history is an engine driving us closer to the knowledge of God, to the glory of God, to the love of God.
In his great psychological analogy for the Trinity, St. Augustine suggests that the mind remembers, understands, and loves itself. The mind is its memory. The mind doesn’t just have memory; the mind is inseparable from its remembrance. This is just a very philosophical way of observing what Moses requires of the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 26: They must remember. It is not even right to say that they must remember who they are, as if they were who they are and who they are is a piece of information that needs to be held by the consciousness or not. No, it is in this act of remembrance that they are who they are. Memory, for Israel, is life. No longer to remember is no longer to be.
This is consistently the way the scriptures and the Christian tradition speak about being remembered by God. To be saved is to be remembered by God. Over and over in prayer and song we ask, like Israel before us, that God remember not our sins; that instead he remember us according to his mercy and loving kindness.
The remembrance that we do every year in the sacred liturgy is just this kind of remembrance. We aren’t remembering the forty days in the wilderness the way that a fourth-grader remembers her multiplication tables. We remember in the way that we remember Christ’s body in the Eucharist, which is to say, with Flannery O’Connor, “If it’s just a symbol, to hell with it.” Having partaken of his nature, we join with him in his struggle against the devil, and at Easter, we win.
Lent is forty days not because it resembles the forty days; it is the forty days. There’s a realism here that we need to accept, which seems to have been much easier for the poetic imagination of the ancients than it is for us. Lent is meaningful not because I make it meaningful, but because in it I die to myself and become more and more configured to Jesus Christ. This isn’t just a remembrance of the past in my mind, but the ongoing historical work of redemption. Christ accomplishes his salvation in us by bringing us with him through temptation, through suffering, through death, into the joys of heaven.
This first step, today, is perhaps the most crucial. We have to resist the devil’s offer to skip ahead, to get the results that we want without the cost.
Peter Kreeft has an unusual take on the second temptation. He suggests that the real temptation wasn’t worldly power per se, but the salvation of souls. You can have all these lost souls, the devil suggests, if you’ll just stop this ridiculous attempt to work things out in history. The Lord resists, because of course there is no real salvation without him as the Savior, no healing of human nature without . . . well, the healing of human nature in time. There is no shortcut.
We too can resist temptation, because he resists in and for us—walking with us one step at a time, in time, all the way to the end.

The Christian’s View of Lent

Why can’t a non-Catholic receive communion in a Catholic church?

My husband is Muslim but can get around the idea of Jesus as God. How do I explain it to him?

I’m on my way to becoming Catholic. How can I better defend a faith that I’m not yet a part of?

How can I bring up the topic of Religion/ Catholicism to my friends?

How does a Catholic respond to antisemitism?

Can you give a general defense of the faith against Mormonism?

In the scenario that a person is changed into an object or an animal since the rational soul is the form of the body and the body changes, does that mean the person dies?

2 Tim 1:12-14 Does the Greek version indicate that the deposit will be preserved?

I was baptized in the Mormon church. How do I go about being a part of the Catholic Church?

How is prayer efficacious? I know God’s not a genie in a bottle.

Didn’t the church prosecute Galileo for contradicting the churches flat-earth biblical models?

How does the Catholic Church understand 2.Thess 2:15 specifically the oral tradition part? Is this the tradition of the Church?

How do you reconcile middle knowledge and prophecy?

What is your opinion on Louisa Piccerta and the Divine Will movement?

Can someone know whether they have perfect or imperfect contrition?

AMA: Souls and Transformation, Tradition, Middle Knowledge, and More

The Catholic’s Appeal to Oral Traditions Beyond Scripture

Do we have any evidence that some oral traditions persisted?

The Catholic’s Use of 2 Thess. 3:6—“stay away from brother who does not walk in accord with the tradition received”

The Catholic’s Counter to Mark 7 and the “traditions of men” Argument

The Catholic’s Counter to a Fallible List of Infallible Books

In this Catholic Answers Live episode, we address the Catholic appeal to oral tradition beyond Scripture. The discussion examines historical evidence that apostolic oral traditions persisted in the early Church, explains St. Paul’s teaching in 2 Thessalonians 3:6 on holding fast to received tradition, and responds to objections from Mark 7 regarding “traditions of men.” The episode concludes by addressing the problem of a fallible authority being required to identify the infallible canon of Scripture, offering a coherent Catholic defense of Sacred Tradition and biblical authority.

Catholic Missteps Against Protestants – Oral Traditions

There are many ancient saints whose lives seem to have been lived for modern days, whose relevance has only grown greater with the passage of time. By this paradox, old things become new in the apocalyptic sense, or else are reflections of that eternity where things are always important. Or perhaps it is only the case that good and evil are still as good and as evil as ever they were, and we should find a less exciting biblical paradigm, such as “nothing is new under the sun.”
When it comes to old saints who hold the solution for new problems, it probably is just because the problems aren’t new. Even something like <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/yoga-dream-reading-holier-than-thou">the New Age</a> movement is age-old. As it rears its gnostic head in what seem to be new forms of fierce fantasy, there is a saint whom we should remember and invoke to fight the heterodoxies that persist even in our day and age, though they be as old as the hills.
This is the mighty Irenaeus, whose feast day we just celebrated, and whose embattled history against the Gnostic heresy comes alive again in the present-day culture wars.
Irenaeus was a second-century Greek raised in the faith by St. Polycarp. He was ordained a priest and labored under the persecution of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gaul. As a vigorous (and sometimes vicious) defender of clergy and congregation alike, Irenaeus was tasked with a mission to travel to Pope Eleutherius in Rome with warnings concerning a strange new face of heresy: Gnosticism.
Gnosticism was a belief that creation is the evil, twisted work of a wicked “demiurge.” The Gnostics fostered a kind of hatred for the physical world and the human body: nature as man knew it was irredeemable, and salvation consisted in escaping the material prison that holds the divine spark, the immaterial soul, in all men. The soul’s release would result in an experience of knowledge, or the gnosis, the Gnostic salvation.
Even in the second century, people flocked to the idea of personal spiritual knowledge and wielded Gnostic syncretism against budding Christian orthodoxy, the beginnings of tradition, and the rise of ecclesial authority.
And so, as the persecution against the Christians abated, Irenaeus launched his own campaign against the Gnostics. When the bishop of Lyon was martyred, Irenaeus took up his fallen crozier. With blazing theology, he tore down the Gnostic dream of secret salvation, attained by secret knowledge of the forgotten secrets of the universe. He denounced their strange spells that purported to free the mind to higher realms of being.
Irenaeus <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/apologetics-with-st-irenaeus">grappled with the Gnostics</a>. With his prodigious mind and spirit, he laid out that orthodoxy is orthodox, that Christian tradition is traditional, and that the succession from the apostles is apostolic succession. In this, Irenaeus was central in establishing the mystery of the triune God and the continuity of the one, holy, catholic, apostolic Church over the weird vagaries of cosmic mind, conscious universe, and the demiurge. When the Gnostics cited the high-flying mysteries of the Gospel of St. John for their purposes, Irenaeus turned that same text against their surreal wonders, fighting Gnosticism so fiercely and thoroughly that his arguments provide much of what is known about Gnosticism today.
Irenaeus was one of the first great theologians and clerical writers of Western Christianity. He defended the unity between the Old and New Testaments; he upheld the essential mystery of Christ’s human and divine natures; he promoted the indispensable purpose of Church rituals; he taught that “the glory of God is man alive,” that man’s happiness and God’s glory are integral. Whether it was the persecutor’s prison or the heretic’s sophistry, Irenaeus resisted and repelled the enemies of the Church, that it might maintain its fresh footing and continue spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth.
That mission continues to this hour, and the battles remain surprisingly similar. A new Gnosticism has asserted itself that is just as airy and erroneous as the old one—the Gnosticism of relativism and subjective truth, of self-definition and self-expression, of knowledge that is power, of transhuman technology and robotics, of transgenderism and homosexuality. Mankind has always been eager to make his knowledge and inclination in some way supreme and a source of redeeming enlightenment. The twisting and repurposing of various philosophies and even theologies that is prevalent today, with its weird whimsy unbound by strict rules and revelations, is nothing more than the seductive sedative of the Gnostics.
If the Word didn’t become flesh, as Gnosticism posits, then what remains is atheism. The material world must be the be-all, end-all, ministered and manipulated by chance and not by God. Science then becomes the key to making the faulty material realm beneficial to man and creating utopia through technology, molding all things to and by the human intellect, and making human beings the deity that will save mankind from the evil effects of nature. In our day especially, we see how technology is hailed as the means to change human nature and human society to bring peace out of randomness and incompleteness. By this view, reconstruction and not resurrection is the principle.
The Gnostic repurposing of sex (or “gender”) is especially rampant nowadays, to bring some sort of equality (or perhaps equivalency) in secular society’s desperate search for meaning. Biological sex is an obstacle to freedom, to self-desire and self-expression, a boundary that relegates and restricts. Mind games, corporate ideologies, and invasive technologies are all being leveraged to upend longstanding norms and find an unbounded, unshackled state of “individualized” being. This is the Gnostic impulse—to be free of the material world—and it has given rise to a dismissal of the reasons for standards and roles like male and female. Sexual acts for pleasure, or according to disorders, and gender-dysmorphic psychoses are upheld in a Gnostic attitude of reconstructing nature and society as the work in progress that it is. Nature is fundamentally flawed, after all, and needs the correction of modern science and modern values as opposed to the blessing of ancient spirituality and traditional virtues.
This is the era of the new Gnostics: the era of discovering your inner self, your inner god, where psychology replaces theology, dreams replace doctrine, experience replaces exegesis, and the person replaces the institution in the attempt to enshrine the importance of the self without the importance of Christ. This is the Gnostic world of feelings, caring, inclusivity, diversity, and soft femininizing asexuality that focuses on narcissistic attitudes rather than objective truth and the one God.
It’s everywhere. It is the same war that Irenaeus joined nineteen hundred years ago on earth. He pursues it still from heaven.
From her earliest days, the Church has sent forth heroes to carry the cross of Christ and bear the good news—heroes who made sure that the cross remained Christ’s and the news remained good. Such foundational evangelization was undertaken with terrific force by Irenaeus, this towering second-century figure who, even though his name means “peaceful one,” is remembered as an army of angels waging war against heresies.
Irenaeus, a patron of sanity, will guide us still through the insanity of our times and defend us against the heresies that loom large over civilization. The glory of God is man alive, and so let us live as men, as nature and the Creator intended, and give to him the glory that is his due, and his alone.

The Hero of a 1,900-Year War

On Ash Wednesday, to kick off the penitential season of Lent in preparation for Easter, many of us go to Mass and receive ashes on our foreheads (or the crown of our heads) as a reminder of death and of the fleeting nature of worldly things. When we receive the ashes, we are told by the minister, “Remember, you are dust, and unto dust you shall return” or “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.”
But the ashes are more than a personal reminder; they are an outward sign as well. It’s not as if we can see our own foreheads, so is it meant to be a sign for others?
Hang on—didn’t Jesus tell us not to be ostentatious about our sacrifices and penances? In the Gospel of Matthew, we read, “And when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matt. 6:16-18).
Doesn’t Ash Wednesday contradict this? By wearing ashes, and especially by sporting them and exhibiting them, aren’t we going against our Lord’s command?
Well, the main point we need to recognize here is that Jesus is talking about our intentions. In other words: don’t fast and make sacrifice in order to show off. Do we wear the ashes for God’s glory or for ours? Jesus is employing hyperbole here to help make his point. He exaggerates, seeming to say we should never fast in a way that others can see, but in reality, what he is doing is reacting to those who make a show of their penance.
As Tim Staples <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/does-jesus-want-me-to-wash-off-the-ashes">points out</a>, Jesus uses hyperbole at least thirteen times during the Sermon on the Mount, where this passage is found. It is apparently a favorite tool in his rhetorical toolbox! Other examples include “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away” (5:29); “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away” (5:30); and “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret” (6:6).
The wearing of ashes is a common penitential practice throughout the Old Testament. One example is found in the writings of the prophet Jeremiah: “Thus says the Lord . . . O daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth, and roll in ashes; make mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation; for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us” (6:22-26). Ashes and other penitential practices can do great good for our souls, helping us keep in mind death and the transience of the world.
The potential problem comes in our interior disposition with regard to the wearing of ashes. Is it a penitential sign, reminding us and others of death and of the fleeting nature of worldly things? Or do we treat it as a sign of our piety, a way to show others that we are so devout?
We must be frank and honest with ourselves. As we’ve seen, there is no guideline for the wearing of ashes, but we must be careful not to be “exhibitionist” about it, drawing attention to ourselves and our piety. On the other hand, we must not go looking for a convenient excuse not to wear our faith on our sleeve. In other words, if we want to wash off the ashes right away—or avoid getting them in the first place—why do we want to? Is it because we don’t want to seem ostentatious or exhibitionist? Or is it because we really don’t want people to know that we are Catholic, or to challenge our faith? Is it because we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves over Jesus, or is it because we don’t want to draw attention to the Catholic faith and the memento mori?
We’d do well to remember the most striking part of the old papal coronation ceremony, where a friar would present the pope (already arrayed in pontifical regalia and carried around on the sedia gestatoria) with a piece of burning flax. As the flax burned into ashes and smoke, the friar would loudly proclaim to the pope, “Pater Sancte, sic transit gloria mundi!” (Holy Father, thus passes the glory of the world!) Tempus fugit, memento mori—time is fleeting, remember death! This could be the motto of Ash Wednesday.
All of these powerful reminders of death and of the fleeting nature of worldly things are front and center on Ash Wednesday, and our wearing of the ashes can be a reminder of this to those we encounter—particularly if it sparks a conversation.
And why is it that we keep death before our eyes like this? The other option for the minister when administering the ashes informs us on this: “Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel.” That is the point of these ashes. And if others see us wearing them, it can be a reminder to them as well.