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The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives us the most important reasons why we must <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/infant-baptism">baptize infants</a>:
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Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called. The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant baptism. The Church and the parents would deny a child the priceless grace of becoming a child of God were they not to confer baptism shortly after birth (CCC 1250).
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<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/to-explain-infant-baptism-you-must-explain-original-sin">Original sin</a> is a reality from which each and every human person desperately needs to be freed. Biblically speaking, Romans 5:12 is remarkably clear on this point:
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Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned.
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Even if nothing else was <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/to-explain-infant-baptism-you-must-explain-original-sin">said in Scripture</a> implying infant baptism, we could conclude it to be necessary just from this simple fact: babies need to have original sin removed from their souls.
But there is more.
St. Paul, being a Jew, as well as all of the apostles, understood the idea that true religion is a family affair. A Jew became a Jew when he was circumcised on the eighth day after his birth. They did not have to first “accept Moses as their personal prophet” before they could be circumcised. And according to Paul, baptism is the fulfillment of circumcision:
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In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ. . . . You were buried with him in baptism (Col. 2:11-12).
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The Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition, which I quoted above, has the word &#8220;and&#8221; placed between “Christ” and “you were buried.” I left it out because it is not in the original Greek text. The Greek indicates that baptism is the circumcision of Christ!
This seems trivial to us today. Okay, so baptism is the “circumcision of Christ.” But this was not trivial to first-century Jewish Christians who were being challenged to circumcise their children “after the manner of Moses or else they could not be saved” (see Acts 15:1-2). Many were being persecuted because they chose infant baptism instead of infant circumcision. As Paul says in Romans 2:28:
<blockquote>
For he is not a real Jew who is one outwardly, nor is true circumcision something external and physical. He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart, spiritual and not literal.
</blockquote>
What is this “spiritual circumcision” of which Paul speaks? Baptism, according to Colossians 2:11-12. Not the shedding of foreskin, but the transformation of the inward man through the sacrament. As a fulfillment of that which is only a type, baptism does something circumcision could never do: &#8220;baptism now saves&#8221; us (1 Pet. 3:21). The change that occurs is not physical; it is spiritual. As it is often said, what you don’t see is what you get in all of the sacraments, baptism included—and infant baptism included, too.
Elsewhere in Scripture we find a close association between baptism and circumcision. In Galatians 3:27-28, Paul says:
<blockquote>
For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
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Paul&#8217;s point is that baptism is more inclusive than its Old Testament antecedent. You had to be a free, male Jew to be circumcised. And when were males generally circumcised in the Old Testament, by the way? At eight days after birth (Gen. 17:12). Paul’s point is that in the New Testament, baptism is open to all. Of course babies would be included.
This idea of baptism as the circumcision of Christ, therefore opening up the legitimacy of infant baptism, is at least implied in other biblical texts as well. You&#8217;ll recall that on Pentecost, Peter preached to thousands of Jews, who already had an understanding of their faith involving a family covenant, and said, &#8220;Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. . . . For the promise is to you and to your children and to all that are far off, everyone whom the Lord calls to him&#8221; (Acts 2:38-39).
If Peter believed that baptism is exclusive to adults, he was a terrible teacher!
The Lord explicitly &#8220;called infants&#8221; to himself in Luke 18:15-17:
<blockquote>
Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciple saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
</blockquote>
These were not just children who were being brought to Jesus. The Greek word here is brephe, which mean &#8220;infants.&#8221; And again, the Jews listening would understand that the parent’s belief and obedience suffices for the child until he is old enough to own his faith. The parents bringing children to Christ, according to Christ, is equivalent to the children coming to him on their own. Moreover, because babies are icons of what we all should be—that is, they put up no obstacles to the work of God in their lives, and they can most obviously do absolutely nothing to merit anything from God—infant baptism makes sense, as they are reminders of “the sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation” (CCC 1250).
From the very beginning, whole “households” received baptism. There is no reason to believe that infants would not have been included (see Acts 11:14; 16:15, 33; 18:8; 1 Cor. 1:16). For brevity&#8217;s sake, I will use just one of the five examples cited in that parenthesis. I encourage all reading this to take a look at the other four examples as well.
When Paul led the Philippian jailer to Christ in Acts 16, he said to him, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:31). He does not say that all in his household must first believe. He simply says they will all be saved. How could he say that? Paul seems to have understood what St. Peter had already preached back when Paul was still persecuting Christians (in Acts 2:38). The promise of faith and baptism is for the jailer and his children.
Jesus said, “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved” in Mark 16:16. Many claim this to mean that faith must precede baptism. And this would seem to exclude infants as possible candidates for baptism. Seems airtight. Can an infant possess faith? No. Therefore, a baby cannot be licitly baptized.
Although this argument may sound convincing on the surface, it does not survive serious scrutiny. First, Jesus did not say faith must precede baptism for an individual. He simply said one has to believe and be baptized in order to be saved. He said nothing about the two having to be accomplished in that order for the individual.
Moreover, even if we were to accept as fact that faith must come first, even though Mark 16:16 does not say that, this would not exclude the possibility that the faith of the parents suffices until the child reaches the age of accountability.
Second, a strict reading of Mark 16:16 has devastating consequences. A baby cannot believe. Does that mean that all babies who die without believing will not be saved? Of course not! The thief on the cross was presumably not baptized. Does that mean he would not go to heaven? Of course not! Belief and baptism are necessary to those who have the opportunity to obtain them. If they were to be impeded from being able to believe or be baptized, and that could be the case for many different reasons, then God would judge them in accordance with what they were responsible for.
This last point gets to another reason why infant baptism is so important. Sometimes we are accountable not just for ourselves, but for others as well (see Ezek. 3:18-19). Parents are responsible for baptizing their babies. If they knowingly do not do so, they break God&#8217;s covenant in a serious matter. Like the paralytic in Matthew 9:2-6 who was completely dependent upon others to bring him to Christ in order for him to get his sins forgiven (and his physical healing), a baby is completely dependent upon his parents to bring him to Christ.
And notice as well that it was the faith of those who brought the paralytic to Christ that God used instrumentally for the paralytic&#8217;s salvation: “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven’” (v. 2). Whose faith did Jesus &#8220;see&#8221; here? “Their” seems to refer back to the “they” of the same verse: “And behold, they brought to him a paralytic . . .”
The faith of the parents suffices when they bring their infant to be blessed by Christ via &#8220;the circumcision of Christ.&#8221;
Paul clearly teaches that circumcision never justified anyone, at least in the sense of the initial gift of justification. “We say that faith was reckoned to Abraham . . . before he was circumcised” (Rom. 4:9-10). So doesn’t this prove that baptism does not save us, either?
Three points:
First, as I said above, baptism is the fulfillment of that which was only a type in the Old Testament. The fulfillment is always more glorious than the type. Thus, “baptism does now save you” (1 Pet. 3:21) in a way that circumcision could not.
Second, it is true that Abraham and David were Paul’s two examples of justifying grace occurring apart from circumcision in Romans 4. And yet, Abraham instituted circumcision by divine mandate, and David was, in fact, circumcised as a little baby. Indeed, God also declared in the Old Testament that &#8220;any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant&#8221; (Gen. 17:14). It is not a contradiction to say both faith and circumcision were necessary to remain within God’s covenant in the Old Testament, even though circumcision played no role in initial justification.
Third, the faith of the parents sufficed when it came to circumcising a child. Do we not see that principle in the New Testament as well? Jesus saw the faith of the friends of the paralytic and healed the paralytic in Matthew 9:2. When people cannot have faith, the faith of family or friends suffices. So it is with infant baptism. The faith of the parents sanctifies the children, as Paul says in 1 Cor. 7:14. This is just as much a New Testament concept as it is an Old Testament concept.
So if you have the Faith, and you&#8217;re on the fence about baptizing your baby . . . wonder no longer. Baptize him!

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Ask Me Anything

When it comes to love, English is impoverished. It’s not that English-speakers don’t love but that our language is so limited. “I love God,” “I love my wife,” “I love chocolate ice cream” all use the same verb, but that word cannot mean the same thing in all three cases.
Sociologists speak of the Sapir-Whorf thesis. Put simply, it explains differences in language based on users’ need, which, reciprocally, shape or limit the speaker’s way of seeing reality. Like “love,” English has one word for that white powdery thing that falls from the sky: “snow.” Eskimo languages, by contrast, have many words for snow. English has to approximate them by multiplying adjectives. Muruaneq is “soft, deep snow,” which is different from ughugesnaq, “wet snow that is falling”—each of which will require different actions to get home. A quick but precise noun conceptualizes X and distinguishes it from Y, enabling rapid life decisions.
So why is English a one-word “love” language?
C.S. Lewis wrote a book called The Four Loves, which explains the four Greek words for “love.” They range from attraction (including physical attraction) to affection (emotional attraction) to friendship to benevolence.
I’m stressing the differences in “love” because it’s relevant to an image I want to discuss from another C.S. Lewis book, The Great Divorce. It has to do with “love” as eros and its deformation in lust.
The Great Divorce discusses the dead who come from a “city” on a bus trip to the outskirts of heaven. The identity of that “city” is fluid: for those who, on their heavenly peripheries day trip, are attracted to stay, it is purgatory. For those who choose to take the return bus, it’s hell.
Don’t be surprised that the return bus is usually full. One of the tragic consequences of the mystery of sin is that, having grown accustomed to it, we feel naked and insecure without its familiarity. It’s like that natty, worn out sweater with holes that should have been thrown out long ago but you still wear because “it feels good.”
I was particularly gripped by a scene in which an angel encounters a soul with a lizard on its neck. The soul is headed back to the bus. He’s a little put off by the angel’s presence because he knows that the reptile—which symbolizes lust—has not kept its promise. The lizard promised not to keep whispering dirty ideas into his ear, since the soul knows that “his stuff won’t do here,” but it “won’t stop.” So the soul is ready to take his inappropriate companion and go back to hell.
The angel proposes another way, albeit by steps.
“Would you like me to make him quiet?” The soul seems enthusiastic about the prospect.
“Then I will kill it.”
But, on approaching them, the soul already feels uncomfortable. “You’re burning me,” the soul bellows, “retreating.” When the angel asks whether the soul really wants the pest killed, the latter begins to temporize. “You didn’t say anything about killing him at first.” That’s so “drastic.” All the soul wanted was lust’s “silence,” not necessarily its separation. And he wanted its “silence” because, well, its overt visibility is “so damned embarrassing.”
The angel isn’t diverted. “May I kill it?” The soul parries: let’s talk “later.” Really, thank you, didn’t mean to be a bother. See you.
But the angel doesn’t give up. “There’s no time.” Now is the time (literally, since heaven is the eternal now).
The soul keeps multiplying excuses. “I shall be able to keep it in order now.” A “gradual process” is better than a nip in the bud. I’ll feel better about it tomorrow.
In the end, the soul admits its fear: in killing it, you’ll kill me. The angel assures the soul that’s not true. But “you’re hurting me now.” The angel is clear: “I never said it wouldn’t hurt you. I said it wouldn’t kill you.”
In the end, after further hemming and hawing, the soul finally musters himself enough to agree. As the angel’s hand approaches, lust grows louder, pleading, “You’ll be without me for ever and ever. It’s not natural!” At last, in the end, comes the soul’s decision: “Damn you and blast you! Go on . . . get it over. Do what you like. God help me. God help me.” (He will!)
The angel then plucks the lizard from the soul’s shoulder and fatally twists its neck. At the same time, the soul “gave a scream of agony such as I had never heard on earth.”
What then happens is amazing.
The soul begins to grow in stature, “not much smaller than the Angel.” His beauty emerges.
The lizard, too, changes. From an ugly reptile emerges a vigorous white stallion, which the soul approaches and nuzzles. Then the soul hops on its back and, together, both ride off to the mountains—the heights—of heaven.
Human beings are sensory creatures. The world comes to us through our senses, including touch (which includes sex). Eros is that love which most directly affects the senses. It is powerful. It gives us “lust” for life and love. It drives us forward.
In itself, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/better-than-sex">eros is very good</a>. It’s when its power is directed in the wrong ways that the powerful stallion becomes the creepy lizard hanging on our necks.
St. Augustine was an erotic man. His misdirected eros led to many sins and wasted years. But when his lizard was killed, he became a saint whose spiritual vigor outdid many.
Catholicism does not ask we deny the senses. It does ask that we put them in the service of the good. The failure to control them leads to lust; their discipline supports love. “Love” and “lust” are not cousins. They are just two four letter words.
Our sensual world confuses them. One example: think of the wreckage pornography brings to so many lives, damage that seems irreparable. And think of its ubiquity, along with the sexualization (“pornification”) of our world.
Now, imagine what great saints would arise if that eros were channeled into true love instead of lust. If we stopped making excuses and snuggling in our sins. If, by God’s grace, we cast off the lizard and mounted the white stallion.
Our Lady, Queen of Purity, pray for us!

Lust Is Not Love’s Cousin

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People celebrate every St. Valentine’s Day using heart shapes. Greeting cards bear them, cakes and candies are made in this shape, and they’re used as decorations on anything connected with the holiday.
The shape—usually red, with two round lobes at the top and a point at the bottom—is idealized and only approximates what a human heart looks like. But how common it is raises a question for the modern mind: Why do we use it this way?
At least in the secular sphere, Valentine’s Day celebrates romantic love, but in modern medicine, the heart is just a set of muscles that rhythmically contract to push blood around inside our bodies. What’s the connection?
The answer, as you might expect, goes back quite a ways. People have always known the organs of the body. Between cutting up animals and cutting up other people, they were quite familiar with them. But they didn’t always understand their functions.
For example, today we associate thought with the brain. This is known as the cephalocentric (“head-centered”) hypothesis, but this view wasn’t dominant in history.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was one of the best anatomists in the ancient world. He noted all the blood vessels around the brain and concluded that its function was to allow the blood from the heart to cool down (On the Parts of Animals 2:7). The brain was, in essence, a heat management organ.
On the other hand, there seemed to be a direct connection between the heart and mental phenomena. If you’re seized by a strong emotion—love, lust, fear, anxiety, excitement—your heart speeds up. In the absence of such emotion, it slows down.
Sometimes—particularly at moments of peak emotion—your heart may even “skip a beat.” (Technically, one chamber beats early, before it’s fully filled with blood, so you don’t feel the beat; then it over-fills as the normal cycle reasserts itself, and you feel a more pronounced thump.)
It thus became natural for people to associate the heart with mental functions like emotions and intellect. This is known as the cardiocentric (“heart-centered”) hypothesis.
Several other factors may have also contributed to this view, such as the fact the heart is hidden (like our mental functions), that it is at the center of our bodies’ extensions (suggesting it’s important), and that if it stops working, you die (associated with the spirit leaving).
Whatever the factors, the idea that the heart is the seat of the mind was common in ancient cultures. Thus, when the ancient Egyptians mummified you, they kept your heart inside your body, but they took out the brain so that its moisture wouldn’t cause the body to rot. This would have been done for the two ancient Israelites who we know were mummified, the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph (Gen. 50:2-3, 26).
The Israelites also accepted the cardiocentric model. Thus, a man is said to rejoice “in his heart” (Exod. 4:14) or to have his heart “broken” (Ps. 69:20)—an expression we still use today. Angry people have their hearts grow hot (Ps. 39:3), and hearts “melt” with fear (Deut. 20:8). The heart is the seat of courage (2 Chron. 17:6), and God may fulfill the “heart’s desire” (Ps. 21:2).
In addition to the heart being seen as the place of these emotions, it was also seen as the seat of the intellect. Thus, before the Flood, God saw “that every imagination of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5), and when Abraham heard the prophecy of Isaac’s birth, he laughed to himself and “in his heart” said, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?” (17:17). This mode of language is even applied to God himself, for after the Flood, “the Lord said in his heart” that he would not curse the ground again because of man (8:21).
The cardiocentric model continued to be used in the New Testament. The heart is still spoken of as the seat of emotions. Thus, Paul tells the Colossians to sing “with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16), and he tells the Thessalonians that he wishes God will “encourage your hearts” (2 Thess. 2:17).
The heart is similarly envisioned as the seat of the intellect. Thus, Simeon prophesies that through Jesus, the “thoughts from many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:35), and when the disciples argue about who is the greatest, Jesus knows “the thoughts of their hearts” (9:47).
The image of the heart continued to be prominent in the post-apostolic age. After the year 1000, devotion began to grow to the heart of Jesus. A prominent example is the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-you-can-personally-console-jesus-in-gethsemane">Sacred Heart of Jesus</a> devotion revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque between 1673 and 1675. This devotion depicts Jesus’ heart surrounded by flames of love, with a crown of thorns and a cross above it, and a solemnity commemorating the Sacred Heart is celebrated on the third Friday after Pentecost.
Ordinary people continue to use language based on the cardiocentric model today, such as when we say that someone is “big-hearted,” “cold-hearted,” or “tender-hearted.” We may say that someone has a “heart of gold” or a “heart of stone,” or that he is a “bleeding heart.” People “learn things by heart.” And of course, the Grinch’s “heart was two sizes too small.”
We do this without even thinking about it, the same way we speak of the sun rising and setting despite what Copernicus and Galileo had to say. For us ordinary individuals, this doesn’t raise much of an issue. The presence of the cardiocentric model in folk expressions is no big deal.
But what about when it appears in Scripture or Church documents—like those approving the Sacred Heart devotion? Does it conflict with the cephalocentric model that regards the head rather than the heart as the seat of mental activity?
The cephalocentric model also has a long history. It actually pre-dates Aristotle, having been proposed by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras around 550 B.C. Fans of the theory included Aristotle’s teacher Plato and the Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen, so it’s not as if the idea was absent from Western thought.
Following the Scientific Revolution, evidence mounted that the brain is more associated with thought than the heart, and by the early 1800s, neuroscience had developed to the point that cephalocentrism was firmly established.
The Church knew this, and so in 1899, Pope Leo XIII explained the Sacred Heart in symbolic terms, stating that “there is in the Sacred Heart a symbol and a sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ which moves us to love one another” and that “whatever honor, veneration, and love is given to this divine heart is really and truly given to Christ himself” (Annum Sacrum 8).
Similarly, in 2024, Pope Francis stated that “devotion to the heart of Christ is not the veneration of a single organ apart from the Person of Jesus. What we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart. That heart of flesh is seen as the privileged sign of the inmost being of the incarnate Son and his love, both divine and human. More than any other part of his body, the heart of Jesus is the natural sign and symbol of his boundless love” (Dilexit Nos 48).
What about the Bible? Does the cardiocentric language it uses mean that the biblical authors didn’t understand the role of the brain and the heart? They lived before the Scientific Revolution, so they would not be expected to, and that’s not a problem from the perspective of biblical theology.
The Second Vatican Council taught, “Since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and without error that truth that God wanted put into sacred writings” (Dei Verbum 11).
It also taught, “For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking, and narrating that prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another” (op. cit. 12).
We therefore must distinguish between what the biblical authors assumed to be the case and what they were asserting by the language they used. When Luke says that Jesus knew “the thought of [the disciples’] hearts” (Luke 9:47), he’s asserting that Jesus knew their thoughts, not that these thoughts were literally housed in their hearts.
We don’t know which school of thought Luke subscribed to. As an ancient physician, he may have been a cardiocentrist or a cephalocentrist, but either way, it was normal for people of his day to speak of thoughts as coming from the heart—as is often the case for us today. In any event, Luke is not trying to teach us a medical theory; he’s telling us that Jesus knew what the disciples thought, and this assertion—not any background assumptions in the way it is expressed—is what is guaranteed to be true.
On the other hand, we shouldn’t be too quick to assume a strict correlation between the brain and mental phenomena. In the first place, there’s what’s known as “the little brain in the heart,” or the intrinsic cardiac nervous system (ICNS). It’s about forty thousand neurons that help regulate the heart’s activity, and things like a racing heart can affect emotional states (e.g., by causing fear and panic).
Even more surprisingly, there is evidence from heart transplant surgeries that something more than the physical organ—at least information—is being passed between patients. In one example, neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hearts-Code-Tapping-Wisdom-Energy/dp/0767900952">recounts the cases</a> of men he refers to as Jim and Frank. Jim had bad lungs and received a heart-lung transplant. However, Jim’s own heart was still good and was given to Frank. After the transplant, Frank’s personality changed to be more like Jim’s, Frank began exhibiting Jim’s food preferences, and during intimate moments Frank began calling his wife by the name of Jim’s wife (123-124).
Ultimately, neither the heart nor the brain may be essential for mental activity. Consistent with Christian teaching on life after death, the evidence of near-death experiences reveals that people continue to have conscious experiences even during cardiac arrest, when the heart has ceased beating and brain activity goes offline within seconds. Yet people in this condition accurately report things happening around their physical bodies and even in other rooms of hospitals that they have no sensory access to.
All of this serves as a warning against reductionistic theories that would too closely tie the mind and emotions to physical organs like the heart and the brain. Given the complexity of what we observe, this whole area is—as it was in biblical days—a mystery.

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What If I Was Poorly Catechized? Invincible Ignorance and Responsibility

Jimmy Akin explains some of the meaning behind Mark 4:11-12 and why Jesus would have wanted to conceal the truths of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/parables">parables</a> to some people, and further explains how this relates to predestination.
Transcript:
Host: Go to Justin in Hamilton, Ohio listening on the Catholic Answers app. Justin, you are on with Jimmy Akin, what&#8217;s your question?
Caller: Hi Jimmy, my question is, well I was reading reading my Bible and I was coming across a verse in the Gospel of Mark chapter 4 where he says, &#8220;He answered them, &#8216;The mystery of the kingdom of God has been granted to you. But to those outside everything comes in parables so that, &#8220;they may look and see but not perceive, and hear and listen but not understand; in order that they may not be converted and be forgiven.&#8221;&#8216;&#8221; What exactly is he trying to say? Like when I&#8217;m reading and I have a hard time understanding, is he saying that he&#8217;s saying these things in parables so people don&#8217;t understand?
Jimmy: This is one of the most difficult verses in the New Testament and I won&#8217;t really be able to do it full justice here. You might want to check out my commentary on Mark which is just called &#8220;Mark: A Commentary,&#8221; it&#8217;s by Jimmy Akin, it&#8217;s available on Verbum Bible Software. But I can give you a brief explanation here.
Now one of the things that God often does in Scripture is he often uses things like parables. Prophecy is also frequently given in a kind of symbolic, almost parable-like way rather than just an explicit straightforward statement, and there seem to be a couple of reasons for that, at least a couple. One of them is that sometimes truths are complex, and they&#8217;re rich, and in order to fully mine them it&#8217;s helpful to use an analogy rather than simply having a short statement. If you made a short statement, it would tend to flatten them out, whereas if you give them in a symbolic form, and you&#8217;re forced to think about it and wrestle with it, you may notice additional dimensions that you wouldn&#8217;t if just a short statement were given. And so the richness of these things is part of why God gives us parables and prophecies.
Also there&#8217;s a certain intrigue factor to them. We&#8217;re more likely to wrestle with them and absorb their message if they&#8217;re given to us in this somewhat enigmatic way, because our minds are attracted to mysteries and enigmas, and so if God gives us a mysterious, enigmatic statement we&#8217;re gonna be inclined to think about that more deeply than if he just told us something flat-out. We&#8217;re likely to learn our lesson better.
Having said that, there are specialized situations where knowledge is meant to be broadcast in a way that conceals it, and that seems to be what Jesus is referring to here. Jesus did not come to make his message apparent to everybody so that everybody would repent and believe. Now he came to make salvation possible for everybody, but the means by which he chose to do that in concert with the Father was by his redeeming death. And so he came to die, he came to function as a prophet who, like many of the prophets before him, would encounter opposition and disbelief on the part of many people, and who would eventually put him to death just like many of the previous prophets were martyred&#8211;only unlike them, through his death the redemption of the world would be accomplished.
And so what Jesus is talking about here is when he talks about &#8220;lest they see and understand&#8221; and so forth, basically that&#8217;s another way of saying &#8220;Part of the reason I&#8217;m using parables is so that those who would not think about them and dwell on them, those people who aren&#8217;t willing to engage the parables in a constructive way and learn from them and absorb their spiritual lessons and convert, so that those people will follow their appointed course and they will end up choosing to martyr me so that I end up fulfilling my mission as well.&#8221;
And so it&#8217;s a kind of complex situation, much like those that we actually find in parables. But it&#8217;s not that he doesn&#8217;t will everybody to be saved&#8211;he does&#8211;but he knows certain people are not going to cooperate with his offer of salvation, they&#8217;re not going to take him up on it, and as part of that he&#8217;s willing to communicate in this somewhat mysterious way, so that those who are open to God&#8217;s message will study the parables and interpret them and internalize them and be saved, whereas those who aren&#8217;t willing to engage God in that way will not do so and they&#8217;ll end up fulfilling his mission.
Host: Does that help you, Justin?
Caller: Yeah, yeah that&#8217;s a&#8211;yeah, that&#8217;s a large pill to swallow at once.
Jimmy: Yes it is.
Caller: Okay, I do have a quick question. So with your explanation, I&#8217;m thinking and trying to rationalize what you&#8217;re saying, could that be in a way like some people believe in predestination?
Jimmy: In terms&#8211;well, there are themes of predestination that are related here. It doesn&#8217;t intersect in a direct way, because, I mean Jesus is not talking about predestination per se in this passage, but God&#8211;you also have to clarify how are you using the word predestination, because in some circles the word predestination is used to refer to a decision God makes on no basis&#8230;that God&#8217;s just going to pick certain people to do certain things. And that&#8217;s not the the vision of this that I just articulated, which involves those who are willing or unwilling.
The choice that Jesus makes to leave certain people in their ignorance is based on their unwillingness to engage God in an open constructive way, because if someone is willing to engage God in an open constructive way then they&#8217;ll think about the parables, and they&#8217;ll eventually solve them, internalize their meaning and be saved. So it&#8217;s not that God&#8217;s picking people randomly to go to Heaven or Hell; the dividing line is between those who are willing to be open to God&#8217;s grace and those who are not.
Host: Thanks Justin, I hope that that was helpful to you.

Did Jesus Speak In Parables So People Wouldn’t Understand Him?

<div>How can Catholics use 2 Maccabees 12:46 as a justification for purgatory when St. Jerome rejected its authority as Scripture?
</div><div>It is true that Jerome did not initially accept 2 Maccabees as Scripture and thus would not have used the texts from the book to support belief in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-purgatory-in-the-bible">purgatory</a>. But this in no way undermines the canonicity of 2 Maccabees.
First, Catholics do not consider the early Church Fathers infallible. Therefore, one should expect to find some Fathers teaching things that are not consistent with later defined teachings.
Second, there is evidence that Jerome later accepted the deuterocanonical parts of Daniel despite the belief of the Jews of his day that they were not Scripture. In his response to Rufinus (11:33, A.D. 402), Jerome makes explicit that it is the judgment of the Church by which the canon is to be settled. He writes, “What sin have I committed if I followed the judgment of the churches?”
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/jerome-saint">Jerome</a> would also eventually include all the deuterocanonicals in his Vulgate edition of the scriptures.
So, rather than Jerome’s initial denial of 2 Maccabees’ canonicity undermining the Church’s acceptance of the deuterocanonicals into the canon, the story that his denial is a part of actually supports it.
</div>

How can we use 2 Maccabees for Purgatory when St. Jerome Rejected It?

<div>If people in a state of mortal sin repent with imperfect contrition at the moment of death, can they still attain eternal salvation?</div><div>Imperfect contrition means a sorrow for sin that is not motivated by supernatural charity but by fear of punishment. Of itself, imperfect contrition is good and reasonable as far as it goes, but it does not suffice for the removal of the obstacle of grave sin. So the best thing for the person to do is to ask God for the grace of loving him and repenting because of his goodness, not only because of his punishments. It is practically certain that God will grant this grace to those who ask for it, since he himself has commanded us to love him!
</div>

Is Imperfect Contrition at Death Enough?

How Specific Do You Need to Be For a Good Confession?

What does Catholic tradition actually teach about racism? Did Jesus have anything to say about it? Father Hugh Barbour explains how the ancient Faith deals with a term coined in the modern world.

Racism for Catholics

<div>As a Catholic, may I officiate at my niece’s wedding? She and her fiancé are both unbaptized. But they are also planning on not having any children. </div><div>In general, a Catholic could officiate at wedding of two non-Catholics, provided there are no obvious impediments, for example, a prior marriage. 
In addition, although your niece and her fiancé are to be commended for desiring to make a lifelong commitment, they will marry invalidly, because they are positively excluding an <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/4-musts-that-make-a-catholic-marriage">essential element of marriage</a>: openness to children. And because it’s an essential element, this applies to even a natural marriage—that is, the type of marriage your niece and her fiancé will be attempting—not just simply to sacramental marriage between two Christians. 
As the Catechism of the Catholic Church provides: 
<blockquote>Unity, indissolubility, and openness to fertility are essential to marriage. Polygamy is incompatible with the unity of marriage; divorce separates what God has joined together; the refusal of fertility turns married life away from its &#8220;supreme gift,&#8221; the child (GS 50 § 1). (CCC 1664, emphasis added).</blockquote>
The Church’s Code of Canon Law affirms: 
<blockquote>The internal consent of the mind is presumed to conform to the words and signs used in celebrating the marriage.
If, however, either or both of the parties should by a positive act of will exclude marriage itself or any essential element [i.e., good] of marriage or any essential property, such party contracts invalidly (1101, §§ 1–2, emphasis added). </blockquote>
Again, the Church means categorically excluding children, as opposed to perhaps delaying having a child, and that point might help persuade your niece and her fiancé. 
Consequently, I encourage you to lovingly tell your niece and her fiancé that they need to be open to children to marry validly, and thus to have you officiate as a faithful Catholic. I realize that’s a “big ask,” given how they’ve been raised and otherwise formed by the culture. But speaking the truth in joyful charity is key and distinguishing between categorical exclusion vs. limited delay re: openness to children could win her and fiancé over. 
If your niece still refuses, then let her know that, out of genuine love for her and fiancé, both for their temporal well-being and concern for their everlasting good, that you will charitably decline officiating. 
I’d still try to be a part of her life, which she may not open to, at least for a while, but you’re the kind of person who could plant good seeds in her life over time. God bless your efforts abundantly! (John 10:10; Rom. 8:28). 
</div>

Should a Catholic Officiate a Non-Catholic Wedding?

Can Mary Save Us?

On May 2, 2024, the House of Representatives passed the “<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6090/text">Antisemitism Awareness Act</a>,” partly in response to an uptick in antisemitic displays at U.S. college campuses in recent years. The act could help students file civil complaints if they feel they have been victims of antisemitic discrimination.
The Catholic Church condemns all unjust discrimination, and <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240202-lettera-ebrei-in-israele.html">Pope Francis even said</a> this past February that the Church “rejects every form of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred towards Jews and Judaism as a sin against God.”
Some critics are concerned that the bill’s definition of antisemitism, which is drawn from the <a href="https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism">International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance</a>, is too broad and would make basic Catholic doctrine antisemitic. They focus on one part that says it is antisemitic to “[use] the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.” In response, they say that the Bible and many Church Fathers speak about “the Jews” killing Jesus.
So is it accurate to say “the Jews killed Jesus”? Is it antisemitic?
The Second Vatican Council taught that “the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today” (Nostra Aetate 4). Some Catholics, however, argue that all the unconverted Jews in the time of Christ (thus exempting the Blessed Virgin and the apostles) were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. Some even claim that all unconverted Jews in history since the Crucifixion carry a unique guilt for Christ’s death that other sinners do not share.
It is obviously false that all non-Christian Jews at the time of Christ’s death were responsible for his crucifixion, for the simple reason that not all of them were consulted! Only a tiny portion of the Jewish population called for his death. Further, many Jews who did not formally become Christian still had a positive attitude toward Jesus and his movement (see Acts 2:47) and almost certainly would not have approved of Jesus’ death.
When it comes to later Jews being responsible, this idea comes from an interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel, which describes Pilate washing his hands, saying, “I am innocent of this righteous man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” Matthew then says the crowd answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (27:25).
What do we make of this “blood curse”? To start, the biblical text never says God honored it. Nor would such a curse, even if it was honored, apply to every future Jew, since nearly all of them are not descended from the small crowd present at Jesus’ sentencing.
In the second volume of his work Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI writes:
<blockquote>When in Matthew&#8217;s account the &#8220;whole people&#8221; say, &#8220;His blood be upon us and on our children&#8221; (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus&#8217; blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb. 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all. . . . Read in the light of faith, it means that we all stand in need of the purifying power of love which is his blood. These words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation (187).</blockquote>
For another interpretation, the crowd’s exclamation in Matthew 27:25 may refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 as being part of a divinely appointed punishment upon those who rejected Jesus. It was not uncommon in Israel’s history for future generations to be afflicted because of the sinful actions of Israel’s rulers, such as Solomon’s idolatry (1 Kings 11) being the catalyst for the division of the kingdom and the Jews’ subsequent exile into Babylon.
Historically, some Catholics, including through medieval regional councils and in papal documents, did argue that Jewish hardships throughout history represented a similar kind of punishment for Jewish involvement in the Crucifixion. However, these assertions did not rise to the level of definitive magisterial teaching. In fact, the sixteenth-century Catechism of the Council of Trent rejects the idea that Jews bear more guilt for Jesus’ crucifixion than non-Jews:
<blockquote>In this guilt are involved all those who fall frequently into sin; for, as our sins consigned Christ the Lord to the death of the cross, most certainly those who wallow in sin and iniquity crucify to themselves again the Son of God, as far as in them lies, and make a mockery of him.
This guilt seems more enormous in us than in the Jews, since according to the testimony of the same apostle: If they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; while we, on the contrary, professing to know him, yet denying him by our actions, seem in some sort to lay violent hands on him.</blockquote>
But even if Jews throughout history are not uniquely responsible for the death of Jesus, what about “the Jews” of Jesus’ time?
The Catechism of the Council of Trent refers to “the Jews” killing Jesus, and several Scripture passages (John 5:18, Acts 10:39) use similar language. In 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15, St. Paul says, “For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men.”
Paul’s phrase “the Jews” is a reference not to all Jews, but to a particular group of Jews in Palestine who were persecuting the Church. Other scholars have proposed that the Greek word Ioudaiōn in the New Testament can also be translated Judeans and that in some verses, this context makes more sense than the broader term “Jews.”
John 7:1 says, “After this Jesus went about in Galilee; he would not go about in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him.” But there were plenty of Jews in Galilee, so what is meant in this passage is not “Jews”—i.e., non-Christian followers of Yahweh—but rather Judeans, and specifically the Jews loyal to political leadership in Jerusalem. This interpretation also makes sense of Paul’s exhortation to imitate the Christians in Judea who withstood persecution at the hands of the persecutors in that area, the Judeans (a role Paul once held before his conversion).
The Catechism also gives this insight into how we ought to understand Jewish responsibility for Christ’s death:
<blockquote>The historical complexity of Jesus&#8217; trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles&#8217; calls to conversion after Pentecost. Jesus himself, in forgiving them on the cross, and Peter in following suit, both accept &#8220;the ignorance&#8221; of the Jews of Jerusalem and even of their leaders (597).</blockquote>
It is inaccurate to say, as some critical scholars might allege, that the Romans were completely responsible for Christ’s crucifixion. Scripture clearly teaches that some members of the Jewish leadership saw Jesus as being such a grave threat to the social order that he needed to be killed (John 11:50). However, as we saw in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council quoted earlier, this guilt cannot be laid upon all unconverted Jews at that time, and much less so on Jewish people throughout history. Indeed, we must remember humanity’s collective involvement, through our sins, in Christ’s death on the cross. This is why the Catechism states that
<blockquote>in her magisterial teaching of the Faith and in the witness of her saints, the Church has never forgotten that &#8220;sinners were the authors and the ministers of all the sufferings that the divine Redeemer endured.&#8221; Taking into account the fact that our sins affect Christ himself, the Church does not hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torments inflicted upon Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burdened the Jews alone (598).</blockquote>

Did ‘the Jews’ Kill Jesus?

Catholic Answers’ Jimmy Akin and host Cy Kellett take a nostalgic trip back to the 1970s—a time of questionable toys, bizarre TV shows, and zero safety regulations.
Transcript:
Cy: Magikarp sounds like how people say magic harp.
Jimmy: How many people actually say Magikarp these days?
Cy: I think there might have been one in the.
Jimmy: I know, I know. There&#8217;s a Magic Flute. You know, there&#8217;s an opera about that.
Cy: That&#8217;s so funny that you think of the opera and I think of the Saturday morning TV show with. With Jimmy. What was his name?
Pufnstuf
Cy: HR Pufnstuf Yeah.
Jimmy: He&#8217;s your friend. When things get tough, I All the.
Cy: Don&#8217;t do it, Jimmy. I know you know all the words to the HR Pufnstufsong. I actually am kind of tempted to have you do it, but don&#8217;t do it.
Jimmy: Okay? I&#8217;ll do whatever you want. I&#8217;m a mechanical boy, like a mechanical toy.
Cy: I was enjoying it. I was kind of getting into it.
Cy: By the way, if you&#8217;re young and you have never been exposed to HR Pufnstuf, and you don&#8217;t know why people our age are weird, because this is what we watched on Saturday morning. Sid and Marty Krofft was a CIA conspiracy against the Mile or something. I don&#8217;t know, man. It was crazy. I had forgotten about click clacks.
Jimmy: Yeah, we should explain. Just before we came back on, we were talking about wild stuff from the 70s, and Cy mentioned avocado-colored household appliances.
Cy: Yeah.
Jimmy: And I mentioned all the dangerous games that we had that were then pulled off the market. And we both, at the same time, said lawn darts, which were these. They were about a foot long, as I recall, and they had a metal core with plastic fins, and you&#8217;d throw them and aim at targets on the lawn.
Cy: They were knives for children to throw at each other. It was. That&#8217;s what it was.
Jimmy: Yeah. And I think adults played lawn darts, too. But when you get kids running around and you&#8217;re throwing pointed metal objects, you know, it&#8217;s like this is like a little game of javelins with children running around, but also click clacks.
Cy: What a click clack was. It was kind of like a bolo, but there were two plastic spheres, hard plastic, that were connected by a cord. And you&#8217;d hold the cord in the middle and you&#8217;d swing it back and forth so that the two plastic spheres would clack into each other twice with each swing. And so you&#8217;d be going, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack.
Cy: And a. Okay. This is a noisemaker, which is going to annoy parents, but kids love noisemakers.
Jimmy: Yeah, but the real problem is you&#8217;re gonna hit someone with those hard plastic spheres, you may hit yourself in the head. You may hit another child. You might deliberately throw it at another child to hit them. So. Well, there are some kind of dangerous toys.
Cy: I think that it&#8217;s Australians. That there&#8217;s some kind of weapon where they put two balls on the end of a string and you throw it.
Jimmy: Oh, that&#8217;s a bolo.
Cy: Oh, yeah. Okay. So of course that&#8217;s what we tried to do. Be like, hey, run down the street and I&#8217;ll try to see if I can get these around your legs. So children are knocking each other&#8217;s brains out with heavy plastic balls. The 70s was awesome. It was awesome.
Cy: After this, we&#8217;ll throw lawn darts at each other. Amazing, amazing time. But then the fun thing was then you could get in the station wagon with no seat belts and just play sports in the back of the car.
Jimmy: Just in the back of the car.
Cy: Rumble around in the back of the car while you went on a drive with no air conditioning.
Jimmy: Did that all the time. I should correct myself. It&#8217;s not bolos, but bolas that are the throwing weapon that you could use to, like, if you&#8217;re a gaucho in South America, you could, you know, catch an animal by throwing a bola at it.
Jimmy: We also had another thing that I really. Look now. We had some toys that got taken off the market that I don&#8217;t think they needed to like. There was one toy that I really liked that was. It was called a Thing Maker. And what it was was a. It was a little light bulb powered oven. Basically. They had the Easy-Bake Oven for girls, and they&#8217;d make little things that were.
Cy: Was that for girls?
Jimmy: I was not aware of that.
Cy: Well, I love Easy-Bake Oven.
Jimmy: All right, go ahead.
Jimmy: Primarily for girls, but they also had an equivalent for boys that were primarily for boys where you could take these metal trays and pour goop in them. And they had these bottles of goop and then you put that into the Thing Maker and it would heat it up and cause the goop to solidify as this kind of rubber. And you&#8217;d make these little creatures. And they had like Creeple People was one of them. And it was these little creepy looking characters that you could make.
Jimmy: And I loved playing with the Thing Maker and the Creepy Crawlers and Creeple People that I made with it. But because those little metal trays got hot, they ended up taking it off the market. And I think that was maybe a little. I mean, it&#8217;s not meant for 2-year-olds or 4-year-olds. But I think older children could play with that without it being a problem. Once you learn, you gotta have a little patience and restraint while it cools down.
Cy: Children can deal with heat. Like sometimes we under. Like for all of human history, children have been dealing with fire and heat. Like, if you&#8217;re responsible, they can deal with it.
How are they gonna learn if they don&#8217;t burn their fingers once in a while?
Jimmy: You know, there also was another that I really liked that was. This would have been late 60s or very, very early 70s. But there was a kind of plastic goop. It was thicker than the goop you&#8217;d use with the Thing Maker, which was. Had a consistency before it was baked. Kind of like glue.
Cy: And then you make a frog or something out of it.
Jimmy: You&#8217;d be all kinds of cool stuff, little monster something. But there was another kind of goop that came in a tube and this goop was thicker and more rubbery just out of the tube. And what you. And it was all kinds of different psychedelic colors. And what you do is you&#8217;d squeeze out a little bit of this goop onto the end of a straw and then you take the straw and blow into it and the goop would inflate and you would have your own custom-built goop balloon with an irregular shape and all these psychedelic swirly colors on it.
Jimmy: And then you pinch it off and you could play with your balloon. And I thought that was really cool too. But apparently the goop was toxic or something the way they made it.
Cy: Get over it.
Jimmy: Oh, sorry. Yeah. And so they ended up pulling it off the market. But I thought it was fun.
Cy: Yeah. And we. Did you, did you ever get the opportunity as a child to make a tie-dye shirt? This was also a big thing. You get a. Magically a white T-shirt turns into an actual fashion statement. Like it was a wonderful adventure making the tie-dye T-shirt.
Jimmy: I didn&#8217;t have that as a child. My parents were a little too square for that.
Cy: Oh yeah.
Jimmy: But I do actually have a tie-dye shirt now. But these are ones I bought, not ones I made. I first got a tie-dye shirt because I thought they were looking interesting. But I first got one when I was in grad school in college, at least this first one I remember.
And I had had some toe surgery for an ingrown toenail and I needed to wear Birkenstock sandals after the toe surgery. And no, there&#8217;s a method to my madness because in grad school, I was assigned as a teaching assistant. And I had, I had, you know, longish hair and I had a beard. It wasn&#8217;t as long as it is now, but I had longish hair and a beard.
And I was assigned as a teaching assistant in grad school in the philosophy department. And so I was assigned to teach Introduction to Philosophy. And I did very well at it. I had my faculty, you know, student evaluations were top of the department, and they actually gave me an award for teaching.
And I remember one day one of my fellow grad students who was also a teaching assistant, he couldn&#8217;t make it to one of his classes and asked me to sub for him. And he was not the clearest communicator. And so I went and I taught his class. And this was towards the beginning of the semester and I had, like, several students come up to me after the class eagerly saying, are you our new instructor now?
Cy: They understood you.
Jimmy: So. But one of the challenges, because I wanted as part of this course to do Intro to Philosophy, I wanted to cover philosophy of religion. And I wanted, and this was a state school, this was University of Arkansas, so this is not a religious school. And I wanted to be able to present religious content in a way that would not trip sensitivities for students that were, you know, hostile to Christianity or things like that, because, you know, young people.
And so what I did was I got out my Birkenstock sandals from my toe surgery and I bought a tie-dye T-shirt and I put on the tie-dye T-shirt. And then I go in and teach philosophy of religion. And I can talk about religion without looking like Jerry Falwell. And it worked.
Cy: Yeah, yeah. There are advantages to being a hippie. You can talk about stuff that the guy with the tie on can&#8217;t talk about.
Let&#8217;s take a break. The 70s was both better and worse than, and now I&#8217;m recalling better than people remember it. It had some. Yeah, it was a real mix. Not so good for Patty Hearst. But for the rest of us, there were click clacks.
We&#8217;ll be right back with more Jimmy Akin right after this on Catholic Answers Live.

The 70s Were Dangerous! (And Fun)

<div>Did St. Francis really say, “Lord, grant me the strength to change the things I can, the serenity to deal with the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference”? 
</div><div>As with a number of famous St. Francis quotes,<a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/will-the-real-st-francis-please-stand-up"> this one is misattributed</a>. The Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote what we now commonly call the “Serenity Prayer” that is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. The earliest version of the prayer comes from a 1927 Christian student newsletter that attributes this prayer to Niebuhr: “Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.” The prayer increased in popularity after a secretary at Alcoholics Anonymous noticed it in a 1941 New York Herald Tribune obituary and began using it in the context of addiction recovery.
</div>

Did St. Francis really create the “Serenity Prayer”?

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In evangelization, your ethos matters. Be a Catholic in practice.

Few Christians can honestly say they have never had their belief in God tested. Most of us have encountered difficulties along the path of faith and have been tempted, perhaps when experiencing suffering and evil, to reconsider our convictions.
Not even the saints are exempt from such temptations. Mother Teresa, for example, experienced profound temptations to religious doubt. In a letter to her confessor, she wrote, “Do not think that my spiritual life is strewn with roses—that is the flower which I hardly ever find on my way. Quite the contrary, I have more often as my companion ‘darkness.’”
To some, this might appear scandalous. How can saints experience such temptations? And what should we, who are far less holy, make of our own hesitations to believe?
Before we move forward, I should clarify what I mean by the term doubt. I do not mean what Bl. John Henry Newman meant in his <a href="http://www.newmanreader.org/works/apologia65/chapter5.html">Apologia Pro Vita Sua</a> when he noted, “Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt. . . . Difficulty and doubt are incommensurate.” Here he refers to a willful rejection of belief. In contrast, what I mean here by doubt is closer to what Newman meant by difficulty.
Doubt presupposes belief, or the acceptance of something as true based on the authority of another—and wherever belief is, doubt tends to follow. Why? Because we are keenly aware of human fallibility. We know we can (and do) get things wrong or partially right, and we know that this is true about others. So no matter how certain we might feel in our convictions, there is always a chance that a “perhaps” moment of doubt will surface. “Perhaps I am wrong,” we might admit. “Perhaps it isn’t true.”
When it comes to spiritual matters, doubt and belief come as a package deal. It is not only believers who must face this reality, but unbelievers, too. Even the most hardened atheist must eventually choose to accept a truth about what he cannot see. And he must face the fact of his own intellectual limitations. Thus, a “perhaps” moment is no less likely for the unbeliever: “Perhaps it is true,” he may privately and even painfully wonder.
The point is that doubt can be understood as a natural possibility that arises from authentic belief. Thus, Pope Benedict XVI (as Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote in his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Christianity-2nd-Communio-Books/dp/1586170295">Introduction to Christianity</a>:
<blockquote>Both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt.</blockquote>
Atheism, or the willful rejection of God’s existence, is a sin against the virtue of religion since God has adequately revealed himself in nature (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2125, Rom. 1:18). So doubt in the absolute sense is bad. But doubt in the form of a temptation is—like any temptation we experience passively—not a sin. In fact, inasmuch as it stimulates us to contemplate further the mysteries of Christianity, a trial of faith may refine and strengthen our religious conviction and thus be considered a good. Fr. Dwight Longenecker <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/blessed-john-henry-newman-explains-faith-doubts-and-difficulties">suggests that</a> we “experience trials in the faith for three reasons: to strengthen us, to clarify our beliefs, and to help us proclaim the gospel.”
Doubt compels us to examine our deepest convictions about reality. And as Socrates implied in one of his famous maxims, only the examined life is worth living. Therefore, doubt makes life interesting because it forces us to think about reality. It awakens the mind and restores the will. It compels us to make new or renewed decisions about where we are going in life. G.K. Chesterton, a convert from agnosticism, understood the potential value of doubt when he remarked, “Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them” (Orthodoxy).
A good illustration of the tension between doubt and belief can be found at the Council of Elrond in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, when Frodo vows, “I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.” It is clear that Frodo doesn’t know how he is going to pull it off. It is also clear that his will is fixed: he will march forward despite the thousand difficulties clamoring in his imagination.
When we face doubts—or difficulties—regarding our belief as Catholics, we encounter a similar choice. Will we march forward in faith and seek out answers? Or will we turn our backs on the path we have trodden in faith? It is only when the believer chooses unbelief that doubt results in sin. It all comes down to the will.
Mother Teresa, like all the other saints who experienced severe temptations to doubt, had an iron will. When she wrote in the above letter to her confessor that she has had “more often as [her] companion ‘darkness,’” she did not end her thoughts there. In fact, the next line revealed the true depth of her faith, despite extreme trial: “And when the night becomes very thick—and it seems to me as if I will end up in hell—then I simply offer myself to Jesus.”
She overcame doubt, above all, by standing firm in her faith and entrusting herself to the Savior she knew but could not feel. The little saint of Calcutta chose to walk by faith and not by sight, and we are all called to do the same. For “the men signed of the cross of Christ,” as Chesterton muses in his <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301231h.html">Ballad of the White Horse</a>, “go gaily in the dark.”