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<div>How does one deal with religious debates without getting angry?</div><div>When you speak with people about God and his revelation, you are working for their salvation and happiness, and this means that you love them. So loving the ones we speak with is the best way not to give in to anger. Better to be angry at the devil, the deceiver, than at the poor souls who labor under various errors. You should see yourself as helping the Good Shepherd to bring back his lost sheep, not as an opponent or accuser.
Pray for the ones with whom you speak before, during, and after your talking. Ask the Lord to give them all he desires for them and to use you as his humble and peaceful instrument. Then you will be imitating Christ and the apostles, and then, if anger against evil is warranted, it will be appropriately expressed and won&#8217;t be a general attitude.
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Keeping Your Temper in Religious Debates

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These arguments against the priesthood fail. #denominationaldifferences

<div>Does Catholicism teach that all religions are true?</div><div>No, the Catholic Church does not teach that all religions are true, even if elements of truth can be found in non-Catholic religions. For a primer on the Church’s teaching in this regard, see CCC 846-48.
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Are All Religions True?

In this engaging clip, Cy Kellett and Trent Horn dive into a thought-provoking discussion about why some individuals, like a viewer from Ohio, choose not to embrace Catholicism. Drawing from personal experiences in a Pentecostal background, they explore the impact of miraculous claims and the complexities of faith, challenging assumptions about doctrine and authenticity in religious practices.
Transcript:
Caller: So I would say the reason I am not Catholic is because of the denomination I was born and raised in. I was born and raised in a Pentecostal denomination. You know, emphasis on spiritual church services, speaking in tongues, healings, things like that.
We have ministers all the time from foreign countries that told us miracle stories, converting people by the millions. There&#8217;s one story of a woman who had a kidney that miraculously grew back after this Pentecostal preacher laid hands on her. So I&#8217;d say it&#8217;s that environment that I&#8217;m not Catholic and also because, well, can these people be teaching false doctrine if all these miracles are happening? So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m not Catholic.
Trent: Sure. I think those are two good points. Number one, it seems to be you&#8217;re thinking, well, if these people are capable, let&#8217;s assume that at least some of the miracle claims they&#8217;re making are authentic. I mean, there have unfortunately been cases of preachers, including Pentecostal preachers, who claim to be faith healers. But it seems quite suspect what they&#8217;re exactly doing.
But let&#8217;s just. I think it&#8217;s. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s improbable that some non-Catholic Christians, whether they be ministers or lay people, are capable of performing miracles or having God work through them. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s improbable. But I don&#8217;t think that it follows that because God works a miracle through them, that God validates their theology completely.
It reminds me in the Gospels when there were the apostles, those who were following Jesus, that there were other people who weren&#8217;t direct disciples, who were also casting out demons and doing things. And Jesus said, look, if they&#8217;re not against us, they&#8217;re with us. Though that wouldn&#8217;t mean they had the same apostolic authority as Peter, John, and the other apostles just because other Christians, God empowers them to do miracles.
Because would you agree that, I mean, there are, you know, you said you grew up in the Pentecostal tradition. Would you agree that it&#8217;s possible there are, let&#8217;s say, Calvinists who have done miracles? God has worked through them with charisms. But that wouldn&#8217;t mean you should become a Calvinist, right?
Caller: Well, I guess that&#8217;s a fair point because I&#8217;ve heard of Mormon missionaries, to change the subject a little bit, who have prayed for miracles. Like I saw one video where they claim to stop a drought. And this one lady was cured of cancer after he was baptized in a Mormon baptism. So I guess that&#8217;s a fair point, right?
Trent: And that&#8217;s actually a great example because Mormons are not Christians. So God, I mean, He could choose to work a miracle through anyone, even someone who&#8217;s non-Christian, who&#8217;s not a believer. I mean, you know, God spoke through Balaam&#8217;s donkey, for example, in order to move him.
So there could be non-Christians or non-Catholics God could work through to do a miracle, but that doesn&#8217;t mean automatically their theology is correct. God&#8217;s sovereign. He can choose to do miracles through whoever He wants. For me, I would rather look at trying to determine which theology to believe in. I try to say, look, which one coheres with Scripture and two, which one coheres with history?
Because the Bible, you know, we didn&#8217;t have the Bible in the first century. There wasn&#8217;t a canon, really. There wasn&#8217;t one that was universally recognized until the 4th century. I would say, well, what does early tradition, history, and Scripture tell us? And my full study has led me to the Catholic faith.
I&#8217;d also offer you one more thought, Cole, and that would be that some of the traditions in Pentecostalism, so, you know, charism, speaking in tongues, healings, those kinds of things, they&#8217;re not contradictory to the Catholic faith. Catholics would agree that God can give different charisms to people all the time.
In fact, there are a group of Catholics that have a special devotion to that. They&#8217;re called Charismatic Catholics or part of the Charismatic Catholic Renewal. And that&#8217;s something you could look into, that you can kind of see there how those elements of spirituality that you may find to be positive within Pentecostalism, the Catholic Church also fully supports as well, as long as it doesn&#8217;t contradict Catholic doctrine or Catholic dogma.
Trent: So does that sound like something you might want to look into or&#8230;
Caller: Worth the thought?
Trent: Sure. Yeah. Well, why don&#8217;t you take a look at it? And again&#8230;
Oh, go ahead.
Caller: Well, I just like to say, well, just these preachers have such&#8230; They seem to have such authority when they&#8217;re speaking, and that&#8217;s just hard to kind of argue against, you know.
Trent: But remember, though, when you say authority, they may sound very confident, they may sound, you know, bombastic, they may sound very winsome. I&#8217;ll agree with you there. There are Protestant preachers that can preach up a storm, my friend, but we have to always be careful.
I remember, I believe it&#8217;s in the letter to the Thessalonians, Paul says there will come a time where people will not stand for true doctrine and hoping that their ears will be tickled or pleased, they will go after false teachers. So just because someone&#8217;s really impressive to listen to, sometimes that&#8217;s a warning sign they can be leading people astray.
So when we say speak with authority, we should not mean that they&#8217;re very confident. We should ask what is their authority? Who gave them the right to speak on behalf of Christ? If it&#8217;s just, well, I read the Bible, how do you know your interpretation is right? First Peter 1:20 says, no prophecy of Scripture comes about by one&#8217;s own interpretation.
So I would say the real authority lies in those people who are the successors of the apostles. And we find that apostolic succession fully in the Catholic Church. So something to think about and do. Call back at another time or maybe in an open forum if you want to get more answers.
Cy: Cole, thank you very, very much for that call. Our topic this hour, why aren&#8217;t you a Catholic? Why are you not a Catholic?

Pentecostal Miracles are Why I’m Not Catholic…

<div>Can you help clear up the misunderstanding about St Junipero Serra? Many say he mistreated the Native Americans, but he must not have been bad if he was declared a saint.</div><div>After an extensive investigation over many years, Pope Francis was pleased to culminate the Catholic Church’s examination <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150923_usa-omelia-washington-dc.html">by canonizing Junipero Serra</a>.
In summary, St. Junipero gave his life for the temporal and eternal well-being of the people he served in Mexico and modern California, and that is why he was much beloved by the Indian and Hispanic populations he served.
For more on St. Junipero in historical context, please see <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/01/padre-mestizo#login">this article</a>, <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimgraves/st.-junipero-serra-is-a-great-american-hero">this article</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/junipero-serra">this article</a>
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Setting the Record Straight on St. Junipero Serra

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Why Christians Must Convert "Savages"...

Why Dilexi Te is an Awesome Document

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<h3>Fourth Sunday of Easter
Lectionary: 49</h3>
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<h4>Reading 1    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/acts/2:14">ACTS 2:14A, 36-41</a></h4>
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Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, 
raised his voice, and proclaimed: 
“Let the whole house of Israel know for certain 
that God has made both Lord and Christ, 
this Jesus whom you crucified.”
Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, 
and they asked Peter and the other apostles, 
“What are we to do, my brothers?” 
Peter said to them, 
“Repent and be baptized, every one of you, 
in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; 
and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 
For the promise is made to you and to your children 
and to all those far off, 
whomever the Lord our God will call.” 
He testified with many other arguments, and was exhorting them, 
“Save yourselves from this corrupt generation.” 
Those who accepted his message were baptized, 
and about three thousand persons were added that day.
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<h4>Responsorial Psalm    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/psalms/23:1">23: 1-3A, 3B4, 5, 6</a></h4>
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R. (1) The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. 
or: 
R. Alleluia. 
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. 
In verdant pastures he gives me repose; 
beside restful waters he leads me; 
he refreshes my soul. 
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. 
or: 
R. Alleluia. 
He guides me in right paths 
for his name’s sake. 
Even though I walk in the dark valley 
I fear no evil; for you are at my side. 
With your rod and your staff 
that give me courage. 
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. 
or: 
R. Alleluia. 
You spread the table before me 
in the sight of my foes; 
you anoint my head with oil; 
my cup overflows. 
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. 
or: 
R. Alleluia. 
Only goodness and kindness follow me 
all the days of my life; 
and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD 
for years to come. 
R. The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. 
or: 
R. Alleluia.
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<h4>Reading 2    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/1peter/2:20">1 PT 2:20B-25</a></h4>
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Beloved: 
If you are patient when you suffer for doing what is good, 
this is a grace before God. 
For to this you have been called, 
because Christ also suffered for you, 
leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. 
He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.
When he was insulted, he returned no insult; 
when he suffered, he did not threaten; 
instead, he handed himself over to the one who judges justly. 
He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, 
so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. 
By his wounds you have been healed. 
For you had gone astray like sheep, 
but you have now returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls.
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<h4>Alleluia    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/john/10:14">JN 10:14</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
R. Alleluia, alleluia. 
I am the good shepherd, says the Lord; 
I know my sheep, and mine know me. 
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
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<h4>Gospel    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/john/10:1">JN 10:1-10</a></h4>
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Jesus said: 
“Amen, amen, I say to you, 
whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate 
but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. 
But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. 
The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, 
as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 
When he has driven out all his own, 
he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, 
because they recognize his voice. 
But they will not follow a stranger; 
they will run away from him, 
because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” 
Although Jesus used this figure of speech, 
the Pharisees did not realize what he was trying to tell them.
So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, 
I am the gate for the sheep. 
All who came before me are thieves and robbers, 
but the sheep did not listen to them. 
I am the gate. 
Whoever enters through me will be saved, 
and will come in and go out and find pasture. 
A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; 
I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”
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Source: <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/readings">cms.usccb.org</a>
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Sunday Holy Mass, May 3, 2020

The Church recently rolled out the final document on the Synod on Synodality and I cannot intellectually accept it. Am I essentially no longer Catholic?

Why is marriage between a man and a woman?

At what point did Jesus declare that all animals are clean to eat?

What is the Catholic stance on eugenics?

My supervisor said he would refuse to submit to his supervisor because she is a woman. He used scripture to justify this. How do we approach this as Catholics?

Regarding the year of Jubilee, when you visit 7 churches, do you receive 1 indulgence or an indulgence for every church you visit?

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A caller shares that his coworker refuses to take direction from a female supervisor, citing Scripture as justification. In this episode, Catholic apologists respond with clarity on what the Church teaches about gender roles, authority, and human dignity. Discover how Catholic teaching affirms the equal dignity of men and women while refuting misuse of Scripture to justify sexism.
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>
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Does Scripture Support Male-Only Authority? A Catholic Response

Many single Catholic women hope not to be single forever, but struggle to find a good husband. Until recently, I was one of them.
I got married at the beginning of 2024, and around the same time, I published a book called <a href="http://prettygoodcatholic.com">Pretty Good Catholic</a> about dating and finding a spouse as a Catholic. Based on my research for the book and my own experience, here are some tips for meeting more Catholic men, getting more dates, and ultimately finding a husband.
First, expand your social circle. If you haven’t married anyone you already know, you probably need to meet new men to have a chance at marriage. But it’s easy to get into a routine that doesn’t provide opportunities to meet many new people.
These days, most young Catholics turn to online dating to meet new eligible singles. This is a great tool if it’s used rightly. Catholic psychologist Greg Bottaro <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Bx4C9yXc0">says</a> that “online dating” is a misnomer; instead, we should use dating apps for “online meeting.” Bring the relationship into the real, physical world as quickly as possible.
From talking with friends who have tried online dating, I find that women often struggle to feel interested in a picture and profile on a screen, whereas in real life, a “spark” might happen with the same guy. Keep that in mind as you use “online meeting”; give men a chance for a little longer, even if you don’t feel that initial spark.
Believe it or not, meeting in real life is still possible, too. Try “church-hopping” a bit to find parishes near you that have thriving young adult groups or other social activities you can be involved in outside of Mass. And go national, or even international: attend Catholic or Christian conferences, join pilgrimages, and go on mission trips.
Also, remember that Catholics don’t just go to Catholic-labeled events! Rekindle interests—or find new ones—that include a social element. Recreational sports are great for this, as is any form of partner dancing: swing, ballroom, salsa, etc. (I find that a disproportionate number of Catholics attend public dances!)
Of course, it’s not just where you go; it’s how you go. You’ll need to go in with a mindset that makes you open to meeting new people and being approached by men. Challenge yourself to meet at least one new single guy at every social event. (I’m going easy on you here: Henry Cloud, author of How to Get a Date Worth Keeping, challenges his readers to meet five new single people of the opposite sex per week.)
Go with a “wing woman” who will hold you accountable for your “eligible man” quota. Then separate from her for portions of the event so you’re approachable. Men often complain that the women they are interested in are always with their friends, so they can’t find a moment to ask them out. Put your phone away, look around the room, smile, and make eye contact. Sometimes, that’s all it takes to prompt a man to start a conversation with you. If he doesn’t, you can always say hello and start some casual small talk yourself.
Also, let’s face it: men’s attention is usually caught by the outside, before they get to know the inside. Your appearance will matter. Catholic men usually say they like a woman who looks “feminine”—in other words, like a woman. There are lots of ways to look like a woman, but consider what uniquely “feminine” touches you can incorporate into your appearance while still looking and feeling like yourself: more dresses, a new hairstyle, maybe a little bit of makeup? Regardless, figure out what colors and silhouettes enhance your natural beauty the most. Of course, taking good care of your health and hygiene goes a long way, too.
Once you’ve met a new man, you’ll need to send strong signals that you’re open to being asked out. Many men have told me they struggle to know whether a woman is interested in them, and that they need some encouragement before they make a move.
So learn the art of appropriate flirtation! If you’re interested in a guy, you may find you want to smile and laugh more than usual or even lean a little closer to him when he&#8217;s talking. Do it! If you tend to become shy or freeze up when you&#8217;re interested in someone, you may need to make concrete efforts not to self-sabotage: make eye contact more often and for longer than you usually do, and keep your whole body, including your feet, turned toward him during your conversation.
If your interest persists, but he doesn&#8217;t make it clear he reciprocates, you can proceed to stronger hints. When you have the chance to work it into conversation, hint that you would love to plan an activity together: “I haven’t been kayaking this summer yet, but I’d love to! Where do you usually go?” Hopefully, he’ll pick up this “dropped hanky” and ask you out.
Once you do get a date, or even before that, it can be tempting to switch to analysis mode right away: “Is he my type? Is he ‘husband material’?” Yes, you will need to do considerable reflecting and discerning as the relationship progresses, but there’s no need to do it all at once. Pace yourself.
I’ll share some advice I heard from several matchmakers, date coaches, and even a priest as I was researching for my book: get to know him on a “one date at a time” basis for up to three months before using the “boyfriend” label. During this time, slow-roll both physical affection and emotional intimacy. Think of this initial stage of dating as a time to build a friendship as a foundation for discerning marriage more concretely later.
During this stage, it is perfectly okay to go on dates with more than one person, if you have the opportunity and want to. In fact, I recommend doing so; it can help you avoid getting over-committed to anyone too quickly, and it just seems wise to get to know each potential match at least a little before deciding to commit or reject. Just be honest with each man, after the first or second date, that you’re not ready to be exclusive yet. The script I used that worked well was, “I’m getting to know a few people right now, and I won’t be ready for an exclusive relationship for a couple more months, but if you’re comfortable with that, I’d love to go out again.”
As you get to know him, allow the more serious marriage-discernment topics to come up organically, or ask questions a little at a time, without turning your dates into job interviews. Does he have a strong faith that’s compatible with yours? Is marriage an important goal for him in the foreseeable future? Does he want children? Do you align on your beliefs and desires regarding the roles of husband and wife? Do you communicate well with each other and even disagree well, with honesty and charity? These are just some of the important questions you’ll need to ponder as you gradually assess whether he’s a good husband for you, and you a good wife for him.
Most importantly, pray for guidance, and observe the fruits of the relationship. If your relationship isn’t making you holier and happier now, marrying him probably won’t, either. If it is making you holier and happier, that’s a good sign that you should keep moving forward.

How to Find a Husband

Why does the Catholic Church have priests?

Although our salvation doesn’t depend on knowing the exact date of Christ’s birth, nor is the Church likely ever to make a dogmatic definition regarding this date, it is a matter of interest to anyone who knows and loves Jesus Christ. In this article, <a href="https://cybersky.software.informer.com/">modern</a> astronomy <a href="https://store.simulationcurriculum.com/products/starry-night-pro-8">software</a> and ancient historical documents (including but not limited to the Bible) will offer one perspective on the star of Bethlehem that heralded our Redeemer’s birth.
The three scholars who deserve the most credit for this research are <a href="https://bethlehemstar.com/">Frederick Larson</a>, <a href="https://a.co/d/6kaOiNC">Timothy Norris</a>, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/ddp/the-star-of-bethlehem-and-astrology">Jimmy Akin</a>. What follows is a partial timeline of the Christ Event, from his conception in Mary’s womb to the adoration of the Magi. Powerful new software and the regularity of Kepler’s planetary motion laws offer a plausible case for the precision of each date. After this timeline, verses from the Bible and other ancient documents will provide historical support for each claim.
<h2>September, 3 B.C.</h2>
Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb. After a close conjunction of Jupiter and Venus on August 12, Jupiter (the King Planet) began a rare triple conjunction with Regulus (the King Star), essentially crowning it with a halo pattern. The conjunction dates were Sep. 14, Feb. 17, and May 8. The celestial coronation took place in the constellation Leo. Just after sunset on Sep. 11, the constellation that rose in the east behind Leo was Virgo, the Virgin, literally “clothed with the Sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1). It was a new moon at her feet, coinciding with the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). The Magi, familiar with Jewish prophecies of the Messiah, definitely took notice.

<h2>June, 2 B.C.</h2>
Nine months after his conception, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. When Jupiter had finished crowning Regulus in May, it formed a close conjunction with Venus (the Mother Planet) on June 17, such that the separation between the two would have been imperceptible to the naked eye. Light from each planet added to the other, forming the most brilliant star that had ever been seen. (The Jupiter-Venus conjunction of June 17, 2 B.C. has been the brightest such conjunction in human history.) The Magi departed in haste from Babylon towards Bethlehem.
<h2>December, 2 B.C.</h2>
The first Epiphany: the Magi arrived in Bethlehem and adored the Christ child. Jupiter had proceeded ahead of the Magi, first leading them westward toward Jerusalem and then stopping (in full retrograde motion) on December 25 over the town of Bethlehem. Jesus would have been a six-month-old baby by this time, no longer in a temporary cave-stable but now in a small house built by Joseph.
At this point, let’s make the case for the claims above. The first fact to demonstrate is that King Herod died in 1 B.C., not 4 B.C. This is extremely important, because if Herod died in 4 B.C., as is widely believed, the star of Bethlehem would have appeared before then. In fact, the great mathematician and astronomer, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), wrote two books on the subject, De stella nova (1606) and De anno natali Christi (1614). Unfortunately, he didn’t find much in the stars of 7, 6, and 5 B.C. His careful calculations could reproduce the celestial map with astonishing accuracy, but he sadly missed the star because he was searching in the wrong years.
Kepler’s mistaken idea that Herod had died in 4 B.C. was based on the historical scholarship of his time. Historian David Beyer has argued that a widely accepted reading of Josephus, which suggests that Herod died in 4 B.C., came from a transcription error introduced in a 1544 printed edition of Josephus’s Antiquities of the Jews (Book 18, chapter 4, section 106; see also David W. Beyer, “Josephus Re-examined,” available <a href="https://www.book-info.com/isbn/0-86554-582-0.htm">here</a>.) According to Beyer, nearly all the pre-1544 editions and manuscripts he reviewed in the British Library and Library of Congress stated that Herod Philip (who succeeded Herod the Great) died in the twenty-second year of Tiberius&#8217;s reign. The 1544 edition, however, changed this to the twentieth year of Tiberius. The “twentieth year” reading would place Herod the Great’s death in 4 B.C. Presumably working from a post-1544 edition of Josephus, Kepler would have accepted the 4 B.C. death date.
Besides the transcription error, there are more important reasons to reject the 4 B.C. date of Herod’s death. Historian Gerard Gertoux has published a tour de force of research <a href="https://www.academia.edu/2518046/Herod_the_Great_and_Jesus_Chronological_Historical_and_Archaeological_Evidence">here</a>, and Jimmy Akin’s findings agree with Gertoux’s. Although historian Emil Schürer’s claim that Herod died in 4 B.C. has retained widespread acceptance over the last hundred years, it rests on weak foundations. Akin critiques these foundations based on the following key points from Josephus and related evidence. He also builds a case for Herod the Great dying in 1 B.C. (specifically between the lunar eclipse on January 10, 1 B.C., and Passover on April 11, 1 B.C., likely closer to the latter).
1. Herod&#8217;s appointment as king in 40 B.C. leading to a thirty-six- or thirty-seven-year reign:
Josephus states that Herod was appointed king in the 184th Olympiad (ending mid-40 B.C.) during the consulship of Calvinus and Pollio (which began late 40 B.C.). This creates an impossible contradiction, as the dates do not overlap. External Roman sources (Appian and Dio Cassius) place the appointment in 39 B.C. Josephus reckons reigns non-inclusively (not counting partial first years in this period). Starting the count from the first full year (38 B.C.) and then adding thirty-seven years leads to a death in 1 B.C.
2. Length of reign after conquering Jerusalem (thirty-four years):
Josephus states that Herod died thirty-four years after obtaining his kingdom by slaying Antigonus (i.e., conquering Jerusalem), but he provides contradictory dates for the conquest. Some details point to 37 B.C., whereas others (e.g., exactly twenty-seven years after Pompey&#8217;s conquest in 63 B.C., and the end of 126 years of Hasmonean rule starting in 162 B.C.) point to 36 B.C. This inconsistency undermines using 37 B.C. as a firm anchor for a 4 B.C. death. However, using non-inclusive reckoning of the thirty-four-year period, we can infer a possible death date in either 2 B.C. or 1 B.C.
3. The lunar eclipse shortly before Herod&#8217;s death and Passover:
Josephus places Herod&#8217;s death between a lunar eclipse and Passover, with numerous events (requiring significant time and travel of many different people) in between. Advocates of a 4 B.C. death cite a partial lunar eclipse on March 13, 4 B.C., twenty-nine days before Passover. The twenty-nine-day gap is too short to accommodate all the events and travel Josephus describes between the eclipse and Herod&#8217;s death (estimated minimum forty-one days, more realistically sixty to ninety days). However, a total lunar eclipse occurred on Jan. 10, 1 B.C., eighty-nine days before Passover, which better matches Josephus&#8217;s description due to the sufficient time gap. Additionally, since Josephus does not specify a partial lunar eclipse, a total eclipse aligns better.
4. Evidence that Herod&#8217;s sons assumed office in 4 B.C.:
This does not prove that Herod died then, as it was common for aging rulers to appoint successors as co-rulers during their lifetime to ease succession and reduce pressure. Historical evidence shows that Herod did grant his sons governing authority before his death.
5. Testimony of the Church Fathers:
Many Church Fathers asserted a birth date of Christ in 3/2 B.C., necessitating a death date of Herod later than 4 B.C. and around 1 B.C. These Fathers included St. Irenaeus, St. Clement of Alexandria, Julius Africanus, St. Hippolytus, Eusebius, and Epiphanius, with Tertullian and Origen joining them.
Now that we’ve proven a 1 B.C. date for Herod’s death, let’s demonstrate the dates of the infant Christ’s timeline. We will proceed in chronological order:
<h2>September, 3 B.C.</h2>
The Magi weren’t just random stargazers. Most likely they were descendants of Daniel, the prophet brought to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. The Bible provides plenty of clues for this. In Daniel 2:48, Nebuchadnezzar makes Daniel the chief wise man (magus) of his court. In Daniel 5:11, Belshazzar’s queen reminds the king that Daniel, the chief magus, can interpret dreams and visions. In Daniel 6:28, we see that Daniel prospered in the reigns of Darius and Cyrus, implying his tremendous influence on the kingdom (including the school of magi). Daniel’s famous prophecy of weeks of years (sixty-nine sets of seven years each) in Daniel 9:24-27, predicted both the coming of Christ and the destruction of the Temple.
The point is that Daniel, a devout Jew whose God was respected and protected by King Cyrus, would have trained magi to watch the stars for signs of the Messiah. This is why the Magi took notice of the triple conjunction of Jupiter and Regulus in the constellation Leo, representing the Lion of Judah (a type of Christ mentioned in Gen. 49:8-10, 2 Sam. 7:12-14, and Rev. 5:5). It also explains how they knew the prophecy of Micah and why they wanted to worship the newborn King:
<blockquote>In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.  They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel” (Matt. 2:1-6).</blockquote>
<h2>June, 2 B.C.</h2>
The Gospel of Luke notes that John the Baptist began his ministry in the “fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” (Luke 3:1). Tiberius assumed the throne after Augustus died in August A.D. 14, but Roman historians such as Tacitus and Suetonius typically started counting an emperor’s regnal years from the following January 1, ignoring any partial year. Using this standard method, the fifteenth year of Tiberius would run through what we know as A.D. 29. (A regnal year is counted similarly to a person’s age: the “fifteenth year” spans from the end of the fourteenth year to the end of the fifteenth.)
Jesus began his own ministry shortly after John’s, so his public work probably started around A.D. 29 as well. Luke adds another key detail: at the start of his ministry, Jesus was “about thirty years old” (3:23). Counting back roughly thirty years from A.D. 29, and remembering there is no year zero in the transition from B.C. to A.D., we are brought to 2 B.C. as <a href="https://jimmyakin.com/2013/04/what-year-was-jesus-born-the-answer-may-surprise-you.html">the most likely birth year</a>.
<h2>December, 2 B.C.</h2>
In Matthew 2:9, we read, “When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.” This was the town of Bethlehem, five miles south of Jerusalem. Jupiter was in full retrograde motion that night, the first Epiphany, on December 25. This is not why December 25 was chosen to celebrate Our Lord’s Nativity each year, but it is an interesting coincidence demonstrated by modern astronomy software.
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
Although history and science can never dictate our faith, it is always helpful to see that neither history nor science can contradict it. This is because truth can’t contradict truth. If Christ entered human history through the Incarnation, it is not surprising that he would allow us to use history and science to discover his birth date.
In any case, the most important thing to contemplate as we celebrate Christmas is that “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

A Modern Take on Christ’s Birth Date

<div>is it legal to have a classical piano concert in a church?</div><div>The sanctuary is the location of the altar in all churches and of the tabernacle in most. As such, it is considered sacred space and cannot be used in the manner of a simple public space.
The Code of Canon Law states:
<blockquote>In a sacred place only those things are to be permitted which serve to exercise or promote worship, piety and religion. Anything out of harmony with the holiness the place is forbidden. The ordinary may, however, for individual cases, permit other uses, provided they are not contrary to the sacred character of the place (CIC, can. 1210).</blockquote>
Practical considerations in many parishes, unfortunately, leave the sanctuary space as the only space large enough for certain events. But these events must be reasonably religious in nature. For example, a parish school choir Christmas concert is reasonably religious. On the other hand, the parish school&#8217;s talent show most likely is not, unless restricted to performances consistent with or not contrary to the sacred character of a church. Otherwise, the school gym or other parish venue would be appropriate.
Even when the use of the sacred space is permissible, that doesn&#8217;t mean anything goes. The altar and the space immediately around it need to be respected. Nothing should be placed upon the altar as if it were a mere table or display location. The Eucharist may need to be removed from the tabernacle to ensure that the sacred presence of the Lord is not disrespected by being ignored.
While the pastor of the parish can grant permission to use the sacred space for a religious purpose (e.g., religious music concert, retreat, religious drama), only the bishop may grant permission for sacred space to be used for a secular purpose (e.g., non-religious classical music concert). And the bishop cannot grant permission for anything that would be explicitly contrary to sacredness (e.g., a political rally).
In addition to canon law, the Church provides important norms to follow in <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/concerts-in-churches-2164">Concert in Churches,</a> a document which the Congregation for Divine Worship issued in 1987:
<blockquote>8. The principle that the use of the church must not offend the sacredness of the place determines the criteria by which the doors of a church may be opened to a concert of sacred or religious music, as also the concomitant exclusion of every other type of music. The most beautiful symphonic music, for example, is not in itself of religious character. The definition of sacred or religious music depends explicitly on the original intended use of the musical pieces or songs, and likewise on their content. It is not legitimate to provide for the execution in the church of music which is not of religious inspiration and which was composed with a view to performance in a certain precise secular context, irrespective of whether the music would be judged classical or contemporary, of high quality or of a popular nature. On the one hand, such performances would not respect the sacred character of the church, and on the other, would result in the music being performed in an unfitting context.
9. The playing of the organ or other musical performance, whether vocal or instrument, may &#8220;serve to promote piety or religion.” In particular they may . . .
9f. assist visitors and tourists to grasp more fully the sacred character of a church, by means of organ concerts at prearranged times. . . .
10. When the proposal is made that there should be a concert in a church, the Ordinary is to grant the permission per mudum actus [by a silent act]. This excludes permission for a series of concerts, for example in the case of a festival or cycle of concerts. . . .
10f. The Blessed Sacrament should be, as far as possible, reserved in a side chapel or in another safe and suitably adorned place (cf. C.I.C., can 938, par. 4).</blockquote>
The reservation of the Eucharist, e.g., in the parish rectory chapel, is all the more important if there are non-Catholics performing, i.e., people who wouldn’t understand—let alone, believe in—the sublimity of the Blessed Sacrament and thus express proper reverence toward our Eucharistic Lord in close proximity to him in the sanctuary tabernacle.
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Concerts in Churches?

<div>I recall a married Catholic couple who separated but didn’t divorce so that one or the other could enter religious life. What are their names? </div><div>You may be thinking of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/was-there-a-catholic-couple-who-separated-but-did-not-divorce-so-that-one-spouse-could-enter">Cornelia Connelly</a> (1809-1879), who with her husband, Pierce, an Episcopalian minister, converted to the Catholic Church. Pierce Connelly decided he wanted to become a Catholic priest. In those days, no special dispensation existed to allow a converted Episcopal priest to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood and continue to share a common life with his wife. To accommodate his vocation, Cornelia became a religious sister and founded the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.
Pierce’s vocation didn’t last. He eventually left the priesthood and the Church altogether, denied Cornelia contact with their three children, and pressured her to abandon religious life to resume life with him and the children. She refused and entrusted her children’s future to God.
A cause for her canonization has been opened and she has been given the title <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/all-saints-in-the-family">Venerable</a>. You can read more about her in Ronda De Sola Chervin’s book <a href="https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/avoiding-bitterness-in-suffering">Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering</a> (Sophia Institute Press).
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Cornelia and Pierce Connelly

Fr. Bjorn Lundberg recommends <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/adoration">Eucharistic Adoration</a>, counseling, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-can-i-explain-to-protestant-friends-why-catholics-go-to-confession">Confession</a>, and Deacon Neal Lozano&#8217;s book &#8220;Unbound&#8221; as means of recovering our trust in God after having negative experiences both inside and outside of the Church.
Transcript
Host: We go next to Ray in Lexington, Kentucky. Ray, you are on with Fr. Bjorn Lundberg, what’s your question?
Caller: Hi, Father. I had a question as far as, you know, people have had bad experiences with the Church, you know.
Fr. Bjorn: Right.
Caller: Having the ability to surrender themselves and be vulnerable after having—being hurt in the past. What would you say there?
Fr. Bjorn: This is a huge problem, and it’s a great question, because whether it’s a bad experience with the Church or our experiences in life; whether it’s in relationships within our family or things that have happened to us or crises we’ve gone through; these wounds affect how we look at God. And so, you know, they use this term, like we can be “anthropomorphic;” we can project on God our experience of life. So especially when someone’s been wounded in an area of trust by an authority figure or anyone in the Church or in life, this can then set up problems for trusting God.
So, a couple things I would recommend: one is to spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. If the person believes in the Real Presence, that’s a starting point. If they don’t, you know, you kinda just want to work them into—whether it’s Scripture reading, or devotions, or healthy discipleship with other people, that would be a starting point—who they trust. But if you can—you or I or anyone can spend time with the Lord. Even if you do nothing but just sit in His presence, it’s healing. Because Sister Briege McKenna makes the point that if someone goes to the beach and they’re in the sun, you can tell; they’ve got a sunburn, or a tan, or they’re freckled, or whatever. And the same thing: when you spend time with Our Lord, in front of the Blessed Sacrament, it’s like, you know, nuclear—or spiritual chemotherapy or radiation treatment.
A book I’d also recommend is called “Unbound,” by Neal Lozano, he’s a Catholic deacon who’s been involved with the charismatic renewal. And he has these five keys, or five steps, that a person can take to experience greater freedom. He starts—well, there’s an analogy you can use that if someone gets up on a Saturday morning to go into their kitchen for coffee, and it’s wintertime, and they’ve run the heat all night, but when they get to the kitchen it’s freezing cold, they say, “Why is it cold in here? We had the heat on.” Well, they realize someone left the window open or the door open. So they close it and the room warms up. Well, in life, when we’ve gone through trauma or crisis or abuse, there can be sort of spiritual doors that are opened. It’s great to go to counseling, it’s of course essential to go to Confession when we need it, but even with those things, there can sort of be a dark cloud that follows us around, and this would be some kind of form of spiritual attack. So the book “Unbound” is a very practical way to grow in a relationship with our Heavenly Father and have greater healing too.
Host: Ray, how does that strike you? That is awesome, thank you so much, Father.
Fr. Bjorn: You’re welcome, great.
Host: Thank you very much, Ray.

How Do We Trust God Again after a Bad Experience?

5 Bad Catholic Arguments We NEED TO STOP Using…

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A 14-year-old asks if wearing the One Ring in The Lord of the Rings could be a mortal sin. Jimmy Akin explains how Catholic teaching on temptation, free will, and culpability applies—even in Middle-earth.
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Transcript:
Cy: Nicholas says, Hi! I&#8217;m a mega fan of Jimmy Akin&#8217;s Mysterious World. I am 14, and I have a weird question for you. First, in the Lord of the Rings, how culpable are people for mortal sin when they wear the One Ring? I would just like to say, 14 years old, using the word culpable. Good job, Nicholas. I am asking because it is possible to ignore the temptation of the ring.
Jimmy: My. Oh, so let&#8217;s do that. Then we&#8217;ll do his second question. Gotcha. Okay, so I have to start by saying that I have never read in their entirety the Lord of the Rings books. I have seen the movies. I&#8217;ve seen all the movies, and not just the Peter Jackson ones. I&#8217;ve seen the Nelvana, Ralph Bakshi productions, too, from back in the 70s, one of which only ended up on TV and was never theatrically released. So I&#8217;m familiar with the basic plots. But Tolkien may have stuff in the books that provides more detail about how the Ring works than what I&#8217;m aware of. So I don&#8217;t know, Cy. You may know more about that than me. You may have read the books in their entirety.
Cy: I did, yeah.
Jimmy: Okay, so you may be able to add some color to this. But assuming that it is possible to ignore the temptation that the One Ring provides, which it would seem to be given that Tom Bombadil is totally unfazed by the One Ring, he&#8217;s playing with it at the beginning of the first of the Lord of the Rings books, which I understand why they dropped that sequence from the movies, because the movies open with a very effective portrayal of how dangerous the ring is. And it would totally undercut that to have Tom Bombadil spinning it around his finger and not caring. So I think that was actually a good cut for the movies.
But the mere fact that it&#8217;s possible to ignore the temptation does not mean that a person is not going to have. Is not. Is not going to be committing mortal sin. The person may or may not commit mortal sin. The Church&#8217;s understanding is that in order for mortal sin to occur, three conditions must be met together. One of them is there has to be grave matter. And we&#8217;ll just specify that that&#8217;s the case in whatever mortal sin the ring is tempting someone to do.
The second is you have to have full knowledge of the moral character of the act. And that may or may not be present, depending on the extent to which the ring is impacting your perception of what&#8217;s going on. So it could be that the ring is depriving you of adequate knowledge of what you&#8217;re doing and what it really consists of.
And then the third condition is that there must be deliberate consent, meaning this is a free choice that the person is making. But it&#8217;s not deliberate consent if the person is under some kind of psychological compulsion. And the Ring would seem to provide, since it tends to corrupt folks in some cases in radical ways like Gollum, it would seem that there is a strong psychological compulsion there such that even Frodo succumbs to it by the end of the story.
And it&#8217;s only because of divine providence that the Ring ends up being destroyed. Because Frodo was not going to destroy it there at the end and he knew what the stakes were. He knew the Shire and other places would just be ravaged by Sauron if he didn&#8217;t destroy the Ring. And so that would seem to indicate that the Ring, at least in some circumstances, has tremendous psychological compulsion power.
So even if it&#8217;s possible for some unusually strong individuals like Tom Bombadil to ignore it, and even if a normal person could ignore it in some circumstances, like let&#8217;s say when you&#8217;re far from Mount Doom, your culpability will be diminished by the Ring&#8217;s noetic effects, which are its effects on your beliefs and, you know, what you perceive yourself to be doing.
And it will also be. Your culpability will also be mitigated by the degree of compulsion the Ring has over you in that moment. So on two grounds. Both by interfering with your knowledge of what you&#8217;re doing and by interfering with the normal exercise of your will to make deliberative choices, you could end up not being responsible in a mortal sin way for what you&#8217;re doing.
So it might end up being a venial sin or even not a sin at all if your knowledge or culpability were fundamentally removed from you. If your knowledge or your volition, your use of the will was fundamentally removed.
On the other hand, this is. It&#8217;s not guaranteed that you might not commit a mortal sin. You might still have enough control and knowledge to be mortally culpable for what you did. And even if you&#8217;re not, you may have made a free choice to wear the ring knowing what the consequences of that would be.
Like Bilbo, you know, Bilbo originally started wearing the ring not knowing what it would do. But by the time in The Hobbit, but by the time of The Lord of the Rings, he had learned the corrupting effect of the Ring. And there&#8217;s even a moment in the Peter Jackson movies where he&#8217;s, you know, given the ring to Frodo, but he just doesn&#8217;t want to let it go.
And he becomes. He starts. He even looks monstrous as he lunges for the ring at one point because he wants to wear it because it&#8217;s addictive. Well, okay, someone who engages when they are in control of themselves, who, let&#8217;s say, gets drunk or high knowing that that&#8217;s going to lead them to do immoral things is responsible for the path that they set themselves on.
So if, you know, let&#8217;s say someone goes out to a bar and starts drinking like crazy knowing they&#8217;re going to drive home in an unsafe state, they assume responsibility for driving home in an unsafe state. And that can be mortally sinful. Same thing if they know they&#8217;re going to get high, let&#8217;s say they&#8217;re smoking weed and they know they&#8217;re going to get high, and then they&#8217;re going to drive to the store to get snacks because they&#8217;re going to have the munchies. Well, they&#8217;re responsible for the dangerous condition they&#8217;re going to be driving in.
And so in the same way, one could have the ring and not be wearing it, but be tempted to wear it in a state where you still have control of yourself and you know, your addiction is not so far gone that you have no control over this. And if you then, while you have control of yourself, choose to wear the ring knowing what it&#8217;s going to lead to, then you have assumed the moral responsibility for what it will lead to.
And you could mortally sin by wearing the ring, by choosing to wear the ring once you know what the consequences of that act are going to be and you just want to do it anyway.
Cy: All right, Nicholas, there&#8217;s question number one for you. Nicholas&#8217;s second question&#8230;

Is Wearing the One Ring a Mortal Sin?

&#8220;<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/modernism">Modernism</a>&#8221; is the charge against the Church in many parts of the internet. In fact, it is common to find Catholics <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cal/tba-49">attacking the Second Vatican Council</a> as modernist heresy. So what is modernism, and has it infected the Church? Father Sebastian Walshe, author of <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/secrets-from-heaven/">Secrets From Heaven</a> and <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/always-a-catholic-how-to-keep-your-kids-in-the-faith-for-life-and-bring-them-back-if-they-have-strayed/">Always a Catholic</a>, explains modernism and engages with the charge of modernism against the Church.

Modernism

Jesus’ command to “eat my flesh” and “drink my blood” in John 6 has been the subject of much debate since the time of the Protestant Reformation. And Catholic apologists have done their fair share of defending the realistic understanding of these words (we must eat Jesus’ real flesh and blood) as opposed to a metaphorical reading (we need only come to Jesus and believe in him). Thus, you might think, “What more can be said about it?”
Well, I’d like to answer that question here.
What I say below is nothing entirely new. However, there is enough twist that I think it’s worth sharing.
We all know that Jesus’ disciples struggled to accept his command to eat his flesh and drink his blood: “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (John 6:60). Some of them even left him for it: “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer walked with him” (v. 66).
We also know that Jesus recognized their difficulty: “Do you take offense at this?” (v.61).
Now, the question is, “Did Jesus attempt to ease the difficulty by clarifying their realistic understanding?”
As others have <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-living-bread-mp3/">argued</a>, and as I argue in my book Meeting the Protestant Response: How to Answer Common Comebacks to Catholic Arguments, the answer is no. Rather, Jesus underscored the difficulty by appealing to his ascension: “What if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before?” (v. 62).
Such a response suggests that Jesus was not clarifying his disciples’ realistic understanding. Rather, he was affirming it. Why would Jesus appeal to his ascension—something even more difficult to believe, given its observably miraculous nature—if he were trying to ease the difficulty by clarifying the literal thoughts of his disciples concerning his teaching to eat his flesh and drink his blood?
Most who swim in the waters of apologetics are familiar with the above argument. There are two other lines of reasoning, however, that aren’t so familiar.
For the first one, consider that in verses 33-35 of John 6, the metaphor of “eating” and “drinking” are used in conjunction with Jesus’ command to “come to” him and “believe” in him:
<blockquote>“For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Lord, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.”</blockquote>
The “eating” and “drinking” metaphors are implied in Jesus’ promise that we will never hunger when we come to him and never thirst when we believe in him. So, at least here, “eating” and “drinking” are metaphors for following Jesus and believing in him.
Now, if Jesus wanted to ease the difficulty that the disciples were having with his command to “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood” and clarify their realistic understanding, then he could have easily done so by retreating to the “come to me” and “believe in me” language. You can imagine him saying something like, “Hey guys, why are you having such a hard time with this? I just gave you the interpretive key for this language. All I’m asking you to do is come to me and believe in me.” And the disciples would have responded, “That’s all you mean? Whew! I thought you meant for us to actually eat your flesh and drink your blood. In that case, no problem here! We’re already following you and believing in you.”
Not only could Jesus have done this, but he would have done it. Jesus wouldn’t leave his disciples in the darkness of their misunderstanding when he had an easy fix available. That’s just not Jesus’ M.O. Sure, at times, he left his critics in such darkness (John 2:1-15). But he never did that for his disciples.
When Jesus spoke in parables to the multitudes, “privately to his own disciples he explained everything” (Mark 4:33-34; see also Matt. 13:10-11). When Jesus’ disciples thought he was speaking of real food—“I have food to eat of which you do not know” (John 4:32), Jesus clarified their misunderstanding: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work” (v. 34). When Jesus’s disciples thought Jesus was speaking of the bread of the Pharisees and Sadducees—“Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matt. 16:6)—Jesus, again, clarified their misunderstanding: “How is it that you fail to perceive that I did not speak about bread?” (v. 11). Matthew tells us that the disciples then understood Jesus to be speaking of the “teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (v.12).
So, to repeat: If Jesus wanted to ease the difficulty that the disciples were having with his command to “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood” and clarify their realistic understanding, then he could have, and would have, done so by retreating to the “come to me” and “believe in me” language.
But Jesus didn’t retreat to such language.
Therefore, Jesus didn’t want to ease the difficulty and clarify their realistic understanding.
Now, given this, we have only three possibilities that would follow:
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<li>a) Jesus wasn’t concerned with the disciples’ difficulty,</li>
<li>b) Jesus intended to leave the disciples in their false realistic understanding, or</li>
<li>c) Jesus intended the disciples’ realistic understanding.</li>
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It can’t be that Jesus wasn’t concerned with their difficulty. He was: “Do you take offense at this?” (v. 61).
Nor can it be that Jesus intended to leave his disciples in their false realistic understanding. The examples above where Jesus clarifies his disciples’ misunderstandings suffice as evidence.
Our only option left is that Jesus intended the disciples’ realistic understanding. Thus, there was no misunderstanding on the part of the disciples. They got it! And they left Jesus for it.
There’s yet another line of reasoning that suggests Jesus’ affirmation of the disciples’ realistic understanding. After we’re told that the disciples “drew back and no longer walked with [Jesus]” (v. 66), Jesus asks the apostles, “Will you also go away?” (v. 67).
Here’s the question for us: Why would Jesus think the apostles might leave him for his teaching to believe in him when they already believed in him?
This is what Jesus would have to have thought if he intended his words to be taken as an idiom for coming to him and believing in him. But that doesn’t make sense.
The question as to whether the apostles would leave Jesus, along with the other disciples, makes no sense if all Jesus meant was to come to him and believe in him. No difficulty would have existed for the apostles, especially a difficulty of such a degree that they might leave him for it
Therefore, Jesus’ question to the apostles is further evidence that he intended a realistic understanding of his words as opposed to a metaphorical or figurative one.
There you have it: a few more lines of defense to add to the stock defenses for the realistic understanding of Jesus’ words “eat my flesh” and “drink my blood.” The mystery of these words never ceases to inspire awe within us and draws us ever deeper into reflection on God’s Word.

Jesus: ‘No, Seriously, Guys’

<div>I want to receive Communion. If I made up a lie or got mad at someone, does this require a confession?</div><div>Whether a lie or our anger is a mortal sin depends upon their severity. Lying that I did not leave the bathroom light on would be a venial sin. Lying about a murder would be a mortal sin.  In the same way, a brief fleeting anger wouldn&#8217;t be a mortal sin, but a deep-seated anger could very well be a mortal sin.
You would need to examine your conscience and what the potential consequences of your lies or anger might have been.  However, a good rule of thumb would be: when in doubt, confess it. Your confessor can help you with a spiritual assessment.
</div>

When to Go to Confession?

Jimmy Akin answers a caller who wonders how to reconcile seemingly contradictory stories in Scripture, and in particular the differing accounts of the Gaterine demoniacs in Matthew&#8217;s and Mark&#8217;s Gospels.
Transcript:
Host: Chris from England, listening on the Catholic Answers app, you are on with Jimmy Akin on open forum. And I have a question for you: What part of England are you in?
Caller: I&#8217;m from Manchester.
Host: Manchester, ok very good, awesome, great to hear from you.
Caller: Thank you. And so my question is, is that we have the belief that the Holy Spirit is the primary author of Scripture. And so I would like to know, how can we account for apparent factual contradictions? One story comes to mind of the demon-possessed man in the Gospel of Mark and also in the Gospel of Matthew. In the Gospel of Matthew there&#8217;s two possessed men and also the location seems to be different from the same story from the Gospel of Mark. And so how can we counter the seeming factual contradictions?
Jimmy: Ok, the incident you&#8217;re referring to is the&#8230; it&#8217;s described in one place as the Gadarene demoniac, because Jesus is in the area of Gadara; and so there are a couple of things to note here, because you&#8217;ve asked about the location and about the number of the possessed men.
One of the things that we find in Scripture is that the location terms often overlap. So you can describe&#8211; because they didn&#8217;t have, you know, geo-location coordinates back then, geocaching was not a big thing in the first century&#8211;and so you could describe locations in a variety of different ways. Sometimes you could describe them based on where they were in terms of the region that they&#8217;re in; sometimes you could describe them in terms of what town they were close to; sometimes you could describe them in terms of how you got there; sometimes you could describe them in terms of what features geographically were nearby; and so there were a bunch of ways that you could more or less describe the same area, and because they weren&#8217;t, you know, trying to geocache these things, you could say, well this happened in this region or in this approximate area.
And different authors can take different approaches to how they do that, and so that&#8217;s how I would account for the difference in location descriptions that you find in Matthew and Mark, both of whom have a version of this incident. If you&#8217;d like to read more about that, I&#8217;d suggest you check out my commentary on Mark which is called &#8220;Mark: A Commentary&#8221; by Jimmy Akin, and it&#8217;s available on Verbum Bible Software. I have a&#8211;it&#8217;s actually a really thorough commentary and I go through that question, among others, in this.
Also, I go into the question of the the number of the demoniacs, and that is one that&#8217;s actually even easier to solve, because one of the things that authors have to make a decision on when they&#8217;re writing&#8211;and this is true of all authors, certainly I know it&#8217;s true of me when I&#8217;m writing&#8211;is how much detail you&#8217;re gonna go into. Because frequently you know way more about something than you have space to go into, either because you&#8217;ve gotten a word count from your editor that you have to meet, or you&#8217;re gonna run out of paper, or you simply don&#8217;t want to bore your audience so they lose interest and stop reading and you&#8217;re writing for no purpose.
So every author is conscious of &#8220;How much detail am I gonna go into here?&#8221; And therefore authors make different choices. They may choose, for example, to simplify an account in terms of how many of the details they record, like, suppose something happened with two guys, but&#8230;they&#8217;re both demoniacs, they both get exorcised by Jesus, they&#8217;re both in the same location; do I really need to mention both, or can I just make as an author the point that, okay, Jesus exorcised a demoniac here. And that&#8217;s the choice that Mark makes when Mark only mentions one. He&#8217;s using a simplified account.
Now in Mark&#8217;s case, he may not have been the one who did the simplification, because Mark is dependent in his Gospel on Peter&#8217;s preaching. And so if Peter, in his preaching, simply decided, &#8220;I&#8217;m gonna talk, for the sake of my audience, about one guy rather than confuse him with two,&#8221; then that could have been the form of the account that Mark was familiar with, and so that&#8217;s the one he wrote down.
But either way, either Peter or Mark is simplifying. Matthew, also as an eyewitness, would have known, &#8220;Well okay, there is&#8211;&#8221; assuming he was there for this incident, assuming, you know, he wasn&#8217;t taking the day off, and that he was already a follower of Jesus by this point, but as a witness of Jesus&#8217;s ministry, could well have been there and he could have said, &#8220;You know, there are actually two guys there, and I think that&#8217;ll suit my literary purposes in helping my audience in writing my Gospel, so I&#8217;m not gonna use the simplified account I found in Mark; I&#8217;m gonna give a little bit more detail than Mark did, and mention the second guy.&#8221;
So that&#8217;s the basic approach that I take in looking at those. It&#8217;s not actually a contradiction, it&#8217;s just a question of how much detail are you gonna go into, and different authors make different choices.

How Can We Account for Factual Contradictions in Scripture?

Have you ever felt awkward listening to the Gospel reading during Ash Wednesday services? It sounds as if Jesus is telling us not to put ashes on our foreheads during a day devoted to fasting.
In one part of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says,
<blockquote>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 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).</blockquote>
Doesn’t this mean we should wash our faces of ashes or anything else that would show people we’re fasting?
When you come across a passage in scripture that seems to teach that a Catholic doctrine is unbiblical, slow down and try to find as much context as possible behind the passage. In reading a passage slowly, we can also ask questions and notice details that change how we understand the text.
All right, let’s give it a try. Jesus says, “And when you fast . . . ”
Notice that Jesus does not say “if you fast.” Jesus expects his disciples to fast, and it would be a hasty assumption to think Jesus’ disciples engaged only in secretive, personal fasts that no one else knew about.
In fact, some critical scholars doubt that Jesus’ statement “and when you fast” actually comes from Jesus. They say this statement contradicts the criticism that Jesus’ disciples didn’t fast like the Pharisees or John the Baptist’s disciples (Mark 2:18). However, as the Protestant scholar Craig Keener notes, “Mark cannot mean that they never fasted,” because “omission of the biblical fast, Yom Kippur, would have yielded serious charges of which the Gospels provide no hint” (The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, 226).
The criticism about Jesus’ disciples may have been related to the fact that they did not keep certain optional fasts that were popular among groups like the Pharisees (who may have fasted twice a week, as Luke 18:12 suggests). Jesus’ explanation is that just as one cannot mourn while the bridegroom is present, Jesus’ disciples do not fast while he is still with them—but this will change after “the bridegroom is taken away from them.” Indeed, Acts 13:2 says the Holy Spirit spoke to a group of Christians in Antioch who “were worshiping the Lord and fasting.” A first-century Catechism called the Didache says that Christians fasted on Wednesday and Friday (8:1).
Not only did Jesus expect his disciples to fast, but they fasted during periods when everyone knew they would be fasting, such as the annual day of atonement, Yom Kippur. (Luke probably mentions this when he refers to “the fast” in Acts 27:9.)
Jesus’ warning, therefore, is not about doing something that would reveal you’re fasting. If it was Yom Kippur (or a similar holy day), everyone would expect a faithful Jew to fast. The warning is about doing something to draw attention to your fasting and the toll it takes on your body. That’s why Jesus gives the following command: “Do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces.”
How would someone look “dismal” by disfiguring his face? What makes him a hypocrite?
The word hypocrite refers, in part, to the masks that an actor in a Greek play would wear on stage. A hypocrite only plays a part, so a religious hypocrite is someone who appears pious but actually isn’t (one of Jesus’ stock complaints about the Pharisees). But, in general, Catholics don’t wear ashes in order merely to appear to be pious. Ashes are instead a genuine sign of internal repentance and recognition that the wearer of the ashes comes from dust, and to dust he shall return (Gen. 3:19).
Jesus even speaks in a positive way of wearing ashes as a sign of repentance. Matthew says Jesus “began to upbraid the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent.” Jesus then thunders at them, “Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (Matt. 11:20-21).
Jesus’ criticism is not of people who engage in religious activities that outwardly manifest genuine repentance or spiritual sacrifice. Instead, Jesus criticizes people who engage in exaggerated behaviors, who “disfigure” themselves, in order to draw attention to their fasting, or even to fabricate it. That’s why St. John Chrysostom said, “I know many, not merely fasting and making a display of it, but neglecting to fast, and yet wearing the masks of them that fast, and cloaking themselves with an excuse worse than their sin” (Homily 20 on Matthew).
In other cases, the person may be sorrowful, but he is also vainly seeking some measure of glory through his fasting. For example, rabbinic literature like the Talmud criticized the nikpi Pharisee who “knocks his feet together” out of exaggerated humility or the kizai (or “black and blue”) Pharisee who walked into walls because he kept his eyes closed out of a desire to avoid temptation. Another kind of Pharisee were those who “rub” or “strike” themselves against walls in order to show how weak they had become from fasting. Protestant scholar Craig Evans connects this kind of Pharisee to Jesus’ warning about those who “disfigure” themselves to show they are fasting (Matthew, 139).
Jesus then says of the hypocrites, “They have their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face.”
Notice that the goal here isn’t to hide the fact that you are fasting. After all, friends and family would have noticed during mealtimes that a disciple of Jesus wasn’t eating. Jesus must have told someone about his forty-day fast in the desert so that it would be recorded in Scripture (Matt. 4:2). Instead, the goal is not to draw unnecessary attention to your fasting by making it look as if the lack of food has caused you to become gaunt or sickly.
 We also have to remember, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/doesnt-jesus-say-not-to-wear-ashes-on-your-forehead">as my colleague Tim Staples notes</a>, that Jesus often uses hyperbole in his teachings. Jesus commands that we pray in secret, but he prayed in the sight of others (Mark 14:32-35, John 11:41). Jesus says not to make any oaths to God (Matt. 5:34), but St. Paul made oaths calling on God as a witness to his truthfulness (2 Cor. 1:23). Likewise, Jesus says we should fast in secret to emphasize that we should not fast in order to receive praise from other people, not that our fasting should be done only in secret.
In closing, Matthew 6:16 does not condemn wearing ashes for the purpose of entering into a spirit of repentance for observing Lent. But that doesn’t mean Jesus’ warning is irrelevant to us today. If we treat ashes as a hip way to stand out from the crowd and announce to others that we’re Catholic, then Jesus will tell us that we “already have our reward.” This also applies to people who might not “disfigure their faces” but enjoy complaining about how difficult it is to fast or give up something during Lent in order to get sympathy from other people.
But if we maintain a holy disposition while wearing ashes or fasting, then we will carry out Jesus’ command to “let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

Is Ash Wednesday Unbiblical?

Martin Luther (1483-1546) took the Christian world by storm in the sixteenth century. His work “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Protestant-Reformation-Hans-J-Hillerbrand/dp/0061148474">The Freedom of a Christian</a>” (1520), turned the theology of Christ’s atonement on its head.
Catholics thought that faith in Jesus, works of charity, and all seven Catholic sacraments contributed to man’s just standing before God. They also thought that certain works, called <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-do-i-know-if-its-a-mortal-sin">mortal sins</a>, forfeit salvation. Luther, on the other hand, said that faith in Christ alone contributes to man’s just standing before God. His teaching separated such works from salvation, and he supported it with multiple biblical quotations. With works separated from justification, Luther then naturally denied the existence of mortal sins, saying that only a lack of faith would forfeit salvation.
Two significant responses to Luther came out the next year. These responses were not as careful and specific as modern scholarly responses are, but they give an interesting glimpse into the past.
A bishop in England, St. John Fisher (1469-1535), preached a highly developed <a href="https://www.amazon.com/English-Works-John-Fisher-Part/dp/1164945734">sermon</a> on Luther in 1521 to refute his teaching on salvation. King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547), who ultimately became Fisher’s enemy, wrote (with the help of St. Thomas More) on the same team as Fisher in his <a href="https://www.google.fr/books/edition/King_Henry_the_Eighth_s_Defence_of_the_S/jpFdAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=henry+viii+defense+of+the+seven+sacraments&amp;printsec=frontcover">Defense of the Seven Sacraments</a> (1521). Because Luther’s “faith alone” teaching eliminated the salvific element of most of the sacraments, Henry attempted to rebut Luther’s views with various arguments.
Fisher’s “Sermon Made Against the Pernicyous Doctryn of Martin Luther Within the Octaves of the Ascensyon,” covered Luther’s teachings and salvation by faith alone. Fisher agreed with Luther that a Christian’s state of justification is maintained by faith but disagreed that it is by faith alone. Faith needs to be coupled with hope and love. To explain this, Fisher utilized an analogy and various scriptural quotations.
Fisher’s setup analogy would have been effective for his congregation to grasp. He said, “What marvelous power, what wonderful energy is in the beams of the sun, which, as we see this time of year, spread over the ground and quicken and bring to life many creatures which before appeared to be dead.” The sun’s beams bring life typically, but in the winter, they are unable to make trees grow. Fisher compared this to Luther’s teaching of faith alone: “Faith is a thin light without the rebounding of hope and the heat of charity.” In Fisher’s estimation, Luther’s idea about salvation does not bring life. Life occurs only with hope and love, for “no matter how much light a person has, unless he also has the heat of charity . . . he is only a dead stick and like a tree without life.” Faith alone is not sufficient.
To support this analogy, Fisher cited Scripture. He quoted three passages:
<ul>
<li>Paul: “If I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have charity, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2).</li>
<li>James: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).</li>
<li>Luke: “Give alms and everything will be clean for you” (Luke 11:41).</li>
</ul>
The passage from Paul prioritizes love above faith, the passage from James denies Luther’s “salvation by faith alone” teaching, and the passage from Luke gives a specific work that contributes to salvation. Fisher said of Luke 11, “What is this cleanness but the justifying of our souls which is promised for the work of almsgiving?” Fisher saw a good deed as integral to justification in Luke 11, so Luther, he insisted must be mistaken.
Fisher then quoted a flurry of passages, as modern apologists do. Among them:
<ul>
<li>Matthew 6:14, 7:21, 5:20, 7:26</li>
<li>Romans 2:13</li>
<li>James 1:27</li>
<li>Romans 8:13</li>
<li>Galatians 5:6</li>
</ul>
For Fisher, Luther was wrong on salvation by faith alone, for he contradicted Scripture.
King Henry VIII tag-teamed with Fisher in one of the best plays of historical irony: he quoted from Luther’s various writings, then utilized scriptural passages to combat Luther’s “salvation by faith alone” doctrine. Henry’s evidence against “faith alone” included various aspects, but the largest was probably his reliance upon James 2. Then Henry provided a practical and historical argument against Luther’s single mortal sin of a lack of faith.
Henry quoted James 2 multiple times throughout his work. For example, in the context of baptism and confession, “faith without works is dead.” Henry also quoted James in the context of anointing. In short, per Henry, James “so narrowly touches Luther everywhere, as if, by his prophetic spirit, he had plainly foreseen him. For when Luther . . . despises good works . . . St. James on the other hand disputes.”
On to mortal sin, because Luther said that “no sins can damn thee but infidelity [lack of faith] only,” thereby abolishing the normal Catholic list of mortal sins by works, Henry attempted to refute him with a historical argument. Luther needed to be rejected because he contradicted St. Hierom (probably old English for Jerome), who had said that penance is “the table after shipwreck.” This statement is an analogy for the teaching that, after initial justification, man sails onward toward God, but if he commits a mortal sin, then he will wreck his ship. The man will lose his justification, but through the sacrament of penance, he can reboard a ship and be justified again. If the work of the sacrament of penance is intimately involved in salvation, then Luther’s “faith alone” idea does not work. So Henry cited St. Hierom as an authority on his side.
Besides this historical argument, Henry emphasized that Luther’s denial of mortal sin was a bad teaching practically. For if Luther was right that only a lack of faith is a mortal sin, then this, according to Henry, would encourage men to sin. Such a teaching by Luther was the “mistress of all impiety.” For suddenly, Henry exclaimed, “adultery will not damn them! Murder will not damn!” Henry’s point was that if such sins did not damn Christians to hell, then why would Christians avoid them?
Luther shook Christian Europe when he separated good and bad works from righteousness and supported this with Scripture. Catholics responded to Luther with practical, historical, and biblical arguments. St. John Fisher argued that Luther’s teaching was comparable to the sun in the wintertime, unable to give life to the trees. To support this analogy, he provided numerous biblical citations that appeared to contradict Luther. Two of King Henry VIII’s rebuttals were that Luther contradicted St. Hierom and practically encouraged men to sin. James 2 was important to both Fisher and Henry, as it is important to apologists today.
And so, as spectacular as it sounds to those familiar with <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/yes-more-and-fisher-were-real-martyrs">St. John Fisher’s end</a>, King Henry shines as a coworker with Fisher in their respective rebuttals to Luther.

Martin Luther’s Most Shocking Opponent

“Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while.”
There is a question, and a problem, deeply embedded in modern life: why this place and not another? Why Bridgeport and not Phoenixville? Why Philly and not Boston? What is the difference between one place and another?
We all know that there are differences. We like some places better than others. We know some places better than others, and in fact that some places are more knowable than others. An old church is much more memorable than a supermarket. Say what you will about the streets of many cities in the American Northeast—twisty, incomprehensible, names changing every few blocks—but some studies have shown that a given street corner in a city like that is more recognizable than one in a city with streets laid out in a perfect grid.
Places give us all kinds of feelings. The modern world, however, dislikes these feelings. It dislikes the kind of distinctions that make one place better than, or even different from, another. Think of the brutal modern architecture that we sometimes still see, emphasizing uniformity, blandness, function. Even better, think of the way we make maps. In ancient times, through the Middle Ages, maps were made to help you get from one place to another, and they were more often than not itineraries to help you remember and distinguish one thing from another—but they were also made to show the underlying significance of each place. This is why, for example, you see the old maps with sea monsters in the ocean: because the ocean can be a place of danger and the unknown.
Today’s maps are more accurate, more precise. They lay out the world on a grid. Latitude, longitude, north, south, east, west. This is all useful. But it presents a different model of place. What we have in modern maps is not a collection of places, but absolute space—an endless void, spreading out in all directions, that can be filled with anything at all. In the drive to make all things equal, to flatten all distinctions, the world tells us that places have no inherent significance. They are simply points on a map, coordinates in space.
The view of the Bible is quite different, and we don’t need to look very hard to find it. From the beginning, God hallows certain places. The garden of Eden. Mount Sinai. Jerusalem. The Temple. Whenever something good happens in the Old Testament, it seems that the place where it happens gets a special name, perhaps even a monument for remembrance. This is the place where Jacob wrestled with God. This is the place where we crossed the Jordan into the promised land. This is the place where God’s glory rests with his people.
If we look closer, the picture is a little more complicated. The Bible is not, in fact, unreservedly on board with the consecration of place. In the Old Testament, for example, Israel makes a name for itself by denying the sacred places of other people. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is not a local god, like the others; he is not lord of a place—the god of the Nile, or of the Jordan, or of the city of Tyre—no, he is the God, period.
The scriptures begin with creation, emphasizing that this God is no mere local lord; he is the Lord of all things. He is worshiped not at a shrine, at a special place, but everywhere, because he is everywhere, and because every place belongs to him. As much as the prophets emphasize the goodness of the land, they emphasize, maybe even more strongly, the source of that goodness. The frequent Old Testament imagery of shepherds and flocks goes alongside a suspicion of cities and places of man-made permanence—take Babel, for example, or Sodom and Gomorrah—emphasizing that the true identity of God’s people centers less on where they are than on whom they follow. “Judah shall be saved,” Jeremiah tells us, when the true and ultimately just shepherd arrives. In other words, the flock can really settle down into a permanent place only when that place is ruled by the right person.
This universal, catholic faith of the Jews took an even stronger form in the early Church. Jesus Christ is Lord not just of the Jews, not just of Jerusalem, but of the whole earth. This was one reason why the catholic nature of the Church has always been so deeply associated with the city of Rome. Rome was about as far from Jerusalem as one could imagine. It was a city of pagans, of Gentiles. And yet it became the seat of the apostles and the principal church of the world. The early Christians venerated certain places, to be sure: the places where Jesus walked, the places where the martyrs died, the places where miracles happened. But they also insisted that theirs was a universal Lord, a universal gospel, that did not depend on Jerusalem, on Rome, on any holy place—but could be carried to the uttermost parts of the earth and remain the same.
Perhaps you can see how the modern idea of space is related to the Christian concept of universality. In a sense, the modern view toward space, toward place, is a corruption of catholic Christianity. You see, Christians have always affirmed the equality of all places: God can be found anywhere. And yet, at the same time, they have affirmed that, because God can be found anywhere, places matter.
Jesus Christ is the Lord of all space and time. Yet he entered space and time in a very specific place: the womb of the Virgin Mary, which was prepared for him by God as a “meet dwelling place.” He was born and baptized in places with names; he was killed on a hill known as the “place of the skull”; he rose again from the tomb—a place, again, that you can still visit.
He has redeemed people from every place—those far off and those near. But he has done so in a specific place, and that place is his body, his blood. As St. Paul says, “but now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.”
Jesus is our home, our house, our body—he is our only dwelling place, our final destination. In him we are home. Apart from him we are homeless. Perhaps that is why Holy Church in her wisdom appoints today’s passage in Mark as an introduction to the feeding of the five thousand and an extended meditation on the “bread of life” discourse in John 6. Sometimes we wander the wilderness a while before remembering where home is.
We are at the end of a great “eucharistic revival” promoted by our bishops. Whether it succeeds or not, I think the goal has been to remind Catholics that the worship of Jesus is actually the most central thing about our faith. I didn’t grow up Catholic, so my experience is hardly universal, but I met a lot of Catholics, growing up, and it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I ever really met Catholics who seemed interested in Jesus. Oh, they were interested in community service, in making the world a better place, in being instruments of peace and all that. They were wandering the wilderness, trying to make their own bread, build their own heaven. Woe to the bad shepherds who let them imagine there was such a thing as the Catholic faith without Jesus.
Though we are called to display the kingdom of God in this world, the mission of the Church is not simply to make the world a better place. The mission of the Church is to show the world that it is the world, to show that it cannot find its own meaning without God. Our mission is to live in such a way that Jesus can be known where we are, even in this world of suffering and sin
This place, like any real church, is a holy place—not because it has been made perfect, but because Jesus is here. Our true home, the end of our long pilgrimage, is here in sight, just beyond that altar rail. Everything about this holy place is designed to remind us that there is another place, beyond this, to which all places point, and in which all created places are fulfilled and find their meaning.
Come away to a lonely place, and rest a while. Come away to the cross, to the Resurrection, to the glory of the Lord. Come to this altar, one with the heavenly altar, and find your true home.

A Lonely Place to Rest

Here&#8217;s a skeptical meme I recently came across:

There are three problems with this (admittedly kind of funny) picture. Let’s take the first: Christians neglect the poor. 
This hardly seems worth the trouble to rebut. More than any other group you can identify, for centuries Christians have fed the poor, sheltered the homeless and orphan, tended to the sick, protected the refugee, comforted the afflicted, supported the widow and unwed mother, and generally lifted up the down and out. This includes official Church charities, parishes and religious orders, independent charities related to Christian groups or motivated by Christian conviction, and individual Christians who give their time, talent, and treasure to improve the lot of others in the world who need help. Christians do this because their Lord commands it, and a lot of his followers take him very seriously.
It&#8217;s not hard to Google websites that track nonprofits and see the enormous efforts undertaken by Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities, Caritas, and Food for the Poor, to name just a few of the big ones that spring immediately to mind. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
So any meme that starts with the ridiculous premise that Christians neglect the poor hardly deserves consideration for that reason alone. But let’s take a look at the other two assumptions anyway.
Are cathedrals useless? There are two ways we can respond here.
One is point out that the claim begs the question against Christians. This claim would be true if and only if God didn’t exist. If there were no God, it would be futile—and a big waste of time and effort—to erect enormous buildings for glorifying and worshipping him. But if God does exist, then he deserves the best, most beautiful, most sacred things we can make. (And believers deserve places that help lift their hearts and minds to him.) This objection assumes there’s no God to persuade someone to give up on believing in God. That’s classic circular reasoning—begging the question.
Finally, the third assumption: Christians who build cathedrals do so to feed a disordered desire to have expensive and ornate structures. Though this may be true for some, it doesn’t follow that it is true for all. Building ornate structures to glorify the Creator is an appropriate end-goal. If some Christians lose sight of that purpose, building cathedrals (for example) to indulge vanity or for personal profit, the problem is not with building cathedrals—it’s with those Christians’ disordered motives.
The meme may be cute and creative in its own way (when is Elmo not cute?). But trying to score cheap points against Christians and the ancient practice of building cathedrals is a waste of cuteness and creativity.

Quit Snorting Cathedrals! (and Other Atheist Admonitions)

The doctrine of scriptural perspicuity, championed particularly during the Protestant Reformation, contends that the Bible <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-protestants-biggest-bible-problem">communicates clearly</a> such that an individual reading it should be able to understand the contents without an outside source. This belief should not be confused with the early Church’s statements on Scripture being clear, as those examples are often talking about a specific belief that is clear in Scripture, other beliefs notwithstanding.
The Protestant Revolution created a rather new idea: that Scripture is not only clear on some points, like that Jesus is God, but clear on every essential point. If this is the case, I am unsure why so many Protestants have <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/sola-scriptura-and-basic-illogic">differing views</a> on the essential points. This would seem to completely invalidate the point, but I digress.
Protestant apologist James White is a huge proponent of this belief. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/g0iiVcz425k">a debate this past weekend</a>, in the process of making his point, White employed a formal logical fallacy known as denying the antecedent to make his claim.
Before getting to the specific example, it would be beneficial for me to explain what this fallacy consists of. Denying the antecedent has this logical form:
<ol>
<li>If A, then B.</li>
<li>Not A.</li>
<li>Therefore, not B.</li>
</ol>
This logical form is invalid, because even though A leads to B, the negation of A would not necessarily lead to the negation of B. Real-world examples often make it much easier for someone untrained in philosophy to recognize this. In plain English, we could think of this example:
<ol>
<li>If it rained, then the ground is wet.</li>
<li>It did not rain.</li>
<li>Therefore, the ground is not wet.</li>
</ol>
This is clearly an invalid logic structure. If it rains, the ground will be wet, but just because it didn’t rain, it wouldn’t necessarily mean the ground is not wet. There could be other reasons why the ground might be wet, like someone’s sprinkler going off or someone watering some plants.
Another example may go like this:
<ol>
<li>If Person X is a doctor, then he studied medicine.</li>
<li>Person X is not a doctor.</li>
<li>Therefore, Person X did not study medicine.</li>
</ol>
This is also an invalid logic structure. Although doctors study medicine, so do other professionals, such as nurses, as well as former medical students who decided to change paths.
As obvious as this may seem, it is the exact fallacy James White made in his debate against Joe Heschmeyer in their debate on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/live/g0iiVcz425k?si=ldKFbEMtvS3PWiZC&amp;t=3050">Mass</a>.
The passage that White was quoting comes from 2 Peter 3:16. It reads, “There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.”
Specifically relating to the subordinate clause in this sentence, White used the phrase “which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures” in the debate to argue that if ignorant and unstable men twist Scripture, then knowledgeable and stable men will be able to understand them. Here is White making his point:
<blockquote>Peter warns that untaught and unstable men distort Paul&#8217;s words. . . . If he says “untaught and unstable men,” would it not follow that a taught and stable man can understand Paul&#8217;s words and can accurately handle what he wrote?</blockquote>
This statement is a textbook denying the antecedent fallacy. The form goes like this:
<ol>
<li>If they are untaught, they will twist Scripture.</li>
<li>They are not untaught.</li>
<li>Therefore, they will not twist Scripture.</li>
</ol>
This argument holds the same form as the logical form originally given in the original examples. It does not follow.
It also seems unusual to quote a verse from Peter’s letter saying that some things in Paul’s letters are hard to understand while also attempting to argue that taught men will not have trouble. Putting aside the formal logical fallacy problem, if White is attempting to argue that taught men will understand Paul’s writings, why is Peter saying they are difficult to understand? Was Peter not taught? One may argue that Peter meant that these difficult passages would be difficult to understand “for some,” but Peter never makes such qualifications. Why read into the text?
In any case, despite not naming the fallacy, Joe did a good job of giving a counterexample on the spot to prove that the logical form is invalid: “If I said Gnostics misuse this text, that doesn&#8217;t mean that if you&#8217;re not a Gnostic, you&#8217;re going to use it correctly. That doesn&#8217;t follow at all. That&#8217;s not logical.”
This is absolutely correct. If I say A leads to B, the negation of A does not necessarily mean the negation of B.
In conclusion, White&#8217;s defense of scriptural perspicuity through 2 Peter 3:16 falters due to his use of the denying the antecedent fallacy. The absence of the antecedent would not necessarily mean that the consequent would not occur. Heschmeyer&#8217;s counterexample effectively exposes this flaw. When defenders of perspicuity must employ fallacious reasoning, perhaps the doctrine needs reconsideration.

Peter Too ’Untaught’ for Paul?

The United States is just a few weeks away from the presidential election, and things just keep getting more depressing. Each of the leading candidates has endorsed intrinsic evils, including Donald Trump, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-wants-make-ivf-treatments-paid-government-insurance-compani-rcna168804">who wants to fund IVF procedures</a>. Many Catholics might ask in response, “What should I do in the face of these choices?”
One choice is to vote for a minor candidate who doesn’t endorse intrinsic evils.
You might vote for <a href="https://www.petersonski.com/">Peter Sonski</a>, the 2024 presidential nominee of the American Solidarity Party. This party describes itself as “upholding a vision of the common good of all and of each individual informed by Christian tradition.” They oppose abortion, euthanasia, and even in vitro fertilization.
But in the last election, the American Solidarity Candidate received only about 40,000 votes, or 0.026 percent of votes. So it’s safe to say they won’t win and voting for them is more about sending a message. Other people send a message about the political process by not voting at all.
Can Catholics vote for a minor candidate or not vote at all? Yes, they can.
In “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” the United States Conference of Catholic bishops recognizes a Catholic’s right not to vote when every viable candidate in a race endorses an intrinsic evil. It says, “When all candidates hold a position that promotes an intrinsically evil act, the conscientious voter faces a dilemma. The voter may decide to take the extraordinary step of not voting for any candidate” (36).
But just as it isn’t sinful not to vote or to vote for a minor candidate, it isn’t always sinful to vote for a major candidate who endorses an intrinsic evil. It is sinful to vote for a law that expands an evil like abortion or to vote for a candidate because you agree with his support for an intrinsic evil. This is called formal cooperation with evil. However, in some cases, you can vote for a flawed candidate if you have other good reasons to justify it.
<a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/worthiness-to-receive-holy-communion-general-principles-2153">Cardinal Ratzinger said</a>, “When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.” The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says, “Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil” (35).
This means you can vote for a candidate who endorses grave evils, but you need a proportionate or really good reason to justify such a vote. What might that be? Typically it would be that this candidate represents the lesser of two evils. Pope Francis weighed in on that recently, saying that both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are “against life.” He told reporters on a recent flight that Trump’s stance on deporting illegal aliens is against life and that turning away migrants is “a grave sin.” He also likened abortion to assassination. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pope-harris-trump-lesser-evil-rcna171127">He said</a>: “One must choose the lesser of two evils. Who is the lesser of two evils? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know.”
I find little way to make sense of the Pope’s prudential judgment on this matter.
The Church teaches that direct abortion is always illegal and that the state has a duty to protect the life of unborn children. Pope St. John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae,
<blockquote>Civil law must ensure that all members of society enjoy respect for certain fundamental rights which innately belong to the person, rights which every positive law must recognize and guarantee. First and fundamental among these is the inviolable right to life of every innocent human being (71).</blockquote>
Church teaching on immigration is not as absolute. The Catechism’s position is that people have a natural right to migrate, but, in service of the common good, the state may make “the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions” (2241). Presumably, this would include penalties for those who violate these juridical conditions, including deportation.
I have addressed how deportation is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/illegal-immigration-and-the-morality-of-deportation">not intrinsically evil</a>, and Pope Francis has on numerous occasions said it can be legitimate to “send back” people who try to enter a country illegally. He recognizes that it can be justified, and Harris has claimed that she will “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/09/harris-promises-to-go-tough-on-border-security-00173485">secure the border</a>,” which involves what Pope Francis calls the grave sin of “turning migrants away.” And at one point, the Biden-Harris administration <a href="https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ELECTION/MIGRATION-DEPORTATIONS/akpeoeoerpr/">deported more people</a> than the Trump administration did.
But when it comes to abortion, Trump wants to make it possible for states to legally protect the unborn, and Harris wants to make it impossible by codifying Roe v. Wade at the federal level. This would result in tens of thousands more deaths of unborn children every year in America. How is one candidate being more inclined to non-violently deport people a greater offense against human life?
A pro-lifer who votes for Trump might also point out that Trump is more likely to nominate judges who are friendly to pro-lifers, whereas Harris has repeatedly targeted pro-lifers through the U.S. Justice Department and even when she was a California prosecutor, such as in her <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/anti-abortion-groups-kamala-harris-resign-david-daleiden-221681">campaign against David Daleiden</a> for his undercover work exposing Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in fetal body parts.
In response, some people say the president can’t affect the issue, since Roe is overturned, so you’re justified in voting for anyone who might bring the abortion rate down, even if he’s totally pro-abortion. But even left-leaning sites like Snopes have rated <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/abortion-rates-presidencies/">as false</a> the claim that “abortion rates drop during Democratic presidencies and rise during Republican administrations.”
It’s not obvious that Democratic economic policies dramatically decrease abortion rates. Sweden has generous welfare and maternity care policies, but <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_abortion_rate">its abortion rate is higher</a> than the United States’. However, it should be obvious that if the next president codifies Roe v. Wade into federal law and overturns state bans or allows Medicaid to fully cover abortions, this will result in children being killed who otherwise would have lived.
Abortion is a moral problem, not a money problem. Like the moral problem of stealing, abortion can be exacerbated by poverty, but poverty is not the root cause of abortion, since many moral poor people don’t kill their own children and many evil wealthy people do get abortions.
So even if a candidate advocates for intrinsic evils, you could still licitly vote for him if, as the USCCB says, he is “less likely to advance such a morally flawed position and more likely to pursue other authentic human goods.” Or you could, in an act of protest to demand better candidates, withhold your vote. Both options are licit, though one might debate which one is more prudent.
Finally, we shouldn’t be naïve about the importance of the political process, but we also shouldn’t idolize it. There is a reason the Psalmist said, “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no help. When his breath departs he returns to his earth; on that very day his plans perish” (Ps. 146:3-4).
Choosing elected leaders is important, but we can’t trust in them for our salvation even in this life. That’s because it is God who providentially arranges everything for good for those who believe in him (Rom. 8:28), which includes the institution of earthly rulers (13:1). So let’s trust in God and use our best judgment when it comes to electing civic leaders. And whoever does end up being elected, let’s follow St. Paul’s exhortation that
<blockquote>supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:1-4).</blockquote>

Can a Catholic Just . . . Not Vote?

Erik Tafoya&#8217;s story of imprisonment and redemption is a powerful demonstration of God&#8217;s mercy. Now Tafoya is on a mission to bring apologetics to everyday folks. He shares his story and his techniques for explaining and defending the Faith.

Apologetics for Regular People

Tim Staples dispels the common myth that priests turn to pedophilia due to sexual repression from celibacy, and explains why celibacy is actually a sign of the highest love of all which wills the good of another.
Transcript:
Host: This question comes from Connie on Facebook Live: “Tim, can you explain why priests are to live chase lives? I recently had someone tell me that the Catholic Church is the reason why so many priests stray and have relationships with other people and abuse children.”
Tim: You know, that’s another popular myth. In fact, oh, what was our good friend from Penn State University that wrote the book “Priests and Pedophiles: The Anatomy of a Crisis?” What was his name? Dr…it’ll come—Philip Jenkins. Dr. Philip—great book. I read it back in 2001. He did extensive research on this whole quote-unquote “pedophile crisis.” And—parts are comical, because in one section he talks about a forty-year study that was done by the Archdiocese of Chicago on the “pedophile crisis,” and it was—when the actual information was gathered, he said there was actually only one case of actual pedophilia. It was mostly ephebophilia, which is— Oh, teenagers. Relationships with post-pubescent teenagers. And he says in this book, “Were it not for this one sad case, there would have been an absolute lack of actual pedophilia in the ‘pedophilia crisis’ of the Archdiocese of Chicago.” The problem was actually homosexuality, but of course the culture can’t say there’s anything wrong with homosexuality, because we say “It’s normal” as a culture, right? But that was really the issue, at least for the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Now there have been pedophilia problems and so forth, and one case is one case far too many. But the point is, in Dr. Philip Jenkins’ book, he did extensive research and found, number one: the percentage of priests actually involved is EXTREMELY low. We’re talking, like, 1.7%, versus in Protestant ministry it’s actually much higher. It’s not even close, it’s like three times higher. And most ministers are married. Yes! In fact, most pedophiles are married. Most—it’s father with daughter and such.
I mean, it’s—this thing got so blown out of proportion, number one, even on the numbers, but number two: celibacy has nothing to do with it. I mean, when we’re talking about pedophilia, we’re talking about a sickness. This is not—even secular psychologists will tell you—this isn’t even the normal sexual sort of deviancy like adultery or fornication or masturbation; this is a sickness, this is about power and control, and these people really need some serious psychological help.
Alright. But now, when it comes to actual celibacy, what you find is, celibacy is not part of the problem, it’s part of the answer! Celibacy is a great gift to the Church, and it is needed so desperately now because of the fact that we live in the midst of a sexually crazed culture where, oh my gosh, just go out and look at the billboards, open a magazine, turn on the TV. Celibacy is an eschatological sign for us today. When we see a Pope St. John Paul the Great, a Mother Teresa—St. Teresa of Calcutta, we see, lived out in their lives, the fact that sex dies when we do; love is eternal!
I mean, my gosh, we’re so crazy—the mentality in our culture is, “If you’re not having sex, you’re gonna go crazy!” Right? Which is an absolute lie! What does that say to elderly couples who can’t have sex anymore, or people in various situations in their marriages where they can’t have sex—“Oh, you must be deviant and sick because you’re not—” I mean, that is, it’s absolutely a lie, and thanks be to God for the celibates, like I’ve mentioned, who are that sign to us. Love, my friends, love which, at its core, is to will the good of the other, it’s completely disinterested.
And by the way, this is why Plato held the love between two men to be of such a high level, it’s because—not because he taught homosexuality, he didn’t—but it’s because it’s disinterested. You’re not asking for anything. It’s a love. That’s kind of—you know, Plato didn’t have the sense of celibacy that we do with the advent of Christ, but it’s that sense of disinterested love that is God. God gives, He creates, He redeems; not because he’s gonna get anything back, but He gives because He is Love. And that’s what we’re called to do even in a marriage situation, where I have a conjugal relationship; we have to constantly be reminded—and our celibate brothers and sisters remind us of this—of what love is. My wife is not a sexual object for me. She is to be put up on a pedestal, and I love her, and I give myself until it hurts to her without asking for anything in return. We have to remember that.
So at any rate, forgive me for going on and on about this, but I do think, in our modern era, too often we fall prey to that myth, that celibacy is the problem. No, my friends, celibacy is the answer. Jesus recommended it in Matthew 19:12. St. Paul recommended it in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. And I think those are two pretty good guys to take wisdom from: Jesus and St. Paul—and by the way, the Holy Spirit too.
And—don’t you think there’s something about the 19th century, the Freudian stuff and all that, it polluted our society with ideas that, in a weird way, have now been proven—no, that’s not how the psyche works. But yet, people are still poisoned with that idea that any kind of repression means I’m losing my humanity or something. Yes, it is incredible how we have ended up lowering humanity to the level of the lower appetites, and—to the animal level, when it’s our intellect and our will and our ability to rise above our appetites and our passions that makes us human.

Is Priestly Celibacy Responsible for Pedophilia?

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<h3>Thursday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Lectionary: 282</h3>
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&nbsp;
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<h4>Reading 1    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/acts/13:13">ACTS 13:13-25</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
From Paphos, Paul and his companions 
set sail and arrived at Perga in Pamphylia. 
But John left them and returned to Jerusalem. 
They continued on from Perga and reached Antioch in Pisidia. 
On the sabbath they entered into the synagogue and took their seats. 
After the reading of the law and the prophets, 
the synagogue officials sent word to them, 
“My brothers, if one of you has a word of exhortation 
for the people, please speak.”
So Paul got up, motioned with his hand, and said, 
“Fellow children of Israel and you others who are God-fearing, listen. 
The God of this people Israel chose our ancestors 
and exalted the people during their sojourn in the land of Egypt. 
With uplifted arm he led them out, 
and for about forty years he put up with them in the desert. 
When he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, 
he gave them their land as an inheritance 
at the end of about four hundred and fifty years. 
After these things he provided judges up to Samuel the prophet. 
Then they asked for a king. 
God gave them Saul, son of Kish, 
a man from the tribe of Benjamin, for forty years. 
Then he removed him and raised up David as their king; 
of him he testified, 
I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; 
he will carry out my every wish. 
From this man’s descendants God, according to his promise, 
has brought to Israel a savior, Jesus. 
John heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance 
to all the people of Israel; 
and as John was completing his course, he would say, 
‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. 
Behold, one is coming after me; 
I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’“
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<h4>Responsorial Psalm    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/psalms/89:2">89:2-3, 21-22, 25 AND 27</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
R.    (2)  For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord. 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
The favors of the LORD I will sing forever; 
through all generations my mouth shall proclaim your faithfulness. 
For you have said, “My kindness is established forever”; 
in heaven you have confirmed your faithfulness. 
R.    For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord. 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
“I have found David, my servant; 
with my holy oil I have anointed him, 
That my hand may be always with him, 
and that my arm may make him strong.” 
R.    For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord. 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
“My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him, 
and through my name shall his horn be exalted. 
He shall say of me, ‘You are my father, 
my God, the Rock, my savior.’” 
R.    For ever I will sing the goodness of the Lord. 
or: 
R.    Alleluia.
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<h4>Alleluia    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/revelation/1:5">RV 1:5AB</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
R. Alleluia, alleluia. 
Jesus Christ, you are the faithful witness, 
the firstborn of the dead, 
you have loved us and freed us from our sins by your Blood. 
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
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<h4>Gospel    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/john/13:16">JN 13:16-20</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
When Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, he said to them: 
“Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master 
nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him. 
If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it. 
I am not speaking of all of you. 
I know those whom I have chosen. 
But so that the Scripture might be fulfilled, 
The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me. 
From now on I am telling you before it happens, 
so that when it happens you may believe that I AM. 
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send 
receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.”
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Source: <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/readings">cms.usccb.org</a>
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Daily Holy Mass: Thursday, May 7, 2020

Is male headship biblical or misunderstood?

Dr. Stacy Trasancos talks with Cy Kellett about her book Particles of Faith: A Catholic guide to navigating science. Trasancos encourages Catholics to take the widest possible view of science and faith in order to see both in the context of God’s gift of creation. She also defends the idea that Christ is the savior of science.

A Catholic Guide to Navigating Science

With the Supreme Court weighing in on abortion, all the old pro-choice arguments are being dragged out again, and they haven&#8217;t gotten any stronger. Trent Horn breaks down some of them with us.

Debunking Common Pro-Choice Arguments

“There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts.”
You may notice in this reading from Mark that Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees. They are the people in the New Testament whom everyone today loves to hate. If Jesus is the peace-loving, friend-making, rule-ignoring rebel healer, the Pharisees are the mean-spirited, narrow-minded religious authorities who stand in his way. And as such we find it very hard to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/in-defense-of-the-pharisees">identify with them</a> or understand them.
But it’s important that we do so if we hope to understand what Jesus says about the human heart. The Pharisees were not the monsters we might want them to be. They were, as they saw it, the guardians of Jewish religion and culture. They were half political party and half religious order: they were teachers and spiritual leaders, scholars and legislators. They knew the Jewish scriptures inside and out, and their goal was to share and preserve that knowledge in a world that seemed to be falling apart. Things that might seem fussy to us—questions about exactly what to wear and how to wash one’s hands and so on—these were for them ways of preserving the identity of an ancient culture in the face of the Roman Empire’s expanding authority.
I have to say: I find this all very familiar, and I wonder if you do too. As Catholics, we put a lot of energy into teaching and following the rules. We have rules that make us unique, rules that preserve a certain distinctive culture that can, we hope, be shared with the world. When to sit, stand and kneel, when to make the sign of the cross, when to fast, when to abstain, how to make your confession, how to receive Holy Communion, how to get married, how to calculate the date of Easter. These rules at times seem arbitrary, yet they function within an organic system whose goal is the health of the whole community. Add to this our heritage in the Ordinariate: a certain speech idiom in prayer, a culture of fellowship, a notoriously dry English wit, our own particular prayers, and a liturgical culture that we think is a treasure worth preserving and sharing. In external terms, we are much more like the Pharisees than we are like Jesus’ roving band of misfit disciples.
Some people, reading what Jesus says to the Pharisees, may jump to the conclusion that, if we are like the Pharisees, then we must change: we should do away with the rules and the rituals and seek some kind of purer, more internal version of Christian practice, some less disciplined and more relaxed version of Church life. But this reaction misses the point of what Jesus says. Let’s hear that key phrase again: “There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts.”
What, after all, are rituals for? Jesus doesn’t tell the Pharisees to abandon their tradition. But he does insist that external things, external rituals, do not make us good or evil. Wearing the wrong vestments at Mass or making the sign of the cross in the wrong place, or forgetting to abstain from flesh meat on Friday, is probably not a moral failure unless it is an intentional rebellion against authority. But the ritual matters, because ritual forms us internally through external habit. Following the Church’s precepts and her liturgical law will not automatically make you into a good person. It may, however, mold you in such a way that the choice to do good will be easier, more natural, than it would otherwise have been, because here you get used to the existence of standards and expectations outside your own imagination and understanding.
So what, then, is the warning for those of us who, in so many ways, resemble the Pharisees of Jesus’ day?
I’ll leave you with two thoughts.
First, the Pharisees seem to have forgotten, much of the time, what ritual and rules were for. The law in itself does not make us holy or good, and the Pharisees therefore used it too often as an excuse from truly good work. The modern Catholic Pharisee might say something like this: As long as I’m not breaking the rules, anything I do is fine. Or: As long as I show up at Mass and avoid any scandalous public sin, I’m doing what’s required; it’s not necessary for me to pay attention, or participate, or put in extra effort. Frankly, when non-Catholic Christians accuse Catholics of Pharisaism, this is what they mean: the Catholic who checks all the boxes but couldn’t care less in his heart about loving God or his neighbor, who treats the Church as just another institution whose rules have be followed, not categorically different from the DMV.
Second, the Pharisees probably did understand, at least in a theoretical way, that the law and the ritual were designed to bring them closer to God. And yet when God stood in front of them, in the person of Jesus, they missed it. They were so scandalized by the notion that God might meet them in some new and unexpected way that they missed it. They missed, in one sense, the whole point of all their training in scripture and tradition and ritual, because they were so focused on getting it right that they never actually let themselves be changed by it. They were so focused on following the rules that they never let the rules transform their hearts.
That’s a hard lesson, and again a relevant one: we can run the risk of focusing so much on getting it all right—whether that means following all the rules, or standing firm against the shifting sands of secular culture, or making our fundraising goals, or creating the perfect parish program—that we forget to let all these good things be means to a greater end. We need to do those things; we need those rules and those goals. We need them not because they will themselves make us happy or good, but because they train us, in their own particular ways, to recognize and finally take hold of the perfect happiness of the saints in God’s kingdom.
So, as the Lord tells us elsewhere, “the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do” (Matt. 23:2). In other words, observe the law, respect the tradition, but, even more importantly, let it transform your heart.