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

Harrison Butker and Vocations

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

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

Nobody goes to the movies anymore

Weight loss drugs

Crisis of institutions

Migration

Rise of AI

The Flannel Panel continues its 2025 year-in-review by examining major cultural and technological shifts, including the collapse of moviegoing, the explosion of weight-loss drugs, the growing crisis of trust in institutions, and the ongoing debates over migration. The panel also tackles the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and what these trends mean for society, culture, and the future.
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Weight-loss Drugs, AI and 2025 in Review | Flannel Panel

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

Flannel Panel | Easter Edition

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

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

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

One Question Atheists Can’t Answer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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