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Is the Catholic Church a CULT?

<div>Would God for some reason rescind a person's salvation? </div><div>To be clear, if someone falls out of grace and ultimately goes to hell, it’s the person’s fault, not God’s. God will judge us accordingly for such unrepentant mortal sin, but we will have refused God’s gift of salvation:
<blockquote>We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: &#8220;He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.&#8221;612 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.613
<blockquote>To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God&#8217;s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called &#8220;hell&#8221; (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm">CCC 1033</a>, emphasis added).</blockquote>
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For more on this subject, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/search?q=salvation">please see our various online resources</a>.
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Losing My Religion (and Salvation)

<div>How did the polar bears and penguins reach Noah’s ark?</div><div>That’s a good question. The answer depends on what actually happened in history.
The Catholic Church does not prohibit interpretations of Genesis 6-8 that include a worldwide flood, but neither does the Church require there to be a worldwide flood in all interpretations of these passages. Instead, according to Pope Pius XII, “in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured,” the first eleven chapters of Genesis “both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people” (Humani Generis 38).
Consequently, the flood could be understood as impacting the entire world, or possibly a large region of the world. If it did impact the entire world, animals in distant regions would likely have been miraculously transported to the ark.
On the other hand, if the flood was more regional, a view which has gained increasing traction in recent centuries because of scientific findings, then all the animals of the world would not have been destroyed, and thus polar bears and penguins would not have been affected.
For more on this topic, please see this <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-catholic-perspective-on-a-new-attraction">article</a> in Catholic Answer Magazine Online.
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Two Views of the Flood

<div>What is the Church’s teaching on atonement?</div><div>The eminent theologian Ludwig Ott defines atonement in the following way:
<blockquote>By atonement in general is understood the satisfaction of a demand. In the narrower sense it is taken to mean the reparation of an insult. This occurs through a voluntary performance which outweighs the injustice done (Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, 186-187).</blockquote>
Ott distinguishes between full value atonement and incomplete value. If the reparative act completely counterbalances the grievousness of the guilt, then the act is adequate and complete (full value). If the act is not commensurate with the grievousness of the offense but is graciously accepted as sufficient, then the act is inadequate and not of complete value. Finally, if the act of atonement is not performed by the offender, but by another in his stead, then the act is one of vicarious atonement.
The Church teaches that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is one of vicarious atonement that is complete with full value for the redemption of the human race. Concerning the vicarious nature of Christ’s sacrifice, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
<blockquote>By his obedience unto death, Jesus accomplished the substitution of the suffering Servant, who “makes himself an offering for sin,” when “he bore the sin of many,” and who “shall make many to be accounted righteous,” for “he shall bear their iniquities.” Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father (615, emphasis original).</blockquote>
The Catechism articulates the full and complete value of Christ’s atoning sacrifice in this way:
<blockquote>Christ’s death is both the Paschal sacrifice that accomplishes the definitive redemption of men . . . and the sacrifice of the New Covenant, which restores man to communion with God by reconciling him to God through the &#8220;blood of the covenant” (613, emphasis original).</blockquote>
The Church’s teaching on atonement is consistent with what Jesus himself taught: “The Son of Man is come . . . to give his life as a redemption for many” (Matt. 20:28).
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A Primer on Atonement

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Join Catholic Answers Live as Cy Kellett interviews Fr. David Michael Moses on reaching young people through social media and evangelization in today’s digital age!
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Why Evangelize on Social Media? – Fr. David Michael Moses (Encore)

As I showed in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/john-calvin-the-gnostic-protestant">Part 1</a> of this series, not only Calvin, but various Protestant sects argue for the sixty-six-book canon of Scripture on explicitly and undeniably gnostic grounds.
In this article, I will show just how thoroughly gnostic Calvin’s argument is by examining his Institutes of the Christian Religion, in which he doubles down on his claim that the means of knowing the correct canon of Scripture is the “inward illumination” and “secret testimony of the spirit.”
In addition to this, he also disclaimed the need for the witness of others (i.e., the Church) to any particular canon of Scripture. He wrote as follows in <a href="https://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.iii.viii.html">Book 1, Ch. 7, §5 of the Institutes</a>:
<blockquote>Let it therefore be held as fixed, that those who are inwardly taught by the Holy Spirit acquiesce implicitly in Scripture; that Scripture, carrying its own evidence along with it, deigns not to submit to proofs and arguments, but owes the full conviction with which we ought to receive it to the testimony of the Spirit.
Enlightened by him, we no longer believe, either on our own judgment or that of others, that the scriptures are from God; but, in a way superior to human judgment, feel perfectly assured—as much so as if we beheld the divine image visibly impressed on it—that it came to us, by the instrumentality of men, from the very mouth of God.</blockquote>
Not only does knowing the correct canon come through an “inward illumination” of the “secret testimony of the spirit,” but this “illumination” is taught “in a way superior to human judgment.” Note once more the sleight of hand: Calvin simply labels the judgment of the Church as to the canon “human judgment,” but his own judgment he labels the “inward illumination” of the Holy Spirit. Yet he has made zero argument for why we should believe that his “inward illumination” is from God, whereas the judgment of the Church is a merely “human judgment.” The devil truly is in the details, all of which Calvin assumes rather than argues for.
Calvin thereby not only claims that the knowledge of the canon comes in a gnostic fashion, but has locked the individual inside his own ego—an ego superior to all external witness and authority. The canon is no longer a public revelation imparted by God by means of duly authorized representatives (i.e., apostolic authority), as the Christian faith had always been understood to be. Rather, it is an “inward illumination” that requires no witness from others, no duly authorized representative, and no public testimony to its veracity. Quite contrary to many of his claims about the necessity of ecclesial authority (which was virtually always his personal authority), and its role in speaking for Christ, when it comes to the canon of Scripture, Calvin argues like a Gnostic and maintains his ground like a Gnostic.
What can justify this? Apparently just the word of Calvin, and his purely subjective conviction that he (and those who agree with him) are “enlightened” by God.
Incidentally, whereas Calvin claims that only the elect receive this “inward illumination,” many of those who agree with him on the canon (other Protestants) vehemently disagree with him on other doctrines he claims are necessary for salvation. One wonders why God would give an “inward illumination” to the “elect” to know with perfect and unchallengeable certainty the canon of Scripture, but not the actual doctrines it supposedly taught. Calvin never addresses such blatant incoherence.
The next few sentences of the same section make his gnostic approach even clearer:
<blockquote>We ask not for proofs or probabilities on which to rest our judgment, but we subject our intellect and judgment to it as too transcendent for us to estimate. This, however, we do, not in the manner in which some are wont to fasten on an unknown object, which, as soon as known, displeases, but because we have a thorough conviction that, in holding it, we hold unassailable truth; not like miserable men, whose minds are enslaved by superstition, but because we feel a divine energy living and breathing in it—an energy by which we are drawn and animated to obey it, willingly indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge.
Hence, God most justly exclaims by the mouth of Isaiah, “Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he” (Isa. 43:10).</blockquote>
This is a remarkable statement from a man who claimed to be “reforming” the Church.
First he disclaims entirely the need for arguments—“proofs or probabilities,” as he says—a strange assertion for a man writing a treatise hundreds of pages long explaining why his particular doctrines should be believed. He asserts that his conclusion is based on truth that is “too transcendent for us to estimate.” Upon what basis does he claim this? We don’t know. He denies that he owes anyone any arguments.
But he then proceeds to make one: his sixty-six-book canon of Scripture is correct because he and those of his persuasion “have a thorough conviction” that it is “unassailable truth.” Those who disagree with them are enslaved to “superstition,” he claims. He and his followers, on the other hand, are not merely certain of their conviction, but “feel a divine energy living and breathing” in the canon they have identified—a remarkable appeal to what can only be described as a sort of physical sensation.
The fact that so many Christians throughout the ages had included other books in the canon of Scripture never seems to enter Calvin’s mind. These great saints could no doubt, likewise, claim to experience “an energy by which [they] are drawn and animated to obey it [Scripture], willingly indeed, and knowingly, but more vividly and effectually than could be done by human will or knowledge.” Yet they often believed that the canon of Scripture included seven additional books that Calvin excluded.
So which one is right? Those with the stronger “thorough conviction that, in holding it, we hold unassailable truth”? But even by this “standard,” would not the conviction of so many centuries of saints—especially martyrs—count on the scale far more than that of just Calvin, who was just one man at the head of a small sect, who did not die a martyr?
Calvin concludes his “argument” as follows:
<blockquote>Such, then, is a conviction which asks not for reasons; such, a knowledge which accords with the highest reason, namely knowledge in which the mind rests more firmly and securely than in any reasons; such in fine, the conviction which revelation from heaven alone can produce. I say nothing more than every believer experiences in himself, though my words fall far short of the reality.
I do not dwell on this subject at present, because we will return to it again: only let us now understand that the only true faith is that which the Spirit of God seals on our hearts. Nay, the modest and teachable reader will find a sufficient reason in the promise contained in Isaiah, that all the children of the renovated Church “shall be taught of the Lord,” (Isa. 54:13). This singular privilege God bestows on his elect only, whom he separates from the rest of mankind. For what is the beginning of true doctrine but prompt alacrity to hear the Word of God? And God, by the mouth of Moses, thus demands to be heard: “It is not in heavens that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart,” (Deut. 30:12, 14).
God having been pleased to reserve the treasure of intelligence for his children, no wonder that so much ignorance and stupidity is seen in the generality of mankind. In the generality, I include even those specially chosen, until they are ingrafted into the body of the Church.
Isaiah, moreover, while reminding us that the prophetical doctrine would prove incredible not only to strangers, but also to the Jews, who were desirous to be thought of the household of God, subjoins the reason, when he asks, “To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” (Isa. 53:1). If at any time, then, we are troubled at the small number of those who believe, let us, on the other hand, call to mind, that none comprehend the mysteries of God save those to whom it is given.</blockquote>
The gnostic nature of Calvin’s argument could not be clearer, as he applies it not only to the canon of Scripture, but to the Christian faith itself. It bears a disturbing resemblance to religious and secular ideologies of succeeding centuries that disavowed the need for reason, argument, and logic to defend their positions.
Calvin speaks of “knowledge in which the mind rests more firmly and securely than in any reasons”—a gnostic claim that cannot be countermanded.
Calvin describes this knowledge: “Every believer experiences in himself.” So now “experience” is the criterion of dogmatic veracity—just not, apparently, the “experience” of countless generations of Christians over the preceding 1,500 years that contradicts him. And who can ever contradict that which is experienced “in himself”? No one.
Calvin says to whom this knowledge is given: “This singular privilege God bestows on his elect only, whom he separates from the rest of mankind . . . God having been pleased to reserve the treasure of intelligence for his children.” So once again, every one of the countless Christians and saints who identified a different canon from Calvin are apparently not among the “elect” or the “children” of God—not among those “specially chosen”—even while those who apparently qualify are at the same time at odds with Calvin on many other doctrines.
Should Calvin or those who follow him be disturbed at how few have ever believed anything like what he proposes? No, he says, because “none comprehend the mysteries of God save those to whom it is given.”
Calvin has thus sealed himself and the “elect” of his sect off from not only the Christian public witness of apostolic authority from the first century onward, but from argument, reason, and logic, all while very selectively appealing to a set of subjective experiences, namely those of his sect.
It is impossible to imagine anything more circular and gnostic than this. Calvin claims that God reveals the canon only by an inward illumination of the individual, and then he locks the ego of that individual in a self-sealed container that has no need to appeal to any other witness, testimony, or authority, satisfied in the assertion that God speaks directly to him, but the perennial witness and authority of the Church is mere “human judgment.”
Is anything like this found in Christian history? For that matter, is anything like this found in Scripture?
The answer to both is a firm “no.” With respect to the canon, Calvin has invented his own religion in order to guarantee that he arrives at his own conclusion, and that religion is nothing less than a revival of a novel form of Gnosticism under a veneer of Christianity.

Trapped in the Mind of John Calvin

“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
In both the call of the first disciples in John 1 and the call of 1 Samuel 3, we see an emphasis on personal encounter: the Lord sees people and calls them by name. In the case of Peter, he even gives a new name.
Names are intimate things, words of power. The fact that naming is so central in the magical systems of countless fantasy worlds stems from a basic reality that we all know. We notice when people call our name. Maybe we don’t want our name to be called, so this is not a power that is intrinsically good.
Learning to recognize our names is an important part of growing up. When a child responds to her name, we rightly understand that her sense of identity is developing; she begins to see the world not just as light and dark, Mom and not-Mom. She begins to know that she is a person.
When God reveals his name to Moses in Exodus 3, we see a radical development in human knowledge. God’s personal character is already implied with his call of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, his promises of blessing. Yet to reveal his name suggests that this covenant, while not exactly between equals, is nonetheless a covenant between persons. The God who meets Moses is not merely some force who happened to interact with his ancestors; he has a name. The fact that pious Jews have always recognized this name as holy—set apart, unpronounceable—is not mere superstition or magical thinking. It is awe and gratitude in the face of an unimaginable gift: that the transcendent God who is the source of all being would want a relationship with us.
For that really is the heart of these call stories in Samuel and in John. God doesn’t call people just to become transmitters of certain choice pieces of information. He calls them by name so that he can communicate to his people by means of a personal relationship. To say this is to touch on a whole bundle of mysteries, chief of which is that the incarnate divine Son leaves us not a body of writing or ideas, but a group of men charged with inviting others into the same school of discipleship. They have ideas, to be sure, but the heart of their mission <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-secret-ingredient-to-evangelizing">involves persons</a>.
A recurring theme of implicitly anti-Catholic rhetoric involves emphasizing Jesus’ personal call at the expense of what is usually labeled religion. At heart, I find these statements rather sad in their ignorance, for the heart of Catholic religion is a relationship with God. If it is not, it is not the Catholic religion. We are all called by God and named in baptism. Further, we must all at some point continue in maturity to recognize this call in a more personal way.
Indeed, religion in its core sense involves nothing but relations. That is what the word means. If it has been dumbed down and reduced to something like a set of rules abstracted from relationship, that is the fault of modernity and its antagonism to tradition, not of the Catholic religion as it is actually taught and practiced. In any case, it would be ridiculous to say that Jesus’ personal call is somehow opposed to rules or to exterior practices. Otherwise, instead of “come and see,” he would have told Andrew and Peter to go back to their homes and think nice thoughts about how God loves them. A God who gives us relationship without any content, boundaries, or goals is not the God of Samuel or of Jesus Christ.
That is how we must understand St. Paul’s call to sexual morality in 1 Corinthians 6. I suppose we could say here that Paul has abandoned the relationship at the heart of Christianity for a set of rules—and there are those today, in various progressive Christian pulpits, who would. But again, this would be to misunderstand both what Paul taught and what Jesus said. The reason that the body matters is precisely because of the relational call at the heart of Christianity. God calls us each by name to follow him. He doesn’t just call our souls. He calls persons who are body and soul. I cannot follow Jesus with just my mind and my heart. If I am invited to someone’s house for dinner, I cannot spit on his table, light fire to his couch, and make fun of his children, all the while saying that what really matters is the relationship. The body and its actions are meaningful. Everyone knows this, even though modern culture takes great pains to convince us otherwise. We cannot escape from this reality.
Because bodies have meaning, when Jesus tells us that he gives us his body and his blood, it doesn’t take a full grasp of the Mosaic Law’s understanding of blood to sense that he is giving us something intimate and personal. His body is his self, and his blood is his life. Once again, the invitation is completely personal. He isn’t, like some spiritual guru, pointing us to a path of enlightenment that has nothing to do with him. He is asking us to join our life to his so that our lives—our souls and bodies—can share in his own goodness. This is so much more than following a set of rules. But there are rules in a very natural sense: if you want to share the life of a person, you have to configure your own life so that it is capable of doing so. I can say that I love my children, but if I order my days so that I never see them, or that I always prioritize other things, I am not doing a very good job of it.
We may be inclined to insist, as an immature child might insist, that the relationship must happen on our own terms as we define them. But such a relationship will only become disordered. In his meditation on 1 Samuel 3, Peter Kreeft points out that, when faced with someone wiser than ourselves, we should always listen more than speak. Eli wisely instructs Samuel not to unload his thoughts and feelings to the mysterious voice, but rather to listen.
How hard that is for us in our relationship with God! We just want to explain everything, justify everything, frame everything on our own terms rather than simply listening at the times when he tells us to listen: in the proclamation of Scripture, in the breaking of bread, and in the silence of our hearts in his presence. The problem with so much modern theology—call it “contextual” or “from below” or whatever—which wants to start with us and move to God, is that we never actually get to God. We just get to pseudo-divinized versions of ourselves, which it turns out aren’t really capable of salvation, just of endless introspection.
The opposite temptation, I suppose, is to listen in such a way that we cannot take a step without direction. Should I brush my teeth tonight? Let me pray on it. That, too, is the wrong posture, for it places the voice of God in competition with our ordinary natural life, suggesting that any decision I make on my own is somehow apart from God’s providence.
The virtue of religion—there’s that word again—might be described as the virtue of right relations, the virtue of listening and acting well with God, neither becoming automatons who need strict programming nor agents of chaos who value ourselves over the relationship. A right relationship remembers the past, appreciates the present, and looks forward to the future. I’d suggest that we need all three of those things for a healthy relationship with God: diligence over what he has revealed in the past, patience and attentiveness to his presence today, and a willingness to grow more fully into the life he intends for us. May we hear his call to us and respond, like Samuel and the first disciples, with faith. “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

God Wants More of You

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DAY 218
CHALLENGE
“Christians are a bunch of hypocrites.”
DEFENSE
Yes. And?
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Consciousness of the fact that we don’t think and act the way we should is a human universal. So is the desire for others to think well of us. Everyone wishes to save face and, at one time or another, either shades the truth or flat out lies to appear better than he is. This makes hypocrisy another human universal, and it applies to Christians and everyone else.
When confronted with the fact that we don’t live up to our moral standards, we have several options. One—which is not good at all—is to abandon our standards. Reviewing them to make sure they are correct is one thing, but tossing them aside so we can indulge in im- moral behavior is another. It also will not work in the long run, for we cannot escape the moral law written on our hearts. We can only temporarily suppress it.
A second choice—also not good—is to pretend we are better than we are. This is the option of hypocrisy. It is not good because it’s an offense against the truth. Hypocrisy is a form of lying—specifically, lying about our own behavior, using either words or deceptive actions (CCC 2483). Hypocrisy is also risky, because in the long run the truth tends to be found out, and people will see you for the hypocrite you are. For Christians, hypocrisy takes on added gravity because it can push people away from God (Rom. 2:23–24).
The third choice—and the only good one—is the hardest. It means maintaining our moral standards, being honest about the fact that we don’t live up to them and seeking God’s grace to do better in the future. This doesn’t mean telling everyone everything we’ve done wrong (CCC 2489). Frequently, it is none of their concern, and in some situations knowing could even hurt them (e.g., marriages can be harmed by a naive and imprudent sharing of information about one’s sexual failings). However, it does mean being humble and willing to admit the fact that we are sinners.
Christians may share the universal inclination to hypocrisy, but that doesn’t mean Christianity is false. Christianity teaches that we are all sinners. The good news is that there is mercy, even for hypocrites like us.
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Christian Hypocrisy

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Which came first: the Bible or the Church? Let’s talk about it.

<div>Is being a good person selfish if I am doing it in fear of being sent to hell?</div><div><a href="http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson18.htm">The Baltimore Catechism</a>:
<blockquote>Q. 767. What is imperfect contrition?
A. Imperfect contrition is that by which we hate what offends God because by it we lose heaven and deserve hell; or because sin is so hateful in itself.
Q. 768. What other name is given to imperfect contrition and why is it called imperfect?
A. Imperfect contrition is called attrition. It is called imperfect only because it is less perfect than the highest grade of contrition by which we are sorry for sin out of pure love of God&#8217;s own goodness and without any consideration of what befalls ourselves.
Q. 769. Is imperfect contrition sufficient for a worthy confession?
A. Imperfect contrition is sufficient for a worthy confession, but we should endeavor to have perfect contrition.</blockquote>
It is obviously better to be sorry for sin solely because it is wrong and is an offense against God&#8217;s love but being sorry primarily because we are afraid of hell is still a good thing.  It shows that we trust what Jesus has taught us about the effects of sin and that we respect his judgment.  Imperfect contrition is a good starting point to help us focus on why sin separates us from God and one another and deepening our relationship to God.
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Am I Selfish If I Fear Being Sent To Hell?

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DAY 338
CHALLENGE
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“Unanswered prayer disproves Christ’s teaching on prayer. Jesus said, ‘If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you’ (Matt. 17:20b). But experience shows that we can’t do such things by prayer.”
DEFENSE
Jesus’ teaching is more complex than this challenge suggests. It doesn’t involve a promise that we’ll always get what we ask.
First, Jesus makes the statement when the disciples have just failed to exorcise a demon. When they ask why they were unable to drive it out, he says, “Because of your little faith” (Matt. 17:20a). If the apostles, who were accustomed to working miracles, including driving out demons (Matt. 10:1, 5–8), could have inadequate faith, then we may, too. (Also, in this instance the disciples were trying to cast out a particularly powerful type of demon; Mark 9:29).
Second, the statement that having faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains does not mean that faith has some magical power of its own. The point is that it is God who performs miracles, and he is omnipotent. The size of the miracle is therefore not dependent on the size of the person’s faith but on God.
Third, this means that we do not have a promise that simply anything we pray for will happen. It must be the will of God (cf. Luke 22:42; James 4:13–15; 1 John 5:14).
Fourth, the fact that mountains usually do not move in response to prayer indicates it is usually not God’s will for this to happen. That’s why Jesus uses this example—because of how striking it is. He is using hyperbole (exaggeration to make a point). The point is that our prayers are dependent on God, not the size of our faith; Jesus is not issuing a promise that simply anything we ask for will be granted.
Fifth, elsewhere Jesus indicates that in some cases we will need to believe without doubting (Matt. 21:21; cf. James 1:6–7).
Sixth, the New Testament indicates that our individual dispositions can affect the outcome of our prayers in other ways, particularly with regard to whether we are living in a way pleasing to God (John 15:7; James. 4:3, 5:16; 1 Pet. 3:12; 1 John 3:22).
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Unanswered Prayer

The earliest Christians believed the Eucharist is a true sacrifice  ✝️

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DAY 266
CHALLENGE
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“Religion is intrinsically hostile to science.”
DEFENSE
This is a gross caricature that itself exhibits hostility to religion.
There have been conflicts involving science and religion (e.g., the Galileo affair, the Scopes Monkey Trial). There are religious individuals who are hostile to science, but there also are scientifically oriented individuals who are hostile to religion. Looking down on something as “unscientific” displays hostility in the same way dismissing it as “irreligious” does.
The supporters of both religion and science are flawed human beings who are sometimes unjustly hostile, but this does not make the two fields intrinsically hostile to each other.
Religion is a diverse phenomenon. When one thinks of all the different religions in the world, all the diversity of viewpoint and attitude that can exist within a single religion, and all of the scientists who belong to different religions, it is a gross caricature to assert that religion is somehow fundamentally opposed to science.
Christianity, in particular, understands God as a divine lawgiver who embedded certain laws in nature. These laws can be investigated by humans, and it has been argued that this understanding has played an important role in the rise of modern science, in which many Christian scientists were prominent.
Religion, science, and philosophy each ask fundamental questions about the world, and sometimes the areas investigated by the three disciplines overlap. However, this does not make the three disciplines intrinsically hostile to each other.
From a Christian point of view, all truth is God’s truth, and he is glorified when humans use their divinely given intellects to discover what God has done, regardless of which field makes the discovery.
The Catholic attitude toward science is expressed in the Catechism:
The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers (CCC 283).
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Religion Hostile to Science?

A special Christmas Day episode of Focus with Catholic Answers President Christopher Check.

Christmas Day with President Chris Check

<div>So what if a fetus is alive and human? Every cell in my body is alive and human. Is every cell in my body a human being? Are sperm and eggs human beings too?</div><div>Sperm, egg, fetuses, and toddlers are all human in the adjective sense of the word, since they possess human DNA. Unlike sperm and egg, however, fetuses and toddlers are also human in the noun sense of the word. Specifically, they are human organisms, or individual members of the human species. But what do we mean when we say the unborn is an organism?
An organism is a collection of biological parts, or organs, that function together to sustain the existence of a whole being that possesses the qualities of life. If I can give a living thing time, nutrition, and a proper environment, and it is able to develop toward becoming a mature member of its species, then it is an organism and not a mere body part.
Because body cells such as skin, sperm, and egg can never—even given time, nutrition, and a proper environment—develop into an adult human, they are not organisms. In contrast, you and I are <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/when-does-a-fetus-become-a-person-0">organisms</a>, because if we are given time, food, and the proper environment (i.e., not on the moon or at the bottom of the ocean), we will continue to develop into mature members of the human species.
Likewise, an unborn child, when given time, nutrition, and a proper environment (i.e., not outside the uterus) will develop into a mature human being if he does not die prematurely. Embryologist E.L. Potter points out, “Every time a sperm cell and ovum unite, a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition” (Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant, 7).
The fact that some <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/an-embryo-is-a-living-being">embryos</a> and even other born children die before they become adult humans does not negate the fact that they are human beings. They still are human beings because they have the intrinsic capacity to develop into a mature human being even if their development is cut short.
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So What if a Fetus is Alive and Human?

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DAY 45
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CHALLENGE
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“Why should we confess our sins to a priest? We should go to God directly.”
DEFENSE
We can and should ask God directly for forgiveness, but Scripture also reveals that it is his will—in some cases—that we approach his ministers in confession.
Prayer may be sufficient for the forgiveness of daily, venial sins, but Jesus indicated that some sins are more serious by instituting the sacrament of confession to deal with them.
After rising from the dead, he told the disciples, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” Then he breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are for- given; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:21–23).
Previously, God had sent Jesus to forgive sins on earth (Matt. 9:6), and people glorified God “who had given such authority to men” (Matt. 9:8). Now Jesus shares this authority with his ministers.
Notice that he gives them the power to forgive or retain (not for- give) sins. The decision whether to forgive or retain a sin is serious, and Christ’s ministers must not make it in an uninformed manner. To perform their role, they need to be properly informed.
In particular, ministers need to know: (1) that we have committed a particular sin, and (2) that we are genuinely repentant. Since they have no way of knowing these things apart from our informing them, we are obliged to confess. Thus we have the sacrament of confession.
John 20:21–23 is also the background we need when reading the same author’s affirmation that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
TIP
Historically, penance has been celebrated in different forms. Early in Church history, it was common for it to be celebrated publicly, with Christ’s minister presiding over the service. Such public confession is envisioned in the exhortation, “Therefore confess your sins to one another” (James 5:16), which is done in the presence of “the elders of the church” (James 5:14)—the elders being the priests. In Greek, “elder” is presbuteros, from which we get the English word “priest.”
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Confessing to a Priest

Pope Francis Died. What Happens Now?

<div>Can going to Mass on a weekday substitute for Sunday Mass?</div><div>No. Our obligation is to attend Mass on Sundays (or Saturday evening). If someone is unable to fulfill his Sunday obligation for valid reasons, then his obligation to attend is simply abrogated.
If someone has missed Mass due to laziness or some other illegitimate reason, then he cannot make up for missing his Sunday obligation by attending a weekday Mass.
</div>

Can I Attend a Weekday Instead of Sunday Mass?

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DAY 216
CHALLENGE
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“Religion is inherently violent, producing countless wars.”
DEFENSE
This claim does not withstand scrutiny.
War is not unique to humanity. Other species—including ants, bees, and chimpanzees—wage war, understood as the organized, collective use of lethal violence against external enemies (such as for control of territory). Yet these species do not have religion. War’s roots are thus non-religious.
Religion is a human universal, and historically there have been no atheist societies. It is thus impossible to argue that non-religious societies were less violent than religious ones. The officially atheist societies that arose in the Communist world in the twentieth century were not more peaceful than others. They warred, exported revolution, and killed tens of millions of people, including their own citizens.
If religion predisposed people to violence, we should see this on the small scale, yet violent criminals don’t usually seem to be devout churchgoers.
Like non-religious viewpoints, religions have differing attitudes toward violence, ranging from advocating violence for a variety of causes to advocating it only in self-defense to thoroughgoing pacifism. One cannot tar all religious viewpoints with the same brush. If religion can inspire people to kill, it can also inspire them to refrain from killing (“You shall not kill,” Exod. 20:13; “Love your enemies,” Matt. 5:44).
Similarly, if lack of religious zealotry deprives one non-religious person of a motive to kill, another non-religious person may go on to slay because he is not constrained by religious values against killing.
Ultimately, religions don’t go to war. Governments do, and they usually must convince an ambivalent populace of their decision to do so. In this, they may use religion as a motivating factor (whether or not the religion of the enemies is different), but that doesn’t make religion the cause of war.
Often wars are fought when there is no difference in religion. In the bloodiest war in U.S. history—the Civil War—the North and the South had the same religion.
Most wars are not fought over religious goals such as converting, subjugating, or killing people because they have a different religion. Instead, they are fought over secular goals such as control of territory and resources, self-determination, defending national prestige, or seeking revenge for perceived wrongs.
TIP
For more, see the book The Myth of Religious Violence by William Cavanaugh.
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Religion and War

Resurrection Debate Debrief

<div>Did Adam and Eve have sex in the garden that created original sin? My mom and aunt said this is what they learned in Catholic school in the 1940s and ’50s. They say "eating the apple" really meant they had sex. I say no. Please help. </div><div>You are right. According to the Fathers of the Church and St. Thomas, Adam and Eve did not have intercourse until after the fall. There are precise theological and moral reasons for this teaching, too complex to go into here. The original sin was an act of disobedience followed by Adam&#8217;s ignoble blaming of Eve for his sin. Whatever eating the fruit (it was not an apple that was depicted in Genesis) means, it does not mean having intercourse, because that is something God commanded them to do, not something he forbade them to do. The first sin was doing something forbidden, not doing something commanded. When you reflect on this you see how incoherent this opinion is.
</div>

Was Having Sex the Original Sin?

In this episode Trent appears as guest on a podcast for the Christian Research Institute and helps their mostly Protestant audience better understand the arguments of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Sharing Aquinas’s “Five Ways” with Protestants

The passage most associated with the Immaculate Conception is Luke 1:28-30, where Gabriel addresses Mary with the title (or proper name) of full of grace or highly favored one (Greek: Kécharitôméne). Kécharitôméne is the passive perfect participle form of the verb charitoo, expressing a completed action or definitive perfection. The verb’s root is charis, Greek for grace or favor. The full literal translation of Kécharitôméne would be oh, one who is completely graced or favored. It is followed by “You have found favor [Greek: charis, grace] with God.”
In the fourth century, Jerome translated Kécharitôméne as gratia plena—full of grace—since God had blessed Mary “in Christ with every spiritual blessing,” having chosen her and us in Christ “before the foundation of the world . . . [to] be holy and blameless [Latin: immaculati]” (Eph. 1:3-4).
If God fully favored or graced Mary, she needed to be free of sin, of any alienation from God. Mary is fully graced, as she is fully a virgin. Had she been “unvirginal” in any moment of her existence, then she would not be fully a virgin. Likewise, had Mary been disfavored (i.e., in sin) at any moment, then she would not have been fully graced by God or “filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19).
Light is an image for grace. Being clothed with the sun indicates that Christ shared with Mary his glory, favor, and grace in God, just as he will with all Christians: “The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43), when we shall be full of grace. God did this with Mary in anticipation of the redemption, of her becoming the Mother of God. This fulfilled his promise: to pour out his Spirit upon his maidservants and handmaids—upon the handmaid of the Lord.<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[i]</a> The Spirit both purified and filled Mary at her conception so she could be called full of grace and most blest of women. As Gregory Nazianzen (d. 390) explains:
<blockquote>He was conceived by the Virgin, who had first been purified by the Spirit in soul and body; for, as it was fitting that childbearing should receive its share of honor, so it was necessary that virginity should receive even greater honor (Sermo 38.13).</blockquote>
Mary was more blessed, spiritually holy, clear, pure, and spotless than Lady Wisdom from the Old Testament (Wis. 7:23-24). God sought Mary—as he does every Christian—to be Christ’s pure bride (2 Cor. 11:2-3), just as Abraham sought a pure bride for his son Isaac (Gen. 24:3,37; 28:1-2): she must not be a daughter of Canaanites—of sinners descended from Cain. No, Christ’s bride must be immaculate: spiritually holy, spotless, without blemish or wrinkle (Eph. 5:25-27), just as every Christian must be washed clean of any stain so as to form the spotless bride. So it is impossible that Mary had any sin affecting her relationship with God.
God goes to great lengths to preserve women from defilement, prefiguring how God would preserve Mary from the spiritual defilement of sin.<a href="#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[ii]</a> Sinful and defiled women are antithetical to Mary. Sin is linked to shame. We contract sin at conception and experience shame as we grow. Scripture praises Susanna, in the Book of Daniel, “because nothing shameful was found in her” (13:63). In fact, she freely faced death rather “than to sin in the sight of the Lord.” (v. 23). God vanquished the tempting adversaries of Mary, more blessed than Susanna. So describing Mary as immaculate, free from all sin, best fits Scripture.
Key to understanding the Immaculate Conception is how Scripture prefigures Mary in Eve. Exploring early Christian writings, John Henry Newman (d. 1890) noticed how God created both Adam and Eve fully graced and favored, with no stain of sin or shame. This meant their human nature could reflect God’s image and likeness perfectly. The New Adam typology suggests that the New Eve would also be fully graced and immaculate. In fact, God calls all of us, “before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless [Latin: immaculati] before him” (Eph. 1:3-4). Human nature doesn’t necessitate sin: God calls all to be immaculate, free from sin and its effects. So Mary could be.
As the Word of God and source of all grace (John 1:14-17), Christ was conceived in Mary without sin. Since he is eternally God, he is also eternally holy and without sin. This radically differs from Adam, Eve, and Mary, all of whom had the capacity to sin, whereas Christ did not. Although her immaculate conception differs from her son’s, Mary is more blessed than Eve, even before the Fall! “Blessed is the man [or the woman] to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Ps. 32:2).
Justin Martyr (d. 165) compares Mary to the immaculate, undefiled virgin Eve (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, 100). In Scripture, virginity affirms something beyond the physical: it represents freedom from sin. (Scripture does not say that every person who is sexually a virgin is free from sin or immaculately conceived. The Bible makes only a negative assertion: the loss of virginity is connected with sin and impurity.) Where there is sin, there is a loss of virginal love of God and a loss of the wholesome relationship with God the Father. As more blessed than Eve, Mary is more fully a virgin and free from sin; she is fully graced with a favorable relationship with her heavenly Father (Luke 1:28-30).
Ill favor is sin. For St. John, sin and virginity are mutually exclusive:
<blockquote>Then I looked, and lo, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who . . . have not defiled themselves with women, for they are chaste . . . and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are spotless (Rev. 14:1-5).</blockquote>
Adam and Eve lose this immaculate grace and shamelessness when they freely disobey God.<a href="#_edn3" name="_ednref3">[iii]</a> God curses Eve’s sin: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Gen. 3:16). Eve, and all women stained with original sin, are cursed with birthing pain and menstrual and birthing bloods, associating these with sin and a need for purification.
As God puts enmity between the devil and the Messiah’s mother (Gen. 3:15), so Satan does not break through God’s protection of Mary. Pope John Paul II explains:
<blockquote>The absolute hostility put between the woman and the devil thus demands in Mary the Immaculate Conception, that is, a total absence of sin, from the very beginning of her life. The son of Mary won the definitive victory over Satan and enabled his mother to receive its benefits in advance by preserving her from sin. As a result, the son granted her the power to resist the devil, thus achieving in the mystery of the Immaculate Conception the most notable effect of his redeeming work . . . the beginning of a new order which is the result of friendship with God and which, as a consequence, entails a profound enmity between the serpent and men.</blockquote>
Mary is blessed because of her faith (Luke 1:41-45), and “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23). So fullness of faith means fullness of sinlessness and grace. Christ’s mother is “a lily among brambles, so is my love among maidens” (Song of Sol. 2:2), oh, blessed among women!

What It Means to Be ‘Virgin of Virgins’

Let’s begin with a quick recap of this famous parable, whose name varies with the emphasis—the parable of the prodigal son, the parable of the two brothers, the parable of the loving father.
This is explicitly recounted in the Gospel as a parable, not a real story, so the Lord himself invites us into the multiple layers of symbolic meanings. Perhaps the first layer is the immediate dynamic among the righteous, sinners, and God. Much like the story of the prophet Jonah, where God rebukes the prophet for his elder brother-like whining, the point is that God’s mercy is his own prerogative, not some sort of calculation where we get to sit around and fret about who deserves it. Jesus tells this parable in the context of the scribes and Pharisees complaining about his mercy toward sinners, so it also contains a subtle nod to the Lord’s own divinity. As with so many of the parables, although there is a great deal to learn about ourselves, perhaps the larger and more important message has to do with God.
A second layer would be the relationship between the lost northern tribes of Israel—the prodigal son who wastes his inheritance—and the more faithful southern tribe of Judah, the elder brother of the parable. Here, too, the story says something about Jesus himself. By this point, many Samaritans—descendants of those less faithful northern tribes, scorned by the Judeans—had begun to follow Jesus, no doubt turning many heads, not just of the scribes and Pharisees.
A third layer is closely related to the second, and that is the relationship between Israel and the world—or the Gentiles. Most of the peoples of the earth, since the days of Noah and Abraham, had run away from their inheritance. But Israel had been preserved as a righteous and faithful remnant. At this point, Jesus is still largely preaching to the Jews, and we don’t really see clearly the full weight of his universality until Pentecost, but already he had a reputation of both consorting with Gentiles and implying through many of his other parables that the elder brother, the people of Israel, has squandered his inheritance. In other words, despite their outward fidelity to the law, their hearts were not at all different from those of the Gentiles. The elder brother in the parable, despite his outward respect for his father, reveals in the end that he is not so different on the inside.
We could perhaps go on, but I want to mention one final layer of meaning—this time less a straightforward allegory than a resonance with our first reading from the book of Joshua. The people of Israel had been wandering the wilderness for forty years as a punishment for their rebellion. Just before this scene, the people cross the Jordan into the promised land. Tradition sees this wandering as a sign of the wandering of human nature in this present life before we are finally able to enter the kingdom of heaven. Connect that as well, of course, with these forty days of Lent as we look to Easter. At this moment, hope becomes reality. The manna from heaven—always seen by the Church Fathers as a type of the Eucharist—gives way to the produce of the land itself, which is to say the beatific vision.
In the end, whereas we might identify more with the prodigal son or the elder brother at different moments in time, the thing that matters most about the parable is the love and mercy of the father. He represents a new kind of family, a new kind of economy, a new creation—that true and final promised land—where grace and mercy reign. And the catalyst ushering in that new world is his heartbreak and longing for communion with his sons.
The heartbreak and longing are critical. This isn’t some cold, calculating father who looks at his accounts again and says, “Well, son, it’s been a good year for me, so I guess I can afford to give you another chance.” He doesn’t worry about the cost. This is God’s love for us: a selfless choice to tie his life to ours. He knows that it will hurt, and he does it anyway
Peter Kreeft writes, “If you want to avoid suffering at all costs, then the stupidest thing you can possibly do is to love someone, to give your heart to someone, because it will certainly be broken, many times, in many ways.” There is a great mystery here, wrapped up in the mystery of the Trinity and the mystery of the Incarnation, one that we can fully digest only when we cross the Jordan of this life. But we don’t have to understand everything about how this makes sense in terms of nature and theology and atonement to receive and grasp on some level the description of God’s character; as we say and as I often quote from our Prayer of Humble Access, our gracious Lord’s “property is always to have mercy.”
In other words, this is just who God is. It is just who Jesus is. We don’t have to understand it. We don’t even have to like it. At times we might be like the prodigal son, overwhelmed and confused at how the Father could possibly receive him back. At times we might be like the elder son, angry and envious, and also confused as to how all this works, unsure of whether his choices were in the end the right ones when the mercy seems so ridiculously free. But the father in this story, who is really more akin to the divine Son, stands at the crux of history, literally allowing his body to be beaten, his soul to be anguished, and his heart to be pierced because he would rather die a thousand deaths than see his brethren and children separated from him.
The old collect for today reminds us that though “for our evil deeds” we “do worthily deserve to be punished,” we can confidently ask God to be “mercifully relieved” by the comfort of his grace. Modern consciousness (and liturgy) shrinks back from that rather stark description of our plight, worrying that it makes God into some angry, punishing despot. But this is exactly opposite the point: God, despite all that we do, is more grieved than angry. The Sacred Heart isn’t bound by some kind of external law demanding punishment; God is rather bound to his own sovereign decision to give us freedom. He bears the cost of that decision himself in a way more infinite and total than any punishment we might ever imaginably bear in this life. He is not, in other words, standing around looking for ways to condemn us; we are quite capable of doing that for ourselves. He is rather always looking for ways to pardon us, to revive us, to restore us to the good.
This is the God who wants to share his life with us. Let us then leave the old world and go with him into the promised land.

Which of the Two Brothers Are You?

My father received last rites and went to confession. The priest said that if he were to die, he wouldn’t have to go to purgatory. Is this true?

What did it mean when the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary?

What are legitimate reasons to not have kids?

What’s the Church’s official teaching on the Nephilim?

Do you have to believe in all doctrines of the Catholic Church in order to be appointed a priest or bishop?

1 Corinthians 4:6 says to “not go beyond what is written.” Is this evidence for sola scriptura?

&#8220;Can you avoid purgatory after last rites?&#8221; This episode explores the nuances of last rites and their implications for purgatory, alongside intriguing questions about the meaning of the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary, the Church&#8217;s teachings on the Nephilim, and the reasons for not having children. Tune in for a thoughtful examination of these important topics.
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Can You Avoid Purgatory After Last Rites? Nephilim and Mary

Why the Kansas Black Mass (satanism) shows Catholicism is true…

<div>Did members of the Nazarene sect believe in Jesus as God?</div><div>In the ancient Church, all the way until the Middle Ages, Nazarene was used to describe those Christian sects that maintained the observance of the Old Law but also accepted the divine Sonship of Christ, his Virgin Birth, and his Resurrection. It is clear that they all accepted that Jesus is the Son of God. Whether, given the imprecision of the formulations of earlier times, they professed his full equality with God the Father in the mystery of the Holy Trinity would be hard to establish.
In any case, the Fathers, including St. Augustine and St. Jerome, and of course the ever-vigilant St. Epiphanius, all are aware of this sect&#8217;s continued existence in Palestine and in Asia Minor. The word Nazarene is used now also of modern Christian denominations that flow originally from aspects of the Methodist movement. These have nothing to do with the Judaising traditions of the ancient Nazarenes. To this day Jews and Muslims tend to call Christians &#8220;Nazarenes&#8221; in Aramaic and in Arabic.
So the name has a certain renewed nobility in these past years since Islamists have killed so many Christians for their faith as &#8220;Nazarenes.&#8221;
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Did Nazarenes Believe Jesus Was God?

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The mystery of the Incarnation 👀

In light of the war between Israel and Palestine, accusations of anti-Semitism in the fight between Ben Shaprio and Candace Owens, and some of your own comments&#8230; how SHOULD Christians think of biblical Israel, the Jewish people, and the modern nation-state of Israel? What role, if any, does the Old Covenant play today? And is it heretical to speak of the Jewish people as still the &#8220;people of God&#8221; in any sense?

What Should Catholics Think About Israel and the Jews?

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“The resurrection of the dead is absurd. An ancient might believe that God could reanimate dead bodies, but after death our bodies are broken down into their constituent elements. Further, particles from one person’s body can end up in another person’s body.”
DEFENSE
Belief in the afterlife is a human universal. This is a sign that it exists. The question is what form it takes. God has revealed that the afterlife includes an eventual bodily resurrection. He has demonstrated this by raising Jesus from the dead (on the connection between Jesus’ Resurrection and ours, see 1 Cor. 15).
The idea that the ancients could believe in the resurrection of the dead because they were unsophisticated is chronological snobbery. They were as aware as we that the body decomposes into tiny particles. In the first book of the Bible, God proclaims to man: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).
In Jesus’ day it was customary to entomb a body and then, once the flesh had rotted off the bones, to return, clean the bones, and place them in a container known as an ossuary. People were thus brought into immediate contact with the decay of their loved ones’ bodies. Nor were the ancients ignorant of the fact that—through cannibalism or less direct means—matter from one person’s body could end up in another’s. The medieval philosophers explored this question in detail.
The fundamental part of man that guarantees personal identity over time is the soul, which is the “form” of the body (CCC 365). How- ever, over the course of our lives, the matter that makes up our bodies changes dramatically.
The International Theological Commission notes: “The Church has never taught that the very same matter is required for the body to be said to be the same. But the cult of relics, whereby Christians profess that the bodies of the saints who were living members of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit must be raised and glorified by Christ, shows that the resurrection cannot be explained independently of the body that once lived” (Some Current Questions in Eschatology 1.2.5).
Christian theology thus holds that the resurrected body is connect- ed with the one that previously lived but not that it contains all the matter that was ever part of it in life.
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Objections to the General Resurrection

4th Sunday of Advent, Year B 
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic word, we focus on two details in the Gospel reading for this upcoming 4th Sunday of Advent, which is taken from Luke 1:26-38. One of the two is read in tandem with the first reading, taken from 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16. The apologetical topic that it relates to is Jesus’ Messiahship. The other detail deals with the Blessed Mother, particularly her perpetual virginity.
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Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/122423.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Hey everyone,
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Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
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I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
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In this episode, I’m going to focus on two details in the Gospel reading for this upcoming 4th Sunday of Advent, which is taken from Luke 1:26-38. One of the two is read in tandem with the first reading, taken from 2 Samuel 7:1-5, 8b-12, 14a, 16. The apologetical topic that it relates to is Jesus’ Messiahship. The other detail deals with the Blessed Mother, in particular her perpetual virginity.
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Let’s get started. Luke records,
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The angel Gabriel was sent from God
to a town of Galilee called Nazareth, 
to a virgin betrothed to a man named Joseph, 
of the house of David, 
and the virgin&#8217;s name was Mary. 
And coming to her, he said, 
&#8220;Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with you.&#8221; 
But she was greatly troubled at what was said 
and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 
Then the angel said to her, 
&#8220;Do not be afraid, Mary, 
for you have found favor with God.
&#8220;Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, 
and you shall name him Jesus. 
He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, 
and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, 
and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, 
and of his kingdom there will be no end.&#8221; 
But Mary said to the angel, 
&#8220;How can this be, 
since I have no relations with a man?&#8221; 
And the angel said to her in reply, 
&#8220;The Holy Spirit will come upon you, 
and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. 
Therefore the child to be born 
will be called holy, the Son of God. 
And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, 
has also conceived a son in her old age, 
and this is the sixth month for her who was called barren; 
for nothing will be impossible for God.&#8221; 
Mary said, &#8220;Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. 
May it be done to me according to your word.&#8221; 
Then the angel departed from her.
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The first detail is Gabriel’s announcement that Jesus would sit on the throne of David and that his kingdom would have no end. This announcement can only be appreciated against the backdrop of a portion of the first reading, verses 11-14a, and verse 16:
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The LORD also reveals to you 
that he will establish a house for you. 
And when your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, 
I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, 
and I will make his kingdom firm. 
I will be a father to him, 
and he shall be a son to me. 
Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; 
your throne shall stand firm forever.&#8221;
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Given this background, Gabriel is announcing that Jesus is the Messiah, and Luke believes it to be true. So, Jesus’ Messiahship is front and center for this upcoming Sunday’s Gospel.
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Now, there are a few details here that concern the Blessed Mother. One of them is Gabriel’s announcing Mary to be “full of grace.” This normally ties into Mary’s sinlessness. I’m going to pass over this detail in this episode. For a great treatment of this, I recommend Tim Staples’s Behold Your Mother.
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The detail concerning our Blessed Mother that I want to focus on here is Mary’s response to the angel Gabriel’s revelation that she would bear the Messiah. Mary says, “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” (KJV). In Scripture, the term know (Greek, gin ōskō) commonly refers to sexual relations (see Gen. 4:1; Matt. 1:25).
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The angel tells Mary she will conceive a child, but Mary is puzzled as to how that could possibly happen. Why would Mary inquire as to how she is going to conceive a child if she were in a normal, soon-to-be-consummated marriage with Joseph? Luke 1:27 has already told us that Mary was “betrothed” to Joseph.
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Her question suggests that she isn’t planning on a normal marriage. This is why Gabriel’s response explains the miraculous nature of the conception that will take place: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you” (Luke 1:35).
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The idea of having a vow of virginity within marriage would not have been totally out of bounds for the ancient Jews. In Numbers 30 we find instructions given for a woman still living in her father’s house (vv.3-5)—a married woman (vv.6-8) and a widowed or divorced woman (v. 13)—concerning her oath to “afflict herself.” According to Torah scholar Jacob Milgrom, this is an idiom among ancient Jews that refers to fasting and refraining from sexual intercourse.<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[i]</a>  And as the context bears out, in the case of the married woman her vow remained if the husband did not object.
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So, if Mary had made such a vow after their betrothal, and Joseph didn’t object, then the instructions in Numbers chapter thirty would provide a historical basis for such a situation. And even if Mary made the vow before betrothal, the instructions would still provide a historical context that would make her vow intelligible.
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Now, as I point out in my book Meeting the Protestant Response, Protestant James White offers a counter to this reading. He argues that the angel was “speaking about an immediate conception,”<a href="#_edn2" name="_ednref2">[ii]</a> and therefore Mary’s response has to do with her being a virgin at the time Gabriel announces to her that she is to bear the Messiah. To quote Ron Rhodes, her response basically amounts to, “I am a virgin, and my upcoming marriage will not take place for close to a year. So how will this pregnancy you speak of come to fruition?”<a href="#_edn3" name="_ednref3">[iii]</a>
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White gives two reasons for his claim. First, he says Mary was “only engaged to Joseph, but not married.” From this he infers that “at that time [Mary] could not possibly conceive in a natural manner, since she did not ‘know a man.’” He thinks that’s what prompts Mary’s question.
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White’s second reason is “the present tense, ‘I do not know a man.’” For White, if Mary had a vow of perpetual virginity, she would have said, “I have pledged never to know a man,” or “I will never know a man.” Since Mary doesn’t say such things, White again concludes she must be thinking of not conceiving a child at that time.
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As I show in my book, we can refute each of the reasons behind this argument. Let’s take first the claim that Mary was “only engaged to Joseph, but not married.” This simply is not true.
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Consider, for example, Matthew 1:18. There Matthew writes, “When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.” Matthew uses the same Greek word for “betrothed” (mnēsteuō) as Luke does in Luke 1:27, right before Gabriel makes the announcement to Mary.
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For Matthew, this “betrothal” was a real marriage. Immediately after, in verse 19, Matthew tells us Joseph sought to divorce Mary quietly. Why would Joseph seek to divorce her if they were not legally married? Couldn’t he just leave her with no qualms about it?
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Furthermore, in verse 19, for example, Matthew refers to Joseph as Mary’s “husband” (Greek, anēr). Anēr also means “man,” but the context concerning Joseph’s contemplation of divorce confirms its marital sense. Then in verse 20, Matthew quotes the angel: “Do not fear to take Mary your wife (Greek, gunē<a href="#_edn4" name="_ednref4">[iv]</a>).”
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Now, some translations (ESV, NIV, NLV) translate verse 20 as “take Mary as your wife,” allowing for the meaning that Mary is not Joseph’s wife yet. But this directly contradicts verse 19 where Joseph is said to be Mary’s “husband,” a translation that both the ESV and NIV agree on. The NLV (The New Living Translation), however, renders verse 19 as “Joseph, to whom she was engaged.” But this is clearly an interpolation, since, as mentioned above, the Greek word for husband, anēr, is used to describe Joseph, and it’s within the context of Joseph contemplating divorce. Joseph is Mary’s “husband.” Mary is Joseph’s “wife.” That’s language of a real and legally binding marriage.
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The point of Matthew’s narrative is that Mary was found to be with child during the interim period between vows and consummation. It was customary in ancient Israel that a man and woman would become legally married, the husband would go off to prepare a place for his bride, and then come back to take his wife to begin their life together in one household, at which point consummation would occur. It’s this interim period that both Matthew and Luke describe as “betrothal” (mnēsteuō).
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Now that we have shown that Mary was legally married to Joseph at the time of the Annunciation, the significance of her question, “How shall this be?” comes into greater focus. Apologist Tim Staples explains the significance this way:
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Think about it: If you were a woman who had a ratified marriage and someone at your reception said— or “prophesied”— that you were going to have a baby, that would not really be all that much of a surprise. That is the normal course of events. You marry, consummate the union, and babies come along. You certainly would not ask the question, “Gee, how is this going to happen?” Mary never doubted; she simply asked a very valid question. She believed the message of the angel— that she was going to have a baby— but she did not know how it was going to happen. If she had been betrothed in the normal course, she would know precisely how it would happen because St. Joseph would have had a right to the marriage bed. Her question indicates she was not planning on the normal course of events in her future with her husband.<a href="#_edn5" name="_ednref5">[v]</a>
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What about the second point, regarding the present tense of know?
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One response is that although Mary’s statement, “I do not know man,” is in the Greek present tense, it’s a present tense that indicates an ongoing or permanent state of affairs (known as the habitual present).<a href="#_edn6" name="_ednref6">[vi]</a> On this reading, Mary’s statement that she does not know man would suggest that she expects to remain a virgin on an ongoing basis. So, rather than the present tense undermining an appeal to this verse for support of Mary’s perpetual virginity, it converges with it.
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A second response is that the only way it would have entered into Mary’s mind that the angel was speaking of an immediate conception is if the angel indicated she was to conceive immediately, or at least before she and Joseph consummated the marriage. But there’s no such evidence. In fact, the evidence points in the opposite direction. The angel places everything he says prior to Mary’s response (and even after) in the future:
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And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end (Luke 1:31-33).
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It would be strange for Mary to think the angel was referring to an immediate conception when the future tense is used seven times and there’s no revelation yet as to the supernatural nature of the conception. Mary would have every reason to think the angel was thinking of a regular conception that would occur after the consummation of her marriage with Joseph. The supernatural character of the conception doesn’t come until after she queries, “How shall this be?”
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Even if Mary’s statement, “I do not know man,” referred to her not knowing man during the interim period between the vows and consummation, still her question as to how she’s going to conceive a child wouldn’t make sense, given the fact that in normal circumstances, she would eventually consummate the marriage, after which a child would be conceived.
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In the end, the Protestant who denies Mary’s perpetual virginity is forced to read into the text something that is not there—namely, that Gabriel indicated an immediate conception (that is, one before she and Joseph begin living together as husband and wife). This is not stated by the text. You’d have to go beyond what the text says for this argument to work.
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Well, my friends, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The readings for this upcoming Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B, equip us for the topic of Mary’s perpetual virginity.
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As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well at sundaycatholicword.com. You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Cy Kellet’s Catholic Answers Focus, Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, and Jimmy Akin’s A Daily Defense, all of which can be found at catholic.com.
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One last thing: if you’re interested in getting some cool mugs and stickers with my logo, “Mr. Sunday podcast,” go to shop.catholic.com.
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I hope you have a blessed Fourth Sunday of Advent. Until next time, God Bless!
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<a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">[i]</a> See Jacob Milgrom, Harper Collins Study Bible n. Lev 16:29; citing Targum Pseudo-Jonthan; cf. Brant Pitre, “A Biblical Basis for Mary’s Perpetual Virginity,” March 13, 2008, <a href="http://www.the">www.the</a>sacredpage.com.
<a href="#_ednref2" name="_edn2">[ii]</a> James White, Mary—Another Redeemer? (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1998), Chap. 3, Electronic Edition.
<a href="#_ednref3" name="_edn3">[iii]</a> Rhodes, Reasoning with Catholics from the Scriptures, 297.
<a href="#_ednref4" name="_edn4">[iv]</a> Gune also means simply “woman,” but like marital context indicates “wife” as the appropriate translation.
<a href="#_ednref5" name="_edn5">[v]</a> Tim Staples, Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines (El Cajon, CA: Catholic Answers Press, 2014), 134-135.
<a href="#_ednref6" name="_edn6">[vi]</a> See Daniel B. Wallace, 521–522; cf. Manual Miguens, The Virgin Birth, an Evaluation of the Scriptural Evidence (Westminster, MD, 1975), 81; William H. Carroll, A History of Christendom, Vol. I (Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 1985), 310.

Biblical Evidence for Mary’s Perpetual Virginity

In the gallery of canceled Catholics, pride of place is given to Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), queen of France. There is perhaps no other Catholic in history who was maligned just as much during her life as she was after her death.
Marie’s main crime was that she was not born in France. Despite her deep love for her adopted homeland, she was treated as a foreigner and reviled in the most grotesque manner in the Parisian media.
Perhaps the most damning propaganda against Marie specifically and the monarchy in general was the “Affair of the Diamond Necklace” in 1785. Years before, the aged King Louis XV had ordered Charles August Böhmer, a Swiss jeweler, to make an elaborate and exceptionally expensive necklace, consisting of 647 diamonds of 2,800 carats, worth 1.6 million livres ($25 million today).<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> The old king died before the necklace was completed, which left the Swiss jeweler distraught (and in debt). Louis XVI offered to purchase the necklace for Marie to give as a future wedding gift to their daughter, but Marie refused and said the money should be used instead to construct a warship. Böhmer demanded that the queen buy the piece, or he would commit suicide. Marie did not give in to the jeweler’s hysterics and suggested he break the necklace into smaller pieces in order to expedite its sale.
At this stage, the saga turned bizarre, with the introduction of a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Citizens-Chronicle-Revolution-Simon-Schama/dp/0679726101">cast of characters</a>” who “seemed perfect symbols of a regime worm-eaten with corruption” (205). The archbishop of Strasbourg, Cardinal Louis de Rohan, a gullible man desirous of the queen’s attention and favoritism, thrust himself into the story by offering to buy the necklace. The cardinal told Böhmer that the queen now wanted the piece and that he had been sent to acquire it for her. De Rohan had been convinced by Jeanne de La Motte, a charlatan, who hired an actress to portray the queen in an elaborate nighttime skit, where Marie supposedly told the cardinal she wanted the necklace. Additionally, de La Motte hired a forger to craft a letter from the queen to de Rohan about the necklace. Both duplicitous actions persuaded the cardinal that Marie needed him to acquire the precious piece.
Ultimately, Böhmer gave the necklace to de La Motte, acting on behalf of the cardinal, who then fled to England and sold it. When the jeweler came to Versailles to demand payment, the plot was discovered, and de Rohan was publicly arrested as he processed to the Royal Chapel to celebrate Mass. King Louis XVI was irate and ordered the cardinal imprisoned in the Bastille. Eventually, the duped cleric was tried by the Paris Parlement but, to the surprise of Louis and Marie, found not guilty and acquitted.
The public, kept abreast of the affair by press reports during the trial, blamed the queen for the entire episode. Opponents of Marie Antoinette used the “Affair of the Diamond Necklace” to transform public opinion against her so that she was seen by the people of France, both nobles and commoners alike, not as the beloved queen but as the “Austrian whore” who was concerned only about riches and ostentatious pieces of jewelry. Not only was the sordid affair a stain on Marie’s reputation, but it seriously damaged the legitimacy of the monarchy and the Church in popular opinion, as one councilor of the Paris Parlement <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/214913.Marie_Antoinette">remarked</a> that the situation was a “nice little smear of dirt on both crown and crozier” (83)
Propaganda directed against the queen during her lifetime manifested into later myths about her concern for the French people suffering during the height of the financial crisis in the 1780s. The secular historical attack continues to posit <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/5-myths-about-the-french-revolution/2015/07/09/6f27c6f0-25af-11e5-b72c-2b7d516e1e0e_story.html">the myth</a> that Marie, when told about the plight of her French subjects, callously remarked, “Let them eat cake.” The phrase itself is poorly translated from the French, which includes the word brioche rather than gâteau (cake). Brioche was a pastry made with flour enriched with eggs and butter and thus more expensive than ordinary bread.
But the difference between brioche and bread must be seen for the distraction that it is. The infamous quote remains fixed in the modern mind about Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI despite the fact the queen never uttered it. The insensitive remark was never attributed to her during her lifetime or the French Revolution. Post-Revolution secular historians used the false quote to portray a corrupt, evil, and morally decadent monarchy linked with the Church to preclude a return of the crown.
The phrase first appears in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, which was published in 1769, a year before Marie ever set foot in France. It is possible that the quote originated with Maria Theresa of Spain (1638-1683), the first wife of Louis XIV, who died seventy-two years before Marie Antoinette was born!
The truth is that the queen was very concerned with the health and well-being of her adopted subjects and established soup kitchens in Paris to feed the hungry during the difficult financial times in France. But the propaganda against the queen created a negative environment toward the monarchy so that when the kingdom was beset by severe financial problems in the late 1780s, people turned against Louis and Marie and viewed the Church and its wealth as a means to end the national suffering.
It is difficult to find a more perfect example of the Catholic scapegoat than Marie Antoinette. “To the memory of no other woman, and few of either sex, has the verdict of her time and of history been so <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Against-Christendom-History-Vol/dp/0931888808">unjustly and vindictively destructive</a>” (117).
For more profiles of good Catholics done dirty by secular history, buy Canceled, available in the Catholic Answers <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/canceled-twelve-catholic-heroes-that-history-turned-into-villains/?searchid=9188990&amp;search_query=canceled">shop</a>.

Marie Antoinette and the Diamond Necklace

Is the Bible &#8220;self-attesting&#8221;? In other words, can we tell which books belong in the Bible from the Bible itself, or do we need the Church? Protestant Reformers like John Calvin argued we only needed the Bible (and the &#8220;internal witness&#8221; of the Holy Spirit). Here&#8217;s why they&#8217;re wrong.

Is the Bible “Self-Attesting,” or Do We Need the Church?

Which Gospel Was Written First

Why is the True Presence of Jesus Absent in Protestant Communion?

<div>Is it possible for a parent to undo a godparent for a child? </div><div>Classically, the godparent-godchild relationship was ended if the two married each other, or if one or both entered the clerical or religious state, although even these cases were not universal but more regional and cultural. The godparent-godchild relationship gave rise to what was understood as a &#8220;spiritual affinity&#8221; that was incompatible with sexual relations on the one hand or celibacy on the other. Thus, in the previous discipline there had to be a dispensation for a godchild and godparent to marry, and clerics and religious were generally not allowed to function as godparents.
Nowadays in the West, the obligations of this role are not as great as they were in previous times. Current discipline does not provide for ceasing to be a godparent or godchild. So it would seem that this would be left up to the will of the persons involved. Of course, this would be a horrible thing, akin to a father&#8217;s saying to his son, &#8220;I am no longer your father, &#8221; or a son&#8217;s saying, &#8220;I am no longer your son.&#8221; It would seem also that loss of the Catholic faith would also remove a godparent from his role, since one who does not have the Catholic faith would ordinarily not strive to protect the Catholic faith of another. But even this is not strictly the case.
</div>

Can the Godparent Role Be Rescinded?

In this video, Cy Kellett and apologist Tim Staples sit down with rising Catholic creator Adrian Lawson from Sips with Serra. Adrian shares how Tim played a key role in his conversion to the Catholic Church—and how he’s now helping lead the next generation to the faith through online evangelization.
Transcript:
Cy: Adrian from Sips with Serra, thank you very much for being here with us!
Adrian: Thank you for having me. Thank you for clearing up how to say the name. I often get Sips with Sierra, so I appreciate you saying that.
Cy: Oh, yes, right. My father is a longtime member of the Sarah Club. They pray for vocations. And he said, people always think it&#8217;s the Sierra Club, but no. Well, we&#8217;re delighted to have you here. You yourself are a convert to the Catholic faith?
Adrian: Yes. Coming up this Easter will be one year since I have been a confirmed Catholic.
Cy: Oh, congratulations. God bless you!
Adrian: Thank you.
Cy: Tell us a little bit about that. How did that happen that you came into the Catholic Church?
Adrian: Well, it&#8217;s quite a long story with some false starts and some runaround. But in short, I was going to an evangelical church, which is kind of the tradition I grew up in. Fell away when I went into atheism, came back to Protestantism, started to learn about the early church and realized, hey, they have some beliefs that really don&#8217;t line up with what my church is teaching, particularly about the Eucharist and Baptism. And that led me to look into more traditional forms of Christianity. Catholicism was obviously high on that list. And then some family scared me out of it. I was about to join RCIA. Some family scared me out of it. So I thought, like-
Cy: Like with a shotgun? What kind of family do you come from? How are they scaring you out of it?
Adrian: There were just some strong words. No weapons.
Cy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Catholics are pagans or Catholics are idol worshipers or what kind of thing?
Adrian: Yeah, they worship Mary. Idol worshipers. You won&#8217;t really be a real Christian, so on and so forth. You&#8217;ll go to hell. Thankfully, those same family members have now come around a little bit more to Catholicism. Not in the sense that they&#8217;re going to convert, but in the sense that they&#8217;re more accepting. And I&#8217;m very grateful for that.
Cy: You don&#8217;t know We can hope life is long. You don&#8217;t know. But at some point, despite the fear, you turned towards the Catholic Church. What happened?
Adrian: Yeah, so after spending two years in the Lutheran tradition, I just kept feeling this tug towards Catholicism. And a lot of it had to do with some of the work you guys are doing. A ton of it had to do with you guys, actually, especially Tim Staples. I was reading *Behold Your Mother* at that time. He got me, and I talked about this. I talked about this recently on another channel, but I read a couple of chapters of that book, and I was like, I don&#8217;t need to finish this. Everything the church says about Mary is probably true. I don&#8217;t even need to finish this. I&#8217;m so convinced because it was just so well reasoned. Whereas before I thought they just made this stuff up. They don&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re talking about. And then just seeing how well reasoned just the first few chapters were, I was like, oh, this stuff is actually pretty well founded. Very well founded in scripture and in the early church. So from there it was just a matter of time until I became a Catholic.
Cy: So tell us about your channel, Sips with Serra. People can get you on YouTube. You&#8217;re posting all the time there on YouTube. So tell us about what you do there and how that came about.
Adrian: Yeah, so I actually. So what I do there is just Catholic apologetics, but I generally just talk about topics that are interesting to me, topics that are commonly misunderstood about Catholicism. And really the way this started was I was actually on TikTok a couple of years before I became a Catholic, and I was actually doing Protestant apologetics on that channel or on that TikTok account. And then I became a Catholic. I took some time off of TikTok because I thought maybe I should just keep my mouth shut if I&#8217;m not really sure what I believe at this moment. Came back to TikTok after becoming a Catholic or soon before I became confirmed. And then I just felt like, you know, a lot of these topics need to be kind of fleshed out in more detail in longer form videos. So I brought it over to YouTube and saw pretty quick success with it. So I&#8217;ve been dedicating basically all of my time into it now.
Cy: So who&#8217;s your audience? Is it Catholics or people who are considering the Catholic Church? People who disagree with you, agree with you. What is it?
Adrian: I get a lot of converts and a lot of people who are currently in OCIA on their way into the church.
Cy: Oh, wonderful. And so their path is similar to your path.
Adrian: Yeah. In fact, just last night I was talking to one of the guys who&#8217;s a big supporter of the channel, and he had basically the same story as me. Grew up Protestant, became an atheist, came back to the faith, but was not really comfortable with Protestantism because he felt like something was missing there. We have a very similar path. So a lot of the people that I&#8217;ve encountered through the channel have that same story.
Cy: So what are you working on now? Like, what kind of topics are you working on now?
Adrian: Oh, man, I talk about a lot of different things. I mean, any given week I&#8217;ll be covering a couple of different subjects. Lately I&#8217;ve been getting into the authority of the church, which is one of the main things that attracted me to the Catholic Church at first because, yeah, I know it puts a lot of people off, especially in an American context, to say I have to submit. I don&#8217;t really like that, but for me it just made sense. You know, I was, at the time, I was in a Lutheran church and I had bounced around a couple of different Lutheran churches because some of them were just not very faithful. Some of them were doing basically open communion, which even Lutheranism is just not cool with. And I just felt like if there was a church authority that could just, you know, say, hey, stop doing that. If you want to continue to be a valid church, that type of authority makes a lot of sense. So just seeing the practical benefits of having a church structure the way that the Catholic Church has really made that a much stronger case to me.
Cy: Would you like to be Tim Staples someday? Like, learn all that he has learned and make a profession out of it?
Tim: Say no! No, you don&#8217;t want to be.
Adrian: I could only hope. I could only hope.
Cy: But is that something that&#8217;s of interest to you? Like, would you like to pursue this as a professional path?
Adrian: Yes. Yes. In fact, I don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t. Not to like make a whole sob story or whatever, but I got laid off of my job recently, which is happening a lot right now, unfortunately to a lot of people. But because of that, I&#8217;m treating this. I&#8217;m like, okay, this is my full-time job now. So that&#8217;s kind of, that is the goal.
Caller: God bless you. Wonderful. Wonderful.
Tim: I have a very important question. Did you finish my book?
Cy: No. He said he didn&#8217;t have to.
Adrian: I didn&#8217;t, I didn&#8217;t finish.
Cy: What?
Adrian: I gotta be honest.
Cy: You need to finish that book. What are you talking about?
Tim: No, you know,
Adrian: It&#8217;s such a good book.
Tim: It&#8217;s really cool though, that you&#8217;re sharing as you are, because you do hear this side from converts. The authority of the church is really the linchpin for so many folks. I know for me, I can remember getting to the point where I saw it and it was like, man, it ought to be true if it&#8217;s not. But I had so many other questions that I just couldn&#8217;t buy it yet. And so I had to deal then with the individual issues, you know, works and sacraments and Mary and the rest. Was that similar for you?
Adrian: Yeah, although for me, it was Mary was the first. I guess the Eucharist, baptism, and Mary were like the first three things that I came to accept. And then from there I accepted the church&#8217;s authority. And I think the last thing that clicked for me was the papacy itself. So, yeah, that was not the same exact trajectory as you, but it was a domino effect.
Tim: Right, got it.
Cy: You know, Tim and I, a lot of gray hair between the two of us. I mean, a lot. And a lot of product making holding it all together, but. So you got no gray hairs yet. What do you find works with? I assume that you have a younger audience. I think that&#8217;s fantastic. They&#8217;ve been through a lot. People your age. You&#8217;re what, early 30s, right? So people your age have been through a lot. They&#8217;ve been through the pandemic. They grew up with the war on terror. You were little kids when the World Trade Center, as far as Christianity goes, scandals and upsets and frankly, a kind of the rise of the social media world, all of that is what your generation went through. What do they need to come to Christ and to his church?
Tim: Yeah.
Adrian: Oof. That&#8217;s a big question. I mean, I think a lot of what people my age are fed up with nowadays is the age of, or the philosophy of relativism that we kind of grew up in, where everybody&#8217;s opinion is valid. And that&#8217;s your truth, and this is my truth and that whole thing. And we&#8217;ve seen how that&#8217;s resulted in a lot of different strange things happening in society today. But I think a lot of people my age are kind of tired of that, and they&#8217;re looking for what is something solid I can stand on, what is something solid I can base my life off of, rather than just living in this kind of vacuum of purposelessness where there&#8217;s no sense of objective truth. I think people are looking for something that is opposite of what they grew up with, and that&#8217;s obviously very easily found in the Catholic Church.
Cy: What a beautiful answer and what a beautiful work you&#8217;ve undertaken, Adrian. We&#8217;re really grateful that you took the time with us.
Adrian: Thank you so much.
Tim: And next time you come back, I&#8217;ll be asking if you finished my book.
Adrian: So I have to do it now?
Tim: That&#8217;s right, you do.
Cy: You do have to finish the book. It took him long enough to finish it. Now you should finish it.

From Protestant to Online Catholic Evangelist, Sips With Serra | Creators in Focus

Christmas Questions (Encore)

The Lord&#8217;s Prayer or &#8220;Our Father,&#8221; is the most famous prayer in Christian, given to us by Jesus himself. But did you know that there&#8217;s a deeply Catholic meaning to this prayer, in what it reveals about formal prayer, about the Church, about the Eucharist, and about the impossibility of &#8220;salvation by faith alone&#8221;?

4 Surprising Catholic Implications of the “Our Father”

Many Protestants object to praying to Mary and the Saints because they think (1) it&#8217;s impossible to reach them (are they even conscious in Heaven?); (2) they can&#8217;t hear all of our prayers, in various languages, simultaneously; and (3) it&#8217;s sinful to try to reach them (how is this any different than a Ouija board?). These objections are reasonable enough&#8230; but they&#8217;re all wrong. Here&#8217;s why.

Proving that the Saints in Heaven Hear Our Prayers

Christians who believe that Mary is the mother of God often employ a three-step argument that runs as follows:
P1: Mary is the mother of Jesus.
P2: Jesus is God.
C: Therefore, Mary is the mother of God.
It’s as simple as that, right? Some Protestants say, “Not quite!”
In his <a href="https://carm.org/roman-catholicism/there-is-a-logical-fallacy-in-the-argument-that-mary-is-the-mother-of-god/">article</a>, “There is a logical fallacy in the argument that Mary is the mother of God,” Protestant apologist Matt Slick argues that the above argument involves the fallacy of equivocation, which is when a word, or words, changes meaning within an argument.
Which word does Slick think is being used with different meanings? God. He writes,
<blockquote>When we say that Jesus is God, we are affirming that Jesus has a divine nature as well as a human nature. Therefore, the word “God” here must refer to the divine nature, the divine essence.</blockquote>
Slick then asks how Catholics are using the term God in the conclusion:
<blockquote>In what sense is the term “God” used here? Does it mean God in the divine essence? . . . In what sense is the word “mother” used here? Does it mean that she is the mother of the divine nature?</blockquote>
Slick rightfully infers that “God” cannot be used to refer to the divine nature, since that would entail Mary being prior to the divine nature, which is absurd. We might even bolster Slick’s reasoning and say that mothers aren’t mothers of natures, but rather mothers of persons, and that the idea that Mary is the mother of the divine nature isn’t even what the dogma entails.
Slick is left to ask, “So, how is [God] meant?” Given the ambiguity, he concludes, “The lack of clarity is the problem.”
To strengthen Slick’s argument, it’s not merely a lack of clarity that is the problem, but the seeming switch in meaning of the term God. Given that the term can’t mean the divine nature in the conclusion, per Slick’s reasoning above (and ours), the conclusion must switch the meaning from the divine nature, as applied to Jesus in premise two, to something else, thereby committing the fallacy of equivocation.
So what might we say in response?
Well, Slick misses the mark when he thinks the term God in premise two is being used in reference to the divine nature. Maybe that’s how Christians use the term in other contexts, when speaking of Jesus’ divinity. But that’s not how it’s being used in this context, when arguing for Mary as the mother of God.
Indulge me for a moment!
Slick is right in thinking the term God can be and is used to refer to the divine nature, which just is the divine reality itself, or the divine being itself—ipsum esse subsistens (subsistent being itself), which all three persons are identical to.
Where Slick goes wrong, however, is to think that God is used solely in reference to the divine nature, or at least to think that’s how defenders of the Mother of God are using it in the above argument.
But the term God can also be used in a personal sense—that’s to say, it can be used to refer to the person to whom we offer prayers, adoration, and worship, the personal agent who brings about certain created effects, and the person who stands in a certain relation to the other persons in the Trinity. In this sense, God can be ascribed individually to the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit.
The reason is that all three persons are identical to the divine being. So the term God, which initially refers to the divine nature, is transferred over to refer to the persons of the Trinity to signify that they are all divine, given that they all are identical to the divine nature.
For example, Jesus says of the Father, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17). Thomas says of Jesus, “The Lord of me and the God of me” (John 20:28). When speaking of the Holy Spirit who gives a variety of gifts, such as knowledge, prophecy, tongues, miracles, etc. (vv. 7-11), Paul says, “It is the same God who inspires them all in everyone” (1 Cor. 12:6).
So God can be used to refer to a specific person of the Trinity without rigidly identifying the divine nature itself.
Keep in mind, however, that for some things, we must use God in reference only to the Divine Son, such as “God” suffered, “God” laughed, “God” died, and “God” was born (see Gal. 4:4). This is so because only the Divine Son took upon himself a human nature.
So, in our argument above, when we say, “Jesus is God,” God is being used specifically to refer to the Second Person of the Trinity, the Divine Son, such that the statement “Jesus is God” means “Jesus is the Divine Son.”
Consequently, in our conclusion, “Mary is the mother of God,” God is used specifically to refer to the Second Person of the Trinity, the Divine Son, such that the statement “Mary is the mother of God” means “Mary is the mother of the Divine Son.”
And since we’ve already established that it’s appropriate to ascribe the term God to the Divine Son in a personal sense, it’s appropriate to call Mary the mother of God, since she is the mother of the Divine Son, Jesus.
I think we can all learn a lesson from Slick’s challenge. First, we need to be careful to clarify the meaning of our terms when we run our argument, lest there be confusion. Secondly, we need to be careful to discern precisely how a term is being used by a community in an argument before we critique it.
Of course, these are lessons not just for arguments defending Mary, the mother of God, but also for any and all arguments. Let’s not let this opportunity to grow as apologists pass us by.

Mary, Mother of Whom?

<div>Is John Michael Talbot in good standing with the Catholic Church?</div><div>John Michael Talbot is the founder of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity community. The community is canonically categorized as a public association of the faithful. The community is under the authority of the Diocese of Little Rock and is accountable to the bishop of that diocese.
</div>

Is John Michael Talbot in Good Standing with the Church?

Joshua Charles explains how typology can be used to show connections between the Old Testament and Gospels as a way to show the validity of Catholic beliefs of Mary.
<a href="https://shop.catholic.com/bible-mary-the-mother-of-jesus-in-the-word-of-god/">Purchase Bible Mary &#8211; The Mother of Jesus in the Word of God</a>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-can-you-say-that-mary-is-the-new-eve">Mary as the New Eve</a>

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How Do We Know Peters’ Authority Endures Today? Eucharistic Miracles and Demons

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This article is a theological exploration of the difficult topic of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, help is available free of charge. If you live in the United States, call 988 to reach the Suicide &amp; Crisis Lifeline. In case of emergency, call 911.

Hope in the Face of Suicide

Episode 26: Year A &#8211; The Ascension of the Lord
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on five details that come each of the readings for the Ascension of the Lord, Year A, which for most dioceses in the United States was transferred from May 18th to this Sunday, May 21st. The topics that these details highlight are as follows: Jesus’ resurrection, the baptism of the Holy Spirit and its relation to the Sacrament of Confirmation, Jesus’s Messiahship, Jesus’ Divinity, and the trinitarian formula for the Sacrament of Baptism.
Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052123-Ascension.cfm">https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/052123-Ascension.cfm</a>
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The Trinitarian Formula for Baptism

Joe explains how the early Church Fathers understood the Eucharist, and demonstrates how immensely powerful the Paschal meal in bringing us to eternal life.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. And last episode I mentioned this. I&#8217;m really looking forward to just doing an episode on how Gregory of Nisa shows the Eucharist is connected to bodily resurrection and glorification because it&#8217;s incredible. Yes, Joe, I agree with you. The early Christians were convinced that the Eucharist was key to our rising from the dead. And at first blush, that idea seems pretty strange even to Catholics. And yet we find this connection being made over and over again by the earliest of Christians, even seemingly by Jesus himself. So today I want to explore this question in two parts. Number one, where do we find the early Christians making this connection? And number two, why? Now the quick side note, this is one of the reasons why I&#8217;m so incredibly grateful to those of you over on my Patreon, shameless joe.com, because it&#8217;s your financial support which makes it possible for me to both share the gospel and also just geek out about beautiful parts of the Christian faith like this.
Even researching and writing and recording these short episodes, it takes me a long time and it&#8217;s your generous support, which enables me to do it without having to live and badai by YouTube&#8217;s algorithm. Plus, you&#8217;re an incredible community. I mean, look at this delightful story from Audrey about how her 2-year-old learned to say God bless you by imitating the ends of my episodes. I love it. Now for the rest of you, if you&#8217;d like to join, there&#8217;s plenty of room for you over@shamelessjoe.com. But now let&#8217;s get back to this curious connection. Right around the year 1 0 7, Saint Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch has been arrested and is being taken to Rome to be martyred, but the Romans tended not to feed prisoners very much. Now this helps to explain several things you might encounter. For instance, Jesus&#8217;s stress on visiting the imprisoned. If you leave them to themselves, they could die.
It&#8217;s also why the Roman governor of Felix permitted Christians to take care of St. Paul in prison. St. Ignatius is being escorted under Roman guard to Rome from Syria. He&#8217;s visited by Christians from the churches of Asia Minor, the area that we now know as Turkey, and he writes to these Christians about some of the difficulties that they&#8217;re facing. In particular, he writes to the Christians of Smyrna and he warns them about this heretical group called Dous who taught that Christ only appeared to have a human body since they didn&#8217;t believe that the divine could be truly united to corruptible flesh. Now, that&#8217;s a big problem because if Jesus doesn&#8217;t really have a body, then there&#8217;s no incarnation, then there&#8217;s no crucifixion, there&#8217;s no bodily resurrection, and also there&#8217;s no Eucharist. And so Ignatius warns that these heretics abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins and which the father of his goodness raised up.
Again, that&#8217;s a powerful statement of Eucharistic theology from an early bishop, particularly since Ignatius is believed to be a former student of the Apostle John. But it&#8217;s actually the part that comes right after that that I want to focus on. He says, those therefore who speak against this gift of God incurred death in the midst of their disputes, but it were better for them to treat it with respect that they may also rise again. So Ignatius seems to take for granted that if you have the Eucharist in a right relationship with it respectful, you&#8217;ll rise again. But that if you spurned the Eucharist, you won&#8217;t, you&#8217;ll incur everlasting death instead. And this isn&#8217;t a stray comment either. In his letter to the Ephesians, he refers to the Eucharist as the medicine of immortality and the antidote to prevent us from dying, which causes that we should live forever in Jesus Christ.
Now that&#8217;s an amazing promise. Treat the Eucharist respectfully and you are immortal. Now, obviously Ignatius knows the word literally going to die. He is on his way to martyrdom after all. Instead, his point is that even though we&#8217;re all going to die, the Eucharist is powerful enough to overcome the grave and to cause us to live forever. So the Eucharist really is Jesus in the flesh and somehow receiving Christ in this way is key to our eternal life and our bodily resurrection. And you might be asking, but how Ignatius treats this connection as so obvious that he doesn&#8217;t seem to feel the need to explain it. But don&#8217;t worry, an explanation is coming. We get the first hints of an explanation from St. Justin Martyr. Now he&#8217;s written in the mid one hundreds, he talks about how the Eucharist isn&#8217;t ordinary food and drink instead just as the word became flesh in the incarnation, Justin says that when the bread and wine at mass are blessed by the prayer of his word, two things happen.
One, it becomes the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. And two, our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished by the Eucharist. So the bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, and the Eucharist somehow transforms or trans mutates our bodies as well. That first one I think is pretty predictable. The early Christians clearly believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. The second one is very surprising that this somehow causes us to be changed, and we get a much more thorough explanation of how that all works in the latter part of the one hundreds. Now, now we&#8217;re up to about the year 180. Saint I of Leone is continuing a lot of these same themes and like Ignatius before Reina is writing against the heresy of gnosticism and is rejection of bodily resurrection. So how does Iranis make the case for bodily resurrection against gnosticism?
Well, he starts from the fact that the bread and wine literally become the flesh and blood of Christ. Now, I know that you&#8217;ll find some Christians today who no longer believe in this, but back in the one hundreds we see the earliest Christians took for granted that this was the Christian understanding of the Eucharist. Reina is even explicit that our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion. Now, if this is true, it shows that Christ wants to redeem our bodies, not just our souls. After all, if Christ is willing to transform mere bread into his body, then it makes sense to believe that he also wants to transform us, all of us, including our bodies into his body. Now, here again, you&#8217;ve got Christians today who will say, oh yeah, sure, we&#8217;re made to be part of the body of Christ, but they understand the body of Christ is some purely spiritual reality, kind of more of an idea.
But RNAs points out that the whole point of a body is that it&#8217;s visible. So the body of Christ isn&#8217;t some spiritual and invisible man, and this idea that the eucharistic body of Christ makes the church the body of Christ. This isn&#8217;t some crazy notion he&#8217;s dreamt up. St. Paul himself explicitly says that we are the body of Christ because we all partake of the one loaf. Now, if we are body and soul part of the body of Christ, then our bodies and our souls are meant to be glorified with Christ forever. Now, as Jesus says, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit so the grain of wheat dies and bears much fruit, and that then is transformed into the body of Christ in the Eucharist. So to Ernie says, our bodies which have been nourished by the Eucharist still die.
They&#8217;re deposited in the earth and they suffer decomposition there, but they shall rise at their appointed time. Now look, speaking for myself, I was blown away by how clear and how sophisticated the Eucharistic theology is of these early Christians, people like Ignatius and Justin and Nias, because remember, all of them are writing in the one hundreds, but they all understand this connection between the Eucharist and bodily resurrection in a way that I think many people today, including many of us Catholics just miss entirely. So why do the earliest Christians believe that there&#8217;s a connection between the Eucharist and bodily resurrection? Well, maybe the most obvious reason is because Jesus teaches this connection. In John six, Jesus says that he&#8217;s the living bread which came down from heaven, and that if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread which he shall give for the life of the world is his flesh.
And he says that he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day. That raising up at the last day is the resurrection of the dead. And so when we hear Jesus say that he who eats me will live because of me, and he who eats this bread will live because of me, he&#8217;s not just saying that our souls will fly off to heaven. He&#8217;s promising the redemption of our bodies. This is why the catechism of the Catholic Church calls the Eucharist, the seed of eternal life and the power of resurrection. But still, how does all of this work? Now, I personally love the explanation that St. Gregory of Nisa gives in his great catechism. Now he&#8217;s writing about 3 85, so he&#8217;s quite a bit later than the other Christians that we&#8217;ve heard from, but he does such a good job of explaining these things that these earlier Christians often kind of took for granted.
So if I may paraphrase his argument, he basically makes an argument with four steps. Step one, Jesus turned bread and wine into his body and blood through metabolism. So here&#8217;s some Bibles trivia for you. I&#8217;ve kind of given it away, but prior to the last supper, did Jesus ever turn bread and wine into his body and blood? This is a fun question to ask people who know about the Bible because the answer is yes. And he might say, well, where? Well, Jesus says in Luke seven that unlike John the Baptist who ate no bread and drank no wine, the son of man came eating and drinking. And so when Jesus ate bread and he drank wine, he metabolized it. He turned it into his body and blood. I don&#8217;t mean miraculously here, I mean in the very same way that you and I convert bread and wine into our bodies and our blood.
But why does that matter? Well, step two, Jesus does the Last Supper supernaturally what he&#8217;d done his entire life naturally. So the last supper, Jesus once again is going to transform bread and wine into his body and blood only this time, as Gregory points out, instead of doing it naturally, Jesus transforms the bread and wine instantly. And miraculously reading this, I&#8217;m reminded of CS Lewis&#8217;s argument in his book miracles that in every one of the miracles that Jesus performs, the incarnate God does suddenly and locally something that God has done or will do in general. In other words, the supernatural events that Jesus performs look like the natural events that the father performs. For instance, Jesus turns water into wine at the wedding Feast of Cana, but you know who else turns water into wine grapes? They soak up the rainwater and they turn them into what becomes wine.
Or you could say God the Father through nature, through grapes. Now, Lewis is going to call this the hereditary style. The son&#8217;s miraculous behavior looks like the father&#8217;s behavior in creating the order of nature. Contrast this with two things. When the devil tempts Jesus, for instance, he tries to get him to turn a stone into bread. That is not the hereditary style. There&#8217;s nothing in nature that resembles a stone becoming bread or second, you could imagine fairytales, fairytale stories don&#8217;t look like the miracles of Jesus. For instance, a pumpkin becoming a stage coach doesn&#8217;t resemble anything in nature to use Lewis&#8217;s terms. These are simply arbitrary and meaningless violations of the laws of nature. Christ never does that. He does not mock the laws of nature even when he supersedes him through a miracle. He&#8217;s always doing this in a way that reflects and honors what the Father has already done through the order of nature.
So Gregory&#8217;s point is that Christ&#8217;s supernatural action at the Last Supper in the Eucharist, step two looks like what the Father has already established in the order of nature. That&#8217;s step one. So the Eucharist has the look and feel of an authentic miracle rather than a demonic mockery or a fairytale. But Gregory isn&#8217;t just arguing that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ. Again, people knew that back then. He&#8217;s instead going to use that as a starting point to show us some things we might not know. Step three in the Eucharist, Jesus metabolizes us into his body. Now, we&#8217;ve already seen this point expressed in different ways by both St. RNAs and St. Paul. When we receive the body and blood of Christ, it&#8217;s not that we&#8217;re metabolizing him into our bodies so much as we are being metabolized, so to speak, to become his body.
We become one body through the Eucharist. Now, this was actually a critical realization for St. Augustine as he recounted in his confessions. When we feed on Christ, we don&#8217;t turn him into us. We are converted into him. And that naturally leads to step four by metabolizing us into his body. Jesus saves us from bodily corruption. Now this fourth of Gregory&#8217;s four steps is the one that I find the most mind blowing. He says that Christ disseminates himself and every believer through that flesh whose substance comes from bread and wine, blending himself with the bodies of believers to secure that by this union with the immortal man to maybe a sharer and incorruption. Now that&#8217;s a mouthful, literally. So let&#8217;s unpack it. Without a bunch of chemical preservatives, bread and wine, they go bad pretty quickly. The bread gets moldy, the wine becomes vinegar, but if you eat the bread, it won&#8217;t decompose.
It&#8217;ll be spared from corruption by becoming part of your body. It&#8217;s not as if a few days after you eat the bread, you suddenly get bread mold on your arm from where all those bread molecules went. No. Instead, by eating the bread and drinking the wine, those things now become part of your body and blood and can last and last is anyone who&#8217;s ever tried to work off those carbs will tell you. And Gregory&#8217;s point is that something similar happens to us, left to our own devices. You and I are destined for the grave and our bodies will corrupt and they&#8217;ll rot as surely as the bread will get moldy or the wine will become vinegar. So how does Christ spar us this fate? Through the Eucharist, he metabolizes us into his body and he makes us part of him. And so our bodies, once they are part of Christ last as long as Christ does, which is to say beyond the grave into eternity.
Now, this message is at the heart of the good news of the gospel, and it&#8217;s something that we badly need to preach more clearly after all. As int Wright observed in his book, surprised by Hope, many Christians today seem to have more or less agnostic view of the afterlife rather than a Christian one. Plenty of churchgoing Christians don&#8217;t believe in a future bodily resurrection. There&#8217;s this idea that we&#8217;re saved from the body rather than saved through the body. But that&#8217;s gnosticism in a nutshell. In contrast, Christianity has always taught that we are saved through the body, beginning with Jesus dying and rising bodily and culminating in us, rising bodily with him in glory. But even today, you&#8217;ll find people acting as if the soul is good and the body is evil, and these gnostic ideas, which are not Christian, have nevertheless crept into parts of Christianity itself. So where do we find these false teachings today and what can we do to combat them? Well, for the answer to that, you&#8217;re going to have to click this video to find out more. For Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
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How the Eucharist Leads to Bodily Resurrection

Does the Great Apostasy Disprove Mormonism?

Is it a good idea to use my new woodworking business as a way to have a good Catholic influence for evangelization?

How do you reach out to the people who can seem to figure out the mystery of sacramental life?

How can the Latin Mass play a role in bringing Catholics back?

What’s a good approach to converse with a fallen away older Catholic man to bring him back?

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&#8220;Can Latin Mass bring Catholics back?&#8221; In this episode we are joined by Catholic Speaker John Sablan to talk about re-engaging fallen away Catholics. We discuss the potential of the Latin Mass in revitalizing faith, alongside discussions on using personal businesses for evangelization, reaching those curious about sacramental life, and effective ways to engage with fallen-away Catholics. Tune in for a thoughtful exploration of these important topics.
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Re-Engaging Fallen Away Catholics w/John Sablan

Not all opposition to the idea of free will comes from atheists. In fact, a prominent strain of Christianity denies free will as it strives to defend the omnipotence of God. But does such a strategy turn God into a monster? Trent Horn explains.

Calvinist Objections to Free Will

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“The Gospels’ claim that Pilate customarily released a criminal at Passover is fiction. We have no records of this ever happening.”
DEFENSE
We do have records: the four Gospels.
We don’t have an extrabiblical record that says, “Pilate customarily released a prisoner at Passover,” but that’s hardly surprising. Releasing a prisoner at the Jewish capital on a Jewish feast would be a purely local custom, and we don’t have detailed records of the Roman administration in Judaea. The surviving sources are too patchy for that.
However, leaders often pardon popular prisoners to curry favor with their subjects. That happens today, even with political prisoners considered a danger to the established regime (e.g., Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr.).
Further, we have records of ancient rulers in Judaea releasing prisoners to win favor. Both Herod Archelaus (4 B.C.–A.D. 6) and the Roman governor Albinus (A.D. 62–64) did so (Josephus, Antiquities 17:8:4[204–205], 20:9:5[215]).
Also, the Jewish Mishnah contains provisions for slaughtering the Passover lamb for prisoners to be released at Passover (m. Pesahim 8:6). Passover was a time when Jewish religious and national feeling ran high, and riots were known to break out in Jerusalem then (Antiquities 17:9:3[213–218], 20:5:3[106–112]), so releasing a prisoner to pacify the populace could be quite reasonable. (In fact, Matthew records a riot began to break out when Pilate dithered about releasing Barabbas; Matt. 27:24). Even if we didn’t know all that, the Gospels are historical records in their own right, and if even one of them mentioned the custom, it would need to be taken seriously. But the custom is mentioned in all four Gospels (Matt. 27:15; Mark 15:6; Luke 23:18; John 18:39), which
adds weight in several ways:
<ul>
<li>If, as many think, John wrote independently of the synoptics (not my view), we would have a second and clearly independent source attesting the custom.</li>
<li>Even if John knew the synoptics (my view), he was an eyewitness, as was Matthew, meaning we have two eyewitnesses reporting it.</li>
<li>If the custom didn’t exist, this would subject the evangelists to criticism. The first evangelist to write wouldn’t be inclined to invent the custom, and later evangelists wouldn’t be inclined to repeat it. The fact that it appears in all four makes the report especially credible.</li>
</ul>
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“Give Us Barabbas!”

In this free-for-all-“fight-day” Trent talks about his family’s recent decision to study martial arts.

FFAF: So I’ve Started Martial Arts Training . . .

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is clear about the existence of angels. &#8220;The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls &#8220;angels&#8221; is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition. St. Augustine says: &#8220;&#8216;Angel&#8217; is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is &#8216;spirit&#8217;; if you seek the name of their office, it is &#8216;angel&#8217;: from what they are, &#8216;spirit&#8217;, from what they do, &#8216;angel.'&#8221; With their whole beings the angels are servants and messengers of God. Because they &#8220;always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven&#8221; they are the &#8220;mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word&#8221;. As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness.&#8221; &#8211;CCC 328-330
Fr. Hugh joins Cy Kellett to discuss the reality of angels.

What Do Catholics Believe About Angels?

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“The argument from contingency is flawed: (1) Everything could be fated, so nothing would be contingent; (2) we can explain how things are by their history, which could be infinite; (3) there could be multiple ultimate causes; (4) you could call the first, necessary cause something other than God; and (5) if everything needs a cause, then God also must have a cause.”
DEFENSE
None of these objections overturn the contingency argument.
First, the argument from fate simply proposes a single, ultimate cause—fate itself—for contingent things. It doesn’t show they aren’t contingent. It is not necessary for a person to be standing the way it is necessary for a square to have four sides. People can stand or sit, but squares must have four sides. If a person is fated to stand, he could also be fated to sit, and his posture is contingent.
Second, history (and whether history might be infinite) is not part of this argument. We are asking why things are the way they are now, not what history preceded this.
Third, one could trace the chain of causes for each of the many contingent things up to higher causes, but these would not end in a multiplicity of ultimate explanations, for explanations converge as we go higher. An example is the four fundamental forces of physics (electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force, and gravity), which explain the state of innumerable contingent physical things. An important goal of science is to find ways to unify these forces and any others that exist.
There cannot be a multiplicity of ultimate explanations. If one pro- posed a certain set of explanations as ultimate, then they would have to exist within some kind of framework that would allow them to relate to one another. Otherwise, they would not be able to interact to pro- duce the contingent states of affairs we see. However, the framework would then be more fundamental than the proposed explanations, so they would not be ultimate.
Fourth, one can always reject the term “God,” but this argument shows that there is a First Cause that is a necessary Being. This does not prove the full Christian understanding of God, but it can be supplemented by other arguments.
Fifth, God would not need a cause because, per the argument, God is necessary rather than contingent.
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Objections to the Contingency Argument

<div>If the landowner is symbolically Christ, what is the meaning of Christ harvesting where he did not sow and gathering where he did not scatter? Is there a deeper interpretation of this particular verse?</div><div>The landowner is not literally Christ. The parable is about God&#8217;s expectations and the wise use of what has been entrusted to us. The landowner is not meant to be a literal stand-in for God. Jesus was using the expectations of this world to help us understand the expectations that God has for us. The idea of a landowner who harvests where he did not plant and gathers where he did not scatter is simply meant to convey the notion of a landowner of great power.
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The Landowner in Matthew 25:26

Cy interviews two of our favorite women religious about their work sharing the love of God with others, and how we gain confidence in the love of God.

How Can We Know That God Loves Us?

Are you &#8220;sex positive&#8221;? If not, get ready to be called a closed-minded bigot. Theologian Angela Franks, from St. John&#8217;s Seminary in Boston, gives us a Catholic critique of the &#8220;sex positivity&#8221; movement.

Sex Positivity

<div>Where does the Church address children leaving Mass during the liturgy of the word?</div><div>The General Instruction of the Roman Missal (21) directs us to the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship&#8217;s 1973 Directory for Masses with Children. In that document (<a href="https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/SOS/DCM.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">16-17</a>) the Congregation states:
<blockquote>In many places parish Masses are celebrated, especially on Sundays and holy days, at which a good many children take part along with the large number of adults . . .
. . . if the place itself and the nature of the community permit, it will be appropriate to celebrate the liturgy of the word, including a homily, with the children in a separate, but not too distant, room. Then, before the Eucharistic liturgy begins, the children are led to the place where the adults have meanwhile celebrated their own liturgy of the word.</blockquote>
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Children’s Liturgy of the Word

The Church recently remembered the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist. Let’s remember something of the history and what it might mean for today.
Recall King Herod the Great, the ruler who met with the Magi on their way to Bethlehem and later slew the infant boys of Bethlehem? Herod had three sons. (He actually at least six and perhaps more, but he executed three of them.) Upon Herod’s death, his “kingdom” (he was really a vassal king at Roman pleasure) was parceled out among three sons, none of whom acquired the title of “king.” They were “tetrarchs.” Archelaus, who ruled in Jerusalem, was quickly deposed, which resulted in the emergence of the office of Roman procurators. Philip ruled lands east of the Sea of Galilee, today mostly in Syria and Jordan. Antipas had two noncontiguous territories: Galilee (hence his involvement in Jesus’s trial—Luke 23:6-12) and a sliver extending down into the wilderness around the Dead Sea. It was there that his father, Herod the Great, had built Machaerus, an isolated fortress palace calculated to be a refuge if needed. (This family was not loved.) John died there.
The gospels recount John’s arrest for having criticized Antipas—specifically, his “marriage.” According to Matthew (14:3-4) and Mark (6:17-18), Herodias had been Philip’s wife. Some scholars dispute this (claiming the lack of a proper name in Luke 3:19) and connect her instead with other members of the Herods, for whom incest had been a generational family affair. I take the Matthean-Marcan attribution.
Herodias subsequently divorced to marry Antipas, who also divorced his first wife in the hopes that the marriage with Herodias would be politically advantageous. All the Herods (a) had battled their way to power by political intrigues or vassalage to others; (b) were unpopular with their subjects and generally regarded by the Jews, at least, as practical pagans if not foreigners; and (c) sat on relatively shaky thrones, whose securing was a constant game of political calculation.
The Old Testament explicitly proscribes marrying the wife of one’s brother (Lev. 20:21). John the Baptist kept speaking up about it, for which he was eventually arrested and killed. What does that say to today?
First, looking at the death of John through modern lenses can be distortive. A modern might say that John was fixated on “pelvic issues”—the sexual morality of Antipas and Herodias—as compared to his earlier “social justice” focus, when he preached to soldiers, tax-collectors, and others seeking baptism in Jordan (e.g., Luke 3:10-14). Had he gone from “social justice warrior” to prosecuting a “culture war”? No.
For John—as for Israel—God’s morality is one. There are not “sexual” issues versus “social justice” issues. There is one way of living right before Yahweh: according to the Torah, the Law. The commandments—all 613 of them found in the Old Testament—were part of the Covenant with God, by which “you will be my people and I will be your God” (Exod. 6:7). These mitzvot express the content of that relationship, whether in matters of sexual rectitude or fair treatment of subjects, are what it meant to be “holy, because I, the Lord Your God, am holy” (Lev. 20:26). To postulate some division between “personal” and “social” morality is anachronistic: it is to force into the Bible the categories of our times, not theirs.
Looking at expectations for Antipas through the lens of “Church/State separation” is also misleading. For one thing, in antiquity there was no such thing; one’s gods were considered tied up with one’s national fate. That’s why when the Romans or Babylonians or Assyrians conquered, they also demanded worship of their gods, who clearly were stronger than yours since you lost. That said, if you already have a hundred gods in the temple, you can probably squeeze in a couple more, especially since most of them were just different names for certain common things—e.g., war or beauty.
Israel’s faith is different. On the one hand, a monotheistic faith cannot accommodate a few extra deities. On the other hand, Israel had the concrete experience of defeat: by the Assyrians in the 700s B.C.; Judah by the Babylonians in the 500s B.C., leading to the Exile; the whole place by the Romans in 63 B.C. That would require a different theology from “my god is bigger than your god!” It might be seen as divine punishment (e.g., Jeremiah regarding the Babylonians), or it might be seen as a mystery of divine Providence, but it did not shake faith in the One True God.
Because of Israel’s covenantal relationship with God, it also meant that Israel’s leader was supposed to be both the leader and example of living according to that covenant. It’s why Israel at first doesn’t have a king: Yahweh is Israel’s king. It’s later why the prophets criticize so many of Israel’s kings as anti-examples, as unfaithful to what their vocation should be. It was not a question of their “personal morality” versus their “official duties.” He who was to rule Yahweh’s people had to be in right relation to Yahweh. It’s why God praises Solomon when he prays, “Grant me wisdom … [to] lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?” (2 Chron. 1:10). “Wisdom” is living in right relation to Yahweh, which is why, when Solomon allows his many wives to import idols, that luster fades. Clearly, Antipas living in a forbidden relationship with his brother’s divorcée also violates the kind of life and leadership expected of one who aspired to rule over Jews.
We should not go away thinking such was Israel’s cramped worldview, which we have grown beyond. The “things of God and of Caesar” are not assets divided in a “partnership” between equals: there is nothing Caesar has that was not God’s first. The idea that Caesar’s order is an autonomous order, utterly independent of God’s dominion, is not the Jewish or the Christian vision. Neither is the idea that some morality is “social” whereas other is “personal” and that God parses between the two. We can learn a lot from John’s integrated vision—including the costs of fidelity.

The Head of John the Baptist

This is the most important biblical passage—and most people overlook it.

When 1 Corinthians 15 lists the people who saw the risen Jesus, there&#8217;s a notable omission: the women who were the first to discover the empty Tomb. So why does their testimony matter, how was it used against early Christians, and how does it help prove the case for the Resurrection today?

How an Argument against Christianity Became an Argument for It.

Featured Guests: Trent Horn, BP. Joseph E. Strickland, Karlo Broussard, Jimmy Akin
DONATE: give.catholic.com/castudios 
SUBSCRIBE: www.youtube.com/user/catholiccom 
WEBSITE: www.catholic.com 
Follow us on SOCIAL MEDIA 
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<ul>
<li>00:38 &#8211; How to defend the divinity of Christ – Trent Horn</li>
<li>07:20 &#8211; What is the Church teaching on sex and sexual sin? – BP. Joseph E. Strickland</li>
<li>11:33 &#8211; Understanding the Church’s language on homosexuality being disordered – Karlo Broussard</li>
<li>19:37 &#8211; How can we infer from Colossians 4:16? – Jimmy Akin</li>
</ul>

Catholic Answers | Season 4 | Episode 8

Donald Trump was nearly assassinated at a rally eleven days ago, and it’s only because he turned his head at the last moment that the bullet nicked his ear instead of ending his life. For some Christians, this is proof of God’s providential protection, and thus, a confirmation of Trump as God’s chosen instrument. Others have gone even farther, trying to draw biblical connections to Trump’s survival.
For instance, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/hBQB3tutva9ctbvY/?mibextid=xfxF2i">a viral post on Facebook</a> cites Leviticus 8 and Leviticus 14 to argue that “the concept of blood on the right ear serves as a visible mark of consecration, signifying that the person is dedicated to God’s service and has been set apart for a specific purpose.”
This is a strange perversion of the biblical texts. Leviticus 8 involves placing the blood of a ram on the right earlobe, right thumb, and the big toe of the right foot as part of the ordination of the Jewish high priest. And Leviticus 14 is an even stranger proof-text: it’s about the purification ritual for lepers. Neither text says anything about the top of the right ear, or about using the blood of the person in question.
But the image expressing a variation of this idea that I’ve seen most often is one in which a weird AI-generated Virgin Mary uses her middle finger to move a bullet (still in its shell):

To be sure, Trump’s survival could be because Mary intervened, or because God wanted to show . . . something. Miracles do happen, and Pope St. John Paul II was certain of Mary’s intervention in his own survival after <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Pope_John_Paul_II">the assassination attempt of Mehmet Ali Ağca</a>. But it’s dangerous to jump to the conclusion that a politician is divinely appointed just because he survives an assassination attempt.
To take a stark example: on July 20, 1944, as part of the famous Operation Valkyrie, a group of conspirators led by Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by leaving a briefcase containing a bomb next to him at a meeting. At the last moment, the briefcase was moved and Hitler survived with minor injuries (while three others present at the meeting died).
That night, the Führer took to the airwaves to announce to the world that he had survived, and claimed this as proof of Providence:
<blockquote>The bomb planted by Colonel Count Stauffenberg exploded two meters to the right of me. It seriously wounded a number of my true and loyal collaborators, one of whom has died. I myself am entirely unhurt, aside from some very minor scratches, bruises and burns. I regard this as a confirmation of the task imposed upon me by Providence. […] Probably only a few can imagine what fate would have befallen Germany if the plot had succeeded. I thank Providence and my Creator, but not because He has preserved me. My life is solely devoted to worry, to working for my people. I thank Him, rather because He has made it possible for me to continue to shoulder these worries, and to pursue my work to the best of my abilities and according to my conscience.</blockquote>
And of course, the horrific “work” that Hitler was pursuing was a ghastly Holocaust and a bloody world war.
I’m not suggesting that Trump is Hitler; such a comparison is ridiculous. Rather, I’m demonstrating why it’s theologically reckless and unfounded to treat a politician surviving an assassination as thereby receiving a divine endorsement of any kind.
As Christians, we don’t believe that fortune signals divine favor, or that misfortune signals divine disfavor. An anecdote from the Gospel of John illustrates this: the disciples see a blind man and ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:3). Jesus answers by rejecting the premise: “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him” (v. 4). Similarly, Jesus warns his followers not to think of themselves as better than the Jews who died in a tower collapse, or the Galileans whose bodies were desecrated by Pontius Pilate (Luke 13:1-5).
So if you’re trying to decide whether Donald Trump is the person you should be voting for this fall, don’t base that decision on a near-death escape. Instead ask: does he do the deeds of righteousness or the deeds of wickedness? How does he take care of the fatherless, the unborn, the immigrant, the poor, the weak and defenseless, whoever and wherever they may be? That’s the standard—not that a bullet nicked his right ear.

No, Donald Trump Is Not God’s Anointed

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DAY 310
CHALLENGE
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“Catholics have committed grave sins in history, including sins of avarice, intolerance, and persecution.”
DEFENSE
Yes, they have! Jesus did not come to make men sinless in this life but to make it possible for sinners to be saved.
Sin is an ongoing reality (James 3:2; 1 John 1:8) against which we must struggle (1 Cor. 10:13). Jesus taught us to pray, on a regular basis, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12).
We must also recognize that sins are not only committed against God; they affect those on earth, and their forgiveness must also be sought.
People alive today did not commit the sins of the past and so are not responsible for them. Nevertheless, the past sins have continuing negative effects in the world, and we must do what we can to remedy them. This applies to all of us, and in the year 2000 John Paul II made a dramatic act of public apology for the sins committed by Catholics in the past, stating: “We cannot fail to recognize the infidelities to the Gospel committed by some of our brethren, especially during the second millennium. Let us ask pardon for the divisions which have occurred among Christians, for the violence some have used in the service of the truth, and for the distrustful and hostile attitudes sometimes taken towards the followers of other religions.”
He went on to say: “Let us confess, even more, our responsibilities as Christians for the evils of today. We must ask ourselves what our responsibilities are regarding atheism, religious indifference, secularism, ethical relativism, the violations of the right to life, disregard for the poor in many countries. We humbly ask forgiveness for the part which each of us has had in these evils by our own actions, thus helping to disfigure the face of the Church” (Homily, March 12, 2000).
Having made this act of public apology, it remains to be seen whether others will take a similar attitude regarding their own sins and those of their forebears.
TIP
For an in-depth theological reflection on this issue, see the International Theological Commission’s document, “Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past” (<a href="http://Vatican.va">Vatican.va</a>).
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Historical Sins

Episode 83: Year B &#8211; 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on three details from the second reading and Gospel reading that are relevant for doing apologetics. The detail in the second reading, taken from 2 Corinthians 5:14-17, is Paul’s teaching that in Christ we are a new creation. The topic that comes to fore here is the nature of justification as intrinsic righteousness. One of the details in the Gospel reading, taken from Mark 4:35-41, is Mark’s report of Jesus calming the winds and the sea. As we will see, when read in light of the Old Testament backdrop, this detail provides evidence of Jesus’ divinity. The other detail is Jesus’ “rebuke” of the winds, which, when read in the Greek, might suggest demonic forces were behind the raging winds and Jesus rebukes such forces, thereby revealing his authority over demons.
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Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062324.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a>
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Jesus’ Divine Authority Over Demons

What is the "debt" of purgatory?

One of the challenges often raised against the Christian faith is that the gospel portrait of Jesus looks too much like the “mythic hero” archetype. The claim is simple: Since Jesus’ story resembles the recurring pattern of legendary heroes from world mythology, it must itself be just another legend. But does this conclusion really follow?
The mythic hero archetype is a familiar figure. He is often of divine origin, undergoes trials and tribulations, and in the end brings about renewal or order to the world. Heroes like Hercules, Odysseus, Beowulf, and King Arthur exemplify this type. Hercules battled fearsome monsters; Odysseus endured a perilous journey home after the Trojan War; Beowulf used his great strength to defeat Grendel and his mother; and King Arthur, with the Knights of the Round Table, sought the Holy Grail while embodying chivalric leadership. In short, mythic heroes embody humanity’s hope that good will triumph over evil.
It is not surprising, then, that some skeptics, such as New Testament critic Robert Price, argue that because the story of Jesus reflects these archetypal elements, it should be seen as fiction rather than history. Price goes so far as to <a href="https://infidels.org/library/modern/robert-price-fiction/">write</a> that “every detail of the Christ story fits the mythic hero archetype, with nothing left over,” concluding that it is “arbitrary to assert that there must have been a historical figure lying in the back of the myth.”
But does this argument stand up to scrutiny? In their book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Legend-Wrestling-Jesus-Dilemma/dp/1608999548">Lord or Legend? Wrestling with the Jesus Dilemma</a>, Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy provide several reasons why the “mythic hero” objection fails. Let’s consider four of them.
<h2>1. Many historical figures fit the mythic hero archetype.</h2>
Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and William “Braveheart” Wallace all fit the pattern of the mythic hero in one way or another. Yet no serious historian doubts their existence. As scholar Charles E. Murgia <a href="https://www.amazon.com/hero-pattern-life-Jesus-twentyfifth/dp/0892420243">points out</a> in his article “Response to Dundes,” “conformity [to a mythic pattern] does not necessarily mean that the events did not occur.”
<h2>2. The Jesus story lacks key mythic traits.</h2>
Unlike classic mythic heroes, Jesus was not an earthly warrior or king—he explicitly said his kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). Moreover, the Gospels emphasize aspects not typical of mythic heroes: Jesus was a teacher, a healer, and an exorcist. If the Gospel writers were merely inventing a mythic hero out of borrowed archetypes, it is difficult to explain why they would highlight such unusual features.
<h2>3. Influence may run the other way.</h2>
The objection also assumes that the archetype shaped the Gospel story, but what if it’s the other way around? If the Jesus story is rooted in history, then he’s the quintessential hero. And if that’s the case, then mythic stories could be seen as foreshadowings—echoes of a deeper truth fulfilled in Christ. As C.S. Lewis <a href="http://mythbecamefact.com/">suggested</a>, myths express humanity’s deepest longings, and in Jesus, “myth became fact.” In that light, a skeptic can’t appeal to the mythic hero archetype as a reason to reject the historicity of the Jesus portrait, since the historicity of the Jesus portrait could be a reason why we have the mythic hero archetype in the first place.
<h2>4. Historical evidence is ultimately what matters.</h2>
Finally, the most important consideration is historical evidence. We believe in Lincoln and Wallace not merely because their stories are heroic, but because the evidence supports their existence. The same standard applies to Jesus. Attempts to explain away the Gospels by appeal to myth miss the point: the question of historicity, as Boyd and Eddy put it, is settled “by examining historical evidence, not by attempting to find parallels in mythic stories.” And when we examine the historical data—the early sources, the testimony of eyewitnesses, and the rapid rise of the Christian movement—it becomes exceedingly difficult to deny that Jesus was a real figure rooted in history.
<h2>The True Hero</h2>
The mythic hero archetype objection, then, is far weaker than it first appears. Historical figures often fit mythic patterns, yet we do not dismiss them as fiction. The Gospels also present distinctive features that set Jesus apart from legendary heroes. The archetype itself may even reflect humanity’s anticipation of the true Hero to come. And ultimately, the case for Jesus’ historicity rests not on similarities to myths, but on solid historical evidence.
Far from being just another story among myths, the Gospel portrait of Jesus is the account of God’s definitive entry into human history—the true Hero whose life, death, and resurrection bring not just the hope, but the reality of redemption.

Jesus the Hero, Jesus the Myth

How is the Church supposed to be structured? It had bishops, authority, and unity from the start.

What would obligations for Sunday Mass be if you were in a Ground Hog’s Day scenario?

Do we jump around with the readings at Mass?

How do I know the difference between a bishop, an archbishop, and a cardinal?

When did Jesus mean by “taking up your cross” when he wasn’t crucified yet? Also, I’m writing a Catholic history book in Spanish; do I need an imprimatur?

Why does God give us suffering when it feels like there’s no purpose? For example, a break-up.

Why does St. Irenaeus say that the Church was founded and organized in Rome by Peter and Paul?

What are the rules for working on Sunday?

Why does God let us go through pain, like breakups, when it feels pointless? Jimmy Akin explores this tough question and answers more on Sunday obligations, Church hierarchy, and Catholic history.

Why Does God Allow Suffering? Understanding Its Purpose in Faith

Featured Guests: Trent Horn, Jimmy Akin, Tim Staples, Karlo Broussard
DONATE: give.catholic.com/castudios 
SUBSCRIBE: www.youtube.com/user/catholiccom 
WEBSITE: www.catholic.com 
Follow us on SOCIAL MEDIA 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/catholicanswers 
Twitter: twitter.com/catholiccom 
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<ul>
<li>00:57 &#8211; Was Christ’s resurrection a spiritual one? – Trent Horn</li>
<li>06:59 &#8211; Is a civil annulment the same as a religious one? – Tim Staples</li>
<li>11:10 &#8211; What is an anathema? – Jimmy Akin</li>
<li>18:14 &#8211; What does it mean to truly love God? – Karlo Broussard</li>
<li>22:27 &#8211; Catholic Teaching on War – Trent Horn</li>
</ul>

Catholic Answers | Season 4 | Episode 5

Is the Bible a collection of letters? To whom were the letters sent? Did the ancient world have a mail system? Listen in to hear Jimmy Akin and Cy Kellett discuss ancient letters and their importance in Scripture.

Ancient Letters and the Bible

One of the most controversial aspects of LDS (Mormon) theology is what it teaches about &#8220;plural marriage&#8221; or polygamy. But many times, non-Mormons make bad arguments against this teaching. So here are some arguments to NOT use, as well as three important dimensions to consider in discussing the doctrine.

Mormon Founder Joseph Smith Lied about Polygamy

<div>What does is the church teaching in regards to being civilly divorced and dating? </div><div>As <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/dont-date-while-awaiting-an-annulment">we’ve noted elsewhere</a>, a person shouldn’t date until they’ve received an annulment. Because they’re still married in the eyes of the Church and thus in God’s eyes too, because what the Church binds on earth God binds in heaven (Matt. 16:18-19; 18:15-18).
For more information on this issue, including pastoral advice, please see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/dont-date-while-awaiting-an-annulment">our previous response</a>.
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Divorced? Don’t Date Until Receiving Your Annulment

Chapter 7 of the Gospel of St. Luke records an encounter that took place when Jesus was eating in the house of a Pharisee named Simon. As Jesus is “sitting at table in the Pharisee’s house,” a woman whom Luke refers to as “a woman of the city, who was a sinner,” enters the house, bringing “an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment” (vv. 36-38). Simon the Pharisee is aghast, thinking, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner” (v. 39). Jesus then uses the opportunity to contrast Simon and the woman, saying that “her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little” (v. 47).
That message is straightforward enough, but when you get into the nature of Christ’s forgiveness, there’s more going on here. For starters, we have clear evidence of Jesus’ divinity, which is why “those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this, who even forgives sins?’” (Luke 7:49). That is, Jesus is forgiving not just those who wronged him directly. The woman who approaches him has apparently never met him before, yet he tells her that “your sins are forgiven” (v. 48) and, after the others murmur, adds, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (v. 50). As C.S. Lewis put it, in forgiving sins, Jesus “unhesitatingly behaved as if he was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if he really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.”
<a href="https://sites.google.com/site/aquinasstudybible/home/luke-commentary/gregory-the-great-homily-33-on-the-gospels">Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) invites us</a> to grapple with another meaning of the text. Observing the beauty of the woman’s repentance, he remarks that “I feel more like crying than saying something. Indeed, what heart, even if it were of stone, would not be moved by the example of penance that the tears of this sinner give us?” As Gregory explains, her repentance is beautiful because she takes the same parts of her life that had been dedicated to sin and gives them to God:
<blockquote>It is very evident, my brethren, that this woman, formerly addicted to forbidden deeds, had used perfume to give her flesh a pleasant odor. What she had shamefully granted to herself, she now offered to God in a manner worthy of praise. She had desired the things of the earth by her eyes, but now mortifying them with penance, she was crying. She had emphasized the beauty of her hair to adorn her face, but she was now using it to wipe away her tears. Her mouth had uttered words of pride, but now, kissing the feet of the Lord, she was staring at that mouth in the footsteps of her Redeemer. Thus, all that she had in it of attractions to charm, she found there material to sacrifice. She turned her crimes into so many virtues, that all that in her had despised God in sin was put to the service of God in penance.</blockquote>
In other words, God doesn’t just want to heal us when we fall. He wants to heal us where we fall. The parts of ourselves that we devote to sin are parts of ourselves that we received from God, for his glory, and he wants to redeem us even there. Those are the parts of our lives where we should find there “material to sacrifice,” to be burnt up in the fires of love: “for the rust of sin is all the better consumed as the heart of the sinner burns with the great fire of charity.”
Nor is the woman of Luke 7 the only example of this in the New Testament. Another person who understands this is St. Paul, who can say in one moment that “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God,” and then, in the next breath, “but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor. 15:9-10).
Prior to his conversion, Paul (then Saul) was so zealous a persecutor of the Church that he approved of the killing of St. Stephen, whom he wrongly considered a heretic (Acts 8:1). St. Luke records how “Saul laid waste the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison” (v. 3). Yet by the grace of God, Saul became Paul, and this same zeal became a great engine of evangelization. The aspect of his character that once led to the persecution and death of Christians now led to his being the hardest working of all the apostles. God saw Saul’s zeal not as bad, but as misdirected. Instead of demonizing or eliminating that zeal, God redeems it by redirecting it toward the spread of the gospel.
What might this look like in our own lives? We can start by recognizing that sin is a perversion of something good. Our hatred of sin shouldn’t lead us into a hatred of the underlying good, or into self-hatred. Too often, we see those parts of ourselves that led us to wander from God, and we treat them as dangerous, boarding them up and barring the door. But God wants to meet us there, because those are the places where we actually need healing. That doesn’t mean putting ourselves back into sinful situations, or inviting what the <a href="http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson18.htm">Baltimore Catechism</a> calls “near occasions of sin”: those “persons, places and things that may easily lead us into sin.” But it does mean that we should emulate Paul and the woman of Luke 7 by having the courage and faith to offer God those passions and those places that once led us from him. Do you struggle with lust? Remember the holiness of the body God gave you (1 Cor. 3:16-17), and use it as he intended you to, for his glory. Gossip? Use your mouth to bless God and to speak well of your neighbor. Pride? Thank God for the gifts he’s given you, instead of thanking yourself. Whatever the case, turn your “crimes into so many virtues,” so that all that is in you that has despised God in sin can be “put to the service of God in penance.”

God Wants Even Your Wounds

In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Trent Horn to discuss the complexities of the Immaculate Conception and Mary&#8217;s role in the Catholic faith. Trent clarifies misconceptions about Mary&#8217;s sinlessness and its implications for Jesus&#8217; perfection. Tune in for a deep dive into this fascinating theological topic!
Transcript:
Caller: And I&#8217;ve been looking into the Catholic faith only in these past few days, and something that I&#8217;m having trouble reconciling is Mary, and more specifically, the Immaculate Conception. Yeah, and I&#8217;m confused. If she is sinless, how that is possible, if she needed to be, for Jesus to be perfect, if then her parents would have to be, and their parents would have to be all the way back. How does that make sense?
Trent Horn: Right? This is a very good question, Chloe. And it underscores a common misconception about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. That&#8217;s this. It was not necessary for Mary to be sinless in order for Jesus to be born of a woman. So Galatians 4,4 says that Jesus, in the fullness of time, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law. And we know that Jesus is sinless. Hebrews 4:15 says, he is a brother like us in all things, except for sin, that he. He never sinned. So the question is, now, some people have taken the Immaculate Conception, the teaching that Mary was conceived without original sin and then divinely protected from sinning throughout her whole life, that this was necessary for God to be born of her. And that&#8217;s. That is not the case. It was not necessary because you&#8217;re right. If it were necessary in order for Jesus to be sinless, if. If Mary had to be sinless, then that would mean Mary&#8217;s mother, St. Anne, would have to be sinless, her mother would have to be sinless. It&#8217;d go all the way back to Eve, and it wouldn&#8217;t make sense. You&#8217;re absolutely right. The dogma of the Immaculate Conception is not a necessary truth related to the Incarnation. It is a fitting truth. It&#8217;s just that it is true because God has revealed it to us in the deposit of faith. And it&#8217;s not something that had to be, but it&#8217;s just something wonderful that it is. It&#8217;s wonderful that it is. My colleague Tim Staples wrote a wonderful book on Mary that I. If you want one book on Mary to understand her more, how she relates to the Catholic faith, I would recommend it. It&#8217;s called behold your mother. And he uses an analogy like this. So let&#8217;s say that a king were to go into a village, all right? Now, the king could just dress in peasant garb and he could just walk through the village and say hi to people, and that&#8217;s something he could do. There&#8217;s nothing in his kingship that restricts him from doing that. But there&#8217;s something fitting about the king being in his royal garb and having a herald and having a procession because it&#8217;s fitting of the nature of his office. It&#8217;s the same. We do it all the time in the own offices that we have here in the US I mean like you know, a judge, A judge could just show up in T shirts and a short, T shirts and shorts. And he could do his job. It wouldn&#8217;t prevent him from being a judge, but it&#8217;s fitting for the very important role that he has. He wears a robe, we call him your honor. So then if you just take those examples that are minor among humans, you extrapolate them to Mary, who is the mother of the creator. I mean, it&#8217;s amazing me two things that the God who created the whole universe then at one point was the size of a one celled organism dwelling within the body of his mother, completely dependent on her for his biological existence. The other thing, Chloe, that just totally fascinates me about Mary is that when we get to heaven, we will behold the face of God. We&#8217;ll see Jesus, we will behold him for who he is and for all of eternity. There&#8217;s going to be a woman next to him, a woman near him who will look like him because they&#8217;re related. There will be a woman who, who shares the face of God because God was born of her. Really born of her. I was once talking to a Protestant, Chloe, who. And I asked her, I said, if we did a DNA test on Mary and Jesus, would they be related? And she said, no, they wouldn&#8217;t. And I said, so you only see Mary is like a vessel, kind of, not as truly Christ&#8217;s mother, biologically related to him. Now I&#8217;m not saying you believe that, but I&#8217;m just saying I&#8217;ve seen it in the Protestant world. So I think that with Mary that it&#8217;s something that God chose to do that&#8217;s fitting an honor he wanted to bestow on his mother, to honor her, because the commandments say honor your father and mother. Jesus honors his father, who is God, he honors Mary. And then we have evidence of this special grace given to Mary. Luke 1:28 talks about her being full of grace. The church fathers talk about her being the ark of the new covenant, that is, that is not defiled, that is without blemish. So we see very early testimony of this. So is that a helpful start at least on that doctrine, on that dogma?
Caller: Yes. So you see Mary as perfect because God made her so to bring in Jesus with, you know, properly with his glory and to make that known through her, although she just didn&#8217;t sin. And does she still need to be saved by Jesus?
Trent Horn: Absolutely. Absolutely. Sure. So, We&#8217;ll. We&#8217;ll look at this. What human person deserves the highest praise of all human persons? Like, what human person did the most important thing in the history of the world?
Caller: I can see that being Mary.
Trent Horn: Sure. Right. Now, notice the phrase I used here, human person, because Jesus is a divine person. Jesus is a divine person. He&#8217;s existed for all eternity. He has a fully human and fully divine nature. Mary is a human person. She&#8217;s finite. She is not the creator. She is a creature. But she said yes to God and brought the Word into the. Into our world. In John&#8217;s Gospel says the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. I&#8217;ve been actually to the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. Have you ever. Have you ever been to the Holy Land?
Caller: No, I haven&#8217;t. I was supposed to go summer, but it got canceled.
Trent Horn: When it. When it comes up, you got to go to the Holy Land. Go with a Franciscan group. They got access to all the great sites to be able to get to all the great places. And I was at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth. And inside that basilica there is a stone archway, cave, a grotto commemorating the place where the Incarnation took place, where Gabriel spoke to Mary. And. And in Latin it says, in Latin, the Word became flesh here. Here, right in this spot. And so what we believe about Mary is the same thing Mary says in Luke chapter one. She says, all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me that she receives. Of all of God&#8217;s creatures, she deserves the highest honor because she is the creature God continues to honor. Jesus will always follow the fourth commandment, honor thy father and thy mother, so he will honor Mary for all eternity to love her, and that she is the first disciple. She was the very first person to say yes, to receive Jesus into her very being. So she&#8217;s a model for all of us in that regard. So we give her the highest praise a creature deserves. But that&#8217;s still infinitely less than the worship God deserves. But she deserves the highest praise of all human persons. And so she is a model disciple to us. She leads us to Jesus. We ask for her prayers because James 5:16 says the prayers of a righteous person are powerful people who are closer to God. Their prayers are more powerful. James 5:16 proves it. And Mary, God&#8217;s mom, is going to be pretty close to God in that respect. And so we believe Mary was preserved without original sin, she still needed to be saved. She could not save herself. But the medieval philosophers put it this way. Imagine someone falling into a hole in the ground or a pit. You could be saved from a pit in one of two ways. If you fell into the pit, stop. Someone reaches in and pulls you out, you&#8217;re saved from the pit. The other way you could be saved is as someone is going to fall into the pit, you grab them and keep them from falling in in the first place. You and me are sinners. We fell into the pit of sin. God pulled us out of that through baptism. Mary was special. She was saved before she ever had to fall into the pit by the grace of Christ, merited on the cross that Christ retroactively applied to her because he&#8217;s the all powerful God. So Mary needed a savior and Christ did protect. The only reason Mary is without sin is because Christ has given her the grace to make it possible. Mary simply cooperated with God&#8217;s grace, just like you and I do. And because Mary is that wonderful model of cooperation with God and a disciple of Christ, the first disciple, we emulate her and we ask her to lead us closer to her son. So is that more helpful of an elaboration?
Caller: Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you, Trent.
Trent Horn: Okay, well. Hey Chloe, stay on the line. I would like to send you. Let&#8217;s get your email. I&#8217;ll send you a few books. I&#8217;ll send you case for Catholicism and also Behold your mother by my friend Tim Staples because it&#8217;s chock full of great stuff.

I’m Not Catholic Because of Mary…

I feel like Catholics come across as first century historians about a God that wants nothing to do with you.

My friend’s dad doesn’t believe Jesus really rose from the dead. How can I object to his premise?

I have a relative who is going to a non-Catholic bible study. They were told that they are not supposed to eat pork or else they will be condemned. How do I respond?

What is your response to protestants who reject the seven extra books we have?

Do Catholics believe that there is no more procreation in the afterlife?

Why are Holy Thursday and Good Friday not considered holy days of obligation?

My protestant friend said that they reject the Deuterocanon because they came in at a time where no new prophecies would come. How do I respond to that?

&#8220;How can I respond to Protestant objections about Scripture?&#8221; This episode addresses this question while also tackling varied topics such as how to engage with a friend&#8217;s doubts about the resurrection, responding to claims about dietary restrictions from non-Catholic Bible studies, and discussing the significance of the Deuterocanonical books.
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How Can I Respond to Protestant Objections About Scripture?

Episode 58: Year B &#8211; Feast of Holy Family
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, I focus on five details that come from all three readings for this upcoming Feast of the Holy Family, Year B. The first detail is Abraham’s faith and the righteousness that is credited to him spoken of in the first reading option taken from Genesis 15:1-6; 21:1-3. When this detail is read in tandem with the second reading option taken from Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, and 17-19, the related apologetical topic that comes to the fore is justification and the idea that it’s not a one-time event in the past but has multiple stages. The second and third details come from the second reading option taken from Colossians 3:12-21. The related topics are the meaning of a wife’s submission to her husband and the limits of a child’s obedience to his parents. Finally, the last two details come from the Gospel reading, taken from Luke 22:39-40. The related topics are the good of obeying Church disciplinary precepts and the theology of grace as found in Christ’s human soul.
Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/123123.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Hey everyone,
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Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
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I’m Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
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In this episode, I’m going to focus on five details that come from all three readings for this upcoming Feast of the Holy Family, Year B. The first detail is Abraham’s faith and the righteousness that is credited to him spoken of in the first reading option taken from Genesis 15:1-6; 21:1-3. When this detail is read in tandem with the second reading option taken from Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, and 17-19, the related apologetical topic that comes to the fore is justification and the idea that it’s not a one-time event in the past but has multiple stages. The second and third details come from the second reading option taken from Colossians 3:12-21. The related topics are the meaning of a wife’s submission to her husband and the limits of a child’s obedience to his parents. Finally, the last two details come from the Gospel reading, taken from Luke 22:39-40. The related topics are the good of obeying Church disciplinary precepts and the theology of grace as found in Christ’s human soul.
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Let’s start with the detail of Abraham’s faith and righteousness. This is recorded in Genesis 15:1-6, which is a portion of the first reading option from Genesis 15. The text reads,
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The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying: “Fear not, Abram! I am your shield; I will make your reward very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what good will your gifts be, if I keep on being childless and have as my heir the steward of my house, Eliezer?” Abram continued, “See, you have given me no offspring, and so one of my servants will be my heir.” Then the word of the LORD came to him: “No, that one shall not be your heir; your own issue shall be your heir.” The Lord took Abram outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so,” he added, “shall your descendants be.” Abram put his faith in the LORD, who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.
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For Christians, this is a go-to passage for belief that we are justified by faith, and rightfully so. Paul appeals to it several times: Romans 4:3-5, 9, Galatians 3:6. James appeals to it in James 2:23.
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However, many Christians believe that the justification we receive in virtue of this initial expression of faith is a one-time event of the past, something completed and finished.
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But the second reading option from Hebrews 11:8, 11-12, and 17-19 proves otherwise. Here’s what the verses read:
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By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place
that he was to receive as an inheritance;
he went out, not knowing where he was to go.
By faith he received power to generate,
even though he was past the normal age
&#8211;and Sarah herself was sterile&#8211;
for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.
So it was that there came forth from one man,
himself as good as dead,
descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky
and as countless as the sands on the seashore.
By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac,
and he who had received the promises was ready to offer
his only son,
of whom it was said,
“Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.”
He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead,
and he received Isaac back as a symbol
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Notice the author of Hebrews considers Abraham exercising “faith” when he was initially called by God, which took place in Genesis 12. He also considers Abraham exercising “faith” when he offered Isaac, which took place in Genesis 22.
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Now, which kind of “faith” does the author have in mind here? According to verse 2 of the same chapter, chapter 11, it’s the faith by which “men of old received divine approval.” In other words, it’s the kind of faith that justifies. This is confirmed by James in James 2:22 when he says Abraham was “justified” by offering his son Isaac in obedience to God.
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So, when Genesis 15:6 is read in tandem with Hebrews 11:8 and 17, we see that Abraham was justified multiple times: initially when he obeyed God in Genesis 12, when he believed God’s promise to have descendants as numerous as the starts in Genesis 15, and when he offered his son Isaac in obedience to God’s command in Genesis 22. This reveals to us that justification is not a one-time event in the past, something complete and finished. Rather, there are stages to justification.
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This biblical understanding of justification maps on with the Church’s teaching on the different stages of justification. In chapter ten of its decree, “The Increase of the Justification Received,” the Council of Trent speaks of those who have “been thus justified and made the friends and domestics of God,” thereby recognizing an initial stage of justification in which a person first comes into relationship with Christ.
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The council then says that such justified Christians “increase in that justice received through the grace of Christ and are further justified” through the “observance of the commandments of God and of the Church” and by “faith cooperating with good works.” This “increase in justice” that makes a Christian “further justified” signifies an ongoing stage of justification.
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For Protestants who think justification is a one-time event in the past, this teaching is absurd. But, as we’ve argued, the Council of Trent’s teaching maps on perfectly with what the Bible teaches about the stages of Abraham’s justification.
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We can now move to the second reading option, which is taken from Colossians 3:12-21. There are two details that I want to highlight here. They don’t necessarily pertain to apologetics. But they do raise questions that are worth considering.
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The first is Paul’s teaching, “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord.”
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The question that arises here is, “Does the husband actually have headship over his wife?” The answer is yes. But not with regard to nature, since both are equally human. Rather, the headship concerns the role the husband plays as head of the family. Every society must have a principle of unity, or head, lest it fall apart.
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Now, the role the husband plays within the family is governor, which means he must direct or order members of the family toward their ultimate end, or goal (that’s what a governor does). That end or goal is their perfection as human beings, which is ultimately found in union with God.
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This is why Paul says immediately afterward, “husbands, love your wives” (v.19). What is love but to will the good of the other.
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So, by “submission,” Paul means the wife must put herself under that ordering by the husband, allowing herself to be directed by the husband to her ultimate good, which is union with God. In other words, she must allow herself to be loved by her husband.
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Of course, this raises a few pertinent questions: Does this mean the wife has no role to play in ordering the members of the family to their ultimate good? Does mean that the wife must obey the husband in everything he says?
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The answer to both questions is no. Concerning the first, the wife does have a role to play—namely, to help the husband in his governing activity. This is rooted in Genesis where we read that God created Eve to be Adam’s “helpmate”: “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:18).
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The head of the family is not infallible. He is subject to error in his reasoning as how to best order the family life. Therefore, he needs help, he needs counsel. This is where the wife comes into play. She is meant to help the husband discern what’s best for the family, which involves her sharing her own insights and wisdom.
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Ultimately, the husband does have legitimate authority to make final decisions for family life. But he would do well to take his wife’s insights and wisdom into consideration when making such decisions. For to neglect her contribution would be to go against the very reason why God created woman in the first place. And, surely, we don’t want to go against God’s design.
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The second detail from the second reading option taken from Colossians 3:12-21 is Paul’s teaching, “children, obey your parents in everything.”
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The question here is, “Does this mean that children must obey their parents in everything, even sin?” Of course, the answer is no. The assumption behind Paul’s command here is commands that are ordinances of reason, which means obedience is not due for commands contrary to reason. In other words, children don’t have to obey commands that involve sinful behavior.
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The last two details that we’re going to look at in this episode come from the shorten version of the Gospel reading, taken from Luke 22:39-40. Here’s what we read,
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When the days were completed for their purification
according to the law of Moses,
they took him up to Jerusalem
to present him to the Lord.
When they had fulfilled all the prescriptions
of the law of the Lord,
they returned to Galilee,
to their own town of Nazareth.
The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom;
and the favor of God was upon him.
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The first detail here is Joseph and Mary’s obedience to the Mosaic precept. The law of Moses stipulated that every firstborn male was to be dedicated to God. Joseph and Mary were obedient to that precept, even though it was disciplinary in nature.
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This provides us Catholics a model for obedience to Church precepts. Given the judicial authority that the Pope and bishops in union with him have, we are bound to obey such precepts even though they are disciplinary in nature. This is rooted in Christ’s instruction for them to “bind and loose” (Matt. 18:18).
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We see this play out in the first century when the apostles and elders convened at the Council of Jerusalem stipulated that Gentile converts abstain from meats offered to idols and meats not fully drained of blood. Even though these precepts were disciplinary in nature, the Gentile Christians were still expected to follow them.
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The second detail in this Gospel worth highlighting is Luke’s line: “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” There’s a bit of ambiguity as how to translate this verse.
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The above translation from the Lectionary suggests that the “favor of God,” or grace, was simply with Jesus. There’s no problem here. Jesus, in his human nature, had sanctifying grace and such a state of affair can be adequately described as having favor with God.
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Some translations, however, translate this line in a way that suggests Christ grew in grace. For example, the New American Bible reads, “Jesus advanced [in] wisdom and age and favor before God and man.” Notice that in this translation, unlike in the Lectionary translation, the verb “to grow” governs all three items in the list: wisdom, age, and grace.
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On this translation, Luke seems to be saying that Christ “grew in grace.” “But,” it might be argued, “Christ can’t grow in grace. John tells us that Christ was ‘full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14). To be full of grace is to be completed in grace without any more room for growth.”
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Aquinas deals with this very objection in the third part of his Summa Theologiae, question seven, article 12, objection 3. This suggests the translation found in the New American Bible was floating around at the time of Aquinas.
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Aquinas takes for granted this translation and responds accordingly. Here’s what he writes,
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Anyone may increase in wisdom and grace in two ways. First inasmuch as the very habits of wisdom and grace are increased; and in this way Christ did not increase. Secondly, as regards the effects, i.e. inasmuch as they do wiser and greater works; and in this way Christ increased in wisdom and grace even as in age, since in the course of time He did more perfect works, to prove Himself true man, both in the things of God, and in the things of man.
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So, for Aquinas, Christ didn’t increase in sanctifying grace itself. Rather, the effects of sanctifying grace outwardly manifested through his behavior grew or increased as he did greater things that pertain to God, like expressing his love for God, showing devotion for God’s Word, piously obeying Mosaic precepts, etc.
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At least this is how Aquinas deals with the question, and I think plausibly so.
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Well, my friends, that does it for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The readings for this upcoming Feast of the Holy Family is not shy of details when it comes to apologetical topics and interesting theological questions. We have opportunity to reflect on:
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<ul>
<li>The nature of justification as a process rather than a one-time event of the past,</li>
<li>The relationship between a wife and her husband as head of the family,</li>
<li>The scope of obedience from children that is due to parents,</li>
<li>The good of obeying Church precepts, and</li>
<li>Sanctifying grace as it dwells in the human soul of Christ.</li>
</ul>
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As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well at sundaycatholicword.com. You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Cy Kellet’s Catholic Answers Focus, Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, and Jimmy Akin’s A Daily Defense, all of which can be found at catholic.com.
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One last thing: if you’re interested in getting some cool mugs and stickers with my logo, “Mr. Sunday podcast,” go to shop.catholic.com.
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I hope you have a blessed Feast of the Holy Family. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for us.
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Is Justification a One Time Event?

Is there a problem with hoping everyone is in Heaven?

Denying this leads straight into ancient heresy...

Genesis 6 contains a very strange passage. It says,
<blockquote>The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (vv. 2-5).</blockquote>
Biblical scholars of all persuasions have concluded that this is one of the most mysterious passages in the Old Testament. The reason for this is that the author of Genesis is giving us a summary account of a much longer story that is not found in the Bible.
Among the things we’d like to be able to figure out are the following:
<ul>
<li>Who are the “sons of God” in this passage?</li>
<li>Who are the “daughters of men”?</li>
<li>Why does God say that man’s “days shall be 120 years”?</li>
<li>Who were the Nephilim?</li>
<li>What is the relationship between the sons of God, the daughters of men, and the Nephilim?</li>
<li>Why does the text say the Nephilim were on the earth “in those days, and also afterward”?</li>
<li>Do these events have anything to do with the Great Flood, which this passage introduces?</li>
</ul>
Multiple theories have been proposed to answer these questions, and some of them are really wild.
One that has been extremely common in pop culture for the last few years was proposed by Zechariah Sitchin (1920-2010), an Azerbaijani-American journalist who claimed to have taught himself Sumerian cuneiform and profoundly affected the popular conception of the Nephilim in modern culture.
According to Sitchin, Mesopotamian tablets reveal that there is a planet in the outer solar system called Nibiru that has a highly elliptical orbit and swings through the inner solar system every 3,600 years. (Don’t worry; it’s not due again till around 2900.)
Nibiru is inhabited by a race of aliens that the Sumerians called the Anunnaki and that Genesis calls the Nephilim. That’s right, the Nephilim are . . . aliens (because it’s always aliens . . . or demons).
When serious Christians hear this claim for the first time, they can be tempted to dismiss it out of hand. As far as believing in it, that’s the right instinct. No Christian should take Sitchin’s claims seriously for reasons we will go into.
However, not believing something doesn’t mean not interacting with it. If you want to do apologetics—and be serious about it—you have to be willing to interact with ideas that are out there in the culture, and this is one of them.
If you want to help people find their way to Christian faith, you have to help them take a look at the evidence for the Faith, and that includes evidence that Sitchin’s understanding of Genesis is simply mistaken.
One of the individuals who called attention to this was Dr. Michael Heiser (1963-2023), a Protestant scholar of the Old Testament and Semitic languages who critiqued Sitchin’s work in a variety of venues, including his provocatively named website <a href="http://sitchiniswrong.com/">SitchinIsWrong.com</a>.
Unlike Sitchin, Heiser was not self-taught. He had an accredited Ph.D. in Hebrew Bible and Semitic languages, which include the cuneiform that Sitchin claimed to have learned.
Over and over again, Heiser showed the problems with Sitchin’s claims, most of which concerned the Mesopotamian writings he claimed to have translated. Heiser regularly cited scholarly reference works—some of them online so that they could be easily checked by the reader—and the truth is that Sitchin was simply making up his claims.
The Sumerians did not envision a planet named Nabiru, and it was not inhabited by a race called the Anunnaki or the Nephilim.
You can read Heiser’s takedowns of Sitchin for youself, but most of them concern Sitchin’s claims about Mesopotamian literature rather than the Bible. Here, we’re interested in the Nephilim from Genesis 6, so we’ll look only at that.
In keeping with his ancient astronaut theory, Sitchin claimed that the Nephilim’s name meant “those who came down from above” in Hebrew, and that they came down in rocket ships.
However, Heiser <a href="https://sitchiniswrong.com/nephilim/nephilim.htm">points out</a>,
<blockquote>Sitchin assumes “nephilim” comes from the Hebrew word “naphal,” which usually means “to fall.” He then forces the meaning “to come down” onto the word, creating his “to come down from above” translation. In the form we find it in the Hebrew Bible, if the word nephilim came from Hebrew naphal, it would not be spelled as we find it. The form nephilim cannot mean “fallen ones” (the spelling would then be nephulim). Likewise, nephilim does not mean “those who fall” or “those who fall away” (that would be nophelim).
The only way in Hebrew to get nephilim from naphal by the rules of Hebrew morphology (word formation) would be to presume a noun spelled naphil and then pluralize it. I say “presume” since this noun does not exist in biblical Hebrew.</blockquote>
Instead, Heiser argues, the word Nephilim appears to be a loan-word from Aramaic, where it means “giants.” In fact, this is how the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament—renders the word in the two passages where it appears (Gen. 6:4, Num. 13:33). In both places, it uses the Greek word gigas or “giant.”
This also fits with Genesis 6:4’s statement that the Nephilim “were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown” and with Numbers 13:32’s statement that their descendants are “of great height” and the following verse’s statement that “we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”
This doesn’t mean that they were giants in the way we would think of them today. The average man in ancient Israel was only about five feet, five inches tall. According to the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Greek Septuagint, and the Jewish historian Josephus, the biblical giant Goliath was four cubits and a span tall, which works out to only six feet, six inches. So the text doesn’t ask us to envision superhumanly large giants.
Setting aside Sitchin’s unfounded claim that the Nephilim were “those who came down from above” in rocket ships, we thus see that the evidence points to their being unusually tall humans or “giants.”
That solves one of the mysteries we began with (number 4), but there are still more mysteries about this text to solve. We’ll take them up another time.

Are the Nephilim Biblical Aliens?

<div>Were Adam and Eve immortal? Where in the Bible does it reflect your answer?</div><div>According to Genesis, the tree of life by which someone could live forever was in the midst of the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:22), and this tree was not forbidden to Adam and Eve (Gen. 2:16). Only the tree of knowledge of good and evil was forbidden (Gen. 2:17). It was not until they were banished from the garden that they no longer had access to the tree of life (Gen. 3:23-24).
We can say, based on what is presented to us in Genesis, that Adam and Eve would have had access to the tree of life and would have lived forever if they had not sinned.
</div>

Were Adam and Eve Immortal?

Is Abortion a VIOLENT choice? What are your thoughts?

If you got permission from the Pope to access the secret vatican archives, what’s the one thing you’d want to see?

Why does it seem like so many Catholic priests are hard to interact with on a personal level?

My granddaughter is being taught that Adam and Eve aren’t real people and that bothers me. What are Tim’s thoughts on that?

How did the rosary come to be? And how did it become associated with Mary?

Why does the stigmata occur in the hands when most historical data suggests Jesus was crucified through his wrists?

Who is the man of lawlessness referenced in 2 Thessalonians?

At first glance, there is almost no connection today between our Old Testament reading in Proverbs and our New Testament epistle and Gospel. St. Paul in 1 Thessalonians, and the Lord himself in Matthew, bring to mind once again the themes that press on us this time of year: the end of the world, the return of Christ, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/advent-is-here-prepare-for-judgment">the judgment</a>.
The parable of the talents has often been read as a story about what we do with our, well, talents—that is, not the ancient unit of measurement, but the modern concept of an aptitude or ability or gift. You might think this is some modern development, but not so: in fact, our modern word talent (in English and in various European languages) comes precisely from this passage of Scripture, as a good dictionary will tell you. It seems that the patristic reading of the “talents” as different kinds of gifts became so commonplace that it soaked into our ordinary vocabulary.
So the parable is about two things: first, how we use or squander the gifts that we receive from the Lord while he journeys to a far country (that is, Christ ascended into heaven and no longer with us in a natural way), and second, how we will be judged at the end of the age.
I don’t want to dwell much on the nature of the “talents.” I think we can all understand pretty well what those are. They could be wealth, poverty, great skill or artistry, intelligence, beauty, a capacity to love or teach or show mercy. We cannot list every possible gift, whether those of nature or those of baptismal grace. The point is clear that we should use everything that we have been given—even if it means taking risks—for the glory of God. And, Paul reminds us, we do not know when the Lord will return.
But what on earth does any of this have to do with the virtuous woman of Proverbs 31? Many Bibles head up this passage, only part of which is included in this morning’s lectionary, with the title “The Wife of Noble Character” or “The Capable Wife,” or something similar. But the Hebrew speaks about a “valiant woman,” which I think is a little stronger. Arguably there is an intentional juxtaposition of this model of valor with other models of heroism and valor in the ancient world: the noble warrior who slays thousands of enemies and saves his kingdom from ruin; the semi-divine hero who fights monsters and prevails; the just king who prudently administers the affairs of his realm. Here valor is expressed by managing household finances, keeping the family well fed and clothed, thinking about the future. In other words, the valiant woman isn’t one who conquers armies or rules multitudes; she is one who, in the words of Matthew, is “faithful in small matters.”
There we’re starting to see the connection joining all these readings. Proverbs 31 is a beautiful passage, but it should go without saying that many of the specific things here are not universal actual things that a valiant woman must necessarily do: we no longer live in a culture where men sit together at the gate of the city, nor is it necessary for every woman to spin her own thread and make her own clothes. These examples are the particular cultural manifestation of what the inspired author wants us to see: an embodiment of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/mary-as-wisdom-personified">Wisdom</a>. Some readers wonder if this passage is somehow tacked on to the rest of Proverbs as something extra and a little foreign, but in fact it serves as a capstone for the whole book. Proverbs is wisdom literature in its classical form; wisdom is most commonly characterized as prudence, or practical wisdom. So this exemplar of wisdom speaks to us all—not just wives and mothers.
Perhaps we could put it like this: the valiant woman of Proverbs 31 gives us an example of what it looks like to use our talents well. Indeed, she is also an example of what it looks like to be prepared so that we will not be caught off guard at the Lord’s return. In a lovely connection with <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-door-of-death-is-shut">last week’s parable</a> on the wise and foolish virgins—a connection that was, I am sure, not lost on our Lord—verse 18 says of the valiant woman, “Her lamp does not go out at night.”
Over and over again, we see how she is “faithful in small matters.” Or rather, the inspired author wants us to see that very often, the small matters really are the great matters.
Jesus did not give us the task of managing history. That is his job. In fact, he didn’t even give that job to popes or presidents or other Important People. If we think that is our job, we will be prone either to false pride at moments in history when things seem to be going very well, or to despair at moments when it seems that everything is falling apart around us (even in the Church).
We are responsible for managing what we have been given. For some of us, that may in fact mean grand things. If you are a pope or a president, and you toss your talents into a hole in the ground, your position will not save you from the “outer darkness” of the unfaithful. As an example, we might look to the “middle” servant, the one with two talents. He doesn’t resent the one with five, or ten. Why? Because they receive the same reward: the master’s joy! Nor is the two-talent servant scornful of the servant with one. We might speculate that he would likewise not fall into despair if the five-talent servant proved unfaithful.
Most of us aren’t going to be Mother Teresa or Pope John Paul II. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be saints. I suspect that the heavenly court is full of those who, like the woman of Proverbs 31, were faithful in small things. Strengthened by their prayers, may we too be faithful so that we can at last enter into the joy of the Lord.

The Valiant Woman

Were Moses and Abraham fictional characters?

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
Everyone likes salt and light, or at least everyone has to like it who wants to stay alive. It is not a question of high-sodium diets or artificial light pollution, but of basic human needs.
This immediately brings us to the point of the matter. Being salt and light may be needful, but it is no automatic popularity or happiness. We have what people need, but people very often need things that they do not want and want things that they do not need.
These are complex metaphors in the end. I wonder if the disciples on the mountain heard them, as we so often hear them, and found them unsurprising, maybe a little poetic, only to be struck later by their strangeness. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Not “you should be like these things,” or “you should aspire to these things.” Jesus continues his instruction as the new epitome of the Law and the Prophets. Prophets speak truth, describing reality. If you are my follower, the Lord says, these things describe you. Light can illuminate and warm, but it can also blind and sear. It can be useful, or it can be merely decorative. Likewise, salt can preserve and flavor, but it can also kill.
Though many of these resonances are natural, others pertain more closely to the experience of Israel, above all to the Temple at Jerusalem. All sacrifices in the Temple were sprinkled with salt. As Remigius observes, “in the Old Testament no sacrifice was offered to God unless it were first sprinkled with salt, for none can present an acceptable sacrifice to God without the flavor of heavenly wisdom.” This association of salt with wisdom, or with knowledge, is taken up early on through the use of salt with holy water and baptismal water. “Receive the salt of wisdom,” we say to catechumens. The later medieval commentator Durandus delightfully describes wisdom as the “condiment of all virtues as salt is the seasoning of all foods.”
Light, too, has a close association with the Temple, which is constantly described by the prophets as a source of light. At the Feast of Tabernacles, the courts of the Temple were lit twenty-four hours a day by large menorahs that had to be lit by men climbing up on ladders. And Jerusalem is likewise a “city sat on a hill,” with the Temple itself being in the most prominent position.
The whole point seems to be that Jesus sees his disciples as somehow a living temple, replacing the old temple of stone. This idea takes on further weight when we look at the Lord’s claims about that temple being cast down, and about how his disciples will consume his body and blood—he who describes himself consistently in sacrificial terms as somehow embodying a new temple of God’s presence.
Being Christ’s disciples, we are this light, this salt, this temple. But here too we can see the double-edged sword of the metaphor. Just as salt and light can harm, the goodness of the Temple in fact did become, so often in the history of God’s people, a source of corruption and hypocrisy. How often do the prophets lament, as Isaiah does in today’s first reading, the failure of the people to act toward one another in a way consistent with their supposed devotion to God?
Our call as Christians is to follow the Christ who is the “light to enlighten the Gentiles,” as Simeon says at the Presentation. We inherit this mantle of Israel to be a kind of salt to the nations, preserving, seasoning, purifying, calling them to their true nature in the light of God.
Israel’s failures were, so often, the failures of light and salt. What salt and light have in common is that they do not draw attention to themselves, but reveal other things, enhance other things. You’re not really supposed to taste salt; you’re supposed to taste all the other good flavors that the salt brings out. Good lighting should reveal the beauty of a person, place, or thing; it does not draw attention to itself for its own sake.
Our Lord himself is salt and light, too, though differently, above all in the fact that he is the “light of the world” (John 8:12) in a more particular sense. His light reveals, and his salt flavors, but he, unlike us, is the main feature: the light of God is the end of all things. Yet by the Incarnation, and the communication of his divinity with human nature, we see the most profound example of that illuminating and salting work of grace within nature. It elevates and enlightens; it does not destroy. And in another way, the Lord is salt and light in a way that applies to us, if again differently: for salt and light give of themselves to do what they do. Salt can flavor food only by becoming itself food and being eaten. Christ’s “seasoning” of human nature, or “leavening,” if we can mix in another Patristic-scriptural metaphor, happens because he is “mixed up” with us, because he suffers with and for us.
Salt is meant to be used, just as a lamp is meant to be used. But to allow ourselves to be used for the glory of God means giving something. We cannot be salt simply by standing on the sidelines of the world and hoping we will give off a vibe while we go about our own private business. To season with our own lives, to shine light with our own lives, is a form of wisdom and knowledge that can only gesture, as St. Paul attests, to the cross of Christ.
As we continue moving toward Lent, the time is ripe to consider the works of mercy, and take an honest look in the mirror, following the exhortation of the prophet Isaiah. This is not a matter of some trying to calculate out how many good deeds you need to do to make up for the bad. That is exactly the sort of hypocrisy the prophets deplore. The question is, what story does my life tell? What truth does it reveal, and what truth does it obscure?
Our life as Christians is salt and light. Whether for good or ill, time will tell.