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<div>In older times, were genders separated at Catholic Masses?</div><div>Yes. It was a fairly common practice in many Catholic cultures into the mid-20th century. Though the 1917 Code of Canon Law did not require separation of men and women at Mass it did recommend it (<a href="http://www.jgray.org/codes/cic17lat.html">canon 1262 §1</a>). The 1983 Code makes no mention at all of this practice.
The practice is ancient. It is explicitly mentioned in the 4th century by St. Cyril of Jerusalem and <a>St. Augustine. It most likely was inherited and carried over from the same practice of the ancient synagogues.</a>
Many older churches have a St. Joseph statue on one side of the main altar and a Blessed Mother statue on the other side as a remnant from when this practice was more common. Some older churches even have all the images of male saints on one side and female saints on the other.
The practice appears to have been common in some areas and not in others. It would be difficult to call it a universal custom but it was most certainly not uncommon.
</div>

Were Genders Ever Separated at Catholic Mass?

It may seem like there isn&#8217;t any freedom in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/free-will">free will</a> if one bad decision can damn you to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-hell">hell</a> for eternity. What does it really mean when Catholics say we have free will? Jimmy Akin, Catholic Answers Apologist, freely chooses to answer this question.

Does Fear of Hell Contradict Free Will?

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Does the Bible DISPROVE that Mary was SINLESS?

Does praying to Mary and the Saints draw you away from, or towards, Jesus? Dr. Gavin Ortlund claims that Medieval Catholics&#8217; prayers to Mary prove that they viewed Jesus as far off, and thus needed to appeal to Mary and the Saints. But what do actual Medieval historians &#8211; and the writings of the Medieval Catholics themselves &#8211; have to say on the subject?

Does Devotion to Mary Draw Us Away from Jesus?

Recently, Ohio governor Mike DeWine vetoed a bill (<a href="https://search-prod.lis.state.oh.us/solarapi/v1/general_assembly_135/bills/hb68/EN/05/hb68_05_EN?format=pdf">Ohio House Bill 68</a>) that his own Ohio Republican party-majority House and Senate passed to ban “gender transition care” for youths under eighteen, which would include hormone therapy, puberty-blocker medication, and so-called “gender reassignment surgery.” Governor DeWine defended his veto decision by appealing to the “life-saving” nature of gender-affirming care. Here’s how he <a href="https://time.com/6551149/ohio-governor-gender-affirming-care/">put</a> it:
<blockquote>This bill would impact a very small number of Ohio’s children. But for those children who face gender dysphoria, and for their families, the consequences of this bill could not be more profound. Ultimately, I believe this is about protecting human life. Many parents have told me that their child would not have survived, would be dead today, if they had not received the treatment they received from one of Ohio’s children’s hospitals.</blockquote>
DeWine’s motive for vetoing Ohio’s bill is laudable. Who doesn’t want to save human life? But DeWine fails to consider whether the means of “gender-affirming care” is the best way to go about it.
There are two approaches that we could take here. One is to examine the morality of so-called “gender-affirming care.” If such “treatment” is ethically wrong, then DeWine’s desire to protect human life is irrelevant in discerning whether the Ohio Legislature should approve it.
What would be at work here is the fundamental ethical principle the end never justifies the means. No matter how good an end is, it can never be justified to use an immoral means to achieve it. The classic example that illustrates this principle is robbing a bank to provide for the financial wellbeing and security of my family. Such security is a good end to pursue. But that doesn’t morally justify me robbing a bank.
DeWine clearly doesn’t view “gender-affirming care” as being morally problematic. So challenging this view would be a worthwhile project. But I’m going to put that off for another time.
What I want to share here is a bit simpler—namely, that so-called gender-affirming care does the opposite of what DeWine intends to achieve by advocating for it. A recent <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31611339/">study</a>, for example, published in the journal Pediatrics showed that trans youth “had higher odds of all suicidality outcomes, and transgender males and transgender females had high risk for suicidal ideation and attempt.”
Other <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n356">studies</a> have confirmed such findings. According to <a href="https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/06/15145">Paul McHugh</a>, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital and University and Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, “ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.” McHugh made this statement based on a follow-up <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885">study</a> of people who received the surgery that extended over thirty years in Sweden, where the culture is very supportive of transgender people.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services acknowledged the results of the study in Sweden, which found high rates of suicide, along with other mental illnesses, among transgender people. Its <a href="https://www.cms.gov/medicare-coverage-database/view/ncacal-decision-memo.aspx?proposed=N&amp;NCAId=282&amp;bc=ACAAAAAAQAAA&amp;">memo</a> states,
<blockquote>The study identified increased mortality and psychiatric hospitalization compared to the matched controls. The mortality was primarily due to completed suicides (19.1-fold greater than in control Swedes), but death due to neoplasm and cardiovascular disease was increased 2 to 2.5 times as well. We note, mortality from this patient population did not become apparent until after ten years. The risk for psychiatric hospitalization was 2.8 times greater than in controls even after adjustment for prior psychiatric disease (18 percent). The risk for attempted suicide was greater in male-to-female patients regardless of the gender of the control. Further, we cannot exclude therapeutic interventions as a cause of the observed excess morbidity and mortality. The study, however, was not constructed to assess the impact of gender reassignment surgery per se.</blockquote>
Given the above evidence, it’s not the banning of so-called “gender-affirming care” that fails to protect human life. Rather, it’s the encouragement of people to undergo genital-mutilating surgery and body chemistry-distorting hormone regimens that actually does the harm.
DeWine would do well to consider the above statistics if he sincerely desires to protect human life. And in doing so, he might be more inclined to support his state’s Legislature to ban such “gender-affirming care”—not just for children, but for all who suffer from gender dysphoria. Such a ban would be the more reasonable means to achieve DeWine’s desired end. Self-mutilation is not the answer. Psychiatric help is.

Women, Men, Means, and Ends

How to Approach ‘Pro-Choice’ Family Members

When talking about the Catholic practice of asking the saints to pray for us, a question arises from both Catholics and Protestants: “Why seek the help of saints when we can go straight to Jesus?” Protestants often pose this question as an objection. For Catholics, it’s a question of curiosity.
There are two ways to answer. The first is to address the problematic assumptions, which we would direct primarily at our Protestant friends who ask this question as an objection. The second, which can be directed at both Protestants and Catholics, is to give positive reasons for the practice.
Let’s look at the assumptions first.
Consider that many who ask this question assume that the Catholic practice of asking the saints to pray for us implies that we can’t go straight to Jesus. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The Catholic Church affirms wholeheartedly that we can go straight to Jesus in prayer. The Catechism teaches in paragraph 2665,
<blockquote>The prayer of the Church, nourished by the word of God and the celebration of the liturgy, teaches us to pray to the Lord Jesus. Even though its prayer is addressed above all to the Father, it includes in all the liturgical traditions forms of prayer addressed to Christ.</blockquote>
Notice that the Church doesn’t say we must invoke the saints to pray for us before we can go straight to Jesus. The Church affirms that Christians have a straight path to Jesus.
A second, common assumption is that we should not seek the saints’ help because Jesus’ intercession is sufficient. Now, it’s true that Jesus’ intercession is sufficient, as the Catholic Church affirms in paragraph 662 of the Catechism. The Church teaches that Christ, in the heavenly sanctuary, “permanently exercises his priesthood, for he ‘always lives to make intercession’ for ‘those who draw near to God through him,’” quoting Hebrews 7:25.
But this shouldn’t be the reason why our Protestant friends reject seeking the saints’ prayers. If Jesus’ sufficiency as our intercessor precluded our asking the saints in heaven to pray for us, then there’d be no reason to ask the “saints” on earth (born-again Christians) to pray for us, either. The same question could be asked: “Why seek the help of Christians on earth when we can go straight to Jesus?”
No Christian wants to say we shouldn’t pray for one another. Therefore, the sufficiency of Jesus’ unique intercession doesn’t serve as an obstacle to the invocation of the saints’ intercession.
Now let’s look at some positive reasons why we should seek help from the saints.
First, it’s God’s will, and it has positive consequences. God has determined that he will answer some requests when multiple people are praying, which he might not answer if fewer people were to pray.
Second, since it’s God’s will for the saints to pray for us, our asking their intercession gives glory to God. And it gives glory to God not just because it’s his will. Our request for the saints’ intercession gives God glory because, as we mentioned in a previous chapter and above in this chapter, it highlights his goodness and wisdom in willing to use the saints to help us.
A third positive reason for the practice of the invocation of the saints is that St. Paul instructs us not to refuse help from other members of the mystical body of Christ. We’ve covered 1 Corinthians 12:20-21 a couple of times already, and it bears repeating again here: “There are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’”
Now, the saints in heaven are still members of the body of Christ. Paul teaches us in Romans 8:35 and 38 that death doesn’t separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Since Christ has willed that we not reject the help of other members of the body of Christ, and the saints in heaven are members of the body of Christ, it follows that we shouldn’t deny their help that’s offered through their intercessory prayer. We should employ it, since we need all the help we can get.
Given that the saints are fellow Christians, invoking their intercession is in principle not at all different from Paul in Romans 15:30 asking the Christians in Rome to pray for him: “Strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf, that I may be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea, and that my service for Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints.” Why should where Christians exist (earth or heaven) be an obstacle to requesting their prayers, especially when such prayers are empowered by Jesus’ unique mediation, no matter where they’re offered?
A fourth reason, and the final one we’ll consider here, is that the saints’ prayers bear much fruit, as St. James makes clear in James 5:16 when he writes about the prayers of a righteous man. We know that the saints in heaven are perfectly just. The author of Hebrews, in 12:22-23, writes, “You have come to . . . the heavenly Jerusalem . . . to the spirits of just men made perfect.” Therefore, the prayers of the saints in heaven have great power in their effects.
Going straight to Jesus for help is essential to the Christian life. But going to other members of his mystical body for help, including those perfected members in heaven, is not to be disregarded. It’s the Christian way.

Why Not Just Go Straight to Jesus?

Apologist Pat Flynn, from the Philosophy for the People podcast, gets down to basics with us to defend the idea that we can, indeed, know things with certainty. This defense of knowledge helps when we are confronted with the argument that no one really knows anything for sure.

Can I Know Anything For Sure?

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Are Catholics actually IDOLATORS?! The simple answer is no. But let's talk about it.

LGBT History in California Schools

This year has been a pretty good one for the Satanic Temple. They&#8217;ve even gotten a good deal of positive press. So who are they, what do they believe, and are Catholics obligated to battle them in the streets? Karlo Broussard examines their seven tenets to see.

Satanic Temple for Beginners

What do you think about the reference to a Biblical creator in the Declaration of Independence?

Did the Declaration of Independence reference the Biblical Creator, or was it a more general idea of God? In this episode, we discuss The Church Against the State with Dr. Andrew Willard Jones, exploring the historical tension between secular and religious authority.

Did the Declaration of Independence Reference the Biblical Creator?

Have you ever felt angry at God? Don&#8217;t worry—you&#8217;re literally incapable of hurting his feelings. Joe Heschmeyer explains what it means to be angry with God.

How to be ANGRY with God as a Christian

Habemus Papam! &#8220;We have a pope!&#8221;
With these words today, May 8, 2025, following the famous sign of white smoke from the roof of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, the Catholic Church announced the election of its 267th pope. The newest successor of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/peter-apostle-saint">St. Peter</a>, bishop of Rome, vicar of Christ, and leader of over one billion Catholics, is the American cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. Following Catholic tradition, he has chosen a papal name: Leo XIV.
The new pope is a distinguished member of the Order of Saint Augustine and has long been a prominent figure in the Roman Catholic Church. His life and ministry reflect a deep commitment to the Church&#8217;s mission, rooted in Augustinian spirituality and a dedication to the pastoral care of the faithful.
<h2>The New Pope’s Early Life and Formation</h2>
Prevost was born on September 14, 1955, in Chicago.
His academic journey began at Villanova University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics in 1977. That same year, he entered the novitiate of the Augustinian Order in Saint Louis. After professing his solemn vows in 1981, he pursued theological studies at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, obtaining a Master of Divinity degree in 1982.
Prevost was ordained a priest on June 19, 1982. Furthering his education, he earned both a licentiate (1984) and a doctorate (1987) in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/what-is-canon-law">canon law</a> from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (the Angelicum) in Rome.
<h2>A Missionary and a Prior</h2>
In 1985, Prevost was assigned to the Augustinian mission in Chulucanas, Peru, marking the beginning of his extensive missionary work in that country. He served in various capacities in Trujillo, including community prior; director of formation; and professor of canon law, patristics, and moral theology at the diocesan seminary. His leadership extended to administrative roles, such as judicial vicar of the Archdiocese of Trujillo and director of the joint formation project for Augustinian aspirants in the Vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos, and Apurímac.
In 1999, he was elected provincial prior of the Augustinian Province of Our Lady of Good Counsel in Chicago. He later served two terms as prior general of the Augustinian Order, from 2001 to 2013.
<h2>Ordained a Bishop, Named a Leader</h2>
In November 2014, Pope Francis appointed Prevost as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, elevating him to the dignity of bishop and assigning him the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/auxiliary-bishop">titular diocese</a> of Sufar (in modern-day Algeria). He took canonical possession of the diocese on November 7, 2014, and was ordained a bishop on December 12, 2014, the Feast of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/our-lady-of-guadalupe-catholic-answers-guide">Our Lady of Guadalupe</a>. As bishop, he served the faithful of Chiclayo with dedication, focusing on pastoral care, evangelization, and the formation of clergy. In March 2018, he was elected second vice president of the Peruvian episcopal conference.
<h2>To the Roman Curia</h2>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/rip-pope-francis">Pope Francis</a> appointed Prevost as prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops and president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America on January 30, 2023. Prevost assumed these roles on April 12, 2023. In recognition of his service, he was created a cardinal in the consistory of September 30, 2023, receiving the deaconry of Santa Monica.
As prefect, he oversaw the nomination of bishops worldwide, charged with ensuring that candidates were well formed in doctrine, pastoral care, and fidelity to the Church&#8217;s teachings.
He was also a member of several other dicasteries, including those for Evangelization, the Doctrine of the Faith, Clergy, and Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. His multilingual abilities—fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Portuguese, with reading knowledge of Latin and German—enhanced his effectiveness in these international roles and no doubt added to his suitability for the papacy.
<h2>The New Pope’s Spiritual Center</h2>
Cardinal Prevost viewed his elevation to the College of Cardinals as a call to deeper service to the Church. He said that being a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/cardinal">cardinal</a> is &#8220;a mission of love with Christ, our Savior,&#8221; emphasizing the responsibility to give his life in service to the Church. He also highlighted the significance of the red vestments of a cardinal, symbolizing the blood of martyrs, which underscores the gravity of his role. His approach to leadership is characterized by a commitment to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-synodality">synodality</a>, seeking to walk together with the people of God in discerning the will of God.
<h2>Pray for Pope Leo XIV</h2>
Pope Leo’s life has been a testament to faithful service in the Church, marked by a deep commitment to Augustinian spirituality, rigorous academic formation, and pastoral dedication. His work continues to inspire those who seek to serve the Church with humility and devotion, upholding the timeless truths of the Catholic faith.
Let us pray now for our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV. May the Holy Spirit fill him with faith, hope, and charity. May he be provided the strength, wisdom, and good judgment he will need to teach the truth, govern with prudence, and promote the sanctification of the Church and the world.

We Have a Pope! Leo XIV in Brief

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How can Mary and the Saints hear our prayers?

Can someone want out of hell?

Moral Relativism is more dangerous than it may seem...

If you want to learn more about Moral relativism from Trent, be sure to check out the Catholic Answers School of Apologetics: Moral Apologetics Online Course 

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Moral Relativism is more dangerous than it may seem...

Is the song, Mary Did You Know, biblically accurate?

What does it mean to be consecrated to Mary? How do you do it and why is it important?

what are the Greek words when talking about Mary having other children?

Are we human race a type of Mary that’s looking for Jesus?&nbsp;

Walking with Mary

<div>I've heard several times that the Church is cannibalistic, since it teaches that bread and wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ. Looking at the definition of cannibalism, they seem to be correct. Are they correct, and how should I respond?</div><div>The charge of cannibalism is not new. Roman pagans called early Church Christians cannibals precisely because the disciples spoke of eating and drinking their God. In doing so, the pagans provide further evidence that belief in the Real Presence of the Eucharist is an ancient Christian doctrine, and that the first Christians understood Jesus to be speaking literally when he established at the Last Supper the ritual we have come to call the Mass.
Yet the charge of cannibalism is misplaced. Cannibalism, simply put, is the eating of human flesh, typically after a person has died. A corpse (dead body) is usually present, or at least a dead body part. Second, the quantity of the flesh diminishes as it is being consumed. Third, digesting flesh results in physical nourishment, protein included.
In the banquet of the Eucharist, however, Jesus is not dead but is a living sacrifice. Second, his substance is not diminished by consuming the Eucharist. To the contrary, Jesus is bodily in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, though his body becomes miraculously present wherever the Eucharist is celebrated. Third, the eating of his Body and Blood does not result in practical physical nourishment on a natural level, although some have miraculously subsisted solely on the Eucharist. The purpose of the Eucharist is to provide spiritual nourishment.
In summary, cannibals consume the flesh of a dead person in a way that diminishes and profanes the corpse. Through the sacrament of the Eucharist, Jesus freely gives himself to us; and we consume his living body, blood, soul, and divinity in a way that mysteriously and miraculously does not diminish him but instead enhances our spiritual life.
For more on how receiving the Eucharist is not cannibalism, please see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/what-catholics-believe-about-john-6">Tim Staples’ article on John 6</a>.
</div>

Is Receiving the Eucharist Cannibalism?

Most Catholics have never heard of generational spirits. That is no surprise: they rose to prominence in some circles only recently, and belief in them is part of the spirituality of very few Catholics. Their existence is an open question, meaning Catholics are within Church teaching to believe or disbelieve in them. Some exorcists and other Catholics involved in so-called deliverance ministry seem to have certainty not only in their existence, but in their demonic methods of attack, and in the means to be freed from them.
What does the Church teach us about this possible type of evil spirit?
<h2>What is a generational spirit?</h2>
It is not easy to give a definition, since the Church has no doctrine on the subject. They are said to be demons that attach to particular families. They are not mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church or the Catechism of the Council of Trent, in papal documents or in Church councils, or in the writings of Doctors of the Church (St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Teresa of Avila, St. Francis de Sales, etc.). Different people have different names for them, such as family spirits, familial spirits, and wounding of the family tree. They are described in different ways, as demons that cause particular problems or provoke particular sins and continue to do so for succeeding generations of the person to whom they first attached. Some think membership in the Freemasons is especially inviting to generational spirits, though why this is so remains unexplained.
<h2>Does belief in generational spirits contradict Catholic doctrine?</h2>
No, the topic is neither taught nor condemned by Church doctrine. It might or might not be the case that the demon tempting me today is the same demon that tempted my Aunt Elgisa or Great-uncle Vito or Great-grandfather Nikola.
<h2>Where does the idea of generational spirits come from?</h2>
Within the Catholic Church, the belief and alleged methods of dealing with generational spirits  probably came from Pentecostal Christians in the 1960s. It is difficult if not impossible to find any mention of the topic by Catholic writers from before that time.
Some Catholics say that belief in generational spirits is found in Catholic teaching and tradition and point to the authority that parents have over their children. But parental authority comes from God, for the purpose of leading children to heaven. There is nothing in Church teaching or tradition that equates that authority with passing on a particular demon from one generation to the next.
<h2>Are generational spirits mentioned in the Bible?</h2>
No. Some who believe in them will point to Scripture verses such as Exodus 34:7, which states that God is “forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children&#8217;s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
But neither this nor similar verses mention generational spirits, and there are more traditional explanations. For example, St. John Chrysostom said the above verse is “not to be universally applied, but was made with regard to those going out of Egypt” (Homily 56 on St. John).
Certainly, God seems to clarify this in Ezekiel 18:20:
<blockquote>The soul that sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.</blockquote>
A simple way to reconcile the two is that though God does allow parents’ sins to cause damage to their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, those descendants are not punished as such for a family member’s sins. In any event, there is no mention of generational spirits in the Bible.
One writer, with regard to Mark 9, says that “Jesus exorcises a demon from a man’s son, who has been possessed from infancy. That means that either the son was cursed in the womb, or else is the victim of a generational spirit.” But those are certainly not the only explanations for this case of demonic possession. According to Mark 9:21, “Jesus asked his father, ‘How long has he had this?’ And he said, ‘From childhood.’” Jesus did not ask or receive an exact age; the father could have meant age seven or seventeen or anywhere in between, and the young man could have done something to open himself to demonic attack.
<h2>What about exorcists and deliverance ministers who say they have experience with generational spirits?</h2>
There are a few problems with this. Some claim to be able to sense the spirits; some make deductions based on one’s ancestry; some even claim the demons have revealed themselves. But there is no way to verify these claims.
As for demons alleged to have revealed themselves, this could be the imagination of persons who mistakenly believe they are possessed and have unfortunately been reading about spiritual warfare with generational spirits. If an actual demon were to admit to being a generational spirit, exorcists and deliverance ministers should remember three things: they lie, they lie, they lie.
<h2>Can any harm be done by those promoting the belief in generational spirits?</h2>
Yes, great harm can be done and has been done to individuals struggling with a range of mental, emotional, and relationship problems. All of these may result from mistreatment by parents, who in turn may have been mistreated by their parents, but this is not the same as saying a demon has attached itself.
The suffering individual may go to an exorcist or deliverance minister who claims to have a method to drive off the generational spirit. When the method fails, the individual believes that, on top of his other struggles, he has a generational spirit that even an alleged expert could not banish.
<h2>Does the Church have certain prayers or rituals to bind generational spirits, or break the generational demonic bonds, or heal the family tree?</h2>
No. Again, there is no mention of generational spirits in Church teaching, and certainly no specific prayers or rituals dealing with them. Those who believe in them write their own prayers. There is nothing wrong with that, unless they try to tell people these prayers have special power against these demons, or even that these specific prayers must be said if the alleged generational demon is to be driven off.
In fact, the Rite of Exorcism specifically tells the exorcist, “During the exorcism, he shall preferably employ words from holy writ rather than forms of his own or someone else.” Bible verses are more powerful against demons than prayers we write ourselves.
<h2>The Church has the Rite of Exorcism for demonic possession. What does the Church say to do about demonic attacks that fall short of possession?</h2>
We use the spiritual weapons the Church has given us: sacraments, sacramentals, Scripture, and prayer.
For example, the Rite of Exorcism states that both the exorcist and the possessed person should go to confession and receive Holy Communion. The rite includes Gospel readings (Mark 16:15-18; Luke 10:17-20, 11:14-22; John 1:1-14) and Psalms (3, 10, 12, 21, 30, 34, 53, 67, 69, 90, 117); it also includes the St. Michael prayer and the Litany of the Saints. It tells the exorcist to have a crucifix and holy water.
We can and should use these frequently to protect against demonic temptation and attack. I think it important to note this instruction to the exorcist: “It will also help to say devoutly and often over the afflicted person the Our Father, Hail Mary, and the Creed.” As these are the very prayers of the rosary, clearly praying the rosary with the specific intention for protection against demons is a powerful weapon.
Satan tried to tempt Jesus, so we can be certain that he and his minions are tempting us. While in this world, we are part of the Church militant, fighting the battle against them. But we should not get too caught up in the mindset and language of fighting demons.
Jesus talked about this battle sometimes, but he did not talk about it all the time, and he never mentioned or hinted at generational spirits. The Lord’s Prayer forms the basis of all our prayers, and only in the last petition do we ask God’s help against the evil spirits: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Generational Spirits: Questions and Answers

Joe Heschmeyer delves into the Catholic doctrine of original sin, responding to a Reddit user&#8217;s query about its compatibility with the innate goodness of humanity. He discusses the impact of original sin on relationships with God, fellow humans, creation, and oneself, shedding light on the theological nuances and the need for redemption.

What Christians Get Wrong About Original Sin

The Bible teaches that Jesus is “the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). This is the heart of the Christian message: Christ made satisfaction for our sins (paid a debt) through his death on the cross.
But the question is, “Was this necessary?” Did Jesus have to die on a cross to expiate our sins? Or could God have done it some other way?
Some Christians say it was necessary (absolutely speaking—i.e., it couldn’t be any other way, regardless of what God willed). But others say it wasn’t (i.e., redemption could have been accomplished some other way). What should we think?
Christians who say it was absolutely necessary often appeal to passages like the one quoted above. “The Bible says Jesus satisfied for our sins,” so it’s argued, “therefore, it was necessary.”
But the mere affirmation that Jesus’ death satisfied for our sins doesn’t logically entail that it was the only way to satisfy for our sins. It’s true that if Jesus wills to order his death for the satisfaction for our sins, then our sins will be satisfied. But to conclude that our sins wouldn’t be satisfied if Jesus didn’t die would be to commit the fallacy of negating the antecedent (if A, then B; not A; therefore, not B).
Now, concerning the positive reasons for why Jesus’ death wasn’t absolutely necessary for our redemption, we can turn to St. Thomas Aquinas for help. Here are three reasons that he gives in a variety of his works.
Reason #1: God is omnipotent.
Given his omnipotence, God can bring about anything that doesn’t entail a logical contradiction. As Mary says, “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). The idea of God remitting the debt of sin in some way other than Jesus’ death doesn’t entail a logical contradiction. Therefore, as Aquinas concludes, “it was possible for God to deliver mankind otherwise than by the passion of Christ” (Summa Theologiae III:46:2).
Reason #2: Sin is ultimately against God alone and not some other.
One might think God couldn’t remit the sin of the human race without satisfaction (imposed suffering) lest he act unjustly. A judge, for example, can’t justly pardon fault without penalty when such fault has befallen another (another man, the State, etc.).
But, as Aquinas points out, sin has “the formality of fault in that it is committed against [God] himself” (ST III:46:2 ad 3, emphasis added). In other words, it’s a personal trespass against God. David captures this nicely in his psalm of repentance: “Against you, you alone have I sinned” (Ps. 51:6).
So for God to forgive sin without willing satisfaction he would in no way act against justice. Rather, his forgiveness would simply be an act of mercy. Such forgiveness would be no more unjust than me forgiving my friend’s offense without willing that he pay for it.
Reason #3: The dignity of Christ’s person is infinite.
In question two of his Quodlibet II, Aquinas appeals to the infinite dignity of Christ’s person as a reason why Jesus’ death wasn’t absolutely necessary. Given that Jesus is the Word of God, and thereby divine, any act that he performs has infinite power. Aquinas focuses merely on acts of suffering in this text. But the principle applies to any act Jesus performs. Thus, Jesus could have ordered any of his acts to the redemption of the human race and thereby accomplished it.
Now, if Jesus’ death wasn’t absolutely necessary to satisfy for sin, then why did the Father ordain it? Here are eight reasons.
First, sacrifice is understood by both Jews and all humans as that which brings about good relation between man and the divine (see Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense, Day 4).
Second, sacrifice has a particular meaning for the Jews, given that they were delivered from slavery in Egypt through the sacrifice of the Passover lamb. Since Jesus is revealed to be the new Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5:7; see also John 1:29), it’s fitting that Jesus be sacrificed (see Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense, Day 4).
Third, Jesus’ death on the cross manifests certain truths about God. It manifests God’s justice because Jesus’ death on the cross did in fact satisfy for sin, paying a debt that the human race could not pay (ST III:46:1). But Jesus’ death also manifests God’s mercy, since “man of himself could not satisfy for the sin of all human nature” (ST III:46:1; Cf. I:2 ad 2). Finally, Jesus’ death manifests how much God loves us (ST III:46:3). As Jesus teaches, “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus speaks a language that we all understand—sacrificial death equals love. Paul concurs, writing, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
Fourth, Jesus’ death on the cross helps us progress on the path of holiness and conform our lives to his. It gives us an example of virtue—in particular, the virtues of “obedience, humility, constancy, [and] justice” (ST III:46:3). As Peter writes, “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” Jesus’ death also gives us an example to die to sin spiritually and our carnal desires (ST III:50:1; cf. Quodlibet II.2), for Paul teaches, “The death he died he died to sin . . . so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin” (Rom. 6:10). Finally, the ugliness of Jesus’ death inspires us to refrain from sin (ST III:46:3).
Fifth, Jesus’ death fittingly counters the devil’s combat tactics. Through Adam’s sin, which was brought about by the temptation of the devil, man experiences death as a penalty for sin. Christ takes on death to deliver us from death (ST III:46:3, 50:1). Jesus also counters the devil with his humility. It was the devil’s pride that prompted him to tempt Adam, which brough about the de-redemption of man. Jesus counters such pride with humility to redeem mankind (ST III:46:3 ad 3). Finally, Jesus redeems through justice (satisfying for sin) to counter the devil’s unjust assault on man (ST III:46:3 ad 3).
Sixth, Jesus’ death confirms three truths. It confirms the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. As Aquinas writes, “how could Christ’s victory over death appear, unless he endured it in the sight of men, and so proved that death was vanquished by the incorruption of his body?” (ST III:46:3 ad 2). The truth of Jesus’ humanity is also confirmed because a phantom cannot suffer and die (ST III:50:1). Finally, it confirms the ugliness of sin (ST III:46:3).
Seventh, given that the Word assumes to himself a human nature and redeems the human race through that nature, a certain dignity is bestowed upon man by incorporating him into the Father’s providential plan to overthrow Satan (ST III:46:3).
Eighth, it was fitting that Jesus merit the glory of exaltation through lowliness (ST III:46:1). Jesus says of himself, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). Christ’s exaltation is threefold: his resurrection, the manifestation of his divinity, and the reverence shown to him by every creature (Phil. 2:8-10).
In 1 John 4:8, St. John tells us that God is love. It’s no surprise, therefore, that Jesus’ death on the cross, which is an expression of God’s love, would exclude absolute necessity, since love is an expression of the greatest freedom. God’s freedom to have done otherwise gets to the heart of the Christian message: God loves you!

Did Jesus Have to Die for Us?

<h2>What Did St. Malachy Predict?</h2>
You may have heard of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/do-the-prophecies-of-st-malachy-suggest-we-are-living-in-the-end-times" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">St. Malachy</a>, but perhaps not for his holy life. He is a real saint, born in Armagh, Ireland, in 1094, and became the bishop there in 1032. He restored discipline to the Church in Armagh, and he died in 1148 in the arms of his <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-honey-sweet-doctor">fellow saint</a>, the great <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/bernard-of-clairvaux-saint">Bernard of Clairvaux</a>, a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/how-does-one-become-a-doctor-of-the-church" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Doctor of the Church</a>.
On the other hand, you probably have heard of the papal prophecies attributed to Malachy—<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes">a list of 112 Roman pontiffs</a> (and anti-popes), identified by a brief epithet alluding to his name, family, place of origin or service, coat of arms, or some more nebulous identification. Proponents argue that the list dates to St. Malachy’s time, though the list was discovered—or published—only in the late 1500s, with no mention in the interim, including from sources one would expect to reference it—e.g., biographers of the saint.
Because of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/prophecy">support in some Catholic circles</a>, though, and the countdown to the “final pope” on the list over the last century—along with the Church’s prophesied “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prophecy_of_the_Popes">final persecution</a>” (including the destruction of Rome)—the list has garnered media coverage <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-a-papal-conclave">during papal interregnums</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/will-our-next-pope-be-the-last-ushering-in-the-end-of-the-world">including here at Catholic Answers</a> when Pope Benedict XVI resigned in February 2013.
After all, of the 112 popes listed in Malachy’s prophecy, Pope Francis is . . . you guessed it: the 112th.
And so, if the reported private revelations were true, we would be on the doorstep of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/gods-final-victory-is-coming">the Second Coming</a>, given the recent death of Pope Francis. Although we must always be ready for the Lord’s return—or to face him sooner than that, when we die—the end does not appear to be imminent, at least based on the credibility of the prophecies attributed to St. Malachy.
<h2>Dubious Historical Foundations</h2>
St. Bernard, who wrote Malachy’s biography, makes no mention of the prophecies, and the related document was discovered only years later, allegedly after being l<a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/do-the-prophecies-of-st-malachy-suggest-we-are-living-in-the-end-times">ocked in the Vatican archives for centuries</a>. However, as <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/9-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-prophecy-of-st-malachy">Jimmy Akin explains</a>,
<blockquote>The fact that we cannot establish its existence for hundreds of years until after its supposed author’s death is also consistent with the claim that it was a forgery composed around 1590 and then “salted” into the archive. (“Salting” is the term used for planting false records in archives.) It also may never have been in the archive but merely claimed to be.</blockquote>
The list of predicted popes appears to draw on a work of Italian historian <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/onofrio-panvinio">Onofrio Panvinio</a>, which is cited in M.J. O’Brien’s <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/An_Historical_and_Critical_Account_of_th/qIZVuIhz06cC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=falseThe">Historical and Critical Account of the So-called Prophecy of St. Malachy Regarding the Succession of Popes</a>. O’Brien opposes the historicity of the reported prophecies. Panvinio was a respected historian in his day, and not an advocate of the prophecies.
At the same time, Panvinio, also known as <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/First_Proofs_of_the_Universal_Catalogue/WNcZAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=Accurat%C3%A6+Effigies+Pontificum+Maximorum&amp;pg=PA1535&amp;printsec=frontcover">Onuphrius Panvinius</a>, did author—or <a href="https://cdm15942.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15942coll53">at least contribute</a> to—<a href="https://digital.library.villanova.edu/Item/vudl:497683#?xywh=-4605%2C-265%2C11225%2C3529">Accuratæ Effigies Pontificum Maximorum</a>, which appears to be the source of the purported prophetic list, as <a href="https://cdm15942.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15942coll53">this work</a> contains “portraits and short biographies of popes starting from Urban VI in 1378 and ending with Gregory XIII in 1572.” This work itself appears to draw on a history of the popes for which Panvinio definitely authored an updated version, as <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/panvinio-onofrio#:~:text=A%20book%20of%20portraits%20of%2027%20popes,richly%20illustrated%20with%20portraits%2C%20coats%2Dof%2Darms%2C%20and%20seals.">that book</a>, Platina&#8217;s Lives of the Popes (De Vitis Pontificum), includes their respective papal coat of arms, an element noted in the list of pontiffs attributed to St. Malachy.
<h2>Missing the Mark on Papal Prognostications</h2>
Not surprisingly, whereas the papal “prophecies” are on the mark until 1590, the opposite is true afterward, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-pope-francis-the-final-roman-pontiff">as Tim Staples reports</a>:
<blockquote>Pope Benedict XIV is referred to as “rustic animal”—in Latin, animal rurale. This means something akin to what southerners might call a “country boy.” But Benedict XIV was anything but a country boy. He was a brilliant scholar educated in Rome at the Collegium Clementium, which he entered at the age of thirteen! . . . He was also an exceptional administrator and a man of many talents, respected within and without the Church. He was anything but animal rurale! . . .
John Paul I (1978) is referred to as “of the half moon.” Your guess is as good as mine. . . .
And finally, we should mention our present Pope Francis (2013-). He is referred to as “Peter the Roman” [Petrus Romanus] in the prophecy. The best the proponents of the prophecy have been able to do is point out that our good Cardinal Bergoglio took the name of St. Francis, whose father’s name was Pietro. Of course! Plus, even though he is Argentinian, his parents are Italian. Huh? Huh?</blockquote>
In contrast to Marian apparitions like <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/getting-fatima-right">Fatima</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-miracles-point-to">Lourdes</a>, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/our-lady-of-guadalupe-catholic-answers-guide">Guadalupe</a>, the Church has never approved the alleged prophecies attributed to St. Malachy. Defenders might respond that the Church never approves reported apparitions until they are completed and can be more closely analyzed. But that would be a rather convenient—and ill-founded—counterargument, as we’d have to wait until after the last pope and thus for our Lord’s Second Coming and the Last Judgment (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a12.htm#V">CCC 1038-1041</a>) to get a definitive ruling on the matter.
Instead, given both its dubious historical origins and predictions <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/do-the-prophecies-of-st-malachy-suggest-we-are-living-in-the-end-times">since 1590</a>, “the consensus among modern scholars is that it is a sixteenth-century forgery created for partisan political reasons.”
Still, the alleged prophecies have remained popular, in part because of support in some Catholic circles over the centuries. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia">The Catholic Encyclopedia</a>, published in the early 1900s, is normally a reliable source on matters related to the Faith. But in its “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/prophecy">Prophecies</a>” article, the priest author doesn’t help the cause in speculating that there could be unnamed popes between numbers 111 and 112:
<blockquote>It has been noticed concerning Petrus Romanus, who according to St. Malachy’s list is to be the last pope, that the prophecy does not say that no popes shall intervene between him and his predecessor designated Gloria olivae. It merely says that he is to be the last, so that we may suppose as many popes as we please before “Peter the Roman.”</blockquote>
Or not, given the list’s historical and predictive deficiencies.
<h2>Trusting in Jesus Instead</h2>
When asked for a sign from the Pharisees, Jesus says,
<blockquote>An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matt. 12:39-40).</blockquote>
Jesus’ paschal mystery—his death, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-last-word">resurrection</a>, and ascension into heaven (and his related <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pentecost-and-the-papacy">sending of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost</a>)—remains the fundamental historical sign on which the truth of the Faith rests. And the Church’s sustenance through two thousand years is further evidence of the truth of that divine sign, which Jesus has otherwise affirmed (see <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c3a1.htm#III">CCC 156</a>).
In the meantime, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/star-struck-about-92317-dont-be">as I write elsewhere</a>, “we all need to be vigilant, because none of us knows the hour or day when Jesus will call us via death to our own particular judgment (see Matt. 24:42-51, <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a12.htm#I">CCC 1021-22</a>).”

St. Malachy’s Prophecy and Pope Francis

<div>Is it okay to have a child baptized with two sets of godparents?</div><div>No. Canon law provides that one godparent is sufficient but that there may be two, so long as there is one of each sex (<a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann834-878_en.html">canon 873, Code of Canon Law</a>). There is no provision for more than two godparents.
If the parents wish to honor another couple at the baptism, and that couple are both baptized Christians, they may ask the couple to be Christian witnesses to the baptism together with the Catholic godparents (<a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/directory-on-ecumenism-2345">Directory on Ecumenism 98</a>).
</div>

May a Child Have Four Godparents?

It’s common for skeptics of Christianity to claim that the word Easter comes from the name of a pagan deity called Ishtar, suggesting that the Christian faith has pagan roots. But no matter how prevalent this contention has become, it has no basis in history or reality.
In Jeremiah 44:15-17, the people of Judah reject the prophet Jeremiah’s message in preference to their idolatrous worship of an entity called “the queen of heaven”—apparently the pagan deity Ishtar. Commentators seem to be in general agreement that Jeremiah’s “queen of heaven” is Astaroth or Ashtaroth—Astarte in the Septuagint, which is the Greek Old Testament. Literally, Astaroth means “the moon.” The moon was a Sidonian idol worshipped by the Phoenicians and worshipped as Ishtar by the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Babylonians. In nature worship, the sun and the moon were considered the king and queen, respectively, of the celestial heavens.
Some people have inferred that Easter is the English derivation of the Greek Astarte, but there is no linguistic or historical basis for this. In addition, the English word Easter is said to have derived from an Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess named Eostre. This theory was based on an incorrect conclusion by St. Bede the Venerable about the etymological origins of the English month that coincides with spring and the celebration of Easter, Eosturmonath. But, as Anthony McRoy, a fellow of the British Society for Middle East Studies, notes, <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2009/april/was-easter-borrowed-from-pagan-holiday.html">there is no historical basis for this derivation</a>. He notes that St. Bede himself said his conclusion was based on his interpretation rather than a generally held position or proven fact.
Also, there is no doubt that the focus of Easter for St. Bede and English Christians in general, was and is Jesus, the Passover Lamb who died on our behalf and rose from the dead.
Indeed, in most European countries, the name for Easter derives from the Greek word Pascha, which itself is derived from the Hebrew Pesach—i.e., the word Passover. Thus, the term paschal sacrifice refers to Jesus’ one sacrifice, and paschal candle is another name for the Easter candle.
So where did the English get their word for the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection? McRoy <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2009/april/was-easter-borrowed-from-pagan-holiday.html">notes there are two main theories, both of which are plausible</a>:
<blockquote>One theory for the origin of the name is that the Latin phrase in albis (“in white”), which Christians used in reference to Easter week, found its way into Old High German as eostarum, or “dawn.” The other is that Eosturmonath simply meant “the month of opening,” which is comparable to the meaning of “April” in Latin. The names of both the Saxon and Latin months (which are calendrically similar) were related to spring, the season when the buds open.</blockquote>
In either case, the claim that the English celebration is rooted in pagan goddess worship simply has no historical basis, even if some anti-Catholic polemicists have gotten a good deal of mileage out of it.

Easter Is Not a Secretly Pagan Holiday

Trent Horn, author of Why We&#8217;re Pro-Life, digs into some of the Bible verses that people use to support abortion. Turns out, the Bible is pro-life. Go figure&#8230; Find out how you can get free copies of Why We&#8217;re Pro-Life at <a href="https://whyweareprolife.com">whyweareprolife.com.</a>

No. The Bible Does Not Support Abortion.

<div>Are all attributes identical in God? Do the distinctions in his attributes come from our way of understanding him?</div><div>The answer to your first question is yes. Because of God’s absolute simplicity (the fact that there are no parts within him, either physical or metaphysical), all of God’s attributes are one with his essence, which is existence itself. God is his eternity, which is his power, which is his will, which is his intelligence, and so on. Talking about God’s different attributes are just different ways of talking about the one and same reality. Although we distinguish his attributes in thought, they are not distinct in reality.
This doesn’t mean, however, that all his attributes mean the same thing. Just as the expressions “the morning star” and “the evening star” differ in sense while referring to the one and same thing, so to “intellect,” “will,” “goodness,” “power,” etc., differ in sense while referring to one and the same thing when applied to God.
It’s also important to keep in mind that when we predicate these attributes to God, we do so analogically. And this gets to your second question.
When we name God with positive attributes, such as goodness, power, and intellect, we take these names from creatures. But we don’t apply them to God in the same way (univocal predication). Nor do we apply them in an entirely different way (equivocal predication). When we apply them, we recognize that there is similarity, but at the same time, there is also a difference (analogical predication).
As philosopher Edward Feser puts it, “There is in God something that is analogous to power, something analogous to goodness, something analogous to intellect, and so on, and that these &#8216;somethings&#8217; all turn out to be one and the same thing” (Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide, ch. 3).
</div>

How Are We to Understand God’s Attributes?

Last week in Luke 16 we heard the very strange story of the dishonest steward. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/whats-the-deal-with-the-dishonest-steward">I spoke about</a> the joy of forgiveness, and how the steward’s clever scheme, while perhaps superficially unjust, shows the value of forgiveness and grace.
But in today’s parable of Lazarus in the rich man (Dives in the Latin, and in much of the Western art tradition), we see an object lesson in the Lord’s command to “make friends for ourselves by unrighteous mammon” (16:9). According to some of the old commentators, like St. Bede, this parable is meant directly as a confirmation of that principle.
How so? Because Dives had an opportunity to use his wealth—however it was gained—for the good of someone in need right in front of him. Had he done so, perhaps when that wealth failed, he might have been “received into the eternal habitations.”
The “make friends by unrighteous mammon” instruction, then, isn’t a general commendation of dishonest business practices, but a reinforcement that what may be “unrighteous” in the world of money-making may end up being “righteous” in the world of eternity. Helping lift a poor, ailing man out of poverty isn’t going to win the rich man any friends or give him any rewards in this life, but it gains him a friendship and reward for the life to come, which is ultimately more important.
Does this parable mean that helping the poor will bring us to heaven, or that failing to help the poor will send us to hell? Maybe, but we had better be careful about an approach to almsgiving and the works of mercy that treats it like a simplistic credit in the cosmic accounting — almost like the businesses proudly saying that they plant a tree for every item sold. Salvation isn’t a marketing gimmick, and we can’t buy our way into heaven, as if it were just a matter of doing a work of kindness to counteract every work of selfishness or greed. Ultimately, our presence with God in heaven comes down to our relationship with Jesus: have we turned away from sin, away from our own desires, and cooperated with the grace wherein he unites us to himself?
So I think Augustine’s reading of this parable is helpful. He says Lazarus is a type of Christ. He is the wounded man sitting on the doorstep waiting for us to notice him. Augustine even gives us a rather vivid and unsettling image of the Gentiles as the dogs licking the poor man’s sores: they may be dogs, but they at least partake of the Lord’s own body and blood!
Lest we think this Christological reading of the parable means that the Lord doesn’t think we should notice and care for the poor in a more general way, remember that haunting reminder about the “least of these” in Matthew 25. The only path to eternal life is noticing Jesus, and this requires not only noticing his particular life as it appears to us in history, or even his life as it is presented to us in the Church and its sacraments, but also his life as it appears to us in one another. Suffering doesn’t make one holy any more than poverty does, but both suffering and poverty can bring us closer to Christ in a way that riches and comfort never can. So an attitude like that of the parable’s rich man, where we despise and ignore the poor and suffering lest they violate our own comfort and pleasure moves us toward hell in that it represents a habitual lack of interest in finding Jesus where he has promised us he will be.
The final words of this parable further reinforce our Christ-centered reading: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.” It may sound heartless, but remember that only a few chapters back, Jesus appeared on the mountainside alongside Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets. In other words, he’s saying, if you will not listen to me, there is nothing else, no higher or clearer proof that preserves human freedom.
The Fathers and later readers often speak about the “unbridgeable chasm” between Lazarus, in the “bosom of Abraham,” and Dives in hell. This chasm does of course support the idea, maintained by Catholic teaching, that there really is a division and an immediate judgment at the point of death. We may be further purified and perfected, but there is no additional change to revivify a soul that has committed itself to eternal death.
There is, however, another way of looking at this chasm, which is that, if we take Augustine’s Christological reading to heart, we can see the incredible generosity of Christ in bridging the gap between death and life, in rising from the dead as a sign not of necessity, but of overwhelming love and favor. Yes, we should have listened to Moses and the Prophets, but we didn’t. So he is going to make a way through his own flesh. He is going to lower himself to the lowest state possible, even the state of death, so that he might burst open the doors of the eternal habitations.
So although the parable of Dives and Lazarus is a warning, it is also a promise: that conversion is possible in this life. We do not have to follow the way of the world, the way of pleasure and comfort and wealth for its own sake. We can instead turn and follow Christ, recognizing that in the final eternal scheme, all our worldly wealth and status are the most abject poverty in light of his glory and power. Yet he wants to share all his goodness with us, if only we can toss aside the many things of this life holding us down.

A Deeper Look at Lazarus and the Rich Man

<div>Why isn’t the Confiteor said at every Mass?</div><div>The Penitential Act is an essential part of the Sacrifice of the Mass, although the Confiteor need not be prayed as part of it. For more information, see the “Order of the Mass” section of your parish missal.
</div>

Why Not Confiteor at Every Mass?

There’s no shortage of critiques Protestants offer when it comes to the Catholic idea of Sacred Tradition. One of the more common ones goes like this: We can’t know what’s in Sacred Tradition the way we can know what’s in Scripture.
Protestant scholar Robert Godfrey makes exactly this point in his essay “What Do We Mean by Sola Scriptura?” (found in the book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sola-Scriptura-Protestant-Reformation-published/dp/B008IU6MR4/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3E3SGI4I7GA9B&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.TG_o3ywQdoC48xbh_as4T6tpx7_x-j_zi6Rd6187HiaT475OUXZbq0HRS-k_syF1.59U1rVwbG6OIuL7RUuhdeI7IiLVZuOEgIaPYPy4QV88&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=sola+scriptura+the+protestant+position+on+the+bible&amp;qid=1752067364&amp;sprefix=sola+scriptura+lthe+%2Caps%2C164&amp;sr=8-2">The Protestant Position on the Bible</a>). He claims, “Our Roman opponents, while making much of tradition, will never really define tradition or tell you what its content is” (emphasis added).
Another author in that same book, John Armstrong, basically says the same thing in his essay “The Authority of Scripture.” He argues that Tradition can’t be an ultimate authority because we can’t “heed” it the way we can Scripture. He even adds that we can “ponder” a prophet’s words only if they’ve been written down in Scripture.
Then you have Protestant YouTuber Austin Suggs, who brings up this point in his video “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6uFmPWybMY">My Thoughts on Sola Scriptura: Responding to Common Objections</a>.” He says,
<blockquote>Sola Scriptura, in my estimation, doesn’t say Scripture is the only way one could form doctrine. If you can sit down with the apostles and people who knew them directly, you’d be justified in making theological conclusions based on their testimony.</blockquote>
Now, as my colleague Jimmy Akin points out in his <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/tjap/sola-scriptura-trying-something-new">response</a> to Suggs’s video, the implication here is pretty clear: since we no longer have the apostles around to tell us directly what their traditions were (beyond what’s in Scripture), we supposedly can’t know which traditions were truly apostolic or authoritative.
So what can we say in response?
Well, first off, this argument actually ends up undercutting a number of Protestant beliefs. Many of the things our Protestant friends hold dear simply can’t be accounted for by Scripture. That means they’re relying—whether they realize it or not—on the authority of Tradition. Consider this list of things a Protestant most likely affirms:
<ul>
<li>There are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-UZDiEEmns">no more apostles</a>.</li>
<li>Public revelation has <a href="https://thewestminsterstandard.org/the-westminster-confession/">ceased</a> (because there are no more apostles to be inspired).</li>
<li>There are no more inspired writings.</li>
<li>The Epistle to the Hebrews is inspired Scripture.</li>
<li>The words in the Gospel of Mark are inspired.</li>
<li>The Didache is not inspired.</li>
<li>Clement of Rome’s First Letter to the Corinthians is not inspired.</li>
<li>Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon are inspired (even though these were debated by Jewish authorities into the second century).</li>
<li>Christ acts by virtue of two wills—divine and human.</li>
<li>Infant baptism is valid (something affirmed by Lutherans, Methodists, Anglicans, and Presbyterians).</li>
<li>Immersion baptism is the only valid form of baptism (something affirmed by Baptists, Anabaptists, and the Church of Christ).</li>
<li>Baptism is still valid even if performed by a layperson in danger-of-death scenarios.</li>
<li>A man and woman become married by <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/2025/02/dont-write-your-own-marriage-custom-wedding-vows/#:~:text=This%20is%20Christian%20marriage.,of%20the%20Freely%20Given%20podcast.">saying vows</a>, not by consummation.</li>
<li>The oral traditions preached by the apostles are <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Word-Alone-Authority-Scripture/dp/0310515726">identical to</a> what we find in Scripture.</li>
<li>There’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Catholics-Evangelicals-Agreements-Differences/dp/0801038758">no final purification</a> after death for a Christian who dies in God’s friendship.</li>
<li>Jesus and the apostles <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Scripture-Alone-Exploring-Authority-Authenticity-ebook/dp/B00AFWM4YS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WJG2A4BBHUVS&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ChQIbqWGqwelk3AwIMZC4bcjPiQdVdwUS5ZlfFc2vTKxOq4FE4OWNHqebjCSRVjx.zwvwui24WEc7ACWvR2mCRxT6EgVzwYBRjXinMv4KMNs&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=james+white+sola+scriptura&amp;qid=1753112128&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=james+white+sola+scriptur%2Cstripbooks%2C123&amp;sr=1-1">intended sola scriptura</a> to be the rule of faith for Christians after the apostles died.</li>
<li>The apostles’ infallible authority <a href="https://www.amazon.com/What-Means-Be-Protestant-Always-Reforming/dp/0310156327/ref=sr_1_1?crid=160UF6Z5EHLO1&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.rG6RSW1A_FNZGHhb4JwqTw.bCSAWpspJy6n037y-0kls6OZ4bCqjOvYEJ_n5RCZvHY&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=ortlund+what+it+means+to+be+protestant&amp;qid=1753112164&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=ortlund+what+it+means+to+be+protestan%2Cstripbooks%2C101&amp;sr=1-1">didn’t pass on</a> to the “bishops/presbyters” who succeeded them.</li>
</ul>
Now here’s the big question: if a Protestant says we can’t “know,” “heed,” or “ponder” any apostolic truths outside Scripture, then how does he explain the fact that he does know, heed, and ponder all the items above—which are clearly outside the Bible?
He has to choose:
Option A: He gives up this critique of Sacred Tradition, admitting that he can identify apostolic truths outside of Scripture.
Option B: He says these beliefs aren’t apostolic at all—which would mean they’re not binding on Christians.
Neither option is great for the Protestant position.
Now, here’s a second point that builds on the first: the claim that Catholics can’t identify what’s in Sacred Tradition is just flat-out false.
We absolutely can identify Apostolic Traditions—and many Protestants even agree with us on a lot of them. Take a look again at the earlier list. Almost everything in that list (except for the last four items) is shared by Catholics and Protestants.
But we can go farther. Catholics also recognize a number of Apostolic Traditions that Protestants usually don’t accept, including
<ul>
<li>that the seven deuterocanonical books (Wisdom, Baruch, Tobit, Judith, Sirach, 1 &amp; 2 Maccabees) are inspired.</li>
<li>that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven.</li>
<li>that Mary was conceived without sin (the Immaculate Conception).</li>
<li>that Christ instituted seven sacraments.</li>
<li>that certain specific things are required for a sacrament to be valid (like using wheat bread for the Eucharist).</li>
<li>that Christ’s one sacrifice is made present at every Mass.</li>
<li>that bishops are true successors to the apostles, and that this apostolic succession comes through the laying on of hands by someone already in that line.</li>
</ul>
And don’t forget the interpretations of Jesus’ words and actions that the Church has always held through Tradition—interpretations Protestants usually disagree with, but which still count as examples of Sacred Tradition. For example,
<ul>
<li>When Jesus says, “Eat my flesh” and “Drink my blood” (John 6), and “This is my body . . . this is my blood” at the Last Supper, he’s revealing the real presence in the Eucharist.</li>
<li>When he says, “Do this in memory of me,” he’s ordaining the apostles as New Covenant ministerial priests.</li>
<li>When he says, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5), he’s teaching baptismal regeneration.</li>
<li>Peter is the rock in Matthew 16:18, and Jesus intended Peter and his successors to lead the Church.</li>
<li>When Jesus says the apostles can forgive sins, he’s instituting the sacrament of confession (John 20:23).</li>
</ul>
None of these teachings can be fully accounted for by Scripture alone. Yet we believe they’re part of divine revelation passed down through the Church. So contrary to the objection, Catholics can and do identify truths that belong to Sacred Tradition.
Now for one final point. The Bible actually gives us a model for how to identify Sacred Tradition: the council.
In Acts 15, the early Christians faced a serious theological disagreement. Some said Gentiles had to become Jews—specifically, to get circumcised—before they could be saved. Others said no, Gentiles are saved through faith in Jesus, not by following the Old Covenant law.
So what did the apostles and early Church leaders do? They gathered in Jerusalem for a council. After hearing both sides, they issued an authoritative decision: Gentiles are saved by grace through faith, not circumcision.
This was a defining moment. It showed that the Church could come together, guided by the Holy Spirit, and discern what belongs to the deposit of divine revelation. And Christians followed this pattern throughout history. Whenever major disputes arose—whether about the Trinity, the canon of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, or something else—the Church convened a council.
These councils gave us official teachings that bear witness to Sacred Tradition—including, by the way, which books belong in the Bible!
So if we can trust councils to tell us which books are inspired, then surely we can trust them to help identify other parts of Sacred Tradition as well.
Bottom line: Catholics can identify apostolic teachings that aren’t laid out in Scripture. And we even have a God-given structure—the Magisterium—to help us do that faithfully.

The Protestant Take on Tradition

Did God really abandon Jesus?

This is concerning about Martin Luther...

Ever wondered why the Church doesn&#8217;t condemn the stock market? Colin Donovan dives into Catholic social teaching on interest and economics. He lays out the difference between &#8220;usury&#8221; (sinful interest) and fair interest. Discover how the Church views the role of interest in capitalism and the importance of justice and charity in financial dealings. Explore papal encyclicals (like those by Pope St. John Paul II) for a deeper understanding.
Transcript:
Why isn&#8217;t it that the Catholic Church and actually Christianity in general is very fervently against interest-based economics or for example the stock market? The Bible seems to speak very clearly in condemnation against loans being given with interest and that seems to be the foundation of capitalism. So why doesn&#8217;t the Catholic Church speak out against that? 
It does. In fact, if you go to ewten.com and I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;s also on catholic.com, you can look up the papal encyclicals especially of John Paul II who wrote about these issues. So there&#8217;s a lot of teaching. It&#8217;s called social teaching. In the modern era, beginning in the late 1800s with the union movement and you also had communism and capitalism battling it out or beginning to battle it out, the post began to write social encyclicals in dealing with this.
If you look at the scriptural context, you will see that, just on this particular point of interest, you will see that what was condemned was basically sinned against individuals. So the unjust keeping of the cloak of the man at the end of the day, you hold it in surety so guaranteed that he will do the work or do the service that you asked him to do and then you would hold it, just keep holding it rather than returning it or not paying his wages at the end of the day. So the consideration there are considerations of justice and charity. 
So the Church doesn&#8217;t have an abstract &#8220;we&#8217;re against interest.&#8221; No. It&#8217;s the question of what is the justice and the charity of the situation. And in fact, in the early days when interest was being spoken about in the, I guess at the end of the medieval period, the Church was in fact against it. And it did so in ignorance until it understood how an individual in loaning capital out, for example, and then here we&#8217;re going to talk about the basis of capitalism, loans capital out that others can do work with their money and he deserves a just reward. 
And so interest is that reward, interest we get on a savings account or interest we pay to a company for buying a product on time. The question of what is usury then is when does it get to be exorbitant and unjust? And that&#8217;s where the Church settled out in these issues when these were first being raised in the late Middle Ages. There had always been different kinds of banking and so on historically, but that really came to the fore. I believe it was in the 1500s or so and the issue of what constitutes usury, which is the sin of injustice. So not taking interest per se, but taking interest or paying interest unjustly. And this is still an issue when you look at your credit card percentages sometimes and you know that the prime rate is six or seven or eight percent and the company wants 22 or something like this, it makes you wonder is there some usury going on there and they do have excuses as to why they do it. 
You get the deadbeats who don&#8217;t pay their debts and so they have to keep up their income levels and so on. But these are areas where the Church is concerned and in the social encyclicals and in other documents of the Church by the Bishops Conference here in the United States and so on you will find those concerns spoken about and discussed.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

Is It Wrong to Charge Interest on Loans?

In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Trent Horn to debate whether abortion is ever justified.
Transcript:
Caller: Yeah, I just think abortion is part of God&#8217;s plan to help the old population problem. Okay, well, I guess there&#8217;s. There&#8217;s three elements there, Randy. One, whether we have a problem with overpopulation. Two, whether abortion is ever okay as a solution overpopulation. And three, whether it&#8217;s part of God&#8217;s plan. Why do you think it&#8217;s God&#8217;s plan to. To overpopulation? How do you come to that conclusion? Well, the world&#8217;s population has gone from just under 2 billion to 7 and a half in just over 100 years. So, yeah, it&#8217;s got to be part of his plan. Well, how do you know it&#8217;s part of his plan and not just part of your plan? And what people like you think. How do you know God wants. Well, I really don&#8217;t know because I don&#8217;t know. You know, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s a God anyways here, so I kind of threw that in. Can&#8217;t. Can&#8217;t quite be his plan if he&#8217;s not there, right? There you go. Yeah. Yeah.
Trent Horn: Okay. So it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s your plan. All right. It&#8217;s your. This is your plan? Randy, you think we could. Do we need abortion to deal with overpopulation? Well, I guess here&#8217;s. All right, here&#8217;s my question then for you. So you think abortion will decrease overpopulation? Here&#8217;s my hypothetical. Let&#8217;s say not enough women choose to have abortions. Not enough women choose to have abortions. Would you be okay forcing women to have abortions and forcing women to use birth control so that the planet doesn&#8217;t get overpopulated?
Caller: I think it should be a woman&#8217;s choice there. Yeah, but what about overpopulation? So you would let people not have abortions? You&#8217;d be okay with that even if the world got overpopulated? Well, I think the natural course, you know, women will have abortions or contraception there. You know, like I said, the world&#8217;s population doubled in the last 60 years with abortion and contraception. Right. So. But. But if people thank goodness that we, you know, women have had access.
Trent Horn: But, Randy, abortion&#8217;s been legal all through that time, yet population levels still keep increasing. So my point is, do you agree that it&#8217;s wrong to force people to have abortions even if the world&#8217;s overpopulated?
Caller: Well, sure.
Trent Horn: Okay, so. And would you say it&#8217;s wrong to do that because it violates their rights?
Caller: Well, I think as a human species, we&#8217;ve got to be careful with the finite resources that the world has. Right, but does forcing a woman to have an abortion violate her rights? No, it does not. Wait, no. So. So it&#8217;s okay to force a woman to have an abortion? Well, again, she&#8217;s got to figure that out for herself. But Randy, just let&#8217;s be. I want to be very clear. Is it wrong to force a woman to have an abortion? No. Wow. Randy, do you call yourself pro choice? Sure. So you are pro choice, but it&#8217;s not wrong to force someone to have an abortion? You don&#8217;t see the massive contradiction there? No, because the way you&#8217;re putting it there, it sounds like that. But again, I said that a woman, you know, it should be a woman&#8217;s choice.
Trent Horn: Okay, so if it. See, Randy, you&#8217;re contradicting yourself here. You say it should be a woman&#8217;s choice. That would follow that you can&#8217;t force her to do it.
Caller: Sure. Okay. Okay. Oh, wow. I&#8217;m so relieved. Well, hopefully. Let&#8217;s just keep going. So you. Let&#8217;s try that again then. You should not force a woman to have an abortion. Is that your position? But you should have a right to have an abortion. Right. But you shouldn&#8217;t force her to do it. Sure.
Trent Horn: Okay, good. So here&#8217;s the thing. Here&#8217;s my argument then. If you can&#8217;t violate a woman&#8217;s rights to reduce overpopulation, if you can&#8217;t force a woman to have an abortion, then you shouldn&#8217;t force a child to be aborted for the same reason. That&#8217;d be my argument.
Caller: Okay, again, that&#8217;s your. That&#8217;s your prerogative. Yeah. All right.
Trent Horn: Do you. Do you think. Well, I guess I&#8217;ll put it this way, Andy, very bluntly. Do you think it&#8217;s okay to kill children if there are too many children in the world?
Caller: But we&#8217;re talking about children. We&#8217;re talking about having an abortion. What is abortion? Well, I&#8217;m just saying, you know, we&#8217;re talking about abortion, not. Not killing a child. Randy, what is abortion? It&#8217;s getting rid of a fetus. What is a fetus? It&#8217;s a pre born human. So it&#8217;s a very young human, but it&#8217;s not, you know, it can&#8217;t survive on its own. So it&#8217;s not a human in the full sense of the term there. Yeah.
Trent Horn: So you&#8217;re saying that because a human being is very, very dependent on his mother or her mother, it&#8217;s okay to kill that human being just because they&#8217;re really dependent on mom.
Cy Kellett: He hung up on us. Thanks. Randy. I gotta say, if I may. You do a Fine job, Trent. And a lot of times that involves accepting certain premises that the person gives you and say, okay, we&#8217;ll follow on that premise. But the premise that the world is overpopulated with humans or ever has been
Caller: overpopulated with humans, now that&#8217;s false. Is a false premise. Yes, that&#8217;s false.
Cy Kellett: And this is a pet peeve of my own. So I&#8217;m inflicting this on you a little bit.
Caller: That&#8217;s fine.
Cy Kellett: But this was when I was a kid. Walter Cronkite and other media elites pushed this idea of overpopulation. And what followed was brutal treatment of women in India and China and in other parts of the world, but primarily India and China. And it&#8217;s a horrible thing. And we have to stop with this idea that making babies is somehow bad.
Trent Horn: It&#8217;s simply not true. In fact, in many parts of the world, we&#8217;re experiencing a birth dearth, if you will, that we have a demographic winter. There are many areas of the world where we are not at replacement level. You will have an aging population without a younger population to care for them or to provide them with Social Security benefits, retirement benefits. That is the problem facing most of the world today. So we are not overpopulated. Researchers have shown there&#8217;s more than enough food to feed billions more people on Earth. We continue to revolutionize agriculture production, food production. Modern famines are not caused by too many people. They&#8217;re caused by corrupt governments that prevent food resources from being able to reach people. This claim was the product of environmental alarmists from the 1960s, like people like Paul Ehrlich, who wrote the book the Population Bomb.
Caller: Yeah, and if we all live like Paul Ehrlich, then there&#8217;s not enough resources.
Trent Horn: And he was fantastically wrong. He wrote his book in the 1960s and he predicted that there would be worldwide famines and hundreds of millions of people would die in the 1970s, that this is the beginning of the end. And he was, he said by the year 2000, the nation of England wouldn&#8217;t even exist anymore. And he was just wrong on all. By 1989, he bumped it to 2000.
Caller: Oh, did he?
Trent Horn: Yeah. And so, you know, when you have these kinds of alarmists, people jump forward and try to put forward these barbaric solutions that themselves create problems. You look at China and India, abortion that was used to curb so called overpopulation. What resulted in happening was it created a gender imbalance in China. You now have a skewed population where men outnumber women by a sizable margin. So that there&#8217;s large numbers of men who have no hope of finding someone to marry. When you have large numbers of men that can&#8217;t find stable careers and someone to marry, that&#8217;s not a great circumstance to be in. Leads to crime, can lead to terrorism, you know. So we should rather respect the dignity of the human person and always pursue good solutions to the problems that we face in this world. One not, not adopt, one should not adopt a solution that is worse than the problem at hand.
Cy Kellett: Amen, brother. Amen. And I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll tell you this too. I was looking on NBC News about 10 days ago, maybe two weeks ago, had an article on overpopulation and the photo that they chose was a photo of all 100% brown skinned people. And I thought the underlying racism implied in the whole overpopulation movement is really what they mean is there&#8217;s too many of those kind of people. It&#8217;s not a problem of there&#8217;s too many people like me.
Trent Horn: Well, Ignatius Press has a wonderful book out called Target Africa that talks about neocolonialism in Africa where you have on the one hand liberal progressives who say we have to respect other people&#8217;s cultures and we can&#8217;t impose our views on them so that missionary work is imperialistic and wrong. But on the other hand, they promote in these cultures the use of contraception and abortion. So they kind of talk out of both sides of their mouths in that respect.

I Think Abortion Is God’s Plan for Overpopulation…

Trent Horn cites Jesus&#8217;s &#8220;binding and loosing&#8221; message to the Apostles as the basis on which the Church makes her authoritative judgments concerning teachings and rituals not explicitly laid out in Scripture.
Transcript:
Host: Jacob in Portland, Oregon, listening on Mater Dei Radio, you are on, what&#8217;s your objection to the faith for Trent Horn?
Caller: Yeah, I&#8217;m actually wanting to piggyback on the previous caller who called about the divisive, you know, the schisms that kind of happened between Protestantism and Catholics. And maybe, I don&#8217;t know if this is where he was going, but this is a thought that came into my mind, is that I understand that you can use reason and Scripture to support a lot of things, but as a Protestant I tend to have more of a pious silence on a lot of these things that I feel like the Catholic Church has really defined in great, great scrutiny, that&#8211;and I just don&#8217;t know where they get that sort of authority.
Like perhaps, like just an example, the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation, or the fact that the wafer has to be wheat, and there&#8217;s just so many things that have been defined, and I am challenged to to know where that authority comes from in such great detail.
Trent: Okay, sure. Well, Jacob, it seems to me that your preference for defining theological truths would be that they&#8217;re explicitly described in Scripture, so you wonder how could the Church define certain things like the essence of transubstantiation, or how&#8211;what elements are required at Mass, because these aren&#8217;t explicitly described in the Bible. Is that where you&#8217;re coming from?
Caller: Yeah, well I understand tradition and its importance, and I actually think that you guys have that right as opposed to the Protestants, but I guess if it&#8217;s not in Scripture, who gave you that, who gave the Catholics that knowledge, and how can that be proven that that knowledge was was given?
Trent: Jesus. That would be the short answer. What I would say is that when Jesus founded his Church on the Apostle Peter and the other apostles in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18, He conferred on to them authority to be able to lead and teach in the Church and to be the safeguards and custodians of divine revelation. Specifically in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18, they are told that the Church is given the power to &#8220;bind and loose,&#8221; so what Jesus says to Peter, for example, is &#8220;Whatever you bind on Earth will be bound in Heaven; whatever you loose on Earth will be loosed in Heaven.&#8221;
There is a Protestant Biblical scholar named Artie France who says this language of binding and loosing goes back, actually, to Judaism, that rabbis could send out others and give them their authority in order to determine doctrine and practice. So binding and loosing is a way of talking about how you determine doctrine and practice, because Jesus did not answer every question we have that is not found explicitly in Scripture.
For example, here, two examples I can think&#8211;here&#8217;s a prime example: what are the words a person should say at a baptism? Scripture does not explicitly describe the words we should say, or the method we should choose to baptize. Would you agree that&#8217;s not explicitly described in Scripture?
Caller: It isn&#8217;t.
Trent: Right, so then, we would then&#8211; somebody has to say, &#8220;Well, I have authority to determine this,&#8221; and ultimately it&#8217;s gonna be a Protestant who says, &#8220;Well, I have the authority because I think my interpretation is correct, on what the Bible teaches about this.&#8221; And obviously Protestants disagree about the words that should be used, and especially the method that can be used, whereas what Catholics would say is, &#8220;Well, the Church has been given this authority to define, to be able to reveal what God has given to us in His Divine Law, but also the Church has authority to administer Ecclesiastical Law, or law that helps the Church spread its&#8230;spread the Gospel and be able to function.&#8221;
These would include laws related to, you know, how weddings and funerals ought to be conducted&#8211;that would be one example there, and other things related to liturgy or fasting rules, things like this; things that are not explicitly described in Scripture, which even Protestants have to have, because Scripture also never tells us how to conduct weddings or funerals, it never even says anything about people getting married in a Church, for example.
So I would say that the authority comes from the Church, and we see this in Scripture as a witness to this, but ultimately, though, I would ask, for the person who says, &#8220;Well, I think we ought to be silent on that which Scripture does not explicitly teach about,&#8221; I would ask, &#8220;Where does Scripture say we ought to be silent and only believe what&#8217;s explicitly taught there?&#8221; I would say Scripture actually never issues that kind of a command for us. So do you see where I&#8217;m going with that?
Caller: Yes. I guess&#8230;
Trent: We only have a few minutes left, so how about one last thought and I&#8217;ll try tie it up?
Caller: Okay, well&#8230;you know what, I&#8217;m okay, I think I&#8217;m satisfied.
Trent: Oh, that&#8217;s great. I&#8217;ll tell you what, if you&#8217;re not, feel free to call back in, I would enjoy continuing the conversation, or if you&#8217;d like to hear a little more, check out our website at Catholic.com, a lot of great resources there.

Does the Church Need More ‘Pious Silence’?

Many accuse Christians of hate speech for voicing their belief that homosexual acts are immoral and contrary to human nature. In this Ready Reasons video, Karlo shows why this objection fails and explains how a negative moral evaluation of a behavior doesn’t necessarily involve hatred for the person engaging in the immoral behavior.
&nbsp;
Transcript:
Are Christians guilty of hate speech for voicing their belief that homosexual acts are immoral and contrary to human nature? Many in our culture think so.
So what can we say in response?
First, it’s not hate speech to say a particular behavior is inappropriate human behavior given our nature as human beings. If that were true, then any negative moral evaluation of behavior would be hate speech. For example, is it hate speech to say pedophilic behavior is contrary to human nature? Of course not!
Therefore, the criterion for determining what is hate speech can’t be merely saying a particular behavior is wrong. I can judge a behavior to be wrong without hating the person. We do it all the time.
Second, the assertion is inconsistent with itself. Why are Christians slapped with accusation of hate speech when they voice their negative moral evaluation of homosexual behavior, yet the objector is exempt when he negatively judges a Christian’s behavior for opposing homosexuality? Isn’t the objector guilty of the very thing he accuses Christians of?
It’s interesting that our culture allows vocal support of the same-sex lifestyle in the name of diversity and freedom of speech. But when Christians vocalize their opposition to the same-sex lifestyle, those same rights of diversity and freedom of speech are revoked.
My friends, just because we say a particular behavior is not befitting human beings, it doesn’t mean we hate the people who do those things. We must judge actions, but we must always do so with respect for the person.
If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com.
For Catholic Answers, I’m Karlo Broussard. Thanks for watching.

Are Catholics Guilty of Hate Speech?

Joe Heschmeyer tackles the complex theological question of predestination and free will. He explains that predestination exists, but not in the Calvinistic sense that negates free will. He uses the example of Pharaoh hardening his heart in the Bible to illustrate how both God&#8217;s will and human choice can coexist.
Transcript:
I know that there&#8217;s some denominations that believe in predestination and my original
instinctive reaction is like, &#8220;What?&#8221; But then I was like, &#8220;Well,
kind of hard to argue against that when you think about, say, Judas, who was like, he&#8217;s supposed to betray Jesus. Like, as soon as he got the Eucharist, it was like right after that, then Satan entered him. And then I don&#8217;t remember the exact
verse off the top of my head or nor the exact wording, but as I recall, oh, when God was assuring Moses that he&#8217;d be with him, he&#8217;d also assured him that I&#8217;d make ram if he&#8217;s obstinate or stone hearted. I was like, &#8220;Well&#8230;&#8221; Is there predestination? I don&#8217;t know how to respond.
Is that what you want to know?
I don&#8217;t know how to&#8230; I know that there isn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s just I don&#8217;t know how to kind of counter somebody bringing that up, say, some non-Catholic throws that at me.
I was like, &#8220;All right, Joe?&#8221; That&#8217;s a very good question. The first thing I&#8217;d say is there is predestination, just not in the Calvinistic sense of it. So God is outside of time. And so anything that happens, God either desired that it happened or permitted it to happen for some reason. And so in that sense, we have to take&#8230; I mean, Saint Paul is very clear, those whom he foreknew, he also predestined. He even uses the language of predestination to describe this. The problem is that when modern Christians hear the term predestination, they often have a very specific, very Protestant, very Calvinistic kind of understanding of what that means, that if there is predestination, then there is no free will. Then our choices are only illusory or we&#8217;re not making free choices. And that doesn&#8217;t follow logically, and it&#8217;s not true. So I&#8217;m going to take the example of Pharaoh as a clear way you can see this. In Exodus chapter 9 and 10, we hear both that in verse 34, Pharaoh seized the rain and the hail and thunder it ceases. He send yet again and hardened his heart.
And then in verse 35, it says, &#8220;So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened.&#8221; And then in Exodus 10, 1, God says, &#8220;Go into Moses for I have hardened his heart.&#8221; So in the span of a few verses, we hear both that Pharaoh hardens his own heart and that God hardens Pharaoh&#8217;s heart. So how can we harmonize that without just ignoring one side of the ledger or the other? The best explanation I&#8217;ve heard. So it was super hot here in the Midwest until we got an amazing day of relief. It&#8217;s like 18 degrees cooler today than it was yesterday. And it was blazingly hot. And when you have mud out in the sun like that, it hardens. When you have butter out in the sun like that, it melts. So we can say the sun hardened the soil and it melted the butter, but that doesn&#8217;t mean that the sun hates the soil and loves the butter or anything like that. What we&#8217;re really doing is it&#8217;s two ways of describing the reaction, soil versus butter, has to the sun. And so likewise, we react to God in different ways, either by opening our hearts or by hardening them. And so in that way, just as we can talk about the soil being hardened or melted, we can talk about our hearts being hardened or melted, but we have an actual role to play and whether we allow our hearts to be open to the Lord or whether we harden them. And so if we harden them, we can both say God hardened our hearts. And since it was in response to God that this happened, just like it&#8217;s in response to the sun, the clay hardens and that we harden our own hearts. So both can be true. So that&#8217;s why I would suggest there. And the fact that God incorporates even our sin into his plan of salvation, as we see most famously in the case of Judas, doesn&#8217;t make it not sin. Like the reason Judas is punished, the reason that Jesus can say would be better for him not to have been born is because it actually does matter what we freely choose to do. If we had no agency over it, we wouldn&#8217;t be held accountable for it. If you are, let&#8217;s say, on a train as a passenger and the train is in some sort of horrible collision and somebody dies, you&#8217;re a passenger on the train, you had no agency, you had nothing to do with that. You were there, but you didn&#8217;t cause it to happen. You were simply along for the ride. And so if predestination was like that, we could never be held accountable. And the early Christians recognized this, by the way, St. Justin Martyr responded to the popular pagan view of the time, which was fate, and said, that is not what we believe as Christians. We believe in free will. So in the 100s, you have very clearly the fact that the Christian conception of predestination very explicitly includes the freedom of our will to cooperate with or resist God.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

Was Judas Predestined for Failure?

<div>Can I proceed to sponsor someone entering the Church on Easter if they made an iffy/half-hearted reconcilation last week? How responsible am I for the grave matter on their soul, since they will be receiving the Holy Body of Christ Saturday night?</div><div>I&#8217;m not sure how you could definitively judge that their confession was &#8220;iffy/half-hearted.&#8221; Even if the person said that, you don&#8217;t know if they were simply acting somewhat disinterested because he didn&#8217;t want to discuss the matter.
If the person has fulfilled all the requirements of the parish and the priest feels the person is ready for confirmation, then I would suggest you defer to that judgment.
</div>

Confirmation Sponsor Quandary?

By the first century A.D., the books of the Old Testament had been written, but how did the canon form? Why were some—like Ezekiel and Esther—included, while others—like 1 Enoch and Jubilees—were not?
Some claim that the decisions were made by a gathering of 120 Jewish sages known as the Great Assembly, which was founded after the Babylonian Exile by Ezra, around 444 B.C.  
In the A.D. 200s, rabbinical sages attributed all kinds of decisions to the Great Assembly, including the Old Testament canon. However, we have no contemporary records of the Great Assembly and no documents it issued. The earliest claims are from around 600 years later, and modern scholars doubt that it did the things claimed or that it even existed. It looks as though the rabbis—the intellectual descendants of the Pharisees—attributed their own views to the legendary body to give them antiquity. 
Another view holds that the priests made the decisions and kept an archive of the sacred books in the temple. Anything in this collection was canonical; anything that wasn’t was not. 
This view is mere speculation and is not backed up by the evidence. We know that the Torah was kept at the Temple (2 Kings 22:8-20), but we don’t have a record of an official archive of the scriptures there. It would be surprising if there were, for the prophets were critical of how the Temple was run. Also, the Sadducees appear to have rejected many books of Scripture, and they were closely associated with the Temple. 
A third view holds that there were two canons in circulation—the Palestinian canon and the Alexandrian canon. The first contained the protocanonical Old Testament books written in Hebrew (with some Aramaic passages). It was used in Palestine and represented the pure Old Testament. Outside Palestine, where Greek was common, the broader, Alexandria-based Septuagint collection was used. 
Advocates of this theory sometimes claim that the Palestinian canon was finalized around A.D. 90 at a meeting known as the Council of Jamnia. This view was common in the nineteenth century, but twentieth-century scholarship destroyed it. There was disagreement even in Palestine regarding which books were considered to be Scripture, and some didn’t consider the canon closed.  
All Jews—and even the Samaritans—accepted the Pentateuch. These five books were foundational for the Jewish faith, and they were considered by far the most important books. Even those who accepted other works as Scripture considered these pre-eminent. 
The Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch as Scripture, and we have no evidence they ever accepted other books as such. It thus appears they had a closed and very limited canon. 
The same may be true of the Sadducees. The Church Fathers state that the Sadducees accepted only the Pentateuch (Hippolytus, Philosophumena 9:29; Origen, Against Celsus 1:49; Commentary on Matthew 17:35-36; Jerome, Commentary on Matthew 3:22:31-32). 
As Luke notes (Acts 23:8), they didn’t accept the resurrection of the dead, which is unambiguously attested in passages outside the Pentateuch, like Daniel 12:1-2 (cf. Isa. 26:19, Ezek. 37:1-14). It’s hard to see how they included these books in their canon if they disbelieved in the resurrection. Also, when the Sadducees challenge Jesus about the resurrection (Matt. 22:23-33), he cites the Pentateuch (Exod. 3:6) instead of the more obvious passages outside it—likely because they didn’t accept the other books.  
The Sadducees thus appear not to have accepted all of the books of the Hebrew Old Testament, and they may have had a canon limited to the Pentateuch. 
This wasn’t the case for the Pharisees. They accepted additional books that corresponded roughly to the protocanonical books found in Jewish Bibles today. However, the boundaries of this collection were still somewhat fuzzy. 
Those who say the Council of Jamnia closed their canon around A.D. 90 admit that it wasn’t closed before this time—and that’s true—but it wasn’t fixed until later.  
There was no “council” at Jamnia. Councils are temporary gatherings that meet for a time and then disband. They are a Christian rather than a Jewish institution. What actually happened was that, during the Jewish War of the A.D. 60s, a sage named Johanan ben Zakkai obtained permission from Roman authorities to establish a rabbinical school in Jamnia (also known as Jabneh or Yavneh). After the war, the Jewish ruling council relocated there. 
We don’t have records saying the sages of Jamnia attempted to close the canon. In fact, rabbinic writings such as the Mishnah and the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds reveal <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/formation-of-the-biblical-canon-volume-1-9780567668769/">there was a diversity of opinion</a> among the sages about certain books. Some rabbis opposed the scriptural status of six books—Ruth, Esther, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Ezekiel. By contrast, some quoted Sirach as a book of Scripture, though it was eventually excluded. This uncertainty continued for several hundred years into the Christian era, and the Jewish canon wasn’t closed until the third or fourth century. 
The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed that the Essenes had an even larger collection of scriptures. They appear to have included all of the protocanonicals except Esther. The likely reason is that the Jewish liturgical calendar was extremely important to them, and Esther conflicted with their understanding of the calendar. Hebrew and Aramaic copies of books like Sirach and Tobit also were discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls.  
The sect had a large library of other materials, and many probably weren’t regarded as Scripture. However, several factors—such as whether they were quoted as Scripture, had commentaries based on them, or were treated as prophetic texts—have led scholars to argue that some of them were. These include 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and a document known as the Temple Scroll. 
We’ve already mentioned the Septuagint tradition, which included not only the protocanonicals but also seven additional books—Tobit, Judith, 1-2 Maccabees, Baruch, Sirach, and Wisdom—as well as expanded editions of Daniel and Esther. This tradition also had fuzzy boundaries, and some editions of the Septuagint included additional books, such as 1-2 Esdras, 3-4 Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasseh. 
There were thus at least five major canonical traditions in the first century: 
<ul>
<li> The Samaritan tradition</li>
<li> The Sadducee tradition</li>
<li> The Pharisee tradition</li>
<li> The Essene tradition</li>
<li> The Septuagint tradition</li>
</ul>
None except the Samaritan tradition, and possibly the Sadducee tradition, was a closed, fixed list of Scripture. Instead, they were open and had fuzzy boundaries, and this fuzziness would persist for centuries into the Christian age. 
Finally, there were books in circulation that were presented as divine revelation, though we can’t show that they were part of one of these established canonical traditions. They include works like the Apocalypse of Zephaniah. Some modern authors dismiss them, as if nobody in the ancient world regarded them as Scripture, but this doesn’t fit the evidence. That these books survived indicates they were popular. If they hadn’t been, not enough copies would have been made for them to survive. An individual copy had only a small chance of surviving the ages, so there must have been many copies in circulation. But if a popular book presented itself as prophecy—like the Apocalypse of Zephaniah—this is strong evidence at least some ancient Jews considered it Scripture.

How We Got the Old Testament

Who is the sinner? That seems to be the question on everyone’s lips in this long passage from John’s Gospel. The disciples, always ready to say what everyone else is thinking, use a blind man as an object lesson. Who sinned? they ask—The man himself or his parents?
Neither, says Jesus, with the rather obvious subtext: You’re asking the wrong question.
Whether or not the disciples get it, John goes on to show just how much everyone else seems to have the same problem. If the disciples wanted to know who sinned to cause the blindness, the Pharisees want to know, in a weird sort of reversal, who sinned to heal it. Or rather, how it could be possible for an obviously sinful man to heal something that was so obviously caused by sin.
What’s going on here? Today, people still love finding someone to blame. though most of us probably find the language of “sinners” and guilt here strange. This is for both good and bad reasons. One good reason is that we have been formed by regular penitential acts in Christian practice, and so we’re intuitively opposed to the Pharisaic stance, which wants to label some people as “sinners” and others as righteous. Surely by now we know that we are all sinners. One bad reason, maybe, is that, despite the knowledge of universal sinfulness, we do not like to believe that our sins actually affect us. We prefer to think of sins purely in terms of disobedience, not in terms of physical and social consequence.
I say this is bad, but there is some good in it: unlike the disciples and the Pharisees, we are unlikely to look at someone’s pain or disability and immediately chalk it up to his sins, or his parents’ sins. Medical science is a great help in this regard, because it makes us aware of different kinds of corruption beyond our control. But we can take this too far by assuming that everything is reducible to physical causality. No doubt this is convenient, because it means we can never be blamed for anything. But we then fall into a kind of spiritual escapism, where we never have to deal with sin on anything but a theoretical basis.
Jesus gives us no easy way out in John. He does insist that the man’s blindness is not his fault, or his parents’ fault, but the reason he gives is maybe even more disturbing: he says the man was born blind so that the works of God might be made manifest.
What could this possibly mean? On the surface, it suggests that God made the man blind so that later God could heal him. That is why I call it disturbing, because it seems to make God the source of sickness.
And is God the source? Well, is God the source of all things? Certainly Scripture says that he is. Other religions prefer to separate sources: one divine being is the source of good, another of evil; one of light, another of darkness; and so on. Not a few Christians find themselves in this same category, sometimes on purpose, sometimes by accident, by imagining an Old Testament God full of wrath and judgment and a New Testament God full of love and mercy. But the Bible does not leave us that option: there is only the one God, utterly transcendent, who is the source of all things.
Does this really mean, though, that God is, directly, the source of the man’s blindness? There is another stream running through Scripture and tradition, which speaks of human sin and the way that humanity, the apex of creation, caused corruption to enter nature (see Gen. 3, Rom. 8). In this stream, it is clear that God is not the source of sin and evil; we are. Or, more properly, our free will is. And so God is the source in that he created us and gave us free will, but evil is not something he made; it is something he allowed, as a consequence of how he created us.
This still doesn’t answer the question about the man born blind. What is the reason for his blindness? What is the cause?
I think the most honest immediate answer is, there is no reason. Evil is by nature contrary to reason. It is not reasonable that a man should be born blind through no fault of his own; it is not reasonable that bad things should happen to good people. This is what it means to say we live in a world of sin. Modern Christians like saying, “Everything happens for a reason,” but this can blithely obscure the way evil disrupts the rational order of things. We have to name evil for what it is.
But—and this is a crucial “but”—God can create out of nothing. God can impose rationality where there is no rationality. God can transform chaotic death and destruction into good. In Tolkien’s wonderful creation myth, Ainulindalë, the creator Ilúvatar says to Melkor, the figure of Satan, that his attempts to sow disorder in the cosmic music will not ultimately succeed: “For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.” And so Jesus can say, without making God the source of evil, that there is a reason for the man’s blindness where, in a world ruled by sin, there would be none. The reason is the glory of God.
This is a hard teaching; who can accept it? It is much easier to go around insisting that “everything happens for a reason.” That may seem an easy comfort to those on the outside, but it mostly seems to ring false to those nearest to loss and tragedy, unless perhaps they are very saintly indeed.
We have to look the darkness of evil in the face and acknowledge its unreason, its utter contempt for “why.” Only then does God answer with the creative reason that makes loss into meaning, that makes sickness into the opportunity for a yet more beautiful healing.
If we understand this—if we understand the mysterious nature of God’s response to evil—maybe we can better understand what Jesus was about in his earthly ministry of healing. We read these stories, and so much of the time, we get this picture of Jesus just walking around fixing everybody’s problems. And so then we wonder why God doesn’t just come and fix all our problems. Why doesn’t God heal that family member who’s sick? Why doesn’t Jesus heal me? Why doesn’t Jesus just fix the problems in our town, our state, our nation, our world?
But, as we see in today’s story, Jesus’ healing isn’t a walk in the park: the poor recipient is dragged all over the place and cross-examined. It wasn’t just a simple fix. And anyway, the point wasn’t to fix things; it was to show God’s glory.
Fixing things, in people with free will, is never as straightforward as we would like it to be. You see, God does want to heal us. But that healing is not a quick fix. It is not a painless twirl of the wand in which everything suddenly becomes okay. Like any real healing, it involves pain, and itching, and questions, and trust.
And so, when St. Paul instructs us to walk as children of the light, what he means is to live with the knowledge that God is in charge, even when it appears that the darkness is winning.
To believe that God is in charge is to say something radical like what Jesus says—to say that an inexplicable and irrational problem can have a purpose because God is creative enough to give it one. To walk as children of the light is to enter this strange hospital of sinners known as the Church, trusting that our doctor can transform even our deepest wounds into the glorious and life-giving scars of his passion. We will never be without those scars, just as he will never be without his. Yet they shall be wonderful, like his.
Have you ever noticed that verse from Psalm 23? “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” I know that I, at least, usually gloss over it, because it’s hard to see why enemies should have anything to do with this wonderful banquet of divine goodness at the end of the psalm, apart from pure spitefulness. But this is important: in the heavenly banquet, our enemies are no longer an occasion for fear or anger or even gloating. They are an occasion for deeper joy.
We all have enemies, don’t we? Perhaps you have a real personal nemesis. But for many of us, the enemy is maybe the self, my own ego, my own scarred past, an old relationship, a financial collapse, a looming sickness. Maybe the enemy is loneliness and hurt; maybe it’s working too much, or too little; maybe it’s that person who just always seems to get on my nerves.
And we just want God to fix it, to get rid of these enemies, to vanquish them. But real healing is harder, because it means letting them be redefined, given purpose and meaning. It means seeing in darkness the coming dawn, and saying with the confidence of David, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Why God Doesn’t Heal You

The greatest trick the devil ever played...

Catholic Answers apologist Tim Staples addresses concerns about reading books by figures like Machiavelli, previously banned by the Church. While those bans are no longer binding, Tim emphasizes the importance of understanding the Church&#8217;s reasons and assessing your own spiritual maturity. He encourages informed reading for those strong in faith but advises caution for those susceptible to the presented ideas.
&nbsp;
Transcript:
Edward, thank you for the call. Go ahead with your question for Tim. Hi Tim. Yes, hello. Okay, so there was a recent book that I had been turned off of because I discovered that it included some work by Machiavelli and I understand that Machiavelli&#8217;s works were all banned by the church for quite a long time, even though it&#8217;s my understanding that that&#8217;s been discontinued. So I wanted to ask, would it be sinful to read literature by people like Machiavelli? No, it would not be sinful. But I appreciate your question, Edward, because I do think that we need to take seriously those, you know, documents from the church. The church is our mother. She loves us. And there&#8217;s a reason why the church banned those. And remember, we&#8217;re talking about a time when there was a lot of illiteracy. There was a lot of naivete, like we don&#8217;t have it today, right, Cyco? I think it&#8217;s with all the images, you know, from video and all that. I think we&#8217;re becoming less literate, not more literate. Yeah, it is true. And so we have to take those things seriously. But of course, from a canonical perspective, no, they do not have any binding force any longer. But yeah, I want to know what books were banned and what were not, but then I will read them.
And it&#8217;s okay to read them, understanding why did Holy Mother Church say no, because hey, there&#8217;s stuff in here that&#8217;s dangerous. But remember, even those, you know, lists of banned books, it didn&#8217;t mean that theologians and philosophers could not read them. That was a list, generally speaking, for the faithful. Hey, these things are bad. They can lead you astray. Don&#8217;t read them. But of course, the church had theologians and scholars and seminary professors and stuff that read them even back then in order to refute them, right? And so yeah, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with it, but we still have to take seriously. And I would add this, Cy, Kelly. Yes, Tim Staples. That if you&#8217;re weak in your faith, you shouldn&#8217;t. Now, I can&#8217;t tell you that, you know, this is a near occasion of sin for you and you can&#8217;t do it, but you need to be honest with yourself. I mean, it&#8217;s like porn. We all know, right?
You don&#8217;t look at porn because it can lead you and will lead you into sin. Well, in the area of the faith, if you read stuff that&#8217;s shaky, I know my son Luke, who&#8217;s listening probably right now, Luke loves to grab some of&#8211;he reads everything. My son reads every book in the house. My goodness, this kid is, he&#8217;s just a voracious reader, but he&#8217;ll pick up McCarthy&#8217;s book, you know, or some book like that. And I have to warn him, hey, you know, that&#8217;s not&#8211;that&#8217;s actually a guy teaching false teachings and whatnot. And so I warn him and then he can warn it. He can read it properly. And if he has questions, he can ask me. So that&#8217;s what we have to do is if we&#8217;re reading these things, we&#8217;re reading them in order to understand the world better so we can evangelize better.
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Can Catholics Read Banned Books?

“Now the Catholic Faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity; Neither confusing the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.”
So says the Athanasian Creed, also known as the Quicunque vult, which for many centuries was recited in the Western divine office every day at prime. This creed summarizes in its own way the dogmatic tradition of the Church given in the Nicene Creed and the ecumenical councils of the first millennium.
I call it the “dogmatic tradition” deliberately, and not as an insult. People today may dislike the concept of dogma, or authoritative teaching, but there’s no other true way to describe the way that trinitarian theology functions in the Christian and Catholic tradition. It is dogma, which is to say, it is not an opinion that you can take or leave based on personal preference. It is not one interpretation of things that can be revised at any time. It is a line in the sand, a boundary, a marker, that says, Here is something that is so central that we cannot be who we are if we deny it. In other words, we may wrestle with the dogma of the Trinity, we may try to understand it better, we may try to state it in new ways—but we cannot revise it or alter it and remain who we are as the Church for which Christ gave his life
But maybe many people will then ask, So what? Perhaps we feel no need to maintain a creed that is recognizable to the apostles and their successors. We have moved on, after all, in so many things. For certain strands of skeptical modernity, embracing a creed from the fourth century makes about as much sense as embracing medicine from the fourth century.
And yet, I think, the intrusion of that larger and longer story is exactly why the dogma of the Trinity matters to us in a direct and personal way. I hope it goes without saying that, as a Catholic priest, I believe what the Creed says about God’s unity and trinity; it goes without saying that the Church has insisted, since a very early time, that this was the only way to understand what happened in the life, death, resurrection, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/hope-until-we-meet-again">ascension</a> of Jesus Christ. But those are intellectual responses to intellectual problems, and I doubt that most of us spend much time from day to day wondering how it is that God could have an eternal Son, and what it would mean for that Son to become incarnate, and how they could both be one unchanging God while remaining distinct.
I wonder if the gift of trinitarian dogma is valuable and useful for us precisely as dogma. What I mean is this: By giving us a foundational tradition that can neither be proved nor disproved through normal human reason, God’s self-revelation has shown us not just what God is like, but also what the world is like. We are born into a world that we did not choose. Creation, life—everything that we know and love about existence—is a gift. Sure, we can look at it and think about it and try to understand it, but to do all this in any meaningful sense, we have to take that first leap of faith, which is to just acknowledge that it is, that we are. This has always been the most basic existential proof of God.
Our takeaway, then, from the givenness and permanence of the Church’s faith in the Trinity is that the life lived in faith is a gift. We do not have to make it up as we go along. We are not thrown into the cosmos naked to fend for ourselves. We are free because we are born into a story that we did not choose, a story whose foundation is the infinite love of God’s own choice to create us and to be with us forever.
On this Octave Day of Pentecost, we do well to remember our baptism. Baptism is birth. Did we choose to be born, in biological terms? The notion is ridiculous. Life is simply given. And even though the Catholic Church views adult baptism—the baptism of converts, in other words—as the theoretical norm, the baptism of children is a norm in another way, for it highlights the graciousness of God’s gift. When we baptize a child, the choices, the stories, that precede her own choices frame her story and shape it toward freedom and love. She doesn’t need to figure out or invent who she is, and neither do we; we are children of God, made heirs of God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ.
God delights in us, his children, and he wants us to take for granted that this is so, however much we sin, err, and choose bad over good. Consider this: I may be disappointed in or angry with my children, but I never want them to have to stop and think and puzzle their way to the conclusion that I am still their father and that I love them. I want them to take my love for them, and their identity as part of my family, as dogma—non-negotiable, unalterable, absolute.
God is, thank God, more of a Father than I will ever be. And I give thanks that God’s eternal identity, and his love for me, is not dependent on what I happen to think about it. To this God most holy, in his divine majesty of Trinity in Unity, be praise, honor, power, and glory, now and forever. Amen.

The Trinity: Make Dogma Great Again

What is transubstantiation? 🤔 @CA-Live

<div>Why do we believe in indulgences?</div><div>In a nutshell, our belief in indulgences is rooted in the fact that we are sinners in need of God’s mercy. We all sin and will incur punishment for our sins, either in the form of eternal punishment or temporal punishment (Isa. 1:18, Rom. 5:9, 2 Sam. 12).
When we are absolved of our mortal sins in the sacrament of reconciliation, the eternal punishment is removed, but the temporal punishment remains. The Catechism explains: &#8220;Absolution takes away sin, but it does not remedy all the disorders sin has caused&#8221; (1459). Thus, the priest imposes a penance on the penitent, which can take the form of &#8220;prayer, an offering, works of mercy, service of neighbor, voluntary self-denial, sacrifices, and above all the patient acceptance of the cross we must bear&#8221; (1460).
Catechism on indulgences:
<blockquote>To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the &#8220;eternal punishment&#8221; of sin. On the other hand, every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the &#8220;temporal punishment&#8221; of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.
The forgiveness of sin and restoration of communion with God entail the remission of the eternal punishment of sin, but temporal punishment of sin remains. While patiently bearing sufferings and trials of all kinds and, when the day comes, serenely facing death, the Christian must strive to accept this temporal punishment of sin as a grace. He should strive by works of mercy and charity, as well as by prayer and the various practices of penance, to put off completely the &#8220;old man&#8221; and to put on the &#8220;new man&#8221; (1472-1473).</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/primer-on-indulgences">Further reading</a>.
<a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_p-vi_apc_01011967_indulgentiarum-doctrina.html">Church document</a>.
</div>

What About Indulgences?

Why do Catholics call Mary Mediatrix?

Cy Kellett welcomes apologist Joe Heschmeyer to discuss the concerns of a former Baptist pastor who is contemplating joining the Catholic Church.
Transcript:
Caller: I think one of my big ones that I have regarding why I&#8217;m not Catholic, whenever I speak to Catholics, they&#8217;ll typically bring up the Magisterium and how the Magisterium is the, I guess the way to say it is like the governing authority for the interpretation of Scripture and doctrine.
Joe: That&#8217;s not a half bad definition.
Caller: Part of my prop. Okay, that&#8217;s not a bad definition.
Joe: Yeah, not a bad definition. It comes from the word for teacher, magister. So it just means the teaching authority of the Church.
Caller: So, yeah, okay, great. So then the next step for me then is I go, well, I don&#8217;t have access to that. Like, I don&#8217;t. I can&#8217;t just go to the Internet and type in what does the Magisterium teach on X verse or something like that. It&#8217;s. I&#8217;m always, I&#8217;m always kind of thrown for a loop on that because it feels very much like an appeal to some ghostly authority I&#8217;m not allowed to directly ask a question to.
Joe: Okay, yeah, I see what you&#8217;re saying. I think so. The teaching office of the Church is described in the Catechism beginning in paragraph 888. Now, the first thing I&#8217;d say is the Catechism itself is a great summary of what the Church teaches on various topics.
The second thing that&#8217;s probably worth pointing out is there&#8217;s a difference frequently in how Catholics and Protestants particularly will approach these kind of questions. Where most teaching from the Catholic side is done at the level of doctrine, not at the level of the chapter or verse.
So this often throws people coming from a Protestant background for a loop because they&#8217;re expecting that there&#8217;s somewhere like an official Vatican kind of commentary, verse by verse, on Scripture. And that&#8217;s not the way the Magisterium tends to teach.
There are a handful of verses where in the course of defending a particular doctrine, the Church will say, for instance, with original sin, that when St. Paul talks about sin entering the world through one man, that this is in reference to original sin. But those are actually pretty few and far between.
The usual way that this is approached is ex doctrina, like the Trinity is defined, but it&#8217;s not. You have to read this particular Bible verse as supporting the Trinity. It is rather that taking the whole of Scripture, if your conclusion on the topic of the nature of God leads you to a non-Trinitarian conclusion, then you&#8217;ve read Scripture wrong. Whatever passage you&#8217;re reading that has led you in that direction, you&#8217;re misreading it. But it&#8217;s not verse by verse.
Think about the Nicene Creed, for instance. The Nicene Creed is doctrine by doctrine. It&#8217;s not verse by verse.
So then it&#8217;s like, okay, well, if I want to find out what does the Church teach on a particular topic, you actually could Google what does the Magisterium teach about X topic? And you&#8217;d probably find a pretty good summary. You might find it on our website, you might find it on the Vatican&#8217;s website. You might find any number of people talking about it, and then you look at what they&#8217;re quoting.
When you&#8217;re looking for magisterial teaching, you look to things that ecumenical councils have said, particularly in defining dogma. You&#8217;re looking at things that popes have said, particularly in defining some doctrine, some dogma, as a matter of faith and morals. And you&#8217;re looking for the clear witness of what the bishops in union with the Pope have said.
And if you have the Church Fathers and look at how 2000 years of Christians have spoken on it, and that can make at times, admittedly for a very deep dive. So I&#8217;m giving you this sort of deep dive answer. A much easier way in 90% of cases is just look up what the Catechism has to say.
And thanks be to God, there&#8217;s a lovely church down in Lafayette, Louisiana, the St. Charles Borromeo. Oh, sorry, it&#8217;s Picayune, Mississippi. My mistake. Picayune St. Charles Borromeo has a searchable Catechism of the Catholic Church. So you can literally just go to their website and put in whatever word and it&#8217;ll take you to the corresponding paragraph of the Catechism, which is a great way to get a short here&#8217;s what the Church teaches on XYZ topic.
Another good resource, if you want to stick around after we get done talking, is Trent Horn&#8217;s *Why We&#8217;re Catholic*, where it&#8217;s a good kind of primer on just like the kind of some of the big ticket items. And then that can give us sort of a basis to move forward from there. How does that sound?
Joe: Okay.
Joe: I think that that&#8217;s helpful, I guess then a follow up to that. Yeah, because I think that was a good distinction between it&#8217;s not so much about chapter and verse as it is the topics. Would you say that the Magisterium then all of the topics that it&#8217;s exhaustive or that there&#8217;s just topics it doesn&#8217;t speak on?
Joe: That&#8217;s the second one. There are topics it doesn&#8217;t speak on. There are topics that are still ar that we&#8217;re in the process of sort of looking at. So, for instance, bioethics. There&#8217;s all sorts of issues like for instance, embryo adoption where some couple practices IVF and then they convert and they realize they can&#8217;t just throw away their children. But maybe they&#8217;re not in a stage where they&#8217;re old enough or they&#8217;re young enough to carry these children to birth.
And then this raises this moral question of, well, maybe we&#8217;ve got friends or relatives who would be happy to bear these children, but that looks like having a donor. And all of those kind of moral questions, these are very new questions that weren&#8217;t even an issue at the start of my lifetime.
And so we&#8217;re never going to just exhaust here&#8217;s everything to know about God, or here&#8217;s everything to know about morality, or here&#8217;s every possible question people could ask. But the focus isn&#8217;t let&#8217;s make sure we have a common starting place and then all go interpret Scripture for ourselves. The focus is much more let&#8217;s make sure we&#8217;re arriving at the right destination on these issues of faith and morality.
Cy: I&#8217;ll tell you what, Joseph, what I&#8217;d like to do is send you a copy of *Why We&#8217;re Catholic*. But I&#8217;d also like to add a second book for you. It&#8217;s called *Teaching with Authority*.
Joe: Oh, that&#8217;s a great choice. Yeah, that&#8217;s direct on point.
Cy: How to cut through doctrinal confusion and understand what the Church really says. That&#8217;s by Jimmy Akin. So two books for you, Joseph.

Who Decides What Catholics Believe?

<div class="x_elementToProof" data-olk-copy-source="MessageBody">Our epistle from Colossians contains that famously controversial passage about wives being subject to their husbands. I confess to find the subject a bit wearisome, because I grew up in a Protestant evangelical tradition which found it hard to distinguish between leadership and tyranny. Somehow they, along with many of their contemporary heirs, including many people in so-called conservative circles, both Catholic and Protestant, delighted in digging into the discomfort that modern people, especially and obviously women, felt reading St. Paul, making it really a point of pride that the apostle be every bit as much of a misogynist as they feared. Then, on the other hand, I spent a fair amount of my adult life in more mainline liberal theological circles where it was taken for granted that obviously this was just one of those verses that needed to be either ignored or explicated out of existence with contextualizing commentaries about Paul’s captivity to the inequalities of the Greco-Roman world. No need to explain what Paul meant. He was just clearly wrong so we should ignore him.</div>

<div class="x_elementToProof">Neither of these views is very satisfactory to a serious Catholic. I do want to say more about what St. Paul does and does not mean, but first let me frame those questions with the gospel for today’s feast of the Holy Family. For this Sunday in the Christmas Octave we always get stories about Jesus’ obedience to his parents. That is an interesting subject in itself. But this year we get the flight to Egypt and St. Matthew’s unusual emphasis on St. Joseph’s role. Just last Sunday we reflected on Joseph’s quiet courage and leadership, his ability to listen to God and obey God even in the face of confusion or uncertainty, his role in redeeming Adam’s failure in the garden through his protection and love for the New Eve. And in this next chapter of the gospel, immediately after the story of the magi, we see Joseph again courageously taking up that mantle of leadership that must have felt very strange for him. After all, he was asked to guard and lead the immaculate Mother of God and her incarnate divine Son. What a strange feeling that must have been! And this brings me to the connection between this gospel and the epistle that was perhaps in the Church’s mind pairing them together: whatever it means for wives to be subject to their husbands, it must be something like what it meant for the holy Virgin and the incarnate Son of God to be subject to St. Joseph.</div>
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<div class="x_elementToProof">So right off the bat we can rule out some things. This is no tyranny, no “I’m the man so I’m better than you and you have to do what I say” mentality. There’s no implication that Joseph is somehow better than Mary or Jesus, that Mary or Jesus lack wisdom or courage or intelligence or even power. Joseph has a role and he fulfills it. I’ve seen some Catholic thinkers speculate that the natural fittingness of husbands as head of the family is almost like a grace and a mercy to those who otherwise would be the least important part of family life. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it tracks a bit with Joseph, because he isn’t needed in the way that Mary and Jesus are, yet they choose to place themselves in his care. They give his life meaning and purpose. The difference of his station is valued.</div>
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<div class="x_elementToProof">Which leads to the first big qualification of Colossians 3:18. This is not some kind of prescription for men and women in general. St. Paul does not say “all women must submit to all men.” It describes husbands and wives and the order of a family. But the principle of submission here does rely on a basic assumption that men and women are different and therefore not simply interchangeable. Women are not just men who can have babies; men are not just women who can’t. We are two different kinds of human beings. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t social constructions and conventions and roles that change and evolve in time and place. The cruel absurdity of our age is that, probably in reaction to a moment where mainstream culture had calcified certain arbitrary gender roles, we felt that we had to reject all roles and differences as if they were all make-believe. And so the instinct among certain conservative folks is to swing back hard in the other direction, but it’s not going to work if it ends up at the opposite extreme of arbitrary tyranny.</div>
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<div class="x_elementToProof">But back to the point: wives should be subject to their husbands. Elsewhere the apostles writes that they should “obey” their husbands. Again I’m struck by today’s feast day resonances with the obedience of St. Joseph and our Lord himself who is always subject to the will of his Father. What does it mean to “obey,” or to be subject to? It certainly doesn’t mean to lose one’s dignity or to take on the status of an inferior. Obedience in Greek means to “listen under,” and in the Romance languages, where that word “obedience” comes to us from the French and the Latin, it means something like to listen to, to heed. Obedience then, for wives, is a matter of guarding and valuing the leadership of their husbands in the family, seeing themselves not as competitors for authority but as the most important member of his team. Though there have been many men in history who want to distort this command into some sort of unthinking, servile passivity, that is not what St. Paul actually says. Some writers talk about “submission” as being literally “under” the “mission,” that is, the mission of the husband and father to lead the family to heaven. So Peter Kreeft, for example, suggests that the wife’s obedience to the husband’s leadership is itself subject to that fundamental condition — that the husband is being faithful to his mission. When he strays from that mission a wife should rightly say “I must obey God not men.”</div>
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<div class="x_elementToProof">Another way of putting it is that the wife’s obedience to her husband is only as virtuous and as effective as the husband’s own obedience to God. His role is to model obedience for his family, to model submission. Like St. Joseph, he must listen to God. And, like St. Joseph, to listen he must often be silent.</div>
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<div class="x_elementToProof">If St. Joseph is a model for husbands and fathers, he is also a type for all Christians, for we are all called to nurture, cherish, and protect the life of Christ that has been given to us in Baptism and in the Blessed Sacrament. The Lord comes to us not first as a conquering hero but as a child; then, as a tiny portion of bread. Like to St. Joseph, he has made himself subject to us: but can we learn to obey him? He is no tyrant, but the true king and prince of peace.</div>

Scripture and Wifely Submission

Patrick Lencioni talks about why we should take seriously the claim &#8220;God told me we should do this&#8221; only in discussion with someone we trust, but not with people we don&#8217;t know well.
Transcript:
Host: We go now to Maria in Washington, DC, listening on Guadalupe Radio there in Washington DC. Maria, you are on with Patrick Lencioni, what&#8217;s your question?
Caller: My question is, I have the opposite take on what you just discussed. If I&#8217;m in a board meeting in a Christian nonprofit, and someone says we&#8217;re trying to work out a problem or project and someone said, &#8220;Well, I was in prayer today, and God told me to do such and such,&#8221; I mean, how do you respond to that?
Patrick: Well, I mean, this is an interesting one. I mean, and &#8220;if you&#8217;re in a board meeting&#8221; is an interesting thing, because that&#8217;s like, how well do you know this person? How much do you trust them inherently? Because if my wife comes to me and tells me that? Man, I&#8217;m listening. Okay. But if somebody I don&#8217;t know very well says that, I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Are you using this to try to win this argument?&#8221;
And so while I would never write that off, because God speaks through people, I think that&#8217;s where we&#8217;re talking about conflict among people with great levels of trust. And there are people that say those things, and though I can&#8217;t know their hearts, I know that some people sometimes use that as a way to kind of take things off the table. Like, &#8220;Well, God told me that you&#8217;re an idiot and I should be in charge, so there it is.&#8221;
Host: Is that the impression you get, Maria?
Caller: No no, that&#8217;s exactly right, when it comes from somebody I trust already, I take it to heart, and when it&#8217;s somebody I don&#8217;t trust, I think they&#8217;re trying to use it to manipulate the situation.
Patrick: And that&#8217;s why we need to build trust before we engage in conflict. I don&#8217;t think people that don&#8217;t know each other go, &#8220;Let&#8217;s engage in conflict!&#8221; I say, &#8220;No no no, first establish trust.&#8221; And as you said, Cy, that&#8217;s&#8211;we have something in common, we want to please God, we have a common faith, let&#8217;s draw upon that and then go there. But if a person uses that without trust and without knowing a person, it feels pretty manipulative.
Host: Thanks Maria, thanks very much for that.

Responding When People Use God as an Excuse

<div>Is dream therapy morally permissible?</div><div>Speaking to a licensed Catholic therapist about one’s dreams can be beneficial, including for getting to the root of why one may be having recurrent nightmares of a particular sort. However, dreams should be only one aspect of therapy for a patient, not the sole or main focus. Effective therapy involves helping individuals deal with various issues while they are wide awake.
For more information on this topic, including to find a good Catholic therapist in your area, or perhaps to speak to one by phone, contact Dr. Gregory Popcak and his team at the <a href="https://www.catholiccounselors.com/services/our-counselors/">Pastoral Solutions Institute</a>, and/or visit <a href="http://www.catholictherapists.com/a-note-from-the-founder">CatholicTherapist.com</a>.
</div>

Is Dream Therapy Morally Permissible?

“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?”
We’ve been walking through John 6, and the “hard saying” in question is the teaching that we can have life only through eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the Son of Man. This morning, we might also add the “hard sayings” of St. Paul in Ephesians 5 on wives submitting to their husbands and husbands loving their wives. That one is so hard that the lectionary permits us to cut it out. But just avoiding difficult scriptural passages rarely creates a healthy spiritual climate, so I think we’d better take it seriously.
I’ll come back to Ephesians in a moment. For now, let’s consider again what exactly is so “hard” about the Lord’s teaching on the Eucharist. Last week, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/unless-you-gnaw-and-chew-my-flesh">we recalled</a> how the Jewish consciousness would likely recoil at the idea of drinking blood. So this is the first and most obvious difficulty. Many centuries later, after long meditation on the Eucharist, we can speak with precision about the Blessed Sacrament—about what it is, about what it isn’t. For example, it is the real and substantial body and blood of the incarnate Son of God, but it is not ordinary human flesh that is ordinarily bloody and . . . well, fleshy. Its reality is hidden. But none of that is known by the disciples. When Jesus suggests, in today’s section, that no one can come to him unless drawn by the Father, part of what he means is that receiving this teaching requires a supernatural faith, which can only later come to deeper understanding. All of this in some ways may have deepened the scandal. First, this guy tells everyone to drink his blood. Next, his insane disciples all just accept this statement as if it were no big deal.
To be fair, if you follow the personalities of the disciples, it’s pretty unlikely that they accepted it in some kind of naïve and blind way. I suspect that there were a lot of questions, and even more confused facial expressions than were recorded by John. But even if they had questions or doubts, they knew at this point that Jesus was worth it all, that somehow the only way to understand was to plunge deeper into the mystery of this man and his teaching.
The second difficulty or hardness about the Lord’s “saying” centers less on the immediate offensiveness of flesh and blood and more on the suggestion, from a spiritual leader, that true spiritual life has something definite to do with the body.
Not that mainstream first-century Jewish culture was afraid of bodies. It was no mere “spiritual” religion, but a set of complex bodily and social practices. Yet, despite inhabiting this world, Jesus does persistently push against it, especially in his interactions with the scribes and Pharisees. His famous sermon on the mount can be summarized as a radical spiritualization of the law—don’t just worry about murder; worry about hatred. Don’t just avoid adultery; avoid all lust. Time and again, he speaks about the inner, spiritual life that was at times, especially among the teachers of the law, lost amid the quarrels about obscure points of ritual and textual tradition.
Today, we seem to have the opposite problem. Modern people chafe at “organized religion,” as if it were somehow coherent to insist that a way of life be “unorganized,” delighting in any spirituality that rejects rules and embraces the mysterious inner voice. These are the people who post memes insisting that if Christians really followed Jesus, they wouldn’t actually, you know, follow Jesus or do any of the stuff that he said, much less be a part of the Church that he founded, because the important thing about Jesus wasn’t Jesus, but a vague sense of spirituality detached from ordinary realities.
So what I’ve described as the second “hard” aspect of the Lord’s saying is maybe on average harder today than it was for most people in the first century. We really love the idea of a spirituality, or religion, or whatever, whose demands are entirely intellectual, or at the very least whose “religious” demands simply enable us to live in a way that makes sense to our other tribal identities and not stick out too much. The idea that we might have to participate in some particular rite or ceremony or sacrament, and that this is central and necessary, and not merely occasionally useful, comes across as offensive, and exclusive, and threatening to our sense of individual liberty.
But hold on—doesn’t Jesus go on in today’s passage to say that “the spirit gives life,” not the flesh? Last week, I said I didn’t remember hearing a Protestant explanation of the “flesh and blood” language in John 6, but I recall now hearing the argument that according to Jesus, we have to understand “my flesh” and “my blood” as <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/if-you-dont-eat-youll-die">spiritual metaphors</a> for his teaching. This is a tempting line of thought—partly because, again, it frees us from the burden of “religion” and its external forms, which seems a necessary thing for modern man. Yet we face the odd problem that, if this is really what the Lord meant by his flesh and blood, presumably it would not have caused so many followers to walk away scandalized. In fact, “flesh,” in John and other writers, is often shorthand for nature corrupted and enslaved by sin. But John also speaks of the Word becoming flesh. So surely not all flesh is bad. Flesh is enlivened by spirit. And anyway, the flesh of the Son of God cannot be said to be “of no avail.”
Apart from the reminder that the disciples need divine assistance to understand his teaching fully, the Lord presents here what we might call an uncontroversially traditional understanding of human nature. Human beings are body and soul. Our spiritual nature is the higher part, the part that gives flesh its meaning. But this meaningfulness is meaningless without its matter. So fully human, rational life must be spiritual life, not life lived merely in the body and merely serving bodily needs. But we cannot be human and be pure spirit. The spirit gives life… to the body, not just in general.
So again, I think we face this “hard” teaching that, actually, the true spiritual life is not a complete separation from bodily life, but rather a bodily life empowered by and directed by the spiritual life. We should therefore insist that the “spiritual” interpretation of Christ’s flesh and blood is “spiritual” exactly because it insists on a real, substantial, fleshly set of actions: take, eat, this is my body which is given up for you. If you really want to be spiritual, you have to be in the body.
This is one way of summarizing the set of teachings from Pope St. John Paul II on the “theology of the body.” The Holy Father writes, in Veritatis Splendor, “The person, by the light of reason and the support of virtue, discovers in the body the anticipatory signs, the expression and the promise of the gift of self, in conformity with the wise plan of the Creator.”
All of this brings me back to Ephesians and the idea of submission. Many of the difficulties that people have in this passage stem from a failure to read the overall context, which is Paul’s command to “be subject to one another” (5:21) out of reverence for Christ. Within this broader culture of mutual submission, we find that, in marriage, wives should “submit” to their husbands, and that husbands should love their wives “as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her.” So if there’s anything lopsided there, it is arguably on the side of the husbands, who are basically commanded to die for their wives. Though this passage has undeniably been used in history in a misogynistic way, that use is far from its meaning.
The fact that, even so, people balk at it, comes down to that same antagonism toward “organized religion,” and to any kind of spirituality that dares to tell us what to do with our bodies. The hard saying is that Christianity isn’t just a bunch of nice feelings mixed with provocative social media posts. It is hard work, because it requires that we do certain bodily things, that we discipline our actions and our feelings, and not just in our heads. Marriage is a great sacrament, according to Paul, precisely because it is a bodily sign of the universal way that the human person finds his joy not in service of self, but in service of the ultimate other: God.
We meet that other, the heavenly bridegroom, at this altar, where he lays down his life for us, his bride. His love is no phantom idea, but expressed in a body given for us. Dare we submit, and receive the gift? Dare we persist when the world walks away, unsettled by the demands of faith? “Will you also go away?” Jesus asks. May we answer with St. Peter: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

When Religion Isn’t Good Enough

<div>Why do the older books of the Old Testament describe God as if he has a body?</div><div>In Jewish tradition, there are two different camps of thought. One camp views the passages of the Old Testament that refer to God&#8217;s body as metaphorical. The other camp accepts them literally and believes that God either has a body or, at the very least, has a form that he can permit man to see. Since Maimonides&#8217;s thirteen principles of faith in the twelfth century, Jewish thought has generally been that God is incorporeal.
Christian tradition has been virtually unanimous in viewing these passages in a metaphorical context (see John 1:18). Any reference to God&#8217;s body is considered a symbolic means of making God&#8217;s actions more comprehensible to human beings living in a material world.
Exodus 33:23 and 33:11 are most often cited as examples of God having a form, but they need to be viewed in their entire context.
Although Exodus does record that Moses spoke to God &#8220;face to face&#8221; (Exod. 33:11) we also read a few verses later that no one can see God&#8217;s &#8220;face&#8221; and live (33:20). Therefore, it is clearly a metaphorical expression.
God does say that he will let Moses see his &#8220;back&#8221; (33:23), but this is in response to Moses asking to see God&#8217;s glory (Exod. 23:18). This is understood as God veiling his essence in some way from Moses but revealing himself to some degree to Moses.
In the passages from the prophets where they claim to have seen God on his throne and these descriptions sound completely human-like, these are understood as visions to help the prophet understand and not a true seeing of the divine essence.
</div>

Does God Have a Body?

I enjoy fielding questions on Catholic Answers Live about humanity&#8217;s forays into outer space, such as this one: “How would the Church adapt its liturgical calendar if we colonized another planet or the moon?”
Well, it&#8217;s going to depend on where the planet or moon is and how fast it rotates. Humans are biologically designed to have a wake-sleep cycle that is synced with the day-night cycle on earth. If we&#8217;re in an environment where the day-night cycle is radically different from what we&#8217;re programmed to work with, we just ignore it.
For instance, the International Space Station goes around the earth in about forty-five minutes, meaning the astronauts on board get twenty-two minutes of light and twenty-two minutes of dark. There&#8217;s no way they want to fall asleep every twenty-two minutes and then wake up twenty-two minutes later for the duration of their mission.
Thus, astronauts on space stations ignore their environment&#8217;s peculiar day-night cycle. Instead, they keep a regular Earth-based day-night cycle for their sleeping and waking periods.
The same would be true of any other planet or moon that has a radically different rotation rate. And if humans are keeping a normal terrestrial day-night cycle and ignoring the rotation of the object they&#8217;re on, then they would likely keep a terrestrial calendar. They wouldn&#8217;t modify the calendar because they&#8217;re keeping the same day-night cycle.
Now, what about other planets like Mars, which has a rotational period close to that of earth? Its day is almost the same length as earth’s. It&#8217;s a little bit different, but humans there would probably adapt to a Martian day-night cycle, and that means their days and nights would get out of sync with the days and nights on earth.
However, I don&#8217;t think that on Mars there would be a need to change the liturgical calendar, because Mars is very close to earth. It&#8217;s only a few light-minutes away, and as a result it would be very easy to stay in contact with earth and continue to use the terrestrial liturgical calendar. Even if their Sunday slides a few hours from Sunday on earth (because of the difference in the day lengths), you can still approximate that. So, they would still have the same kind of Sunday cycle, they could still celebrate Christmas and Easter at the same times, and so on.
But what if you go further afield—like out of our solar system? In that case, there&#8217;s no easy way to communicate with earth because of the light-speed limit. If you were on a planet with a similar rotation period to earth, I could see the local church in this other solar system developing its own liturgical calendar based on the local planetary rotation period.
However, I suspect that even then—even if they came up with new holidays and new liturgical seasons—they would still keep Christmas and Easter at the same time that they&#8217;re being celebrated back on earth, because that&#8217;s something you could always calculate.
So, I think that there could, in another solar system, be a different liturgical calendar with some similarities to ours; but here in our solar system, we&#8217;re so close that I don&#8217;t think we would practically develop different liturgical calendars for other planets—at least not any time in the foreseeable future.

A Liturgical Calendar…In Outer Space

Tim Staples answers a call asking whether it is improper for us to use the same gestures as the priest during mass, such as raising the hands during the Lord&#8217;s Prayer.

What to Do About Gestures During Mass

<div>Should YHWH be translated as Yahweh or as Lord?</div><div>The problem with translating YHWH is that ancient written Hebrew did not contain vowels. On top of that, the name was considered so sacred that it was only pronounced once a year by the High Priest. So translating it as &#8220;Yahweh&#8221; is more of an educated guess than definitive translation.
Jewish practice was to avoid reading the name aloud and to instead speak the words adonai (&#8220;lord&#8221;) or elohim (&#8220;God&#8221;) in its place.
In keeping with Jewish tradition <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/yahweh_not_to_be_used_in_liturgy_songs_and_prayers_cardinal_arinze_says">the Church has asked Catholics not to use the name Yahweh</a> and instead use adonai/Lord.
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How Should YHWH Be Translated?

<div>What does it mean to put on the breastplate of righteousness?</div><div>St. Thomas teaches that the image of the breastplate is used because righteousness or justice protects the other virtues as a breastplate protects the body. So it is a characterization of justice as a universal virtue underlying all the other virtues.
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Why Is Righteousness a ‘Breastplate’?

<div>Since Church Tradition preexisted and encompasses the truth of the Bible, why is the Bible necessary? Doesn’t it cause division?</div><div>As the Church makes clear, we don’t have the whole of apostolic Tradition apart from Scripture (CCC 75-76). So it’s incorrect to say that the whole of apostolic or Church Tradition clearly and completely preceded the writing of Scripture. In addition, the Church’s unwritten Tradition includes the institutions the apostles established with divine guidance and authority, e.g., apostolic succession (CCC 77).
In addition, Scripture should not be looked upon as divisive but rather as a gift from God that set us free (see John 8:31-32). Recall also that Jesus’ initial preaching about the Eucharist was not uniformly embraced by his disciples, and yet it was truth that needed to be preached to advance the kingdom (John 6). Jesus doesn’t withhold the truth, which he personifies, even if some people may respond in a divisive manner (see Luke 12:51). And we pray for their ultimate conversion.
For more on this subject, please see our tracts on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/apostolic-tradition">Apostolic Tradition</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/scripture-and-tradition">Scripture and Tradition</a>.
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Why Is the Bible Necessary?

<div>I know the Church is against contraception, but does it permit an exception to prevent the conception of a child with Down Syndrome? </div><div>Because contraception is an intrinsic <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/contraception-is-a-mortal-sin">moral evil</a>, which no good intention can justify, there can be no exceptions for it. A core principle of Catholic moral teaching is that we may not do evil even if we want good to come from it. Therefore the Church cannot provide any exceptions for contraception, when directly chosen as a moral object, even for a good reason such as concern for potential birth defects.
This teaching can be challenging, as many Christian moral teachings are—especially in a world that judges acts solely by intentions or consequences rather than by whether the acts themselves are good or bad. But no Christian teaching, however challenging it seems, is beyond the ability of ordinary people to follow. Our faithful cooperation with God&#8217;s grace makes all things possible, and even the hardest teachings are ultimately ordered to our happiness.
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Contraception Against Birth Defects

Did God the Father punish Jesus on the cross?
Some Christians say, “Yes.” For example, the late Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul, in his 1985 book The Holiness of God, writes, “[Jesus] was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God” (emphasis added).
Sproul isn’t the only one. In their book Pierced for Our Trangressions, Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach write, “The Lord Jesus Christ died for us . . . suffering the wrath of his own Father in our place.”
This view has come to be known as penal substitution. “Penal” captures the active punishment that God the Father inflicts on Christ. “Substitution” captures the idea that Christ takes our place.
Now, as seen from the quotes above, a key to penal substitution is that God the Father is the active agent who inflicts the punishment on Jesus. This is consistent with the nature of punishment.
As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, when we sin, there are three orders that we disturb: the order of reason, the order of human law, and the order of divine law. Consequently, every sinner incurs a threefold punishment: “one inflicted by himself [we would call this penance],” “another inflicted by man,” and “a third inflicted by God” (Summa Theologiae I-II:87:1). It’s the third infliction, the infliction by God, that penal substitution affirms Jesus fell under.
I argue that it’s this active agency of God the Father in the alleged punishment of Jesus that’s problematic.
Consider that the “punishment” Christ supposedly endures is his death, which wasn’t a direct effect of God the Father’s agency—like in the case of God killing the innocent firstborn of the Egyptians—but rather was inflicted by the Roman soldiers. St. Thomas Aquinas makes this point in his Summa Theologiae. He writes,
<blockquote>A thing may cause an effect in two ways: in the first instance by acting directly so as to produce the effect; and in this manner Christ’s persecutors slew him because they inflicted on him what was a sufficient cause of death, and with the intention of slaying him, and the effect followed, since death resulted from that cause (III:47:1).</blockquote>
So Christ’s persecutors were a direct cause of Jesus’ death. The Father was not. Aquinas affirms that the Father “delivered up Christ to the Passion,” but that deliverance was merely a permission of Christ’s executors to execute him. He writes, “God the Father did deliver up Christ to the Passion . . . by not shielding him from the Passion” (ST III:47:3). Just as a side note, Aquinas doesn’t think this is cruel of the Father, because the Father moved Christ’s human will to suffer for us (see ST III:47:3 ad 1).
Now, as Aquinas points out, the act of slaying Jesus was an injustice—i.e., a sin—on the part of the participating Jews and Jesus’ executioners (Summa Theologiae III:47:6 ad 3; Summa Contra Gentiles 4.55). And I think it’s safe to say that most Christians <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-the-jews-kill-jesus">would agree</a> with Aquinas on this point.
With these relevant points in place, we’re now able to begin seeing the problem with the idea that God the Father is the active agent of punishment in Jesus’ death. According to the penal substitution theory, the punishment that the Father inflicts is Jesus’ death. With Aquinas, we can say that Jesus’ death was inflicted by his executioners. It follows, therefore, that the Father was the direct cause of Jesus’ enemies inflicting death upon him.
But the act of slaying Jesus was an injustice—a sin. Therefore, according to penal substitution, the Father was the direct cause of the injustice or sin committed by Jesus’ executioners.
This idea would immediately repulse most Christians, since most intuitively would reject the idea that God can cause someone to sin. And they’d be in good company with Aquinas, who writes, concerning the Jews, at least, “[The Father] did not will the unjust action of the Jews.” He applies the same reasoning to the Roman soldiers.
The Council of Trent also rejected the idea that God can cause someone to sin. In fact, the Council anathematized the idea:
<blockquote>If anyone says that it is not in man’s power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil God worketh as well as those that are good, not permissibly only, but properly and of himself, in such wise that the treason of Judas is no less his own proper work than the vocation of Paul; let him be anathema (Decree on Justification, Canon VI).</blockquote>
Since penal substitution logically entails God the Father causing Jesus’ executioners to sin, which most would accept to be absurd, the “penal substitution” theory should be rejected. For someone of this mindset, there would be no need to go farther.
However, for someone like John Calvin, the idea that God directly causes someone to sin is not out of bounds. Calvin is famous for teaching that God doesn’t just permit moral evil, but positively directs sinners to sin. Of “wicked” and “obstinate” men, he writes,
<blockquote>[God] bends them to execute his judgments, just as if they carried their orders engraven on their minds. And hence it appears that they are impelled by the sure appointment of God (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. 1, Ch. 18, sec. 3).</blockquote>
Notice that for Calvin, sinners sin not merely because God allows them to do so (his permissive will). Rather, he “impels” or “bends” (forces) them to sin.
So for someone who follows Calvin on this, more work must be done to defend our critique of penal substitution. We must explain why it’s not possible for God to directly cause someone to sin.
We could appeal to Scripture. The Psalmist states in Psalm 5:4, “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not sojourn with you.” If God the Father were to directly cause someone to sin, even if it were for some further perceived good, his will would be terminating in that sin, and thus “delighting” in it, which is contrary to divine revelation.
There’s also a philosophical reason why God can’t cause someone to sin. Consider that if God were to move us to sin, he would be turning us away from him, away from our ultimate end or goal—“for,” as Aquinas states, “man sins through wandering away from [God] who is his last end” (Summa Contra Gentiles 3.162). In other words, God would be directly moving us not to love him, and if so, he would fail to will the divine goodness more than any other good, which is impossible for the infinite and perfect God. Aquinas confirms this in his Summa Theologiae:
<blockquote>Now God wills no good more than he wills his own goodness; yet he wills one good more than another. Hence he in no way wills the evil of sin, which is the privation of right order towards the divine good (I:19:9).</blockquote>
As to why it’s impossible, consider that this failure on the part of God would be due either to a lack of knowledge that he is the supreme good or a failure in due attraction to himself as the supreme good.
But God can’t possibly fail in knowledge that he’s the supreme good because he’s omniscient. Nor can he fail to be attracted to himself as the highest good, for that would entail a desire for some good outside the order of reason, which is impossible, because he’s perfectly good.
In fact, God can’t fail in any sense. Failure necessarily entails unactualized potential. But God is traditionally understood to be <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/what-is-god/">pure actuality</a>, or pure existence itself, the very notion of which excludes the idea of unactualized potential. Therefore, God can’t fail, lest he cease being God.
Since God moving us to sin entails a failure on God’s part, and on the classical view God can’t fail, it follows that on the classical view God can’t move us to sin.
Now, someone may just reject the classical notion of God to keep the idea that God moves us to sin. But then there’s not much value in a deity who’s finite and subject to defect. Such a move would undermine the same sovereignty of God that one tries to uphold with penal substitution.
So in the end, an advocate of penal substitution comes to a fork in the road: either give up penal substitution as an adequate explanation of the nature of Christ’s death on the cross or give up God’s absolute perfection. I’m going with the former option!

The Problem with ‘God Punished Jesus’

In these past three weeks of Advent, our lectionary readings and prayers have largely focused on the Second Coming, the second advent of the Lord, when he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I have often suggested that this makes sense because if the Lord came once, he can come again, and so preparing for a remembrance of the first advent is also useful preparation for the second.
One of our more memorable Advent hymns takes up this theme: “O come, o come, Emmanuel.” The verses of this carol are an English paraphrase of an old series of liturgical texts called the “great O antiphons.” An antiphon is just a short verse of prayer that is said before and after a psalm or a canticle at the daily office. And the great O antiphons are said in the seven evenings leading up to Christmas Eve. So, at Evening Prayer, beginning on December 17, we start with “O wisdom” and move down the list:
O Wisdom
O Adonai 
O Root of Jesse 
O Key of David 
O Morning Star 
O King of the Nations (that’s today!) 
O Emmanuel
These are all wonderful little pieces of the tradition, and I encourage you to look them up if you have the time, or listen to various musical settings, like my favorite rendition in German by Arvo Pärt. They each give expression to one of the Old Testament images of the Messiah, and the theme is clear: do not tarry, but come now and deliver us. The Latin words of these seven antiphons even form a backwards acrostic: Ero cras. I will be here tomorrow.
There is an alternate tradition, which comes from medieval England—and which has been retained in some form in the Ordinariates—that adds an eighth antiphon at the end. Unlike the others, though, which address themselves to the various titles of the Christ, this eighth antiphon suddenly turns to Mary:
O Virgin of virgins, how shall this be? 
For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. 
Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? 
The thing which ye behold is a divine mystery.
Rather than destroy the clever Latin acrostic, this one letter just slightly changes the meaning. Instead of “Ero cras”—I will be here tomorrow—it becomes “Vero cras”—truly, tomorrow!
Clever acrostics aside, the last antiphon raises the question: Why, after this extended focus on the coming Messiah, do we all of a sudden turn to Mary?
In a way, our readings today pose the same problem. We have been hearing all about how, at the end of days, Christ will come again in great power and glory to judge the world. We have been hearing from John the Baptist about how we must prepare for the coming storm, for the fire that will destroy all that does not bear fruit. And then today, all of a sudden, we turn to this human moment with Mary and Elizabeth—the two unexpected pregnancies with two different joys.
“How shall this be?” That is the antiphon’s question, but you may remember that it is very similar to Mary’s question at the Annunciation: “How shall this be, since I know not a man?” Joseph makes no recorded response when he is told by the angel in his dream to trust Mary, but surely his thought must be similar: “How shall this be?”
What the angel says first to Our Lady is, of course, what angels always seem to say in Scripture: Be not afraid. But in for Joseph, it’s a little different. Usually, the angel says, “Don’t be afraid” because the natural human reaction to seeing an angel is . . . well, to be afraid. Real biblical angels are not the happy little chubby cherubs you see in modern European art: they’re terrifying, otherworldly beings whose presence is intuitively dangerous. But in Joseph’s case, the command takes a different form: “Do not be afraid . . . to take Mary your wife into your home.”
For Joseph, the vexing thing is not the angel, but the deeply complicated social predicament he’s in—his wife (and it’s important to note that in Jewish law <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-christmas-mysteries-through-jewish-eyes">she was his wife</a>) is pregnant, and he knows that the child cannot be his. And yet here the angel tells him that this complicated predicament will, in the end, be the cause not of fear, but of joy and wonder. A virgin has conceived, as the prophet foretold. And the child will be the Son of God.
Once again, Joseph’s angelic visit parallels Mary’s in an interesting way. In both cases, fear is dispelled, and the potentially paralyzing “How can this be?” gives way to trusting wonder.
And in our Gospel today, when Mary meets Elizabeth, the wonder unfolds with the meeting of the unborn John the Baptist. He leaps. Elizabeth rejoices. Mary sings her Magnificat.
This is, in God’s economy, how Christmas works. The fear of judgment, the fear of apocalypse, the fear of the second coming of the Lord, is transformed into wonder and joy at the mystery of the Incarnation.
In this story, the opposite of fear is not confidence, or bravery, but wonder. “O virgin of virgins, how shall this be?” This is a consistent theme through the nativity stories: the wonder of Mary at her pregnancy, the wonder of Joseph at God’s work in Mary, the wonder of Elizabeth at her meeting with the “mother of [her] Lord,” the wonder of the shepherds at the angels’ song.
To wonder at something, in these stories, is to admit that it is a mystery, to admit that it cannot be summarized or explained in a simple way. It just has to be experienced. There’s no substitute for the thing itself and its inexhaustible fullness.
As we enter the final stretch of time before Christmas, this should be our goal: to live not in fear, but in wonder. This means, first, that the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-three-advents-of-christ">advents</a> of the Lord—both the first and the second—are not something to be feared, but to be wondered at; not something to worry us, but something to excite our imagination. There is a practical aspect to this that we do well to remember: If we’re doing something for Christmas that causes more anxiety than it evokes wonder, we should think twice about doing it.
The second thing to say about living in wonder rather than fear is that wonder is not always positive. There is, the Bible makes clear, a kind of wonder at the presence of evil. For many people Christmas is as much a time of sorrow as of joy. This is not new: Mary’s wonder continues from her miraculous pregnancy all the way to the cross, when she wonders—and weeps—at the mystery of evil. By long tradition the Christmas octave includes at least two major feasts of martyrs, St. Stephen and the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-could-the-holy-innocents-be-martyrs">Holy Innocents</a>. And so it is with us: Evil and tragedy are not something to be explained, or avoided, out of fear, but something to be endured with hope based on the wonder and joy of the gospel.
This is no easy stance either way. I don’t know if it’s harder to recapture the childish wonder of Christmas or to claim the proper Christian wonder in the face of sadness. But we could do worse than look to and Mary and Joseph and Elizabeth as models, and even to call on them for help. God grant that, like them, we may receive the Lord Jesus not with fear—not with calculation and explanation—but with true wonder, love and affection.

Fear and Wonder

<div>I would like feedback on whether one should have a Mass offered for someone who has died who was an atheist.</div><div>By all means, you may have a Mass offered for an atheist who has died. Obviously, he or she is not an atheist anymore! And should the person be in purgatory, the help received from the Holy Mass is considerable, especially if the atheist was originally baptized and so has the character of baptism, which relates the soul directly to receiving the fruits of divine worship.
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Should I Offer Mass for an Atheist’s Soul?

Marriage has been redefined by the state, but was there ever a precise definition of marriage? Could reason lead us to such a definition? And who is the competent authority to decide these things?

Can Anyone Define Marriage? (Part 1)

In this episode, Jimmy Akin joins Cy Kellett to discuss how the Church views the canon of Scripture and why not everything Paul wrote became part of the New Testament.
Transcript:
Caller: Imagine if, or suppose that, they find St. Paul&#8217;s letter to the Athenians. And for the sake of argument, it&#8217;s completely orthodox, and we know with 100% certainty that Paul wrote it. Would it be scripture? And could it ever become scripture if we started using it in liturgy?
Jimmy: Okay, well, first of all, we don&#8217;t know that there was a letter to the Athenians. We do have references to some letters that we know St. Paul wrote that are not in the New Testament, that have been lost, but we don&#8217;t know if there was one to the Athenians. But supposing that there were, you ask, would it be Scripture? And I assume you mean by that, would it be divinely inspired?
Well, there&#8217;s no way to answer that. Just because a book is divinely inspired does not mean it was automatically preserved. And so consequently, God could have divinely inspired works through St. Paul or any other writer that he didn&#8217;t choose to have survive and become part of the canon of the Church.
So I would say there&#8217;s no way to answer if you know this. Even if we know Paul wrote it, which we never would, and even if it were 100% orthodox, there&#8217;s no way at this point to determine whether or not it&#8217;s inspired. It would require some new revelation of God to tell us that it was inspired. And even that would only be a private revelation, so it wouldn&#8217;t be binding on us as a matter of faith.
So I would say, could it be divinely inspired? Hypothetically, is it required to be divinely inspired? No, it&#8217;s not. Paul undoubtedly wrote a lot of stuff that we don&#8217;t have, and that stuff that we don&#8217;t have may not have been inspired.
So that&#8217;s the first thing I&#8217;d say. You then said, could it become scripture? And I would say no, because the way the Church has discerned what books are scripture is by looking at what&#8217;s been passed down to us for use in the churches as scripture.
And when it comes to Paul&#8217;s letters, we even have evidence that. And this goes into some interesting areas that I don&#8217;t know if we have time to go into today. But we have evidence that Paul himself was the author of the letters. We have evidence that Paul wrote a whole bunch of letters. The question is, why do we have those that we do? Why did these letters get collected?
For a period of time in the 20th century, it was thought, oh, well, they were just kind of gathered up here and there by churches, and it was kind of a random thing that we ended up with these letters. But the evidence is that that&#8217;s not the case. They did have ancient collections of letters in the ancient world.
For example, Cicero, the Roman author, was very famous for writing letters, and he collected them. Similarly, with the governor of Bithynia, Pliny the Younger, he collected his letters. And we know something about how this process worked. Typically, the initial collection of letters would be done by the author himself, and he would organize them according to some criterion.
He could organize them by date, he could organize them by who they were written to. He could order them by length from smallest to longest. He could order them by length from largest to shortest. But it was up to the initial author to identify what went into the initial letter collection and what organizing principle would be used to sequence them.
And when you study Paul&#8217;s letters, it looks like we have an initial collection that consisted of Romans, 1st Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and Galatians. The normal pattern was for the author himself to do an initial collection. Later expanded editions might be done by somebody else, but they&#8217;d follow the author&#8217;s pattern.
In the case of St. Paul&#8217;s letters, they&#8217;re arranged in descending order of length. So Romans is his longest letter, First Corinthians next, Second Corinthians next, Galatians next. But then there&#8217;s a bump, and the bump is Ephesians. It is slightly longer than Galatians, and then it starts shrinking again. And then you have the Pastoral epistles that are written to individuals last.
So what it looks like is during his own lifetime, St. Paul likely published an edition of Romans through Galatians. And then either Paul or one of his associates later expanded that collection to form the collection we have now.
Now, what that means is there was conscious thought given to which letters were going to go into this collection and which were not. That&#8217;s, for example, one reason why we don&#8217;t have 0 Corinthians, because we know he wrote a 0 Corinthians, but it was not selected to go into this collection.
Well, this collection was what was chosen by Paul and possibly by his associates to become scripture for the Church. And by implication, everything else Paul wrote was not passed on to the Church to become scripture.
And so I would say if we discovered a letter to the Athenians or if we discovered 0 Corinthians or something like that, well, it wasn&#8217;t selected to become scripture for the Church. It was consciously excluded from that role by not being included in Paul&#8217;s letter collection.
And so I would say, even if it were inspired, which we wouldn&#8217;t have any way of knowing since inspiration is not a detectable literary quality, I would say it would not be canonical. I would say it would never be canonical because it does not meet the criterion that the Church used of being passed down to us as scripture.
Cy: Liam, I wanted to say thank you very much for the call. I&#8217;d love to send you a copy of Jimmy&#8217;s book, *The Bible is a Catholic Book*, if you&#8217;d like it. Hang on the line and we will send it off to you.

Could We Add Lost Books to the Bible?

Some are surprised that the doctrine of Mary’s bodily assumption was not defined until 1950, using little biblical support. Pope Pius XII decreed that all Catholics must hold and believe as divinely revealed “that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, completing the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory” (Munificentissimus Deus 44). Yet Tim Perry, an evangelical Protestant, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mary-Evangelicals-Toward-Understanding-Mother/dp/083082569X">reminds us</a> of the “doctrine’s ancient roots” (239-240).
Although the Bible says nothing directly about the Assumption, it also says nothing about Mary’s life after Pentecost or her death, just as it doesn’t say anything about St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s deaths. But Protestant evangelical Scot McKnight <a href="https://archive.org/details/realmarywhyevang0000mckn">notes</a> that God has the power to assume a person into heaven, and although
<blockquote>we find nothing about Mary’s death or her assumption in the Bible, [does] that mean Mary wasn’t “assumed” into heaven? Obviously not. None of us believes that everything was recorded in the Bible, so we are left to examine the evidence (133).</blockquote>
Jesus addressed similar issues, too—for example, the resurrection from the dead. This was a highly debated topic in his day, especially for the Pharisees, who believed in the resurrection from the dead, and the Sadducees, who did not (see Matt. 22:22). When Jesus addressed their disagreement, he used the Bible, but in an indirect way:
<blockquote>“As for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching (Matt. 22:31-33).</blockquote>
Notice how Jesus used the books of the Bible that the Sadducees accepted—the Torah—and made an inference from them to clarify the question . . . and all were “astonished.”
Later, when Jesus rose from the dead, as the disciples “did not [yet] know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead” (John 20:9), he appeared to them to explain Scripture to them. He did it first with the disciples traveling to Emmaus:
<blockquote>“O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. . . . And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:25-27, 31-32).</blockquote>
He had to do it with the apostles, too, to open “their minds to understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:45). But he seems to quote not just one or two passages to them, but “all the scriptures” “beginning with Moses and all the prophets.”
This is how the ancient Church approached Mary’s assumption—not looking for a proof text, but looking to discern whether this teaching was consistent with all the scriptures and with other Christian beliefs. And why wasn’t this teaching “defined” by the Church until the twentieth century? Perhaps the Holy Spirit had waited to counteract the materialistic and mechanistic view propagated by some in the name of science. Mary’s assumption reaffirms the Christian hope in bodily resurrection, attesting to man having a spiritual dimension that endures unto eternity (see also <a href="https://archive.org/details/TheWorldsFirstLove">here</a>, at 130-141, and paragraph 974 of the Catechism), which modern science finds absurd. As St. Paul writes,
<blockquote>the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality. . . . Then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Cor. 15:52-55, quoting Isa. 25:8 and Hos. 13:14).</blockquote>
This certainly applied to some Old Testament saints who were assumed into heaven: Enoch (Gen. 5:22-24, Sir. 49:14, Heb. 11:5-6), Moses (Jude 8-10, Deut. 34:5-6, 10-12), and Elijah (2 Kings 2:11-13). If any woman or man ought to be taken into heaven, body and soul, it would be Mary, the holy Mother of God.
Examining the evidence, prefigured in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit guided the early Christians to conclude that Mary—the mother of the Messiah, the Ark of the New Covenant (Rev. 11:19-12:5)—is a woman in heaven, clothed with the sun’s glory, crowned with twelve stars, and with the moon under her feet. This means she is certainly alive, body and soul, in heaven. As Pius XII says:
<blockquote>The revered Mother of God, from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ . . . immaculate in her conception, a most perfect virgin in her divine motherhood, the noble associate of the divine Redeemer who has won a complete triumph over sin and its consequences . . . [was granted] that she should be preserved free from the corruption of the tomb (Munificentissimus Deus 40).</blockquote>
Twice I have been on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where we were able to visit many of the places where events of our Lord’s life and of his blessed mother’s life took place. One special one was the Cenacle and alongside it the Church of the Dormition.
We know that St. John the Apostle took care of Mary, the Mother of God, after our Lord’s ascension. John remained in Jerusalem with Mary until Herod’s persecution, detailed in Acts 12:1-3. Then John took the Virgin Mary with him to Ephesus. The two returned to Jerusalem after the death of Herod and supported the Church as she grew in number and extension. Likely she was back there with John at the Council of Jerusalem in the year 50, described in Acts 15.
In Jerusalem, Mary often would do the Way of the Cross and pray in front of the Holy Sepulcher as a way of uniting herself to her son. This reinforced her desire to be like him in dying for love. The Eastern churches celebrate the feast of Mary’s dormition, describing the fulfillment of her desire to die with Christ more like falling asleep than as dying.
Church Fathers and sacred writers, beginning in the second century with Bishop St. Melito of Sardis (who died around A.D. 200), give us details of Our Lady’s dormition and assumption. These traditions tell us that Mary, knowing she was about to leave this world, called together the apostles, except St. James, who had been martyred.
All the apostles (except for St. Thomas, who had yet to arrive from distant India) gathered around Mary while she lay on her bed. As she gave them encouragement in their apostolic endeavors, Jesus appeared to her. She looked up and said his name. Then she closed her eyes, entrusted her soul to her son, and breathed her last.
Large crowds of faithful gathered around Mary’s body as the apostles carried the funeral bier in solemn procession from the house of the Dormition on Mount Zion to the tomb just a stone’s throw north of Gethsemane. As they carried her bier up the Kidron Valley (Valley of Josaphat), a Jewish priest named Athonios was filled with anger and jealousy and tried to topple the bier with the body of the Mother of God. When Athonios touched the bier with his two hands, an angel cut off both hands instantaneously. Repenting of his misdeed and declaring the greatness of God and of Mary, he was healed.
They arrived at the tomb near the Garden of Gethsemane, in the same plot where her parents Joachim and Anna were buried. Upon sealing the tomb, many of the Christian faithful remained outside praying. Some described hearing the sound of angels singing, which is associated with Mary’s assumption and the source of her title “St. Mary of the Angels.”
Tradition has it that St. Thomas arrived to Jerusalem from India three days later and was quite disappointed that he had not been able to accompany Mary in her last moments. So the apostles took Thomas to Mary’s tomb, where he prostrated himself. Opening the tomb for him, they found it empty except for the burial clothes that had wrapped Our Lady’s body. Again, celestial music could be heard.
Mary’s assumption reaffirms our faith in the resurrection of the body, giving us hope in eternal life with Christ, and with our heavenly Mother, in heaven.

Must We Prove the Assumption from the Bible?

Episode 15: Year A&#8211;Second Sunday of Lent
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we’re going to focus on two details present in the readings for the 2nd Sunday of Lent (Year A) that are relevant for doing apologetics, particularly with our Protestant brothers and sisters. The first detail is Jesus’ communication with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, which comes from the Gospel reading taken from Matthew 17:1-9. The second detail is Paul’s teaching on the gift of salvation being given independent of our works, which is found in the second reading taken from 2 Timothy 1:8b-10.
The Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030523.cfm">https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030523.cfm</a>
Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday</a>

Salvation and Works

Terry Barber is half of one of the most exciting teams in radio. Aimed squarely at calling men to live the Faith, the Terry and Jesse Show has garnered a wide and loyal audience. Terry’s been at it for decades, but he just can’t stop creating new platforms for sharing the good news.

He Can’t Stop Building Catholic Media

Has Freemasonry Infiltrated the Catholic Church?

My friend is not Catholic because popes have been wicked or corrupt.

I am not a Catholic but want to learn more. How do I go about doing this?

Where can I find Mary’s perpetual virginity in the Bible? I am a lapsed Catholic.

Does Joseph have a body and soul in Heaven?

I’m not sure if I’m Catholic; if I have a godfather, does that mean that I am?

To play Devil’s advocate, could all the secular accounts of Jesus be mentions of Christian texts and not Christ himself?

Why Aren’t You Catholic?

What is up with Germany&#8217;s bishops and their attempts to re-write some basic Church teachings? Is a schism in the offing? We asked Ed Condon, one of the founders of the The Pillar, a new &#8220;Catholic media project focused on smart, faithful, and serious journalism, from committed and informed Catholics.&#8221;

Are the German Bishops a Danger?

Are Catholics guilty of “vain repetition” in prayer? Protestants often make this accusation. They say that repeated standard prayers—rather than spontaneous, improvised prayers—is pointless and even damaging. Typically, this comes up with regard to the holy rosary, but it is often applied more broadly. The claim is that Our Lord specifically condemned repetitive prayer during his earthly ministry, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-the-rosary-isnt-vain-repetitions">Catholics are in violation</a> of this prohibition.
The passage in question comes during the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew: “And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (6:7-8). In some translations—including the King James, which is the translation of choice for a great number of Protestants—“empty phrases” is translated as “vain repetitions.”
So was Jesus condemning repetition in prayer?
Let’s take careful note of the qualifier in the sentence, as that adjective makes clear what our Lord is saying: vain repetition or empty phrases. Jesus is not condemning all repetition in prayer; if that were his intention, he would not have needed that qualifier. It would have been much clearer for him to say, “Do not heap up repetition in prayer, which is in vain” or something similar. As it is, he condemned not all repetition, but vain or empty repetition.
But perhaps the clearest window into what our Lord meant by his condemnation of “empty phrases” or “vain repetition” comes in the verses immediately following. Jesus says, “Pray then like this” and proceeds to teach the Our Father. This is clearly an instruction to a standard, non-improvised prayer. If all repetition in prayer is “empty” or “in vain,” then why would Our Lord teach a prayer like this immediately after condemning repetition?
Another reason it would not have made sense for Jesus to condemn all repetition is that repetition in prayer has long been part of Jewish (and later, Christian) practice, both in personal prayer and in communal, liturgical prayer.
We see many examples of this throughout Sacred Scripture, where repetitious prayer is not only acknowledged, but lauded. In the Torah, the Lord commanded the people of Israel to repeatedly recite the “sh’mah” prayer: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 6:4-7).
We also read of the vision of Isaiah in which the seraphim repeatedly chant the prayer “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts” (Isa. 6:3). Psalm 136 repeats the phrase “for his steadfast love endures for ever” twenty-six times in twenty-six verses. Yet another example, from the book of Daniel, comes when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are in the furnace facing execution, and they pray thirty-one times, “Bless the Lord . . . sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever” (3:35-68).
We have several instances in the Gospels of Jesus himself praying repetitively or applauding those who do. One example comes in the Garden of Gethsemane, during Our Lord’s agony on the night he was betrayed. We read that Jesus prayed to the Father, making the same request, and continuing to present his petition in prayer: “So, leaving them again, he went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words” (Matt. 26:44).
In the Gospel of Luke, we find Jesus teaching about the importance of persistence in prayer. “And I tell you, Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knows it will be opened” (Luke 11:9-10).
Take another example, a variation on the same theme: the parable of the persistent widow and the unjust judge (Luke 18:3-9). The widow persists in her request, confident that her persistence will eventually bring the judge around, and it does. In elucidating the parable, Jesus says God will answer those who cry to him day or night—in other words, persistence in prayer, repeatedly making the same request.
In the book of Revelation, the angels chant “day and night.” “They never cease to sing” the same phrase, and it is one familiar to Catholics: “holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (4:8).
Consider this point as well: reading Scripture is itself a prayer. Would any believing Protestant seriously claim that it is efficacious only the first time you read a passage from Scripture, because anything after that is merely “vain repetition”? I think not.
What, then, is vain repetition? At this point, we’ve established that not all repetitive prayer is in vain or “empty.” But some is—so what is the difference? What makes some prayer vain? What was Jesus talking about?
As we have seen, when you take the context into account, it’s clear that Jesus was not condemning all prayer with any repetition. What he is condemning is the way in which the Gentiles rattled off mindless and repetitive prayers in order to appease their gods. The words are said repeatedly to check a box.
There is another point to make: the Gentiles’ prayers were in vain because their gods were demons! Recall Elijah and his competition with the prophets of Ba’al. Elijah was confident that their prayers would be ineffective, since Ba’al is a demon with no inclination to act according to man&#8217;s good (see 1 Kings 18:20-40). Elijah, perhaps less charitable than Our Lord, flat-out mocks the prophets: “Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is musing, or he has gone aside, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened” (v. 27). Clearly, a prayer will be in vain if it is directed to a &#8220;god&#8221; that has no love for mankind, or to a &#8220;god&#8221; that does not exist. But this does not mean that all repetitive prayer is pointless, by any means.
Is there a modern form of vain and repetitious prayer that we should be wary of? One example, the mantra, comes from the New Age philosophies, which often incorporate elements from eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. A mantra is a repetitive chant to aid in meditation or enlightenment. The pagans of Jesus’ time chanted their vain prayers to appease false gods, but today’s New Age mantra is designed to calm and elevate the person using it. It’s really no prayer at all, except maybe a prayer to yourself.
Pagans and atheists aren’t the only ones who employ vain prayers. Catholics must be vigilant and not allow prayer to turn into something they do merely to satisfy a requirement, to check a box, in order to keep God from getting mad. Prayer is a conversation, a communing with God. Rather than heaping up empty phrases, let us pray prayerfully.
When our Lord condemned vain repetition and empty phrases in prayer, he was not condemning all repetition. Standard prayers, such as the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-mystery-of-the-our-fathers-ending">Our Father</a>, the Hail Mary, the Psalms, etc., can be a wonderful aid in approaching God in prayer and in focusing our minds, hearts, and souls.

Would Jesus Condemn the Rosary?

Joe examines C.S. Lewis&#8217;s argument for male-headship, and how that applies to Christianity and the Papacy.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to share a fascinating argument that CS Lewis made one that I agree with and one that I think points to the truth about the Catholic church and particularly about the papacy in ways that even he didn&#8217;t recognize at the time. Now many of Lewis as the author of works like the Chronicles of Narnia and his space trilogy, in which he presents Christian themes through the lens of fiction. But he&#8217;s also one of the finest modern Christian apologists and I want to explore some apologetic arguments today. Now, he was an Anglican, but his focus was to affirm what he called mere Christianity, presenting a case for why someone should believe the Christian Gospel to be true without getting into all of the particular disputed points between Catholics and Orthodox and the various denominations of Protestantism.
And in fact, the argument that I&#8217;m focused on today is from his book Near Christianity, which was itself adapted from a series of radio talks that he gave during World War ii. Before we get into that, I would be lying if I said I wasn&#8217;t grateful for all of my wonderful supporters over@shamelessjoe.com. Just know that your support is what keeps this show going and helps us to keep improving For as little as $5 a month, you can get access to the show notes with all the sources used in each episode and a PDF digest of the major points. You can also get early access to ad-free videos, exclusive q and as and much, much more. So thank you very much to all of our patrons and if you&#8217;re not already a member, please come join us over@chijoe.com. Alright, so first to give some context to the argument that he&#8217;s making. Lewis is defending the Christian belief in male headship. This is a theme I&#8217;ve explored a lot lately, but I want to point out what he says because he recognizes that when we&#8217;re talking about the idea of male headship, there are two questions which come up.
CLIP:
Something else even more unpopular remains to be dealt with. Christian wives promised to obey their husbands in Christian marriage. The man is said to be the head. Two questions obviously arise here. One, why should there be a head at all? Why not equality two, why should it be the man?
Joe:
It&#8217;s the way that Lewis answers the first of these two questions that I want to focus on. Why should a family have a single head at all instead of being governed by two co-equal parents? And here&#8217;s how Lewis answers that question.
CLIP:
The need for some head follows from the idea that marriage is permanent. Of course, as long as the husband and wife are agreed, no question of a head need arise. And we may hope that this will be the normal state of affairs in a Christian marriage, but when there is a real disagreement what is to happen, talk it over of course, but I&#8217;m assuming they have done that and still fail to reach agreement. What do they do next? They cannot decide by a majority vote. For in a council of two, there can be no majority, surely only one or other of two things can happen. Either they must separate and go their own ways or else one or other of them must have a casting vote. If marriage is permanent, one or other party must in the last resort have the power of deciding the family policy.
Joe:
I think Lewis&#8217;s argument makes sense here. The Christian vision of marriage is that it&#8217;s made to last for life. Jesus quotes Genesis two about how the two become one flesh in marriage and says, what therefore God has joined together. Let men not put a under, but anybody who&#8217;s married knows that even when you love your spouse, there are going to be times that you don&#8217;t see eye to eye. Now hopefully you can talk through it and work out whatever issues come up, but what if you&#8217;re still at an impasse? Maybe it&#8217;s a big decision like whether to move across the country for work. You&#8217;re both wanting the good of the family, you&#8217;ve both considered all the facts, and yet you&#8217;re still coming out on opposite sides of the question. Then what? Well, at a certain point, one of you is going to have to have the final say or else the two of you&#8217;re going to go in opposite directions, literally or figuratively.
And this Lewis argues is why there needs to be a single head within marriage. Lewis and Anglican is pointing towards that same truth that Pope Pius II highlighted around this same time, namely that every well ordered society requires a head and all authority in a head comes from God. Or if you&#8217;d prefer to hear it from St. Paul, the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband and the head of Christ is God. Now that doesn&#8217;t mean that women submit to their husbands instead of Christ. Jesus is the head of all Christians and as many as you were baptized and to Christ have put on Christ. Rather, it&#8217;s a pragmatic point and a theological point being made here. Practically speaking, whether we&#8217;re talking about the family or the church, any well-ordered society, someone should have the last word to preserve unity and to allow decisions to be made.
And theologically, this oneness points to God&#8217;s own unity and his headship. But if all of this is true in a marriage and in a society, why not also in the church after all the biblical teachings on marriage and on the church are inseparable. Even when St. Paul lays out his teaching on ship in Ephesians five, he describes it in terms of the teaching on marriage. Christ is the head of the church, his bride, he tells husbands to love your wives as Christ loved the church. He quotes the exact same line from Genesis two that Jesus had quoted about marriage and divorce, about the two becoming one flesh. But Paul applies it mysteriously to the one flesh union of Christ in the church. Now this oneness is critical. St. Paul mentions it at least 10 times. The church is one body. What does it mean to say that the church is one?
In a sense it means that the church is completely united with Jesus Christ. That two become one. You should no more try to have Jesus without the church than you would try to separate a man from his wife or a person&#8217;s head from their body. But Paul is also clear that the oneness of the church means that we are to be united as one church. Jesus only has one bride and we though many are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. So just as the two Christ in the church become one, so also do the many. Each of us become one with each other in the one church. And so it&#8217;s important that like the family, the church has a head. Now here, in one sense, all Christians are going to agree Jesus is the ultimate head of the church. St. Paul could not be clearer about that point.
In St. Peter&#8217;s words, Jesus is the shepherd and guardian of our souls and he is our chief shepherd. What does this look like at the local level? Should a parish have a single head like a pastor? Should a diocese have a single head like a bishop? Should the church on earth have a single head like a pope? Well, let&#8217;s follow Lewis&#8217;s reasoning. The church is the household of God as Paul says, and like our own Christian households, it means it&#8217;s to be a place of unity. But sometimes households, even those of God have squabbles. We disagree over big decisions sometimes on questions infinitely more important than moving across the country for work. What happens next? Well, hopefully we can talk it out and sure enough, sometimes there&#8217;s some plain answer to be found in the Bible or common sense or research or something like this is going to point to a sufficiently clear answer to settle the controversy.
But often even after a good faith investigation, we find ourselves at an impasse. And when that happens, you can find people on both sides of some of these big questions who clearly are well-intentioned. Clearly you&#8217;re trying to serve God and trying to serve their Christian family. They&#8217;re considering all the facts at their disposal and yet they&#8217;re coming out with different conclusions. Maybe you&#8217;ve got a congregation, they&#8217;re reading the Bible together and half of them come away convinced that the Bible supports the baptizing of infant and half of them come away convinced that it&#8217;s inappropriate to baptize infants. What are you going to do in that case? On some stuff you can just take an agree to disagree attitude, but on big issues you really can&#8217;t do that. So you ultimately are going to have to either put the doctrine up to a vote or else
CLIP:
Only one or other of two things can happen. Either they must separate and go their own ways or else one or other of them must have a casting vote.
Joe:
But the point here isn&#8217;t just pragmatic, there&#8217;s also the theological side. Back in 1 0 7, Saint Ignatius praised the Christians and trialists for being subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ. And he reminded the Christians of Ephesus that as the Lord did nothing without the father being united to him, neither by himself nor by the apostles. So neither do anything without the bishop and presbyters. He called upon them to run together as into one temple of God as to one altar, as to one Jesus Christ who came forth from one father and and has gone to one. Now, in contrast, consider how strange it is that there are denominations on earth today that don&#8217;t follow this pattern. They&#8217;ll talk about the importance in a marriage for there to be one head, the husband, but then these same denominations will be led by a committee instead of by a single head.
Well instead, the headship of the family that Lewis points to should logically lead us to support the headship of the bishop and his church. Now, as an Anglican Lewis might&#8217;ve been perfectly comfortable with the implications, but what about the rest of the on earth? After all, you could have a thousand local churches that are in lockstep with their own bishop or their pastor, but each of them disagrees with one another. But that would hardly be one church in the sense that St. Paul speaks about when he talks about how there is only one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope belonging to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all who is above all and through all. And in all that is one of the reasons that the church is one, is because there can be only one true church since there&#8217;s only one true Christian faith.
And so just as the early Christians recognize, the one bishop is key for the unity of the local church, we find early Christians pointing to the papacy is the key for the unity of the global church. St. Optatus of Milevis, for instance, writes in the three hundreds about how Christ set St. Peter above the other apostles and how Peter&#8217;s unique authority passed on to the church he founded in Rome. Now he refers to this seat of authority as the Cathedra. That means seat is where we get the word cathedral from. And he says that you cannot then deny that you do know that upon Peter first in the city of Rome was bestowed the episcopal Cathedra on which sat Peter the head of all the apostles and why. So that in this one Cathedra unity should be preserved by all lest the other apostles might claim each for himself separate Cathedras so that he who should set up a second Cathedra against the unique Cathedra would already be amatic and a sinner.
So even if your local church is completely in union with your bishop, and even if your bishop is a successor of the apostles, Optatus says that&#8217;s not enough because the true church needs to be won throughout the world, whereas every schematic and heretical group is local and so on. Global conflicts as with local ones to borrow from Lewis once more, one or other of them must have a casting vote or else the global church is going to descend into schisms. And that&#8217;s exactly what we&#8217;ve seen. It&#8217;s not just a case of Protestant groups breaking off from the church to practice some new form of Christianity. We&#8217;ve also seen countless schisms throughout church history where Christians in one region like North Africa and Egypt or Eastern Europe and what&#8217;s now Turkey, will split off from the global church and break off communion with the sea of Peter. So why be Catholic instead of Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox? I explained all of that right here, including how these Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches affirmed the authority of the Pope as recently as the 15th century in the Council of Florence. For Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
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C.S. Lewis’s Argument for the Papacy (sort of)

Should Catholic priests be allowed to marry? Fr. Joshua Whitfield, a married Catholic priest, explains why he thinks a departure from the traditional practice of priestly celibacy would be unwise.

A Married Catholic Priest on Priestly Celibacy

Why doesn’t God make his presence undeniable to honest inquirers? It seems like a God who is all-good would not leave us stumbling in the dark, unsure of his existence—especially in times of trial and suffering when we need him most. The reality of God’s hiddenness can be a cause for struggle in our faith life, and skeptics seize on it to claim that he doesn’t even exist. In this talk, Karlo Broussard explains why it’s no reason for despair or doubt. Using a popular philosophical approach that is thorough and intellectually satisfying yet still accessible, Karlo shows how God’s apparent hiddenness is not contrary to his goodness, but flows from it.

Why Doesn’t God Show His Face? Making Sense of Divine Hiddenness

I want to draw our attention first not just to our readings for the day, but to the whole shape of readings in these past few weeks. One thing about going through the lectionary—whether you’re  hearing it at Mass or preaching it—is that you get used to certain things while you fail to notice others. Since the Easter Octave, we have been skipping around in St. John’s Gospel. This starts with some of the post-Resurrection appearances, but it moves quickly into some of the deeper theological statements in John that fit nicely into this high holy period of the Church year. The first reading comes from Acts—which is typical in other years as well, as the early Church seeks to organize and understand itself in light of the Resurrection. But the second reading this year has come from Revelation.
On the surface this might seem like an odd choice to make. We associate Revelation with the Apocalypse, with the end of the world, with the Antichrist—the Beast, the Dragon, the bowls of wrath and the four horsemen—in other words, some of the most dramatic imagery in the Bible, which has further inspired some of the wildest speculation and dramatization over the last two millennia. Isn’t that the realm of crazy street preachers and fundamentalist cults? Don’t Catholics avoid all that?
If by “that” you mean sitting around trying to predict the future and coming up with things to worry about, then yes, we are supposed to avoid all that. But Revelation has more to it than doomsday prophecy. It is a classic example of apocalyptic literature whose purpose is to reveal God’s final purposes for the world. Rather than a kind of decoding exercise in history as it unfolds, Revelation is a spiritual vision—it is, literally, a vision given to John on the island of Patmos—meant to show us something of the final state of things.
Catholic students of Scripture will remember the idea of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/one-text-four-senses">fourfold sense</a> of Scripture—the literal, the allegorical, the tropological, and the anagogical. That is, we read Scripture first for what the words say and what they convey in their historical or rhetorical meaning; second in how it relates to other parts of salvation history; third, how it relates to our moral life as human beings; and fourth, how it relates to our final state in heaven.
Revelation has a natural tendency to this last sense of Scripture, the anagogical. It relates directly to what the Creed calls “the life of the world to come.” But it does so first on the literal level. How is the anagogical sense different?
The Greek word anagogy has to do with leading up or ascending. And I think what the Fathers have in mind here is more than a mere intellectual thing. Knowing about the world to come isn’t just a piece of trivia to tuck into our back pockets and pull out when someone asks a hard question about Revelation. It is rather a spiritual engine pulling us upward—“further up and further in,” as C.S. Lewis writes in The Last Battle. We begin this journey here in Easter, with the “newness” of the Resurrection.
Notice this word’s repetition this morning in our propers. In our Introit: “O sing unto the Lord a new song.” In Revelation: a new heaven and a new earth, and the voice of the Lord saying, “Behold, I make all things new.” In Acts, we have the newness of the good news, and the newness of God opening the door of faith to the Gentiles. In John we hear Jesus give the disciples a “new commandment”: Love one another.
In itself, there is not much new about newness. Change is part of creaturely life; it is definitional to created things. Our collect describes this constant newness as the “sundry and manifold changes of the world,” which suggests that the newness of worldly things is more often a cause for anxiety than of comfort. So what exactly is new and good about the good news?
I think this is where the anagogy comes into it. For the apostolic preaching in Acts, the good news is the accessibility of the kingdom of God. Revelation gives us a vision of this kingdom: Heaven and earth are renewed—not just recycled or moved to the next stage, but made perfect. This perfection is possible because God himself dwells with his people. The kingdom of God is neither an otherworldly escape from temporal things nor a mere this-worldly kingdom of peace; it is fellowship between God and his creation.
Although we can envision a more perfect world, even a perfected creation will always contain, in some sense, “sundry and manifold changes,” because change is an intrinsic part of existence for anything that is not God. The difference is that, in Jesus, we now have a fixed reference point where joys are to be found; rooted in him, the change and newness of this life can become for us less a cause of fear and uncertainty than a cause of delight. We can enjoy the unfolding of the story because we know the ending. And if we can learn to fix our hearts on him in this life, in the unfolding of that story, we will be well prepared and ready for our fellowship with him in the life to come. Amen.

The End of the World

Under the Law of Moses, forty days after the birth of a son, a woman would offer a “sin offering” in the Temple (Lev. 12:1-4). And so today, forty days after Christmas, we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation. Since this is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/catholics-keep-your-trees-up">the final Christmas-related feast</a>, it’s also when people began looking for signs of spring, a practice that gave rise to Groundhog Day.
What exactly is going on today? And why is it so important? We’ll start by explaining the deeply Jewish background of the Feast of the Presentation, because without that, it’s hard to make sense of any of it.
For instance, there’s an <a href="https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/were-joseph-and-mary-poor/">ongoing</a> <a href="https://covenant.livingchurch.org/2021/12/01/the-poverty-of-the-holy-family-against-ian-paul/">debate</a> about whether the Holy Family was “middle class” or poor. Leaving aside the anachronistic nature of using “middle class” to describe anyone in the first century, the question is largely answered by Luke 2:24, which says that Mary’s offering in the Temple was “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” What’s the significance of that? Ordinarily, a woman offered “a lamb a year old for a burnt offering, and a young pigeon or a turtledove for a sin offering” (Lev. 12:6). But “if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering” (v. 8). In this case, the fact that Mary is offering two birds tells us that the Holy Family were poor enough that they couldn’t afford a lamb.
But we’ve just established that she’s offering a “sin offering” here in the Temple. Doesn’t that prove that Mary is a sinner, just like the rest of us? That’s how many Protestants read the passage. <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Luke_1_5_MacArthur_New_Testament_Comment/wMk4yNC28GcC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=%E2%80%9CMary+offered+a+sin+offering%22&amp;pg=PA171&amp;printsec=frontcover">John MacArthur writes</a>, “That Mary offered a sin offering is consistent with the reality that she was a sinner in need of a Savior. The Catholic dogma that Mary was immaculately conceived and lived a sinless life finds no support in Scripture.” And <a href="https://carm.org/roman-catholicism/if-mary-was-sinless-why-was-she-unclean-and-had-to-offer-a-sacrifice-for-sin/">CARM’s Matt Slick asks</a>, “If Mary was sinless, how could she also be unclean?”
So according to MacArthur and Slick, the Feast of the Presentation is all about Mary offering a sin offering to atone for the “sin” of . . . well, what, exactly? Giving birth to Jesus Christ? The obsession with trying to debunk the Catholic view of Mary has led these men into strange and impious places.
As you might have guessed, these Protestant objections are ignorant of the Jewish background to Luke 2. Let’s start with Slick’s question: “if Mary was sinless, how could she also be unclean?” Quite easily. Ritual impurity isn’t the same thing as being in a state of sin. As <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Impurity_and_Sin_in_Ancient_Judaism/Rrhv2LyDSbsC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=%22sin%20does%20not%20produce%20ritual%20impurity%22">Jonathan Klawans explains</a> in his book Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism, “sin does not produce ritual impurity, and ritual impurity does not render one sinful. Also ritual purification is not a part of the process of atonement.” Klawans further explains that ritual impurity is “generally natural and more or less unavoidable,” and “it is not sinful to contract these impurities.”
We see this distinction illustrated quite clearly in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), in which the priest and Levite see a man on the road, wounded so badly that he appeared to be dead, and “passed by on the other side.” Why did they pass by? Because touching a dead body would render one ritually impure (Num. 19:13). By obsessing about ritual impurity, they were failing to treat the man with charity. Jesus is clear that the Samaritan, unconcerned with such matters, is the only one who treats the man lovingly.
This seems to be true even in terms of ḥaṭṭā&#8217;āṯ, the kind of offering traditionally translated (including here) as “sin offering.” Many scholars argue that a better translation is “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1517287">purification offering</a>,” since it’s offered for many things we wouldn’t think of as sins. For instance, it was offered at the dedication of God’s altar in Exodus 29:36-37. It was offered in the ritual purification of lepers and their houses (Lev. 14). If you took a Nazirite vow, which prohibited contact with dead bodies (Num. 6:6), and someone were to “die very suddenly” beside you, you offered a sin offering (v. 11). But if you successfully completed your vow, you also offered a sin offering (vv. 13-14).
After all, why would it be considered a “sin” to bring a child into the world? <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/107149?lang=en">Jewish sources disagree</a>, and some of the attempts at explanation are frankly far-fetched (for instance, the theory that women in childbirth always make rash vows never again to have sex with their husbands). One interesting theory, from the fifteenth-century Jewish commentator Isaac Abarbanel, argued “that this sacrifice is not due to her own sin, rather due to the sin of the mother of all (Eve), because if she did not sin, then man and woman would procreate not with desire and lust but in a totally natural way,” and that “because the branches are corrupted like the root is corrupted, and therefore the Torah requires a sin offering to atone for the primal sin.” In other words, both lust and the pain of childbirth are reminders of the Fall (Gen. 3:16), and so the sin offering is a recognition of what we Catholics would call “original sin.”
Whichever side you fall on in the ongoing debate about the ḥaṭṭā&#8217;āṯ offering, there’s a crucial detail that the Protestant commentators (and many others) are missing: Mary didn’t have to offer the ḥaṭṭā&#8217;āṯ “sin offering” in the first place. That’s true regardless of what you believe about Mary’s sinlessness, so long as you believe what the Bible teaches about the Virgin Birth. That’s because Leviticus 12 doesn’t apply to women who conceive (<a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2029/kjv/wlc/0-1/">hārâ</a>) or are pregnant (<a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2030/kjv/wlc/0-1/">hārê</a>). It applies to women who “receive seed” (<a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/lexicon/h2232/kjv/wlc/0-1/">zāraʿ</a>). And while Mary did conceive and bear a child, she did so as a virgin, as St. Matthew tells us: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Matt. 1:23; cf. Isa. 7:14).
Under the strict terms of the Mosaic Law, Mary was totally free. She needn’t have offered the ritual offerings in the Temple, and she would have known that (since she knew she was a virgin). And yet there she is at the Temple for the Feast of the Presentation anyway. Why? St. Bede the Venerable (672-735) offers an insightful answer:
<blockquote>Mary, God’s blessed mother and a perpetual virgin, was, along with the son she bore, most free from all subjection to the Law. The Law says that a woman who “had received seed” [Lev. 12:2] and given birth was to be judged unclean and that after a long period she, along with the offspring she had borne, were to be cleansed by victims offered to God. So it is evident that the law does not describe as unclean that woman who, without receiving man’s seed, gave birth as a virgin. Nor does it teach that she had to be cleansed by saving sacrificial offerings. But as our Lord and Savior, who in his divinity was the one who gave the law, when he appeared as a human being, willed to be under the Law . . . so too his blessed mother, who by a singular privilege was above the Law, nevertheless did not shun being made subject to the principles of the Law for the sake of showing us an example of humility.</blockquote>
Bede, who clearly understands the nuances of Leviticus 12 better than many modern Protestants, realizes that it doesn’t apply (by its own terms!) to a virgin birth. Instead of the Presentation showing that Mary was a sinner who needed to atone for the “sin” of Jesus’ conception and birth, Luke 2 actually shows—and St. Paul <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=galatians+4%3A4-5&amp;version=RSVCE">reinforces</a> in Galatians 4—that Mary freely submitted to the Jewish Law even when she was free from its strictures . . . just as her divine son would go on to do throughout his life.

If Mary’s Immaculate, Why a Sin Offering?

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DAY 80
CHALLENGE
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“The Catholic Church says Protestants are damned. The Council of Trent contains many canons saying that if someone endorses a particular Protestant belief, ‘Let him be anathema’ (damned by God).”
DEFENSE
This fundamentally misunderstands what an anathema was. It reads a non-Catholic understanding of the term into Catholic documents.
In Church documents, the term “anathema” does not mean “damned by God.” It refers to a form of excommunication that used to be practiced. When a person was excommunicated by anathema, a series of procedures had to be followed, including the local bishop warning the person he was committing a grave ecclesiastical crime and imperiling his soul. If he failed to repent, an ecclesiastical court would try and convict him, then the bishop would hold a public ceremony where he was excommunicated (cf. 1 Cor. 5:1–5, 1 Tim. 1:20). If he later repented, the bishop would perform another public ceremony, lift the
excommunication, and welcome him back (cf. 2 Cor. 2:6–8).
When Trent used the formula “Let him be anathema,” it indicated bishops could apply this form of excommunication to Catholics in
their flocks who committed certain offenses. 
The penalty did not take effect automatically. Thus, it never applied globally to Protestants. Not only were Protestants not subjects of Catholic bishops, the bishops had better things to do than conduct endless court procedures and ceremonies concerning people who were not part of the Catholic community.
In practice, the penalty of anathema was imposed rarely and only on those who continued to assert their Catholic identity. Eventually, it became so infrequent that it was abolished and does not exist today. The current Code of Canon Law (1983) does not contain the penalty of anathema, and it abrogates all penalties it does not contain (cf. canon 6).
Excommunication still exists and is still applied if a Catholic embraces a heresy (canons 751, 1364; cf. canons 11, 1321–23, 1330). How- ever, the form of excommunication known as anathema no longer exists. But even when it did, anathema did not judge the state of a per- son’s soul—something only God knows. It was a disciplinary measure intended to protect the Catholic community and to wake a Catholic up to the spiritual danger he was in.
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Anathema

If a person confesses their sins to a person who is portraying themself as a priest, is that confession valid?

Is the following a proper analogy: We are like the apostles who were lost in the quantity of fish they caught and didn’t recognize Jesus along the shore? We get caught up in our daily distractions and don’t recognize Jesus.

How does the Church resolve God being the rock such as in Deuteronomy?

If God is called &#8220;the Rock&#8221; in Deuteronomy, how can Catholics say Peter is the rock in Matthew 16:18? We explore how Scripture uses the term and why identifying Peter as the rock of the Church doesn’t take anything away from God’s ultimate authority.
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Does Calling Peter the Rock Contradict Deuteronomy?

Do Catholics believe they must earn salvation?

<div>Can the Annunciation be moved to a permanent date out of the shadow of Divine Mercy Sunday?</div><div>The date of the Feast of the Annunciation is March 25. In 2018 March 25 was Palm Sunday and then Holy Week, and the Octave of Easter took precedence over the feast, and so it was moved to April 9.
You might also recall that the feast was moved in 2016 because Good Friday fell on March 25.
While this happens occasionally, the feast usually is able to remain on March 25. Over the next twelve years the feast will need to be moved only three times (in 2024, 2027, and 2029).
In the Latin Church, it has been almost always and universally celebrated on March 25, with evidence going back the seventh century.
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On What Date Do We Celebrate the Annunciation?

Each December, as we approach Christmas, there are articles proclaiming that the &#8220;real reason&#8221; we celebrate Christmas on December 25th is because of pagan holidays. So is Christmas based on the pagan feast of Saturnalia? Or is it based on the feast of Sol Invictus? And if not either of these, how did Christians end up celebrating Christmas on December 25th?

Does Christmas Have Pagan Origins?

<div>How do I explain Jesus to a Jew?</div><div>I would explain how Jesus fulfills Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messiah and the people of Israel, though I would use the term “Hebrew Bible” in speaking to a Jewish friend.
For example, Jesus fulfills the “suffering servant” prophecy of Isaiah 52-53, in which a lamb is described as taking on the sins of the people, and not just of the Jewish people but the whole world.
Indeed, Isaiah prophesied elsewhere that from the root of Jesse would come an ensign for all nations (Is. 11:1-10), a reference to Jesse’s son, King David, whose dynasty had fallen but would one day be restored in Jesus (see Luke 1:31-33). The prophet Amos affirmed that the fallen house of David would one day be rebuilt and that the nations would be drawn in (Amos 9:11-12).
In addition, God told Abraham that all the nations of the world would be blessed by his descendants (Gen. 22:18), a prophecy again fulfilled in Jesus.
That’s a good start. Just remember that the Church teaches that Catholicism is the fulfillment of Judaism; it is the new Israel, and we consistently see that theme played out in Church life and teaching, e.g., the twelve apostles fulfill the role of the twelve tribes of Israel, and the Mass is the New Covenant fulfillment of Passover, in which we not only offer anew but partake of the Lamb of God (Luke 22:19-20, John 6:47-59, Ex. 12).
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How Do I Explain Jesus to a Jew?

What are we supposed to confess at First Confession?

What is the standard to know if Catholic Doctrine has changed versus developed?

Why can’t I receive Communion unless I’m in a state of grace?

Why is it okay for Catholics to only receive the bread versus both species?

Could the Creation of Eve be considered the first miracle?

Why do we cling to certain Biblical teachings and stray from others?

What’s the difference between change and development in Catholic teaching? Karlo Broussard explains how the Church maintains continuity and answers more on First Confession, receiving Communion, and the first miracle of creation.
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How Do We Know If Catholic Doctrine Has Changed or Developed?

<blockquote>Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to send her away quietly (Matt. 1:18-19).</blockquote>
So writes the Holy Spirit through the Evangelist, St. Matthew, in describing the virginal conception in the womb of the Holy Mother of God, Mary, and the ensuing, though temporary, decision of St. Joseph, her husband, to “send her away” quietly.
“Why was Joseph going to separate himself from Mary?” The immediate response may well be that he suspected her of adultery, but did not want to make this publicly known lest she be shamed and, indeed, stoned to death. Surely, as St. Thomas Aquinas references in his famous Catena Aurea, this was the response of some of the great Fathers of the Church to this question—e.g., John Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine (see Catena Aurea, Volume I, The Saint Austin Press, 1997). Given the scriptural data, as well as these corresponding interpretations from such great authorities, we might consider this question settled.
However, not so fast . . . for there are some other considerations to be made in order to more conscientiously answer this question. This theory—the “Suspicion Theory”—is not the only “game” in town!
Aquinas, in his masterful commentary on the Holy Gospel according to Matthew and the aforementioned Catena Aurea, points out that in addition to the Suspicion Theory, there are two other interpretations of Matthew 1:19’s reference to Joseph’s decision to dismiss Mary.
The first, which we will call the “Confusion Theory,” holds that Joseph was not suspicious of Our Lady, but rather was simply confused as to how she was with child.
The other of these alternative interpretations, the one upon which we will focus here and which we shall call the “Reverence Theory,” holds that Joseph knew exactly what was going on—i.e., that this child was the promised Messiah and that Mary, the Holy Virgin Mary, his betrothed, was none other than the promised Virgin of Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear as son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Proponents of this theory include such great ones as Jerome and Origen, as Aquinas references both in the Catena Aurea and in his commentary on this Gospel:
<blockquote>According to Jerome and Origen, he had no suspicion of adultery. For Joseph knew Mary’s chastity; he had read in the Scriptures that a virgin will conceive (Isa. 7:14) and, and there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root (11:1); he also knew that Mary was descended from David. Hence he more easily believed that this had been fulfilled in her than that she had fornicated. And therefore, considering himself unworthy to live with such great sanctity, he wished to hide her away, just as Peter said, depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord (Luke 5:8). Hence he did not wish to hand her over, i.e., to take her to himself, and receive her in marriage, considering himself unworthy (see chs. 1-12).</blockquote>
Some may be inclined to think that this interpretation is an “overly pious” stretching of the true meaning of the Scriptures on this matter, ignoring the obvious meaning of divine revelation on this question. But is this so?
Before we answer that directly, we must remember that in order to interpret the Scripture properly, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) teaches (see 112-114), we must be attentive to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture, read the Scripture within the living Tradition of the whole Church, and be attentive to the “analogy of faith”—i.e., the coherence of the truths of faith among themselves and within the whole plan of revelation. It is only by employing these three principles that we can interpret the Scriptures properly, especially difficult passages.
We can now say that the Reverence Theory given by Jerome and Origen (and seemingly gaining popularity in the Church as time goes on) is hardly “far-fetched.” For if we utilize the aforementioned three principles of scriptural interpretation given in the Catechism, with the aid of the development of dogma, we today can realize just how holy the Mother of God is—i.e., that she is the Immaculate Conception (as she herself told St. Bernadette at Lourdes and as the Church has infallibly defined).
Furthermore, as the centuries progress, the Church seems to be very much growing in her appreciation of the holiness of St. Joseph. “The opinion that St. Joseph is <a href="https://www.ecatholic2000.com/lagrange/saviour/mother.shtml">the greatest of the saints</a> after Our Lady is one which is becoming daily more commonly held in the Church” (p. 277). In recent centuries, numerous papal documents have been written about him, greater importance has been given by the Church to his feasts, he has been given greater titles (e.g., “Patron of the Universal Church”), his litany has been expanded, and his name was added both to the Roman Canon and to the other Eucharistic Prayers. Consider, too, this strong statement made by Pope Leo XIII concerning Joseph: “As Joseph has been united to the Blessed Virgin by the ties of marriage, it may not be doubted that he approached nearer than any to the eminent dignity by which the Mother of God surpasses so nobly all created natures” (Quamquam Pluries 3).
Thus, as the centuries roll along, Holy Mother Church’s eyes are penetrating more keenly into the holiness of these two key figures, Mary and Joseph, so closely connected to the incarnation of Our Lord. With that penetration, the Church is gradually coming to see that their holiness surpasses—far surpasses— the holiness of other saints.
This is an important point to make for our question. For, as Aquinas teaches (see Summa Theologia IIa-IIae, q. 60), the nature of suspicion is such that the more pure one is, the less inclined he will be to be suspicious of others.
Given all of this—the employing of the previous principles of scriptural interpretation given by the Catechism, the development of doctrine that the Church has undergone over the centuries on the high level of holiness of both Mary and Joseph, and the nature of suspicion—we can now simply ask an alternative question: “Would Joseph, being as holy as he is, ever suspect Mary, being as holy as she is, of adultery?”
Even if one still holds to the Suspicion Theory, such a one should, at the very least, be able to see that it is hardly unreasonable to hold to the Reverence Theory.
But if we in fact do hold to the Reverence Theory (as, in fact, the author of this article does!), we get a very different “picture”—one much “warmer”—of the great St. Joseph. We see a man who, contrary to being suspicious of the Immaculate One, is much more inclined to believe that she was, indeed, the promised Virgin of Isaiah 7:14 (a prophecy that Joseph himself helped fulfill—see Matt. 1:22-23). Further, it is his humility—not suspicion, but humility—that moves him to regard himself as unworthy of Mary (whom he would know to be the bride of the Holy Spirit) and her divine son! Further, if we hold to this theory, we can only imagine the joy that Joseph must have felt when he was told by the angel that he indeed was worthy to be the husband to the Mother of God and the virgin-father of her divine son: “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife” (Matt. 1:20).
St. Joseph, worthy husband of the Holy Virgin Mary, pray for us!