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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.
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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.