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Patrick Lencioni discusses a Catholic approach to dealing with conflict, emphasizing most of all the need for humility and the desire to learn the truth rather than to win the argument.
Transcript:
Host: John in Wilmington, North Carolina, listening on Wilmington Catholic Radio, you are on with Patrick Lencioni, what&#8217;s your question, please?
Caller: Yes, I wanted Patrick&#8217;s opinion about a strategy for dealing with conflict. And here&#8217;s what I would suggest. It&#8217;s kind of a general thought process, is that through the clash of differing opinions comes the spark of truth. And a way that I&#8217;ve dealt with, in consultation, with others when we have differences, it could be personal issues between two people, it could be, let&#8217;s say social issues in the Catholic Church where people differ in their opinions about things.
And one&#8211;the steps I would say, and I&#8217;d like your feedback on this and your thoughts and then I&#8217;ll hang up once I share these. Number one is: first identify what are the spiritual principles that various people feel are related to whatever this issue might be; number two, agree that those are relevant principles that could be taken from Scripture, they can be taken from the Magisterium, can be taken from a personal experience; and number three, consult about those after you&#8217;ve agreed on them, and then begin to deal with what the real truth is, whatever that matter might be.
And the reason I say this is that if you identify spiritual principles and can agree on them, it&#8217;s kind of taking the ego out of the picture and now you have the essence of what are the issues that relate. Maybe you&#8217;re talking about how to deal with the poor, and happen and how we deal with the poor in our community for example.
Host: Okay John, let&#8217;s let Pat take a shot at that.
Patrick: That was great, John, I mean I there&#8217;s a lot of wisdom in what you said. And so I&#8217;ll just add some things to that. I think that that&#8217;s&#8211;when we talk about building trust before we engage in conflict, it&#8217;s about getting people to be vulnerable enough, and if you&#8217;re a true Christian and a follower of Jesus you can&#8217;t be anything but. This is what humility is, it&#8217;s like &#8220;I am NOT God, and I just want to serve God,&#8221; and we have that in common.
So if you do that, and if you start with prayer, and like, when you&#8211;when a church goes to have a difficult conversation about something going on in their parish, or if two people, priests or otherwise, want to have a good theological conversation because they&#8217;re not on the same page, goodness gracious, if two bishops sat down and said &#8220;I think you might be off on this,&#8221; if they prayed hard and said, &#8220;God send us your spirit and your truth, and take away our egos, and let us do what you want,&#8221; and they&#8217;re both eagerly seeking that, well you&#8217;ve got to figure that most of the unhealthy conflict is gonna go away.
And I think two things that I would say to people is, one, think about St. Francis of Assisi, who said &#8220;Seek to understand more than to be understood,&#8221; and we&#8217;re called to do that. And if we go into these situations seeking to understand where the other person is coming from, rather than trying to win the argument, we&#8217;re much more likely to do that. And then one of my favorite prayers is the Litany of Humility, that was written by a pope years ago, I wish I can remember which one, but which is just asking God to give you the grace to let go of the desire to be considered and understood, and to overcome your fear of being&#8230;it&#8217;s just to be truly humble.
And if you&#8211;if two people can sit down and agree that they&#8217;re here to serve Jesus, they pray together, humility is at the center of this, and they want to understand one another, this is&#8211;conflict is only gonna become the pursuit of the best answer in truth. The problem is when we engage in that without trust, without humility, without prayer, and without seeking to understand.
So I think what I&#8217;m saying to you, John, is your thoughts are great, and I think it&#8217;s completely, completely about our faith, and that&#8217;s why churches should be better at making decisions than anybody because they should be calling on God to intervene for them every single time. So you&#8217;re right John, that&#8217;s my short long answer way of saying you&#8217;re right.

An Approach to Dealing with Conflict

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.
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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?

Typically, Protestants who believe in the “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/once-saved-always-saved">once saved always saved</a>” doctrine also believe we can “know” we have eternal life. And the knowledge here is taken to be knowledge with absolute certainty, i.e., having no possibility of error—as opposed to knowledge with moral certainty, which involves the possibility of error. They often <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-we-know-that-we-have-eternal-life">cite 1 John 5:13</a> for support.
There’s a corollary that goes with the above belief—namely, that if someone falls into grave sin, then he was never really saved in the first place. This often is posed as <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/meeting-the-protestant-response-how-to-answer-common-comebacks-to-catholic-arguments/">a counter</a> to a Catholic who, in trying to defend the idea that it’s possible to lose your salvation, cites a person whom most thought was truly a “born again” Christian and yet committed grave sin—e.g., adultery or apostasy.
It never occurred to me until recently that this corollary is incompatible with the belief that we can “know” we have eternal life.
Think about it: according to the above belief, committing a grave sin is a sign that a person was never saved in the first place. But here’s the question: do we have absolute assurance that, from this day forward, we will never commit a sin like apostasy that signifies we were never saved in the first place? The answer is no.
Now, if we don’t know whether we’re going to eventually commit such a sin, then we don’t really know with absolute assurance whether we’re really saved in the first place or not. We wouldn’t have such assurance until we die.
So, the belief that we can “know” with absolute assurance that we’re saved is logically incompatible with the belief that a grave sin committed by a “Christian” is evidence that he was never really saved in the first place.
Protestants who profess the above two beliefs must choose which belief they will keep. Which will it be? Our Protestants friends will have to decide.

“You Were Never REALLY Saved”

Is Halloween too obsessed with evil for Christians to participate? Is it <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-halloween-a-pagan-festival">descended from a pagan holiday</a>? Is it really contrary to faith or morals to decorate your house with spiders, dress up in a costume, and go trick-or-treating? Jimmy Akin gives the answers.

Can Catholics Celebrate Halloween?

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Does Christmas fall apart without Santa?

FEMALE PASTOR calls Catholic show

Back in my Episcopalian days in the Deep South, I remember hearing a fascinating conversation between a mother and son on their arrival at church. The son was asking his mother about why they came. She began to tell him about how they come to learn about God, but he stopped her and says, “But mom, I already like God!”
There’s no special wisdom in this statement, just honesty. If you don’t believe in the holy sacrifice of the Mass, if you don’t believe in the Sunday obligation, if you think Christianity is just having a friendly attitude toward God and other people, it makes sense that, in the long list of priorities, it should fall somewhere below cleaning the house, helping the kids do homework, playing golf, and spending time with family. When all those other things are in order, and we happen to be well rested and not too busy, maybe we can make it to church. And what’s wrong with that? I mean, we already like God.
Is it our job to make people like God? That is, I suppose, one model of ministry, represented well by Amaziah in our reading from Amos. He is a court priest. His job is to fill the king’s ears with happy religious support. His job is to keep the peace in the name of God, or the gods, or whatever convenient powers happen to be at hand. And in today’s passage, that means rebuking the true prophet, Amos. Go back to Judah where you belong, he says. Maybe they’ll appreciate your prophecy there.
But for Amos, unlike Amaziah, this isn’t about personal gain; it’s about the truth. He is, by his own testimony, not a professional: he doesn’t come from one of the prophetic dynasties or the formal groups of prophets devoted to Scripture and prayer. He is not so different, maybe, from the disciples in today’s passage from Mark, where the Lord sends them out two by two. How are they prepared for this mission? By years of training and discipline, by mastering the latest evangelistic techniques and rhetorical styles? None of the above. Their preparation consists of simply watching and listening to Jesus. Their instructions do not include a complicated playbook or set of quotas—just a reminder to keep moving and not worry too much about it if they’re not welcome. Their goal, too, isn’t just to make people like God, but to lead people from shadows into truth, from knowledge to worship.
Let’s bring this back to the present. You already like God. Good. But our job, yours and mine, is not to like God, or even just to know God, but to worship God. Worship literally means to ascribe worth to something or someone. In our beautiful marriage rite, a man says to his wife, when putting on the ring, “With this ring, I thee wed; with my body, I thee worship.” To worship God is to live in such a way as to make it clear, to ourselves, and to others, that God is the source of all worth, all value, all goodness. Worship is a whole way of life. It flows from the altar, through the church, and out into the world. Worship is putting our loves in order; it is arranging our priorities and our lives—from our heads to our wallets to our loins to our feet—in a way that shows that God is the most important thing.
For Amos and the other prophets, worship is the end game. Modern people love quoting the prophets about justice, but injustice, for the prophets, is a problem precisely because it disrupts worship, because it suggests the finality of a world without God, a world without meaning or relationship. Justice is having everything in order—which is to say it is much more than punishment or prevention. The just world is a world ordered and oriented to worship. Worship is what we are for. It is why we were made. In the philosophical way of putting it, it is our final cause: our “meaning of life.”
There is probably no better way in this world to be prophetic than to act as if worship is the most important thing in the world. Prophecy involves both action and word—the ability to name, at times, behaviors that disrupt the Church’s worship. Amaziah shows that priests are sometimes incapable of doing this themselves. Amos the prophet, however, is “a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” He’s no cleric, that is. He’s a layman. But he is able to ask the right questions, the sorts of questions that laypeople today can and do still ask. What is the most important thing? Is it God, or is it not stepping on anyone’s toes? Is it God, or is it preserving capital? Is it God, or is it making life easier for ourselves? Is it God, or is it being safe?
You don’t need an advanced degree in theology to answer those questions. In fact, sometimes theologians (and I speak as one) can make things so complicated by nuance and distinction as to lose the point. God is the most important thing. Our lives find their ultimate meaning when they are shaped and ordered around the worship of God. So, despite the Amaziahs of this world telling us to stay in our own lane and not “force our religion” on people, we have to insist, like Amos, that actually all questions about justice and morality and human politics and economics come down to worship—in other words, to what we were created for. Those demanding that we keep “religion” out of the public square are declaring that, in order to talk about the journey, we have to forbid any discussion of the destination or why we are making the journey in the first place.
Whether we are called to the modern-day royal court, or to some other more ordinary place, Jesus sends us out on his business. The question isn’t whether we have all the right skills or the perfect techniques to win the day. The question is whether we are willing to go, or to be, where we are sent, trusting in our Lord—to reveal that the purpose of all things is only found in Christ.

The Meaning of Life

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Do Catholics believe they must earn salvation?

Jeff Cavins and Father Mike Schmitz are now doing for the catechism what they did for the Bible. Cavins joins us to explain the value of the catechism in sharing the Faith.

Making Sense of the Catechism

Archbishop Alexander Sample discusses the role of listening in the mass and the various parts of the liturgy to which we can attentively listen.
Transcript:
Host: So we go to James in Dallas, Texas, listening online. James, your question for Archbishop Alexander Sample.
Caller: Hi there, Archbishop Sample. Anyhow, basically I was just wondering if listening is the most important role of a congregant in the pews; especially what I mean by that, listening to the homily or sermon and hopefully the priest will touch on a current topic and then what I call grounded in in solid Gospel teaching instead of so many people in the pews &#8220;praying, paying, and exiting,&#8221; as I like to call it. What is your overall view on that?
Abp. Sample: Well thank you James, that&#8217;s a very good and important question, I&#8217;m glad you asked it because listening, being receptive at at the mass is very much a part of that full, active, conscious participation in the Sacred Liturgy. And I think that&#8217;s, you know, listening and being what some might call passive during the Sacred Liturgy is like&#8230;in the minds of many liturgical people it&#8217;s sort of like the mortal sin of Mass is that you ever be in a passive mode. And by &#8220;passive&#8221; I don&#8217;t mean&#8230;that&#8217;s probably very much the wrong word to use. To be in a receptive mode, a receptive mode, to be listening, as James said, to be listening to the Word of God. To be listening to the prayers of the Mass.
I mean, how many of us, five seconds after the opening prayer of the Mass, the Collect of the Mass, can remember what the priest just prayed? Are we even listening to what that prayer says? The other texts of the liturgy are very important, and many of them deeply rooted in a long tradition. But to be in that listening mode, to be listening to the Word of God, to be listening to the prayers of the Mass, to be listening to, hopefully, what is a meaningful and spiritually uplifting homily. Sometimes also to be listening to the sacred music that is being sung. Sometimes the choir, or the schola, will be singing something that isn&#8217;t meant for congregational singing but is meant for choir.
But listening, being in a receptive listening mode to the sacred song, also is a form of active participation. This is what I was trying to get at earlier too, is this idea that we&#8217;re participating interiorly, we&#8217;re participating with our mind and our heart, but that means having open ears, open mind, open heart to be receptive to the Grace that that Christ wishes to give us through our participation in the Sacred Liturgy, so I think that&#8217;s a very important question.

What Role Does Listening Play at the Mass?

Catholicism seems to be rules obsessed.

How do I explain to protestants that they have tradition also?

It seems like Catholics are inconsistent with their interpretation of the use of the word “until” in Scripture.

How do Catholics reconcile the idea of a Catholic view of Jesus and Protestant view of Jesus?

What exactly is tradition?

Dr. Karlo Broussard answers common objections and questions about Catholicism, including whether the Church is too focused on rules, how to explain to Protestants that they also rely on tradition, and whether Catholics interpret “until” inconsistently in Scripture. He also discusses reconciling Catholic and Protestant views of Jesus and clarifies what tradition means in the Catholic faith.

Is Catholicism Too Focused on Rules? A Catholic Response

If there’s one thing Catholics and Protestants can agree on, it&#8217;s that whatever we believe can’t contradict Scripture. But some Protestants think the Catholic belief in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/immaculate-conception-and-assumption">Mary’s bodily assumption</a> into heaven contradicts John 3:13.
There, Jesus says, “No one has ascended up to heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man.” If “no man” has ascended into heaven, so the argument goes, wouldn’t that include the Blessed Virgin Mary?
The answer is no; and the reason depends on how we interpret “ascend into heaven.” There are three possible meanings, as far as I can tell.
<ul>
<li>One meaning is simply entrance into heaven.</li>
<li>Another is the unique way in which Christ entered into heaven—by his own power.</li>
<li>Still another is Jesus’ possession of the Beatific Vision.</li>
</ul>
My claim is that none of these meanings excludes Mary’s bodily assumption.
Let’s take the entrance meaning first.
We know Christ can’t be excluding absolutely everyone else from entering heaven, since that would go against other things he’s revealed to us (cf. Rev. 5:8, 6:9, 7:4-10). Therefore, he must be referring to the timing of people entering heaven compared to himself.
Now, remember, Jesus is saying this long before Mary’s bodily assumption. So, at the time this statement was uttered, it was true that no one had “ascended” into heaven in the sense of entering heaven, including Mary, because her earthly life hadn’t come to an end yet and she hadn’t been bodily assumed.
So, on the view that “ascend” means entrance into heaven, Mary’s bodily assumption doesn’t conflict with John 3:13.
Well, what about the other meaning for “ascend”—namely, the unique way in which Christ enters heaven? Wouldn’t Mary’s bodily assumption rob Jesus of that privilege?
It would if we believed Mary went into heaven in the same way as Christ. But that’s not what the Catholic Church teaches. We don’t believe Mary “ascended” into heaven. Rather, she was assumed, which is essentially different.
The difference is that Jesus ascended into heaven by his own power. He was the active cause of his bodily entrance into heaven. Mary, on the other hand, was entirely passive, being brought bodily to heaven by God, just as all Christians will be bodily assumed into heaven by God at the end of time.
Given this difference between ascension and assumption, we can conclude that the Church’s teaching on Mary’s bodily assumption doesn’t conflict with the second possible meaning of John 3:13.
There’s one more possible meaning for “ascend”—namely, the beatific vision. One might interpret “ascend” in this way because Jesus’ statement seems to imply that he already “ascended” into heaven, for he says, “No one has ascended up to heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man.” How can Jesus have already “ascended” into heaven before his ascension in Acts 1?
The answer is the beatific vision. It is part of Church teaching that Jesus had the beatific vision while here on earth. So, he was “in heaven,” or “ascended into heaven,” even before visibly ascending into heaven with his resurrected body.
Now, on this reading, Jesus’ statement is not falsified by the belief that Mary was bodily assumed into heaven. When Jesus said this statement, which was long before Mary would enter “heaven,” it was true that no one had the beatific vision. This statement was even true given that no righteous soul from the Old Testament had yet entered the beatific vision.
So, no matter how we read the phrase “ascend into heaven,” Mary’s bodily assumption doesn’t conflict with John 3:13. Thus, John 3:13 fails to disprove Mary’s bodily assumption.

Did Mary Break the Rules of Heaven?

<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!

Why Did Joseph Want to Put Mary Away?

<div>Did the Church change its teaching on whether non-Catholics can go to heaven?</div><div>No, the Church hasn&#8217;t. Problem is, that teaching has been misunderstood and sometimes misrepresented by various people over the centuries. For a good primer on the subject, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/salvation-outside-the-church">our tract “Salvation Outside the Church.”</a>
</div>

The Salvation of Non-Catholics

Protestants believe the Bible is the only source for determining Christian truth. But as Karlo Broussard shows this belief is incoherent. If followed to its logical conclusion, Protestants would have to reject their knowledge of what Scripture is.
Transcript:
Protestants believe the Bible is the only source for determining Christian truth. This doctrine is called <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-protestant-achilles-heel">Sola Scriptura</a>, which is Latin for “Scripture Alone.”
But did you know that this fundamental doctrine of Protestantism is incoherent? Let me explain!
Notice the doctrine presupposes knowledge of what scriptura is—those books inspired by God that belong in the Bible. But if the Bible is the only source of Christian truth, then we couldn’t have such knowledge. Why? Because <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/proving-inspiration">the Bible never tells us which books are inspired</a>.
If Sola Scriptura were true, then we couldn&#8217;t know what scripture is. Do you see how it’s self-refuting?
Even if the Bible did give us a list of inspired books, and we believed the Bible was inspired, we couldn’t accept that list lest we be guilty of circular reasoning—“Why do you believe the biblical books are inspired?” “Because they say they’re inspired.” “Well, why do you believe them when they say that?” “Because they’re inspired.”
The only way to acknowledge the inspiration of Scripture and avoid circular reasoning is to appeal to an infallible Church established by Christ that tells us which books are inspired. But Protestants reject this idea, which gives rise to another conundrum.
If no infallible Church exists, and Protestants believe our knowledge that the biblical books are inspired is infallible, then we would have an infallible effect produced by a fallible cause, which is absurd.
The bottom line is Sola Scriptura is an unreasonable doctrine. So, of my Protestant friends I ask, “Why believe in a doctrine that can’t stand up to the scrutiny of reason?”
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.

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<div>Does having a Mass said for dead person save them from hell at their judgment?</div><div>Having a Mass said for someone after death cannot save them from hell. The reason for this is that grace does not override our choices.
When we have a Mass said for a deceased person we are presuming he is at least in purgatory and that the Mass will help lessen or ease the temporal punishment due to his sins. In this case, we are assuming or hoping that the individual has repented of sin.
Someone who ends up in hell is someone who died unrepentant in a state of mortal sin.  Such a person has refused the grace and mercy of God and therefore has refused any benefit from the sacrifice of the Mass. A worldly and imperfect example would be if I gave you a coupon for a reduced admission to an event. In order to make use of the coupon, you&#8217;d have to actually be going to the event. The coupon is of no use otherwise.
</div>

Can Mass Save Someone from Hell?

In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Trent Horn to discuss the complexities of the pro-choice argument. Trent continues with details about the implications of illegal abortions and the importance of considering all parties involved in unintended pregnancies.
Transcript:
Caller: I&#8217;m pro choice because I believe that if we don&#8217;t have legal abortions, then there&#8217;s going to be women that are exposed to illegal abortionist quacks, as you would say, and we&#8217;re going to have women that are dying. So, Judy, you think the answer that some women may choose to go have unsafe abortions. You think that you know this. I know this from experience. You think that the best. My personal experience, but I. My father was a law enforcement officer, and in the the 60s, he had a man that operated an independent motel on the north side of Waco and came to him concerned because there had been people renting a room weeks, weekends and weekends and weekends, leaving lots of bloody sheets and bloody towels. And he was concerned that there was something. Something going on. And they staked it out. And sure enough, there was a man performing illegal abortions. Wow. And when they. They caught the person, the person that he was performing the illegal abortion on actually nearly bled to death. And she wasn&#8217;t able to have children. Her father was actually a very important person in Waco and she was afraid to tell her parents.
Trent Horn: Right. No, that&#8217;s. That&#8217;s very sad to hear about, Judy, and to hear these details about what happens when people try to take violent solutions to difficult life problems and go and see people like this, like illegal abortion providers. I agree with you that it&#8217;s very disturbing. So I think the question we have to ask is, what do we do with these people involved? What is the best solution that we should come up with? And when it comes to an unintended pregnancy, would you agree we have primarily. Well, I guess really we have three people involved. There&#8217;s a third person here nobody ever talks about. We probably should talk about them more. In an unintended pregnancy, we have the woman who is pregnant, the man who impregnated her, and the child who now exists. So we&#8217;ve got those three people, right?
Caller: Well, you&#8217;ve got the people that prey on these women, too, right? Well, these are the secondary elements, like the people who will offer abortion services offer illegal services. And there are people who will offer not legal abortion because they don&#8217;t have acts. At the time, the state of Texas did not offer legal abortion services.
Trent Horn: Judy, let me ask you a question. For anything that is illegal, is there also a black market for that thing? For example, murder is illegal, but there&#8217;s still a black market. In hitmen, drugs are illegal, but you can find a black market for illegal drugs. For anything that&#8217;s illegal there, there will be a dangerous black Market. Right.
Caller: You&#8217;re, you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re mixing. You&#8217;re changing the subject. We&#8217;re talking about why. I am pro life. We&#8217;re not talking about murder. Do you mean pro choice? Pro choice. Excuse me. You&#8217;re changing the subject on me. Well, here&#8217;s what I&#8217;m trying to understand. You&#8217;re saying you think abortion should be legal so that it&#8217;s safer for the mother to end the life of her child. Yes. So she has the right to counseling and she can make the choice. Under safe. Under safe, she has access to counseling. And if she makes that choice, she gets to go into a clinic that safe. Judy, why should we care. And medical experts, Judy, why. Why should we make it safer for big people to hurt little people? Why? I&#8217;m talking about a person that is emotionally charged, that they don&#8217;t know where to turn. Maybe the father of the child has stepped away from the picture. I&#8217;m talking about being able to have access to medical and psychological counseling. Judy. Let me ask you another question, Judy. Can we offer medical and psychological counseling, medical treatment, psychological counseling, support. Can we offer those things in a way that. So that both the mother and the child live? We can. Then why don&#8217;t we. Then why don&#8217;t we only do. Why don&#8217;t we only do that then? Because a woman has the right to choose. Okay, Judy, if someone. To choose. If someone makes a choice, should they have to face the consequences of their choice? That&#8217;s, That&#8217;s a moral issue. And I&#8217;m not going to pass judgment on anybody. You&#8217;re not going to pass judgment on anybody? Do you think. Not going to pass judgment. Do you think it&#8217;s wrong to make abortion illegal? Yes, I do. Aren&#8217;t you passing. Well, I think. Judy, here&#8217;s how I feel. I think. I didn&#8217;t ask how you feel. You interrupted me before I got to finish speaking. Go right ahead. Didn&#8217;t you? You interrupted me. Go ahead. So let me finish my sentence. I believe that impoverished and very young women will not have the opportunity to get access to things like Planned Parenthood, other agencies that will offer them the counseling, the guidance, and the opportunity to say, yes, you can have your child. I mean, a lot of young, impoverished women may not even know how they got pregnant.
Trent Horn: All right, well, let me. Let me. Okay, well, let me jump in here, Judy, because I think we have to get back to the main point with our disagreement. I know you said, well, you&#8217;re not passing judgment and morality, but at the same time, I believe that we should make it illegal for human beings to kill other human beings. And you said that it&#8217;s wrong to make abortion illegal in that regard. So my question. Is this your argument? This is the logic you&#8217;re arguing from. And the logic does not make sense to me. When some people commit crimes, they might get hurt when they commit crimes, including the crime of ending a child&#8217;s life. So my question for you is, among born people, do we ever say, let&#8217;s make it safer for this born person to kill another born person? Do we ever do that among born people?
Caller: I&#8217;m sorry, repeat it. Repeat your. Do we ever make it legal so it&#8217;s safer for one born person to kill another born person? Do we ever do that? No, that&#8217;s illegal. Well, why. You are talking about the state of Texas, right? I&#8217;m just talking about society in general. So you agree we shouldn&#8217;t make it be more specific. You can&#8217;t kill another human person. That&#8217;s. That&#8217;s homicide. Absolutely. Is the human being in the womb what a woman is pregnant with? Is that a person? The state of Texas does not consider a child in a womb a person. Could the state be wrong? That&#8217;s just that. That&#8217;s the way the law is. So let&#8217;s say you and I 100 times that they have. You&#8217;re going to have to go to your legislatures and get the law changed. Okay, so the law could be wrong. Right. You know, if, you know, the baby can&#8217;t live outside the womb. That&#8217;s why we have neonatal units. So if they&#8217;re born prematurely, you know, a baby can live at a pound and a half if it has the right, you know, medical care, but it can also live. Again, you&#8217;re changing the subject. How am I changing this? I&#8217;m just trying to probe. We&#8217;re talking about premature babies and babies, us killing babies, instead of talking about pro choice, which is why I called in. Okay. I&#8217;m actually not changing the subject because pro choice involves the choice to have an abortion. Right. Talk about your opinion when I called in to express my choice.
Trent Horn: Cool. Yeah. And you. You have your opinion, but I think that what&#8217;s important here is we are talking about a very, very important issue that has two big stakes involved. That if those who identify as pro choice are right, then people who are pro life are imposing morality on women and hurting women. But if pro life people are right, then those who identify as pro choice are imposing their morality on unborn children. And. And children are being violently killed, over a million of them every year. So it&#8217;s big stakes here. That are involved. And so those of us who disagree, we have to get to the root of our disagreement. And I think the root of our disagreement, what you and I have gotten to is not so much about abortion being legal or illegal or the safety involved. What we&#8217;re talking about now is, does abortion kill a person or a human being? Because we don&#8217;t. We don&#8217;t make it legal. So it&#8217;s safer to kill human beings. We agreed with that with born people. Now we gotta talk about whether the unborn are human beings. And so to me, that is the, the center that we need to focus on. And the two issues you brought up, I&#8217;m happy to discuss. You know, the state of Texas or whoever. The law says a baby isn&#8217;t a human being. Well, the law could be wrong. I say we change it. The law did. The, the law used to be wrong about black people when it said that they were only 3/5 of a person or that they could be slaves. Laws can be wrong. Second, my other point, and I&#8217;m fine to go back and forth with you on why does it matter if a child can only survive outside of the womb at a certain point, like viability, the child is growing and living and they&#8217;re healthy in the womb. And if that&#8217;s the case, what right do we have to take them from the only safe place they can live and kill them? That just doesn&#8217;t make sense to me.
Cy Kellett: Judy. Judy. A fascinating conversation, Trent and Judy. I will say this, since it does appear that Judy is not currently there, but thank you for that call, Judy. But it struck me just as the listener, Trent, pro choice means in favor of the choice to abort babies. And I felt like we weren&#8217;t closing that circle with Judy.
Trent Horn: Well, and that&#8217;s why I think language is so important in this debate. What we&#8217;re talking about here, people have accused me of. Well, you&#8217;re changing the subject. When we talk about a disputed moral issue, like whether abortion is right or wrong, we have to compare it to an issue where we know what&#8217;s right or wrong. To me, abortion is very simple. Abortion is an action that expels or removes an unborn child from the womb with the intention of ending their life. So abortion is about ending the life of a human being who&#8217;s in the embryonic or fetal stages of life. So I mean, every, I mean, if you just describe it dispassionately enough, that is what abortion is. You cannot get around that. So I&#8217;d say, well, do we ever end born human beings for these reasons and back alley abortions came up a lot in these two hours. And my main argument is clear. We&#8217;d never make it legal. So it&#8217;s safer for big born people to kill little born people. We never do that with born people.
Caller: No.
Trent Horn: So why should we make it legal? So. So it&#8217;s safer for big born people to kill little unborn people? The moral logic just makes no sense to me.

Why “Unsafe Abortions” Can’t Justify Legal Abortion…

Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer joins Thomas Graf to help a caller navigate tough conversations with Calvinists about salvation. Do Catholics believe in predestination? Can you lose your salvation?
Transcript:
Caller: I&#8217;d like to ask what would be the best scriptures to go to and church fathers to reference. Whenever I&#8217;m getting in discussions with some Calvinist denominations, typically with non-denominational people that I have discussions with, they&#8217;re more easier to come to understanding. But some of my Calvinist friends are pretty hard-headed, pretty similar to me.
Joe: Yes. So when you talk about this, are you looking specifically at predestination? I mean, there&#8217;s technically a lot of things that you might be in a debate about, but usually when people talk about Calvinism specifically, it&#8217;s typically the two.
Caller: The biggest things I think that I find myself discussing are predestination, eternal security, and baptism. Those are like the things that I&#8217;m always trying to navigate through.
Joe: Sure. So the first thing to know is that there is a sense in which we want to affirm predestination, that when anyone is saved, they&#8217;re saved because God has taken the initiative in their salvation. It isn&#8217;t just that he&#8217;s left the door open and waited to see who comes in; he&#8217;s gone out and he&#8217;s pulled people in. And so we want to affirm some common ground there.
And I think that&#8217;s worth saying partly because sometimes Calvinists think that we take the polar opposite view, something more like Pelagianism, and that&#8217;s not correct. So we want to say anyone who&#8217;s saved is saved because God has saved them. But nevertheless, anyone who isn&#8217;t saved is not saved because they have rejected God.
And so I think one of the points to stress here is this theme of what&#8217;s called limited atonement. And so the question would be, for whom did God die? Did he die just for us, or did he die for our sins only, but for the whole world?
And so First John chapter two would be one of the places I would go. In First John 2, John writes, &#8220;My little children, I&#8217;m writing this to you that you may not sin, but if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.&#8221; And here&#8217;s a critical line: &#8220;And he is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.&#8221;
He goes out of his way to make sure that you&#8217;re not going to think that Jesus only died for us. Now, there are plenty of places where it emphasizes that Jesus died for us. That doesn&#8217;t mean he only died for us. Paul says that Jesus died for him. That doesn&#8217;t mean Jesus only died for him, thank God.
And so anyone who is ultimately unsaved is not unsaved because Jesus didn&#8217;t die for them. They&#8217;re not unsaved because Jesus didn&#8217;t want them to go to heaven. And so you can look at all the other passages that talk about that, about how God takes no delight in the death of the wicked, about Jesus mourning over Jerusalem, not repenting. None of that makes any sense if he doesn&#8217;t want them to repent and has given them no means to repent and has actually closed the door to make it impossible for them to repent.
So I would stress those passages that you want to affirm, on the one hand, that everyone who&#8217;s saved is saved because God has taken the initiative, and on the other hand, that there really is this ability to resist and reject these tremendous gifts that God has given us. You know, if you&#8217;ve got a lifeguard, maybe you push yourself away from the lifeguard and you drown. That doesn&#8217;t mean that if you don&#8217;t do that, you&#8217;ve saved yourself. Of course not. The lifeguard saves you, or you kill yourself. And that&#8217;s how salvation works.
So that&#8217;s how I would kind of focus on that. There&#8217;s much, much more, obviously, that could be said on this, on the notion of eternal security, that if you&#8217;re saved, you&#8217;re never going to lose your salvation. That&#8217;s a really fun idea, but it&#8217;s just so obviously against Scripture.
I&#8217;ll give you a few passages. Second Peter 2. The entire chapter is about those who&#8217;ve been ransomed by Christ and then have denied him, and have brought upon themselves swift destruction. The chapter goes on to compare them to the angels who were saved and then lost their salvation. You may remember that.
And then, Second Peter 2, verse 20 says, &#8220;If after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overpowered, the last state has become worse for them than the first, for it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.&#8221;
&#8220;It has happened to them according to the true proverb: the dog returns to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire.&#8221;
Now, you can try to explain that away with whatever backflips you want, but that passage is quite clearly about people who come to know Christ, are ransomed by him, are washed, and are brought into knowledge of the truth. They are, in other words, saved. And then they end up worse than before they ever got saved because they&#8217;ve rejected salvation.
And that&#8217;s not alone. Acts 8 gives you the example we can point to specifically: Simon in Samaria, Simon the magician. He believes and is baptized. That is the formula for salvation in Mark 16:16. And then afterwards, he tries to buy the spiritual gifts. He commits a sin that&#8217;s now named after him, the sin of simony. And he&#8217;s told that his money will perish with him. And he begs Peter to pray that he might be forgiven.
So he is saved and then is now in a place where he knows his salvation is imperiled. And Peter says he has at that point no company with them. We don&#8217;t know what ultimately happens to him, but it&#8217;s very clear that he enters right relationship with God and then exits it very quickly.
Hebrews 6 talks about how it&#8217;s impossible to restore to repentance. This is verse four: &#8220;Those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt.&#8221;
This is again dealing with those people who&#8217;ve come to know Christ, they&#8217;ve been saved, and then they reject their salvation. Now, to be clear, Hebrews 6 is insane. It&#8217;s literally impossible for them to be saved. With God, all things are possible, but it&#8217;s talking about how they are, as Second Peter 2 says, they&#8217;re now in a worse spot than if they just never heard of the Gospel because now they&#8217;ve heard of it and chosen to reject it after having experienced it.
So all of those passages speak to this, I think quite clearly.
The last thing, because you asked for early Christian evidence as well. The passage that I would give you is from St. Justin Martyr in his work *The First Apology*, beginning in chapter 43.
At the time, pagans believed similar things to what Calvinists believe. They believed that there was fate and everyone was just fated. And so you have these famous works like *Oedipus*, where the more you try to resist the Fates, the more you just fall into their snares.
In response to that, the Christian response is that, no, we actually have free will and thus accountability. And in Justin&#8217;s words, he says, &#8220;We have learned from the prophets and we hold it to be true that punishments and chastisements and good rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man&#8217;s actions. Since if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our power.&#8221;
Excuse me, if it&#8230; yeah. Since if it be not so, in other words, it would be unjust for God to reward or punish anyone&#8217;s works, anyone&#8217;s behavior, if it weren&#8217;t for such a thing as free will. And so you can&#8217;t just chalk everything up to fate or predestination or some force that gets rid of man&#8217;s will completely.
And so it&#8217;s important to note he&#8217;s saying this in the mid-1100s; the earliest, say, 300 years of Christians are very clear on the fact that they don&#8217;t believe anything like a Calvinist idea of predestination. In fact, Calvinists who&#8217;ve gone looking for this have come up short with this.
I could give some examples on that as well. I&#8217;ll just give one. Sean Wright of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, he wrote a piece called *Calvinist Before Calvin*, and he couldn&#8217;t find anyone amongst the earliest Christians. He points out Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Athanasius, figures like this. They write about these themes and clearly don&#8217;t agree with Calvin on predestination.
So either the earliest Christians didn&#8217;t understand this important doctrine of grace, as they call it, or Calvin&#8217;s just misinterpreting this stuff a millennium and a half later.
Thomas: Prentice, thank you so much for that question. That takes us to our third break now.

Responding to Protestants on Predestination

Jimmy Akin explains the difference between actively causing suffering and merely allowing suffering, why God might do either, and how He always brings a greater good out of it.
Transcript:
Host: Courtney in Temecula, California listening on the Immaculate Heart Radio app, you are on with Jimmy Akin, What&#8217;s your question?
Caller: Hi my question is: Did God create physical illness? The reason why I&#8217;m asking this question is because I have a degenerative eye disease, and it has always been my assumption that it was the Christian God, and that he gave it to me for a reason because I&#8217;m a better Catholic because of it and I can do so many things because I have this disease.
Jimmy: Okay. Well, there&#8217;s not a single up or down answer to this question. In the Bible, we do see language that talks about diseases, like say, a plague, as if it was sent by God, as if He were actively causing it. But we also know that not all of the language that the Bible uses regarding God is literal. One of the things that we observe, when we make a careful study of how the Bible uses language, is that, particularly when talking about God, the Biblical authors, and ancient people in general, would speak as if God were actively causing things that we also have reason to believe he actually only allowed.
And an example of that actually concerns a plague. There&#8217;s a famous incident that&#8217;s recorded in the historical books of the Old Testament where David took a census of the people of Israel, which is construed as kind of a lack of trust in God. Like, he&#8217;s trying to raise an army and he&#8217;s going to trust in his army instead of in God, and so as a result of that there&#8217;s a plague that comes upon Israel. And David then makes atonement, he actually buys the plot of land that then becomes the site of the future temple, and so it&#8217;s a very important moment in Israel&#8217;s history, but what&#8217;s interesting is that this event is interpreted different ways in different historical books.
According to one passage, God Himself stirred up David to take this census; but according to another passage, the devil stirred up David&#8217;s heart to take this census. And both of them agree that it was a bad thing to do, because David then gets punished for doing it, but one attributes it to God and one attributes to the devil, so how do we square that? Well, the logical way, to my mind and to a lot of interpreters&#8217; minds, is to say that the ancients had a habit, because they wanted to depict God as strong and active, of speaking of God as if He were actively causing things when really He was only allowing them. And so the way to harmonize those two would be to say that, okay, actually, this was an evil thing and the devil stirred up David to do it, and God allowed the devil to do that. But because of the way they tended to talk about God, and kings in general as being very active and as causing everything in their kingdoms, it got framed in a different way.
And so that means when we encounter language about God causing illnesses, that we have to&#8211;we have this question: &#8220;Is this literal, or is it just a way of talking about God based on how people spoke back then, but really God&#8217;s only allowing the illness?&#8221; And there&#8217;s no definitive answer to that question. Moral theologians and philosophers have drawn a distinction between what&#8217;s called &#8220;moral evil,&#8221; which is sin, and &#8220;physical evil,&#8221; which is suffering, in essence. And God can&#8217;t cause moral evil because that would be morally evil for God to do. God himself would be sinning if he caused someone to sin.
But some&#8211;many Catholic theologians in history have said God could cause suffering because it&#8217;s not a moral evil. Suffering can bring benefits, I mean that&#8217;s why we have pain receptors in our skin, so that it can play a positive role in keeping us from hurting ourselves. You know, there are people who have a different condition called congenital insensitivity to pain, and they don&#8217;t feel pain. They can cut themselves, they can burn themselves, they can really injure themselves, because they don&#8217;t have functioning pain receptors. So because suffering can play a positive role, many theologians historically have said, &#8220;Well, God can cause that,&#8221; and so God could, without sinning, send suffering into someone&#8217;s life actively, as long as he&#8217;s bringing some good out of it. And so, Courtney, the interpretation that you&#8217;ve offered of your own condition fits with that. It fits with that interpretation. That&#8217;s a legitimate theological interpretation.
On the other hand, many theologians today have been hesitant to say God actively causes suffering even when there&#8217;s going to be a good that comes out of it. Many people have said maybe we want to look at look at it through the other lens, and say, really, God is allowing this suffering in order to bring a good out of it, but he&#8217;s not actively causing the suffering. And so on that view, God wouldn&#8217;t actively cause anybody&#8217;s illness or anybody&#8217;s death&#8211;and passages that talk as if He did would be, you know, according to the ancient mode of language but not literal&#8211;but he does allow those things in order to bring good out of them. Either way, there wouldn&#8217;t be any suffering or illness without God bringing some good out of it, but there is an open question theologically about whether God would actively cause such things or merely allow them.
Does that help you out, Courtney?
Caller: Yes it does quite a bit, thank you so much.
Jimmy: My pleasure, and God bless you, and we&#8217;ll ask the audience to keep you and everybody in similar conditions in prayer.
Caller: Thank you!
Host: Thank you for giving us that call, Courtney.

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<ul>
<li>00:35 &#8211; Answering the claim that there is no scientific evidence for God– Karlo Broussard</li>
<li>07:46 &#8211; Exploring Early Christin History Through a Pagan Lens – Gary Michuta</li>
<li>15:15 &#8211; How to React to the Sex Abuse Scandal – Trent Horn</li>
<li>24:30 &#8211; Answering the Objection to the difference between “Petra” and “Petros” – Jimmy Akin</li>
</ul>

Catholic Answers | Season 4 | Episode 10

Signs of the Demonic

An early Lutheran theologian quotes Martin Luther as saying that “justification is the article by which the Church stands or falls.” The closest we find <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/luthers-saying/">in Luther’s own writings</a> is a slight variation: that “if this article [of justification] stands, the church stands; if this article collapses, the church collapses.” Luther’s fellow Reformer John Calvin agreed, <a href="https://www.monergism.com/john-calvins-letter-cardinal-sadoleto-1539">telling Cardinal Sadoleto</a> that it was “the first and keenest subject of controversy” between Catholics and Protestants, and that “wherever the knowledge of it is taken away, the glory of Christ is extinguished, religion abolished, the Church destroyed, and the hope of salvation utterly overthrown.”
So according to the first Protestants, the doctrine of sola fide, that justification is by faith alone, isn’t just an important doctrine, it’s the make-or-break doctrine for Christianity (both in terms of individual salvation, and the survival of the Church). Given this, it’s surprising that the Protestant theologian and Church historian <a href="https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc2.v.xiv.xviii.html">Philip Schaff</a> should concede that anyone trying to find “the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone” being taught in the early Church “will be greatly disappointed.”
But if the early Christians weren’t the ones claiming that sola fide was “<a href="https://www.crossway.org/articles/why-every-generation-must-contend-for-justification-sola-fide/">the heart of the Gospel</a>,” where did this idea come from? The history is fascinating, and perhaps not what you might expect. For instance, did you know Martin Luther didn’t originally believe this doctrine, even in his first years as a Protestant? As <a href="https://journal.rts.edu/article/luther-in-1520-justification-by-faith-alone/">Howard Griffith</a> of Reformed Theological Seminary points out, “Luther’s doctrine of sola fide in 1520 is closer to ‘union with Christ by faith alone’ than to ‘justification by faith alone.’” So even when Luther used the expression “sola fide” (“faith alone”), he didn’t mean by it what later Protestants (including Luther himself) would mean.
<a href="https://journal.rts.edu/article/luther-in-1520-justification-by-faith-alone/">Zondervan Academic</a> (the Protestant publisher) explains that “in the early years of the Reformation (that is, before 1535), Luther did not make a sharp distinction between justification and sanctification,” believing (as Catholics do) that justification is “both an event and a process.” Further, Luther originally “did not necessarily characterize justification in forensic categories. His metaphors for justification tended to be of the marriage relationship or the medical process of healing.” In other words, Luther was initially very “Catholic” on the question of justification…even as a Protestant.
Only in the latter part of the 16th century do Protestants rally around sola fide in the sense that it is understood today. But even here, it wasn’t because this doctrine originally inspired the Reformers. In the words of Zondervan Academic, it’s because “this was the one thing all Protestants held in common and the thing that distinguished them from Rome.” That is, the reason sola fide became “the gospel” for Protestants wasn&#8217;t because the earliest Christians (including those who actually knew the Apostles) understood the gospel to mean that. They clearly didn’t. Instead, it was simply the only non-Catholic belief that Protestants could all agree on. It gave the Reformers something that both (a) rallied all Protestants together, and (b) allowed them to distinguish themselves from (and condemn) Catholics…even if it meant turning a novel doctrine into the “heart” of the gospel.

The Heart of the Protestant Gospel

Should I go to confession if I don’t have any mortal sins, since my venial sins are forgiven at Mass?

How can priests keep all these confessions confidential? They see their parishioners all the time, how do they not slip?

Do you need to go to confession every time before taking communion?

When I confess my sins I don’t say how many times. But I heard I should be saying the number of times.

What are the mortal sins?

Regarding priests keeping the seal of confession — how would it even benefit a priest to talk about a confession, even if they don’t reveal who the person is?

I’m in OCIA and my wife isn’t. I’m trying to help her understand why we don’t just confess to our hearts directly to God.

I was baptized presbyterian and became Catholic last year. Sometimes I remember a sin from my pre-Catholic life that I didn’t mention in my first confession. Do I need to confess those?

If you have committed a mortal sin and die before going to confession, I understand you’re good if you have perfect confession. But what exactly is perfect contrition?

Is the withdrawal method a mortal sin?

&#8220;What does the Bible say about Confession?&#8221; This episode addresses the significance of confession in the Catholic faith, alongside questions about whether one should confess venial sins, how priests maintain confidentiality, and the necessity of confession before receiving communion. The discussion also touches on the nature of mortal sins and the concept of perfect contrition.
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What Does the Bible Say About Confession and Mortal Sins

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent gives a sneak peek of the next six, that’s right SIX, books he plans to publish.

FFAF: My next six books

Does the church teach that Purgatory is a process or a place?

How can I reconcile purgatory and the final judgment?

What is the difference between OCI and RCIA?

What is the treasure referenced in Luke 18:25?

How do I defend purgatory with a Baptist who don’t have the book a Maccabees?

How many Saints pray for us?

How do you find out the name of your guardian angel?

Can you explain Hallowtide as we prepare for All Saints solemnity?

How to Talk to Protestants About Saints and Purgatory

The 8 Best “Conversation Moves” to Win Converts (YOU can do this…)

During my time as a pro-life evangelist, the organization I worked with was equally composed of Catholics and Protestants. At one of our December events, I asked a Protestant co-worker what she planned to do for Christmas.
“I don’t celebrate Christmas,” she answered.
“Oh? Why is that?”
She continued in a simple, matter-of-fact tone: “Because celebrating Christmas is not in the Bible.” Every other Protestant on our team still celebrated Christmas, but this young woman’s opposition to Christmas reminded me of the very first Protestants.
Throughout most of Church history, Christians did not exchange gifts on December 25. Instead, they celebrated the Mass dedicated to Christ’s birth (or “Christ-mass”). Gifts would be given on December 6, the feast day of the fourth-century bishop St. Nicholas, who was known for his extraordinary generosity. (This did not include leaving toys in poor children’s shoes—European parents celebrated that tradition much later on “St. Nicholas Day.”)
<a href="https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/vita-per-Michaelem.pdf" data-cke-saved-href="https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/vita-per-Michaelem.pdf">The earliest biographer of St. Nicholas</a> tells us that the plotting and envy of the devil had driven the saint’s God-loving neighbor into poverty. This man was now so poor that he could not afford a dowry for his daughters to be married. As a last resort, the man decided to send them to a brothel so at least they wouldn’t starve in the absence of a husband to provide for them after his passing.
Fortunately, Nicholas took pity on him and remembered, among other Old Testament scriptures, Proverbs 24:11: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” He then hurled three bags of gold through an open window of the man’s home, and the girls were married shortly thereafter. For the next few centuries, Nicholas was celebrated as a model of Christian care for the poor and became one of the most popular patron saints of the medieval period.
The Protestant Reformers, however, rejected veneration of saints like Nicholas and abolished the use of the traditional liturgical calendar. Philip Melancthon went so far as <a href="http://bookofconcord.org/defense_20_saints.php?setSidebar=min" data-cke-saved-href="http://bookofconcord.org/defense_20_saints.php?setSidebar=min">to say</a>, “The bishops, theologians, and monks applaud these monstrous and wicked stories [about the saints] . . . because they aid them to their daily bread.”
Some of the Reformers didn’t even celebrate solemnities about Christ. For example, when John Calvin saw that an unusually large crowd had gathered to hear his sermon on Christmas day, <a href="https://www.sermonaudio.com/new_details3.asp?ID=114228" data-cke-saved-href="https://www.sermonaudio.com/new_details3.asp?ID=114228">he told them</a>:
<blockquote>If you think that Jesus Christ was born today, you are as crazed as wild beasts. For when you elevate one day alone for the purpose of worshiping God, you have just turned it into an idol. . . . No day is superior to another. It matters not whether we recall our Lord’s nativity on a Wednesday, Thursday, or some other day. But when we insist on establishing a service of worship based on our whim, we blaspheme God, and create an idol, though we have done it all in the name of God.</blockquote>
Martin Luther was not as antagonistic toward Catholic rituals as Calvin or Zwingli, and he sought to keep ones that lacked overly “popish” influences. When it came to the tradition of giving gifts on St. Nicholas Day (December 6), he suggested that Christians celebrate the gift of Christ himself and exchange gifts on Christmas instead.
Luther’s suggestion did not include any representation of St. Nicholas, who remained a popular part of the Christmas tradition, especially in the Netherlands, where he was known as Sinterklaas.
To explain how St. Nick “stuck around” in the English-speaking world, we must look to late medieval England and its celebration of “Father Christmas.” He was originally a metaphor, like “Lady Luck,” and had no culturally recognizable appearance. But after a while, Father Christmas came to be depicted as a jolly, bearded man in a green robe who brought good cheer and merriment to adults (rather than children) during the Christmas season.
In the seventeenth century, after the English Civil War, Puritans who objected to “high church” practices in the Church of England rose to power. They sought to abolish all aspects of Christmas, which <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/chris-durston/puritan-war-christmas">they described</a> as having “trappings of popery and rags of the beast.” In order to appease them, the popular imagination slowly merged the figure of St. Nicholas with England’s Father Christmas until the celebration of Christmas became focused on a jolly, bearded man in a robe who brought good cheer, merriment, and gifts on December 25.
In early nineteenth-century America, every December, the Dutch continued to celebrate the arrival of Sinterklaas, whom Washington Irving described in 1809 with the English equivalent of “Santa Claus” (though he looked like an overweight sailor dressed in green). The rest of what we associate with Santa Claus comes from a variety of sources, including the 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (or, as you probably know it, “The Night Before Christmas”), Harpers Weekly cartoonist Thomas Nast, and Coca-Cola advertisements—which ingrained into the American consciousness the image of a red- and white-robed, jolly bearded man with the goal of getting people, especially children, to drink soda during the winter months, when it wasn’t very popular.
And that, Virginia, is where “Santa Claus” began. However, the legacy of St. Nicholas doesn’t have to end there. Christmas can be a joyful time for Catholics to witness to our Protestant brethren, who would be shocked by Reformers who preferred “Bah, humbug” over “merry Christmas.” We can, for example:
<ul>
<li>Show them that “graven images” are not sinful, but help us remember the heroes of our faith so we can imitate them. After all, the same Protestants who object to statues in Catholic churches usually have no objection to mangers that depict the Holy Family.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Introduce them to saints like Nicholas, who help keep “Christ in Christmas” because, unlike Santa, they actually exist, and venerating them brings us closer to Christ. In the biography I cited earlier, the author says of Nicholas, “O the beneficial and beautiful purpose of all-blessed Nicholas! The care of his good-natured soul revealed in visible form a model of our savior Christ’s compassion toward us.”</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Help them overcome the idea that rituals are harmful to a faith that should be about a “relationship with God” by showing how their most important relationships are celebrated through rituals: Christmas services they get dressed up to attend, tree-lighting, gift-giving, and the singing of Christmas carols (<a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20141219-when-christmas-carols-were-banned" data-cke-saved-href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20141219-when-christmas-carols-were-banned">which the Puritans once outlawed</a>).</li>
<li>Show that Tradition is not opposed to Scripture. No Christian follows a strict form of sola scriptura, because everyone comes to Scripture with at least some non-biblical traditions attached to it (the least of which is the tradition of which books belong in the Bible in the first place). Traditions that contradict the word of God are wrong, but not sacred and pious traditions the faithful have handed on to us through the centuries, even if they aren’t explicitly found in Scripture. This includes the pious tradition of joyfully exclaiming, “Merry Christmas”—not just for one day, but for <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/catholics-keep-your-trees-up">an entire season</a> that celebrates the birth of our savior, Jesus Christ.</li>
</ul>

The Weird History of Santa Claus

It turns out that Catholic Answers Apologist Joe Heschmeyer is also a lawyer, so we asked him about the recent Supreme Court decision that allowed a Catholic social service agency to continue refusing to place foster children in the custody of gay couples. Is this discrimination? And what does this ruling suggest about the future of religious freedom?