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In my work against divorce, and in advocating for marriage permanence as Christ intended, I am regularly in contact with devastated men and women whose spouses have abandoned them. One example we can turn to in these emotionally devastating situations is St. Helena, whose feast day we celebrated last month—empress, mother of Constantine, and patron of divorced women. Helena puts a spotlight on how differently Catholics treat abandoned spouses in our day from how we treated them in the past.
The husband of Empress Helena, a western Roman emperor, abandoned and divorced her and married another. Helena spent the rest of her days single, reminiscent of St. Paul’s instruction: “To the married I give this command—not I but the Lord—that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband)” (1 Cor. 7:10-11).
Because her wayward husband never provided an opportunity to be reconciled, Helena essentially lived her life as a “stander”—a person, in this case a wife, who stands for her marriage vows, despite the choices and actions of an abandoning spouse.
We don’t like to talk about standers in our own culture, as it makes us uncomfortable to think of our loved ones being alone and lonely for the rest of their lives. Perhaps the greater discomfort is the unspoken fear of the expectation that we ourselves be faithful till death—as we promised—if our spouse should leave. This leads to today’s widespread encouragement and even pressure to divorce, annul, and “move on” to the next romance.
But where do “standers” stand in the mind of the Church? The Church’s ancient wisdom remains as true today as at the time of Jesus’ and Paul’s admonition that spouses stay faithful to the end, even in separation. St. John Paul II said in Familiaris Consortio (emphases mine):
<blockquote>The ecclesial community must support such people more than ever. It must give them much respect, solidarity, understanding and practical help, so that they can preserve their fidelity even in their difficult situation; and it must help them to cultivate the need to forgive which is inherent in Christian love, and to be ready perhaps to return to their former married life.
The situation is similar for people who have undergone divorce, but, being well aware that the valid marriage bond is indissoluble, refrain from becoming involved in a new union and devote themselves solely to carrying out their family duties and the responsibilities of Christian life. In such cases their example of fidelity and Christian consistency takes on particular value as a witness before the world and the Church (83).</blockquote>
Unfortunately, Helena, along with other holy women who kept their marriage vows, be it through abandonment or abuse, earn condescension (and even disdain) these days for their heroic witness. Take for example <a href="https://www.catholiccompany.com/magazine/st-monica-prayer-6122">St. Monica</a> and <a href="https://www.catholiccompany.com/magazine/st-rita-of-cascia-patron-saint-of-the-impossible-6065">St. Rita</a>, both patronesses of abused spouses and marital difficulties. Monica’s response to her pagan husband with an explosive temper was “great patience and constant prayers along with her examples of kindness.” Rita, likewise, “met [her husband’s] cruelty with kindness and patience” and years of prayer and trust in the Lord. Both women eventually won over their hard-hearted husbands, helping to save the men’s souls (and the souls of their wayward sons as well).
Those last two sentences would have been a balm to Catholic readers of any past era. However, these saints’ example chafes hard against our modern, increasingly secular sensibilities. Sadly, I’ve seen even Catholics pronouncing these saints irresponsible witnesses at best, dangerous at worst.
If we are offended by these holy women’s lives and choices, it seems that we have three options for a response: We must disdain them, excuse them, or rewrite the historical narrative.
Open disdain tends to be rare, though not unheard of. Some will excuse these women, insisting that Helena, Monica, and Rita would certainly not do the same in today’s enlightened times. The culture was backward, they say, and women were oppressed back then, and not good role models for women today, even though they were “personally holy.” Still others will rewrite the hagiography, from women who gracefully bore the heavy crosses in their state of life to a feminist profile: “She was a strong and feisty woman!”
Now, let us be clear on this point! The Church does not require that an abused spouse stay and be further abused. According to canon law, in cases of unrepentant adultery, “grave mental or physical danger,” or unlivable situations, physical separation of spouses is allowed with the bishop’s permission, but “in all cases, when the cause for the separation ceases, conjugal living must be restored” (canons 1151-1155). Nor is this permission to separate by any means just a modern-day understanding—see Leo XIII’s Arcanum Divinae from 1880 for one example. And even <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-does-the-church-tolerate-divorce">civil divorce may be “tolerated” in narrow circumstances</a>, although the marriage bond remains very much intact (civil divorce does not make one “unmarried”), and the Church’s hope—Christ’s hope—is always for reconciliation.
But the sad fact is that the mind of the Church on this matter—that spouses must vigorously work toward reconciliation, even in seemingly impossible cases—has become repulsive in the modern age. We live in an environment where Catholics refer to women as being St. Monica’d or St. Rita’d when priests or friends encourage them to fight for their marriages or stay when it’s difficult. And many women who are motivated to save a contentious or volatile marriage face something that has been described as “stay-shaming”—that is, shaming a person into leaving a marriage she does not want to leave.
In her book Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering, Dr. Ronda Chervin goes with careful delicacy where few modern Catholics dare to tread:
<blockquote>Sometimes women who think the Holy Spirit is calling them to protest against abuse or bring charges against their husbands feel impelled to berate other unhappily married women who choose the . . . path of taking refuge in the love of Christ and offering their pain for their husbands, children, and other worthy intentions. Sometimes women who [choose to stay] will be frightened by the vehemence of assertive women (p. 158).</blockquote>
I applaud Chervin’s diplomacy in a topic fraught with emotion. No woman should be shamed for her choice to stay with her husband or be faithful to her vows. Such aggressive “stay-shaming” often looks a lot like bullying, and it has no place in Christian life.
My friend <a href="https://catholicphilly.com/2017/01/commentaries/why-catholics-uncomfortable-with-amoris-arent-dissenters/">Hilary Towers once noted</a>, “The Church seems to be genuinely struggling with whether it is still the loving position to require lifetime fidelity on the part of all married spouses, not just most.” She says moving on from heavy crosses in marriage “seems to make our loved ones feel happy again, so we encourage them” to do just that. Pastorally, she believes, the Church has turned away from working toward reconciliation (which is <a href="https://www.leilamiller.net/blog/2020/3/24/impossible-marriages-redeemed-the-introduction">the traditional mind of the Church</a>) and toward finding ways to exempt the couple from the obligations of their vows.
It comes down to the question about which many are unsure: Is it still okay to emulate and imitate St. Helena and the other female saints of old, whose lives and choices do not seem to jibe with the voices of our culture? Yes, it is! Our faith does not change. Virtue does not change. Christ never changes. It is still and always good to honor Helena, the patroness of divorced women, for remaining faithful after abandonment. And it is still and always good to honor Ss. Monica and Rita, patrons of abused spouses and marital difficulties, who, through their sanctity, loved their husbands the way Christ loves us.
We’re at a point where many Catholics no longer believe that living out the Church’s teaching on marriage, sex, and lifelong fidelity is possible. But it is. It can be done, it has been done, and it must be done if we want to avoid another generation marked by chaos and brokenness in families.

Women Who Handled Difficult Marriages

In the wake of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/on-ivf-alabama-and-frozen-babies">the recent Alabama State Supreme Court ruling</a> that declared frozen human embryos are human beings under Alabama law, there have been several memes shared online denying this fact of biology. One says:

First, we know these embryos are human because they have human DNA and human parents. Many animal species go through the embryonic stage of life, and if an in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinic put a non-human embryo in a mother’s body they would be guilty of gross malpractice.
Second, we know these human embryos are alive because they are growing or able to grow by cellular reproduction. The cryogenic freezing process halts their growth, but not their capacity for growth. They are alive since IVF clinics recognize that accidentally-thawed embryos have died (and so cannot be implanted) while frozen embryos are still capable of growing.
Third, microscopic animals like tardigrades and rotifers have evolved an ability to survive being frozen (<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-revive-tiny-animals-spent-24000-years-ice-180977928/">even for thousands of years</a>). Humans do not have this ability, so it can only be accomplished through the use of technology.
When cells freeze, they form sharp ice crystals that destroy cells just like a knife pops a balloon. The reason frozen food tastes worse than fresh food is because the freezing process has already killed some of the cells in what you’re eating. <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-embryos-survive-th/">Collections of up to about 100 human cells can be successfully frozen by using cryoprotectants that act as an anti-freeze to prevent cellular “freezer burn”.</a>
One day this could be used to preserve human organs, but for now those structures are too large and complex to undergo the necessary cryoprotection process to safely freeze them. The possibility that this problem will be solved in the future has even led some people to freeze their entire body (<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/200-frozen-heads-and-bodies-await-revival-at-this-arizona-cryonics-facility-180980981/">or even just their heads</a>) after death, hoping that future medical science could revive them.
To summarize: our ability to keep very young human beings alive in conditions that would kill older human beings does not disprove those young human beings are alive. Indeed, it proves they are alive. And if they are living, human beings, then we should treat them humanely. One way to do that would be choosing not to put these human beings into inhumane cold storage in the first place.

Frozen Embryos Are Living Humans

We’re all familiar with the idea that Lent is forty days long, and it used to be true that Lent involved forty days excluding Sundays, though this <a href="https://jimmyakin.com/2004/03/the_length_of_l.html">isn’t true now</a>, given revisions to the Church’s liturgical calendar.
The length of Lent is inspired by the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began his public ministry (Matt. 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13).
However, there’s another forty days connected with Jesus, and we read about them at the beginning of Acts:
<blockquote>To them [the apostles] he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God (1:3).</blockquote>
Jesus then instructed the apostles to remain in Jerusalem until they received the Holy Spirit (vv. 4-5). This happened on Pentecost, fifty days after his crucifixion on Passover.
These forty days are interesting in their own right, and many Christians have wondered about them. For example, why did Jesus stay only forty days and not the full fifty? Why leave when he did?
We aren’t told, but a likely explanation is that he was using the forty days as a parallel to his time in the wilderness. Just as he spent forty days in the desert to prepare for his ministry, he now stayed with the apostles for forty days, preparing them for their ministry.
The tradition that Jesus remained with them forty days was not universal in the early Church, however. The second-century Church Father Irenaeus of Lyons recorded that the Valentinian Gnostics claimed that Jesus remained with the disciples for eighteen months (Against Heresies 1:3:2). The same view was held by another sect known as the Ophites (1:30:14).
Paulist Press’s translation of Irenaeus finds the origin of this counter-tradition obscure. An editorial note on 1:30:14 says, “How this strange error arose is a mystery,” and a note on 1:3:2 says, “Perhaps it was in some apocryphal work.”
This is actually the correct answer. There was an early noncanonical work that contained this tradition. The Ascension of Isaiah, which was written about the year A.D. 67, states,
<blockquote>And when he [Jesus] has plundered the angel of death, he will rise on the third day and will remain in that world for five hundred and forty-five days (9:16).</blockquote>
Five hundred forty-five days works out to just over eighteen months. This may have been the origin of the Valentinian and Ophite belief that Jesus remained with the disciples for that amount of time.
Still, not all agreed. The third-century Gnostic work called Pistis Sophia holds that Jesus remained with the disciples for an astonishing eleven years!
<blockquote>It came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples (1:1).</blockquote>
However, the canonical book of Acts is divinely inspired, and Luke was an excellent historian, so we should go with him. Forty days it was.
What was Jesus doing in this time? According to various Gnostic sects, he was imparting their secret Gnostic teachings to the apostles.
According to their idea, Jesus gave two sets of teachings. The first was an exoteric or public set of teachings that the apostles passed down to the bishops to be shared with the faithful in general, and the second was an esoteric or secret set of teachings, to be shared only with a select few (the Gnostics themselves).
This “two sets of teachings” idea was to justify how the Gnostics could have teachings coming from Jesus that were manifestly different from those preached by the bishops.
Because books were fantastically expensive in the ancient world (with a single copy of Matthew costing the equivalent of more than $2,000), the Gnostics didn’t bother writing Gospels in our sense—that is, documents that told the full story of Jesus.
Instead, they supplemented the canonical Gospels by writing documents that zoomed in on particular moments in Jesus’ life. An example is the second-century Gospel of Mary, in which—after the Resurrection—Jesus gave “Mary” (likely Mary Magdalen) secret Gnostic teachings.
However, even secular scholars acknowledge that Gnostic documents are too late to contain accurate information about Jesus’ life and teachings.
We also do not have writings from the Church Fathers that are early enough to provide reliable information about the forty days. Acts 1:3 is barely mentioned in the orthodox Christian writings of the second and third centuries, and when it is mentioned, we aren’t given any new information about the period.
So once again, we’re back to the canonical works if we wish to obtain that.
At the beginning of Acts, Luke tells us that Jesus essentially did three things during the forty days:
(1) “he presented himself alive after his passion,”
(2) “by many proofs,” and
(3) “speaking of the kingdom of God.”
He may well have done other things, too, like spending time with the disciples, sharing table fellowship with them, and even possibly celebrating the Eucharist. But these are the three things Luke tells us he did.
When it comes to presenting himself alive, Luke mentions only two events from this period in Acts. The first is the instruction to remain in Jerusalem until the apostles receive the Holy Spirit (1:4-5), and the second is the Ascension (vv. 6-11).
But Luke tells us more in his Gospel, indicating that Jesus appeared to the two disciples (one of whom was Cleopas) on the road to Emmaus (24:13-35), that he appeared to Peter (v. 34), that he appeared to the apostles “and those who were with them” (vv. 36-49), and that he ascended before them (vv. 50-53).
We can expand on these appearances by consulting other canonical texts. Matthew records that Jesus also appeared to the women who discovered the empty tomb (28:9-10) and that he appeared to the Eleven in Galilee, where he gave them the Great Commission (vv. 16-20).
John reports that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalen, in particular, on the morning of the Resurrection (20:11-17) and that he appeared to the other core disciples (less Thomas) later that day (vv. 19-23). He also appeared to the Twelve, including Thomas, a week later (vv. 26-29), and he later appeared to a group of seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee (21:1-22).
The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-fake-resurrection-in-marks-gospel">longer ending</a> of Mark confirms many of these appearances, including the one to Mary Magdalen (16:9), the one on the road to Emmaus (v. 12), and another to the Eleven (v. 14), as well as the giving of the Great Commission (vv. 15-18) and the Ascension (v. 16:19).
We also have evidence from St. Paul, who records the same appearance to Peter that Luke mentioned (1 Cor. 15:5a) and a subsequent appearance to the Eleven (b).
Paul strikingly says, “Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:6)—that is, by the time 1 Corinthians was written, around A.D. 53.
After this appearance to more than five hundred, Paul says, “Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles” (1 Cor. 15:7)—indicating first an appearance to James “the brother of the Lord” and then another appearance to the Twelve (which would have, by this time, included Judas’s replacement, Matthias; see Acts 1:12-26).
Finally, Paul says, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Cor. 15:8). However, Luke indicates that this occurred long after the Ascension and thus after the forty days were over (Acts 9:1-19).
When it comes to the “many proofs” that Jesus was alive, Luke records two of them in his Gospel. The first is this:
<blockquote>[The Eleven and those who were with them] were startled and frightened and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this he showed them his hands and his feet (24:37-40).</blockquote>
The second is this:
<blockquote>And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them (vv. 41-43).</blockquote>
John appears to record more detailed accounts of these same two proofs, elaborating that the first occurred when Jesus invited Thomas to touch the wounds in his hands and side (20:24-28) and when he appeared to seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee and ate charbroiled fish with them (21:9-14).
When it comes to “speaking of the kingdom of God,” we are not told specifically what Jesus said.
The Gnostics obviously had their own (completely unreliable) theories. However, a more secure basis is found in the canonical works that we have.
The kingdom of God is a prominent theme in the canonical Gospels, and we are told that the disciples did not understand things Jesus told them before the Resurrection, including what he meant when he predicted that he would die and rise again (Mark 9:30-32), as well as other matters (John 2:21-22).
However, on the road to Emmaus, “beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Similarly, when he spoke to the apostles and those with them,
<blockquote>Then he said to them, “These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:44-47).</blockquote>
It is thus likely that in this forty-day period, Jesus reviewed many of his previous teachings about the kingdom of God and helped the disciples understand them more fully.
Did Jesus do other things in this period? It is quite possible. Near the end of his Gospel, John tells us:
<blockquote>Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book (20:30).</blockquote>
Some of those signs may have occurred in the forty-day period he spent with the disciples after his resurrection.
However, whether he did so and what these signs may have been, we are not told. We must therefore leave them as an Easter mystery.

What Jesus Did for 40 Days

Critics who reject the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception often cite the 1966 “Pontifical Commission on Birth Control” to justify their dissent. They say Pope Paul VI ignored the research of the commission he directed to determine if contraception is immoral. <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/it-is-time-to-revisit-chu_b_11879144">According to Celia Wexler</a>, author of Catholic Women Confront Their Church,
<blockquote>the commission, which included Catholic married couples and physicians, reportedly voted overwhelmingly to lift the Vatican’s blanket ban on artificial birth control, and to permit married couples to prudently plan their families. But that hope was dashed in 1968, when Paul VI, writing in his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, once more declared artificial contraception “intrinsically wrong.”</blockquote>
Critics like Wexler say the faithful were harmed by the pope’s fear of rejecting tradition when he should have listened to “the best theological minds” in the Church. Catholics for Choice <a href="https://www.catholicsforchoice.org/resource-library/humanae-vitae">puts it this way</a>: “Humanae Vitae marked a turning point for the Catholic church, as Pope Paul rejected the theologically sound findings of his own Papal Birth Control Commission in favor of a turn to rigid orthodoxy.”
For many Catholics, Pope Pius XI’s 1930 encyclical Casti Connubii laid the issue of contraception to rest. Pope Pius XII <a href="https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12midwives.htm">said</a> his predecessor’s condemnation of acts done to hinder the procreation of new life within the conjugal union “is in full force today, as it was in the past and so it will be in the future.” But by the 1960s, millions of American women, including many Catholics, were using the new FDA-approved birth control pill.
Some theologians claimed that, unlike condoms and diaphragms, the Pill did not create a physical barrier between the spouses during intercourse, so it could be a legitimate way to space children. They also said the Pill was needed to stop population increases that would, according to environmentalists like <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Population-Bomb-Paul-R-Ehrlich/dp/B0CXJKNK17/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2QDEMLQB692B&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xIAglqU324IVh2fv2w0nCL8DgmUqG5Mvet3YUphYG7y9f38mv5Fi1solBCh4o_aF5l8NM-9HACX70UoMC1JcgBg_8CEl8kGs66nFevIg4QSzgnTmzJT0VaQKuXkkdgzdxshCwlF_uzxBtATi4yyHyv_c5sSk7WmjfsHseKVkQP4YqklNWZTxybibdpTgv_DeYljgrAtc70KfHDAOXNBH4q7YCRcmOtAbsyr0kkFi128.uTVmaDx_8gStSq54T8s3q7zDjdwwP8peb1t53cKnksg&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=population+bomb&amp;qid=1716898578&amp;sprefix=population+bomb%2Caps%2C109&amp;sr=8-1">Paul Ehrlich</a>, kill hundreds of millions through global famines (a threat that, by the way, never materialized for the Pill to neutralize).
In response, Pope John XXIII created a committee to discuss the issue whose first meeting reaffirmed the conclusions of Popes Pius XI and XII on contraception but said the mechanics of the birth control pill required greater study before any conclusions about it could be reached. However, some bishops in Europe were teaching that couples could follow their conscience regarding use of the Pill precisely because the Church had not reached a definitive conclusion about it. In response, Paul VI reconvened the Pontifical Commission for the Study of Population, Family, and Births and added seven members, some of whom were notorious for their dissent against Church teaching.
When people speak about the commission, they often assume that the pope simply selected the best theologians in the Church, and so he should have followed whatever they recommended. But there is evidence that the pope wanted a commission that would give him arguments to test rather than advice to follow. The late moral theologian Germain Grisez, who worked behind the scenes to help future commission member Fr. John Ford defend Church teaching, <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/new-documents-reveal-inner-workings-of-papal-birth-control-commission">told</a> the Catholic News Agency,
<blockquote>[Paul VI] was perfectly happy to have a lot of people on the commission who thought that change was possible. He wanted to see what kind of case they could make for that view. He was not at all imagining that he could delegate to a committee the power to decide what the Church’s teaching is going to be.</blockquote>
The committee eventually grew to over seventy members, though some members, like the future Pope John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, could not attend due to Soviet travel restrictions. Two notable attendees were Patrick and Patty Crowley, the Catholic founders of the Christian Family Movement. The Crowleys said surveys they conducted among married couples showed that the rhythm method “did nothing to foster marital love” and provided no greater unity between the spouses. Colette Povin, another married woman invited to the commission, slammed temperature-based rhythm methods: “When you die, God is going to say, ‘Did you love?’ He isn’t going to say, ‘Did you take your temperature?’”
By this point, the commission had moved far away from its original focus on the mechanics of the birth control pill. A majority of theologians, many of whom were moved by the stories of Catholics who felt that the prohibition on contraception harmed their marriages, claimed that contraception is not intrinsically evil, and they drafted an eleven-page report summarizing their position. Meanwhile, Fr. John Ford, along with a handful of other commission members, drafted their own 9,000-word defense of the Church’s teaching. (This would later be called the “minority report,” even though it was not an official document.)
The commission’s main report (now called the “majority report”) claimed that contraception is not intrinsically evil. It and the minority report were given to Paul VI on June 28, 1966. Four months later, the pope commented on the majority report, saying it carried “grave implications . . . which demanded logical considerations.” Some members worried that the entire report would be buried, so they leaked it to the National Catholic Reporter.
Robert Kaiser, a journalist who reported extensively on the commission at the time, <a href="https://archive.org/details/encyclicalthatne0000kais">said</a> that because of the leak, “people would have proof positive that authorities in the Church were not only divided but also leaning preponderantly to a new view of marriage and the family that did not condemn couples to hell for loving each other, no matter what the calendar said.”
Does the commission’s report include irrefutable arguments, or a “new understanding” of marriage that overturns what the Church has always taught about the need not to eliminate the procreative end of the conjugal act? Not by a long shot.
The commission claimed that “developments” in the Church’s teaching on sex (such as the primacy of expressing love) and social developments such as lower infant mortality rates make contraception acceptable even though it was condemned in the past. Testimonies such as those compiled by the Crowleys also made an indirect appearance in this statement from the majority report: “Then must be considered the sense of the faithful: according to it, condemnation of a couple to a long and often heroic abstinence as the means to regulate conception, cannot be founded on the truth.”
But the intrinsic morality of an act is not dependent on demographic facts or societal opinions. For example, the commission steadfastly rejected abortion as a way to space children, but modern dissidents say the Church should change this teaching, too, because women’s place in society has changed and many Catholics who identify as pro-choice find it impossible to follow a complete ban on abortion.
According to Catholic philosopher Paul Gondreau, liberal descriptions of the traditional teaching on sexuality are <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/contraception-cant-be-reha-pill-itated">a caricature</a>. Furthermore,
<blockquote>Few know that the “consciences”—and subsequently the votes—of the nine bishops labored under an erroneous understanding of the science of contraception. They believed that the birth control pill acted not as a block or inhibition of the natural procreative process, but as a kind of medication that “helped nature” by prolonging the woman’s natural period of infertility. (We know this from the testimony of Georges Cardinal Cottier, a close friend of the Swiss Dominican who served as the secretary of the papal commission.)</blockquote>
Gondreau also takes issue with reducing the traditional teaching on sexuality to just a concern about the marital act being procreative in nature. He says that although our existence as animals means that the sexual act is obviously ordered toward procreation (as it is in all other animals), human bodies exist not merely for animal purposes. He writes,
<blockquote>[Because] we are not pure bodies, but incarnate (rational) spirits with an ordering to interpersonal love, human sexuality also owns an essential ordering to interpersonal unitive love. In brief, God has endowed us with a sexed design for the joint purpose of procreation and unitive love, as HV makes plain.</blockquote>
The traditional view of Catholic sexuality recognizes that sex is for the expression of marital love and it is unitive precisely because it involves the full gift of the spouses, including the gift of their respective fertility. That’s why Pope Francis said in <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/pope-francis-upholds-catholic-ban-on-contraception">an address</a> to a conference on natural family planning that “there is a need always to keep in mind the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal act. . . . When these two meanings are consciously affirmed, the generosity of love is born and strengthened in the hearts of the spouses, disposing them to welcome new life.”

Church and Contraception: The History

Today marks the 750th anniversary of the death of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/thomas-aquinas-saint">St. Thomas Aquinas</a>. Saint Thomas is famous for his (literally) encyclopedic knowledge: between the Summa Theologiae and Summa Contra Gentiles, there are <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Aquinas_s_Summa/aHU6asH8TgsC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;pg=PA74&amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;bsq=%22citations%20from%22">some 38,000 citations</a>, including 25,000 biblical citations, 8,000 references to Christian authors (usually the Church Fathers), and 5,000 to non-Christian authors like Aristotle. In an age before typewriters or the internet, the sheer volume of Thomas’ output (to say nothing of the structured and thoughtful way in which he presented deep theology) is mind-boggling.
But while we may never match Thomas in his brilliance or his literary output, we can strive to be a bit more like him. After all, Thomas gave us <a href="https://aquinas.cc/la/1263/~Puer">a four-step roadmap</a> for how to grow in wisdom. In a reflection he gave (probably in January 1271) on Luke 2:40, he remarked that “the growth of Christ was fourfold, namely years, wisdom, grace, and in human fellowship.” He then asks how it is that we can grow in wisdom, and he concludes that four things are needed: that we should “listen willingly, seek diligently, respond prudently, and meditate attentively.”
So how do we do that? Let’s consider each step in turn. First, we listen willingly according to the counsel of Sirach 6:32-33: “If you love to listen you will gain knowledge, and if you incline your ear you will become wise.” But that’s only possible when we have the humility to realize that we’re not wise yet: we have much to learn from others. Thomas points out that when Mary and Joseph find Jesus in the Temple, they find him listening: “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (Luke 2:46). So before we try to set other people straight, we need first to cultivate an openness to listening to and learning from others.
But passively listening isn’t enough: we should be actively seeking out wisdom. And where should we seek it? Thomas suggests several answers. The first two are (1) those we know to be wiser than us, and (2) the writings of “the ancients” (like the Church Fathers). This matches Deuteronomy 32:7, which counsels us to “remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you; your elders, and they will tell you.” But Thomas’ third teacher is surprising: creation itself, which is “telling the glory of God” (Ps. 19:1). And finally, Thomas argues that we grow in wisdom by sharing it with others: there’s no better way to learn a topic than to try to teach it!
Of course, sharing wisdom requires us to know how to “respond prudently” to what we’ve learned. A prudent response is one which corresponds to the intellectual ability of the respondent (that is, you) as well as the listener, and which isn’t needlessly long-winded. In other words, know when a topic is beyond you, or beyond the person with whom you’re sharing it. And don’t speak just to hear yourself talk!
Thomas then presents the Virgin Mary as a model of what it is to both “respond prudently” and “meditate attentively.” After all, “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Thomas quotes “a certain Greek” who pointed out how “Mary, the most prudent of women, truly the mother of wisdom, becomes the scholar of her child, and furthermore she does not perceive him as a boy nor as a man, but as God, so that as she had conceived the Word itself in her womb, so she then conceived all his deeds and words in her heart.” Let us turn, then, both to St. Thomas Aquinas and the Blessed Virgin Mary as models to show us how to grow in “wisdom, grace, and in human fellowship” as we grow in years!

How to Be Wise Like Saint Thomas

During our third year in marriage, we decided it was time to have a baby. I cheerfully had my birth control implant removed from my arm (it was still eight years before we converted to Catholicism), and we went about our business, naturally assuming I would shortly come up pregnant.
Except I didn’t. Month after month went by, and my womb remained empty.
I was confused. Had I missed something important in my high school health class? Didn’t sex lead to pregnancy?
My conversion to Catholicism and thus to Natural Family Planning has been an eye-opening journey as I become aware of the astounding breadth of information I missed out on. And I am surprised that even within the Catholic community, many teenage girls are not being taught the basics of NFP.
It took seven months of timed trying as I slowly learned to navigate my own reproductive system, but we finally conceived. We went on to have three more healthy pregnancies, and I’m currently pregnant with twins, but our family-building has not been without effort. I have <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-womanhood-feels-pagan">lost three babies</a>, and every pregnancy has required planning and trying. Our twins are an exception, though, and here I have to insert credit to the intercession of Mary: I asked several of my friends to pray a week of rosaries with me, and we conceived the first month.
I imagine that my story is not unique. There are people who are infertile and people who become pregnant with surprising ease. Between those edges of the bell curve, there are women who need a little tracking and trying and giving their bodies a little extra support to conceive. And if those women attended a perfectly respectable public school and had perfectly normal parents, they are probably as clueless as I was. It is concerning to discover many teenage girls formed in the rich tradition of the Church are also clueless.
In addition to NFP’s role in family-building, there are numerous benefits to understanding the cycles of the female body that have nothing to do with conception or the avoidance thereof. Each month brings the cycle of symptoms and changes that impact our normal day-to-day routine. Almost any adult woman can tell you a story or decision in her life inspired by a hormonal shift, and we come to understand that some days we feel bloated or depressed or impulsive or easily aroused. These are all part of the four phases of a woman’s cycle. This would have been beneficial to learn much earlier in life, when the easy predictability of such feelings would have led to knowledge and freedom from emotional undulations.
Our culture today is working to eradicate gender differences. In 2021, approximately <a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/">42,000 </a>children and teens across the United States were diagnosed with gender dysphoria—three times as many as in 2017. The culture’s statement to teens is that if they are uncomfortable or unhappy in their bodies, there must be something wrong with them. This is laughable to anyone who has endured puberty, but particularly to women, when each month brings a fresh cycle of discomforts and inconveniences. Knowledge of these cycles—what they mean, what causes the shifts, how to navigate them—can prevent a sense of feeling overwhelmed or embarrassed by being a woman, and rather understand it as a pathway to closeness with our creator.
As such, we can use NFP to begin teaching our girls about the beauty and dignity of womanhood. To fight the culture’s torrent of gender ideology, it is essential to celebrate the uniquely feminine aspects of their bodies and understand the troublesome ones. For girls, menstruation is the ideal time to talk more consistently about how the female form—both the beautiful and uncomfortable aspects—uniquely draw us to holiness. In the words of Fulton Sheen,
<blockquote>it is well known that women are capable of far more sustained sacrifice than men; a man may be a hero in a crisis, and then slip back to mediocrity. He lacks the moral endurance, which enables a woman to be heroic through the years, months, days, and even seconds of her life, when the very repetitive monotony of her tasks wears down the spirit.
Not only a woman’s days, but her nights—not only her mind, but her body must share in the Calvary of motherhood. That is why women have a surer understanding of the doctrine of redemption than men have: they have come to associate the risk of death with life in childbirth, and to understand the sacrifice of self to another through the many months preceding it.</blockquote>
Almost every aspect of our culture shouts messages of shame, rejection, and disgust around the female body. Our curves are reduced of objects of sexuality, our cycles are nuisances to be medicated, and children are offensive and worthy of murder. As parents, we must increase our efforts to counter these messages and remind our daughters their bodies are holy temples rather than confusing inconveniences.
The concepts of NFP and hormone tracking should be taught to every female as soon as she begins her monthly cycle. By the time she enters marriage, she should know the nuances of her body and be able to articulate them to her spouse. In addition to the obvious family planning benefits, a woman’s cycle can often be an indicator of health. Irregular or painful cycles can be a symptom of endometriosis and require medical intervention. Long delays between cycles are often caused by malnutrition. Stress, illness, and life changes can all impact our cycle and indicate how well our body is coping.
If this task feels daunting to you, fear not. Like many things in parenting, this can be a gradual process that brings about greater bonding between you and your daughter. Women are blessed to have a natural coming-of-age experience. Experiencing a period for the first time is an exciting rite that should be celebrated. It indicates to young women that they are entering a new phase of life, a transition for greater maturity, freedom, and responsibilities.
Her first period is the time for a girl to begin tracking her cycles in a simple planner and maybe indicate her emotions around the experience. When she comprehends her cycle, you can begin to talk to her about bodily indicators. As the years go on, you can add the use of a basal body thermometer and explain temperature changes around hormonal shifts. Our bodies give many signs of our monthly cycles, and by the age of eighteen, a woman should have a clear understanding of each one.
The years of scientific research behind NFP have gifted Catholics with tools that go far beyond the manageable spacing of children. Our understanding of the rhythms of the female body are unique within broader culture, and we should make greater use of them to prepare our daughters to thrive. The truths about biological sex, reproduction, and family life are some of the most countercultural aspects of our faith. So many of these truths are expressed in a unique way by the role of women and God’s unique design in their anatomy. It is vital that we succeed in teaching our daughters about their bodies in order to equip them with the knowledge and tools to navigate this time in history.

Teach Your Daughters NFP

This past Friday, November 29, marked the anniversary of C.S. Lewis’s birth in 1898. The sixty-first anniversary of his death was one week before that, November 22.
Recurrently appearing on the Internet and social media is a pithy saying attributed to Lewis: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”
As <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2014/01/the-spiritualist-origins-of-you-dont-have-a-soul-you-are-a-soul">one helpful article</a> shows, Lewis never said this, but the sentiment’s appeal nonetheless remains, as Google searches will reveal. (Etsy sells <a href="https://www.etsy.com/listing/544779548/cs-lewis-quote-you-dont-have-a-soul-you?ga_order=most_relevant&amp;ga_search_type=all&amp;ga_view_type=gallery&amp;ga_search_query=you+are+a+soul&amp;ref=sr_gallery-1-3&amp;sts=1&amp;content_source=7e5318c805e99b8fe9d39f52aa0a5f2ad57a611c%253A544779548&amp;search_preloaded_img=1&amp;organic_search_click=1">one version</a> of this declaration as wall art, under Lewis’s name, intended perhaps for Christians, perhaps for trans advocates.) The saying captures a surprising convergence of certain Christian and trans worldviews, both of which prioritize “the soul” even to the point of identifying it with the person. In defense of Lewis, then, and to show the distinctively Catholic vision of the person, we should look carefully at what “soul” and “body” mean in the first place.
Pop culture tends to see “soul” as the place of one’s deepest feelings and truest perceptions. Regardless of what happens to the body as it ages, the soul in this sense does not necessarily change. In loving other people, we should attend more to their feelings and perceptions than to their sheer bodiliness; otherwise, we objectify persons. Losing a limb, likewise, does not mean losing a piece of one’s soul. I remain who I am in my desires, consciousness, and dignity, no matter how my body might get injured. Maybe I really am “my soul.”
Christianity’s texts and traditions can seem to harmonize with such a view. Jesus tells us not to fear the one who can destroy the body. We as Catholics are concerned with the salvation “of souls.” St. Paul laments the war of the flesh against the spirit—and decidedly on behalf of the spirit. In this light, we might conclude that we Christians really ought to identify ourselves with the soul rather than the body. Maybe trans advocates go wrong in flouting the God-given character of the body and its sex, but they are right in seeing the body as distinct from our true self. Maybe we really “are” a soul that “has” a body.
It’s important to realize that the biblical notion of “soul” (nephesh in Hebrew, psyche in Greek) denotes not a center of conscious feeling, but something much more substantial: a living being. It is when God breathes into the dust that the first human comes to be and is nephesh. Even some of the non-human animals in Genesis are referred to as nephesh, or living creatures (though their life is not so immediately tied to God as Adam’s is). The Greek philosopher Aristotle argues that soul (psyche) means much the same thing: it is the life-principle that makes certain bodily things to exist and to be alive. Plants, animals, and humans all possess psyche, or soul, simply because they are alive, though their souls are certainly of distinct kinds.
Thinking of soul as nephesh or psyche leads to two further points. First, we can refer to the whole person as “soul,” just as we could refer to the whole person as a life, a living thing. We use this sort of language: the hero saves many lives. And just as “life” does not exclude, but includes the body, so does “soul” in this view of things. We could say that to speak of soul is to name the human person from the standpoint of its being alive—a standpoint that is difficult to conceive apart from bodiliness.
The second point, closely related, is that soul and body are not distinct things. They are distinct principles of one thing, which is the human person. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (362-368, especially 365) has even adopted Aristotle’s conclusion, refined by Thomas Aquinas, that “soul” is the form of matter: it is that which actualizes matter and structures it into a distinct kind of organism. In non-human animals and plants, the entire organism, form-with-matter, comes from the parents and over time develops through the soul’s agency and the matter’s capacity. In humans, by contrast, form-and-matter are no less united, but whereas the material disposition comes from parents, the soul comes directly from God at the moment of conception.
Either way, soul and body come into existence as one. You cannot have human bodiliness without a human soul, and the human soul is the body’s principle of existence and living. The soul does not come to the body and make it do living things. Rather, the soul, from the initial moment of its creation, makes the body to exist in the first place, forming it over time into a more mature organism.
One piece of evidence of this soul-matter unity is what happens at the end of life. Death is not simply the departure of the soul from the body; it is the destruction of the body. After death, there is no human body in the strict sense, but rather a corpse on its way to complete dissolution. This means that what the soul brought to matter was not just movement or consciousness, but the body’s unity and existence to begin with.
The Catholic view of soul, in other words, goes much deeper than being a source of consciousness or feeling. It is responsible for the body’s existence and therefore, with the body, responsible for the whole person. Only soul-and-body can be the kind of thing that is the human being; only soul-and-body can be conscious, or feel, or perceive at all. To claim that my soul is a separate thing from my body, or that my soul is in the wrong body, is not just wrong, but incoherent in the Catholic vision of humanness.
Further, the human soul is unique among the souls of animals in that it is a spiritual reality, created directly by God as actualizing matter. Because of this spiritual existence, the human soul with its matter structures the person as an image of God, capable of exercising thought and free will. Being spiritual, the soul is incorruptible and will persist even when the body dies, though it does so in an unnatural state and longs for reunion with its matter. Such a view of soul and its relation to bodiliness makes the doctrine of the resurrection of the body so much more meaningful!
It is with this view in mind that we should understand the emphasis placed on the soul in Christ’s words and the Catholic tradition.
We can see now how the words “soul” and “body” are often used problematically, even by Christians. For when we typically think of “the body,” we are thinking of something already living and formed—i.e., something already ensouled. So to speak of “soul and body” is to posit the soul as something gratuitous and separate from the body we know and experience. Our knowing and experiencing thus become “the soul,” which is the precisely what various forms of dualism, Gnosticism, pop psychology, and trans ideology maintain.
It is important that we as Christians do not fall into the same ways of thinking. C.S. Lewis was aware of the danger, as works like The Abolition of Man and Screwtape Letters reveal. In Screwtape Letter VIII, he refers to us as “metaphysical amphibians”: we are one being, but our lives involve two dimensions, the spiritual and the physical.
Let us pray for Lewis’s soul, in thanksgiving for what he did in this life and with hope for his eternal life to come.

A Fake Quote from C.S. Lewis

In case you somehow missed it, last week there was <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256470/cardinal-victor-fernandez-book-sexual-themes-vatican-doctrine">an uproar</a> over the unearthing of a book written twenty-five years ago by Cardinal Victor Manual Fernandez, prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. (That’s the Roman office charged with safeguarding Catholic teaching, making Card. Fernandez the pope’s chief “doctrinal czar” over the whole Church.) Mystical Passion caused a stir over content that included graphic reflection on sexual acts and the detailed retelling of the intimate fantasy of a teenage girl, allegedly shared with then-Father Fernandez, involving our Lord.
Criticism of the book, which aimed to plumb theological connections between spiritual and sexual ecstasy, has tended to focus on the impropriety of its content and language, as well as, in deeper dives, the error of sexualizing mysticism: taking superficial resemblances between divine union and sexual climax and making them literal. The orgasm, seemingly in the younger Cardinal Fernandez’s view, is not just a (crude, earthly, infinitely insufficient) metaphor for the experiences of mystical prayer but can be a gateway to them or even, perhaps, constitutive of them.
I find myself in general agreement with the better critiques of this book’s worst parts, and I hope that Cardinal Fernandez’s <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/01/09/fernandez-book-sexuality-ddf-doctrine-246835">recent disavowal</a> of it goes beyond its potential to be “misunderstood” as he has said.
Beyond that, though, I think would be a shame if efforts to purify spirituality of hyper-sexualization caused us to lose sight of real and important ways in which God and sex are linked.
For example, in the ecclesial and Trinitarian metaphors for nuptial relations. Marriage, with which sex is intrinsically connected, models both <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perichoresis">the intimate self-giving and receiving</a> of the Persons of the Trinity and the spousal love between Christ and the Church. Can you run too far in a speculative direction with these realities? Sure, but that doesn’t make them any less true in what they are.
Also, in the act of co-creation with God to make new life. In the marital act, husband and wife do reach to the heavens to call down divine fire—only, not by the experience of climactic pleasure but in the invoking and sharing of God’s proper power to create, from nothing, new human beings with immortal souls.
It is kind of interesting how, in the practices of modern sexual revolutionary figures like J.H. Noyes, Alfred Kinsey, Margaret Sanger, Aleister Crowley, H.R. Giger, and others, you can see a red thread of attempting to magnify sexual pleasure to magical or mystical levels (often by intermixing sex acts with occult rituals) while viciously rejecting procreation. Such people worked furiously to perfect and propagate <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-sin-of-onan">onanism</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-contraception-thwarts-love">contraception</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-catholics-cant-be-pro-choice">abortion</a>, and other <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/the-disgusting-end-of-the-slippery-slope">perverse and unnatural practices</a> because the intellect darkened by sin sets pleasure at odds with human life. And the darkest of intellects divinizes pleasure while despising the thing that does make sex a participation in the divine.

Between Sex and Godliness

Presented with the imperative to “do something” for Lent, a familiar response is to “give something up.” In itself, this is a healthy enough instinct. Depending on your lifestyle, giving up alcohol, or even chocolate, can be a reminder of the nature of the season and a noticeable sacrifice. Alternatively, people think of giving up something bad, trying to overcome a habitual sin. This is laudable, but penance is the sacrifice of something good, not something bad. Catholics should be able to go beyond both kinds of “giving up.”
The imperatives of Lent in particular, and of the Christian life in general, are the eminent good works of prayer, penance, and almsgiving. These really are good works—works that earn us merit. These works will cancel out temporal punishment we would otherwise suffer in purgatory, and add to our glory in heaven, and we can offer them for the good of the holy souls in purgatory and for the conversion of sinners. Good works in this sense are possible only if we are in a state of grace (sanctifying grace), and they will themselves be done in and through God’s assisting grace (actual grace). When we do them, we may say with St. Paul, it is not we who do them, but God who does them through us (Phil. 2:13). They are in fact a gift of God to us—but when God gives us something, we really do possess it.
Accordingly, if we want to do something more than give up chocolate or habitual sins, the first thing we should think about is prayer. Three general principles should be borne in mind.
The first is the definition of prayer: of raising one’s mind and heart to God. This means that prayer is an action of the will, not of the intellect, the imagination, or anything else. If we are trying to pray, we are succeeding, because in trying, we will to raise our minds and hearts to God, and that is raising them to God. We can certainly use our other faculties in prayer, but they are secondary.
Connected with this is the fact that our prayers are not more successful or worthy if they are rewarded with spiritual consolations. If we feel comforted, or have a religious experience, or if our prayers have a tangible effect in ourselves or in the outside world, we should accept these things with gratitude, but prayers that are not accompanied by anything like that may be just as genuine and may be even more meritorious. God wants us to love him for himself, not for his consolations, so he won’t always give them to us.
The second principle is that the prayer of the Church is the most perfect prayer, because it is offered by Christ, the head of the Church. We unite ourselves with that perfect prayer when we take part in the “public prayer of the Church,” which is the liturgy, including the Office (the Liturgy of the Hours), and the rosary. This public prayer is continually raised to God by the whole Church, and it has a special character not possessed by private prayer.
The Church’s public prayer is perfect intrinsically—in terms of its inner nature. It is often imperfect in terms of our participation in it, and that of course goes for priests as well as laypeople. We should make whatever effort we can to make the extrinsic aspects of the Church’s prayer as perfect as possible.
The third general principle is the old adage, “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.” If a particular form of prayer is difficult for you, try something else, or try participating in it in a different way.
The life of prayer can be stimulated and enriched by spiritual reading. There is a vast literature of Catholic spiritual writings, from the great spiritual masters of long ago like St. <a href="https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/the-devil-in-the-castle">Teresa of Avila</a> to apologetic writers of more recent times, like <a href="https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/the-greatest-commandment">Frank Sheed</a>, and there are <a href="https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/treasury-of-catholic-meditations">collections</a> made from a range of writers. And then, of course, there is Sacred Scripture.
As for prayer itself, the best prayer of all is the Mass, and more frequent attendance at Mass is always to be recommended. There are also other forms of liturgical participation that may not have occurred to you, however, such as saying parts of the Office. In recent years, there has been a particular revival in interest in the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a devotion that goes back to the Middle Ages, which is well suited to the use of laypeople because it is short and easy to navigate, and it contains psalms and prayers of great beauty. There are various reprints currently available; it can be said in Latin or in translation; you can say it in whole or in part.
Moving on to penance, this is an indispensable part of the Christian life. It is simply a mistake to imagine that one can have a spiritually fruitful life without voluntarily sacrificing some material comforts and satisfactions out of a love of God. The love of God demands such sacrifices and is stimulated by them. Some kind of fasting and abstinence should be part of your life, and it is remarkable to see growing interest in how this works at a physical level. Serious penance of this kind is not impossible—all Catholics of the past did it—but for modern people in the West, some physical <a href="https://issuu.com/latinmasssociety/docs/moa_spring_2021_final/s/11734502">preparation</a> may be called for.
The same is true of another traditional mainstay of Catholic penitential practice, which is having a revival today: walking pilgrimages. I have myself walked from Ely to Walsingham (about 55 miles), and from Paris to Chartres (about 60 miles), in my forties rather than in my twenties, and I can attest that a sensible amount of preparation has the effect of spreading the pilgrim spirit over several months: you need to do a lot of walking in advance. This can and should be done not to see the sights, to get fit, to make friends, or with some vague hope of “finding oneself,” but in a spirit of prayer and penance, and with particular prayer intentions in mind. Seek first the kingdom, and many of the other things will be given to you as extras.
Finally, almsgiving should not be neglected. It is easy today to donate money to worthy causes, but the very easiness of clicking on a donate button online separates us from human contact with the person one is helping. This may be inevitable, but the contact itself is a valuable part of almsgiving, for the giver, which can too easily disappear completely.
This is more difficult than before because of the professionalization of charitable work and the takeover of many aspects of it by the state. It is not impossible, however, and there are still many opportunities for volunteering, particularly in those areas of human needs in which the modern state is less interested: the cultural, educational, and above all spiritual needs of our fellow creatures.
St. Teresa of Calcutta remarked: “The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty—it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality.” It is this poverty which Catholics have a special gift to alleviate.

Go Beyond Giving Something Up for Lent

It’s been a momentous week for awareness of human sex trafficking. We saw the release of the film Sound of Freedom and the debate in the California legislature over a bill that would make child sex trafficking a serious felony.
The fact that a bill aimed at deterring the sex trafficking of minors received any opposition at all is an utter embarrassment for my state, and the people who have defended the pushback are shameful.
Luckily, some of the California political class came to their senses and intervened. According to the <a href="https://amp.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277288758.html">Sacramento Bee</a>, “. . . lawmakers revived a bill to enact harsher punishments for child sex traffickers after Democrats blocked it earlier in the week, prompting intervention by Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leadership.”
The bill makes sex trafficking a serious felony, and would count as a strike under California’s three strikes law. The concern from some of our elected officials is that this would negatively impact minorities in the state.
Minority or not, there should be zero tolerance for sex trafficking another human being. Period. My vote on this issue is for harsher penalties on only one “strike.” If there is an inordinate number of minorities effected by this, it’s not obvious to me how minimizing penalties or rolling back deterrents solves the problem. If the argument is that some in minority communities engage in trafficking because they lack legitimate economic opportunity, then let’s work on that issue.
My wife has worked in advocacy since before we were married twenty years ago. The last few years, she worked with victims of human sex trafficking. I’m not sure what our politicians are smoking, but if you ask my wife about the justice system here, it certainly seems there is more attention paid to the rights of perpetrators than there is for the victims of such crimes. It’s a curious thing when you consider that most victims of sex trafficking are also <a href="https://humantraffickingsearch.org/human-trafficking-not-all-black-or-white/">from minority communities</a>.
The release of Sound of Freedom has stirred controversy as well. <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/sound-of-freedom-child-trafficking-experts-1234786352/">Some critics</a> of the film point to actor Jim Caviezel’s supposed support of Qanon theories as a strike against it. I don’t know much about his political opinions, but even if he was totally on board with Qanon, Passion of the Christ and Count of Monte Christo are still awesome movies. And so is Sound of Freedom.
Mr. Cavieziel is a great actor. Maybe he’s not the best political commentator. I don’t know. But he didn’t write the script or direct the film, and it’s obviously something he is rightly passionate about. And anyone who says human sex trafficking is not a real issue has their head in the sand.
Thanks be to God that this week turned out the way it has. While there are some critics of the film, they seem to be in the minority, and it has received a crazy amount of attention. The human trafficking bill in California also had its detractors, and they lost their fight. Chalk this week up as a win for awareness and action against modern slavery.

Human Sex Trafficking in the Spotlight this Week

Why don’t the media get religion, and what can churches do to change that fact? Revered religion reporter and founder of <a href="http://GetReligion.org">GetReligion.org</a> Terry Mattingly joins us for a wide-ranging look at the state of religion reporting in America.

Why Don’t the Media Get Religion?

Detailed instructions about the celebration of Mass are given by the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ordinamento-messale_en.html">General Instruction of the Roman Missal</a>, in addition to the texts and rubrics (set actions) of the rites themselves, and this has the force of (liturgical) law. Some liturgical issues are also covered the Code of Canon Law.
Pope John Paul II was extremely worried by the issue of liturgical abuses. So he added to the above resources <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_dw80id.htm">Inaestimabile Donum</a> (1980), <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/laity/documents/rc_con_interdic_doc_15081997_en.html">On Certain Questions</a> Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Laity in the Sacred Ministry of the Priest (1997), and <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20040423_redemptionis-sacramentum_en.html">Redemptionis Sacramentum</a> (2004).
It is sometimes said that John Paul <a href="https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/how-john-paul-ii-restored-liturgical-sanity">restored order</a> to the liturgy, and certainly some of the wilder liturgical abuses of the 1970s, such as the use of invalid, homemade cookies for consecration in Mass, did come to an end. However, on many issues, law and practice were reconciled by changes to the law, not changes to practice.
For example, the first rules allowing the distribution of the precious blood alongside the host to the faithful at Mass specified that it should be for small, homogenous groups, and only for “particular” occasions (Sacramentali Communioni [1970]). Nevertheless, the bishops of the USA were permitted to allow it on Sundays in 1984, and restrictions on it become rather vague in later documents.
The same story can be told about the use of females to serve the altar and the reception of Holy Communion <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-ancient-is-communion-in-the-hand">in the hand</a>. On still others, practice contrary to the official rules is so widespread that Catholics could be forgiven for regarding it as normal. Examples would be the routine use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, the priest leaving the sanctuary to take part in the Sign of Peace, the saying of the Lavabo prayer aloud, and lay people cleansing the sacred vessels after Holy Communion.
The situation is unsatisfactory, to say the least. John Paul’s documents condemn laxity on liturgical law in the strongest terms, but ultimately, they failed to curb it. Their failure was symbolized by Pope Francis washing the feet of a non-Catholic woman on Holy Thursday in 2013. The law was not changed to allow the washing of women’s feet until 2016, and the <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/archbishop-roche-popes-foot-washing-change-is-a-return-to-tradition">new rule</a> still excludes non-Christians from the rite. Pope Francis was certainly making a telling, symbolic, point: the battle over liturgical law is over, and the legalists have lost.
There is clearly no point in doing what some did under Pope John Paul: to insist on adherence to liturgical law just because it is liturgical law. If bishops, seminary rectors, parish priests, or laity are going to argue for closer adherence to the law, they need better arguments than that. Naturally, the Holy See had reasons for all of its legislation, but some of these reasons are stronger than others.
The most powerful reason for a liturgical law is to ensure the validity of the sacraments. Such matters are, in fact, still widely taken very seriously: the Arizona priest, for example, who used an invalid formula for baptism <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080829813/priest-resigns-baptisms">rightly resigned</a> from his position, though it is regrettable that he was not stopped for a quarter of a century. Ministers of the sacraments must not change sacramental formulas or accompanying actions (pouring water, laying on of hands, etc.); the faithful have a right not only to valid sacraments, but to complete confidence in their validity.
At the other end of the scale, reasons for liturgical laws can be much weaker. In 1955, the Holy See decided to tweak the symbolism of the Holy Thursday Mandatum (the washing of feet) away from the idea of serving the poor and toward the service of Christ to his apostles. Pope Francis has <a href="http://www.lmschairman.org/2016/01/is-pope-francis-restoring-tradition-in.html">tweaked it back</a> again. A lot of liturgical laws are like this, and we should not allow disputes about them to disturb our own worship of God.
Then there are intermediate cases, where liturgical abuses can rise to the level of sacrilege: the wrongful treatment of holy things. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/on-pets-as-family-members">A dog</a> receiving Holy Communion, for example, does not endanger the validity of the sacrament for others, but is an objective, grave offense on the part of whoever allows it, causes serious and justified upset to onlookers, and potentially undermines the doctrine of the Real Presence.
It’s not clear if this has ever happened: internet references to it usually turn out to refer to Episcopalian services. But short of this obvious outrage, there are practices that of their nature conflict with the teaching of the Church—not only on the Real Presence, but on the priesthood.
Readers will be able to think of many examples of inappropriately casual treatment of the Blessed Sacrament. Ask the question: is this what we would do if we really believed that the host and the precious blood contained the body and blood, soul and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Savior? Many historic liturgical practices serve to emphasize this reality; their abandonment does the opposite, effectively contradicting it.
To give just one example, consider the practice of “self-intinction”: when someone receiving Holy Communion carries the host to where the chalice is being offered and dips it into the precious blood before consuming it. I hope most readers can see that lay people should not be wandering around carrying a consecrated host in their fingers, nor should spillage of the precious blood be risked in this way. Once we start thinking on these lines, we can take a view on the importance of the “act of reverence” called for, but often not given, before receiving Holy Communion—the manner of receiving Holy Communion, the use of lay people to distribute Holy Communion, the use of pottery or glass sacred vessels, and so on. What confirms and what undermines the doctrine of the Real Presence?
An example of a practice that undermines the Church’s teaching on the priesthood is the saying of the words of consecration by members of the congregation along with the priest. Those who promote this practice, if not necessarily all those who do it, must intend to minimize the role of the priest and to conflate it with the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/ddp/the-priesthood-of-all-believers">quite different priesthood</a> of the baptized.
If we recognize why this practice is problematic, we should be able to extend the principle to other issues: the way the celebrant can appear to be surrounded by lay people at the altar; a priest’s failure to wear proper vestments; and lay people taking on all kinds of priestly liturgical roles, from preaching at Mass to putting the Blessed Sacrament back in the tabernacle after Holy Communion. Everything that blurs the distinction between the priest, and his role, and the laity, and theirs, undermines in a practical way the Church’s teaching that a priest is not merely a convenient representative of the community, but someone able to act as Christ in Mass and in the sacrament of penance (confession), due to the ontological change made to him by the sacrament of holy orders.
Without creating pointless conflict, the Church’s more fundamental liturgical principles remain things priests and people should keep in mind, to keep the Faith clear to themselves and others.

Watch Out for Liturgical Abuses

Episode 141: 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
In today’s episode, we reflect on some details in the second reading for this upcoming 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time that are not directly related to apologetical topics but rather are indirectly related. The topics that these details give rise to are Paul’s belief in Jesus’ Messiahship and divinity, Paul’s teaching on the salvific efficacy of baptism, and Paul’s teaching on the second coming of our Lord, which in turn is related to discussions surrounding the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine that is common among some Protestants.
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&nbsp;
Hey everyone,
Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.
I’m Dr. Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.
In today’s episode, we’re going to reflect on some details in the second reading for this upcoming 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time that are not directly related to apologetical topics but rather are indirectly related. The topics that these details give rise to are Paul’s belief in Jesus’ Messiahship and divinity, Paul’s teaching on the salvific efficacy of baptism, and Paul’s teaching on the second coming of our Lord, which in turn is related to discussions surrounding the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine that is common among some Protestants.
Here&#8217;s the second reading, which is taken from Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11:
If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. 
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. 
For you have died, 
and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 
When Christ your life appears, 
then you too will appear with him in glory.
Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: 
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, 
and the greed that is idolatry. 
Stop lying to one another, 
since you have taken off the old self with its practices 
and have put on the new self, 
which is being renewed, for knowledge, 
in the image of its creator. 
Here there is not Greek and Jew, 
circumcision and uncircumcision, 
barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; 
but Christ is all and in all.
The first detail that stands out for apologetical purposes is Paul’s statement, “Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” The first thing this signifies is Paul’s belief that Jesus is Messiah.
Consider that the theme of Christ sitting at the right hand of God conveys the idea of reigning with God. Now, this in turn alludes to Daniel’s vision in 7:13-14 concerning the Messianic King who will reign forever with the Ancient of Days. Daniel describes his vision as follows:
[A]nd behold, with the clouds of heaven 
there came one like a son of man, 
and he came to the Ancient of Days 
and was presented before him. 
14 And to him was given dominion 
and glory and kingdom. 
that all peoples, nations, and languages 
should serve him; 
his dominion is an everlasting dominion, 
which shall not pass away, 
and his kingdom one 
that shall not be destroyed.
Paul is saying that Jesus is this one “like a son of man” who is given dominion to reign with the Ancient of Days forever.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church picks up on this line of exegesis in paragraph 664. It states, “Being seated at the Father’s right hand signifies the inauguration of the Messiah’s kingdom, the fulfillment of the prophet Daniel’s vision concerning the Son of man.”
Now, this allusion to the “son of man” in Daniel’s vision doesn’t only reveal Jesus was the Messiah. But I argue there is good reason to think this reveals Jesus’ divinity as well.
New Testament scholar Brant Pitre argues for this in his book The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ (143-145).
Pitre highlights two details that suggest the figure’s divinity. First, Daniel describes him as “coming on the clouds.” According to the Old Testament, this is something only God does, according to Jeremiah 4:13.
Second, Daniel doesn’t say, “He is a son of man,” but he is “like a son of man.” Dr. Pitre writes, “He appears to be a merely human figure but is in fact a heavenly being” (The Case for Jesus, 144; emphasis in original).
The contemporary Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin describes this figure as a “second divine figure” (the first being the ancient of days) and “a God who looks like a human being” (The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, 32-33).
Finally, such an exegesis of this figure in Daniel’s vision would provide a rationale as to why the high priest charged Jesus of blasphemy in Mark 14:63-64 when Jesus claimed himself to be this figure from Daniel. Recall, Jesus said to the High priest in 14:62, “[Y]ou will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven,” to which the high priest responded while tearing his clothes, “You have heard his blasphemy.”
The second detail that I want to focus on is Paul’s teaching that we as Christians have “died” and “raised with Christ.” This calls to mind his more elaborated teaching on the same theme in Romans 6:3-7, where he introduces baptism as the experience of this death and resurrection in Christ. He writes,
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (vv. 3-4).
Paul goes on to articulate the effects of this baptismal death and resurrection in verses 6-7:
We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin (vv.6-7).
What’s interesting about this passage, as pointed out in Catholic circles by apologist Jimmy Akin, is that the Greek doesn’t say “freed from sin.” The Greek word translated “freed” is dikaioō, which means “to put into a right relationship (with God); acquit, declare and treat as righteous.” This is the same word Paul uses when he speaks of our justification by faith: “Since we are justified [Greek, dikaiōthentes] by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). So the phrase “freed from sin” in Romans 6:7 can literally be translated “justified from sin.”
Modern translations render it as “freed from sin” because the context is clearly about sanctification. For example, in the verse before Paul speaks of baptismal death, he speaks of those in Christ as having “died to sin.” As quoted above, Paul speaks of those who have died the death of baptism as “no longer enslaved to sin.”
In verses 17-18, Paul actually uses a form of the Greek word for “free” (eleutheroō) in relation to the freedom from sin that we receive in Christ:
But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free [Greek, eleutherōthentes] from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
This tells us that, for Paul, justification can include sanctification, which is the interior renewal of the soul whereby the objective guilt of sin is removed. And that justification, or new birth, takes place in baptism.
In sum, Paul is teaching us here in Romans 6 that baptism saves us. And the detail from our second reading for this upcoming Sunday prompts us to reflect on this teaching.
Okay, the third and last detail that we’ll focus on for today’s episode is Paul’s teaching, “When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” I do think that Paul is primarily calling our attention to the bodily resurrection at the end of time. But this theme of “appearing with him in glory” as he returns reminds me to Paul’s similar teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, where he speaks of those Christians who are still alive at Christ’s coming will be “caught up together with [those raised from the dead] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (v.17).
Some Christians view this as evidence for the pre-tribulation rapture view. But as I argue in my book Meeting the Protestant Challenge: How to Answer 50 Biblical Objections to Catholic Beliefs, this is not the case. Rather, Paul is describing how Christians will meet the Lord in the air to escort him as he returns, in a way that is analogous to the ancient custom of citizens ushering in important visitors.
It was common for citizens to meet an illustrious person (such as dignitary or victorious military leader) and his entourage outside the walls of their city and accompany him back in. This was a way for people to honor the visitor and take part in the celebration of the visitor’s coming.
We see an example of this in Acts 28:14-15, where the brethren at Rome went out of the city to meet Paul as he approached: “And so we came to Rome. And the brethren there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us.” This ancient custom also explains why the crowds go out to meet Jesus on Palm Sunday and usher him into Jerusalem (see Matt. 21:1-17).
So, for Paul, those who are alive at the Second Coming, will join the resurrected Christians and do for our blessed Lord what the ancients did for their dignitaries: they will be caught up in the air to meet the approaching king Jesus and escort him as he “descend[s] from heaven with a cry of command” (1 Thess. 4:16).
And we know this is at the final coming of Christ at the end of time because Paul says this will happen at the time of the bodily resurrection. He writes in verse 16: “And the dead in Christ will rise first” (v.16).
We know this refers to the end of time because Paul teaches as much in 1 Corinthians 15—the end happens in tandem with the resurrection of the dead:
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power (1 Cor. 15:22-24).
If Paul viewed the resurrection of the dead as occurring in tandem with the end of time, and if he speaks of the resurrection of the dead in tandem with Christ’s coming in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, it follows that Christ’s coming in those verses is his coming at the end of time and not the beginning of a pre-tribulation rapture.
For more details, see episode 51 for the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.
Conclusion
Well, my friends, that’s all I have for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The second reading for this upcoming 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C provides us with some material that is at least indirectly related to apologetical topics.
• We have details that relate to Jesus’ Messiahship and divinity, 
• The salvific efficacy of baptism, and 
• Paul’s view of what happens at Christ’s return at the end of time.
As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well through any podcast platform that they use. You can also access the archived episodes of the Sunday Catholic Word at sundaycatholicword.com.
You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, and Jimmy Akin’s The Jimmy Akin podcast,” all of which can be found at catholic.com. And if you want to follow more of my own work, check out my website at karlobroussard.com
One last thing: if you’re interested in getting some cool mugs and stickers with my logo, “Mr. Sunday podcast,” go to shop.catholic.com.
I hope you have a blessed 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C. Until next time, God Bless.

Is Jesus Christ Divine? Paul’s Clues in Colossians 3

<div>Can you please give me some information on the alleged Marian apparitions in Jacarey, Brazil?</div><div>Bishop Dom Nelson Westrupp issued a <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/347481989/Carta-Circular-de-Dom-Nelson-Westrupp-Jacarei-Aparicao-00">circular letter in 2011</a> rejecting any supernatural element to the messages of Marcos Thadeu Teixeira:
<blockquote>Although it is evident that Marcos Thadeu has a deep devotion to the Heart of Jesus and Our Lady, the messages which he claims to have received from Jesus and Mary are not of a supernatural nature. There are several expressions that flatly contradict this possibility by showing that these messages / locutions come from the author&#8217;s own thoughts and feelings (<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/347481989/Carta-Circular-de-Dom-Nelson-Westrupp-Jacarei-Aparicao-00">Letter from Diocese of Santo Andre</a>, Feb. 11, 2011).</blockquote>
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Marian Apparitions in Brazil?

In a previous <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-best-argument-for-sola-scriptura">article</a>, I argued that sola scriptura blocks a Protestant from having infallible knowledge of several books in the Bible, including some from the New Testament, like Hebrews, Mark, and James. The reason I gave was that neither Jesus nor the apostles, the only infallible sources besides the Bible for a Protestant, ever gave a complete list of which Jewish and Christian writings were inspired.
But a Protestant might counter: That we can’t discern a complete list of inspired Jewish and Christian writings from Jesus and the apostles is not a problem, because Protestants affirm that the Holy Spirit providentially guided the Church, or the people of God, to recognize what belongs in the canon of Scripture.
Take, for example, former president at Westminster Seminary in California, W. Robert Godfrey. He <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sola-Scriptura-Protestant-Position-Reformation/dp/1573580287/ref=sr_1_2?crid=CDSXJEBSGOD3&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.4RKsIMTu2h252_jxyqecY8Xapg-_N1nSdM6-tKRaqhDqFULVmRAXcPFLrClhjxFw.HkXL18Cg_KzlZItPnsbWsUEIm0KikCgu5FEqPSYgq_c&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Sola+Scriptura%21+The+Protestant+Position+on+the+Bible&amp;qid=1725479835&amp;sprefix=sola+scriptura+the+protestant+position+on+the+bible%2Caps%2C152&amp;sr=8-2">writes</a>,
<blockquote>As God’s revelation, they are recognized by the people of God as God’s own word. . . . The self-authenticating character of the canon is demonstrated by the remarkable unanimity reached by the people of God on the canon. . . . These actions [by popes and councils] simply recognized the emerging consensus of the people of God as they recognized the authentic scriptures.</blockquote>
Protestant apologist Gavin Ortlund articulated this same response in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7qdPSHSJk">debate</a> with Trent Horn.
Now, one might think that by saying the Holy Spirit guided the Church to discern the canon, our Protestant friends are saying the Church’s discernment was infallible, which would be at odds with sola scriptura. This is exactly what a convert from Protestantism recently told me he implicitly believed as a Protestant, and when this implicit belief was made explicit, he abandoned sola scriptura and became Catholic.
But for some, the Church’s historical discernment of the canon is not infallible. And they’re okay with that.
Consider, for example, R.C. Sproul. In his Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, he writes,
<blockquote>Rome believes the church was infallible when it determined which books belong in the New Testament. Protestants believe the church acted rightly and accurately in this process, but not infallibly (p. 58).</blockquote>
Sproul is famous for adopting the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sola-Scriptura-Protestant-Position-Reformation/dp/1573580287/ref=sr_1_2?crid=CDSXJEBSGOD3&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.4RKsIMTu2h252_jxyqecY8Xapg-_N1nSdM6-tKRaqhDqFULVmRAXcPFLrClhjxFw.HkXL18Cg_KzlZItPnsbWsUEIm0KikCgu5FEqPSYgq_c&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Sola+Scriptura%21+The+Protestant+Position+on+the+Bible&amp;qid=1725479835&amp;sprefix=sola+scriptura+the+protestant+position+on+the+bible%2Caps%2C152&amp;sr=8-2">phrase</a>, “The Bible is a fallible collection of infallible books.”
Gavin Ortlund, again, put forward this view as his own in his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn7qdPSHSJk">debate</a> with Horn, stating, “The church does not need to possess infallibility in order to recognize infallibility. . . . You don’t need to be infallible to discern that which is infallible.”
So the Protestant claim here is that the Holy Spirit providentially guided the Church to rightly discern what Scripture is, but such discernment wasn’t infallible.
There are basically two targets here at which to direct our responses:
Target #1: The general idea of relying on the people of God’s discernment of the canon of Scripture.
Target #2: The issue of the fallible discernment by the people of God.
Let’s take target #1. There are two responses.
First, Protestants face a problem concerning their thirty-nine-book Old Testament canon.
Consider that there’s an embedded principle in the counter-argument that we’re considering here: Christians can reasonably believe whatever the Holy Spirit leads the Church to believe. 
Now, here’s where the problem arises for a Protestant. The Church simply didn’t discern the twenty-seven books of the New Testament to be canonical—that’s to say, inspired by God. The historical <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/why-catholic-bibles-are-bigger-revised-2nd-edition/">record</a> is clear that the Church also discerned forty-six books to make up the Old Testament, which includes the six deuterocanonical books that Protestants reject (Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus [Sirach], Baruch) along with parts of Esther and Daniel.
Therefore, according to the logic of this counter-argument given by Godfrey, Ortlund, and Sproul, they’d have to say a Christian is safe in believing the deuterocanonical books to be inspired, which, of course, runs contrary to their belief.
A Protestant might counter here and say that the Holy Spirit only led the Church in its discernment of the Christian writings and not in its discernment of the Jewish writings, thereby leaving the Church to err in judging the deuterocanonical books to be inspired. Sometimes the Spirit moves, so it might be claimed, and sometimes he doesn’t. (This seems to be not just a potential counter, but something required for any Protestant who rejects the six deuterocanonical books.)
The problem with this way of thinking is that it ends in self-defeat, at least concerning a Protestant’s belief that he can rely on the people of God’s discernment of the canon.
To say the Holy Spirit led the Church to rightly judge the twenty-seven books in the New Testament to be inspired but didn’t lead the Church to judge the seven deuterocanonical books necessarily implies that there is something other than the people of God that is the measure for discerning which books are inspired. You can’t say the people of God is our final court of appeal for the canon of Scripture, which is what Godfrey, Ortlund, and Sproul argue above, and then turn around and say the judgment made by the people of God on the Old Testament canon was in error.
So the people of God’s discernment of what constitutes Scripture ends up not being the testimony upon which a Protestant can rely after all, which is at cross-purposes with the general view that we’re considering here. Therefore, this counter ends in self-defeat, at least regarding the general idea that the Holy Spirit led the people of God to discern the canon of Scripture.
The question now becomes, “What is the measure by which the people of God’s judgment is in error?” What authority must we rely on to determine when the Holy Spirit was guiding and when he wasn’t?
That’s something a Protestant would have to answer, lest he be guilty of an arbitrary selection as to what the Holy Spirit accurately guides the Church in.
Here’s our second response for target #1: The logic of the argument demands an openness to the Spirit having led the Church to accurately recognize other things that pertain to divine revelation.
Recall the above principle: Christians can reasonably believe whatever the Holy Spirit leads the Church to believe. 
Well, there are other things that pertain to divine revelation that the Church came to believe—for example, baptismal regeneration, the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the supreme authority of the Church of Rome, prayers for the dead, etc.
Therefore, according to the above principle, Christians can reasonably believe these teachings, too, along with the teaching as to which Jewish and Christians writings are inspired.
But this creates a problem for Protestants who reject these doctrines. Such Protestants would have to either give up their argument that they accept the canon of Scripture on account of the testimony of the people of God or say a Christian can reasonably believe these doctrines, like the canon of Scripture.
Now, if a Protestant says the Spirit didn’t guide the early Church concerning these issues, and that’s why the early Christians erred, then we’re back to the question, “How do you know?” What testimony are you relying on to know that the Holy Spirit wasn’t leading the Church in teaching these doctrines?
Again, a Protestant must answer this question lest he arbitrarily select which teachings the Church got right and which ones it got wrong.
What about target #2—the fallible discernment by the people of God?
The first thing we can say is that this view, at least as articulated by Sproul and Ortlund, focuses on discerning “infallible authority” when the argument should focus on “inspiration.”
Sproul and Ortlund are correct in saying that fallible creatures can recognize infallible authority. We do this with Christ and his apostles.
We rightly recognize Jesus as having infallible authority because he vindicated his claims through the miraculous, and he gave such authority over to his apostles, commanding them to speak on his behalf. And given this authority, the apostles’ writings take on the very same infallible character, which would allow us, who are fallible, to have a collection of infallible books.
But infallible authority is not what the Church was after throughout its years of discernment as to what constituted Jewish and Christian scriptures. The Church wasn’t trying to discern whether Old Testament prophets and Christ’s apostles were infallible teachers with divine authority. That was already believed. Rather, the Church was discerning what was inspired—that’s to say, which Jewish and Christian writings had God as their primary author.
And for that, you do need an infallible testimony, whether God himself or a voice to speak on behalf of God, to tell us what God has authored, lest you’re left with a mere subjective guess as to what Scripture is.
Our second response to target #2, and perhaps the most important, is that if Protestants acknowledge that the Church erred in its judgment concerning the deuterocanonical books, then that means the Church could have erred in its judgment about those books that Protestants do accept to be God’s word. And with that potential error come grave consequences for a Protestant who adheres to sola scriptura.
Jimmy Akin <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/a-daily-defense-365-days-plus-one-to-becoming-a-better-apologist/">states</a> the problem this way:
<blockquote>If there is the possibility that books have been included in Scripture that shouldn’t be there—and multiple books were in doubt in the early centuries—then the foundations of Protestant theology are uncertain. False elements may have been introduced into data it rests upon, with potentially grave consequences. Similarly, if some inspired books were left out of the Protestant canon, important data would be missing, again with potentially grave consequences. Determining, precisely and with certainty, what belongs in Scripture is thus a critical priority for sola scriptura.</blockquote>
Now, a Protestant, following Sproul, might say the Church, although subject to error, didn’t in fact err in its judgment about the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. But again, how would he know that? What is the measure by which he measures the Church’s judgment to be in fact accurate in these cases? Again, a Protestant would have to answer these questions lest he be guilty of arbitrary selection.
In the end, I don’t think this route, taken by Godfrey, Ortlund, and Sproul, is favorable for a Protestant. If it’s safe to trust the people of God’s discernment of the New Testament canon, then it’s also safe to trust their discernment in other things—like the forty-six-book Old Testament canon and other revealed doctrines that many Protestants reject.
And if the discernment is fallible, then there’s a real possibility they were mistaken concerning the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and the thirty-nine books in a Protestant’s Old Testament canon. Such a margin of error is not a good foundation on which to build a belief that involves looking to those same books as your sole infallible rule of faith.

The Two-Pronged Protestant Dilemma

Do you know someone who isn’t exactly hostile to God and religion but just doesn’t seem to care much about them one way or the other? Such a person exhibits religious indifference:the failure to think seriously about religion and accordingly to give God his due. 
This is a general definition, but in real life indifference occurs in a variety of forms and to varying degrees. One common form of indifference involves a failure to take religion seriously due to disbelief in a personal, present God. Such disbelief leads the indifferentist to treat all religious beliefs and behaviors as absurd since God—whatever he may be—cannot know (or care) what we do in this life. This radical closed-mindedness towards religion that results from such skepticism is called closed indifference. 
Not every unbeliever is a closed indifferentist. Some skeptics take religious claims seriously. This was notably evident in the twentieth century, before the rise of the New Atheism. Atheist philosopher J.L. Mackie, for example, made an honorable attempt at rebutting theistic arguments when he published The Miracle of Theism in 1982. Many theistic philosophers took his philosophical charges against the classical arguments for God’s existence seriously then—and still do today. 
Mackie was not alone. Antony Flew, one of the most prominent philosophers of the twentieth century, was respected by believers and unbelievers alike. Indeed, Flew took the arguments against and for God so seriously that at the turn of the millennium—despite his first-rate philosophical contribution to atheistic thought—he would argue himself into deism, finding himself rationally unable to reject the existence of God. In a discussion in 2004 with Christian professor Gary Habermas, Flew said: 
<blockquote>I don’t believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to that. But it seems to me that the case for an Aristotelian God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence is now much stronger than it ever was before. And it was from Aristotle that Aquinas drew the materials for producing his Five Ways (<a href="https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lts_fac_pubs/333/">“My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism,”</a> online at digitalcommons.liberty.edu).</blockquote>
Aristotle’s first cause argument for God so impressed Flew that it led him to theism, even though he insisted his “discovery of the divine has proceeded on a purely natural level, without any reference to supernatural phenomena . . . a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith” (<a href="http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Nave-html/Faithpathh/Flewq.html">“There Is a God”</a>). 
Catholics everywhere, like Flew, have also found the Aristotelean approach to arguing for God—especially as developed later by St. Thomas Aquinas—to be deeply compelling. Richard Dawkins, on the other hand, would beg to differ. Consider the following remarks in The God Delusion, which are representative of all-out dismissal of St. Thomas’s philosophical case for God: 
<blockquote>Even if we allow the dubious luxury of arbitrarily conjuring up a terminator to an infinite regress and giving it a name simply because we need one, there is absolutely no reason to endow that terminator with any of the properties normally ascribed to God: omnipotence, omniscience, goodness, creativity of design.</blockquote>
In only a few pages, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/dawkins-vs-aquinas-fail">Dawkins attempts to reduce</a> to mere rubbish Aquinas’s classic Five Ways and his related arguments for the divine attributes. But as other critics have pointed out, one can hardly take seriously this four-page attempt to take down one of Western civilization’s greatest philosophers. If Dawkins wants to take a serious stab at heavy hitters such as Aristotle and Aquinas, so be it—but he should at least try. We should not take Dawkins seriously, except for the fact that many armchair skeptics today have done so. 
Such dishonest caricaturing is symptomatic of closed indifference; and the intellectual apathy it betrays has upset even fellow unbelievers such as philosopher and atheist Michael Ruse, who writes: 
<blockquote>
Unlike the new atheists, I take scholarship seriously. I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, “What caused God?” as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/02/atheism-dawkins-ruse">“</a>Dawkins et al bring us into disrepute,” online at theguardian.com).
</blockquote>
How do we awaken the closed indifferentists? The solution could be as simple as reintroducing arguments for God’s existence and inviting the spiritually indifferent into a serious discussion. It could be that many closed indifferentists have simply never heard a proper explanation of such proofs before. Antony Flew admitted, after his conversion to deism, “I was not a specialist on Aristotle. . . . I was reading parts of his philosophy for the first time.” It is easy to assume nonbelievers have heard more than they have.
It could also be the case that, in addition to never hearing a clear and rational case for belief in God, many indifferentists have never been challenged to give an account for their own skepticism. As the respected atheist philosopher Quentin Smith observes, “The great majority of naturalist philosophers have an unjustified belief that naturalism is true and unjustified belief that theism (or supernaturalism) is false” (<a href="https://www.pdcnet.org/philo/content/philo_2001_0004_0002_0195_0215">“</a>The Metaphilosophy of Naturalism,” online at pdcnet.org). 
We might also remind closed indifferentists of the costs of their beliefs. Many skeptics are strict materialists, for example—they believe in nothing outside of physical reality. This obviously rules out God, angels, and the like. But this also means that mental thoughts, for instance, amount to nothing more than a kind of secretion of the brain. It also means that we have, to quote biologist Anthony Cashmore, no more free will than a bowl of sugar. This calls into question whether we can really be responsible for our actions—a line of reasoning most closed indifferentists probably haven’t considered. 
Since God has placed in our hearts a hunger for him and his truth, I would like to think that, deep down, every human being has in interest in religious questions—like those regarding the meaning of life, morality, and life after death. Our evangelical task, therefore, is, first and foremost, to show that we are willing to take the indifferentist’s thoughts and questions seriously and, second, to be prepared to give a compelling account for the hope that is within us. We plant the seeds; God takes care of the growing.

‘It Doesn’t Matter:’ How to Deal with Closed Indifference

Declaring that “faithful men stand up” and “speak up,” Josh Buice, the founder of G3 Ministries, <a href="https://twitter.com/JoshBuice/status/1453685557243043847">argues that</a>
<blockquote>we can be certain that Luther, Calvin, Knox, Tyndale and other figures of the Reformation were not making decisions about defending the faith by calculating their career advancement and protecting their platform.</blockquote>
Buice’s message about basing our actions upon faith, rather than political calculation, is a good one, but (with the possible exception of Tyndale, the only one of the four to die for his beliefs), he could hardly have chosen worse examples than these Protestant Reformers.
In a <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Letters_of_Martin_Luther/k5T8vh2PUPkC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=Luther+writes+submissively+to+the+Pope&amp;pg=PA28&amp;printsec=frontcover">May 30, 1518 letter</a>, Martin Luther wrote to Pope Leo X to insist that he wasn’t rejecting papal authority and that the accusations against him were false:
<blockquote>I know, most holy father, that evil reports are being spread about me, some friends having vilified me to your Holiness, as if I were trying to belittle the power of the keys and of the supreme pontiff, therefore I am being accused of being a heretic, a renegade, and a thousand other ill names are being hurled at me, enough to make my ears tingle and my eyes start in my head, but my one source of confidence is an innocent conscience.</blockquote>
Insisting that these accusations against him are untrue, Luther concludes the letter by promising that “my cause hangs on the will of your Holiness, by whose verdict I shall either save or lose my life. Come what may, I shall recognize the voice of your Holiness to be that of Christ, speaking through you.”
But when Leo decided against Luther in June of 1520, Luther changed his tune. Rather than recognizing the voice of the pope to be that of Christ speaking through Leo, Luther instead denounced the pope as the Antichrist, publishing <a href="https://www.famous-trials.com/luther/293-execrablebull">Against the Execrable Bull of the Antichrist</a> in November of that year. Before taking this step, Luther shrewdly drummed up political support. In the summer of 1520, he wrote an “<a href="https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/luther-nobility.asp#The%20Three%20Walls%20Of%20The%20Romanists">Address to the Nobility of the German Nation</a>,” playing on German nationalism, and urging the secular authorities to take greater control of the Catholic Church. Unlike his theological writings (which were in Latin), this was written in German. In the letter, Luther rejected the idea “that the temporal power has no jurisdiction over spirituality” on the grounds that since “the temporal power is baptized as we are, and has the same faith and gospel, we must allow it to be priest and bishop.”
Therefore, he offered a number of suggestions for how secular authority could control the Church, including consolidating or abolishing religious orders like the Dominicans (“Let no more mendicant monasteries be built! God help us! there are too many as it is. Would to God they were all abolished, or at least made over to two or three orders!”); abolishing or tightly controlling the ability of the German faithful to go on pilgrimage to Rome (“Pilgrimages to Rome must be abolished, or at least no one must be allowed to go from his own wish or his own piety, unless his priest, his town magistrate, or his lord has found that there is sufficient reason for his pilgrimage”); and banning of most of the books written by that “blind heathen teacher, Aristotle.” Luther even suggested that “the temporal authorities” should convene their own ecumenical council, and if the pope should resist this secular council, “we must not respect him or his power; and if he should begin to excommunicate and fulminate, we must despise this as the doings of a madman, and, trusting in God, excommunicate and repel him as best we may.”
Protestants are free to make of Luther’s ideas whatever they will, although I suspect that the idea of turning control over the churches to secular authorities no longer sounds as attractive as it did to Luther. My point is simply that between 1518 and 1520, Luther executed a remarkable 180-degree reversal. He pledged fealty to the pope “come what may” when he thought that would benefit his cause, and when it didn’t, he denounced the pope as the Antichrist and pledged support to the worldly authorities instead.
In 1558, John Knox wrote <a href="http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualNLs/firblast.htm">The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women</a> to denounce the Catholic Queen Mary. Knox denied her legitimacy as queen of England, insisting that women “may never rule nor bear empire above man,” because “woman by the law of God, and by the interpretation of the Holy Ghost, is utterly forbidden to occupy the place of God in the offices aforesaid, which he has assigned to man, whom he has appointed and ordained his lieutenant in earth, excluding from that honour and dignity all women.”
But then an awkward thing happened: Mary died, and her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I became queen. Would Knox continue his principled opposition to female empire? He would not. He quickly <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_History_of_the_Reformation_of_Religi/HEURAAAAIAAJ?q=&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=%E2%80%9Cthe%20virtuous%20and%20godly%20Elizabeth,%20by%20the%20grace%20of%20God,%20queen%20of%20England,%E2%80%9D%20%22#f=false">wrote to the unhappy queen</a>, addressing her as “the virtuous and godly Elizabeth, by the grace of God, queen of England,” and insisting that nothing in The First Blast “is, nor can be prejudicial to your grace’s just regimen,” a reign for “which most I have thirsted, and for which—as oblivion will suffer—I render thanks unfeignedly unto God.” Elizabeth remained unmoved by Knox’s sycophancy, forbidding him from entering England.
As the nineteenth-century novelist <a href="https://www.djmcadam.com/knox-women.html">Robert Louis Stevenson points out</a>, John Knox (who wrote his treatise from Geneva) had first approached “his great master, Calvin, in ‘a private conversation,’” in which Calvin admitted his own position that “government of women was a deviation from the original and proper order of nature, to be ranked, no less than slavery, among the punishments consequent upon the fall of man.” Once Elizabeth acceded to the throne and Knox fell out of favor, however, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Letters_of_John_Calvin/Aa1DAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=%22of%20the%20book%20I%20had%20not%22">Calvin wrote to her adviser</a> Sir William Cecil to insist that he “had not the slightest suspicion” that Knox was planning to publish a book, and that “it had been published a whole year before [he] was aware of its existence.” To the Swiss Reformer Heinrich Bullinger, however, Calvin admitted that Knox “had talked over these matters with me before he came among you.” This same Calvin critiqued the Church (rightly) for allowing boys as young as ten to become bishops, yet he <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/calvins-fawning-over-a-13-year-old-head-of-the-church-of-england">dedicated two of his biblical commentaries</a> (the Commentary on Isaiah and Commentary on the General Epistles) to the boy-king Edward VI, Elizabeth’s predecessor and elder brother.
This is not to suggest that the Reformers were entirely unprincipled, but it is to suggest that there’s a reason that Tyndale was executed and the other three were not. In an age in which both Catholic and Protestant authorities were willing to violently suppress perceived heresy, men like Tyndale (and, on the Catholic side, St. Thomas More) were willing to die for what they believed. In contrast, Luther, Calvin, and Knox avoided physical suffering in no small part by ingratiating themselves to the politically powerful, even at the cost of some of their own inconvenient principles.

3 Protestant Reformers Put to the Test

The special pleading fallacy is a logical error in which someone applies a different standard to a specific case without justifying why that case should be treated differently. It normally occurs when someone attempts to make an exception for his behavior.
For instance, let’s say a student argued, &#8220;I know I didn&#8217;t turn in my essay on time, but you should still give me full credit. Yes, I understand your policy is to deduct points for late work, but my situation is different because I had a really busy week.&#8221; This person is attempting to make an exception to a general rule without justification and would be committing a special pleading fallacy.
This fallacious argument is relevant in topics relating to the biblical canon. The biblical canon is something that every Christian must account for. In order to avoid the special pleading fallacy, any standards that Christians set to determine what books should be allowed in the Bible need to be consistent. A Protestant’s standards for what constitutes Scripture need to allow for exactly sixty-six books. If those standards allow for sixty-five or even sixty-seven books, they need to be modified. However, it seems impossible to create a consistent standard.
For example, Protestants generally give three criteria for determining canonicity. According to John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue in their book on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Doctrine-Systematic-Summary-Bible/dp/1433545918/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=1334807686679188&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.gbdebAK_Oambu-htRcxkJ-l6YQ_hR2iZzw--DZfS6y0jSnmqxXUAXZU6rKh3qpeuRKxT4OS6A_zFCmovIWuIWxGUW3-qUGjNsQmvgvaCamdvWRe1_dirX6-plz9QBAT06JvXH7VlwdZfOKPuxCla6qfIAMnARREXtLRxjM3KGoYQ1E_26wUJec-0RWZCevuyM-6oZlpA9I8lsK13IIKfbaA8_GKavwyvrrht45-5cZ0.-tQhd9YxjNwg_-jJ0bHkBjOqsXp3unlpvi6f3w1E4h4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;hvadid=83425552388227&amp;hvbmt=be&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocphy=100743&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83425837560616%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=22656_10489326&amp;keywords=biblical+doctrine+a+systematic+summary+of+bible+truth&amp;msclkid=690768e936271bd0f3d60e64de21d7f1&amp;qid=1720576009&amp;sr=8-1">biblical doctrine</a>, these criteria are
<ul>
<li>written by an apostle or prophet, or someone associated with one;</li>
<li>no contradictions with previous Scripture; and</li>
<li>accepted by a consensus of the church.</li>
</ul>
These standards, however, are inconsistent. Starting off with 2), we must first address the issue of canonicity before considering potential errors. The proper order is to establish a book as Scripture, and only then should we attempt to reconcile apparent errors or contradictions. It&#8217;s crucial to understand that Scripture is not deemed Scripture because it is error-free; rather, it is error-free because it is Scripture. We must not confuse this order of reasoning.
The third criterion likewise contains an inconsistency, and this argument is one that many other Protestants make as well. For instance, James White, in his book on sola scriptura, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Scripture-Alone-Exploring-Authority-Authenticity/dp/B08TQQDJF8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2OA52ST0AE404&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xO4zwHxlmBbIw_LlplRT3XMdl6q_HYI1crkaiZE5YEkAORolZYBmf2K_5pv3IliiUh3aQJz3-_PyHzqqHPIjBHpeat78o_4AZFs8AH-K-8tf729Ou4shXav-zRB0xMYSoNMguWpkAZ8wBcCmahT23g.Q1RutaO5H49pEarRFtZBeimDBktceoGGA3moKnJXJqQ&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=james+white+sola+scriptura&amp;qid=1720577874&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=james+white+sola+scriptur%2Cstripbooks%2C184&amp;sr=1-1">argued this</a>:
<blockquote>Likewise, pointing to canonical disagreements does not mean God has not accomplished his will in leading his people to a sufficient knowledge of canon. Indeed, with reference to the New Testament, there is hardly any meaningful disagreement to be noted (p. 120).</blockquote>
In the footnote, he says,
<blockquote>Obviously, many disagree with this statement, pointing to isolated statements all over the historical record as evidence. But it is precisely the scattered nature of these statements, and the fact that they never reflect a consensus of believers over any period of time or great distance, that substantiates my claim.</blockquote>
White is attempting to argue that God led his people to sufficient knowledge of the canon. He then argues that even though some may disagree, these disagreements never reflect a consensus, which is a good reason to believe that God inspired those books.
However, if Protestants like White want to take seriously the consensus of the church, they have to accept the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-to-defend-the-deuterocanonicals">deuterocanonical books</a>. As Protestant scholar J.N.D. Kelly notes, for the great majority of early Church Fathers, the Deuterocanon ranked as Scripture in the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Early-Christian-Doctrines-J-Kelly/dp/006064334X/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=1333708167438563&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cLkwYyZo6FUW9U1kc_VLkCyKrama55sk5uTstJ8-sAJYkVi953gszhtFbprkSQez6AWm6LTcVbk9q-W3f_P2JV3M9X1oG9PGAywQYr0YQ3hKlge0m6n004u2QlFqeyblrQkJ4skHNjZEdCovkIoxX2kVWiJbZuqlV6QGEuxIudfLuesKovEwgZONfaowiniwv7IjjB65zM1uj_UIKepOH843J77xwLhO2FbTotOCXlQ.pP4J1o30IxPM_BywRyji7vKNLFa_LPMWvkS3PcuyISY&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;hvadid=83356999573926&amp;hvbmt=bp&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocphy=100743&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=p&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83357098575210%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=8265_13501988&amp;keywords=early+christian+doctrines&amp;msclkid=4d9a7434874a1467f42b12b96c7b94b3&amp;qid=1720576822&amp;sr=8-1">fullest sense</a> (p. 55).
All that’s left is 1) “written by an apostle or prophet, or someone associated with one.” However, one important issue is missing. How do we know that the apostles wrote the New Testament? How do we know that Matthew wrote his Gospel and that it was not written by an anonymous source, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Testament-Origins-Christianity-Religion/dp/1107172780/ref=sr_1_1?crid=SNTV2X9EWNN4&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.NB2CPyAhJluGMRxhWwI-VQeQ0OQFTBSPDN0WVLJ0gpRr9GhqDhFYGyQd8CxlaAsEh76UH6jjjHPWVRo54d4IElYvNJ_m1wc_rwndrpafPkMiLutgqqP8vPsECTMdTsR6iEy7ljNVVijuB1rFlHVeoCtHqL6TKCEd45EzFZgXqf8lSLHcgFeOs4qCv81OvjZJDi-PXbX-2KsU01cSd_rkYLXtuyrbjiUK-Qs2dy442cw.OplLjbUzJbTUkM7sKtdmSSngNcxD8Mgjhq7Igki73Rc&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=introduction+to+new+testament+burkett&amp;qid=1720576554&amp;sprefix=introduction+to+new+testament+burkett%2Caps%2C95&amp;sr=8-1">as some scholars have suggested</a> (p. 175)? Generally, Protestants will appeal to the traditions and consensus of the Church.
Therefore, 2) is an invalid order, and 1) and 3) become consensus questions. If a Protestant wants to accept things like the four Gospels because of this consensus, while also rejecting the Deuterocanon, which also has consensus, he commits the special pleading fallacy. The Protestant would need to either accept both or reject both, as accepting one without the other would be special pleading.
Further, this inconsistency undermines attempts to reject certain doctrines that also have a great consensus, like <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Church-Rome-at-Bar-History/dp/0851517102/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2PR302K9AX719&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.4lFO0X6vIEBToHDojpeJylwuf1qcTx7awxA9oVmCSIA.pVzSlAJcIkxjv69ipAshSc6gid4hGdYUQk79lw6I5t0&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=church+of+rome+at+the+bar+of+history&amp;qid=1718681862&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=church+of+rome+at+the+%2Cstripbooks%2C130&amp;sr=1-1">baptismal regeneration</a> (p. 95), solely on biblical grounds. If we acknowledge that our understanding of what constitutes the Bible relies on early Church consensus, it becomes problematic to dismiss other widespread early Church beliefs by attempting to interpret the biblical text.
Other Protestants try giving other standards. For example, Michael Kruger, a scholar who has written extensively on the canon, made a different, but still fallacious, argument in a <a href="https://youtu.be/DTki0ESXIJk?si=8E995KSMxautd2Le">speech in 2022</a>. He said,
<blockquote>What do we mean by self-authenticating? What it means is the real way you know that God&#8217;s word is God&#8217;s word is because God demonstrates the validity of his word through his word. In other words, the word bears God&#8217;s own divine attributes and qualities. . . . I know the Bible is the word of God from the word of God. It exhibits God&#8217;s own qualities and characteristics. . . .
So what are the characteristics that mark God&#8217;s word as God&#8217;s word? . . . One of those characteristics is the amazing unity and harmony of these books, how they all fit together so remarkably.</blockquote>
Kruger goes on to talk about how another way we can tell is that because the Bible “does something” to the reader, it must be from God. Protestants John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue make a similar argument, where they argue that the Bible is the word of God because it has a practical or emotional effect on individual lives (p. 103).
The problem is that these arguments suffer from circular reasoning and don’t actually prove anything. A Mormon or a Muslim could make the same claim about his holy book. Both of them could say their books have unity and harmony and do something to the reader.
The assertion that the Bible inherently displays God&#8217;s qualities and characteristics also faces challenges when considering books like the Protestant version of Esther, which notably lacks any direct mention of God. It&#8217;s difficult to reconcile how a text can embody divine attributes without explicitly referencing the deity. It should likewise be noted that a Christian who holds to a sixty-five-book canon with every book except Esther would also be able to make Kruger’s argument. These standards just cannot get us to a consistent sixty-six-book canon, no more and no less.
There seem to be two options for Protestants with regard to their canon, both involving fallacious arguments.
<ol>
<li>Have inconsistent standards that would include books like the Deuterocanon (special pleading).</li>
<li>Assume their canon is correct, then fit standards around it (<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/dont-let-protestants-drag-you-to-their-turf">begging the question</a>).</li>
</ol>
In conclusion, the Protestant approach to establishing the biblical canon faces significant logical challenges. The criteria used to determine canonicity often lead to inconsistencies when applied rigorously, resulting in either special pleading or circular reasoning. The reliance on Church tradition and consensus for certain aspects of canonicity while rejecting these for others creates a problematic double standard. Furthermore, arguments based on the Bible&#8217;s internal qualities or its effect on readers fail to provide a unique justification for the specific Protestant canon.

Special Pleading for a Protestant Bible

Catholic circles have been abuzz with the exciting news of a possible case of saintly incorruption in the state of Missouri. According to <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254384/a-miracle-in-missouri-body-of-benedictine-sisters-foundress-thought-to-be-incorrupt">Catholic News Agency</a>:
<blockquote>Hundreds of pilgrims have descended on a Benedictine monastery for religious sisters in rural Missouri in recent days after news began to spread on social media last week that the recently exhumed remains of the contemplative order’s African American foundress appear to be incorrupt, four years after her death and burial in a simple wooden coffin.</blockquote>
The foundress—Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB—passed on at the age of 95 in 2019. She was not embalmed.
Recently, it was decided to move her remains into the monastery’s chapel, and it was discovered that the coffin had cracked, allowing moisture and dirt into it.
Despite this, when the coffin was opened, the sisters did not discover the skeleton they expected. Instead, it was discovered that Sr. Wilhelmina’s body was remarkably well preserved, prompting word to spread of her as a possible case of incorruptibility.
Although a cause for the canonization of Sr. Wilhelmina has not (yet) been opened, and there has been no official Church judgment on the preservation of her body, incorruptibility has often been regarded as a miraculous sign of sainthood, prompting pilgrims to come to the monastery.
What are we to make of cases like this? It’s remarkable when a human body seems to have been immune from the natural processes of decay that underlie the truth, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19). And it can be a sign that something supernatural—the hand of God—may be at work in the case.
At the same time, there is reason for caution. First, the immunity from decay often is not total. In most cases of incorruptibility, it is not the case that there has been no change in the body since death. It is simply that there has been less of a change than one would expect given the circumstances and length of time.
Second, there are purely natural things that can arrest the rate of decay. The most common is embalming. This kills the microorganisms that cause decay, so people who have been embalmed are not considered incorruptibles. (Sr. Wilhemina was not embalmed).
Being sealed in an air-tight metal coffin also arrests decay. (Sr. Wilhelmina was buried in a wood coffin that cracked.)
Being buried in a dry, arid climate can cause natural mummification. In fact, the ancient Egyptians may have gotten the idea of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIxQ42-Ufw4&amp;feature=youtu.be">making mummies</a> after finding bodies in the desert sands. (Missouri is not Egypt.)
Being buried in an airless bog can similarly arrest decay, resulting in what are known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_body">bog bodies</a>. (Sr. Wilhelmina was not buried in a bog.)
And there are other ways bodies can be preserved from ordinary decay.
However, in many cases the incorruptible bodies of saints are sometimes said to display other unusual properties, such as being associated with a pleasant (rather than unpleasant) smell called the “odor of sanctity.” (The press accounts I’ve seen regarding Sr. Wilhelmina don’t mention this in her case.)
How much evidential value does incorruptibility have regarding whether a person is a saint?
Thought on this has changed over time. Such cases were once commonly cited in canonization causes as miracles attesting to sainthood. Of 1409 causes between the 16th and 20th centuries studied by physician Jacalyn Duffin, 28 were miracles involving the saint’s body (either incorruptibility, odor of sanctity, or something else).
Early 20th century scholar and parapsychologist Fr. Herbert Thurston, S.J., offered an extensive discussion of the subject in his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Physical-Phenomena-Mysticism-Herbert-Thurston/dp/1908733578/">The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism</a>.
However, because of the growing awareness of natural ways that decay can be limited, thought on the subject has shifted. Duffin writes:
<blockquote>So frequent an occurrence was the finding of incorruptibility that exhumation of the body of the would-be saint was part of the canonization process. . . . But these cadaveric miracles, frequent though they were, seem to have provided only weak evidence for sanctity in modern times. In almost every cause that included a miracle pertaining to the saint’s corpse, other miracles of healing were also included. Eventually, the finding of miraculous preservation was deemed to be indistinguishable from mummification induced by environmental circumstances of humidity and temperature. Because the finding could apply to the remains of people who had not lived exemplary lives, it constituted insufficient evidence for saintliness (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Medical-Miracles-Doctors-Saints-Healing/dp/019533650X/">Medical Miracles</a>, 102).</blockquote>
Thus, today, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints does not treat incorruption as a guaranteed sign of sainthood but looks for additional evidence.
Still, it is significant when a body is preserved from normal deterioration, especially when exposed to water and dirt the way Sr. Wilhelmina’s was, and it may be a sign of God’s hand in the case.

Incorrupt in Missouri?

There are six “truths” I’ve been asked about many times. People think I’ve never heard these “truths” before and attempt to explain them to me—though I know them all to be myths.
In each case, there is no historical, biblical or actual basis to substantiate any of them. Someone started teaching them by finding an assertion on the internet or in a book or magazine. The pious speculation gets picked up by teachers or bloggers with good intentions, and as the old saying goes, “if something is said often enough, it becomes true.”
So we will address each of these myths briefly and set the record straight.
1. Shepherds break the leg of the wandering lamb.
The first popular myth is that shepherds in the Middle East break the leg of a wandering lamb to keep it close. Being close to the shepherd during its early years makes the lamb affectionate, and a special bond is built between the shepherd and the lamb so that after the leg is healed, it never wanders away again.
The assertion is that Jesus is a good shepherd, and he too would break the proverbial leg of his followers to keep them from straying.
However, this does not happen. There are no traditions or incidents known of it happening. In fact, there are a good number of reasons why it would not happen. How will the lamb nurse from its mother if the leg is broken? Having been raised on a farm, I can testify that an animal needs its legs to maneuver around the mother to bump and push on the udder and latch on for the milk.
I’ve been told that this leg breakage was in a book or books about shepherds and Psalm 23. I own those books, and it is not contained in them. I also own a book entitled The Perfect Shepherd, written by John Avis, who lived among the shepherds in the Middle East. He <a href="https://archive.org/details/perfectshepherds0000davi">debunks this myth</a> of the broken leg (82-83).
Though it may sound profound, and pious lessons can be drawn from it, it also portrays God in a capricious manner. It is an urban legend of recent origin, and it simply is not true—it is <a href="https://greenegem.wordpress.com/2011/12/03/myth-busting-8-breaking-a-lambs-leg/">a manufactured tale</a>.
2. The “eye of a needle” is a gate, not a needle.
Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt. 19:24).
It is common for preachers and writers to say that Jesus meant not an actual needle, but a supposed gate, called the Eye of a Needle, too small for the camel to pass through, especially with his load. The story is lovely for preaching because it graphically explains how a camel cannot get through the small door to enter a city with his load of merchandise. The camel driver has to remove everything from the camel’s back so it can stoop down and wiggle through the small gate without its load. Thus, we have to get rid of worldly possessions to enter the kingdom of God.
After researching this, I’ve concluded that there is no historical, written, or <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-word-set-in-stone-how-archaeology-science-and-history-back-up-the-bible/">archaeological evidence</a> that there was ever such a gate. In fact, scholars and commentators debunk the idea. The camel was the largest thing people usually saw and the eye of the needle the smallest; therefore, it made an excellent visual for how impossible it is for a rich man to get into heaven. The idea of offloading wealth and possessions made this a great teaching image.
However, the idea that the “eye of the needle” was a gate is simply a myth. If Jesus had meant a literal gate, the scriptures would say “the eye of the needle,” but it says “the eye of a needle.”
To confirm that Jesus used such “large and small” comparisons, he also describes the man who “strains out a gnat, but swallows a camel” (<a href="http://biblia.com/bible/esv/Mt%2023.24">Matt. 23:24</a>). Here it’s an actual gnat, as in the previous, it is an actual needle. As <a href="https://ref.ly/logosres/jbc?ref=Bible.Mt19.24&amp;off=24&amp;ctx=easier+for+a+camel%3a+~The+figure+of+the+ca">stated</a> in the respected Jerome Biblical Commentary, “the figure of the camel and the eye of the needle means exactly what is said; it does not refer to a cable or a small gate of Jerusalem” (97).
3. The folded napkin in the tomb meant that Jesus would come back.
The Gospel of John tells us that the napkin, or face cloth, of Christ was rolled or folded up in a place by itself (20:7). Some have invented a custom that never existed, claiming that in biblical times, a man would crumple up his napkin and toss it aside if he was done with dinner but would fold it neatly and set it aside if he was leaving for a moment but would soon return.
Therefore, since Jesus’s face cloth or napkin was folded up in the empty tomb, it was a signal that Jesus would return.
<a href="https://www.logos.com/product/6623/got-questions-bible-questions-answered-vol-1">Logos</a> sums it up:
<blockquote>Numerous Bible study sources have been checked, but there is nothing about this alleged Jewish custom of the folded napkins. The only references to this story seem to be from internet postings and emails that appear to have originated in 2007. . . .
The truth is that table napkins, such as we use today, were not used in Jesus’ day. Jews would do an after-meal hand washing as part of the eating ritual. . . . The folding of the napkin as a sign that a dinner guest was finished may be good European custom, but it appears this custom was unknown in the land of Israel in the time of Jesus.</blockquote>
The folded napkin, like the others here, is a myth.
4. Jesus couldn’t have been born on December 25 because sheep aren’t out in the fields in winter.
The presumption is often expressed that winter in Bethlehem is harsh and cold. Sheep would not be out in the fields in December, so Christmas <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/was-jesus-born-december-25th">could not have been</a> on December 25.
Scripture says, “In the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8). So it is assumed that since there were shepherds out in the fields at night with their sheep at the birth of Jesus, it certainly could not have been December.
Well, I’ve been to Bethlehem well over a hundred times, and I’ve seen sheep and shepherds out in the fields during December. The average temperature in Bethlehem in December is from a high of 60 to a low of about 45 degrees Fahrenheit. Yes, I have seen it snow in Bethlehem, but winters are mild, and the snow melts quickly. It’s not like Michigan or Minnesota.
Additionally, European sheep give birth in the spring, but <a href="https://sophiainstitute.com/product/secret-of-bethlehem-shepherds/">the Awassi breed</a> in the Middle East “usually give birth in November to January, thus providing evidence for the traditional time of Jesus’ birth in mid-December” (82).
So those who deny that sheep and shepherds were in the fields of Bethlehem on December 25 must have never been there during December. Sheep have to eat. If the weather does get colder, they have nice wool coats, and there are large caves outside Bethlehem that are cool in the summer and warm in the winter. These caves also protect the sheep during the night.
5. Paul was given a new name at his conversion.
Simon was given a new name by Jesus. He was Simon, son of John, but Jesus said, “You are now Peter.” From that point on, he was called Simon Peter, with his old name and his new name combined.
Saul of Tarsus was an opponent of the Church and persecuted the Christians. But later we hear him being referred to as Paul. Many people assume that, like Peter, he was given the new name after his conversion on the road to Damascus.
However, that is not the case. He had two names from his birth. Saul was his Jewish name, after the first king of Israel. And because he was a Roman citizen (Acts 22:27-28), he also had a Roman name, which was Paul. Acts recalls “Saul, who was also known as Paul,” being “filled with the Holy Spirit” (13:9). He had two names from birth—Saulos and Paulos—and was not given a new name at his conversion.
6. Lambs were “swaddled” to keep them perfect for Passover sacrifices.
At his birth, Jesus was swaddled by his mother, Mary (Luke 2:7). After birth, a baby was washed, rubbed with salt, and wrapped with bands of cloth to provide warmth, protection of the limbs, and a sense of security (see Ezek. 16:4).
A myth has arisen suggesting that shepherds swaddled lambs designated for sacrifice to ensure that they were delivered unblemished according to the requirement—a year-old male without blemish (see Exod. 12:5). Recent books and websites assert this as a fact, but I have found no evidence, factual or historical, to support it. It appears that someone thought it was a nice parallel—lambs swaddled, and the Lamb of God swaddled in preparation for a spotless sacrifice.
There is nothing in Scripture about swaddling lambs. During the time of Christ, up to 250,000 lambs were sacrificed a year on Passover. All of them were <a href="https://christian-intellect.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-christmas-myth-pushing-evidence.html">swaddled</a>? How would a swaddled lamb eat? Lambs follow their mother around and jockey for the teat from which they get milk. Were all of the swaddled lambs fed from a bottle? Were they <a href="//everlastingtruths.com/2020/01/02/did-jewish-shepherds-swaddle-lambs/">swaddled</a> for the whole year before sacrifice? There are some serious practical reasons to disbelieve this story.
I have found no serious historical document, archaeological evidence, commentary, or Bible dictionary that even suggests such a practice. I’ve found only assertions on blogs and devotional material, all without a shed of documentation. Again, it seems as though a too-clever devotional idea became a “fact” by well-meaning folks who picked it up and spread it as truth with no evidence whatsoever.
There you have it: six Bible myths, debunked. Next time you see something like one of these, think twice before you click “share”!

6 ‘Biblical’ Myths Debunked

Pornography is one of the most confessed sins in confession. Therefore, I will share some insights for penitents and confessors when it comes up.
<h2>How Should I Confess the Sin of Pornography? Applying Church Requirements</h2>
In confession, the Church requires that we confess each mortal sin that we can remember in kind and the number of times we committed it. If you intentionally viewed pornography <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-counts-as-pornography">in any form</a>, you must confess that you viewed pornography and how many times. If pornography was accompanied by masturbation, you must confess that, too, along with the number of times.
Another item that must be included in our confession is any intention, factor, or circumstance that increases the sinfulness of the act we have committed. In the instance of viewing pornography, it would be necessary to mention anything about the material that increases the gravity of the viewing. For <a href="https://wdtprs.com/2018/01/ask-father-if-i-confess-to-watching-porn-must-i-say-it-was-homosexual-porn/">example</a>, if the pornography was homosexual, then it would be necessary to mention this in the confession, as homosexual acts are contrary to natural law to a degree greater than are acts of fornication. This is necessary even if one viewed homosexual pornography that was not the same sex as the viewer, although whether this is the case ought to be specified in confession also. I hope this principle is clear enough that I need not specify each way that pornographic material in itself could be more grave. This principle also applies to circumstances surrounding its display, such as if the viewer viewed it with someone else or at the workplace.
One temptation for those who fall once is thinking, “I fell and I cannot get to confession for several days. I might as well do it again before I go to confession.” One problem with this, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl7MpiqRnX4">among others</a>, is that it can easily turn into presumption of God’s mercy. If this temptation is given into, it should also be mentioned in confession.
<h2>What If I Try to Access Pornography but Am Unable?</h2>
One wise practice for those who struggle with pornography use is to install software on their devices that can provide filtering and accountability. <a href="https://www.covenanteyes.com/">Covenant Eyes</a> is an example of this.
Sometimes people who install these products on their devices will be tempted to find a way around the filter. Here is the question: if we begin to sin, but are unable to carry out the act, are we guilty of the sin? Here is the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GohSU4bKyo">answer</a>: we become guilty of sin when we make an act of the will that is offensive to God. If a person commits to viewing pornography, then even if he is unable to do so due to the effectiveness of the filter, that an attempt was made to get around it should be confessed. However, if a person is tempted to work around the filter but decides of his own free will not to give into the temptation, then it is not sinful, and moreover, it is the virtuous act of resisting temptation. The difference may be hard to discern in this case, so mentioning it in confession is advised.
<h2>I Keep Confessing This Over and Over Again!</h2>
The Church requires for confession a sincere contrition for sins committed, a desire to sin no more, and a firm purpose of amendment of one’s life. Pornography is a sin that people confess repeatedly, and that can be discouraging. However, it is important not to despair and to keep going to confession. On a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/ive-confessed-this-1000-times">Catholic Answers Live call</a>, a man who struggled with pornography and mentioned it in all of his confessions at the time spoke with Matt Fradd, who said,
<blockquote>In order to have the contrition needed for absolution, we do not need to twist our mind in such a way that we are convinced we will never fall again. We can confess that we have fallen to something, and so long as our will desires never to fall to it again, even though we may recognize that we likely will fall to it again, it is still a valid confession, and you are forgiven.</blockquote>
As long as a person who struggles with the same sin repeatedly truly desires not to sin again, that person can and must continue to bring those sins to confession and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness.
<h2>Some Tips to Make Confession More Effective, Plus Some Limitations of Confession</h2>
The following suggestions are not necessary for confession, but they are helpful tips to implement for both priests and faithful together who want to the sacrament of confession to be an impactful experience that truly inspires the penitent to make progress. First, Fr. Sean Kilcawley offers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j75UX8jmd_M">a series of questions</a> that priests can ask penitents in confession to help them. Penitents who are not asked these questions can also volunteer this information when confessing the sin of pornography. The questions are as follows:
<ol>
<li>How often do you fall into this sin in general?</li>
<li>When was your first exposure to pornography?</li>
<li>Are you speaking to someone outside confession at this time about this?</li>
<li>Do you want to stop?</li>
</ol>
Another suggestion, which comes from my friend Fr. Allen Hoffa, is to offer the penitent the opportunity to make an appointment outside confession. This cannot be required for absolution, but it can be offered to the penitent as an option.
Although confession grants forgiveness of sins, confession alone is often not enough for someone with a habit to overcome pornography use. To make progress, it needs to be discussed with loved ones and possibly a therapist. The seal of confession is a gift, but if the person who has developed a habit of viewing pornography talks about it only in confession, the habit can remain a secret.
The sin of pornography thrives in shame and secrecy. Regular use becomes a vicious cycle of viewing pornography, feeling ashamed, going to confession, and eventually falling and beginning the cycle again. Although confession forgives the sin, this pattern can also make confession part of the cycle, as a tool the person uses to ease his guilt from the previous fall. This can be exacerbated if the person goes to confession to different priests so he doesn’t increase his shame by repeatedly confessing the same sins to the same priest. Having a priest as a regular confessor who also offers help outside of the confessional is much more helpful in healing from shame, being held accountable, and making true progress. Also, having people you trust in your life who know and are there to help is essential to the process of recovery from a habit of viewing pornography.
<h2>A Common but Dangerous Omission—Worth Mentioning in Confession If It Applies</h2>
One <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/sins-of-omission">sin of omission</a> that relates to the sin of pornography is when parents and Church leaders neglect, intentionally or not, to proactively address this subject with their children and with the faithful. We can assume this on the part of many parents, since the average age of first exposure to pornography is eight years old.
Parents, as the first and primary educators and protectors of their children, have the duty to make sure their children are protected from pornography on devices, to educate their children about pornography, and to encourage their kids to talk with them if they come across pornography. Also, Church leaders must equip parents in their preparation and follow-up of these conversations and occasionally address the topic publicly so that people know the Church is opposed to pornography but is also there to help those who struggle.
If you are a parent or church leader reading this, and you recognize that you have not been as proactive as you should have been, it may be worth mentioning in your next confession as you prepare to start those conversations.
<h2>Final Word: Persevere in Hope, Keep Going to Confession, but Talk About It Outside Confession, Too!</h2>
I hope this article had valuable insights for both priests and faithful for addressing pornography in confession. Due to the shame felt by pornography users, it can be difficult to discuss both in and apart from confession. However, it is a common struggle for people today. This does not reduce its sinfulness, but it should reduce any stigma around getting help. Many people who fall into a habit of pornography use do so because of woundedness, or to meet other needs. Pornography is a perfect example of the kind of problem that recalls Pope Francis’s vision of the Church as a field hospital.
Those who view pornography should go to confession, trusting in God’s mercy and recognizing that shame and the temptation to keep it a secret is from the devil. Priests regularly hear this sin, andthis article offers them some ways to make confession more impactful, along with insights to recognize when more must be done outside of confession.
For more information about pornography and talking about it, priests and parents should check out organizations like <a href="https://www.covenanteyes.com/">Covenant Eyes</a>, <a href="https://integrityrestored.com/">Integrity Restored</a>, and <a href="https://roadtopurity.com/">Road to Purity</a>, which have more resources.

Advice for Confessing the Sin of Pornography

Last week, X (formerly Twitter) gave me this pearl of wisdom:

The implication is that [bad thing] is not a big deal, so why does the Church remain so hung up on it? And we can refine this complaint in an age where sexual continence is under attack even at the highest ecclesiastical levels: “Why are those mean old fun-hating conservatives so hung up on it?”
Let’s clear a few things up. First, the loathsome term premarital sex. How can we be so confident as to declare this sex “pre-marital,” preceding marriage? “Extra-marital” might be more accurate, though that is a euphemism for something else, now euphemized even harder as “irregular circumstances” or, worse, “<a href="https://www.catholicregister.org/home/international/item/24336-canon-official-couples-in-irregular-marriages-can-receive-sacrament-only-if-there-s-desire-to-change">an irregular marriage</a>.” So the classic term, fornication, seems most sensible. It’s still called that today, but no one wants to admit it, nor that it is a mortal sin—meaning the sort of thing that will send <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-do-i-know-if-its-a-mortal-sin">unrepentant and fully-knowing</a> practitioners <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-hard-is-it-to-commit-a-mortal-sin">to hell</a>. I suppose the Church is still “in denial about” it in that way, albeit quietly and with some embarrassment.
Next, “denial.” Is anyone really in denial that the vast mass of Americans of marriageable age are fornicating? At the very least, every television show and movie and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/09/12/1121999705/sex-education-school-kindergarten">elementary-school curriculum</a> throws it at us daily. Even C.S. Lewis, a towering icon of “mean old conservative” Catholics, declared to his 1940s-ish “conservative” 88-percent-fornicating readership that “the sins of the flesh . . . are the least bad of all sins.” Tell that to <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/on-july-13-1917-our-lady-of-fatima-showed-a-vision-of-hell-and-taught-us-how-to-avoid-it">Sr. Lucia</a>, Clive—but suffice it to say that I’m not sure anyone’s been in denial about the prevalence of fornication for a long, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=galatians+5&amp;version=DRA">long time</a>.
Next, the stats. How does a voyeuristic pollster go about ascertaining that “95 percent of Catholics have premarital sex”? Does he ask them, and expect them to tell the truth? More likely, he skates by with a “representative sample.” What does such a sample look like? Does it include people like me, and then the innumerable categories of people better-looking than me? Does it include the elderly, the socially awkward, the cloistered nuns? I could go on and on.
Suffice it to say that when we break down this tweet, and the sentiment it represents, we see that people really aren’t in denial about an ill-defined thing that in fact may or may not be happening to a greater or lesser degree. In short, it means nothing. It’s smoke, in elaborate, meaningless designs, all translating to the basic and brute phrase “I WANT.”
But finally, let’s take the smoke for granted, if only to attack the WANT. Maybe, stats or no stats, (almost) everyone really is fornicating just beyond your field of vision, like in that movie Amélie. If that’s the case, it is a grave evil, the sort of thing holy people weep over. If it’s true, millions are at risk of eternal damnation, and deepening their commitment to that risk, making themselves ever more entrenched in it, every day. To put it bluntly, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-m9WgAdflY">that’s a bummer, man</a>.
But here’s where the dumb premise of a dumb tweet can be right: we should be “in denial about all this,” in the sense that we should be in denial about all dubious sweeping polls and their foul output. The guy who wants more fornication uses them as base propaganda. We, who want less fornication, do best to shrug our shoulders. Our lot is not to fix the (possible) fornication problem of (maybe almost) the whole mass of the United States. Not now, and not in the 1940s, though that would make for an entertaining time travel movie. Our power lies in reforming our own discrete lives. I can’t make X stop fornicating, but I can stop myself . . . and from lying, and defaming, and contracepting, and reading X.
Should the Church change its position on fornication because everyone’s fornicating? No, not any more than it should change its position on murder because <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/01/11/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/">everyone’s murdering</a>. Nor should you. Rather, let’s remember that 2,000 years of wisdom probably has something to it. Then we can recommit ourselves to that wisdom, and not worry so much about the throes of social media.

Are You a Fornication-Denier?

The <a href="https://www.usccb.org/committees/divine-worship/policies/mass-settings-texts#tab--glory-to-god-in-the-highest">Gloria</a> (“Glory to God in the highest”) is one of the most familiar prayers to Catholics at the beginning of Mass. It disappears in Lent and Advent, which makes it a good time to think about it.
The Gloria is an ancient hymn, its antiquity evident by the terms it uses to speak about God and Jesus Christ. In the ancient Church, Christians wanted to compose hymn prayers that would evoke the Old Testament Psalms or the New Testament canticles. Only a few have survived, like the Gloria and the <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/devotions/te-deum-381">Te Deum</a>. The earliest evidence we have of complete Latin text of the Gloria seems to come from just before 700.
The Gloria is a doxology—a prayer of praise. There are <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/in-defense-of-prayers-in-tragedy">four types of prayer</a>: praise, petition, intercession, and thanksgiving. Prayers of praise and adoration recognize that we stand before God our Creator, who also <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P96.HTM">saves us from sin</a> (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2628). The Gloria is often called the “Greater Doxology” to distinguish it from the “Little Doxology” (“Glory be to the Father and to the Son . . .”) more commonly prayed every day. Other examples of doxologies include the Te Deum and the “Great Amen” at the end of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-many-eucharistic-prayers">Eucharistic Prayer</a>.
Originally not part of the Mass, the Gloria was added to the Midnight Mass of Christmas in Rome and then extended to more festive occasions and Sundays, but only when a bishop celebrated.
The Gloria consists of three distinct parts: the opening prayer of the angels, the praise of God, and invocation of Christ. Let’s examine each.
<h2>The Prayer of the Angels</h2>
“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to people of good will” comes from Luke 2:14. It is the song of the angels following the first angels’ announcement of the birth of Christ to the shepherds in Bethlehem.
Because of that opening, the Gloria has traditionally been associated with Christmas. The liturgical historian Josef Jungmann <a href="https://www.ccwatershed.org/2014/01/25/josef-jungmann-study-roman-rite-mass-pdf/">thinks that</a>, in Rome, the pope sang the first line of the Gloria, which the ecclesial assembly then joined. He wonders whether the practice alludes to Luke 2, where the one angel’s announcement is then followed by the angelic choir.
Jungmann makes two observations about the angelic prayer. First, it may be a declaration, not a wish: the Incarnation of God as man is God’s glory and makes possible peace for men whose own will is good—i.e., who are open to God’s will. Second, it stresses the “already/not yet” about salvation: God has already made salvation possible, but the work of salvation won’t be finished until the Last Day. Every time Mass is celebrated, every time at Mass the Gloria is prayed, the achievement of salvation grows that much closer.
<h2>The Praise of God</h2>
From “We praise you” to “O God, almighty Father,” the Gloria praises God directly. We start with repetitive praise of God: “praise,” “bless,” “adore,” and “glorify.” In antiquity, multiplication of a theme emphasizes the praise and reverence of the one praying. We praise God not for what he has done for us, but purely because of who God is: “we give you thanks for your great glory.” The divine titles are all ancient ones: “Lord God,” “heavenly King,” “O God, almighty Father.” This last is essentially the beginning of the Apostles’ Creed.
<h2>The Invocation of Christ</h2>
The Gloria then transitions to specific invocation of Jesus Christ, starting with “Lord Jesus Christ, only begotten Son.” In reference to the Father, Jesus is “only begotten Son.” In reference to us, he is our Savior and Redeemer, and the titles reflect that: “Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father.” We then have a threefold litany, focused on our redemption: “You take away the sins of the world” (twice) and “You are seated at the right hand of the Father” (which reflects Jesus’ position as savior and judge), each invocation accompanied by the traditional response, “have mercy on us.”
The Gloria then moves from invoking Christ into a full-throated doxology of the Trinity: he who is “the holy One,” “the Lord,” “the Most High” is praised “with the Holy Spirit in the glory of God the Father.”
In the ancient Church, God and Christ were the two shock points for heresy: the early Church was rocked by controversies over the relations of the persons in the Trinity and of Jesus’s divinity and humanity. That points to the age of this prayer: after the angelic salutation, the two main thrusts of the Gloria involve God and Christ. As Jungmann points out, the prayer unites God and Christ as the “pillars of the Christian order of the universe,” God as the beginning and end, the Alpha and Omega, to whom everything is directed in Christ.
There’s a principle in Catholic liturgy: lex orandi, lex credendi. Basically, it means that how we pray expresses what we believe. When we stop and listen to what we say in the Gloria almost every Sunday, we realize what a profound prayer of praise of God and invocation of the mercy of Christ it is. Take a careful look at it. You’ll better appreciate the Gloria’s return at Christmas Midnight Mass.

You’re Singing It Wrong!

I can understand and appreciate why some Protestants might be annoyed at the way that conversions from various Protestant traditions to Catholicism are often covered in Catholic (<a href="https://nypost.com/2025/04/17/lifestyle/why-young-people-are-converting-to-catholicism-en-masse/">and even secular</a>) media. There is a certain triumphalistic brand of Catholic apologetics, which especially proliferates on social media, that seems to share the attitude of an SEC football team running up the score against Kent State. In your face, Southern Baptist Convention!
This is not good, as my friend Mike Sabo, a Protestant editor and writer, argues in a <a href="https://americanreformer.org/2025/08/rejuvenating-the-protestant-mind/">recent piece</a> at American Reformer that <a href="https://catholicvote.org/anglican-leader-protestants-must-confront-catholic-eucharistic-theology-fueling-conversions/">has attracted even Catholic media attention</a>. Sabo expresses his frustration with Catholics who unfairly caricature and simplify Protestantism, and I wholeheartedly agree and sympathize with that frustration. As someone who was persuaded to leave Presbyterianism for Catholicism fifteen years ago through the evangelistic witness of other former Protestants, I believe that ecumenical debate (and really, all intellectual debate) demands that we engage with the very best arguments our interlocutors can offer.
Yet I think Sabo overreaches in his complaint, largely because he engages in the same kind of rhetoric in his criticism of Catholics and Catholic apologetics. He writes, “Catholics are regularly outraged when Protestants try to convert them, or talk as if they aren’t part of the one true, catholic, holy, and apostolic church. But these pro-Catholic apologists have no problem with proselytizing evangelicals.” What Catholics are we talking about? Sabo offers no examples. And even if some Catholics present a double standard when it comes to Catholic and Protestant debates, so what? Do Catholic claims stand or fall because some Catholics are hypocrites?
Sabo continues: “However, when Protestants, especially in the political arena, question the leading doctrines and dogmas of the Catholic Church, that’s seen as a social faux pas that will likely get you locked out of the upper echelons of the institutional Right.” I presume Sabo has examples to substantiate this claim, one also found in a <a href="https://davenantinstitute.org/why-do-protestants-convert/">recent book</a> by prominent Protestant scholars Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo, but he doesn’t give any. It also seems overwrought, given that there are <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/religiously-congress-doesnt-reflect-modern-america-pew-finds">twice as many Protestants</a> in Congress as Catholics, and our president, secretaries of Defense and the Treasury, and speaker of the House are all Protestant.
The most important argument Sabo makes is that a lot of Catholic apologetics fails to address what he calls “historic Protestant positions,” asserting that “this crowd seems to evince almost no familiarity with the confessions, catechisms, or teachings of classic orthodox Protestantism.” The charge, neatly summarized, would be that many Catholic apologists are not being charitable, and they are attacking low-hanging fruit rather than the very best of the Protestant tradition.
For example, Sabo points to the Eucharist as an example of modern Catholic apologetics failing to take into account the robust theological sophistication of some Protestant understandings of the doctrine. “A caricatured modern memorialist approach that even Zwingli would blanch at is simply not representative of classical Protestantism. Which is why converts most often than not aren’t even converting from historic Protestantism, but from a pale shadow of it.” He cites as an example of this “historic Protestantism” eighteenth-century Anglican Daniel Waterland, who taught that people receiving communion could partake of Christ&#8217;s sacrifice, just not literally. Indeed, claims Sabo, this understanding was taught by the Church Fathers.
Sabo refers to “historic Protestantism,” “classical Protestantism,” and “classic orthodox Protestantism.” Yet what, exactly is this? When I was myself a Presbyterian seminary student, I would have pointed to whatever consensus could be identified among the prominent Reformers, particularly as manifested in various Protestant confessions of faith: the Augsburg Confession of the Lutherans, the Westminster Confession of Faith of English Presbyterians, and the “Three Forms of Unity” of Dutch Calvinists (the Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism). And it’s true that there is a significant amount of theological agreement in these various confessional documents.
Yet this alleged consensus is arbitrary. The so-called “Radical Reformers,” for example, including such persons as Thomas Müntzer, Andreas Karlstadt, and the Zwickau prophets, as well as Anabaptist movements such as the Hutterites and the Mennonites, were contemporaneous with Luther, Bucer, and Melanchthon, but also condemned by them. Early Lutheranism was divided between Gnesio-Lutherans and Philippists, leaders of the latter being persecuted, imprisoned, and ultimately defeated in the 1560s and ’70s. Calvinists and Arminians in the early seventeenth century divided both on the continent and in England over soteriological issues, promulgating <a href="https://evangelicalarminians.org/the-arminian-confession-of-1621/">different confessional documents</a>.
Moreover, even those examples Sabo cites as representatives of “historic Protestantism” disagreed over pedobaptism (baptism of infants) or credobaptism (believer’s baptism); the nature of the Eucharist (e.g., symbol, Christ somehow spiritually present, or sacrifice); and church polity (e.g., episcopal, presbyterian, or congregationalist). They disagreed over who is saved, how those people are saved, and if they can lose their salvation. Those disagreements over ensuing generations resulted in new and diverse Protestant ecclesial communities and new confessional documents, and they define Protestantism to this day.
The appeal to anything called “historic” or “classical” Protestantism that demonstrates a certain unity or purity of doctrine fails, because it is necessarily ad hoc. It elides many of those falling within the Protestant ecosystem, whether in 1530 (Augsburg Confession), 1563 (Heidelberg Catechism), or 1647 (Westminster Confession of Faith), because there were many self-identifying Protestants at all those historical moments who were categorically excluded from those very same confessions. It amounts to what my friend and Catholic philosopher Bryan Cross calls shooting an arrow and then drawing a target around it, because the individual Protestant gets to determine what is genuine Protestantism and what is not. By excluding Protestants with whom one disagrees, one can give an impression of unity—but only an impression.
Finally, I appreciate that there are varied and nuanced Protestant opinions on Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist, as different Protestant traditions call it. But speaking as someone who was a member of both non-denominational and Presbyterian churches, the opinion that it is in any sense a sacrifice is not widely held among Protestants today. Thus, for Catholics to critique popular Protestant opinions about this central Christian practice seems entirely appropriate, even if Sabo and some of his Reformed confreres believe such opinions to be less defensible than their own or departing from what many earlier Protestants believed.
Yes, Catholic apologetics should seek to address the many diverse manifestations of Protestant theological opinions, whether on the Eucharist or anything else. Some of those opinions have more historical credibility or logical coherence than others. But the very decentralized nature of Protestantism—something inherent since its sixteenth-century beginnings—makes this an inherent challenge. There is no singular historic, classical Protestantism. There never was.

There Is No ‘Singular Historic Protestantism’

SEEC (the Shroud Educational Endeavors Corporation)’s first International Scientific Shroud Conference since COVID had just started when the New York Post published <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/08/01/science/shroud-of-turin-never-wrapped-jesus-body-its-just-art-study/">a story</a> on a new “study” debunking the Shroud of Turin. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
The conference was held at the new Augustine Institute Center in St. Louis, with scientists from around the world gathered to present new research, evidence, and studies on the Shroud of Turin. I was greatly honored to be invited to speak on my environmental and climate research providing supporting evidence to the Gospels with connections to Jesus’ shroud and sudarium. At the conference, I joined key Shroud scientists from the STURP team that studied the Shroud in 1978. We quickly realized that this story was another erroneous attention-grabbing, money-making claim.
Sadly, certain media groups continue to run headlines to incite attention, because reporting the truth or the complete picture to debunk this “study” doesn’t make money, get more subscribers, or earn promotions.
This recent study was done by a Brazilian designer, Cicero Morares, who produces 3D digital models on computers. He uses free software to see how cloth would drape over shapes and detects all contact points between the cloth and the created shape. His computer-made shape was flat—a low-relief sculpture. Morares digitally created the top part of a human shape and saw the cloth making full contact.
The study was published in the journal Archaeometry, showing how cloth and other fabrics form impressions on a human body compared to a sculpture. Morares claims that his results demonstrate that the contact pattern generated by the low-relief model is more compatible with the Shroud’s image, compared to a three-dimensional model of a human figure. Therefore, Morares suspects that a medieval artist made a sculpture of a human body from wood, stone, or metal and pigmented only the areas of contact.
This far-from-complete evaluation created headlines such as “Brazilian 3-D expert, Cicero Morares, says that he can prove the Shroud never wrapped a real human body let alone the body Jesus Christ using state-of-the-art digital” and “Turin Shroud imprint might not be from human body, says groundbreaking new study.”
So what do the final results of this study prove?
The fact is that this study is erroneous and doesn’t come close to addressing all the known facts about the Shroud of Turin. Thus, the study doesn’t really prove anything. But what it implies is rewarding for a few, and detrimental to the education and enlightenment of the world.
One main factor ignored is that the Shroud’s image has a correlation as regards image density. In other words, lights and darks of the image on the Shroud are in direct correlation to the body’s distance from the cloth. The closer the body was to the cloth, such as at the nose, the darker and more enhanced its image is on the Shroud. It is my understanding that the computer model Morares studied has an image like the Shroud’s, but created only at the contact points. The Shroud of Turin has an image, although fainter, even when the body is not touching the cloth, such as several millimeters away.
Morares also stated that a medieval artist would have used a pigment at the contact points. This raises the question—what pigment? The Shroud of Turin is the most studied artifact in the world, and no pigment made by humankind has been found on it. Yes, some remnants totaling to an amount of pigment that could paint one strand of hair were found, but this is attributed to artists hired by the Savoy family to paint copies of the Shroud. These painted copies were then venerated by having them touch the actual Shroud. The royal House of Savoy in Italy had ownership of the Shroud from 1578 to 1983, when the Shroud was transferred to the Holy See.
The Shroud of Turin is approximately 14 feet by 3.5 feet and shows the full frontal and dorsal images of a crucified man. Forensic scientists who studied the real Shroud estimated that the body image was about 5 feet, 11 inches tall and weight about 170 pounds. The image on the Shroud is that of an anatomically correct human body.
But a historical fact about medieval times states that there was no knowledge of correct anatomical proportions for the human body. Thus, no medieval artist had the knowledge to carve wood, stone, or metal into a perfectly anatomically correct figure. This knowledge came about hundreds of years later, during the Renaissance period.
The study does not address the bodily fluid around the blood of the spear wound—bodily fluid that is invisible to the naked eye but visible under ultraviolet (UV) light. What medieval artist would have modern medical knowledge to paint invisible bodily fluid, anticipating the future discovery and scientific use of UV light?
Now here is the most erroneous deletion: When the image from the Shroud of Turin is placed in a VP-8 analyzer, we receive a full-detailed three-dimensional image. No artwork of any kind made by humankind does that; only two-dimensional information is provided. Morares’s image, printed out from his 3-D computer model, fails to present the three-dimensional data from a VP-8 analyzer.
The Shroud of Turin has not been debunked. It is Morares’s study that has been debunked, by a plethora of international scientists. Sadly, that fact will never make the headlines.
As the Northeast regional leader for SAGE (Shroud Apostolate Group English) under Othonia, started by Fr. Pascual from the Pontifical Institute of Science and Faith in Rome, I have been assigned (see <a href="https://www.faithandreasonrevival.org/">here</a>) to share the truth about Jesus’ burial Shroud. Taking on the Morares study is just one way to do so.

A New Attack on the Shroud of Turin

Episode 73: Year B &#8211; 3rd Sunday of Easter
There are four details that we focus on for this upcoming Sunday Mass Readings for the 3rd Sunday of Easter. The first two come from the first reading, taken from Acts 3:13-15, 17-19. The relevant topics that come to fore are the early Church’s belief about Christ’s divinity and the Church’s teaching on invincible ignorance when it comes to sin. Details three and four are in the Gospel reading, taken from Luke 24:35-48. There are two apologetical topics that come into play: the bodily nature of Jesus’ resurrection and its significance for countering alternative explanations to Christ’s literal resurrection and the Catholic appeal to John 20:23 as biblical support for the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
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The Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/041424.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a>
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The Invincible Ignorance of Sin

<div>I have a friend that was not raised with any religion; what is the best book or information I can give her?</div><div>A good number of people recommend G.K. Chesterton’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112760.The_Everlasting_Man">The Everlasting Man</a>.
And if she likes that book, I would then highly recommend Archbishop Fulton Sheen&#8217;s A Life of Christ.
For further formation, I’d encourage her reading the Bible in tandem with the Catechism of the Catholic Church and, to better both, informally sitting in on an RCIA classes and adult education classes at a good Catholic parish you can recommend to her.
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Best Book for Those Raised Without Religion?

How to Read the Bible as a Catholic

<div>At adoration, why would you pray the Rosary, since Christ is truly present right there infront of you?</div><div>Because properly understood, the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-rosary">Rosary</a> is a Christ-centered prayer, and thus can and should aid our adoration of our <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/christ-in-the-eucharist">Eucharistic Lord Jesus Christ</a>.
The Holy See in Rome has specifically addressed this issue. According to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Rosary may be prayed during Eucharistic adoration with exposition, provided that’s not the sole reason exposition of the Blessed Sacrament takes place:
<blockquote>One should not expose the Eucharist only to recite the rosary. However, among the prayers that are used during adoration, the recitation of the rosary may certainly be included, emphasizing the Christological aspects with biblical readings relating to the mysteries, and providing time for silent adoration and meditation on them (“Notes on the Recitation of the Rosary During Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament,” Notitiae (1998) XXXIV edition, 507-511).</blockquote>
This statement was reprinted in the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy’s Newsletter (Jan./Feb. 1999). That committee is now known as the <a href="http://www.usccb.org/about/divine-worship/index.cfm">Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship</a>.
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Why Pray Rosary During Eucharistic Adoration?

Many of us will celebrate Labor Day today by taking some well-deserved time off before the back-to-school, back-to-work, back-to-reality September rush kicks in. But sometimes, the chatter over Labor Day barbecues can actually be a cultural conversation about the dignity of work.
Take, for example, this attempted public shaming that backfired. Back in 2018, a shopper named Karma Lawrence spied former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens working at a Trader Joe’s in New Jersey, scanning groceries, and took a picture of him. On social media, Lawrence lamented what she thought was the bad . . . uh, karma that life had doled out to Owens. 
News sites picked up the story, which quickly went viral, leading to a torrent of support from friends of the actor as well as fellow thespians. They noted that most actors look for other types of work to support themselves between gigs, just as Owens was doing. Then superstar producer Tyler Perry <a href="https://abc7ny.com/entertainment/tyler-perry-offers-geoffrey-owens-a-job/4151534/">offered him a job</a>, and soon Owens’s phone was blowing up with opportunities to tell his story on talk shows. 
As for Karma? Well, you know what they say about that. She was forced to endure a social media shaming of her own. 
Owens, a Yale graduate, explained that decreasing royalties from Cosby reruns had put pressure on him to earn a regular living to support his family. Many of the tweets in support of Owens asked the question, “What’s wrong with someone doing an honest job?” At least, they wrote, he was working to support his family—no shame in that. In fact, it’s quite honorable.
What’s interesting to me about Owens’s story is what it says about the dignity and meaning of work.
We live in a culture in which labor is frowned on and retirement—the earlier, the better—the goal, with many Millennials embracing the FIRE (financially independent, retired early) movement, dropping out of the workforce often in their late twenties and early thirties. For some, such freedom means having the time to do what they see as meaningful, even if that happens to be another type of work. But there are many more who view any type of work as a sort of necessary evil, with the ideal life amounting to uninterrupted leisure. 
Even some Christians actually view work simply as part of the punishments stemming from original sin. But does that view . . . work?
The Bible notes that before our first parents fell into sin, work was there. God himself “worked,” establishing the heavens and the earth, after which he rested (Gen. 2:1-3). Yes, we are to imitate God in his rest, but his plan isn’t “all play and no work.” in fact, work is also one of the joyful gifts God gave his children in Eden’s paradise. Adam had a job to do: he was to “till” (Hebrew: ’abodah) and “keep” (Hebrew: shamar) the garden. These verbs are later used in the Old Testament to describe the Levitical priests’ service in the Temple, connecting Adam’s work with the task of worship!
Of course, the entry of sin into creation adversely affected the arena of work, too. The joy of work became toil: because of the disobedience of our first parents, God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen. 3:17-19). 
But the goodness of work for humanity remains. As birds were created to fly, we were created to share in God’s work of creation, no matter what our job might be. 
When interviewed, Owens said to Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, “There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a résumé and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”
This is straight out of the Catholic playbook: the dignity of work and worker. Any honest job can be a means of worship and a means of personal holiness for the worker. The micro-marvel of tiny ants, dutifully working, carrying many times their body weight, gives God just as much glory as do the macro-marvels, like majestic mountain peaks piercing the clouds. 
It’s like that with our work, too. As St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, <a href="http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/furrow.htm">wrote</a>, “before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything acquires the value of the love with which it is done.” One might say that the greatest job, then, is the one that is done with the most love, for the glory of God.
Jesus spent the vast majority of his life as a worker. In that, he was redeeming us, too, albeit in a different way, by sanctifying work. God worked in St. Joseph’s workshop just as he did in building the heavens and the earth, in order to remind us that, through service in the most ordinary things of life—yes, even at Trader Joe’s—we can discover the divine.

Work as Worship

The site formerly known as Twitter brings us another gem of popular atheism:

Of course, there’s something deeply ironic here. The idea that “religion” teaches that if you read one book you “know everything” is a gross caricature. Perhaps this critique captures something true of some shallow forms of religion, but anyone who thinks that this represents all or even most religious people is being too intellectually incurious. Before painting with such a broad brush, they should cultivate an intellectual curiosity, and realize that they “don’t know enough” about what religious people actually believe.
For instance, did the Catholic Church really invent the university system (with the Universities of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford in the 11th century) because they only wanted people to know about one book? By that same reasoning, why does the Vatican run one of the oldest astrological research centers on Earth, the Vatican Observatory? And <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/07/12/why-are-so-many-craters-moon-named-after-jesuits">speaking of astronomy</a>, “Jesuit contributions to astronomy are significant enough that 34 craters on the moon and several asteroids are named after them.” Nor is this scientific interest anything new, or confined to astronomy: the father of genetics was a monk, Gregor Mendel; the fallopian tube is named after the 16th-century anatomist Fr. Gabriele Falloppio; and the Big Bang theory was first proposed by Fr. Georges Lemaître. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lay_Catholic_scientists">Additional</a> examples <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_clergy_scientists">abound</a>. The point is, all of this seems like an awful lot of unnecessary work for people who supposedly think one book is all you need.
Atheists who want to cultivate intellectual curiosity (instead of simply bragging about how curious they already are) might start with this question: why has the Catholic Church in particular been so interested in learning more about science? A good resource here would be Pope John Paul II’s encyclical <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html">Fides et Ratio</a>, on faith and reason, in which he declares that:
<blockquote>Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.</blockquote>

When Atheists “Don’t Know Enough” About Scientists

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<h3>Thursday in the Octave of Easter
Lectionary: 264</h3>
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<h4>Reading 1   <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/acts/3:11">ACTS 3:11-26</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
As the crippled man who had been cured clung to Peter and John, 
all the people hurried in amazement toward them 
in the portico called “Solomon’s Portico.” 
When Peter saw this, he addressed the people, 
“You children of Israel, why are you amazed at this, 
and why do you look so intently at us 
as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety? 
The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, 
the God of our fathers, has glorified his servant Jesus 
whom you handed over and denied in Pilate’s presence, 
when he had decided to release him. 
You denied the Holy and Righteous One 
and asked that a murderer be released to you. 
The author of life you put to death, 
but God raised him from the dead; of this we are witnesses. 
And by faith in his name, 
this man, whom you see and know, his name has made strong, 
and the faith that comes through it 
has given him this perfect health, 
in the presence of all of you. 
Now I know, brothers and sisters, 
that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did; 
but God has thus brought to fulfillment 
what he had announced beforehand 
through the mouth of all the prophets, 
that his Christ would suffer. 
Repent, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, 
and that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment 
and send you the Christ already appointed for you, Jesus, 
whom heaven must receive until the times of universal restoration 
of which God spoke through the mouth 
of his holy prophets from of old. 
For Moses said:
A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you 
from among your own kin; 
to him you shall listen in all that he may say to you. 
Everyone who does not listen to that prophet 
will be cut off from the people.
“Moreover, all the prophets who spoke, 
from Samuel and those afterwards, also announced these days. 
You are the children of the prophets 
and of the covenant that God made with your ancestors 
when he said to Abraham, 
In your offspring all the families of the earth shall be blessed. 
For you first, God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you 
by turning each of you from your evil ways.”
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<h4>Responsorial Psalm   <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/psalms/8:2">8:2AB AND 5, 6-7, 8-9</a></h4>
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R.    (2ab)  O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth! 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
O LORD, our Lord, 
how glorious is your name over all the earth! 
What is man that you should be mindful of him, 
or the son of man that you should care for him? 
R.    O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth! 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
You have made him little less than the angels, 
and crowned him with glory and honor. 
You have given him rule over the works of your hands, 
putting all things under his feet. 
R.    O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth! 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
All sheep and oxen, 
yes, and the beasts of the field, 
The birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, 
and whatever swims the paths of the seas. 
R.    O Lord, our God, how wonderful your name in all the earth! 
or: 
R.    Alleluia.
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<h4>Alleluia   <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/psalms/118:24">PS 118:24</a></h4>
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R. Alleluia, alleluia. 
This is the day the LORD has made; 
let us be glad and rejoice in it. 
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
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<h4>Gospel   <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/luke/24:35">LK 24:35-48</a></h4>
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The disciples of Jesus recounted what had taken place along the way, 
and how they had come to recognize him in the breaking of bread.
While they were still speaking about this, 
he stood in their midst and said to them, 
“Peace be with you.” 
But they were startled and terrified 
and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 
Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled? 
And why do questions arise in your hearts? 
Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. 
Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones 
as you can see I have.” 
And as he said this, 
he showed them his hands and his feet. 
While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, 
he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 
They gave him a piece of baked fish; 
he took it and ate it in front of them.
He said to them, 
“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, 
that everything written about me in the law of Moses 
and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.” 
Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. 
And he said to them, 
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer 
and rise from the dead on the third day 
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, 
would be preached in his name 
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 
You are witnesses of these things.”
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Source: <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/readings">cms.usccb.org</a>
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Daily Holy Mass: April 16, 2020

When I began seminary, my biggest question was, “Where in the Bible does it teach that Mary was immaculately conceived?” I thought it had to be there . . . somewhere . . . anywhere. Maybe it was in the original languages, but not in the English translation.
I searched until I found a strong answer—but that answer was not primarily from the Bible. Rather, I found it in the writings of St. John Henry Newman.
Newman didn&#8217;t say, &#8220;The Marian dogmas aren&#8217;t provable with Scripture alone.&#8221; But what he did do is explain the most relevant Marian dogma to his time (the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/immaculate-conception-a-smart-take">Immaculate Conception</a>), and he didn&#8217;t use Scripture as the primary source to do it. Newman’s primary source was the writings of the first Christians, whom he called the Fathers.
Among scholars who study Newman, this is a <a href="https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/pusey/section2.html">famous quote</a>:
<blockquote>The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now, as it was twenty years ago. Though I hold, as you know, a process of development in apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not supersede the Fathers, but explains and completes them.</blockquote>
To put it bluntly, Catholic teachings about Mary are hotly contested by our Protestant brothers and sisters. They think we <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/statues-arent-necessarily-idols">worship Mary as God</a>. We have to understand well what the Catholic Church actually teaches about Mary so that we can defend our beliefs. So let’s see how Newman’s approach can help us shed some light.
There are four Marian teachings (also known as dogmas) that Catholics are required to believe about Mary:
<ol>
<li>Mary was a perpetual virgin: she remained a virgin her entire life</li>
<li>Mary is the Mother of God (meaning that she gave birth to Jesus, who is fully God and fully man).</li>
<li>The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-immaculate-conception-in-scripture">Immaculate Conception</a>: Unlike the rest of humanity, Mary was conceived without the stain of original sin. (Again, obviously, Jesus was not conceived with original sin either because he is God, and sin has nothing to do with God.)</li>
<li>The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp/protestants-are-wrong-about-marys-assumption-heres-why">Assumption</a>: At the end of her life on earth, Mary was assumed into heaven, body and soul. It parallels Christ’s ascension into heaven.</li>
</ol>
Are these teachings taught in the Bible? Scripture certainly does not contradict these doctrines, but it does not teach them explicitly, either. Nowhere does the Bible say in plain black and white that Mary was a virgin her entire life. Although the angel Gabriel’s address to Mary as full of grace (Luke 1:28) <a href="https://ignatius.com/rethinking-mary-in-the-new-testament-rdmp/">can point us</a> in the direction of the Immaculate Conception, it does not prove it (28). As for the Assumption, if I were a Protestant, I might hesitate to accept the argument that Revelation 12 <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-mary-the-woman-in-revelation-12">proves</a> that Mary was assumed into heaven. Even Mary’s divine maternity, though provable from Scripture, had to be officially defined in the Council of Ephesus in 431.
If Scripture does not prove what the Catholic Church teaches about Mary, then why do we believe these teachings? We believe them because the earliest Christians did not adhere to <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/sola-scriptura-doesnt-work/">sola scriptura</a>. Rather, they believed in Apostolic Tradition as well.
Scripture itself teaches that the Bible is not the only authority (or the highest authority). St. Paul states in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 that the people of God are to hold firm to Scripture (what he wrote) and Tradition (what he taught them by word of mouth): “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.” Therefore, Paul is not a follower of sola scriptura, either: for him, Scripture and oral tradition carry an authority independent of each other.
The first Christians clearly felt likewise:
St. Basil the Great <a href="https://litpress.org/Products/1025/The-Faith-of-the-Early-Fathers-ThreeVolume-Set">wrote</a>, in 375,
<blockquote>Of the dogmas and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/kerygma">kerygmas</a> preserved in the Church, some we possess from written teaching, and others we receive from the tradition of the Apostles. . . . In respect to piety both are of the same force . . . were we to try to reject unwritten customs as having no great authority, we would unwittingly injure the gospel in its vitals. . . . For we are not content with those words the apostles or the gospel has recorded, but we say other things also . . . and we regard these other words, which we have received from unwritten teaching, as being of great importance.</blockquote>
St. Epiphanius of Salamis explicitly argued against the principle of scripture alone when he wrote (between 374 and 377),
<blockquote>It is needful also to make use of Tradition, for not everything can be gotten from Sacred Scripture. The holy apostles handed down some things in the Scriptures, other things in Tradition (Panacea Against All Heresies).</blockquote>
Expounding on 2 Thessalonians 2:15, which we quoted above, St. John Chrysostom wrote (between 398 and 404) that the apostles
<blockquote>did not hand down everything by letter, but there was much also that was not written. Like that which was written, the unwritten too is worthy of belief. So let us regard the tradition of the Church also as worthy of belief. Is it a tradition? Seek no further.</blockquote>
Martin Luther <a href="https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9780800698836/Martin-Luthers-Basic-Theological-Writings">thought</a> that St. Augustine was the first to be sola scriptura. Luther wrote, “Herein I follow the example of St. Augustine, who was, among other things, the first and almost the only one who determined to be subject to the Holy Scriptures alone.” But Augustine, regarding traditions kept throughout the whole church (400), wrote in his letter to Januarius,
<blockquote>In regard to those observances which we carefully attend and which the whole world keeps, and which derives not from Scripture but from Tradition, we are given to understand that they are recommended and ordained to be kept, either by the Apostles themselves or by plenary councils, the authority of which is quite vital in the Church.</blockquote>
Now that we have seen that Scripture and Apostolic Tradition both carry teaching authority, we can better understand why these four Marian teachings are not explicit in the Bible. They come to us through Apostolic Tradition and developments therefrom.
There is a need for a deeper understanding of St. John Henry Newman’s contributions to the field of Catholic apologetics and Mariology, especially in his <a href="https://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/pusey/index.html">Letter to Pusey</a> and his <a href="https://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/">Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine</a>. Without them, we can too easily fall into the trap of trying to prove Catholic Marian teachings from Scripture alone. In fact, these teachings cannot be adequately defended without Apostolic Tradition or the infallible teaching authority of the Catholic Church. However, with them, what the Catholic Church teaches about Mary is defendable and provable.

‘But Marian Dogmas Aren’t in the Bible!’

You don’t need to wait until Lent to go to confession. Any time of the year is wonderful to receive <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-forgiveness-of-sins">the forgiveness</a> that Jesus promised us for sins we commit following our baptism.
<h2>Is Confession Biblical?</h2>
Some people argue that the sacrament of confession isn’t biblical, yet Jesus commands all persons to forgive those who trespass against them personally (Matt. 6:12-15). In marked contrast, beginning on the evening of that first Easter, Jesus gives the power to forgive sins in general—or retain them—to only a relative few: his apostles, their successors, and others whom they designate:
<blockquote>Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:21-23).</blockquote>
Jesus didn’t limit this sacramental gift to his visible time on earth. Rather, his ministry of forgiveness continues until the present day through <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-biblical-evidence-for-apostolic-succession">apostolic</a> <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/apostolic-succession">succession</a>, because Jesus promises that the gates of hell will never prevail against <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pentecost-and-the-papacy">the one Catholic Church he founded</a> (Matt. 16:18-19). So the idea that we can simply repent to Jesus and automatically receive the forgiveness our Lord gained for us on the cross is, actually, not biblical.
<h2>Now that It’s Lent, Why Wait?</h2>
The season of Lent is a great time to go to confession—especially if you’ve been away for five, ten, fifteen, or even fifty years or more. And if by the very off-chance you get a priest who <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-to-do-when-you-get-a-bad-confessor">treats you rudely in the confessional</a> . . . well, let him absolve you of your sins, through the power Jesus has given him, and then tell him—and his diocesan bishop—that he needs an attitude adjustment, not to mention absolution for his own sins, including those he committed against you in the confessional.
I say this because someone close to me had a bad first confession experience as a Catholic child.
“What do you mean, you haven’t done anything wrong?!” the gruff priest told the lad, who couldn’t come up with anything. When I heard the person make this recollection many years later, I tried to make light of the matter, saying, “Well, when you go into the confessional, you know you’re supposed to have at least something to confess.”
But seriously, don’t let a bad experience in the confessional, or the failure of a Catholic role model, or the sins of a priest, bishop, and/or pope keep you from receiving Christ’s absolution for your sins. You’re going to confession <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c2a4.htm">to encounter our merciful Lord Jesus</a>, who sustains the mission of his Church <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pentecost-and-the-papacy">amid the failure of her human leaders</a>:
<blockquote>Only God forgives sins. Since he is the Son of God, Jesus says of himself, &#8220;The Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins&#8221; and exercises this divine power: &#8220;Your sins are forgiven.&#8221; Further, by virtue of his divine authority he gives this power to men to exercise in his name (CCC 1441).</blockquote>
If you need reassurance about God’s desire to reconcile with you, remember those wonderful parables you likely learned as a kid—e.g., the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) and the Good Shepherd (vv. 1-7).
<h2>The 5 Steps of Going to Confession</h2>
1. Examination of conscience. You need to recognize your sins to confess them well. An examination of conscience—rooted in <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/command.htm">the Ten Commandments</a> and with an awareness of the seven deadly sins (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c1a8.htm#V">CCC 1866</a>)—will guide you, especially if you’ve been away from the sacrament a good while. See our <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-catholic-answers-guide-to-an-examination-of-conscience">examinations here</a>—one each for adults, teens, and younger children, as well as one in Spanish.
In addition, we need to distinguish between mortal (i.e., grave or deadly) sins and venial or lesser sins (see 1 John 5:16-17, James 5:19-20). If we commit a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-do-i-know-if-its-a-mortal-sin">mortal sin</a>, we need to go to confession before <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/who-can-receive-communion">we receive Holy Communion again</a>. There are three components of a mortal sin: 1) grave matter, 2) full knowledge, and 3) complete consent (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c1a8.htm#IV">CCC 1857-1859</a>). Some grave sins have become legally protected over the years, including <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/abortion">abortion</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/divorce-annulment-remarriage-and-communion-a-catholic-primer">attempting to marry while still married to another person</a>, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/marriage-has-been-redefined-now-what">the redefinition of marriage</a>. So don’t be misled. For more, see Joe Heschmeyer’s article, “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-do-i-know-if-its-a-mortal-sin">Mortal Sin: The Basics</a>,” as well our synopsis on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/grave-matter">grave matter</a>.
2. Contrition. You need to repent for your sins to have true sorrow for having offended God and others by your transgressions. The Church distinguishes between perfect contrition, which “arises from a love by which God is loved above all else,” and imperfect contrition, which is born of lesser reasons, including “the fear of eternal damnation and the other penalties threatening the sinner” (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c2a4.htm#VII">CCC 1452-1453</a>). To be clear, imperfect contrition in the confessional is sufficient for the absolution of all of our sins.
3. Commit to not sinning again. Implied in true contrition, lest there be any doubt, is the resolution not to sin again, particularly regarding mortal sins, given their deadly nature. This is known as having a firm purpose of amendment (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c2a4.htm#VII">CCC 1451, 1490-1491</a>). After you confess your sins, you say <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/no-act-of-contrition">an act of contrition</a>. Click <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-do-i-make-an-act-of-contrition">here for a good one</a> to guide you.
A key part of repentance, if at all possible, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-to-repent-and-reconcile-with-others">is repenting to the people you offended</a>, whether before or after your confession. Further, in going forward, you want to avoid the twin grave sins against the virtue of hope: despair and presumption (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c1a1.htm#I">CCC 2091-2092</a>).
4. Confession of sins. You need to confess your sins to an ordained priest, distinguishing between your venial sins and mortal sins, as the latter need to be confessed in both kind and number. Deliberately withholding a mortal sin will nullify your absolution. As the <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c2a4.htm#VII">Catechism</a> provides,
<blockquote>when Christ&#8217;s faithful strive to confess all the sins that they can remember, they undoubtedly place all of them before the divine mercy for pardon. But those who fail to do so and knowingly withhold some, place nothing before the divine goodness for remission through the mediation of the priest, &#8220;for if the sick person is too ashamed to show his wound to the doctor, the medicine cannot heal what it does not know&#8221; (1456).</blockquote>
If you haven’t been to confession for a while, it’s good to make an appointment with a priest to accommodate any extra time you may need, though that’s not required. And if you encounter any irate penitents in line after your lengthier confession, smile and say, “Remember what our moms used to say: ‘Offer it up.’” In addition, don’t fret if you <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-if-i-forgot-to-confess-a-sin-and-remembered-it-later-was-it-absolved">fail to recall</a> a particular grave sin.
Going forward, remember the reassuring words of <a href="https://www.omvusa.org/bruno-lanteri/about-bruno-lanteri/spirituality/nunc-coepi/">Ven. Bruno Lanteri</a>: “If I should fall even a thousand times a day, a thousand times, with peaceful repentance, I will say immediately, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KfZ79lo8XY">Nunc coepi</a> [Now I begin, or Begin again].”
5. Penance. You need to do the assigned penance, whether prayers or other actions, that your priest confessor gives you (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c2a4.htm#VII">see CCC 1459-1460</a>). Yet strive to avoid <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/mortal-sin-and-resolutions-for-reparation-for-sin">scrupulosity</a>, which <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/escaping-the-trap-of-scrupulosity">if unmanaged</a> will impact not only you, but also <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/scrupulosity-the-occupational-hazard-of-the-catholic-moral-life">your loved ones</a>.
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How to Go to Confession

<div>For some particularly grievous sins, such as abortion, must priests consult first with their bishop before absolution?</div><div>
Certain sins are not just sins but also considered canonical &#8220;crimes&#8221; and thus receive canonical penalties that need to be lifted. Most reserved penalties can be lifted by the local bishop, but some are reserved to the pope. In the case of danger of death, any priest can remit validly and licitly virtually all penalties (can. 976).
In the situation of sins that are accompanied by a penalty that is reserved to the local bishop, he can grant the faculty of lifting the penalty to some or all of the priests of his diocese.
Sins that carry a canonical penalty are:
<ul>
<li>Apostasy, heresy, schism</li>
<li>Violation of consecrated species</li>
<li>Physical attack on a pope or bishop</li>
<li>A priest who absolves an accomplice in sexual sin</li>
<li>Unauthorized ordination of a bishop</li>
<li>Direct violation by a confessor of the seal of confession</li>
<li>Anyone who reveals the overheard confession of another</li>
<li>Pretended celebration of the Eucharist by a non-priest</li>
<li>Attempt to hear confession by one who cannot validly do so</li>
<li>False accusation of the crime of solicitation in the confessional</li>
<li>Attempted marriage by a religious or cleric</li>
<li>Formal cooperation in abortion</li>
</ul>
Formal cooperation in an abortion had previously been reserved for the bishop to lift the canonical penalty. However, <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-lettera-ap_20161120_misericordia-et-misera.html">Pope Francis in 2016</a> extended that authority to all priests in the sacrament of confession.
</div>

Reserved Sins?

Not too long ago, I found myself sitting in the stands at an NHL game with <a href="https://www.catholic.com/profile/don-johnson">Don Johnson.</a> Since he’s not only a puckhead and an <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/twisted-unto-destruction-how-bible-alone-theology-made-the-world-a-worse-place/#product-reviews">author</a> but also the documentary auteur behind <a href="https://dysconnectedmovie.com/">Dysconnected,</a> after a whistle on the ice I asked him why aggressive transgender ideology just seemed to spring up overnight. There was no warning, no easing into it—just an apparent decision by the sexual-progressive hive mind to change the programming to all-transgender, all the time.
“Because that’s what it was,” he told me. When you research it, he said, you find the same handful of parties initiating and driving the narrative.
One of the big players has been the Pritzker family, billionaire scions of the Hyatt hotel empire and fixtures in government and big-dollar philanthropy. An<a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers"> excellent new feature piece at the Tablet</a> traces the dense web of the Pritzkers’ efforts to raze the cultural, scientific, and educational edifice of human sexual dimorphism and replace it with what the author calls Synthetic Sexual Identity (SSI). Through “investments in the techno-medical complex” both philanthropic and for-profit, and by funding legal and educational efforts to “induce institutions and individuals to normalize” the idea of an infinite spectrum of sexes, the Pritzkers (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Pritzker">one of whom</a> went from James to Jennifer a decade ago, conveniently avoiding having to change the monogram on his luggage) are hell-bent on making “male and female he made them” as intolerable as racism and as risible as phrenology.
“Hell-bent” might be a lazy cliché in other contexts, but in this one I think it’s quite literally accurate. This is bent, and it’s from hell.
I was a teenager when Whitley Strieber’s Communion—featuring on its cover the “gray” alien that would become a sci-fi staple—sparked a frenzy of interest in alien abduction. That was also around the time that I first heard the “aliens = demons” theory that I’m told still chugs along. One wrinkle to the version I heard was that, since sexual experimentation was a commonly reported element of abduction accounts, it had to be fallen angels who, lacking the ability to generate more of themselves, were looking for the “secret of reproduction.”
Now, angelic intelligence apprehends things all at once; demons don’t do experimental research. And I think it more likely that sexual details are found in many abduction accounts because the poor, confused people who report them have suffered sexual traumas. So I’m not sold on “aliens = demons.”
But I do think there’s something to the idea that Satan and his angels have a special hatred for human sexuality. It must be an intolerable insult to a prideful being of pure spirit to see God extend the divine spark of life-creating power to us dirty flesh-spirit hybrids, to exercise as we will.
This may not explain alien abductions, but it does explain the demonic drive to spread confusion in the sexual sphere. To tempt humans to lust. To drive a wedge into the full meaning of the marital act. To have us breed embryonic bodies for raw material to inch us closer to technological immortality. To sow disorder in human sexual attraction—and get as many people as possible to celebrate lies as truth (the devil’s most satisfying trick). And perhaps the master work: to bring the temptation in the garden to its diabolical climax by getting men and woman to deny that they are men and women—or indeed that there’s any such thing at all.
Modern man’s project of disintegrating and re-inventing human nature, of which SSI is such a stark and unveiled example, is an earthly extension of what Satan and the demons have done to themselves for eternity. They rejected the created order and with it the Creator, and now they want us to do it, too.

Why Satan Hates Sex

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

Mary, Mother of Whom?

Today is <a href="https://www.pennlive.com/life/2022/08/heres-how-you-can-celebrate-national-beach-day.html">National Beach Day</a>, at which time corporate America will likely fill most of our social media feeds with pictures of scantily clad beachgoers. What we wear on beaches has gradually become more revealing as the decades have gone by, with plenty of female attire now being less concealing than the underwear worn below their regular clothing.
It&#8217;s tragic, because the people who dress in such a way to attract the attention of the opposite sex do so while <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/homecoming-dresses-and-the-dreaded-m-word">effacing their own dignity</a>. To dress modestly is, in the words of Josef Pieper, a habit of &#8220;selfless self-preservation,&#8221; which is a demonstration of self-respect that is rightly grounded on the appreciation of one&#8217;s body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The modern age tends to regard modesty as something of an antiquated notion, as if it were an ancient custom specifically commanding the dress codes of women for the benefit of men. That&#8217;s horribly reversed. Modest attire is for the benefit of the person who wears it. It denotes a person&#8217;s value, asserts her dignity as something worthy of protection, and prevents her reduction into a display piece for the benefit of strangers.
One area in which modesty is too often forgotten in the modern age is with regard to church. How we dress when attending Mass ought to be considered because our attire affects us and those around us.
Whereas it was once accepted that we should wear formal clothing to Mass, this understanding has been gradually eroded, spurred by those who will (loudly) argue some variation of &#8220;Church isn&#8217;t a fashion contest.&#8221; They are correct: it&#8217;s the house of God, and thus infinitely more important than a fashion contest. The acknowledgment that it is his house should entail respect. Similar to how we genuflect in a physical recognition of his presence in the tabernacle, so too should we dress in accordance with that same reality.
Most people, when made aware that they are visiting someone of importance, attempt to dress their best. It&#8217;s a token of respect and a recognition of the position the important person holds. And so if we consider ourselves visiting God in a holy place of worship, that will help to provide context as to why dressing respectfully ought to be done.
Some will call the suggestion of dressing formally an assault on the poor, but that is absurd. Nobody is suggesting that parishioners should be comparing name brands of outfits after Mass or contrasting price tags. Rather, simply dress with respect and humility. Most Americans can manage that. The poorest in our society dress as they can. The issue is those among us who do not dress as we can, but impart minimal effort compared to every other respectful occasion.
Shorts and a t-shirt are often not appropriate even for an afternoon golf session. All the more, then,  in the context of worshiping God, on his day of worship, in his house of worship.
How we act (including what we choose to wear) is a reflection of what we believe. At a time when belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is at a record low, we should reflect on whether our actions denote our beliefs.
Here&#8217;s a thought exercise: would a child look at me in church and understand that the Mass is an important event? Would the child believe that this event matters deeply to me? Does the way I behave before, during, and after Mass reveal that something special is happening at the altar?
Remember that since the formal attire we choose is to denote our respect for God, it&#8217;s not appropriate to wear clothing to attract attention to ourselves. This is one area of differentiation from some other formal occasions. So it&#8217;s generally accepted that a woman&#8217;s shoulders should be covered, that she shouldn&#8217;t wear a low-cut top or dress, and that her skirt length should be below the knee.  Some women choose to wear veils, as <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/why-do-women-wear-veils-to-mass">the sacred is veiled</a>, because they themselves are sacred as vessels of life. Their share in the divine power of life-giving is veiled, like a sacred vessel, and is revealed under controlled circumstances, rather than merely exposed. Veiling was once the norm but has become a private choice.
If we believe what we say we do, then we should care about the symbolism of our choices. Just as churches were historically designed to remind people of God&#8217;s presence therein via grandeur, art, and beauty, individuals should do the same by their dress and behavior.

Modesty in Church

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus tells Simon, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.” Catholics interpret the rock as a reference to Peter. From this, Catholics infer that Jesus intended Peter to be the visible foundation and head of his Church on earth. This makes Peter the source of unity for Christ’s Church—for, wherever the foundation and head is, there is the true Church of Jesus.
Catholics appeal to this verse as biblical evidence for the papacy because the Catholic doctrine of the papacy is precisely that Christ appointed Peter and his successors to be the source of unity of and the identifying mark for Jesus’ Church on earth.
Some Protestants reply by conceding that Peter is the rock but challenge the idea that he is unique in being the foundation of the Church. Let’s look at two such replies.
1. “All the apostles are the foundation, not just Peter”
One argument appeals to Ephesians 2:20, where Paul teaches the “household of God” is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” Well-known Protestant apologists Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie <a href="https://archive.org/details/romancatholicsev0000geis">write of this passage</a>: “Two things are clear from this: all the apostles—not just Peter—are the foundation of the church . . . and the only one who was given a place of uniqueness or prominence was Christ, the capstone” (208).
Geisler and MacKenzie seem to be making two arguments here. First, since the apostles too are identified as the foundation of the Church, there’s nothing unique about Peter being the rock of the Church in Matthew 16:18. The second argument is that if Peter were unique as the foundation of the Church, then he would have been distinguished from the other apostolic foundation stones, as Jesus is distinguished. But since he’s not, Geisler and MacKenzie conclude that Peter is not unique.
In response to the first argument, there’s an assumed hidden premise that Geisler and MacKenzie never say out loud: whenever something is said of two people, those two people must be equals with regard to what is said about them. Only if this premise is true can Geisler and MacKenzie conclude that Peter has no unique status relative to the apostles based on the fact that the “foundation” metaphor is used for both Peter and the apostles.
The problem for Geisler and MacKenzie is that this hidden premise is demonstrably false. Consider, for example, how Jesus is called our shepherd in 1 Peter 2:25: “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd [Greek, poimena] and Guardian [episkopon] of your souls.” This Greek word for shepherd, poimena, is also used to describe pastors in the Church—for example, where Paul writes, “And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors [Greek, poimenas] and teachers” (Eph. 4:11). If we were to follow Geisler and MacKenzie’s logic, we’d have to conclude that Jesus has no unique status as our pastor, since the Bible says there are other pastors in the Church, too!
Now let’s consider the second argument: if Peter were unique as the foundation of the Church, then Paul would have singled Peter out among the other apostles as he did for Jesus. Since Paul didn’t do such a thing, Peter must have no special role as the foundation of the Church.
But why must we think that Paul would have singled Peter out among the apostles the way he did for Jesus? It’s reasonable to think that only if Paul’s focus were Peter and his role as the rock of the Church in relation to the other apostles. But that is not Paul’s focus.
Paul’s focus is on the Ephesians and their relation to the apostles and Jesus as pieces that make up the edifice of the Church, which Paul calls a “holy temple” (v. 21). The Ephesians are pieces built into the edifice. The apostles and prophets are the foundation. And Jesus is the cornerstone, “in whom the whole structure [of the Church] is joined together” (v. 22).
Since Paul’s concern is not the order among the apostles as the foundation of the Church, but simply the order that exists among the Ephesians, the apostles and prophets, and Jesus as pieces that make up the edifice of the Church, we shouldn’t expect Paul to highlight Peter’s unique status as the rock of the Church.
The “foundation” metaphor is being used in Ephesians 2:20 in a different context and for a different purpose. We must read it accordingly and not try to shoehorn its meaning into an entirely different context, such as that of Matthew 16:18. The reverse is true as well. We shouldn’t take the Catholic interpretation of Peter as the rock in Matthew 16:18 and force its meaning onto Ephesians 2:20. We have to remember that metaphors can be used in more than one way in the Bible.
2. “Peter is only a pillar, not the pillar”
Another Protestant counter derives from Galatians 2:9, where Paul writes, “When they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.” That Peter (called Cephas, the Greek transliteration of the Greicized Aramaic Kephas) is named second in this list of pillars is taken as proof that Peter is not unique in his role as the foundation of the Church. Protestant apologist Jason Engwer makes the argument <a href="http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-pillars-of-roman-catholicism.html">this way</a>:
<blockquote>It’s doubtful that people would have been grouping Peter with other apostles as pillars of the church and naming him second, after James, if he was thought of as a pope. Remember, Catholics are the ones who place so much emphasis on the alleged significance of Peter’s being a foundation of the church in Matthew 16, which is similar to the pillar concept in Galatians 2:9. It’s highly unlikely that the early Christians believed that Peter was such a unique foundation of the church, the infallible ruler of all Christians, including the other apostles, yet perceived him as described in Galatians 2:9.</blockquote>
We might summarize this argument as follows:
Premise 1: If Peter were unique as the foundation of the Church according to Matthew 16:18, then he would not have been listed second as a pillar of the Church in Galatians 2:9.
Premise 2: Peter is listed second as a pillar of the Church in Galatians 2:9.
Conclusion: Therefore, Peter is not unique as the foundation of the Church according to Matthew 16:18.
The underlying assumption of premise one is that being listed second must reveal an inferior rank. But we can challenge this assumption, for there are additional plausible explanations for Peter being listed after James.
The order of the list, with James first, Peter second, and John third, may simply be a consequence of the order in which these men’s names came into Paul’s mind as he was dictating. When we list people or things when writing an email or telling a story, we typically do not intentionally list them in order of importance or greatness unless we have a reason to—and so, without any indication of such a reason in this text, there’s no cause to think that Paul is doing so here.
Even if Paul did intend some significance to the ordering, it still does not require the conclusion that Peter did not have the special role that Catholics say he was given in Matthew 16:18.
First, because elsewhere in Galatians, Peter seems to be ranked above James. Evidence suggests that this James (not the brother of John—the other one) became the leader of the Jerusalem church when Peter left after his imprisonment (Acts 12:17). Recall Galatians 1:18-19, where Paul speaks of his first trip to Jerusalem shortly after his conversion and implies that Peter’s in charge. He writes, “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.” So it would be a mistake to portray Galatians as if it uniformly supported James holding rank over Peter. The first chapter of the letter does the reverse.
So what is happening in Galatians 2:9? This trip takes place fourteen years after Paul’s initial visit with Peter (see Gal. 2:1), who had left Jerusalem and gone to Antioch after he escaped from prison. Peter’s absence from Jerusalem would have given James the opportunity to take the reins to oversee the Jerusalem church (cf. Acts 21:17-24). Protestant New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce <a href="https://www.ffbruce.com/the-epistle-to-the-galatians/">explains</a>:
<blockquote>On Paul’s earlier visit to Jerusalem, Cephas was the most important man in the church; Paul went up specifically to meet him, and adds that he also saw James. But all our evidence (scanty as it is) indicates that James became increasingly influential in the Jerusalem church. An opportunity to increase his influence at the expense of Cephas/Peter came with the latter’s departure from Jerusalem after his escape from Herod Agrippa’s prison (121-122).</blockquote>
That James had become the bishop of the Jerusalem church at the time Paul visits Jerusalem in Galatians 2:9 provides a plausible explanation as to why Paul might have intentionally listed James first. It could have been a way of acknowledging his current headship in the local church. Peter was only there temporarily to attend the Council of Jerusalem.
There is yet another plausible explanation: Paul was undercutting the claims of the Judaizers. These were a group of first-century Jewish Christians who argued that Gentiles needed to be circumcised if they wanted to be Christian. Paul called them the “circumcision party” in Galatians 2:12, and they held James in high esteem. In fact, in that same verse, Paul tells us that the Judaizers, whom Peter feared offending, “came from James.” So, if there were anyone that the Judaizers would have tried to pit against Paul concerning whether the Gentiles should be circumcised, it would have been James.
Paul counters this move by showing that James endorsed his view that circumcision is unnecessary for the Gentiles. And perhaps to drive home the point, Paul lists James first as a pillar: “When they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship” (Gal. 2:9). Paul thereby undercut any attempt by the Judaizers to make their case by appealing to official backing from the Jerusalem church.
These are just two of many Protestant comebacks to Catholics’ reliance on Matthew 16:18 to defend the papacy. But no matter where the discussion might go, Catholics can be confident that Peter is indeed the rock on which Christ’s church is built.

There Can Be Only One (Pope)!

The Church teaches that the desire for baptism, whether <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1259.htm">explicit</a> or <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1260.htm">implicit</a>, saves those who die before they can receive it. Yet, someone may ask, “If that person doesn’t receive the sacrament of baptism, is he ‘fully Catholic’”?
If by “fully Catholic” one means “getting to heaven,” then the answer is yes. However, if by “fully Catholic” one means receiving the character/seal of baptism, then the answer is no. The Catechism teaches that the desire for baptism “brings about the fruits of baptism,” but “without being a sacrament” (CCC 1258). Since the character is only communicated through the sacrament (CCC 1121), it follows that the desire for baptism does not communicate the sacramental character or seal.
What’s the significance of this? For this life, it simply means that the person wouldn’t enjoy the “rights within the Church” to participate in aspects of the life of the Church, such as the sacraments (CCC 1269). The character/seal is ordered to making the baptized “share in Christ’s priesthood” and constituting them as “a member of the Church according to different states and functions” (CCC 1121). Or, as Aquinas puts it, it gives a person the right “to do or receive something pertaining to the worship of the priesthood of Christ” (Summa Theologiae III:63:6 ad 3).
Concerning the afterlife, this lack of the character might not have any significance at all. The Church only definitively <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Catholic-Dogma-Dr-Ludwig/dp/1905574657">teaches</a> that the seal remains at least until death. Even if the character does remain in heaven, which is the general theological <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Catholic-Dogma-Dr-Ludwig/dp/1905574657">opinion</a>, that would only imply that the souls without it would experience beatitude in a lesser degree than those with it. But that’s not a problem because every soul will experience different degrees of beatitude in heaven depending on their state of charity.
Regardless, the important thing is that the baptism of desire does indeed save. And in that sense every soul in heaven is “fully Catholic.”

Baptized? No. Fully Catholic? Maybe.

Catholic devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is always a tough topic for Protestants, even for Protestant converts to Catholicism. One particular devotion they object to is the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/hard-truths-about-marian-consecration">consecration to Mary</a>, championed by <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-you-love-mary-too-much">St. Louis de Montfort</a>. It’s often thought to smack of Mariolatry, the worship of Mary as a divine being.
Generally, the word <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/consecration">consecration</a> is used to express the idea that something (such as a Church or an altar) is given over to God, in the service of God. Accordingly, some think that when Catholics consecrate themselves to Mary, they’re giving their lives over to Mary as if she were God.
But this is not what’s going on.
It’s true that with the Marian consecration we’re giving our lives over to Mary, asking her to take care of us. Pope St. John Paul II <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20001008_act-entrustment-mary.html">expressed</a> this idea with the term “entrustment.” Just as Jesus entrusted John into the care of Mary at the foot of the cross when he said, “Behold your Mother,” (John 19:27), so too we entrust ourselves into Mary’s care and look to her as our Mother.
After all, she is the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/is-marys-queenship-biblical">queen mother</a> of Jesus’ kingdom, which makes her our spiritual mother insofar as we’re citizens of that kingdom. Also, she’s revealed in Revelation 12:17 to be the mother of all “those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus”—that’s to say, Christians.
Now, by entrusting our lives over to Mary’s care, we’re not doing so as if she were our final end or goal, namely, God. We do so to achieve our end or goal, which is union with God. All Marian consecration is ordered to union with Christ, who gives us access to the Father.
It’s similar to how a restaurant owner will invest vast amounts of time and energy—give himself over, consecrate himself—to that work in order to achieve the goal of having the best possible restaurant. We entrust ourselves into Mary’s loving care so that we can achieve the goal of having the best relationship with Christ possible. Again, Mary’s not the end. Devotion to her is the means of getting us to our end, which is Jesus.
So, as Catholics, we don’t need to be worried about engaging in idolatry when we do the Marian Consecration. We can entrust ourselves into Mary’s loving care because she always leads us to Jesus, and commands us, like she did at the Wedding at Cana, “do whatever he tells you.”

Consecration to Mary: It’s Not Idolatry!

This has been <a href="https://www.usccb.org/topics/marriage-and-family-life-ministries/national-marriage-week">National Marriage Week</a>, and of course today is St. Valentine’s. A double reason, then, to honor one of the primordial forces of human nature: the inner drive of man and woman to seek out and cling to one another in a permanent, exclusive embrace, for their mutual aid and the bearing and raising of children.
This force, however, once as constant as gravity and as powerful as the sun, seems to be… slipping.
Not only have marriage rates been tumbling for a generation; now young adults in the West aren’t <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/02/14/gen-z-love-instagram-tiktok-dating/78336999007/">even coupling and fornicating like they used to</a>, either. Everyone has a theory as to why:
<ul>
<li>Effortless access to pornography is sating or dulling the desire for sex that used to motivate a young man to pair with a young woman (and ideally to marry her).</li>
<li>The nonstop entertainments and virtual relationships afforded by devices are disincentivizing both men and women to socialize in person.</li>
<li>Economic factors, real or perceived, are making those virtual relationships, and casual group hangouts, easier to fit into the budget than traditional dating (and certainly marriage and children).</li>
<li>Some ambient cultural or environmental pollutant is messing with young people’s minds and bodies: the sexual confusion wrought by pervasive gay and trans activism; stunting of social skills during the Covid years; residual hormones from sixty years of artificial contraception leeching into in our water supply; vaccines or seed oils or chemtrails or whatever your public-health soapbox is.</li>
</ul>
Whatever the reason or reasons, the West is <a href="https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-dramatic-declines-global-fertility-rates-set-transform">staring smack at a crisis</a> unprecedented in history: a systemic loss of desire for one generation to court, mate, form families, and create another generation.
In this context, we might take a fresh look at recent discussion over the state of Catholic marriage preparation. (I spent several years as a diocesan marriage &amp; family minister, preparing thousands of couples for matrimony, and the subject is of special interest to me.) In recent years, Pope Francis and some bishops have advocated for much longer and more-stringent marriage-prep programs than most dioceses currently require.
This has <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/should-the-church-require-a-year-of-marriage-prep-catholic-formators-weigh-in">divided Catholic opinion</a> along unpredictable lines: some of the usual papal critics like it and some of the usual papal defenders are opposed—and everything in between.
Me? I see arguments for both sides, but I think I come down firmly on one of them.
The pro side for making marriage preparation longer and more involved boils down to one principle: more knowledge is better. Marriage is a “great mystery,” as St. Paul said, and great mysteries require deep and careful attention. How else are we going to reduce Catholic divorce rates and promote marital happiness, if not by a thorough and even demanding pre-marriage boot camp that gets couples truly ready for what lies ahead?
The con side says, yes, marriage is a deep and ineffable mystery. But it’s a mystery we slowly come to understand through living it. The basics of marriage are easy enough to teach and make people understand; after that, it’s on-the-job training.
You might have guessed that, since I put it second, I side with the con folks—and you’d be right. And I think today’s poll data about cratering attitudes toward dating and marrying throw the con arguments into sharp relief. How the heck are we going to encourage marriage by making it seem more complicated and making it harder to do?
Men and women have been marrying naturally for many millennia. Christian men and women have been uniting themselves to each other sacramentally for nearly two. Most of them have been illiterate, minimally catechized, without specialized resources. They had no problem forming exclusive unions, bearing and raising children, and usually staying together until death.
Sure, every age has its troubles, and the Church in every age should respond to them. Today, for instance, the best marriage and family ministry includes joyful apologetics for Catholic teaching on the marital goods of fecundity and indissolubility, because these two goods have been under special attack since the Sexual Revolution.
But, the basics of marriage are the same in every age. It doesn’t take a master’s degree or hundreds of hours of special seminars for couples to know what they’re signing up for and consent to it. You used to be two; now you are one. You can’t have anyone else. It can’t be undone. Now go make babies if you can.
All the rest—“getting to know each other” and improving communication and setting goals and managing finances and changing diapers and learning to say sorry and everything else—this is the work of a lifetime. The theological and spiritual mysteries of the sacrament and its saving graces are likewise the stuff of lifelong growth and reflection. Let’s not overwhelm our already-anxious younger generations by making them think they need to work out all of it before they say, “I do.”
Or, indeed, before they say, “Will you?” Or even, “Want to grab some coffee?”
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Don’t Overcomplicate Marriage!

It’s one thing to hear on the news about transgender athletes taking away opportunities from female athletes. It’s another to hear about it from someone you know.
One of my hobbies is Brazilian-jiu jitsu (BJJ), a grappling martial art that focuses on submitting an opponent through chokes and joint locks. A month ago, I suffered an injury to my ACL in my right knee, so I can barely train. I can’t compete or fully grapple with anyone else in the gym, or at least with any other man in the gym.
A few weeks ago, one of the few female students in the class, who is a white belt like me, told us that she was in an international competition for another combat martial art and she came in second place to a transgender woman.
“You mean a man,” I replied.
“Yeah, but you’re not allowed to say that,” she told me.
“The truth is,” I continued, “that he’s a man and you won first place and the truth is always allowed.”
She appreciated the sentiment, and after the lesson portion of the class, we sparred in a jiu-jitsu grappling session (which we call “rolling”).
Now, this woman is physically fit, not much smaller than me, and with my knee energy I could only use about 20% of my strength. But even with my injuries, I could still easily do things like sweep her onto the ground or move my body for a submission.
Of course, there are female jiu-jitsu practitioners who could twist me into a pretzel and defeat me in 30 seconds given their skill level. In fact, BJJ is a great martial art for women because it gives you skills to help overcome larger and stronger opponents. But the experience showed me how tempting it would be for a male athlete who is not very good against men to suddenly feel like a champion when he beats women who can’t stand up to him.
Men simply have a biological advantage over women, which is why we have segregated sports in the first place. Even if a transgender “woman” has taken testosterone inhibitors, that man has already benefitted from increased bone density and muscle mass given to him through puberty.
This incident reminded me that our culture’s insane rejection of human identity hurts more people than we realize; and female athletes who publicly stand up against this injustice (<a href="https://nypost.com/2023/05/17/riley-gaines-tells-congress-she-was-held-for-ransom-at-san-francisco-state-unsure-if-she-could-leave-safely/">like Riley Gaines</a>) deserve all of our support.
We shouldn’t demonize transgender athletes or attack them, but we should also lovingly tell them that their value doesn’t come from the medals they win. You can’t truly enjoy praise for your accomplishments if it’s coming from people who have a “cancel-culture” gun to their heads. True athletic joy, like any joy, comes from rejoicing in who God made us to be and seeking a crown of righteousness (2 Tim. 4:8) from him instead of athletic medals won under false pretenses.

When Transgender Injustice Hits Home

There is a certain kind of person that puts many of us to shame: the optimist. Fans of cartoons may think of the character SpongeBob SquarePants, who annoys everyone in his underwater town with his positivity. SpongeBob has childlike wonder, and even when dark shadows appear in his life, he still sees the light. In one episode, he notes, “I’ll have you know I stubbed my toe last week while watering my spice garden, and I only cried for twenty minutes.”
Many of us, however, identify more strongly with SpongeBob’s pessimistic co-worker, Squidward Q. Tentacles. Squidward is a world-weary realist, tormented by his colleague’s unwavering sanguineness. Squidward tends to expect the worst and find it, and he tells his customers at the Krusty Krab restaurant, “Please come again. When I’m not working.”
Then there is the next-level optimist, who is impossibly cheerful, epitomized by the orphan Pollyanna Whittier in the novels of Eleanor H. Porter. In the 1960 film adaptation of the story, starring Hayley Mills, Pollyanna describes how her life is one big “glad game,” and she cites as an example what happened when she asked for a doll and received a pair of crutches in the mail by mistake. Instead of being disappointed, she rejoiced that she had no need of crutches. (I, the pessimist, remember watching Pollyanna and thinking, “Bummer for the dude that needed those crutches and got a doll!”) Anyway, Pollyanna turns out to be a good influence on the stuffy New England town where she ends up, but her sourpuss spinster namesake, Aunt Polly turns out to be good for her, too, when she suffers a debilitating injury—ironically, requiring those crutches after all.
SpongeBob and Squidward, Pollyanna and Aunt Polly are flip sides of the same coin.
The Christian is not required to be either optimistic or pessimistic. The Church needs both types, and so does the world. For example, would we know the extent of the clerical abuse scandals if not for pessimists with the stomach to investigate, assuming the worst? But would we have anyone in our churches at all if not for optimists with the heart to take risks and cast a positive vision, assuming the best?
What the Christian must be is a person of hope.
The glossary section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes hope as “the theological virtue by which we desire and expect from God both eternal life and the grace we need to attain it.” A pessimistic Christian may focus on the many occasions to sin and the difficulty of maintaining a state of grace. An optimistic Christian may focus more on God’s lavish gift of grace, no matter how many times we fall down and sin. Both viewpoints <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/hope-until-we-meet-again">are correct</a>, complementing each other.
In five rich paragraphs (1817-1821), the Catechism expands on the glossary definition of hope. And in his 2007 encyclical <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html">Spe Salvi</a> (Saved in Hope), Pope Benedict XVI teaches us even more about this virtue and the need for its renewal in the world today. Right from the start of Spe Salvi, our late Holy Father brings heavenly hope down to our messy lived experience in the world. He assures us,
<blockquote>Redemption is offered to us in the sense that we have been given hope, trustworthy hope, by virtue of which we can face our present: the present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey (1).</blockquote>
Pope Benedict XVI’s wisdom brings to mind the practical example of a woman in childbirth. My wife and I have recently begun teaching natural childbirth classes to expectant couples, and one of the major principles my wife explains to women facing the difficulties of labor is “pain with a purpose.” A woman giving birth doesn’t have to pretend she’s having a good time while it’s happening—but with such a glorious goal at the end of the ordeal—namely, a healthy baby!—she can come to understand the agonies of labor as a source of joy. It’s hope in action.
Elsewhere in the encyclical, Pope Benedict elucidates the Catechism’s teaching on hope as a virtue not confined to the individual. “Salvation,” he tells us, “has always been considered a social reality” (14). That is, we do not practice our faith alone, nor does the Christian expect to experience the beatific vision alone. Thus, in our present circumstances on this side of the eschaton, we do not hope alone, either. To build upon our example of a woman in childbirth, we all labor together in this life for the sake of a blessed result that is bigger than any of us, and bigger than the world itself. To get the job done with maximum hopefulness, it is a benefit to have some SpongeBobs, Squidwards, Pollyannas, and Aunt Pollys mixed up together.
St. Paul bids farewell in his letter to the Romans by highlighting hope: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope” (15:13).
Whether we’re optimists or pessimists—insufferable idealists, prickly grumps, or something in between—may we abound in the same hope, too.

Can Pessimists Have Hope?

Calvinists teach that man is powerless to resist God’s grace; hence, there is no truly free will.
The Catholic and biblical position, though, holds that we must “work out our salvation with fear and trembling”—meaning we must do something—“for it is God who works in you both to will and to do according to his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13)—meaning God’s grace must precede and accompany every meritorious action that brings about our salvation.
The Catholic teaching emphasizes both God’s grace and man’s cooperation. But there is no room in Calvinist teaching for St. Paul’s inspired notion of man as “co-laborer” with God (1 Cor. 3:9). In Calvin’s words,
<blockquote>if [by free will] is meant that after we are once subdued by the power of the Lord to the obedience of righteousness, we proceed voluntarily, and are inclined to follow the movement of grace, I have nothing to object. . . . If, again, it is meant that man is able of himself to be a fellow-laborer with the grace of God, I hold it to be a most pestilent delusion (Institutes, Bk. 2, Ch. 3, Para. 11).</blockquote>
Catholics agree that man cannot “of himself” merit anything from God—meaning, apart from God’s empowering grace. But Calvin’s meaning is very different. For him, “subdued by the power of the Lord” means that man cannot resist the movement of God’s grace.
If God wills for you to go to heaven, he will give you grace to that end, and you will be irresistibly moved to act in accord with it. If God wills for you to go to hell, then you will not be given grace, and you will be moved to sin by God’s eternal decree.
Before we proceed, two notes. First, many Calvinists will claim, as the Westminster Confession does, that they believe in “free will.” But “free will” for the Calvinist means acting in accord with irresistible grace that he cannot do anything but accept. The term voluntary, which Calvin used in the passage above, becomes meaningless. According to Calvin, when God extends his “special grace” of salvation and mercy, he “does not suffer a refusal” (para. 6). Yet man is “free”? This would be like Vito Corleone, in The Godfather, making “an offer you can’t refuse” and then claiming that the offer was “freely” accepted.
Second, honest Calvinists acknowledge the contradiction here. Clifton Kirkpatrick, who at the time held the highest elected staff position in the Presbyterian Church (USA), <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL673338M/What_unites_Presbyterians">wrote</a>,
<blockquote>If a sovereign God decides to elect persons to eternal life, that is a decision for all time and eternity. . . . Presbyterians have endorsed this conviction, but with Calvin, we have always had trouble with it for two reasons.
First, if God predestines every person, and not all are called, elected, or predestined for salvation, then God has predestined (the Westminster Confession says “fore-ordained”) some persons to hell or eternal damnation. Second, if God has determined the ultimate fate of all persons, then the individual has no power to make any important decisions.
Presbyterians have learned to believe, also, in free will, realizing that these two doctrines are logically impossible to hold at the same time, but that each is true, as taught in the Westminster Confession. . . . Those persons who can with a clear conscience accept what they are taught, regardless of apparent inconsistencies, are in some ways better off than those who think (17).</blockquote>
Notice the almost cult-like acceptance of this logical contradiction. The Catholic and biblical faith never asks anyone to check his intellect at the door. Although we recognize that certain truths of our faith are supra-rational, there is nothing in our faith that is irrational. 
I have to agree with Kirkpatrick that a thinking man will have trouble with this Calvinist notion of double predestination. In fact, I would say that a thinking man is not going to remain Calvinist unless he can learn to believe what he knows to be irrational. And that is not faith; that is closer to superstition.
The grace of God is resistible, according to Paul:
<blockquote>You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love. You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth? (Gal. 5:4-7).</blockquote>
Paul warns these Galatian Christians not to be seduced by “Judaizers” who were telling them belief in Christ is great, but they must also return to the Old Covenant temple, sacrifices, law, circumcision, etc. in order to be saved. He warns that if they do this, they forfeit Christ; they “fall from grace.” To “fall from grace” means they resist God’s grace.
The inspired author of Hebrews also teaches that we can “fall from grace”:
<blockquote>Strive for peace with all men, and for that holiness without which no man will see God. Take heed lest anyone be wanting in the grace of God [Gr.—usteron apo tes karitos tou theou—“falling from the grace of God”]; lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble and by it the many be defiled; let there not be any immoral or profane person, such as Esau, who for one meal sold his birthright (Heb. 12:14-16, Confraternity Bible).</blockquote>
The Greek verb ustereo, translated above as “wanting,” means “to fall short of, lack, or want.” Because the preposition apo, or “from,” is used immediately after the verb, a literal translation would be “falling short of from the grace of God.” I translate it as “falling from the grace of God.”
Similarly to Galatians, Hebrews warns Christians not to “sell their birthright” as sons of God and forfeit the glory of heaven that is their inheritance as Christians. Indeed, we truly are sons of God, and if sons, “then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:17). The context of Hebrews emphasizes the truth that Christians can, in fact, “fall from grace” and lose their heavenly inheritance.
St. Stephen chimes in specifically when it comes to resisting the grace of God. He almost seems to have Calvin in mind 1,500 years before Calvin when he speaks to his “brethren and fathers” (Acts 7:2) among the sons and daughters of Abraham:
<blockquote>You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you (v. 51).</blockquote>
The Holy Spirit calls us by grace; thus, to “resist the Holy Spirit” is to resist God’s grace.
And finally, the words of our Lord himself are most clear:
<blockquote>O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, you house is forsaken and desolate! (Matt. 23:37-38).</blockquote>
Jesus here speaks as God and informs us that he is ever calling to his people by his grace to come to him, as a hen calls to her chicks. But he is equally clear that he respects the freedom he has gifted us. It is their choice whether they will resist his call—resist his grace—or cooperate with it unto salvation (Gal. 6:7-9, Rom, 5:1-2, 2 Cor. 6:1-2).

John Calvin, the False Optimist

Can a Man and a Woman Truly Be Friends?

<div>What should I do when my wife won’t be sexually intimate?</div><div>My first suggestion is to have a heart-to-heart conversation with your wife as to why she desires not to engage in the marital act. Perhaps she experiences physical pain, something that a competent doctor or physical therapist could address.
Perhaps your wife feels neglected by you in some way. If so, ask whether there is anything you could do to help improve your marriage. Tell her you want to be the best husband you can be, laying down your life for her as Jesus Christ did for the Church (see Eph. 5:25). In so doing, tell her that you pledge to show your love for her in non-sexual ways and that you welcome any suggestions regarding ways she would prefer. And let her know you won’t be expecting immediate “conjugal payback” but that perhaps you could discuss the issue of sexual intimacy in a month or two.
As time goes on, continue to look for non-conjugal ways you can show your love for your wife, and invite her to pray with you each day as a married couple, if you’re doing so at present, or ways you can deepen that experience, if you already are. As the Ven. Fr. Patrick Peyton used to say, “The family that prays together stays together.”
Further, perhaps going to a good marriage counselor would be helpful. Don’t feel ashamed to do so. Every couple can benefit from helpful input periodically, whether it’s from their parish pastor, a good friend, or even a good Catholic therapist. To find a Catholic good 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>.
Finally, seek the Lord’s help to carry your cross, especially in the Eucharist and the sacrament of reconciliation. Over time, and with various aids, we hope and pray your situation improves. In any event, God will be faithful in helping your carry your cross fruitfully (see 2 Cor. 12:8-10; John 14:27).
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What Should I Do When My Wife Won’t Be Intimate?

<div>Do Eastern Catholics believe that the priest confers the sacrament on the couple, as opposed to the Latin Church’s teaching that the couple mutually conferring the sacrament on each other with the priest acting only as a witness?</div><div>The canonical form of marriage in the Eastern Catholic Churches requires the priestly blessing for Eastern Catholics (Catechism 1623).  Even if only one of the spouses is an Eastern Catholic the priestly blessing is required for validity (<a href="http://www.jgray.org/codes/cceo90eng.html">CCEO </a>828 §§1-2).
This requirement of a priestly blessing for proper canonical form (and thus validity) is only required of Eastern Catholics. The Eastern Catholic Churches do accept as valid the marriages of Latin Catholics that were presided by a deacon.
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Eastern Catholics And Marriage

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<h3>Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Lectionary: 284</h3>
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<h4>Reading 1    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/acts/13:44">ACTS 13:44-52</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
On the following sabbath 
almost the whole city 
gathered to hear the word of the Lord. 
When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy 
and with violent abuse contradicted what Paul said. 
Both Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly and said, 
“It was necessary that the word of God be spoken to you first, 
but since you reject it 
and condemn yourselves as unworthy of eternal life, 
we now turn to the Gentiles. 
For so the Lord has commanded us, 
I have made you a light to the Gentiles, 
that you may be an instrument of salvation 
to the ends of the earth.”
The Gentiles were delighted when they heard this 
and glorified the word of the Lord. 
All who were destined for eternal life came to believe, 
and the word of the Lord continued to spread 
through the whole region. 
The Jews, however, incited the women of prominence who were worshipers 
and the leading men of the city, 
stirred up a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, 
and expelled them from their territory. 
So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them 
and went to Iconium. 
The disciples were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.
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<h4>Responsorial Psalm    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/psalms/98:1">98:1, 2-3AB, 3CD-4</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
R.    (3cd)  All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God. 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
Sing to the LORD a new song, 
for he has done wondrous deeds; 
His right hand has won victory for him, 
his holy arm. 
R.    All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God. 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
The LORD has made his salvation known: 
in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice. 
He has remembered his kindness and his faithfulness 
toward the house of Israel. 
R.    All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God. 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
All the ends of the earth have seen 
the salvation by our God. 
Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands; 
break into song; sing praise. 
R.    All the ends of the earth have seen the saving power of God. 
or: 
R.    Alleluia.
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<h4>Alleluia    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/john/8:31">JN 8:31B-32</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
R. Alleluia, alleluia. 
If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, 
and you will know the truth, says the Lord. 
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
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<h4>Gospel    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/john/14:7">JN 14:7-14</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
Jesus said to his disciples: 
“If you know me, then you will also know my Father. 
From now on you do know him and have seen him.” 
Philip said to Jesus, 
“Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” 
Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time 
and you still do not know me, Philip? 
Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. 
How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? 
The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. 
The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. 
Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, 
or else, believe because of the works themselves. 
Amen, amen, I say to you, 
whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, 
and will do greater ones than these, 
because I am going to the Father. 
And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, 
so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 
If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
Source: <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/readings">cms.usccb.org</a>
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Daily Holy Mass: Saturday, May 9, 2020

If you listen to Catholics discussing the Blessed Sacrament today, you’re likely to hear—not just, but especially in traditional circles—an emphasis on the Eucharist as “sacrifice” and a complaint about overemphasis on the Eucharist as a “meal.”
Maybe you’ve wondered: what are they talking about?
Well, discussion of the Eucharist as sacrifice is certainly no novelty. In fact, it’s probably how most Catholics predominantly discussed the sacrament, certainly until not too long ago.
But sacrifice? We’re in the twenty-first century, remember?
Okay, but that doesn’t make the Eucharist any less real as a sacrifice.
In the ancient world, including the times described in the Old Testament, sacrifice was the way one sealed a covenant. A covenant was not just a “contract” or an “agreement.” It was a life commitment between two parties. To enter a covenant was to undertake a most solemn obligation on which the parties staked their lives. You’ve heard the expression “cross my heart and hope to die”? That child’s phrase today expresses something of the gravity of the commitment two parties that bound themselves to each other made.
Covenants were brought into being with blood because, for most human beings in antiquity, blood was the seat of life. If your blood was spilled, you were weak. If spilled too much, you were dead. That is why animals were offered in sacrifice: their blood was supposed to represent the human covenant-makers.
Covenants could be between equals, but they usually were between unequals, between a superior and a subordinate. A defeated king who now became a vassal to his conquerer was bound by covenant.
And when God made covenants—with Abraham, with Moses, with Israel—those were most definitely covenants between unequals.
Covenant partners bound themselves by their lives to do (or not do) something vis-à-vis the other. A vassal bound himself not to be disloyal to his king and to defend him. Israel bound itself to keep God’s Law, and God bound himself to be their God and they his people.
God’s first covenant is creation: God bound himself to man in a special way by creating him in “his image and likeness.” Man broke that covenant by wanting to be not God’s image and likeness, but rather “like God” himself, deciding for himself what is good and what is evil. Israel broke God’s covenant by its constant religious backsliding.
“Again and again you offered a covenant to man and . . . taught him to hope for salvation.”
The final and definitive covenant, “the new and everlasting covenant,” is made with God in Christ. It is made with his blood, “not the blood of bulls and goats” (Heb. 9: 13-14), but of a human being who, at the same time, was God. As man he offered himself absolutely to God; as God, his offering is absolutely perfect. Jesus did what we could not but needed to do. He offered himself on the Cross, unto death.
But what does this have to do with the Eucharist?
Jesus explicitly speaks of the Eucharist as his body and his blood. They do not “represent” or “symbolize” his body and blood; they are his body and blood, “the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.” That act of Jesus’s absolute submission to his Father’s will, even unto death, is re-presented in every Mass.
Jesus clearly intended the Eucharist to be part of his offering on the cross. Catholic theology speaks of the Eucharist as making the “sacrifice of Christ present.”
But Jesus instituted the Eucharist on Holy Thursday night, and he didn’t die until Good Friday afternoon. So how are they connected?
Let’s remember that, for God, time is not past, present, and future. Jesus is not sitting at God’s right hand, waiting to see how history will turn out. “All time belongs to him,” we say during the inscription of the paschal candle at the Easter vigil. For us, mortal creatures, time is experienced as unfolding: past, present, and future. For God, all time is now.
So, yes, Jesus offered himself once and for all (a prime Protestant contention that also corresponds to Heb. 10:10). But Jesus’ offering encompassed his passion, death, and resurrection on Calvary that was already anticipated in the Last Supper and is made present in every Eucharist that has been celebrated from then until the end of time. This is Jesus offering himself.
Jesus enjoined his apostles to “do this in memory of me”—not as an afterthought, not as a “hey, Jesus did this, and isn’t it nice?” No, “memory” here in a Jewish context has a specific meaning. It is a making present of the thing being remembered here and now.
The Last Supper was a Passover meal. The Passover prefigures the Eucharist. When God institutes the Passover, he instructs Moses that Israel is to keep this “memorial” forever (Exod. 12:14) because every generation of Jews stands together with Moses and Aaron and the Jews of Egypt with whom God made this covenant. Even today, during the Passover meal, the youngest child asks, “Why is this night different from all others?” Take note of the verb and adjective: the child does not ask “why was that night different,” but “why is this night different?” Before Almighty God, every Jew who was, is, or will be was part of that Passover.
And if the Passover merely prefigures the sacrificial offering of the Lamb of God, the real offering on Calvary presupposes just as real a memory: whoever belongs to Christ is joined, in every Eucharist, to the Upper Room and Calvary. If by baptism we become part of Jesus’ death (Rom. 6:31-11), well, baptism makes us participants in that death in order to make us part of the mystical body of Christ.
So is the Eucharist a meal? Yes, but a unique kind of meal, because it is also a sacrifice, thanks to which (and thanks only to which) we are saved.
By taking part in and receiving the Eucharist, we—the mystical body of Christ—join the supreme offering of our head to God. That is why we speak of the priest as celebrating in persona Christi. It’s not “Father John’s Mass.” It’s Christ’s Mass, who acts through human ministers to accommodate us, mortal creatures bound to space and time, raising us up to God’s dimension not bound by such limits.
(To read more on the Eucharist as sacrifice, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p2s2c1a3.htm#1367">1362-72</a>.)

The Eucharist as a Sacrifice

<div>What is a papal conclave? What happens when a pope dies or resigns? What is an interregnum? How is a new pope elected? What percentage of cardinal electors is needed to elect a pope? How do we know when a new pope has been elected?</div><div>A papal conclave is the election process by which a new pope, the visible head of the Catholic Church, is selected.
Catholics believe that the pope is the vicar of Christ and successor of St. Peter, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/what-do-catholics-believe-about-the-pope">the visible leader of the universal Church</a>, against which Jesus promises the gates of hell will never prevail <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/pillar-of-fire-pillar-of-truth">(Matt. 16:18-19)</a>. After a pope dies or resigns, a papal <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/conclave">conclave</a> commences within three weeks to elect his successor. A conclave of the cardinals—officially known as the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/does-god-pick-the-pope" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">College of Cardinals</a>—gathers in Vatican City in which these papal electors choose the next pope.
<h2>The Process of the Pope in the Catholic Church</h2>
When a pope dies or resigns, the Church follows a process established over centuries <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/papal-elections">to elect his successor</a>. The period between two popes is called an <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/who-ran-the-catholic-church-after-john-paul-ii-died-and-before-benedict-xvi-was-elected">interregnum</a>, Latin for “between reigns” of two popes. Despite the absence of a pope for a period of time, the faithful take comfort in knowing that the Church continues, reminded that the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of kings (Rev. 17:14), never relinquishes his divine reign over his Catholic Church.
<h2>The Rarity of Papal Resignations</h2>
Rare is the case in which a pope resigns. In February 2013, Pope Benedict XVI was the first pope in almost six hundred years to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/there-were-clues-pointing-to-pope-benedicts-decision">resign his office</a>.
If a pope dies—the much more common scenario—there are nine days of mourning, as prescribed in the apostolic constitution that governs the election of a pope, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_22021996_universi-dominici-gregis.html">Universi Domenici Gregis</a> (UDG), which Pope St. John Paul issued in 1996 (13b; 27).
<h2>The Election Process in a Papal Conclave</h2>
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI restored the traditional requirement that a <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/la/motu_proprio/documents/hf_ben-xvi_motu-proprio_20070611_de-electione.html">two-thirds majority</a> of cardinal electors is needed to elect a pope, no matter how many ballots is required to complete the conclave voting process. In his <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/motu_proprio/documents/hf_ben-xvi_motu-proprio_20130222_normas-nonnullas.html">2013 motu propio Normas Nonnullas (NN)</a>, Benedict further decreed that, whether a pope dies or resigns, the election of his successor must commence <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/motu_proprio/documents/hf_ben-xvi_motu-proprio_20130222_normas-nonnullas.html">after a maximum of twenty days</a> from when the papal see becomes vacant (37).
<h2>Historical Origins of the Papal Conclave</h2>
The word “conclave” derives from the Latin words cum clavis, meaning “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/conclave">with key</a>.” After the death of Pope Clement IV in November 1268, the interregnum dragged on for almost three years. The lay faithful of Viterbo, Italy, aided the selection process by locking the cardinal electors in the city’s episcopal palace and also limiting their food supply <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/conclave">until they elected a new pope</a>:
<blockquote>In 1271 the election that ended with the choice of Gregory X at Viterbo had lasted over two years and nine months when the local authorities, weary of the delay, shut up the cardinals within narrow limits and thus hastened the desired election (Raynald, Ann. Eccl., ad an. 1271). The new pope endeavored to obviate for the future such scandalous delay by the law of the conclave, which, almost in spite of the cardinals, he promulgated at the fifth session of the Second Council of Lyons in 1274 (Hefele, Hist. des Conciles, IX, 29). It is the first occasion on which we meet with the word conclave in connection with papal elections.</blockquote>
<h2>Voting Eligibility in the Papal Conclave</h2>
In a papal <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/conclave">conclave</a>, the College of Cardinals gathers to select the next pope. The college is composed of Catholic bishops from around the world whom a pope has selected. Cardinal electors are eligible until they reach <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_22021996_universi-dominici-gregis.html">eighty years of age</a> to vote for a pope. The cardinals gather in the Sistine Chapel for a secret election, secret to thwart outside interference, as papal conclave history has included <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/papal-elections">political interference over the centuries</a>. The cardinals pray for the Holy Spirit’s guidance before casting their votes. To be elected, a candidate must receive a two-thirds majority.
<h2>The Announcement of a New Pope</h2>
Once the new pope is chosen, and provided he accepts his election, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/white-smoke-valid-pope">white smoke rises</a> from the Sistine Chapel. In the meantime, the new Roman pontiff selects a papal name, and subsequently he is announced to the world from the balcony of St. Peter&#8217;s Basilica with the words “Habemus papam!” (We have a pope!).
For more on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/what-do-catholics-believe-about-the-pope">what Catholics believe about the pope</a>, and what happens when a pope dies, see our <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/what-do-catholics-believe-about-the-pope">related tract</a>.
</div>

What is a papal conclave?

Christians talk a lot about the gospel, but what actually is it?
An easy answer is that it’s “good news.” That’s what the Greek and Hebrew terms translated gospel mean, and we get the English word gospel from roots that mean “good news.”
But what is the good news that the gospel contains? What is it, specifically?
That’s where things get fuzzy. Christians don’t have a single, clear definition for what the gospel is. There are several different uses for the term.
This is a problem because St. Paul has stern things to say about people who don’t understand the gospel correctly. He writes,
<blockquote>I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed.
As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed (Gal. 1:6-9).</blockquote>
In Paul’s view, anyone who has a fundamentally different gospel is to be condemned and ejected from the Christian community. So making sure that you have a correct understanding of the gospel is very important. Yet this is where we run into trouble.
Sometimes people use the term very broadly. For example, GotQuestions <a href="https://www.gotquestions.org/what-is-the-gospel.html">states</a>, “The gospel is, broadly speaking, the whole of Scripture.”
The gospel is a good thing, and Scripture is a good thing, so it sounds inspiring to link the two concepts and say that all of Scripture belongs to the gospel. It could even sound irreverent to propose that there are things in Scripture that are not part of the gospel.
But if you think about it, problems with the claim emerge. There are verses in the New Testament that say that Andrew was the brother of Simon Peter, but do we really want to say that the historical fact that Andrew was the brother of Peter—in some acceptable, first-century definition of the term “brother”—is part of the gospel?
What about Deuteronomy 3:11, which says that Og king of Bashan had a bed that was nine cubits long? Is the length of a pagan king’s bed really part of the gospel? Most Christians would not suppose so. It may be interesting that Og’s bed was nine cubits—or between thirteen and fourteen feet long—but this curious fact is scarcely something that warrants being considered an element in the gospel.
What’s going on in this definition is a pious identification of one sacred concept—the gospel—with another—Scripture. But this is not how Scripture itself uses the term gospel.
Even GotQuestions expresses reservations by saying that the gospel is the whole of Scripture “broadly speaking,” suggesting that this is an extended use of the term rather than how you’d define it properly.
Of course, language changes over time, and communities can use terms however they see fit. If some groups identify all of Scripture with the gospel, they can do that. But we need to be honest about the fact that this is not how Scripture uses the term.
Other Christians who have a very broad understanding of the gospel make it identical with the whole of Christian teaching. Any doctrine of the faith is part of “the gospel” on this usage.
For example, the Lutheran Book of Concord says that the term gospel is used two ways in Scripture and that
<blockquote>in the one case the word [gospel] is used in such a way that we understand by it the entire teaching of Christ, our Lord, which in his public ministry on earth and in the New Testament he ordered to be observed (Book of Concord, Formula of Concord 2:5:4).</blockquote>
Here the term gospel would be identified either with all the teachings of the Christian faith or at least with those taught by Jesus himself.
But it’s pretty easy to see that this is not how the Bible is using the term. To give an example I often use, one truth of the Christian faith is the existence of angels. Jesus himself taught that angels exist. But the biblical authors wouldn’t say that the existence of angels is part of the gospel.
One reason is that the existence of angels is taught in the Old Testament, but the gospel is something new. It hasn’t been with us all through redemptive history. Whatever the good news of the gospel is, it’s something associated with the New Testament, not the Old.
Another problem with this approach is that if St. Paul is correct that anyone with an incorrect understanding of the gospel is to be regarded as accursed, and if the gospel is identified with the whole of Christian doctrine, then you won’t be able to have fellowship with anyone who disagrees with you on any point of doctrine.
The one point of doctrine on which you disagree with someone means he has a false gospel, and you need to regard him as accursed and kick him out.
Most Christians don’t hold this view. In the Protestant community, it is common to say that Christians can have different opinions on doctrines as long as they agree on “the essentials.”
The trouble comes when trying to identify what counts as an essential. People have different views on what is essential. For example, in many Protestant communities, the idea that we are saved strictly by God’s grace and not by our own efforts is common.
This claim is true, but in some circles it has led to an identification between the gospel and the concept of grace. You’ll recall that the Lutheran Book of Concord stated that the term gospel is used in two senses, one of which is identified with the whole of Christian doctrine. The other, more restricted sense is based on a Lutheran tendency to divide biblical teaching up into two categories that Luther referred to as law and gospel. The Book of Concord continues:
<blockquote>In addition, however, the word “gospel” is also used in another (that is, in a strict) sense. Here it does not include the proclamation of repentance but solely the preaching of God’s grace. . . .
Everything that preaches about our sin and the wrath of God, no matter how or when it happens, is the proclamation of the law. On the other hand, the gospel is a proclamation that shows and gives nothing but grace and forgiveness in Christ (Book of Concord, Formula of Concord 2:5:6, 12).</blockquote>
On this view, law is anything that discusses our sin or God’s wrath, whereas gospel is anything that deals with grace and forgiveness in Christ.
It’s okay if Lutherans want to use the terms law and gospel this way in their own community and classify different verses in Scripture according to these two categories. But we need to be exegetically honest about the fact that this is not how Scripture itself employs these terms. They are definitions that come from a later age and are being used to classify Scripture, but Scripture does not conceptualize the terms in this way.
For example, the primary meaning of the term law in the New Testament is a reference not to human sin and divine wrath, but simply to the Law of Moses that God gave during the Exodus. Although that law does have things to say about sin and wrath, it also contains promises of grace and provisions for forgiveness.
Another problem with the idea of being united on essentials while allowing diversity on non-essentials is that people also tend to identify their own movement’s distinctive doctrines as essentials and thus as parts of the gospel.
For example, some Pentecostals use the phrase “full gospel” and hold that many Protestants are not preaching all the elements they need to for a full presentation of the gospel. One element they hold is part of the gospel is the idea that God continues to give miraculous gifts. GotQuestions.org <a href="https://www.gotquestions.org/Full-Gospel-church.html">explains</a>:
<blockquote>A “Full Gospel Christian” believes that the Holy Spirit is still doing everything he was doing in the New Testament Gospels: He is still healing, giving the gift of tongues, performing miracles, etc.</blockquote>
So you don’t have the full gospel unless you include miraculous gifts in it. Most Protestants don’t teach this, and so for Full Gospel Christians, most Christians have a truncated version of the gospel.
On the other hand, Calvinists stress what they refer to as “the doctrines of grace.” These are teachings connected with grace and predestination that they refer to as the “five points of Calvinism” and summarize with the acronym TULIP (total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, perseverance of the saints).
Many Calvinists think that the doctrines of grace are so important that you have to teach them to have a correct understanding of the gospel. I’ve known Calvinists who hold that, and if you point out that this would imply that non-Calvinists don’t actually have the gospel, they’ll sheepishly admit that this is the case: Non-Calvinists don’t really teach the gospel.
These two positions identify the gospel with the views of particular groups—certain Pentecostals and Calvinists—but most don’t identify the gospel so narrowly with their own movement.
Many seek to identify the gospel with something broader—something most or all Protestants could get on board with.
For example, there are slogans in Protestantism like sola fide (Latin, “by faith alone”). The claim is that we are justified by faith alone, and this was a big point of controversy during the Reformation.
To justify breaking away from the Catholic Church, Protestants accused it of teaching a false gospel. They said Paul preached the idea of justification by faith alone, and so sola fide expressed an essential element of the gospel.
If anyone taught that anything besides faith was involved in justification, it was argued that he was in some degree engaging in self-justification and adding “works” to the gospel, making it a false understanding. They then appealed to the passage from Galatians where Paul condemns anyone with a different understanding of the gospel.
There are a number of problems with this understanding, and we don’t have time to go through them all at the moment. However, it’s worth pointing out that “by faith alone” is not the language of Scripture. The phrase is used only once—in James 2:24—where it is rejected.
It’s also worth pointing out that Catholics don’t have a problem with the formula “faith alone,” provided you understand the faith in question correctly. Pope Benedict XVI stated,
<blockquote>Luther’s phrase “faith alone” is true, if it is not opposed to faith in charity, in love. . . . So it is that, in the letter to the Galatians, in which he primarily developed his teaching on justification, that St. Paul speaks of “faith that works through love” (General Audience, Nov. 19, 2008, quoting Gal. 5:6).</blockquote>
In light of growing Catholic-Protestant rapprochement, some Protestants have backed off on the necessity of the “faith alone” formula and been more open to the idea that the gospel merely requires that it’s God’s grace that saves us. They might identify the gospel with another Reformation-era slogan, the idea that we’re saved sola gratia (“by grace alone”).
One of the most common ways of presenting the gospel is that it is the message of eternal salvation. It’s all about sin and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.
The idea is that you are a sinner, and you cannot save yourself. If left to your own devices, you will spend eternity in hell. That’s the bad news many preachers say one needs to understand to appreciate the good news or gospel.
The good news is that God has not left us to our own devices. He sent his Son Jesus Christ to die for us, and so he graciously offers to forgive our sins if we repent and believe in his Son. That way, we can be saved from sin and from hell and spend eternity with God in heaven.
It so happens that every one of the claims I’ve just described is true. But is this the way the New Testament conceptualizes the gospel, or does the New Testament understand it some other way?
We’ll explore that question next time.

Misunderstanding the Gospel

One of the biggest “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pill_and_blue_pill">red pills</a>” behind my conversion was realizing that the vast majority of Protestants (including myself) had virtually the same theology of history as the Latter-day Saints church (the Mormons), and we didn’t even realize it. I found the consequences of this to be extremely disturbing.
<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/the-restoration/the-great-apostasy?lang=eng">The LDS church teaches</a> that after the death of the last apostle, the authority of the priesthood and the keys was lost. As a result, Christians fell into deeper and deeper error, and the true faith was lost. They call this the “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/in-search-of-the-great-apostasy">Great Apostasy</a>.”
Many Protestants—often prevented from realizing it by historical ignorance—believe basically the same thing. This was one of the most sobering conclusions I came to in my final days as a Protestant, and it helped lead to my conversion.
Here’s why.
To have any religion whatsoever, you must, at minimum, have three doctrines:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How you join the religion (initiation)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How the members of the religion govern themselves, who has authority, etc. (government)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How the religion worships whatever deity/deities it acknowledges</li>
</ol>
Without these three, it’s arguably impossible to claim you even have a religion.
On these three matters, the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/who-were-the-church-fathers">Church Fathers</a>—the Christian leaders of whom we have any record from the earliest days of the Church through roughly the first millennium—are UNANIMOUS.
They UNANIMOUSLY believed in:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-necessity-of-baptism">baptismal regeneration</a> (how we become Christians),</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/apostolic-succession">apostolic succession</a> (how the Church is governed), and</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-sacrifice-of-the-mass">the sacrifice of the Eucharist</a> (how Christians worship).</li>
</ol>
Giving as much credit as possible, Anglicans and (some) Lutherans are the two biggest sects who believe in items one AND two. However, even if we say ALL of them believed in both (which is not true), together, they constitute only about twenty percent of worldwide Protestantism.
All Protestants reject item three (some Anglicans and Lutherans will quibble with this, but that’s for another article).
Thus, the vast majority of Protestants reject all three of these fundamental Christian doctrines upon which the ancient Church was unanimous and which are absolutely essential to having a religion of any kind whatsoever.
That means the vast majority of Protestants (including myself at one time) must necessarily believe—whether they realize it or not—that from the very first generation after the apostles forward, all Christians got it wrong on how we become Christians, how the Church is governed, and how Christians worship. In other words, they must believe that Christians got the essence of their religion wrong, that it got worse and worse through time, and that this began right after the death of the last apostle, since every Church Father of which we have any record is squarely opposed to Protestantism on these three fundamental doctrines.
While these Protestants do not claim to believe this is what happened, this is nonetheless the necessary conclusion if their doctrines are true, making their theology of history virtually identical with that of the LDS Church.
This is absurd for various reasons, but here is where it gets very disturbing.
If this is true—that the fundamentals of Christianity were essentially lost from the first post-Apostolic generation, but have been available in one form or another for the 500 years since the Reformation—then this conclusion necessarily follows: what God in the flesh established in the first century was weaker than what men like Luther, Calvin, and others re-established in the sixteenth century.
I made the same objection to Mormon missionaries who visited me for several weeks. “If your religion is true,” I said, “then what Christ himself established was weaker than what Joseph Smith re-established.”
As disturbing as I found this conclusion about the nature of my own Protestantism, it was nonetheless true in light of the facts of history.
I realized I had been deceived by a religious system that had surreptitiously claimed to achieve something greater than even the apostles.
I explore this subject in greater detail in <a href="https://www.joshuatcharles.com/blog/2023/8/18/becoming-catholic-38-protestantisms-mormonism-problem">this article</a>.

The Protestant-Mormon Problem

Throughout his voluminous writings, St. Augustine has constantly reminded us of a theological maxim ancient even in his time: man is made in the image and likeness of God. Of course, this is more than merely a maxim. It is a God-breathed fact, first made explicit in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis (1:26).
This first principle of Christian anthropology was fundamental to all of Augustine’s thought. He understood that it sets the context for all of salvation history, putting into proper perspective man’s original greatness, the gravity of sin, the significance of his redemption, and the glory of the heavenly life to come. Across his prolific corpus of writings there are more than eight hundred <a href="https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&amp;context=cc_fac_pub">direct references</a> to “the image and likeness of God” in his letters, sermons, and books.
What does it mean to be human? Augustine’s thought on this topic evolved dramatically over the course of his life. Before his Christian conversion, he was heavily influenced by the <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm">Manicheans</a>, a heretical cult that held the soul to be good while demonizing the body. The Manicheans viewed the idea of the incarnation of God to be utter foolishness, as they could not conceive of why or how anything divine could subject itself to such condescension. In time, Augustine renounced the worldview of the Manicheans, referring to them in his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Saint-Augustine/dp/0872208168">Confessions</a> as “a sect of men talking high-sounding nonsense, carnal and wordy men.”
As Augustine moved from Manichaeism to embrace Christianity, he came to embrace a positive theology of the body. Not only did his Christian anthropology deviate from that of his former Manichean stance, but it also departed from that of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who otherwise had an overall profound effect on Augustine’s thought throughout the latter’s life.
Plato believed that the human soul is trapped in the body, and the body is (here akin to the Manichean stance) a hindrance to be shed. True human freedom, therefore, involved the liberation of the soul from the body. Augustine did not accept this narrative. He understood that the body, though corrupted by sin, is inherently good. The Christian goal is not to renounce the body and the life proper to it, but rather to renounce sin and subordinate the body to the spirit—to what is reasonable and good.
Augustine knew the body’s original goodness. And with <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Corinthians%2015&amp;version=RSV">St. Paul</a> and the tradition of the Church, he acknowledged that we are destined for resurrection and glorification of the body: “It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44). When the rational soul fully rules the body, the body becomes fully what it is meant to be as a human body.
Thus, Augustine teaches that the rational soul is what makes the human person like God. But, he is careful to point out, it is not right to think of the body as wholly separate from the soul’s powers. Augustine was not a dualist. He did not take the position (as did, say, René Descartes) that the soul and body are two distinct things interacting with each other. The soul is not the conductor or “engine” of the body. Rather, the body and the soul are one thing.
Since the human person is one integrated unity, human action becomes the physical outpouring of the rational spirit. As a triangle is not separate from its shape, the soul and body are one. As such, we can say that the soul infuses every aspect of the body.
St. Thomas Aquinas takes Augustine as his authority on this matter. In his Summa Theologiae, Thomas <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1076.htm">rebuts</a> the notion that the soul functions as the motor of the body. He writes, “On the contrary, Augustine says, that ‘in each body the whole soul is in the whole body, and in each part is entire.’” In fact, we know this Augustinian principle to be true intuitively, for everyone understands without reflection that when we are punched anywhere in the body—whether in the arm or the foot or the ear—it is not only that part of us that is punched. If you punch a part of me, you punch me—and that is because (repeating Augustine) “in each body the whole soul is in the whole body, and in each part is entire.”
Furthermore, teaches Augustine, in our bodies we reveal our distinct humanness in rational actions like thought and prayer. The animals do not have an interior life—and any observation of even the highest animals bears no indication that they ponder the big questions as humans do. Augustine writes that, therefore, “the bodies of all animals, whether those that live in the water or those that live on land or those that fly around in the air, are bent forward to the earth, and do not have an upright posture like the human body.” Even our bodily postures become reflections of our humanity.
The great St. Ambrose was a “family friend” of Augustine and became a theological guide and mentor. He introduced Augustine to the concept of the incarnate Christ as the original image-bearer. Christ is the original eikon of God, writes Paul: “He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation” (Col. 1:15). Man, insofar as he imitates Christ, then, makes himself an exposition of the divine image. Theologian <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Augustines-Early-Theology-Image-Development/dp/0190251360/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1JXLF70P4XN85&amp;keywords=boersma+early+theology+of+image&amp;qid=1691705086&amp;sprefix=boersma+early+rhwology+of+imag%2Caps%2C159&amp;sr=8-1">Gerald Boersma</a> sums it up: “Christ is the image of God and the human person is the image of God inasmuch as he imitates Christ.”
But though it formed a part of his anthropology, this line of thought was not ultimately sufficient for Augustine. He insisted that there must be something inherent in man from the beginning, from the first moment of his existence at conception, that bears the divine image. As such, even the greatest sinner still deserves love and mercy, not because of what he has done, but because of what he is. Thus, Augustine concludes that the mind—or the “inner man”—is the common denominator that makes all human persons equally God-like.
In his great work on Trinitarian theology, De trinitate, Augustine reflects upon how man’s life of the mind emulates the inner life of the Trinity. There are three elements that characterize every act of the mind, he proposes
<ul>
<li>the object of thought, which can be external (e.g., a tree) or internal (e.g., a memory);</li>
<li>the faculty of the mind, which “receives” the object or is activated and formed by the object; and</li>
<li>the voluntary or “intentional” element, whereby we direct our mind toward its object.</li>
</ul>
Augustine teaches that these three elements are present in all our cognitive acts, from sense to perception to contemplation. But it is specifically these three elements in the act of contemplation that images God in us. When we exercise self-knowledge and enter into our interior life, we bend ourselves reflexively “into ourselves” and manifest a cognitive unity reminiscent of the inner life of the Blessed Trinity. For it is God alone who contemplates himself in love, and who finds in that divine self-contemplation perfect happiness.
Here, one cannot help but remember the famous Delphic maxim described by Plato, which commands us to “know thyself.” Indeed, it is our interior life that makes us human. But Augustine teaches us that we are more than our minds. We are more than our bodies. We are persons. If we are to understand what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God, this we must not forget.

How to Get a Godly Bod

Why Would God Create Someone to Go to Hell?

<div>Can magic be a central theme in a novel? (Not promoting witchcraft, of course.)</div><div>By and large, the Catholic Church has no position on such things. Some Church officials have had <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/vatican-slams-harry-potter-as-wrong-kind-of-hero-30859/">negative opinions</a> and some have had <a href="http://www.osservatoreromano.va/portal/dt?JSPTabContainer.setSelected=JSPTabContainer%2FDetail&amp;last=false=&amp;path=/news/cultura/2011/159q11-L-ultima-battaglia-di-Harry-Potter.html&amp;title=Harry%20Potter%27s%20last%20battle&amp;locale=en">positive opinions</a> of the most famous recent magical books, the Harry Potter series. It comes down to prudent judgment.
Ultimately, we need simply to ask ourselves if the story is advancing values that are contrary to our faith. If so, avoid it. If not, feel free. Reasonable and well-meaning people will disagree, but we should be asking the same question.
</div>

Is Magic in Stories OK?

Does Jesus’ Childhood Make Sense?

<div>Genesis 1:26 says, "Then God said: ’Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness.’" Do the plurals "us" and "our" refer to the Trinity?</div><div>Christian theologians have seen this as an implicit reference to the Trinity. In Christian theology, the persons of the Trinity all play a role in creation, especially in the creation of humanity.
Jewish scholars have seen this verse in two ways.
One is that God is simply talking to himself in the same way that a person would debate with himself about whether or not to do something. In this interpretation God is essentially using “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_plural">the royal we</a>.”
The other is that God in that verse is addressing both heavenly and earthly creations that already exist. In ancient Judaism, God was often portrayed as presiding over the heavenly assembly of angels and consulting with them (1 Kings 22:19–22; Isaiah 6:8; Psalms 29:1-2; 82; 89:6-7; Job 1:6; 2:1; 38:7). As to why God would consult with angels, the Jewish Talmud gives us this answer:
<blockquote>When Moses was engaged in writing the Torah, he had to write the work of each day. When he came to the verse, and God said: LET US MAKE MAN, etc., [Moses] said: &#8220;Sovereign of the Universe! Why dost Thou furnish an excuse to heretics?&#8221;
&#8220;Moses,&#8221; said the Lord to him, &#8220;this man that I have created—do I not cause men both great and small to spring from him? Now, if a great man comes to obtain permission [for a proposed action] from one that is less than he, he may say, &#8216;Why should I ask permission from my inferior!&#8217; Then they will answer him, &#8216;Learn from thy Creator, who created all that is above and below, yet when He came to create man He took counsel with the ministering angels.’&#8221;</blockquote>
</div>

Why Does God Self-Refer in the Plural?

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

<div>At Mass recently there was a Communion line where an Anglican vicar distributed Communion for non-Catholics. Is this allowed?</div><div>One must at least be a Catholic layman to distribute Holy Communion at Mass (Code of Canon Law, <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_PV.HTM#15">can. 230.1</a>). So Anglican priests would not qualify, nor would other non-Catholics. See also <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/on-facilitating-reception-of-communion-in-certain-circumstances-2178" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Immensae Caritatis</a>, the 1973 document that authorized extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.
Regarding the reception of Holy Communion, please the <a href="http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/order-of-mass/liturgy-of-the-eucharist/guidelines-for-the-reception-of-communion.cfm">U.S. Bishops’ guidelines</a> and <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_P2T.HTM">canon 844</a>.
</div>

Anglican Priests May Not Distribute Communion

Some critics say not only that Catholics can be socialists, but that they should be socialists because that was how the first Christians lived. They cite Acts 2:45, which says, “all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.” But when we examine the biblical and historical evidence a different picture emerges: the first Christians lived in communities that practiced voluntary charity rather than mandatory communism or socialism.
Classic socialism (which in many contexts is interchangeable with the term “communism”) rejects the natural right to own private property. Bhaskar Sunkara, the editor of the popular socialist magazine Jacobin <a href="https://jacobin.com/2016/02/socialism-marxism-private-property-person-lennon-imagine-kenny-loggins">wrote in 2016</a>, “Radically changing things would mean taking away the source of capitalists’ power: the private ownership of property.” This is why <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html">Pope Leo XIII said</a>, “the main tenet of socialism, [the] community of goods, must be utterly rejected.”
Nowhere in the New Testament do we find a prohibition against owning private property. We do find the practice of believers placing goods at the apostles’ feet for communal distribution (Acts 4:34-35), but even this generosity is not mandated for all Christians.
Given the persecution of the early Church, it made sense for Christians to share communal property and meet in private homes for worship (1 Cor. 16:19), but those practices are not proof that all Christians are obliged to live this way. If socialism was morally required of Christians we would expect the New Testament to say this or at least mandate a tithe, but as New Testament scholar <a href="https://www.marketsandmorality.com/index.php/mandm/article/download/705/685">Craig Blomberg points out</a>, while tithing was commanded of God’s people in the Old Testament, “no New Testament text ever mandates a tithe but rather commands generous and sacrificial giving instead.”
Further, Acts 2:45 does not unambiguously say first century Christians completely renounced private property. The verse literally says of the faithful and their possessions, “they were selling and were dividing them to all” (Gr. hyparxeis epipraskon kai diemerizon auta) rather than “they had sold and distributed them to all.”  Luke’s use of imperfect verbs in this verse seems to describe a continuing process of selling extra property and goods in order to support the poor. But in order to do that Christians would have had to retain some private property even after becoming believers.
Some critics contend that the story of Ananias and Sapphira shows that renouncing property and giving it to the apostles was mandatory. Acts 5 describes how this couple, “kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” But a careful reading of the passage shows the couple’s sin was not their mere withholding of property from the collection. Peter says the property was theirs before they sold it. Rather, it was their lie to the Apostles, who represented God’s authority that incurred this fatal judgment (Acts 5:3-4).
After the apostolic age, pagan critics like Lucian and Christian apologists like Justin Martyr describe Christians sharing goods in common with one another, a practice which isn’t surprising given that by the second century Jews who worshipped Jesus had been expelled from the synagogues and the Romans persecuted those who openly admitted to being Christian. Deprived of traditional social structures, Christians relied on each other for survival and were so generous that the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate <a href="http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_letters_1_trans.htm">noted how they</a> “support not only their own poor but ours as well; all men see that our people lack aid from us.”
However, the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart in his article, &#8220;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/opinion/sunday/christianity-communism.html">Are Christian Supposed to Be Communists?</a>&#8221; claims Christians repudiated wealth even after they were longer persecuted, saying, as an example: “The great John Chrysostom frequently issued pronouncements on wealth and poverty that make Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin sound like timid conservatives.” But believers were required not to renounce their wealth, but to be generous with the poor. Chrysostom said as much <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1915.htm">with words that would outrage Karl Marx:</a>
<blockquote>A rich man is one thing, a rapacious man is another: an affluent man is one thing, a <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04462a.htm">covetous</a> man is another. Make clear distinctions, and do not confuse things which are diverse. Are you a rich man? I forbid you not. Are you a rapacious man? I denounce you. Have you property of your own? Enjoy it. Do you take the property of others? I will not hold my peace.</blockquote>
In short, the early Church challenges us to be generous with whatever blessings God has given us. It does not teach that Christians are required to give up private property in favor of socialism, much less that they endorse socialism. This can be seen in St. Paul’s petition to the Corinthians that they give to a collection for poor believers in Judea. He never commanded them to do this, but instead he hoped, “it may be ready not as an exaction but as a willing gift . . . Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:5,7).

The First Christians Were Not Socialists

It’s a <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-does-kamala-is-brat-mean-how-gen-z-memes-turned-kamala-harris-into-a-brat-summer-icon">brat girl summer</a> . . . and, frankly, it’s a little alarming.
The summer of 2022 presented as <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/popculture/what-is-feral-girl-summer-meaning-rcna28179">feral girl summer</a>, in which we were all called to celebrate our wild side. This led, in 2023, to <a href="https://www.today.com/popculture/rat-girl-summer-rcna100800">rat girl summer</a>, which encouraged females to scurry aimlessly outside their homes while nibbling snacks. Now, in 2024, we are celebrating the summer of the brat, a term to denote late-night partying, volatile female emotions, and a shade of lime green that looks good on exactly no one.
Adult females are, in essence, spending summer after summer in the least appealing ways possible and convincing themselves that it’s a cute way to celebrate their girlhood.
The primary problem with this is that they are no longer in girlhood and should have long ago advanced to womanhood. Charlie XCX, the British pop star whose album launched the brat trend, is thirty-one years old, and <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/charli-xcx-brat-review-1235031414/">Rolling Stone</a> defines brat as “a hyperpop roller coaster of post-Saturn return, early-thirties anxieties, and It-girl bravado.”
If I chose to be generous about extending youth beyond the time it is strictly necessary, I would say that a person is in adulthood when she reaches the age of a college grad. This is typically around twenty-two to twenty-four and allows for several years of post-high school shenanigans. By the time a person reaches her thirties, she should be well beyond youth and fully embracing mature adulthood.
But the unfortunate truth is that people without the grounding of marriage and children can struggle to grow up. <a href="https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/womens-impact-on-the-economy">Recent studies</a> forecast that 45 percent of women ages twenty-five to forty-four will be single by the year 2030. This leaves us with a disconcerting number of lime green-clad women scurrying around the streets, eating snacks.
For further proof that our women are stuck in adolescence, we need not look beyond the album that gave us all these brats. Charlie XCX delivered catchy electronic club vibes with an honest analysis of her own insecurities and mean-girl tendencies. She discusses the frenemy who she couldn’t be even if she tried; living as 365 party girl, but often feeling like a wallflower at those parties; how it’s so confusing to be a girl; and how she wishes she could rewind to simpler times. In short, this album is loaded with lyrics that would be appropriate for pubescent teenagers, but it is somehow instead the anthem of our thirty-year-olds—and, in an especially alarming case, a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/23/kamala-harris-charli-xcx-brat">fifty-nine-year-old </a>who is running for president.
In short, women are regressing. Our extremely feminist culture has brought us from the early days of desiring that women have a vote, through the Sexual Revolution, and now to this new stage of encouraging women not to be women at all, but remain in a strange stage of volatile adolescence.
With this regression comes the same mean-girl bullying that we all learned to fear in our school days. This is showcased perfectly in the recent attack on the “<a href="https://www.thetimes.com/magazines/the-sunday-times-magazine/article/meet-the-queen-of-the-trad-wives-and-her-eight-children-plfr50cgk">Queen of the Trad Wives</a>,” also known as Hannah Neeleman, published in the London Times. The article interviews Neeleman about her life as a mother of eight living on a farm that was made successful by her own efforts on social media. However, in spite her obvious success in multiple areas of the life she has chosen, she is slammed as being oppressed by her husband and children, who, the author claims, are constantly correcting, interrupting, and hanging on her. The message is clear: no matter how beautiful, successful, and fulfilled your life seems, you can’t possibly be happy if you have a husband and children suffocating your feminist potential.
This feminist trend of calling any conservative woman oppressed was also analyzed by <a href="https://reason.com/2024/08/01/from-usha-vance-to-ballerina-farm-denying-conservative-womens-individuality/?itm_source=parsely-api&amp;utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">Elizabeth Nolan Brown</a>, who comments that this same phenomenon is seen in the liberal reaction again J.D. Vance’s wife, Usha. Brown points out how condescending it is to assume that a woman is incapable of wanting something different from the feminist ideal: “This manifests as utter disbelief that women like Hannah Neeleman and Usha Vance could be happy co-pilots in the lives they and their husbands are leading. . . . But it&#8217;s not actually feminist to paint all women with one brushstroke. Women are not and will never be a monolith.”
Granted, not all of us want to live on a farm with eight kids, but in the same vein, not all of us want to throw ourselves into a career. Women should be free to live a variety of lives, but regressing to mean-girl adolescent tendencies is never going to be a successful solution for empowering women, and giving up on adulthood altogether and living the life of a volatile party girl is similarly useless. For women to thrive and succeed, we need all of humanity to thrive, and for humanity to thrive, we need the family unit to thrive. J. Michael Miller, in <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/revitalizing-society-through-the-family-vision-of-john-paul-ii-10443">his analysis</a> of the work of John Paul II, distilled it beautifully when he said, “Whenever a family fosters love, it performs an inestimable service to society and to the coming of the kingdom. If we are first a communion within the family, then we can later enter into communities in society. A civilization of love has its roots in a family of lovers.”
Trends come and go (thankfully), but truth is a timeless foundation to build your life on. Women cannot operate in a world separate from men and children any more than a child can survive without its mother or men can thrive without women. We all need one another.
When we crumble into a life that is selfish and self-centered, we rapidly become brats. As I have said to my children—and I’m sure many of you have said to yours—“don&#8217;t be a brat.”

Don’t Be a Brat

<div>How does the Catholic Church view intersex people? May they be ordained?</div><div>While some persons may exhibit aspects of both male and female reproductive organs or have physiological “intersex” characteristics of another sort, the Catholic Church recognizes that every person is intrinsically either male or female. Fr. Tad Pacholczyk, the Director of Education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, <a href="https://www.ncbcenter.org/making-sense-of-bioethics-cms/column-132-seeing-through-the-intersex-confusion?rq=seeing%20through%20the%20intersex%20confusion">addresses the matter well in this article</a>.
In addition, all such individuals should be accorded respect as persons made in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen. 1:26-27).
Finally, any intrinsically male person is eligible to be considered as a potential candidate for the priesthood.
</div>

What About ‘Intersex’ Persons?

In this episode, Trent gives advice on how to overcome a common rhetorical technique in discussions over the Bible.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq8-lg1_60E"> When Atheists Misread The Bible</a>
Transcription:
Have you ever been in a discussion with someone about theology and the other person rattled off dozens of memorized Bible verses to try to show you’re wrong? Or have you engaged in a comment thread and one person just lists dozens of Bible verses after their claim in a way that makes the debate overwhelming.
I call this the Bible Blitzkrieg and it often makes conversations about the Faith much more difficult than they need to be. If you feel overwhelmed by the blitzkrieg, or if you see others being the victim of it, or if you’re tempted to use it yourself, today’s episode should give you a helpful shield against this rhetorical onslaught.
Now, at the outset I want to say it isn’t bad to memorize scripture. In fact, it’s awesome to do that. While some Catholics do this well, I notice Protestants tend to be more adept at it, especially Evangelicals raised in environments that promote memorization through programs like Awana for children.
St. Jerome famously said that “ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.” so we should always commend a person’s intimate knowledge of scripture. But it is one thing to know what the Bible says and another thing to know what it means. St. Jerome said of a heretical group called the Luciferians “let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning.” (Dialogue with Luciferians)
As St. Jerome shows that anyone can string along biblical citations and say they are correct, but that doesn’t mean they are correct. The second century Church father Irenaeus of Lyon said the following about how heretics distort scripture to support their false doctrines:
By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skillful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox . . .
So according to Irenaeus, a heretic can take scripture and make it say something completely different just as a counterfeit artist can take gemstones that form a king’s image and rearrange them to make the stones “say” something else. The same materials are used in each case, but they are presented in different ways in order to get true or false results.
A Protestant should admit that extremely heretical people can know the letter of the scripture very well. For example, you can find Jehovah’s Witness, for example, who can cite dozens of passages that, according to them, show Jesus is not equal in divinity with the Father. A Christian who isn’t prepared might be overwhelmed at all this data that seems to conflict with what the Church teaches. But a well-studied Protestant would rightly tell them the Witnesses that, when each of those verses is reviewed one at a time, you can see that none of them disprove the deity of Christ. And the same is true when one goes through the dozens of Bible verses that can sometimes be cited in a Protestant Bible Blitzkrieg.
And to be fair, I’ve seen Catholics do the same thing. It’s not uncommon for Catholics to say something like “We are not saved faith alone” and then cite a bunch of Bible verses about the role of works in salvation. That doesn’t help move the conversation forward because a Protestant can do the same thing and just cite verses that he says prove we are not saved by works.
That’s why the Protestant scholar D.A. Carson once said “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” Making a statement and then defending it with only a dozen Bible citations is nothing more than grandstanding or a mild form of intimidation. It’s like saying “How can I be wrong when all these Bible verses say I’m right?”
A better approach would be to show how all the verses fit together. Verses that say we aren’t saved by works show how we are initially saved by merely accepting God’s grace through the sacrament of baptism. A baby does nothing to be saved, he just receives this gift from God. As the Catechism says “Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification.” (CCC 2010)
But after we are saved good works increase our holiness and bad works damage our relationship with God. Unrepentant grave evil can even cause us to be separated from God forever.
Everyone who cites the Bible in defense of their views, including non-Christians like Jehovah’s Witnesses and even Muslims should, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, avoid the blitzkrieg. If you are faced with it, just say you need time to go through the presented evidence. Eventually, after enough time, you will get through all of it. And in many cases you’ll see the cited verses aren’t just incorrect interpretations, they are irrelevant interpretations. The verse being cited has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. But that can be missed if you are just impressed by a mountain of Bible verses.
For example, atheists might present a long list of atrocities to show the Bible is evil but you can show that in many of these cases the Bible is just describing human evil, it isn’t endorsing or commanding it. (For more on that, see my episode “When Atheists Misread the Bible” – linked below)
When you are faced with a “Bible blitzkrieg”, remember that this isn’t an actual war. You’re allowed to ask for a break so you can look up these verses and get back to your interlocutor. You can remind him that studying Bible verses is always better than slinging Bible verses. In addition, St. Peter reminds us that scripture contains difficult passages that people can misunderstand to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16) so you want to consult authoritative sources to find out what these verses might say and, at the least, what they absolutely cannot say.
This can be helpful because some Protestants operate under the mistaken assumption that Catholics are prohibited from reading or interpreting the Bible for themselves. They might cite the Second Vatican Council which said “the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church” (Dei Verbum, 10).
But the Church has only infallibly defined the meaning of a handful of biblical passages. The Church gives biblical scholars a wide degree of latitude in determining the literal and spiritual meaning of biblical texts, provided that they follow the council’s direction to be attentive to the “analogy of faith” and interpret the texts in light of all divine revelation. So, for example, a biblical interpreter could not assert that a particular Bible passage taught that Mary gave birth to other children or that Christ is not fully divine since the Church has infallibly taught those are false doctrines and so scripture can’t teach them.
Finally, don’t get discouraged if you are a Catholic and your Protestant friend knows more biblical citations than you do. The chapters and verses aren’t original to the Bible. The chapter divisions come from Archbishop Stephen Langton in the 13th century and the verse systems in most modern Bible comes from Robert Estienne in the 16th century. When Jesus showed the Sadducees that the Old Testament does refer to a resurrection of the dead, he said, “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush [emphasis added], where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” (Luke 20:37)
If Jesus can give an approximate citation of scripture, like “the passage about X” you and I can do the same. And if you are a Catholic that doesn’t know chapters and verses well, that doesn’t mean you’re biblically illiterate. Scott Hahn, a professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, once said that Protestants know the Bible like a mailman knows the neighborhood.
For example, the mailman knows the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood St. and so if he needs to get the mail to them he knows which streets to follow to get there. In the same way, Protestants who have a deep passion for understanding the Bible can cite a biblical passages exact chapter and verse. Catholics, on the other hand, know the Bible like kids know a neighborhood. They may not know the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood St., but they do know the Johnsons live on the top of the hill next to the house with the old green fence and the barking dog. They can get you to the same place, but in a more indirect way.
In the same way, Catholics know a lot of scripture even if they don’t remember everywhere it’s found in scripture. For example, they hear the Bible at mass or read biblical passages in Catholic devotionals and prayer books. They have an intuitive knowledge of scripture more than a formal knowledge.
But we should remember what St. Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Cor. 13:11)
We can all apply ourselves to having a mature knowledge of God’s word in sacred scripture. You can also post a favorite Bible verse at your desk or on the refrigerator each week. Another great method is listening to the Bible so that it is familiar, such as by listening to the Bible in a Year podcast. You can also practice listening to a chapter and then reading that same chapter of scripture. I like to use the truth and life audio bible for this. If you just spend 15 minutes reading and listening to one chapter a day, you’ll finish the New Testament in less than a year.
Finally, praying the liturgy of the hours or lectio divina is a great way to be immersed in scripture and memorize it as, after just a few weeks, you’ll find yourself memorizing entire prayers from scripture like Mary’s Magnificat.
So, don’t feel like you can’t talk about the Bible just because you may not remember the chapter and verse where a passage is located. Even our Lord didn’t cite the Bible in this way! You can survive the “Bible Blitzkrieg” by humbly leading the person through different parts of scripture with the light of the Church’s teaching as a helpful guide to interpreting it.
Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.

Surviving the “Bible Blitzkrieg”

Catholics Can’t Be Pro-Choice

Daybreakers (2009) was the most expensive movie I ever watched. It was on a flight I had to rebook because I had missed the original one. It is a gem of wisdom—an apologetic for the Church&#8217;s attitude toward perversion of all kinds and a horror movie that features hope front and center.
It has at least three important Christian themes:
<ol>
<li>Sin makes us hypocrites as we despise those who go farther than us, without admitting that we are guilty of the same thing.</li>
<li>Dying to ourselves, though painful, is better than the living death that is sin.</li>
<li>Grace can be painful to experience, but ultimately, it gives the ability to live the full life we want but that we cannot live just by our own free will.</li>
</ol>
As a movie, Daybreakers is most spectacular in the beginning, opening with a montage of scenes that gradually establish the horror: a strange disease has caused almost everyone in the world to become a vampire. More horrible still, &#8220;humanity&#8221; has taken it in stride. Chrysler makes Chargers with proprietary day-driving technology. Busy vampires in crowds go to work, attend school, and do their shopping at night, and the remaining humans live either in sinister, &#8220;humane&#8221; blood-milking farms or hide in scattered rebel bands. As the blood supply dwindles, vampire hematologists race to develop an adequate blood substitute. The stakes are higher than satiation, or even survival, since blood-starved vampires become &#8220;subsiders&#8221; who feed on other vampires.
Many, including the actors and others involved in production of the movie, seem to think of it as <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PostPeakOil">a fable about fossil fuels</a>—but it is so much more powerful as a story about sin, the inevitable lack of real satisfaction that it gives, and the hypocrisy it engenders. The &#8220;normal vampires&#8221; rationalize their profoundly warped existence while expressing contempt for the ones who &#8220;go too far.&#8221; For example, in one scene, a vampire cop looks at a dead subsider and spits out, &#8220;Animals!&#8221; There is a similar phenomenon in the reality we live in now, most clearly seen with regard to sexual sins, such as when men and women who justify various kinds of perversions express disgust for pedophiles. It&#8217;s a false comfort to look down on people who take your own sin uncomfortably farther.
Indeed, few modern metaphors for sin are as precise as vampirism. Vampires, for instance, cannot see their reflections, just as serious sin alienates us so much that it even separates us from ourselves, to the point of forgetting what we really are. Sin, as the great novelist Sigrid Undset says through one of her characters, is <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1370150-kristin-lavransdatter">trampling on other people</a>. This antisocial character of sin is most clearly personified by a vampire, whose life depends on taking away the life of others. It is the most horrific illustration of the glutton, who lives to eat instead of eating to live. Similarly, even the most refined vampire is ultimately a being whose highest aim is satisfying his appetite. This last fact is particularly well captured in the movie&#8217;s depictions of normalcy in a regime of vampires: there&#8217;s still Starbucks; there are still crowds on the streets; high schoolers idle together outside; TVs are still on in lobbies; major news networks feature well-dressed vampire journalists interviewing politicians. Yet the yellow eyes of each person reveal the lust for blood uppermost in each mind.
Even more compelling than the psychological probing of sin is the implicit consideration of the role of grace. Its necessity is emphasized first. There are vampires who recognize the perversity of their situation and even make noble decisions from time to time. The protagonist, a scientist developing a blood substitute, loathes the fact that he has become a vampire and refuses to drink human blood. He exhibits good will, braves pressure from his vampire peers, and even shows heroism in helping and protecting the persecuted humans. Nevertheless, he cannot free himself on his own. Furthermore, it is significant that his attention in the first half of the movie is on developing  a &#8220;substitute&#8221; for human blood. It is similar to the way in which modern Western society obsesses over creating more and more ways of indulging the passions for violence and sex &#8220;without hurting anyone.&#8221; No one is prepared to dream of the possibility of curing the sickness itself.
As the movie progresses, something similar to grace emerges. In the most desperate hour, it is discovered that there is a way to reverse the transition to vampire. The transition is not made by mere self-help. Instead, it is by exposure to light and water. The scenes depicting these transformations are redolent of the Christian associations with both of these essential realities. Transformation comes with a great deal of pain—pain that is rewarded with being truly human again. Like Eustace peeling of his dragon skin in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, shedding evil hurts, but it also means becoming what we are meant to be.
Like any good movie, Daybreakers is not an allegory, but rather an example of how real art tends to &#8220;rhyme&#8221; with the deepest realities, which are supernatural. One of the &#8220;rhymes&#8221; is seen in a twist at the end of the movie. Like how the way in which grace, in some mysterious way, produces a new creature, as St. Paul says, so are these renewed humans endowed with a new ability. The tables are turned; it is now the vampires who must fear the humans, especially when they are prepared to offer their lives.
The gore in the film, rather than being gratuitous, accentuates the hidden theme: that, indeed, the wages of sin is death, even it is living death. Although one does not need to watch this movie to learn that, and though it may not be worth the price of a plane ticket, it is an example of a vigorous horror movie, invigorated by truth, that is worth watching.

Vampires and the Wages of Sin

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

Am I Selfish If I Fear Being Sent To Hell?

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.”
Almost exactly thirty years ago this week, in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, Pope St. John Paul II taught, “To believe in Christ means to desire unity; to desire unity means to desire the Church; to desire the Church means to desire the communion of grace which corresponds to the Father’s plan from all eternity. Such is the meaning of Christ’s prayer: Ut unum sint” (9). “May they all be one.”
As the Holy Father reminds us in his encyclical, Christian unity is fundamentally oriented to Trinitarian unity. This is the plain meaning of the Lord’s words that we heard today in the “high priestly prayer” of John 17:
<blockquote>That they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me (vv. 20-23).</blockquote>
John Paul II again: “The faithful are one because, in the Spirit, they are in communion with the Son and, in him, share in his communion with the Father.” It is very much in this vein that our new holy father Pope Leo chose as his episcopal motto a line from St. Augustine of Hippo, In Illo uno unum, “In the one [that is, Christ] we are one.”
I for one appreciate the pope’s emphasis on unity in these first days of his pontificate. One of the first addresses he gave, within a week of his election, was <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2025/may/documents/20250514-giubileo-chiese-orientali.html">to a group of Eastern Catholic Christians</a>. He emphasized the enduring value of their unique perspective in the Catholic Church as distinct from that of the Latin West. I’m reminded of a line from Peter Kreeft’s comments on today’s gospel: “Unity is not unison but harmony, which is better.” Those of us in the Ordinariates, and indeed others who appreciate the variety of traditions even in the Latin Church, can give a hearty “amen” to that.
Despite the apparent connectivity of our world, or perhaps partly because of it, Christians have never been less “one” than at the present. There are by some counts tens of thousands of separated Christian groups and denominations in the world; even by a more cautious estimate there are several thousand. It’s often said that it’s easier to break something than to restore it; easier to wound than to heal; easier to divide than unify. That seems pretty clearly true when it comes to how quickly new Christian denominations are started. And we all know that even within the visible unity of the Catholic Church there are clear divisions. We all pray that these will be addressed and salved under the leadership of the new pope, but they have been festering for many years and are unlikely to go away soon.
That paints a rather dark picture, one somewhat at odds with the more optimistic tone struck by JPII thirty years ago, riding as he was the tide of post-Vatican II ecumenical enthusiasm. To be fair, Ut Unum Sint rightly celebrated a certain change of tone in dialogue that many of us can appreciate. Referencing the council’s decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, John Paul spoke of the way that the Church can remain firmly committed to dogma while at the same time making efforts to communicate that dogma, in a way, helps those outside the Church hear and understand. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, for example, was instrumental in my own understanding of Catholic teaching, precisely because of its sensitivity to modern questions and Protestant challenges. As much as I now can seem like a crusty traditionalist happy to quote the anathemas of the Council of Trent, when I was a Protestant I would never have responded any of that. To have the Church recognize that I was already trying to follow Jesus, but to invite me to do so more deeply, in communion with the apostolic tradition, was a great gift.
At the same time, I think the ecumenical optimism that remained in the 1990s has now largely faded, partly because most professional ecumenists have cheerfully ignored much of what JPII said about the necessity of Catholic teaching and the unity of truth and love. For John Paul, dialogue was a path to deeper understanding and communion. This path was meant to end in full communion, not to be just a thing that goes on forever on its own. At some point, there has to be a decision to walk together rather than apart, a recognition that when Christ calls us to unity in his Church I might actually have to do something, sacrifice something, for the sake of that good.
The very existence of the Ordinariates is controversial among many ecumenists because they dislike the idea that dialogue actually resulted in communion rather than just endless friendly agreements to disagree. But I think we are here in witness to the Church’s unity as well as the fact that its unity doesn’t have to mean that everybody is always the same.
The unity of the Church, as we saw at the beginning with JPII, is a witness to the unity of the Father and the Son. As an extension of that, the Lord himself tells us, the Church’s unity is her most powerful testament to the truth of the gospel. Of course, the unity of the Father and the Son, and the Lord’s death and resurrection, are true regardless of how we act. But the Church’s oneness and holiness make the truth shine that much more brightly, just as her disunity and sin obscure it.
At the very start of his encyclical, JPII speaks of the multiplication of martyrs in the twentieth century, including martyrs for Christ from various separated churches. “These brothers and sisters of ours,” he writes, “united in the selfless offering of their lives for the Kingdom of God, are the most powerful proof that every factor of division can be transcended and overcome in the total gift of self for the sake of the Gospel” (1). Our unity was purchased in blood, and it is at times witnessed again in the blood of the martyrs.
And so, let us never imagine then that unity is an easy thing. We know this, even if we are under little threat of martyrdom, because we know even the small costs. The cost of having to be polite to the fellow parishioner we don’t like. The cost of submission to a directive from Rome, or from our bishop or pastor, that we think is misguided. Perhaps even, for many of us over this last decade, the cost of communion with a pope who seemed to have a personal dislike for us.
At times, the dramatic martyrdoms of the early centuries—“Renounce Christ or die!”—can seem straightforwardly easy. Of course we would die for the Lord! Or so it is tempting to think. But do we dare to live for him, in unity with the people he loves, even when it is frustrating or confusing or painful? To ask that question every day is to learn to be a Christian.

The Price of Unity Is Pain

Dropping the Atomic Bomb Was Wrong. Period.

What&#8217;s the most reasonable thing to see when you walk through the door of a Catholic young men&#8217;s gathering? The answer is nothing, because you&#8217;ll be blinded by all the cigar smoke.
Smoking is a popular pastime, even after decades of state-sponsored condemnation. Catholics are no strangers to it, either: G.K. Chesterton wrote that &#8220;to have a horror of tobacco is not to have an abstract standard of right; but exactly the opposite. It is to have no standard of right whatever. . . . A man does not make dividends for the Big Boss by smoking, and therefore smoking has a smell as of something sinful&#8221; (<a href="https://archive.org/details/generallyspeakin00ches/page/4/mode/2up?q=%22horror+of+tobacco%22">Generally Speaking</a>, 1929). Yet we&#8217;ve all been hammered with statistics on the harms that come from tobacco in all its forms.
And so, in today&#8217;s edition of Both Sides Now, you&#8217;ll find that where there is smoke, there is fire. Hopefully not hellfire, though. Is smoking a sin?
<a href="#pat">Click here for YES!</a>
<a href="#joe">Click here for NO!</a>

Is Smoking a Sin?

The pope, an atheist, a Muslim, a transgender, an abortion activist, and a pornographer walk onto a Disney set during Holy Week . . . 
No, that’s not the first line of a bad bar joke, but the premise of a documentary called The Pope: Answers, which premiered last week on Disney-owned Hulu. Co-directed by Spaniard Jordi Évole, whose past work includes a <a href="https://www.eldiarioar.com/mundo/opus-dei-asediado-escandalos-abusos-juega-futuro-congreso-extraordinario-exigido-papa_1_10111829.html">muckraking attack</a> on Opus Dei, it promised a no-topics-barred rap session between Pope Francis and a diverse group of young people seemingly chosen to represent every possible anti-Catholic grievance.
Since plans for the film were announced, some Catholics had been expecting a train wreck. Historically, the combination of skeptical journalists and Pope Francis speaking ex tempore has produced reactions from the faithful ranging from head-scratching to face-palming. Given the setup here, and a timeline for release that was at best ill chosen and at worst crassly calculated to disrupt the Church’s focus during its most solemn and prayerful days, many were expecting controversy to rival the optics of Francis’s most notorious in-flight press <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/francis-in-flight-contraception-doctrinal-development">conferences</a> or unrecorded <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/30/17179952/pope-francis-hell-vatican-interview-scalfari-italian">interviews</a>.
Based on the headlines from early reviews, the film did its best to ruffle feathers. An Argentinian woman who identified herself as both a catechist and an abortion activist presented the pope with a green scarf bearing a pro-abortion slogan—symbol of the recent successful movement to <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/breaking-argentina-legalizes-abortion/">legalize abortion</a> in the pope’s home country—and he accepted it (before, as the headlines leave out, unambiguously upholding Church teaching on abortion). Persons identifying along various points of the “LGBTQ+” spectrum demanded more sexual diversity in the Church. And a Colombian woman defended her work making pornography because—can’t make this up—it allows her to spend more time at home with her family.
But two other moments in the film have come under the most scrutiny.
The one that made most of the headlines was when the pope was asked about the online hookup site Tinder. He responded that it was “normal,” because young people “have that eagerness to meet each other.” <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-says-using-tinder-normal-talks-inclusivity-disney-documentary">POPE</a> <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/04/pope-francis-tinder-disney-documentary.html">SAYS</a> <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/pope-francis-sex-tinder-documentary-b2316439.html">TINDER</a> <a href="https://www.aol.com/pope-francis-says-sex-beautiful-162958383.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFF3db1RxDghcWKoBa1wGqIGEKgtuW6-ngr2ma3D744cqOpRcLembOBtB8hT8clrsrAQ2aihLRTghfb7ZUclVwzvgOObtKIkTbKe-SxD2SxMLqJxogTog-xLr2k_GDBcobMU457ZOp2AsPBQRMA59deGv2gSjOItW6qDyuAwi7US">IS</a> ”<a href="https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/04/11/pope-sex-is-beautiful-tinder-is-normal/">NORMAL</a>”!
But I’m not inclined to join the chorus of critics for this one. First, because Pope Francis probably doesn&#8217;t know what Tinder is, in the way that your grandmother probably doesn’t. He may think it’s an ordinary online dating site rather than a digital meat market (indeed, it was described to him in the question as &#8220;a place where young people meet&#8221;). And second, because even if he does know what Tinder is, surely the meaning of his response was not to endorse swiping your phone for sex partners, but to establish a baseline shared principle that the attraction between sexes is normal and good. (Whether that’s a point that even needs to be stipulated today is its own fair question.)
The other and much more bothersome headline-maker was when the pope remarked that the Church’s “catechesis on sex is still in diapers.” I found this unfortunate, for three reasons.
First, because it’s a belittling image. Babies wear diapers—and poop in them. Diapers are for people who don’t have intelligence or control over their faculties. Even if the pope just intended to express a lack of development in the Church’s sexual teaching, the metaphor does more—it invites an unserious attitude, even ridicule, toward that teaching.
Moreover, because the Church’s catechesis on sex is not in its infancy, as if Scripture and the Fathers and the Doctors and popes and theologians haven’t been teaching about sexual morality for two millennia. As if Francis’s recent predecessor John Paul II had not profoundly reaffirmed and synthesized and advanced the Church’s wisdom on the subject. As if the JPII generation has not seen a flowering of sex-positive chastity ministry, responding, as the Holy Spirit always does, to the challenges of the age.
Even beyond these points of fact, there is a dangerous underlying premise to this “diapers” business: the idea that, even after nearly 2,000 years, the Church still has only a baby&#8217;s understanding of what will make human beings flourish and lead them to salvation, and what will make them miserable and lead them to hell.
Yes, doctrine develops. The Church’s reflection on the revealed mysteries deepens and ripens; throughout history, definitions and precisions are made to counteract errors. But incremental and organic development of doctrine doesn’t sever Church teaching from its roots. The Church cannot endorse as good today the same moral acts that it expressly forbade to Christians of the past. Conversely, it can&#8217;t say, “Sorry for those past long centuries where we taught that such-and-such a practice was good and salvific; but all that time, our teaching was just in diapers. Now we know that the opposite is true. Tough luck, you guys who listened to us back then.”
Either thing would be monstrous. If we were forced to adopt such a freakishly protracted view of doctrinal development that even 2,000 years isn&#8217;t enough to settle on solid and reliable moral guidance on basic, universal questions, it would leave all Catholics in a perpetual cloud of unknowing over how and how not to live.
You might also say that it would invalidate the Church’s core claims. Sheldon Vanauken, the twentieth-century Anglo-Catholic convert who wrote the beloved memoir A Severe Mercy, once offered an argument that he formulated as “Women’s ordination denies the Incarnation.” He reasoned that if the Church were to start ordaining women after twenty centuries of saying it couldn’t, that would represent a) such a great injustice to the women of those twenty centuries, and b) such an admission of fallibility on a central aspect of the Faith, that the Church could not possibly call itself a reliable steward of divine truth. And since Christ founded the Church to be just that, his own divine authority would fall apart.
Likewise, if we believed that, after twenty-one or twenty-three or thirty centuries, our Church could grow out of its “diapers” and start blessing sexual behaviors that it had consistently called gravely evil, it would be impossible to continue crediting the Church’s claim to being an authoritative teacher of gospel truth.
But such a reversal of teaching is just what some in the Church hope for, even expect. It seems to be what Fr. James Martin expects when he tells a man that one day <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-does-fr-james-martin-really-believe">he’ll be able to kiss</a> his “husband” in church. It seems to be what the architects of the German Synodal Way, expressly calling for such reversals, expect.
I don’t think this is what the Holy Father wants or expects. But most of the young people gathered around him for The Pope: Answers, along with millions of other Catholics around the world who think the same way, plus countless others monitoring Rome for signs of change, do want and expect it. And I fear that the kind of language he chose in answering them, despite his good intention to thread the needle of accompaniment between discouragement and false hope, tends to lead such people not toward conversion, but to self-assurance that one day, a fully &#8220;mature&#8221; sexual catechesis will just affirm the way they’ve been living all along. Then they&#8217;ll be motivated to wait it out, not to change their lives.
I think we might take this as a caution, when we&#8217;re involved in defending and explaining the Faith, not even to give the appearance of being coy or apologetic about the hard teachings. Even when this is not our intention, the other party may choose to hear it that way. They may also find the object of your evangelization much less compelling. Who, seeking perennial wisdom and the full armor of God, would settle for a diaper?

Pope Francis on Sex and Diapers

There’s a common line of Protestant attack—or perhaps better described as a <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/meeting-the-protestant-response-how-to-answer-common-comebacks-to-catholic-arguments/?searchid=10349658&amp;search_query=meeting+the+protestant+response">counter-attack</a>—where they argue that the problem Catholicism raises for Protestants is, in fact, just as much a problem for Catholics, even if less immediately obvious.
I’ve discussed this <a href="https://journalofabsolutetruth.substack.com/p/thats-your-problemnot-mine-addressing">tu quoque tactic</a> before. In this article, I want to examine a few examples of it, particularly as they relate to a recent piece of mine on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-the-catholic-church-has-to-prove">the philosophical case for Catholicism</a> (and why Protestantism tends toward religious skepticism).
Here’s the gist of the argument: Revelation—Scripture—is often ambiguous, especially since it was delivered fully clothed in the culture and customs of times long past. So, to ensure its successful transmission and proper understanding, what’s needed is a living person or “moral person” (that is, an institution) to guide its interpretation. To leave such enormously complex matters to the fallible individual is surely beyond what’s reasonable for the rational powers of beings like us—and definitely not something God would require.
Using our reason, then, we can see that this is a context where we should expect an epistemic (from episteme, meaning knowledge—epistemic refers to belief formation) authority to be provided—and can recognize what that authority is: the Catholic Church, which claims pretty much what we’d expect and has the historical pedigree to back it up.
Related to this argument, I pointed out,
<blockquote>the Protestant paradigm offers no living, infallible epistemic authority. Just sola scriptura. And no book interprets itself. So inevitably, the final arbiter is the individual—and nothing beyond himself.
But that individual is—according to his own paradigm—no less fallible than the many Christians throughout history he believes got these matters wrong.
For any intellectually honest or responsible person, this should inspire a great deal of skepticism—about whether their doctrines are true, their interpretations are correct, or whether they even have the right canon of Scripture. Within their own paradigm, they really shouldn&#8217;t feel confident about any of it!</blockquote>
So that’s the problem: Protestantism—because it rejects the kind of epistemic authority Catholicism claims—opens the door to (catastrophic) religious skepticism about Christian doctrine and teaching. After all, the Protestant must believe that countless thinkers—many of the most influential theologians and Church Fathers—were seriously mistaken about matters they themselves held to be essential: baptism, the Eucharist, the papacy, you name it. And since Protestants have no living epistemic authority they can “tap into,” they should have little to no confidence that they, in our own time, have things concerning divine revelation any more figured out than those towering figures before them—who were often, even radically, wrong.
<h2>A Few Objections</h2>
Let’s now consider a few objections to this line of reasoning—objections that, in effect, try to show that the problem Catholics point to really applies just as much to them (a kind of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/you-catholics-are-divided-too">tu quoque move</a>).
For example, perhaps the Protestant will flip the objection about significant error and say, “Well, Catholics also believe that many Christians throughout history have been wrong—especially those whose beliefs the Church later condemned! And certainly, they think Protestants are Christians who get a great many things wrong as well!”
To which the Catholic should say, true. But here’s the key difference—Catholics don’t locate the error within the institutional Church. The error—this is important—is with individuals or groups either breaking away from the Church or operating within it prior to a formal declaration—not with the Church’s formal, authoritative teaching. There’s no error at that level, because, as Catholics hold, God doesn’t allow it. That’s precisely what avoids the problems Protestants now find themselves mired in.
Put differently, Catholicism doesn’t require us to believe that the visible Church Christ founded fundamentally failed or taught heresy—which Protestants must, in effect, maintain. That’s why Catholicism doesn’t generate the same kind of religious skepticism I argue Protestantism ultimately struggles with. There is, for Catholics, a reliable, infallible epistemic authority at work.
Thus, Catholics can claim real continuity with an institutional, infallible teaching authority—one that has been there from the beginning. Protestants, on the other hand, deny that such a thing even exists. So when the Church “goes off the rails” (as they see it), there’s no built-in safeguard to preserve or restore the truth. It’s error all the way down—or at least all the way back.
<h2>But Wait—What About Eastern Orthodoxy?</h2>
There are problems. First, Eastern Orthodoxy lacks the clear unifying principle of the papacy—the mechanism that allows the Church to definitively settle disputes and, moreover, to clarify which councils are actually ecumenical. Eastern Orthodoxy is effectively frozen—and, moreover, appears to be in schism with itself at present. (The situation between Ukraine and Moscow is quite serious.) It suffers, functionally, from many of the same problems as Protestantism, despite its initially more traditional appearance.
So, although Eastern Orthodoxy may have a stronger claim to historical continuity than Protestantism in certain respects, it does not meet the other key expectations—and in fact, it experiences just the issues one would expect to arise without the sort of mechanism Catholicism has.
If one looks more closely into the history, other problems emerge. For example, it takes some serious contortions to get around the (very Catholic) papal teachings ratified by the Third, Sixth, and Seventh Ecumenical Councils. Eastern Orthodox theologians must adopt strained and implausible interpretations to avoid the plain sense of those teachings—interpretations that, in effect, render the teachings functionally useless. After all, if what appears clear is not actually what was intended, then the teachings become massively opaque and incapable of serving as reliable guides. Unless—yes, you guessed it—there’s a living, infallible authoritative interpreter—someone who can bring definitive clarity and settle the matter.
Eastern Orthodoxy doesn’t have that. Catholicism does—and has definitively clarified the role and authority of the papacy. (See Vatican I and beyond.)
<h2>And So You See . . .</h2>
We return to the heart of the religious skepticism problem for Protestants: if the institutional Church got it wildly wrong for a thousand years, then why assume we’re not just as wrong now—even about core doctrines like the Trinity or the divinity of Christ? After all, within the Protestant paradigm, there’s no principled difference in the epistemic situation. It’s just fallible individuals then and fallible individuals now, trying to hash out matters that are very, very difficult. (Not so, obviously, for Catholics, who do have an infallible authority they can remain in visible union with.)
Another objection might go like this: “But even the Catholic must use his fallible private judgment to discern the Church—so doesn’t that collapse the whole thing?” That is, if Catholics claim that private reason or judgment isn’t sufficient to sort through all the complicated matters of revelation and interpretation, isn’t it just as much a problem that they must rely on private reason to identify the true Church in the first place?
Answer: No—not at all. In fact, I addressed this in my previous article by showing that private judgment is often sufficient for
<ol>
<li>recognizing when an epistemic authority is needed and</li>
<li>discerning what that authority is,</li>
<li>but not for replacing that authority once it’s found.</li>
</ol>
The Catholic paradigm fits this picture perfectly. The Protestant one falls apart at point 3.
The examples I gave—whether with respect to medicine or to even more everyday things like hiring a trail guide—make this distinction clear: we are generally well suited to recognize when we need help, and even whom to turn to for help, but we’re not always well suited to resolve the matter independently. (The first two judgments are indeed reasonable and responsible; the latter, in many—if not most—cases, is unreasonable and irresponsible.) We might know we need a doctor, and we might be good at picking one. But we’re not good at diagnosing our own condition or prescribing our own treatment. That’s why we submit to medical authority.
It’s not hard to see why the same sort of thing applies to propositional revelation. Nor is it particularly difficult to discern which Church might be that authoritative guide. After all, Catholicism is the only candidate that both meets our a priori expectations for an authoritative magisterium and has the historical continuity to back it up. It fits the bill—and the historical data.
As I said before, there are no other serious contenders.

Catholicism: The Last Man Standing

One of the most common reasons skeptics doubt the Gospels is that they present Jesus as a miracle-worker. After all, the logic goes, if a story contains supernatural elements, then it must be legendary.
This assumption drives much of the skepticism surrounding the Gospel accounts.
For example, the late German Lutheran theologian Rudolf Bultmann <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kerygma-Myth-Rudolf-Bultmann-Critics/dp/B001F4VW4S/ref=sr_1_3?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.5BrqV580jnsN2asxUMqFIAmxbDRPRuvlpVM-KsFxhXCaksfJ95G8Vqo5ESK7wLWVdnZSuoeABGKyh3Wf-0KpLu1qgv9efQyknRYZ2Ug3bp1kkkZCGS3hmvx1Rcktu0CewetIl5pHyIlz-9cZTiUctFON3LWysD7RMQ62be6YSk4dlsoiZY5jyA857nwlYEM7kVUMti7LwdO9GgvcUEASMUqvNLHPTcK1Y5yZqnO_E7A.FlbENTs1AbRn42RZ_dCkixowSIquoBmgTXCkFuA5Z3s&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;qid=1759319578&amp;refinements=p_27%3ARudolf+Karl+Bultmann&amp;s=books&amp;sr=1-3">wrote</a> concerning Jesus’ resurrection, “But what of the Resurrection? Is it not a mythical event pure and simple? Obviously it is not an event of past history.” John Dominic Crossan carried forward Bultmann’s skepticism, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Revolutionary-John-Dominic-Crossan/dp/006180035X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2F05SNJZGWKJX&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.v5-s8XnM_0jMtJsCNzHk57QTdftZiKEb9Fg_3TfY_VAdKAbEEK-y5p01zw_s_cY4KeIt4IHtX1uBWmlJRlhJuNmp0qzQxQe7pX7GAQZsfJv9KUl1iBCvmfWYxfTyDVvvojTqiwJkKRlSRkW5EE-aNHSyCgPJWAZUwXZmkjHy6Nf9G1U0a_t6Wbu__CvJrQ1oLZTDbxJRDXLd9hEAoXuopXeqGaeNuNgQ2WcNHOqfh_s.TmKMjxGdD9NPobVp6dWQkGY7xVRfJlZStPmvM91KLJ8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Jesus%3A+A+Revolutionary+Biography&amp;qid=1759319635&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=jesus+a+revolutionary+biography%2Cstripbooks%2C175&amp;sr=1-1">declaring</a> in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, “[Jesus] did not and could not cure that disease or any other one.” He later adds, “I do not think that anyone, anywhere, at any time brings dead people back to life.”
The Jesus Seminar went even <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Five-Gospels-Really-Search-Authentic/dp/006063040X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=36V5R4S2MSVWV&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.-WyaeucG50VfJCnmqqwzCPcoNA5xSOqgDKGztJUpbs9xS27klmAkbu-G40cWYUOw9K7zo5X7kdVG2UCasvO7F9mt9RBzKz98trQFUpnH3_gfxa-H067_GtMLxI6J0DdZNiYXvs8L6n0oqCXBWjwyOw.AiTEkMzKjKNzO_xkKTs6959GkQufNrE0NrIMRvGpKy8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=the+five+gospels+what+did+jesus+really+say&amp;qid=1759319732&amp;sprefix=The+five+gospels+what+did+%2Caps%2C96&amp;sr=8-1">further</a> in The Five Gospels, ruling out entirely the authenticity of Jesus’ resurrection sayings on the grounds that words ascribed to him after his death cannot be historically verified. For such scholars, the miraculous content of the Gospels is itself proof that they cannot be historically reliable.
But is this actually a good reason to reject the Gospels? A closer look suggests otherwise.
First, miracle reports would count against the Gospels’ reliability only if miracles were metaphysically impossible. This of itself isn’t all that bad of a methodology. For example, if I already know it’s impossible for something to both be and not be at the same time and in the same way, and then I read the Gospels repeatedly saying that something both exists and doesn’t exist in that exact sense, then I’d have a pretty solid reason to doubt those reports.
But miracles are not like contradictions. Rather, miracles are considered impossible only on the prior assumption that God does not exist. If there is no God, then of course there can be no divine actions in history. But if God exists, then miracles are <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/miracles-lead-to-the-catholic-faith">at least possible</a>. That means the presence of miracle reports in the Gospels cannot, by itself, discredit them as historical sources. The real issue is not the Gospels’ trustworthiness, but the prior question of whether God exists.
This raises another point: skeptics often pride themselves on being critical thinkers, but in this case, they rarely question their own assumptions. They simply take it for granted that miracles are impossible. Yet as Gregory Boyd and Paul Eddy point out in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Legend-Wrestling-Jesus-Dilemma/dp/1608999548/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1TH4VYJ4UAD3E&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.3vydoJoHfXOzaqVv6deEMTrhoZGoX8hW5Icvqi5m2_MHBJR9Sir7MPF4YqpxIdDQfYB8HT5LThDMwaeoTGHgOi2-n9gaTKCCDvMWouP-zuMeZ8AfJV92YTov-bnaufvI8K_KvcxAT-Hk3D_Eju_jWRNySXOS3EWfFDt5k5p1RT3dfJzPa9jwPdoj1bh8Ud1OdqNLUI5qXErfyaUuHAMAfOLFnNLJ87KselLux1P8gYk.ag_TSI0Nz14Kpw9lbynafpqKUdDqyUTgdeMSpsBZvlo&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=lord+or+legend+wrestling&amp;qid=1759320135&amp;sprefix=lord+or+legend+wrestling%2Caps%2C98&amp;sr=8-1">Lord or Legen?</a>, this assumption has never been widely shared across history—and even today, most people around the world continue to believe in at least the possibility of the supernatural. Given that the skeptic’s position is the minority view, it would be wise for him to critically examine whether his presupposition is a worthy starting point for historical investigation.
Finally, there is the issue of consistency. Ancient historians routinely deal with texts that contain miraculous elements, yet they don’t automatically dismiss the entire account. Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon (cf. 49 B.C.) is a prime example. Roman historian Suetonius reports in his On the Life of the Caesars that Caesar was inspired to cross the river after seeing “an apparition of superhuman size and beauty,” who was “sitting on the riverbank, playing a reed pipe.” Yet historians do not treat this as grounds for doubting the historical event itself. Why, then, should miracle references in the Gospels cause wholesale rejection of their accounts? As Craig Blomberg observes in Jesus Under Fire, such a move reveals a clear double standard.
The British historian A.N. Sherwin-White saw this problem decades ago. He wrote in Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, “It is astonishing that while Greco-Roman historians have been growing in confidence, the twentieth-century study of the Gospel narratives, starting from no less promising material, has taken so gloomy a turn.” If other ancient sources can be read generously—even with supernatural elements included—then surely the Gospels deserve at least the same courtesy.
In the end, dismissing the Gospels simply because they contain miracles is not a sound historical move. It shifts the conversation away from the actual reliability of the texts and onto a prior assumption about the impossibility of God’s action in the world. If God exists, then miracles are possible—and if miracles are possible, then the Gospels cannot be dismissed out of hand. At the very least, they deserve the same fair treatment as any other historical documents from antiquity.
The claim that the Gospels are unreliable because they contain miracle stories rests on shaky ground. It assumes, without argument, that God does not exist and that miracles are <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-an-elephant-walks-on-water">therefore impossible</a>. It also applies a double standard, treating the Gospels more harshly than other ancient sources that contain supernatural details. When we peel back the assumptions, we find that the real question is not whether the Gospels can be trusted, but whether miracles are possible—and that depends on the bigger question of God’s existence. Until that question is answered, dismissing the Gospels on the basis of miracle reports is not an act of historical rigor, but an act of philosophical prejudice.
&nbsp;

Too Many Miracles Spoil the Gospels?

<div>Is it licit for a priest to change the last sentence of the consecration to: "When you do this, remember me"?</div><div>No, it is not licit for a priest to change the words of consecration.
<blockquote>The priest must remember that he is the servant of the sacred Liturgy and that he himself is not permitted, on his own initiative, to add, to remove, or to change anything in the celebration of Mass (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ordinamento-messale_en.html">GIRM</a>, 24).
Only those Eucharistic Prayers are to be used which are found in the Roman Missal or are legitimately approved by the Apostolic See, and according to the manner and the terms set forth by it. “It is not to be tolerated that some priests take upon themselves the right to compose their own Eucharistic Prayers” or to change the same texts approved by the Church, or to introduce others composed by private individuals (<a href="https://adoremus.org/RedemptionisSacramentum.html">Redemptionis Sacramentum</a>, 51).</blockquote>
While it is illicit to change the words of consecration, the change you describe does not seem to change the meaning of the words of consecration, and therefore it would still be a valid Eucharist.
<blockquote>Defects on the part of the form may arise if anything is missing from the complete wording required for the act of consecrating. . . . If the priest were to shorten or change the form of the consecration of the Body and the Blood, so that in the change of wording the words did not mean the same thing, he would not be achieving a valid sacrament. If, on the other hand, he were to add or take away anything which did not change the meaning, the sacrament would be valid, but he would be committing a grave sin (Pope St. Pius V, De Defectibus, 20).</blockquote>
</div>

May a Priest Change the Words of Consecration?

<div>Is there a Catholic edition of the King James Version of the Bible?</div><div>No. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version">King James Version</a> of the Bible, also known as the Authorized Version, is a Protestant translation of Scripture into English that was commissioned and promulgated by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I">James I of England</a> for use in the Anglican church. The Douay-Rheims translation is a Catholic translation of Scripture into English and was published around the same time as the KJV. In fact, the Douay-Rheims was completed first, but it should not be considered a Catholic edition of the King James Version.
</div>

No Catholic King James Version

Catholics believe we will be judged based on our works. And there’s no better argument for this belief than one that appeals to Jesus’ teaching about judgment in Matthew 25:31-46, the parable of the sheep and the goats.
The difference between the sheep and the goats is what they did and did not do. Performing the works of charity merits eternal life, and failure to perform works of charity leads to damnation. For a Catholic, it doesn’t get much clearer than this.
But for some Protestants, it’s not so clear. And they have reasons why they don’t agree.
Consider, for example, Protestant scholar Robert Wilkin. He <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Views-Works-Final-Judgment-Counterpoints/dp/0310490332">argues</a> that it’s “erroneous” to equate Jesus’ statement, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you,” with “entering it” or “that these people have eternal life.” He interprets Jesus as saying, “They will be rewarded with the privilege of reigning with him forever.” Protestant author Joseph Dillow takes the same line as Wilkin, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Reign-Servant-Kings-Eternal-Security-ebook/dp/B007U79V1U/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1R003P3X41W6W&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ca7z02nPFWm1CdNMWP_vUN4JWkTRrkHp5f8Vnr5LDevGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.q3z343z3vb9hNof4yKuT97Ds2WKSz3JyAVkhDtOqreQ&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=The+Reign+of+the+Servant+Kings%3A+A+Study+of+Eternal+Security+and+the+Final+Destiny+of+Man&amp;qid=1725478818&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=the+reign+of+the+servant+kings+a+study+of+eternal+security+and+the+final+destiny+of+man+%2Cstripbooks%2C120&amp;sr=1-1">writing</a>, “‘To inherit the kingdom’ is a virtual synonym for rulership in the kingdom and not entrance into it.”
Since Jesus isn’t talking about entrance into the kingdom, but rather ruling in the kingdom, so it’s argued, the works that the sheep perform don’t play a causal role in their (or our) final salvation.
For our first response, let’s concede for argument’s sake that “inherit the kingdom” is equivalent to “reigning with Christ forever.” By itself, this doesn’t exclude the Catholic view that serving Christ in others is a condition for entrance into the kingdom.
Consider, for example, the contrast Jesus makes between those who “inherit the kingdom” and those who do not. Those who don’t inherit the kingdom depart from Christ “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. . . . They will go away into eternal punishment.” “Eternal fire” and “eternal punishment” both convey the nature of the individual’s experience as he departs from Christ.
But it would be ridiculous to think this somehow excludes the idea that the goats don’t ever enter the kingdom because of their failure to practice love in serving Christ in others. Jesus explicitly says, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire . . . for I was hungry and you gave me no food.” Jesus’ statements about what the damned will experience also involve exclusion from the kingdom.
Since “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment” involve both what the damned will experience, being separated from Christ, and that they are excluded from the kingdom, and Jesus explicitly contrasts “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment” with “inheriting the kingdom,” it’s reasonable to conclude that “inheriting the kingdom” involves not only what the saved will experience in heaven (e.g., ruling with Christ forever), but also entrance into the kingdom. And since serving Christ in others is a condition for ruling with Christ (assuming that “inheriting the kingdom” refers to ruling with Christ), it follows that serving Christ in others is also a condition of entering the kingdom.
A second response is that the word inheritance implies entering a new state that you didn’t have before. For example, if I were to say to my son, “You will inherit my money when I die,” I would mean that my son would eventually enter a state of possessing my money that he doesn’t have now, before my death. Another example is the Israelites’ inheritance of the promised land. Given that the term inheritance signifies entering a new state, we can interpret Jesus’ statement about Christians “inheriting the kingdom” to mean Christians entering the kingdom of heaven.
A third <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Heaven-Gospel-Matthew-Jonathan-Pennington/dp/080103728X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3862CZWXVX21Z&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DqiaYEXWcYkkX8qPSzIFp_IcZNOky6MPu4_lAze2IEZAts1DsI0KD5cuiCu6i4zUdev2wCD-KNf7KT7xdbEP-FvlnYJGxeNjdVzOt2UiulDRGmKbezWiypKsw3QrcE5RqFruJyOmG6ijBRcN1xDW2-Nm9gM-YchAgdfhoHaGVq5hlsuEcbAdarJjlfeknQZhf0849vt7YbYwgdOlnlbGNtP0zVWfq3zTzV7KBoxwbtQ.B-ulqnL36cX-dCgBKfZog0kvhVCZWs8MO-HN2wYO0Hk&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Heaven+and+Earth+in+the+Gospel+of+Matthew&amp;qid=1725479034&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=heaven+and+earth+in+the+gospel+of+matthew%2Cstripbooks%2C134&amp;sr=1-1">response</a> is that we have biblical grounds for thinking the phrase “inherit the kingdom” refers to receiving eternal life. First, Jesus explicitly identifies the sheep who “inherit the kingdom” as the “the righteous” who “go . . . into eternal life.” Eternal life here is not to be equated with merely a reward, such as ruling with Christ, since it’s contrasted with “eternal punishment.” Jesus is contrasting two eternal destinies: one for the righteous and the other for the unrighteous.
Moreover, as R.T. France <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Matthew-International-Commentary-Testament/dp/080282501X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1JCMOJFMN08AH&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.2sxcHGe0UBaFIbxQFOD-dmxtXvQYaPjE3TD_IuJE271ATbyYitVIF0GHMFdsgAD-H30Az9ernid5pFzZ_fD331l2sn02py_tU43yJO3YO0lH7s_rtGMF08xgekhKKWAUrtmBVtpjdLg_tOf5jDoDCXmLwPih_WRB80h-qp302P0.o9Bb72TruPtCPzkfHPMT6730wIR2-MtKv3WnKkpVsX0&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=r.t.+france+The+Gospel+of+Matthew&amp;qid=1725478947&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=r.t.+france+the+gospel+of+matthew%2Cstripbooks%2C117&amp;sr=1-1">points</a> out, the phrase “eternal life” is already familiar to the reader of Matthew’s Gospel as being equated with being saved or entering the kingdom of heaven. For example, in Matthew 19:16, the rich young man asks Jesus, “What good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” Then, in verses 28-29, Jesus makes clear that the eternal life the rich young man asked about refers to the life the righteous will receive at the Final Judgment: “Truly, I say to you . . . when the Son of Man shall sit on his glorious throne . . . everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake [what the rich young man didn’t do], will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life.”
Second, Matthew elsewhere in his Gospel records Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom, and it specifies that entrance into the kingdom is conditioned on whether Jesus’ followers perform loving actions. For example, in Matthew 7:21, Jesus is clear that only those who do the will of his Father will “enter the kingdom of heaven.” Doing God’s will is the essence of the theological virtue of charity.
Matthew two chapters earlier records Jesus: “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (5:20). Jesus goes on to list a variety of things that make up this righteousness:
<ul>
<li>Making amends with someone we’ve offended before we offer our sacrifice.</li>
<li>Avoiding lust.</li>
<li>Refusing to divorce or to attempt marriage after divorce.</li>
<li>Not swearing.</li>
<li>Turning the other cheek and being generous.</li>
<li>Loving enemies.</li>
</ul>
Notice that each item in the above list involves charity. And it’s this charity, manifest in deeds or the avoidance thereof, that is necessary to have the righteousness required to “enter the kingdom of heaven” and be called “sons of your Father who is in heaven” (v. 45). Therefore, charity, and the behaviors associated with it, is a necessary condition for entrance into the kingdom.
Given this context of Matthew’s Gospel concerning entrance into the kingdom and its relation to charity, as shown both in Matthew 5:20-47 and Matthew 7:21, it makes sense to think that when Jesus speaks of “inheriting the kingdom” based on charitable actions in Matthew 25, he has in mind the same teaching he gave concerning entrance into the kingdom based on charity in Matthew 5 and 7.
In sum, this Protestant counterargument fails on multiple grounds. It doesn’t jibe with Jesus’ teaching on the kingdom and its relation to charity elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel. Nor does it succeed even if we grant for argument’s sake that “inherit the kingdom” refers to ruling with Christ. As such, this comeback shouldn’t cause a Catholic to stop using Matthew 25:31-46 for biblical support of the belief that works play an essential role in entering heaven.

Protestants Reign on the Catholic Parade

In a 2009 speech given at an atheistic conference, Daniel Dennett coined the term deepity to refer to statements that seem profound at first glance but upon closer examination turn out to be trivially true at best (“Love is just a word”) or just nonsense (“Have faith in faith”). Some atheists say theology is just a bunch of “deepities,” but this is like saying meaningless “<a href="https://physics.nyu.edu/sokal/weinberg.html">junk philosophy</a>” shows that all of philosophy is worthless.
Indeed, you can find “junk theology” that disparages good theology in a 2019 New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/opinion/sunday/christian-easter-serene-jones.html">interview with Serene Jones</a>, a Protestant minister and president of Union Theological Seminary. Here are a few of her “deepities”:
<ul>
<li>“[The] empty tomb symbolizes that the ultimate love in our lives cannot be crucified and killed.”</li>
<li>“Living a life of love is driven by the simple fact that love is true.”</li>
<li>“The message of Easter is that love is stronger than life or death.”</li>
</ul>
When I hear this kind of talk, I think of <a href="https://comb.io/Z2xbyA">the episode of The Simpsons</a> where Rev. Lovejoy is selling ice cream flavors such as “Blessed Virgin Berry” and “Command-mint.” He then offers Lisa “Unitarian ice cream” and hands her an empty bowl. Lisa remarks, “There’s nothing here,” to which Lovejoy responds, “Exactly.” Unitarians who have “<a href="mailto:https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe">no shared creed</a>” are just one example of theologies that sound lofty and good but are without any support beyond mere sentimentalism.
A good way to expose the emptiness of these &#8220;deepities&#8221; is to ask some simple questions: How is love stronger than death? What makes love “true”? In doing this, you can show that the person is just dressing up secular, hopeful thinking with religious language.
I also notice that adherents of liberal theology often defend their position by casting traditional concepts of God and faith as being for simpletons. However, their hasty dismissals often reveal their own simplistic grasp of theology. For example, Jones says, “Crucifixion is not something that God is orchestrating from upstairs. The pervasive idea of an abusive God-father who sends his own kid to the cross so God could forgive people is nuts.”
I expect this misrepresentation of the Trinity from village atheists, but not from a “Christian” minister, who should understand that God became man to freely offer himself as a sacrifice of love that outweighs the evil of our sins.
Jones also says Christians who are “obsessed” with the Resurrection have a “wobbly faith.” She writes, “What if tomorrow someone found the body of Jesus still in the tomb? Would that then mean that Christianity was a lie? No, faith is stronger than that.” Tell that to St. Paul, who declared, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).
Jones tries to defend her assertion about the unimportance of the Resurrection by saying, “The stories are all over the place. There’s no resurrection story in Mark, just an empty tomb. Those who claim to know whether or not it happened are kidding themselves.”
It’s true the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-fake-resurrection-in-marks-gospel">shorter ending of Mark</a> does not contain an appearance of the resurrected Jesus, but it certainly contains a resurrection account because the young man at the tomb tells the women, “Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you” (Mark 16:6-7, emphasis added).
This leads to another good question to ask: How is a non-miraculous Christianity at all different from morally upright atheism?
Jones says hell doesn’t exist; it is the reality we create when we “reject love.” And Easter represents “love triumphing over suffering.” But you can be an atheist who puts hope in love and patiently endures suffering, so why even bother being a Christian? Indeed, when the interviewer asks if he’s a Christian even though he denies Jesus’ miracles, Jones answers, “Well, you sound an awful lot like me, and I’m a Christian minister.”
Now, Jones might say her theology isn’t equivalent to atheism because she believes in God, but her God is so limited and disinterested in human affairs that he might as well be nonexistent.
For example, Jones says she doesn’t worship an all-powerful, all-knowing God, because that’s a product of “Roman juridical theory and Greek mythology” (even though Greco-Roman deities were limited in power, knowledge, and goodness). She also claims that God doesn’t answer prayers, and instead of “controlling the world,” he merely “invites” us into love, justice, and mercy.
This God might as well be a self-help book you pick up every few months for advice. In fact, for some liberal theologians, God is merely a projection of human ideals and isn’t real in any meaningful sense of the word.
John Dominic Crossan, one of the world’s most famous New Testament scholars, <a href="mailto:https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/jesus-of-nazareth/presuppositions-and-pretensions-of-the-jesus-seminar/">was once asked</a>, “During the Jurassic age, when there were no human beings, did God exist?&#8221; Crossan responded, “Meaningless question” and went on to say that God doesn’t exist apart from faith. But with this understanding of God, it’s not surprising that places like the United Church of Canada have a minister <a href="mailto:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretta_Vosper">who is a self-professed atheist</a>. One of her books’ titles perfectly summarizes the essence of liberal theology: With or Without God: Why the Way We Live Is More Important Than What We Believe.
It’s true that practicing virtue will make you happy, but that’s because God made us to be virtuous people, and we are happy when we live according to the nature he gave us. But St. Paul strikes the deathblow to both secular and Christian liberalism that relies on virtue alone for salvation: “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:14-15).
Our Easter joy is not found in something meaningless such as “hope in hope” or “faith in faith.” It is grounded in the fact of Christ’s resurrection. Indeed, that is the only fact that explains the advent of Christianity in an ancient world that didn’t build religions around platitudes. The only reason the disciples did not think their rabbi was just another failed messiah like all the others is because he proved he was not a failure to them three days after his crucifixion.
Through it, we have true hope that God will deliver us from sin we cannot conquer on our own and raise us to new life, both in our souls in this life and in our bodies in the next. God proved “love is stronger than death,” not through humanistic sentiment but through glorious triumph. As Christ himself declared, “I died, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades” (Rev. 1:18).

The Emptiness of Liberal Theology

The Catholic practice of invoking the intercession of the saints assumes that the souls in heaven can know our interior thoughts. But for <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Huldrych-Zwingli-Writings-Vol-One/dp/0915138581">some Protestants</a>, this is a problem, because it attributes to the saints a power that the Bible says belongs to God alone. In 2 Chronicles, we read the following:
<blockquote>Then hear thou from heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render to each whose heart thou knowest, according to all his ways (for thou, thou only, knowest the hearts of the children of men (6:30).</blockquote>
If the Bible says that only God knows the hearts of men, so the argument goes, then the invocation of the saints’ intercession would be a doctrine that contradicts the Bible.
Let’s see how we can meet this challenge.
First, there is nothing contrary to reason in the idea that God can reveal his knowledge of the interior thoughts of men to those whose intellects he also created. Here is how St. Thomas Aquinas responds to the above challenge in his Summa Theologiae:
<blockquote>God alone of himself knows the thoughts of the heart: yet others know them, in so far as these are revealed to them, either by their vision of the Word or by any other means (Suppl. 72:1, ad 5).</blockquote>
Notice how Aquinas articulates the difference between how God knows the thoughts of men and how the saints in heaven know the thoughts of men. God alone knows “of himself,” and the saints know “by their vision of the Word or by any other means.”
That God knows “of himself” means that the knowledge God has of the interior movements of man’s heart and mind belongs to him by nature. In other words, he has this knowledge by virtue of being God, the uncaused Creator and sustainer of all being, including the thoughts of men. Consequently, he doesn’t have to receive it from a cause outside himself. Only an infinite being can know the interior thoughts of men in this way.
But it’s not a problem for God to reveal this knowledge to the saints in heaven (by whatever means) any more than it is for him to reveal to mankind’s knowledge of himself as a Trinity of persons. Knowledge of God as a Trinity is something that God alone has by nature. Human beings, on the other hand, know God as Trinity only because God willed to reveal that knowledge to mankind. Our knowledge of the Trinity is caused. God’s knowledge of himself as Trinity is uncaused.
Similarly, because God knows the thoughts of men “of himself,” God’s knowledge of man’s thoughts is uncaused. But this doesn’t mean that he couldn’t reveal this knowledge to the saints in heaven, in which case their knowledge of the interior hearts of men would be caused. And because God would cause this knowledge, we could still affirm that God alone knows the hearts of men—that’s to say, he knows them in an uncaused way.
A Protestant might counter, “But what if every person on earth, within his own heart, prays to Mary or one of the saints at the same time? Wouldn’t knowledge of those prayers require omniscience? And if so, then it follows that God couldn’t communicate this sort of knowledge to a created intellect.”
Even though the Church doesn’t claim that God ordinarily gives the saints in heaven the ability to know the thoughts of every living person, it’s not impossible for God to do so. Of course, knowing the thoughts of all men at the same time is something that goes beyond the natural powers of a created intellect. But this kind of knowledge doesn’t require full comprehension of the divine essence, which is characteristic of omniscience. Knowing a finite number of thoughts is not the same as knowing all that can be known about the divine essence, and thus knowing all possible ways that the divine essence can be imitated in the created order.
Since full comprehension of the divine essence is not involved in knowing a finite number of thoughts at the same time, it’s not necessary for the saints in heaven to be omniscient to know simultaneously the interior prayer requests of Christians on earth. From this, it follows that God can communicate this kind of knowledge to rational creatures. And according to Aquinas, God does this by giving a “created light of glory” that is “received into [the] created intellect” (ST I:12:7).
This “created light of glory” demands infinite power inasmuch as infinite power is needed to create and give it to the human or angelic intellect. But infinite power is not necessary for the human or angelic intellect to passively receive this light. As <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/are-catholics-god-makers">Tim Staples argues</a>,
<blockquote>As long as what is received is not infinite by nature or does not require infinite power to comprehend or to be able to act upon, it would not be beyond men&#8217;s or angels’ ability to receive.</blockquote>
Because the light that God gives the created intellect is created, it’s not infinite by nature, nor does it require infinite power to comprehend or act upon. Therefore, it’s not contrary to reason to say that God gives this “created light of glory” to a human or angelic intellect to know simultaneously a finite number of interior thoughts and respond to them.
A second way to meet the above challenge is to show the evidence that God in fact reveals his knowledge of the interior thoughts of men to created intellects.
The Old Testament story in Daniel 2 involving his interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is one example. If God can reveal knowledge of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to Daniel, then surely, he can reveal to the saints in heaven the interior prayer requests of Christians on earth.
Another example is the story of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. We’re told that after selling his property, Ananias, with his wife’s knowledge, gave only a part of the proceeds to the apostles, which prompted Peter’s response: “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back part of the proceeds of the land?” (v. 3).
Although Ananias’s sin of dishonesty had an external dimension (there were some proceeds that he held back), the sin itself wasn’t subject to normal observation. Knowledge of this evil would have to be obtained in a way that transcends human nature.
Peter receives this knowledge by way of infusion. But it’s not merely knowledge of the external act. It’s knowledge of the interior movements in Ananias’s heart: “How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.”
Revelation 5:8 serves as another example. John sees “twenty-four elders,” along with the “four living creatures,” prostrating themselves “before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” If they are offering the prayers of the Christians on earth, then it’s reasonable to infer that they have knowledge of those prayers.
Even if these prayers aren’t interior prayers, but merely verbal prayers, the souls in heaven don’t have physical ears. So whatever knowledge of prayers God gives to the created intellects in heaven is knowledge of interior thoughts, which the verbal prayers express.
In light of the above examples, we can see that both the Old and the New Testaments affirm that God does in fact communicate his knowledge of the interior thoughts of men to created intellects—interior thoughts that also involve prayers.
The bottom line is that God’s knowledge of the interior thoughts of men is not the kind of knowledge that belongs to omniscience alone. It can be communicated to created intellects, and we have biblical evidence that God in fact does reveal this kind of knowledge to created intellects.

How Can the Saints Hear a Million Prayers?

<div>What should Catholic firefighters do if called to extinguish a fire at an abortion clinic?</div><div>They should do their job and extinguish the fire. While it is true that a fire at an abortion clinic could impact the ability of abortion providers to perform abortions, that is not the only possible outcome of a fire. There could be people trapped inside the clinic whose lives are in jeopardy. The fire could potentially spread to other structures and cause harm to the lives and livelihoods of people who are not involved in providing abortions.
In 2015, there was a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. One of the first responders was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Swasey">Garrett Swasey</a>, who was a devout, pro-life Christian. He died while working to save lives during that horrific event. In its coverage of the shooting, <a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2015/11/28/slain-officer-swasey-was-church-elder-father-of-two/">the Denver Post reported</a>:
<blockquote>Officer Garrett Swasey was a man so committed to his Christian beliefs that he was willing to die for others without hesitation, friends and family said Saturday. . . . &#8220;He may not (have agreed) with the abortion position, but he was willing to lay down his life for other people,&#8221; said Scott Dontanville, co-pastor of the evangelical Hope Chapel, where Swasey spent much of his time.</blockquote>
Officer Swasey&#8217;s heroic actions should be a model for all pro-life first responders.
</div>

Mustn’t Let the Abortion Clinic Burn

Every time I get dressed, I have an opportunity to ennoble and inspire. How I dress sends a message to all who see me regarding my sense of self-value and my regard for others. I can elevate godless society with beauty. This is the fruit of the virtue of modesty, one of the most hated words in the modern vocabulary.
There is a kind of dressing that respects cultural expectations, but that also inspires and elevates those who see me. This manner of dress answers the call of the Lord Jesus to be salt of the earth and leaven in the dough, a kind of missionary fashion. We must remind ourselves that the virtue of modesty is not a negative condemnation of women, but rather an exhortation to dress appropriately with respect to the occasion, in honor of our station, and with sufficient fabric that draws attention to our faces rather than particular body parts.
I am a full-time wife and homeschooling mother, so I dress in a way that shows the honor of my chosen vocation. I take ten minutes in the morning to put on a lovely outfit, arrange my hair, and put on mascara—not from insecure vanity, but so that I know that I am ready for the day and won’t give another thought to my appearance as I seek to love my family and friends well.
If I were a man, I would have the same responsibility to dress with respect to the occasion, my station, and the dignity of my body. Men dress modestly by dressing with decorum and respect. This is how they show all who see them that they value themselves, their families, and their work.
We might think we have only two options in American culture: embrace cultural pressure to devalue our bodies and be overly casual, or reject our culture and dress like the Amish. But unless we actually are Amish, both options are insufficient. We want to neither embrace the culture of the world nor reject it totally. We want the middle path, the golden mean of virtue, which recognizes the opportunity to evangelize culture through dressing nobly.
We can consider the two extreme poles of vice that lie on either side of the golden middle of modesty: shamelessness and bashfulness.
Shameless dressing is pervasive in our culture. One way it is expressed is through the uglification movement. We see it everywhere: tattoos covering the body, half-shaved heads, piercings everywhere. Anthony Esolen <a href="https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/pagans-without-nature">calls</a> such aberrations ugly, self-advertising, and narcissistic. Deliberate uglification recalls what Saint Augustine said about the devil: he cannot create, but can only corrupt and pollute the good that God has made.
Another expression of shameless dress is the overtly sexy style, which presents the body as an object for lustful viewing. I dressed in an overtly sexy manner before I knew better, and I was aware of the seductive power that I wielded over the opposite sex. This style of dress is more prevalent among women than men, but certainly men, too, can show off their bodies inappropriately.
When I had my conversion to the Catholic faith, I felt ashamed of how I had presented myself. But my solution swung to the opposite extreme: now I wanted to cover up with too much fabric, shapeless and baggy.
This was not a migration to virtue, but rather an embrace of the flip-side vice: the vice of bashfulness, which St. Thomas Aquinas describes as misdirected piety. In my case, I rejected my feminine beauty out of shame, and I wanted to hide from the world. (Nor is this sort of bashfulness restricted to women! Men can be inappropriately bashful, too.)
It was not until I discovered the true definition of modesty that I understood the missionary, evangelizing opportunity I had to dress in a noble and respectful manner. Virginia Nunziante, who wrote the introduction to Christian Fashion in the Teaching of the Church, <a href="https://voiceofthefamily.com/item/christian-fashion-in-the-teaching-of-the-church/">notes</a> the rich opportunity that comes with virtuous dressing : “Beauty and elegance can serve as instruments of the apostolate and the foundation of an authentically Christian fashion” (p. 38).
The love of Christ compels us. The harvest is rich, said Jesus Christ. When we choose honorable modesty in dress, avoiding shamelessness on the one hand and bashfulness on the other, we burn with zeal for the salvation of lost souls. The harvest is so great, and how we dress is an effective tool to reap it.
“Let your light shine before men,” said the Lord Jesus, “that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Shining before all for the Father’s glory is at the heart of the virtue of modesty.
Many times in the twelve years since I began to dress in a noble way, I have had the opportunity to plant a gospel seed because someone liked my outfit. I can convey that I don’t completely reject the culture in which I live, yet I also preserve the mystery of femininity by forsaking a sexy or edgy look. And if compliments come—“I love your outfit,” or “Your skirt is so pretty,” or “You should come in here more often!”—I don’t have to second-guess myself, wondering if I’m indulging my vanity through my clothes or seeking to draw attention to myself. Rather, adhering to solid, time-tested principles of dress can shrink the ego while also promoting loveliness—it is not so much about how beautiful I am as it is about how beautiful this way of dressing, of presenting the human person, is. I didn’t come up with it, I don’t deserve any special credit for it, and it will work just as well for anyone else.
The heart transformed in Christ ever seeks a connection, a starting point for a conversation. Like Saint Mary Magdalene, I have met the risen Christ and want to talk about him with everyone who’ll listen. Maybe a compliment at the salon can open up a conversation about our Lord. Even when no words are exchanged, a cheerful smile from a respectably dressed man or woman sends a message of encouragement and light, perhaps planting a seed of curiosity as to what makes that one different.
That is modesty. It truly is the golden road, the happy path between two poles. The virtue of modesty, sometimes described as <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3160.htm">a daughter of temperance</a>, promotes human flourishing. Let us not dive headfirst into the culture and mimic its shamelessness, nor reject the culture and hide in bashfulness and shame. Rather, we can evangelize with our whole selves, even without words, down to how we present the “very good” bodies with which God endowed us.

Why Modesty?

Two weeks ago, Tucker Carlson set off a conflagration in media and politics when he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efBB0D4tf1Y">interviewed</a> the ardent America First advocate and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Most of the news coverage centered on <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/11/09/nx-s1-5599975/nick-fuentes-comments-on-the-tucker-carlson-show-sparks-backlash-from-conservatives">free speech</a>, <a href="https://reason.com/2025/10/30/deplatforming-nick-fuentes-wont-stop-antisemitism/">cancel culture</a>, and <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/general/general/the-gop-feud-over-tucker-carlson-and-nick-fuentes-explained/ar-AA1Q4flg?ocid=BingNewsSerp">antisemitism</a>. Only a few commentators remarked (and <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tucker-carlson-nick-fuentes-gay-pornography-liberal-women_n_6900ce18e4b0ebfddfbbe64a">those</a> <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/tucker-carlson-apologizes-to-nick-fuentes-for-calling-him-gay/">ineptly</a>) on what Fuentes said, much later in the interview, about pornography.
In short, this twenty-seven-year-old pariah, who has offended everyone across the spectrum of mainstream American thought, nevertheless spoke sensibly on this one issue.
<blockquote>Something that is almost never talked about is that this is a generation that is totally sexually dysfunctional, I think, because of pornography. . . .
It is impossible for a real woman to compete with the availability and the novelty of pornography. A real woman is only one person. . . . Porn is—you could have a hundred different women in one sitting, doing anything. Whatever niche or idiosyncratic thing that a person might be into, it’s there. . . .
It’s reality distortion. . . . Just like psychedelics distort reality, just like an internet society is a form of delusion, so is porn. . . . Especially among young men, they know it’s a problem. It’s ruining their lives! And they know it.</blockquote>
It’s nuts to see a guy who fulminates against “world Jewry” on the same page—granted, this one fluttering page—as Matt Fradd, Jason Evert, and Trent Horn. But the groypers’ guy agrees: pornography is ubiquitous, pervasive, and grievously destructive to human relationships.
Fuentes’s popularity with young men <a href="https://www.bluesquarealliance.org/command-center-insights/tracking-nick-fuentess-rise-how-an-extremist-is-gaining-visibility-through-the-mainstream/">appears authentic</a>. It thus seems reasonable to read his remarks as underlining the impression that the conventional warnings against porn are not working. So what should we do differently, or at least in addition?
This will sound counterintuitive, but part of the problem is the relentless focus on pornography itself. This is like a general grinding his army down on the enemy’s best fortifications, when the better strategy would be to settle in for a siege and let starvation turn the tide.
Orthodox Jews have an ancient tradition of “<a href="https://www.britshalomstatecollege.org/torah-commentaries/2017/11/20/making-fences-around-the-torah">building a fence</a> around the Torah.” The Torah prescribes the essential laws for Jews—the ones Sodom and Gomorrah couldn’t be bothered with, and we all know <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-did-god-hate-about-sodom">how that turned out</a>. But the rabbis, concerned for the welfare of the Jewish people, laid down laws on top of the Torah—“lesser laws” not directly from God, like <a href="https://coffeeshoprabbi.com/2019/04/02/a-fence-around-the-torah/">forbidding the holding of a tool</a> on the Sabbath.  This “fence” of extra laws safeguarded the people: a guy might incur a rabbi’s punishment by picking up a tool, but dealing with that rabbinical law would save him from transgressing the divine commandment not to work on the Sabbath (see Deut. 5:12).
This is what we need when it comes to the scourge of pornography. We build a fence around pornography by identifying related “lesser” evils and fostering <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-it-ever-okay-to-hate">righteous hatred</a> for them. There are many of these, right in front of our faces. Men will need to focus more on some, women more on others, though both sexes should cooperate in campaigning against all of them.
<h2>Integrity and the MPAA</h2>
Twenty years ago, a high school freshman I knew would consciously avert his eyes from the local mall’s gigantic Victoria’s Secret ads to “avoid sinful thoughts.” I made fun of him then, but now I admire the memory of him.
For men, this is where the fight against porn starts: with all the little gateways the world has planted to ensnare us. Neither the Catechism nor the Church’s tradition offers a “porn pass” for mainstream movies, no matter what the Motion Picture Association of America has to say about their appropriateness or how many Oscars they win. Nor do a few square inches of fabric or skillfully placed set pieces fix the problem because technically there’s no nudity.
Men must cultivate a healthy disgust for these snares, which enflame lust even when they’re not pornographic themselves. This is what integrity implies: a worldview that recognizes evil everywhere it shows up and doesn’t scramble to make exceptions for the sake of comfort or human respect.
One useful technique is to meditate on the rank inauthenticity of these precursors to porn. Think of the artifice that goes into a Victoria’s Secret ad: the careful photo shoot staging, the make-up, the circus show of staring photographers and technicians. Likewise with the Oscar-winning movies—not technically porn, we’re assured!—where two effective strangers come together and contort their bodies and mouth out noises to pretend they’re having sex. Often they leave their families at home to do this, with their spouses’ consent—and then they rake in money and fame and awards!
With enough scrutiny, the fakeness becomes glaring, and then repulsive. If we dial into that aversion, we can stop convincing ourselves that it’s okay to put up with a little cheesecake or fan service or even nudity in an otherwise “perfectly fine” movie. We can seriously clean up our viewing habits or even stop watching TV altogether.

Does this mean avoiding almost all cinema and television and pop culture? In a world saturated with temptations to lust, yes, absolutely, it could. Embrace it. Call it a take-no-prisoners hard pivot back to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/three-fallacies-in-the-dress-code-debates">custody of the eyes</a>.
<h2>Modesty and Instagram</h2>
Holy things are covered—our Lord in the tabernacle, the chalice that holds his blood, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/canopy">the altar</a> on which the Mass is offered. It’s not just flattery to say that the woman likewise should be covered. Her body—of the same kind as <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/mary-the-ark-of-the-new-covenant?fbclid=IwAR0kpj7BwsemehLRHi07fW_Mdt3XkS2HjtqyIAW1yWrjZP93h3FDs8ZM6sc">the one that bore</a> our Lord—is holy, too. It’s controversial to say so, but the edicts they tell me the nuns issued in the mean old fifties have merit.
There’s more to this than hems and necklines and sleeves. A woman who protects her modesty by her dress can then turn to protecting society with her witness. If men should hate the “pre-pornographic” snares of the media, what should women hate? Namely, Instagram and its analogues, and what they represent: a culture in which women command astronomical attention directly proportional to how much they’re willing to exhibit. It starts with 5,000 profile pics on Facebook and bikinis on Instagram and progresses to OnlyFans, where women are so empowered in their promiscuity that it’s hard to find a man to blame for exploiting them.
What empowers good women is to hear that yes, women do have great power, which means that women too are capable of great evil. OnlyFans proves it. Women who respect themselves, who want a culture that breeds good men to marry, whose maternal instincts flame over at the thought of their sons and daughters lost to some internet pit of filth will be righteous to trumpet their hatred of women’s power squandered on vanity and ambition and sin.
We need more women to speak about this—not to shout from the rooftops, necessarily, but just to be ready to express their disgust when the occasion calls for it. “Instagram grosses me out” has power, just as “That movie is porn with a veneer” does. This sort of witness, calmly and charitably expressed, will cause people to do a double-take.
The advice against pornography must start with “Don’t,” but it can’t end there. Demolishing the gateways to it—to consuming it and to creating it—must be part of the cure. This work is especially necessary where it touches on embedded cultural institutions: television, advertising, fashion, social media. Speaking out and standing out will mean ridicule, ostracization, and contempt, but Christians should be used to that kind of thing.
And eventually, with courage and steadfastness, it works.  When porn is just not that interesting anymore—not to watch, and not to do—it will die.

Good Fences Make Good Christians

In this episode Trent explores the history of Catholicism in America revealing the cracks in its foundation that were forming long before the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
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Transcription:
Trent:
When people think about the decline of Catholicism in America, they often think about the rebellious spirit of the 1960s and the hotly debated aftermath of the Second Vatican Council is where it started, but that&#8217;s not when American Catholicism began to decline. That happened in the 1940s. And today&#8217;s episode, we&#8217;ll see why it happened and the lessons that we need to learn from it. Although you might be skeptical about the 1940s starting, the church&#8217;s decline in America weren&#8217;t the forties. A time of Chattanooga choo choo socking old Hitler in the jaw and a celebration of all things good and traditional partly. But when you dig deeper, you see cracks forming in the larger social structure. For example, the sexual revolution of the 1960s didn&#8217;t instantly come into existence with the introduction for the birth control pill, though that did throw gasoline on the fornicating fire. Instead, we need to go back to the 1920s where Americans sick of a pandemic in a world war were ready to cut loose and flap their flappers. During this period, the Latex condom became available, which was cheaper, thinner, more effective, and lasted years longer than previous. Rubber and animal skin condoms, well not animal skin, they&#8217;re made from sheep intestines.
Man Catholic teaching on marriage looks better and better every day. In fact, the widespread proliferation of these products with the help of eugenics like Margaret Sanger motivated Pop Xi to reaffirm the church&#8217;s teaching on the evils of contraception in his 1930 and cyclical Casty Canobie. In the same year, the Anglicans became the first Protestant body to grant an exception for contraceptives for married couples. And it&#8217;s not like that would become a slippery slope for them. Seven years later, the FDA tested and approved barrier contraceptives and the American Medical Association formally recommended their use. While in many places they were illegal, doctors got around the contraception bans by promoting things like condoms for disease prevention. During World War ii, condoms were widely distributed because as popular warning posters reveal from the time not every soldier was out selflessly saving private Ryan. But not only were contraceptives becoming widely available, social changes were causing what later historians would term the silent sexual revolution of the 1940s bans on child labor and requirements to complete high school, extended childhood and ushered in a new label to describe the people going through this new phase of life between childhood and adulthood.
IE teenagers companies aggressively marketed to teens and the widespread adoption of the car moved dating out of the family home and into less supervised areas.
CLIP :
Jenny thinks that she has the key to popularity parking in cars with the boys at night. When Jerry brags about taking Jenny out, he learns that she dates all the boys and he feels less important.
Trent:
According to historian Alan Tiggy, between the beginning of World War II in 1941 and the inaugural issue of Playboy in 1953, the overall rate of single motherhood more than doubled. The Alfred Kinsey report on sexual behavior in the human male also came out in 1948 and contributed to propaganda saying that basically everyone was a sexual deviant. So why complaint about it? Films were also becoming more provocative, prompting the adoption of the Hayes Code to censor them. Though artists often mocked the code as can be seen in this 1940 photo purposely breaking many of the codes rules, provocative media of the 1950s, including magazines like Playboy did not create a sexual revolution from nothing. They accelerated one that began years earlier and was marketed to men who had indulge in things like pinup girls during the war. This can be seen in gross ads in the 1950s and even the 1940s like this one for bar mix that brags about using the world&#8217;s largest lemons.
That&#8217;s not to say the men during this time were just a bunch of perverts. Many were virtuous and deserve to be called members of the greatest generation. But there&#8217;s no denying how the horrors of war can leave scars on the soul even more than the body and be a place where sin can infiltrate. In 2003, John Paul II said, bluntly no to war. War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity. And that makes sense because even if you supposedly win a war, a part of your humanity is always lost in the process. However, by the late 1940s after the war, Americans were in the midst of a self-indulgent reaction similar to the roaring 1920s. And this also affected Catholic communities, which before World War II often involved lower class communities. These Catholics had many children, and so some of them were usually encouraged to join the priesthood or the convent to secure a better life for themselves.
But after the war, many Catholic veterans use their GI bills to attend college and start families with middle-class lifestyles. This desire to keep up with the Joneses also lit the fuse of the future vocation crisis. Instead of seeing the priesthood as a path to success, college and post-war manufacturing jobs were now in reach for many Catholics. And the priesthood was pushed aside for many young people. In Robert an&#8217;s book, minor Setback or Major Disaster, the rise and demise of minor seminaries in the United States, he shows that around 1960 and 1961 before the second Vatican Council High school seminaries began to decline in enrollment. This makes sense because that&#8217;s when the children born after World War II were now becoming teenagers. Baby boomers often get a lot of hate, but you can&#8217;t blame them for the pressure their greatest generation parents put on them when they were teenagers to go out and make something of themselves in the world.
This post-war mindset can also be seen in the formation of Catholic priests. As Anello notes in his book, in early 20th century Catholic immigrant communities, the smartest person you knew was probably your parish priest. But with college education becoming more popular after the war, priests were expected to have the same level of general education as laypeople. And this gave rise to more liberal university study among priests and the disastrous secular dogmas that followed them into their priesthoods. And while we might like to think 1950s Catholics, the high levels of orthodoxy found among adherence of the traditional Latin mass, today the data tells a different story. Historian Leslie Woodcock Tendler from the Catholic University of America cites a 1952 poll commissioned by Catholic Digest, which found a majority of Catholics Did not think contraception or remarriage after divorce were sinful. The poll was so shocking, it was unpublished and left for tenor to find in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia&#8217;s archives.
And this wasn&#8217;t an isolated case. National fertility studies showed that about 30% of Catholic women in 1955 used contraceptives with that number ballooning to 51% in 1965 with the advent of the birth control pill. So what can Catholics learn from this? Well, it&#8217;s too simplistic to just blame the Second Vatican Council for the decline of American Catholicism. As we saw American Catholic views on moral issues and vocations we&#8217;re changing long before the Council, but that doesn&#8217;t mean the council was without fault. Stephen vin&#8217;s 2019 book, mass Exodus Catholic disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II shows that after the council Protestant groups declined more than Catholicism. So religious decline wasn&#8217;t a uniquely Catholic phenomenon, but Olivin doesn&#8217;t completely absolve the council. He says that before World War ii, Catholics had high levels of social support because of their tight-knit communities, their lives revolved around their parish and their priest.
They were so tight-knit even in things like what they ate on Fridays that groups like the Ku Klux Klan saw Catholics as subversive dangers as can be seen in early 20th century propaganda. However, world War II had the effect of moving Catholic women into the workforce and Catholic men into close bonds with men from other religions and classes, which weakened Catholic reliance on the parish community. Conversely, this made Catholics less alien to other Americans. By the 1940s, Catholics were becoming more accepted as Americans and anti-Catholic bigotry was seen as a remnant of outdated fascism. As can be seen in this 1943 public service announcement, we&#8217;ll
CLIP :
Never be able to call this country our own until it&#8217;s a country without what? Yeah, without what? Without Negroes, without alien foreigners, without Catholics, without Freemasons.
Trent:
Within a few years, Catholics were seen as a prized marketing demographic as can be seen in McDonald&#8217;s launching the fly of fish to capture the Friday night Catholics who didn&#8217;t eat meat. However, the US bishop&#8217;s defacto end of the perpetual Friday meet fast and the second Vatican Council&#8217;s changes to the liturgy caused a weakening of Catholic identity and a resulting loss of a social net that helped keep people in the church. Though as we saw, this had been dissolving for decades before the Council, although it&#8217;s sad to read about the promises from those who adopted the spirit of Vatican II saying this would revitalize the church. It reminds me of the awful 1969 Elvis movie Change of Habit where Mary Tyler Moore stars as a nun who helps the poor but doesn&#8217;t wear a habit. And rebukes older priests who criticize her
CLIP :
Late parties profane music till all hours forsaken. The habit was one thing, but now you&#8217;re not even dressed like females. Father, I&#8217;ve had enough of you. I want you out of my parish. Father, we&#8217;ve done nothing to be ashamed of.
Trent:
So do young women flock to convents in order to emulate these cool hip nuns? Well, given that there are more nuns over the age of 90 in the United States than under the age of 60 today, the answer is no. Instead, today we&#8217;re seeing young people flocking the churches that embrace a timeless, authentic beauty that is found in sacred tradition. That doesn&#8217;t mean the church only needs one way of living out this tradition, just that it should not chase cultural fads that quickly become dated and unfulfilling. So what can we learn from these facts of history? First, we have to be watchful of changing social norms, which often begins subtly and under the radar before they become fully formed cultural changes. This is why Jesus told his followers this. When you see a cloud rising in the West, you say at once a shower is coming.
And so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say There will be scorching heat and it happens you hypocrites. You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? We too need to be watchful of damaging cultural changes while they exist in their embryonic form like they did in the 1940s before they become a full fledged crisis like they did in the 1960s. Second, holiness isn&#8217;t just about having all the right external behaviors. My colleague Joe Hess Meyer and I were discussing this episode and he said it reminded him of the truth that some people think chastity is just about not engaging in sinful physical acts and has nothing to do with what we think about. But I&#8217;m sure a lot of people in the 1940s and fifties thought ogling pinup posters or obsessing over the latest consumer fad was just a harmless diversion.
But sins of the flesh always begin as sins of the mind. And no one is immune from the temptation that he or she will think they could always keep them separate. And third holiness isn&#8217;t just about sexual morality. The idolization of sexual sin in the 1960s could not have happened without people idolizing modern post-war consumerism that disconnected people from the things that truly made them happy and holy. We have to be on guard against the temptation to make our faith something. We fit into our routine on Sundays rather than the primary axis that everything else in our life revolves around. This provides more reason to build up solid Catholic communities who can provide for people&#8217;s spiritual, emotional, and even their physical needs and keep them from thinking the only Catholic community they can trust is on the internet. For more resources on today&#8217;s episode, check out the links below. And don&#8217;t forget to hit the subscribe button and support us@trenthornpodcast.com. And of course, go to conference of trent.com to check out our conference coming up this April. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.

The Decade That Broke American Catholicism

On May 2, 2024, the House of Representatives passed the “<a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6090/text">Antisemitism Awareness Act</a>,” partly in response to an uptick in antisemitic displays at U.S. college campuses in recent years. The act could help students file civil complaints if they feel they have been victims of antisemitic discrimination.
The Catholic Church condemns all unjust discrimination, and <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2024/documents/20240202-lettera-ebrei-in-israele.html">Pope Francis even said</a> this past February that the Church “rejects every form of anti-Judaism and antisemitism, unequivocally condemning manifestations of hatred towards Jews and Judaism as a sin against God.”
Some critics are concerned that the bill’s definition of antisemitism, which is drawn from the <a href="https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism">International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance</a>, is too broad and would make basic Catholic doctrine antisemitic. They focus on one part that says it is antisemitic to “[use] the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.” In response, they say that the Bible and many Church Fathers speak about “the Jews” killing Jesus.
So is it accurate to say “the Jews killed Jesus”? Is it antisemitic?
The Second Vatican Council taught that “the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in his passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today” (Nostra Aetate 4). Some Catholics, however, argue that all the unconverted Jews in the time of Christ (thus exempting the Blessed Virgin and the apostles) were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. Some even claim that all unconverted Jews in history since the Crucifixion carry a unique guilt for Christ’s death that other sinners do not share.
It is obviously false that all non-Christian Jews at the time of Christ’s death were responsible for his crucifixion, for the simple reason that not all of them were consulted! Only a tiny portion of the Jewish population called for his death. Further, many Jews who did not formally become Christian still had a positive attitude toward Jesus and his movement (see Acts 2:47) and almost certainly would not have approved of Jesus’ death.
When it comes to later Jews being responsible, this idea comes from an interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel, which describes Pilate washing his hands, saying, “I am innocent of this righteous man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” Matthew then says the crowd answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” (27:25).
What do we make of this “blood curse”? To start, the biblical text never says God honored it. Nor would such a curse, even if it was honored, apply to every future Jew, since nearly all of them are not descended from the small crowd present at Jesus’ sentencing.
In the second volume of his work Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI writes:
<blockquote>When in Matthew&#8217;s account the &#8220;whole people&#8221; say, &#8220;His blood be upon us and on our children&#8221; (27:25), the Christian will remember that Jesus&#8217; blood speaks a different language from the blood of Abel (Heb. 12:24): it does not cry out for vengeance and punishment; it brings reconciliation. It is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all. . . . Read in the light of faith, it means that we all stand in need of the purifying power of love which is his blood. These words are not a curse, but rather redemption, salvation (187).</blockquote>
For another interpretation, the crowd’s exclamation in Matthew 27:25 may refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 as being part of a divinely appointed punishment upon those who rejected Jesus. It was not uncommon in Israel’s history for future generations to be afflicted because of the sinful actions of Israel’s rulers, such as Solomon’s idolatry (1 Kings 11) being the catalyst for the division of the kingdom and the Jews’ subsequent exile into Babylon.
Historically, some Catholics, including through medieval regional councils and in papal documents, did argue that Jewish hardships throughout history represented a similar kind of punishment for Jewish involvement in the Crucifixion. However, these assertions did not rise to the level of definitive magisterial teaching. In fact, the sixteenth-century Catechism of the Council of Trent rejects the idea that Jews bear more guilt for Jesus’ crucifixion than non-Jews:
<blockquote>In this guilt are involved all those who fall frequently into sin; for, as our sins consigned Christ the Lord to the death of the cross, most certainly those who wallow in sin and iniquity crucify to themselves again the Son of God, as far as in them lies, and make a mockery of him.
This guilt seems more enormous in us than in the Jews, since according to the testimony of the same apostle: If they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; while we, on the contrary, professing to know him, yet denying him by our actions, seem in some sort to lay violent hands on him.</blockquote>
But even if Jews throughout history are not uniquely responsible for the death of Jesus, what about “the Jews” of Jesus’ time?
The Catechism of the Council of Trent refers to “the Jews” killing Jesus, and several Scripture passages (John 5:18, Acts 10:39) use similar language. In 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15, St. Paul says, “For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men.”
Paul’s phrase “the Jews” is a reference not to all Jews, but to a particular group of Jews in Palestine who were persecuting the Church. Other scholars have proposed that the Greek word Ioudaiōn in the New Testament can also be translated Judeans and that in some verses, this context makes more sense than the broader term “Jews.”
John 7:1 says, “After this Jesus went about in Galilee; he would not go about in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill him.” But there were plenty of Jews in Galilee, so what is meant in this passage is not “Jews”—i.e., non-Christian followers of Yahweh—but rather Judeans, and specifically the Jews loyal to political leadership in Jerusalem. This interpretation also makes sense of Paul’s exhortation to imitate the Christians in Judea who withstood persecution at the hands of the persecutors in that area, the Judeans (a role Paul once held before his conversion).
The Catechism also gives this insight into how we ought to understand Jewish responsibility for Christ’s death:
<blockquote>The historical complexity of Jesus&#8217; trial is apparent in the Gospel accounts. The personal sin of the participants (Judas, the Sanhedrin, Pilate) is known to God alone. Hence we cannot lay responsibility for the trial on the Jews in Jerusalem as a whole, despite the outcry of a manipulated crowd and the global reproaches contained in the apostles&#8217; calls to conversion after Pentecost. Jesus himself, in forgiving them on the cross, and Peter in following suit, both accept &#8220;the ignorance&#8221; of the Jews of Jerusalem and even of their leaders (597).</blockquote>
It is inaccurate to say, as some critical scholars might allege, that the Romans were completely responsible for Christ’s crucifixion. Scripture clearly teaches that some members of the Jewish leadership saw Jesus as being such a grave threat to the social order that he needed to be killed (John 11:50). However, as we saw in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council quoted earlier, this guilt cannot be laid upon all unconverted Jews at that time, and much less so on Jewish people throughout history. Indeed, we must remember humanity’s collective involvement, through our sins, in Christ’s death on the cross. This is why the Catechism states that
<blockquote>in her magisterial teaching of the Faith and in the witness of her saints, the Church has never forgotten that &#8220;sinners were the authors and the ministers of all the sufferings that the divine Redeemer endured.&#8221; Taking into account the fact that our sins affect Christ himself, the Church does not hesitate to impute to Christians the gravest responsibility for the torments inflicted upon Jesus, a responsibility with which they have all too often burdened the Jews alone (598).</blockquote>

Did ‘the Jews’ Kill Jesus?

On his last full day as president of the United States, it is reported that Joe Biden <a href="https://www.conferenceofgrandmasterspha.org/news-events-scholarships">joined the Freemasons</a>.
Canonists <a href="https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/did-joe-biden-join-the-freemasons">are debating</a> whether one incurs a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication for joining the Masons, given that the 1983 Code of Canon Law does not explicitly forbid Catholics to join, whereas one did incur an automatic excommunication under the previous 1917 Code (<a href="https://www.canonlaw.info/1917vatorig.htm#LIBER_QUINTUS">see can. 2335</a>). There is also the issue of President Biden’s mental capacity in making such a choice, as his cognitive decline was evident in his one debate in June 2024 with President Donald Trump, after which Biden was pressured by his Democratic Party colleagues to end his re-election bid.
In <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19831126_declaration-masonic_en.html">a 1983 declaration</a> from the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, now DDF), the Church reaffirmed that “the faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave [mortal] sin and may not receive Holy Communion.” Although excommunication and being in a state of grave sin usually go hand in hand, they don’t always, depending on who levies the excommunication and on what basis. Being in a state of grave sin is more serious, though, given that one who does not repent of such wrongdoing will go to hell (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c1a8.htm#IV">see CCC 1861</a>). In addition, to be subjectively culpable of a mortal sin, one must fulfill three criteria: its moral object must be grave matter, and one must commit the sin with full knowledge and deliberate or complete consent (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c1a8.htm#IV">see CCC 1857-1860</a>).
In 2023, the DDF reaffirmed <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20231113_richiesta-cortes-massoneria_en.html">the Church’s ban</a> on membership in the Freemasons, and the president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-does-the-church-say-about-freemasonry">reaffirmed it again in February 2024</a>.
Whatever his personal culpability in joining the Masons, President Biden’s choice sadly caps a series of decisions in which he as a public official repudiated the Faith. That includes his many decisions to uphold legalized abortion as a U.S. senator as well as president. Others include supporting the redefinition of marriage and even <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vice-president-joe-biden-officiated-wedding-sex-couple/story?id=41058123">officiating</a> at the “wedding” of at least one same-sex couple.
We can make principled arguments <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/dialogue-is-abortion-a-human-right-or-an-inhumane-wrong-with-nathan-nobis">against abortion</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/prepping-for-pride-month">the redefinition of marriage</a> based on objective biology and basic human rights, despite the empty attempt by Biden and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-light-toward-the-darkness">other politicians</a> to say, “I am personally opposed” on these issues, “but I cannot legally impose my religious convictions on others.” In any event, let us pray for our brother in Christ, President Biden, that he might yet see the light and publicly repent, both for his benefit and for many others’.
Many Catholics don’t understand why the Catholic Church forbids the faithful to become Freemasons, including because they may have neighbors or co-workers who are Masons, and because they see positive philanthropic work the Masons oversee, such as providing major health care for children at their hospitals.
The Freemasons were established in Europe several centuries ago to oppose the Catholic Church, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-great-modern-attack-on-the-church">and indeed to destroy the Church</a>. Because of this enmity, popes issued a series of pronouncements, beginning with Pope Clement XII’s constitution <a href="https://www.papalencyclicals.net/clem12/c12inemengl.htm">In Eminenti</a> in 1738 and including Pope Leo XIII’s 1884 encyclical <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18840420_humanum-genus.html">Humanum Genus</a>. In addition, St. Maximilian Kolbe founded his Militia of the Immaculate in significant part to combat the Masons, whom he observed proclaiming in 1917—as part of their bicentennial celebration in Rome—that “<a href="https://saintmaximiliankolbe.com/st-maximilian-kolbe-and-the-second-page/#:~:text=The%20secret%20founding%20of%20the,of%20heresies%20called%20M%20o%20d%20e%20r%20n%20i%20s%20m%20.">Satan must reign in the Vatican</a>. The pope will be his slave.” Also, a key reason Fr. Michael McGivney established the Knights of Columbus in 1882 was to provide fraternity and life insurance for the faithful, as many Catholic men were being tempted to join the Masons for those reasons.
In modern-day America, Masonic lodges typically serve as social clubs that also help members network professionally. But make no mistake: the Masons are qualitatively different from the Kiwanis Club or your local Elks lodge, because Masonry is a naturalistic religion. As the New Catholic Encyclopedia states,
<blockquote>Freemasonry displays all the elements of religion, and as such it becomes a rival to the religion of the Gospel. It includes temples and altars, prayers, a moral code, worship, vestments, feast days, the promise of reward or punishment in the afterlife, a hierarchy, and initiation and burial rites.</blockquote>
In his <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/it/vaticano/news/2024-02/chiesa-massoneria-stagliano-inconciliabili.html#:~:text=Chiesa%20e%20massoneria%2C%20Staglian%C3%B2%3A%20%E2%80%9CEcco%20perch%C3%A9%20sono%20profondamente%20inconciliabili%E2%80%9D,-Il%20presidente%20della&amp;text=%E2%80%9CQuella%20massonica%20%C3%A8%20un'eresia,tra%20Chiesa%20cattolica%20e%20massoneria.">February 2024 interview with Vatican News</a>, Bishop Antonio Stagliano, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, distinguished Freemasonry from Catholic belief on several important matters.
For example, Masons view God as “the Great Architect,” and their <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/masonry">longstanding emblem is an architect’s basic instruments</a>. Consequently, <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/bishop-who-participated-in-freemasonry-event-affirms-its-incompatibility-with-catholicism">Stagliano said</a>, “Freemasonry is a heresy that is fundamentally aligned with the Arian heresy,” because it was Arius “who imagined that Jesus was a great architect of the universe” while also denying Christ’s divinity. In addition, Stagliano said, as a natural religion, Freemasonry “is the fruit of human reasoning that tries to imagine a god, whereas the God of Catholics is the fruit of the very revelation of God in Christ Jesus!”
“In essence,” he added, Catholicism “is the result of a historical event in which God became flesh, drew near to men, spoke to all human beings, and destined them for his salvation.”
Similarly, Masonry and Catholicism differ on the concept of mystery. Freemasonry is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-does-the-church-say-about-freemasonry">a secret society</a> that espouses a form of Gnosticism—special, secret knowledge available only to its initiated members. In marked contrast, Stagliano notes, for Christians, the mystery “hidden throughout the centuries does not cease to be a mystery but rather ceases to be hidden, because the mystery hidden throughout the centuries has been revealed,” referring to God’s self-revelation, especially through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, infallibly taught in and proclaimed by his Catholic Church to the whole world (Matt. 28:18-20).
The bishop also distinguished Catholic from Masonic brotherhood: “Our fraternity is established on the sacrament of the love of God in Jesus; it is founded on the Eucharist, not only on the generic idea of being brothers.” He also said that Freemasonry’s concept of doing good works should not be confused with the life in Christ that Jesus calls the faithful to exemplify. The practice of Christian charity “has nothing to do with Masonic philanthropy,” he says, because “Christian charity is based on the historical event of a God who died and rose again for us and asks his children not to be merely philanthropic but to be, finally, crucified for love.”
“In short,” <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/bishop-who-participated-in-freemasonry-event-affirms-its-incompatibility-with-catholicism">Stagliano summarized,</a> “when we talk about incompatibility, we are referring to profound contradictions.”

Joe Biden, Freemason?

<div>I’m seeking employment in the biotech field. Are there any restrictions as to what I can do? Can I work with human cells?</div><div>The best thing for you to do is to contact the folks at the reliable and sophisticated <a href="https://www.ncbcenter.org/">National Catholic Bioethics Center</a> in Philadelphia. They are happy to engage and answer questions.
Peace to you with prayers for your future work.
</div>

Are There Mays and May-Nots in Biotech Work?

For many, the mercy of God seems incompatible with the doctrine of hell. If God is all-merciful, then wouldn’t he have mercy on the damned and give them the grace they need to repent? Although the damned wouldn’t be able to reorient their wills to God naturally, given the <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-blackfriars/article/abs/aquinas-on-the-fixity-of-the-will-after-death/7694E049B34DEB149D311D54A40C3072">irrevocability of the will after death</a>, perhaps God could give such a grace that would enable them to change their wills supernaturally. Since God doesn’t give this grace, then he isn’t all-merciful.
Even if we assume for argument’s sake that God could give a grace of repentance to the damned despite the natural irrevocability of the will after death, the major problem with the objection is that it assumes that God must give the grace of repentance to be merciful. But this assumption is false. And the reason it’s false is that it entails a contradiction.
Mercy, by definition, is an act of giving that which a person doesn’t have to give. For example, if you have a debt and owe me money, I could easily require in justice that you pay the debt. But I could also just as easily exercise mercy and remit the debt. The reason it would be an act of mercy is that I didn’t have to remit the debt, yet I did, gratuitously.
So to say that God must give the grace of repentance to be merciful—whether to the damned or us in this life—is to say that giving the grace of repentance is an act of mercy and not an act of mercy at the same time and in the same respect. It would be an act of mercy simply by virtue of saying that God is merciful. And it would not be an act of mercy insofar as the objection assumes that God must give the grace. That’s a contradiction.
Since the fundamental assumption of the objection—namely, that God must give the grace of repentance to be merciful—entails a contradiction, we can conclude that the objection from God’s mercy has no persuasive force against affirming the reality of hell.

God Owes Us a Ticket Out of Hell!

Many Protestant-Christians argue that Christians should use <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/sola-scriptura-doesnt-work/">only the Bible</a> as the infallible source of truth. One way they do this is by attacking the ambiguity of Tradition. Catholicism claims that “Tradition” is basically everything that the apostles passed down to their followers orally, rather than through their written letters. Tradition, for Catholics, is just as infallible as the Bible.
But, Protestants contend, Catholicism does not point to any specific examples of Tradition. Scripture is easily consulted by opening the book in our hands, whereas Tradition is less easily consulted. As Protestant apologist Robert Zins said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRDUue2NgjQ">debate</a> on Catholicism, “How many of you in here have held Paul’s tradition in your hand? And read it, and studied it, and obeyed it?” His point is that there is no infallible listing of teachings handed on by the apostles orally. Because of this, Protestants argue that Catholicism could simply invent new teachings and claim that they came from this mysterious source of “Tradition.”
To address this claim, I’ve compiled a few teachings that principally derive from Tradition. These teachings are examples of Tradition for two reasons.
First, the earliest Christians sometimes explicitly claim that the specific teaching was handed down from the apostles. If the earliest Christians are trustworthy, then this is a good first criterion.
Second, the earliest Christians sometimes unanimously hold to a specific teaching. If nearly every Christian writer throughout the world teaches the specific teaching or does not dispute it, then this implies that the source of the teaching is the apostles. A teaching would likely be widespread because it was a part of the Tradition. On the other hand, if the teaching was not held by men all over the world, but was just one particular thought from one particular man, then the teaching was likely not an apostolic tradition.
The following teachings of Tradition can be found in Scripture, but only implicitly. Many will debate whether these teachings come from Scripture, but if we know that a given teaching was handed down from the apostles orally, then the debate is cleared up.
Below are seven teachings that meet the above two criteria and thus qualify as specific traditions.
1. Prayer for the Dead. Catholicism teaches that Christians can <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-saints-pray-for-you-how-the-christians-in-heaven-help-us-here-on-earth/">pray for the souls</a> of the dead, for the dead might be getting purged of their sins before God. Prayer for the speeding up of this after-life purgation comes from the apostles, according to the popular patriarch of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom (347-407). He <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230203.htm">said</a>, “Not in vain did the apostles order that remembrance should be made of the dead in the dreadful Mysteries [of the Eucharistic liturgy].” The apostles taught that the prayer of the Mass would refresh the souls of the dead being purified.
2. Infant Baptism. Catholics hold to the teaching that infants, who are incapable of having faith in Jesus, can be baptized. The faith of the Church makes up for the infant’s deficit. This teaching of infant baptism has its origins in the apostles, according to Origen of Alexandria (184-254). He said that the “Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants” (Commentary on Romans 5:9).
3. The Perpetual Virginity of Mary. This teaching says that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was a virgin her entire life. She never had sexual relations with Joseph. This dogma was <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/mary-ever-virgin">universally taught</a> by the early Church, even though there is no Scripture verse that says, &#8220;Mary never had relations with Joseph for her entire life.&#8221; St. Jerome refuted a man named Helvidius who claimed that Mary had sexual relations, by saying, “Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? . . . Ignatius [A.D. 108], Polycarp [65-155], Irenaeus [130-200], Justin Martyr [100-165], and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against [the heretics] Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus held these same views and wrote volumes replete with wisdom. If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man&#8221; (19).
4. The Real Presence. Although many Protestants teach that Jesus’ phrase “this is my body” was purely symbolic, Catholicism teaches that Jesus was speaking literally. The bread mystically transformed into the body of Jesus yet remained under the form of bread. This teaching was affirmed by <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/the-real-presence">all of the early Church Fathers</a>. The reason nobody doubted or denied it is that the apostles had handed it down.
5. The Sacrifice of the Mass. Catholicism teaches that the Last Supper of Jesus (the first Mass), wherein he offered bread and wine, was truly united to his sacrificial death. All Masses offered by priests are therefore sacrifices to God. Many Protestant Christians deny that the Mass is a sacrifice, yet <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/the-sacrifice-of-the-mass">all of the Church Fathers</a> unanimously taught this. Scripture never says explicitly &#8220;the sacrifice of the Mass,&#8221; but this teaching is nonetheless a tradition. Church Historian JND Kelly <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Early_Christian_Doctrines.html?id=UivDgM0WywoC">said</a>, “The Eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian sacrifice from the closing decade of the first century, if not earlier. . . . It was natural for early Christians to think of the Eucharist as a sacrifice” (196).
6. Apostolic Succession. Catholics teach that bishops need to be ordained from someone with a direct lineage of succession to the apostles. This was never explained in Scripture as a requirement. Yet why did the <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/apostolic-succession">Church Fathers</a> consider it essential? Probably because it was an apostolic tradition. In fact, heretics who claimed that their doctrines stemmed from the apostles were refuted by Tertullian (160-220), who <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0311.htm">noted</a> that such heretics did not have lists of their bishops linking them to the apostles (ch. 32).
7. Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Scripture never says that there are three offices of leadership in the Church: bishops, priests, and deacons. It says only that there are elders or overseers and deacons. Yet St. Ignatius of Antioch spoke of a tripartite governance of orders that already existed for a while and was spread out in the various churches of Asia Minor (Letter to the Trallians 2:1-3). <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/bishop-priest-deacon">Other early Christians</a> spoke of the same. Where did they get such an idea if not from Tradition? How could they be so confident that every Church had a single bishop above the priests and deacons?
Those who claim that Tradition is just a murky soup of undefined messiness are wrong. Catholics cannot pull doctrines from Tradition, as if from a magician’s hat. Instead, the apostles handed down teachings verbally, and the early Christians attested to them.

7 Specific Church Traditions

“Thank you. We love you.”
These words are printed on the bottom of the sales receipts from<a href="https://lalalandkindcafe.com"> La La Land Kind Cafes</a>. And that’s not at all. I was patronizing the coffee shop for the first time recently, and the Gen Z-er barista was working hard on the connection with our table—taking our pictures, asking us personal questions, giving us unsolicited affirmations, and then, as we were leaving, thanking us and telling us, “Love you guys so much.”
It’s weird. But being “in the business of kindness” isn’t or at least shouldn’t be. Here’s a bit from the “About us” section of La La Land’s website:
<blockquote>The name La La land represents a dream world. We set out to bring La La land to life. A place where you walk in and feel a true sense of joy for life. A place where you are loved for who you are. A place that brings together all human beings. A place where kindness is priority.</blockquote>
Granted, it is fantastically secularized—but this is what lay people are supposed to do on this side of eternity! “Bring La La Land to life”—in religious language, “restore the temporal order and build the Kingdom of God here on earth”!
How do we do that? Stewarding joy, love, kindness, and community, “a place that brings together all human beings.” In biblical and religious language, “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19).
Where did all these catholic ideas come from? Oh, the Church. It sounds like church because it is from Church. Place this truth in the “intellectual history” fact file.
The movement of “normalizing kindness” (also on the La La Land website) began in the first century of the Roman Empire. Pagans converted to the Faith in droves, when the Church was illegal and persecuted, because of the kindness shown to them by their Christian neighbors during the famines and plagues. The concept of charity became an experiential reality.
This coffee shop is a sign of the times—post-Christian times. The people there are trying to do what the Church is supposed to do: transform culture by building a civilization of love and a culture of life.
I’ve always been fascinated by how well the secular world diagnoses the problem. For example, the problem of workaholism launched the “self-care” movement. Wrong-ish solution, but the right problem: worship of work over human dignity. What’s the real root of workaholism? The sin of sloth, or acedia. Interestingly, the root word for acedia means “lack of care,” uncaringness. We should care about spiritual things, and we should also care about ourselves. So moderns aren’t wrong about the need for self-care. But without replacing worship of work with worship of God, all these attempts at self-care remain superficial and circular.
The fourth-century emperor Julian the Apostate tried—and failed—to do the same thing in a pagan context. Pope Benedict reminds us of the story in Deus Caritas Est:
<blockquote>Upon becoming emperor, Julian decided to restore paganism, the ancient Roman religion, while reforming it in the hope of making it the driving force behind the empire. In this project he was amply inspired by Christianity. He established a hierarchy of metropolitans and priests who were to foster love of God and neighbor. In one of his letters, he wrote that the sole aspect of Christianity which had impressed him was the Church&#8217;s charitable activity. He thus considered it essential for his new pagan religion that, alongside the system of the Church&#8217;s charity, an equivalent activity of its own be established. According to him, this was the reason for the popularity of the “Galileans.” They needed now to be imitated and outdone. In this way, then, the emperor confirmed that charity was a decisive feature of the Christian community, the Church (24).</blockquote>
Julian tried to incentivize “kindness.” You can legislate morality insofar as the law is within the realm of justice. But the realm of charity is of a supernatural order, and the nature of love demands that it be entirely free—freely willed and freely accepted. Without freedom, morality becomes moralism, and sometimes this can tend to violence (e.g., one of the merch items in the La La Land shop says “be *insert expletive* kind”).
Another fascinating sign of the times is <a href="https://bumble.com/bff">Bumble BFF</a>, the “Bumble For Friends” app. That’s another well-intentioned monetization of the current epidemic of loneliness. Buy a coffee, get some love affirmations. Purchase an app, buy some friends.
But all consumeristic attempts will fail or remain ultimately unsatisfying because, as Pope Francis exhorted us in Evangelii Gaudium, without God, we “remain existentially orphaned, become drifters, flitting around . . . and never getting anywhere” (170). You can’t monetize love (no matter how well intentioned), and you can’t hotwire an emotional connection or purchase friendship.
The statistics surrounding these issues are staggering. Since 2010, religiosity among high-schoolers has decreased by 27 percent. Forty-two percent of youth report hopelessness and unhappiness. Twenty-two percent have experienced suicidal ideation in the last year, according to the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/yrbs_data_summary_and_trends.htm">CDC</a>.
I guess it’s time to make parish families great again! The breakdown of the family has left us a lot of unhappy spiritual children to adopt. It should be the easiest time to evangelize. Interestingly, La La Land Kind Cafe intentionally hires and mentors “foster youth.”
Let’s do the same, supernaturally. The practice of physical and spiritual adoption originated in medieval convents and monasteries, which led to the founding of official orphanages in Europe. Now we need the apostolic zeal and creativity to re-invent the parishes as spiritual orphanages for our numerous spiritual children.
Currently, parishes have adopted a consumerist model, following the culture. Even those who belong to a parish remain largely anonymous, coming in and out for sacraments, or engaging only with those they like, are already friends with, or maintain a shared context with (same small group, kids in the same religious education program, etc.). There are many within the parish who remain lonely, not to mention those within the parish boundaries who are waiting to be found—the peripheral “orphans and widows” whom the Lord has entrusted to our care.
If Mother Teresa is right about loneliness being the most terrible poverty, then we have never been poorer in the West than we are at this moment. Let’s change that.

So You Think You’re Lonely

If you spend too much time on the internet, you may have seen the historian and author Diana Butler Bass’s <a href="https://twitter.com/dianabutlerbass/status/1392177655475281921">impassioned defense of Pelagianism</a>. In it, she says “Pelagianism helped save my life” and that “declaring Pelagianism a heresy was, in my opinion as a human being and a church historian, the worst mistake western Christianity ever made.”
The defense of Pelagianism is fascinating, if only because it’s rare to see someone owning the label. Moreover, there’s a great deal of confusion about who <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/pelagius-and-pelagianism">Pelagius</a> (c. 354-418) was and what he actually taught. Indeed, much of what we know of his doctrine comes from the writings of his opponents, although some of his own writings remain.
The real-life Pelagius was from somewhere in the British Isles and became a monk in Rome. He once was well respected for his asceticism and his apparent holiness, but as time went on, he became increasingly fixated on defending his own heretical views.
Just what were those views?
An easy (somewhat simplified) way to understand the matter is that if Calvinists err in one direction, seeming to reject the goodness of man as God’s creation, Pelagians err in the opposite direction, treating humanity as so good as not to need redemption.
In his defense, Pelagius’s motives in teaching this seem to have been good. In <a href="http://www.pelagius.net/demetrias.htm">a letter to Demetrias</a>, he lamented that “most people look at the virtues in others, and imagine that such virtues are far beyond their reach. Yet God has implanted in every person the capacity to attain the very highest level of virtue.”
Herein lies the half-truth of Pelagianism. Pelagius was right to preach something greater than lukewarm holiness, calling Christians to strive not only for good, but for perfect. The Christian message is radical, after all: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). And settling for lukewarmness is spiritual suicide, as we see from Christ’s words to the church of Laodicea: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Rev. 3:15-16).
But there’s a problem with achieving perfection. Pelagius admitted as much, saying that “people cannot grow in virtue on their own.” Here, you might expect that he would say that what we need is Christ, or divine mercy, or grace. Instead, he says: “We each need companions to guide and direct us on the way of righteousness.” That is, instead of turning toward God and grace, the Pelagian impulse is to encourage one another to a perfection that (if we’re just careful enough) we can achieve ourselves. It is here that Pelagianism goes dangerously astray.
The hallmark of Pelagianism is a denial of original sin and a belief in human perfectibility, seemingly apart from divine grace. Pelagius described the human condition by saying that “day by day, hour by hour, we have to reach decisions; and in each decision, we can choose good or evil. The freedom to choose makes us like God: if we choose evil, that freedom becomes a curse; if we choose good, it becomes our greatest blessing.” Explicitly, Pelagius denied that this godlike ability was the result of grace, or Christianity, since “the goodness we see in pagans is proof of the goodness of God. He has granted every person, regardless of race or religion, the freedom to choose good or evil.”
At this point, you may be thinking Pelagius’s view of the human condition sounds a lot like what many modern Christians believe. But Pelagius saw more clearly where that line of reasoning leads. First, it logically entails that the Fall of Adam and Eve was good, not evil, since their “banishment from Eden is in truth the story of how the human race gained its freedom.” He explained:
<blockquote>When Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden they were like small children: they simply obeyed God’s instructions without considering the moral reasons for those instructions. To become mature they needed to learn the distinction for themselves between right and wrong, good and evil. And God gave them the opportunity to become mature by putting within the garden the tree of knowledge, by which they could learn this distinction. But if God had simply instructed Adam and Eve to eat from the tree, and they had obeyed, they would have been acting like children. So he forbade them from eating the fruit; this meant that they themselves had to make a decision, whether to eat or not to eat. . . . By defying God, Adam and Eve grew to maturity in his image.</blockquote>
A theology that praises man for “defying God” should set off alarm bells.
The trouble with Pelagianism doesn’t stop there. In this view, Jesus is no longer our redeemer so much as simply a helpful model of living a holy life. As Pelagius describes it, “in the teachings and the example of Jesus Christ we learn the general principles of behavior which pleases God.” Even when he says we are “reborn” through Christ, it’s only “because we can see clearly how we should live.” It’s not so much that Christ saves us, but that we (following the example of Christ) save ourselves.
In all of this, Pelagius is ascribing to our human nature, or our reason, or our good actions, things that Scripture instead ascribes to God and to divine grace. As St. Paul explains, it is “by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8-9).
Butler Bass’s own writings reveal the dangerous consequences of Pelagian thinking. She is the author of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Freeing-Jesus-Rediscovering-Teacher-Presence/dp/0062659529/">Freeing Jesus</a>, which Fr. James Martin has praised as “an inviting, accessible, provocative, challenging and always inspiring look” at the “heart of Christianity” from “one of our great Christian writers,” and which Butler Bass describes as being interwoven with her Pelagian theology. As she explains in the book’s introduction, the title comes from her belief that an icon of Jesus in the National Cathedral spoke to her and said, “Get me out of here.” The book is largely about “liberating” Jesus from our traditional view of him. For instance, instead of the cross, Butler Bass says that “the circle best illustrates my experience of Jesus,” and she presents an image of what her idea of what it means to believe in “the welcoming and inclusive Jesus, the Jesus of the circle and in the circle” (p. 261). It is, in short, a vision of Jesus as a visionary, but nothing more. She describes a mental image of
<blockquote>Jesus sitting in a circle with Patanjali, the Buddha, Muhammad, Guru Nanak, and Confucius; with saints and mystics and seers. In the circle. Not above it, not beyond it. In the circle. With me, with all of us in the circle (pp. 259-60).</blockquote>
Such a vision of Christ might seem far afield from the Christian perfectionism toward which Pelagius was striving, but it’s really just a matter of bringing Pelagius’s theology full circle. After all, if Pelagius is right, Jesus is not our redeemer—he’s simply a good moral example. And that’s why the Church considers Pelagianism a heresy. A church without Christ as its head, no matter how good it makes its adherents feel, is not really a church at all. It’s just another false teaching.

Pelagianism: Old Heresy, Still Attractive

Jesus was a Jew. This fact slips past most casual readers of the New Testament, but it is crucial to understanding Jesus and the book written about him—the Bible. Unfortunately, we are far removed from the ancient world of Roman-occupied Judea and the life of Israel in which Jesus lived.
Let me ask you a few questions. Were you born and raised in Israel? Did you study the Torah with the rabbis from an early age? Have you traversed the rocky hills and dusty paths to celebrate the mandatory feasts in Jerusalem? Do you speak Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic? I have not found many in my Catholic circle of friends who have. Without this background, we are at a disadvantage when studying the word of God as contained in the Bible.
When we open the pages of our English Bible, we find a Jewish book! The setting revolves around the country of Israel and the worship of Yahweh. With one exception, the more than forty biblical writers were all Jews, and the one exception was most likely a Jewish proselyte. (Do you know who <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-acts-leaves-out">the only non-Jewish author</a> in the Bible is? I’ll give you a few hints: he was a physician, one of St. Paul’s co-workers, and he wrote the first history of the Church.) But the point is, how can we understand the Bible and the teachings surrounding Jesus without understanding his people, his culture, and his Jewish identity?
Paul wrote, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4-5).
David H. Stern, a Messianic Jew, <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-the-jewishness-of-the-gospel-david-h-stern/1112654030">writes</a>, “The Messiah’s vicarious atonement is rooted in the Jewish sacrificial system; the Lord’s Supper is rooted in the Jewish Passover traditions; baptism is a Jewish practice; and indeed the entire New Testament is built on the Hebrew Bible, with its prophecies and its promise of a New Covenant, so that the New Testament without the Old is as impossible as the second floor of a house without the first. Moreover, much of what is written in the New Testament is incomprehensible apart from Judaism” (62). Even if a skeptic ignores the importance of the Jews in God’s plan of salvation, which would be ridiculous, it would not change the fact that the Bible is Jewish, and Christianity sprouts from thoroughly Jewish roots.
Studying the Bible comes alive when the fresh breeze of Jewish understanding wafts over the pages. When reading any good book, it is difficult to reap the benefits without immersing ourselves in the world and spirit of the “story.” When reading Gone with the Wind, the reader benefits from plunging himself into the “feeling” of the Old South during the Civil War and soaking in the culture and surroundings of the characters. One doesn’t start the novel in the middle, for that would cut him off from the foundation and beginning of the story and make it impossible to gain a full appreciation of the setting, plot, mood, and characters. Too often, the New Testament is read without a familiarity with the first “chapters” of God’s Jewish story, which begins several millennia earlier in the covenants and life of the Old Testament.
Let’s take an example that is dear to the heart of any Catholic. St. Matthew records profound words between Jesus and Simon the fisherman. Jesus actually changes the disciple’s name, which in Jewish tradition signifies a change of status, from Simon to Rock. For us Westerners two millennia removed, without understanding the Semitic importance of a name, this means little. But to Jesus’ cadre of disciples from the stock of Abraham, the name change was profound and earth-shattering. Abraham himself had received a name change from God, which corresponded to the ratification of the Old Covenant. Abram’s name (meaning “father”) was changed to Abraham (meaning “father of nations”) which signified Abraham’s new status or standing before God.
Simon’s name change was significant. But what it was changed to was even more important. A Jew would instantly notice what most English readers miss: the name Peter is an English rendering of the Greek word for “Rock.” Jesus spoke Aramaic, and the word he used to rename Simon was the Aramaic word for rock: kepha. This is why we find Simon referred to as Cephas throughout the New Testament (e.g., John 1:42; 1 Cor. 15:5; Gal. 1:18). No one but God alone (and Abraham) had previously been referred to as “Rock.” Abraham was the rock from which the Jews had been hewn (Isa. 51:1). But God was the only one with the descriptive title of Rock (26:4). Peter now shares that title. What would a Jew think about such a name for a mere man?
Another striking example of the necessity of understanding the Jewish ambiance of the Bible comes from the same passage. This involves Matthew 16:19, which mentions the “keys of the Kingdom.” Due in part to an ignorance of Jewish culture, this passage is frequently truncated, reducing the “keys of the kingdom” merely to Peter’s preaching on Pentecost (another word unknown outside the Jewish religion) “unlocking the doors of heaven.” Many Protestants make this mistake in trying to understand this passage without the benefit of a “Jewish background.” What did “keys” represent to the Jews who heard Jesus? What would a Jew understand from the image of the keys given to Peter by King Jesus?
The Pharisees had large portions of the Old Testament memorized, if not the whole Tanakh. The average Jew of Jesus’ time was intimately familiar with the scriptures. When Jesus told Peter he would receive the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” the Jews would immediately be drawn back to Isaiah 22 and the monarchical office of the royal steward, who ruled over the house of the king. Read Isaiah 22 yourself and consider the royal office of steward “over the house” in the Davidic kingdom. For those Jews who first believed in Yeshua the Messiah, who was soon to be seated on the throne of his father David and given an eternal kingdom (Dan. 7:13-14, Luke 1:26-33), these were profound words. When the new king is enthroned, wouldn’t the Jewish subjects expect the king to appoint his royal steward? Alleluia! Simon is renamed Rock, a foundation, and the Israelite name for the strength of God, and he is then delegated the keys of the royal stewards to govern the kingdom of King Jesus.
Ah, the Jews understood! What about twentieth-century men and women?
This should not discourage us from reading the Bible; rather, it should inspire us to excel in our knowledge of Scripture, its background, and the world of the Jewish people. The Church is growing from a Jewish root; the Church and the scriptures are Jewish. May the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob enlighten us and give us a love for the word of God as contained in the scriptures and the Sacred Tradition of the Church.

Jesus Was a Jew

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

Are the Nephilim Biblical Aliens?

Is Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist, as it is variously called in Protestant traditions, a “sacrifice”?
Many if not most Protestants, wary of how that language is typically applied to the Eucharist in a Catholic context, would say no. Yet some Protestants eager to recapture a certain strand of their own history and tradition would argue that yes, there are senses in which the Eucharist can be described as sacrificial. And, as my friend and Protestant writer and editor Mike Sabo <a href="https://americanreformer.org/2025/08/rejuvenating-the-protestant-mind/">has argued</a>, Catholic critiques of Protestantism that fail to appreciate the diversity of thought within the Protestant tradition effectively attack a straw man.
Yet in what sense do Protestants, typically of an Anglican variety, refer to the Eucharist as sacrificial? According to Sabo, quoting Daniel Waterland, an eighteenth-century archdeacon in the Church of England and a master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, there are a number of senses in which the Eucharist can be described as sacrificial. This includes “the active (as actually offered) and passive (participation by others), the extrinsic (Christ) and intrinsic (‘sacrifices of the heart’), and the literal and spiritual,” writes Sabo. The “orthodox understanding taught by the Patristics,” explains Waterland, is that “we may indeed partake of Christ’s sacrifice, a proper sacrifice, but not in the literal sense.” Rather, Christians offer “proper sacrifices, namely, spiritual sacrifices,” including the prayers, praise, thanksgiving, alms, and worship.
Protestants are certainly free to define and interpret the Eucharist within their own ecclesial traditions however they see fit. But are Waterland, Sabo, and other “pro-sacrificial” Protestants accurate when they say that their interpretation is truly that of the Church Fathers? Even a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-sacrifice-of-the-mass">fairly cursory review of the historical evidence</a> would suggest otherwise.
Some of the earliest Church Fathers affirm that the Eucharist is not simply sacrificial, but truly the sacrifice of Christ. St. Ignatius of Antioch (d.108)—who according to tradition was a disciple of St. John the Apostle—in his Letter to the Philadelphians refers to the Eucharist as “one flesh of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup for union with his blood,” which certainly sounds as though the Eucharist is the sacrifice of Christ himself. St. Justin Martyr (d. 165) writes that the Lord teaches, “In every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering, for my name is great among the Gentiles” (Dialogue with Trypho the Jew). Writing of the bread and the cup, St. Irenaeus (d. 202) similarly explains “that in every place sacrifice will be offered to him, and indeed, a pure one, for his name is glorified among the Gentiles” (Against Heresies). If the sacrifice offered by priests is “pure,” could it really be that of sinful Christians who partake, rather than Christ himself?
Later Patristic sources get more specific. St. Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258) says priests offer “a true and full sacrifice in the Church to God the Father” (Letters 63). St. Serapion of Thmuis (d. c. 360) in his Prayer of the Eucharistic Sacrifice asserts, “Full also is this sacrifice, with your strength and your communion; for to you we offer this living sacrifice, this unbloody oblation.” St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) declares in The Priesthood that the Lord is “sacrificed, and laid upon the altar,” with the priest “standing and praying over the victim.” I do not know how Chrysostom’s words could be interpreted other than that the Eucharist is actually Jesus himself sacrificed.
St. Ambrose of Milan says, “Even if Christ is not now seen as the one who offers the sacrifice, nevertheless it is he himself that is offered in sacrifice here on earth when the body of Christ is offered.” He continues: “Indeed, to offer himself he is made visible in us, he whose word makes holy the sacrifice that is offered.” In effect, for Ambrose, the sacrifice of the Eucharist is Jesus.
Finally, for the sake of brevity, let us quote St. Augustine, whom so many Protestants, including John Calvin, praise for his doctrine of grace. We read in Augustine, “In the sacrament he is immolated for the people not only on every Easter Solemnity but on every day; and a man would not be lying if, when asked, he were to reply that Christ is being immolated” (Letters 98:9). In the sacrament, it is Jesus who is offered in sacrifice.
So extensive is the evidence in favor of the Church Fathers’ belief in the Eucharist as the literal sacrifice of Christ that even prominent Protestant historian J.N.D. Kelly argues as much in his classic book Early Christian Doctrines. There we read,
<blockquote>The Eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian sacrifice. . . . Malachi’s prediction (1:10–11) that the Lord would reject Jewish sacrifices and instead would have “a pure offering” made to him by the Gentiles in every place was seized upon by Christians as a prophecy of the Eucharist. The Didache indeed actually applies the term thusia, or sacrifice, to the Eucharist.</blockquote>
Moreover, offers Kelly, “the bread and wine, moreover, are offered ‘for a memorial (eis anamnasin) of the passion,’ a phrase which in view of his identification of them with the Lord’s body and blood implies much more than an act of purely spiritual recollection.”
Certainly we should praise Protestants who seek a deeper, more traditional and even more Patristic conception of the Eucharist. But to say only that the Eucharist is in certain senses sacrificial, but not literally the sacrifice of Christ himself is to depart from the same Patristic sources traditionalist Protestants aim to honor. There is overwhelming evidence that Patristic sources as early as the first decades of the second century believed that the sacrifice of the Eucharist was Christ himself, and not merely “sacrificial” in certain limited senses.
“Instead of going to the proverbial referee and telling him how unfair some Catholics are, Protestants should gather the will to defend themselves and their traditions,” writes Sabo in <a href="https://americanreformer.org/2025/08/rejuvenating-the-protestant-mind/">his defense</a> of “classical” or “historic” Protestantism. That is all well and good, as far as those traditions are more closely aligned with Catholic teaching. Yet at least for those sources cited by Sabo, such Protestant thinkers still fail to faithfully follow the teachings of the Church Fathers regarding the sacrifice of the Eucharist. As their own words demonstrate, the Eucharist was in their eyes not simply “sacrificial.” It was, and is, the sacrifice.

The Eucharist: Almost There, but Not Quite

<div>How can a teenager find the right friends?</div><div>Does your teenager go to a Catholic school? If so, that’s a good place to start, and you could seek assistance in the process from the school’s principal, guidance counselor, coaches and/or teachers, and fellow parents as well.
If your teenager doesn’t go to a Catholic school, and also if he or she does, your Catholic parish would be a good place to start. Beyond religious education classes for teenagers who don’t attend Catholic school, many parishes have youth ministry activities, which should be a good place to meet friends, including with the assistance of the parish youth minister and pastor. If your parish doesn’t have a youth ministry program, perhaps a nearby parish does.
You could also contact your diocesan chancery to see what youth events may be going on throughout the diocese.
Homeschooling groups could provide another source of good friends for your teenager, even if you and your family don’t homeschool. Your pastor should know about some, even if you don’t know of any yourself.
Finally, I suggest you check with your local Knights of Columbus council, as the organization sponsors the <a href="http://www.kofc.org/en/members/programs/youth-activities/columbian-squires.html#/">Columbian Squires</a> for young men ages 10 to 18. The K of C is a longstanding and faithful Catholic fraternal men’s group.
</div>

Helping a Teenager Find the Right Friends

<div>What does the church say about the movie “Paul, Apostle of Christ”?</div><div>The Church does not take official stances on movies unless they are blatantly obscene. Most movies are a matter of prudential judgment.
Here are some links to the reviews of a few Catholic organizations:
National Catholic Reporter: <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/kschiffer/paul-apostle-of-the-christ-touches-hearts-both-on-and-off-the-set">‘Paul: Apostle of the Christ’ Touches Hearts, Both on and off the Set</a>
Our Sunday Visitor: <a href="https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/National/Article/TabId/717/ArtMID/13622/ArticleID/24302/%E2%80%98Paul-Apostle-of-Christ%E2%80%99-coming-to-theaters.aspx">‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’ coming to theaters</a>
Catholic News Service: <a href="http://www.catholicnews.com/services/englishnews/2018/paul-apostle-of-christ.cfm">Movie Review</a>
</div>

What’s the Church’s Stance on the Movie ‘Paul, Apostle of Christ’?

<div>Can you help clear up the misunderstanding about St Junipero Serra? Many say he mistreated the Native Americans, but he must not have been bad if he was declared a saint.</div><div>After an extensive investigation over many years, Pope Francis was pleased to culminate the Catholic Church’s examination <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150923_usa-omelia-washington-dc.html">by canonizing Junipero Serra</a>.
In summary, St. Junipero gave his life for the temporal and eternal well-being of the people he served in Mexico and modern California, and that is why he was much beloved by the Indian and Hispanic populations he served.
For more on St. Junipero in historical context, please see <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/01/padre-mestizo#login">this article</a>, <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimgraves/st.-junipero-serra-is-a-great-american-hero">this article</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/junipero-serra">this article</a>
</div>

Setting the Record Straight on St. Junipero Serra

<div>A friend went to psychic years ago. I lost touch with her. A I responsible for trying to contact her to tell her it’s a mortal sin?</div><div>You say you’ve lost contact with your friend. Do you know how to get back in contact with your friend or know someone who is likely to help you in succeeding in that request?
If you can answer one or both of those questions affirmatively, then, out of charity, it’d be good for you to let your friend know to avoid psychics and trust in God, instead of consulting problematic spirits to deal with life issues (see <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c1a1.htm">CCC 2115-17</a>). Yet, make sure to approach your friend with humble charity, including because it’s been a good while since you’ve last spoken (see 1 Pet. 3:15). If your friend is Catholic, encourage her to take advantage of the sacrament of reconciliation. If she’s not, encourage her to repent to God on her own.
Further, consulting a psychic is certainly, objectively, gravely wrong. However, remember that mortal sin involves two other components: full knowledge and full consent of the will (see <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8.htm">CCC 1857-61</a>). Consequently, while encouraging your friend to repent and avoid this sin, don’t presume to judge her subjective culpability.
If you are not able to contact your friend, pray for her repentance and conversion.
</div>

Should I Reprove a Friend for Consulting a Psychic?

Romans 6:3-4 is a go-to passage for many Christians when they want to show from the Bible that baptism actually does something—that it saves. Paul tells us that through baptism, we’re “buried therefore with [Christ] . . . into death . . . [so that] we might walk in newness of life.” Then in verse 7, he adds that in this baptismal death, we’re “freed from sin.”
Now, here’s something interesting: The Greek word translated as “freed” is dikaioō, which actually means “to justify.” In other words, Paul is saying we’re justified—or saved—through baptism. That’s a pretty strong claim.
But not everyone agrees. In his <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Rome-Biblical-Historical-Catholicism-ebook/dp/B0793SQWDL/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1LCKFYC64V0ZU&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Fk5bj4NZuV1mGQBc5qjfWFv6odqKjmqpAw8TX1cbs0A.Viow3QZMayCj6fzpIR95R0jsi7_dvJKkcQrxcxLxxqM&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=todd+baker+Exodus+from+Rome&amp;qid=1746209779&amp;sprefix=todd+baker+exodus+from+rome%2Caps%2C115&amp;sr=8-2">book Exodus from Rome: Volume I</a>, Protestant theologian Todd Baker pushes back on this idea. He argues that Paul isn’t even talking about water baptism here. According to Baker, Paul is referring to something merely spiritual. He gives two main reasons for this view, so let’s take a look at both.
Baker’s first argument is that Paul never actually says the word “water.” Here’s how he puts it:
<blockquote>Paul’s use of baptism in Romans 6:3-5 does not mention water anywhere, and therefore can conceivably convey the greater idea of identification with Christ in his death and resurrection for the sinner’s salvation, without necessarily pointing to the idea of the rite or act of water baptism . . . if Paul means a water and ritual baptism in Romans 6, he would have clearly included the term “water” as the descriptive modifier to baptism, which he does not.</blockquote>
But this is kind of a stretch. Think about it: Paul wrote Romans around A.D. 50. That means for about twenty years, Christians had already been practicing water baptism, following Jesus’ command in Matthew 28:19 to go out and baptize. And we have multiple examples of it in action—just look at Acts 8:16, 10:48, 11:14, 16:15 and 33, and 18:8, plus 1 Corinthians 1:16.
So, for early Christians, “baptism” would have naturally meant water baptism. It was the norm. Paul wouldn’t have needed to tack on the word “water” every time. Just like today—if someone says he got baptized, you assume he means with water. There’s no confusion.
And let’s be real—Paul is describing a powerful transformation here: dying and rising with Christ. That’s a pretty dramatic image, and what better way to symbolize that than through a ritual washing? Ritual washing with water fits the theological message perfectly. Take away the washing, and you lose a lot of the meaning.
Now, Baker might respond by saying, “Well, Paul must be referring to something else besides water baptism because baptism is just a symbol of our union with Christ—it doesn’t actually do anything.” But that’s begging the question. In other words, you can’t argue that Romans 6:3-4 doesn’t support salvation by baptism just because you already believe that baptism doesn’t save. That’s the very thing we’re trying to figure out.
Baker may also counter and say that I’m misunderstanding his argument, thinking he’s arguing that Paul should have merely mentioned the term “water.” But the next few lines specify how Paul would have used “water” as a modifier if he envisioned water baptism. Baker writes (emphasis added),
<blockquote>Consequently, the Apostle would have written Romans 6:3-4, if water baptism were the productive means of salvation and union with Jesus Christ, to read: “As many of us were immersed (baptized) into water in Christ were immersed into water into his death. Therefore we are buried with him by immersing in water into his death.</blockquote>
Baker assumes that if Paul were talking about water baptism, Paul should have said we’re baptized into water. But that would be strange, since Paul would be saying the ritual act of water baptism unites us to water itself, which makes no sense.
Moreover, this detracts from what Paul actually says: “We baptized into Christ.” Spiritual union with Christ is the result of the baptism that Paul speaks about. This fits perfectly with the sacramental reading of the text. Water is just the medium through which this union with Christ takes becomes a reality.
Now, Baker’s second argument seems to capitalize on this very point: We’re baptized into Christ. He makes a big deal of the Greek preposition eis, which means “into.” The fact that Paul says we’re baptized into Christ leads Baker to conclude that Paul is talking about a spiritual baptism, not a physical one:
<blockquote>It is simply what the text of Romans 6:3-4 says it is: a baptism into Christ. . . . To merely assume that Romans 6:3-4 is speaking about the ritual of water baptism is to force that idea into the text when it clearly speaks of a baptism into Christ, not a baptism of water.</blockquote>
But this reasoning is flawed, too.
Baker is mixing up two questions: (1) What are we being baptized into? and (2) What kind of baptism are we talking about? Baker thinks the answer to the first question logically entails the answer to the second. But that’s not true.
There’s nothing about having union with Christ that logically excludes a physical action bringing about such a spiritual state. Even Protestants believe that the physical act of verbal confession that Jesus is Lord brings about our salvation. And they quote Romans 10:9-10 to prove it, which is commonly called “The Roman Road to Salvation.”
Spiritual union with Christ, therefore, could be brought about by the physical ritual of water baptism. Thus, Baker’s appeal to the spiritual effect of union with Christ doesn’t necessarily exclude water baptism.
At the end of the day, Baker’s case against water baptism in Romans 6 just doesn’t hold up. Expecting Paul to explicitly say “water” every time he mentions baptism isn’t realistic, especially given the historical context. And insisting that being baptized “into Christ” rules out water baptism is based on assumptions that don’t follow from logic or the text.
On the flip side, reading Romans 6 as referring to water baptism makes sense both historically and theologically. It fits with what the early Christians practiced, and it lines up with the powerful spiritual transformation Paul describes. Far from being a stretch, the sacramental reading of this passage is the most natural one.

What Good Is Water Baptism?

In the United States, we usually identify ideological differences as liberal or conservative, right or left, Democrat or Republican. The categories are helpful to some extent. Disciples of Jesus worship the Word made Flesh, “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Thoughtful Christians prefer to distinguish between truth and error. So when we pledge our allegiance to the flag, we must pay close attention to the words for purposes of personal integrity.
A Union Army officer during the Civil War composed the first Pledge of Allegiance of the United States. Decades later, in 1892, Francis Bellamy penned the Pledge that is in use today. In 1942, Congress adopted it: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
During the Cold War, the Knights of Columbus and veterans’ organizations called on Congress to add “under God” to the Pledge. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended a service in honor of Lincoln’s birthday, he heard the Presbyterian Rev. George Docherty <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/14/the-gripping-sermon-that-got-under-god-added-to-the-pledge-of-allegiance-on-flag-day/">sermonize</a>: “To omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive factor in the American way of life.” He added, “An atheistic American is a contradiction in terms. If you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.” On Flag Day in 1954, Congress—with Eisenhower’s signature—added the words “under God” to the Pledge.
What about today? Will the rapid and almost inevitable degradation of our culture and nation force us to renounce our beloved American flag and refuse formal expressions of patriotism? Have abortion, profiteering on aborted baby body parts, and institutional sexual perversion mortally wounded the country’s moral stature? Has the nation become the moral equivalent of the murderous Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, or North Korea?
In many respects, these questions are not new. Historically, could we honestly pledge allegiance to the flag that in effect 1) tolerated slavery; 2) waged the Mexican-American War, which President Grant considered the most unjust war in history; 3) racially segregated communities; and, especially for the last fifty years, 4) legally denies the humanity of unborn babies?
We must remember that good and evil permeate every social institution—families, communities, nations. And patriots have loved their countries, unconventionally when necessary, in even the most debased and barbarous nations, from <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/sophie-scholl-and-white-rose">Sophie Scholl</a> in Nazi Germany to <a href="https://mercatornet.com/a-soviet-dissident-shatters-western-illusions/46358/">Vladimir Bukovsky</a> in the USSR. Loyal Catholics, too, recite the Creed despite the faithlessness and treason of so many Church leaders.
So it comes down to this: even the worst of times cannot extinguish our obligation for patriotism, which struggles against national suicide.
Patriotism is a form of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-seven-gifts-of-the-holy-spirit">piety</a>—the acknowledgment that we owe our gratitude to God, our family, and our nation for the gift of life and sustenance. We owe our lives to God, our parents, and to a country that provides the soil and cultural structures for communal living. Piety—and, deriving from it, patriotism—renders the affection and loyalty due to our benefactors. Patriotism is indispensable to our love of God and neighbor.
Just as we love our imperfect parents and follow the Fourth Commandment by lawfully obeying them, we can and should love and lawfully subject ourselves to our morally flawed nation, according to the dictates of conscience.
When President Ronald Reagan <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-welcoming-ceremony-pope-john-paul-ii-miami-florida">greeted</a> Pope John Paul II in Miami in 1987, he said: “In freedom, we Americans have in these 200 years built a great country, a country of goodness and abundance. . . . It is precisely because we believe in freedom, because we respect the liberty of the individual in the economic as well as the political sphere, that we have achieved such prosperity.”
Pope John Paul II <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1987/september/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19870910_reagan-museo.html">responded</a> with a profound clarification: “The only true freedom, the only freedom that can truly satisfy, is the freedom to do what we ought as human beings created by God according to his plan. It is the freedom to live the truth of what we are and who we are before God, the truth of our identity as children of God, as brothers and sisters in common humanity. That is why Jesus Christ linked truth and freedom together, stating solemnly: ‘You will know the truth and the truth will set you free’” (John 8:32).
Back in 1954, in one providential phrase, Congress purified—and perhaps redeemed—the Pledge of Allegiance as an enduring expression of Christian patriotism. The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance “renders unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” in patriotism, and it also “renders unto to God the things that are God’s” in Christian piety (see Mark 12:13-17). Regardless of how far we slip in the direction of injustice, lawlessness, totalitarianism, and even barbarism, our resolve to live under God is the gold standard of patriotism and is the remedy for all imperfections, past, present, and future.
During that same 1987 address to President Reagan, John Paul II concluded by quoting the Pledge of Allegiance: “A new birth of freedom is repeatedly necessary: freedom to exercise responsibility and generosity, freedom to meet the challenge of serving humanity, the freedom necessary to fulfill human destiny, the freedom to live by truth, to defend it against whatever distorts and manipulates it, the freedom to observe God’s law—which is the supreme standard of all human liberty—the freedom to live as children of God, secure and happy: the freedom to be America in that constitutional democracy which was conceived to be ‘one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’”
As it reads, a robust and sincere patriotic recitation of the Pledge does not undermine Christian integrity. Rather, it challenges the foundations of an atheistic <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-catholics-get-woke">woke culture</a>.