Manage Account

Can A Catholic Support a Candidate Who Opposes Church Teaching?

Discover

<div class="page" title="Page 43">
<div class="section">
<div class="layoutArea">

<div class="column">
DAY 33
CHALLENGE
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
“John the Baptist was the reincarnation of the prophet Elijah. When the disciples ask Jesus why the scribes say that Elijah must come before the Messiah, Jesus says he already had come. &#8216;Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist&#8217; (Matt. 17:13). Also, Luke says John the Baptist will have the spirit of Elijah (Luke 1:17).”
DEFENSE
John the Baptist functioned symbolically as a new Elijah, but he denied actually being Elijah in person (John 1:21).
The New Testament repeatedly states that we will be resurrected, not reincarnated. Jesus’ Resurrection is recorded in all four Gospels (Matt. 28:6–7; Mark 16:6, 14; Luke 24:5, 34; John 21:14), and it sets the pat- tern for ours (1 Cor. 6:14). Thus he is referred to as “the firstborn of the dead” (Col. 1:18; Rev. 1:5). The New Testament is emphatic about our resurrection (1 Cor. 15), stating that “it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27).
In Matthew, when the disciples ask their question about Elijah, they have just seen Jesus transfigured along with Moses and Elijah (Matt. 17:1–9). Elijah—not John the Baptist—had just appeared to them, and they were wondering if this was the fulfillment of the prophecy that Elijah would return before the Messiah (Mal. 4:5–6).
John the Baptist could not be the reincarnation of Elijah because Elijah never died. Instead, he was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1–15). At that time, Elijah’s servant, Elisha, asked that he be allowed to inherit a double portion of Elijah’s spirit, which he did (2 Kings 2:10–11, 15). Elisha could not have been the reincarnation of Elijah because they lived at the same time. For Elisha to inherit a double portion of Elijah’s spirit meant that he was able to inherit Eli- jah’s role as a prophet; he had the same prophetic spirit, not the same individual soul.
When Luke’s Gospel says John the Baptist “will go before [Jesus] in the spirit and power of Elijah” (Luke 1:17), it is saying that John the Baptist will inherit Elijah’s function and strength as prophet the way Elisha did.
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

John the Baptist and Reincarnation

Recent media coverage surrounding OnlyFans contributor Lily Phillips and her decision to get “<a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/why-onlyfans-star-lily-phillips-decided-to-be-rebaptized-excl/">rebaptized</a>” raises sincere spiritual questions that deserve a biblical and charitable response.
Phillips’s words express a desire to return to God, a longing that every Christian can recognize as the work of grace stirring the heart. At the same time, Phillips has not demonstrated a public desire to leave the online sexual content lifestyle she lives. Additionally, the language she uses about baptism is an example of the deep and widespread confusion in our society about what baptism accomplishes and how conversion actually unfolds within the Christian life.
Two core issues require careful attention here. First is what the Church across the ages has taught about baptism and why rebaptism is excluded from Christian practice. Second is what Scripture reveals about repentance and conversion as the proper response for a baptized believer who desires renewal and discipleship.
<h2>Baptism as a Once-for-All Gift</h2>
From the beginning, the Church has proclaimed baptism as decisive and not repeatable. Scripture consistently presents baptism as a real and singular participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. St. Paul explains that through baptism we are buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:1-14)—a transformation that marks the soul of the person irreversibly and establishes a permanent covenant bond with the Lord.
This permanence stands at the heart of induction into covenant life. The Letter to the Ephesians speaks of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (4:5), thereby excluding any idea that baptism requires or even allows for repetition when faith weakens or moral failure follows. Likewise, the Nicene Creed (365) professes “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” a doctrine rooted in perennial apostolic teaching.
Baptism imprints a spiritual mark upon the soul that remains even when the baptized person drifts from God. The Catechism notes, “Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, baptism cannot be repeated” (1272). Hence, the grace given may be rejected or lie dormant, yet it remains real and accessible from the moment of baptism. Consequently, baptism never expires, and it never requires or calls for repetition. In fact, the Church guards this teaching precisely because baptism belongs first to Christ’s action in the soul rather than to human effort.
<h2>Why Rebaptism Feels Appealing</h2>
The origins of the practice are varied, but the cultural thrust of today began with sixteenth-century Anabaptists, who emphasized “believer&#8217;s baptism” only for repentant adults, earning the name “rebaptizers.” Joseph Smith&#8217;s Restorationist movement (for remission of sins, healing, covenant renewal), and various Orthodox churches (for converts from other traditions) also facilitated differing practices of rebaptism. Today, many people who seek rebaptism express some semblance of a genuine desire for cleansing, restoration, and a visible new beginning.
Modern culture associates authenticity with dramatic public gestures, and rebaptism publicly presents the façade of inner change. However, Scripture would beg to differ. God addresses post-baptismal sin through repentance, reconciliation, and transformation rather than through repeating the sacrament that already united the believer to Christ.
The New Testament repeatedly warns against treating baptism as something provisional. The Letter to the Hebrews concurs with Romans in teaching that Christ died once for all, and Christian participation in his saving work follows the same pattern (see Heb. 10:10-14). Therefore, repeating baptism would imply that God’s original gift lacked permanence, an implication the Church rejects.
<h2>Conditional Baptism Explained</h2>
There are rare circumstances wherein the Church recognizes that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-doubtful-validity-of-seventh-day-adventist-baptism">serious doubt</a> exists regarding whether baptism ever occurred. In such cases, conditional baptism may be administered using the formula, “If you are not baptized, I baptize you . . .”
This practice is not rebaptism. Instead, it safeguards <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/does-invalid-baptism-invalidate-other-sacraments">the integrity of the sacrament</a> while ensuring that no one remains deprived of baptism through uncertainty. In fact, conditional baptism applies only when facts remain unclear regarding the use of water, the Trinitarian formula, or the event itself. Where valid baptism already occurred, the Church with pastoral firmness forbids repetition.
<h2>Conversion as the Proper Path Forward</h2>
If baptism is permanent, then how does renewal occur for someone who desires to return to God after moral collapse or spiritual distance? Scripture answers this question with remarkable consistency. The biblical call always centers upon repentance, conversion, and obedience flowing from grace.
Jesus begins his public ministry with the command, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). Repentance in Scripture signifies a turning of the whole person toward God, involving the intellect, the will, and the moral pattern of daily life. This turning reaches far beyond emotion, spiritual sentiment, or public spectacle.
Zacchaeus is a clear example: his encounter with Christ compels restitution, generosity, and visible change. Likewise, the woman caught in adultery is forgiven but also charged with a command to leave sin behind. Throughout the Gospels, forgiveness always opens toward moral transformation.
Canon law is equally clear:
<blockquote>For an adult to be baptized, the person must have manifested the intention to receive baptism, have been instructed sufficiently about the truths of the Faith and Christian obligations, and have been tested in the Christian life through the catechumenate. The adult is also to be urged to have sorrow for personal sins (865 §1)</blockquote>
St. Paul reinforces this pattern when he reminds the Corinthians that former patterns of sexual immorality belonged to their past, and sanctification now defines their present identity (1 Cor. 6:11). Christian conversion therefore unfolds as a process grounded in grace and expressed through moral obedience.
<h2>The Teaching of Pope Benedict XVI</h2>
This understanding of conversion appears clearly in the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI, especially in his catechesis on repentance. <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100217.html">Reflecting on the preaching of John the Baptist</a>, Benedict explains that repentance involves a realignment of life according to God’s truth rather than a private spiritual preference. Conversion engages the whole person, including moral decisions, habits, and public conduct.
According to Benedict, conversion remains a lifelong journey rather than a single emotional moment. Grace initiates the process, and cooperation sustains it. Faith grows through obedience, humility, and willingness to accept correction from divine revelation.
<h2>What Authentic Conversion Looks Like</h2>
Authentic Christian conversion unfolds through several visible dimensions. First, repentance confesses sin truthfully and seeks forgiveness humbly. Second, reconciliation restores communion between the penitent and God through sacramental grace. Third, firm purpose of amendment of life gradually aligns one’s moral conduct with the gospel.
Conversion is rarely instantaneous. Scripture portrays virtuous growth as a process shaped by struggle, perseverance, trust, and cooperation with God’s divine life. Our intentionality matters: a heart turned toward Christ seeks constant conformity to his teaching rather than easy accommodation to prevailing culture or, worse, clinging to old ways of life.
The Church’s response to public claims of spiritual renewal always combines compassion with discernment. Encouragement and validation without truthful examination risks scandal. Baptism was established by Christ to be a once-for-all sacrament that anchors Christian identity securely in Christ. Conversion remains a lifelong response that unfolds through repentance, obedience, and grace. When these realities remain united, the Christian life reflects the fullness of the gospel.
Hence, Lily Phillips’s intent might have been good, but her execution and subsequent life choices warrant concern. Conversion requires returning to the font of baptismal grace in reconciliation, allowing Christ to complete the work he began in her original baptism, which remains indelibly sealed in her, compelling her (and all of us) to conversion and newness of moral life.

What Does the Church Say About Rebaptism?

What authority does the Church have on scientific matters when it comes to faith and morals?

What is an apostolic pardon and how does it work?

How can people go to hell if God knows what would be good for them?

Why don’t we use the availability of confession as an apologetics selling point?

The apostolic pardon offers a powerful grace at the moment of death—but what exactly is it? We explain its purpose, how it works, and also discuss the Church’s authority in science, the reality of hell, and why confession is an underrated tool in apologetics.
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>

What Is an Apostolic Pardon and How Does It Work?

Am I doing the wrong thing by not becoming a Catholic?

My non-Christian brother says he’s not Christian because the God of the Old Testament is not a loving God.

I have studied religions my entire life. I don’t think faith in any religious faith is worth doing.

&#8220;Why Aren&#8217;t You Christian?&#8221; In this episode we ask callers why they are not Christian, and we answer any questions they have about the Catholic faith.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Why Aren’t You Christian? w/Tim Staples

Who are Seventh-day Adventists, and what do they believe? For starters, they&#8217;re Adventists, meaning that they believe that Christ is about to return. The &#8220;Seventh-day&#8221; part of their name refers to their believe that Christians should make holy Saturday, not Sunday (which they view as a compromise with paganism and with Catholicism). And behind a lot of this is the theology and alleged revelations of a woman named Ellen Gould White, who accused Constantine and the pope of changing the Christian holy day from Saturday to Sunday. So how might a non-Adventist respond?

Are Seventh-Day Adventists Right about Sunday Worship?

Trent sits down with Dr. Scott Hahn to talk about his new book on sacred scripture and the Bible’s journey to being viewed in popular culture as a “secular book” began even before the Protestant Reformation.

FFAF: My Most Valuable Books!

Jimmy Akin discusses whether John the Beloved Disciple, John the Evangelist, and John of Patmos are all the same person, embarking on a tour of several historical theories about the different Johns found in Scripture and New Testament history.
Transcript:
Host: John in Louisville, Kentucky, listening on Sirius radio. John, you are on with Jimmy Akin, what&#8217;s your question?
Caller: Jimmy, hi, how are you guys?
Jimmy: Just fine.
Caller: Okay so I&#8217;m in a Christian Scripture&#8230;title of the course for a Certificate of Pastoral Ministry. So first of all, is the John the Apostle whom Jesus loved, and John the author of the Gospel, and John of Patmos, all the same John?
Jimmy: It&#8217;s a very interesting question, and the Church doesn&#8217;t have a teaching here. This is not a matter of doctrine or dogma, it&#8217;s something on which Catholics can have different opinions. And that&#8217;s something that Pope Benedict actually talked about. If you read his discussions about this he gave, for example, some audiences on the Johannine literature in the New Testament, which you can look up on the Vatican&#8217;s website. He also talked about the Johannine literature in Volume One of his &#8220;Jesus of Nazareth&#8221; series, and one of the things that he discusses is the fact that this literature doesn&#8217;t lock us down into a single option regarding who is exactly who. And he says at one point that it was evidently the intent of the author to leave the matter &#8220;shrouded in mystery,&#8221; to use his phrase.
Having said that, there are some clues we can use to try to figure it out. Now one of the things I need to kind of separate is the John the disciple who Jesus loved&#8211;you mentioned that is one of the options&#8211;actually there&#8217;s a question there: Is John (the disciple that is referred to) John the Apostle (the disciple that Jesus loved in the Gospel of John)? It&#8217;s kind of tangled to say it that way, but there&#8217;s a question: Is John, son of Zebedee, the Beloved Disciple?
And there&#8217;s an argument that he is. One of the things that there&#8217;s&#8211;and it&#8217;s been put various ways&#8211;but one of the things you find out, when you read the Gospel of John and you&#8217;re being attentive to the clues, is that the author is apparently someone who has intimate access to Jesus, because he&#8217;s described as the disciple that Jesus loved. Now that could be kind of literary artifice, because you could say, well, Jesus loves all of his disciples, and the Beloved Disciple felt loved by Jesus and so he&#8217;s mentioning himself this way as a way of emphasizing Jesus&#8217;s love without saying &#8220;Jesus didn&#8217;t also love other people in the same way.&#8221; Or it may mean, no, Jesus had a special affection for him. So both of those are possibilities. But he does seem to have a bit of an access to Jesus, because at the Last Supper he&#8217;s the one who seated closest to Jesus, closer even than Saint Peter.
Now some people have said, &#8220;Okay, well, if he&#8217;s a close disciple of Jesus, that would put him in the twelve, and it would also put him presumably in the core group of the twelve, which was like Peter, Andrew, James, and John. And, well he can&#8217;t be Peter, because he&#8217;s just distinguished himself from Peter, because Peter is seated farther away at the Last Supper. He wouldn&#8217;t be Andrew either, because he&#8217;s keeping his name quiet throughout the Gospel, he&#8217;s deliberately not identifying himself, and he does identify Andrew early on, and so it wouldn&#8217;t be Andrew. That would leave James and John the son of Zebedee, but we know from the end of John&#8217;s Gospel there was a rumor that this John would not die. Well guess what? James son of Zebedee died in, like, AD 42-43, and so there was no rumor about him that survived about &#8220;He&#8217;s not gonna die.&#8221; So if it is one of the four core disciples, then John would be the one who&#8217;s left. So there&#8217;s an argument that John son of Zebedee is the Beloved Disciple.
There&#8217;s also an argument that he&#8217;s not. One of the things you find when you read in the Church Fathers is, there&#8217;s another disciple, also known as John, who was an eyewitness of Jesus&#8217;s ministry. He was not one of the Apostles, but he was an eyewitness and he&#8217;s known as John the Elder. And some early Christian sources, including Saint Jerome, attribute at least some of the Johannine books in the New Testament to this John the Elder. Specifically, they will attribute 2 and 3 John to the Elder because they&#8217;re not addressed from&#8211;it doesn&#8217;t say at the beginning &#8220;From John to so-and-so,&#8221; it says &#8220;From the elder to so-and-so,&#8221; and a number of early Christian sources say, &#8220;Okay, that&#8217;s who&#8217;s writing these. It&#8217;s not John the Apostle, it&#8217;s John the Elder.&#8221; And actually that&#8217;s the position that Pope Benedict also took, that at least those two books were written by John the Elder.
What&#8217;s the relationship, then between John the Apostle and John the Elder? Well, they&#8217;re two different guys; they apparently were both buried at Ephesus, that&#8217;s one of the things that we&#8217;re told by early Christian sources. And that could give rise to confusion between the two. If you have two guys who were both eyewitnesses of Jesus, both named John, and they&#8217;re both buried in Ephesus, it&#8217;s easy to see how people could get the two of them mixed up. And so that could be part of what&#8217;s going on in our struggle to figure out who wrote exactly what in the New Testament.
In terms of the argument that John, the author of John&#8217;s Gospel, might be somebody other than John the Apostle, there are some interesting points. One point is that even though he&#8217;s not identified by his first name, John the Apostle is mentioned in the Gospel of John. He&#8217;s mentioned as one of the two sons of Zebedee when they go to the Sea of Galilee. And so there&#8217;s a kind of a minor argument that if he&#8217;s really trying to keep his identity secret, why would he mention himself that way? It seems more likely that the Beloved Disciple is one of the two completely unnamed disciples who was there on that occasion.
Also, whenever you look at where this disciple appears in the Gospel of John, he tends to appear&#8211;with a few exceptions&#8211;he tends to appear in Jerusalem, he doesn&#8217;t seem to be following Jesus on a regular basis through Galilee. He seems to be a native of Jerusalem. He also seems to be an upper-class aristocratic, and likely priestly resident of Jerusalem, because the high priest knows him personally. When Jesus has been betrayed and they&#8217;re taking him to the house of the high priest to interrogate Jesus, John is immediately given access, because the the servant girl who&#8217;s keeping the door knows him because the high priest knows him. So he&#8217;s a familiar person in the household of the high priest. This is very unlikely for a Galilean fisherman, and in fact we know that because she doesn&#8217;t know Peter. She keeps him out, and John has to go and get Peter brought in, which he again does because he&#8217;s known in the household of the high priest. So that could suggest he&#8217;s an aristocratic inhabitant of Jerusalem who may himself belong to the priestly class, if he&#8217;s on a first-name basis with the high priest.
Also, there&#8217;s a question of: Why would John the Apostle be seated higher than Peter at the Last Supper? Because that&#8217;s the kind of thing that&#8217;s going to provoke some dissension. And if he&#8217;s one of the Apostles and he&#8217;s being seated higher than Peter, that&#8217;s going to cause confusion. So maybe there&#8217;s another explanation why someone would be seated next to Jesus on that occasion. And a very plausible answer that&#8217;s been proposed is: he was the house owner. Because if your host is there at the Last Supper, it would be natural to seat the host next to the guest of honor. And it would make sense to have, therefore, John of Jerusalem, if we want to call him that, seated next to Jesus, and Peter in second place.
So could&#8211;and this is a proposal some have entertained&#8211;could the Zebedees have owned a property in Jerusalem that then became the site of the Last Supper? So maybe John son of Zebedee could have been seated there as kind of the son of the house owner, and thus the representative of the family? Well, it&#8217;s possible they could have owned a house in Jerusalem, but here&#8217;s the problem with that: If you look in the synoptic Gospels, and specifically if you look in Luke, Jesus sends two of his disciples to find a representative of this household to arrange for them to have the Last Supper there. And He tells them, you know, go find a guy who&#8217;s carrying water on his head and it was gonna lead you back to this house, and tell the householder we want to have the Passover here. Well, guess what two disciples he sends? In Luke, it&#8217;s Peter and John. And so it would&#8211;if this was John&#8217;s house&#8211;it wouldn&#8217;t make a lot of sense to send John to go find this servant with the water jar and go back and ask the householder. Jesus would just say, &#8220;John, let&#8217;s have it at your place.&#8221; So there&#8217;s an interesting argument to be made that maybe the Beloved Disciple is a different John.
And there are also hybrid solutions. Now, we know the Beloved Disciple&#8217;s the author of this Gospel, because he identifies himself as such late in the Gospel. Some have proposed a kind of hybrid solution; for example, if you look at what Pope Benedict wrote in &#8220;Jesus of Nazareth,&#8221; his proposal is that the Beloved Disciple is John son of Zebedee, but that the gospel in its final form was written by John the Elder. So there&#8217;s a kind of hybrid possibility there.
Other people, like the scholar Richard Balcom, have thought that it was John the Elder who wrote the Gospel. Others have said &#8220;Well maybe Revelation was written by John the Elder,&#8221; that was a position favored by the church historian Eusebius in the 300s, the 4th century, and there are other solutions yet.
So the Church doesn&#8217;t have a teaching on this, it&#8217;s something that is a very interesting question to explore; the majority opinion has been that John the Apostle wrote all this stuff, but what&#8217;s important is not specifically the historical individual that wrote it, but that it&#8217;s both historically reliable, and more importantly, divinely inspired. And as long as that&#8217;s guaranteed, people can discuss and have different opinions about who precisely the inspired author was.
Host: Does that help you, John?
Caller: Sure does, thank you. I wish I had about five months with you, but I don&#8217;t, so&#8230;
Jimmy: At some point, maybe.

Which John Wrote the Gospel of John?

Is it sinful to watch MMA? In this episode Trent examines Fr. Mike Schmitz&#8217;s arguments against MMA and reveals when it is sinful for Christians to watch this sport.
&nbsp;
Transcript:
If Christians are called peacemakers, then is it okay for them to watch people punch each other in the head or choke another person into a submission? That&#8217;s the issue that&#8217;s raised when people say Christians should not support mixed martial arts or MMA. But other people say there&#8217;s nothing wrong with it, and in fact, Christians should be more involved in athletic combat sports. In today&#8217;s episode, I&#8217;m going to give my thoughts on the matter, but I will talk about one circumstance where Christians definitely should not watch MMA. There&#8217;s a particular circumstance where that would be wrong, but there&#8217;s other circumstances where it would be right. Before I get to that though, we&#8217;ll need a little bit of background.
What is mixed martial arts or MMA? The term mixed martial arts comes from a review of the first ultimate fighting championship hosted in 1993. It pioneered matches where fighters could use different styles to engage one another, and in the early years, you had some pretty wild matchups. Like what happens if a sumo wrestler fights a kickboxer? The answer is the sumo wrestler goes down pretty fast. Or what happens when a little guy named Royce Gracie fights the same kickboxer using a style we call Brazilian jujitsu? The answer is that Gracie closes the distance so that the kickboxer&#8217;s kicks can&#8217;t hurt him, and focuses on grappling to use a choke hold to force him into a submission. Now, 30 years later, MMA has evolved so that most fighters learn a mixture of kickboxing, jujitsu, and wrestling in order to maximize their effectiveness in the ring or the octagon.
I&#8217;ve trained in Muay Thai kickboxing until I tore my ACL a year ago, and I hope to get back into it, but I&#8217;ve been doing jujitsu on and off during that time while I&#8217;m healing. I&#8217;m not very good. I&#8217;m literally one rung above a training dummy, but it&#8217;s fun, I enjoy it even when I get hurt. Now, jujitsu isn&#8217;t as violent as MMA because you&#8217;re not allowed to punch or kick the other person, and there can be some brutal injuries in mixed martial arts. I&#8217;ll admit some of the matches are hard to watch, but is it wrong for Christians to watch MMA or even participate in it? I was especially interested in these two videos from Father Mike Schmitz who summarizes his essential objection to MMA.
Before I share that though, I need to add a Father Mike is awesome disclaimer here. He&#8217;s done a tremendous amount of good for the church. My son and I love listening to Bible in a Year with him, so this video represents a minor disagreement I have with him because as I&#8217;ve said overall, Father Mike is awesome. I love the work that he does. With that being clear, here&#8217;s his objection to watching MMA as a form of entertainment.
There is nothing that is noble about dominating someone or beating another human being into submission for someone else&#8217;s entertainment.
Now, I agree with Father Mike when it comes to doing this to innocent people. It&#8217;s wrong to watch videos of random attacks against innocent people you might find on the internet because you enjoy watching people get attacked and you get a thrill out of it. This isn&#8217;t entertainment. These are crimes of assault and battery that do take away a person&#8217;s dignity, so people shouldn&#8217;t be watching them for thrills.
But what about when two people agree to a fight with fair rules? When I engage in jujitsu or role with someone, we aren&#8217;t beating each other with our hands and fists, but one of us may be dominating the other person. In this case, my coach who is a black belt is absolutely dominating me, and while there is pain and discomfort, I haven&#8217;t lost my dignity, even if it&#8217;s a little embarrassing sometimes. That&#8217;s because every time someone better than me dominates me and has good sportsmanship and is willing to teach me what I can do better, I learn more. This is how I learn to not be dominated in the next fight or not be dominated if someone tries to attack me out of nowhere on the street.
Now you might say it&#8217;s okay to be educated by this like me, but it&#8217;s wrong to be entertained by watching someone else be dominated. But I don&#8217;t feel that way. If someone watching this gets to see what jujitsu is like, how good black belts are, and how every black belt started as a white belt, I think that&#8217;s great. I haven&#8217;t been dehumanized. I find it very dignifying to learn from my other coaches both in class and when I watch them compete in competitions where they dominate someone else. Like here where my coach gets a sweet flying arm-bar on his opponent. It&#8217;s fun to watch, and even his opponent would say, this is good for human dignity, not opposed to it.
I think what most people are squeamish about with MMA are the strikes and kicks more than the grappling, even though grappling and throwing like what you might have in judo causes injuries too. But more importantly, other sports have the same, if not more risk of injury. MMA fighters wear light gloves while boxers wear heavier gloves, and the heavier gloves allow them to have more head strikes against the hard skulls of their opponents. And football players with helmets are at even more risk of head injury. Father Mike also says this.
I think about this story Saint Augustine recounted in his book Confessions. Saint Augustine&#8217;s problem was lust, right? One of his problems was lust. He had a friend whose problem was violence. This friend who was a convert to Christ, he was obsessed with the gladiator arenas. At one point, he and some of his non-Christian friends were walking by an arena and they said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s come on in, let&#8217;s go watch.&#8221; And he was like, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to go. I&#8217;m not going to go.&#8221; They said, &#8220;No, come on in. You&#8217;re going to love it.&#8221; He said, &#8220;Fine, I&#8217;ll go, but I&#8217;m not going to look. I&#8217;m not going to watch.&#8221;
He went in and he kept his eyes down, like knowing I know what happens here. I know what they&#8217;re doing right now. I know as a Christian, I don&#8217;t want any part of it, but he said there was a moment when the crowd cheered in such a way that he knew what was going on and he wanted to see it with his own eyes in the arena and he looked up and it was in an instant that what Augustine calls the blood lust returned to him, and he was cheering the victimization. He was cheering the dominance. He was cheering the violence of one human being against another human being just as much as any non-Christian who was there in that arena.
I agree that if you watch MMA because you enjoy seeing other people getting hurt, then you shouldn&#8217;t watch MMA because you have blood lust or lust for violence. This is definitely one circumstance where Christians or anybody for that matter, shouldn&#8217;t watch mixed martial arts. But that&#8217;s a you problem, not an MMA or a martial arts problem.
To give another example, if you look at Renaissance art because you enjoy seeing naked people and it makes you feel aroused and excited, then you shouldn&#8217;t look at Renaissance art. But that&#8217;s a you problem, not a Renaissance art problem. But if you enjoy combat sports because you appreciate the skill on display and the commitment to athleticism, then it can be a healthy thing for Christians to enjoy watching or participating in. In response he made to his original video, Father Mike boiled down his essential objection to watching mixed martial arts.
Human beings have dignity. Violence strips a human being of dignity. Violence as entertainment has no place in the life of the Christian.
My response would be this. Violence itself is neutral towards human dignity. It&#8217;s not always wrong. I mean, what is violence? Most definitions say something like the use of physical force to cause injury to something. But when a surgeon cuts open a person&#8217;s chest for open heart surgery or amputates a gangrenous limb, that&#8217;s a violent act. The body suffers injury and needs time to heal afterwards, but the violence is justified. Or when the police wrestle a suspect to the ground who is resisting arrest, they don&#8217;t harm that person&#8217;s dignity, even though they commit violence, as long as the violence or force they use is not excessive. Raping an evildoer or torturing him would take away his dignity, but proportional violence to subdue him actually respects his dignity because we&#8217;re keeping him from committing more evil. This also applies to sports since other contact sports involve acts where you know you&#8217;re going to cause the other player pain and possibly injury.
Think about when a football player tackles someone on the field. If tackling someone in a fight would be considered violent, isn&#8217;t this also violent? Hockey would be another example where fights are expected. I mean, to me, this just looks like mixed martial arts are boxing on ice. The question isn&#8217;t, is the act violent? Lots of things are violent that are not immoral. The question is, is there a proportionate reason to justify the violent act?
When it comes to MMA, a few of those reasons might be that it encourages people to learn or value non-lethal means of self-defense and disabling attackers if they&#8217;re forced into a fight. Or it celebrates human creativity, athleticism, health and sportsmanship. And here I actually agree with Father Mike with one of the points he was trying to achieve in his original video.
All that last video was trying to do was propose that there is a line, right? Maybe the line goes to boxing. People wrote to me and said, &#8220;More people die boxing than doing MMA.&#8221; Like, okay. More people get serious brain damage playing professional football than MMA. I don&#8217;t know. I wasn&#8217;t trying to establish how far the line went. All I was trying to offer was that there is a line somewhere.
He&#8217;s absolutely correct. There is a line to be drawn where consensual acts of violence between two people cannot be justified. In the 12th century, the Second Lateran Council banned jousting, saying it condemned, &#8220;those abominable jousts and tournaments in which knights come together by agreement and rashly engage in showing off their physical prowess and daring, and which often result in human deaths and danger to souls. If any of them dies on these occasions, although penance and viaticum are not to be denied him when he requests them, he is to be deprived of a church burial.&#8221;
During the Middle Ages, several popes and ecumenical councils banned dueling or fighting to the death. The Council of Trent said, &#8220;the detestable custom of dueling, introduced by the contrivance of the devil, that by the bloody death of the body, he may accomplish the ruin of the soul, shall be utterly exterminated from the Christian world.&#8221;
Acts of entertainment where there&#8217;s a good chance people can be killed, are incompatible with human dignity. I&#8217;d also say this is true of other engagements where there&#8217;s an unreasonable risk of serious injury. Things like underground street fights where there are no rules. Even in MMA, there are rules governing what is allowed and a set of moves that are prohibited because they&#8217;re too dangerous. I also wouldn&#8217;t support watching competitions where people simply endured severe pain and injury, like seeing how many nails they can drive through their hands. It&#8217;s also why I&#8217;m not a fan of slap fighting where contestants just compete to see who can endure harder slaps from the other person. I think this one probably goes over the line into being unacceptable because now this isn&#8217;t about celebration of skill in combat where you can dodge punches as well as receive them. It&#8217;s just about tolerating injury.
I agree with Father Mike that when we seek out entertainment, we have to make sure what entertains us never violates the dignity of the people who are involved. But I&#8217;d say MMA is on par with the amount of violence and risk one would find in boxing, football, rugby, and other high intensity sports. So if there are proportional reasons to justify those activities, then they also justify MMA. That doesn&#8217;t mean everybody has to watch or that there aren&#8217;t individual examples where behavior in the octagon is over the line, just that MMA doesn&#8217;t seem like a moral hazard we have to worry about because we have enough of those in the world as it is.
Thanks for watching today&#8217;s episode. If you want more great content, be sure to check out these other great episodes and don&#8217;t forget to like and subscribe to help our channel grow. Finally, if you want to help us create more content like this, please support us at trenthornpodcast.com.

Is it SINFUL to Watch MMA?

Can you explain Jesus’ age when he died? St. Irenaeus seems to say Jesus died around the age of 50?

Is there a list of spiritual faculties?

Did Jesus know Mary was a virgin? Did he introduce her to people as “my virgin mother”?

If I swear or use vulgar language, is that a mortal sin?

Since Josephus was Jewish, did he include Jesus’ raising of the dead in his histories?

Should I house my sister who lives with her female partner if she loses her job?

Tradition says Jesus was 33 when He died, but did early Church Fathers like St. Irenaeus suggest otherwise? Tim Staples explores this question and more, including Mary’s virginity, swearing as a sin, and historical accounts of Jesus’ miracles.

Did Jesus Die at 33, or Was He Closer to 50? And More Questions

I attend the Tridentine Mass Almost exclusively at my ‘local’ FSSP parish. I have a friend seeking the Catholic Church who asked me ‘why do you have two different masses in the Western Rite? Why don’t you just attend the regular...

The Church has been quite vocal against usury over the centuries. Is it still defined as any lending of money at interest? How does this notion square with the idea of a variable money supply? Would things like bank accounts, bonds, cds or stocks still...

Does just war theory apply to rebellions? Historically, I’m thinking of Irish wars against the British Empire and slave revolts of African-descended peoples in the Americas, including during the U.S. Civil War. What would be the conditions of jus ad be...

Canon 7 of Chalcedon forbids clergy and monks from war and holding secular office. How then did the Knights Templar, and bishops such as the bishop of Andorra, who also holds title of Co-Prince of Andorra, not violate this?

How does baptism fit with “faith alone working through love?” Can someone with “faith alone working through love” be initially justified apart from baptism?

What do you think is the most convincing argument/thought exercise against naturalism/empricism (or at least what the average indifferent secular person thinks they believe).

What is your best advice for a married Catholic couple to strengthen their bond in marriage? Your stories about you and Renee are always so beautiful (the blue birds especially). Also thanks for being a Catholic cowboy. I grew up Southern Baptist, and ...

Peter denied Jesus 3 times. After the cock crows three times he ran away in shame. What if he falls, hits his head and dies after this? Would his soul be in danger of damnation?

Why does the Catholic Church have both the Traditional Latin Mass and the modern form of the Mass—and how should you explain the difference without getting pulled into “liturgy wars”? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Catholic Answers apologists address this common question before diving into a wide range of topics. They explore whether charging interest is still considered usury, how just war theory applies to rebellions, and how historical cases like the Knights Templar fit with Church law. The episode also explains the role of baptism in justification, offers arguments against naturalism, and gives practical advice for strengthening Catholic marriages. Additional questions include how to understand Peter’s denial of Jesus and what it means for salvation. A rich discussion covering liturgy, moral theology, and everyday Catholic life.

Why Two Catholic Masses? Answers on Latin Mass AMA: Dropped Calls

What is the Catholic stand about mediums?

Can we speak to people in the past in any other way apart from pagan means?

Why do we pray to Saints when Jesus says there is only one intercessor?

Did Pope John Paul II originate the idea of receiving our glorified bodies in Heaven?

Can you explain what Purgatory is like for people? Can you pray for yourself in Purgatory

If Christ is our sole mediator, why does the Church encourage prayer to saints? We explore the biblical foundation for intercession, along with Catholic teaching on mediums, Purgatory, and receiving glorified bodies in Heaven.

Why Do Catholics Pray to Saints If Jesus Is the Only Intercessor?

What Day Was Jesus Crucified?

A little orphaned macaque named Punch has <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/articles/punch-baby-monkey-officially-girlfriend-170701368.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAEunWtEGJBJ3tCgvRgZfEa9fINia2bP--1173g14igx9rlTOBlSnJeiPzRGxhtG6O6AL_gokrSFvrvnObfVKZC8dsnRNwsnO0Gm5qXy_NNBGLNLnGz-Q5lTs9MLNXHRbbPh5CbASdfIrm2_ZsWqrooYq_d7KcJ1sXv8X-Kb_809e">drawn affection</a> from people across the world. He was abandoned after birth at Ichikawa City Zoo near Tokyo, was given a stuffed orangutan to help him cling and feel secure, and then became widely known through videos showing him dragging, hugging, and sleeping beside the toy. Now zoo staff say he is gradually using the plush less as he begins climbing on other monkeys, sitting with adults, and receiving grooming and affection from the troop. The response has been so intense that the zoo had to limit viewing time and ask visitors for quiet, while the IKEA orangutan plush linked to his story has sold out in some places.
That global reaction tells us something important about the human heart. People still feel tenderness toward the weak. People still feel grief when they see a small creature pushed aside. People still feel protective love when innocence suffers. In other words, compassion for the vulnerable has hardly vanished from the human person. That matters very much, because it means the moral problem in our age is deeper than emotional and intellectual numbness alone. People still know how to feel pity and to think compassionately; they simply have learned to direct that pity and compassion in selective and distorted ways.
Scripture helps us understand why. Man is made in the image of God (see Gen. 1:27). Therefore, every human being carries a dignity that is given, received, and sacred. Likewise, Psalm 139 says, “Thou didst form my inward parts, thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb” and again, “Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance” (vv. 13, 16). The child in the womb is therefore neither a project nor a possession nor an inconvenience to be managed. The child is someone known by God, willed by God, and loved by God.
Here, then, is the contradiction that should trouble every conscience. A society can weep over an orphaned baby monkey, and that compassion is good. Yet that same society often shrugs at the destruction of human children in the womb. In fact, the World Health Organization says around 73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year—a staggering figure, revealing a moral disorder reflected in law, medicine, media, and daily speech. When a culture can rally itself around a tiny animal in distress and then refuse the claims of its own unborn human sons and daughters, the issue is hardly a lack of feeling. The issue is a corrupted moral imagination.
That corruption is learned. It is taught through slogans, repeated through entertainment, normalized through policy, and defended through public shaming. St. Paul says that even the Gentiles show that “what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness” (Rom. 2:15). In plain terms, God has left his moral testimony within man. Therefore, when people instinctively feel compassion for Punch, they show evidence of that deep witness. They reveal that the vulnerable still call forth mercy from the human heart. Consequently, indifference toward unborn children is the fruit of a culture that has trained people to suppress what they know innately.
The abortion issue reaches far beyond politics. It is a spiritual crisis. It is rebellion against God, rebellion against the truth of our own nature. A child in the womb is living, growing, distinct, and human. Many people even admit as much. Nevertheless, they still defend the killing. That is why this issue carries such terrible gravity: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil” (Isa. 5:20). Once a people learns that exchange, its institutions begin to rot.
Will Durant captured that pattern with painful precision: “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”  Chris Hedges, writing from a very different tradition, still saw a similar truth: “Cultures that do not recognize that human life and the natural world have a sacred dimension . . . cannibalize themselves until they die. They ruthlessly exploit the natural world and the members of their society in the name of progress until exhaustion or collapse.” Those words fit our age disturbingly well. A culture that severs compassion from truth soon turns savage, packaging savagery in the language of care.
Selective mercy eventually devours society, too. Once the smallest human life loses protection, every other claim to dignity grows weaker. If worth depends on size, strength, wantedness, convenience, or autonomy, then dignity has already been reduced to a shifting social contract. Under that system, the elderly will suffer, the disabled will suffer, the poor will suffer, and eventually everyone will suffer. The gospel offers a radically different ground for human worth. Christ took flesh. The Son of God entered the womb of the Virgin Mary. The Incarnation forever sanctified human life from conception onward. The unborn child matters because Christ has joined himself to human nature.
The Christian claim gives us the pathway forward: neither rage nor contempt, but conversion. People whose hearts ache for Punch already possess a doorway through which truth can enter. Their compassion is a starting place. Their tenderness can become a bridge. Their sorrow for a vulnerable animal can help them recover sorrow for vulnerable children. Therefore, Christians should treat this story as an opening for dialogue. We can say, gently and firmly, that your compassion is good, your instinct to protect is good, and your grief over innocence in danger is good. Now let that mercy become consistent. Let it reach the baby in the womb as well.
Jesus says, “Whatever you did to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40). The unborn are surely among “the least of these.” They have no vote, no wealth, no voice in the public square, and no power to defend themselves. Yet God sees them and loves them. He knows them by name before the world ever knows they exist. Christian witness in this age must recover that truth with patience, courage, and hope.
So yes, compassion for this little monkey is a beautiful thing. A civilization can survive when it can still love the weak. A civilization collapses when it teaches itself to love sentiment while rejecting truth. The gospel alone can heal that fracture, because the gospel alone reveals both what man is and what man is for. In Christ, compassion is purified, truth is restored, and the vulnerable are received as gifts rather than burdens. That is the corrective our culture desperately needs, and that is the road by which mercy may yet be taught to love rightly again.

A Baby Monkey Moves the World

Frank Turek on the Bible & the Church

As we continue to rejoice in the Easter Octave, many sports fans have become preoccupied with their losses. Indeed, whereas Easter celebrates our freedom in the risen Lord Jesus Christ (John 8:31-32; 14:6), more and more people—<a href="https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/isacco-gambling-addiction">especially young men</a>—are realizing that their interest in sports has become a form of enslavement, not a healthful recreational outlet. The estimated <a href="https://www.politifact.com/article/2026/mar/23/march-madness-sports-betting-gambling-help-support/#:~:text=Sports%20betting%20ads%20are%20inescapable,money%20won%20from%20sports%20betting.">$3.3 billion wagered on March Madness</a>—which concluded with the University of Michigan and UCLA winning the men’s and women’s tournaments, respectively—is a reminder of not only how popular sports gambling has become, but also how many people are finding it to be an occasion of sin and addiction (see <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p4s2a3.htm#VI">CCC 2846-2849</a>, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James%201&amp;version=RSVCE">James 1:13-15</a>).
<h2>The Big Gambling Pie</h2>
Back in the day, the only way you could place a legal bet on sports was in Las Vegas, but the <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/14/589087523/supreme-court-rules-states-are-free-to-legalize-sports-betting">U.S. Supreme Court changed that with its 2018</a> Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Given the popularity of sports betting and the development of smartphones, online startups like FanDuel (2009) and DraftKings (2012) anticipated the Court’s decision, with Major League Baseball (MLB) an early partner with DraftKings. Since the 2018 decision, the National Football League (NFL) and others are playing catch-up—and then some.
Sports leagues want engagement in their contests. If you’re betting on a game, you have a greater stake in the outcome (pun intended), and so you’re more likely to watch, which can only help increase advertising rates as well as generate more subscriptions to the NFL Ticket, pay-TV plan for your local MLB team, etc.
And to help keep you engaged, casinos, other gambling companies, and sports leagues have collaborated to provide their clients every imaginable “proposition bet” (prop bet). Decades ago, gamblers had to place their bets before the game started, and it was mainly on who would win, although there were other regular bets, such as the over/under for the collective points two teams would score in a contest. In addition, other bets developed. I recall when a friend, in January 1986, wagered $50 that William “the Refrigerator” Perry would score a touchdown for the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XX. The line began at 20-1, my friend got in at 12-1, and the odds quickly dropped to 2-1 as betters sought to capitalize on what they saw as a very good bet. The Fridge did score a TD as the Bears romped, and while the bookies took a bath, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/davecaldwell/2019/02/03/how-a-bookie-and-a-refrigerator-changed-super-bowl-betting-forever/">modern prop betting was born</a>. As the old saying goes, the only way to ensure making a profit in gambling is by owning the casino, or having a partnership with one—as the NFL, MLB, et al. can attest.
Today, gamblers can make not only various prop bets in advance of a game, including who wins the coin toss at the Super Bowl, but also many “live/in-play props”—i.e., as a game progresses, designed to keep them watching until the contest ends.
<h2>A Sad but Sure Bet</h2>
I’ve longed quipped that having gambling counselors at casinos—or available via a toll-free number—is like having a marriage counselor at a brothel. But you have to patronize the house before you can see the counselor.
Well, for the growing number of fans with betting problems, it’s no joke, including because sports enthusiasts are at least twice as likely as other gamblers to have issues, <a href="https://www.ncpgambling.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Sports-gambling_NCPGLitRvwExecSummary.pdf">according to the National Council on Problem Gambling</a>. Indeed, although tax revenue is up for various states, so are <a href="https://idahocapitalsun.com/2024/12/06/growth-of-sports-betting-may-be-linked-to-financial-woes-new-studies-find/#:~:text=By:%20Kevin%20Hardy%20%2D%20December%206%2C%202024%2010:13%20am&amp;text=While%20states%20have%20cheered%20the,states%20to%20authorize%20sports%20gambling.">related</a> “lower consumer credit scores, higher credit card debt, and less household savings.” Some states, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/09/30/nx-s1-5553428/sports-books-betting-gambling-addiction-massachusetts-gamesense">like Massachusetts</a>, have begun programs to help those who’ve developed gambling addictions.
There is no doubt that betting <a href="https://responsiblegambling.org/for-the-public/about-gambling/the-science-behind-gambling/">is an addictive gamble for many</a>:
<blockquote>When you gamble, your brain releases dopamine, the feel-good neurotransmitter that makes you feel excited. You’d expect to only feel excited when you win, but your body produces this neurological response even when you lose. . . .
While most of us are able to walk away when we lose and practice <a href="https://responsiblegambling.org/for-the-public/safer-play/">safer play habits</a>, others may continue gambling to win back the money they have lost in a phenomenon known as chasing losses. These individuals may begin to develop problems with gambling.</blockquote>
At the same time, addictions and vices often overlap, with the latter deteriorating into the former if corrective action is not chosen. Still, with therapy, prayer, and personal agency, a person can overcome compulsive patterns—and then commit to a long-term plan, as members of Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, can witness.
<h2>Gambling and Pornography</h2>
Gambling is not new, <a href="https://www.history.com/articles/chariot-racing-ancient-rome">as the ancient Romans could tell us</a>, but it’s a lot more accessible today. As Catholic psychologist <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/isacco-gambling-addiction">Anthony Isacco observes</a>, digital technology has exacerbated addictions to both pornography and gambling:
<blockquote>The same three A’s that contributed to the rise of problematic pornography consumption also are fueling gambling addiction: accessibility, anonymity and affordability. Young men can download an app on their phone and start betting within minutes. The app is sleek, easy to use, and has built-in incentives to start gambling—and to keep gambling.</blockquote>
However, engaging in pornography is an intrinsic moral evil, as the Catechism explains:
<blockquote>It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a6.htm#II">2354</a>).</blockquote>
On the other hand, gambling—contrary to what many Protestants believe—is not inherently immoral, although it can certainly become a vice:
<blockquote>Games of chance (card games, etc.) or wagers are not in themselves contrary to justice. They become morally unacceptable when they deprive someone of what is necessary to provide for his needs and those of others. The passion for gambling risks becoming an enslavement. Unfair wagers and cheating at games constitute grave matter, unless the damage inflicted is so slight that the one who suffers it cannot reasonably consider it significant (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a7.htm#II">2413</a>, emphasis original).</blockquote>
In any event, as a good priest confessor will counsel, addictions can mitigate culpability, and yet there is still personal culpability—often grave—for developing the vice that generates an addiction, as well as regarding how we choose to deal with an addiction we’ve cultivated. In addition, we disserve an addict if we don’t remind him that he can exercise freedom in dealing with his addiction, especially when he comes down from his addictive high—of whatever sort—and can thus soberly survey the damage he’s done to himself and others.
To be sure, those who profit off the vulnerabilities of others <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/sola-scriptura-and-americas-love-of-money">may well have their own moral reckoning</a>, especially if they’re not vigilant in identifying and aiding problem gamblers (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%206&amp;version=RSVCE">see 1 Tim. 6:10</a>).
Those who struggle with a gambling addiction need to avail themselves of various resources. <a href="https://www.covenanteyes.com/victory/?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=paid_search&amp;utm_campaign=brand_covenant_eyes&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=407188357&amp;gbraid=0AAAAADSStEeZF7tqg7rhtcDpCdJsJiZYk&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw4a3OBhCHARIsAChaqJPm-a83PCGLAequcekI8EFQQVSF-Upc_ZRm_3QObYHzij8St5Qka_AaAnOAEALw_wcB">Covenant Eyes</a> is an excellent online accountability service for those who battle porn. There is not a gambling analogue, but one can install bet-blocking tools on his computer, such as <a href="https://gamban.com/">Gamban</a>. Also, <a href="https://www.netnanny.com/">Net Nanny</a> offers helps for parents. <a href="https://gamblersanonymous.org/find-a-meeting/">Gamblers Anonymous</a> and <a href="https://catholictherapists.com/find-a-therapist-disclaimer/">Catholic Therapists</a> can also provide help. And, to reaffirm, God’s mercy is always available <a href="https://catholictherapists.com/">in the confessional</a>. Let us pray for—and support otherwise—all concerned.

Yes, Christians Can Gamble

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent break down the elements that make up modern musicals and shares some of his favorites, with a few of his own renditions to share!

What I Love About Musicals

<h2>What Is the Three Days of Darkness Prophecy?</h2>
In certain Catholic prophetic circles, there is a concept known as the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-does-the-church-say-about-the-three-days-of-darkness" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">three days of darkness</a>, according to which a judgment will come upon the earth, and the earth will be preternaturally shrouded in darkness.
One of the most famous quotations about this event is attributed to the Italian mystic Bl. Anna Maria Taigi (1768-1837). She is said to have stated,
<blockquote>There shall come over the whole earth an intense darkness lasting three days and three nights. Nothing can be seen, and the air will be laden with pestilence which will claim mainly, but not only, the enemies of religion. It will be impossible to use any man-made lighting during this darkness, except blessed candles. He, who out of curiosity, opens his window to look out, or leaves his home, will fall dead on the spot. During these three days, people should remain in their homes, pray the rosary, and beg God for mercy. All the enemies of the Church, whether known or unknown, will perish over the whole earth during that universal darkness, with the exception of a few whom God will soon convert. The air shall be infected by demons who will appear under all sorts of hideous forms.</blockquote>
Another mystic—Marie-Julie Jahenny (1850-1941)—is said to have claimed that only 100-percent wax candles will work. This has led to people selling pure beeswax candles to Catholic households for use during the event.
Some Catholics have been very concerned about this event, because if it were to occur as described, it would be terrifying.
<h2>What Does the Catholic Church Say About Three Days of Darkness?</h2>
What should we make of the prediction? How credible is it? And what does the Church have to say about it?
The answer to the last question is easy: nothing. The Church has nothing to say about it. A search of the Vatican website reveals no occurrences of the phrase “three days of darkness.” The three days of darkness is not a matter of Church teaching.
<h2>Is Three Days of Darkness in the Bible?</h2>
Can it be supported by the Bible? Websites advocating the three days of darkness regularly appeal to the ninth plague of the Exodus (Exod. 10:21-29), in which God caused three days of darkness in Egypt. However, this is a reference to a historical event, not a prediction of a future one.
Appeal also is made to Revelation 6:12 and 16:10—the sixth seal and the fifth vial. These chapters in Revelation most likely pertain to events early in Church history, <a href="http://jimmyakin.com/preterism-and-eschatology">not our future</a>, and although both passages involve darkness, there is no mention of it lasting three days.
<h2>The Problem With the Origins of the Prophecy</h2>
However, the Bible does not contain a prediction of the three days of darkness. However, God could still reveal it through credible private revelations, and it is here that we run into a problem. George Ryan—who passes no judgment on the three days of darkness—writes,
<blockquote>The origins of the prophecy are unclear, but it has been attributed to a number of saints and mystics throughout history. Some believe it comes from St. Hildegard of Bingen, while others attribute it to St. Patrick or St. Teresa of Avila.</blockquote>
This is a problem, because if any of these figures predicted the three days of darkness, it should be possible to find the prediction in their writings, and nobody has been able to do so. It thus appears that some advocates of the view have attempted to give it an air of antiquity by associating older saints with it (Patrick lived in the 400s, Hildegard lived in the 1100s, and Teresa lived in the 1500s), even though they made no predictions about it. The idea thus appears to be of more recent origin.
<h2>Modern Visionaries and Three Days of Darkness</h2>
There are numerous visionaries operating today, and some of them do speak of the three days of darkness. However, what these visionaries have in common is that none of them has been investigated and had his visions approved.
Some visionaries authentically receive private revelations, but some are hoaxers—because hoaxers exist in every age, including our own—whereas others may be innocently imagining things based on what they have read in visionary literature.
This is why it is important to have competent investigations done rather than simply giving credence to claims of purported revelations. (See, for example, the case of the once very popular Canadian mystic <a href="https://youtu.be/msbotf5PEio">Fr. Michel Rodrigue</a>, who was repudiated by his bishops and whose prophecies have subsequently been falsified.)
If we set aside disapproved and uninvestigated claims, what are we left with?
Some advocates of the three days of darkness have claimed that St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio, 1887-1968) predicted it. However, the quotation was given with no traceable source, and the Capuchin order that he belonged to has <a href="https://jimmyakin.com/2010/01/a-reader-writessomebody-asked-me-in-regard-of-this-article-is-it-true-or-false-is-it-authentic-or-just-regular-pious-writi.html">denied that he ever made such a prediction</a>. This also appears to be a case of someone trying to lend the prediction credibility by associating it with a popular modern saint.
What about the most famous quotation concerning the three days of darkness—the one we quoted earlier, attributed to Anna Maria Taigi?
Various web pages attribute it to a book titled Private Prophecy, which was published in 1863. This is good, because books of that era have been digitized and are searchable online. However, when we check Archive.org and Google Books, they turn up no book by this title. The same is true if you make the title plural—Private Prophecies (<a href="https://archive.org/search?query=%22private+prophecies%22">Archive.org</a>, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&amp;q=%22private+prophecies%22">Google Books</a>).
One website lists the book as having the Italian title Profezie Private and adds that it was published in Rome. However, the same thing happens again on Archive.org and Google Books. There are no books of this title on record.
After considerable searching (including by other means), it appears that this book simply never existed. Perhaps someone saw the above quotation attributed to a private prophecy of Taigi from 1863 and thought it was a book title.
However, here we encounter another difficulty. The website “The Great Catholic Monarch and Angelic Pontiff Prophecies”—which supports the three days of darkness—acknowledges that it was not mentioned until 1863 or 1864—twenty-six or twenty-seven years after Taigi’s death.
During life, Taigi reportedly saw an orb-like “mystic sun” that revealed things to her about the future, and she told these to her spiritual director, Raffaele Natali. The website states:
<blockquote>There is no question Bl. Anna Maria Taigi saw in her mystic sun several visions of “clouds of darkness” and other horrific disasters descending upon the earth during the times of the punishments; this has been mentioned during her beatification process as seen above. However, the mention of a specific time-frame of Three Days for the foretold “purge” of the earth was first allegedly revealed by her spiritual director, D. Raffaele Natali, who was not only her strongest supporter during her beatification process, but also gave ample testimony regarding her visions, for in obedience, she had told him everything.
According to an article in the El Ermitaño, (No. 155, Oct. 26, 1871), D. Natali revealed the following during c. August of 1864, a year after her beatification process was opened by Bl. Pius IX in 1863:
“It is very true that the venerable Servant of God announced the scourge of the three days of darkness spread over all the earth. . . . In these circumstances, the windows should be closed, and leaning over them should be avoided, and it will be imperative to pray the holy rosary and pray.”</blockquote>
The website also relates an account in which Natali may have mentioned the three days in the previous year (1863).
This raises grave questions about the quotation attributed to Taigi—as well as any other quotations attributed to her on the three days of darkness.
The idea was apparently related more than a quarter-century after her death by a now elderly spiritual director. We have to take his word for what she told him, and we are at the mercy of his memory and his honesty, as well as the accuracy of the reports concerning what he said.
<h2>Should Catholics Believe in the Three Days of Darkness Prophecy?</h2>
Under these circumstances, and given the known problems with other quotations on this topic (such as the false Padre Pio quotation), we should not place confidence in any alleged verbatim quotations attributed to Taigi—especially lengthy ones—in the absence of verifiable documents written during her life.
Then there is the fact that—as far as I have been able to determine—these revelations were not subject to an ecclesiastical investigation into their validity. When a person’s cause for canonization is opened, a check is made to see whether he said anything that contradicts the Faith. However, a judgment is not made about the validity of any revelations he claimed to have received. That is a separate process, which I have no evidence of being performed in this case.
Although I may perform more research in the future, thus far I have not been able to verify any reference to the three days of darkness in an approved apparition. Instead, I have found a highly problematic set of quotations and attributions that appear to be the product of the Apparition Rumor Net rather than competent scholarship.
As vivid and compelling as the prediction of the three days of darkness is, I would not recommend that Catholics be terrified of it or that they invest it with credence, given the present state of the evidence.

The Three Days of Darkness

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

How to be ANGRY with God as a Christian

The Council of Constantinople

Do we count the Council of Jerusalem among the first councils?

Pope Leo announced reintroducing Deaconess based on Church History? Were there Deaconess in the Early Church?

What the basic stuff to know about the Council of Nicea?

Arianism sounds like Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Why did the council of Ephesus do?

I feel like there is a popular opinion that the church was united up until 1054. But at the Council of Ephesus and Council of Calcedon there was a split by assyrian church of the East and oriental orthodox Church. Is this an argument that the church wa...

What is Nestorianism?

Who are the heroes of the Council of Ephesus?

&#8220;Did the Early Church Have Deaconesses?&#8221; This episode explores the role of women in the early Church, including discussions on the Council of Constantinople and whether the Council of Jerusalem should be counted among the ecumenical councils. We also delve into Arianism&#8217;s connections to modern groups and the significance of the Council of Ephesus.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Did the Early Church Have Deaconesses? Councils and Arianism

In this episode Trent gets “grilled” by Michael Lofton, the host of Reason and Theology, on all sorts of questions related to apologetics and theology.

Ask me Anything! (with Reason and Theology)

I heard a claim that writing goes back 20 or 30 thousand years, and that Jesus was taking things from these texts, and also that Noah’s flood was copied from one of these ancient texts. Is this true?

It seems like liberal Catholic theology is focused on advancing political initiatives. But are there “liberal” Catholic theologies that are still within the bounds of orthodoxy?

After the death of Jesus, did the Jewish people stop being the chosen people?

Can you explain Marcianism to me? Did they believe in two separate gods? How did that come about?

If Jesus gave the Church the power to bind, then why are married people no longer married in heaven?

Could Protestants get married at my home?

What is the Catholic understanding of Jesus’ statement that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church?

What is the Church teaching on head coverings and women wearing makeup to Mass?

&#8220;Are the Jewish People Still God&#8217;s Chosen People?&#8221; In this episode, Jimmy Akin answers biblical questions from callers.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Are the Jewish People Still God’s Chosen People?

Trent Horn reflects on Pope Francis’s passing, and his pontificate marked by heart and humility, despite occasional disagreements.
Transcription:
It’s been confirmed that Pope Francis has passed away and so I’d ask that you please pray for the repose of his soul.
For me, there are two words that summarize the Francis pontificate: heart and humility. On the latter word, I remember in 2013 watching the election of Pope Francis at the Catholic Answers office alongside the rest of the staff.
I was struck by the almost forlorn way the Pope addressed the crowds in St. Peter’s square. Some memes even contrasted his reserve with the more joyful expressions of John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. It seemed that in this moment he focused almost entirely on the weight of the office given to him and the responsibility that lay before him.
A few months after the election Laura and I got married and on our honeymoon we took part in a tradition called Sposi Novelli. This is where the Pope greets newlywed couples who attend his Wednesday Audience in their wedding attire. We followed a priest friend’s advice and went to Gammarelli’s, the Pope’s official tailor, to purchase a papal zucchetto. When we met the Pope, which was unusual because Benedict often greeted the newlyweds as a group, we offered to trade him Zucchettos.
Pope Francis then took Laura’s bridal tiara and jokingly said, “I take this instead?” To which I blurted out, “You’re the Pope, you can have whatever you want.”
Laura then went in to hug the Pope which threw the papal security into disarray.
I could tell Francis was a man who liked to think with his heart. In his pontificate this led to joyful, humorous moments and other incidents that would have benefitted from more clarity and a headfirst approach. However, there is something endearing about someone who values speaking and acting from the heart. And throughout his papacy the Pope’s embrace of the most marginalized and vulnerable shows how he led with the heart. In fact, I would say his greatest encyclical was the last one he wrote, Dilexit Nos, a mediation on the sacred heart of Jesus.
There’s a lot more that can be said and will be said about Pope Francis and, in spite of my occasional disagreements with him that I have discussed in previous episodes, I firmly maintain that Pope Francis has been a blessing to the Church in many ways and he will be missed.
And so now, we should pray for the bishops of the world and especially the cardinal electors as they prepare to gather to elect a new Pope. The Holy Spirit doesn’t automatically select the next Pope but instead, gives the cardinals grace to guide them. Scandalous popes in the past were a consequence of the cardinals resisting that grace so let’s pray that they not be tempted by politics or petty interests but turn to prayer and listen to how God wants to lead his church.
If you have other questions on papal elections or the papacy I recommend you check out the website of Catholic Answers at Catholic.com. Thank you all so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.

Rest in Peace, Pope Francis.

<div class="page" title="Page 25">
<div class="section">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
DAY 15
CHALLENGE
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
“The sacrament of the anointing of the sick has no biblical basis; it is a human invention.”
DEFENSE
The anointing of the sick is recorded in the Bible.
The practice of anointing the sick as a means of miraculous healing was already part of the Christian movement during the earthly ministry of Christ. Jesus performed many exorcisms and healings, and he commissioned the apostles to continue this miraculous ministry, us- ing anointing as one of their methods. Thus in Mark we read how Jesus sent the Twelve on a preaching and miracle-working mission and “they cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them” (Mark 6:13).
The anointing of the sick continued to be used later in the apostolic age. Thus in the letter of James we read: “Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven” (James 5:14–15).
It is this passage in particular from which the Church draws its understanding of the anointing of the sick: “The first grace of this sacrament is one of strengthening, peace, and courage to overcome the difficulties that go with the condition of serious illness or the frailty of old age. This grace is a gift of the Holy Spirit, who renews trust and faith in God and strengthens against the temptations of the evil one, the temptation to discouragement and anguish in the face of death. This assistance from the Lord by the power of his Spirit is meant to lead the sick person to healing of the soul, but also of the body if such is God’s will. Furthermore, ‘if he has committed sins, he will be for- given’” (CCC 1520).
Note that James says that the sick person is to call for “the elders [Greek, presbuteroi] of the Church.” Presbuteros is the Greek word from which the English word “priest” is derived. Since the anointing of the sick is part of the ministry of the presbuteroi, “only priests (bishops and presbyters) are ministers of the anointing of the sick” (CCC 1516).
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

The Anointing of the Sick

What is the significance of the Immaculate Conception?

How can we explain the concept of purgatory to non-Catholics?

Why do Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist?

What is the role of the Pope in the Catholic Church?

How should Catholics approach the topic of abortion in discussions with others?

&#8220;What is the significance of the Immaculate Conception?&#8221; This episode delves into this controversial belief, while also addressing how to explain purgatory to non-Catholics and the Catholic understanding of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Join us as we explore these essential topics and more in Catholic apologetics.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

What Is the Significance of the Immaculate Conception, Purgatory, and the Eucharist?

Why do I need a priest when I can go straight to God? In this episode Trent and Fr. Walshe answer this and other common arguments people make against the sacrament of holy orders.
<a href="http://www.catholicanswersspeakers.com/trent-horn-speaker/">Book Trent</a> to speak at your parish or next event.
Want more from Trent Horn?
<ul>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/made-this-way-how-to-prepare-kids-to-face-todays-tough-moral-issues/">Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/why-were-catholic-our-reasons-for-faith-hope-and-love/">Why We&#8217;re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, And Love</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-how-to-talk-about-our-cultures-toughest-issue/">Persuasive Pro-Life: How to Talk About Our Culture’s Toughest Issue</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/answering-atheism-how-to-make-the-case-for-god-with-logic-and-charity/">Answering Atheism: How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity</a></li>
</ul>

Defending the Priesthood with Fr. Sebastian Walshe (Part I)

Larry Chapp has some confessions to make, and some powerful insights to share with a Church in crisis. He joins us for a conversation about his new book, &#8220;Confession of a Catholic Worker: Our Current Moment of Christian Witness.&#8221;

Confession of a Catholic Worker

“Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom” (Luke 12:32, DRE).
The pithy warmth of this older translation paints the Father with generosity and love. He gives us his good gifts not because he has to, or because it is reasonable, or correct, but first and finally because it is “[his] good pleasure” (KJV, RSV, et al.). The Father takes delight in giving his children gifts. The Son, in telling us this, shares in his Father’s delight. The disciples are his “little flock,” the sheep cared for and provided for by the Good Shepherd.
It is this relationship of unconditional and unmerited love that stands behind the entire Christian ethical vision. If this is how God looks on us, how God provides for us, we can face trials and persecution, give generously to the poor, do the right thing even when it hurts, and refuse to worry about what happens tomorrow.
But the images given today focus less on moments of crisis—on how to persevere when we’re under attack, resist extreme temptations, or fall into a panic over situations of high anxiety. These stories are all about learning to wait, to stay vigilant, even when the waiting seems long and boring.
One of the Lord’s metaphors, the servants waiting for the master’s return from a wedding, shows a situation of uncertainty. The Fathers often read the master here as Christ coming back after ascending into heaven. We know that he will return, but we do not know when. “No one knows the day nor the hour.” Likewise, we are encouraged to be prepared for a thief coming in the night. Does this mean we aren’t allowed to sleep? That we should be waiting by the back door all the time with a baseball bat?
The difficulty of these scenarios is rather different from the difficulty of crisis. Compare the child who stubs his toe or scrapes his knee who runs crying to Mom or Dad and is quickly comforted with a kiss and a bandage. That’s one thing. It’s another when Mom or Dad is nowhere to be found, when nothing particularly bad is happening, but there’s a mounting anxiety and uncertainty about what could happen. Perhaps a babysitter or sibling assures him that Mom will be back soon, that there’s nothing to worry about, but he may not even be able to hear such comforts.
Such feelings and worries are more or less natural depending on development, age, and circumstance. Likewise in the Christian life, this is an enormous part of maturity: How do we cope with uncertainty? How do we go on when we’re not sure what comes next? Sometimes we may even be tempted to manufacture some enemy or problem so that we can find a way to focus our energies, but it will not aid us in our need for patient waiting.
These Gospel images about the coming kingdom and the return of the Lord can, if we’re honest, be less attractive than the more dramatic depictions elsewhere about the apocalyptic end of history. At least with the great beast and its blasphemies you sort of know what you’re getting. And maybe that’s part of the point here, because it is all too easy for us to convince ourselves that all this watching and waiting for the kingdom really has nothing to do with us. Peter Kreeft gives us this sharp reminder: “You may think that you will not be alive when that happens, but you are wrong. You certainly will, because you will certainly die, and your death is the end of the world for you, the end of your world, and it is when you will meet Christ.”
Our brief reading from Wisdom is a somewhat cryptic selection in the modern lectionary. Its reference to Passover, though, should recall to us the whole character of the original Passover, which was expectant waiting. The Israelites in Egypt were told to eat with their loins girded, packed and ready to travel. The use of unleavened bread was and remains a powerful sign of this vigilance. There was not even time to let the dough ferment and rise.
In Jewish tradition, at least, the symbol of unleavened bread remained a seasonal sign, a particular remembrance of the Passover. It is interesting, then, that this sign has become, at least for those of us in the Latin Church, an enduring mark of ordinary Christian life. Often it doesn’t feel like that. But the Passover of Christ’s death and resurrection, renewed and made present at each Mass, suggests that the vigilant expectation of the Exodus should be for us the norm. We should eat this meal as if it were our last. We should prepare for this meal as if it were our last.
And we should take seriously the metaphors given to understand what proper kingdom vigilance means. The fact that a thief may come in the night doesn’t mean we never get to sleep or rest or enjoy ourselves. We just need basic precautions: reasonable walls, doors, and prudence. This, in spiritual terms, comes down to seeking true virtue, which is always a balanced mean between opposing vices: we neither become consumed with worry nor become lax. Rather, we focus first on those most basic disciplines that Holy Church gives us: going to Mass, going to Confession, finding ways to practice the works of mercy. In other words, the servants should not leave the house, which is to say the Church, to wander off and do their own thing. If we’re staying close to the sacraments, we are placing ourselves in a situation where, like the waiting servants, we are not so distracted with our own temporal affairs that we fail to notice that the Lord is on the doorstep calling for us.
While a proper fear of the Lord may keep us alert, a recognition of the Father’s abiding love for us should in a similar way guard us from falling into needless anxiety. He is not, in the end, a thief in the night! His appearing will only feel like a thief in the night if we forget who he is and who we are. So the ordinary disciplines of the Christian life aren’t just some kind of military preparation for battle, they are just the ordinary disciplines of love, the disciplines of staying near to the one who loves us so that we can remember his voice and his calling to us.
Though the fate of the unready servants is a hard warning, the promise to the servants who stayed ready is quite remarkable: “Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes; truly, I say to you, he will gird himself and have them sit at table, and he will come and serve them.” Perhaps it goes without saying, but this is a very unusual scene! The Master becomes the servant.
Again, the hard words of warning should not appear to us as some great angry reminder of God’s wrath, but rather of the extremity of the Father’s love. It is this enormous condescension that warrants our constant attention and love in this life, for our faithfulness will be rewarded in a way that far outstrips its worth.
Let me close with one of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s great reminders of this theme—his little poem “Easter Communion,” written just before his entrance into the Catholic Church. Here, he suggests, the Lenten disciplines do not somehow balance out the joys of Easter; rather, they give way to the overwhelming goodness of God’s triumph:
<blockquote>God shall o&#8217;er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze 
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment 
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease. 
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent: 
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.</blockquote>
Again hear these words of the Lord: “Fear not, little flock, for it hath pleased your Father to give you a kingdom.”

The Eucharist: Your Last Meal

Tom Nash answers a caller who wonders whether Christians outside the Catholic Church who do not receive the Eucharist can be saved and whether the caller&#8217;s father can receive the Eucharist before his process of annulment has ended.

Can Protestants Have Salvation Without the Eucharist?

In this rebuttal Trent examines clips from the documentary “American Gospel” and shows how they distort and fail to refute the authentic Catholic view of salvation and the Gospel.

REBUTTING “American Gospel” on Catholic salvation

How did the Church councils get their names?

If I only had one Early Church Father to study what would be your recommendation and why?

What in the world is monophysitism?

Was Purgatory mentioned in the Early church or discussed at council?

What criteria did the Council of Rome use to determine the Canon?

Is there a similarity and difference the Catholic Churches and the Eastern Orthodox councils?

In this episode, we explore &#8220;How did the Church councils get their names?&#8221; along with a variety of other intriguing topics, including recommendations for studying Early Church Fathers and the concept of monophysitism. We also delve into whether Purgatory was discussed in the Early Church and the criteria used by the Council of Rome to determine the Canon.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

How Did the Church Councils Get Their Names, Purgatory, and More

“But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified.’”
Who killed Jesus? One of the great sins of Christian people in history has been the facile assertion that Jesus was killed by the Jews. This made Christians in the Middle Ages, and not a few modern Catholics, feel good about themselves because they were not the “Christ-killers.” But of course the assertion doesn’t really make sense. Jesus was, after all, a Jew—a fact that I know can come as a shock to so many of those people I still meet from time to time who think they must know everything about the faith because they “went to Catholic school.” And the people actually putting him to death, in all four of the Gospels, are the Roman authorities, led by Pontius Pilate.
And so now, after the Holocaust, many anxious Christians, trying to be more sensitive, answer the question with a different facile assertion: that the Romans killed Jesus. But of course that assertion doesn’t really make sense, either. It’s not as though the Jewish people of Jerusalem stood by powerless while the Romans did their business. They were there.
So were we all.
Not literally, of course. But this week isn’t just about the literal; it’s about truth. And I think on this question our hymns and our poetry and our art so often get it right when our histories miss the point: We killed Jesus. You and me. Not the Romans. Not the Jews. Not any other group that we can think of that keeps us at a safe distance. We did it.
I think that is, front and center, the challenge and the gift of Holy Week. We have to confront what we’ve done and who we are. This isn’t an exercise is self-pity or moralism, as if every time you tell a little lie, you’re killing Jesus, or every time you disobey your mother, you’re killing Jesus. That’s not the point. The point is that we are part of that crowd of people who don’t really know what they’re doing, who find themselves doing something together that no one would have really thought to do on their own, who find themselves full of contradictions and emotions they don’t understand, who move almost without thought from singing praise to shouting hate, from worship to murder.
That, friends, is us, whether we acknowledge it or not. I’ve seen it in myself, over and over again, in the ways that my temper will flare up at something stupid and I find myself cursing under my breath at people I love more than anything in the world. I see it in my children, who can go from sweet, playful innocence in one moment to cruelty in the next. Lord knows that it appears in the confessional, where otherwise good people find themselves falling into sin. This is who we are.
Going through the work of Holy Week—and, let’s be honest, it is work—is like looking in a mirror, a brutally honest mirror that will show us everything that we never wanted to see about ourselves. It’s not meant to be fun. But it is meant to be good. Because although the Church shows us everything that we never wanted to see, it also shows us everything that we never dared to hope: how all of the worst things about ourselves, like our capacity to kill God, can become the very best things—how God in his grace and mercy and love can make us beautiful.

Who Killed Jesus: The Romans or the Jews?

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent gives his thoughts on the body horror film &#8220;The Substance&#8221;

FFAF: I Need to Talk About “The Substance”

Jimmy Akin explains why the Catholic Church only ordains men to the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/priesthood">priesthood</a>, and offers several possible explanations of why Jesus chose men to be his ministers.

Explaining the All-Male Priesthood

Episode 91: Year B &#8211; 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode, we focus on the Gospel reading for this upcoming 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, which is the exchange that Jesus has with the Jews concerning his command to eat his flesh. The passage is taken from John 6:51-58. The key apologetical topic, of course, is the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-3e747287f40b833b body-half">
<div class="jsx-3e747287f40b833b body-half">
Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081824.cfm">Click Here</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-3e747287f40b833b body-half">
<div class="jsx-3e747287f40b833b body-half">
Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a>
</div></div></div></div></div></div></div>

Push Back on the Real Presence of the Eucharist

Jerome made a comment on Titus 1:7 that the presbyters were basically the same as bishops, then there was a development that made the distinction between them, and also the papacy. How would you respond to that?

Why do we have to learn God’s love language but he doesn’t have to learn ours? It seems like it’s a one-way relationship.

I’ve been inquiring about Catholicism for a long time, and I agree with a lot of Catholic points. But I worry about a lot of liturgical abuse happening in the Church and that the Vatican doesn’t do anything about it. Any thoughts?

If you are in friendship with God, but then commit a mortal sin and get hit by a train on the way to confession, do you go to Hell because you didn’t confess? Also, I have been told that Catholics are not required to confess to a priest, they can confe...

Questions from Non-Catholics

Christians believe that God created the universe from nothing. But some skeptical critics say that even if there were evidence for the universe having a cause, God could not be it—at least, not the cause of a finite universe that began in the past, like ours.
The late physicist Stephen Hawking, for instance, argued that since the Big Bang is typically claimed to be the beginning of time itself, there could have been no time until it occured. And since all causes occur before their effects, he said, without time there was no way for for any cause, even God, to bring the universe into existence. Because without time there can be no &#8220;before.&#8221;
One problem with this argument is that a cause does not always have to occur before the effect. The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant argued, for example, that “the greater part of operating causes in nature are simultaneous with their effects. . . . If the cause had but a moment before it ceased to be, the effect could not have arisen.”
To understand this, imagine a brick smashing a window. In this case, it is clear that the brick is thrown before the window breaks, and the window doesn’t break before the brick hits it. But notice that there is a brief overlap where the cause (the brick flying through the air) is simultaneous with the effect (the window breaking). If the brick disappeared even a microsecond before it touched the window, then the effect would never happen. So there has to be a moment where the cause and effect happen at the same time.
Likewise, God’s causing the universe to begin to exist, and the effect of the universe coming into existence, are simultaneous events. This objection does not negate the principle “out of nothing, nothing comes,” because there still needs to be an explanation for the beginning of time itself. Instead of saying that God existed before the universe existed (since there was no &#8220;before&#8221;), we say only that God existed timelessly without the universe. He then caused the universe to exist at the same moment time began to exist.
But how could God, who is timeless and changeless, engage in an act like “creating the world”?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes it clear that God did not have to create the world, and it does not automatically emanate or proceed from him (295). The world is contingent, which means it depends on God in order to exist, and it is possible that it could have not existed if God had chosen not to create it. But God did choose to create the world—not in a temporal way, as if he had to think about whether this was a good idea, but in a way that simply reflects his desire to share his superabundant love with others. As Protestant pastor <a href="https://www.rbap.net/god-creation-ex-nihilo-and-divine-immutability-by-richard-c-barcellos/">Richard Barcellos puts it</a>, “creation does not entail divine mutation, though it does entail divine revelation. No work of God changes God in any sense whatsoever. His external works reveal him.”
God is pure being itself, so he does not change in any way. In creating the world, God is the same. The only thing that changes is how we are related to God.
The philosopher Peter Geach, who perhaps most powerfully made the argument, calls this a “Cambridge change,” named after the Cambridge University philosophers to whom he was responding. Here’s how it works: suppose a son grows up and ends up becoming taller than his father. This direct change is recognized by the father, who says, “My son is now taller than me,” but when the same father says, “I am now shorter than my son,” he is recognizing a change not in himself, but in the difference between him and his son.
The same thing happens when we say God created the universe—nothing changes in God’s immutable nature, but the world around us is “changed” by becoming real in an act of being that is created from nothing.
Another argument against God creating the universe is that it seems as though God has no reason to do this. Some atheists even say the idea of a perfect God creating the world leads to a contradiction. The atheist philosopher of religion, Theodore Drange, for example, says God would have created the universe only because he lacked something, and if he lacked something, then he would not be perfect. Such a being might be a very powerful supernatural creature or alien, but it wouldn’t be God.
But Drange is wrong in presuming that God would have created the universe only out of some imperfection, such as loneliness or boredom. If God is the perfection of virtues, including love and selflessness, then his creation is a logical result of his superabundant love and self-giving. He created the universe not for his good, but for ours. The Baltimore Catechism puts it this way:
<blockquote>Question: Why did God make you?
Answer: God made me to know him, to love him, and to serve him in this world, and to be happy with him forever in heaven.</blockquote>
So God&#8217;s creation of the universe does not contradict his perfection, but in fact flows from it. Because God is perfect love, he gives being and life to his creation.

God Created the Universe? Impossible!

In this episode Trent rebuts a documentary produced by the atheist Youtuber skydivephil that tries to refute the kalam cosmological argument for the existence of God. Part one focuses on the philosophical arguments for the beginning of the universe.

REBUTTING An Atheistic Documentary on the Kalam Argument – Part 1

Oneness Pentecostal: Is the Catholic Church the One True Church?

Is There a Hell, and Do Most People Go There?

Why “Bind and Loose” Doesn’t Apply to Everyone

Best Way to Bring Faith to Nonbelievers

Why Jesus Didn’t Let Mary Magdalene Touch Him

Who Was in Heaven When Enoch & Elijah Arrived?

<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
“Why is the Catholic Church the One True Church?” This episode dives into the unique claims of the Catholic faith, while also addressing pressing questions like the existence of Hell and the fate of souls, the significance of John 6, and effective ways to share faith with nonbelievers.
[Encore from August 8, 2025]
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>
</div>
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
</div>

AMA Catholicism

In the Bible, how many times did Jesus appear between the Resurrection and the Ascension?

Where did he physically appear during the 40 days?

What happened when he appeared in the Upper Room?

Mount of Olives and the Ascension.

Appearing to Paul on the Road to Damascus.

How many times did Jesus appear after His Resurrection—and where did these appearances take place? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Catholic Answers apologists walk through the key post-Resurrection appearances of Christ, from the Upper Room to the road to Emmaus and beyond. They explain what happened during the 40 days leading up to the Ascension, the significance of Jesus appearing to the apostles, and how these encounters strengthen the case for the Resurrection. The discussion also covers the Ascension from the Mount of Olives and Christ’s later appearance to St. Paul on the road to Damascus. A clear and compelling look at one of the most important periods in Christian history.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

What Happened After the Resurrection?

God Wants You to Rest

Will the brown scapular alone save you from hell? What is the brown scapular, and what does it actually do?

Does Galatians 3 mean that we are all the chosen people?

What book do you recommend making the jump from atheism to theism?

What does St. Ignatius of Antioch mean when he introduces himself as God Inspired in his letters?

What’s the Catholic response to people who use the bible to claim the earth is flat?

&#8220;Can The Brown Scapular Save You from Hell?&#8221; In this episode, we explore the significance of the brown scapular and its role in salvation. Additionally, we tackle questions about Galatians 3 and its implications for the chosen people, recommend resources for transitioning from atheism to theism, and discuss St. Ignatius of Antioch&#8217;s self-identification in his letters.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Can The Brown Scapular Save You from Hell?

Peter Thiel and the anti-Christ

New York Times reports on adult Catholic converts

The conversation touches on Peter Thiel&#8217;s views regarding the Antichrist and examines recent New York Times reports on adult Catholic converts, highlighting the diverse experiences within the Church today.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Peter Thiel Talks About the Anti-Christ in Rome – Flannel Panel

What does it mean to be a man? How can society help men become the heroes God wants them to be when society says we should fear masculinity? In this episode, Trent unpacks these important questions with the Diocese of Phoenix’s vicar of evangelization Fr. John Parks.

What is Authentic Manhood? Part 1 (with Fr. John Parks)

<div class="page" title="Page 109">
<div class="section">
<div class="layoutArea">

<div class="column">
DAY 99
CHALLENGE
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
“God imputes righteousness to us; he doesn’t infuse it, as the Catholic Church teaches.”
DEFENSE
This involves several misunderstandings.
The words “impute” and “infuse” are derived from Latin terms—imputare and infundere—that respectively mean “to reckon” and “to pour in/on.”
The image of God imputing righteousness suggests a legal or commercial context where God either legally declares us righteous or credits righteousness to our commercial accounts. The image of God infusing righteousness suggests a context in which God pours righteousness into us like water into a vessel. Despite the way this challenge is posed, Catholics don’t deny God imputes righteousness to us. They have the same verses saying this in their Bibles that Protestants do (e.g., Gen. 15:6, Rom. 4:3–6, Gal. 3:6, James 2:23).
Also, the image of infused righteousness isn’t frequently used in Catholic documents. It’s only mentioned once in Trent’s Decree on Justification (chapter 16), and not at all in the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and its Annex. The Church more commonly uses the language of infusion concerning the Holy Spirit and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity (cf. Acts 2:17–18, Rom. 5:5, Titus 3:6).
Ultimately, both the images of imputation and infusion can be used to describe God’s saving action. They don’t need to be understood as mutually opposed, so we need to be on guard against mere quarrels about words (1 Tim. 6:4; 2 Tim. 2:14).
Although Catholics don’t deny God reckons people righteous, they do understand God’s word as effectual, so it brings about the effect God declares (Isa. 55:11). Thus, when God reckons or declares people righ- teous, they become objectively (metaphysically) righteous (see Day 350).
This does not mean their behavior instantly changes (though God does begin a work of sanctification that leads them to behave more righteously over time). It does mean that they “are made innocent, immaculate, pure, guiltless, and beloved of God, heirs indeed of God, joint heirs with Christ; so that there is nothing whatever to hinder their entrance into heaven” (Trent, Decree on Original Sin 5).
This point is frequently misunderstood in Protestant apologetics, which often claims that the idea of infused righteousness means a person is not made perfectly righteous when he is first justified. He is (see Day 257).
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Imputed versus Infused Righteousness

How One Argument Against Islam Backfires

<div class="page" title="Page 332">
<div class="section">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
DAY 322
CHALLENGE
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
“Jesus was a Jew. If Christians are really his followers, why don’t they keep Old Testament laws like circumcision, eating kosher food, and so on? Jesus said he didn’t come to destroy the Law and not a jot or tittle would pass away from it (Matt. 5:17–18).”
DEFENSE
Such prescriptions were only binding on Jewish people before Jesus fulfilled the Law.
Everyone must obey the natural, moral law God has placed in the human heart (Rom. 2:14–16; see Day 291). The Law of Moses includes many aspects of this law (CCC 1961), but it also adds provisions of a non-moral nature.
The reason these added laws aren’t binding on non-Jewish people is that the Law of Moses was a covenant God made with Israel. It was not made with other peoples, so it wasn’t binding on them (St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I–II:98:5).
Theologians often divide the requirements of the Mosaic Law into three groups: moral precepts, judicial or civil precepts, and ceremonial precepts. The first deal with basic moral requirements (e.g., don’t kill, don’t steal), the second with the civic life of Israel (e.g., establishing cities of refuge where a person who had accidentally killed someone could flee for protection; cf. Num. 35:9–15), and the third with ritual requirements of being a Jew (e.g., circumcision, food laws).
The moral precepts are binding on all human beings, not because they are contained in the Law of Moses but because they are part of human nature. The judicial and ceremonial precepts were binding only on the Jewish people.
It was established in the first century that one doesn’t need to be circumcised and become a Jew to be a Christian (Acts 10–11, 15), so non-Jewish Christians have never been obliged to keep the judicial and ceremonial precepts.
Further, those precepts are no longer binding on Jewish people today. Jesus said he came not to abolish the Law and the prophets “but to fulfill them,” and that nothing would pass away from the Law “until all is accomplished” (Matt. 5:17–18). Jesus then fulfilled the Law by his perfect life, allowing it to pass away (CCC 578). Thus “Christ is the end of the Law” (Rom. 10:4; cf. Gal. 3:23–25, Eph. 2:15, Col. 2:16–17), and the non-moral precepts aren’t objectively binding even on Jewish people today.
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Old Testament Laws

It is well established that the Holy Rosary has a few different origin stories. Some of them are downright off, contradictory, or really lazy attempt to fill in the history where we otherwise find blanks.
Let’s start with the basic version. Modern books love to tell a charming tale about illiterate laypeople who, unable to read the 150 psalms monks recited daily, were given simple prayers to repeat instead—a prayer chain of 150 “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” on a string of knots. The idea was to create something comparable to the monks’ daily routine, minus the Latin and the heavy-duty memorization. Eventually, those knots were swapped for beads—because, let’s face it, knots were never going to be the next big thing in fashion.
This version is peppered with some truth, but it has some major inaccuracies. First of all, not all monks prayed all 150 psalms. Indeed, the specific rules for religious orders and congregations varied widely on prayer. The Fourth Lateran Council forbade the approval of new rules—think the rule of Augustine or Benedict—for future religious orders. Synods, councils, and bulls would address the standardization of the Divine Office well after the rosary skyrocketed to popularity in the thirteenth century.
The more widely accepted version of the rosary’s origins comes from medieval France, where St. Dominic de Guzmán found himself in the midst of one of the most intense religious battles of the time. The Albigensians, or Cathars as they were known, had popped up in the region, spreading their dualistic heretical theology. They were anti-Catholic in the extreme, rejecting marriage, childbearing, and even baptism unless death was right around the corner. And although they claimed to shun violence, their version of peace looked suspiciously like submission.
The Cathars—who kind of acted like the holier-than-thou Pharisees of the Old Testament—appeared to offer a counterpoint to the lavish lifestyles of some Catholic clergy, who were living it up while allegedly ignoring the real work of faith. As one might imagine, this created quite the religious and political storm.
Enter Dominic, a canon from the Premonstratensian monastery of Santa María de La Vid. Dominic was known for his preaching, but he didn’t just preach—he engaged in debates with the Cathars, and his combination of passionate evangelization and a humble life led many to re-examine their beliefs. He was on a roll.
It was in 1208 that the legends describe the Blessed Virgin appearing to Dominic and giving him a spiritual “battering ram.” Our Lady, the story goes, revealed the form of the devotion and the layout of the holy mysteries of the life of Christ and Mary, which would repel heresy and propel any believer into piety. And thus the holy rosary, a meditation on Christ’s life through fifteen distinct mysteries, was born. Dominic and his followers began to spread this powerful new prayer, and, before long, the Cathars were being driven out of Europe.
Soon the Dominican Order was officially approved by Pope Honorius III, becoming a powerhouse in preaching the rosary and eradicating the Albigensians. Today, we remember all of this in October, the month of the Holy Rosary, culminating with the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7.
Setting aside the supernatural elements of this story, many books that discuss the origins of the rosary leave even Dominic out. But can the “Dominican” version of the rosary’s history be proven? I answer with a firm and confident “yes.”
What the Dominicans lack is a written history of these events. In fact, there is a deep gap of modern history on the rosary, no matter what version of the story is being pushed onto the pages of books and magazines. But it doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence to piece together—there certainly is—and it doesn’t mean we cannot make some logical arguments for the traditional story.
As I mentioned, we lack a definitive corpus of extant writings on the rosary. It isn’t until the writings of Bl. Alan de la Roche in the late 1400s that we read a thorough version of the tradition of the Blessed Virgin instructing Dominic. That’s a near-240-year gap! Poor record-keeping, thus, is the running joke in Dominican circles. I knew of this as a lay Dominican long before I began the heavy research on the topic. De la Roche is sadly targeted as the real author of the rosary. For those strict historians who make no room for circumstance, he is the standard benchmark for showing a historical relation of the rosary to Dominic.
That’s a lot to think through. But here is what we do have: we see zero evidence of anything that resembles the rosary prior to Saint Dominic, and an explosion of rosary use in the time immediately after him.
Multiple recitations of shorter Christian prayers were a general practice of Christians for centuries before Dominic. No place was this more evident than in England, where a “belt of pater nosters” (Our Fathers) was to be prayed at funerals. And in Paris, where historians have laid out the manufacturers of these apparent strings of beads or knots. What we do not find, however, is much of any recitation of the Angelic Salutation (the Hail Mary), benediction of the Trinity, the creed, or meditation on the life of Christ in a structure. And these are the core of the holy rosary—it is as much a teaching apparatus as it is a devotion of faith.
Jean Mabillon, a French Benedictine monk of the seventeenth century, was a famed “compiler”—a fancy word for historian. He records in his Acta Ordinis S. Benedicti multiple ordinances of bishops of Dominic’s time that instruct the faithful to pray using the Angelic Salutation and the Apostle’s Creed in successive repetition—and not as a means of supplanting the Our Father, but to support it, since many sects of the time, like the Cathars, were sowing seeds of doubt about the Incarnation.
Can we be content with this in demonstrating that even a basic form of the holy rosary did not exist prior to Dominic? Yes, we can. However, may we also suggest that there were preludes to the structure of the rosary as preached by Dominic and his successors? Yes, I think it is safe to say that both of these can coexist well.
Then what for the time anterior to Dominic? Alan de la Roche was not the only fifteenth-century writer to make mention of the rosary’s immediate relation to Dominic. Another interesting source comes up, given to us again by Mabillon: none other than the highly regarded Thomas à Kempis (1380-1471). Kempis notes in the chronicle of the Monastery of St. Agnes that “we read [of the rosary] as preached by the holy Father St. Dominic” — “although,” he adds, that “for a time it had fallen into neglect.”
These are supplemented in great strength by the ruling popes of the time. Innocent VIII, Alexander VI, and Sixtus IV all credit the rosary to Dominic and its popularity to his successors.
A 1234 statute from a Beguinage in Ghent directs its faithful to pray “three coronas forming the so-called Psalter of the Blessed Virgin,” and it interpreted that these “coronas” (“crowns,” not the popular beer) are the sets of mysteries. We know these from arguments the Bollandists of the Reformation attempted to use against the Church’s prayers for Mary’s intercession. John de Mailly chronicled the Diocese of Metz in 1243 and included that it was a widely held practice there, especially among women, to pray 150 Angelic Salutations.
Finally, we find in the collection of writings of bishop of St. Gall of modern-day Switzerland, dating to 1454, a near-exact description of the rosary as “three times fifty Ave Marias under the title of the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin, counting their prayers on the beads of a chaplet which they held in their hands, and meditating at the same time on the mysteries of the life and death of our Lord.” We know this from the unquestionable scholarship of Augusta Theodosa Drane. The reference Drane makes may be centuries later than other, earlier testimonies, but the point of this, and all of these, is that Alan de la Roche was assuredly not the first author to reference the rosary, then known as the Psalter of the Blessed Virgin.
What can we make of this? I am heavily persuaded to take these accounts and be satisfied to conclude that there was a rosary preached by Dominic and his successors. Dominic probably didn’t sit down one day and then go back to the convent and say, “Here’s the rosary we’ll use forever,” but he certainly planted the seeds for what would become the rosary as we know it today. We know that Pius V issued the bull Consueverunt Romani Pontifices, which secured the rosary in its current form. But he was only one in a long and secure line of popes who ascertained its history and attributed this to Dominic. The references provided to them must have been enough to persuade them, too, given the universal impact of their guidance to the Church.
In conclusion, the early history of the Dominicans shouldn’t be the only thing we look at when determining the origins of the holy rosary. For sure, readers of the annals of this period will agree that it was a short period of decline for many religious groups, and the making of histories was not on the top of the priorities for many. As most historians afford to those of the past, it is prejudicial to hold the people of yesterday to the standards of today.
Père Antoine Danzas said, “The rosary has no history, and will probably never have one.” Maybe it doesn’t matter, either. But there you go.

The Controversial History of the Rosary

President Trump says the pope should stay out of politics. “Border czar” Tom Homan and Vice President J.D. Vance say, effectively, that Church leaders should stick to fixing the Church. As Vance says, “let the Church be the Church,” and &#8220;it <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/jd-vance-tells-pope-leo-xiv-stick-matters-morality-stay-us-public-policy">would be best</a> for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality.&#8221; Trump publicly criticized Pope Leo XIV over the Iran crisis and took offense that Catholic <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/pentin-trump-leo-reax">leaders</a> across the world answered in defense of the Holy Father, including Cardinal Gerhard Müller, Cardinal Baldassare Reina, the Italian bishops, several British bishops, and a growing number of American prelates.
Let us get straight to the point. The pope has every right to speak on politics and public affairs, because politics concerns man and the common good, and every facet of those realities belongs under the judgment of God. Theology is the queen of the sciences because God is Lord over all things, and the vicar of Christ has every right to comment on those matters because Jesus Christ is Lord over all. The pope does not suddenly lose his voice when the subject turns from theology to politics. That kind of compartmentalization of the Church’s role is myopic and ignorant. Vatican II says the Church and the political community are distinct in their proper fields, yet it also says the Church brings “the light of its doctrine” to “all fields of human endeavor,” and that the Church must have freedom “to teach its social doctrine” and “to pass moral judgment” when public order or the salvation of souls requires it (Gaudium et Spes 76).
The Catechism says the same thing firmly. It teaches that every institution is shaped by some vision of man and his destiny, which means public life is never spiritually neutral, and it further states that the Church may pass moral judgments “even in matters related to politics” (CCC 2246) whenever fundamental rights or the salvation of souls are at stake. That is a standing mandate of Catholic doctrine. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church teaches that the Church’s social doctrine has “a duty to denounce” and that this includes “the sin of injustice and violence that in different ways moves through society and is embodied in it.” It also says the Church’s mission embraces man in “his community and social being” (82).
Many people ask why Pope Leo seems to comment on only American policy while saying less or nothing about Islamic slaughter of Christians, euthanasia in Canada and the West, or antisemitism. The answer is clear: he is speaking on those issues as well. He always has!
<ul>
<li>In January, he
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/09/world/europe/pope-leo-address-war-diplomacy.html">commented</a> on religiously motivated violence in Bangladesh, the Sahel, Nigeria, Syria, and Mozambique;</li>
<li><a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-01/poope-leo-xiv-address-diplomatic-corps-9-january-2026.html">warned</a> about discrimination against Christians;</li>
<li><a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2026/january/documents/20260109-corpo-diplomatico.html">defended</a> the dignity of migrants and prisoners; and</li>
<li><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/pope-denounces-abortion-warns-against-surrogacy-exploitation-mothers-children">rejected</a> abortion, rejected surrogacy, opposed euthanasia, and insisted that the right to life is the foundation of every other human right.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>In December, Leo <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-12/pope-leo-xiv-president-israel-phone-call-peace-antisemitism.html">reiterated</a> the Church’s firm condemnation of antisemitism.</li>
<li>In May, he also <a href="https://www.churchinneed.org/pope-leo-xiv-calls-for-support-for-eastern-christians-in-homelands-and-diaspora/">shared concern</a> about Eastern Christians driven from their homelands by war and persecution.</li>
</ul>
The Church reads the signs of the times in light of the gospel. That is part of its vocation in every age. A pope who keeps silent while rulers of influence push morally unfettered war or ideology would fail in his office. Leo has called for peace and dialogue and showed resistance to public stances that are affronts to revealed truth and nature. Whether a president likes that is a small issue. Whether the successor of Peter is doing his duty is the real issue.
The more serious issue for Catholics in America concerns Catholics who know better. J.D. Vance had this to say, too:
<blockquote>In the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology. . . .
If you’re going to opine on matters of theology, you’ve got ot be careful, you’ve got to make sure it’s anchored in the truth, and that’s one of the things that I try to do, and it’s certainly something I would expect from the clergy.</blockquote>
A Catholic public figure who can cite Augustine’s City of God on the ordo amoris certainly knows that politics exists under moral law, and moral law is a purview of the Church, especially the pope. Catholics in the United States must say this with calmness and with backbone: we are Catholic Christians first, and our other vocations follow. Only after that are we American patriots—we have no partisan identity—and then we are Catholic Christians, again, last. Our faith bookends our existence, social or otherwise.
We love the United States because so much in its founding order appealed to natural law and biblical moral reason. Catholics therefore serve this nation best when we tell it the truth. The Church is never a chaplaincy for any administration.
Our task is larger than one social media post and larger than one bruised news cycle. The bishops who defended Leo were right to do so, because he was preaching a gospel of peace and the sanctity of human life from within his divinely entrusted office. As for the rest of us, if an act has dishonored the holy name or holy visage of Christ, then we should make reparation before God, and away from a digital audience. If we haven’t done that yet, then we’ve missed the point. This is how the Church has always answered vulgarity: with worship, penance, and a steadier witness than any age can manufacture.
So here is the exhortation. Catholics, grow the proper kind of backbone. Keep teaching. Keep reasoning. Keep praying. Keep fasting. Keep making reparations. Keep your devotion filial and intelligent. When it comes to the papacy, avoid blind cheerleading, but also avoid constant criticism. During the Francis papacy, we witnessed globally how both habits deform the soul and weaken the Body of Christ. Be discerning and hold to the mean.
Pray for Pope Leo XIV to have the exact wisdom for the exact words at the exact hour. Modern popes labor under a savage digital microscope that no pope historically has had to deal with, and Leo, too, is a fallen man in desperate need of grace. Hence, when he speaks rightly, even on matters of prudential judgment, the Catholic response is virtuous fidelity of children to their spiritual father.
“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chron. 7:14).

Vance Versus the Pope

<div class="page" title="Page 102">
<div class="section">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
DAY 92
CHALLENGE
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
“The practice of celibacy is unbiblical. Paul describes forbidding marriage as a ‘doctrine of demons’ (1 Tim. 4:1–3).”
DEFENSE
Celibacy is grounded in Scripture, including the writings of Paul.
Celibacy is the state of being unmarried. This is not the condition most people are called to, but it is for some. In the Latin Church, most ordained ministers are celibate, as are many in Eastern Catholic Churches (CCC 1579–80).
This is a matter of discipline rather than doctrine, and it could change for sufficient reason. However, being unmarried allows clergy to fully consecrate themselves to Christ and his service. It also conforms them to the model of life adopted by Christ during his ministry and by all the saved in the next life (Matt. 22:30).
The way the discipline has been practiced has varied in different periods, but it is far from unbiblical. Although Jesus recognized marriage as a good instituted by God (Matt. 19:4–6), he was celibate (see Day 25), and he recommended celibacy to those who could accept it (Matt. 19:10–12).
Celibacy is also discussed by Paul. He indicates that he was celibate and wished everyone was, though he acknowledged it is not everyone’s calling (1 Cor. 7:7, cf. vv. 1–9). In view of the conditions of his day, he counseled the unmarried to remain as they were, noting it would spare them worldly troubles and allow them to be single-minded in their devotion to Christ. Yet he acknowledged that it was not sinful for them to marry (1 Cor. 7:25–38). He also appears to recommend celibacy to Timothy as a minister (2 Tim. 2:3–4).
With this background, we can understand what Paul means when he refers to forbidding marriage as a “doctrine of demons.” He is not condemning celibacy, which he both practiced and recommended. He is condemning the idea that nobody should marry, that marriage is somehow immoral (a view endorsed by some heretics).
In the same letter, Paul endorses vows of celibacy. When discussing an order of consecrated widows, he said, “Refuse to enroll younger widows; for when they grow wanton against Christ they desire to marry, and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge” (1 Tim. 5:11–12). He therefore recommended that younger widows remarry and avoid violating the consecrated widow’s vow of celibacy (vv. 14–15).
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

The Practice of Celibacy

In this episode Trent sits down with Fr. Gabriel and Fr. Anthony of Coptic Orthodox Answers to address the errors of sola scriptura and transgenderism.
Transcription:
Trent:
Happy New Year everyone. To kick off 2025, I want to share with you two clips from two interviews that I had recently with the priests who hosts the YouTube channel, Coptic Orthodox Answers. Father Anthony and Father Gabriel are great men of God. And we talked about things that we share as apostolic Christians. So in this first clip, we talk about the issue of transgender identity and in particular pronouns and how we can address that by presenting the truth, but doing so in love.
Fr. Gabriel:
Are we mandated as Christians to voice our opinion? So not so much the idea or are we mandated to? I mean, I find a lot of views sometimes within our communities that know their faith, understand their faith, they live their faith, but they have this idea that everybody should live freely, which is absolutely true. However, that pushes them from speaking up and being the light of the world,
Trent:
And
Fr. Gabriel:
They rather choose to stay in their own corner. Can we be Christians and look at this darkness in front of us and just remain silent?
Trent:
I think one can be a Christian, but they would be one that the Lord would disapprove. The Lord would say that you are taking your light and hiding it under the bushel basket, and that&#8217;s not what we&#8217;re called to do as Christians. Now that doesn&#8217;t mean we have to say something at every single opportunity. We have to use prudence to discern, is this a good opportunity to raise the topic or is it not an opportune time right at this moment? But there can be sins of omission if to a grave scale, you&#8217;re simply refusing to speak up for the truth or speak up for those who are being harmed, for example, in the world today. So we have an obligation to do that, but each of us has to look to our own conscious and discernment to determine what particular circumstances we should speak up in or not.
Fr. Anthony:
Well said. I think that&#8217;s especially important for people to feel empowered to be able to speak the truth and love now more than ever because I don&#8217;t know what it&#8217;s like where you live right now in the United States, Trent, but we happen to live here in Canada and in Canada now. It&#8217;s reached a point where a child who&#8217;s not allowed to go watch certain movies because of their age, a child who is not allowed to be able to go purchase alcohol or even person who&#8217;s not even allowed to sign to be able to rent a vehicle, is allowed to walk into a hospital and to say, I want to sign up for vendor affirming surgery, which will ultimately lead to some really, really drastic and devastating effects.
Trent:
Yeah, it is ultimately inconsistent. And many of these people say, well, some of those other things, they&#8217;re not as important. But we understand that if something has lifelong consequences for someone, that we don&#8217;t allow children to do it. That&#8217;s why we don&#8217;t let children enlist in the army. We don&#8217;t let children enter into contracts. Even in a lot of schools, you can&#8217;t prescribing even over the counter medicines parental approval. This is something that I&#8217;ve seen so many tragic cases of young people who when they&#8217;re 17 or 18, go and do this when they&#8217;re eventually allowed to do it. And then when they&#8217;re 25, 30 realizing they made the biggest mistake of their life, and it&#8217;s something that is truly tragic, that at the very least children should be protected from these lifelong mistakes that can be made if not all people.
Fr. Anthony:
And one thing that I think both of our traditions, the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have in common is that we firmly believe in spiritual warfare. And it&#8217;s very clear. It&#8217;s very clear that there is a spiritual war that is targeting our children right now because now we&#8217;ve reached a point to where a school needs my permission to be able to take my child across the street and go to a park and do a field trip, but they don&#8217;t need my consent to be able to have conversations about their sexuality and their gender without my consent. It&#8217;s reached a whole other level of targeting and propaganda and indoctrination, and it&#8217;s very sad to see and to remain silent to your point on this, to remain silent in face of this evil would be for the Lord to look at us and say, but I gave you a light. Why wasn&#8217;t it shined?
Trent:
Right.
Fr. Anthony:
Yeah. Let me ask one last question about this whole subject of gender and the societies that we live in today. Gender and gender ideology and everything that revolves around transgender rights has also caused us to ask questions regarding language and the use of pronouns. And obviously here in Canada, I&#8217;m sure you&#8217;ve heard of Dr. Jordan Peterson. He was involved in quite a bit of a debacle when it came to him taking a stance as to how it is that we should not force people to speak in certain ways when it came to pronouns and the use of pronouns because it&#8217;s such a sensitive thing. What advice would you give the Christians who want, they really do want to love and honor their neighbor, their brother and sister in Christ, but they feel disingenuous about the use of pronouns with trans colleagues or trans friends, and is there exceptions, in which case we have to use wisdom in their sermon where it&#8217;s okay, what are your thoughts on this?
Trent:
I think that Christians have to make a firm stand on this issue. And so we shouldn&#8217;t lie. We should not. If I say refer to a woman as he or a man as she and I know clearly that&#8217;s a man or that&#8217;s a woman and I&#8217;m lying about an essential part of their identity, Christians shouldn&#8217;t lie about that. So I feel very firm that they should not go along with that, that at best they could maybe accommodate, they could say, all I will use the singular, instead of saying he said that, I&#8217;ll say they said that or refer to them by their name, even their new name. People can get all kinds of names. There&#8217;s men with feminine names, women with masculine names, but the pronouns I think are much more problematic in that they are really lying about the nature of the person. And it can be scandalous for others who see us using incorrect pronouns. We might think, oh, I guess Father or Trent doesn&#8217;t think that&#8217;s really a big deal when it is a big deal. So I believe Christians need to take a stand, but you can work with people to say, can I accommodate you? I want you to feel comfortable. I&#8217;m not going to lie about you, but I could use words that you might be more open to hearing.
Fr. Anthony:
And it&#8217;s that second piece that you mentioned there that most people I think don&#8217;t realize how important that is for you to have a conversation with the person and to say, I want to accommodate you. I want to meet you where you are. I don&#8217;t want to make you feel disrespected. Here&#8217;s what I am willing to do. And in so doing, I think you&#8217;re actually showing much more love than bigotry, although the people who are in the audience looking at that conversation might think otherwise, but their opinions don&#8217;t necessarily matter in that relationship.
Trent:
And in this next clip, father Anthony and Father Gabriel and myself discuss the issue of Sola scriptura and we find some common ground here as well in some of the finer points of engaging this doctrine and the scripture versus used to support it.
Fr. Anthony:
I&#8217;m very curious, and I know that a lot of people like to reference back two Timothy three 16 when it comes to soul of scripture, but is there any other scriptural texts that they refer to to be able to demonstrate even from scripture that scripture points to scripture alone?
Trent:
There&#8217;s very few. Second Timothy would be the primary one. All scripture is inspired and useful for teaching reproof correction, training and righteousness, which we firmly agree. Scripture is useful for all those things. But Paul doesn&#8217;t say Scripture is sufficient or it&#8217;s the only thing that we need because there&#8217;s other things that we need to, we need prayer. We need holiness, for example. We need to pursue that. We need community in the body of Christ. A few other verses that might come to mind in Acts chapter 17, some Protestants will say that the Berean were considered more noble than the thesal and aikens because it says they searched the scriptures daily to see if what Paul said was true. But that doesn&#8217;t follow that the Berean only believed in scripture alone because they had to accept Paul&#8217;s oral proclamation of the gospel, rather what made the Berean noble the problem here?
That story would work for a Protestant if the problem was that the Thess and kins were gullible and would believe any doctrine and didn&#8217;t check it, and the Bereans were noble, and when they heard a doctrine, they checked it against scripture. That was not the dispute in Acts 17. The dispute was that the Thesal and Ekins heard Paul and didn&#8217;t want to give him a fair hearing, so they ran him out of town. But the Bereans were more noble because it says they searched the scriptures daily. They had a love for scripture and a love for hearing God&#8217;s truth. And so they were open to Paul&#8217;s message. They were noble in that regard. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s going on here, has nothing to do. Let&#8217;s talk about solo s scriptura. And the only other one might be Mark seven, where Jesus condemns the traditions of men of the Pharisees in relation to the core bond rule. But here that doesn&#8217;t prove solo S, all it proves is there are bad traditions that does not disprove that there are authentic traditions from God. Two Thessalonians two 15 says, there are traditions handed on by word of mouth or by letter just the same. There are Paul warns about counterfeit scripture. He warns about forgeries, and there were apocryphal gospels in the church. But the existence of false scripture doesn&#8217;t negate true scripture. The existence of false tradition does not negate true tradition.
Fr. Gabriel:
But a scripture here, is it speaking about New Testament scripture like in these verses you quoted?
Trent:
No, it couldn&#8217;t possibly be talking about that here. So in Acts 17, that can&#8217;t be solo scriptura because the Berean were looking at the Old Testament to see, oh yeah, what Paul is saying, it doesn&#8217;t contradict the Old Testament, but what Paul was preaching that the Messiah would be crucified and rise from the dead three days later. They had to take Paul&#8217;s word for that. That was not in the Old Testament, at least explicitly. And so they had to take Paul&#8217;s word that yes, this is the fulfillment of these prophecies. And then second Timothy, when Paul tells Timothy that scripture&#8217;s inspired and it&#8217;s useful, he&#8217;s talking about the Old Testament. He&#8217;s talking about its abilities. Once again, there is no scripture that says all of the Apostles teaching would eventually be confined to the episodic writings.
Fr. Gabriel:
I think potentially the only scripture that can speak about New Testament is two Peter three 16 potentially, right?
Trent:
Yes, yes. And that&#8217;s ironic because here Protestants will often say that scripture&#8217;s the only infallible rule of faith, and the church is not needed to understand it. There are things that are difficult, but the main things God wants us to know in scripture, any man with do means can come to know &#8217;em. But the problem is, second Peter three 16 says that there are things, Peter says there are things in Paul&#8217;s letters that the ignorant and unstable twisted are own destructions as there&#8217;s confusing things in there that they don&#8217;t understand and they twist to their own destruction. And anybody going through Paul&#8217;s letter to the Romans, to Galatians these theologically sophisticated works, and many people have gleaned all kinds of heresies from them because they can&#8217;t read it in its original context.
Fr. Gabriel:
And what I find very interesting here is that St. Peter, here he is showing the authority of the church. So he&#8217;s telling them that we understand what scripture means, right? So don&#8217;t twist it in a different way. So it actually goes against the understanding of soul scripture.
Trent:
Exactly.
Fr. Gabriel:
Are there, Anthony, any comments on this one? I
Fr. Anthony:
Just think it&#8217;s super interesting for us to maybe contemplate a little bit on that second Timothy three 16 where he talks about this God inspired or God breathed, depending on how it is that you understand that Greek word theto or however it is that you choose to say it. I know many people say it in different ways. No,
Trent:
But you&#8217;re pronouncing it correctly because you obviously, I find that more people from the East that have this connection, I hear a lot of people pronounce it, and I used to pronounce it this way, I heard Protestants pronounce it, but there isn&#8217;t a, in coin, a Greek, there isn&#8217;t a silent pie.
Fr. Anthony:
That&#8217;s
Trent:
Right. So it&#8217;s not, for example, we say Numa, but it&#8217;s pma.
Fr. Anthony:
Yeah, that&#8217;s
Trent:
Right. So that&#8217;s the,
Fr. Anthony:
It&#8217;s very similar in the Coptics or the Coptic and the Greek are, they share that in common. And that word is especially interesting because the Ima part of is meant to be understood as God breathing life, right? And hence why they say God inspired, which really holds me back to the end of the gospel of John, where the Lord breathes on his disciples and he gives them the Holy Spirit. And they are the ones who are granted the authority to have life and to be inspired because they are the church. And it&#8217;s interesting, the commentary of the Fathers, they would say that that&#8217;s them before Pentecost receiving the Holy Order of Hood. And it&#8217;s interesting to me how it is that we miss that the God breathed scripture or God inspired scripture that Paul will speak about in two Timothy, but we miss the reception of the Holy Spirit in the church through the apostles at the end of that gospel. And so there&#8217;s something there to be said about how it is that you cannot divorce scripture from the church and you cannot divorce the church from scripture. To do so is to annihilate what it is that the Lord intended to have as his kingdom here on earth.
Trent:
Thank you guys so much for watching. If you want to check out the full interviews that I gave, click on the links below and be sure to go and check out Father Gabriel and Father Anthony&#8217;s channel, Coptic Orthodox Answers. I&#8217;ll link to that as well. Thank you guys so much and I hope you have a blessed day and a blessed 2025.

Answering Modern Errors (with Coptic Orthodox Answers)

Joe looks at the position of Sabbitarians, and their claim that Emperor Constantine instituted worship on Sundays.
Transcript:
JOE:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. And why do Christians worship on Sunday? Is it because of something that Jesus did or because of something that Constantine did? In other words, was Sunday chosen because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ or was it chosen as a way of compromising with Roman pagans in the fourth century? You might be convinced you already know the answer to this question, but I hope you&#8217;ll give me the opportunity to share some historical evidence that you might not already know. After all, the stakes are high.
CLIP:
The Bible is very clear. We are to worship God on his Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week. So if you&#8217;re worshiping on Sunday, the first day of the week, you&#8217;re worshiping on the wrong day.
JOE:
None of us should want to worship God on the wrong day or in the wrong way. We should strive to worship him both when and how he calls us to worship him. And according to Sabbatarians, like the men you just heard, we are meant to worship him on the Sabbath day, Saturday. So how, according to this view, did we end up worshiping him on the wrong day?
CLIP:
How did Christianity go from keeping the Sabbath to observing Sunday? After the death of the apostles, the church maintained much of the same religious practices, including the observance of the seventh day Sabbath. However, by the 300s, things changed dramatically for Christianity in the Roman Empire. Enter Emperor Constantine.
JOE:
We&#8217;ll take a closer look at this in a moment, but just for now, recognize the story is this. Allegedly, the early Christians were Sabbatarians. They worshiped on Saturday until 3:21 when Constantine, who&#8217;s the villain of the story, changed the day of rest and eventually the day of worship to Sunday.
CLIP:
Every story needs a good old-fashioned villain, and Constantine is ours. Constantine was the Roman emperor from 306 to 337 AD. Constantine ended Christian persecution with the edict of Milan in 31380. But on March 7th, 3:21, Constantine decreed Sunday to be the Roman day of rest, saying on the venerable day of the sun, let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest and let all workshops be closed.
JOE:
Now, that&#8217;s partly true, by the way. Constantine did create Sunday as a weekly day of rest in Rome for the very first time. But according to the story, he did this because this was already the day the Romans were used to worshiping the sun.
CLIP:
Now, this law initially wasn&#8217;t aimed at replacing the Sabbath with Sunday, but it did establish a day of rest on the day of the sun or Sunday. And sun worshipers, like he had been, now had a day of rest. But what that did do was pave the way for pagans who were converting to Christianity to keep their old day of worship in honor of their new Christian God.
JOE:
So that&#8217;s the basics we&#8217;re in a nutshell. I&#8217;m going to try to distill it to three claims that I want us to investigate. Number one, the earliest Christians worshiped on Saturday, not Sunday. Number two, the switch from Saturday to Sunday worship happened because of the influence of the Emperor Constantine in 321. And number three, this switch was a compromise with paganism so that the Roman pagans could keep their old day of worship. But are any of these three claims true? I want to look at them one by one, but in reverse order. So starting with Constantine and slowly working our way back to Jesus. And if you find that helpful, if this is something that you would like to support more of, I&#8217;d encourage you to join my Patreon over at shamelessjo.com. So with that, very briefly out of the way, let&#8217;s look at that third claim that this switch to Sunday is the day of rest, this happens in 321 and it happens in order for Roman pagans to keep their old day of worship.
As I said, is a small kernel of truth in the story. Constantine really does establish Sundays a day of rest in the Roman Empire in 3:21, but here&#8217;s where that story immediately starts to fall apart. Now remember, the claim is that allegedly this was done in order to-
CLIP:
Pave the way for pagans who were converting to Christianity to keep their old day of worship. Wait a minute.
JOE:
If this was already the well-established, the old day of worship for Roman pagans, why is Constantine the first to give them the day off on Sunday? So in order to believe this story, we&#8217;re actually meant to believe several things that are not just not founded in the historical record, but are obviously false. First, the center of Roman worship, it wasn&#8217;t the Son. It wasn&#8217;t the Son God&#8217;s soul. Pretty famously, there&#8217;s a pantheon of Roman gods and the head God is Jupiter, not soul. Second, regardless of which God you worshiped, this idea of a weekly day of worship, that&#8217;s a Jewish and a Christian idea, not a pagan one. In fact, the first century Saturist juvenile mocks the Jews for giving up every seventh day to idleness, keeping it apart from all the concerns of life. His point has nothing to do with Saturday verse Sunday.
His point is that from a Roman pagan perspective, it&#8217;s bizarre to take a religious holiday every single week. Now, of course, there were plenty of pagan holidays dedicated to the various gods, including the God&#8217;s soul, but they weren&#8217;t set for one day a week. They were scattered throughout the calendar. So for instance, the special festivities in honor of soul, the Son God, were on August 8th, August 9th, August 28th, December 11th, and then later, October 9th, October 22nd. And then in 354 after the rise of Christianity, we find December 25th added to the calendar as well. This tone marked as the nativity of the unconquerable soul. My point is that Sunday wasn&#8217;t the old day of worship for Roman pagans, both because their religious lives weren&#8217;t centered around soul, but also because they weren&#8217;t centered around a weekly day of worship at all. Even the seven-day week itself was pretty new to the Romans.
It arrived in Italy at about the same time that Jesus was being born in Bethlehem, and it was used principally for astronomy. It wasn&#8217;t the standard calendar Romans used for their regular life. The fact that it&#8217;s used for astronomy is reflected in the fact that the various days of the week were named after the sun, Sunday, the moon, Monday, and then the other days are named after various planets. Outside of astronomy, the calendar you would ordinarily use wasn&#8217;t one that was built around a seven-day week. Rather, the month was divided up into Cowans, nuns and eyes, hence famous line. Well, the eyes of much. Now that&#8217;s a little detail in the story. I think it&#8217;s easy for us to miss as Christians. We&#8217;re used to the idea of a weekly day of rest, but Constantine, he&#8217;s not just introducing the Romans to the idea of a weekly day of rest.
He&#8217;s actually helping to standardize and popularize seven-day week calendars in the first place. So hopefully it&#8217;s clear that that part of the story, this idea that Sunday is chosen because the day on which the Romans were out there worshiping their God every week, it&#8217;s demonstrably false in several different ways. But okay. If Sunday wasn&#8217;t chosen by Constantine to appease the pagans, why does he establish Sunday as the day of rest? Well, because it was already the Lord&#8217;s day for Christians. So here, we need to take a closer look at the second of the Sabbatarian claims, this idea that Sunday worship starts with Constantine. A lot rides on this claim. For instance, the largest group of Sabbatarians are the Seventh-day Adventists. There&#8217;s about 23 million members, and they teach that their co-founder, LNG White, was a prophet, and she claimed that in the first centuries, the true Sabbath had been kept by all Christians.
But the problem is their prophet has no idea what she&#8217;s talking about. This is very obviously untrue. So let&#8217;s take just a few of the earliest Christian writings we have outside of the Bible. I&#8217;m going to start around the year 200 and then we&#8217;re going to keep moving backwards to the time of Christ. At the close of the second century, Turtulian distinguishes the Sabbath from the day of the Lord&#8217;s resurrection, and he talks about how on the Lord&#8217;s Day, Christians should be in the habit of deferring even our businesses lest we give any place to the devil. So it&#8217;s clearly this idea that as a day distinct from the Sabbath, there&#8217;s also this day of the Lord&#8217;s resurrection, Sunday, and that it&#8217;s some kind of day of rest. Let&#8217;s move earlier than that to the middle of the 100s. Here we find St. Justin Martyr explaining that Sunday is the day in which we all hold our common assembly, and that this is in honor of the Father creating the world on the first day of the week, and because of Jesus rising from the dead on the first day of the week.
Even before that, in a dialogue with the Jewish trifo, Justin tells him that he needs to get baptized in order to be circumcised with the true circumcision. And then he adds that we too would observe the fleshly circumcision and the Sabbath and in short, all the feasts if we did not know for what reason they were enjoined, namely on account of your transgressions and the hardness of your hearts. So here he&#8217;s explaining not just why Christians worship on Sunday. He&#8217;s explicitly saying as well why we don&#8217;t treat the Sabbath as the heart of our worship anymore because we understand what the Sabbath was for. Now, that point bears some explaining. After all, Sabbatarians might argue Christians should still observe the Sabbath because after all, scripture describes it as an everlasting sign.
CLIP:
The third fact I ascertained in my study is that the Sabbath is an everlasting sign between God and his people.
JOE:
The problem with this argument is that the exact same language is used to describe circumcision. God introduces it by referring to it as an everlasting covenant, and yet the church was perfectly clear in Acts chapter 15 that circumcision was no longer required. Why? Because the old covenant sign of circumcision was pointing to something higher in the new covenant, baptism. Now, early Christians recognize the same thing about the Sabbath as well. Yes. The Old Testament does talk about it as if it&#8217;s an everlasting sign, but the New Testament treats it as no longer binding. Jesus says that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and St. Paul says, &#8220;Therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.&#8221; Festivals were the annual Jewish feasts, New Moon were the monthly Jewish feasts, and the Sabbath was the weekly Jewish day of rest.
So how do we make sense of this? How can it be, on the one hand, this everlasting sign, and on the other hand, no longer something that is part of our daily or weekly life? Well, by recognizing that like circumcision, the Sabbath is everlasting because it points beyond itself to something deeper. Here, it&#8217;s worth looking how the New Testament treats this idea of the Sabbath. Hebrews chapter four, quote Psalm 95, in which God says that the disobedient Israelites that they shall never enter into his rest. Now that&#8217;s clearly a reference to eternity and Hebrews is quite clear this is a kind of rest we can enter only by faith. We who have believed enter that rest. And so there remains the Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever enters God&#8217;s rest also ceases from his labors as God did from his. Now, Hebrew&#8217;s treatment of the Sabbath is pretty similar to the way that the so- called Epistle of Barnabas, which dates to about the year 135, talks about the Sabbath as well.
It describes the old Saturday Sabbath is no longer acceptable to God and says that the true Sabbath will be when God giving rest to all things shall make a beginning of the eighth day that is a beginning of another world. And the author of the Epistle of Barnabas says that it&#8217;s in anticipation of this true Sabbath that we keep the eighth day with joyfulness, as well as the fact that it is the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Now, all of this is also in keeping with what we find even earlier than Turtulian, even earlier than Justin Martyr, even earlier than the Epistle of Barnabas. In about the year 107, St. Ignatius of Antioch describes faithful Jewish converts to Christianity as those who were brought up in the ancient order of things who have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the observance of the Lord&#8217;s Day, on which also our life has sprung up again by him.
Ignatius is talking in this context about not returning to the observance of the Mosaic law, what was called Judaizing. And one of the hallmarks is that these Christians are no longer observing the Sabbath, that they now instead observe the Lord&#8217;s Day on Sunday, the day Jesus froze from the dead. Now, I know many Sabbatarians will protest the Sabbath was meant for Gentiles as well as for Jews, but the important thing here isn&#8217;t whether you think Justin or Ignatius or the Epistle of Barnabas are right. The important thing here is just to recognize that this was an ancient Christian practice hundreds of years before Constantine. Whether you agree with the early Christians or not, they clearly demonstrate Sunday worship isn&#8217;t originating with Constantine or paganism or anything of the sort. It goes back hundreds of years earlier and it&#8217;s done explicitly in honor of the resurrection.
So it&#8217;s simply indefensible for Sabbatarians to continue to say the kind of obviously false claims that people like Walter Veath may care.
CLIP:
When Constantine, the emperor introduced Sunday as the day of the Lord, when they mingled, this was in the fourth century when he mingled the pagan Sunday with Christianity.
JOE:
But Constantine simply couldn&#8217;t have introduced the church to the idea of Sunday as the day of the Lord, because we find references to Sunday as the day of the Lord 200 years earlier back in the year 107. And amazingly, we can seemingly go back even earlier. Within the Bible itself, St. John says in Revelation one that he was in the Spirit on the Lord&#8217;s Day. Now, I know some Sabbatarians will claim that John really meant Saturday. He meant the Sabbath by that. The problem is that goes against the way the expression the Lord&#8217;s Day is used in all the other ancient Christian writings. Quite clearly, the Lord&#8217;s Day or the day of the Lord reversed to Sunday. Now, similarly, in the dedicate, which might actually be older in the book of Revelation, seems to have been written during the lifetime of the apostles. It distinguishes things like the Jewish practice of which days they keep fast and the Christian practice of which days to keep fasts.
And it also says that for Christians, the sacrifice of the Eucharist is offered every Lord&#8217;s day. The Greek there literally says the Lord&#8217;s day of the Lord. In short, as scholars have pointed out, Christians began to hold periodical gatherings not later than the middle of the first century, 20 years after Jesus&#8217;s death. And insofar as the sources allow any inference, the periodical gatherings of Christians took place on Sundays. In other words, we can trace weekly worship back to the life of the apostles themselves, and this weekly worship seems to have been, by all the evidence, Sunday worship. So I think we need to regard the Sabbatarian case as largely fictional. It&#8217;s based upon obvious falsehoods about Roman paganism, about the Roman calendar, about Constantine, about early Christianity, and about the way the New Testament speaks about the Sabbath and about the Lord&#8217;s day. Our worship on Sunday has literally nothing to do with Constantine.
It has everything to do with Jesus Christ. Now, if you happen to be a seventh day Adventist, or perhaps you want to know how to answer some other aspects of Adventist&#8217;s theology, I hope you&#8217;ll take a look at this debate that I did with an Adventist gentleman on whether the Bible teaches the idea of soul sleep. For Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
&nbsp;

Why Do Christians Worship On Sunday?

In <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/john-calvin-the-gnostic-protestant">Part 1</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/trapped-in-the-mind-of-john-calvin">Part 2</a> of this article, I described my shocking discovery, as a Protestant, of Calvin’s gnostic argument for the canon of Scripture, as argued in the French Confession of Faith and his Institutes of the Christian Religion.
That was not the end of the matter. As I said in Part 1, I grew up in an area that had many Mormons—members of what they call the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS). One of my dearest friends was even an LDS missionary.
When LDS evangelize, one of the key things they do is request that a prospective convert read the Book of Mormon, which they call “another revelation of Jesus Christ,” and ask God if it is true. Following Joseph Smith—the man they claim was a prophet—they appeal to James 1:5 for justification: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him.” They believe that God will reveal to you that it is true through what is often called a burning in the bosom—a direct revelation by the Spirit.
Sound familiar?
Another set of LDS scriptures, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/9?lang=eng&amp;id=8-9#p7">Doctrine and Covenants (9:8-9)</a>, describes this “burning in the bosom” as follows:
<blockquote>But, behold, I say unto you, that you must study it [the Book of Mormon] out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall feel that it is right.
But if it be not right you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong; therefore, you cannot write that which is sacred save it be given you from me.</blockquote>
How is this different from Calvin’s argument that “we feel a divine energy living and breathing in it”? What if—as often occurs—a Muslim or anyone else of another religion makes the same argument for the Quran or his respective scriptures?
Could actual God-breathed Scripture possibly evoke such experiences? Yes. The Catholic Church does not deny and has never denied this. But that is not the point. The point is that we must reconcile such dogmatic claims, and if there is no basis for doing so outside an appeal to an individual revelation, then the notion of public revelation becomes absurd and untenable.
This LDS doctrine of a burning in the bosom was originally given to Oliver Cowdery, who assisted Joseph Smith in supposedly translating the Book of Mormon. The LDS <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/manual/doctrine-and-covenants-student-manual/section-9-your-bosom-shall-burn-within-you?lang=eng#:~:text=The%20Lord%20will%20cause%20the,that%20the%20thing%20is%20right.">provide the following official commentary</a> on this verse in a “Student Manual,” making clear that this burning in the bosom applies to others as well:
<blockquote>This process of receiving revelation can be of value to all Saints. President Joseph Fielding Smith explained that “a similar privilege is given to any member of the Church who seeks knowledge in the spirit of prayer and faith. The Lord will cause the feeling of security and truth to take hold of the individual and burn within the bosom, and there will be an overwhelming feeling that the thing is right. . . .
When you have been listening to some inspired speaker who has presented a new thought to you, have you not felt that burning within and the satisfaction in your heart that this new thought is true? On the other hand, have you experienced the feeling of stupor, gloom, or uneasiness when some thought has been presented which was in conflict with the revealed word of the Lord, and you have felt by this manifestation of the Spirit that what was said is not true? It is a great gift, which all may receive, to have this spirit of discernment, or revelation, for it is the spirit of revelation” (Church History and Modern Revelation, 1:51).</blockquote>
Hence the common practice of LDS missionaries to ask people to read the Book of Mormon and request this burning in the bosom themselves.
Given my familiarity with this LDS method of “proving” their scriptures, when I saw Calvin’s arguments, I immediately detected the substantial similarity between his appeal to the “inward illumination of the Holy Spirit” for his canon of Scripture and the LDS appeal to the burning in the bosom for theirs.
How do the two differ? In reality, they do not. Both are fundamentally circular and gnostic appeals that sidestep public apostolic authority, reason, and logic, for the sake of founding a new religion.
Though I had read a decent number of Calvin’s writings as a Protestant, I had either never read—or perhaps never noticed—the blatantly gnostic argument for his canon of Scripture until, as I described in Part 1, St. Francis de Sales pointed it out to me. Calvin’s arguments are essentially indistinguishable from those of the LDS.
If Person A appeals to an “inward illumination” for Canon A, and Person B appeals to a “burning in the bosom” for Canon B, and both disclaim the necessity of argument, history, and public authority, how are we to know which (if either) has the true canon of Scripture?
Person A and Person B don’t even have to be a Calvinist and a Mormon. They could be John Calvin and St. Augustine, or Martin Luther and St. Athanasius, or Ulrich Zwingli and the Council of Trent, or even one of the Church Fathers and one of the various local Church councils who occasionally had somewhat different canon lists among themselves.
How can the right canon be identified not only for all Christians, but for all people to whom Christians are witnesses of the gospel?
There are only two possible answer to this question: a private appeal or a public appeal; a gnostic appeal to “inward illumination”/“burning in the bosom” or the public authority of a divinely authorized witness and teacher.
That public authority, that divinely authorized witness and teacher, is the Catholic Church, which was given the power to “<a href="https://www.joshuatcharles.com/blog/2023/2/17/becoming-catholic-34-what-was-the-jewish-understanding-of-jesuss-words-about-binding-and-loosing">bind and loose</a>” (render judgment) by Jesus Christ.
Contrary to Calvin’s gross mischaracterization that the Church’s authority somehow “makes” what was not Scripture into Scripture by its declaration (an argument never once made by the Church), the authority of the Church rather recognizes Scripture, as St. John the Baptist, St. Peter, and others appointed by God recognized Jesus Christ as the Messiah, and upon this basis declared it to the rest of the world.
As God’s duly authorized representative on earth, the Church publicly declares to the world what the canon of Scripture is so that all may know it in a public manner, thereby guaranteeing them that what the Catholic Church teaches is the purpose of its Magisterium (teaching authority): “the objective possibility of professing the true faith without error” (<a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2A.HTM">CCC 890</a>).
So long as anyone can appeal to the inward illumination or burning in the bosom of the “Holy Spirit” as their source for any article of faith, then the possibility of public religion is gone. Christianity becomes essentially gnostic from that moment forward—a matter of private individuals claiming to have received an inward illumination from God (given only to God’s “elect,” of course), hoping to convince other private individuals through what can only be described as self-authentication.
This Protestant approach to the canon of Scripture laid the theological groundwork for the spirit of our age. What began as “self-authentication” in religious dogma became “self-authentication” in philosophy (“I think, therefore I am”), then morals, and now even one’s own sex.
These are the fruits (quite contrary to their intentions) of a process in large measure catalyzed by Calvin and his ilk. Calvin did not recognize the profound incoherence of his own position. Those who followed in his footsteps have thereby been condemned to witness, without understanding, a civilizational degeneration that simply took the logic of their own theology many steps farther than they were willing to go themselves.
However, we may all rest assured that the one true religion, the Catholic faith, far from relying on the gnostic appeals of a self-authenticating “elect” to individualized revelation, appeals instead to the public witness, history, and authoritative teaching of Christ’s Catholic Church, the “city on a hill that cannot be hidden,” as received now for 2,000 years.

Where John Calvin Meets Mormonism

It has become a regrettable feature of American public discourse that tragedies, like mass shootings and natural disasters are greeted by some public figures and commentators with mockery of the idea of prayer.
I seem to remember, some years ago, when Christian politicians assured the victims of some disaster of their prayers (“our thoughts and prayers are with the victims” and so on), non-Christian commentators would react angrily, saying that what the victims needed was food and shelter, or else that something should be done to mitigate such events in the future, like flood defenses or gun control.
It might, indeed, be reasonable to question politicians’ sincerity if they offer prayer as a substitute for action (see James 2:16), if that were really what was going on. Now, however, we seem to have moved on to a new phase, in which the idea of prayer in itself is ridiculed, because it didn’t save the victims. We have entered a dark place, where the principles of those scoffing at the Crucifixion have found their way into public discourse in a still majority-Christian nation: “Let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him” (Matt. 27:42).
As Catholics, we need to be able to respond to the misunderstanding, sincere or not, that lies behind this ridicule. The suggestion seems to be that if prayer worked, then Christians would not suffer any misfortunes. This is clearly not something that Christians have ever believed, as a glance at Scripture or the history of the Church confirms. On the contrary, those who pray best, the saints, have often faced great suffering and death, as Our Lord predicted they would: “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). Insofar as we are united to Christ in this life, we are united to his sufferings; it is in the next life that we can hope to share in his glory (2 Cor 1:5, 1 Pet. 1:11, Rom. 8:18 sic passim).
Catholic spirituality gives great emphasis to this reality. Persecution is a mark of the Church, and the saints are subject to misunderstandings, calamities, sickness, and bereavement, often in an acute form. Nevertheless, ours is a joyful religion, because in these things we can find Christ. This is not easy for outsiders to understand, but let me say something about why we pray at all.
We are frequently encouraged to pray for things—petitionary prayer—but this is not the whole, or even the most important part, of prayer. Traditionally, prayer is divided into four categories: adoration, thanksgiving, contrition, and petition. Prayer itself is defined simply, in the traditional catechisms, as the lifting up of the mind and heart to God. Prayer is paying attention to God—placing oneself, as an act of will, in his presence. It need not involve words, and if there are words, they need not be our own; they could be the words the Psalms, or the liturgy, or formal prayers repeated (for example, in the rosary) until we no longer think about the individual phrases, but employ them as a setting for wordless prayer.
An analogy with human relationships might be helpful. If we love and respect someone, and know that this person cares deeply about us, then we will want to spend time with him. Talking to such a person may help us, in a difficult situation, to calm down and clarify our thoughts, even if the other party doesn’t say very much. Whether or not we bring to such an encounter a practical problem to be solved, such conversations, as a form of communion with another human being, are good in themselves, and necessary to the maintenance and deepening of our relationship.
If we can take a non-transactional approach to human relationships that, as we might say, “feed the soul,” then we should certainly do so with our relationship with God. We spend time with God, we communicate with God, we thank and praise God, because it is good to do so, because the object of human life is the intimacy and union of will with God, which we approach in prayer and which will be perfected in heaven.
A non-believer may ask us if God communicates back to us. Some saints had “interior locutions,” or indeed visions, but for the most part, God’s communication with us is more subtle. A feeling, after prayer, of greater peace, of greater confidence in a planned course of action, of greater strength and courage, is common in the spiritual life. It is also a frequent experience that someone praying about a difficult problem may think of a way to deal with it, or find that circumstances change favorably, or find unexpected help becoming available. Readers can reject this or try to explain it away, but it is a fact about how devout Catholics and other Christians experience their lives.
God wants us to bring him our problems, to seek help at his hands, and to view all our consolations and successes in light of our relationship with him—that is, as blessings. On the other hand, if he wished to, he could solve all our problems in an instant. He could take away our sciatica or our troublesome mother-in-law; he could mend our car, or our roof, or make us win a lottery and become millionaires. The Christian life is punctuated, as we experience it, with God’s assistance, in large ways and small, but he does not simply solve all our problems. That is not how life works. We are in this world to work, to face difficulties, and to suffer, alongside all the experiences we may have of happiness and pleasure, because this is the path of our sanctification. This is the way we can give glory to God, to build up his kingdom on earth, and to unite ourselves with the example and sufferings of Christ.
Sufferings risked or undertaken voluntarily, or accepted with patience, are redemptive. This is why Christ suffered them, and because he wants us to be able to contribute to the work of salvation, He allows us, too, to suffer for the sake of others, to make up for the wrongs we and other have done. As St. Paul exclaimed, “who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church” (Col. 1:34).
God’s way of dealing with us is not like an indulgent pet-owner who wants his hamster to have plenty to eat and a comfortable environment. It is like a father who wishes his son to grow in maturity, to deal with obstacles, and to learn how to do the right thing even when that is difficult. God helps us, but what he helps us to do is to tread the path that Christ trod before us. It is a difficult path, but it is the path that leads to true happiness in this life, as well as to glory in the next.

In Defense of Prayers in Tragedy

Is it appropriate to pray the Rosary during Mass?

I’m not Catholic. Why do many Catholic churches only give the bread and not the wine? It seems like if we’re following scripture it should be both.

I heard that when the Holy Family went to Egypt they were robbed by two thieves, and these same thieves were crucified with Jesus. Is this true?

My wife and I are going through OCIA. Both of us are seeking annulments for our previous marriages. The annulments will likely not be done by Easter. Can we still receive the sacrament of reconciliation?

Could the new Mass of Paul VI be considered a new rite? Especially considering the new Eucharistic prayers, and the fact that the Roman Canon is not required?

What are your thoughts on making noise in the church before Mass begins? Should it be silent preparation, or should we greet and talk to people? Or somewhere in between?

Is Aquinas’ belief that Jesus did not have the theological virtue of Faith a doctrine of the Church? Or is it just Aquinas’ opinion?

&#8220;Is it appropriate to pray the Rosary during Mass?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the integration of personal devotion within communal worship. Other topics include why many Catholic parishes serve only bread during Communion, the historical context of the Holy Family&#8217;s journey to Egypt, and the process of seeking annulments while preparing for the sacraments.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Is It Appropriate to Pray the Rosary During Mass? Annulments, Eucharist

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?

In this episode, Trent reveals the four living Protestant apologists and thinkers that have shaped his work and helped him become a better apologist.

My Four Protestant Role Models

Is Mary a saint and if so, is she higher than other saints?

Is there any evidence that would suggest Mary’s parents were visited by an angel informing them that she would be born without sin and would be the mother of the savior?

How do I respond to my protestant friend who says all she needs is God and Mary is not important to Christian Faith?

How old was Mary when she conceived Jesus?

At the annunciation it was just the Angel Gabriel and Mary, is there any witnesses or way to vouch for the event being true?

Why does the Church teach that some things are symbolic about Mary?

&#8220;How Old Was Mary When She conceived Jesus?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on her significance within the Catholic faith, addressing whether she holds a higher status than other saints. The conversation also touches on the nature of Marian prayers and how to respond to those who downplay her importance in Christianity.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>