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Debates aren’t WWE — they’re for learning.

When demonstrating that the Bible teaches Jesus is God, many people cite John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Although this verse is powerful evidence for Christ’s divinity, it’s not usually the best verse to use, since the average person struggles to understand what it means that Jesus is “God’s Word.” Plus, a seasoned critic might try to trip you up on how to translate the original Greek of the passage, claiming it really says “the Word was a god.”
That’s why, instead of focusing on the beginning of John’s Gospel to prove Christ’s divinity, I prefer to focus on the end of it. Specifically, I point to the following episode about “Doubting Thomas”:
<blockquote>
“Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.’” (John 20:26-29, emphasis mine).
</blockquote>
The proof comes not so much from what is said by Thomas, but by what is not said by Jesus. In the New Testament, whenever an apostle is mistaken for God, the apostle corrects those who are worshipping him (Acts 14:14–15). In Revelation 19:10, the apostle John falls at the feet of an angel to worship him, but the angel tells him, “You must not do that!” When Herod Agrippa gives an address to the people of Tyre and Sidon, they shout in response, “The voice of a god, and not of man!” Luke then tells us, “Immediately an angel of the Lord smote him, because he did not give God the glory; and he was eaten by worms and died” (Acts 12:23).
But when Thomas calls Jesus his God, Jesus does not correct him or tell him to “give God the glory.” And no angel comes down to smite Jesus for receiving Thomas’ worship. Which must mean there was nothing for Jesus to correct.
Now, some <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/unitarians">Unitarians</a> who deny the Trinity respond that Thomas was so overcome with joy that he didn’t know what he was saying. But in other Scripture passages, we are told explicitly when the apostles say something they don’t mean. For instance, during Jesus’ transfiguration, when Peter exclaims he will build tents for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah, Luke notes Peter as “not knowing what he said,” and Mark writes that Peter “did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid” (Luke 9:33, Mark 9:6).
Unitarians also can’t say that Thomas was merely making an exclamation—like how some people say, “Oh my God!” when they are surprised. Even in the Jehovah’s Witnesses New World Translation, John 20:28 says, “In answer Thomas said to him: ‘My Lord and my God!’”
Thomas didn’t merely say, “My Lord and my God!” He said it to Jesus because Jesus is his (and our) Lord and God. We too, then, should imitate Thomas and not be afraid to address Jesus as our “Lord and God.”

How “Doubting Thomas” Proves Jesus Is God

<div>Can objects be possessed by demons? Can dreamcatchers carry demons? Is there biblical evidence for this? </div><div>Only people can be demonically possessed. But inanimate objects can be negatively controlled through curses. As Adam Blai, a lay Catholic expert on religious demonology and exorcism, writes:
<blockquote>A curse is simply a demon sent to do some harm. . . . Cursed objects are objects that have had the opposite of a blessing done to them. Instead of grace being attached to an object to make it holy, a demon has been attached to the object to make it associated with evil (Hauntings, Possessions and Exorcisms, p. 45).</blockquote>
That is, through the permission of the one who has rights over an object, a demon attaches itself to the object and inflicts harm through it.
We can also distinguish between the cursing of an object and an object’s being impacted via demonic infestation. Infestation refers to when demons have obtained the right to carry out extraordinary manifestations in specific locations, such as a house, an example of which could be the moving of a non-cursed item(s) into the house.
In addition, in an attempt to intimidate exorcists and others involved in spiritual warfare, the devil and his demonic minions may perform extraordinary manifestations apart from curses or infestations that could include physical attacks the type of which St. Padre Pio, for example, endured. For more on this general topic, see the <a href="http://www.religiousdemonology.com/">website of Adam Blai</a>.
I’m not aware of any case of a cursed object in the Bible, but Jesus did allow the demonic group called “Legion” to enter into a herd of swine after exorcising them from a man (Mark 5:1-20).
As for dreamcatchers, they hypothetically could become cursed or impacted otherwise by a demon. But we should not become preoccupied with such matters and instead trust in our Lord and his Church.
</div>

How Demons Can Affect Objects

Joe examines Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, why it&#8217;s a huge problem in modern society, and how this applies to the recent Jesse Ridgeway news.
Transcript:
Joe:
This week, a YouTuber named Jesse Ridgeway announced that he and his wife had decided that she would abort their child because the baby had down syndrome. Once they saw the size of the cross being laid before them, they decided it would be better for their child not to live. But honestly, I don&#8217;t really expect Jesse Ridgeway to have room for accepting suffering into his comfortable life as a successful secular YouTuber. I think the bigger story in some ways is how many Christians quietly behave in the same way. Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to talk about the false gospel that all too many Christians actually believe in. And it&#8217;s a false gospel they often believe in without realizing that it&#8217;s a denial of Christianity. About 20 years ago, the sociologist Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist-Denton interviewed a few thousand teenagers about their beliefs about God.
And what they discovered was that frequently, despite whatever religion the teenagers claimed to be Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Jewish, whatever, what they actually believed in was often quite similar and radically different than the beliefs that they professed to have. So what were their actual beliefs? Well, Jen Oshman has a pretty good summary here.
CLIP:
And what we found is that teenagers were believing basically that there is a God and he wants us to be happy and he wants us to be nice. So anything that you don&#8217;t need God unless anything infringes on one of those two goals. So as long as you&#8217;re pursuing happiness and as long as you&#8217;re pursuing niceness, everyone&#8217;s going to go to heaven. Other than that, you don&#8217;t really need the Lord.
Joe:
In their book, Soul Searching, Smith and Denton coined a term for this belief system. They called it moralistic therapeutic de- ism or MTD. So you might be wondering why we should care today in 2026 about a sociological study of teenagers from the early 2000s. Well, first, those teens are now haggard looking elder millennials like me and their milk toast creed is the one that many modern people live by today, including people we might be in the pews with, perhaps some of you watching this right now. But second, those teens had themselves gotten that bad theology from somewhere. But even though we recognized it in teens in the early 2000s, as we&#8217;re going to see, C.S. Lewis had called out the seeds of this all the way back in 1940. So what are the core beliefs of MTD? Smith and Denton suggests that its creed has five basic tenets.
Number one, a God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth. Number two, God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. Number three, the central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself. Number four, God does not need to be particularly involved in one&#8217;s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem. And number five, good people go to heaven when they die. Now, as Smith and didn&#8217;t point out, nobody calls themselves a moralistic therapeutic daist. Rather, MTD is an attempt to summarize what is really a strange hodgepodge of Christianity with secularism, relativism, maybe some self-help culture thrown in for good measure. But precisely because this mix of Christian, non-Christian, and even anti-Christian elements, it can sometimes be tricky to see what it gets right and when it gets wrong.
So I want to take it apart piece by piece affirming when it gets right and calling out what it gets wrong by comparing it to authentic Christianity. Let&#8217;s take it first the M. Smith and didn&#8217;t call it moralistic because at its core, it&#8217;s the teaching that central to living a good and happy life is being a good moral person. That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, at work on self-improvement, taking care of one&#8217;s health and doing someone&#8217;s best to be successful. Now some of you may be wondering, what is wrong with that? Don&#8217;t Christians want people to be moral? Absolutely we do. But morality is not the actual core of Christianity, particularly not this understanding of morality. Once you reduce Christianity to being a nice, upstanding member of society, you actually take away the reason for Christianity&#8217;s existence. After all, as William Lynn Craig has pointed out-
CLIP:
Certainly it would be arrogant and ignorant to claim that unbelievers do not also often lead good moral lives. In fact, sometimes lives that put ours to shame.
Joe:
So if you reduce Christianity to being moral, particularly morality understood in this way, you immediately make it vulnerable to unbelievers who say that they can be good without God. Now, of course, an important distinction needs to be made here from a Christian perspective. On the one hand, you have what are called the cardinal virtues, prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, and then you have a host of related virtues. These are all moral virtues. And if you mean that by moral, you mean those kind of morals, then absolutely. Unbelievers can certainly be moral. But authentic Christianity is about so much more than that. As St. John says, we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love and he who abides and love abides in God and God abides in him. Those mysterious words are expressing the true heart of Christianity. In the words of Benedict the 16th, this being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon in a decisive direction.
In other words, we encounter Jesus and we receive him in baptism and in the Eucharist and he unites us to his own body in some mysterious way. And it&#8217;s only with this kind of Christological and sacramental basis that we can make sense of Jesus&#8217; two great commandments that we love God and love our neighbor. He&#8217;s not just saying be nice. He&#8217;s not even just telling us to love with a human love and he&#8217;s certainly not giving us a simple matter of morality, something that could exist apart from and alongside faith in Christ and its sacramental reactualization. Rather, he is calling us into this life of faith, hope, and love that is literally impossible without God dwelling within us because it is a call to love God and love neighbor with truly divine love. So that&#8217;s the M in MTD. What about the T, therapeutic? It&#8217;s the idea that religion exists to provide therapeutic benefits to its adherence.
Instead of a focus being upon sin and redemption or divine grace or even things like social justice, Smith and Denton instead found that what appears to be the actual dominant religion among US teenagers is centrally about feeling good, happy, secure at peace. It&#8217;s about attaining subjective wellbeing, being able to resolve problems and getting along amiably with other people. Here again, there&#8217;s something half true to what those then teenagers were recognizing. God does in fact want us to be happy. He desires our beatitude just as he wants us to be moral. What&#8217;s the problem with this view? Well, partially it&#8217;s that it has a superficial understanding of happiness. It&#8217;s a kind of happiness that&#8217;s inconsistent with suffering, particularly with voluntary suffering. And so it offers its adherence no way to live out Jesus&#8217; call to deny themselves and to take up their cross and to follow him every day.
I like Jinoshman&#8217;s take here.
CLIP:
We&#8217;re looking to God sort of as like a pie in the sky. Just make me healthy, just make me wealthy. Because I&#8217;m a Christian, things are going to go well for me. I shouldn&#8217;t expect too much hardship. I shouldn&#8217;t expect to endure too much suffering because God wants me to be happy. He wants me to believe in myself. He wants me to be nice. He wants me to be good. Well, this kind of gospel is not the gospel at all. This is actually a false gospel and it has really infiltrated our churches. It&#8217;s really especially infiltrated, I feel like, and I&#8217;m most concerned about women&#8217;s ministries and women&#8217;s ministry materials that tell you to believe in yourself rather than to turn your gaze up on our Almighty God.
Joe:
Leon Blue once suggested that the rich are incapable of understanding the cross of Christ. In his words, they were capable of giving alms perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare. They&#8217;ll be moved to the sound of beautiful music at Jesus&#8217; sufferings, but his cross, the reality of his cross will horrify them. They want it and they want the cross all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight, pleasant to see hanging from a woman&#8217;s beautiful throat. That is, I think, a popular understanding of Christianity in the cross today. Now, none of us would want to claim that because it&#8217;s a pretty ugly description, but I suspect that many of us today are guilty in this way. We like the idea of the cross, but the reality of suffering is horrifying and we run from it. And what&#8217;s more, our conception of God can be such that, well, he wants us to be happy so surely he&#8217;d never call Christians to radical self-sacrifice or suffering or even martyrdom.
In this way then, MTD says something true. God wants our beatitude, but it twists it in such a way that while appearing Christian, it robs us from the mysterious good of being united to the cross of Christ. I was reminded of that this week. A YouTuber named Jesse Ridgeway announced that he and his wife had decided that she would abort their child because the baby had trisomy 21 Down syndrome, concluding that if the baby is just a little so intellectually, then we&#8217;ll make it work. But once they realized the whole host of serious physical and mental developmental issues associated with down syndrome, once they saw the size of the cross being laid before them, they decided it would be better for their child not to live, calling it a difficult decision that we believe in the long run will be beneficial for our family. It was horrifying.
It was tragic and I wish more people would recognize and be appalled at the idea of these kinds of eugenic abortions. But honestly, I don&#8217;t really expect Jesse Ridgeway to have room for accepting suffering into his comfortable life as a successful secular YouTuber. I fully believe that he and his wife thought they were doing the right thing by snuffing out the life of their child so that they and their baby wouldn&#8217;t have to suffer. I think the bigger story in some ways is how many Christians quietly behave in the same way. Ridgeway himself pointed out that something like 90% of women abort their children when they find out they have Down syndrome, a number that even he was shocked by. Now admittedly, that number might be artificially inflated in one way because pro- lifers often don&#8217;t bother getting prenatal genetic testing because it&#8217;s not going to change whether the baby&#8217;s allowed to have a birthday or not.
Speaking personally, we did have the genetic testing and our son George tested positive for at least having an increased probability that he had trisomy 21. Sadly, he died in the womb before we could ever find out for sure. But even tweaking the numbers slightly, the point remains. The Lutheran Pastor Hans fine is right. The numbers suggest that many, if not most of the people who find Jesse Ridgeway&#8217;s tweet repulsive would do the same thing if they discovered they were carrying a child with down syndrome. He&#8217;s not endorsing abortion there. He&#8217;s calling us to recognize that many of us pro- life Christians crumble when presented with the cross. So what does an authentic Christian response to this look like? St. John Paul I seconds encyclical on the Christian meaning of human suffering. Savichi Dolores is worth reading in its entirety. A friend of mine was a Protestant youth minister and his own wife died of cancer at a young age and in the mourning process and in searching for the deeper meaning of suffering, it was this theology that he discovered that ended up leading him to the Catholic church.
Now JP2 begins by unpacking St. Paul&#8217;s own teaching on sufific suffering. When he says in Colossians one, &#8220;I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake. And in my flesh, I complete what is lacking in Christ&#8217;s affliction for the sake of his body that is the church.&#8221; Now for many Christians, that line is absolutely mysterious even baffling. How in the world can Paul rejoice in suffering? But John Paul II explains this joy accompanies an authentic understanding of human suffering in the light of the cross. In the Pope&#8217;s words, &#8220;Man perishes when he loses eternal life. The opposite of salvation is not therefore merely temporal suffering, any kind of suffering, but the definitive suffering, the loss of eternal life being rejected by God, damn nation. In other words, the gospel really does exist to help us avoid suffering, but particularly it&#8217;s to help us avoid the definitive suffering of damnation, to help us avoid the loss of God.
That&#8217;s the suffering we ought to be worried about the pangs of hell and the joy we should be focused on are the joys of eternal life, because look, we will absolutely accept short-term pain and suffering for long-term joy. That&#8217;s true even of non-believers provided they have even the basics of human development. If you know that investing a litle bit now is going to pay off huge in the future, you&#8217;re likely to accept that short-term loss for the long-term gain joyfully. If you know that working out is going to help you get the girl of your dreams, chances are you&#8217;ll hit the gym with a smile. Every morning when you and I get up and go to work, we voluntarily take on ourselves an inconvenience, but we do it for the sake, hopefully of the good of the work that we&#8217;re doing, but also for the good things that we know long-term that paycheck will provide.
But once we see the entirety of our life on earth in the same way as a brief moment in time in which we can invest in our eternal future, it radically changes how we think of earthly joys and sufferings. We don&#8217;t accept sufferings because we&#8217;re masochists or because we think God wants us to be unhappy. We accept sufferings because we know that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us, as St. Paul says. And we believe this in part because we can look at the cross and see that God can draw the greatest good in history from the greatest suffering in history. So what about the third part of MTD, the deism part? It&#8217;s the idea that God exists, created the world, and defines our general moral order, but he isn&#8217;t particularly personally involved in our affairs, especially affairs in which we&#8217;d prefer not to have God involved.
In Smith and Denton&#8217;s words, this God is not demanding. He actually can&#8217;t be because his job is to solve our problems and make people feel good. In short, God is something like a combination divine butler and cosmic therapist. He is always on call, takes care of any problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about themselves and does not become too personally involved in the process. Here again, there&#8217;s a sliver of truth involved here because it&#8217;s true. Jesus really does wash the feet of his disciples at the last supper and he says to them, For which is the greater, one who sits a table or one who serves. Is it not the one who sets a table? But I am among you as one who serves. So it&#8217;s tempting to take that sliver of truth and then use it to reduce Jesus to being our butler and our therapist.
And this is not a new temptation. Sies Lewis called out a very similar view of God in his 1940 book, The Problem of Pain. He said,&#8221; We want in fact not so much a Father in heaven as a grandfather in heaven, a senile benevolence who as they say, like to seng people enjoying themselves and whose plan for the universe was simply that might be truly said at the end of each day, a good time was had by all. So what does this view get wrong? I suspect this is going to be the most obviously anti-Christian dimension of MDD because it&#8217;s an attack on the Lordship of Christ. A Lord, if you remember, is a ruler. It&#8217;s somebody who&#8217;s in charge. I&#8217;ve been plenty critical of John MacArthur in the past, but I really like the way he said it. Jesus is Lord. Those who refuse him as Lord cannot use him as savior, and Jesus himself similarly says that merely proclaiming his Lordship isn&#8217;t enough.
In Matthew seven, he says, &#8220;Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.&#8221; Remember, many of the people who believe in MTD think of themselves as good Catholics and good Protestants, but I think taken together the implications of his theology are positively cancerous. If you think of Christianity as being about becoming a good person, a lot of theology becomes irrelevant. Why care if Jesus has one nature or two? When you combine that with big dealistic dimensions, then even morality becomes largely irrelevant. Does God really care what I do with my girlfriend? Doesn&#8217;t even have better things to do like answering my prayers? And so MTD has served for decades now as a kind of stealth assault on theology and on morality, on the Lordship of Christ and the sovereignty of God and on the Christiological and sacramental nature of Christian love.
Finally, speaking of both Christian love and John MacArthur, I think the question of getting God&#8217;s love right is critical in understanding an important distinction between the Calvinism MacArthur believed in and the Catholicism I believe in. And that distinction is namely this. Does God love everyone including sinners with a deep and salvific love? If you want the answer on that biblically, I urge you to check out this episode right here. For Shamus Popri, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
&nbsp;

The False Gospel Many Catholics Secretly Believe

Many people see salvation as a “me and Jesus” type of religion. For example, the viral video “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IAhDGYlpqY">Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus</a>” by Spoken Word (Jefferson Bethke) has had over 36 million views on YouTube alone. He says,
<blockquote>Now back to the point. One thing is vital to mention: how Jesus and religion are on opposite [ends of the] spectrum. See, one is the work of God, but one is a made-made invention. See, one is the cure, but the other is the infection.</blockquote>
Before I respond, it needs to be addressed that there are lots of good points about the hypocrisy of Christians in the video. An article could be written agreeing with those points. However, the quote above is problematic, for the individual aspect of salvation is not to be separated from the communal aspect.
Although having a personal relationship is central, it is centralized within the communion of the Church. Take the personal relationship outside the Church, and you’ve lost salvation. If you take a fish out of water, the fish dies.
This is why the Church Fathers said the Church is essential for salvation. If you were to leave the Church in favor of your ideas about “Jesus over religion,” as Jefferson Bethke does, then that creates a tear or schism within the Church and results in a “strange doctrine” historically. I would suggest that Jefferson read St. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch (A.D. 110):
<blockquote>Be not deceived, my brethren: If anyone follows a maker of schism [i.e., is a schismatic], he does not inherit the kingdom of God; if anyone walks in strange doctrine [i.e., heresy], he has no part in the Passion (<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0108.htm">Letter to the Philadelphians</a> 3:3-4:1).</blockquote>
Jefferson, his ideas, and those who follow them are in dangerous territory. Ignatius’s statements imply that the Church is essential for salvation. They do not make sense if everything is solely about a personal relationship with Jesus.
At this point, some might question Ignatius’s authority. Is he not just some oddball to be disregarded? I would encourage some digging into <a href="https://catholicism.org/eens-fathers.html">what other Church Fathers say</a>, but let’s stick with Ignatius for a second. Some of my friends during my college years were skeptical about him, but that is not warranted.
The first Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea (300s), and the bishop of New Rome, St. John Chrysostom (400s), said that &#8220;Ignatius, who was chosen bishop of Antioch, second in succession to Peter, and whose fame is still celebrated by a great many&#8221; had the “hands of the blessed apostles touch his sacred head&#8221; (Church History 3, 22, 36; Homilies on S. Ignatius and S. Babylas in F 2nd series, 9:136). Ignatius was <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0123.htm">a disciple</a> of the apostle John.
Back to Jefferson: he is attacking the idea of “no salvation outside of the Church,” but that idea can be attested to from the earliest days of the Church. Heck, it goes back beyond Ignatius to Jesus. His salvation is centralized within the Church, to whom he said, “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). It is this Church that he, the Divine Architect, built: “On this rock I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18).
The Catechism recently reformulated the negatively worded quote “no salvation outside the Church” into a positive quote: all salvation comes from Christ through the Church (846). That final part of “through the Church” cannot be forgotten.
My professor of Paul’s letters, Michael Barber, notes that Paul is a heavy hitter against Jefferson’s idea. Paul calls the Church the singular “Bride of Christ” (Eph. 5:25-27). Marital imagery brings in the great truth from Genesis on marriage: “The two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). Two people in marriage form one body.
But Jefferson wants Jesus without his bride—and not only that, but Jesus without the body of Jesus! For if Jesus and the Church are in marriage, then they are one body—the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13)!
This truth about the Church can be seen in the sacraments. For baptism, you can’t baptize yourself! Another person is needed to baptize you. And what are you baptized into? Into a personal relationship with Jesus? Not exactly—even babies are baptized, and they do not have the use of reason yet.
Scripture says we are baptized into one body (1 Cor. 12:13). Once this occurs, the individual is no longer an individual. Protestant scholar Michael Gorman <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Inhabiting-Cruciform-God-Justification-Soteriology/dp/0802862659">says</a> that when Paul speaks of justification in Romans 5, for example, “the subject of the verbs . . . is ‘we,’ not ‘I’” (55). If Jefferson Bethke is correct in his viral video about Jesus over religion, then Paul should use “I,” not “we.” The “we” and the “I” cannot be divorced from each other. Similarly, the Lord’s Prayer does not start out with “My Father, who art in heaven,” but “Our Father, who art in heaven.”
This truth is built into the very notion of “faith.” Thomas Séding <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Galatians-Christian-Theology-Justification-Gospel-ebook/dp/B00N246YKQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2H1QAWUJZP3AF&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.9HvWyAEfU2gZzBCWYpBSBA.xAWLxq4EKy3C7FO9DSsQ4FwgJjb87ud2KpEJKmixlRE&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Galatians+and+Christian+Theology%3A+Justification%2C+the+Gospel%2C+and+Ethics+in+Paul%E2%80%99s+Letter%2C+ed.+Mark+W.+Elliot%2C+Scott+J.+Hafemann%2C+N.+T.+Wright%2C+and+John+Frederick+%28Grand+Rapids%3A+Baker+Academic%2C+2014&amp;qid=1763044533&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=galatians+and+christian+theology+justification%2C+the+gospel%2C+and+ethics+in+paul+s+letter%2C+ed.+mark+w.+elliot%2C+scott+j.+hafemann%2C+n.+t.+wright%2C+and+john+frederick+grand+rapids+baker+academic%2C+2014%2Cstripbooks%2C140&amp;sr=1-1">observes</a>, “For Paul, ‘faith’ in itself is not only personal but ecclesial: ‘We believe’ (Gal. 2:16) and ‘I’ believe (cf. Gal. 2:19-20)” (69-70). The two cannot be divorced.
The other sacraments of the Church, such as the Eucharist, have a powerful role to play in salvation as well. This sacrament does not just symbolize our communion, but effects it: “We are one body because we partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16-17). The Eucharist is not just a personal encounter between you and the Lord. It creates a fellowship among believers—you can’t get away from the other Church members!
Salvation is not a private affair. It isn’t an isolated reality apart from the Church. Salvation is ecclesial in shape. It is not just “me and Jesus.” Scripture and Tradition bear this out. Never mind the fact that there are other members of the Holy Trinity besides God the Son. The Father and the Holy Spirit are within the Godhead as well, and humans need a personal relationship with them, too.

You Ain’t Getting Saved All by Yourself

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<h3>Monday of the Third Week of Easter
Lectionary: 273</h3>
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<h4>Reading 1    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/acts/6:8">ACTS 6:8-15</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
Stephen, filled with grace and power, 
was working great wonders and signs among the people. 
Certain members of the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen, 
Cyreneans, and Alexandrians, 
and people from Cilicia and Asia, 
came forward and debated with Stephen, 
but they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke. 
Then they instigated some men to say, 
“We have heard him speaking blasphemous words 
against Moses and God.” 
They stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes, 
accosted him, seized him, 
and brought him before the Sanhedrin. 
They presented false witnesses who testified, 
“This man never stops saying things against this holy place and the law. 
For we have heard him claim 
that this Jesus the Nazorean will destroy this place 
and change the customs that Moses handed down to us.” 
All those who sat in the Sanhedrin looked intently at him 
and saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
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<div id="cs_control_228452" class="cs_control CS_Element_Textblock">
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<div class="bibleReadingsWrapper">
<h4>Responsorial Psalm    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/psalms/119:23">119:23-24, 26-27, 29-30</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
R.    (1ab)  Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord! 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
Though princes meet and talk against me, 
your servant meditates on your statutes. 
Yes, your decrees are my delight; 
they are my counselors. 
R.    Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord! 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
I declared my ways, and you answered me; 
teach me your statutes. 
Make me understand the way of your precepts, 
and I will meditate on your wondrous deeds. 
R.    Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord! 
or: 
R.    Alleluia. 
Remove from me the way of falsehood, 
and favor me with your law. 
The way of truth I have chosen; 
I have set your ordinances before me. 
R.    Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord! 
or: 
R.    Alleluia.
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<div id="cs_control_228454" class="cs_control CS_Element_Textblock">
<div class="CS_Textblock_Text">
<div class="bibleReadingsWrapper">
<h4>Alleluia    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/matthew/4:4">MT 4:4B</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
R. Alleluia, alleluia. 
One does not live on bread alone 
but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. 
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
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<div id="cs_control_228453" class="cs_control CS_Element_Textblock">
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<h4>Gospel    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/john/6:22">JN 6:22-29</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
[After Jesus had fed the five thousand men, his disciples saw him walking on the sea.] 
The next day, the crowd that remained across the sea 
saw that there had been only one boat there, 
and that Jesus had not gone along with his disciples in the boat, 
but only his disciples had left. 
Other boats came from Tiberias 
near the place where they had eaten the bread 
when the Lord gave thanks. 
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, 
they themselves got into boats 
and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. 
And when they found him across the sea they said to him, 
“Rabbi, when did you get here?” 
Jesus answered them and said, 
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me 
not because you saw signs 
but because you ate the loaves and were filled. 
Do not work for food that perishes 
but for the food that endures for eternal life, 
which the Son of Man will give you. 
For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” 
So they said to him, 
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” 
Jesus answered and said to them, 
“This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”
&nbsp;
Source: <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/readings">cms.usccb.org</a>
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Daily Holy Mass: April 27, 2020

Can Catholics use the title Christotokos alongside theotokos?

Question from Non Catholic Family-Member: How does Mary intercede for us if she’s not alive?

If the Eucharist is truly Jesus, body and soul, why isn’t it open to everyone, and why are priests allowed to determine who receives it? How do I answer?

What is the best argument for Catholicism to a Protestant who accepts the Nicene creed?

If someone who received the gospel of Jesus and believed, should the Church immediately baptize him since we have a similar example in the Ethiopian eunuch?