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Miracles in Other Religions?

<div>When should Catholics put up their Christmas tree and decorations? Are there any rules about this?</div><div>There is no rule about when to put up <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/christmas">Christmas</a> decorations. You can put them up and take them down whenever you want. You can even leave them up all year long!
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Christmas Decorations

Protestants often challenge Catholics to provide biblical evidence for their belief in indulgences. Can such a challenge be met? Karlo Broussard shows that it can.
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Transcript:
Paragraph 1471 of the Catechism defines an indulgence as “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven.”
This presupposes that punishment remains after God has forgiven our sins and that we can do something to satisfy it.
But is this biblical? I think it is.
The Bible is full of examples of God remitting the eternal punishment due to sin while still willing temporal consequences. For example, David is forgiven of his sin in 2 Samuel <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TuyZej_SxQ&amp;t=733s">12:13</a>-18 yet must suffer the death of his son. The Psalmist says in Psalm 99:7-8 that God forgives but avenges wrongdoing. Even Jesus teaches in Luke <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TuyZej_SxQ&amp;t=767s">12:47</a>-48 that the servant who did what is deserving of punishment without full knowledge will be punished, but in lesser degree.
It is such temporal consequences that indulgences remit. By virtue of its authority to bind and loose, the Church declares certain acts to be of such value that, if they are performed under certain prescribed conditions, sin’s temporal consequences can be remitted, either partially or fully. It is no different than Jesus’ teaching in Luke <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TuyZej_SxQ&amp;t=701s">11:41</a>, “give alms…and behold, everything is clean for you.”
The Church grants indulgences to help its children heed St. Paul’s exhortation in Philippians <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TuyZej_SxQ&amp;t=132s">2:12</a>, “work out your salvation,” and to cooperate with God in bringing to completion the good work he has begun in us—Philippians 1:6.
So, the motifs of temporal consequences due to sin and the Church’s authority to bind and loose make a solid biblical foundation for the Catholic dogma of indulgences.
If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com.
For Catholic Answers, I’m Karlo Broussard. Thanks for watching.

Are Indulgences Biblical?

Jonah is a familiar story. The prophet hears the call of God. He says no. He gets on a boat to go as far away from Nineveh as possible. There are unaccountably fierce storms, so he rightly discerns God’s judgment and has the crew toss him into the sea, where he is swallowed by a large fish—or perhaps a whale—and spit up after three days. He journeys to Nineveh, where our story picks up this morning, to preach repentance. The people repent, as does God—more on that in a moment—and then, after today’s selection, Jonah goes into a fit of pouting self-pity.
It&#8217;s an odd story in many ways, which is part of why it is one of the most memorable stories of the Old Testament. But it’s worth pointing out how the content of the book as a whole is also unusual in the context of the whole Bible. Jonah is sent not to the kings of Judah or of Israel; he is not sent to the people of the covenant. He is sent to heathen foreigners who have no direct contact with the God of Israel. In much of the Old Testament, we could easily forget that promise to Abraham long ago that in his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Yet here we have this clear insistence that God is interested in and cares for the Gentiles.
One other interesting aspect of the book is how it subtly asserts the absolute singularity of Israel’s God in the world. It wasn’t that unusual for ancient peoples to make large claims about their gods. But for the most part, those claims end at the border of the nation. It seems strange to us, but this was a typical ancient attitude: well sure, our god is the creator of all things, but by “all things” we really mean this village or this river or this nation. The other nations and cities have their own gods, and we leave them alone. Yet in Jonah, there’s this seeming ignorance that anyone even claims to worship other gods. We see God’s power first on his native turf—his call to Jonah. But then we see God’s power over the wind and the waves, his power over the animal kingdom, his power over plant life, over the sun, his power over a huge city that has never even heard of him. No other gods are even mentioned. The implication is that they are too small, too insignificant to warrant notice. Their power, if it is power, is illusory and limited. They are not really, in the end, gods at all.
But, hold on. Doesn’t Jonah’s God “repent” at the end of the story, changing his mind from the evil he intended to do to the city? This might seem the final nail in the coffin for a view of God’s transcendent, changeless perfection, but not so. First, the book as a whole seems designed to show God’s absolute singular and unique holiness in the face of the diverse powers of the world. Second, Scripture and Tradition as a whole insist that God is perfect and unchanging. How then do we interpret this line about God’s “repentance”?
We’d best go with analogy here. If you live in a hot, sunny place, and you defy the sun’s power, walking about at midday without cover or sunscreen or hydration, it may seem as though the sun is out to get you: it threatens dehydration, sunburn, heatstroke. If, however, you respect the sun’s power and prepare to be in its presence, it will seem that the sun is no longer your enemy. What once seemed the source of pain will now seem like a warm embrace. In these two scenarios, the sun didn’t change. You did.
Not that God is merely some great natural force like the sun. But for the ancient writer to say that God “repented” is a sort of shorthand for the idea that people have adapted to the reality of who God says he is, and so what once seemed like judgment now seems like mercy and grace.
Our Lord himself says, in that long conversation with the disciples on Maundy Thursday, that “in a little while” their sorrow “will be turned to joy” (John 16:20). The cause—in this case, the cross—hasn’t changed. But what changes is the disciples themselves, for when they really encounter the cross in all its power, and the one who gives it power through the divine life he most fully reveals in his resurrection, they experience it in a new way.
This radically different experience of the same ultimate reality goes at the heart of the Christian understanding of heaven and hell. We can say that hell is “absence” from the presence of God. But this is an absurdity, since God is everywhere. Hell is, rather, the experience of God’s presence as absence—or the experience of the good as something painful. It is like the person so worn down and corrupted by hatred and anger that he perceives a gesture of love as an attack.
Those aren’t perfect descriptions at all, but they suggest something of the paradox of God’s relation with the world. God never changes. But we do, and the world does. Furthermore, God has, in a mysterious way, chosen in his eternal will to allow our choice to matter. When we say that prayer matters, part of what we mean is that God’s changeless decision is to decide certain things in relation to our free will.
I think it is very much in the light of this same divine transcendence that St. Paul declares in 1 Corinthians that we should live as if we were not married when we are, as if we had nothing when we don’t, as if we were rejoicing when we are not. It seems clear that these paradoxical statements aren’t concrete instructions—elsewhere, for example, he has some lofty things to say about marriage. The point is that whatever good things there are in this world—and there are some truly good things—cannot compare with the glories of eternity. Maybe we could even describe this as a Pauline argument for wit and good humor.
Anyway, we have to hold even the best things of this world, its joys and its sorrows, with a light touch. Here the Buddhist notion of “detachment” gets it right in some important ways, recognizing that the source of much suffering comes from holding on to things that do not last. Where St. Paul and Christianity part ways from Buddhism is on the recognition that detachment isn’t itself the ultimate goal; the ultimate goal is actually to be attached, just to the right thing: God. When we orient our hearts to him, all the earthly forms of goodness can shine with the reflected light of the true sun. But if we try to take these various mirrors away from the light, they will only ever be dull and meaningless.
The true light of Christ, the transcendent and eternal divine Son, is in fact the only thing worthy of the kind of devotion we see in the early disciples. For a serious Jewish man in the first century, there was nothing more important than family and work. The only thing that could dare call one away from that was . . . well, God himself. The fact that Peter and Andrew, James and John, drop their nets and follow him, suggests that they recognized in him something precious beyond price. Nothing is more important than following him. Nothing.
Today we don’t see those old visible competitions between gods of river and mountain and nation. But there are plenty of other gods demanding their place—gods of commerce, of political party, of family comfort, of wellness and self-care, of pleasure, of self-expression, of control. All of these want a small piece of us, and it seems reasonable because they want just that little piece, and they’re fine leaving the rest to somebody else. But Jesus does claim more, because he’s not just the god of Sunday or the god of traditional morality or the god of Catholics: he is Lord of the nations, King of Kings, the Alpha and the Omega. It is God, or it is nothing.
The time is running out, Paul says. That was a theme of Jonah’s preaching too, it turns out. Maybe we’re like the disciples, or like Jonah, or like the citizens of Nineveh. We cannot run forever. The city of this world will not last forever. Our family and our work will not last forever. All the best things will pass away. But if we choose first the kingdom of God, all the good things of this life will shine with the brightness of God’s own light.

How God Repents

Judging by social-media reactions, this year’s most controversial Super Bowl commercial was not the VW spot featuring a prairie-church wedding with two brides (and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/02/12/volkswagen-vw-super-bowl-advert-hiding-nazi-past/">making some choice omissions</a> about the company’s past) but <a href="https://youtu.be/94BqlDQ-Ppo">the latest installment of “He Gets Us.”</a>
That big-dollar media-evangelization brand, with its characteristic ads featuring emotion-baiting soundtracks, stark tableaus of human suffering, and the reassuring message that Jesus understands that suffering, is no stranger to controversy. Last year, for instance, it <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/should-jesus-have-super-bowl-ads">came under fire</a> from “progressive” Christians for receiving underwriting from conservative Evangelicals who must have been using the ads as a front for a homophobic, racist, exclusionist agenda.
This year, the brand is under control of <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/Ad-Meter/2024/02/11/he-gets-us-super-bowl-commercials-jesus/72562492007/">a new nonprofit group</a>, and apparently gone are the ties to the old conservative donors. And now the script has flipped, with conservative and traditional Christians largely panning the Super Bowl ad (though some on the religious left are still <a href="https://www.salon.com/2024/02/13/hobby-lobby-funded-jesus-super-bowl-ads-cant-hide-the-hate-that-fuels-the-christian-right/">warning us not to fall for the pro-Maga trickery</a>).
One reason for the criticism is the new ad’s embrace of hot-button political imagery. In the sixty-second spot, set to a cover of the 1980’s torch standard “Never Tear Us Apart,” various figures intended to represent the downtrodden are having their feet washed by figures intended to represent the powerful, followed by the message, “Jesus Didn’t Teach Hate.” Images include:
<ul>
<li>a pro-life protester washing the feet of a pregnant girl outside an abortion clinic</li>
<li>a cop washing a young, tough-looking black man in an alley</li>
<li>a suburban woman washing a bussed-in migrant girl</li>
<li>a Christian minister washing a gay man who had been roller-skating at the beach</li>
</ul>
Whether or not I agree with them, I “get” the criticisms over some of these images and others (still others were non-controversial and even poignant). The Gospel example of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet should not be appropriated for another context without extreme care, and it’s certainly debatable whether invoking modern politics and culture wars constitutes such care. It’s also debatable whether the ad is communicating opinions on some of those issues that are contrary to Catholic teaching or right reason.
But I’m noticing a deeper vein of debate dividing Christians: over the question of whether this approach is evangelically fruitful.
In one corner is the camp that says that messages like this “He Gets Us” ad are all bark and no bite; all Easter and no Good Friday; all consolation and no conversion. That the promise that Jesus &#8220;gets us,&#8221; full-stop, is too easy to take as an assurance that we are good just as we are. And so you end up converting people to <a href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.catholic.com%2Fmagazine%2Fonline-edition%2Fme-my-god-and-i&amp;data=05%7C02%7Ctaglialoro%40catholic.com%7Caf2a9611deec49a684fa08dc2cdca754%7Cdd9faf74765b495cac09cabd182c95a7%7C0%7C0%7C638434573421864749%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=Qc44xOsVjXL%2FAmvQKmstH0t1t3aTdmvGwKsUp%2FPyFR8%3D&amp;reserved=0">moral therapeutic deism</a>, which is probably where they already were anyway.
The other side counters that simply to be told that we are loved and understood in our suffering—and, yes, sin—is revolutionary. That for many people it’s all they’re able to hear and process at this point in their lives. And so it’s the milk they need before the harder food of faith and conversion, a necessary first baby step on the road to discipleship.
The parameters of this debate seem to me strikingly like those around the recent declaration <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20231218_fiducia-supplicans_en.html">Fiducia Supplicans</a>, which permitted clerical blessings for couples in “irregular” unions. One side saw it as a capitulation that will have the effect of confirming people in their sin; the other, as a gentle invitation to begin hearing the promptings of the Spirit.
Me? I think these are both examples of a classic evangelistic balancing act: to challenge but not repel; to sympathize but not enable; to convict but not pronounce judgment. I think the “He Gets Us” spot, whatever else may be said of its methods, its enormous cost, its underlying theology, and so on, both succeeds and fails at achieving that balance. Which is probably the case with most of our efforts to evangelize.

Will ‘He Gets Us’ Get Souls?

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Catholic school ≠ Catholic expert.

One of the frequent claims made by Protestants and skeptics of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/transubstantiation-for-beginners">Catholic eucharistic doctrine</a> is that it’s just too complicated. The doctrine of transubstantiation is too much for the human mind to grasp. It’s just ridiculous to believe that bread and wine are completely transformed into the substance of flesh and blood. The bread and wine are clearly still there, for crying out loud. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/william-of-ockham">Occam&#8217;s razor</a> points to a simpler solution.
Eucharistic theology is not meant to be easy. The early Church writer Pseudo-Dionysius found that it is, in fact, impossible to sufficiently explain the truths surrounding the divine essence. But even if theology were meant to be comprehensible, Protestants would be at a loss, for the only thing less sensible than transubstantiation is its alternatives.
Whereas all too many Protestants now dismiss the Eucharist as merely a symbol, the original Reformers and many of the more orthodox Protestant denominations (Lutherans, Irvingians, Presbyterians, Anglicans, etc.) hold to some version of the theological concept of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/consubstantiation">consubstantiation</a>. This theology seeks to reconcile the physical “breadlike” properties of the post-consecration Eucharist with Jesus’ insistence that this substance is his body.
Consubstantial means “of the same substance.” The idea is that the Eucharist is two things simultaneously, fully Christ and fully bread. When we put it this way, it instantly brings to mind another similar doctrine, the theology of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-the-incarnation-cause-god-to-change">hypostatic union</a>, by which Christ incarnated is fully man and fully God. The Arian heresy argued that Christ himself was something along the lines of “just a symbol”— just a created fleshly being who serves as a representative from God to men. The modern orthodox Protestants respond to eucharistic Arianism the same way the early Church responded to Christological Arianism in the Nicene creed: Just as Christ is consubstantial with the Father, the bread is consubstantial with Christ.
Protestants disputing transubstantiation can say what they will in favor of consubstantiation, however they may define it—but one thing they can’t say is that it’s more rational or more simple than Catholic eucharistic dogma. After all, if consubstantiation means consubstantial—and it does—and if God is consubstantial with Christ—and he is—and if Christ is consubstantial with a piece of bread—which he is not—then a piece of bread would be something of a Fourth Person of the Trinity. And that’s going to require a lot more mental legwork to explain than the simple, albeit mysterious, dogma of transubstantiation.
Now, the Trinity is a mystery of faith that is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-not-to-share-the-trinity">almost impossible</a> to grasp. But the various creeds dogmatically assert that the three persons therein are consubstantial. The Athanasian creed—which most orthodox Protestants profess—says specifically that “we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.” It is precisely the fact that the three persons are identical in their substance that makes them one God. So if something else were to become consubstantial with any person of the Trinity, it would become God. Humans, by contrast, become the body of Christ in the Church, and so we “become” God through a process called <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-word-that-every-catholic-needs-to-know">theosis</a>, or participation in the life of Christ by grace. But there’s a major difference between theosis and consubstantiation. Theosis is a perfection of our human nature to (in a manner of speaking) make us “gods, sons of the Most High (Ps. 82:6; see John 10:34),” but consubstantiation specifically does not change the nature of bread. It is not any closer to the platonic form of bread—as anyone who has eaten stale matzoh knows well—yet, according to the teaching, it is fully God while still retaining its bread-nature. The bread is consubstantial with the Son, and therefore with the Father, and therefore with the Holy Spirit. How can it be called anything but a second Incarnation?
There is a way of working around this issue: by claiming that Jesus is only spiritually consubstantial with the bread. This, however, runs up against other significant problems. First of all, saying that Jesus’ soul can be present without his body is problematic to begin with. Jesus is a man, which means he has a human soul. Protestants profess this, too, when they recite the Athanasian creed. The soul and the body are a union for human beings (Gaudium et Spes 14). The soul is not a free-floating entity that can be supported by any kind of physical object. But even if humans were spiritual beings who only possess our bodies—<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-fake-quote-from-c-s-lewis">as the Gnostics taught</a>—it would still be hard to make the case for Christ being spiritually present in a piece of bread. But even if we take this case for granted, a spirit “present” in an object is not at all “consubstantial” with the object. A human is not fully body and fully soul, but a unity of the two. We are not, for instance, consubstantial with the Holy Spirit merely because he is present in us.
Detractors of transubstantiation can <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/catholic-cannibals">accuse us</a> of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-receiving-the-eucharist-cannibalism">cannibalism</a> if they like, but railing at us for creating a stumbling block with our overly confusing eucharistic theology is unjust. Actually, I think Protestants really have the opposite problem with transubstantiation. The problem with it is not that it’s abstruse and philosophical, but rather that it&#8217;s incredibly simple. All it requires is the unassuming faith of a child. The only explanation needed is “ecce agnus dei.” The Protestant view—meant to appeal to the intellect—is truly the head-scratcher.

Nothing Beats Transubstantiation

Most religious conversations between believers and nonbelievers lead to a contrast between religion and science. “Science is based upon reason; religion relies upon faith,” the nonbeliever will assert, believing that this in some way damages the respectability of belief. In fact, he is only echoing St. Thomas Aquinas, who taught that theology is done on the light of faith while philosophy—including the philosophy of nature and hence modern science—is based upon the natural light of reason. 
This, of course, is not what the nonbeliever wants to say. In contrasting religion and science, he is implying that the believer is a victim of superstition who fails to acknowledge that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-the-only-real-knowledge-scientific-knowledge">only science can lead to true knowledge</a> because it alone is based on empirical verification and rigorous testing. 
How is the believer to respond? Is it true that science alone is rational because it is based on demonstration and logical reasoning? 
Most people would agree that religious faith is grounded in truths that cannot be demonstrated empirically using the scientific method. For the Catholic, these beliefs of faith are justified because they are accepted as true on the revelation and authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. What is not obvious is that scientific knowledge too must be grounded in essential, nonprovable beliefs about the nature of the universe. 
What follows is a brief summary of the scientific method that grounds the scientific enterprise. As many philosophers of science have shown, the success and justification of the method rests on premises that cannot be demonstrated. Instead, these premises are accepted as true by the scientific community because science would be unable to function without them. These premises constitute the essential beliefs of every scientist—his natural faith—and reflect his implicit acceptance of classical metaphysics. 
<h2>First step: induction</h2>
The first step in the scientific method involves the process of induction. The scientist looks around himself, collects data, then makes a probable conclusion. For example, all the swans he sees are white. He therefore proposes the hypothesis that all swans are white.  
But using this process of induction alone, the scientist can never assert truths with absolute certainty. No great number of white swans could rule out the possibility that the next swan could be black. Consequently, the scientist often constructs his hypothesis so that it can be verified and tested through experimentation. The experiment is then thought to confirm or dismiss the hypothesis. 
But even this safeguard cannot guarantee the truth of scientific conclusions. This is illustrated by a simple example used by the philosopher Richard Swinburne (Simplicity as Evidence of Truth, 15-19). Let us say that a scientist is analyzing data composed of four pairs of numbers, the first number in each set being designated “x” and the second “y”: (1,2), (2,4), (3,6), and (4,8). He wants to determine the relationship between the first and the second numbers in the series where x increases by 1 and y increases by 2. 
Using induction, he compares the pairs of numbers and proposes that y = 2x. It is a reasonable hypothesis, but he resorts to more testing and comes up with two more pairs of numbers, (5,10) and (6,12). They seem to confirm his hypothesis, and he rejoices.  
What is not usually realized, however, is that this series of paired numbers can be adequately explained by an infinite number of alternate equations of the form y = 2x + x(x-1)(x-2)(x-3)(x-4)(x-5)(x6)z, where z can be a constant or another function of x. No further testing and collecting of data would be able to distinguish between these alternative equations and the basic equation y = 2x.
 In choosing y = 2x as his hypothesis, the scientist has made the assumption that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-divine-simplicity">simplicity</a> is a marker for truth. 
<h2>Does simplicity beg the question?</h2>
James D. Watson, describing his and F.H.C. Crick’s discovery of the double helical structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, said it was “an adventure characterized by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty” (The Double Helix, ix). And despite the absence of any definitive data that would favor the heliocentric over the geocentric model for the solar system, Copernicus believed that his hypothesis that the Earth revolved around the sun was true because it was simpler. These are only two examples that suggest that the simplest theories are most likely to be true. Most scientists believe this. Why? 
Swinburne discusses three possible answers (Simplicity, 44-51). First, some might claim that there are reasons why scientists choose simple theories beyond the greater probable truth of a simple theory. But examples from the history of science suggest this is not true. As Watson believed, simplicity itself is thought to be a marker of truth. 
Second, some might argue that the presumption of simplicity is justified because history has shown that simplicity is a reasonable assumption that has worked. Swinburne points out that justifying simplicity this way itself already relies upon the criterion of simplicity and as such begs the question. He points out there are many ways of extrapolating from past historical data.  
“Usually, simplest theories predict better than more complex theories” is one way, but “Usually theories formulated by Greeks in the bath, by Englishmen who watch apples drop, or Germans who work in patent offices . . . predict better than other theories” is another way. (Swinburne is referring here to Archimedes, Newton, and Einstein.)  
This second explanation of past data explains history equally well but is obviously absurd. The first alternative, the simpler one, has to be preferred. However, since simplicity itself is presumed, the appeal to history cannot be used to justify simplicity. 
The third possibility is that some mathematical or logical theorem justifies belief in simplicity. This, in fact, is only a more sophisticated way of saying that some mathematical formula can be devised to demonstrate that induction can give rise to certain knowledge. But, as the skeptic philosopher <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/to-err-is-humean">David Hume</a> wrote, “There can be no demonstrative arguments to prove that those instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (Treatise on Human Nature. 1:3:6). 
The future always remains contingent. Ultimately, if the principle of simplicity is true, it is a fundamental, indemonstrable truth that the scientist must accept on faith. It allows him to do science. 
<h2>Truth is beautiful</h2>
The quote from Watson above is a reminder that the conviction that truth is simple is not the only belief held by the scientist. Closely related to this is the belief that the truth is beautiful or, using Watson’s word, “pretty.”  
The mathematical physicist Paul M. Dirac—after recalling that the greatest modern physicists have looked for “beautiful theories,” “beautiful equations,” and “beautiful generalizations” to explain nature—recounts the case of a physicist who refused to accept his mathematical theory because it did not agree exactly with the observed data. Eventually, it turned out that the mathematical solution was true, and the observation was erroneous. Dirac wrote: 
<blockquote>I think that there is a moral to this story—namely, that it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiments. . . . It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one’s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress” (<a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-evolution-of-the-physicists-picture-of-nature/">“The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature,”</a> Scientific American, vol. 208, 47).</blockquote>
Today, theoretical physicists still use elegance and coherence, elements that reflect the beautiful, as signposts for formulating explanations for nature that may not at first be provable with empirical methods. String theory, with which scientists are attempting to unify all the fundamental forces with gravity, is one example.  
In fact, string theory is just one of many attempts to find a theory-of-everything, a single equation that can be emblazoned on the T-shirt of an M.I.T. student. It is a search driven by the realization that the standard model used by physicists to describe the structure of nature seems too complicated. It is not pretty enough. 
Clearly, it is not easy to justify this intuitive understanding that truth is beautiful in a logical demonstration. However, alongside simplicity, beauty allows the scientists to choose among his different hypotheses. It allows him to accomplish his task. 
Finally, as Pope St. John Paul II points out, the scientist takes for granted that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-it-true-that-there-is-no-truth">truth exists</a> and is the object of his endeavors: 
<blockquote>When scientists, following their intuition, set out in search of the logical and verifiable explanation of a phenomenon, they are confident from the first that they will find an answer, and they do not give up in the face of setbacks. They do not judge their original intuition useless simply because they have not reached their goal; rightly enough they will say that they have not yet found a satisfactory answer (Fides et Ratio 29.). </blockquote>
Hence, for the scientist, the truth is attractive—or, in classical terminology, the truth, because it attracts, is good. 
<h2> Based on an act of faith</h2>
We have seen that the scientific assumption that truth is simple, beautiful, and good cannot be demonstrated and yet must be accepted as true. As Swinburne has pointed out, an inductive argument cannot be used to justify this belief, since it has to be assumed in order to construct any conclusions from historical data. It is a metaphysical first principle, a basic assertion about the nature of reality that, as the ancient and medieval philosophers understood, is fundamental and non-demonstrable. 
Ultimately, it is nothing more than the scientist’s implicit acceptance of classical metaphysics that equates being with truth, unity, beauty, and goodness. Every scientist has to accept that reality is ordered and intelligible. As such, simplicity, beauty, and goodness constitute non-empirical criteria that must be adopted by every scientist in order to accomplish his work.  
These attributes reflect common metaphysical beliefs that must be presupposed in order for anyone—scientist or philosopher or theologian—to be rational. Hence, at the very heart of science’s rationality is an act of the will—an act of faith. 
Science is one example of human reasoning at its best. Most scientists would contend that their work attains truth, pointing at the successes of science—we fly planes, we cure diseases, we communicate on the Internet—to support their argument. These same scientists often fail to realize that these successes necessarily presuppose metaphysical and methodological principles that though non-demonstrable are accepted by them as true and certain. 
Is it surprising that there are truths that cannot be proved? Though most scientists would be suspicious, they shouldn’t be. Kurt Gödel, one of their own, showed in 1930 that there would always be some truths whose truth or falsity cannot be established using the axioms and deductive rules of arithmetic (John Barrow, Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits, 218-231). He used logic to prove that there were things that could not be proved. Some of these include the metaphysical first principles that ground the scientific enterprise. 
Thus, if science is considered the paradigm of rationality as many people suppose, then one must conclude that believing is also rational. The believer can now correct the nonbeliever who has contrasted science and religion: science is based primarily upon reason but, as does every rational enterprise, including religion, science relies upon principles that are grounded in faith.

Science is Based on Faith

Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer delves into the complex question of Christ&#8217;s presence in the Eucharist within Protestant denominations. He emphasizes the distinction between different modes of presence, acknowledging that Christ can be present in various ways, even in non-Catholic gatherings.
Transcript:
My question is, does the church teach that Christ can&#8217;t be substantially present in the Eucharist in Protestant churches? If so, where do we find this teaching in either scripture or apostolic tradition? I can certainly see how the church could teach that we only know for sure, that Christ is present when consecrated by a validly ordained priest, but it seems to me that Christ could indwell the host in a Protestant church if he chose to do so. The twist on your question is the particularity of substantially present, because Christ makes it very clear he&#8217;s present in a lot of different ways. Like it&#8217;s through Christ that the entire universe is held together in existence. We believe in the omnipresence of God, Jesus is God. Yet he&#8217;s present in another mode of presence as he&#8217;s walking the shores of Galilee teaching.
He talks about being present in some way where two or more are gathered in his name. And then in the Eucharist, he&#8217;s not simply present. Presence is maybe not a strong enough term. And we talk about it as his sacramental presence.
But the way we use the term presence now makes it sound like he&#8217;s simply in with it under the bread and wine, as Lutherans believe. And we believe in something richer, that when he says, this is my body, that what had previously been bread is now his body, and not his body substantially united to bread. So in terms of modes of presence,
Lutherans do not claim to have the kind of sacramental mode of presence that Christ declares, and that Catholics have and believe we have in the Eucharist.
So I would say that at the outset, but that there are different modes of presence. So even like in a different Protestant church, you may have what is purely and obviously merely a symbolic representation. And this wouldn&#8217;t be Lutherans, but maybe non-denominationals or Baptists, someone from more of a Zwingian tradition, would take merely a representational view. And yet, Christ is still present in some way in the proclamation of Scripture. He&#8217;s present in some way in the gathering of the people together in his name. And so we wouldn&#8217;t deny even there that there can be modes in which Christ is present, simply not in the full sacramental presence where it is his body that we find in the Eucharist.
Lutheranism is somewhat special because they are desirous of and pursuing
a deeper encounter with the presence of God than many other Protestants are.
And so there&#8217;s a pretty famous line from a letter that then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1983 to a Lutheran, Johannes Hanselman, in which he writes, &#8220;Even a theology oriented to the concept of succession,&#8221; meaning apostolic succession, &#8220;such as that which holds in the Catholic and in the Orthodox Church, need not in any way deny the salvation granting presence of the Lord in a Lutheran Lord&#8217;s Supper.&#8221; In other words, like Lutherans don&#8217;t have the Eucharist as Catholics and Orthodox, there it is, understand. And they don&#8217;t really claim to have the same thing. And they don&#8217;t offer the Eucharistic sacrifice because only a priest offers a sacrifice.
And this is not a power given to the lay faithful. Nevertheless, Christ can still be present in a really rich way in a Lutheran Lord&#8217;s Supper, just not in the same way that he&#8217;s present in the Mass. Now, if you want to know the biblical evidence for why that is,
the biblical depiction of the Eucharist is that of a sacrificial offering. This was foretold in the Old Testament in Malachi, where we were told in chapter 1, verse 11, that from the rise of the Son to its setting, a pure offering or pure sacrifice would be offered to his name by the Gentiles.
They did okay. One of the first Christian texts outside of the Bible itself views this as foretelling how Gentiles will offer the Eucharistic sacrifice. Moreover, St. Paul, in trying to describe what happens in the Eucharist, compares it to the pagan and the Jewish sacrifices in 1 Corinthians 10. And the reason this matters is, as I mentioned, only a priest offers sacrifice. And so there is a clear sense of there being, especially even though we&#8217;re all a priestly people, as God said of Israel and as St. Peter reminds us of the Church, within this priestly people, there is a class of ordained priests. This was true in the Old Covenant, it&#8217;s true in the New Covenant as well. Isaiah 66, verse 21, talks about how the Gentiles will be gathered together and some of them, God will take as priests and Levites of the New Covenant. So that the priestly and Levitical system wasn&#8217;t simply like a beta test that God just scraps and decides to do something totally different. It is rather a prefigurement of what he&#8217;s doing with the priesthood in Diaconate. So all that&#8217;s to say, that&#8217;s a long answer. We don&#8217;t want to deny the presence of Christ in Christian gatherings, even if they&#8217;re not Catholic. If they&#8217;re baptized, if they are united in Christ in baptism, Christ shows up in many and various ways, including in a Lord&#8217;s Supper that they&#8217;re offering, particularly if they are trying to do what he tells them to do at the Last Supper. But his full presence, the real presence we talk about in the Catholic Church, the real presence believed in by Catholics and Orthodox, this requires the priesthood, only the priests at the time of Jesus, that&#8217;s just the apostles. Only the priests are brought to the Last Supper and told, &#8220;Do this.&#8221; He doesn&#8217;t tell the crowds, he doesn&#8217;t tell everybody. So it is a particular office tied to the ministerial priesthood and a sacrificial offering, and Lutheranism doesn&#8217;t have that, even if they have other modes of presence.
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Is Christ Present in Protestant Churches?

<div>Can you tell me about consecration to St. Joseph?</div><div>In short, consecrating oneself to St. Joseph is an act of entrustment to his fatherly care, protection, and guidance. In the same way that St. Joseph was Jesus’ guardian, the Church calls us to put ourselves under his faithful care and patronage. 
Redemptoris Custos:
<blockquote>
Leo XIII explained “Joseph was in his day the lawful and natural guardian, head and defender of the Holy Family&#8230;. It is thus fitting and most worthy of Joseph&#8217;s dignity that, in the same way that he once kept unceasing holy watch over the family of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly patronage the Church of Christ&#8221;(44).
</blockquote>
What are the reasons for such great confidence? Leo XIII explained it in this way:
<blockquote>
Recalling that God wished to entrust the beginnings of our redemption to the faithful care of St. Joseph, she asks God to grant that she may faithfully cooperate in the work of salvation; that she may receive the same faithfulness and purity of heart that inspired Joseph in serving the Incarnate World; and that she may walk before God in the ways of holiness and justice, following Joseph&#8217;s example and through his intercession (48).
Even today we have many reasons to pray in a similar way: &#8220;Most beloved father, dispel the evil of falsehood and sin . . . graciously assist us from heaven in our struggle with the powers of darkness . . . and just as once you saved the Child Jesus from mortal danger, so now defend God&#8217;s holy Church from the snares of her enemies (49).
</blockquote>
Today we still have good reason to commend everyone to St. Joseph.
</div>

Consecration to St. Joseph

Karlo Broussard gives a quick overview on the doctrine of predestination, what it means to say that all of our actions are present to God, and why His knowledge of our actions does not take away from our free will.

Do Catholics Believe in Predestination?

<div>May I get a mole removed for aesthetic purposes?</div><div>Yes, skin blemishes may be removed for aesthetic purposes. If the mole is particularly prominent, it could also be argued that removing it also serves a preventive healthcare purpose, to guard against future risk of skin cancer.
</div>

Moles Can Go

In looking at this Sunday’s propers, I came across the collect that was used on this Sunday in many of the modern Anglican prayer books, which reads as follows:
<blockquote>O God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls: that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.</blockquote>
I love the strength of these Lenten orations.
Anyway, in our Missal, that collect was actually one of the options for last Sunday, the second Sunday of Lent, alongside a collect making more explicit reference to the Transfiguration. That is where it was in many of the older versions of the Roman Missal and from there going all the way back to the Gregorian Sacramentary in the tenth century, which is itself a compilation of earlier sources. Sadly, it is one of the many prayers cut from inclusion in the Missal of 1970. The Latin original is also quite strong: Deus, qui conspicis omni nos virtute destitui. “O God, who seest that we are bereft of all virtue.” Cranmer’s 1549 translation is expansive and a little more poetic, but I think very much in keeping with the character of the original: “O God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.”
We might hear this and think it some depressing Calvinistic statement of depravity. Perhaps that is how Cranmer took it, and perhaps that is why the reformers in the 1960s disliked it, but this is a very old prayer of the Roman Rite, well over a thousand years old, likely dating to the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great. In a way, it questions what we often see as the whole point of Lent. Lent is about self-discipline and penitence, about preparing ourselves for Easter, right? But then we get this downer: O God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.
The collect stands as a warning and a prayer against that old heresy, Pelagianism—still a very live memory in the sixth and seventh centuries—which is the idea that we can earn the grace of God on our own merits, the idea that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, whatever that means. But it is just as much a warning against a recurring variation of that heresy, known as semi-Pelagianism, that is the somewhat more attractive idea that “God helps those who help themselves.” No, the collect tells us. We have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.
The language is actually pretty subtle, because it doesn’t say we have no power to help ourselves, but that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. That, perhaps, is an attempt to translate omni vos virtute destitui in a way that does not imply we are doomed to remain merely passive subjects forever. It’s an important distinction, because what it suggests is that we may, in fact, have some ways to help ourselves, but that even those ways are already given by the grace of God. This is a very useful thing to remember at this point in Lent, because it is always tempting to think about how much we’re doing to prepare our hearts for Easter, how much we’re giving up, or fasting, or praying, or going to church—but actually all of those things are already gifts. What we have is grace upon grace.
The difficult part is getting into that cycle of grace, that cycle in which the gifts of God give way to more gifts. St. Paul speaks to us in Romans, in the verses between today’s selection (5:3-4), about suffering that produces endurance, and character and hope—but surely, to many who suffer, suffering would seem to do no such thing. Sometimes suffering is just suffering, and often suffering leads to more suffering; pain begets pain, hardship begets hardship. Not always, maybe—certainly there are many people whose suffering gives character. But, especially when we think about people who are stuck in seemingly endless cycles of poverty or violence or addiction, whether here or throughout the world, the idea that suffering is character-building can sound cruel. In most cases, one cannot simply will to get out of the cycle; something dramatic has to change. The will to break free is only part of the solution: one needs the power to break free.
The Samaritan woman at the well was, pretty clearly, stuck. She was a Samaritan, for starters, stuck before she was even born in a centuries-old feud between the Jews and their less pure neighbors to the north. That cycle of hatred and resentment was not something she chose, but something she embodied. No self-respecting Jew would speak to her, however nice and respectable she chose to be. On top of this, it turns out that even her own people want nothing to do with her. She comes to the well at the middle of the day, in the heat of the sun, because that is the least likely time for anyone else to be there. She’s an outcast, probably, because she’s had five previous husbands, not to mention her current one, who actually isn’t her husband.
It may seem harsh for Jesus to air all these details at the well, but of course, he’s just stating the facts. He doesn’t delve much deeper than that, or try to give explanations or even condemnations, but he does name with stark clarity the situation she’s in. Whether it was something abusive, or manipulative, or violent, or just plain old-fashioned immoral, this woman is in a cycle that she has, no doubt, fed by her own volition, but that is, at the same time, far beyond her control.
The Church Fathers loved to read this story as an allegory of the human soul. In one version of it, the woman’s five husbands are the five senses. St. Augustine says that when Jesus asks her to call her husband, what he’s saying is: seek new understanding beyond the senses. She’s doing that already, in a way, because she’s with a sixth man—but this man, says Augustine, represents not true understanding, but error. Her true and perfect seventh husband is Jesus himself, the Word of God, who will lead her into truth and life.
Whatever you think of the allegory, I think it’s correct in suggesting the nature of Jesus’ call to the Samaritan. He’s not asking her to summon her strength and get herself out of the trap she’s in. He does, though, ask her to acknowledge the truth of her life, which then prepares her to receive the transformation that he offers.
When the Church administers baptism, whether to children or adults, the first step is this same kind of truth-telling: of acknowledging the reality of sin and evil, of naming our inability to get out of it ourselves, and then turning and accepting the grace of the one who offers us new life.
Baptism is one aspect of the living water that Jesus speaks of at the well. Baptism is meant to break us out of the world’s cycle of sin and death, giving us the power to pursue the life that God intends for us. Surely this is part of the logic why, early on, Christians started baptizing their children, not just adult converts: because they wanted to give their children from the very start the power to live a life of true freedom.
But the living water isn’t just baptism. It’s also, and more importantly, the Holy Spirit himself, who is the love of God poured into our hearts, as Paul says in Romans. And here’s the first answer to how we can ever break out of the cycles of sin and evil that trap us: we have to let the Holy Spirit break in. We can escape the cycles not because we have the power to do so, but because the Holy Spirit has the power to change us. It’s not so much that we escape the external situation as much as we escape our former selves. The woman at the well is no longer trapped in a cycle of immorality and social stigma, because she is no longer herself: she is a new woman, through the living water of the Word of God.
That is what God wants to give us this Lent: not just a booster shot in self-improvement, but an insistent reminder of the new identity that we have in Jesus Christ. It is in that identity, and no other, that we can escape the cycles of sin and evil that try to imprison us.

We Just Can’t Help Ourselves

As a young Greek Orthodox Christian growing up in suburban Buffalo, James Likoudis sensed the deficient unity of the Orthodox communion of churches. Like Catholics, the Orthodox have all seven sacraments, including <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/apostolic-succession">validly ordained apostolic successors</a> as their bishops. But because they lack the divinely founded principle of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pentecost-and-the-papacy">unity</a>—the primacy of St. Peter and his papal successors—ethnicity and, often, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-i-didnt-convert-to-eastern-orthodoxy">related nationalist politics</a> take precedence over <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-rite-not-to-be-roman">a common, unifying faith</a>. In his own experience, because the Greek Orthodox church was in Buffalo and his parents didn’t own a car, the Likoudis family rarely made it to the Sunday Divine Liturgy (Mass), even though there was a Serbian Orthodox church only a few blocks from their Lackawanna home.
“It frankly never occurred to me to try to frequent regularly an Orthodox church of another ethnic group closer to home,” writes Likoudis in Eastern Orthodoxy and the See of Peter, which includes his personal journey to Rome. “We were Greek Orthodox, ‘pure Greeks’ (Hellenes), and though we shared a common religion with Orthodox Serbs, Macedonians, and Russians, different languages and customs make it difficult to feel a sense of real solidarity with them.”
In his apologetics and evangelization, Jim always emphasized that Jesus founded a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/ddp/the-church-visible-or-invisible">visible Church with a visible hierarchical structure</a> (Matt. 16:18-19; 18:15-18)—and if the Church’s leadership was needed in the earliest years, how much more in subsequent decades and centuries, when Jesus and his hand-picked apostles were not visibly present to preserve what the Lord had started during his earthly ministry? Likoudis took his cue from Jesus himself, who prayed that his disciples “may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-helpful-question-for-our-protestant-friends">so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me</a>.”
Because Jesus is eternal God (John 1:1-3, 14; 8:58-59), his words are guaranteed to come to fruition (Isa. 55:10-11), so that his Church would be visibly one, so the world could believe in him—and so that the Church could and would progressively make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:18-20), and the gates of hell would never prevail against it.
The college-aged Likoudis could see that the Orthodox churches, despite their beautiful liturgies “and other elements of sanctification and of truth,” as <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html">Vatican II</a> recognizes in Lumen Gentium 8, had not been able to call an ecumenical council for almost twelve hundred years, let alone validate one, nor could they—as he would see in time—definitively pronounce on the pressing moral issues of our modern day.
Jim was not a “Triumphalist Catholic,” viewing himself as superior to his beloved Orthodox brethren, other Christians, and non-Catholics in general. Rather, he strove to follow Jesus on Jesus’ terms. Because he came to know that Jesus Christ founded his one Catholic Church, Likoudis knew that any catechesis or ecumenism that diminished the divine identity of the Church, with its divinely ordained primacy in teaching and governing power of St. Peter and his papal successors (see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/bible-navigator/primacy-of-peter/luke2231-32">Luke 22:31-32</a>), was bound to fail in one way or another—and thus undermine the Church’s saving mission, including by promoting, wittingly or unwittingly, religious indifferentism. The words I’ve italicized are reflective of Likoudis’s apologetics and the title of his magnum opus, <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/product/the-divine-primacy-of-the-bishop-of-rome-and-modern-eastern-orthodoxy/">The Divine Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy</a>. (I was blessed to serve as an editor for my dear friend and mentor for the updated edition.)
I recall when a young Alan Schreck equivocated on the Church’s divine identity in his catechism Basics of the Faith, which Servant Books originally published in the latter 1980s:
<blockquote>These teachings [of Vatican II] are intended to break down the simple and incorrect dichotomy of one church being the “true church” and all others being “false” churches. Catholics believe that the Catholic church is unique not because it is the only true church or body of Christians but because it possesses the fullness of Christian truth and the means of salvation.</blockquote>
Likoudis, who by then had become the president of the lay apostolate Catholics United for the Faith (CUF), responded that Schreck’s catechism “has many fine qualities with its author manifesting a flair for explaining simply various aspects of Catholic teaching.” Still, in an exchange with Schreck in the February 16, 1989, issue of The Wanderer, Likoudis noted,
<blockquote>To allege, as Prof. Schreck does, that the one true Church also exists, however imperfectly, in other churches and ecclesial communities, is to radically alter the meaning of “the one true Church” as traditionally professed by Catholics. Vatican II declared that there was but “one and unique (only) Church” founded by Christ, and Prof. Schreck concedes that this was simply another way of saying “the one true Church,” “but he does not seem to see that conciliar teaching identifies this “one and only Church of God” and “only Church of Christ” with the visible Catholic Church in this world. This is because he posits an unwarranted distinction between the Church of Christ and the visible Catholic Church. But this is what cannot be done. There is only one Church of Christ, the visible Catholic Church built on the Rock of Peter, and though there are elements of the Catholic Church adhered to by our separated brethren, their possession does not suffice to declare “the church of Jesus Christ as a reality that extends beyond the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church,” as Prof. Schreck would like us to believe. Such a notion only serves to promote the error of those who have mistakenly thought that (emphasis original; see <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html.">CDF, Dominus Iesus 16-17</a>).</blockquote>
Schreck humbly accepted this and other constructive criticism from Likoudis, incorporating it into his Essential Catholic Catechism, the successor to his Basics of the Catholic Faith, <a href="https://tanbooks.com/products/books/the-essential-catholic-catechism-a-readable-comprehensive-catechism-of-the-catholic-faith/?srsltid=AfmBOorZRnZDz8TR0rP1dWIGtWnraRjM_Mc0LgCMnx8AelncolyGStXt">which TAN Books republished</a> in recent years.
Amid the confusion prevalent in the post-Vatican II Church, Likoudis covered the gamut, from infallibility to chastity to the liturgy. He also covered the gamut of the media, from appearing on The Phil Donahue Show to writing, with Kenneth Whitehead, <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/product/the-pope-the-council-and-the-mass/">The Pope, The Council, and the Mass</a>.
Some observed only the publicly pugnacious, fiercely faithful side of Likoudis, but I was edified to see how tenderly Jim loved his wife, Ruth. Their storied union of seventy years has blessedly begotten six children, thirty-five grandchildren, and—at present—forty-seven great-grandchildren, including five who are unborn. All of them, like many people beyond their clan, have benefited from the faithful witness of the Likoudis Catholic patriarch, who understood, embraced, and defended the great gift Jesus has bestowed on the world in founding and sustaining his Church, the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pentecost-and-the-papacy">restoration</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/jeremiah-3131-34-foretells-the-new-covenant">fulfillment</a> of the Davidic kingdom of Israel.
“It is simply not true, and never has been, that all bishops are equal by divine right as to their authority, and that Our Blessed Lord established a visible Church without a visible head,” Likoudis noted in the preface of the updated edition of The Divine Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and Modern Eastern Orthodoxy. “It has been a myopic ‘tunnel vision’ of the Church that denies Christ instituted the divine primacy of Peter and his successors in the Church, and it falsifies the import of testimonies to this primacy available from the Fathers, the councils, and even the popes themselves . . . and that even ecumenical councils necessarily required papal confirmation (as Peter ‘confirming his brethren’ [see Luke 22:31]).”
To honor James Likoudis, and to further his work and life mission, the Likoudis Legacy Foundation has been established.

Remembering James Likoudis

Sometimes I feel as though I’m the last to know things. Maybe you feel the same. I’m coming from the perspective of a husband and father, as a boss in my day job, but also as a lay Catholic who wants to share the truth of our Faith with the world. Information and skills with using that information are vastly important to all of these activities and states of life.
It’s easy to be impatient or frustrated in “I didn’t know” or “not knowing before I should” moments, because let’s face it: the stakes are high. A child wants to know why it’s immoral to do this or that when everyone at school is allowed, and the parent struggles to explain why outside “because I said so.” Or, at a New Year’s party, religion comes up, and someone who knows you are Catholic asks why you don’t just confess your sins to God, and you fumble to come up with a practical explanation rooted in biblical truth. There goes a chance to put the issue to rest and vindicate the Catholic Faith.
We’re all familiar with this. I’ve had my own moments of frustration, when I don’t know what I’m supposed to. But something happened in 2015 that began to straighten things out. The details don’t matter here, except that it ended with a friend saying something profound: “Knowing you don’t know something is still knowing.”
This statement carries profound truth, particularly for those who walk the path of faith. As Catholics, we are invited to embrace the mystery of God and to approach the unknown with both humility and trust. Our faith deals with incredible concepts like revelation, mysteries, miracles, and divisions of authority. Whether we were raised in the Catholic faith or came home through a conversion, even with a lifetime of study, the task of pulling these concepts together is requires a most humble rigor: recognizing the limits of our knowledge. It is not a weakness at all, but a strength—a doorway to deeper wisdom, faith, and understanding.
The Bible reminds us repeatedly of the value of humility in the pursuit of knowledge. In the Book of Proverbs, we are told, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (9:10). This verse underscores that true wisdom begins not in certainty, but in reverence and an acknowledgment of our dependence on God. And God, let’s face it, didn’t back the FedEx truck up to the Garden of Eden with instructions and diagrams of everything we want to know. To “fear the Lord” is to recognize our finite understanding in the face of God’s infinite wisdom.
Job’s response to God is a profound example of what I call “holy ignorance.” After chapters of questioning and wrestling with his suffering, Job ultimately declares, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (42:3). Job’s humility in acknowledging his limited understanding leads to a deeper relationship with God. His story is a powerful reminder that it is not our answers that bring us closer to God, but our willingness to surrender to His mysteries.
The saints, too, have much to teach us about intellectual humility. St. Augustine, one of the Church’s greatest theologians, famously wrote, “If you think you understand God, it would not be God” (Sermon 117). Augustine’s insight challenges us to embrace the mystery of God rather than confining him to the limits of human reason. His own journey of faith—from skeptic to believer—was marked by a growing awareness of his dependence on God’s grace and wisdom.
St. Thomas Aquinas, often regarded as the pinnacle of Catholic intellectual thought, experienced a moment of profound humility near the end of his life. After having written volumes of theological works, he had a mystical experience that left him declaring, “All that I have written seems like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me.” This confession did not diminish his contributions, but rather highlighted his awareness that even the greatest human intellect pales in comparison to the fullness of divine truth. St. Teresa of Avila offers yet another perspective, reminding us of the importance of recognizing our limitations. “The real truth,” she said, “is humility.”
The Catholic Church has always encouraged intellectual humility as a cornerstone of faith. Pope St. John Paul II, in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, emphasized that faith and reason are complementary, but human reason must always remain open to the transcendent. He wrote, “Faith liberates reason from presumption, the typical temptation of the philosopher” (76). Meaning all human people, John Paul II was communicating that by acknowledging what we cannot know, we create space for the mystery of God to fill our hearts and minds.
As we settled in to pray the rosary as a family recently, my son, who is eight years old, asked, “What’s a mystery?” I had to think on my feet to get this mighty concept down to a third-grade level. I said something like, “These are things we understand on a basic level, but make us ask questions we cannot have the answer to—and by doing this, they build our faith through trust in God. Like the wedding at Cana—we know that Jesus performed a miracle, but it’s more than that. It was the start of his public ministry. He obeyed the request of his mother, and the whole situation made for an analogy about new wine coming last. On the basic level, we see the story of a miracle, but really there is a lot more we don’t know that informs us about who Jesus is, which deepens our need act in faith, not according to mere narratives.”
Okay, maybe I overexplained, but Dominic said he understood, so I’ll take it as a win.
How can we, as Catholics, cultivate this intellectual humility in our daily lives, especially as we get older? First, we can embrace the mysteries of our faith rather than seeking to explain them away. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the Trinity, and the Incarnation all transcend human understanding. By approaching these truths with reverence rather than skepticism, we open ourselves to deeper faith.
Then we can practice humility in our conversations, whether friendly or adversarial. St. James reminds us, “Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (1:19). Recognizing that we do not have all the answers allows us to listen more attentively to others and to learn from their perspectives.
Always, we must turn to prayer. In moments of uncertainty, we can echo the prayer of the father in the Gospel of Mark: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (9:24). This simple plea acknowledges both faith and doubt, and it invites God to lead us into deeper trust.
“Knowing you don’t know something is still knowing” is more than a clever aphorism; it is a spiritual truth with deep roots in Scripture, tradition, and the lives of the saints. As Catholics, we are called to walk in humility, recognizing our limitations while trusting in the infinite wisdom of God. This intellectual humility is not a surrender, but an invitation to grow in wonder, faith, and love.
In a world that often prizes certainty and control, the Catholic perspective reminds us that true wisdom lies in surrendering to the mystery. As St. Paul wrote, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Cor. 13:12). Until that day, may we embrace the beauty of not knowing, trusting that God’s truth will always surpass our understanding. Whether we are defending the Faith, teaching it to our littles, or searching for the bits of knowledge that help us retain and appreciate the divine mysteries, we must always apprehend the strength of humility over all other forms of knowledge.

When You Just Don’t Know

<div>If we don’t have our bodies in heaven until the end of the world, how are we present to each other there? How do we see and interact with each other?</div><div>This is a good question. Of course, the answer comes from theological reflection with help from some philosophical principles. The human soul separated from the body is naturally very restricted in what it can actively know and experience. This is because the human soul, even though it is spiritual in nature, requires the use of the senses for its natural knowledge, and without a body, there is simply no natural sense experience. So, if the soul separated from the body is to have any specific knowledge beyond the awareness of its own existence and its dependence on God, it will need to be helped and strengthened by higher beings—namely, God and the angels.
So we can say that in heaven the souls perceive each other in their vision of their common source and cause: the essence of God. They may also be enlightened by the angels and Our Lady (who has a body already) about God&#8217;s effects in his creatures. Once they are given this knowledge, then they have a simple, intuitive understanding of each other and any of the things that have been shown them. The real question, given all this, would appropriately be &#8220;Is there anything they do not know?&#8221; St. Gregory the Great exclaims in a concise phrase, &#8220;What is it that they cannot see, they who see Him who sees all things?&#8221;
</div>

How Do Souls Without Bodies Interact?

Jimmy Akin joins us and we gave him two simple tasks—explain the Kalam Cosmological Argument and tell us whether it proves that God exists. Jimmy obliged.

Does This Argument Prove God?

Why Christmas Was Unnecessary (sorta)

What Does it Mean to Merit Salvation?

This is an encore episode, originally aired on October 1, 2025
“Does God Want Organized Religion?” In this episode, we explore the role of organized faith and its significance, along with questions like why Protestants should respect the Pope and how a priest can absolve sin. We also delve into the historical presence of bishops and the continuity of apostolic authority, providing a comprehensive look at these vital topics.
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Does God Want Organized Religion? & More Questions on Hierarchy

Does the Pro-Life Position Have an Answer for this Abortion Question?

What is LinkedIn for?

Dogs in restaurants

Luce

Evidence of Christianity in Germany as early as 270 AD

Meatless Friday obligation

Altar rails

Dogs in strollers

The Eras Tour

School vouchers

Australia ban on social media under age 16

Dogs in airports

Traditional Latin Mass

Flannel Panel

Why does the Catholic Church “police” who can receive the Eucharist? After all, many Protestant churches practice “open communion,” in which the Lord’s Supper is offered to all baptized Christians in attendance, or to all believers (including the unbaptized), or simply to whoever wishes to receive.
But as a non-Catholic attending a Catholic Mass quickly discovers, this is not the case in reverse: non-Catholics are (typically) not permitted to receive. And <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann879-958_en.html">Catholics are themselves reminded</a> that “a person who is conscious of grave sin” may not “receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess” (CIC 916). And ministers of Holy Communion are instructed that those who have been excommunicated or are otherwise “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion” (915).
On the surface, it’s easy to see why the Catholic practice of “closed communion” appears scandalous and pharisaical. After all, when “the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear” Jesus, it’s the hypocritical Pharisees who complain that “this man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2). If Jesus dined with sinners, then why do we refuse them the Lord’s Supper?
The answer is because Jesus treats the Last Supper differently. For starters, whereas Jesus dined with others quite freely, the Last Supper is presented in the Gospels as a more exclusive affair, between Jesus and his chosen twelve. St. Matthew says that Jesus “sat at table with the twelve disciples,” and St. Luke describes how Jesus said to them, “You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (22:28-30).
This is a special, intimate moment between Jesus and his closest followers. Jesus tells them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). This Jewish context is significant, since the Passover was a decidedly “closed” affair: “When a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it” (Exod. 12:48). In other words, anyone was free to join the Passover table . . . as long as he first entered the covenant people through circumcision.
It’s not only that the Last Supper is an intimate affair between Jesus and his disciples, or that it’s the fulfillment of the Jewish Passover. It’s also that the Eucharist is communion with Jesus Christ. This is why Catholics, who believe that the Eucharist really is Jesus, treat the Eucharist with more reverence, and in a more exclusive manner, than those Christians who believe it’s only a symbol. We take seriously St. Paul’s warning that whoever “eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord,” and that “any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself” (1 Cor. 11:27,29).
Christians treat hospitality (open to all!) very differently from how they treat marital intimacy (reserved for the one with whom you’re in a covenantal relationship!). So which of these is the Eucharist more like? If you think the Eucharist is just a symbol, you might think the former. But Scripture is clear that it’s the latter. St. Paul takes the words of Genesis 2:24, about how “the two shall become one flesh” in sexual union, and applies them to the union of Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:31-32). And how does this union occur? As Paul explains, “the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” And Paul insists that “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16-17). In other words, Christ and the Church become one body through the Eucharist.
<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm">St. Justin Martyr told us all of this</a> back in about the year 160, writing,
<blockquote>And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of his word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.</blockquote>
So the earliest Christians didn’t practice open communion. They required anyone presenting themselves for the Eucharist to be (1) baptized, (2) a believing Catholic, and (3) not living in sin. Why? Because, as Justin says, the earliest Christians realized that the Eucharist isn’t common food and drink, but truly the flesh and blood of Jesus. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Liturgy-of-the-Catechumens">So seriously did the early Christians take this guarding of the Eucharist</a> that “in the early Church, the catechumens, or hearers who had not yet been baptized, were dismissed at the conclusion of the Liturgy of the Catechumens, and the faithful, or baptized Christians, remained to celebrate the mystery of the Eucharist.”
But what about Judas? It’s all well and good to say, as the Eastern Liturgy does, “Holy things for holy people.” But at that first Eucharist, we find Judas Iscariot. Benjamin Perry, a Protestant minister at Middle Church in New York City (“<a href="https://www.middlechurch.org/first-time/">where therapy meets Broadway</a>”), puts the argument <a href="https://twitter.com/FaithfullyBP/status/1189241063044714501">this way</a>:
<blockquote>Do not deny anyone communion. Ever.
Communion is not a reward. It is not a privilege for the righteous. It is an invitation to step towards God’s table where everyone has enough and everyone a place.
Remember: Jesus fed Judas.</blockquote>
How do we make sense of this? For starters, it’s not entirely clear that Jesus did give the Eucharist to Judas, and the early Christians disagreed on this point. Nevertheless, the majority opinion is that he probably did, and for good reason: Judas’s sin was a secret. As <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4081.htm">St. Thomas Aquinas explains</a>, “Christ did not repel Judas from Communion so as to furnish an example that such secret sinners are not to be repelled by other priests.”
This is an important distinction. Take the case of two people who commit adultery. One of them repents and goes to confession; the other doesn’t. If the priest knows about the adultery only through the confessional, he may not deny the unrepentant sinner Communion, since to do so would be to reveal this secret sin. Similarly, “if your brother sins against you,” you should first “go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Matt. 18:15). People should have the space to quietly repent without being publicly humiliated.  But none of that applies when the person is openly non-Catholic, either in creed or in action. That’s why canon 915 says you deny Communion in cases of “manifest grave sin”—the sin has to be out in the open.
In the case of Judas, we see these principles at play. Initially, Aquinas points out, “the wickedness of Judas was known to Christ as God; but it was unknown to him after the manner in which men know it.” Jesus doesn’t want to reveal his secret sin publicly, and so he instead says, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” His disciples, including Judas, then ask, “Is it I, Lord?” (Matt. 26:20-25). Jesus has given Judas one last chance to convert without naming him openly. In so doing, he’s also pricked the consciences of the other disciples, who aren’t confident it won’t be they who betray Jesus. It’s only once Judas’s sin becomes manifest, when he’s openly betraying Jesus, that Jesus rebukes him openly: “Judas, would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48).
This is the model the Church has sought to follow for the past two thousand years. If the person’s sin is private, handle the issue privately (including by instructing him not to present himself for Communion); if the person’s sin is open, then prevent scandal by refusing to allow him to eat and drink “judgment upon himself.”

Why Did Jesus Give Judas Communion?

<blockquote>Before Christ&#8217;s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers . . . a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.
The Antichrist&#8217;s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment (Catechism of the Catholic Church 675-676).</blockquote>
The Church traditionally distinguishes between the Antichrist, understood to be a pseudo-Messiah who will come at the end of time and lead “the world” against the Church in the “final trial,” and antichrists, in the plural, who participate, in various ways, in the same spirit of Antichrist, who will personify the spirit or mind of the devil.
What do we mean by “the spirit or mind of the devil”? The answer can be found by considering Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve. The devil tempted Adam and Eve to achieve in their own lives God’s promise of sharing in God’s image and likeness, but by their own power and in their own way. Satan is the ultimate example of Sinatra’s famous “I did it my way!” The spirit of the Antichrist, therefore, is synonymous with the spirit of the devil, which opposes the will and the way of God in favor of his own way.
Paul&#8217;s second letter to the Thessalonians (2:3-12) describes the Antichrist as a person who will have all the power and deception of the devil himself. He will attempt to deceive people into believing that he is what he is not. Ultimately, he will claim himself to be God, and only the coming of the Lord will stop him. Christ himself will finally defeat him and cast him into hell. This is a powerful depiction of the Antichrist:
<blockquote>Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his appearing and his coming. The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false, so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.</blockquote>
In St. John’s writings, we find revealed what we just read in the Catechism. There will not only be the Antichrist, who appears at the end of time, but also many antichrists already in the world:
<blockquote>For many deceivers have gone out into the world, men who will not acknowledge the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh; such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Look to yourselves that you may not lose what you have worked for but may win a full reward (2 John 1:7-8).
Children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come; therefore we know that it is the last hour. . . . Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son (1 John 2:18-22).</blockquote>
John in his day was combating the early fathers of Gnosticism. These personified the Antichrist because they denied the Incarnation—the plan of God for the salvation of the world—thus, Antichrist “denies Jesus coming in the flesh.” They were promoting their “own way” of salvation. Moreover, John says, anyone who would “deny the Father and the Son” is an antichrist. But then, in this same context, John teaches us something less known about the spirit of Antichrist:
<blockquote>Every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of Antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming, and now it is in the world already. Little children, you are of God, and have overcome them; for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are of the world, therefore what they say is of the world, and the world listens to them. We are of God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error (1 John 4:3-6).</blockquote>
There seems to be a connection between the spirit of Antichrist and those who reject God’s authority on Earth. The “spirit of truth and the spirit of error” can be known quite simply and clearly. The spirit that says, “I know more than God’s apostolic authority on the earth”—those sent by God with his authority—represents that same spirit of Antichrist that says, “I’ll do it my way!” This is what John is warning against, especially in 1 John 4:6: “Whoever knows God listens to us, and he who is not of God does not listen to us.”
As Catholics, we believe with St. Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:8 that it will only be after the revealing of the Antichrist that the Lord will come and “slay [the Antichrist] . . . by his appearing and his coming.” If we want to be certain we will not be deceived either by the Antichrist himself or by the many antichrists who are in the world, Scripture teaches that we must do at least these essential things:
We must remain in union with the Father, with the God-man Jesus Christ “come in the flesh,” and with the apostolic authority that God himself established on Earth: our one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, which alone possesses full apostolic authority.

Not Just Antichrist—Antichrists!

Thanksgiving is, in many ways, the quintessential American holiday. Its origins—an English non-conformist Protestant sect’s celebration with pagan Indians—hardly seems the stuff of Catholicism. Is the author then going to try to wedge a Catholic angle into Thanksgiving?
No. I’m going to argue that Thanksgiving is the quintessential Catholic celebration.
Why? Because we do it every day (except for <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/no-communion-on-good-friday">Good Friday</a>), when we celebrate the Eucharist. Eucharistia (εὐχαριστία) literally means “thanksgiving.” (No trademark infringement proceedings against Pilgrims anticipated.)
Whenever Catholics celebrate the Eucharist, they celebrate “thanksgiving”—thanksgiving that, in his sacrifice on the cross made present again here on the altar, Jesus Christ rescued us from death and gave us the opportunity for life everlasting. He restored to us what Adam had lost for us. Now the only reason to be lost is that you want to be.
That’s a lot to be thankful for.
And, I’d add, something to be constantly thankful for. It’s a paradox that the Pilgrims and certainly the Puritans—but to a large extent, most Protestants—actually marginalized the Eucharist. Yes, Catholics ideally have celebrated the Eucharist every day. But let’s make one thing perfectly clear: the Eucharist was the focus of what Christians gathering in churches every week for centuries celebrated. Up until the sixteenth century, the celebration of the Eucharist was the Sunday liturgy. It was what Christians East and West gathered for on the Lord’s Day.
It is only after the Protestant Revolution that the Eucharist was displaced by Bible reading and preaching services. That’s not to say that Protestants “recovered” the Bible, because they didn’t: the Christian Sunday liturgy was always composed of “the Liturgy of the Word” and “the Liturgy of the Eucharist.” In the ancient Church, the Liturgy of the Word came first, because catechumens (those preparing for baptism) gathered with Christians to hear it. But they were then dismissed. Only those “initiated in the mysteries”—i.e., baptized and not serious sinners—took part in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. What John Calvin et al. did was amputate the central act of the Church’s weekly liturgy—her liturgy of “thanksgiving”—reducing it to a monthly or quarterly occasional “service.”
Besides being historically ungrounded, the marginalization of the Eucharist arguably undermined what Karol Wojtyła (the future St. John Paul II) called the Christian “attitude of thanksgiving.”
In his pre-papal book, Sources of Renewal, Wojtyła speaks of “consciousness” and “attitudes.” “Consciousness” is an awareness of certain realities (like “creation”) seen explicitly through the Christian lens. “Creation” is a “consciousness,” an awareness of all that we have that didn’t have to be, even if it is; that it did not come about randomly or accidentally, but by the design of a loving intellect and will (however that intellect and will arranged for it to happen); and that it is good. We can see how that “consciousness of creation” is at odds with secular presumptions of random chance, lack of design, and lack of intrinsic value. The man who is conscious of creation has already made an incipient act of faith.
“Attitudes” then define how we look at what we are conscious of. If we regard creation as gift, good, and intended, our attitude should be one of thanksgiving. As everything that exists is created and depends on God—not just for a one-time creation from which he is now on permanent leave (deism), but rather his constant sustaining presence (since contingent being is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/an-acorn-for-atheists">not self-sufficient</a>)—man can never evade creation. And since he can never evade something that did not have to be, but is, and is good, how can his attitude be anything but a constant act of thanksgiving?
We should not be surprised, therefore, that the Church’s tradition from its earliest days (e.g., Acts 20) was to celebrate the Eucharist (i.e., “break bread”) on “the first day of the week.” (Please spare the tendentious attempts to claim that this was just a farewell supper for Paul.) Neither should we be surprised that, in her best spiritual tradition, the Church sought to celebrate Eucharist as often as she could, even daily. She could not avoid sacramental thanksgiving when thanksgiving is the essential attitude of Christians—not just for the creation that constantly surrounds them, but in consciousness of redemption from sin and death through Jesus’ death and resurrection, a reality made present in the Eucharist.
Familiarity sometimes breeds forgetfulness, and so perhaps we sometime forget thanksgiving for creation and redemption. But circumstances also sometimes make human beings particularly aware of what they have to be thankful for. Those Pilgrims still alive in the fall of 1621—roughly half—had reasons to be thankful. They had not succumbed to disease. They had not landed among hostile Native Americans. They managed to produce an initial harvest. The darkest months seemed arguably behind them. They had reason to be thankful and, in that act, also bequeathed to a nation they would know nothing of a tradition it still keeps four centuries later.
But the Christian origins of thanksgiving go back not to a harvest festival. They go back to a Last Supper.

A Catholic Approach to Thanksgiving

Atheists get the big thing wrong, but that doesn&#8217;t mean they get everything wrong. Karlo Broussard, author of Prepare the Way, explains why Catholics and atheists can agree on some important insights about God.

Three Things Atheists Get Right

In some passages in the Bible, like Abraham bartering with God over Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18) or Jesus at the wedding at Cana (Jn. 2), God appears to change his mind. But how can this be, when philosophy and Catholic theology are adamant that God is utterly unchanging? Jimmy Akin clears up the confusion.

How Can God Change His Mind If He’s Unchanging?

Should Christians celebrate Lent? or is Lent an unchristian invention of the Roman Catholic Church?

Is Lent Biblical?

Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by historian Will Durant as “the most brilliant writer that ever lived,” Voltaire produced novels, plays, and histories. His first love was theater, a passion he cultivated during a stay in England with exposure to Shakespeare’s works, but he is mostly known for his satirical, witty, and critical commentaries on politics and religion. His satirical novel and philosophical fantasy Candide is still read and admired nearly three centuries after its publication in 1758.
Voltaire may have remained just a gifted French writer of the eighteenth century if not for his association with the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment came to the forefront of European life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and comprised numerous philosophes, who contributed to the so-called “Age of Reason.”
Enlightenment intellectuals were not a monolithic group, but they shared a general critical and even inimical attitude toward organized religion. Voltaire, and other philosophes, condemned organized religion generally and the Catholic Church particularly. They believed that society was happier without the influence of the Church, which they argued contained selfish, ruthless clerics who demanded unconditional obedience from the superstitious multitude and enforced societal conformity through violent persecution. Faith enslaved the mind, and it was only reason that could “enlighten” the intellect and free it from the darkness of faith.
Enlightened thinkers examined other topics besides religion and questioned nearly every aspect of society, including humanity in general. Many Enlightenment intellectuals viewed humans in different groups and advocated that some ethnic groups were different species and less human than others, especially the natives of America and Africa. Voltaire delved into these discussions and argued that Africans were a completely different species of humans, destined for slavery.
Enlightenment intellectuals were not content just to discuss their ideas. They desired radical change in society, where “reason” reigned supreme and political, economic, and moral actions were unencumbered by Christian influence. The achievement of that goal depended on controlling the institutions of higher learning in Europe, which required weakening the Catholic Church’s role in society in general and the eradication of the Society of Jesus in particular.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits controlled hundreds of universities and seminaries in Europe. Enlightened philosophes embarked on a campaign to expel the Jesuits from European countries so that royal and secular control of their institutions of higher learning could occur, which would allow the cult of reason to become dominant.
Voltaire led the charge against the Church and the Jesuits by actively campaigning for their suppression. He recognized that if secular rulers could be convinced to expel the Society and confiscate their colleges and universities, it would be an easier task to convince those same rulers to suppress the Church and its influence in society. In 1773, he wrote, “Once we have destroyed the Jesuits, we shall have our own way with the infamous thing [l’infâme — i.e., the Church].” Once the Jesuits were suppressed, Voltaire wrote, “in twenty years there will be nothing left of the Church.” And indeed, Voltaire’s dream was realized twenty years later in his homeland, when the French revolutionary government persecuted Catholics, confiscated the property of the Church, and suppressed it.
The Enlightenment attack against the Jesuits began in Portugal, when King Joseph I (r. 1750-1777) signed a decree ordering their expulsion from Portugal and Brazil in 1755. A few years later, in 1764, King Louis XV (r. 1715-1774) expelled the Jesuits from France and all its dominions. The Spanish king Charles III (r. 1759-1788) followed suit and in 1767 ejected the Society from Spain and its territories.
Pope Clement XIV (r. 1769-1774) was under intense political pressure from the leading monarchs of Europe to enact ecclesiastical penalties against the Jesuits. The pontiff acquiesced on July 21, 1773 in the bull Dominus ac Redemptor, which suppressed the Society of Jesus after 239 years of faithful service to the Church. Although the pope did not pass judgment on the Society in terms of the charges brought against it by secular rulers, his shameful surrendering to political pressure caused the Jesuits to cease existing for a generation, until the Society was re-established by Pope Pius VII (r. 1800-1823) in 1814.
Freed from the “clutches” of the Jesuits, the colleges and universities of Europe were ripe for the influence and control of Enlightenment thinkers to take root. The age of faith had succumbed to the “age of reason,” which produced skepticism, moral relativism, and secular humanism.
Although many Enlightenment thinkers focused their attack mainly on the Church, they also sought the re-interpretation of academic subjects, including history. History, for the philosophes, provided an example of the barbarity and cruelty of humanity influenced by religion. Voltaire utilized historical events and persons as weapons against the Church by re-interpreting them through a lens of negativity and cynicism. He wrote that the Crusades were “marked by every cruelty, every perfidy, every debauchery, and every folly of which human nature is capable.” The Spanish Inquisition was the ultimate expression of religious intolerance; in the 1764 Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire described one inquisitor as the “embodiment of fanaticism.” And perhaps no greater martyr of intellectual freedom existed than the seventeenth-century Italian mathematician Galileo, who, according to Voltaire, “groaned away his days in the dungeons of the Inquisition, because he had demonstrated by irrefutable proofs the motion of the earth.” Apparently, the fact that Galileo’s most strident critics were fellow scientists, and that he did not irrefutably scientifically prove the earth’s motion, did not sway Voltaire from championing Galileo’s cause in his efforts to discredit the Church.
Interestingly, Voltaire’s public vitriol for the Church did not correlate to his private life. He built a chapel on Ferney, his estate; asked the pope to send relics for the altar; and etched the inscription, “Voltaire erected this to God” on the façade. Voltaire allowed his estate workers to attend Mass and provided instruction in the Catholic faith for their children. He expressed deep admiration for the Sisters of Charity and their work.
Toward the end of his life, Voltaire stated his desire for Christian burial upon his death, which was granted. Although he worked for the eradication of the Church’s dominance in political affairs, he appreciated the contribution of individual Christians to society and the necessity of personal faith in a Supreme Being for the general welfare.
Voltaire died a decade before the beginning of the French Revolution, but many contemporaries, along with modern scholars, credit his political and philosophical works for laying the foundation for that cataclysmic event and its catastrophic impact on the Catholic Church. However, those who ascribe credit to Voltaire for the Revolution fail to recognize that he would not have supported the radical elements who overthrew the monarchy and the Church. Voltaire desired an intelligentsia free from the supposed suffocation of the Church, but he certainly did not subscribe to the notions of democracy and rule by the common people.
Nonetheless, the Revolutionary government disinterred his remains from the Abbey of Selliéres in July 1791 and brought them to Paris in a wagon train, where they were interred in the Panthéon for veneration of the masses and the ultimate expression of gratitude from the “democratic” government. It is an ironic end to the story of one of the most indefatigable enemies of the Church.

Kill the Jesuits, Kill the Church

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This is why your Lent keeps FAILING:

“You Catholics are divided, too!”
It’s a common objection from Protestants when confronted with a certain Catholic critique that Protestantism, in its emphasis on the individual’s ability to properly interpret Scripture for himself, and its fundamental opposition to any kind of magisterial authority, necessarily results in an ever-increasing diversity of ecclesial communities and theologies. Yes, the Protestant apologist acknowledges, there are Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Wesleyans, Baptists, and a wide assortment of other branches and sub-branches of Protestantism. But self-identifying Catholics disagree about abortion, contraception, homosexuality, female ordination, and even whether Pope Francis is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/was-benedict-xvi-the-true-pope-the-whole-time">a legitimate pope</a>!
Not so fast. As I explain in my book <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/product/the-obscurity-in-scripture-disputing-sola-scriptura-and-the-protestant-notion-of-biblical-perspicuity/?srsltid=AfmBOoqeX3GJ22TJdYYKemEktdcGd0U7aHsj_H76wNBV74SH5iXu4bPe">The Obscurity of Scripture</a>, relying on the <a href="https://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/the-catholics-are-divided-too-objection/">excellent work</a> of Catholic philosopher (and former Protestant seminarian) Bryan Cross, we need to first understand what the Church means by disagreements of faith and disagreements not of faith. Disagreements of faith are concerned with what has been divinely revealed either in Scripture or Tradition. The Catholic Church, either by solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, has promulgated teachings from Scripture or Tradition that must be believed because
<ul>
<li>they are divinely revealed;</li>
<li>they have been definitely proposed by the Magisterium regarding faith and morals; or</li>
<li>they are authentic teachings of the Magisterium—not by a definitive act, but they nevertheless require religious submission of intellect and will.</li>
</ul>
Disagreements not of faith are
<ul>
<li>those pertaining to open theological questions that have not yet been definitively determined by the Magisterium and do not fall within any of the <a href="https://catholicism.org/the-three-levels-of-magisterial-teaching.html">three grades of assent as defined by canon law</a>,</li>
<li>those concerning prudential judgments regarding the implementation or application of theological or moral truths, or</li>
<li>those pertaining to matters not theological or moral.</li>
</ul>
Disagreements not of faith do not undermine the doctrinal unity of the Catholic Church, because they pertain to issues not considered necessary for belief or submission to the Church. These are disagreements over things that remain open and unresolved, such as the <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/predestination-12420">historic Jesuit and Dominican debates over predestination</a>.
Disagreements of faith are when one party rejects what the Church definitely teaches. These are properly called dissent. There are varying degrees of dissent; some manifest a breach between the dissenter and the Church, and some do not. The former, sometimes called “radical dissent,” is an open rejection of what the Magisterium of the Church has taught as either divinely revealed (de fide credenda) or as definitely proposed and requiring firm acceptance (de fide tenenda). A person engaged in radical dissent is no longer in full communion with the Catholic Church, because that person has rejected the Church’s magisterial teaching authority.
These distinctions help illuminate how the Catholic paradigm is different from the Protestant one. Yes, there are individual Catholics, and even self-identifying Catholic organizations, that hold opinions at odds with Catholic doctrine. But those persons or organizations are in a position of dissent from the Magisterium. Even if they claim to be faithfully Catholic, and even if, God forbid, their bishop has not formally reprimanded them for their disobedience, they are dissenting from official Catholic teaching.
The question of such groups as <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp/the-hidden-danger-of-mel-gibson-on-joe-rogan">Sedevacantists</a> is also answered by a proper understanding of these distinctions. Those who reject the current pontiff and assert either that there is currently no legitimate pope or that some other individual is the real pope are engaged in an act of dissent and/or schism, rejecting the magisterial authority of the Catholic Church as manifested in the Roman See. Such persons are in opposition to one of the core tenets of Catholicism—namely, apostolic succession as it relates to the successor of St. Peter, “<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11744a.htm">prince of the apostles</a>.”
In a sense, this is not categorically different from many heretical or schismatic groups that have existed throughout the history of Christianity. Since the early centuries, there have been various individuals, even individuals ordained as priests or bishops, who rejected the magisterial authority of the Church, of ecumenical councils, and of the bishop of Rome. Marcionists, Montanists, Monarchianists, Novatianists, Donatists, Arians, Quartodecimanists, Macedonians, Luciferians, Appolinarists, Collyridians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monophysites, Acacians, and Monothelites are all examples of schismatic and heretical groups you may have never heard of, but dissented from orthodox, Catholic Christianity in <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-early-church-was-the-catholic-church-softcover/">the first millennium</a> of Church history.
The unity of the Catholic faith does not consist in the degree of doctrinal agreement among everyone who calls himself Catholic, be it a Sedevacantist or a pro-choice politician. Rather, the unity of the Catholic Church consists of <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15179a.htm">three bonds</a>: doctrine, cult, and authority, which derive, respectively, from the Church’s role as prophet, priest, and king. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that those three roles are “assured by visible bonds of communion: profession of one faith received from the apostles [doctrine]; common celebration of divine worship, especially of the sacraments [cult]; and apostolic succession through the sacrament of holy orders, maintaining the fraternal concord of God’s family [authority]” (815).
Anyone dissenting or breaking from these bonds of unity, far from demonstrating Catholicism’s internal divisiveness, only demonstrates that he is at odds with the teaching of the Church. That we recognize such people as dissenters shows that we already know this. Ironically, by their dissent, dissenters testify to the unity of the Church’s faith. That’s not to say that such dissent doesn’t cause scandal and confusion—obviously, it does, as evidenced by the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-5DkCRWg-A">ubiquity</a> of the “Catholics are divided, too” objection we are addressing here.
Nevertheless, the objection (mistakenly) assumes that the unity of the Catholic Church is the amount of agreement regarding matters of faith among everyone calling himself Catholic or who receives the Eucharist. But according to Catholicism’s self-understanding, the unity of the Catholic faith is determined by the unity of the doctrine taught by the Magisterium. Thus, the Protestant who makes this objection is implicitly presupposing that there is no difference in teaching authority between the laity and the Magisterium, and is thus evaluating Catholic unity according to terms that are actually peculiarly Protestant.
In a sense, this is understandable, because the early Protestants claimed that the two marks of the Church were the right preaching of Scripture and the right administration of the sacraments, and thus to observe a dissenting Catholic continue to receive the Eucharist seems like a failure of unity, when in fact it may well be a failure of discipline. And it is understandable because there is no Protestant magisterium providing an authoritative, single body of doctrine by which Protestants could have unity of faith. Rather, for Protestants, unity of faith is attempted by identifying other Protestants who have enough interpretive agreement over Scripture to (for a time) co-exist within an individual ecclesial community, denomination, or para-church organization. I say “for a time” because the lack of a mechanism for adjudicating theological disagreements means Protestants have an “escape clause” to break away and form a new denomination.
In sum, the “Catholics are divided too” tu quoque fails, because it does not properly understand the nature of schism and dissent from the visible unity of the Catholic Church found in the Magisterium. Catholics who dissent from Church teaching, or schismatic groups that deny the authority of the Magisterium, do not undermine the doctrine, cult, and authority that constitute the unity of the Church. Quite the contrary: Their dissent or schism actually reinforces it.

‘You Catholics Are Divided, Too!’

Jimmy Akin explains the different senses in which we use the term &#8220;mediator between God and man,&#8221; and why the senses in which this term is used in 1 Timothy 2:5 do not prohibit us from asking for intercessory prayer from Mary, the saints in Heaven, or our companions on Earth.

One Mediator Between God and Man: 1 Timothy 2:5 Explained

In this video, Catholic Answers Live Host, Cy Kellett, asks apologist Jimmy Akin what Catholics must believe about Demons.
Transcript:
Cy: There are topics where people would like to know, well, what do I have to believe as a Catholic? What is certain about a topic as far as the Catholic faith goes? And one of those is demons. We get a lot of questions about demons. There&#8217;s actually a lot of Internet conversation about demons among Catholics
Jimmy: A lot of which is poorly informed.
Cy: Yes, that&#8217;s right. And so that&#8217;s why we get this situation where there&#8217;s a lot of conversation. But do people actually know the basics of what the Church teaches on the topic? So, and then we&#8217;re gonna take this segment, the Bottom Line, and we&#8217;ll make it available on social media to help people who might need the basic Catholic teaching.
Jimmy: So thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me about demons. Before we go this afternoon, the first thing I would like to ask, I&#8230;
Jimmy: Would say you used two different concepts at the beginning of this segment. One of them was what does the Church teach? And the other is what is certain. And I would take what is certain to mean what&#8217;s infallible. And not all Church teaching is infallible.
Cy: That&#8217;s a good point.
Jimmy: So I will tell you what the Church teaches. I&#8217;ll also tell you if something&#8217;s infallible, and I&#8217;ll tell you what my opinion is on matters the Church does not have a teaching on, but are subject to opinion.
Cy: Very good. Very good. Well, is this a permitted opinion? Could I just say, because I do think lots of people in the modern world do say, look, all this New Testament, particularly talk about demons is really, you can interpret it metaphorically that we&#8217;re talking about human evil, the tendency towards evil and selfishness and all that. So can I, as a Catholic, hold the view that really demons are metaphors?
Jimmy: Well, the Christian Church has always held that they are not metaphors, that they are intelligent creatures of God. They are different than we are in that they don&#8217;t natively have physical bodies the way we do, although it&#8217;s been held very commonly as a matter of theological opinion that they can assume, like angels can assume, temporary physical bodies. These are sometimes called aerial bodies. The idea was that they would condense them out of air and then the air would dissipate when they were done using it. That&#8217;s not Church teaching. Like I said, that was theological speculation. But the Church has always understood that they are not metaphors, but are other creatures of God that are different than us.
Now, after the early 20th century and the mid-20th century, there was, you know, some&#8230; There was a period of doctrinal confusion, particularly after Vatican II. And there were some individuals who were promoting this metaphor idea. But when the Catechism of the Catholic Church came out, the Church reaffirmed its historic position. And so the Church teaches that demons are intelligences that God created without bodies. And they are not simply metaphors. So that is Church teaching.
Cy: I&#8217;m not going to ask you about what they are because I think most people do have the basic understanding that a demon is a fallen angel.
Jimmy: Well, there&#8217;s actually some interesting discussion there in biblical circles because it depends on how you use the word angel. It depends on what value you give to various Second Temple Jewish sources. In the Second Temple Jewish world, it was common to understand&#8230; Now by angel you just mean it&#8217;s not a human being. Well, okay, there&#8217;s&#8230; There was some discussion in early Second Temple Judaism about demons. And they weren&#8217;t actually always identified with what we would call a fallen angel, but with a subset of creatures that were the ghosts of individuals that were human-angelic hybrids. And this is found in the book of Jubilees and in First Enoch. And it seems to be the common understanding in Second Temple Jewish sources.
But eventually the term angel came to be used for any non-human creature that has smarts and is here on earth. And so by that understanding, demons would be fallen angels, regardless of whether they would have been classified under that term in the first century.
Cy: So I guess the question that people have then is why would they fall though? I mean, what could possibly have tempted a creature who&#8230; an intelligent creature that presumably has knowledge of the good? Why would they choose permanently to be separated from God?
Jimmy: Well, let me ask you a question. Why would you choose to be permanently separated from God? Is there any reason good enough to justify that?
Cy: No, no, there&#8217;s not a good enough reason. But there are reasons, I can see, I guess, where you could choose something lower and just say, I want power, I want money, or I want, you know, pleasure.
Jimmy: Or we&#8217;re in a similar situation with the demons. Ultimately there is no good reason. There&#8217;s nothing sufficient to justify turning your back on God. And so sin makes you stupid. And the demons did something stupid, even though they&#8217;re otherwise very smart, they could still do stupid things. Just like King Solomon, he was very smart, but he did stupid things.
In terms of what specifically was it that the demons fell over? We don&#8217;t know, because we&#8217;re not told in Scripture. And that&#8217;s led both Jews and Christians to speculate on what it would have been. One early speculation is that it involved mankind. And according to a Second Temple work known as the Life of Adam and Eve, the reason the devil fell was because God created man in his image. So God is the image of man. Sorry, man is the image of God. And what do you do with the image of a God? You reverence it. I mean, that&#8217;s what they did in the ancient world. They made images of God and then they would reverence them.
Well, okay, in the book of the Life of Adam and Eve, that&#8217;s the explanation. God makes man in his image. Michael, a good angel, tells all the other angels, okay, now we&#8217;re gonna all reverence the image of God. Together, we&#8217;re gonna reverence man. And the devil thought man&#8230; he&#8217;s this puny little thing, and I&#8217;m older than man. I shouldn&#8217;t be reverencing him. And that&#8217;s what led him to rebel.
There are also other speculations. A more particularly Christian speculation is kind of connected to that one. But it&#8217;s that the devil knew that Jesus was gonna incarnate as a human being, and he couldn&#8217;t put up with the idea of someone like Jesus incarnated as a mere lowly human. And that&#8217;s what caused the Fall. Then there&#8217;s the idea that it was pride on the devil&#8217;s part that he wanted to be like God. And this is based on a passage in Isaiah that&#8217;s actually talking about a human prince, a human leader. But many people have applied it to the devil and speculated that he wanted to knock over the establishment and take over heaven for himself, which, of course, he could never do since God is omnipotent.
So I&#8217;m a little personally skeptical of that idea. But there are various speculations on what may have been the cause of the Fall, but they are all just theological opinions.
Cy: All right, so then the practical question I&#8217;ll end with, then how do I avoid these demons and stay out of their evil clutches?
Jimmy: Well, you could try wearing a special, you know, a hazmat suit.
Cy: I&#8217;m willing if it&#8217;ll keep them away!
Jimmy: Failing that, I would pray to St. Michael the Archangel and say the St. Michael prayer and entrust yourself to God and not really think about him too much.
Cy: All right, Jimmy, thanks for giving us the bottom line on demons. As always, things that surprised me in what you have to say and very, very helpful. Thank you.
Jimmy: My pleasure.
Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel:
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen

What Must Catholics Believe About Demons?

Have Christians been inconsistent on abortion?

In a recent <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/fight-the-anti-advent">article</a>, I discussed the penitential character of Advent and noted the difficulty of maintaining this while the world seems determined to make the season an anticipatory celebration of Christmas. A similar problem arises in the context of the beginning of Lent—and goes back much farther, historically.
<h2>Fat Tuesday Versus Lent</h2>
Lent is the Church’s major penitential season. The degree of rigor has varied over the centuries, but in the 1917 Code of Canon Law (CIC), every day of Lent (except Sundays) was a fast day, when we could eat only one full meal and two light meals. (On most of these days, eating meat was permitted.) Earlier in the history of the Church, the Faithful would abstain from not only meat during Lent, but also even eggs and butter.
In both the 1917 Code and the current 1982 Code, abstinence from meat is required on Fridays throughout the year (except for holy days of obligation in 1917, and solemnities in 1982). The possibility of waiving this was given to bishops’ conferences in 1966. Since then, many have indeed waived it, including the conference of the USA. (Interestingly, perpetual Friday abstinence was brought back in England and Wales in 2011.) In the current Code there, are only two fast days in the year: Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
Keeping in mind the older rules, Lent was historically a very serious period of penance, and the custom arose of having a celebration immediately before it started on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-ash-wednesday-unbiblical">Ash Wednesday</a>. This day, Tuesday, has variously been called Shrove Tuesday, from the old English word for Confession (shrift, with the verb shrive), or Fat Tuesday (in French, Mardi Gras). The celebration could extend to a period of time before the Tuesday, with a whole period of Carnival—literally, a “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/sanctify-your-drinking-in-pre-lent">farewell to meat</a>.” In the context of the Medieval discipline, these were the last days, until Easter, during which meat and oil could be consumed.
In some places, the fond farewell to meat could become a fond farewell to debauchery, satirized by the Dutch artist Bruegel’s 1559 painting “The Battle of Carnival and Lent.” The misbehavior of the Carnival in Venice was also notorious, giving us the tradition of carnival masks, which hid the identities of revelers and protected them, they hoped, from repercussions.

<h2>Fat Tuesday as a Catholic Tradition</h2>
These are venerable traditions of Catholic culture, certainly, but not ones we should be maintaining or reviving. In any case, things have moved on. Carnivals no longer conclude with a period of penance: The world wants to party, but not to clean up the mess afterward.
At the same time, it is not quite correct to say that the modern world has given up on penitential practices. On the contrary, as Fulton Sheen noted, often the world picks up what the Church discards. He gave the example of the decline of devotion to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/do-catholics-pray-vain-repetitions">the rosary</a> just when hippies and New Agers adopted the prayer beads of other religious traditions. Equally, at the very time when the Church’s penitential practices were being whittled down to nothing, on the basis that they were incompatible with modern life, the developed world was swept by dieting fads, and the ideal body, exposed to public view by new fashions, demanded iron self-discipline to maintain. A different kind of self-discipline is required to avoid feeling a bit of failure for not living up to these spartan standards.
Fasting and abstaining, in the past, were practices that pretty well everyone could maintain—the sick and certain others were always exempted. These practices united Catholics: something that everyone could complain about equally. The new standards of health and beauty, by contrast, are elitist by design: they are ways that the elite can remind us of their status.
There is nothing wrong with reminding ourselves of the imminent start of Lent with a bit of fun and special foods. As noted, the day before Ash Wednesday is called “Shrove Tuesday,” connecting it with the commendable practice of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/god-chooses-to-uses-human-intermediaries">going to confession</a> before the start of Lent. Preparation for Lent, itself a period of preparation for Easter, may sound unnecessary, but preparation for a period of penance is indeed a good idea. In the calendar of the pre-Vatican II 1962 Missal, and in the Calendar of the Ordinariates for Anglican converts, Lent is preceded by three Sundays of the season of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-septuagesima">Septuagesima</a>, “pre-Lent,” when fasting is not required but the violet of penance is adopted as the liturgical color. This puts Fat Tuesday into context as the culmination of a period of preparation for Lent, when in past centuries stocks of fats would be used up.
In the English-speaking world, Shrove Tuesday has long been marked in a culinary way by pancakes, which must be the most modest kind of party food imaginable. In my childhood in the U.K., we used to eat thin English pancakes rolled up with lemon juice and a sprinkling of sugar; these would appear even in non-Catholic schools on “Pancake Day.” Sliced bananas, ice cream, and hot chocolate sauce have, as they say on social media, now “entered the chat,” but if you are making them at home, a huge amount of the fun is tossing them, to cook them properly on both sides. You have to not worry too much about the ones that get away—they are very cheap to make—and devote yourself seriously to practicing this noble art, remembering that in this, as in so much of what makes Catholic culture fun, you are entering into the spirit of the liturgical year.
<h2>Why We Party . . . and Why We Fast</h2>
A party that goes on all year round ceases to be a party and ceases to be fun. A celebration is by definition something that rises up above the level of the ordinary. The lower the troughs, the higher the peaks can rise in comparison. The penances of Lent are essential to the joy of Easter, and the mortifications of Lent can themselves be consoled by the way one marks Fat Tuesday. Human beings are not machines, working best at an even temperature with a perfectly steady intake of calories. We are organisms designed for feast and famine, for joy and woe. As William Blake <a href="https://www.poetryverse.com/william-blake-poems/auguries-innocence">expressed</a> it,
Joy &amp; Woe are woven fine, 
A Clothing for the Soul divine: 
Under every grief &amp; pine, 
Runs a joy with silken twine.

Where Fat Tuesday Fits In

“There were giants on the earth in those days,” we read in Genesis. The gauzy way we view the past can exaggerate the greatness of our forebears, but when I think of David Carlin, who died shortly before Christmas after a long life, I can’t help but think that he was a man whose likes we won’t see again in these days.
I came to know Dave in the early 2000s, when I edited his first two books. Two decades of ensuing friendship would increase my respect and fondness for him, but right from the start I sensed in him something rare and compelling. A philosopher and sociologist by training, and a college professor by day, he took up politics, too, reaching the rank of Senate majority leader for his home state of Rhode Island. And he looked the part: with his silver hair, strong jaw, bushy brows, and electric smile, he would have appeared right at home at a Kennedy reunion in Hyannis Port.
Dave’s politics, too, were straight from the Irish-Catholic, New England, mid-twentieth-century form book. He proudly called himself a “Blue Dog” Democrat. Not to be confused, he warned me, with “Yellow Dog” Democrats—those who were so party-loyal that they would vote for a yellow dog if it had a D next to its name—the original Blue Dogs were a particular breed: frugal, working-class and devoted to unions, distrustful of the rich <a href="https://www.catholicity.com/commentary/carlin/04442.html">and of Republicans</a>, fans of New-Deal-era policies that they credited for their families’ upward mobility, and, perhaps most notably, socially conservative.
Above all, Dave was a faithful, foursquare Catholic, and pro-life to the core—from a time when pro-life Catholic Democrats still roamed the earth in abundance.
Beginning in the late eighties and accelerating through the turn of the millennium, though, the landscape had begun to change. As his party became more culturally elitist and more identified with social, especially sexual progressivism (championing abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, transgenderism, godlessness, and deviance, with ever-decreasing tolerance for dissent within the ranks), he found himself increasingly estranged from his roots. One of Dave’s great intellectual gifts was summed up in a maxim he liked to quote—“Ideas have consequences”—and he foresaw with clarity that a political philosophy committed to such ideas was ultimately incompatible with Catholicism. One would have to go.
He even <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Can-Catholic-Democrat-David-Carlin/dp/1933184191">wrote a book about it</a>; and even though at the book’s end he made allowance for Catholic Democrats of his vintage to stay within the party to change it, in the two decades that followed, he seemed to lose hope in that possibility. As many Democratic social conservatives and blue-collar folk migrated toward the right, he (reluctantly and sorrowfully) did, too.
Or did the right migrate toward him? To my knowledge, Dave never abandoned any of his paleo-Democrat principles or turned in his Blue Dog card. That integrity alone marks him as a rare sort, as does his farsightedness about the connection between ideas and social change. (He modestly credited such gifts to a rigorous Dominican education.)
Dave’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Decline-Fall-Catholic-Church-America/dp/1928832792/">other book</a> in which I had a hand also displayed his rarity. In an analysis that combined sociology, philosophy, and religious history, he sought to identify the reasons for Catholicism’s decline beginning in the late 1960s. In internecine Catholic polemics today, we often see blame put on the Council generally, or on liturgical reforms, Communion in the hand, “infiltration” by some shadowy evil, and so on. Others, conversely, blame a failure to accept and nourish Vatican II’s vision with sufficient zeal.
Dave, however, didn’t pick a predictable side, because he thought all these answers were simplistic. The Council did play a role, he wrote, but not primarily through anything it expressly said or did. Rather, in its innovations (however defensible they might have been) it shattered the Tridentine Church’s sense of immutability. By itself, this might have been worked through, but it unfortunately happened at the same time as two other phenomena: the generalized rebellion against authority of the late sixties and the ascendancy of secularism. These three factors combined in a potent poison cocktail.
The Church (in the West, at least) had for centuries stood guard against its old Protestant foe, he said, but when it finally let down its ramparts to enter a new age of ecumenical (and interreligious) friendliness, it found that familiar enemies had been replaced by the forces of unbelief: in theology and philosophy, in behavioral sciences, in the arts, in popular mores. And it wasn’t prepared for that fight, at least not in the era’s climate of social upheaval and fresh doubts about former certainties.
In drawing out this point, Dave presented what I’ve called the Carlin Thesis, which I have never stopped finding insightful and useful. The post-Reformation history of Christianity, he demonstrated, has been a succession of compromises with the prevailing secularism, in each case producing a Christian-secular synthesis that left Christianity de-contented in doctrine, squishier in morals, more skeptical about the Bible, and less reverent in worship.
This movement applies mostly to historical Protestantism, he noted. But postconciliar Catholicism has suffered from it, too, and it will continue to suffer whenever Catholics likewise compromise; when our attempts to bring Christ to the world make us worldly instead. Let us heed that warning!
All this is now beyond Dave’s care, as he begins his journey to a new, perfect, and lasting world. But the force of his writing, advocacy, public service, faithful witness, and gentlemanly bearing remains for us to profit from. I pray for the repose of his soul, and I look ahead hopefully to meeting him again in glory.