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The Church’s liturgical calendar throws up some oddities sometimes. One set of Sundays, and other feasts and fasts, is fixed in relation to Easter, which moves around the spring. Another of feasts is fixed to Christmas, and a third is fixed to calendar dates. And so different occasions can coincide: a feast of the “sanctoral cycle” can fall on a Sunday, and all the feasts of the spring and early summer are vulnerable to being swallowed up by the events of Lent and Eastertide.
A feast day like Christmas will fall on a Sunday only approximately once every seven years. Even less frequent are the occasions when significant dates of the sanctoral and paschal cycles coincide. The most famous of these occasional coincidences is that between Good Friday and the Feast of the Annunciation, March 25. It last happened in 2016 and will not happen again until 2157.
This year, we have the coincidence of Ash Wednesday and the traditional date of the feast of the Roman martyr St. Valentine.
The tidy-minded modern mindset is inclined to see these clashes as inconvenient. Not only are there elaborate rules about which occasion takes precedence, but sometimes the celebration of one is moved by a day to avoid it. (March 25 this year is the Monday of Holy Week, which means that, like with Good Friday, the Annunciation will be moved to the Monday after the Octave of Easter, April 8.) Huge efforts were made over the course of the twentieth century to stop Lent being cluttered up with feasts of a non-Lenten character.
This was not the attitude of our predecessors in the Faith, who celebrated both coinciding events on the same day and looked for a symbolic significance in the coincidence. The feast of the Annunciation marks the day of the Incarnation, and tradition has it that Good Friday fell on the same day. The <a href="https://msf-america.org/blog/333-holy-thorn-relic">Holy Thorn of Andria</a> in Italy seems to agree: over the centuries, this relic of the Crown of Thorns has <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/33630/italys-bleeding-thorn-marks-the-coincidence-of-good-friday-annunciation">shed a few drops of blood</a> when Good Friday falls on 25th March. The same coincidence marked the day the English martyr St. Margaret Clitherow <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/extreme-catholic-heroism">suffered in 1586</a>. In a different way, the feasts of St. Patrick and St. Joseph, which always fall in Lent, give us something to look forward to.
St. Valentine and Ash Wednesday create a particular kind of clash because of the way they have become embedded in popular culture. St. Valentine was moved from February 14 in the liturgical reform of 1969, but he has remained there stubbornly in the popular imagination, as the patron of young couples. Ash Wednesday’s significance as the start of Lenten observance has been overwhelmed in some cultures by the celebration of &#8220;Carnival&#8221; or &#8220;Mardi Gras,&#8221; the &#8220;farewell to meat&#8221; that precedes it. This has taken on such a life of its own that it has spread over several days, swamping Ash Wednesday itself.
For this reason, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who oversaw the reform of the liturgy in the 1960s, expressed regret that he could not move Ash Wednesday to a Sunday. (See The Reform of the Liturgy, p. 307, n. 7.) He did manage to break the connection between the greeting-card industry and the liturgical feast of St. Valentine, sticking in St. Cyril and St. Methodius on February 14 instead. Despite this, even the Vatican Information Service called the 14th St. Valentine’s Day when Pope Francis, in 2014, thought it a good day to <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/pope-invites-engaged-couples-to-spend-valentines-day-with-him/">bless engaged couples</a>. Bugnini’s fear of the secular significance of the day <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/halloween-and-the-triduum-of-death">overcoming its religious meaning</a> was itself overcome by the desire to make something of religious significance out of a day noticed by the secular world.
There are various theories as to why Valentine’s Day has become associated with romantic love, but the association has no obvious connection with his holy life and heroic death in the third century. It is an example of popular culture simply making use of the Church’s calendar, at a time when this was not just the &#8220;liturgical calendar,&#8221; but everyone’s calendar. In Britain, the Monday after the “twelfth day” of Christmas, <a href="https://nationaltoday.com/plough-monday/">Plough Monday</a>, was the day to return to work after the break, and rents were (and in some places still are) collected on &#8220;quarter days&#8221; fixed by the great feasts of Christmas (December 25); the Annunciation (March 25); the Nativity of St. John the Baptist (June 24); and Michaelmas, or the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel (September 29). Phrases from the liturgy became associated with particular actions or attitudes: the word placebo <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/placebo">comes from</a> a psalm (114 in the Vulgate) commonly recited for the dead, including by those wishing to ingratiate themselves with the deceased’s family. This isn’t the secularization of the holy; it is the penetration of ordinary life by a ubiquitous devotional culture.
Placing romantic couples under the patronage of a celibate who was executed for his love of Christ in the distant past, for the sole reason that his feast falls in the early spring, seemed perfectly logical and appropriate to the pre-modern Catholic mind. Personally, I can’t see anything wrong with it, either. The couples certainly need his protection today, and, as St. Thérèse of Lisieux said in the context of her own eccentric devotions, &#8220;there is no jealousy in heaven.&#8221; Trying to turn the day into something not connected with the kind of love ordered to the goods of this world—marriage and children—is both quixotic and puritanical. These goods are good, and God made them. They have to be treated with care, and this is where the Church’s teaching can genuinely help out the world.
St. Valentine’s falling on Ash Wednesday this year is a reminder, like some of the more spectacular calendrical coincidences, that life is made up of both feasting and fasting. There must be no feasting without fasting, and no fasting without feasting, either.
Ash Wednesday is unusual as a day that is not a holy day of obligation but still widely observed as a devotional day, with people attending church to receive their ash. I would recommend this year that celebrations associated with St. Valentine take advantage of the proximity of Shrove Tuesday—“Fat Tuesday,” the feast before the fast of Lent—so that the importance of Ash Wednesday is not forgotten.

Valentines and Ashes!

Years ago, shortly after entering the Catholic Church, I had some conversations with Andy, a former Bible college classmate. One of those conversations, about the Holy Eucharist, remains clearly imprinted in my memory.
Andy believed that communion—bread and grape juice at his Evangelical church—was symbolic only, the same belief that I held before studying Church history and Catholic theology. I went over some of the history, explained pertinent points of Catholic doctrine, and noted how the two beliefs are quite different, even diametrically opposed.
Andy listened politely and closely to what I had to say, and then said, &#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t really think it&#8217;s a big deal. You believe it&#8217;s Jesus Christ, and I don&#8217;t. But I don&#8217;t see why it&#8217;s an issue.&#8221; I was stunned by his expression of indifference. I had expected him to argue for his position while rejecting the Catholic position. (I&#8217;ve had plenty of those conversations, but this wasn&#8217;t one of them.)
&#8220;But,&#8221; I said, &#8220;if you&#8217;re correct, then I am worshiping bread and wine, which is idolatrous. But if the Catholic Church is correct, why wouldn&#8217;t you want to receive Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist?&#8221;
Andy shrugged. &#8220;I don&#8217;t,&#8221; he repeated, &#8220;think it&#8217;s that big of deal.&#8221;
That conversation came back to me when I recently read an essay titled “<a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/11/07/giordano-eucharistic-sharing-ecumenicism-248942">A call for Catholics and Protestants to receive Communion—side by side</a>,” written by Meg Giordano, who teaches &#8220;philosophy at a Jesuit liberal arts college&#8221; and is &#8220;an ecumenical chaplain at that same Jesuit school&#8221;—Le Moyne College, in Syracuse, New York. That explains, perhaps, why her curious essay appears in America magazine, a Jesuit publication.
I say &#8220;curious&#8221; because Giordano—unlike certain Protestants and Catholics—does not argue for Protestants receiving Holy Communion. Rather, she writes,
<blockquote>What I have in mind is the idea of Catholics and Protestants sharing the experience of partaking in the Eucharist each according to their tradition—that is, side by side in a shared space with a Catholic priest serving the consecrated Eucharist to Catholic believers alongside a Protestant minister serving the Communion elements to Protestant believers. In all the places I’ve gone, all the shared spaces of ecumenical Christian experience, this one aspect of Christian identity—some might say the definitive aspect of Christian identity—remains a moment of division among us.</blockquote>
I don&#8217;t doubt Giordano&#8217;s sincerity, but I&#8217;m quite certain that she is “out-Jesuiting the Jesuits” with a combination of loaded sentiment, dismissal of doctrine, and rhetorical sleight-of-hand. Furthermore, despite her apparent protests to the contrary, she ends up in the clutches of indifference that my friend Andy refused to acknowledge and abandon.
Giordano&#8217;s approach involves the classic feint of giving lip service to &#8220;A&#8221; while promoting &#8220;Z,&#8221; which directly undermines &#8220;A.&#8221; So the &#8220;real presence of Christ in the Eucharist,&#8221; she writes, &#8220;is a profound and sacred mystery,&#8221; but her &#8220;experiences of fellowship, love and ecumenism&#8221; convince her that doctrinal differences, though important, must give way before a &#8220;shared Christian faith&#8221; that puts Christ before doctrine.
She appeals to a <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2022/documents/20220909-videomessaggio-comm-crossing.html">September 9, 2022 address</a> given (via video) by Pope Francis to an ecumenical gathering involving Catholics and Episcopalians. It doesn&#8217;t help, alas, that Pope Francis refers to both groups as &#8220;denominations,&#8221; but Giordano&#8217;s focus is on these statements:
<blockquote>Yes, we do not agree on everything. Yes, we have convictions that sometimes seem incompatible, or are incompatible. But that is precisely why we choose to love each other. Love is stronger than all disagreements and divisions. It brings peace, and peace does not seem possible.
That is why I want you to continue to work together on this to achieve unity. . . . Jesus Christ is a bond that is stronger and deeper than our cultures, our political options and even than our doctrines. The Lord! Jesus the Lord!</blockquote>
Giordano apparently takes this to mean that love for Christ can somehow trump or supersede doctrine, but this is a faulty reading. The pope&#8217;s point, I think, is that our shared love of Christ—who is always first and foremost—must inform how we approach and understand doctrine, as there is no conflict between the Incarnate Word (logos) and his words or his teaching (doctrina). If we love Christ, we must embrace and follow his teachings.
It’s notable, then, that Giordano makes vague references to the Last Supper and Christ’s high priestly prayer (John 17) but does not mention <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/why-catholics-arent-wrong-about-john-6">John 6</a> or <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/heres-why-you-can-be-absolutely-sure-that-paul-believed-in-the-eucharist">1 Corinthians 11</a>. But the cherry-picking, emphasizing unity, ignores the historical and, yes, doctrinal basis of unity: apostolic authority and succession, Catholic unity centered on episcopal and Petrine authority, and the reality of magisterial teaching guided and protected by the Holy Spirit. Of course Christ desires that “all of them may be one,” but that fact should raise questions (How so? In what way? By what means?) rather than promote a pick-and-choose approach to faith and doctrine.
The great British priest, author, and apologist Ronald Knox—a convert from the Anglican Communion—addressed this serious Protestant problem nearly a century ago in The Belief of Catholics, in discussing sola scriptura:
<blockquote>The Protestant had no conceivable right to base any arguments on the inspiration of the Bible, for the inspiration of the Bible was a doctrine which had been believed, before the Reformation, on the mere authority of the Church; it rested on exactly the same basis as the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Protestantism repudiated Transubstantiation, and in doing so repudiated the authority of the Church; and then, without a shred of logic, calmly went on believing in the inspiration of the Bible, as if nothing had happened! Did they suppose that biblical inspiration was a self-evident fact, like the axioms of Euclid? Or did they derive it from some words of our Lord? If so, what words? What authority have we, apart from that of the Church, to say that the epistles of Paul are inspired, and the epistle of Barnabas is not?</blockquote>
In similar fashion, Giordano wants to hold on to belief in Christ, love, unity, and fellowship—all of them good things—but avoid the real problem of authority. This should not be a surprise, as every form of Protestantism—however sophisticated or fundamentalist—eventually smashes headlong into the divinely instituted wall of ecclesial authority.
To circumvent this looming obstacle, Protestants can ignore it, deny it, or attack it.  Giordano chooses to ignore it, but she does so with clever appeals of sentiment while relying on an indifferentism that is, ironically, quite secular in nature. She would put Catholic and Protestant “side by side in a shared space,” thus implicitly indicating that the differences are inconvenient rather than consequential. Further, this would lead either to confusion and scandal or to further indifference. In both cases, any real unity would be eroded and diminished.
The obvious (to me) question from a Catholic is simple: why bother becoming Catholic when you can mimic Catholic praxis side-by-side and be &#8220;accompanied&#8221; by Catholics in the process? Well, perhaps that is a feature, not a bug. Could it be, in fact, that Giordano recognizes the real issue and is simply seeking to run around it?
Whatever her exact motives, it is troubling that a Catholic publication such as America magazine features an essay by a Protestant that undermines not only Catholic teaching, but basic theological thought. As any decently catechized Catholic knows, reception of Holy Communion indicates full and public communion with the Church, which is the household of God (1 Tim 3:15), headed on earth by the successor of St. Peter (cf. Matt 16:16-20), and which is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
And that really is a big deal.

A Eucharistic Potluck with Protestants

Two Christian holidays that never fail to get secular historians and anti-Catholic wannabe debunkers exercised are Christmas and Easter. In their fervor, these crusaders can&#8217;t help but create some myths of their own. Today, on the winter solstice, we&#8217;re preparing to celebrate Christmas at the end of the week—so let&#8217;s start by defending Easter, and then we&#8217;ll move on to the Nativity.
Every spring just before Easter, major news organizations run stories “debunking” one of the central tenets of the Christian faith: Jesus’ resurrection. Some take the form of an interview with a supposed biblical expert who puts forth reasons to doubt the Gospels’ veracity concerning the Resurrection; others breathlessly report some archaeological “discovery” that supposedly disproves the Resurrection, such as an ossuary that contains Jesus’ bones. Whatever form these attacks take, their objective is always the same: to sow doubt in the minds of believers and confirm those in the minds of unbelievers. 
One common myth about the Resurrection that even some Christians wrongly embrace, at least in part, concerns its celebration at Easter. The theory holds that Easter was a pagan festival that Christians “baptized.” This false narrative rests on the use of the word Easter itself to designate the Solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection. Skeptics note that the word is similar to the old English word Eostre, which was supposedly the name of an ancient Teutonic goddess of rising light and spring. For evidence of that, they point to a passage in On the Reckoning of Time by the English saint Bede (672-735), wherein he wrote, “April, Eosturmonath . . . has a name which is now translated ‘Paschal month’ and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honor feasts were celebrated in that month.”
But although Bede mentions the goddess’s name, he is the only author to have done so: there is no evidence outside his work for the existence of this goddess in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, or Germanic mythology. And note that this entire argument works only with the English language, since all other European languages derive their word for Easter (such as the French Pâques) from the Greek pascha, which in turn comes from the Hebrew word pesach, meaning Passover. 
When the history of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons in England and of the Saxons in continental Europe is considered, it becomes clear there is no connection between Easter and pagan rites. The Anglo-Saxons were converted in the late sixth century by St. Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604), and Charlemagne (742-814) forcibly brought the continental Saxons to the Faith in the eighth century. These conversions occurred long after Christians first celebrated the feast of Easter, which was firmly entrenched in the Church’s liturgical calendar by the second century. The celebration of the Lord’s resurrection is also well documented in Scripture and in writings by and about the early Christians. There was even an early Church crisis over the dating of Easter, such that when the Eastern bishop St. Polycarp (69-155) visited Rome in 154, he discussed the dating of Easter with Pope St. Pius I (r. 140-155). Ultimately, the matter was settled at the Council of Nicaea in 325.
But it is the celebration of Christmas, not Easter, that draws the most comparisons to pagan rites, such as those commemorating the winter solstice, and specifically ancient Roman celebrations for the gods Saturn and Sol Invictus. These comparisons even influenced the Puritans, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/christmas-1644">who rejected the celebration of Christmas</a> as “Foolstide.” Puritan influence in the United States kept the nation from recognizing Christmas as a federal holiday until 1870.  
The feast of the Roman god of agriculture, Saturn, was a two-day celebration of the end of the planting season and was known as the Saturnalia. During the reign of Emperor Augustus (r. 27 B.C.-A.D. 14) the festival would begin on December 17, but that date was later moved by Emperor Domitian (r. 51-96) to December 25. By the second century A.D., the celebration encompassed an entire week. 
The cult of Sol Invictus (the “Unconquered Sun”) was introduced in 274 by Emperor Aurelian (r. 270-275), but it was not associated with an annual event. Although the date for the celebration of Sol Invictus’s birthday was December 25—a date <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/was-jesus-born-december-25th">sometimes reckoned</a> as the winter solstice in the ancient world—the only documentary source for that date is a fourth-century illustrated calendar for a wealthy Christian known as the Chronography of 354.
It is easy for skeptics to claim that Christmas was borrowed from paganism, because Scripture does not provide a date or even a time of year for Christ’s birth. But the lack of calendar specificity in the Bible does not prove that the Church decided to “baptize” a pagan celebration with the Nativity of the Lord. There is no early Christian or pagan writing that indicates that December 25 was picked because of its correspondence with the Saturnalia or the birthday of Sol Invictus. In fact, early Christians went out of their way to demonstrate how different they were from the pagans. They recognized that the Nativity merited a place in the liturgical calendar, so by the third century, Christmas was celebrated on December 25 in the West and January 6 in the East.
The celebration of Easter is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and was a central focus of the early Christians. The Sabbath was changed by the early Jewish converts from Saturday to Sunday in recognition of the Resurrection and was not borrowed from pagan practice. 
Fixing the date for Christmas on December 25 had less to do with pagan custom, the winter solstice, or Sol Invictus and more to do with Jewish tradition than pagan custom. In Jewish tradition, March 25 was celebrated as the date of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, when the Lord promised to send a lamb to complete the sacrifice. It also marked the first day of the Creation, when God brought forth light. The early Christians easily recognized the connection between Christ the Lamb and the Light, and dated both his conception and death to March 25. If the Incarnation occurred on March 25, then it follows that the Nativity occurred nine months later on December 25. For the early Christians “the decisive factor was the connection of creation and cross, of creation and Christ’s conception,” not the desire to baptize pagan celebrations.

A Christmas Baptism of the Winter Solstice?

<div>How many of the twelve apostles died as martyrs?</div><div>
The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/apostles-who-werent-part-of-the-twelve">twelve apostles </a>are Peter, Andrew, James (son of Zebedee), John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James (son of Alphaeus), Thaddeus, Simon (the Zealot), and Judas.
As you indicate, Judas took his own life (Matt. 27:1-5), and St. John, the son of Zebedee, was assigned by Jesus to take of his mother Mary (John 19:25-27), and a strong tradition holds that <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08492a.htm">he later died of natural causes at an old age in Ephesus</a>.
Scripture conveys that James (the Greater), the son of Zebedee, was martyred by King Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1-3), although the king himself <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/who-was-the-first-apostle-to-be-martyred">was struck dead by an angel not long afterward</a> (Acts 12:19-23). There is abundant testimony in the early Church that St. Peter, who was imprisoned on the occasion of James’s execution (Acts 12:3), <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11744a.htm">was martyred around twenty years later in Rome</a>, along with <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11567b.htm">St. Paul</a>.
St. James (the Lesser), son of Alphaeus, is often identified with St. James, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/brethren-of-the-lord">“the brother,” i.e., relative, of Jesus</a>, the bishop of Jerusalem noted in Acts 15, was who martyred by stoning in Jerusalem in the A.D. 60s, as Eusebius testifies (<a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250102.htm">Church II, 23</a>), and also <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08280a.htm">Josephus, the noted Jewish historian of antiquity</a>. As Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20060628.html">has stated</a>, “Among experts, the question of the identity of these two figures with the same name, James son of Alphaeus and James ‘the brother of the Lord,’ is disputed.”
We also see that tradition holds that St. Thomas preached in India <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14658b.htm">and suffered martyrdom there</a>, as Pope St. John Paul II <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1986/february/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19860205_s-tommaso-apostolo.html">affirmed in his 1986 apostolic visit</a>. In addition, tradition holds that St. Andrew <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01471a.htm">was martyred via a form of crucifixion around A.D.60</a>.
St. Bartholomew—also understood by many scholars as “Nathaniel”—is also believed to have been martyred, <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02313c.htm">reportedly either by beheading or being flayed alive</a>.
St. Philip <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11799a.htm">may have been martyred in Hierapolis</a> (located within modern-day Turkey), although that may be the tomb of <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/250103.htm">St. Philip the deacon, noted in the Acts of the Apostles.</a>
St. Matthew, The Roman Martyrology conveys, was <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/st-mark-ji-tianxiang-addict-martyr-and-saint">martyred</a>, <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10056b.htm">although the manner of his death is disputed</a>.
Finally, tradition also holds that St. Simon (the Zealot), the son of Clopas and who is also called Jude, <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13796b.htm">was martyred</a>, as was his apostolic companion, St. Jude (Thaddeus). They are both listed in the <a href="https://archive.org/stream/romanmartyrology00cathuoft/romanmartyrology00cathuoft_djvu.txt">Roman Martyrology</a> and the Roman canon (Eucharistic Prayer I).
For more, get your hands on a copy of <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/these-twelve-the-gospel-through-the-apostles-eyes/?searchid=10224667&amp;search_query=apostles">These Twelve </a>by Rod Bennett :The Gospel Through the Apostles&#8217; Eyes.
</div>

Who Are the Twelve Apostles, and What Happened to Them?

Joe Heschmeyer discusses the art of engaging with individuals who may hold differing views on the Catholic Church. He emphasizes the importance of understanding their motivations and addressing their concerns with empathy and respect. Drawing on biblical examples, Joe outlines strategies for navigating difficult conversations and discerning when to continue dialogue and when to gracefully disengage.
Transcript:
Hey, Joe, good afternoon. Like the previous callers, big fan of your work, the YouTube channel, the stuff that Catholic Answers puts out on social media.
And my question, sort of actually related to the previous question before the break is, as you have these engagements with folks that are not Catholic and are interested in the faith, or perhaps not, but they demonstrate an unwillingness to avail themselves fully of the historical record and maybe deny some of the very good points that you make in your books and in your presentations about how the early church was the Catholic church, at what point or what is your criteria for is it worth continuing that dialogue?
Yeah, that&#8217;s a really good question. So I&#8217;m a big believer of answering the person and not the argument as much as possible. And I know I&#8217;ve given this example on the show before, but I&#8217;m going to give it again. In John 11, at the death of Lazarus, when Jesus gets there, he waits a couple days.
And Martha sees him and says, &#8220;Lord, if you&#8217;d been here, my brother would not have died.&#8221; And she&#8217;s trying to grapple with some theological questions. And so Jesus talks to her about the resurrection and kind of leads her into faith in a deeper way in him.
Then when he gets to Mary, Mary&#8217;s weeping, and she says verbatim the same thing. &#8220;Lord, if you&#8217;d been here, my brother would not have died.&#8221; But she&#8217;s crying. And so Jesus doesn&#8217;t go on with theological excursions about the resurrection.
He cries with her and then goes with her to the tomb of her brother, and then eventually raises the brother from the dead. But he enters emotionally into a situation that isn&#8217;t primarily a theological problem. And so one of the trickiest things to do, both as an apologist and just interpersonally, is know when is this a problem that needs solving? When is this a theological nut that needs to be cracked at all? When is something else kind of going on? And so you can have people who raise any number of issues against the Catholic Church, that&#8217;s not really the issue they care about. So sometimes in one-on-one conversation, I know that&#8217;s not explicitly what you&#8217;re asking about, but in one-on-one conversation, Jay Butitshevsky has a good test that I will sometimes use, where I&#8217;ll ask something like, &#8220;Okay, well, if this thing you&#8217;re raising, it turned out that the Catholic Church was right and you were wrong,
would that make you more open to becoming Catholic?&#8221; And if they say no,
then it&#8217;s like, &#8220;Okay, well, let&#8217;s not waste our time with that. What are the actual barriers keeping you back? What are the actual issues? Not just the ones that sound good. What are the issues that are stopping you from being a Catholic right now?&#8221; Because that&#8217;s the stuff that matters. Let&#8217;s not waste our time.
And so that can be a good way of just streamlining the conversation away from the salacious and scandalous to the actual things that are holding people back, which sometimes it&#8217;s the salacious and scandalous stuff, but that&#8217;s rarely it, in my experience. It&#8217;s usually other things.
And so there are times where someone is just acting in bad faith. They&#8217;re just being a troll. And there&#8217;s nothing you can do there. In Mark 11, the scribes and Pharisees come up to Jesus and they ask, &#8220;By what authority are you doing these things and who gave you the authority to do them?&#8221; And they&#8217;re just trying to trap Jesus, but I get them to explicitly declare that He is the Messiah and explicitly declare Himself to have this divine authority so then they can arrest Him for blasphemy. They&#8217;re not asking a good faith question. They&#8217;re not trying to understand. They&#8217;re just trying to get Him to say something indicting or something that they can indict Him for.
And so Jesus doesn&#8217;t answer their question. He responds by asking them a question. He says, &#8220;I&#8217;ll ask you a question, answer me, and I will tell you about what authority I do these things. Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men? Answer me.&#8221; And they wouldn&#8217;t because they knew the political calculation. If they said that John&#8217;s baptism was from heaven, people would turn on them for saying, &#8220;Well, why didn&#8217;t you follow John?&#8221; But if they explicitly denied John&#8217;s baptism and said, &#8220;It&#8217;s manmade,&#8221; then they would say, &#8220;Well, you know, we like John.&#8221; So they&#8217;re going to risk alienating people politically either way. And fascinatingly, in this discussion, they don&#8217;t even speak a word of, &#8220;Well, what&#8217;s the actual right answer?&#8221; They don&#8217;t seem even at all interested in the truth. It&#8217;s just this kind of political question. And so when they reveal themselves, and Jesus gives them a chance to reveal themselves as being of good or bad faith, once they reveal themselves of bad faith, He&#8217;s done talking with them. And so I try to follow that same advice. There are times where someone reveals themselves to be of bad faith.
Now, I think when you&#8217;re talking to Protestants, you have to recognize that they often are not very deep in history, often have gotten a distorted version of history if they&#8217;ve gotten it at all, or they&#8217;ve gotten it mediated through Protestant sources, or it&#8217;s possible they just aren&#8217;t reading the things in the same way you&#8217;ve read them.
And so we want to make a lot of space for that without assuming bad faith. I try to keep that a very high bar. I&#8217;d rather at the end of my life know, or have it revealed to me by God, that I wasted my own time dealing with somebody who turned out to not have an open heart, than discover that I turned somebody away who was genuinely seeking the truth and genuinely trying to find out more about Christ and His Church.

When to Walk Away from an Apologetic Dialogue

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Did Jesus ever turn bread and wine into His Body before the Last Supper?

Is annulment just Catholic divorce?

My Catholic friend buried a statue of St. Joseph upside down

Can two non-practicing baptized Catholics get married outside of the Catholic Church?

Can a Catholic watch K Pop Demon Hunters?

I recently saw in a church dia de los muerte images displayed next to Mary images.

&#8220;Is annulment just Catholic divorce?&#8221; This episode explores the nuances of annulment in the Catholic Church, addressing common misconceptions. Additionally, we tackle questions about the implications of not becoming Catholic, the significance of burying a St. Joseph statue, and the challenges of faith in the context of differing beliefs.
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Is Annulment Just Catholic Divorce? Marriage, Faith, and God

In the late 1260s, when St. Thomas Aquinas presented the strongest arguments against the existence of God in the first part of the Summa Theologiae, the first objection he offered was that if “God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.” This is what’s known as the “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/why-horrible-suffering-does-not-disprove-gods-existence">problem of evil</a>,” and variations of it date back to at least Epicurus (341 – 270 B.C.). In 2023, it remains one of the most common arguments against the existence of God. Some versions of the argument are stronger than others, though. Consider this meme:

At first glance, the argument might appear convincing: God sounds like the maniac from Philippa Foot’s famous “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem">trolley problem</a>,” who ties people to trolley tracks. But upon closer inspection, the argument is far from compelling—or even coherent.
Consider the second line: that as God, “you create some people, place them on a track and make a trolley hurtle towards them.” What does this represent, specifically?
On the one hand, you could interpret it to mean that God is evil for creating people in a world in which there’s physical pain and suffering (what’s sometimes called “natural evil”). But if that makes God “evil,”1 wouldn’t we also have to condemn all parents as evil, for bringing children into a world in which there’s pain and suffering? Even if you’re willing to take the argument <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/unless-youre-judas-anti-natalism-fails">to such an extreme</a>, the rest of the argument still makes no sense: it’s simply not true (at least in this life) that believing in God spares you from <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/job">pain and suffering</a>.
So perhaps we should understand it to mean spiritual evils: that God is evil for creating a world in which there’s sin and the possibility of hell. But if this is the interpretation, it’s simply untrue that we’re “tied to the track.” The whole point of sin and damnation is that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/isnt-hell-incompatible-with-a-loving-god">we choose it</a>. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “to die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God&#8217;s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell’” (CCC 1033). So a better analogy would be that we have placed ourselves on the track, the trolley is coming, and God is offering to move us off of the track. So will we trust him?

Does the Trolley Problem Work Against God?

Defending God’s existence against Scientism

Evangelization, the Papacy, and My Journey of Faith (Interview)

I’m always surprised by the ignorance of most Christians when it comes to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/who-are-the-jehovahs-witnesses">Jehovah’s Witnesses</a>. For instance, my wife, who is a cradle Catholic, thought they were Protestants like any others, but ones that just happened to go door-to-door in their evangelization work. She was shocked to find out that they don’t believe in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/in-defense-of-the-trinity">the Trinity</a> or the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-do-we-refute-the-soul-sleep-argument">immortality of the soul</a>. And many people I speak to have no idea that Jehovah’s Witnesses practice a form of shunning against former members (called disfellowshipping). “Like the Amish?” they’ll say.
But the ignorance can go both ways. As a teenage Jehovah’s Witness, I’ll never forget the time in high school when I learned from a Baptist girl that she (and her church) believed in the Trinity. “You believe in that three-headed god?” I asked. “I thought only Catholics believed that!”
As a former Witness, I’d like to present a few of the more salient points you should be aware of when encountering a Witness. This will be a sort of “insider’s perspective” on Witness practice and belief, where I highlight some of the things people unfamiliar with the Witnesses miss when <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/evangelizing-jehovahs-witnesses">dialoguing with them</a>. It’s not exhaustive, but it is a place to start.
First of all, “the organization,” as it was colloquially referred to by the membership, is a bureaucratic entity that is constantly changing. For decades, the mainstay of JW life was the reporting of “time,” or the hours spent going door-to-door that every Witness in good standing was expected to complete—typically a minimum of eight hours per month. That requirement was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/religion/timekeepers-no-rank-file-jehovahs-witnesses-say-goodbye-tracking-prose-rcna126582">done away with</a> recently—an astonishing development, because it was formerly understood to be a <a href="https://watchtowerwayback.org/jw-wb/English/Magazines/The%20Watchtower/1943%20The%20Watchtower.pdf">directive from Christ Himself</a> (203), with the Watchtower’s <a href="https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/201988328#h=5">detailed instructions</a> on how to properly do it being deeply embedded in Witness praxis.
The shunning practice has undergone a pretty significant modification as well. Among other things, Witnesses are now <a href="https://cne.news/article/4220-jehovahs-witnesses-ease-shunning-rules-after-blow-in-oslo-court">permitted to say a greeting</a> to the disfellowshipped person (the exception being those disfellowshipped for apostasy). Finally, one of their lingering failed prophecies has been <a href="https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20100615/United-in-Love-Annual-Meeting-Report/">further</a> “<a href="https://jwfacts.com/watchtower/generation.php#2010">adjusted</a>”—namely, that “the generation” that witnessed the events of 1914 would not die prior to the start of the Great Tribulation. It’s now been necessary to posit the existence of “overlapping generations” as a suitable interpretation of “this generation” (Matt. 24:34) to avert systemic doctrinal collapse <a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[i]</a>.
Nevertheless, there are a several constants when it comes to Jehovah’s Witnesses. Let’s discuss some common ground we have with Witnesses that you might not be aware of.
What do we have in common with the Witnesses, besides both being lumped into the general category of “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/they-told-me-jesus-isnt-god">Christians</a>”? Witnesses are generally considered “conservative,” and so there is a good deal of overlap regarding traditional morals, with the notable exceptions of our stances on remarriage and contraception. But the major (and perhaps surprising) area of convergence is the similar insistence on membership in a visible, earthly organization as being necessary for salvation. For the Witnesses, the Watchtower organization is God’s dispenser of truth on earth. God leads it into all truth through a gradual process of increasing “light” (Prov. 4:18). “Current understandings” that are suspected by a Witness to be wrong are therefore opportunities to suspend judgment and “wait on Jehovah” to correct matters.
It might be necessary to carefully distinguish this from Catholic teaching. Some Witnesses are aware of certain changes in tone in the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council and will attempt to conflate the two phenomena. Catholics believe in one dogmatic gospel, delivered once and for all by Christ Jesus to his apostles. The understanding of this deposit can deepen, and we’re assured of the Holy Spirit’s guidance in this process, but it can never contradict what came before. And on certain prudential matters, the Church can change her stance as the needs of a particular age may require (on questions of social justice and relations with other faiths, for example). In contrast, Witness dogma can openly contradict what came before it, and Witnesses admit as much, based on their belief in progressive revelation. For example, at one time, Witnesses believed that all Christians would go to heaven upon their deaths. Later, in 1935, they received <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Conscience-struggle-between-religion/dp/0999499203">clarification</a> from God that only 144,000 would do so, and that the rest would live forever on a paradise earth (16).
Despite these crucial differences in our understanding of how revelation works, Catholics can still praise the Witnesses for seeing the need for a concrete, visible faith community with a clear authority structure. Sadly, though, many ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses have not considered the possibility of entering the Catholic Church precisely because they feel so burned by their experience with religious authority in the Witnesses. Presenting a compelling vision of our historic hierarchical structure and how it corrects the deficiencies in the Witness model is therefore something to approach sensitively when talking with ex-Witnesses.
Remember that if a Witness is willing to talk to you at any length about matters of faith, you’ve already made some progress. Being exposed to something different is all it takes to trigger curiosity many times, so just giving him a glimpse of the beauty and depth of Catholicism can often be the best strategy.

Jehovah’s Witnesses: An Insider Perspective

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

The Heart of the Protestant Gospel

It’s that time of year again, when many Christians encounter claims that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/is-catholicism-pagan">pagan</a> deities predating <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/jesus-christ">Jesus Christ</a> were born on December 25. In popular films, internet videos, and other media, you can find long lists of gods who were supposedly born on the same day.
This idea is not limited to unbelievers. I have heard many Christians claim that the date of Christmas was intended to provide an alternative to pagan celebrations. In some ways, it has become a pious legend. On the other hand, some Fundamentalist denominations refuse to celebrate Christmas for this reason.
Of all the deities of whom people make this claim, only three can be found to come close: Saturn, Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/exposing-the-mithras-myth">Mithras</a>.
<h2>1. Saturnalia</h2>
Saturnalia was the feast dedicated to the Roman god Saturn. Established around 220 B.C., this feast was originally celebrated on December 17. Eventually, the feast was extended to last an entire week, ending on December 23. The supposed connection to Christmas is based on the proximity of the two festivals to each other.
This can be found repeatedly on the internet. In his article &#8220;<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120426224842/http://voices.yahoo.com/saturnalia-reason-we-celebrate-christmas-december-11973.html?cat=37" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Saturnalia: The Reason We Celebrate Christmas in December</a>&#8221; (also available <a href="https://www.stepbystep.com/Saturnalia-The-Reason-We-Celebrate-Christmas-in-December-135883/">here</a>), columnist Mark Whittington explains:
<blockquote>It has been suggested that Christians in the fourth century assigned December 25th as Christ&#8217;s birthday (and hence Christmas) because pagans already observed this day as a holiday. In this way the problem of eliminating an already popular holiday would be sidestepped, thus making the Christianizing of the population easier.</blockquote>
If the suggestion were correct, one would expect to find at least a single reference by early Christians to support it. Instead we find scores of quotations from Church Fathers indicating a desire to distance themselves from pagan religions.
<h2>2 (and 3). Sol Invictus and Mithras</h2>
The feast of Sol Invictus was the attempt by the Roman emperor Aurelian to reform the cult of Sol, the Roman sun god, and reintroduce it to his people, inaugurating Sol&#8217;s temple and holding games for the first time in 274. Not only was this festival not annual, but it also cannot be historically documented as having been established on December 25 by Aurelian (see Steven Hijmans, Sol Invictus, The Winter Solstice, and the Origins of Christmas, Mouseion, Series III, vol. 3, 377-398).
According to inscriptions on candle votives and other ancient works of art, there is a link between <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/exposing-the-mithras-myth">Mithras</a> and Sol Invictus. In some cases, it appears the Mithraists believed that Mithras and Sol were two different manifestations of the same god. In others, they appear to be two gods united as one. These connections are difficult to understand, given our limited knowledge of the Mithraic belief system, but they are important because they help to explain why skeptics claim that the birthday of Mithras was celebrated on December 25.
A manuscript known as the <a href="http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chronography_of_354_00_eintro.htm">Chronography of 354</a> shows the birth of Sol Invictus being celebrated on December 25. Given the fact that the Mithraists equated their god with Sol in one way or another, it is understandable that they may have appropriated the date as their own. The problem for the skeptic is that no evidence exists to suggest that Aurelian was a Mithraist, or that he even had Mithraism in mind when he instituted the feast of Sol Invictus. The connection of Mithra to December 25 is only coincidental.
The deathblow to both the Mithras and Sol Invictus parallels is that the Chronography of 354 is the earliest mention of any pagan god being celebrated on December 25. The celebration of the birth of Christ by Christians is also mentioned on the calendar as having been celebrated on that day, which diminishes the likelihood that the pagan feast came first. At the very least, it negates the claim that it can be proved from the historical record that any December 25 pagan festival predates the Christian tradition.
Although the date of Christ’s birth is not given to us in Scripture, there is documented evidence that December 25 was already of some significance to Christians prior to 354. One example can be found in the writings of Hippolytus of Rome, who explains in his Commentary on the book of Daniel (c. 204) that the Lord’s birth was believed to have occurred on that day:
<blockquote>For the first advent of our Lord in the flesh, when he was born in Bethlehem, was December 25th, Wednesday, while Augustus was in his forty-second year, but from Adam, five thousand and five hundred years. He suffered in the thirty-third year, March 25th, Friday, the eighteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while Rufus and Roubellion were Consuls.</blockquote>
The reference to Adam can be understood in light of another of Hippolytus’s writings, the <a href="https://tcschmidtblog.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/schmidt-calculating-december-25-as-the-birth-of-jesus-in-hippolytus1.pdf">Chronicon</a>, where he explains that Jesus was born nine months after the anniversary of Creation. According to his calculations, the world was created on the vernal equinox, March 25, which would mean Jesus was born nine months later, on December 25.
Nineteenth-century liturgical scholar Louis Duchesne explains that “towards the end of the third century the custom of celebrating the birthday of Christ had spread throughout the whole Church, but . . . it was <a href="https://archive.org/details/christianworshi00mcclgoog/page/n4">not observed</a> everywhere on the same day” (Christian Worship, Its Origin and Evolution: A study of the Latin liturgy up to the time of Charlemagne, 260).
In the West, the birth of Christ was celebrated on December 25, and in the East on January 6.
Duchesne writes, “One is inclined to believe that the Roman Church made choice of the 25th of December in order to enter into rivalry with Mithraism. This reason, however, leaves unexplained the choice of the 6th of January” (id., 261). His solution, therefore, was that the date of Christ’s birth was decided by using as a starting point the day on which he was believed to have died. This would explain the discrepancies between the celebrations in the East and West.
Given the great aversion on the part of some Christians to anything pagan, the logical conclusion here is that one celebration has nothing to do with the other. In his book <a href="https://www.ignatius.com/The-Spirit-of-the-Liturgy-P2310.aspx">Spirit of the Liturgy, Pope Benedict XVI</a> explains,
<blockquote>The claim used to be made that December 25 developed in opposition to the Mithras myth, or as a Christian response to the cult of the unconquered sun promoted by Roman emperors in the third century in their efforts to establish a new imperial religion. However, these old theories can no longer be sustained. The decisive factor was the connection of creation and Cross, of creation and Christ’s conception (105-107).</blockquote>
These explanations of how December 25 came to be the date of Christmas are all plausible. But we know one thing for sure: the evidence that this day held a special significance to Christians predates the proof of a supposed celebration of Sol Invictus or other pagan deities on that day.
Nor was the Christians&#8217; choice of a date so close to the winter solstice done to mimic pagan festivals. The various pagan religions all had festivals spanning the calendar. Whatever month the early Christians might have otherwise chosen would still place Christmas near some pagan celebration, and oppositional theorists would still be making the same claims.
The solstice was important to everyone for agricultural reasons in the same way water is important to the survival of human beings, and so we see rituals involving water showing up in various religions. That doesn&#8217;t prove that one borrowed the idea or theme from another.

Why is Christmas on December 25?

How do you deal with being the only Catholic in the family?

I’m 21 and the only Catholic in my family. How do I find a Catholic community?

I’m the only Catholic in my family. How do I keep cool when having a heated debate with my brother?

I’m converting and will be the only Catholic in my family. How do I break this news to my family without burning bridges?

&#8220;How do I deal with being the only Catholic?&#8221; This question resonates with many, especially those navigating family dynamics. The discussion also touches on finding a Catholic community as a young adult, managing heated debates with family members, and approaching the sensitive topic of conversion without causing conflict.
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