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Can You Reject Infallibility and still be Catholic?

In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Jimmy Akin joins Cy Kellett to explain why popes take new names after their election. Drawing from Church history and tradition, Jimmy explores how this practice developed, what these names signify, and why the choice often reflects a pope’s mission, inspiration, or theological emphasis.
Transcript:
Cy: The question is timely, so I wanted to throw it out to you. Where do popes get their names from?
Jimmy: Well, they pick them. This is actually the very first decision a pope makes after he becomes pope. The first decision is, do you accept your election? And if he says yes and he&#8217;s already a bishop, bam. That moment he&#8217;s the pope. So once he&#8217;s become pope, the very next thing that happens is they ask him, by what name do you wish to be called? So this is his first decision as pope. And then it gets announced, and then he comes out and so forth and greets the folks.
So that&#8217;s where the names come from, if you interpret the question in one sense. But there are a couple of other senses that you could ask it in. One of them is, well, what&#8217;s the source of the names? If the pope himself picks it, where is he getting it from? And the answer is, these days, popes get their name typically from previous popes. And so they look back on who were the previous popes, who&#8217;s someone that I would like to emulate, what message will be sent if I pick this pope&#8217;s name rather than that pope&#8217;s name. And they pick it from a previous pope, but not always.
Now, originally, popes didn&#8217;t have a papal name. You could argue Peter did, because Jesus changed his name. So he got his name from Jesus. His birth name was Simeon or Simon, but then Jesus called him Peter, and that&#8217;s what other people called him. But then after Peter, they just kept their birth name. So, like Pope Clement, he would have just been born Clement. And, you know, Pope Linus, he would have just been born Linus. And so they took their name from whatever their parents had given them.
Now, there were a few deviations from this in the first millennium. So that&#8217;s between, you know, that&#8217;s the first 10 centuries up to the year 1000, there were a few. The first guy to pick a different papal name was named Mercurius. That was his birth name. But he didn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s reported, at least. I haven&#8217;t seen a direct quote from him on this. But it&#8217;s reported that he didn&#8217;t feel it would be appropriate for the Christian world to be led by someone named Mercurius, because Mercury was the name of a Roman God. And so it&#8217;s like, why is your Christian leader named after a pagan God? So he thought there was a problem with that.
But not all popes have thought that, because there was a previous pope, Dionysius, and Dionysius was also a pagan god. So there have been popes with pagan god names, but Mercurius thought that was a bad idea. So he took the regnal name or papal name, John, and he was the second person to have the name John. So he became known as Pope John II. There were a handful of others in the first thousand years of church history that did the same thing.
But when the papal name custom really took hold was in the second millennium, just before the year 1000 in 996, we had a gentleman take a special name as pope. And thereafter, almost everybody did. I mean, basically, for a thousand years, you had people picking a new name when they became pope, with like three exceptions in the 1500s that kept their birth names.
And you might wonder, well, why would this happen at this point in time? You know, why would popes all of a sudden start this tradition of taking a different name? I have never seen a study done on that, a historical study done on that question. But my guess is it&#8217;s because of what royalty were doing. It&#8217;s been common with royalty throughout history to pick a different regnal name than their birth name.
And so by the Middle Ages, you know, when the year 1000 happened, kings and queens were a big deal in Europe. And the pope was also a monarch. He ruled the papal states. And so to make the. And it seemed more like a person was more authoritative if they had a new name in their new office as pope. And so it brought dignity to the office in that cultural context.
And so I suspect that the naming conventions among European monarchs had an influence on popes taking new names. If that hypothesis is true, then we might expect that sometime in the third millennium, that custom may fall away, because kings and queens are not a big deal now. The pope does not have the papal states anymore. And rather than trying to acquire more influence by imitating what secular rulers are doing, the popes are trying to come across as humble and as the servant of the servants of God.
So at some point in the third millennium, maybe 100 years from now, we may have popes just sticking with their baptismal names, unless their baptismal name is Peter or Jesus, because we&#8217;re not going to have a Pope Peter II. No one wants to. Someone who had a birth name of Peter, they would definitely pick something else, because otherwise it would be like, who are you to compare yourself to St. Peter, you know, so I don&#8217;t expect a Peter II.
Also, if someone&#8217;s named Jesus, what Pope Jesus? Really, that would be a bit of a shock to some people. And so I suspect anyone named Jesus or Peter will keep up the custom of changing names. But the custom may fade away.
And we even see signs that we&#8217;re living in an age right now where popes are reconsidering the pool of names they want to draw from. Because in 1978, we had John Paul I elected, and he had the first double papal name in history. He said he wanted to honor Pope John and Pope Paul, so he called himself John Paul.
Then we had Pope Francis, which was another unprecedented papal name after Saint Francis of Assisi. And even if we look at other popes like Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, they had reached back hundreds of years to find a papal name. And so that suggests that popes these days are feeling like maybe the current route, bunch of names is a little stale and they&#8217;re rethinking some things.
But I did a whole study of the subject of papal names back in 2013 when Pope Benedict XVI retired. I turned it into an ebook just called *Pope Names*. It&#8217;s not currently on Amazon, but I&#8217;m hoping I can get it up again real quickly.
And I also talk about this in the upcoming Monday episode of the *Jimmy Akin Podcast*, where I look at how four popes, the four most recent popes, so that&#8217;s John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and Leo XIV, how they met the world. And I cover their choice of papal names because that&#8217;s their first decision about how they&#8217;re going to interact with the world.
And then we watch footage of them coming out on the balcony, the loggia at St. Peter&#8217;s, and we analyze their body language and see what that tells us about how they&#8217;re going to reign. So there are some very interesting lessons you can learn about them from just their opening interaction before they say anything in public. Just studying. Okay. What&#8217;s their name and what are they doing with their body? That tells us a bunch about their reigns, and I&#8217;m going to be covering that on the *Jimmy Akin Podcast* on Monday.
Cy: Very cool. David, I&#8217;m sorry you weren&#8217;t able to stay on the line, but I hope you were listening and that answer was helpful to you.

Why Do Popes Change Their Names?

What happens when the Church is without a pope? In this Flannel Panel episode, Cy Kellett, Joe Heschmeyer, and Chris Check discuss the real-world effects of the current sede vacante. With no Holy Father to appoint bishops or canonize saints, important moments—like the potential canonization of Blessed Carlo Acutis—are on hold. The panel explores the theological and practical consequences of not having a pope and why the papacy remains essential to the life of the Church.
Transcript:
Cy: Trent Horn posted a video today about Pope Francis. And underneath it, people, you know, they write their comments and I read through the comments and there were probably four or five, maybe six comments saying, &#8220;I just came into the church yesterday and today I don&#8217;t have a Pope.&#8221; It was, I felt sad about that. It felt&#8230; well, it&#8217;s just sad, I guess.
Joe: Yeah, even, you know, I remember in 2005, I was in college and I&#8217;d never been in a church without a Pope before because I was born in &#8217;85, so I was, what was I, I guess, 20 when Pope John Paul II died. And it was very startling as a cradle Catholic. I can only imagine people who have come in and then suddenly find themselves without a Pope. And, you know, I&#8217;m thinking in here in Kansas City, we&#8217;re in the process of getting a new bishop on the Kansas side. So that was already a great deal of change. And, yeah, so, you know, finding yourself without a bishop or a Pope all at once is a very strange spot to be at.
Chris: Joe. Yeah, Joe&#8217;s ahead of us in this regard. We&#8217;re not going to have a bishop named until there&#8217;s a new Pope.
Cy: I guess so. No, it can&#8217;t be right. Because by canon law, I don&#8217;t think even if the past Pope had already signed it or something, that will all be stopped until the new Pope comes. Right? None of that can happen.
Joe: Yeah, that&#8217;s right. Basically, everything in terms of church governance slows to a snail&#8217;s pace.
Cy: Wait, what is it usually at? What pace is the church governance usually at? If we&#8217;re going all the way down to snail&#8217;s pace.
Joe: I mean, if God wanted things to be done quickly, he would have put the Vatican somewhere else. But there is this&#8230;
Chris: French, the Italians, everybody.
Cy: We&#8217;ll go after the English next.
Joe: I mean, the Germans would have been fast. I don&#8217;t know if it would have gone well, but they would have been quick about it.
Cy: Yeah, right.
Chris: He put it in Rome. I mean, these were people who got stuff done.
Joe: Yeah, Romans.
Chris: That&#8217;s a good point.
Cy: So, past tense, what happened?
Chris: Go ahead, Joe, you were making a point.
Jow: Well, just that everything slows down right now because in terms of governing decisions, anything that can be put off will be put off. So there&#8217;s some day-to-day stuff just kind of keeping the lights on that will continue to happen for the next few weeks. And if there are any truly urgent matters, they can handle that. But anything that you can defer to the next Pope is supposed to be deferred. And so I think you can expect, you know, even, you know, Blessed Carlo Acutis. His canonization is now suspended.
Cy: I didn&#8217;t think of that. Oh, my goodness, Joe. Because lots of people were going to Rome for that.
Joe: Yes.
Cy: Oh, wow.
Joe: It puts our missed day off really in perspective when you think about all the people who are impacted in a much greater way. Just because all of these things that rely on the Pope&#8217;s presence and authority&#8230; yeah, we&#8217;re going to have to wait. And so please pray.
Cy: You know, on the one hand, it&#8217;s such a big deal, but the other side of being Catholic is we don&#8217;t have a bishop here in San Diego. We don&#8217;t have a Pope. Sunday Mass at the parish, weekday Mass, it&#8217;ll all just be the same. It&#8217;s odd to&#8230; it&#8217;s both hugely dramatic and also not dramatic at all.
Joe: Yeah, there is something to that. That part of the beauty of having tradition, part of the beauty of being part of something that is 2000 years old, is that you don&#8217;t have to worry, well, is this going to be a totally different religion with the next Pope?
Cy: Right, right.
Joe: You don&#8217;t want to say autopilot, because that&#8217;s not actually a spiritually healthy way to live, but there is a sense in which the fundamentals are baked in in such a way that there is some presence and peace, and thanks be to God.
Chris: And as Jimmy said in the previous hour, the likelihood of the seat being vacant for very long in modern times is very low. Unlikely.
Cy: What&#8217;s the longest? Do either of you know the longest? It&#8217;s been years.
Joe: The longest it was vacant was years, but that was many centuries ago. In the 20th century, most papal conclaves are just a few days long because, I mean, the current way it&#8217;s set up, you need a 2/3 majority. So if all of their&#8230; you actually, this is one of the small things I&#8217;ve heard secular media get wrong. They&#8217;ve been saying 138 voting age cardinals or cardinal electors. There&#8217;s actually 135 eligible cardinal electors. So 2/3 of that is, I believe, 90. So if 90 cardinals agree that someone would be a good Pope, then we&#8217;re good to go. And it, I believe it took four rounds of ballots for Pope Benedict XVI and five rounds for Pope Francis. But in both cases, we&#8217;re talking about two days. You have one day on day one, there&#8217;s only one round of voting, and then you have four rounds of voting on the subsequent days until, realistically, until you come up with the Pope.
Chris: This in the perspective of, for example, the Western Schism, where there are at 1.3 claimants to the throne of Peter. So it&#8217;s going to be a little bit of a wait, but it&#8217;s not going to be a long one.
Cy: Yeah, yeah, right. We&#8217;ve had&#8230; it&#8217;s funny, like, even in the time of the multiple claimants to the papacy, the day-to-day life of the church is pretty&#8230; I mean, Jesus gave us a very sturdy structure. The life of the church just goes on. We&#8217;re okay. You can&#8230;
Chris: Baptisms, marriages, it goes on in spite of us.
Cy: Right. I&#8217;m sure that&#8230;Yeah, yeah.
Well, I&#8217;m not claiming any responsibility for it. I&#8217;m just saying it keeps going.
Let&#8217;s get a little&#8230; go ahead, Joe, did you have something else to say?
Joe: Well, I mean, this is maybe the flip side to the thing we were talking about before. You know, it&#8217;s easy to lament, &#8220;Oh, everything is very slow moving.&#8221; The bureaucracy and, you know, people who want change are perennially disappointed. But this is actually a good thing, that you don&#8217;t want a church that is constantly trying to be cool, constantly trying to be, you know, trendy and relevant.
We&#8217;re not trying to be the world. We want to be appealing to the world, but not by becoming like the world.

Why Not Having a Pope Is a Serious Problem | Flannel Panel

Today&#8217;s culture says, &#8220;Don&#8217;t judge others.&#8221; Jesus said, &#8220;Judge not, lest you be judged.&#8221; Aren&#8217;t they saying the same thing? As it turns out, they&#8217;re not. Karlo Broussard explains how the judgment that our culture condemns is different from the judgment that Jesus condemns.
Transcript:
Host: You are on with Karlo, Anonymous from Davenport, Iowa.
Caller: I would like to ask you a question: yesterday I was having a great interesting car conversation with my eleven-year-old son; I just mentioned that I had to throw away a humorous magazine I had purchased because it turned out there was a bunch of inappropriate material in it. And he said, “Oh,” he said, “well, you know, other families don’t, you know, they use those words, they speak that way, and—you know—just because we’re Catholic and we do that, that’s—all families are different.” And I helped kind of create this relativism, I think, by, you know, as he was growing up, trying not to, you know, pass judgements upon things. So now I’m wondering if this is actually turning around to be bad religion, so to speak. So could I have your advice?
Karlo: Yeah, well, first of all, you know, Anonymous, just as the Church does, and just as Jesus teaches us in the Gospels, there’s nothing wrong with making a judgement about a particular action, that a particular behavior is inappropriate human behavior. I mean, you do it every day with your eleven-year-old son, right? I mean if your eleven-year-old son mouths off to you, momma, you’re gonna have some consequences, right? Okay? So the fact that we make judgements about a behavior and say, “Hey, that’s inappropriate human behavior,” there’s nothing wrong with that. We have to do that as human beings in order to, as we were mentioning earlier, Cy, function as human beings in society.
So you can communicate to your son that there’s a difference between a certain behavior being inappropriate, wrong, immoral—whatever word you wanna use—and one’s responsibility for that immoral behavior. And this is where upbringing comes in, right? So let’s say, for example, your eleven-year-old son heard his friend at school say a bad four-letter word, right? Okay. Now, okay, so you can say, “Okay son, well, that word, it has a certain meaning to it that’s really bad, it’s not good for us as human beings, it contradicts our human dignity and our value created in the image and likeness of God. Now, so that’s bad, and we judge that we ought not to say that word, given the conventions of our society and the meaning that’s attached to it. But whether your friend is responsible for that or not, only God can judge that.” Because it may very well be that your son’s friend was brought up in a home where his parents simply didn’t teach him that these words are so bad and violating of our human dignity and keeping us from loving God and loving each other.
So notice, Anonymous, there’s a distinction to be made between judging a particular action to be wrong, and then judging one’s responsibility—or culpability, as we would say in theology, like whether that person has full knowledge of what they’re doing and whether or not it’s wrong. Does that help, at least for starters?
Caller: It does indeed, thank you very much.
Karlo: Okay, fantastic.
Host: Well, don’t forget to give your address to the call-screener, because you’re gonna be getting a free copy of Karlo’s CD, “Your Truth, My Truth.”
Karlo: And Cy, if I may just follow up very quickly, very briefly: you know, in the Gospels, when Jesus talks about “Do not judge;” he’s not talking about not judging a particular action to be immoral. Jesus did that left and right throughout his whole ministry. He said to the woman caught in adultery, you know, “Go and sin no more;” that implies that what she was doing was wrong. But the judgement that Jesus says for us not to enact, “Do not judge,” has to do with one’s responsibility, one’s culpability; judging one’s knowledge or one’s consent. Only God has access to that subjective dimension, right? Only God has access to the inner workings of the heart and the soul and the mind, but we can judge external behaviors and say “That’s not good for human beings; that is good for human beings; we ought to pursue the good, avoid the evil, etc.”
Host: Thank you very much, Anonymous.

Can You Make Judgments About Human Behavior?

Catholic apologist Tim Staples joins Cy Kellett to tackle the misconception that Natural Family Planning is merely Catholic contraception. Tim passionately clarifies the Church&#8217;s teaching on responsible parenthood, emphasizing that being open to life doesn&#8217;t mean having to have as many children as possible.
Transcript:
Cy: I hate that. It&#8217;s among young people as well, who say this. Look, natural family planning is Catholic contraception. So is natural family planning just Catholic contraception?
Tim: Right. And the answer is a resounding no. And unfortunately, Cy Kellett, not only do we have folks outside of the church who say that, but you have some folks— not to pick on. You know, I like Trent Horn&#8217;s term &#8220;the Catholic fundamentalist&#8221; as a sort of nomenclature rather than, you know, radical traditionalist or whatever. But among the Catholic fundamentalists, like that fellow, the kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs.
Cy: I wasn&#8217;t gonna mention, but I didn&#8217;t. Harrison Butker. And I didn&#8217;t like that talk he gave.
Tim: Harrison Butker.
But, yeah, Harrison Butker. Yeah, it was. Oh, he&#8217;s one of those. And God bless him, he&#8217;s Catholic and&#8230;
Cy: He seems like a very good man.
Tim: He&#8217;s on the side of the angels.
Cy: And he can kick it a mile.
Tim: Oh, my goodness. And his accuracy is ridiculous. Right. But the bottom line is&#8230; Yeah. He has this misnomer that, you know, as a Catholic, when you get married, you gotta have as many babies as&#8230; And remember Pope Francis, he got kind of slapped around for saying what he said, &#8220;We&#8217;re not rabbits,&#8221; you know. And I know some folks got mad at Pope Francis for that, but I was actually going, you know, if you forget about the surface and look at what the Holy Father was saying, no, we are not. It is as *Gaudium et Spes* section 50 talks about responsible parenthood. That is a Catholic idea.
And so anyway, to get to the answer here, no, as a Catholic, you do not have to have as many. In fact, some go to such an extreme that they say you can&#8217;t even have conjugal relations with your wife unless she&#8217;s fertile. Because if you have sex when she can&#8217;t get pregnant, that&#8217;s contraception.
But here&#8217;s the point. The key is that the Catholic position is a natural law position that states&#8230; And we can set it up by saying, look, all of our natural faculties as human beings, we can talk about the communicative faculty. Section 2485 of the Catechism says when we deliberately deceive someone with regard to truth, we&#8217;re acting contrary to the very end of our communicative faculty, which is the communication of truth. So if you purposely deceive, and that&#8217;s called a lie, why? Because you&#8217;re acting contrary to that faculty gifted to us by Almighty God.
Well, we could talk about other faculties of human beings, but here we&#8217;re talking about the sexual faculty. The purpose of the sexual faculty is twofold. One, the union of one man, one woman. That&#8217;s right. Not one man, one man. Not three men, one man, or any other one woman.
I&#8217;m just explaining math to you.
Sorry, math, that&#8217;s a tricky concept. But one man, one woman, the union of one man and one woman, and two, the procreation of children. That&#8217;s the purpose of the conjugal act.
But here&#8217;s the key, Cy. If we purposely thwart either of those two essential ends, that act becomes gravely— and yes, I&#8217;m going to shout it— gravely disordered. *A la* Pius XI in *Casti Connubii*. Gravely disordered. Why? Because you are purposely distorting. You are contradicting one or the other. And often it ends up being both of the purposes of the sexual act. Therefore, you&#8217;re distorting that sexual faculty.
Now, in what we call natural family planning, we are doing the opposite of what would be a sin in thwarting. Remember, it&#8217;s purposely knowingly thwarting either one of those two essential ends. In natural family planning, we are honoring both of those. So much so that if we are in a situation— that has to be a reasonable situation— where we believe we ought not to pursue pregnancy at this point in our marriage, and that can be for financial reasons, it can be physical reasons, a bodily ailment, it can be psychological. There are many reasons, and that&#8217;s something that needs to be determined by the couple, in consultation with a spiritual director and so forth.
But if you determine that, rather than thwart either one of those acts— and here we&#8217;re focusing on the second that I mentioned, which traditionally is the primary end of the conjugal act, and that is the procreation of children— if you don&#8217;t feel like, or you don&#8217;t&#8230; I shouldn&#8217;t say feel like. If you do not believe it is God&#8217;s will for you to have children at that time, you abstain from sexual activity, which, by the way, St. Paul recommends in marriages.
For example, where is that? In 1 Corinthians 7, St. Paul talks about coming apart for a time of prayer. But be careful. Don&#8217;t do it for too long unless you get tempted. St. Paul said that that actually can be a blessing.
And I can tell you this. In my wife and my marriage, natural family planning has been a huge gift, not only in helping us to get pregnant. We&#8217;ve been pregnant nine times. We got pretty good at it. We have two in heaven and seven on Earth. It&#8217;s a great way to get pregnant, but it&#8217;s also in those times that are, you know, a serious situation that keeps you from wanting to have children at this particular point out of respect for the conjugal act and God&#8217;s law.
And that&#8217;s divine law. It&#8217;s not only natural law, but it&#8217;s also divine law because it&#8217;s revealed to us as well in Scripture, the sin of Onan in Genesis 38 as interpreted by Pius XI again in *Casti Connubii*. And the Church perennially has understood that to not only be a matter of natural law, but also divine law because of that revelation.
But here&#8217;s the key, all right? If you are using natural family planning, it is impossible for you to contracept. It&#8217;s impossible. Why? Because contraception is purposely acting contrary to one or more of those two essential ends. And if you are using natural family planning, you are respecting both by the nature of the act. You&#8217;re respecting both the love of one man, one woman. You&#8217;re renewing the covenant to strengthen your marriage, and you are respecting the procreative aspect by not engaging at that time.
It&#8217;s impossible for you then to contracept because the definition of contraception is to willfully thwart the procreation of children. Now, is it possible to sin by doing that? Yes, it is. For example, if you get married and you say, &#8220;Well, we&#8217;re just going to use natural family planning the whole time of our marriage to avoid pregnancy.&#8221; To avoid pregnancy.
Now, you would not be contracepting unless you contracept, that is purposely willfully thwart that procreative aspect of the conjugal act. But you can be guilty of sin because of your lack of generosity. And that can be grave in a marital context, depending upon, like I said, you have a healthy woman, healthy man. There&#8217;s no other reason for you not to have children other than, you know what? I gotta get that brand new car every two years. You know, I&#8217;ve gotta get the latest&#8230;
Cy: Then there&#8217;s&#8230; That&#8217;s in his selfishness. It&#8217;s not contraception.
Tim: It&#8217;s selfishness. It&#8217;s a lack of generosity. And yes, that can be sinful. But I think that the most important point, I would say to our friend from the Kansas City Chiefs, right, understand what contraception is. It&#8217;s that willful&#8230; You are imposing your will against what the natural law tells us, Revelation tells us is the purpose.
And I argue with Pius XI, the primary, which is the procreation of children, you willfully thwart that. You are standing against God. God&#8217;s will for your marriage and God&#8217;s will for the conjugal act. In my mind, it can&#8217;t get any more plain. This is not Catholic contraception. It&#8217;s not contraception at all.
Cy: And the fact is that if the Church says the parents have the right to decide on the spacing of children and the number of children, and with all the qualifiers that go with that, some people are going to get that wrong. And here&#8217;s the deal. The Church is comfortable with that. It&#8217;s not a busybody Church telling everybody what to do all the time.
Tim: That&#8217;s right. I encourage folks to talk with a spiritual director&#8230;

Is NFP Just “Catholic Birth Control”?

<div>Do the effects of a Mass said for the dead apply when the Mass is said or when the Mass is requested? In my parish, it can be months before the requested Mass is actually celebrated. That bothers me.</div><div>The fruits (graces) of a Mass offered <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/masses-of-requiem">for the repose of a particular soul</a> are applied when the Mass is offered. While you may find it unsettling that there’s often a long delay between when the Mass was requested and when it was offered, it helps to remember that every Mass includes a prayer for both the living and the dead. You can also offer your Holy Communion or obtain a plenary indulgence (CCC 1471-1473) for the holy souls in purgatory (or for a particular friend, relative, etc.).
<blockquote>The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/prayers-for-the-dead">intercessions</a> [express the fact] that the Eucharist is celebrated in communion with the whole Church, of both heaven and of earth, and that the oblation is made for her and for all her members, living and dead, who are called to participate in the redemption and salvation purchased by the Body and Blood of Christ (<a href="https://cathdal.org/news/ten-ways-to-pray-for-the-holy-souls-in-purgatory">“20 Ways to Pray for the Souls in Purgatory,” online at cathdal.org</a>).</blockquote>
</div>

Remember, God Is Atemporal

Were the Apostles Baptized?

Responding to a caller who posits that certain models of a cyclical universe could do away with the notion of a first cause of the universe, Tim Staples explains why modern physics points toward the necessity of a first cause as laid out by St. Thomas Aquinas.
Transcript:
Host: Colin in San Francisco, California, listening on Immaculate Heart Radio, Colin, you are on with Tim Staples.
Caller: Hey guys, I was excited to hear last week you talking about <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/st-thomas-aquinass-five-ways-as-a-path-back-to-catholicism">the Five Ways by Thomas Aquinas</a>. Cy, you and Tim had suggested I read up on him, so I&#8217;ve been doing that. My argument would be that the natural universe itself could be self-existent and not need God as a first cause, which I think would divert from kind of where Tim was going last week.
First, I wanted to say that I agree that something has to be self-existent; it may have existed forever or it may have existed for all time, at least. But there&#8217;s two ways that the natural universe could do that: the first is a cyclical universe that continually gives rise to itself through a Big Bang, and there&#8217;s a number of models that are consistent with the Big Bang and with what we know about things like dark energy that would argue that the universe may be cyclical; the second thing is that time itself and space-time seem to arise in the Big Bang, so there may not be a time before the Big Bang for the universe to have been created if time itself is a property of the Big Bang.
Tim: Okay, sure. Well I, first of all I would say that in order to argue for that sort of the &#8220;Carl Sagan expanding and contracting universe,&#8221; the problem with that is science, you know, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/law-of-the-conservation-of-energy">the second law of thermodynamics and the law of entropy</a> still is something you have to deal with. Because even if you did—now I have read physicists who have debunked the whole expanding and contracting universe, simply because there&#8217;s not—here, to use an analogy, if I lit a firecracker right here and it blew up, the paper would fly up into the air, and then it would stop and then it would come back down, and why is that? Because there&#8217;s this massive dense object called the Earth underneath it that generates an enormous gravitational pull that pulls it back down, right?
Well, when you look at the Big Bang, the universe is&#8211;and I think science is pretty much in agreement on this—the universe is expanding, and in fact, surprisingly, it&#8217;s actually still increasing in speed, which tells you we&#8217;re just getting started, and it&#8217;s 13.7 billion years ago, and we&#8217;re just, the Big Bang is so unbelievable that we&#8217;re still in the acceleration phase right now. But eventually it will slow down, and the problem is, even taking into account alleged dark matter and such, there&#8217;s simply not enough density for the universe to contract again. You know, at least this is the argument that physicists are making. It just can&#8217;t do it.
But even if it could, the second law of thermodynamics does not pass away. Still, you would have entropy, and that means, as you know, Colin, there is less—there&#8217;s—you know, there is a certain stated amount of usable energy at the beginning of the universe. And that amount is going down. Well, entropy is increasing, which means the amount of usable energy is not there anymore, it&#8217;s dissipating.
And that doesn&#8217;t go away because you have another Big Bang; it still is going away, and so ultimately that demonstrates, I think, as Cardinal Ratzinger points out in his book &#8220;In the Beginning,&#8221; that you have to trace it back to a beginning in time, and you cannot look to the material universe, then, as being eternal. It simply cannot be. That&#8217;s contrary to science.
So I do think the problem is, Colin, and I&#8217;d like to get your thought here, is that you can&#8217;t have a material thing being the first cause, because by nature material things have beginnings. Everything in the material universe that we know—in fact, Colin, this is a principle of science; whenever we look at a galaxy, a star, a planet, one of the first things scientists ask is, &#8220;Well, how old is it?&#8221; And &#8220;How can we demonstrate how old it is?&#8221; And scientists have lots of different ways of dating, and so we know that material things cannot be that first cause, because everything that we see in the universe has a cause, is caused by something else. Again, that&#8217;s a principle of science.
And so there must be, the argument goes, Colin, a first cause that itself was not caused. The universe is demonstrably caused. It cannot be eternal. And again, that&#8217;s scientific principles here. And so there must be a first cause that itself is not caused, and therefore would be the cause of all things and yet not caused. Now if it&#8217;s not caused, that means it is in fact eternal.
Now Colin, there are certain things we can know about that first cause, like namely: could never die; could never move from ignorance to knowledge. Why? Because in order to move from what Thomas Aquinas would call a potential to an actuality, or potency to act, you must be acted on by something else that already has that perfection. Well, the first cause could not have, by definition, any of those potencies. It must be—and I&#8217;m diverting here, Colin, into Thomas&#8217; first proof—it must be pure actuality, or else it&#8217;s not the first cause. Pure act; that means it can&#8217;t move from potency to act, can&#8217;t move from ignorance to knowledge, can&#8217;t even move from here to there, because it&#8217;s impossible. Why? Because it&#8217;s already there.
So at any rate, Colin, I don&#8217;t know if I got to your second point, but are you following me?
Caller: I&#8217;m worried that I might have a better understanding of this then you may. I suggest you look at the cyclical models of the universe that have come since our knowledge that the universe is currently expanding. Wikipedia is a good place to start for that. There&#8217;s models like the Baum-Frampton model that saves for a certain way of conceiving of dark energy; you could have a big rip, so the universe could expand outward, but get to the point where space-time itself rips, and because everything&#8217;s so spread out, you don&#8217;t actually have entropy, and you could have another big bang, because you need particles, you need matter to be close enough together to actually have an increased state of entropy. If they&#8217;re so spread apart that they can&#8217;t communicate with each other, because they&#8217;re over the event horizon, and that issue actually goes away, so there&#8217;s—
Tim: But Colin, I think you&#8217;re not answering a very important point, though. Because everything that you&#8217;re saying presupposes that you have particles and such that are in motion. And if in fact those particles are in motion they cannot be the first cause. Because that means they have potency, and in order for something to move, it has to, from potency to act, move from potency to act, it must be moved by something that already has that actuality. So there must of necessity be that first cause, that unmoved mover, that is in fact pure actuality.
So when you&#8217;re talking about a Big Bang, the motion of particles, that you&#8217;re talking about, a rip, etc., you&#8217;re talking about things that have to be caused, have to be placed in motion, by another. So again, this gets back to St. Thomas&#8217;s first proof, which demonstrates that in order for all of those things to exist that you&#8217;re talking about, there must be the first cause, the unmoved mover, that itself is pure actuality. Pure and infinite being. Absolutely one, absolutely simple.
Caller: I think we&#8217;re gonna have to part ways there, because with a cyclical universe that continually goes through the same cycle, that could conceivably have existed in and of itself without a starting point; in fact, the fact that it&#8217;s cyclical would infer that it could always have existed in cycles, even though everything and it&#8217;s moving. And if you want to look at something that&#8230;and if you look at something like the revolution of one planetary body around another, that&#8217;s something that&#8217;s so stable that it could continue infinitely. So I&#8217;m gonna have to disagree there, but—
Tim: Yeah that&#8217;s not—but I appreciate that Colin, but what you&#8217;re saying there is not science. That&#8217;s more science fiction. Because there there&#8217;s no such thing in science as perpetual motion. Everything that is—I mean, again, this is, this gets back to Newtonian physics, but everything that is in motion was placed in motion by another that is already in motion. And so again we get back to Thomas&#8217; first proof for the existence of God. I think actually you&#8217;re demonstrating our point, Colin.

Is the Universe Cyclical?

I wish I had a nickel for every time someone has said to me, “That was not very Christlike.” This response usually comes after someone is upset by my being firm and honest. The implication is that Jesus was a cuddly, soft-hearted nice guy who was always smiling, always accepting, always with kind words of affirmation. In short, he was nice.
In America, we are known to be relatively polite and courteous, except maybe if you live in New York City. In contrast to much of the world, we tend to be very polite, genteel, gracious, and nice. Tour guides in other countries will tell you that Americans are the nicest people and their favorite groups to guide. We transfer our niceness onto Jesus and assume that he was a lot like us.
When we study the New Testament, especially the Gospels, what do we find? First, let’s discuss what we don’t find. The word nice is never found in the Bible. It is a very popular word in conversation today, but it has not always been so. With its current meaning of giving pleasure, agreeable, good-natured, or kind, it has existed only since the eighteenth century. The origins of the word are fascinating. According to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, “Middle English, foolish, wanton, from Anglo-French, silly, simple, from Latin nescius ignorant, from nescire not to know.” Its current meaning of socially acceptable, well bred, polite, or kind is only from recent years.
Nice is often used as a synonym for loving and kind, as in “That is nice of you to say. You are a very loving person.” But are “love” and “nice” interchangeable, especially in a biblical context?
The English word love in its various forms is found 578 times in the Bible. Jesus uses the word at least fifty times in the Gospels. Love is one of three theological virtues: “So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13). We know that God is love (1 John 4:8), and Jesus, being God in human form, was the most loving human to walk the earth.
Love can be consoling, forgiving, gentle, and warm. One who loves puts the other person first and often makes that person feel special and accepted. The love of a mother for her child is a perfect example of such love—both caring and nurturing. The love and affection of a newly married couple fill us with joy and warm feelings.
However, love does not always equate to nice. Though Jesus speaks of love fifty times, he never speaks of niceness in its modern sense.
We can ask the question, “Was Jesus nice?”
Jesus was always loving, but he was not always nice, as we Americans define niceness. There is such a thing as “tough love.” It is the kind of love that cares enough to be honest, to confront, to discipline, to cause temporary pain to bring about eternal glory. On the surface, “tough love” does not always appear to be nice. While being disciplined out of love, a badly-behaved child may blurt out, “You are not very nice!” Speaking firmly to a belligerent teenager may get the response, “Jesus would never be mean like you are!”
Jesus was not always cozy and cuddly. Here is just one example: Jesus spoke very harshly to his fellow Jews. People today might consider it rude, disturbing, unkind.
<blockquote>Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. . . . You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?” (Matt. 23:27, 28, 33).</blockquote>
Ouch! It doesn’t sound very kind and courteous—not very thoughtful or nice! Yet they deserved it, and he spoke justly—and ultimately out of love, with the goal of repentance and educating the general population on acceptable and unacceptable moral conduct. The Jewish leaders were offending God by their hypocrisy, and Jesus was loving enough to say it how it is.
There is a shocking story recorded in all four Gospels, and it may have actually happened on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-many-times-did-jesus-flip-tables">two separate occasions</a>. Imagine arriving at the Temple in Jerusalem one day to pray. It is a typical day in the courtyard . . . when suddenly, a man bursts onto the scene with a whip and begins to disrupt everything. Shouting and tension fill the air. Shocked, you run over to see what this commotion is all about. The man is yelling as his whip whistles through the air. He is flipping over tables and tossing the merchants’ coins on the ground. Pigeons fill the air as he shouts, “Take these things away!”
Everyone is shocked at this rude and disruptive conduct. This was completely unacceptable social behavior. He was inconsiderate and bad-tempered to lash people with a whip. Folks ran in fear! Imagine if the legacy media had been there! The headlines would be shocking.
This wasn’t just some wild man. This was Jesus. He was red in the face and glaring at the crowd. It certainly didn’t appear very “Christlike.” He was not being nice at all!
So maybe there is more to “WWJD” (What Would Jesus Do?) than we’ve been led to believe. Perhaps we shouldn’t worry so much about being nice, being liked, acting as genteel Americans. Maybe we ought to be more honest and forthright about the things that really matter. Perhaps we should be more willing to hurt feelings, step on some toes, and practice tough love toward those in sin. Maybe we should be more Christlike.
In C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, Jesus is represented by Aslan the lion. The children love Aslan, but they never consider him tame. The dialogue is instructive.
<blockquote>“Aslan is a lion—the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” . . .
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. . . . “Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn&#8217;t safe. But he&#8217;s good. He&#8217;s the King, I tell you.”</blockquote>
Jesus is approachable and loving, but don’t ever consider him “tame” or too cuddly. He may not live up to our perception of nice. Jesus is God as well as man. He expressed the wrath and anger of God as well as the mercy and love of God. Even the “disciple whom Jesus loved” was afraid when he saw the glorified Christ: “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last.” (Rev. 1:17).
Many of us have sung the old hymn, “What a friend we have in Jesus,” but we must remember that Jesus is not here just to be nice or simply our amiable friend. He is God, and his goal is to make us holy. Sometimes, that requires discipline. In Hebrews, we read, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (12:5-6).
Love should permeate our relationships with others, not niceness. And sometimes love is tough. If we ever wonder just what qualities we should have as Christians, St. Paul gives us a good place to start. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” And we should always “speak the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15).
So was Jesus nice? Actually, that is the wrong question. The real question is, was Jesus loving? Did he love us enough to tell us the truth and require us to be holy?

Was Jesus Nice?

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

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

When Atheists “Don’t Know Enough” About Scientists

Is overpopulation a justification for abortion?

Why Faith?

Tim Staples explains the principles from both reason and Scripture that underlie just war theory, and shows why these principles not only allow but even obligate a nation under attack to protect its people with &#8220;the use of the sword.&#8221;

When and How Can War Be Just?

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Catholic Answers Live

Today’s instruction from the book of Sirach isn’t very interesting. It’s that same old message about humility that we see all over the wisdom literature, and not even just the wisdom literature, of the Bible. But the trouble is that we can hear the message over and over and still forget it—hence the need for Scripture and Tradition to remind us over and over again about the two most basic truths: God is not we, and we are not God.
Our Lord’s parable about higher and lower places at the wedding feast is another reminder about humility, another statement of the obvious that we all the same must hear. The Pharisees would not have gone around asserting that they were God. Far from it! Yet Jesus observed, it seems, a pattern of behavior suggesting that their actions revealed more of their true theology.
The scenario, and his comments, further complicates the dynamics of humility, for right there, front and center, is the possibility of acting humble in order to appear great. Choosing the lower seat, after all, could just be a clever trick to get the higher status that you really want. Surely, this is not what the Lord thinks we ought to do.
The second part of the parable, the command to invite all the poor and the lame to the feast, demonstrates a less self-serving kind of humility. But even this humble action could be done for the wrong reasons; we could be simply hedging our bets, avoiding status in this life only to achieve it in the next. This, again, is hardly the purest intention, even if it is a little better than using humility to acquire worldly fame or status.
The main point is neither just a simple “be humble” nor a crafty “be humble in order to be great,” but rather a reminder that ultimately, true status is judged only by God. Appearances never tell the whole story, which is why the Lord reminds us in Luke 13:30 that some of the last will be first and the first last. The statement isn’t just a contradiction of the visible norm, but rather an assertion that the real accounting is what God sees, not what we see or what we think we see. In fact, some of the first probably will be first, and some of the last last. So we dare not, for example, reduce true virtue to a kind of excessive show—the kind of false humility where, for example, a priest, bishop, or pope goes around refusing to act like a priest or a bishop or a pope because he lacks the humility to allow his office to be more important than his individual personality.
The call to discipleship means moving from falseness and vice to truth and virtue, but not necessarily all at once. It is in fact better to do the right thing for the wrong reason than it is to do the wrong thing for the wrong reason, or even the wrong thing for the right reason. The imitation of virtue isn’t true virtue, but it can form us for virtue. Performative humility can develop into real humility, and it is still usually better than unrepentant pride, because there is at least some higher degree of truth-recognition.
To put it another way, proper humility, which is to say a right recognition of who we are in relation to God and one another, can include its own proper ambition for great things—not ambition for power or worldly status for its own sake, but ambition for the things of God, ambition for virtue, ambition for the kingdom.
The Catholic moral tradition wouldn’t put it like that, exactly, though we can probably get away with it in modern English. For the Angelic Doctor, “ambition” is always a vice, a disordered desire for honor. But what we might today think of as a virtuous “ambition” is really what St. Thomas would call magnanimity: the desire for greatness. Literally, it means being “great-souled.” It’s not a desire for greatness in itself, but a desire for great good. Another term in the tradition, magnificence, further names the virtue of actually accomplishing great things. In both of these the great goods desired or accomplished are true goods, which is to say not merely the boosting of one’s own ego, but the increase of beauty, truth, and goodness in the world in witness and service to the kingdom of God.
I hope it goes without saying that it is good to desire heaven, to desire eternal life. Yes, it is possible to desire it for the wrong reasons—as we say so often in the act of contrition—such as merely avoiding pain or punishment. It is also possible to want the right thing but to fool ourselves into thinking we can acquire it by the wrong means. This too is a temptation: whereas a good act with defective motivation may be a middle step toward virtue, and toward God, an evil act, no matter the motivation, is always a step away.
Desiring eternity, though, has a particular form in the economy of salvation, and that form is our Lord Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews, in today’s passage, distinguishes between the Old Covenant and the New, Sinai and the heavenly Zion, the old sacrifices and the new. “We have an altar,” he writes in the final chapter, just beyond today’s passage, “from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat” (Heb. 13:10).
In the old way, proximity to the holy of holies was proximity to God. There was, then, almost inevitably, the possibility of a competitive quest for honor, and understandably so: who would not want to be closer to God? But here at banquet with the Pharisees, the incarnate Son hints at this new reality: no matter where you are at the table, you receive the infinite gifts of the host.
The reason why we should not seek honor, some kind of superficial elevation, is that the only true and lasting honor is the honor available to us where we are now, no matter who we are—the honor that comes only from being united with Jesus. The great things that we should desire and do are the things that honor him, that glorify him, that bring us closer to him. The truest humility is not worrying about our place at all but only delighting in the fact that our place will always be, thanks to his love and generosity, in his sacred heart.

Humility . . . No, Really

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What is Advent really about?

Joshua Charles, a Catholic convert, lays out one reason he left Protestantism. He discusses how the unity of the Catholic Church is what Jesus intended for his people.
This clip was taken from our live show, Catholic Answers Live: <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cal/tbd-146">https://www.catholic.com/audio/cal/tbd-146</a>

His Biggest Issue with Protestantism

<div>What was the language of the original scriptures?</div><div>Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew. Some portions (e.g., sections of Daniel and Ezra) were written in Aramaic. Books that are contained in the Catholic canon but not the Protestant or Jewish canons were written in Hebrew and Greek.
The entire New Testament was written in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koine_Greek">Koine Greek</a>. Some scholars have theorized that the Gospel of Matthew was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, but that claim is highly disputed.
</div>

Original Languages of Scripture?

Christianity CANNOT EXIST without the Eucharist!

In <a href="https://www.lalibre.be/belgique/societe/2023/09/28/joan-bonny-eveque-danvers-leuthanasie-nest-pas-necessairement-un-mal-en-tant-que-tel-GWDQU56HUFFYNO4SVZIAOIFMTI/">a recent interview</a> with Belgian newspaper La Libre, Bishop Johan Bonny of Antwerp, Belgium appeared to reject the Church’s teaching on the intrinsically evil nature of euthanasia. <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/255608/belgian-bishop-euthanasia-is-not-necessarily-an-evil-as-such">He said such a teaching</a> provides “too simple an answer that leaves no room for discernment.” He continues:
<blockquote>Philosophy has taught me to never be satisfied with generic black-and-white answers. All questions deserve answers adapted to a situation: a moral judgment must always be pronounced according to the concrete situation, the culture, the circumstances, the context . . . We will always oppose the wish of some to end a life too prematurely, but we must recognize that a request for euthanasia from a young man of 40 is not equivalent to that of a person of 90 who faces an incurable illness.</blockquote>
If by “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-real-death-with-dignity">euthanasia</a>” Bishop Bonny means the direct killing of an innocent human being because they are suffering, then he is gravely in error. The Catechism calls euthanasia “murder” (CCC 2324) and the CDF called it an “intrinsically evil act” in its document Samaritanus Bonus.
This is also a teaching that is not subject to doctrinal development since it has been “definitely” taught, so any debate about the issue has been brought to an end (Latin: de fine).
The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith said the wrongness of euthanasia must be held <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/doctrinal-commentary-on-concluding-formula-of-professio-fidei-2038">“definitively”</a> because it is taught in an infallible way by the Church’s ordinary and universal magisterium (Doctrinal Commentary, 11). Pope St. John Paul II declared in Evangelium Vitae that the wrongness of euthanasia is based upon the natural law and the written word of God, is transmitted by the Church&#8217;s Tradition, and is taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (65).
As for the bishop’s disdain for “black and white” answers in philosophy, I wonder if he would say declaring racism or wage theft intrinsically evil also constituted faulty “black and white” thinking. Those who condemn absolute answers are always confident that their frameworks should be absolutely accepted!
Now, it is not wrong to discontinue <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-extraordinary-care">burdensome medical care</a> in some cases, including for very elderly patients. Murder is always wrong, but it isn’t murder to allow the natural course of life to progress and end. It&#8217;s irrational suicide for a healthy 40-year-old accident victim to reject a mildly burdensome treatment he needs to have a normal lifespan, but a 90-year-old dying from multiple organ failures might licitly reject the same treatment if it only provided him a few painful months to live.
But it’s always wrong to justify the intentional murder of a person (and not just withholding disproportionately difficult medical care) solely based on the person’s age.
This is a teaching all Catholics must accept. If Bishop Bonny ultimately can’t accept it, then he has no business being a bishop who is entrusted with the souls of his diocese, especially those who are at greatest risk of being murdered in this way.

A Prelate’s Picky Platitudes on Euthanasia

<div>Is it OK to attend daily Mass every day? </div><div>Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to attend Mass everyday. In fact, many people do just that.
<blockquote>The Church obliges the faithful to take part in the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and feast days and, prepared by the sacrament of Reconciliation, to receive the Eucharist at least once a year, if possible during the Easter season. But the Church strongly encourages the faithful to receive the holy Eucharist on Sundays and feast days, or more often still, even daily (CCC 1389).</blockquote>
Suggested reading: The Diocese of Salina&#8217;s <a href="http://salinadiocese.org/new-evangelization/2108-5-reasons-to-attend-daily-mass">5 Reasons to Attend Daily Mass</a>.
</div>

Mass Every Day?

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul profoundly remarked, &#8220;Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.&#8221; Within these words lies a timeless truth: though universal by its nature, the Catholic Church is one, and we are called to pray for one another, support one another, and be missionaries, both at home and abroad.
In today&#8217;s digital age, with information at our fingertips, it&#8217;s easy to assume that everyone must know about Christ. In fact, some could even argue, how could someone not know about him? Yet, according to the Pew Research Center, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/">8 in 10 people</a> around the world have a religious affiliation, but only 2.5 billion of the world’s 8 billion people identify as Christians. Among those who do not follow Jesus, 8 in 10 people <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/august-web-only/non-christians-who-dont-know-christians.html">don’t know</a> a single Christian person.
The assertion of &#8220;many paths to heaven,&#8221; while ecumenically sensitive, doesn&#8217;t negate the Church&#8217;s belief in the unique and universal salvific role of Jesus Christ. Although the Church acknowledges that individuals outside the Christian fold can achieve salvation, it firmly believes in the transformative power of a relationship with Christ and his sacraments, a gift it yearns to share with all.
To answer this longing to make disciples of all nations, the Church since 1926 has observed World Mission Sunday, an annual celebration of the Church&#8217;s missionary activity. It takes place on the second-to-last Sunday of October (October 22 this year) and serves as a clarion call to mobilize faith, resources, and action in advancing the gospel to our brothers and sisters living in the farthest reaches of the world.
As the theme for this year’s World Mission Sunday, Pope Francis has chosen &#8220;Hearts on Fire, Feet on the Move.&#8221; It is based on the evocative narrative of the disciples’ encounter with Jesus on their way to Emmaus, as narrated in Luke 24:13-35. This Scripture passage vividly reminds us that when our hearts are set ablaze by the living Christ, our feet naturally move in mission, spreading the warmth of his love and the light of his word.
As an inspiration, let us look to the example of the woman whose love for the gospel, and for the children of God in far-flung places who had yet to hear it, has inspired millions over centuries to live more prayerfully and to propagate the Faith by word and deed. Bl. Pauline Jaricot was born in 1799 to a profoundly religious French aristocratic family. She was wealthy, carefree, and good-natured. As a young woman, she became the foundress of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, a confraternity dedicated to praying for and supporting the Missions. It began in a simple way: a friend asking her friends for prayers each day and a penny each week.
Funds from that society helped build many churches here in the United States, which was considered a mission territory until 1908 and benefited from the collections of these prayer groups, predecessors to what is today World Mission Sunday.
Today, the organization that she founded, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, one of four Pontifical Mission Societies, served by thousands of missionaries in 1,100 dioceses worldwide, extends Christ’s healing and his entire ministry to people in desperate need of it. They are building churches; educating children; and treating physical and psychological wounds caused by war, cruelty, oppression, terror, and despair. They are bearing witness to the compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The funds raised through this collection are distributed through the Pontifical Mission Societies to territories where the Church is too poor or too young to be self-reliant, enabling them to grow and flourish in faith. The support from the faithful throughout the world—even small parishes in mission territories hold this collection—allows the Pontifical Mission Societies, through the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization, to provide annual subsidies to missionary dioceses, and to directly support mission seminaries and religious formation houses, the education of children in mission schools, and the building of chapels and churches, as well as sustaining homes for orphaned children, the elderly and sick.
The Catholic Church is growing rapidly in Asia and Africa, but mostly among the poorest people in these continents. This means that the institutional Church needs support from regions of the world such as Europe and North America, where the faith is more established. For example, seminaries in Ghana and Nigeria are overflowing with hundreds of seminarians, and local bishops struggle not only to have sufficient infrastructure, but also to find good formators.
While numerous non-profit organizations worldwide work tirelessly to provide for physical, educational, and social needs, Catholic missionaries embark on their journey with a different primary focus. Rooted deeply in Christ&#8217;s Great Commission, their foremost goal is to bring Christ to those who have not known him and to deepen the faith of those who do.
At a superficial glance, the work of Catholic missionaries might seem indistinguishable from that of NGOs. They feed the hungry, heal the sick, and educate the marginalized. Yet the underlying purpose goes beyond temporal needs:
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<li> Sacramental Life. The sacraments are at the heart of the Church&#8217;s life. Missionaries often prioritize sacramental preparation and administration. Whether it&#8217;s celebrating the Eucharist in remote villages or baptizing eager catechumens, the sacraments are channels of grace that missionaries strive to make available to all.</li>
<li> Evangelization. True missionary work is about not just physical aid, but also spiritual nourishment. Missionaries catechize, foster prayer communities, and guide individuals in deepening their relationship with Christ.</li>
<li> Integral Human Development. The primary focus is spiritual nourishment, and after that, the Catholic Church recognizes the intrinsic link between spiritual and temporal well-being. Hence, missionaries also provide education, medical care, and other necessary services. These are seen not as ends in themselves, but as means to demonstrate Christ&#8217;s love and pave the way for deeper evangelization.</li>
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Catholic missionaries are driven by a sense of spiritual urgency.
They persevere amid violence and persecution, often serving in regions hostile to Christianity, finding strength in their faith to remain in conflict regions long after diplomats have called it quits. We saw this in Iraq and Syria during the rise and fall of ISIS; we see it in India, where Dalits who embrace Christianity support of the least of the last in the country’s caste system; we see it in Ukraine, where priests and missionaries are at the forefront, tending to those physically and spiritually wounded by war; and we see it in the Holy Land, with historically missionary orders keeping Christianity alive where it began.
Ad Gentes, the Second Vatican Council&#8217;s decree on missionary activity, is clear when <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_ad-gentes_en.html">it defines missions</a> as “those particular undertakings by which the heralds of the gospel, sent out by the Church and going forth into the whole world, carry out the task of preaching the gospel and planting the Church among peoples or groups who do not yet believe in Christ. . . . The proper purpose of this missionary activity is evangelization, and the planting of the Church among those peoples and groups where it has not yet taken root” (6).
“Christian charity truly extends to all,” Ad Gentes affirms, “without distinction of race, creed or social condition. It looks for neither gain nor gratitude. For as God loved us with an unselfish love, so also the faithful should in their charity care for the human person himself, loving him with the same affection with which God sought out man” (12).
Every Catholic, regardless of geographical location, plays a pivotal role in embracing the missionary spirit. We are called not only to pray for our missionaries, but also to become missionaries in our own right. Whether in our local communities or through international initiatives, we have the power to share Christ&#8217;s message and love with others.
In a world where connectivity can sometimes feel superficial, World Mission Sunday reminds us that the heart of our faith lies in bringing Christ&#8217;s love and message to every corner of the globe. Together, with hearts on fire and feet on the move, we can carry forward this mission and ensure that the transformative power of Christ&#8217;s love reaches every soul, near and far.

Why Bother with Missions?

Cy Ruined Everything

<div>A deacon said that being anointed with holy oil at a healing Mass absolves me of my sins. Can I use this as my last confession?</div><div>The sacrament of anointing of the sick forgives sins only if the recipient is unable to confess (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P4P.HTM">CCC 1532</a>). If a person is able to get to a healing Mass, the odds seem pretty good that he&#8217;d also be able to go to confession.
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Does Anointing Forgive Sins?

Karlo Broussard, Catholic Answers Apologist, answers why Tradition is crucial to a relationship with Jesus. He uses bible verses and cites the Catechism of the Catholic Church to explain why we, as Christians, need to hold Tradition close to our hearts along with Scripture.

Are Catholics Obsessed with Tradition?

Dr. Edward Sri discusses how moral relativism may be gradually entering the minds of even devout Catholics in a hidden way.
Transcript:
Host: Let&#8217;s go to Amy now in Radford, Virginia watching us on Facebook Live. Thanks for watching on Facebook Live, Amy. You are on with Dr. Edward Sri.
Caller: Hey, gentlemen, thanks for taking my question. It&#8217;s actually a two-part question. So from what I&#8217;m understanding is that this book has seven tips to respond to relativism. However, with the two-part is that, with these seven tips is it possible, for people who may be struggling with some things in their own life, could they apply these seven tips to their own life? And the second part is, should they apply it to their own life before they use it in someone else&#8217;s life? With your book?
Dr. Sri: Ah, great. I think, you know, in our culture a lot of people—a lot of good people—have struggled with relativism. I mean people that are working in parishes, I mean even people that go to daily Mass, that sometimes are afraid—you know, &#8220;I&#8217;m afraid to actually say this is definitively right or wrong, I&#8217;ve got, like, my brother&#8217;s living a homosexual lifestyle and afraid to say it&#8217;s right or wrong.&#8221; And so there&#8217;s a bit of that relativism that&#8217;s kind of crept in.
Really, I mean, these are good people, they believe in God, they believe in the Church and all, but because of the pressures of our culture, they start to waffle a little bit. They start qualifying some of their moral statements. &#8220;Well for me, marriage is between a man and woman, but for other people&#8230;&#8221; You know. And I think the book is meant to—first and foremost, it&#8217;s meant to equip people to talk about relativism with their friends, to talk about moral truth.
But I can tell you, I&#8217;ve had people who have had some of that relativism in them. There was a guy I just met this last January who told me, you know, after hearing a presentation I gave where I walked through these seven keys and all, he said, &#8220;I never realized how much relativism had taken shape in my own heart and mind, and I didn&#8217;t realize the problem it was causing. And you&#8217;ve helped me to see there really is moral truth, and I want to I want to be better at standing up for that, and first in my own life and then sharing it with others.&#8221; And I&#8217;ve met other people—I just shared that one example—where it is having that kind of impact, it is doing something in their own hearts getting them to conform more moral truth in their own lives.

Personal Struggles with Relativism

Do Catholics Eat God?

<div>Should we confess﻿ not doing enough against abortion?</div><div>I do not think you should confess this unless there was a particular, individual instance at least when you did not do what you could. This should be concrete, not general. Otherwise, we could get ourselves into a state about all the evils that we are not doing enough to stop. All of us could do more for world peace or for the family or for the poor and so on, but there is not clearly a sin unless we refuse an opportunity where in justice we should have acted concretely in our own circumstances.
So, for example, if you hear some coworkers discussing whether one of them should have an abortion, and you do not say anything to encourage the protection of life, then you certainly should confess that; but if you have not volunteered for the local pro-life ministry when you could, it is not necessarily a sin if you have other good works you are doing.
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Not Opposing Abortion Forcefully Enough

As a Catholic, it’s not hard to find Protestants who say my religion teaches a false gospel, and so it isn’t even Christian. But these Protestants shoot themselves in the foot, because they can’t even answer the question “What is the gospel?” in a way that doesn’t undermine their own argument.
The word “gospel” comes from the Greek word euaggelion, literally “good news.” But in almost every case, the word is used in Scripture without any explanation of what the good news is about.
Matthew refers to the good news of the kingdom or the good news being preached (4:23, 9:35). Mark describes Jesus speaking of the good news or the good news of God (1:14-15). Luke shows Jesus preaching good news for the poor (4:18). And these passages also point back to verses in Isaiah proclaiming the good news of God’s victory over his enemies (52:7, 61:1).
We know that the gospel was preached during Christ’s ministry, but what was initially preached was not a message about Christ’s death, his resurrection, or how he would redeem humanity from sin. At this time, the gospel was just the good news that God’s kingdom was entering the world and that things would finally be set right.
After Christ’s resurrection, we find some passages in Paul’s letters that are closer to a definition of the gospel as we know it today. Romans 1:16 says the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, “I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel [or the good news], which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—unless you believed in vain.
Paul then describes this good news through what many scholars identify as an early creed that was formulated just a few years after Christ’s crucifixion. It says Christ died for our sins, was buried, rose three days later, and appeared to numerous people, including Paul.
Notice there is no description of the gospel being about our individual salvation from damnable sin, even though that is how the gospel is often summarized. Instead, the gospel is the good news of God’s kingdom entering the world that saves God’s people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But these verses about the gospel never say that it is about salvation through faith alone, or grace alone, or any other doctrinal formula. The gospel is just the salvation that comes through God’s power being implemented in his kingdom through his son.
Since Catholicism affirms this truth, that means the Catholic Church is not preaching a false gospel. The glossary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the gospel as “the ‘good news’ of God&#8217;s mercy and love revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It is this gospel or good news that the apostles, and the Church following them, are to proclaim to the entire world.”
People who say Catholicism teaches a false gospel usually arrive at this conclusion through two mistaken lines of thought.
First, they assume that “the gospel” is identical to all essential doctrines of the Faith, but as we’ve seen, the Bible never defines “the gospel” in this way. The Trinity and Jesus’ messianic status are essential doctrines of Christianity, but Scripture never says these truths are part of “the gospel.”
Second, these critics assume that essential doctrines for their denomination must also be essential doctrines of the Christian faith, and so those doctrines must be part of the gospel.
For example, when many people are asked to summarize the gospel in one Bible verse, they will point to John 3:16, where John says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Even though many Protestants say the Gospel of John is sufficient to proclaim the gospel, the word “gospel” is not in John’s Gospel. At best, this verse serves as a loose summary of the plan of salvation that flows from what the gospel is. But this verse is at least the start of a much better answer to the question “What is the Gospel?” than what the late John MacArthur said when he was asked <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g51niEf25ko">to summarize the gospel</a> in a single verse:
<blockquote>The greatest gospel verse in the bible [is] second Corinthians. “He made him who knew no sin sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of god in him.” . . . God punished Jesus for my sin, turns right around and treats me as if I lived [Christ’s] life. That&#8217;s the great doctrine of substitution, and on that doctrine turned the whole reformation of the church. That is the heart of the gospel.</blockquote>
MacArthur said the “heart of the gospel” is his particular, Reformed interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21. This involves our sins being imputed to Christ so that God sees us on the cross, and so he consequently punishes “us” while punishing Christ. And now God sees only “Christ” when he looks at us, and so he rewards us with eternal life. But once again, the Bible doesn’t say this is “the gospel.” even though the Greek word for gospel, euaggellion, is used nine times in 2 Corinthians.
Even if the passage were teaching the doctrine MacArthur thinks it’s teaching, that wouldn’t make it part of “the gospel.” Protestants know that the gospel is not identical to “everything the New Testament teaches,” because all of the major Protestant denominations differ on what the New Testament teaches, but they don’t anathematize every other Protestant as preaching a “false gospel” just because he has mistaken theology.
If the “heart of the gospel” were a particular Reformed understanding of 2 Corinthians 5:21, then followers of John Wesley (i.e., many Methodists), who believe in an “imparted” righteousness rather than an imputed righteousness, would have a false gospel. The same is true for any Christian who denies the doctrine of “double imputation” and believes that 2 Corinthians 5:21 teaches something else.
This includes believing that the verse is a reference to the Incarnation, or Christ coming in the form of sinful flesh, as Romans 8:3 says. The verse could also mean Christ “became sin” in. the sense that Christ became a sacrificial “sin offering” on our behalf, since the Hebrew word for sin is the same word for “sin offering.”
The Christian faith, even just the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, involve much more than the message of the gospel. Even Protestants who believe that Catholicism preaches the gospel still must wrestle with a difficult question: which doctrines are essential to the Christian faith, and how do we know they are essential?
Many Protestants believe that Scripture is perspicuous, or that it clearly reveals the essential doctrines Christians must believe. The Westminster Confession says that those things that are
<blockquote>necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.</blockquote>
But isn’t it necessary for salvation to know if the largest Christian denomination in the world, Catholicism, preaches a true gospel or a false gospel? Even learned Protestants using ordinary means do not have agreement on this question, as can be seen in debates between Protestants on the question of whether Catholics are Christian or if they have a false gospel.
Ironically, this provides evidence that God’s authority structure for the Church is grounded not in something like sola scriptura, but in a living teaching office, or a magisterium capable of settling disputes definitively through authoritative, universal, and infallible teachings.
I hope that when Catholics are asked to explain “what the gospel is,” they will know both what the Bible teaches on this matter and how Christ’s Catholic Church brings us salvation and fulfills the “good news” of our salvation in Jesus Christ.

The Protestant Gospel Problem

If the pope wanted to, could he modify the declaration of an ecumenical council?

Did any early Jewish denomination accept the Deuterocanon?

Why did God make us how he did? Why did he give us eyes, arms, etc.?

Does the Church consider mortal sin to be objective or does it depend on the perspective of the individual?

Where do popes get their names from?

Why did God create hell?

Why is it important to learn Church History?

Is it sinful to lack a relationship with God and to lack knowledge of God?

My friends found out that the priest who baptized them killed someone and they were informed by the diocese that their baptism was invalid. How is this possible?

Is it possible for a pope to change or override the declarations of an ecumenical council? We explore the limits of papal authority, how councils and popes interact, and what Catholic tradition teaches about continuity and development in Church doctrine.
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Can a Pope Modify an Ecumenical Council? And More

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DAY 304
CHALLENGE
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“The book of Leviticus condemns homosexuality (Lev. 18:22), but it also condemns eating shrimp since they don’t have fins and scales (cf. Lev. 11:9–12). If we aren’t obliged to follow it when it comes to the latter, why should we follow it when it comes to the former?”
DEFENSE
Homosexuality is contrary to human nature; shrimp-eating is not.
The Law of Moses (Gen.-Deut.) contains a variety of types of laws. Some, such as the prohibitions on murder, are based directly on human nature and apply to all cultures in all of history.
Other laws, such as the observance of the Sabbath, were related to human nature in a less direct way and applied specifically to the people of Israel. For example, although all humans have a need to devote adequate time to rest and worship, there is nothing about human nature that demands this be done on Saturday in particular. God therefore chose Saturday as the day of rest and worship for Israel, though the underlying principles could be fulfilled another way, as with the Christian observance of Sunday.
This is similar to the way some countries today have motorists drive on the left side of the road and others have them drive on the right side of the road. It doesn’t matter which choice a country makes as long as it makes a choice, so motorists don’t drive in an unsafe manner.
It is widely recognized that the dietary laws found in the Old Testament were of the second category. They were not based directly on human nature the way the prohibition on murder was. Instead, they were given specifically to regulate the common life of Israel.
They had a role in establishing and reinforcing Jewish culture and helping keep Israelites distinct from their pagan neighbors, but they did not apply to other nations nor do they apply to Christians today (Mark 7:19, Acts 10:9–16, Col. 2:16–17).
The prohibitions on homosexuality, however, are directly related to human nature. Even a consideration of the anatomy involved, as well as the ability to conceive new human beings, indicates that men and women are designed to go together. Consequently, the prohibition on homosexual behavior is a moral requirement applicable to all cultures, not just Israel (Rom. 1:26–27).
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God Hates Shrimp?

He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Our Gospel picks up the story just after the travelers to Emmaus return to tell their story to the apostles. Jesus appears to two people walking home from Jerusalem, but they do not recognize him, even though they were his followers. Their hearts are set afire as he speaks with them, opening up the scriptures. It is only when they get home, and they break bread together, that they recognize him, and then he vanishes.
. . . only to appear once again to his apostles as the two travelers tell their story. Here, like in some of the other resurrection accounts, there’s an emphasis on Jesus’ bodily reality: you can touch him; you can give him fish, and he’ll eat it; he’s definitely not a ghost, even if he’s somehow different from how he was before.
This opens up in a mysterious way the theme I want to address, which is the centrality of the body in recognizing Jesus.
So many of these post-Resurrection encounters, and the post-Resurrection speeches, like we hear from St. Peter in Acts, focus on the meaning of Scripture that has now been fully revealed. Indeed, that is what Jesus does here in Luke, opening up the scriptures, making them clear. And this is possible because they’re ultimately all about him. And he is their fulfilment, and he makes sense only in their light.
But we can add, as the Gospel writers do: the scriptures, and Jesus as the fulfilment of the scriptures, make sense only in his bodily presence. There’s a direct personal link that ties everything together. He was known to them not because he gave them the right password, but because he broke bread with them and ate.
St. Jerome famously says that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. We could also reverse this and say: ignorance of Christ is ignorance of Scripture. Yet in these stories from Luke, and the apostolic witness, it’s worth remembering the threefold nature of Christ’s body: (1) the historical body born of the Virgin Mary, dead, risen, and ascended into heaven; (2) the sacramental body truly present in the Eucharist; (3) the body of Christ, which is the Church. So if we tie all this together with Jerome’s principle, we might say: to know Christ, we must know the scriptures; to know the scriptures, we must know Christ in the sacraments; to know Christ in the sacraments, we must know Christ in his people. So in the end there’s no Jesus without the Church, no Church without Jesus, no Scripture without Jesus and the Church.
Even in the first century, it was tempting for Christians to separate these things, to go around claiming that they loved Jesus while hating his people or his word. As our epistle today says, “Those who say, ‘I know him,’ but do not keep his commandments are liars, and the truth is not in them.” It’s often thought that John, in his epistles, is dealing especially with an early form of Gnosticism, which is a religious movement founded on the absolute separation of body and soul. In a gnostic understanding, bodies are irrelevant to what is ultimately real; therefore, for some of them, all bodily disciplines and rules are irrelevant to what is ultimately real.
And here’s where the teaching of John, and of the New Testament as a whole, insists in a surprising way—surprising, at least, for those of us who had been tempted to think that Christianity was simply about spiritual things—they insist that the body of Christ, both in sacrament and assembly, is the privileged access point for interpreting the spiritual messages contained in the scriptures.
So we find, then, in Luke, that the single most important way of seeking out Christ isn’t just being clever, or learning a few extra languages, or memorizing the book of Deuteronomy—useful as all those things might be—it’s being in fellowship with the body, which is always a both/and—both the direct sacramental fellowship of the Eucharist, and the equally real fellowship of the Church. Catholics rightly emphasize the importance of the Blessed Sacrament, but we err if we think Christ’s presence in his body the Church is somehow less real. It is real in a different way. Yet they are related. For if we adore Christ in the Blessed Sacrament, should we not look for him and honor him among those who have been baptized into his life, and who have taken that sacrament into their own substance to be transformed by it?
Maybe you’ve noticed—I have—that in the last few years, with so many people spending more time isolated online, there have been so many new products being marketed to fix every possible ailment. We just want there to be a magic supplement for everything. So often, Catholics fall into this same trap spiritually. We think there’s some perfect spiritual or intellectual nugget that will finally cure our scrupulosity, or our covetousness, or our laziness. I don’t mean that there aren’t good things out there, whether consumer products or spiritual techniques. But there is no substitute for the basic discipline of sacramental life, which is life together. We have to show up, and listen to one another, and seek Christ with patience and perseverance. Then, in the course of the journey, like with those travelers to Emmaus, the Lord can open our eyes and reveal what he has been doing all along.

The Flesh-and-Blood Bible

Cy Kellett and Joe Heschmeyer engage with a listener exploring the journey toward joining the Catholic Church.
Transcript:
Caller: So question why I&#8217;m not Catholic? Well, because I haven&#8217;t started OCIA yet. I am inquiring.
Joe: That&#8217;s a good, that&#8217;s a good reason.
Caller: As I continue down this path, what are some, if you will, do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts, as far as what activities I should be participating in, how I should be praying? My wife and I happen to attend the Protestant church. So curious to know about where I should be sending my tithes, things of that nature, and also just how to, you know, engage my wife. This is something that brought to her attention. She supports my relationship with God. I don&#8217;t believe, at least not now, that she would want to go through OCIA with me. So really I&#8217;m looking for, you know, prayers and guidance as far as what I should do, what I shouldn&#8217;t do.
Joe: Very, very good question. And I like the context you gave. You&#8217;re, you know, coming from a Protestant background and then even about the whole relational context with your wife. I think in terms of do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts, I&#8217;m going to break this up mentally into a few different categories. One are going to be books. Then we&#8217;ve got prayers, then we&#8217;ve got overall practices, because it will be a spiritual journey and you will hit some obstacles along the way, almost guaranteed.
So in terms of books you can read, it can be helpful to have books that take a sort of overview level. And I would suggest a few in particular. Trent Horn&#8217;s *Why We&#8217;re Catholic* is an obvious one. If you stay on the line, we&#8217;d be happy to send it to you. Bishop Robert Barron&#8217;s book *Catholicism*, I think is a very nice overview of just like what it is to be Catholic.
Additionally, a book that I would recommend partly for you and partly for your wife would be Scott and Kimberly Hahn&#8217;s book *Rome Sweet Home*. And I mention that because he was ready to become Catholic before his wife was. Brilliant. I mean, he is, I like to say he stands alone. It&#8217;s really like Han Solo. I mean, he is one of a kind. His book I found very helpful for couples where one is ready to go before the other one is because one of the things he had to stop himself from doing was being really pushy about kind of the argumentative side.
And I&#8217;ve known a lot of, I&#8217;ll just say, a lot of theological nerd guys who were married to women who were not as nerdy about theology or as enthusiastic about upending their life to become Catholic or as enthusiastic about reading 20 books on being Catholic. I know that&#8217;s not everybody&#8217;s journey. But if you find that that resonates with you at all, that book I&#8217;ve found to be helpful on both parties&#8217; side of how they kind of live out that experience where one person may be ready and the other isn&#8217;t. In addition, it&#8217;s just a great resource for a lot of other reasons.
So that&#8217;s kind of the book list.
Second, in terms of prayers, entering into the life of the church and life of prayer in that way can be really rich. But I will give you a don&#8217;t right out the gate, which is don&#8217;t feel the need to do everything and don&#8217;t exhaust yourself. Like, if you get a gym membership on January 1st and your desire is, okay, I need to use every piece of equipment in here, you will by January 7th be like, I don&#8217;t ever want to go back to the gym because you&#8217;ll just worn yourself out.
There are a lot of good, beautiful, rich things that the church has to offer. There&#8217;s a storehouse, a real treasury when it comes to the spiritual gifts, including 2,000 years of really good prayers. And you can feel like you&#8217;re not doing enough by not doing all of them. And that&#8217;s actually not a good place to be. So you need to discern what are the things I can realistically say yes to and make sort of a part of my life.
And then the last thing doesn&#8217;t neatly fall into either the prayer or book category. But finding Catholics who you respect and can have, like, shared life with and like friendship with, it can be really huge. Because what happens to a lot of people is that they become intellectually convinced. And then, especially if you&#8217;re in a bigger, I don&#8217;t know where in St. Louis you&#8217;re at, but if you&#8217;re at one of the bigger parishes, sometimes they can feel kind of anonymous because there&#8217;s a lot of stuff going on.
And it&#8217;s like being a newcomer to a big city where if you&#8217;re not really intentional, you can sort of slip through the cracks. So that&#8217;s a lot. I know I kind of dumped a lot there. I&#8217;m curious about your thoughts or if there&#8217;s any part of that that went unanswered that you&#8217;d like me to maybe explain a little more about.
Caller: Again, practical was, you know, relationship with my wife. And she surprised me with a lot of questions that she&#8217;s asked. And I said, okay, we&#8217;re going to research this together. I&#8217;m going to research it. If you want a more thorough answer than I can provide off the top of my head. And I never want to be pushy. And that&#8217;s one thing I really feel called that I need to kind of slow my roll. But in terms of attending Mass and again, currently tied to the church that we attend. Oh, right, yeah, things like that. It happens to be a Pentecostal church. I am not a member of the church. That was my choice, theological points that I disagreed with. But, you know, do I continue to attend the church with my wife? Because I don&#8217;t want to drive a wedge between us.
So I guess it&#8217;s like, how much should I be doing with the Catholic Church right now? You know, what do I need to distance myself from with the current church I attend? So a lot of the practical, as I said earlier, the do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts.
Joe: Yeah, okay, that&#8217;s very helpful. So first, I think you&#8217;re already doing the right thing when you&#8217;re moving at the speed of your wife&#8217;s interest and have questions and you&#8217;re validating those questions and then you&#8217;re looking for answers. That is helpful for both of you and I think can only enrich the relationship because you&#8217;re treating her spiritual journey with the seriousness that it deserves rather than just kind of expecting her to be a fellow traveler on yours.
Second, you should move at the speed of your own comfort in some ways, I would say, in terms of when you start going to Mass. And I&#8217;ve known of people who have done both, depending on the kind of Pentecostal church that might be a lot in a day, but I&#8217;ve known couples where, because they&#8217;re not on the same boat and because there was nothing heretical necessarily being taught at the Protestant service, they would do both.
You&#8217;re definitely going to want Mass to be a major part of your life before you finally become Catholic. But again, you don&#8217;t have to do everything all at once. And so at this point in your life, you&#8217;re not yet bound by, you know, the weekly obligation to go to Mass. That will be something you&#8217;re bound by once you become Catholic, God willing.
And so growing towards that becoming just part of your regular routine is really important. Now, again, it may be a situation where that means your wife goes alone to the Pentecostal Church or it may mean that you&#8217;re going to both. It might be something that you have to kind of work out with her. Maybe you go with her sometime and, you know, you have to sort of respect one another&#8217;s consciences.
In this, if she doesn&#8217;t feel comfortable going to the Catholic Church or if you don&#8217;t feel comfortable continuing to go to the Pentecostal Church, there&#8217;s a need for real mutual respect for one another in terms of that journey. And it seems like you&#8217;re off to a good start there. I would just continue to be mindful of not pressuring either of you to do something you can&#8217;t in good conscience do, kind of in the name of marital unity, that there&#8217;s a lot of stuff that you want to kind of hold on to there.
Pentecostals, it depends on a lot of situations. But one way to think about it is this. Every Pentecostal I&#8217;ve known has taken miracles very seriously. And so when you explain the Eucharist and explain that there is this real miracle that Jesus Christ is being made bodily present, I have found overwhelmingly Pentecostals don&#8217;t have a lot of the built-up opposition to the idea of a miracle that a lot of other Christians do.
They, you know, some Christians are, you know, they are not continuationists, they&#8217;re cessationists. They think miracles stopped in the first century. So the idea of any miracle on earth is weird to them. That burden is already overcome when you&#8217;re talking about Pentecostal-Catholic kind of questions.
And so I know you said you&#8217;re not a member of it, but if that&#8217;s kind of the basic worldview, presenting it in terms of here is this miracle and I want to be present for this miracle in which our Lord is at, and he&#8217;s here in a special and unique sort of way. Hopefully that framework will be helpful for her.
It&#8217;s kind of a practical thing in terms of tithing. Again, you will, once you&#8217;re Catholic, have an obligation to assist in the upkeep of the church. Technically, the Catholic Church doesn&#8217;t have a strict 10% rule. That&#8217;s all coming from the Old Testament. But that is a good model for what you&#8217;re giving. You do have a duty and justice to help build up the church. And what that looks like for every individual is something you have to spiritually discern.
So that&#8217;ll be something else that you know, as you&#8217;re moving forward. At some point you will want to be financially assisting the church. But it is not, you know, some Protestant schools of thought claim that there&#8217;s still like a strict 10% that is actually not something that historically has been taught by the Catholic Church because it&#8217;s not something we find explicitly in the New Testament, but it is nevertheless a good modeling guide.
I don&#8217;t know. Does that help?
Caller: It&#8217;s extremely helpful and good. I don&#8217;t want to take up too much of your time and other listeners, but as far as with the miracles, when my wife and I were discussing the Eucharist, a very good dear friend of mine, Father Gaurav Shroff, who is now at Korea, was explaining transubstantiation. It was like my wife was just totally blown away by it in a very good way. And so, you know, there are a lot of things that I think are, if you will, no pun intended, easier to swallow, so to speak. She has questions.
Joe: Yeah. So last thing I&#8217;ll say, because I know we&#8217;re actually going to go to a break here pretty quick. I know an old friend of mine, actually an ex-girlfriend from college who was Assemblies of God and became Catholic. And her description was that the Eucharist was like a magnet drawing her past all of her oppositions and inhibitions.
Wow. And it sounds like there might be a similar kind of phenomenon with your wife that it&#8217;s like, okay, once you realize, yes, if I become part of this, I get to receive Jesus in this radical way. There&#8217;s a strong spiritual draw for many people from more of a Pentecostal background.
And so I would just let that be kind of a guiding principle. Even when you inevitably hit a sort of I don&#8217;t know what to make of this moment along the journey, don&#8217;t let that stuff get in the way of saying yes to Jesus in the Eucharist.
Cy: Hey, hang on. We&#8217;re going to send you the book *Why We&#8217;re Catholic*. Right back with more Joe Heschmeyer. Why aren&#8217;t you Catholic?

My Wife’s Protestant — But I Want to Become Catholic…

Full disclosure: I’m a big football fan—grade school, high school, college, and the National Football League (NFL)—and I’d like to see the Buffalo Bills win a Super Bowl, although, truth be told, I’d prefer the same first for my hometown Detroit Lions. I was pulling for Scott Norwood and Buffalo when his kick went wide right at the end of Super Bowl XXV, and I cheered when <a href="https://www.nfl.com/100/originals/100-greatest/plays-46">Don Beebe</a>, two years later, didn’t let a 52-17 deficit prevent him from stopping another score in one of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqGNTUQSuPM">most memorable moments</a> in Super Bowl history.
I played football as a kid and for decades have used “<a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/faith-family-and-football">Faith, Family, and Football</a>” as a personal motto. Catholicism and American football have <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-pigskin-and-the-paschal-mystery">a long and rich history</a>, as the character-testing practices and games can help boys and men bond under a common purpose in our Lord Jesus Christ. Many U.S. Catholic high schools have great football traditions, and I personally benefited from playing in <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/faith-family-and-football-a-reflection-on-when-the-game-stands-tall">the Detroit Catholic League</a>, including at St. Mary of Redford Grade School in Detroit and Fr. Gabriel Richard High School in Ann Arbor. I especially liked how we would participate in Sunday morning Mass as a team at St. Mary’s, and then head to the locker room and play our games at nearby fields.
In addition, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qoh3YkxuwVo">University of Notre Dame</a> has a <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@go1rish/video/7501528430660357422">great gridiron tradition</a>, and the NFL Hall of Fame includes many faithful Catholics, including coaches like Vince Lombardi, George Halas, Don Shula, and Chuck Noll, and players like Roger Staubach, a longtime personal favorite of mine who, when he won the MVP in Super Bowl VI for the victorious Dallas Cowboys, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/2704912/2021/07/19/nfl-100-no-78-why-roger-staubach-was-greatest-sports-hero-of-his-time/">declined a Dodge Charger</a> because the station wagon he asked for instead better suited the needs of his growing family.
<h2>Unsportsmanlike Conduct: A Blasphemous Parody of Baptism</h2>
Many NFL teams have a priest chaplain, who <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-do-i-explain-the-mass">offers the sacrifice of the Mass</a> for Catholic players on Sundays. Given this storied history, I’m disappointed not only that the Bills Mafia are promoting <a href="https://youtu.be/_cBNMPJREvI">a parody of the sacrament of baptism</a> to incorporate fans “into their fold,” but also that <a href="https://www.nfl.com/videos/baby-mafia-you-better-believe-it">the NFL has made a promotional spot</a> of the parody, which it’s been broadcasting to millions in recent weeks.
The Bills Mafia have a ritual in which they hurtle their bodies onto tables. Prudent fans use custom breakable tables, and they also make sure to land on a padded surface. In addition, they help infants break cardboard versions during their initiation into the Mafia. That’s harmless fun, in and of itself, for parents to do with their babies.
What’s not fun, though, is incorporating it into a blasphemous parody of infant baptism.
Catholics can laugh at themselves. Think, for example, of some of the best bits of “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=335255542861394">Fr. Guido Sarducci</a>” of Saturday Night Live fame. In marked contrast, this NFL parody crosses the line, including by mocking the baptism ritual, the associated invocation of the Holy Trinity, and the offices of both the ministerial priesthood and the papacy. As the NFL commercial provides,
<blockquote>We are gathered here today to witness the baptism of the newest member of the Bills Mafia. In the name of [Bills head coach Sean] McDermott, the holy Allen [Bill star quarterback Josh], and in [Bills coaching legend] Marv Levy’s name. Amen!</blockquote>
Multiple infants are seen during the fifteen-second promo, and as the “amen” is uttered, we see the caption, “Some football fans are born ready.” And then, as a father places his child on the cardboard table, the NFL commercial concludes with the message, “You better believe it.”
The Mafia is led by its own “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=815106314526176">pope</a>,” who dresses like a bishop in liturgical vestments  and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cBNMPJREvI">mocks priestly blessings</a>, including making the sign of the cross while bringing older folk into his football flock.
It’s all a backhanded compliment to the Church’s ongoing relevance, because if we didn’t matter, we wouldn’t be on their minds. Still, one should be wary of mocking God (see Gal. 6:7-9).
<h2>Baptism: Worthy of Belief—and Respect</h2>
The real sacrament of baptism provides <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/infant-baptism">new life to infants</a> and others, including through removing original sin, making them temples of the Holy Spirit, and incorporating them into the Catholic Church. Baptism is the gateway to the Christian life and something Jesus normatively requires for his disciples (Matt. 28:18-20, Acts 2:37-39) <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/baptism-saves-you">to attain heaven</a> (1 Pet. 3:20-21). Jesus also makes clear that his kingdom is for children (Matt. 18:1-4, 19:13-15). And so whereas male infants became a member of God’s Old Covenant people through circumcision on their eighth day (Gen. 17:9-14), baptism or “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/ddp/infant-baptism-and-the-new-testament">circumcision of the heart</a>” became its New Covenant analogue for little ones (Col. 2:8-15).
Some might say this article is counterproductive because it draws attention to the very thing it decries. I hope not. Rather, I’m appealing to members of the Bills Mafia, particularly faithful Catholic ones, that they end this charade of sacrilege. Instead, why not have real local priests (or deacons) offer real blessings at gatherings of the Bills Mafia, including special ones for infants? And you don’t need to be Catholic to receive a blessing from a Catholic priest or deacon, so everyone is truly welcome.
I also hope and pray that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell sidelines this promo permanently. Perhaps hearing from deacons, priests, and bishops could help persuade him. Although Goodell didn’t start this ritual, the NFL under his leadership has certainly given it a global audience.
Ironically, the NFL has made special efforts to kowtow to certain groups that promote Marxism and other anti-nuclear family messages under the aegis of combatting racism, <a href="https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2020/10/19/imagining-malcolm-x-in-2020/">something Malcolm X would’ve countered</a> and which many black leaders today have opposed. The NFL also <a href="https://www.nfl.com/causes/pride/">partners with groups with like GLAAD</a>, who’ve applauded the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” for bringing “<a href="https://glaad.org/statement-of-support-for-the-la-dodgers-pride-night-and-for-all-organizations-elevating-the-pride-joy-and-visibility-of-lgbtq-people-and-groups/">flamboyant hilarity to serious causes</a>”— including mock liturgies in which a condom has been “reverenced” as their “holy savior” and “nuns” whose names even many secular publications wouldn’t hazard to print.
So why the double standard for the Catholic Church? Surely Goodell could have consulted his NYC neighbor Cardinal Timothy Dolan or canon lawyer Fr. Gerald Murray, who would have told him that the NFL is aiding and abetting disrespect for Christ and his Church. Where was the vetting process on this commercial? No one raised a red flag?
Here we’re reminded that the Church’s incontrovertible enemies are the devil and his demonic minions, not mere human beings (Eph. 6:12). Given the cultural slide of the last several decades, including because of the damage of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/qa-understanding-the-priest-scandal">clerical sexual abuse scandal</a>, the percentage of practicing Catholics in America has plummeted since my own baptism in March 1962, as has the religiosity of Americans in general. As a result, I suspect some of these Bills Mafia members include non-practicing Catholics seeking solidarity amid the trappings of a faith they once held dear. May they soon seek edifying alternatives in cheering for their home team.

No to Sacrilegious Football ‘Baptisms’

Shrinking population (continued)

Catholic Answers Cruise

Louvre heist

Jud Apatow says he took ahawaska and saw Jesus

&#8220;Can non-Catholics be saved?&#8221; This episode explores this crucial question while also touching on the Catholic Answers Cruise and the implications of a shrinking population. Additionally, we delve into intriguing topics like the Louvre heist and Jud Apatow&#8217;s experience with ahawaska and his vision of Jesus, offering a diverse range of insights.
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