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This episode focuses on the topic of our 2019 Catholic Answers Conference: The Early Church Was the Catholic Church

Catholic Answers | Season 5 | Episode 5

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On November 4, 2025, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released a doctrinal note entitled Mater Populi Fidelis (“Mother of the Faithful People”), “on Some Marian Titles Regarding Mary’s Cooperation in the Work of Salvation.” This note is in response to many requests, mostly in relation to the request of a Fifth Marian Dogma of Mary’s Spiritual Maternity (which includes <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-dreaded-cult-of-mary">the titles</a> Co-redemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate).
Protestants are shouting for joy, as if this were some sort of victory over the Church. Even headlines from notable news sources jumped the gun, <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/vatican-dispatch/2025/11/04/vatican-mary-redemptrix-mediatrix-doctrine/">proclaiming</a> that the Church has <a href="https://angelusnews.com/news/vatican/titles-for-mary/">tossed out</a> the titles Co-redemptrix and Mediatrix.
This has been interpreted by a large contingent on social media as the Church changing its doctrine. And some Protestants are sarcastically writing off the notion that the Church’s teaching is unchanging, pointing to Mater Populi Fidelis as a change in the longstanding tradition.
But what does Mater Populi Fidelis really say?
It bears mentioning first that this doctrinal note is about titles, not doctrine. It seeks not to change any doctrine, but to address the use of particular titles so that the Church’s doctrine may be clearly understood. Second, the perception on the internet of the remarks on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-dreaded-cult-of-mary">the titles themselves</a> has largely misrepresented what was written.
Because it needs to be said, let’s look at what the document actually says pertaining to these unchanged doctrines, and the DDF’s reasoning for wanting to address the usage of titles. As a sneak peak, it is not because the properly explained theology is incorrect.
<h2>Co-redemptrix</h2>
In its treatment of the title Co-redemptrix, the document begins by affirming Mary’s cooperation in the work of salvation. Just as St. Paul said, “We are God’s fellow workers” (1 Cor. 3:9) and “I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col. 1:24), the Church affirms that we have an active participation in the work of salvation. We unite our sufferings to Christ’s and intercede for our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Mater Populi Fidelis affirms that Mary’s unique participation in Christ’s saving work, “attested to in Scripture,” has also “been taught by the Magisterium of the Church.”
So what, then, is the intention of the document, if the Church’s true teaching on Mary’s role in redemption is not changed? The short answer is that the DDF wants to address particular titles associated with this work. Though not altering the true understanding of Co-redemptrix, the DDF essentially states that too many explanations are required for people to understand what the title actually means. As such, “this title risks obscuring Christ’s unique salvific mediation and can therefore create confusion and an imbalance in the harmony of the truths of the Christian faith.”
The document continues:
<blockquote>When an expression requires many, repeated explanations to prevent it from straying from a correct meaning, it does not serve the faith of the people of God and becomes unhelpful. In this case, the expression Co-redemptrix does not help extol Mary as the first and foremost collaborator in the work of redemption and grace, for it carries the risk of eclipsing the exclusive role of Jesus Christ.</blockquote>
The takeaway is that the true theology is not changed—that which outlines Mary’s unique participation as the one who said fiat to the Annunciation, who suffered alongside her Son at the foot of the cross as a mother, and who is given to us as Mother of the Church. Yet at this time, the DDF deems it “unhelpful” to use the title “Co-redemptrix.”
<h2>Mediatrix</h2>
On the topic of mediation, the doctrinal note begins by affirming the concept of mediation among all Christians—that when we pray for one another, our sufferings, when united to Christ’s on the cross, are meritorious, and we assist our brothers and sisters in coming to Christ. This is quickly applied to Mary, who, in a singular and unique way, mediated Christ’s presence (through the Annunciation) to us and continues this mediation today. It has always been understood that in the proper sense, Christ is the one true mediator (see 1 Tim. 2:5), and any other mediation on behalf of believers is a participation in Christ’s mediation.
This is the quickest summary of the treatment of Mary as mediatrix. The document says that the title Mediatrix can be used with caution, so long as it is absolutely clear that Mary does not have some sort of mediation parallel to Christ’s, but subordinate and participatory in his. Mary’s mediation is not some second option to Christ’s, but rather, to put it in the vernacular, her role is to bring us to him who is himself the Mediator.
Mater Fidelis Populi clarifies that it can be said that Mary is mediatrix of “graces” (plural) “when seen in reference to Mary’s maternal help at various moments in our lives,” which “can have an acceptable meaning.” The document does, however, state that the specific title Mediatrix of All Graces has “limits that do not favor a correct understanding of Mary’s unique place. In fact, she, the first redeemed, could not have been the mediatrix of the grace that she herself received.”
It should be explained that the understanding of the title Mediatrix of All Graces, when properly taught, states that Mary has mediated Christ to the world through her fiat and the Annunciation, and that all grace comes to us from Christ (or, to be precise, from the Father, through the Son, and given by the Holy Spirit). As a correct understanding theologically, the DDF is also not changing this teaching of the Church, but issuing caution regarding the use of titles. As Mater Fidelis Populi states, “Mary can implore God to grant us those internal impulses of the Holy Spirit that are called ‘actual graces’” (6). The document goes on to explain these “actual graces” as aids given by the Holy Spirit to help sinners prepare for justification.
In short, the document wants to stress that Mary does not distribute “spiritual goods or energies apart from our personal relationship with Jesus Christ” and that Mary should be seen more as our “mother in the order of grace.” Catholics should have no problem with looking at Mary as our spiritual mother, because as the best mother, she provides her children with all their needs.
<h2>Heavenly Realities Are Not Changing</h2>
At this point, we ought to remember that this is a discussion about titles, not so much about doctrine. There may be a couple of lines in the document that deal with the doctrine of Mary’s role in dispensing graces, but those will be fleshed out over time. For us, the most important thing to remember is that heavenly realities are not changing. Mary still exercises her role as the most powerful intercessor in all of heaven, and the many saints, Doctors of the Church, and papal teachings (including encyclicals) stressing Mary’s mediation are not being thrown in the trash. The Church doesn’t just change doctrine like that, so pray a Hail Mary and ask our Lady for peace.

Is Mary Still Mediatrix of Graces?

Episode 83: Year B &#8211; 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on three details from the second reading and Gospel reading that are relevant for doing apologetics. The detail in the second reading, taken from 2 Corinthians 5:14-17, is Paul’s teaching that in Christ we are a new creation. The topic that comes to fore here is the nature of justification as intrinsic righteousness. One of the details in the Gospel reading, taken from Mark 4:35-41, is Mark’s report of Jesus calming the winds and the sea. As we will see, when read in light of the Old Testament backdrop, this detail provides evidence of Jesus’ divinity. The other detail is Jesus’ “rebuke” of the winds, which, when read in the Greek, might suggest demonic forces were behind the raging winds and Jesus rebukes such forces, thereby revealing his authority over demons.
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Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062324.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a>
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Jesus’ Divine Authority Over Demons

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DAY 244
CHALLENGE
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“The infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke contradict each other. For example, Luke has Mary living in Nazareth before going to Bethlehem, while in Matthew they don’t go to Nazareth until later.”
DEFENSE
The infancy narratives don’t contradict each other. In fact, they fit together very well. Here we provide an interwoven narrative.
Initially, Gabriel appears to Zechariah to announce the birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5–25). A few months later, Gabriel appears to Mary in Nazareth to announce the birth of Jesus (Luke 1:26–38), and Mary goes to visit Elizabeth before returning to Nazareth (Luke 1:39–56). Then John the Baptist is born (Luke 1:57–80).
Around this time, Joseph is informed that Mary is pregnant. He plans to divorce her, but an angel tells him to continue the marriage (Matt. 1:18–23). The two begin cohabiting (Matt. 1:24). This would be in Nazareth, per Luke’s account.
Because of the enrollment announced by Caesar Augustus, the Holy Family travels to Bethlehem (Luke 2:1–5), where Jesus is born (Luke 2:7, Matt. 1:24a). That night, the shepherds visit them (Luke 2:8–20). Around the same time, the Magi observe the star in their homeland (cf. Matt. 2:2, 16).
Eight days after birth, Jesus is circumcised and named (Luke 2:21; Matt. 1:24b), and after forty days he is presented at the temple (Luke 2:22–38).
At this point, the Holy Family either returns to Nazareth or remains in Bethlehem (which is not clear). If they returned to Nazareth, they continued to visit Jerusalem and their relatives in Bethlehem multiple times every year for the three annual pilgrimage feasts (Exod. 23:14–17; cf. Luke 2:41).
Between one and two years after the birth (cf. Matt. 2:16), the Magi arrive and are directed to Bethlehem, where they find the Holy Family (Matt. 2:1–11). They are warned in a dream to return to their country by a different route (Matt. 2:12). Also warned in a dream, the Holy Family flees to Egypt (Matt. 2:13–15) to avoid the slaughter of the innocent (Matt. 2:16–18).
When Herod the Great dies, the Holy Family then returns to Israel (Matt. 2:19–21), but Joseph learns Herod Archelaus is ruling in Judea and so takes the family to Nazareth (Matt. 2:22–23).
TIP
For further discussion, see Jimmy Akin, “How the Accounts of Jesus’ Childhood Fit Together,” at JimmyAkin.com.
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The Infancy Narratives

<div>During Advent, which mysteries of the rosary are to be said each day?</div><div>You are always free to pray using any mysteries of the rosary you desire. There is no obligation to do all of them, or to follow them in order, although that is what most people do. In Advent and Christmas times, it is traditional to pray the Joyful Mysteries on Sunday, replacing the Glorious Mysteries, in order to focus on the mysteries of those seasons. But this is only a custom, and privately you may pray as you please.
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Pray the Rosary as You Desire

<div>What should I do when my wife won’t be sexually intimate?</div><div>My first suggestion is to have a heart-to-heart conversation with your wife as to why she desires not to engage in the marital act. Perhaps she experiences physical pain, something that a competent doctor or physical therapist could address.
Perhaps your wife feels neglected by you in some way. If so, ask whether there is anything you could do to help improve your marriage. Tell her you want to be the best husband you can be, laying down your life for her as Jesus Christ did for the Church (see Eph. 5:25). In so doing, tell her that you pledge to show your love for her in non-sexual ways and that you welcome any suggestions regarding ways she would prefer. And let her know you won’t be expecting immediate “conjugal payback” but that perhaps you could discuss the issue of sexual intimacy in a month or two.
As time goes on, continue to look for non-conjugal ways you can show your love for your wife, and invite her to pray with you each day as a married couple, if you’re doing so at present, or ways you can deepen that experience, if you already are. As the Ven. Fr. Patrick Peyton used to say, “The family that prays together stays together.”
Further, perhaps going to a good marriage counselor would be helpful. Don’t feel ashamed to do so. Every couple can benefit from helpful input periodically, whether it’s from their parish pastor, a good friend, or even a good Catholic therapist. To find a Catholic good therapist in your area, or perhaps to speak to one by phone, contact Dr. Gregory Popcak and his team at the <a href="https://www.catholiccounselors.com/services/our-counselors/">Pastoral Solutions Institute</a> and/or visit <a href="http://www.catholictherapists.com/a-note-from-the-founder">CatholicTherapist.com</a>.
Finally, seek the Lord’s help to carry your cross, especially in the Eucharist and the sacrament of reconciliation. Over time, and with various aids, we hope and pray your situation improves. In any event, God will be faithful in helping your carry your cross fruitfully (see 2 Cor. 12:8-10; John 14:27).
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What Should I Do When My Wife Won’t Be Intimate?

Protestants often claim that the veneration of Mary is a much later accretion into Christianity. However, the truth is the exact opposite: we see a shockingly high view of Mary early. This is not what we would expect if Protestantism were true.
For example, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300140194/the-old-testament-pseudepigrapha-volume-1/">the Second Sibylline Oracle</a>, which scholars generally date to the second century, describes the fate of the damned, who have rejected the opportunity to repent after death. This opportunity was made possible by Mary’s hand: “For he [God] gave seven days of ages to erring men for repentance through the intercession of the holy virgin” (312).
Although the Virgin is not identified by name, there is little doubt about who she is. First, there is no debate that whoever wrote this passage was a Christian. This fact alone drastically narrows down who could plausibly be “the holy virgin.” Second, the Oxford classicist <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-sibylline-oracles-9780199215461?cc=us&amp;lang=en&amp;">J.L. Lightfoot</a> identifies Mary as the holy virgin in her summary of SibOr 2:305-312: “The damned gnash teeth; wish to die and cannot; plead in vain; God turns his face away, for they have had seven days of ages for repentance through the Virgin Mary.”
The eminent Yale scholar <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300140194/the-old-testament-pseudepigrapha-volume-1/">John J. Collins argued</a> (and I think rightly so) that this part of the text was completed before A.D. 150: “Since no other historical event is mentioned after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Christian redaction should probably be dated no later than A.D. 150.” Thus, we have an incredibly early text proclaiming that Mary can intercede for the dead.
It gets worse for Protestants. We have two apparently independent texts converging on a tradition that Mary gave birth to Christ without pain. Given the fact that pain in childbirth was a consequence of the Fall (Gen. 3:16), these texts seem to set up an Eve-Mary typology.
The first text is the <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300140200/the-old-testament-pseudepigrapha-volume-2/">Ascension of Isaiah</a>, which the world’s leading expert on the text, Enrico Norelli, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jts/article-abstract/49/1/323/1735633?redirectedFrom=PDF">dates to the end of the first century</a>. After carrying the Lord for a short time, Mary sees her baby suddenly appear outside her womb. Apparently, news of this event spread around Bethlehem: “But many said, ‘She did not give birth; the midwife did not go up (to her), and we did not hear (any) cries of pain’” (11:14).
This text used to be accused of promoting Docetism, a heresy that denies that Christ had real flesh, but that accusation was refuted by Darrel D. Hannah in his 1999 article “<a href="https://www.academia.edu/3175784/The_Ascension_of_Isaiah_and_Docetic_Christology">The Ascension of Isaiah and Docetic Christology</a>.” Since the text elsewhere affirms that Christ had a true body, the emphasis here is that Christ’s birth was miraculous and strange. Indeed, Mary’s “womb was found as (it was) at first, before she had conceived” (11:9).
The second text is <a href="https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9780800660567/The-Odes-of-Solomon">The Odes of Solomon</a>, which is generally dated to either the late first or early second century. <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/formation-of-the-biblical-canon-volume-1-9780567668769/">James Charlesworth</a> adds another important detail about this text: “I highlight the Odes of Solomon because it may well have been composed within the community that gave us the Gospel of John and helps us understand the marvelous text and the Logos Christology.” If this is true, then it has enormous historical and theological weight.
Odes 19:6-9 says, “The womb of the Virgin caught [it], and she conceived and gave birth. And the Virgin became a mother in great compassion and she was in labor and bore a son. And she felt no pains/grief, because it was not useless/for no reason. And she did not require a midwife, because he [God] kept her alive like a man.”
The “it” is referring to milk, which came from the Father and was given to Mary through the Holy Spirit. Because of this strange imagery, this text has been accused of being gnostic. However, this charge was refuted by <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/10077">Edward Engelbrecht</a> and <a href="https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9780800660567/The-Odes-of-Solomon">Michael Lattke</a>, who both demonstrated that orthodox Church Fathers (like St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of Alexandria) used similar images of God’s milk. It would be especially strange for Irenaeus, who directly opposed the Gnostics, to use this imagery if it were heretical (<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103438.htm">Against Heresies 4.38.1</a>; cf. Lattke 270).
It is no surprise, then, that in the second century we see Mary being called the New Eve. The world’s leading historian on Marian devotion, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300217216/mary-in-early-christian-faith-and-devotion/">Stephen J. Shoemaker</a>, writes, “The notion of Mary’s virginity would receive further theological development during the course of the second century, first at the hands of Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165) and later by Irenaeus of Lyons (d. 202), both of whom wove from this doctrine a portrait of Mary as the New Eve, whose chastity and obedience undid the original Eve’s primordial immorality and disobedience.”
Among early Christians we find the belief that Mary could intercede for the dead (the concept of interceding saints <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jews-and-the-saints">goes back to ancient Judaism</a>) and that she painlessly birthed Christ, exempting her from Eve’s curse and elevating her to the status of a new, better Eve. Even if Protestants think Catholics are wrong about Mary, they cannot say any longer that Marian veneration was a later accretion.

Early Christians Venerated Mary like Catholics!

When I was a kid, I remember watching the movie Freaky Friday. It featured Lindsay Lohan as Anna, a teenage girl with an attitude, who wakes up one morning to find herself in her mom’s body and her mom in hers. Don’t stone me for blasphemy, but I am going to use this as a parallel to the Eucharist.
We have to intellectually wrestle with the fact that Jesus took bread into his hands at the Last Supper and called it his body. He said the blessing, broke the bread, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take this all of you, and eat it, for this is my body, which will be given up for you.” He then took the Passover wine and said something similar. “Take this, all of you, and drink of it, for this is my blood.” What did Jesus mean when he spoke these words?
I’ll tell you what he didn’t mean. Jesus did not mean that this was just a symbol. That’s what many Protestants believe, not Catholics. Also, the Catholic Church has taught that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist from the beginning.
Let me put it this way: when God tells us that bread is his body, we should believe him, even if we don’t understand how, because God himself said it was. Why should we believe that Jesus is God? Because he rose from the dead. It all comes down to the Resurrection. If Jesus is who he says he is, then it isn’t difficult to believe the miracles in the Gospels. And we know that Jesus is God because he told us he was, and he backed it up by rising from the dead.
So how does ordinary bread become the body of Christ? In order to understand this, we have to understand two terms that come from the philosopher Aristotle: a thing’s accidents versus its substance. To understand the difference between accidents and substance, I’ll return to our movie, Freaky Friday.
In the case of a daughter waking up and finding herself in her mom’s body, we see a change in that person’s substance. The core substance of Mom has changed to somebody else while maintaining in appearance everything else that was a part of mom: her eyes, her hair, her nails. Those things that are a part of her appearance make up her accidents. On the other hand, to wrap our minds around the concept of changing a thing’s accidents, let’s think of ourselves in our own bodies. If I dye my hair or break my wrist, what changes are my accidents. My core substance remains the same: I am Deacon Paul Maxey.
Now let’s apply this to the Eucharist. When Jesus said at the Last Supper that bread was his body, the accidents of the bread remained the same. In other words, the bread, a microscope would show, continued to be bread. To all scientific tests, that bread would have remained bread. But like the mother who finds herself in her daughter’s body, the core substance of what the bread is changed. It’s not just that this same change of substance occurred at the Last Supper; it continues to occur every day at Mass. That is why when we receive the Eucharist at Mass, the eucharistic minister does not say, “This is bread”; rather, holding up the Eucharist, he says, “The body of Christ.” And we respond Amen, meaning, “I believe that this is truly the body of Christ.”
Jesus completely understands that this is difficult to comprehend and even to believe, so there have been times in history when the accidents of the bread and wine at Mass have turned into the body and blood of Christ as well. One such instance is the eucharistic miracle of Lanciano, Italy, which continues to this day. To put it briefly, a long time ago, the wine at Mass turned into actual blood in the chalice. Now Lanciano is a place of pilgrimage, where we can worship God, who is truly present in the blood of Christ.
We can reflect on the words of St. Epiphanius of Salamis (374) about the Last Supper. When Jesus took bread into his hands, as it says in the Gospel, “giving thanks, he said: ‘This is really me.’” (Epiphanius, The Man Well-Anchored, 57, in William Jurgen’s The Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 2, 1084). There is something about those words that freshens up my understanding of the Eucharist.
We can think also of the words of St. John Chrysostom (370). When Jesus says, “‘This is my body,’ be convinced of it and believe it, and look at it with eyes of the mind” (Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew, 82, 4. in Jurgen’s vol. 2, 1,179). In other words, understand what’s happening even if your eyes can’t physically see the change.
If you wish that you could see Jesus as the apostles did, John Chrysostom reminds us to look at the Eucharist! “Only look! You see him! You touch him! You eat him!”
St. Ambrose of Milan (390-391) anticipated an objection: “Perhaps you may be saying: I see something else; how can you assure me that I am receiving the body of Christ?” (The Mysteries, 9, 50. in Jurgens, vol. 2, 1,333). He responds, “Let us prove that this is not what nature has shaped it to be, but what the blessing has consecrated; for the power of the blessing is greater than that of nature, because by the blessing even nature itself is changed.”
Next time we go to Mass, as the Eucharist touches our tongues, let us remember that we are receiving into our own body the living God himself!

The ‘Freaky’ Mystery of the Eucharist

A caller asks how to respond to an Anabaptist who claims that they were the original Christians and that Catholics cannot be the true Church due to how Catholics acted during the Reformation. Karlo Broussard, author of Meeting the Protestant Challenge, explains why the Catholic Church is the true Church.
Transcript:
Caller:
I have a sister-in-law who is Baptist, and she talks about her faith and the doctrines of the Baptist church, they sound very Protestant, but she indicates that they are not Protestant. They actually trace their roots all the way back to the apostles, and they believe that they&#8217;re the one true church that Jesus founded. And during the Protestant Reformation, it was the Catholics who participated in the killing of people of other religions, and it was the Anabaptists who did not participate in that. I was just hoping you could maybe fill in some blanks.
Karlo Broussard:
All right. So let&#8217;s think through this, Dee. Thank you very much for your call. So notice how the conclusion Catholic Church is not the original church is based on the premise, right, the reason that she&#8217;s giving for this is that the Catholic Church had sinners in its ranks and committed atrocities. Okay. Well, if committing atrocities and sinful leaders of your church precludes or excludes your church from being the one true church established by Jesus, well, then we&#8217;re going to have to exclude Peter and the Apostles in the first century from being the leaders and the originators of the original Church of Jesus Christ.
Why? Because they committed atrocities as well. Peter denied our Lord. Yes, he repented, but he denied our Lord. A leader, of one of the 12, Judas denied our Lord betrayed Him, and from the looks of it, he despaired. The other apostles &#8211; Matthew tells us of Matthew Chapter 27 &#8211; that all of them in some way betrayed our Lord and they fled and were not associated with our Lord during His passion and death.
So if we&#8217;re going to make holiness of leaders of the church the condition for being the original true church, then we&#8217;re going to have to say that the early apostles were not the true church established by Jesus. But of course, that&#8217;s absurd. That&#8217;s false. So once we expose that flawed reasoning there that they&#8217;re using holiness as a condition for determining which is the true church, like the holiness of the members of the church as a condition for which is the true church.
Well, then we ask the question, okay, well, how would we identify the true Church of Jesus Christ? Well Dee, when we look at the early Christian writings in the second century, for example, and even in the first century, if we look at Clement&#8217;s letter to the Corinthians in the first century, some dated to A.D. 70, some dated to A.D. 90, Clement talks about bishops being the successors to the apostles.
And in Clement&#8217;s mind, in the way that he&#8217;s writing, that is one of the ways in which we can identify the true Church of Jesus by looking to the succession of the apostles in the bishops. And then we see this confirmed again and again in the second century St.Irenaeus, when he&#8217;s talking about how to refute heretics, like how to know these guys are teaching things contrary to the orthodox faith of Christianity, what do we do? Irenaeus tells us we look to the succession of the apostles and the succession of the apostles in the bishops, because therein lies the preservation of the apostolic tradition, of the truth of God&#8217;s revelation given to us through Jesus as taught by the Apostles.
So in your conversation with your friend here, you could sort of carve this path or pave this path or articulate this way of going about it and saying, &#8220;listen, for these early Christians, they were looking to the succession of the apostles and the bishops for determining which was the true church of Jesus Christ and who had the true faith. Does your community have ministers who have been ordained by men who can be traced back all the way to the Apostles?&#8221; And of course, within the Anabaptist tradition, the answer would be no. So that would be one way of going about it. But then we have to take an extra step forward further and say, well, even though a Christian community might have bishops that can trace their historical lineage through succession all the way back to the apostles, the question becomes, well, do they have the successor to Saint Peter?
And that&#8217;s where the essential difference is going to come into play between Catholicism and all other groups of Christianity, even among our Orthodox brethren, because it&#8217;s the successor to Saint Peter and the Bishop of Rome, namely the Pope that is the idea defying marker of the original Church of Jesus Christ. Because in Matthew 16:18, our Lord tells Peter Simon, You are the &#8211; you are &#8211; you shall be called Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church. Peter being the visible foundation of Jesus&#8217;s Church &#8211; allows &#8211; gives us a visible marker for identifying the true Church of Jesus. Because wherever the foundation is, there is the true Church of Christ. And of course, according to historical documentation, Peter died as the Bishop of Rome, so the successors to St. Peter as the Bishop of Rome would continue in that ministry of being the visible foundation of Christ here on Earth, Christ Church here on Earth, the Keeper of the Keys, the Supreme Binder and Looser, the Universal Shepherd of Christ&#8217;s flock here on Earth.
And that, Dee, is how we would move forward in articulating how we can determine that the Catholic Church is the original Church established by Jesus, not only by comparing and contrasting teachings like the Catholic Church teaches this, this is what we find in the New Testament, the early Christian testimony, but also by way of the historical succession to the apostles and more specifically to Saint Peter.

“The Anabaptists Were the FIRST Christians” | The Catholic Response

What would obligations for Sunday Mass be if you were in a Ground Hog’s Day scenario?

Do we jump around with the readings at Mass?

How do I know the difference between a bishop, an archbishop, and a cardinal?

When did Jesus mean by “taking up your cross” when he wasn’t crucified yet? Also, I’m writing a Catholic history book in Spanish; do I need an imprimatur?

Why does God give us suffering when it feels like there’s no purpose? For example, a break-up.

Why does St. Irenaeus say that the Church was founded and organized in Rome by Peter and Paul?

What are the rules for working on Sunday?

Why does God let us go through pain, like breakups, when it feels pointless? Jimmy Akin explores this tough question and answers more on Sunday obligations, Church hierarchy, and Catholic history.

Why Does God Allow Suffering? Understanding Its Purpose in Faith

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DAY 226
CHALLENGE
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“The Gospels contradict one another regarding Peter’s three denials: (1) Mark has the cock crowing twice, but the other Gospels only once; (2) the dialogue used by Peter and his accusers differs; and (3) the people making the accusations are different.”
DEFENSE
None of these involve contradictions.
First, roosters crow multiple times at every dawn. Mark 14:72 mentions the second crowing specifically, and the others streamline the account for simplicity (see Day 37).
Second, no transcriptionist was present, and the dialogue is based on Peter and John’s memories (they being the only disciples present). It involves normal paraphrase and reconstruction within the limits of verbal approximation in ancient documents (see Day 258).
Third, although an ancient author would have been within his rights to simply reconstruct the accusations prompting the three deni- als—which are what would have been principally remembered—the Gospels recount details indicating eyewitnesses’ memories.
Thus all four Gospels state Peter’s first denial occurred after he was accused by a female servant, and John indicates it was the one who kept the door (Matt. 26:69; Mark 14:66–67; Luke 22:56; John 18:17).
Peter’s second denial was prompted by a group accusation. John says “they” made it (John 18:25), while Mark mentions that “the maid” (apparently the first maid) identified Peter “to the bystanders” (Mark 14:69) and Matthew mentions “another maid” spoke “to the bystanders” (Matt. 26:71), one of whom—a man—accused Peter more directly (Luke 22:58).
Peter’s third denial was also prompted by a group, which Matthew and Mark describe as “the bystanders” (Matt. 26:73; Mark 14:70). Luke indicates another person—again a man—accused Peter more directly (Luke 22:59–60), and John indicates it was “one of the servants of the high priest, a kinsman of the man whose ear Peter had cut off” (John 18:26).
Only the first denial is preceded by an accusation by a single person (the door maid), and as the idea begins to spread through the group, the latter two denials are preceded by accusations that at least two of the Gospels say involved groups (Matthew, Mark, and John in the case of the second denial and Matthew and Mark in the case of the third).
We thus see evidence that a real historical event is being recounted in keeping with the literary conventions of the time.
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Peter’s Denials

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3 TEMPTATIONS YOU NEED TO WATCH OUT FOR!

<div>Are there any good books on the The Lord’s Prayer?</div><div>Fr. Romano Guardini&#8217;s book The Lord&#8217;s Prayer is an excellent choice. Another book to consider is Our Father: The Lord&#8217;s Prayer by Pope Francis.
You can also hear Venerable Fulton Sheen speak about the meaning of the Our Father <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSSchaLv0P4">here</a>.
</div>

A Good Book on the The Lord’s Prayer

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The real truth about Martin Luther... Did you know this?

<div>Is someone being treated with psychiatric medication for bipolar disorder free to marry?</div><div>The principle at work here is that of freedom. Does the mentally afflicted person have the freedom necessary to make a commitment to marriage? Very often the use of medications allows a person to function freely and responsibly, so in this case the person could be free to marry. It would be important, however, in the case of someone really diagnosed with bipolar disorder to have a reasonable expectation of stability in maintaining the treatment on the part of the patient and also full knowledge and acceptance on the part of the partner.
This means that a marriage entered into when both were sane cannot be undone or annulled later if one of the parties falls ill again. We say &#8220;in sickness and in health.&#8221; So the time for discernment and responsible free choice is before the vows are taken. The pre-existing condition should not be a way out of the commitment if it was clearly known and accepted before the marriage. I personally know of successful marriages on the part of bipolar persons. Love conquers all!
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Is Someone Who Is Bipolar Free to Marry?

If a person confesses their sins to a person who is portraying themself as a priest, is that confession valid?

Is the following a proper analogy: We are like the apostles who were lost in the quantity of fish they caught and didn’t recognize Jesus along the shore? We get caught up in our daily distractions and don’t recognize Jesus.

How does the Church resolve God being the rock such as in Deuteronomy?

If God is called &#8220;the Rock&#8221; in Deuteronomy, how can Catholics say Peter is the rock in Matthew 16:18? We explore how Scripture uses the term and why identifying Peter as the rock of the Church doesn’t take anything away from God’s ultimate authority.
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Does Calling Peter the Rock Contradict Deuteronomy?

Karlo Broussard explains the Catholic position on the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the Son. He discusses the historical and theological basis for this belief, including references to the Catechism, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Council of Florence. Discover why Catholics profess this in the Nicene Creed every Sunday.
Transcript:
Yuri wanted to know, what are the Catholic arguments for adding the filioque into the creed?
Yeah, fantastic question. And this is a big question, right? Because it&#8217;s at the heart of disagreements between Catholic and Orthodox Christians. So first of all, what does filioque mean? I think that&#8217;s important to get on the table for our listeners. It&#8217;s Latin for and the son. And it refers to the Holy Spirit proceeding from the father and the son, which we profess as Catholics every Sunday in the Nicene Creed. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives a nice summary, a brief synopsis of this theological issue in paragraphs 246 to 248.
And as the Catechism points out, we believe that based on the dogmatic confession by Pope St. Leo I in AD 447, so in the mid 5th century there, in a document entitled, &#8220;Quam la de Bilitaire,&#8221; which means how praiseworthy. And it was later inserted into the creed with magisterial authority into the Latin liturgy between the eighth and 11th centuries as the Catechism points out. So we can appeal to magisterial authority as for a reason why we profess the Holy Spirit&#8217;s procession from the father and the son. And that&#8217;s consistent with our Catholic view of the Pope having that authority to declare it as such and for the church to permit it to be included within the Nicene Creed. Now, what are the theological arguments? Well, here&#8217;s one resource, Thomas, that was a fantastic episode. It&#8217;s episode 208 of the Classical Theism Podcast, hosted by my good friend, John DeRosa. He&#8217;s also an author of a book that we published through Catholic Answers Press. I think &#8220;One Less God Than You&#8221; is the title of it. And the title of the episode is, &#8220;The Trinity and Filioque with Father Thomas Joseph White, a Dominican priest, fantastic scholar.&#8221; And he does a great job providing all of the theological rationale behind it. And so that&#8217;s a resource for our listeners. But here&#8217;s what the Council of Florence states. 
The Council of Florence in declaring the filioque, actually in the 15th century, that is, actually gave us a theological explanation. It stated, &#8220;Since the father has through generation given to the only begotten son, everything that belongs to the father, except being father, the son has also eternally from the father from whom he is eternally begotten, that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the son.&#8221; So notice the theological rationale here, Thomas, is that the son is and has everything that the father has and is, except being the one who begets, except being the father. And given that truth, it follows from that, that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the father would also belong to the son. And this is exactly what St. Thomas Aquinas, in the 13th century, argued prior to the Council of Florence in the first part of the Summa Theologiae, question 36, article four, he teaches the same thing. The Council of Florence was adopting St. Thomas&#8217; argument there in its declaration. 
He says, &#8220;The father and the son are in everything one, wherever there is no distinction between them of an opposite relation.&#8221; And so he goes on to say, &#8220;The same quote unquote spirative power belongs to the father and to the son.&#8221; And that&#8217;s what Florence was saying. &#8220;The procession of the Holy Spirit from the father that what is called a spirative power breathing forth of from the father belongs to the son as well.&#8221; Because again, the son and the father are one in everything except being father. And so here&#8217;s a brief summary of this theological argument. Whatever power the father has, the son has, that&#8217;s premise one, premise two, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the spirative power of the father. And so therefore the son has the spirative power of the father from which the Holy Spirit proceeds. And that&#8217;s St. Thomas&#8217; Aquinas&#8217; argument and an argument that was adopted by the Council of Florence and it makes sense to me and to many others.
Now, as far as the biblical exegesis or maybe a biblical defense of the Filioque, that is to say the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the father and the son, I would recommend our listeners to check out Tim Staples’ article at catholic.com, defending the Filioque where he goes into detail and appealing to passages like John 1526 and Revelation chapter 22 verse one and following where there is enough biblical data there to infer from it this procession of the Holy Spirit from both the father and the son.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic answer, be sure to like, subscribe and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform or our Catholic Answers app.

Why Did Catholics Add the Filioque to the Creed?

What does the church teach on rare pregnancy complications and abortion?

Is hocus pocus taken from the Latin of the words of consecration? Is it similar to book bell and candle?

What does attachment to sin mean?

At what point does a cardinal who is elected pope pick their new name?

Is Mary considered the highest creature? If so, how does that relate to how Jesus says John the Baptist is the greatest?

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When pregnancy complications threaten the life of the mother, what does the Catholic Church actually teach? In this episode, Karlo Broussard clarifies the Church’s position on morally complex medical cases. He explains the principle of double effect, what treatments are permissible, and why direct abortion is never considered a moral solution—even in rare or tragic circumstances. If you’ve heard myths about what the Church requires in these cases, this episode brings clarity and compassion.
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What Does the Church Teach on Pregnancy Complications and Abortion?

In this episode, Trent gives advice on how to overcome a common rhetorical technique in discussions over the Bible.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq8-lg1_60E"> When Atheists Misread The Bible</a>
Transcription:
Have you ever been in a discussion with someone about theology and the other person rattled off dozens of memorized Bible verses to try to show you’re wrong? Or have you engaged in a comment thread and one person just lists dozens of Bible verses after their claim in a way that makes the debate overwhelming.
I call this the Bible Blitzkrieg and it often makes conversations about the Faith much more difficult than they need to be. If you feel overwhelmed by the blitzkrieg, or if you see others being the victim of it, or if you’re tempted to use it yourself, today’s episode should give you a helpful shield against this rhetorical onslaught.
Now, at the outset I want to say it isn’t bad to memorize scripture. In fact, it’s awesome to do that. While some Catholics do this well, I notice Protestants tend to be more adept at it, especially Evangelicals raised in environments that promote memorization through programs like Awana for children.
St. Jerome famously said that “ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.” so we should always commend a person’s intimate knowledge of scripture. But it is one thing to know what the Bible says and another thing to know what it means. St. Jerome said of a heretical group called the Luciferians “let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning.” (Dialogue with Luciferians)
As St. Jerome shows that anyone can string along biblical citations and say they are correct, but that doesn’t mean they are correct. The second century Church father Irenaeus of Lyon said the following about how heretics distort scripture to support their false doctrines:
By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skillful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox . . .
So according to Irenaeus, a heretic can take scripture and make it say something completely different just as a counterfeit artist can take gemstones that form a king’s image and rearrange them to make the stones “say” something else. The same materials are used in each case, but they are presented in different ways in order to get true or false results.
A Protestant should admit that extremely heretical people can know the letter of the scripture very well. For example, you can find Jehovah’s Witness, for example, who can cite dozens of passages that, according to them, show Jesus is not equal in divinity with the Father. A Christian who isn’t prepared might be overwhelmed at all this data that seems to conflict with what the Church teaches. But a well-studied Protestant would rightly tell them the Witnesses that, when each of those verses is reviewed one at a time, you can see that none of them disprove the deity of Christ. And the same is true when one goes through the dozens of Bible verses that can sometimes be cited in a Protestant Bible Blitzkrieg.
And to be fair, I’ve seen Catholics do the same thing. It’s not uncommon for Catholics to say something like “We are not saved faith alone” and then cite a bunch of Bible verses about the role of works in salvation. That doesn’t help move the conversation forward because a Protestant can do the same thing and just cite verses that he says prove we are not saved by works.
That’s why the Protestant scholar D.A. Carson once said “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” Making a statement and then defending it with only a dozen Bible citations is nothing more than grandstanding or a mild form of intimidation. It’s like saying “How can I be wrong when all these Bible verses say I’m right?”
A better approach would be to show how all the verses fit together. Verses that say we aren’t saved by works show how we are initially saved by merely accepting God’s grace through the sacrament of baptism. A baby does nothing to be saved, he just receives this gift from God. As the Catechism says “Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification.” (CCC 2010)
But after we are saved good works increase our holiness and bad works damage our relationship with God. Unrepentant grave evil can even cause us to be separated from God forever.
Everyone who cites the Bible in defense of their views, including non-Christians like Jehovah’s Witnesses and even Muslims should, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, avoid the blitzkrieg. If you are faced with it, just say you need time to go through the presented evidence. Eventually, after enough time, you will get through all of it. And in many cases you’ll see the cited verses aren’t just incorrect interpretations, they are irrelevant interpretations. The verse being cited has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. But that can be missed if you are just impressed by a mountain of Bible verses.
For example, atheists might present a long list of atrocities to show the Bible is evil but you can show that in many of these cases the Bible is just describing human evil, it isn’t endorsing or commanding it. (For more on that, see my episode “When Atheists Misread the Bible” – linked below)
When you are faced with a “Bible blitzkrieg”, remember that this isn’t an actual war. You’re allowed to ask for a break so you can look up these verses and get back to your interlocutor. You can remind him that studying Bible verses is always better than slinging Bible verses. In addition, St. Peter reminds us that scripture contains difficult passages that people can misunderstand to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16) so you want to consult authoritative sources to find out what these verses might say and, at the least, what they absolutely cannot say.
This can be helpful because some Protestants operate under the mistaken assumption that Catholics are prohibited from reading or interpreting the Bible for themselves. They might cite the Second Vatican Council which said “the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church” (Dei Verbum, 10).
But the Church has only infallibly defined the meaning of a handful of biblical passages. The Church gives biblical scholars a wide degree of latitude in determining the literal and spiritual meaning of biblical texts, provided that they follow the council’s direction to be attentive to the “analogy of faith” and interpret the texts in light of all divine revelation. So, for example, a biblical interpreter could not assert that a particular Bible passage taught that Mary gave birth to other children or that Christ is not fully divine since the Church has infallibly taught those are false doctrines and so scripture can’t teach them.
Finally, don’t get discouraged if you are a Catholic and your Protestant friend knows more biblical citations than you do. The chapters and verses aren’t original to the Bible. The chapter divisions come from Archbishop Stephen Langton in the 13th century and the verse systems in most modern Bible comes from Robert Estienne in the 16th century. When Jesus showed the Sadducees that the Old Testament does refer to a resurrection of the dead, he said, “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush [emphasis added], where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” (Luke 20:37)
If Jesus can give an approximate citation of scripture, like “the passage about X” you and I can do the same. And if you are a Catholic that doesn’t know chapters and verses well, that doesn’t mean you’re biblically illiterate. Scott Hahn, a professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, once said that Protestants know the Bible like a mailman knows the neighborhood.
For example, the mailman knows the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood St. and so if he needs to get the mail to them he knows which streets to follow to get there. In the same way, Protestants who have a deep passion for understanding the Bible can cite a biblical passages exact chapter and verse. Catholics, on the other hand, know the Bible like kids know a neighborhood. They may not know the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood St., but they do know the Johnsons live on the top of the hill next to the house with the old green fence and the barking dog. They can get you to the same place, but in a more indirect way.
In the same way, Catholics know a lot of scripture even if they don’t remember everywhere it’s found in scripture. For example, they hear the Bible at mass or read biblical passages in Catholic devotionals and prayer books. They have an intuitive knowledge of scripture more than a formal knowledge.
But we should remember what St. Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Cor. 13:11)
We can all apply ourselves to having a mature knowledge of God’s word in sacred scripture. You can also post a favorite Bible verse at your desk or on the refrigerator each week. Another great method is listening to the Bible so that it is familiar, such as by listening to the Bible in a Year podcast. You can also practice listening to a chapter and then reading that same chapter of scripture. I like to use the truth and life audio bible for this. If you just spend 15 minutes reading and listening to one chapter a day, you’ll finish the New Testament in less than a year.
Finally, praying the liturgy of the hours or lectio divina is a great way to be immersed in scripture and memorize it as, after just a few weeks, you’ll find yourself memorizing entire prayers from scripture like Mary’s Magnificat.
So, don’t feel like you can’t talk about the Bible just because you may not remember the chapter and verse where a passage is located. Even our Lord didn’t cite the Bible in this way! You can survive the “Bible Blitzkrieg” by humbly leading the person through different parts of scripture with the light of the Church’s teaching as a helpful guide to interpreting it.
Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.

Surviving the “Bible Blitzkrieg”

Can Protestantism be Redeemed? (with Redeemed Zoomer)

When do thoughts become mortal sin?

If you die wearing a brown scapular, do your loved ones have to pray for you? Do you have to go to purgatory?

I’m just now returning to the Catholic faith. I’m meeting with my priest tomorrow. How do I properly prepare? What should I expect? Send words of eternal life and secrets from heaven

I was in line for confession and the priest stopped right before I got to go. What do I do at that point? Can I receive communion since my intention was there?

Will parents be culpable for their children’s sin before they reached the age of reason?

What are the miracles attributed to the Miraculous Medal? Is it Just superstition?

What is the Church position on immigration law?

AMA: Returning to Faith, Miraculous Medal, and Catholic Teaching on Immigration

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent breaks down songs that become creepy when you think more about the lyrics, and de-creepifies one song.

FFAF: Unintentionally Creepy Songs

Why is a Wailing Wall leftover from the temple (Mt 24, there will not be a stone leftover)?

What is Joseph referring to in Gen 50:19?

How can we defend the faith and not be anxious?

How do you explain Adoration to a Protestant?

Do we have to believe in the Trinity for the Baptismal regeneration to occur?

Sharing and defending Catholicism can be overwhelming—how can we do it with confidence and peace? Tim Staples offers practical advice and answers more on the Wailing Wall prophecy, Eucharistic Adoration, and the role of the Trinity in Baptism.

How Can We Defend the Faith Without Anxiety? And More Questions

In this episode Trent puts what he taught in yesterday’s episode into practice and models how you can defend the faith even if you’re only allowed to ask questions.

My Steubenville “Socratic Experiment”

Why Mariology names Mary Theotokos: to defend Jesus as God.

Could zombies get married?

What person does Jimmy consider a healer

Does the Pope still hypothetically have the power to crown a Holy Roman Emperor?

If you were cast back in time, let’s say to medieval Europe. You are captured upon the moment that you materialized in the past and were brought before the King immediately. You have one argument that you can present to the King to prove that you...

Is there any evidence that ancient humans may have reached a level of technological advancement similar to, or even higher than, ours, and that this knowledge was somehow lost after the fall or after the great flood?

How much water can a Priest bless in one time? Presumably they cannot bless the whole ocean so how far is their reach in this regard?

&#8220;Could the Pope Crown a New Holy Roman Emperor Today?&#8221; While the papal authority in this regard has evolved, the discussion touches on the historical significance of such ceremonies. Other intriguing questions include whether zombies could get married and what argument one might use to convince a medieval king of time travel. Additionally, the conversation explores the limits of a priest&#8217;s ability to bless water.
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Could the Pope Crown a New Holy Roman Emperor Today?

In this episode Trent reflects on his recent interview with Cameron Bertuzzi and shares how Protestants and atheists use similar techniques to defend their positions.

7 Ways Protestants Act like Atheists

How are people saved? Does salvation take cooperation? Who will be saved? Where is the scriptural evidence for faith and works? Why do Catholics believe what they do?
Have you struggled to answer these questions when sharing your faith?
Listen in to learn how Tim Staples approaches having a discussion about salvation.

Faith and Works Are Necessary for Salvation (Part 1)

Someone might say, “I’m not Catholic because I don’t believe Christ intended the gift of infallibility to continue beyond the apostles, especially in someone like the pope.”

Psalm 69:8 Mary perpetual virginity, Jesus I was an alien to my mothers son, does this indicate that Mary had other children?

I’m not Catholic because I don’t believe apostolic succession is legitimate?

Is spending time in front of crucifix at my home or working at a soup kitchen an acceptable way of spending time with Christ?

What is the purification that is spoken about in 1 John 1:7, and does it have any connection to Purgatory?

What is the difference between Natural Family Planning and artificial birth control?

&#8220;Why Aren’t You Catholic?&#8221; addresses common objections to Catholicism, including the belief that Christ did not intend for infallibility to extend beyond the apostles. The discussion also touches on Mary’s perpetual virginity and whether she had other children, as well as the legitimacy of apostolic succession. Additionally, questions about spending time with Christ and the differences between Natural Family Planning and artificial birth control are explored.
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Why Aren’t You Catholic? Apostolic Succession and Mary

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent offers is thoughts on travel, mortality, plane crashes, and hope in the aftermath of the recent crash in DC.

#993 – FFAF: I Can’t Stop Thinking About the DC Plane Crash

The Counsel of Trent is going back to it&#8217;s roots and becoming The Council of Trent podcast!
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<div>Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/IAupyODgxCr3AV_MGEuW2HcTxgoY88B0koyV2SDPShX7BkS1pE027W3amNLaq8hu3LczFUHBhBmzziMGlMYHO7ntRTI?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&amp;ts=0.24">00:00</a>):
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Today I&#8217;m announcing a rebranding of the Council of Trent. We are now going to be called the Council of Trent, C-O-U-N-C-I-O. And as far as I&#8217;m concerned, it&#8217;s the year 1546, not some fantastical future year like 2026. Now, let&#8217;s get on with the important issues at hand here in 1546. First, I am still unconvinced that there are giant lobsters threatening our brave sailors at sea. Now, I appreciate Sebastian Munster&#8217;s maps of the world, but that doesn&#8217;t mean I have to take everything in them literally, including the sea monsters. Second, I am open to the existence of a race of creatures who have the body of a man and the head of a dog. I&#8217;m not going to say they definitely do exist though. Now, some of you say, well, humans are the only rational creatures, and that may be true. But if we discovered other rational creatures, it would not disprove our faith.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/IAupyODgxCr3AV_MGEuW2HcTxgoY88B0koyV2SDPShX7BkS1pE027W3amNLaq8hu3LczFUHBhBmzziMGlMYHO7ntRTI?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&amp;ts=51.78">00:51</a>) 
Although maybe the dogheads are just misshapen human beings, which is something even the great Saint Augustine postulated in his work, City of God. Some schismatics in the East even say that St. Christopher was a doghead, though I think they might have mixed him up being from Canaan with the Canines. And also, can you please be charitable in your engagement with the work of my colleague, James Vacan, the Earl of the Bazaar? He has put forward intriguing theories about whether one could marry a doghead. Next, I&#8217;m asking people to please give the council a chance. The Council of Trent, great name, by the way. It&#8217;s just started, and some of you won&#8217;t even give the council a chance. Yes, I know the decree on scripture is a tad ambiguous because the first draft said that part of revelation is found in scripture. But now it just says revelation is found in written and unwritten tradition, but the council doesn&#8217;t say how much it is found in either of those things.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/IAupyODgxCr3AV_MGEuW2HcTxgoY88B0koyV2SDPShX7BkS1pE027W3amNLaq8hu3LczFUHBhBmzziMGlMYHO7ntRTI?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&amp;ts=108.24">01:48</a>) 
But look, the Holy Spirit guides the Catholic church in these matters and the council fathers are free to leave some issues open even as they settle other issues. And the church has just decreed the Protestant cannon is heretical. I can&#8217;t wait to see what that scalpy limmer Martin Luther has to say. I mean, I can&#8217;t believe he threatened to throw the letter of St. James into the fire because it teaches a man is not justified by faith alone. Perhaps he was jesting, one certainly hopes, but I, for one, can&#8217;t wait to see the look on the face of that cur when he sees what the Holy Fathers have said at the council. Wait, hold on. Martin Luther is dead. Died three months ago. Now you&#8217;d think with the new printing press, word would&#8217;ve gotten around a lot sooner, but still, in any case, pray for his soul.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/IAupyODgxCr3AV_MGEuW2HcTxgoY88B0koyV2SDPShX7BkS1pE027W3amNLaq8hu3LczFUHBhBmzziMGlMYHO7ntRTI?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&amp;ts=156.91">02:36</a>) 
Finally, I have a special word about the calendar. The current Julian calendar has caused us to lose 12 minutes a year because it overestimated the length of the solar year. Now we&#8217;re at least nine days behind and something&#8217;s got to be done about it. I support the recent proposal to adopt a new calendar and to start the new year on January 1st rather than April 1st as it&#8217;s currently celebrated. After all, Janice is the Roman God of new beginnings, and why not make this a new beginning for a vastly superior calendar? Perhaps we will have a Pope in the future who&#8217;ll have the wherewithal to do what must be done. And even if some people don&#8217;t get the news and they celebrate the new year on April 1st anyways, well, I say we play a delightful prank on those little April fools, let&#8217;s say you.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/IAupyODgxCr3AV_MGEuW2HcTxgoY88B0koyV2SDPShX7BkS1pE027W3amNLaq8hu3LczFUHBhBmzziMGlMYHO7ntRTI?loadFrom=PastedDeeplink&amp;ts=205.95">03:25</a>) 
All right, that&#8217;s all for this episode of the Council of Trent. Our team will be off celebrating Holy Week and Easter Monday, so new episodes will return next Wednesday. Thank you all so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
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</div>

The Counsel of Trent Is Rebranding

<div>What do I do if my wife threatens to leave me if I don’t have protected sex with her because another pregnancy is life threatening? </div><div>You need to be sure that the medical reasons for it being dangerous for your wife to conceive are well-founded. A good talk with two of you and her doctor would be good, if she allows it. It could be that there is some other personal reason she does not want to have relations with you, in which case—and probably in any case!—you need to have some counseling to foster your loving relationship with each other.
If she refuses to have relations with you without contraception, then it would not be right to insist. You need to pray and show by your kindness and gentle consideration of her that she has nothing to fear from you. If you do not show empathy with her fears, then it is not surprising that she might make such threats. It is your job not to let things reach that point by making sure that she is habitually reassured that you love her and that her needs are uppermost in your heart and mind. Prayer and gentleness will win the day.
Pray to St. Joseph, and don&#8217;t focus on your frustration at not being able to have relations with her but rather on the hope that when you do finally have relations, she will be participating willingly and lovingly.
</div>

My Wife Refuses Non-Contracepting Sex

What does the Church teach about speaking in tongues? Why can’t everyone speak in tongues? and Why do we reject the notion that speaking in tongues is necessary for salvation?

What specifically can we do or not do in terms of blessing others?

My friend argues that the authority of the papacy didn’t exist in the early Church. How can I better explain that the pope had supremacy from the beginning?

What is a male in the context of priestly ordination?

What does God do differently if I have a mass said for my deceased father?

&#8220;Why don&#8217;t all Christians speak in tongues?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the Church&#8217;s teachings about this practice, including why not everyone experiences it and the belief that it is not essential for salvation. Other topics addressed include the authority of the papacy in the early Church and the significance of having a Mass said for the deceased.
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Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Why Don’t All Christians Speak in Tongues?

The president of Catholic Answers shares insights into the reality of the Crusades to help the Christian who is confronted with that apologetics conversation-stopper: &#8220;What about the Crusades?&#8221;

The Crusades and the ‘Evil’ of Christianity

In this episode Trent sits down with Deacon Harold to talk about his upcoming book on Catholic responses to racism, the perils of critical race theory, and what the authentic Catholic response to racism should be.

What’s Wrong With Critical Race Theory? (With Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers)

Did Jesus have brothers? Do Matthew 1:25 and Luke 2:7 disprove the idea that Mary was ever virgin? In honor of the upcoming feast of the annunciation Trent tackles common objections to this important Marian dogma.

Answering Objections to Mary’s Perpetual Virginity

In this episode Trent examines a recent video from Fr. Casey Cole and critiques his claims that the Gospels are “theology, not history.”

Responding to Fr. Casey on the Gospel’s Historicity

Why are there time gaps in the bible when God speaks to us?

What is your response to protestants who claim that an infallible canon is not necessary because the Jews didn’t have one during the time of Jesus?

I was going to repeat my gift from last years but I have a challenge for you Cy and Tim. Repeat Johann Tetzels phrase in German and explain it and its misunderstanding from protestants. If you do I will double my donation!

How does 1 Tim 4:3 not contradict Catholic teaching on priestly celibacy and abstaining from meat?

AMA: Gaps in the Bible, Infallible Canon, Tetzel’s Phrase, and 1 Tim 4:3 Explained!

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DAY 130
CHALLENGE
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“The Catholic Church shouldn’t refer just to people in heaven as saints. All believers are saints.”
DEFENSE
The term “saint” is used in multiple senses, even in Scripture.
The term “saint” (Hebrew, qadosh; Aramaic, qaddish; Greek, hagios; Latin, sanctus) means “holy one.” Anyone who is in some sense holy or sanctified is in that sense a saint. This leads to many uses of the term in Scripture, though this is partially masked because English translators sometimes render the word as “saint” and sometimes as “holy one.”
The Israelites were a people holy to God (Lev. 20:26), so the Old Testament describes them as saints (Ps. 34:9; Dan. 7:18, 8:24). Thus, Paul tells Gentile Christians that they have become fellow citizens “with the saints” (Eph. 2:19).
Christians are also holy to God (1 Peter 1:16), so the New Testament often refers to them as saints (2 Cor. 1:1, Eph. 1:1, Phil. 1:1). The Catholic Church acknowledges this usage. After reviewing various passages in the New Testament that refer to Christians as saints, John Paul II noted, “All these cases refer to Christians, or to the faithful, that is, to the brethren who have received the Holy Spirit” (General Audience, August 16, 1989).
Jewish people were sanctified by their participation in the Mosaic Covenant, and Christians are sanctified by their participation in the New Covenant of Christ, so this represents two different forms of sanctification or sainthood. There are others.
Thus the holy angels are also referred to as saints (Ps. 89:6, 8; Dan. 4:13, 17, 23, 8:13). In popular speech, a person of notable holiness is often referred to as a saint, and we find this usage in the Bible as well (cf. Isa. 4:3–4, Matt. 27:52–53). Very surprisingly for English speakers, Jesus is described as the Saint or Holy One of God (Mark 1:24; Luke 4:34; John 6:67–69), and God is described as the Saint or Holy One of Israel (Ps. 71:22, 78:41, 89:18; Is. 1:4; Jer. 50:29).
Since there is no single, privileged definition of the term, it is reasonable to use “saint” to refer to those who have their sanctification— or “saintification”—completed by dwelling with God in heaven. This is thus one way the Church uses the term, both for those in heaven who have been canonized and those who have not.
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The Nature of Saints

Catholics believe that Jesus made Peter the leader of the Church. And some Protestants might even concede this. But what evidence do have to show that Jesus intended this leadership role to continue after Peter died?

What’s the best way to explain purgatory to my wife who is in OCIA?

Why do Catholics believe Mary was a perpetual virgin? What resources do you recommend on the Early Church?

Why did the Vatican need to put out a letter saying Mary wasn’t a co-redemptrix?

Why do Catholics call the Mass a sacrifice

Why is it ok to only take the host at mass?

&#8220;Was the Papacy Supposed to Be Ongoing?&#8221; This episode explores the evidence supporting Peter&#8217;s position as the Church&#8217;s leader and its continuation after his death. Additionally, we address how to explain purgatory to someone in OCIA, the belief in Mary&#8217;s perpetual virginity, and the Vatican&#8217;s clarification on Mary&#8217;s role as co-redemptrix.
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Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Was the Papacy Supposed to Be Ongoing? Mary and OCIA

How can the Catholic Church teach that we actually eat and drink the Body and Blood of Jesus when Scripture forbids partaking of blood in Leviticus 17:10?
The author of <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/meeting-the-protestant-challenge/">Meeting the Protestant Challenge</a>, Karlo Broussard, explains why it is acceptable for Jesus to teach us to drink his blood, and, more than that, why it makes sense that he would.

Is Drinking Christ’s Blood Unbiblical?

One of the most common objections Protestants raise against the Catholic doctrine of purgatory is that it seems to contradict what Jesus taught about the immediacy of heaven after death. In fact, well-known Protestant writers Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie make this exact case in their book Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences.
Their argument is simple: Jesus teaches that people either go straight to heaven or straight to hell after death, leaving no room for an in-between purification like purgatory. They point to three passages in Luke’s Gospel as proof: Luke 23:43, Luke 16:26, and Luke 16:22-24.
But do these passages really close the door on purgatory? Let’s take a closer look.
<h2>The Good Thief and “Paradise” (Luke 23:43)</h2>
At first glance, Jesus’ words to the good thief on the cross—“Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise”—sound like a slam dunk. If the thief is in heaven that very day, then what need is there for purgatory?
As Jimmy Akin argues in A Daily Defense (Day 205), this could be a simple matter of punctuation. In the original Greek, there were no commas. So the verse could just as easily be read: “Truly I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise.” On this reading, “today” emphasizes the timing of Jesus’ promise, not the thief’s arrival in paradise.
If we look deeper, the argument assumes that “paradise” means “heaven.” In Jewish thought, however, “paradise” (Greek, paradeisos) often referred to the blessed state of the righteous dead—what Jesus elsewhere calls “Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22, which we’ll cover too in just a second). Importantly, this exchange happened before Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, which means heaven itself wasn’t even open yet (see Catechism of the Catholic Church 661, 1023). So it’s reasonable to conclude that “paradise” here refers not to heaven proper, but to that intermediate place of blessedness where the righteous awaited Christ’s victory.
Even if we grant for argument’s sake that Jesus was speaking of heaven, it still doesn’t disprove purgatory. Catholic teaching allows for the possibility that someone, at the moment of death, may have such a deep love for God that it completely purifies the soul, eliminating any need for purgatory (CCC 1022, 1472). The good thief, suffering justly for his crimes and humbly uniting that suffering to Christ, could very well have been one such soul.
And don’t forget: the experience of purgatory isn’t measured by earthly time. Even if a soul must undergo purification, it can happen in what St. Paul calls “a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. 15:52). So Jesus could promise the good thief paradise “today” without denying that purification might precede his entrance into heaven.
Whichever way you look at it, Luke 23:43 doesn’t undermine purgatory.
<h2>The Great Chasm (Luke 16:26)</h2>
Next, Geisler and MacKenzie point to Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus. In it, Abraham tells the rich man in torment: “Between us and you a great chasm has been fixed . . . none may cross from there to us.”
From this, they argue two things:
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<li>No one can cross into heaven after death.</li>
<li>Everyone goes immediately either to heaven or hell.</li>
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But notice: the passage is about someone in hell, not purgatory. It shows only that the damned cannot cross over into heaven—not that the saved cannot undergo purification before entering it.
What about Lazarus, the poor man in the story? He doesn’t go to heaven right away. Instead, he’s carried by angels to “Abraham’s bosom”—again, a Jewish way of describing the blessed state of the righteous dead before Christ opened heaven. That alone shows that the text doesn’t teach immediate entrance into heaven.
And even if you interpret “Abraham’s bosom” as heaven itself, there’s still an “in-between process” built right into the parable: Lazarus doesn’t arrive instantly, but is carried there by angels. Jesus seems to be encouraging us to imagine an intervening stage before the final arrival—something that fits perfectly with the idea of purgatory.
<h2>The Rich Man’s Fate (Luke 16:22-24)</h2>
Finally, Geisler and MacKenzie argue that when Jesus says the rich man went immediately into torment, it proves there’s no delay after death: unbelievers go straight to hell, believers go straight to heaven.
But that conclusion doesn’t follow. The parable says something about the fate of only the damned—not the righteous.
Think of it this way: imagine a race where the top three finishers are promised a banquet with the king, whereas everyone else is excluded immediately. The losers’ fate is decided on the spot. But that doesn’t mean the winners walk straight into the banquet hall without any preparation. They might first go wash up, change, or be escorted in.
In the same way, saying that unbelievers immediately go to hell doesn’t mean believers immediately enter heaven. There may well be an “interim stop” of purification.
When we take a closer look, none of the passages appealed to by Geisler and MacKenzie actually contradicts the Catholic teaching on purgatory. At most, they show that the damned enter hell —a point Catholics readily affirm (CCC 1035). But when it comes to the righteous, these texts leave plenty of room for, and even hint at, the possibility of an intervening purification before the soul’s final union with God.
Far from being an obstacle to faith, purgatory is a sign of God’s mercy. It reassures us that even if we die with lingering imperfections, God has provided a way to cleanse us completely so that we may stand before him in perfect holiness. As Scripture says, “nothing unclean shall enter ” heaven (Rev. 21:27). Purgatory is simply how God makes good on that promise.
So, rather than undermining purgatory, the words of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel actually fit comfortably alongside it. They remind us that heaven is indeed our destiny, and that God, in his love, prepares us perfectly for that eternal embrace.

Straight to Heaven, Straight to Hell

How do we make sense of how we are not crucifying Christ during the mass?

I’ve noticed that some Catholics and Protestants are acting as though we are in the end times. How do I go about talking with them?

I need help responding to some saying that Mary disproves the Eucharist?

Why does a bishop have to give permission to perform an exorcism?

Ask Me Anything

There&#8217;s been a LOT of buzz about Pope Leo XIV, both in Catholic media and secular media. Everyone has been digging into Leo&#8217;s past and online history (which in itself is very surreal) and we&#8217;ve found a lot. Here&#8217;s why Joe believes Pope Leo XIV could be an excellent Pope&#8230;
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer and like everyone else, I&#8217;m still waiting to see what Pope Leo the XIV pontificate is going to be like.
CLIP:
Is he woke? We still don&#8217;t know. The new Pope is American. We still don&#8217;t know if he&#8217;s woke. He criticized JD Vance in a tweet, so maybe he&#8217;s woke or maybe he just doesn&#8217;t like the guy who killed his boss,
Joe:
But I&#8217;m very excited. But one thing that I&#8217;m hopeful and even confident that we&#8217;re going to see, namely the restoration of greater unity amongst Catholics. It&#8217;s no secret the Catholics have been very divided over the past few years. Not only squabbling factions of so-called liberals, conservatives, and traditionalists, but the internet is replete with examples of so-called conservative Catholics turn one another apart, either for not loving Pope Francis enough or for loving him too much. It seemed like every time Pope Francis would speak off the cuff or he&#8217;d say something a little ambiguous, it would lead to a new fight over what he meant and how you were meant to feel about it. I think it&#8217;s fair to say that this was one of the chief reasons that Pope Leo was chosen to restore unity to the church and that there are actually several positive signs that should give us hope that he&#8217;ll succeed at least somewhat in that mission. Speaking of incredibly positive signs, I&#8217;ve seen some over on shameless joe.com. Your support there over the last few months has been overwhelming, but I am
CLIP:
Once again asking for your financial support.
Joe:
I&#8217;ve been very grateful to our supporters over on Patreon. I love interacting with you guys. I&#8217;ve gotten some great video ideas from your questions and your comments, and I want you to know that by becoming a member, you get access to exclusive q and a live streams as well as ad free videos hand you directly helped keep this ministry going, so please go to shameless joe.com and become a member today. Alright, so here are six reasons that I&#8217;m hopeful that Pope Leo is going to bring greater unity to the church. First, we&#8217;ve already seen some of this unity in action in his papal election. I&#8217;d venture to say most Catholics had never heard of Cardinal Privos when he became Pope Leo the 14th. And so they didn&#8217;t know how excited to be about his election and many Catholics who are more conservative leaning theologically and politically were alarmed when they saw how excited liberal Catholics like Cardinal Blaise Cupich or Father James Martin were when Pope Leo was announced to the world. But since then, a very different picture has emerged. The Washington Post reported this weekend that conservative cardinals like Cardinal Mueller were pleased with the choice of pontiff and the Italian press is crediting, or in their case, maybe blaming Cardinal Dolan, calling him the king maker for organizing conservative and liberal cardinals alike to support. Now Pope Leo drawing support from the us, from Africa and from Asia. Now Cardinal Dolan himself hinted that there was actually a pretty quick consensus amongst Cardinals of all stripes that Cardinal Privos was the right choice.
CLIP:
You all as seasoned journalists would know, and you&#8217;ve done your background. This kind clay was rather quick.
Yes,
Right? That would lead a savvy observer like yourselves to say there must have been some unanimity from the beginning. There was no shock here. So yeah, if that leads you to think that hey, there was a great sense of unity, there was kind of appeal that this guy exerted right from the beginning.
Joe:
So what would draw people of such varying viewpoints to rally around the same choice for Pope? Well, the attributes they point to Cardinal Soch, for instance, praised him as a missionary pastor. These are precisely the things that all Catholics should desire in a Pope, someone who loves Jesus and loves the downtrodden. In other words, the Cardinals seem to have gone looking for and may have actually found someone who couples Pope Francis&#8217; most attractive qualities, but with some important differences.
CLIP:
So he was obviously close to Pope Francis. We can already tell by the times he loved him very much and listened to him, but we&#8217;ll see some changes as well. And that&#8217;s refreshing, don&#8217;t you think? Yeah.
Joe:
So what are those differences between Pope Francis and Pope Leo? That leads to the second reason. I&#8217;m hopeful because I think we actually got a sense of some of those differences right away, ranging from what we might call his papal style to his papal motto and even his name as Pope. Now, Pope Francis from the beginning seemed to have a desire to shake the church up. He was content to buck small tea traditions that he found cumbersome. He took a totally new papal name, and from the very moment that he emerged on the balcony after his election, we see him in a bare white caic without the traditional red mella or stole. And we find out from him very quickly that he&#8217;s not going to live in the traditional papal apartments, but instead he&#8217;s going to live in the Caza Santa Maria. Well, Pope Leo has returned the papacy to more of a sense of normalcy as it were. He emerged in the traditional garb. He took a surprisingly traditional name more on which in a moment, and he&#8217;s living in the same place that Pope&#8217;s lived before. Pope Francis. Now Liturgically, I&#8217;m going to let the man speak for himself, whether it&#8217;s by the Reverend Way in which he celebrates mass and crisp, clear Latin
CLIP:
Re,
Joe:
Or in his reminder to the
CLIP:
Church that moreover, the church should resist the temptation to believe that it can compete with modern mass media by turning the sacred liturgy into spectacle. Here again, church fathers such as Tertullian remind us today that visual spectacle is the domain of the Secm and that our proper mission is to introduce people to the nature of mystery as an antidote to spectacle. As a consequence, evangelization in the modern world must find the appropriate means for redirecting public attention away from spectacle and into mystery.
Joe:
A third reason that I think Pope Leo&#8217;s pontificate is going to be a mission of reuniting. The church is right there in his papal motto. Now, Pope Leo&#8217;s motto, which he first adopted when he became a bishop is in ilo uno unum, which means in the one we are one, it is a perfect model for him for several reasons. First of all, it&#8217;s a quotation from Saint Augustine and Leo was the prior general of the Augustinian order. He is a son of Augustine to use his own words from his introduction to the world,
CLIP:
I&#8217;m a son of Saint
Joe:
Augustan, but second Augustine is saying that although we Christians are many in the one Christ, we are one. Now back in 2023, then Cardinal Prevost explained that he chose this motto because unity and communion are truly part of the charism of the order of Saint Augustine and also of my way of acting and thinking. So he&#8217;s stressing the need for unity, but also pointing out how it is that we get there. We become unified precisely through our communion with Jesus Christ. In the words of St. Paul, we are one body because we partake of the one bread. The more we draw close to Jesus, the more we draw close to one another and it&#8217;s only in the one Christ that we can ever truly be one. So this isn&#8217;t a unity at the expense of the truth, but a unity in the truth himself. Biblically, this mission of unity in the truth is critical to the success of Christianity.
Remember, Jesus prayed for his future disciples that we would become perfectly one so the world would know that the Father had sent him. When we are divided as Christians and as a church, we don&#8217;t just hinder Christian unity, we cripple our efforts of evangelization. We endanger even our own battles for holiness. After all, one of the reasons that Christ gives us a church is so we can fight the spiritual battles together. And it&#8217;s a great sign that Pope Leo seems to take this call to holy unity. Seriously, this connection between unity and evangelization was one of the themes that Pope Leo hit in his first homily as Pope, but with a fascinating twist, he&#8217;s preaching to the College of Cardinals and the new Pope reminded them that we preach Christ in a hostile world and that we do this first of all in our personal relationship
CLIP:
With the Lord in our daily commitment to the journey of conversion. But then we have to do so as a church experiencing together that our belonging to the Lord leads to our bringing the good needs, good news to all.
Joe:
Now, the Pope Himself obviously plays a special role in bringing people together in this way. And so Leo quotes in Ignatius of Antioch who famously existed and said that the church in Rome presides in charity over the universal church and one way that we are, one is by being united to the Pope, the successor of Peter. That&#8217;s been an important part of Christian theology for 2000 years. But Leo chose to focus on something else, something beautiful in his letter to the Romans. This same saint Ignatius writes,
CLIP:
Then I will truly be a disciple of Jesus Christ when the world no longer sees my body.
Joe:
Now in context, Leo meant this quite literally, he was about to be martyred in Rome by being fed to wild beasts. But Leo suggests that we can find in his words a reminder.
CLIP:
It&#8217;s to move aside so that Christ remains to make oneself small so that Christ may be known and glorified to spend oneself even to the utmost so that all may have the opportunity to know him and to love him.
Joe:
In other words, as John the Baptist said, he must increase and I must decrease. Now, those who know the new Pope describe him as shy and less outgoing than Francis, but that profile might be perfect for someone trying to ensure that the eyes of the church are on Jesus Christ rather than on the Pope. Pope Leo&#8217;s papal name definitely matters. Now, I love the fact that he didn&#8217;t choose Paul III or John Paul III or Francis ii, that instead he reached back further into the church&#8217;s history to take his name after one of the most beloved popes in the modern era. Much of the energy in the church over the past few decades has been wasted in intra Catholic fights over how best to properly interpret Vatican ii. But Pope Leo the IV was only 10 years old at the close of Vatican ii. He&#8217;s simply too young to have been a partisan in many of these fights.
Instead, Cardinal Privos one to identify his papacy with that of Pope Leo the 13th, and he explained why in the midst of the first industrial revolution, Pope Leo the 13th wrote the 1891 and Cyclical Rum Navarro in it, Leo the 13th, decried the greedy capitalist of his age, lamenting that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring. Poor, a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. But in that document, he also warned that to remedy these wrongs, the socialists working on the poor man&#8217;s envy of the rich are striving to do away with private property. And the Pope warned this goal must be utterly rejected since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit and is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind and would lead only to confusion and disorder.
Now, in explaining why he chose the name Leo, the new Pope argued, I think correctly that we find ourselves in the midst of a second industrial revolution this time a digital one in which artificial intelligence threatens to create new challenges to human dignity, to justice and to labor, and it might just be this external threat. That&#8217;s precisely what we as Catholics need to come together. And I, for one, am grateful that we have a Pope who seems aware of the dangers and well-equipped to chart what are certain to be uncertain waters. Now, like I said before, it&#8217;s no secret that the church is more divided than in times past. It seems as though the culture wars that have been raging throughout America and the West have crept into church dialogue with increasing polarization. It would&#8217;ve seemed impossible, at least to me even a week ago, to find a pope who both Patrick Coffin and Father James Martin seemed excited about. And yet here we are.
CLIP:
We&#8217;ll see what happens. I&#8217;m, I am generally optimistic, encouraged and I was shocked, but I was also shocked when they read out his name Leo the 14th, and that was the name I wanted the Pope to take. So I&#8217;m glad that he did. That&#8217;s a great sign. It was a comfort to me.
What a rush. This is the first American Pope Robert Prevost, who we&#8217;ve followed for some years at American Magazine. This is truly historic. It feels like a dream.
I&#8217;m going to keep paying attention to what he does because there are good things that he&#8217;s done. I&#8217;m going to show you some of those today. They&#8217;re actually some pretty crazy good things and there are some signs that we need to be cautious, but it&#8217;s day two, as the kids say, let the man cook.
Hey everyone, it&#8217;s Jim Martin, and just sort of stunned by the news of the election of Pope Leo the 14th former Cardinal Prevost. I got to know him a little bit at the Senate. He was at my table, and I know him to be a down to earth kind, modest, reserved guy, hardworking, decisive, not afraid of speaking his mind. It&#8217;s a great choice. I also think it&#8217;s really important to note the choice of the name Leo the iv. A nod to Leo the 13th is the father of Catholic social teaching. So just an amazing choice.
There&#8217;s some signs afoot that this guy is not the neo modernist activist. He just looked like someone in continuity with things that are traditional, things that are anchored in the past. And I think the fact that he has signaled so many things that angle him in a more traditional way gives me sign of hope.
Joe:
Now, if this feels uncanny or almost surreal, then you&#8217;re in good company. As I say, I never would&#8217;ve predicted this, and that&#8217;s not to say that Pope Leo isn&#8217;t going to do something that&#8217;s going to upset one side or another, or both sides of the theological and political isles. I suspect that&#8217;ll happen. But it is surprising and it is heartening to see so many Catholics of all stripes upbeat and encouraged by the new Holy Father. Perhaps this will all turn out to be a honeymoon phase. Perhaps we&#8217;ll go back to the circular firing squad the minute Pope Leo says, or does anything remotely controversial, but we don&#8217;t have to. Now, of course, as many as you know, right before becoming Pope Cardinal Privos was in charge of the Dicastery for Bishops, meaning that he helped to advise Pope Francis on the selection of new bishops.
And so one of the first tests of Leo&#8217;s own pontificate is going to be who he chooses as his own replacement and the kinds of bishops that he begins to appoint. Now that he has a free hand, it&#8217;s an understandable concern, one that I&#8217;m sure the Cardinals took into consideration when electing him as Roman pontiff, but I think that there&#8217;s a very important angle to this that most people are missing. You see, the face of the priesthood is rapidly changing, particularly here in the United States, and this critical sea change in the clergy is going to have a major impact on who Pope Leo chooses to elevate to the Episcopate. Now, what major trend is that you&#8217;re going to have to click here to find out in the meantime, through the intercession of St. Augustine, let&#8217;s pray that we shall become more fully one in Christ Jesus. For Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
&nbsp;

6 early signs Leo XIV could be a GREAT Pope…

Pornography is one of the most confessed sins in confession. Therefore, I will share some insights for penitents and confessors when it comes up.
<h2>How Should I Confess the Sin of Pornography? Applying Church Requirements</h2>
In confession, the Church requires that we confess each mortal sin that we can remember in kind and the number of times we committed it. If you intentionally viewed pornography <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-counts-as-pornography">in any form</a>, you must confess that you viewed pornography and how many times. If pornography was accompanied by masturbation, you must confess that, too, along with the number of times.
Another item that must be included in our confession is any intention, factor, or circumstance that increases the sinfulness of the act we have committed. In the instance of viewing pornography, it would be necessary to mention anything about the material that increases the gravity of the viewing. For <a href="https://wdtprs.com/2018/01/ask-father-if-i-confess-to-watching-porn-must-i-say-it-was-homosexual-porn/">example</a>, if the pornography was homosexual, then it would be necessary to mention this in the confession, as homosexual acts are contrary to natural law to a degree greater than are acts of fornication. This is necessary even if one viewed homosexual pornography that was not the same sex as the viewer, although whether this is the case ought to be specified in confession also. I hope this principle is clear enough that I need not specify each way that pornographic material in itself could be more grave. This principle also applies to circumstances surrounding its display, such as if the viewer viewed it with someone else or at the workplace.
One temptation for those who fall once is thinking, “I fell and I cannot get to confession for several days. I might as well do it again before I go to confession.” One problem with this, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl7MpiqRnX4">among others</a>, is that it can easily turn into presumption of God’s mercy. If this temptation is given into, it should also be mentioned in confession.
<h2>What If I Try to Access Pornography but Am Unable?</h2>
One wise practice for those who struggle with pornography use is to install software on their devices that can provide filtering and accountability. <a href="https://www.covenanteyes.com/">Covenant Eyes</a> is an example of this.
Sometimes people who install these products on their devices will be tempted to find a way around the filter. Here is the question: if we begin to sin, but are unable to carry out the act, are we guilty of the sin? Here is the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GohSU4bKyo">answer</a>: we become guilty of sin when we make an act of the will that is offensive to God. If a person commits to viewing pornography, then even if he is unable to do so due to the effectiveness of the filter, that an attempt was made to get around it should be confessed. However, if a person is tempted to work around the filter but decides of his own free will not to give into the temptation, then it is not sinful, and moreover, it is the virtuous act of resisting temptation. The difference may be hard to discern in this case, so mentioning it in confession is advised.
<h2>I Keep Confessing This Over and Over Again!</h2>
The Church requires for confession a sincere contrition for sins committed, a desire to sin no more, and a firm purpose of amendment of one’s life. Pornography is a sin that people confess repeatedly, and that can be discouraging. However, it is important not to despair and to keep going to confession. On a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/ive-confessed-this-1000-times">Catholic Answers Live call</a>, a man who struggled with pornography and mentioned it in all of his confessions at the time spoke with Matt Fradd, who said,
<blockquote>In order to have the contrition needed for absolution, we do not need to twist our mind in such a way that we are convinced we will never fall again. We can confess that we have fallen to something, and so long as our will desires never to fall to it again, even though we may recognize that we likely will fall to it again, it is still a valid confession, and you are forgiven.</blockquote>
As long as a person who struggles with the same sin repeatedly truly desires not to sin again, that person can and must continue to bring those sins to confession and receive God’s mercy and forgiveness.
<h2>Some Tips to Make Confession More Effective, Plus Some Limitations of Confession</h2>
The following suggestions are not necessary for confession, but they are helpful tips to implement for both priests and faithful together who want to the sacrament of confession to be an impactful experience that truly inspires the penitent to make progress. First, Fr. Sean Kilcawley offers <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j75UX8jmd_M">a series of questions</a> that priests can ask penitents in confession to help them. Penitents who are not asked these questions can also volunteer this information when confessing the sin of pornography. The questions are as follows:
<ol>
<li>How often do you fall into this sin in general?</li>
<li>When was your first exposure to pornography?</li>
<li>Are you speaking to someone outside confession at this time about this?</li>
<li>Do you want to stop?</li>
</ol>
Another suggestion, which comes from my friend Fr. Allen Hoffa, is to offer the penitent the opportunity to make an appointment outside confession. This cannot be required for absolution, but it can be offered to the penitent as an option.
Although confession grants forgiveness of sins, confession alone is often not enough for someone with a habit to overcome pornography use. To make progress, it needs to be discussed with loved ones and possibly a therapist. The seal of confession is a gift, but if the person who has developed a habit of viewing pornography talks about it only in confession, the habit can remain a secret.
The sin of pornography thrives in shame and secrecy. Regular use becomes a vicious cycle of viewing pornography, feeling ashamed, going to confession, and eventually falling and beginning the cycle again. Although confession forgives the sin, this pattern can also make confession part of the cycle, as a tool the person uses to ease his guilt from the previous fall. This can be exacerbated if the person goes to confession to different priests so he doesn’t increase his shame by repeatedly confessing the same sins to the same priest. Having a priest as a regular confessor who also offers help outside of the confessional is much more helpful in healing from shame, being held accountable, and making true progress. Also, having people you trust in your life who know and are there to help is essential to the process of recovery from a habit of viewing pornography.
<h2>A Common but Dangerous Omission—Worth Mentioning in Confession If It Applies</h2>
One <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/sins-of-omission">sin of omission</a> that relates to the sin of pornography is when parents and Church leaders neglect, intentionally or not, to proactively address this subject with their children and with the faithful. We can assume this on the part of many parents, since the average age of first exposure to pornography is eight years old.
Parents, as the first and primary educators and protectors of their children, have the duty to make sure their children are protected from pornography on devices, to educate their children about pornography, and to encourage their kids to talk with them if they come across pornography. Also, Church leaders must equip parents in their preparation and follow-up of these conversations and occasionally address the topic publicly so that people know the Church is opposed to pornography but is also there to help those who struggle.
If you are a parent or church leader reading this, and you recognize that you have not been as proactive as you should have been, it may be worth mentioning in your next confession as you prepare to start those conversations.
<h2>Final Word: Persevere in Hope, Keep Going to Confession, but Talk About It Outside Confession, Too!</h2>
I hope this article had valuable insights for both priests and faithful for addressing pornography in confession. Due to the shame felt by pornography users, it can be difficult to discuss both in and apart from confession. However, it is a common struggle for people today. This does not reduce its sinfulness, but it should reduce any stigma around getting help. Many people who fall into a habit of pornography use do so because of woundedness, or to meet other needs. Pornography is a perfect example of the kind of problem that recalls Pope Francis’s vision of the Church as a field hospital.
Those who view pornography should go to confession, trusting in God’s mercy and recognizing that shame and the temptation to keep it a secret is from the devil. Priests regularly hear this sin, andthis article offers them some ways to make confession more impactful, along with insights to recognize when more must be done outside of confession.
For more information about pornography and talking about it, priests and parents should check out organizations like <a href="https://www.covenanteyes.com/">Covenant Eyes</a>, <a href="https://integrityrestored.com/">Integrity Restored</a>, and <a href="https://roadtopurity.com/">Road to Purity</a>, which have more resources.

Advice for Confessing the Sin of Pornography

<div>What is the Church’s official stance on the reported Marian apparitions in Medjugorje?</div><div>In a <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240919_nota-esperienza-medjugorje_en.html">September 19, 2024 note</a>, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-primer-on-medjugorje">approved the &#8220;spiritual experience connected with Medjugorje&#8221;</a> as a place of pilgrimage, while declining to make a judgment about the supernatural character of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/twelve-things-to-know-about-private-revelations">alleged private revelations</a> associated with the shrine:
<blockquote>The uniqueness of the place lies in the large number of such fruits: abundant conversions, a frequent return to the sacraments (particularly, the Eucharist and Reconciliation), many vocations to priestly, religious, and married life, a deepening of the life of faith, a more intense practice of prayer, many reconciliations between spouses, and the renewal of marriage and family life. It should be noted that such experiences occur above all in the context of pilgrimages to the places associated with the original events rather than in meetings with the “visionaries” to be present for the alleged apparitions (3, emphasis added). . . .
While this does not imply a declaration of the supernatural character of the phenomenon in question (cf. <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240517_norme-fenomeni-soprannaturali_en.html">Norms</a>, art. 22, §2)—and recalling that the faithful are not obliged to believe in it—the Nihil obstat indicates that the faithful can receive a positive encouragement for their Christian life through this spiritual proposal, and it authorizes public acts of devotion. Such a determination is possible insofar as many positive fruits have been noted in the midst of a spiritual experience, while negative and dangerous effects have not spread among the People of God (38). . . .
In any case, may the people who go to Medjugorje be strongly advised that pilgrimages are not made to meet with alleged visionaries but to have an encounter with Mary, the Queen of Peace, and—faithful to her love for her Son—to encounter Christ and listen to him through meditation on the Word, by participation in the Eucharist, and in Eucharistic Adoration, as happens in so many shrines spread all over the world in which the Virgin Mary is venerated with the most varied titles (41).</blockquote>
<div>The DDF has authorized the publication of the messages associated with the reported apparitions at Medjugorje, granting a nihil obstat—which means that nothing in them is contrary to Church doctrine on faith and morals (39). At the same time, in the same paragraph, the DDF adds, &#8220;The special Apostolic Visitor for the parish of Medjugorje, who will continue to carry out the functions entrusted to him, should verify that this Note is included as an Introduction in any publication that collects the messages (emphasis added). <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240919_nota-esperienza-medjugorje_en.html">In other words</a>, to reaffirm, &#8220;the positive fruits linked to this spiritual experience are evident&#8221; (5). &#8220;Moreover, the positive assessment that most of the messages of Medjugorje are edifying does not imply a declaration that they have a direct supernatural origin. Consequently, when referring to &#8216;messages&#8217; from Our Lady, one should always bear in mind that they are &#8216;alleged messages&#8217;” (38).</div>
Here is a chronology of the events.
In June 1981, the Blessed Mother reportedly began appearing regularly to several children in the town of Medjugorje, which is located in the Diocese of Mostar-Duvno, then part of Yugoslavia. (The diocese is now part of the nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.)
In 1985, Mostar-Duvno’s bishop Pavao Zanic determined that the apparitions <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/bishop-pavo-zanics-orders-3916">were not authentic</a>, i.e., not of supernatural origin.
In 1991, the bishops’ conference of Yugoslavia ruled that the supernatural character of the reported apparitions could not be affirmed. This is different than a definitive declaration that there is no supernatural character.
Bishop Zanic maintained his position until his retirement in July 1993, when <a href="https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bperic.html">Bishop Ratko Peric succeeded him</a>. Throughout his tenure in Mostar, which lasted until July 2020, Bishop Peric <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/35544/local-bishop-the-madonna-has-not-appeared-in-medjugorje">consistently reaffirmed</a> the decision of his predecessor.
Bishop <a href="https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bpalicp.html">Petar Palic</a> is the current Bishop of Mostar-Duvno, and he has not overturned his predecessors’ decisions.
The Holy See, consistent with the rulings of the local bishops, has allowed pilgrimages to Medjugorje—and <a title="Original URL: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-05/pope-authorizes-pilgrimages-to-medjugorje.html. Click or tap if you trust this link." href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vaticannews.va%2Fen%2Fpope%2Fnews%2F2019-05%2Fpope-authorizes-pilgrimages-to-medjugorje.html&amp;data=05%7C01%7Capologist%40catholic.com%7C39bf46e6fa2b44fa6fc308dbc90eaa2a%7Cdd9faf74765b495cac09cabd182c95a7%7C0%7C0%7C638324837042670895%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=AoTh0CGQClr9KrWF0beZ%2BxFHjXeiUy5JOpX1mFO1xGs%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="Verified" data-linkindex="0">in May 2019 Pope Francis formally authorized them</a>—provided they don’t present the reported apparitions as approved by the Church. The Holy See has also forbidden the faithful from participating in events where the reported seers present their reported apparitions as of supernatural origin (see <a title="Original URL: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/14-things-to-know-and-share-about-the-new-letter-on-medjugorje. Click or tap if you trust this link." href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncregister.com%2Fblog%2Fjimmy-akin%2F14-things-to-know-and-share-about-the-new-letter-on-medjugorje&amp;data=05%7C01%7Capologist%40catholic.com%7C39bf46e6fa2b44fa6fc308dbc90eaa2a%7Cdd9faf74765b495cac09cabd182c95a7%7C0%7C0%7C638324837042670895%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=E3a%2BfgwtSIFkKmkBloReBoB2g4XIL1icHUBr%2F195dfI%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="Verified" data-linkindex="1">this</a> for more information).
Finally, to reaffirm the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20240919_nota-esperienza-medjugorje_en.html">September 2024 decision</a> by the DDF, those who have experienced a conversion—or deepening of faith—associated with pilgrimage(s) to Medjugorje should know that the validity of their experiences does not hinge upon whether the reported apparitions are declared of supernatural origin. Indeed, the sacraments are valid at Medjugorje, and the Blessed Mother can—and does—fruitfully intercede for those who seek her sincerely, wherever that may be.
</div>

The Church’s Current Position on Medjugorje

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In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Karlo Broussard tackles one of the most common objections to Catholic teaching: If Jesus is the &#8220;one mediator&#8221; between God and man, why ask Mary and the saints to intercede for us? Drawing from 1 Timothy 2:5, Ecclesiastes 9:5, and Revelation 5:8, Karlo addresses Protestant concerns about the awareness and intercessory role of the saints in heaven. He explains what the Bible really says about heavenly mediation, the beatific vision, and whether the saints are aware of and respond to our prayers. Along the way, he refutes key counterarguments and clarifies Catholic teaching with clarity and Scripture.
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