Manage Account

<div>I was told by a priest that the penitent is also bound by the seal of confession. Is this true? </div><div>We are all aware that canon law absolutely forbids the priest to reveal a confession he has heard (can. 983 §1).
Canon law does extend the seal to other persons as well. If an interpreter is used for the confession, he also is bound by the seal of confession (can. 983 §2). The same canon that forbids an interpreter from revealing a confession also mentions that any person who overhears a confession is bound by the seal as well. Therefore, anyone waiting in line for confession who overhears something from a confession is never permitted to reveal to another what he has heard.
However, nothing in canon law forbids the actual penitent himself from revealing what happened during confession.  Any person is free to recount to anyone and everyone what he said to the priest and what the priest said in reply.
</div>

Who Is Bound by the Seal of Confession?

Karlo Broussard critically examines instances of baptism in the New Testament to show why the Church <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/infant-baptism">baptizes infants</a> without an explicit command from Scripture.

Why Does the Church Baptize Infants When the Bible Says to Baptize Adults?

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Should you lie to your kids about Santa?

Episode 16: Year A&#8211;Third Sunday of Lent
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we’re going to focus on five details present in the Liturgy of the Word for the 3rd Sunday of Lent that are relevant for doing apologetics. Four of the five come from the Gospel reading, which is taken from John 4:5-42. These four details are connected to several different apologetical themes: Catholic rituals in worship, the divinity of the Holy Spirit, the incorporeality of God, the male only priesthood, and the Eucharist. The fifth detail comes from the second reading, which is taken from Romans 5:1-2, 5-8. The apologetical topic that’s relevant here is the nature of justification.
The Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031223.cfm">https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031223.cfm</a>
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Why a Male Only Priesthood?

In this episode, Trent shows how Protestantism&#8217;s response to legal abortion reveals it&#8217;s underlying authority problem.
<a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-2nd-edition"> Persuasive Pro-Life</a>
Transcription:
<div>
<div>
Trent:
One thing I&#8217;ve always appreciated with conservative Protestants is their opposition to the evil of abortion. Some of my fondest memories after college involve traveling the country with a group equally comprised of Catholics and Protestants who would dialogue with college students on the issue of abortion. But while I appreciate this alliance, now, that wasn&#8217;t always the case between Catholics and Protestants. In this episode, I want to talk about how American protestantisms relatively late condemnation of abortion reveals a serious flaw in Protestantisms view of doctrinal authority. So in his book, defenders of the Unborn, the pro-life movement before Roe v. Wade, which is published by Oxford University Press, Daniel K. Williams, shows that most people Protestant and Catholic were against abortion in the 19th and early 20th centuries. You have Protestants like Anthony Comstock who crusaded against all obscenities including abortion and contraception. That changed, however, when the Anglican Church removed its condemnation of birth control at the 1930 Lambeth conference.
After that, many Protestants bought into the idea that contraception was not sinful because the Bible doesn&#8217;t explicitly condemn it. Williams writes, while Catholic clergy and physicians considered liberalized abortion laws a direct attack on the nation&#8217;s fundamental values, Protestants were more likely to describe abortion as an unfortunate problem that could be solved by better access to contraception. Except for the Anglicans in 1930, no Protestant denomination made a statement against abortion until the 1960s, whereas in 1930, Pope c 11th reaffirmed the church&#8217;s opposition to contraception and abortion in his encyclical Casty Canobie. One prominent story about abortion in the 1960s was the case of Sherry Cheen. She was the star of the television show romper room. She wanted to get an abortion because of her use of the prescription drug thalidomide because if you use it while you&#8217;re pregnant, it can cause a child to be born with severe birth defects.
William says that Protestants were almost twice as likely as Catholics to support her decision to get an abortion due to fetal deformity. In 19 67, 21, Protestant ministers and Jewish rabbis founded the clergy consultation service on abortion. In the 1960s, some states like Colorado and California had begun to liberalize their abortion laws, and so the US Conference of Catholic Bishops founded the National Right to Life Committee in 1967, which is still the oldest and largest pro-life organization in the United States. Williams writes hardly any evangelical Protestants joined Catholics in lobbying against the abortion law reforms of the late 1960s. In his other book, God&#8217;s Own Party, the Making of the Christian Right Williams shows how Protestant denominations, including conservative ones like the Southern Baptist Convention, were not completely opposed to abortion. While smaller fundamentalists he called them were opposed to abortion. They didn&#8217;t have a voice because the largest groups fighting abortion were Catholics.
Williams writes, despite their pro-life beliefs, Protestant fundamentalists were unable to mount an effective protest against abortion because they were still politically and religiously isolated. They refused to join predominantly Catholic pro-life organizations, so their protests against abortion never reached beyond their own circles. Meanwhile, the advocates of legalizing abortion continued to gain ground between April, 1967 and January, 1973, 19 states liberalized their abortion laws pro-life. Catholics turned back the tide of abortion legalization in a few northern states, including Pennsylvania, and they created a national organization, the National Right to Life Committee to coordinate their state campaigns, but they could not help noting the lack of help that they received from Protestants in these endeavors. The only reason we have a pro-life movement in this country is because of the Catholic people and the Catholic church, the executive director of the NRLC said in 1973. You can see this ambivalence towards abortion in the official platforms of the largest Protestant denominations at the time the 1968 American Baptist Convention declared because Christ calls us to affirm the freedom of persons and the sanctity of life, we recognize that abortion should be a matter of responsible personal decision and advocated for legal abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.
According to sociologist Sabrina Danielson, the Lutheran Church in America in 1970 argued a woman or couple may decide responsibly to seek an abortion. The Presbyterian church in the United States in 1970 argued abortion should be available to all who desire and qualify for it. The United Church of Christ in 1971 argued for the repeal of all legal prohibitions of physician performed abortions. Finally, in 1972, the United Methodist Church argued for the removal of abortion from the criminal code, placing it instead under laws related to other procedures of standard medical practice. In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention said, we call upon Southern Baptist to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, as well as clear evidence of severe fetal deformity. After Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, wa Criswell, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention said, I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person.
And it has always therefore seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed. Baptists especially supported Roe v Wade because their denomination had a very strict understanding of the separation of church and state. I know Baptist apologists today who tout this separation as one of the strongest points in favor of Baptist theology. But you see the dangers of that thinking when it&#8217;s used to say, the church can&#8217;t even tell the state that something like abortion should be illegal. In 1976, Christianity today asked the question, is abortion a Catholic issue? Even people as conservative as the Reverend Billy Graham were not completely pro-life in 1978. He said he was open to abortion in cases of rape and incest, and that in God&#8217;s eyes, an act of abortion may not necessarily be any worse than many other sins we could list. He solidified that position on Larry King live in 1988.
Clip: Billy Graham:
I would be for abortion in violent rape. I&#8217;m against abortion. I take the same stand that the Pope takes. I&#8217;m against abortion except in cases of rape and in cases and violent rape I would say, and then in cases where the mother&#8217;s life is in danger.
Trent:
Now, I want to be clear that during this period there were solid Protestants who completely opposed abortion, but as we seem, one of the problems was that they refused to work with Catholics so their voices didn&#8217;t get heard. Even today, I know Catholic groups that have trouble getting Protestants to come pray with them outside abortion facilities. That&#8217;s why I appreciate Protestants like my friend Scott Korff, who has defended what he calls theological co belligerent. In his book, the Case For Life Korff points out the hypocrisy of Protestants who refuse to work with Catholics to save children from abortion because they reject Catholic theology, but will be more than willing to work with a Catholic doctor or a Catholic ambulance driver to save their own child&#8217;s life. And during this time, before and after Roe v Wade, their were Catholics who helped to pave the way for legal abortion.
One of the most notorious was Father Robert Drynan, who served in Congress from 1971 to 1981, and he defended legal abortion saying that as a Catholic, he personally opposed abortion, but he couldn&#8217;t impose this view on people through the law. It&#8217;s no wonder that in 1980, Pope Saint John Paul II demanded that all priests withdraw from serving an elected office. But what&#8217;s concerning is that by relying on Sola Scriptura, many upstanding Protestants were able to hold a weaker pro-life view or even defend completely legal abortion. Because the Bible wasn&#8217;t explicit about abortion being evil, one had to infer that message from scripture. Just as one might infer from scripture that contraception is evil, but nearly 100 years later, the majority position among Protestants is that contraception is not sinful because there isn&#8217;t an explicit condemnation of it in scripture. But by making that the bar, am I making that bar so high in order to show the Bible demands something of us morally that opens the door to excuse all kinds of evils that the Bible doesn&#8217;t explicitly condemn? Here are clips I showed from a previous episode of prominent Protestants like Mike Winger, Alan Parr, James Dobson and Sean McDowell saying that masturbation isn&#8217;t always wrong provided one doesn&#8217;t think lustful during the act because they say Scripture only explicitly condemns lust, not masturbation.
Clip: Mike Winger:
Hypothetically, I engage in this behavior on rare occasions. It helps to calm me down and I don&#8217;t do it. I could see a place for that. I wouldn&#8217;t rebuke a person for that. I don&#8217;t think the Bible clearly talks about the issue directly. So I&#8217;m applying biblical principles that seem to fairly simply apply to the topic of masturbation.
Clip: Alan Parr:
Paul says that all things are lawful for me, but not all things are beneficial or expedient. In other words, what he&#8217;s saying is there&#8217;s a lot of things that the Bible doesn&#8217;t say, this is wrong, or this is a sin. We can smoke crack. We can snip cocaine, right? We can text while driving, but are any of those things that I just mentioned wise, will they get us closer to God? And the answer is no, and I would put masturbation in that same category.
Clip: James Dobson:
I really don&#8217;t think that it&#8217;s right for me to tell you what I think because I don&#8217;t know what God thinks. And on the moral issues of this, the Bible is just about silent. If it happens to you, I really wouldn&#8217;t worry very much about it because I don&#8217;t think it has much to do with your relationship with God.
Clip: Sean McDowell:
Some would even argue that masturbation for somebody if it doesn&#8217;t involve lust and just as a biological physical release for a person would be fine.
Trent:
So once again, we see the problem here of contraception, abortion, and masturbation, that if the act itself is not explicitly condemned in scripture, there are Protestants who will justify it using solas scriptura or consider the modern evil of surrogacy. That&#8217;s when you hire a woman solely for the purpose of having her carry another woman&#8217;s child to term during a pregnancy and then relinquishing that child to the biological mother. Now, because this is a very new technology, it&#8217;s going to be hard to come up with an explicitly biblical argument against it. You could even find precedent for this in the Old Testament use of concubines having children for other married women, four of the tribes of Israel came from Jacob&#8217;s relations with the servants of Leia and Rachel. But the Catholic church has an authority structure that can give a firm condemnation against this very novel evil.
The first successful surrogate pregnancy took place in 1985, and two years later, the congregation for the doctrine of the faith released Dunum vitae. And it said, the following surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal, fidelity, and of responsible motherhood. It offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb and brought into the world and brought up by his own parents. It sets up to the judgment of families, a division between the physical, psychological, and moral elements, which constitute those families. Legislation must also prohibit by virtue of the support which is due to the family, embryo banks, postmortem, insemination, and surrogate motherhood. In 2024, Pope Francis called for a global ban on surrogacy, calling it an object of human trafficking and a gray violation of the woman and child&#8217;s dignity. And once again, I want to reaffirm the many Protestants who oppose abortion, many of whom I have learned from to engage that issue better.
However, the history of modern protestantisms response to legal abortion and its ambivalence towards other evils like surrogacy or contraception shows one of the fundamental problems with sola scriptura. God wants us to live a moral life, but the Bible does not contain a systematic treatment of what is and isn&#8217;t moral. I mean, how could it given the new moral issues that have arisen over the church&#8217;s 2000 year history? Instead, it makes sense to believe that God gave us an enduring teaching authority, a living authority, to guide believers as St. Paul put it in one Timothy three 15. If I&#8217;m delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you like more resources on addressing the pro-life issue, definitely check out my book, persuasive Pro-Life, get the second edition with the white cover. It&#8217;s updated after the repeal of Roe v Wade. But in any case, thank you all so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.
</div>
</div>

When Protestants Were Pro-Choice

<div>A friend went to psychic years ago. I lost touch with her. A I responsible for trying to contact her to tell her it’s a mortal sin?</div><div>You say you’ve lost contact with your friend. Do you know how to get back in contact with your friend or know someone who is likely to help you in succeeding in that request?
If you can answer one or both of those questions affirmatively, then, out of charity, it’d be good for you to let your friend know to avoid psychics and trust in God, instead of consulting problematic spirits to deal with life issues (see <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c1a1.htm">CCC 2115-17</a>). Yet, make sure to approach your friend with humble charity, including because it’s been a good while since you’ve last spoken (see 1 Pet. 3:15). If your friend is Catholic, encourage her to take advantage of the sacrament of reconciliation. If she’s not, encourage her to repent to God on her own.
Further, consulting a psychic is certainly, objectively, gravely wrong. However, remember that mortal sin involves two other components: full knowledge and full consent of the will (see <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a8.htm">CCC 1857-61</a>). Consequently, while encouraging your friend to repent and avoid this sin, don’t presume to judge her subjective culpability.
If you are not able to contact your friend, pray for her repentance and conversion.
</div>

Should I Reprove a Friend for Consulting a Psychic?

How to discern between Catholic and Protestant apologetics?

How were the apostles chosen?

How can we comfort the suffering (2 Cor 1:3-5)?

Why does God allow suffering and evil?

Do we receive the full Eucharist with just the host?

&#8220;What can we do to comfort the suffering?&#8221; In this episode, we explore this vital question alongside topics such as the selection of the apostles and the reasons behind God&#8217;s allowance of suffering and evil.
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How Can We Comfort the Suffering? Apostles and Evil

What is a Good Translation of the Bible?

If I was previously married and couldn’t get annulled and as a result and could never receive the Eucharist, why would I become Catholic?

Where in the Protestant bible does it talk about purgatory?

I’m interested in Catholicism, but I follow sola scriptura very strictly.

Why did the Catholic Church change the calendar that now disagrees with the Orthodox?

I’m thinking about leaving Catholicism because the Church discriminates against homosexuals from being admitted into seminary to become priests?

&#8220;Can I become Catholic without an annulment?&#8221; This episode addresses the complexities of joining the Church, especially for those with previous marriages. Additionally, we explore questions about purgatory in the Protestant Bible, the implications of sola scriptura, and the reasons behind the Catholic Church&#8217;s calendar changes. Tune in for a thoughtful examination of these important topics.
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Can I Become Catholic Without an Annulment? – Why  Aren’t You Catholic?

Can one be Anglican and fully in communion with the Catholic Church? We talk with Father Glenn Baaten and Deacon Candidate Keith Way about their entry into the Catholic Church. Both are members of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, created by the Vatican in 2012 for people nurtured in the Anglican tradition who wish to become Catholic.

Anglicans in the Catholic Church

As far back as we have evidence that Matthew, Mark, Luke,and John are the four Gospels, we have evidence that these same Christians believed that the Virgin Mary had a special role to play in the story of our salvation as the “New Eve,” and that  “the knot of Eve&#8217;s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what Eve had bound fast through unbelief, thus did Mary set free through faith.” But is this vision of Mary based on the Bible? and what does it mean for Christianity?

Why the Early Church Thought Mary Was the New Eve

When can Catholics rightly criticize the Pope — and when does that cross a line? In this clip from The Ben Shapiro Show, Ben Shapiro and Trent Horn discuss papal infallibility, prudential judgments, and the difference between disagreeing respectfully and dismissing the Holy Father outright. They also get into media bias, selective outrage from both left and right, Pope Francis, Pope Leo, and how Catholics should think about papal comments on politics, war, and public policy.
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Ben Shapiro (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/DKedRaEyhTCf0PXWWNTpLWO6wjc6gszNxCTzV3_6kz89Jm7hZRuNvjOUOmX3rc1huNVdiicg-gXsw8h9wEU5tnSN4NE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=0.08">00:00</a>):
Joining us on the line is Trent Horne. He is a staph apologist for Catholic Answers and he serves as the host of the Council of Trent. He&#8217;s authored a bunch of books, co-authored over a dozen. And of course, he has master&#8217;s degrees in a wide variety of fields, theology, philosophy, bioethics. Trent, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/vg0I0K4ubypk2iNrDvLC0OG8zX10vebwBTsaZewbUDHt05Cx1EZoRpYiZ4qqpn0Jb0ACDan_RsZbHtrM0o8aZUg08iM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=17.52">00:17</a>):
Thanks for having me on again, Ben.
Ben Shapiro (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/2wGjOYdeYo89Pyonzb351vOqnQLUNP1AV395tR8EdI4OThX2BBL9i0Y20NZodrN_PWRX2tiaTHmhOmrSPzSRN4tAAzM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=20.42">00:20</a>):
So let&#8217;s discuss, from a Catholic perspective, where is it fine for people to criticize the Pope and where is it not fine for people to criticize the Pope? Obviously, he&#8217;s in a bit of a war of wards with President Trump. Right now, Popes frequently sound off on matters political because the crossover between the spiritual and temporal is not a bright line. And if you&#8217;re speaking on matters of morality, that will have consequences for politics. Where is it fair to say, &#8220;I just disagree with the Pope. I think that he&#8217;s wrong on a
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/hfs7SYbRvT1cEuBnQTAe-ye00lA6sNNqO3cg6DCBHSfzQ7M2nPPwlIhC2YptAoL7H1P4fwjRj30vf3f0cIJ7TzzZ--E?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=46.87">00:46</a>):
Subject.&#8221; Yeah. I think it&#8217;s important for people to remember that papal infallibility is a doctrine that only applies to extremely limited number of things that the Pope says and hasn&#8217;t been invoked by recent Popes, except in things like the canonization of saints. Otherwise, Catholics are to give the religious submission of mind and will to when the Pope teaches doctrine, says, &#8220;This is a teaching of the faith that the faithful are to hold.&#8221; But in many other cases, what we have our prudential judgments, and prudential judgments relate to the virtue of prudence. How do we use reason to get to the good? Many times we can try to aim at the good, but as you know, Ben, when liberals try to aim for the good, we often have the law of unintended consequences. Well, we want to get rid of poverty, so let&#8217;s raise the minimum wage to $50 an hour.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/_8PwEItIK9reUifArJYxhyWFv-ngOHHYhnrTQfUQoWn2hJra3NMfbSrjx6lg0pdCdUtLIp_sDmJCX5G1Ms-TU1XuInI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=95.26">01:35</a>):
Well, you&#8217;re trying to do good, but it&#8217;s very imprudent. You&#8217;re not getting to the good, you&#8217;re not using reason to get there. So the Pope and the bishops can offer prudential judgments to say, &#8220;Here&#8217;s what we can do to get to peace and flourishing for human beings.&#8221; And other people in different fields and social sciences can offer respectful disagreement of that. All people, but Catholics especially should give the Pope, who&#8217;s our spiritual father, respectful consideration of these prudential judgments that are given. But to simply flippantly toss them off as if the Pope is just some guy in Rome, that would be out of bounds, especially for Catholics who owe deference to the Holy Father.
Ben Shapiro (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/CnXJ57to-Tw-xDFTOaTsH0qlLd3tiGma4NbKFH0D1glDT1p7BXyQPa3LjMEPGrlDwwHOFfB8OPVyVNAKAZCnx8xm8u0?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=137.86">02:17</a>):
So Trent, this is the part that I think needs to be explicated for folks who are not Catholic. And I&#8217;ve said that I think that the President criticizing the Pope&#8217;s positions or the Pope criticizing the President&#8217;s positions. All of that is sort of normal course of business that&#8217;s been going on for several, at least a couple of thousand years at this point, actually. Sort of the conflict between temporal leaders and the papacy over matters political. Obviously, the president&#8217;s tone when he goes after the Pope should not be the same as when he goes after Chuck Schumer. That is a mistake. I think on both moral and a political level. At the same time, I will say that I&#8217;m a little more insulted actually, even than the president using rhetoric that I would not approve of by the people who oppose the Catholic Church at literally every turn, but suddenly are hiding behind the robes of the papacy in order to criticize President Trump.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/678SOQAFO46KLqpYAkIcIn92P9k_Alj_pUWAXKiTncB4AWS7JBpT4-M2LxBFyobSWzc9nOAnWzM8w1FXM6uUe45S3yQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=186.22">03:06</a>):
If you&#8217;re a person who is standing on behalf of Islamist dictatorships, for example, if you&#8217;re the speaker of the parliament in Iran and you have attempted to exterminate the practice of Christianity in Iran, and now you&#8217;re hiding behind the Pope to criticize President Trump. Or if you are a member of the American body politic and you&#8217;re in favor of transiting the kids and abortion on demand and all the rest, and suddenly you have a newfound respect for the Pope, I find that a little bit hard to swallow.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/JkJ1cYC4DbhBYHaiXv5ljcdR4yqyk8CIPMVWvWU8Pa1gLzFbUSSi6hFvW-JBAqHzLykVQMbx8w8EOJ2aRmkok0450Og?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=212.9">03:32</a>):
No, I agree with that. And this has been a constant problem with secular liberals for decades and not just with the Pope, right? When it comes to Jesus, you&#8217;ll have liberals who will gladly quote Jesus when he said, &#8220;Judge not lest you be judged,&#8221; or they&#8217;ll just quote the judge not part, but they won&#8217;t quote Jesus when he talks about, for example, that a man who divorces his wife and remarries another commits adultery against her, or Jesus&#8217; teachings about how if you lust after someone, you&#8217;re committing adultery in your heart. You&#8217;ll have LGBT activists who will quote Jesus talking about love your neighbor and judge not, but not on his clear teachings related to sexuality. The same thing happened with Pope Francis. You&#8217;d have liberals quoting him on immigration or LGBT ideology, but then ignoring the Pope when Francis would say that abortion is akin to hiring a hitman, which is something even many conservative pro- life activists and politicians, rhetoric that they won&#8217;t even step into if Pope Francis was willing to.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/qDNLRm3i-WNDZZBBlTuFUxSHvvEPly-Dn7SyQfEezNAeIQ68Su3AUTq4YPTcvPbng6K-AmJ9hRrlebPPmvchqgEbG94?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=270.56">04:30</a>):
So I agree with you, Ben, that it&#8217;s bad when people try to just use the Pope for their own purposes, but that&#8217;s something for both the left and the right. I hate it when the left likes the Pope when he speaks about social justice issues and ignores him on sanctity of marriage and human life in the womb, but also people on the right oftentimes will appeal to the Pope on those issues, but not even give respectful consideration to what he has to say about war, for example, or poverty. Even just giving respectful consideration to that, knowing that this is the rhetoric that he has said about the desire to end war and peacefully resolve issues, this is something that we have seen going all the way back to Pope John the 23rd, Pope endick the 15th, even Popes in the 9th and 10th centuries, even during the crusades, talking about war being a failure for humanity, war always being a defeat.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/hmJmcLU7sEdYSJD-yaq1RtI6DZzW2_uFOUE9YK_JPAghCYTBN5Lui06yUmczTUSlD6KFUHP4aLHvtpI21fRbj2hv2xU?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=319.69">05:19</a>):
I think the biggest problem here, Ben, is that when President Trump talks about war and the Pope is asked by reporters, &#8220;What do you think about this? &#8221; At the very least, if you&#8217;re going to engage in these conflicts, you ought to do so with a sober tone when discussing it, not posting on social media about entire civilizations dying and gleefully talking about warfare. It must always be done with a sober mind that human lives are involved in the process.
Ben Shapiro (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/TFmRc6GW8k4a37Qc6JeqbMCZ3McaXXIqafBB09Go8Gde41VOJRKYHNHHGjel9ouhfdBt_1yrv_1MNN-cTvLIC_oF1A0?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=348.21">05:48</a>):
So I do want to ask a question from sort of the outside, obviously, about the way that the papacy is covered. So usually you only see the headlines when the Pope says something that the left wing legacy media really likes, and it&#8217;s always hysterically funny to me when from time to time, they will be shocked that the Pope says, for example, the same-sex marriage is still not approved by the Catholic Church. They&#8217;ll act as though this is some sort of great shock that the church is mirroring the position that it has taken for a couple of thousand years at this point. How much of the popular conception on the right about various Popes from Francis to the current Pope Leo is a reflection of the fact that we really only read headlines about what the Pope says from left wing media outlets. We&#8217;ll read the Pope&#8217;s critique of the war, but we may not ever see that headline about abortion because the left wing media doesn&#8217;t really wish to cover that in serious detail.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/EZoUXea2XDiAUvCCLehq1CDi1YLnPz59quoG2_uT_Z81Rc6Tww399w4TZ2TJMqNAzpDVsATBMhAHukHbrthI3AuNRjw?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=400.35">06:40</a>):
And also, how often does the Pope speak in detail about things like the Iran war? Because it does feel to a certain extent like people are reading tea leaves or vague statements and then interpreting it sort of as they wish. The Pope will say that war is an evil and people will immediately interpret that as that&#8217;s a rip on President Trump as opposed to say a rip on Iran. And so how clear should the Pope be issuing more sort of long form explanations of his positions on issues like the war in Iran?
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/G57rERuPF-uaYepii_9lzIr6__yVKfNsrBjf1dagTPOrcl75h4cjgHdsy5ZRKMM48QOinK-qBLar19J_r-bVal2_Hlk?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=430.56">07:10</a>):
I think that there have been previous magisterial documents, Pope, St. John all the second author won. I believe it was in Santisi Musanmus or previous doc &#8230; No, earlier, I think it was Pope Ice 11th, talked about how the moral sphere and prudential judgments, while they overlap, they&#8217;re not always going to be identical. So I think it is important for the Pope to not try to think, &#8220;Oh, well, he&#8217;s just going to be an expert on everything.&#8221; For example, I certainly agree with Pope Francis that we ought to protect the environment, for example, and not cause unjustifiable harm to the environment that ultimately doesn&#8217;t contribute to human flourishing. That said in his previous encyclicals like Ladato sea, sometimes I had difficulty making heads or tails of what were his actual concrete proposals for what we should do to help the poor to protect the environment.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/YHhRBQ7jqVGf31beEmbdCHmQLeyS6fIpv0zjz7QEoS7clQVimim6gGLl0B_VLVonMCph_nT4Uuv8tZEREB0qugGcFrM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=481.8">08:01</a>):
And similar things about dealing with geopolitical questions, national stability, trade, dealing with armed conflict and how to resolve it. I think Pope Leo really understands that the papacy is going to be limited in many of these practical questions about how to answer these things, but at the bare minimum, the Pope is able to offer just sound advice of saying, for example, no matter what you believe about the conflict, whether you believe who is just or who is unjust, we can all pray for a conflict to end as quickly as possible. Now, how to get it to end, that&#8217;s going to be a prudential judgment and different questions are offered. And I think it&#8217;s wise for the Pope to step back and not offer, &#8220;Here&#8217;s my 16 point proposal to bring the conflict to an end.&#8221; Instead, he&#8217;s encouraging the faithful to pray and to ask their leaders, and hopefully people on both sides of a conflict ask their leaders to bring it to an end as soon as possible.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/duZQvr3UIVMrJqsDC8oVUhrSMjRID1Q5YNm9SASm-V5JHSFd7GWuahfrcZTGR8sANXVOrYc3QNgBc7xv2nEpx59B7GI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=536.59">08:56</a>):
But you&#8217;re right, Ben, that many of these comments that Pope Leo has made in regard to Iran and then the war, they&#8217;re usually prompted by reporters that catch him as he&#8217;s walking in and out of the Vatican. And then I see them and then he comes and he addresses them. And what I appreciate about Pope Leo in contrast to his predecessor is that he&#8217;s much less likely to speak off the cuff and he understands the importance in being exact in the words that he says on these important matters.
Ben Shapiro (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/cMPidAuU4k6aCmCjcBQU19L7E20emA8abMGQWgr7dVrRAoQD3Om2V_EvVDZSEXxHhWtL_GrOrRpKqcOAxESKtthalJ4?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=569.35">09:29</a>):
Well, that&#8217;s Trent Horn. You can go check out his work over at the Council of Trent Podcast and of course check out his books as well. Trent, really appreciate the time and the insight. Thank you, Ben.
&nbsp;

FFAF: Talking to Ben Shapiro About Pope Leo XIV

<div>Is it true, as Chanda.org states, that the souls of men and women are different because they come from complimentary but opposite sources?</div><div>This idea is an error which is found in various religious traditions that accept either the pre-existence of souls or reincarnation. This is found in traditions as disparate as Ultra-Orthodox Judaism and Hinduism. For us Catholics, God creates the human soul directly at each bodily conception, and so there is no sense in which the soul or human form is male or female except insofar as it is infused into a male or female body as its form.
Sexual difference is a bodily reality, and so it is true to say that the soul of a man is always and forever the form of a male body and a male person, and likewise for the soul of a woman. Sexual difference is not indifferent for the soul, but it is still true that this difference does not find its principle in the soul but in the body of one who belongs to a kind, a species that is multiplied in many individuals through procreation. The source of male and female is a single, identical source—namely, human nature, which requires the union of the sexes for its fulfillment.
</div>

The Soul Maintains the Form of the Body

We hear from a lot of parents about their young adult children leaving the Faith, how do we get them back?

I go to a protestant school. How do I bring my classmates the Catholic faith?

I suggest that we don’t pressure them into the Faith.

How would you interact with protestants you are friends with?

Is evangelization safe if it always makes us question our faith and look for other options?

Why does the Church take its time on evangelizing and catechizing people even when they fall away and return?

Is it appropriate for a Catholic to say ‘I am saved’ when evangelizing protestants?

&#8220;How do we bring young people back to the Church?&#8221; This question resonates with many parents concerned about their young adult children drifting away from the Faith. The discussion also touches on how to share Catholic beliefs with classmates at a Protestant school, the importance of not pressuring individuals into faith, and the dynamics of interacting with Protestant friends.
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How Do We Bring Young People Back to the Church? Faith and Evangelization

In this episode Trent rebuts three absurd conspiracies about Catholicism.
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-does-the-bible-say-about-venial-and-mortal-sin"> Does James 2:10 say all sins are equal?</a>
Transcription:
Refuting Three Absurd Catholic Conspiracy Theories
Catholics have long been the targets of lurid conspiracy theories and in today’s episode we are going to refute three of the silliest ones, starting with a recent conspiracy that’s been shared on social media. 
The Pope John Paul II/Jeffrey Epstein Connection 
In the wake of the recent release of material from the Epstein files some people claimed Pope John Paul II was involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking and cite this picture. This X user says: Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell being personally blessed by the Pope. Interesting. 🧐 
But a raised eyebrow does not an argument make. The Pope blesses thousands of people every year and he doesn’t do a background check on them beforehand. Other people point to this email from one of Epstein’s assistants saying Jeffrey Epstein lived at the Vatican with Pope John Paul II implying that the Pope knew about Epstein’s activities. 
Given that people have lived with serial killers and not even known it, it’s not surprising if some bad people lived at Vatican City and the Pope never knew about it. But the evidence Epstein lived at the Vatican is as flimsy as the evidence that Epstein un-alived himself. 
In the email from 2015, ten years after JP2 died, some kind of contractor says he’s trying to paint columns in different styles for Epstein and writes: 
He wants me to finish each column different as when he was living with Pope John Paul the Second in Vatican, he looked at variety of different columns captured in wars. He told me that every Pope demanded to have a column from every conquered country, so there is a collection of different columns in Vatican. 
But there is no such collection of columns from the Pope conquering anything so this is probably just a jumbled recollection of something a tour guide told Epstein when he was in Rome in 2003 when JP2 blessed him that he then told this restoration specialist ten years later. 
Now John Paul II does share some blame for the clergy abuse crisis and McCarrick scandal. Part of this was due to the Pope having grown up in Soviet occupied Poland where communists would use slander and lies to target people. So if someone like McCarrick denied allegations against him, Pope St. John Paul II was more likely to imprudently believe these denials. 
But if you think a literal saint was actively involved in the sexual abuse of minors because there is a picture of him meeting one of the perpetrators at a public ceremony, then you need to log off and go see visit Jesus at church for a hard reset.
Jack Chick’s Fever Dreams 
Jack Chick was a fundamentalist Baptist cartoonist whose tracts are probably the most widely published comic series in the world. He’s published over a billion of these things in over 100 languages all basically saying if you don’t accept Chick’s particularly theology, then Giant faceless Jesus will send you to hell. 
His most famous anti-Catholic tracts include the tastefully titled Death Cookie about the Eucharist, Why is Mary crying?, and are Catholic Christians? where Chick claims Catholics are automatically citizens of the Holy See, which would be awesome because if you have a Vatican passport you can visit over 150 countries without needing a visa. Of course, that’s not true and these passports are only granted to people like Cardinals who reside in Vatican City and other diplomats. 
But the Chick conspiracies about Catholicism get even more ridiculous. In the 1980 discontinued tract my name in the Vatican?, Chick claims that the name of every protestant in the world was in “the big computer in the Vatican”. How did the Vatican get the name of at the time 500 million Protestants around the world from churches no one’s even heard of? 
Yes, the tract says the Inquisition is alive and well after killing 68 million people for heresy. Which is a higher death toll than the Black plague which wiped out one third of Europe in the 14th century. It also says, “Adolf Hitler was an instrument of what is now called the dicastery for the doctrine of the Faith” and the Inquisition is on its way to do the same today to true Christians around the world once Catholicism gets global power. 
The rest of the tract is about an ex-priest named Alberto Rivera who is the source for many of these absurd claims who tries to expose this plot but can’t because Catholics keep getting his book banned or silenced. But in 1981 Evangelical author Gary Metz published an expose in Christianity Today showing there is no evidence Rivera, aka Alberto Romero, was ever a priest but there was evidence he was involved in financial fraud and other crimes. Metz ends his article saying, 
“Rivera, who now lives in California, was asked for an interview to discuss the discrepancies in his tale, but he posed so many restrictions before he would agree, that a legitimate interview was not possible. He did say that any wrongdoings prior to his conversion to Christ in 1967 were done under the orders of the Catholic church, and that any wrongdoings since his conversion are fabrications by conspirators.”
Rivera also wrote the foreword to an 19th century conspiracy from an alleged former nun named Maria Monk called, “Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed. Monk claimed the sisters at a convent in Montreal were raped by priests in the seminary next door who accessed them through a secret tunnel under the convent. If a baby resulted, it was baptized and then strangled and dumped into a lime pit in the basement. Similar elements were borrowed for the Alberto comic strip with the setting placed in Spain. However, scholars consider the book to be a hoax and the non-religious debunker Joe Nickell writes the following in the Skeptical Inquirer: 
the fantastic assertions she made were investigated thoroughly at the time by Protestant clergymen who were permitted to inspect the actual convent, discovering that its interior was in­compatible with Monk’s descriptions. Much additional debunking evidence followed. Nevertheless, the book saw many editions, and by the 1920s reportedly sold over 300,000 copies. Over four decades later, states Stein, it “was still going strong.” Copies like the one I found continue to lie in wait for unsuspecting readers. 
The Alberto comic strip also includes the claim that the Catholic church sends girls like agent Marie to seduce Protestant pastors or even just create up false charges of adultery against them before moving on to their next target. Also, in the comic Rivera says the Catholic church assigned him a beautiful girl to pose as his girlfriend named Carmen, when in reality, according to Metz, 
“Rivera was living at one point with a woman in Costa Rica named Carmen Lydia Torres . . . he and Torres were married in 1963. Their son, Juan, was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1964, [but] died in El Paso in July 1965, after his parents had fled New Jersey leaving numerous debts and a warrant for their arrest on bad check charges. 
This reminds me of the Redditors who will say Catholics are a bunch of pdf-files and then promptly get arrested for possessing pdf-file material. Or as the Bard would say, “The Lady doth protest too much.” 
Silly Seventh Day Adventists 
My favorite Seventh Day Adventist conspiracy theory is National Sunday Law, which was popularized in a book by Jan Marcussen which claims the Catholic church will use the government to force everyone to worship on Sunday, something Adventists oppose because they believe God wants us to worship on the Sabbath, or Saturday instead of Sunday, the Lord’s day. even though the earliest Christians gathered to worship on Sunday, not Saturday. 
The book, which is more of a booklet, claims the change to Sunday is a part of a plan to keep people under the evil system of worship identified by the mark of the beast in the book of revelation. It shows up everywhere often through anonymous people paying to bulk mail it to entire towns. 
National Sunday Law is full of end times prophecy but the book gets updated in parts to try and keep the warning about the end being near relevant. For example, the original 1983 version mentions wars and soviet tanks while the post 2001 version describes 9/11. But there are many parts where you can see the text is stuck in the 80’s. This includes putting the drug “crack” in quotation marks, and saying crime doubles every ten years, which doesn’t account for crime rates plummeting after the 80’s. 
But even in the 80’s the author should have known that the second Vatican council’s teaching on religious liberty would preclude putting people to death for worshipping on Saturday and the U.S. has a very robust protection of religious freedom in the first amendment. 
The book makes a big deal about the sin of not keeping the Saturday Sabbath because apparently once you disobey this commandment you might as well murder, steal and break all the other commandments. It says, “If you break one, you break them all (James 2:10,11). It&#8217;s like two lovers &#8211; it&#8217;s either all or nothing.” 
Okay O Town. 
Also, check out the link below for why James 2 does not say committing one sin is the same as committing all sins and for more information on why Christ, the Lord of the Sabbath, wants us to worship him on the day he rose from the dead check out this episode from my colleague Joe Heschmeyer at Shameless Popery. 
Other seventh-day Adventists, claim the Pope is the beast of the Book of Revelation who is a powerful religious ruler who, according to Revelation 13:18, has a name that is numbered “666”. Some Adventists claim the Pope has a Latin title Vicarius Filii Dei, or vicar of the Son of God, and that since roman letters have numerical value, these letters add up to 666. 
The problem with this argument is that the Pope is the vicar of Christ. Vicar of the son of God isn’t one of the pope’s titles. This myth comes from an error in a 1915 article in Our Sunday Visitor that was later corrected, twice. However, Seventh Day Adventists continue to make this false claim because they think it supports their 666 narrative. 
You also have to arbitrarily assign values to letters in Vicar of the Son of God that don’t normally function that way in Latin (for example, the IV in Vicarivs would normally be read as “4,” but the Adventist calculation gives it a value of 6). 
What makes more sense is that this verse refers to the Roman emperor Nero who brutally persecuted Christians in A.D. 64 and whose name Nero Caesar adds up to 666 in Hebrew and Aramaic. 
But you know whose name does add up to 666 if you change the letters to Latin equivalents? Ellen Gould White, the founder of seventh day Adventism.
Alright, so those are three absurd Catholic conspiracy theories, leave a comment below about other conspiracy theories you want me to examine and don’t forget to like today’s episode and support us at trenthornpodcast.com to help us keep creating awesome content. Thank you all so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.

3 Absurd Catholic Conspiracy Theories (REBUTTED)

Dive into an eye-opening episode of The Jimmy Akin Podcast! Jimmy uncovers why biblical numbers like 40 aren&#8217;t always literal—using Elijah&#8217;s &#8220;40 days and 40 nights&#8221; journey to Horeb as an insightful case study. With geography, math, ancient context, and a clever Deuteronomy cross-check, he reveals how &#8220;40&#8221; functions here as a stock number for &#8220;a long journey&#8221;—not an exact stopwatch. Mind-blowing insights for Bible lovers and skeptics alike! Don&#8217;t miss it.
&nbsp;
TRANSCRIPT: 
Coming Up
It’s obvious when you read the Bible that certain numbers have special meaning.
These include numbers like 7, 12, 40, and 1,000.
In view of the special meaning that these numbers have, did the biblical authors always intend us to take them literally?
The answer might surprise you.
Let’s get into it!
* * *
Howdy, folks!
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to <a href="https://patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast">Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast</a>
&nbsp;
Stock Numbers
Numbers like 7, 12, 40, and 1,000 come up over and over again in the Bible, and it’s clear that they had special meaning.
It’s not always clear what that special meaning was, but they come up so often that they clearly suggested something to the ancient Israelites reading the biblical text.
For example, 7 could suggest the idea of completion, like the fact 7 days made a complete Hebrew week.
12 could represent the twelve tribes of Israel, and later the 12 apostles.
40 could signify a time of testing, like the 40 days that it rained during the Flood, the 40 days Moses spent alone on Mt. Sinai, and the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the wilderness.
And 1,000 can symbolize a vast amount. It can also symbolize the totality of something that is vast. Like in Psalm 50:10 where God says,
Psalm 50:10
Every beast of the forest is mine,
the cattle on a thousand hills.
The number of hills is vast, and here the number 1,000 represents the totality of hills.
It’s not like there’s a thousand-and-first hill somewhere whose animals God doesn’t own.
What God means is that he owns the animals on all the hills—all the hills in the entire world.
And the number 1,000 is not exact. There’s way more than a thousand hills in the world.
There are over a million mountains with names in the world, and hills are much more common than mountains, so there are way more than a thousand hills.
This shows us that in Psalm 50, the number 1,000 isn’t being used as a literal measurement. It’s not a literal count of the number of hills in the world.
Instead, it’s what can be called a stock number—a number that is used regularly but is not meant to be taken literally.
We use stock numbers in English, too, and a thousand is one of them, but not the only one.
English stock numbers occur when we say things like:
<ul>
<li>A thousand pardons</li>
<li>A picture is worth a thousand words</li>
<li>Thanks a million</li>
</ul>
If you’re a native English-speaker, you know that in none of these cases is a person literally asking for your pardon a thousand times, saying that each and every picture conveys exactly a thousand words of information, or thanking you exactly one million times.
In each case, the number just means “a lot,” and saying “a thousand” or “a million” is just a common or stock way of expressing this.
Now, if you’re a native English-speaker, you might say, “Hey, I recognize that numbers like a thousand and a million may not be meant literally, but that doesn’t apply to other common numbers in the Bible.
“Like the number 40. That’s such an unusual number, it must be meant literally—or at least approximately literally.
“I could see how a person might round off a number to 40—like if a person had 38 eggs or 42 eggs, you might round it off to the nearest multiple of five and just say that he had 40 eggs—meaning approximately 40. But when this number is used it’s got to be something close to 40.”
That would be a reasonable thing for a modern English-speaker to propose, because the number 40 does not have any special significance to us.
But it did in ancient Hebrew literature like the Bible.
&nbsp;
Elijah’s Journey: 40 days and 40 nights?
In 1 Kings 19, the prophet Elijah is on the run from the evil northern queen Jezebel, and he goes out into the wilderness and asks God to let him die.
Instead, God sends and angel who makes Elijah eat and drink two times in order to strengthen him for a journey.
Then we read:
1 Kings 19:8
[Elijah] got up, ate, and drank; 
then strengthened by that food, he walked forty days and forty nights to the mountain of God, Horeb.
So what value does the number 40 have in this passage?
Did Elijah’s journey literally take 40 days and 40 nights exactly—or at least approximately?
Let’s find out.
&nbsp;
A Question of Scale
One of the first things that you learn about the geography of the Holy Land is that it’s tiny by American standards.
From north to south, the modern state of Israel is only 290 miles long, and its width varies between 9 miles and 85 miles.
With distances like that, a journey of 40 days and 40 nights would be remarkable, but let’s do some math and see what we can figure out.
&nbsp;
Some Basic Math
The fact that the text says Elijah travelled day and night would presumably indicate at least 12 hours a day, leaving time for breaks and sleep.
A normal person can walk around 3 miles per hour, so that would be 36 miles a day.
After 40 days of that travel, he would have gone 1,440 miles, which would be enough to take him far outside the Holy Land.
I mean, if the Mediterranean Sea hadn’t been in the way, Elijah could have walked all the way to Rome!
But the number 40 is a stock number in the Bible, and it not only indicates periods of testing. It’s also used to indicate long periods of time.
For example, the length of a generation is sometimes given as the stock number of 40 years.
This raises the question of whether the number is being used here simply to indicate a long journey rather than being meant literally.
Fortunately, we can shed some light on the question
&nbsp;
Elijah’s Journey Begins
We know where Elijah began his journey. According to 1 Kings 19:3-4:
Then [Elijah] was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Be’er Sheva, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.
But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree.
So Elijah fled from Jezebel (the queen of the northern kingdom of Israel) down to Be’er-sheva, which was on the southern border of Judah.
Indeed, the phrase “From Dan to Be’er Sheva” is used nine times in the Bible as a way of referring to the entire Holy Land, from north to south, from Dan in the north to Be’er Sheva in the south.
In fleeing Queen Jezebel, Elijah first reached Be’er Sheva and then went a day’s journey further into the Negev desert.
That’s where he had his angelic encounter at the broom tree.
&nbsp;
Journey’s End
The text also tells us where Elijah ended his journey, at “the mountain of God, Horeb.”
In the Old Testament, Horeb is another name for Mt. Sinai, the mountain of God where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
Unfortunately, the location of Mt. Sinai isn’t entirely clear.
A prominent tradition identifies it with Jabal Mousa, a tall mountain in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, by St. Catherine’s Monastery.
This is not the only proposed location, however. There are others—also in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as outside of it.
The plausible ones are either closer to Be’er-Sheva, though, or not much farther away, so we can use the location of the modern Mt. Sinai to get a reasonable approximation of Elijah’s maximum travel distance.
&nbsp;
What Was Elijah’s Travel Speed?
According to Google, the distance from Be’er-Sheva to Mt. Sinai is 266 miles.
Of course, that’s along the modern road system, but we’re dealing with an approximation, so 266 miles will do.
Since Elijah had already gone one day into the Negev when he had the angelic encounter at the broom tree, and since he travelled another 40 days and 40 nights, that would be 41 days total.
Using these numbers, Elijah’s travel speed would have been 6.5 miles per day (266 / 41 = 6.5).
If that represents 12 hours of walking a day, that would be about half a mile per hour (6.5 / 12 = 0.54).
That’s painfully slow.
A normal walking speed is around 3 miles per hour, so Elijah would have needed to walk only around 2 hours a day in order to cover the distance in 40 days.
A mere 2 hours would hardly be day and night travel, and that suggests that the description of it as taking “40 days and 40 nights” is a stock description meant to indicate a long journey and not meant to be taken literally.
Like when we say, “Thanks a million”—using a stock number to indicate great thanks.
&nbsp;
Confirmation from Deuteronomy?
If Elijah was able to travel at a normal walking speed for 12 hours per day then he would make 36 miles per day.
He would thus be able to do 266 miles in just over 7 days (266 / 36 = 7.4).
A less determined person only putting in 8 hours of walking a day, rather than travelling day and night, could make 24 miles in a day and cover the 266 miles in 11 days (266 / 24 = 11.1).
And that’s very significant, because in Deuteronomy 1:2 we read:
Deuteronomy 1:2
It is eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of Mount Seir to Kadesh-barnea.
The precise location of Kadesh-barnea is also debated, but it is clear that it was on the southern border of Israel, placing it near Be’er Sheva.
Deuteronomy thus gives us a remarkable confirmation of the approximate time it would take to travel from Be’er Sheva to Mt. Horeb: It’s something like 11 days under normal travel conditions, not 40 days and 40 nights.
&nbsp;
Ancient Expectations
This is significant because the ancient audience would have known that.
Not only would many in the audience—particularly those from the southern kingdom of Judah—have known the approximate distances and travel times, many would have known it just from reading Deuteronomy!
The same applies to the author of Kings, who was clearly literate and who records the finding of “the book of the Law” in the temple in 2 Kings 22:8-10.
This book of the Law either was Deuteronomy or it included the book of Deuteronomy.
And the author even refers to the mountain as “Horeb” rather than “Sinai”—which is the way that Deuteronomy overwhelmingly refers to it.
Both the author and the audience were thus in a position to recognize the description of Elijah’s journey as taking 40 days and 40 nights as a stock number representing a long journey rather than a literal measurement.
This illustrates how ancient expectations differ from modern ones regarding the use of numbers: The ancients were willing to use numbers in a literary or symbolic way in different circumstances than we do.
&nbsp;
Modern Expectations
If we fail to recognize this then, compared to the ancients, we can come off as overly pedantic, like Mr. Spock or Mr. Data—insisting on numerical precision while utterly missing the point.
The point of the text is: God strengthened Elijah for a long journey, which may also have been a time of testing for Elijah. The point is not how long the journey literally took.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that numbers are always literary or symbolic in ancient texts—the 11 days mentioned in Deuteronomy isn’t symbolic.
Neither is the 12 apostles that Jesus had. He really had twelve, not eleven or thirteen.
But this does mean that numbers can be literary or symbolic, and we need to be sensitive to the context to tell us what the ancient author intended.
This applies, particularly, to skeptics wanting to accuse the Bible of being inaccurate.
Sometimes the Bible just uses numbers differently than we do today, and if we fail to recognize this, the fault is ours, not the Bible’s.
Got that?
Thanks a million.
* * *
If you like this content, you can help me out by liking, commenting, writing a review, sharing the podcast, and subscribing
If you’re watching on YouTube, be sure and hit the bell notification so that you always get notified when I have a new video
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years into the future—and can get early access to new episodes—by going to <a href="https://patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast">Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast</a>
Thank you, and I’ll see you next time
God bless you always!

Elijah’s Journey: 40 Days & 40 Nights? (Bible Numbers)

How do we prove that we have a soul?

How do mortal sin and venial sin affect our soul? How does the Holy Spirit help with that?

Are there new angels being created all the time or are there a finite amount? Can they at any time become a demon?

I’m LDS and we don’t believe in infant baptism. The CC says it respects the dignity of all life, but also claims that all humans have original sins. I see this as a contradiction. How do you reconcile that?

&#8220;How do we prove that we have a soul?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the nature of our existence, alongside insights into how mortal and venial sins impact our souls and the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Additionally, the conversation touches on the creation of angels and the complexities surrounding infant baptism and original sin.
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How Do We Prove That We Have Souls? Sin and the Holy Spirit

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent shares all the old jobs he used to have from taking tickets, to selling shoes, to fixing video tech, and how they all prepared him to be a Catholic apologist

FFAF: All my Old Jobs!

If Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is fully sufficient, does purgatory contradict it—or reveal how its power is applied? In this episode, Karlo Broussard breaks down the “ultimate insult” objection and show how Scripture and theology point to purgatory as participation in Christ’s work, not a denial of it.
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TRANSCRIPT:
If Jesus’ death on the cross was sufficient to take away all sin, then why would anyone need to suffer after death, like in purgatory? Wouldn’t purgatory be an insult to what Jesus already accomplished?
Many Protestants think it would! But is that true? In today’s episode, I’m going to share my thoughts as to why I think it’s not.
Hey guys, Welcome back to the channel! So glad to have you with me. If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and hit that bell notification so you can be notified when new videos are released. Also, I’d like to invite you to consider helping keep this podcast going by financially supporting us on Patreon at doctorkarlo.com with “doctor” spelled out.
As I mentioned, many Protestants make this objection that purgatory is an insult to what Jesus did on the cross. But for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to stick with two: the late Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie.
In their book Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, they put it bluntly on page 338: purgatory “denies the all-sufficiency of Christ’s atoning death.” They even call it “the ultimate insult” to the cross.
For support, they quote verses like John 19:30—“It is finished”—and Hebrews 10:14—“By one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”
Now, it’s a bit unclear as to precisely what they mean by “sufficiency.” And whatever they mean by it will determine how we respond.
Let’s consider two possible meanings.
If by “sufficient” they mean that Christ’s death is powerful enough to atone for every sin—past, present, and future—without our suffering, then we wholeheartedly agree.
The Church has always taught that.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says in paragraph 411 that Christ, as the New Adam, “makes amends superabundantly for the disobedience of Adam.”  Aquinas, in the third part of his Summa Theologiae, question 48, article 2, says Christ’s Passion
[PHONE READ]
 “gave more to God than was to compensate for the offense of the whole human race,” and that “Christ’s Passion was not only a sufficient but a superabundant atonement for the sins of the human race.” 
So yes—Christ’s death is powerful enough to remit every debt of punishment for sin—past, present, and future—without our suffering. He doesn’t need our suffering to atone for sin.But we believe that God, in His wisdom, has chosen to apply the graces of the cross in stages—through baptism, repentance, penance, and sometimes, through purgatory.
In baptism, all guilt of sin and punishment—eternal and temporal—are completely wiped away, without any suffering on our part. The Catechism teaches as much in paragraph 1263:
[PHONE READ]
By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin. In those who have been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the Kingdom of God, neither Adam’s sin, nor personal sin, nor the consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God.
But for sins committed after baptism, we believe God wills a different order. The debt of eternal punishment is remitted when a believer shares in Christ’s Passion through repentance.
The debt of temporal punishment, on the other hand, is remitted when a believer shares in Christ’s Passion through suffering united with Him.
Again, not because God needs our sufferings. Rather, because he wills for us to share in Christ’s passion in this particular way.
So purgatory isn’t about Jesus not doing enough. It’s about God willing us to participate in what Jesus has already done in a particular way.
Now, by “sufficiency” Geisler and MacKenzie seem to mean something stronger—that God wills for believers to initially participate in Christ’s passion in a way that they never incur any debt of punishment for sin—whether temporal or eternal—after being initially justified. And, consequently, believers never have to suffer to discharge that debt.
If that’s what “sufficiency” means, then yes—purgatory would contradict it.But the question becomes: Is that really how Christ willed the fruits of His death to be applied?
That’s the real issue—not whether the cross was powerful enough, but whether God intends our participation in that power to include some temporal suffering for sin after being initially justified.
So, which is it?
Did God will an order where believers incur debt of punishment for post-conversion sins and remit such debt, at least the temporal debt, by sharing in Christ’s passion through their own suffering united to Him? Or did God will an order where they don’t?
Let’s look at the biblical evidence.
Take, for example, 1 Corinthians 3:11-15. There, Paul describes a man who builds on the foundation of Christ with “wood, hay, and straw.” 
These bad works are burned up when they’re tested by fire, and Paul says, as a consequence, he “suffers loss,” “though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.”
Notice: this person is saved—he’s a Christian. 
But he suffers because of his bad works. 
That’s punishment. And it’s temporal, not eternal.
Even if someone argues this passage refers to a loss of heavenly reward, which Geisler and MacKenzie do on page 336 of their book, that loss still involves suffering on account of sin—which is precisely what we mean by punishment. And, again, given that Paul’s talking about a Christian, it’s temporal punishment.
We can also look at the Greek here for some evidence that this passage carries a punitive dimension. The phrase “he will suffer loss” translates the Greek word zēmiōthēsetai—that’s the future indicative of the verb zēmioō.
According to the well-respected Greek-English Lexicon—commonly referred to as BDAG—the word zēmioō means “to be punished” (pg. 428).  So there’s definitely a sense of retribution built into the term itself.
Now, zēmioō doesn’t always have to be understood in a punitive way. For example, in Philippians 3:8, Paul uses it in the sense of simply “losing something.” But even if we take it that way in 1 Corinthians 3:15, the context still points to a loss that results from bad works—and that gives it a punitive character. This is why BDAG actually cites 1 Cor. 3:15 as an example for the punitive meaning of the word.
It’s also interesting to note that in the Septuagint—the Greek translation of the Old Testament—zēmioō (which corresponds to the Hebrew word anash) is often used to describe a monetary fine (like in Exodus 21:22, Deuteronomy 22:19, and Proverbs 17:26) or punishment for an evil deed (as in Proverbs 19:9, 21:11, and 22:3).
Finally, we can also see the punitive character of this passage in the fact that the individual is temporarily detained from receiving the reward of heaven because of his bad works. He has to pass “through fire” to receive his salvation.
As we mentioned earlier, deprivation of a good on account of sin is a key element of punishment. And since this deprivation is temporary—it ends once the soul is purified—it follows that this is a temporary form of punishment.
So, 1 Corinthians 3:11–15 not only points to the purification of the individual, cleansing the soul of any remaining moral defilement, but also implies a suffering that discharges the debt of temporal punishment due to venial sins.
Okay, let’s turn to a second passage where we see that God has willed an order of providence in which believers still incur a debt of temporal punishment for post conversion sins: Hebrews 12:6.
The author tells us, “The Lord disciplines him whom he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.”
That’s every believer—every “son.” 
And that word “chastise,” mastigoō in Greek, literally means “to beat with a whip, or scourge” with the connotation of, in the words of BDAG, “to punish with discipline in mind” (pg. 620). BDAG actually cites Hebrews 12:6 as an example for this meaning.
Hebrews 12:5 provides further support that the chastisement spoken of in verse six is in response to wrongdoing. It reads, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor lose courage when you are punished by him.” 
The phrase “when you are punished” translates the Greek word elenchomenos (the present passive participle of elenchō), which necessarily is tied up with the idea of fault or wrongdoing. For example, according to BDAG, the word itself means “to convict or convince,” with the implication “to bring a persont o the point of recognizing wrongdoing” (BDAG, pg. 315). 
So even the justified—those who are already children of God—experience corrective suffering. 
Not because Christ’s cross was insufficient, but because God wills a particular order of providence in which he treats us as sons, shaping us into Christ’s image through discipline.
This clearly shows that temporal punishment still applies even after we’ve been justified.
So, if the Bible shows that God wills believers to suffer temporally for post-conversion sins, then the “sufficiency of the cross” objection collapses. 
Christ’s death remains fully sufficient—He simply chose to apply its power in a way that involves our suffering, at least for getting rid of the temporal debt of punishment for post-conversion sins.
Now, recall I said that Geisler and MacKenzie appeal to several verses—let’s briefly look at each in turn.
In John 19:30, Jesus says, “It is finished.” The same idea is communicated in John 17:4, where Jesus says to the Father, “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work which you gave me to do.” 
When Jesus said, “It is finished,” or when he spoke of his work being “accomplished,” He wasn’t declaring that every application of His redemption was complete, such that the debt of punishment of all future sins is remitted for the believer. That can’t be for the reasons I’ve given already. 
Rather, Jesus was declaring his redemptive work was accomplished—the sacrifice was made and consequently the human race as a whole is reunited back to God with saving grace being made available for all humans.
That doesn’t exclude a believer’s later participation in that sacrifice through repentance or purification. The fruits of Christ’s redemptive work still must be applied. And, as I’ve argued, that application takes place in different proportions at different points in the believer’s life.
Okay, another biblical passage that Geisler and MacKenzie appeal to is Hebrews 10:14, where the author writes, “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.” For Geisler and MacKenzie, if believers have been “perfected” in Christ, then there is no need for purgatory.
Here, “perfected” refers not to freedom from all debt of temporal punishment for future sins, but to the destiny God has prepared for the elect—their glorification in heaven.
For the author of Hebrews, our “perfection” mirrors the “perfection” of Christ mentioned earlier in Hebrews 2:10 and 5:9. As Aquinas explains in his Commentary on Hebrews, this refers to the fruit of Christ’s glorification—specifically, the glorification of His human nature, marked by freedom from suffering and death.
In the same way, the author is likely envisioning the fruit of glorification that awaits the elect, a perfection that will be fully realized when they enter heaven. That’s why he can speak of this perfection as something already accomplished—“he has perfected”—because from God’s eternal perspective, the glorification of the elect is a reality already willed and assured.
So, it’s perfection as promise, not as present experience. 
Even Paul says, “Not that I am already perfect…” (Phil. 3:12).
So again, there’s no contradiction with purgatory.
Geisler and MacKenzie also appeal to Romans 8:1, where Paul writes, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Geisler and MacKenzie argue on page 337 that this verse proves “there is nothing left for us to suffer.” 
The problem here is that Geisler and MacKenzie collapse “condemnation” into any kind of suffering—whether temporal or eternal. Now, it’s true that the Greek word translated as “condemnation,” katakrima, literally means “a penalty.” According to BDAG, the sense is a “judicial pronouncement upon a guilty person” (pg. 518), which could refer to either a temporal or an eternal penalty.
But I’d argue that the kind of “condemnation” Paul is talking about here refers only to the eternal penalty, not temporal ones.
Think about how Paul uses the same word elsewhere in Romans—specifically in 5:16 and 5:18. In both places, he’s talking about the katakrima—the “condemnation”—that came upon the human race through Adam’s sin.
Now, we know from Genesis that Adam’s fall brought both eternal punishment—spiritual separation from God—and temporal punishments, like toiling by the sweat of his brow, corruption, and death.
But when we get to Romans 8:1, Paul says that there is now “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” If we take that to include temporal penalties, we’d have to conclude that believers never experience corruption or death. But clearly, they do.
So, it makes far more sense to see Paul’s “condemnation” in Romans 8:1 as referring only to the eternal penalty of sin, not the temporal ones. And if that’s the case, then this passage can’t be used to disprove purgatory—because Paul simply isn’t talking about temporal suffering at all.
So, does purgatory undermine the sufficiency of Jesus’ death on the cross? 
No—it reveals how that sufficiency is applied.
Christ’s death is completely sufficient.
But in His divine plan, God invites believers to participate in Christ’s sufferings, to take up our cross daily, and, if necessary, to be purified after death before entering the glory of heaven.
That’s not an insult to the cross—it’s an imitation of it.
Well, my friends, that’s it for today! If you found this video helpful, make sure to like, subscribe, comment below, and share it with someone who might need to hear this. And for more resources, check out my website at karlobroussard.com.
If you want me to come and speak at your event, visit catholicanswersspeakers.com.
Lastly, I’d love for you to consider supporting me over on Patreon. I can’t continue doing this podcast without your financial support. You can find me over at doctorkarlo.com with “doctor” spelled out.
Thanks for hanging out, and I’ll see you next time!

“Is Purgatory the ‘Ultimate Insult’ to Jesus’ Death on the Cross?”

DAY 21
CHALLENGE
The Gospel of John is not historically reliable. It was written in the A.D. 90s and is markedly different in style and substance from the other Gospels.”
DEFENSE 
Actually, the Gospel of John is very historically reliable. Arguments to the contrary do not prove their case. Even if John were written in the A.D. 90s, that’s within sixty years of the events it records. Historically speaking, that is quite close to them, and it poses no barrier to the accuracy of John. But John likely was written earlier. It refers to architecture in Jerusalem as still standing (5:2), but Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70. The Greek text of John 21:19 refers to the death by which Peter “will glorify God” (future tense), suggesting it was written before Peter’s martyrdom in mid-67. Whenever it was written, John is based on the testimony of an eyewitness (the “beloved disciple”)—a point the text makes explicitly (21:24), for the ancients were as aware of the value of eyewitness testimony as we are. John is written in a different literary style than the other Gospels, but this is not surprising. Each author has his own style, and John’s is simply different than the others. This does not mean that he isn’t interested in history. In fact, he records key historical facts about the chronology of Jesus’ ministry that the other evangelists do not. Thus he mentions that at least three Passovers took place between the beginning and end of Jesus’ ministry (2:13, 6:4, 11:55). Using this and other information, we are able to determine that Jesus’ ministry lasted over three years. John also contains significantly different material than the other Gospels, and the reason is very simple: John intends to supplement the other Gospels by recording things they didn’t. In particular, John is supplementing Mark, and his Gospel is designed to interlock with Mark’s.
TIP 
For arguments on an early dating for John, see John A.T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament and The Priority of John. On the dating of Peter’s martyrdom and the value of John’s chronology, see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., and Andrew E. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul. On John’s use of Mark, see Richard Bauckham, “John for Readers of Mark” in The Gospels for All Christians.

The Dating of John

A caller asks about early belief in Mary&#8217;s Assumption into Heaven. Jimmy Akin gives the Catholic Answer.

Did the Church Always Believe in the Assumption of Mary?

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DAY 305
CHALLENGE
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“If Jesus and the New Testament authors thought the deuterocanonical books were part of the canon, why doesn’t the Bible refer to them?”
DEFENSE
They do refer to them. The New Testament contains multiple allusions to the Deuterocanonicals.
It does not contain clear quotations from them—or from many protocanonical books of the Old Testament (see Day 288)—but it does contain clear allusions.
One of Jesus’ most famous teachings is that God’s willingness to forgive us is linked to our willingness to forgive others. This is expressed, for example, in the Lord’s Prayer: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12).
And, too, in the verses that follow it: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14–15).
The Old Testament contains many passages discussing divine forgiveness, but only one where it is linked to our willingness to forgive others. That passage is in the deuterocanonical book of Sirach: “Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray” (Sir. 28:2). Jesus thus picks up and develops this teaching from Sirach the same way he picks up and develops other themes from Old Testament scriptures.
Not only does the New Testament allude to teachings found in the deuterocanonicals, it also refers to the historical events they record. Thus the book of Hebrews contains an extensive list of Old Testament figures who pleased God by their faith. In the course of listing them, the inspired author writes: “Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life” (Heb. 11:35).
This combination of torture and refusal of release to obtain a better resurrection is found in only one place in the Old Testament. It is a reference to the seven brothers who were tortured and martyred by Antio-Chus Ephiphanes in 2 Maccabees 7. The author of Hebrews thus appears to recognize 2 Maccabees as one of the books of the Old Testament.
TIP
For additional examples, see Gary Michuta, The Case for the Deuterocanon: Evidence and Arguments, chapter 1.
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Referring to the Deuterocanonicals

<div>My son married outside the church. Is it wrong for me to have him and his wife sleeping under my roof?</div><div>Based on your question, we infer there are no other impediments regarding your son’s marriage. That is, that this is his first marriage and also the first of his civilly married spouse.
Given that scenario, I would welcome your son and his wife over whenever you can and strive to draw them closer to you, Our Lord and his Church, and that would include not allowing them to spend the night. If they live within easy driving distance, that shouldn’t be an issue, as they can easily return home at the end of the day and vice versa if you visit them.
However, if they travel a ways to see you, perhaps they would be willing to stay overnight at a nearby hotel. Or possibly stay overnight at your home but agree not to engage in conjugal relations. If you have younger, impressionable children this would be less advisable, as children probably wouldn’t draw well the moral distinction of their presumed conjugal abstinence. Children would likely see them going into the same bedroom and presume you’re recognizing them as husband and wife.
If they won’t agree to refrain from conjugal relations, I would counsel continued interaction but not let them stay overnight at your home. Actions speak louder than words, as the saying goes. If they refrain from communication because of your decision, look for opportunities to send them kind notes or gifts, e.g., at Christmas or on their birthdays. Ditto with any children you have. Remember that Jesus never gives up on a wayward sheep, and that’s a good witness to give to your grandchildren too. Seek the Lord’s strength in such a trial, which may be prolonged (see Phil 4:13).
In general, I would also periodically encourage your son and his wife to have their marriage blessed in the Church. But, as a priest friend counsels, drawing on the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas, such fraternal correction should be done privately, charitably and rarely. It is to be done privately so as not to embarrass the person in front of other people; it is to be done charitably, as we must share the truth in love as Christ did; and it is to be done rarely if the person is an adult, as in the case at hand. Why? Precisely because your son and his civilly married wife are adults. In other words, they should not need to be admonished as a child, which would require more frequency in admonition (due to a younger and less-trained intellect and will). Doing otherwise is likely to be counterproductive. Give them something to think about periodically and ask God to bless your efforts.
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Allowing Son and Wife Married Outside Church to Sleep Over?

In this Free-for-all-Friday Trent shares his recent and not so recent &#8220;real estate adventures&#8221; and offers you tips to make buying or selling a home slightly less painful.

Tips for Buying and Selling a House

In this episode Trent refutes anti-natalism (the view that having children is immoral) in both popular environmental literature and more advanced philosophical arguments.

Is it Immoral to have Children?

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent sits down with Matt Fradd and discusses the past, present, and future plans for his podcast Pints with Aquinas.

FFAF: Is Matt Fradd the “Catholic Joe Rogan”?

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent compares and contrasts American and British styles of comedy.

FFAF: American Humor vs. British Humour

Answering NeedGod.Net’s Criticism of Me

In this episode, Trent takes on the claim that prostitution is just harmless &#8220;sex work.&#8221;
Transcription:
Recently I saw an article about prostitution in Belgium that shocked me because it reveals why liberals can never succeed in rebranding prostitution as sex work. It is not work. It is trafficking in human beings and degrading the great gift of our sexuality.
So in this episode I’m going to present four non-religious reasons that show prostitution is not sex work or any kind of legitimate work.
#1 – Workplace Discrimination Laws
Sex should always be freely chosen. If you don’t get to choose who you have sex with, that’s rape. But prostitutes can’t freely choose who they have sex with. This brings me to the article I read entitled “Belgian Government Will Intervene In Cases Where Prostitutes Refuse Sexual Acts Too Often.”
It says that a new law in Belgium grants prostitutes health insurance, a pension, maternity and holiday leave, and unemployment benefits. It also requires that their pimps have to install a safety buzzer they can press which allows them to stop sessions whenever they want.
However, the law says that “One of the conditions on employees is that refusing sex acts more than 10 times in a six-month period allows an employer to request government mediation.”
One of the slogans you often hear related to rape prevention is “no means no”. But prostitutes in Belgium can’t just say no if they need to. They will end up weighing whether saying “no” in a given circumstance is worth it since they can only say no once every 2-3 weeks without causing trouble at work.
The Code of the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals says “I will not refuse service to any client based on disability, ethnicity, gender identity, marital status, physical build, or sexual orientation” but people often refuse sex because they don’t prefer a person’s physical build or because the person doesn’t fit their sexual orientation. If you treat so-called sex workers like massage therapists, then they will be forced to have unwanted sex, which is rape, or else they will be convicted of workplace of discrimination.
Reason magazine, a libertarian organization that generally favors legal prostitution says “One of the slogans of sex worker rights campaigners is sex work is work—it&#8217;s a job, just like other jobs, and sex workers deserve the same dignity and rights. But that has to go both ways. And employees of other jobs can&#8217;t repeatedly refuse to do what they were hired to do without encountering at least some sort of intervention.”
So you can’t treat prostitution as sex work unless your also willing to throw out the slogan “No means no” for an entire category of women.
#2 – Personal Protective Equipment
OSHA, the occupational Health and safety standards organization has universal standards to protect workers from workplace hazards. One of their requirements is that workers who risk coming into contact with bodily fluids must wear personal protective equipment like goggles, face shields, and full length gowns. Watch this OSHA training video and ask yourself how it could ever be applied to prostitutes.
In a non-sexual setting, a condom would never be considered sufficient PPE. And prostitutes could still sexually stimulate clients while wearing goggles, gloves, and whole host of other PPE. But no brothel would be profitable if it did this because those in the prostitution industry do not provide a legitimate eservice to society, they traffic in human beings.
This can be seen that we only put people in high-risk jobs if it serves a proportional societal interest. Soldiers are given as much protective equipment as possible but they are still at risk for a serious physical and psychological injury. The same is true of loggers, fishermen, police officers, and many other risky jobs. But the risks are justified because these professions keep society running.
Studies have shown that women who engage in prostitution have levels of post-traumatic stress disorder on par with combat veterans, and regardless of how you feel about the military, modern society has been able to function just fine while outlawing prostitution. There is no good prostitution offers that justifies the toll it takes on those involved. In his book The Porn Myth Matt Fradd describes how
“A female porn star that had been in the industry for a while had excessive anal intercourse and a piece of her muscle from her anus fell out on set while she was filming. Another said “You get ripped. Your insides can come out of you. It’s never-ending. You’re viewed as an object—not as a human with a spirit.”
Finally, in other risky jobs like coal mining the harm is related to the job but not the job itself. In contrast, prostitutes are harmed by the job itself. The entire purpose is to allow a man to be able to dominate, and in many cases act out degrading and violent behavior he sees in pornography with real women who are paid to not say no to him.
#3 – Experience and Certification.
Temp agencies help people find short-term employment and but in 2013 a German temp agency got in trouble for sending a 19-year-old woman to a brothel for temp work. The position was only for serving drinks, but most people still found the agencies decision wildly inappropriate. And say it was to be a prostitute instead. If this is just sex work, why wouldn’t temp agencies suggest this to clients? Especially since you don’t need to go to school to learn how to perform the world’s oldest profession.
Unlike real work, there is no certification process for being a prostitute or at least no premium on experience for those who lack professional certification. For example, masseuses go to school to learn their craft and masseuse clients would almost always prefer a masseuse who had performed thousands of previous massages to a masseuse giving her first massage.
But prostitution is different because you aren’t buying a service, you’re buying a person. Nobody calls a brothel and asks for the woman who has sex with the most men. Many if not most men, would prefer to have sex with a woman who had never had sex before than with a woman who has had sex thousands of times. This is confirmed by the unending amount of so-called barely legal porn on the Internet.
There is also no real job you can do when you’re unconscious, but in many cases prostitutes have to be drunk or high on drugs to be numb enough to provide this “service”.
Also, if prostitution provided a legitimate service then it could be imported to other fields. For example, nurses often have to do very unpleasant things like helping people go to the bathroom or cleaning up feces on a person’s body if the person can’t do that themselves. And there is no special feces nurse that does that for everyone. But if sex work is work, why can’t a paralyzed person in a hospital ask a nurse to sexually stimulate him if he says he needs that to feel better?
If you turn prostitution into sex work, then you also have to throw workplace sexual harassment laws out the window, especially for prostitutes because sex is something they have to sell even if they don’t want to yet unwanted sexual advance are the definition of sexual harassment.
#4 – Nobody Really Wants to Do It
It’s true that nobody grows up thinking they want to be a dishwasher or a garbageman, but these jobs still validate the dignity of those who hold them, and they fulfill an important social function. A janitor might even bring his son along for take your child to work day because he takes pride in what he does.
But nobody except the most abused and broken people dream of growing up to be a prostitute, and it’s not a job for take your kids to work day. Actually if you did bring your kids to this “work” you should be in jail.
Nobody beyond a few broken people wants to do prostitution so whenever prostitution is legalized it creates a demand for illegal prostitution. Now, some people claim that if you legalize prostitution, that decreases the demand for supposedly less safe, illegal prostitution, since men will just pay for legal sex instead. But a study from 2013 that examined 150 countries showed that, while this happens to some extent and is called the substitution effect, it is outweighed by the scale effect.
Basically, when prostitution is legalized more men than usual are willing to try it because they no longer have the deterrent of being arrested or put on a sex offender registry. However, not enough women are willing to engage in prostitution to meet this increase in demand so women have to be imported into the system through illegal human trafficking operations.
Finally, I’ve avoided making explicitly religious arguments for outlawing prostitution for the same reason I don’t make religious arguments for outlawing abortion, protecting human beings from violence isn’t a religious issue. In fact, a clever critic could point out that St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas both defended legal prostitution saying it provided an important safety valve for society lest it explode into lust.
But while we should have great respect for the doctors of the Church, they aren’t infallible and some of their views on maintaining the social order should not be applied today because we have better means of promoting the common good of society without tolerating violence being inflicted on other human beings.
And as unpleasant as it was to address this, we don’t do ourselves any favors by pretending western civilization isn’t headed in this direction and so we should be prepared to call them back a civilized and truly Christian way of living.
Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.

4 Reasons “Sex Work” is not work.

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Even the Reformers confirmed what the Early Church believed: the Mass is a true sacrifice. ✝️

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent touches base with listeners and shares a story about the worst grocery store you could ever visit.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/K9z1h7Ba1IDesnxgBXQus65u4FG7Cv9kUO9rQBwqPC29jm_rybjCvgxxtJD71SLLCAclgZuLgTDMfkuRes8T-x8QfuQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=0.12">00:00</a>):
It is Free For All Friday. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. It&#8217;s been a while. It&#8217;s been a minute. I don&#8217;t know what happened. I&#8217;ve just had a lot going on. I feel like I have not done a traditional free for all Friday in a bit. I was in a little bit of a slump. I&#8217;m not sure these things just happen. I think I&#8217;ve had a lot of personal things going on and a lot of things also at work going on. And I think that Free For All Friday took the brunt of it a little bit. I mean, there&#8217;s still a lot of great content I like sharing with you guys here on Friday. Maybe other interviews that I&#8217;ve done that I think you all would benefit from. But I feel like, I don&#8217;t know, something in my heart. I wasn&#8217;t totally feeling it, but I think it&#8217;s coming back around.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/HcHWw30P2wclEuLQpn77_NjNDdU7H5fv-6E4hlCUoVt-kl3G3Q2zsM_74M5FfI63ty63UQ_yZaHmnqdEL1n0aeTbD7s?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=39.72">00:39</a>):
I&#8217;m doing a little bit more to get refreshed, to get refocused spiritually, emotionally, physically also. I&#8217;m going to be honest with you though. I was struggling a little bit thinking about what to do with Free For All Friday. I mean, I must have done over 300 of these episodes, at least over 250, probably over 300 now. We&#8217;ve done over a thousand episodes of the show. And originally Free For All Friday just began because Council of Trent was an audio podcast. And so I saw it as a way, oh, people who aren&#8217;t Catholic might tune in and listen to the Free For All Friday and then listen to the main episodes and help people out. And also, I got a lot of fun stuff to talk about. But now it is really strange how Council of Trent has transitioned over the last eight years into being &#8230; The brunt of it is being a video essay channel.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/21whFkYjoY-cu6P8DYSi458cJJul0m7Yv1gRWqeUWIWm2TI898SFxCu5xtg6KCPq7y5DmH1cRGBLXe_J9TkogjrsdO0?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=90.54">01:30</a>):
And we&#8217;ve reached a lot of people on YouTube. We get about three million views a month now. And so I&#8217;m so blessed to see how God has used it to help so many people. And to be frank, I don&#8217;t like being on the internet a ton. I would even encourage people sometimes to listen to the podcast episodes more than watching YouTube, because maybe it can just keep you off the internet when you don&#8217;t want to be there, when you don&#8217;t need to be there. So I&#8217;ve thought about it. I&#8217;m like, &#8220;Oh, should I keep doing free for all Friday? Should I just let it go? &#8221; I can&#8217;t make it a part of the YouTube channel because those videos would totally collapse. You all who are faithful podcast listeners, you&#8217;re much more faithful than people on YouTube. YouTube, it&#8217;s hard to wrangle people in. They just click whatever the algorithm gives them.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/QFoOOimcCyXwL-wuiKX5gGGcRlQmu0znFAa3apoCTZdzjTGbUtAN0H025h-iPCncwuNEBU4Uxn5j7wGoMPG7HKnkV5M?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=133.52">02:13</a>):
If you subscribe on a podcast, tend to be a faithful listener. And I appreciate. Some of you have been listening for like eight years on podcasts. Thank you for your support. I really appreciate it. If you want to help us grow more even, go to trendwormpodcast.com, come a subscriber there. That&#8217;s always helpful. But I&#8217;ve decided, no, I want to keep doing Free For All Friday. It might not be a big glamorous production, but it&#8217;s fun. I can just talk to you guys. I mean, this is how it was like mid 2010s, podcasts. Turn on the microphone. Just talk to people. It doesn&#8217;t have to be all polished and all perfect. I just want to talk to you guys about things that I find weird and interesting. And even sharing other stuff in Council of Trent that I think you would benefit from. So all right, so we&#8217;ve touched base about Free For All Friday.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/u1uz5dy2EYnqx2gyF5zOWLbvrvQXY1xGc3dvs9imUvN8MVbU9UeEArB4KwIeYX5UHc9XUg4wZ9jtDXnRGmlK3K17t8w?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=177.72">02:57</a>):
I want to keep doing this. There&#8217;s all kinds of fun stuff to talk about. Today, what I want to talk about is the Mexia supermarket incident. This has happened in 1999 in Fort Worth, which is where I live now. And it was about a supermarket that turned into a biohazard because of a comedy of errors. So here&#8217;s the article. Let me read this to you. So the Mexia supermarket incident was a bizarre and disturbing event in 1999 when a grocery store in Fort Worth was abandoned with all of its food still inside, leading to one of the most extreme urban biohazard situations in recent history, at least here in the US, I would say. So the supermarket, it opened in the late 1990s, but it ran into financial trouble. Owned by Advanced Investment Corp, the business accumulated significant debt. Over a million dollars in debt.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/tM3jSsm1xBh9c9U6VsZ5wwxmt-xKilTE8qwNKye3d9vLGWGJvfYB2onCnNoH_iD6PEg6B465bftHfROLzfIRtnHQaao?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=226.46">03:46</a>):
And it&#8217;s hard because people think grocery stores, oh, grocery store. They&#8217;re gouging people. Mom, Donnie in New York wants to do free grocery stores. Grocery stores, their profit margin is really, really thin. Only about one to 2% on the goods they sell. They can&#8217;t lower prices really anymore. They can&#8217;t raise prices anymore because there&#8217;s a grocery store down the street who will sell it at a lower price. So the price in the grocery store is really as low as they can get it to keep their overhead. How they make money is by volume. So a grocery store makes money because yeah, they only make a tiny bit on every purchase, but there&#8217;s tens of thousands of purchases, hundreds of thousands of purchases every, not every day, but every week. Some big grocery stores maybe, yeah, but not everyone makes it. So by mid 1999, the owners began defaulting on loans.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/fNO1ud3rmNjWZtjbzLI9WJJofOKhipASIrXARoU_k2nZy3DEP3AvslC04DqpFLZ_5OQLDzQHviQNx1GJXZwbYMu94MU?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=270.38">04:30</a>):
Sometime between July and August of that year, the store abruptly closed its doors. Shortly afterward, the company filed for chapter seven bankruptcy. What made this case unusual and infamous was what happened next. Instead of clearing out inventory, donating food or even disposing of perishables, the store was simply locked up and abandoned. I think there was a error. People were communicating about who was responsible, who&#8217;s the trustee, who&#8217;s now owning the store, who has ownership over it now that the owners have declared bankruptcy and have abandoned it. They think they don&#8217;t have to do anything with the store, but the people who it was transferred over to thought it wasn&#8217;t their responsibility either. So nobody thinks it&#8217;s their responsibility to empty the store of its inventory. They just lock up the store. And because it&#8217;s now abandoned, well, the electricity eventually gets cut off. And this left thousands of pounds of food, meat, dairy, produce, and packaged goods inside a sealed building during the Texas summer.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/NIlSn4VMVbmANw_HSQeBEazzrkvgDDL0ija7BaWuT-22pG25BK4cu6RTUNqPlGksTct6IBUMoD7lm4QJDLzpXYI_oaI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=326.83">05:26</a>):
So the even worse was this happened during summer. It gets hot here, especially August, September, very, very hot. And so it gets really, really hot inside the store. Over the next two to three months, the food began to decompose. With our refrigeration, perishable items rapidly spoiled, producing gases, liquids, and overwhelming odors. The interior of the store became a breeding ground for bacteria such as E. Coli, as well as insects and rodents. Residents in the surrounding neighborhoods soon noticed a powerful foul smell. And people started complaining by about mid-October. They said it smelled like dead animals. And if you walked by the store, it would give them headaches. And so people didn&#8217;t know what it was. They&#8217;re complaining by October. This store, it smells horrible. They go and open the store and then they see what the investigators, first county crews go and show up there.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/Z6s1604xjJlx4l393RiIEin3e8lxhvbRi5DEKygmrIxT9YVhnx46I7dauQBGJvKsjncMJoSRX_n1GEbCdhcoRIBddSQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=378.21">06:18</a>):
And it&#8217;s just a mess. It was so bad that they did tests of the air quality that the air was filled with toxic gases and had low oxygen levels because it&#8217;s a sealed store. The doors are all closed and locked. The air conditioner&#8217;s not running, no air filtration. So this food is decomposing, right? And it&#8217;s emitting stuff. Think about when bananas ripen, fruit and stuff when it ripens, it emits like methane gas. Normally, it barely does that. It doesn&#8217;t stay in one place, but if it&#8217;s all in one place, it&#8217;s producing these gases, it&#8217;s filling up the room. There&#8217;s not even enough oxygen in there to safely be in it. And then the bacteria has spread all over place, including stuff like E. Coli. The rats go in there to eat the food. The rats get sick and the rats die. Oh, just a horrible situation.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/Bd4XQRCnnnCTh0YYZJw2bhyJzhmmC8VDtyRgkSsHBXGqu2ceL5bStcDXeBgWBcvyaPchOQOatOjoqZ3wPnQNQruRUSs?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=423.24">07:03</a>):
The situation worsened due to confusion over responsibility. Because the company had declared bankruptcy, ownership and liability for the property were unclear. The bank trustees and city officials initially hesitated or disagreed about who was responsible for addressing the hazard. This delay allowed conditions inside the store to deteriorate further, turning the building into a serious public health threat. And so they went in, they looked, the oxygen levels were too low. Regular people could not just go in there with trash bags and clean it up.You could die in there. So it says, &#8220;Cleanup crews had to wear full hazmat suits with air filtration systems. Workers used heavy equipment to remove decomposed food and contaminated liquids, transferring them into sealed containers that were then taken to the landfill.&#8221; But it was crazy inside, for example, milk chugs, they exploded because the lactic acid, lactic acid. I mean, that&#8217;s in your muscles, but lactose, that, I guess it can expand as a gas.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/_F3Nj1mtNjcspYdhDcDnlNUF5HEEKzEa5E1FQLoQ02wWOTbNgw-znjnGAyYH37FGG8oXnzvCi_3yER6CpytVcNXkBq8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=481.4">08:01</a>):
You got these jugs and they end up, they explode. And then you got rotten milk that&#8217;s exploded, that bacteria. They had to get rid of everything. I think they tried to save some of the cash registers, but even the canned food was so covered in bacteria, they felt it wasn&#8217;t safe and they threw it all away. So it says it was expensive. The initial estimates of around $10,000 quickly ballooned to reach thousands of dollars per day, tens of thousands of dollars, and it was unclear who would pay leading the city to consider placing a lien on the property. By late November, the food had been removed and the building disinfected though odors reportedly lingered even after, and none of the food could be salvaged. So what&#8217;s crazy is the building. The building is on 3900 Hempel Street, and I think later it ended up housing a Dollar General.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/I2FXvm98ZeQRmhj5-T0LCYYk_019ABj-XTwHhT5vcrMPaJsHYF-KDhZeeBwfgAWi6QlmyHd8JE6FdI9wzvdKBfYgV-Q?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=527.91">08:47</a>):
You would think it would&#8217;ve just been torn down and just raised to the earth. No, they just tried to clean it inside, subdivided it, and then it becomes a Dollar General, which is just slightly less gross than the Mexia supermarket. So there you go. That is the tale of the supermarket that became a biohazard. That was fun. I haven&#8217;t done this in a while. I&#8217;m going to do this more. If you listen to Free For All Friday faithfully, I appreciate it. You&#8217;re like a friend who gets to sit down with me and hear all my silly things I read and think about. So if you are faithfully listening and you enjoy the Free For All Fridays, I appreciate that. It&#8217;s like we&#8217;re sitting down and having a nice chat about all of the weirdo things I like to read about. So hope you guys enjoyed this and yeah, I just hope you have a very blessed weekend.

FFAF: The Grocery Store That Became a Biohazard (and a check in)

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DAY 246
CHALLENGE
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“Christians use God to explain what currently can’t be explained by science (i.e. ‘the gaps’). But as scientific knowledge grows, what’s left for God shrinks to nothing.”
DEFENSE
Christians understand God as the ultimate explanation for everything, not just things science can’t presently explain.
God causes some things directly and some indirectly, using created things as secondary causes. “The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes” (CCC 308).
Scripture often attributes “actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a ‘primitive mode of speech,’ but a profound way of recalling God’s primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world” (CCC 304).
Science is a valuable tool for understanding secondary causation. By studying the visible, created world, we have gained a better understanding of it, and that continues to grow.
When confronted with a scientifically unexplained phenomenon in the natural world, it would be a mistake to reflexively say, “God must have done it; it’s a miracle.” It may be that further investigation will produce a scientific explanation. If so, science will have increased our understanding of how secondary causation works in God’s plan.
However, some events are genuine miracles that resist scientific explanation. These are examples of God using primary causation.
We cannot assume, without investigation or reflection, which category a phenomenon falls into. Neither can we assume that either category is empty: We must open-mindedly allow for the possibility of both the scientifically explainable and the miraculous. To assume all events must be scientifically explainable would be just as prejudiced as assuming none are.
Regardless of whether an event is produced by primary or secondary causation, God is its ultimate explanation, at least in the sense that he created the world and allowed the event to occur as part of his providential plan.
This is not “God of the gaps” thinking because it does not see God as explaining only those things that science can’t presently explain. Neither does it assume that something must be miraculous just because there is no known scientific explanation. It allows the open-minded exploration of both primary and secondary causation.
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The God of the Gaps

Gal.3:13 mentions Jesus became a curse on the cross. How do we properly understand the term curse in that context?

Is there a difference between the Septuagint and the current translation of the Old Testament?

My friend is a traditional Catholic and has a 1st class relic. She said she got it after the Church cleared out the churches after Vatican 2. Is this true?

I’m Catholic but how do I know that Catholicism is the one true religion?

Was witchcraft mixed into Catholicism when African slaves were brought over to Haiti?

I’m 69 years old and I get strange experiences where I have knowledge of things I shouldn’t know. What should I do with this information?

I’m in RCIA coming from a reformed background. How do I understand the difference between penal substitution vs Anselm’s satisfaction

AMA: Septuagint vs. Old Testament, Catholicism as the True Faith, and Witchcraft in Haiti

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DAY 290
CHALLENGE
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“Genesis 1–11 contains many things that don’t correspond to the modern, scientific understanding of the world (such as talking snakes, a universal flood, and so on).”
DEFENSE
These chapters pertain to history in a true sense, but they are written according to a set of literary conventions that conveys truth using more symbolism than later passages.
The Magisterium has indicated this for Genesis 1, stating, “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337). It has said the same for Genesis 3, stating, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man” (CCC 390).
The Magisterium has not yet similarly commented on other events in Genesis 1–11 (e.g., the Flood, the Tower of Babel), but it likely would take the same approach. Thus in 1950, Pius XII stated:
The first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people (Humani Generis 38).
The reason for the greater use of symbolism in these chapters is because of the remoteness of the events in time. This period is before Israel’s recorded history began, and truth concerning this period cannot be conveyed the same way it can for the period after detailed historical records began to be kept.
A different set of literary conventions were thus used for describing the period before the arrival of Abraham in Genesis 12. From Abra- ham to the time of Israel’s kings, less symbolism is used. And a more conventional way of recording history begins with the advent of the kings and the keeping of court records.
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The Early Chapters of Genesis

The questions keep coming for part two of the open mailbag, including ones on Santa Muerte, being a good godparent, and why it’s okay to venerate relics.

Folk Catholicism, Godparents, and Relics (Open Mailbag #2)

What is the Melkite Catholic Church? Catholic Answers Live Host Cy Kellet interviews Bishop François Beyrouti to learn about the American Melkite Church.

What Is The Melkite Catholic Church? – An Interview With Bishop François Beyrouti

Did Vatican II ruin the Church?

I’m a non-practicing Catholic. Am I saved?

Why isn’t it a good thing to continue using Latin in the Church?

What are the rules on cremation and scattering ashes? How do you tell someone to not spread ashes?

Were the prayers changed when they translated to the vernacular? If so, how?

Is it okay to donate blood to an organization that would use the blood for stem cell research?

&#8220;Did Vatican II ruin the Church?&#8221; This episode tackles this pivotal question while also addressing the concerns of non-practicing Catholics about salvation, the implications of using Latin in worship, and the rules surrounding cremation and the scattering of ashes. Join us for a thoughtful exploration of these important topics in Catholicism.
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Did Vatican II Ruin the Church? AMA: Catholicism w/Mark Brumley

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Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. The Rosary isn’t empty repetition. It’s Scripture and love. ❤️📿

In this debate, originally hosted at Pints with Aquinas, Trent Horn engages Protestant apologist Steve Christie on the question of whether the Marian dogmas contradict what is taught in sacred scripture.

DEBATE: Do the Marian Dogmas Contradict Scripture? (with Steve Christie)

Are you a little more stressed than usual? Or maybe you’re even facing a drastic situation like an illness or job loss? In this episode Trent sits down with Catholic therapist Dr. Greg Popcak to learn some ways to overcome stress and anxiety.

Overcoming Pandemic Anxiety (with Dr. Greg Popcak)

Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer Horn joins Cy Kellett to tackle the question of authority within the Church, specifically the role of Peter as the rock.
Transcript:
Caller: Your program has been really great in helping me grow, but I&#8217;m still not Catholic, so you guys need to do a better job, apparently.
Cy: All right, thank you for the progress report. We&#8217;ll do better.
Caller: I like history. So I look at history a lot and I don&#8217;t see the line going from Peter to the Bishop of Rome. Also, with the popes going between France and Italy and multiple popes, it seems like there&#8217;s too many problems there for me. So it&#8217;s like, okay, but
Joe: let&#8217;s start with a couple foundational pieces. Is it fair to say biblically that Jesus chooses a top-down structure of leadership for his church?
Caller: Yes, but he puts Christ as the head of the church, not the bishop in Rome.
Joe: Yeah, absolutely. Christ is the ultimate foundation of the church. We would not want to follow someone who thought he could replace Christ.
But in the same way that, you know, if you said, like, who is the head of your family? One answer is going to be you. One answer is going to be God the Father. Right?
But hopefully you don&#8217;t confuse in what sense you&#8217;re the head and what sense God&#8217;s the head. But like St. Paul can say, for this reason I bow the knee before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named. Like, every fatherhood comes from the fatherhood of God.
Well, similarly, Peter being the rock comes from Christ being the rock. It&#8217;s not a rival rock. So you&#8217;ll find the same kind of language. And you can go back even to the Old Testament. Abraham is described as a rock, but that doesn&#8217;t replace the fact that God is the rock of Israel. It&#8217;s not an either/or in that sense.
But there is rock language used to describe Peter. In fact, his name is changed from Simon to Peter. And Peter means rock in Aramaic. It&#8217;s just very simply like, you are rock, and upon this rock I&#8217;ll build my church.
Really, before I even get to that, I just need to establish there is top-down leadership first, and second, Peter seems to have this very special authority within it.
So Christian leadership is servant leadership. Jesus tells the apostles this when they&#8217;re fighting at the Last Supper about which of them is the greatest. He gives himself as the example and says, behold, he among you is one who serves.
But then he does affirm that the 12 are called to be the servant leaders of the church that they are. He says, I have prepared 12 thrones for you. He says, as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you. You may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.
This is what I mean by the top-down kind of monarchical leadership of the Church. It looks like a kingdom; it doesn&#8217;t look like a democracy.
The very next verse, he singles out one disciple, Simon Peter, and says, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, but that&#8217;s you all, that he might sift you all like wheat.
Then he switches from the plural to the singular and says, but I&#8217;ve prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brethren.
So all the 12 are to be servant leaders of the Church. One of the 12, Simon Peter, is to be the servant of the servants of God. This is the basic structure of the church.
And you can go back and look at the structure of the family, you can look at the structure of Adam and Eve, of the patriarchs, of the prophets, of the priests, of the kings of Israel. And the idea that there&#8217;s always one person with whom the buck stops is this recurring theme in the plan of God in salvation history.
So then the question just becomes, does that suddenly change after the time of Christ for some reason? And the answer is no.
You asked about two specific historical events. One, how do we know this authority continues on from Peter? And we know this in several different ways. You can find references to this.
For instance, when St. Ignatius talks about the Church of Rome presiding in charity in his letter to them in the year 107, you can find, in the year 96, Clement of Rome writing to resolve a controversy in Corinth, even while an apostle is alive, they&#8217;ve written to the Romans.
But maybe the clearest example is Irenaeus in about the year 180 when he talks about the necessity, he says, of the Church of Rome. He calls it the very great, the very ancient and universally known Church, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul.
And he says it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church on account of its preeminent authority. And then in the next paragraph, he traces one by one every bishop of Rome from the time of Peter and Paul to the time of Eleutherius in 180.
And so we don&#8217;t just know that the authority passes from Peter to the successors. We can tell you who they are by name, and we can tell you, not because of some late medieval legend or something, but from Christians in the 100s who grew up knowing people who were discipled by the apostles, like Polycarp.
So that&#8217;s the first part. Like, do we have clear historical evidence of this authority passing along through the successors in Rome? We do.
The second is, as you rightly point out, there are these controversies in the 15th century. So to make a long story medium, the Pope is elected Pope, but there are cardinals who voted for him who claim that, oh well, we didn&#8217;t feel free to elect the Pope.
And so they say that the papal election was invalid and they try to hold another election. They don&#8217;t have the authority to do this because there already is a Pope. You can have a papal conclave when the Pope is dead. You can&#8217;t just have a new papal conclave when you don&#8217;t like who the Pope is.
And so this new anti-Pope starts claiming to be the Pope, and he&#8217;s not. And then another group of cardinals gets together in Italy and Pisa and says, well, we&#8217;re going to reject both these guys and get a new Pope so that it&#8217;s all clean.
And this, of course, doesn&#8217;t solve the problem and makes it worse because now you have the real Pope in Rome, you got a fake Pope in France, and you&#8217;ve got a fake Pope in Pisa.
This was a confusing, messy situation. It embarrassed the church; it undermined the Church&#8217;s authority in a lot of ways, but it doesn&#8217;t invalidate the existence of the Papacy.
Like, you can have counterfeit money and it doesn&#8217;t mean money&#8217;s not real. You can have two different people who claim they&#8217;re married to the same woman, and it doesn&#8217;t mean she doesn&#8217;t have a husband.
Like, there might just be times where there&#8217;s a question about the validity of one marriage, you know, so should an annulment be granted? There might be times where two different people claim to have won a presidential election, but that doesn&#8217;t mean that the answer is that there&#8217;s no President.
So it was a bad moment in terms of the legacy of the Church, but there was always a Pope throughout that.
Cy: You can hear the music. So we gotta leave it there. I&#8217;m gonna send you Pope Peter, Joe&#8217;s book, if you like it. And because you&#8217;re in Peoria, Illinois, the hometown of our own Luke Bender, who runs our YouTube, we&#8217;ll send you another of Joe&#8217;s books. How about *The Eucharist is Really Jesus*?

I’m Not Catholic Cause Jesus is the Head of the Church…

Do you want to “get away from it all”? In this episode Trent takes you on a tour to the most remote places on earth and the unusual ways people live in these locales.

The Most Remote Places on Earth

We just got confirmed this past weekend and I just want to say thank you!

I’ve been praying the 7 Sorrows. One-line states something about suffering in silence. Should I not tell my husband when I’m having a bad day?

What is the relationship between a prudential judgement and the justification for it? Can a bad reason undermine the judgment itself?

If God’s Will will always be done, then what is the purpose of praying for things?

What resources do you recommend to properly understand Papal encyclicals?

How do I deal with the final hurdles to conversion?

If God’s will is inevitable, why pray at all? We explore how prayer fits into God’s providence, and also tackle questions on prudential judgment, understanding papal encyclicals, and the emotional hurdles people face when approaching full conversion.
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>

What’s the Purpose of Prayer If God’s Will Always Happens?

In this episode, Trent shows that Catholics don&#8217;t have to embrace radical &#8220;green energy&#8221; initiatives.
Transcription:
Trent:
It&#8217;s no secret. Pope Francis is a big fan of so-called Green Energy. He mentions it frequently in Lato Sea and La Deum. And some people say you aren&#8217;t a good Catholic unless you think fossil fuels shouldn&#8217;t be expanded, but must be replaced as soon as possible with wind and solar power. Father Thomas Reese, the former editor of America Magazine, even wishes the Pope would declare climate change deniers, heretics, and put their books, articles, Facebook pages, and tweets on the index of forbidden books. He also says, nothing would give me more illicit pleasure than having the governors of Florida and Texas along with the leaders of the oil and coal industries excommunicated. It always amazes me when liberal Catholics say on the one hand, Catholics are too political for wanting it to be illegal to kill babies and that the church should excommunicate pro-abortion politicians. But on the other hand, they say Catholics must support political things.
They must support green energy. And even the so-called Green New Deal in 2023. The National Catholic Reporter criticized the US bishops for not divesting from fossil fuels because they could take relatively easy steps towards a more just future or any future for that matter, for life on earth. Since then, some Catholic diocese have taken a step to reach carbon net zero. But in today&#8217;s episode, I&#8217;ll give you four reasons why Catholics shouldn&#8217;t embrace radical. So-called Green energy policies. Number one, the church doesn&#8217;t require it. Papal and cyclicals contain statements of church doctrine as well as non doctrinal statements that don&#8217;t reflect that a positive faith or the church&#8217;s teaching and lato C, this can be seen in statements like the problem of warming temperatures is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system.
Since those are scientific statements, they aren&#8217;t church teachings, and so Catholics are not required to give them religious ascent. We should take statements like that seriously in a papal encyclical, but they do not require ascent in the same way religious teachings require ascent. But why would Encyclicals or other magisterial documents contain non magisterial statements like scientific summaries? Well, bishops including the Pope, don&#8217;t simply recite what the church teaches. They also apply church teachings in different historical, social and cultural context and in the face of novel challenges. So in order to do that, they may speak from a Catholic perspective that engages with non-Catholic sources of truth like scientific discoveries. They may also be proposing a particular set of approaches to address novel challenges, especially if they&#8217;re addressing non-Catholic audiences rather than imposing something that must be believed. In fact, Lato C is addressed to people of goodwill or basically every person on earth, which means that only a minority of the intended audience of Lato Sea is Catholic.
So given this wide audience, Lato Sea says it offers broader proposals for dialogue and action. And amidst that quote on many concrete questions, the church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion. She knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts while respecting divergent views. Now, some critics may say, we aren&#8217;t bound to follow an encyclical summary of science, but if the encyclical says we must do something or something must be done, then that falls under the definition of morals and the church can teach on faith and morals. But another non doctrinal statement in these encyclicals are statements of aspiration. These aren&#8217;t moral commands, but a kind of shared hope the Pope implores to his audience. So we have to distinguish a magisterial command to act in a certain way on a moral issue from a non-binding statement of aspiration. The latter are hopeful ideals the Pope calls people to share.
They aren&#8217;t rules. He binds the faithful to follow, especially since these appear, as I said in a document addressed to the entire world rather than just to Catholics. So when it comes to energy, Pope Francis says there is an urgent need for fossil fuels to be replaced without delay, and he also calls for the abandonment of fossil fuels. But nowhere does the Pope say there is a specific deadline for when fossil fuels must be abandoned or that it is sinful or incompatible with the faith to not do this. Lato si even says Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the less harmful alternative or to find short-term solutions. Therefore, a Catholic is free to accept the pope&#8217;s prudential judgment that this process must be done as soon as possible, or he may recognize that this just isn&#8217;t possible.
And so shifting to green energy as soon as possible shouldn&#8217;t be a top priority for Catholics. Catholics can question these prudential judgements and aspirational statements because another document Doum Veta from the congregation for the doctrine of the faith says when it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question. And as you&#8217;ll see, I believe Pope Francis has not taken into account many other issues that complicate his call to rapidly switch the world over to so-called green energy. Number two, green energy is a waste of resources. As Catholics, we only have a finite amount of time, physical energy in our bodies and money to address the many different problems that are affecting people today. Some people claim this doesn&#8217;t matter because climate change could bring about the end of life on earth as we know it. About six years ago, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the world would end in 12 years unless we did something about climate change.
CLIP:
The world is going to end in 12 years if we don&#8217;t address climate change. And your biggest issue is, your biggest issue is how are we going to pay for it?
Trent:
Yes, if you want to do something, you need to be able to pay for it. Jesus even said, for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish all who see it begin to mock him, it would cost $23 trillion to convert the US power grid to one that relies solely on wind and solar energy. Assuming that this is even possible, this kind of money could easily eradicate worldwide diseases like malaria. Just 15% of that amount could end extreme poverty across the entire world to spend that money on switching to another form of energy that won&#8217;t even impact. Global climate change is the height of foolishness, but scientists agree that in the most realistic climate models, there will not be a global extinction or even a human extinction.
Catholics can believe climate change will have serious consequences and even cause thousands of excess deaths every year. But the climate, the environment itself killed far more people than climate change. In fact, as CO2 has increased over the past 100 years, climate related deaths have decreased by 90% because increased CO2 emissions from modern technology have mitigated the severity of floods, heat waves, hurricanes, blizzards, et cetera. Moreover, focusing our resources on fighting climate change. It can be a waste of resources when they can be used to address other threats to human life. So along with spiritual suffering from those who haven&#8217;t been evangelized, which really should be the top priority of the church of God, there is the physical suffering of millions of people who die from easily treatable illnesses today like malaria, people who languish from easily treatable ailments like blindness due to cataracts and millions of people who live in decrepit conditions Right now does an American diocese switching over to so-called green energy help any of these people?
Not at all. Even if millions of American Catholics and entire diocese no longer emitted CO2 into the atmosphere, this would do absolutely nothing to change the overall trajectory of global temperatures. Spending a few hundred dollars to heal someone blinded by cataracts would do more real good in the world than spending tens of thousands of dollars on green energy initiatives that won&#8217;t affect the entire global climate in any meaningful way because it&#8217;ll be counteracted by people who are still emitting more. CO2 one part of Pope Francis&#8217; exhortation, Lao Deum criticizes the United States for having twice the CO2 emissions per person that China does. But it neglects to mention that China produces twice as much CO2 as the us and more importantly the US has cut CO2 emissions 25% in the last 20 years, whereas China has tripled its CO2 emissions during the same period. Even if American Catholics do their best to reduce CO2 emissions, it won&#8217;t do any good if other countries increase their emissions.
So it represents a waste of resources that could have been used to address other problems that would result in immediate concrete help for real individuals around the world. But the truth is also that many of these Catholic green initiatives aren&#8217;t even green at all. Most of them are just empty virtue signaling. Sure, some diocese in very sunny states might put solar panels on their roofs and cut down on electricity a little bit, but the majority of their electricity will still come from things like coal and gas power plants. These Catholic groups promise to go net zero, not zero in carbon emissions, and they often do that by buying carbon credits that supposedly offset the amount of CO2 they put into the air. Carbon credits can include paying for things like planting trees to absorb CO2 that make up for the CO2 you put into the atmosphere.
But even environmental groups like Greenpeace call these carbon credit schemes scams because in some cases the money being used to plant trees is actually used to protect forests that no one was planning to tear down anyways. But not only would Catholic emphasis on so-called green energy waste resources that could help the poor pushing for this energy and abandoning fossil fuels actually hurts the poorest in the world. Which brings me to reason number three, green energy hurts the poor. You may have noticed that I&#8217;ve been saying so-called green energy. That&#8217;s because it&#8217;s not completely clean or pollution free. If an American diocese switches to all electric vehicles, for example, that still creates tons of CO2 into the atmosphere from the mining operations that are needed to get the rare metals to make the car batteries and from the fossil fuels that are used to make the energy that charges the vehicles on most power grids and mining. These materials creates ecological and humanitarian nightmares in places like China, Bolivia, and the Congo that require slave labor and toxic pollution for these mines to operate. The same false green promise can be seen in waste created by mining materials for solar panels and the trash created by disposing of expired solar panels and wind turbines.
CLIP:
But there&#8217;s also a growing problem for this young industry. What to do with all the solar panels and wind turbine blades after they wear out?
These windmill blades are being buried in the ground in Casper, Wyoming by 2050. The world&#8217;s wind industry is estimated to produce more than 47 million tons of blade waste each
Trent:
Year. And as I mentioned earlier, billions of people around the world need access to clean energy in order to get out of poverty. And elli tudy, Pope Francis said that whereas lack of access to electric energy was not considered a sign of poverty in the past, it is today given the kind of flourishing humans can have in the modern world, the poorest people on earth will never escape poverty if they don&#8217;t have reliable access to electricity. One research paper says that there are no high income countries today with annual electricity consumption below 3000 kilowatt hours per capita. And it&#8217;s not possible to give everyone on earth enough energy to have a decent life through sources like solar power, which would require tens of billions of solar panels along with unfeasible mega batteries. Only a handful of countries on earth get more than 20% of energy from wind power, and no decently sized country gets more than 20% of its energy from solar power.
If the most advanced countries on earth still have to rely on fossil fuels for the majority of their energy consumption, how can we expect the poorest nations in the world to do better instead of using so-called green energy? These countries will just use even worse forms of energy like burning dung if they&#8217;re not allowed to use fossil fuels. And this has real consequences. Two and a half billion people around the world rely on cooking fuels like wood, coal, kerosene, or animal dung. Burning these substances causes much more indoor air pollution than cooking with electricity or natural gas. It leads to heart disease, lung cancer, and 4 million premature deaths, half of them in children under the age of five who succumbed to pneumonia after prolonged exposure to dirty air. In 2021. The Sri Lankan government banned fertilizers because of their alleged impact on climate change, but this plunged the country into a catastrophic food shortage.
In the past 50 years, environmental alarmists have justified all kinds of evils in their quest to save the earth. This 1967 LA Times article describes how environmentalists, like Paul Ehrlich said, the world could never feed 6 billion people in the year 2000. And so he recommended forcing people to use birth control and putting sterilizing agents in food and water to prevent famines. Thankfully, Lato sea condemns those who can only propose a reduction in the birth rate to solve environmental problems. Lato Sea also says, for poor countries, the priorities must be to eliminate extreme poverty and to promote the social development of their people. But that cannot happen without access to reliable electricity that powers the things that have eliminated extreme poverty like refrigerators, water pumps, and factories that make materials that give people protection from harsh elements. A myopic focus on ditching fossil fuels as fast as possible would only cause us to neglect the people Jesus described as the least among us.
And number four, there is a better alternative to green energy. If Catholics really care about climate change, they can do something far more productive than putting solar panels on church roofs or requiring their diocese to use electric cars. They can write a letter to their elected representatives demanding the continued operation and new construction of nuclear power plants. Some Catholics point to articles describing countries like Sweden getting 95% of their power from low carbon sources, and they assume it&#8217;s talking about wind and solar. But in Sweden, only 1% of their power comes from solar energy. 70% of it comes from hydroelectric and nuclear. 70% of the energy produced in France comes from nuclear power. Nuclear energy truly is green energy. The stuff you see coming from nuclear power plants is just water vapor and advances in storage technology had given us safe, reliable ways to store nuclear waste.
Nuclear material can even be harvested from nuclear weapons, which would promote the church&#8217;s long held aspirations of nuclear disarmament saying we shouldn&#8217;t use nuclear power because of past disasters. Like Chernobyl is like saying you shouldn&#8217;t go on a cruise ship because of the Titanic. Even the nuclear accident at Fukushima in Japan during the 2011 tsunami resulted in only one death. More people die during a hasty and ultimately needless evacuation. And the statistics speak for themselves. You&#8217;re more likely to die installing a solar panel on your roof than you are working in a nuclear reactor. If 50 billion solar panels were used to power the entire world, seven panels for every person in 30 years, the panels would create a nightmarish amount of toxic waste due to the rare earth metals in the photovoltaic cells. Now, in contrast, the entire world could be powered by just an additional 5,000 nuclear power plants, one plant for about every 1.4 million people.
So I am baffled that the popes and cyclicals and teachings on climate change do not endorse this obvious solution to the problem. So to summarize, church teaching doesn&#8217;t morally mandate Catholics to support. So-called green Energy Catholic investment in this energy diverts funds from projects that actually help people. Many of these projects are green in name only and hurt the poor, and Catholics would accomplish more goods simply lobbying for sustainable power sources like nuclear energy. If you&#8217;d like to learn more about this topic, check out my debate on climate change with Tony, Annette in the description below, as well as the chapter in my new book, confusion in the Kingdom on the Issue of Climate Change. Thank you all so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.

The Catholic Case Against “Green Energy”

In this episode Trent sits down with Stephanie Gray Connors to discuss why IVF is wrong and how we can communicate this teaching to a world that sees nothing wrong with children being “conceived by science.”

The Case Against IVF (with Stephanie Gray Connors)

In this episode Trent reveals three bad ways to answer mythicism, or the view that Jesus never existed.

3 Bad Arguments for the Existence of Jesus

In this episode, Trent rebuts extreme positions on what Jesus looked like and examines the theological implications of that issue.
Transcription:
Trent:
A bunch of news articles have come out recently saying that new research has proven the shroud of Turin is 2000 years old, and so it is Christ&#8217;s actual burial shroud and some people have used AI to try to flesh out what Jesus looked like based on the image on the shroud. The image for those of you who are listening by podcast looks a little like Mormon Jesus, but you might also say it looks like the Christ panto crater icon, an early sixth century painting of Jesus. But in today&#8217;s episode, I need to talk about people who are getting really weird about what Jesus looked like and I also want to talk about legitimate questions regarding Jesus&#8217;s physical appearance that raise theological questions. Before I do that though, I want to say that I am not weighing in on whether the shroud of Turin is authentic or not and so that this is or definitely is not an image of Jesus Christ that would require a very long episode of its own and people are free to accept or not accept the authenticity of the shroud.
I would however, caution people to not be overly confident in the latest research. You don&#8217;t want to overplay your evidence. This research is based on wide angle x-ray scattering technology and that technology to use for dating is really new. It&#8217;s only been cited a handful of times prior to this paper. Moreover, the study gets a date of 2000 years old in the shroud by assuming that the shroud of Turin stayed between 68 and 72 degrees and 55 and 75% humidity for 2000 years, which is a pretty big assumption. So that&#8217;s just my caveat about this new shroud research. But what I find more worrying is people who get so attached to this image of Christ that they end up saying really awful things. Here&#8217;s a post that got nearly 2 million views on X. Remember when British forensic experts and Israeli archeologists claim that Jesus was this hideous brown guy?
Now that the shroud of tur has been confirmed, authentic AI has been used to determine what Jesus actually looked like and it matches how he was always depicted. Another popular post says that the earliest eyewitness accounts of Jesus say that Jesus looked like the typical long hair, blue eyed, amazing cheekbones Jesus, and it cites an ancient source publius lentils as confirming this. Alright, so here&#8217;s what&#8217;s wrong with these memes. First, the image on the left that he calls the ugly brown guy. This image never tried to represent Jesus Christ. In 2001, the forensic anthropologist Richard Neve created a model of a Galilean man, just a random Galilean man from the first century for the BBC documentary Son of God, and he did so working on the basis of an actual skull that was found in the region as noted in this clip from the BBC. Now on
CLIP:
The left of your screen, you&#8217;ll see the traditional depiction that we have of him in a church&#8217;s stained glass window with long hair and a beard, but on the right is a reconstruction of a 2000 year old skull of a man from the Galilee area.
Trent:
The point was that this is what the average man in Jesus&#8217; time probably looked like, which makes it reasonable to believe that Jesus probably looks something like this. Since the prophet Isaiah said the following of the Messiah, he had no form or comeliness that we should look at him and no beauty that we should desire him. On a side note, this description also applies to Jesus&#8217; height. If the average height of men in Jesus&#8217; time was five foot five, then it&#8217;s possible the man in the shroud could be Jesus because the man in the shroud&#8217;s height has been estimated to be between five seven and six foot two. If he was five seven, Jesus would&#8217;ve been slightly taller than average, but other sources say the average height of men in Jesus&#8217; time was five foot one, which calls into question the shroud being an authentic image of Jesus.
Sense of that was how tall people were in Jesus&#8217; time and Jesus was six to 13 inches taller. Based on the shroud estimates, Jesus would&#8217;ve been considered a giant king. Saul was noted in scripture for being a head taller than every other man, and if Jesus were so freakishly tall, Judas is scary. It would not have needed to identify him with a kiss in the garden of Gethsemane. He could have told the guards to seek out the really tall guy. Second, the claim that the alleged earliest sources always describe Jesus as looking like AI Jesus. Well, they&#8217;re based on forgeries. The meme, for example, cites the letter of lentils, which claims to be from the governor of the jerusalemites addressed to the Roman Senate and people it says of Jesus, his hair is of the color of the ripe hazelnut straight down to the ears, and it is parted in two on the top of the head and his eyes are blue, gray and bright, but there&#8217;s no evidence lentils existed and the letter first appears in the historical record in the 15th century after Christ.
The Catholic encyclopedia written in 1912 says The following, the letter of lentils is certainly apocryphal. There never was a governor of Jerusalem. No procurator of Judea is known to have been called lentils. A Roman governor would not have addressed the Senate, but the emperor, a Roman writer, would not have employed the expressions prophet of truth, sons of men, Jesus Christ. Instead, the earliest depictions of Jesus make him look very Roman, especially by having no beard. This can be seen in a house church from the third century and a catacomb from the third century. Over time, depictions of Jesus begin to change and reflect the cultures in which the art was created, such as by giving Jesus a beard. Since we don&#8217;t have a divinely revealed answer to the question, what did Jesus look like? Artists are free to depict Jesus in different ways, including by having him belong to other races like being Asian.
In doing this, artists show that God became man as part of a universal mission to redeem all of mankind, which refers to all human beings of every race and ethnicity. Artists can take this liberty in portraying holy people because God himself takes some liberties in how holy people appear. Luke 24 describes how the disciples on the road to Emmaus where kept from recognizing Jesus, which may mean Jesus looked different from their perspective. Marian apparitions like our Lady of Guadalupe la Ette and Akita among others often involve the Sr beholding Mary looking different in accord with the different cultures of the seer. Sears who receive private revelation also differ in whether they see Christ being crucified with one nail going through both of his feet or two nails going through each of his feet. Pope Benedict 14th wrote a book in the 18th century about beatification and canonization of servants of God called heroic virtue.
In the third volume, the Pope talks about how Sears might see different numbers of nails or they might have visions of St. Jerome with a lion as a companion. Even though that is a later legend and not historical, the Pope says that raptures may be above nature and in their substance divine, but in their circumstances conformed to the ideas naturally received, which God leaves in the state they are in. He gave the example of the blessed Claire of Monte Falco&#8217;s vision of Christ&#8217;s nails, and he wrote the following, will you decide that the crucifixion was so because that holy woman&#8217;s meditations on the crucifixion assumed that form? I think nod if you have common sense. These instruments were engraving on her heart not to delineate the passion of Christ, but to make known to posterity. The fervent love of Claire private revelation and relics aren&#8217;t meant to reveal mysteries about God to the whole world.
That is what public revelation is for the catechism says of private revelation. It is not their role to improve or complete Christ definitive revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of history. Private revelation is a way to see our own relationship with God more clearly and to grow in holiness by emulating the saints who were blessed with these visions or who safeguarded these relics. So let&#8217;s keep that at the focus when we meditate on something as awe inspiring as the appearance of the incarnate God, man, Jesus Christ, thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed a day.

Cringe Takes on What Jesus REALLY Looked Like

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DAY 193
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CHALLENGE
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&#8220;Mary should not be given special honors. Jesus certainly didn’t show her any. In fact, he abruptly called her &#8216;woman.'&#8221;
DEFENSE
At the time, “woman” was a respectful form of address, like ”ma’am.”
Jesus refers to his mother as “woman” (Greek, gunai) in two passages— the wedding at Cana (John 2:4) and the Crucifixion (John 19:26–27). In the first, Mary informs him their hosts have run out of wine and (translating literally from the Greek), he says, “What (is that) to me and to you, woman?” Notice he puts Mary in the same category as himself—asking how their hosts’ concern affects the two of them.
This is not a sign of disrespect.
In the second, John says: “When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.” Here again, there is no disrespect. Jesus tenderly provides for his mother’s care after his death.
Concerning the way the term “woman” is used as an address in the New Testament:
<ul>
<li>Jesus uses it to address the Syro-Phoenician woman (Matt. 15:28).</li>
<li>Jesus uses it to address the woman with a hemorrhage (Luke 13:12).</li>
<li>Peter uses it to address the high priest’s servant girl (Luke 22:57).</li>
<li>Jesus uses it to address the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:21).</li>
<li>Two angels use it to address Mary Magdalene (John 20:13).</li>
<li>Jesus uses it to address Mary Magdalene (John 20:15).</li>
<li>Paul uses it to address individual wives among his readers (1 Cor. 7:16).</li>
<li>Paul uses it to address the wives in his audience (Col. 3:18, using the plural: gunaikes).</li>
<li>Peter uses it to address the wives in his audience (1 Peter 3:1, using the plural: gunaikes).
None of these uses are disrespectful, and they reveal that “woman” was a polite form of address.
TIP
The same was true of the term “man” (Greek, anthropē or anēr) when used as a form of address. It functioned like the English terms “sir” or “mister.” Among other examples, see Luke 5:20, where Jesus tells the paralytic: “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”</li>
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Jesus Calling His Mother “Woman”

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CHALLENGE
“Catholicism is false because it bases its teachings on things other than the Bible—the word of God.”
DEFENSE
Catholicism bases its teachings on the word of God, which is not limited to the Bible.
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The Church acknowledges that “Sacred Scripture is the word of God inasmuch as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine Spirit” (Vatican II, Dei Verbum 9). However, even a cursory reading of Scripture shows that the word of God is not limited to Scripture.
In the very first chapter of the Bible, we read about the power of God’s creative word, as he says things like, “‘Let there be light’; and there was light” (Gen. 1:3). This understanding is confirmed by the Psalms, which state: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made” (Ps. 33:6). This exercise of God’s creative word occurred before the existence of man and the writing of Scripture, making it clear that the reality of God’s word goes beyond Scripture.
Even after God began to communicate his word to men, it often was not in the form of Scripture. Thus the Bible records the word of God being given to prophets who wrote no Scripture at all, such as Samuel (1 Sam. 9:27), Shemaiah (1 Kings 12:22), and John the Baptist (Luke 3:2).
Similarly, the oral apostolic preaching of the Christian faith is spoken of as the word of God (Acts 4:31, 6:7, 16:6).
Most fundamentally, Scripture reveals that Jesus is the Word of God (John 1:1–18, Rev. 19:13).
All this makes it clear that the word of God is a complex, multifaceted reality that includes but goes beyond Scripture, which is the portion of God’s word that was consigned to writing under divine inspiration.
Our proper response to the word of God is to accept the whole of it as authoritative, for “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4:4; cf. Deut. 8:3). It would be wrong to close our ears to God’s word when it is found outside of Scripture. Thus Paul tells his readers to “stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thess. 2:15).
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The Word of God

In this episode Trent and fellow apologist Michael Lofton respond to Eastern Orthodox priest Fr. Josiah Trenham and his objections to Catholicism.

Responding to Fr. Josiah’s Orthodox Objections to Catholicism (with Michael Lofton)

How would baptism work for a Trill and symbiote (from Star Trek)?

Would a time-traveling Catholic before Christ still have a Sunday obligation?

Why hasn’t God revealed stories of earlier creations before our time?

Can a baptized person with intellectual disabilities be considered a saint?

Should the Church explore the 4th dimension to better understand Scripture?

Any strange movies with rich theological themes to recommend?

&#8220;Can time-traveling Catholics fulfill Sunday obligation?&#8221; This intriguing question opens a discussion that spans various theological topics, including how baptism would apply to a Trill and symbiote from Star Trek, and whether a baptized person with intellectual disabilities can be considered a saint. Join us as we explore these fascinating ideas and more.
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Would Time-Traveling Help Fulfill The Sunday Obligation? Baptism and Theology

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“Some people are born homosexual, so it’s in accord with their nature for them to engage in homosexual behavior. God made them that way.”
DEFENSE
The premise of this challenge is shaky, and the conclusions drawn from it are erroneous.
First, the claim that some people are born homosexual is problematic. The origins of same-sex attraction are not well understood.
It may be true that most people with same-sex attraction do not recall a moment where they chose to have this condition, but humans are a highly cognitive species for whom training is important. It would be very surprising if our sexual desires were not in some degree conditioned by our life history and the sexual training we have experienced (e.g., what we choose to fantasize about). This applies both to people with same-sex attraction and those without it.
At the same time, we also have innate tendencies, which may be based on a variety of factors, including the hormones our bodies produce, our individual genetics, and so on.
The Catholic Church does not claim that the cause or causes of same-sex attraction have been established. The Catechism states: “Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained” (CCC 2357).
Second, just because people are born with temptations does not mean that we can simply say “God made them that way” (see Day 235). Third, even if same-sex attraction were purely innate, this would not lead to the conclusion that it is moral to engage in homosexual behavior. Everyone has temptations, and sometimes these are due to
factors we have no control over.
It is commonly thought that some people have a genetic predisposition to alcohol abuse. Other people have suffered traumatic brain injuries that increase the risk of their engaging in violent and criminal behavior. However, these predispositions do not justify giving in to one’s impulses.
A person with a genetic predisposition to alcohol abuse is not justified in becoming an alcoholic, and a person with traumatic brain injury is not justified in committing violent crime. We all have immoral impulses—temptations—and we are called not to give in to them but to resist and overcome them.
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The Causes of Homosexuality

In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent shares memorable beauty pageant &#8220;world &#8220;salad&#8221; answers and other viral moments.

FFAF: Viral Beauty Pageant “Flubs”

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent explores cases of people who claimed to live for years inside of prolonged dreams.
Transcript:
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/wx8zK04QQNGO-C9vrkNgnAIjFYAv5--kqvnV7V9rCo7fv27Fu9u_rVUXz30jy4xlRMqLuGZXBG0K_S6Ofa5ye_06bNM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=0.14">00:00</a>):
It is Free For All Friday. Welcome to the Council of Trent. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we talk apologetics and theology. Friday we talk about whatever I want. And there was a phenomenon that I came across recently that I found utterly fascinating that I would like to share with you. So do you have very vivid dreams? I mean, I have them. Dreams really fascinate me. Scientists aren&#8217;t entirely sure why we dream. They think it has something to do with the fact that our brain has to repair itself at night when we sleep. It heals itself from everything has to do during the day. And when the brain is stimulated in this way, the neurons are firing, the synaptical connections are going. It produces these images for us to examine. So it really is fascinating how it does that because if you stay awake long enough, you will die.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/7tLAyLiuC2wU3seIxtoHnzCJgwkZp1urp_jra78NUTaI26HwLTvwmTNNHPvXaPvr6iCwSg9NtWTRIDC34Nj-j6C3f7g?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=51.38">00:51</a>):
They&#8217;ve tried to do sleep experiments where people stay up as long as they can. Now they don&#8217;t do those anymore because they&#8217;re highly unethical because they&#8217;re really, really dangerous. You need to sleep or you&#8217;ll die. In fact, if you just try to stay awake, your body&#8217;s just automatically going to go to sleep at some point. And so you dream. And so the dreams we have, there&#8217;s certain dreams that I&#8217;ve had in life that are just so, so vivid. They just seem so real. And it&#8217;s weird. You&#8217;ll go to sleep at night and sometimes you&#8217;ll feel like you&#8217;ve spent a lot of time in a dream or done things in a dream and you wake up and you&#8217;re like, oh, it was just a few hours. Although I think a part of it is it&#8217;s your brain filling everything in when you wake up. I always wonder what is the difference between what I dreamed and then when I wake up, when I try to remember what I dreamed, how much does the brain really fill in?
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/rk1185gaQO-0yuk_uEom2kXAW63TzGRKPNqgg8fJd-HUeyIQawwPEykA0IP8qISE0U1tn0ZidjTglnK9tMRv-qLNCyM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=101.34">01:41</a>):
But here&#8217;s a very interesting phenomenon. Some people who are in comas for a long time, for weeks or for months at a time in a comatose state, they will describe having lived in a very prolonged dream. So we have our dreams, we remember them however, what duration they have, but we&#8217;ve only sleeping for seven or eight hours, eight hours I wish. I&#8217;m a bad boy who stays up way too late, putzing around, reading things on the internet, doing a little bit of last minute work and then up and early in the morning. I wish I got my full eight hours in. I really should. But imagine if you were in a sleep-like state for months at a time. So here&#8217;s an article that I wanted to share with you. For many people, dreams vanish within minutes of waking, but for some coma survivors, dreams become entire worlds.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/pTGmEga1YArCO1P1XQqNJUpZlssmzMGrvjIFXFrDrW3ATmMSf3owfFU3C9ZHRJFOfc5evV6ZX83T8w9rYPlHApmPKV4?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=148">02:28</a>):
Emotionally rich experiences that seem to last months, years, or even decades inside the mind. These reports have fascinated neurologists, psychologists, and the public alike because they blur the line between dreaming, memory and conscious experience. And so here is the example that I came across that it does seem legit, like it&#8217;s not just being made up. And so it&#8217;s sad also when I think about if someone went through what this was. So let me read it to you. One of the most striking recent examples is that of Clelia Verdier, a 19-year-old woman from Leo France. After a medical crisis in 2025, Verdier was placed into a medically induced coma for about three weeks. When she awoke, she reportedly asked doctors and relatives about her three daughters. The problem was that the children did not exist. She doesn&#8217;t have any children. During the coma, Verdeer experienced what felt like seven years of life in an alternate reality where she fell in love, became a mother to triplets and watched them grow.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/KfQKT3lbAuG7ISmDJpZFS4mkRNc2qQjkrWOFhZp-CQSskOzZKKv_N8VSP8XRIP5hPyNE-wqaAlLHWexttdp8OX3Tqq8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=204.5">03:24</a>):
She later described vivid sensory memories, including the pain of childbirth, everyday family routines, and the grief of losing one of the children shortly after birth. The emotional aftermath was devastating because to her mind, the experiences felt completely real. It goes on to say, &#8220;Verdeer&#8217;s experience is unusual, but it is not unique. Across medical literature and survivor testimony, people recovering from comas frequently describe elaborate dream narratives. Some report living entire alternate lives while others recall surreal journeys, conversations with deceased relatives or worlds governed by dreamlike logic. One famous internet account often referred to as the lamp story came from a man who claimed that after being knocked unconscious, he experienced years of married life with children before noticing a lamp that appeared visually distorted. So these stories are wild. That reminds me a lot of inception, right? Christopher Nolan&#8217;s movie Inception. You go into a dream state.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/aS9HCkdDogMTfyZWmQo-UC8CtFWuBZ3QFxwDgrfedoDlXzGQ2bP9nqsjYx_4KPWmHjcWP38Sd65WwjKiqoLriqwDu74?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=260.2">04:20</a>):
Although whenever movies portray dreams, that&#8217;s never like how I think of dreams. So in inception, you&#8217;re going around and the dream world is 99.99% indistinguishable from the real world. It basically is the real world until you notice some weird thing. Usually you have to take something in that&#8217;s odd. They called it in the movie a totem. And for Leonardo DiCaprio&#8217;s character, it&#8217;s a top that doesn&#8217;t topple over when you spin it. And when you spin it for him, that&#8217;s the way he knows that he&#8217;s in a dream. He&#8217;s not in the real world. And then there&#8217;s a famous ambiguity at the end of inception when he&#8217;s spinning his top wondering, oh, am I back home with my children in the real world or is it a dream and the top&#8217;s moving? But we don&#8217;t know if it falls down or not. So this is interesting that someone had a similar occurrence like that they described online where the world seemed correct, but the lamp was off.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/1FFzH3Jipka8lyKI27WDc87sCB6mRkqJzaBL9q7Hry0gdss6HBbQBh3zzpE8Lsd0xhU6fQ4HV0IokTNssn911jIeaxM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=314.63">05:14</a>):
So according to the story, the strange lamp triggered the realization the reality was an illusion after which he awoke to discover only that minutes had passed. Although the account is anecdotal, impossible to verify medically, it became widely discussed because it echoed many themes seen in documented coma dreams, distorted time perception, emotional attachment and grief upon waking. Yeah, because like inception, they have a dream in a movie and it&#8217;s basically like real life. When I have a dream, it is just whack a doodle because there&#8217;s no logic to it. Your logic centers kind of shut off. So you go from one scenario to another scenario without things making a ton of sense. And when you try to explain it to people, you almost can&#8217;t even explain it to people. So that&#8217;s why I wonder, I do not think that some of these people like this woman actually spent seven years, seven full on years in a dream living in a world indistinguishable from real life.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/vpb0wcc7l73DK5wnzj_v_fezp37BzKv-NSjvUsnYPWkka1e_Tf1tkDqXzvX2G2j-3KgIprFlp6xNBvkqlE-LkXqep7w?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=366.83">06:06</a>):
I think that she could have had a lot way, way more dream-like sequences for her brain to process than you and I would because she&#8217;s in a coma for three weeks, but the brain fills those in, especially upon waking. I mean, think about our own memories, like how many memories could you conjure of the last seven years of your life? You couldn&#8217;t recall every single minute of the last seven years of your life, but you could recall many of the major moments and string them together and play a little mini movie in your mind of what the last seven years were like. And I think this happens in dreams, but to such an extended scale that it confuses you when you wake up. This also reminds me of the TV show, Rick and Morty, where Rick, who&#8217;s the grandfather of Morty, his grandson, he takes him on these intergalactic adventures.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/yaWfq2TAPAi8m7-OBDbQP5Z4PIJi5SvBdJFFKeg884oFY1R2s7Y9vPtKfUNZ9TpQSofn8ybXJb_odqXOPV-6HwFCgiU?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=410.07">06:50</a>):
They go to this arcade, it&#8217;s kind of like a Dave and Buster&#8217;s, an arcade in the galaxy and they play a VR game and it&#8217;s called Roy, A Life Well Lived. And you put on the headset and you wake up as a little boy named Roy and you&#8217;re like, oh, I had this weird dream mom that I was with a guy and put on a helmet and like, oh, go back to bed. And so the idea is that you wake up as just this little kid and live an entire life within a series of a few minutes in this VR game. And then when the helmet comes off, it&#8217;s like, &#8220;Where&#8217;s my wife? Where&#8217;s my children? Calm down, calm down.&#8221; What the hell? Where am I? 55 years. Not bad, Morty. You kind of wasted your 30s though with that whole bird watching faith. Where&#8217;s my wife?
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/FZ9_lG4Ldj0JHb_nNITMQpy3TZnM7bUfmk3ksfs3ncjayRder6tDW1nTqVgOvvZx3V8UM7lLutvCXYDe2rYjVewQIUI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=452.07">07:32</a>):
Morty. You were just playing a game. It&#8217;s called Roy. Snap out of it. Come on. I&#8217;m Morty. You&#8217;re Rick. Hey, you sold a gun to a guy that kills people. That was just a game that you were in. They play it for laughs, but you think about what if you could enter into a dreamlight state and then use VR and AI to augment these things. That&#8217;s something that people might explore later in life as things develop more because you have things like lucid dreaming. So you have the ability to influence the dream that you&#8217;re in. So when you combin all of that together, you can just get some really wild stuff. So the article finishes this way. It says, &#8220;Neurologists caution these experiences do not necessarily indicate supernatural phenomena or parallel realities. Instead, they reveal how powerfully the human brain can simulate experience. Emotion appears to be especially important.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/uxqXtdj4FuS79ukgO6Eo1-4c3r_PtaaDhWA77GDcgiCELPAmRm23pFzPLhZ2nOO-SVDRYZryGzO843mSqb3gFvU0-q4?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=502.57">08:22</a>):
People often awaken, not merely confused, but grieving. The loss can feel genuine because the brain encoded those dream experiences with the same emotional intensity attached to real memories. Cases like Chlelia Verdiers continue to attract attention because they challenge ordinary assumptions about consciousness. They suggest that even in states of profound unconsciousness, the mind may still be able to construct detailed inner worlds, worlds vivid enough to leave lasting emotional scars long after waking. So something to consider, especially people who are in persistent vegetative states, who are unconscious for a long period of time that to refer to them. In fact, persistent vegetative state, that&#8217;s a term I don&#8217;t even like because people are not and never will be vegetables, but treating them with dignity, even if they didn&#8217;t have any cognition, they still be human beings worthy of dignity, but to know, well, there could be things happening under the surface that we are not fully aware of.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/_Vml3CySPDMpOCDKwtksTcZKtcvLmoqLSsNl1XL0cq50Y5pRHLd0Ov1Szf6KZMcruBK7cWjG4NHj5t0tVASJ_JVz8HE?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=551.47">09:11</a>):
So I thought that was interesting for you all. Thank you guys so much for checking in on this free for all Friday, and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.
&nbsp;

FFAF: Living 7 Years in a 3 Week Dream

It’s Not Always Demons (with Jimmy Akin)

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DAY 325
CHALLENGE
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“Why shouldn’t the individual decide for himself what books belong in the Bible?”
DEFENSE
God didn’t promise to guide individuals in this way. It’s also a dangerous thing to try.
First, how would an individual decide what books are canonical? Some have claimed these books are “self-authenticating” or that the Holy Spirit will provide what amounts to a private revelation to the individual, but neither proposal works (see Days 229 and 236).
An individual might establish that certain books are reliable historical records (e.g., that the Gospels reliably record the ministry of Jesus), but the claim they are Scripture—divinely inspired—is a matter of faith that goes beyond such historical evidence.
There is thus a problem with the evidence an individual would have at his disposal if he set aside the conclusions God guided the Church to reach about the canon and tried to consider the matter afresh.
Second, if he tried to do this, he would very likely end up with a canon that was too large or too small.
Daunted by the difficulties that certain books face, he might truncate the canon by ejecting certain books from it that belong there (as Martin Luther tried to do with James, Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation). Alternately, he might be attracted by the possibility of exotic, esoteric new books of Scripture and wish to include books that do not belong in the canon (as many moderns have done with writings like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gnostic gospels, or the writings of Joseph Smith).
Third, since there is no promise in Scripture that the canon will close (see Days 52 and 110), one would have to remain open to new works. Any book that one had not read and personally evaluated would have to be regarded as a potential book of Scripture.
Fourth, the actual historical practice of the vast majority of Christians has not been to try to settle the matter themselves, but to rely on the guidance of the Church. That God guided them to do this is a sign that it is what they should do (though this fact does not fit well with the doctrine of sola scriptura). If they were meant to decide the matter individually, God would have made this clear.
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The Individual and the Canon of Scripture

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent shares 19th century personal ads and how they mirror and diverge from modern dating.

FFAF: I Love 19th Century Personal Ads

<div>Is living together with a significant other still considered cohabitation if there is no sex involved? Are the two different?</div><div>For the purpose of this answer, I&#8217;ll assume by &#8220;significant other&#8221; you are referring to a romantic partner of the opposite sex to whom you are not married and who is not married to anyone else. (If any of these conditions are not accurate, then the definition of the sexual sin in question changes and may increase in gravity.)
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-cohabitation-is-morally-wrong">Cohabitation</a> between unmarried partners of the opposite sex is an occasion of two sins, not just one. The first is, of course, fornication (sexual relations outside of marriage by an opposite-sex couple). If sexual relations are not occurring during cohabitation, then the couple is not guilty of fornication. They may, however, be placing themselves in a near occasion of sin—which means proximity to the temptation of sin—and we are supposed to avoid near occasions of sin.
The other sin is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/scandal">scandal</a>, which is defined by the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
<blockquote>Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor&#8217;s tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense (CCC 2284).</blockquote>
A couple who lives together outside of marriage creates scandal by engaging in an action that may lead others into sin, either by allowing people to believe that they are engaging in fornication or by tempting people to believe that cohabitation outside of marriage is okay so long as the couple does not engage in sex. Either way, the couple is creating spiritual obstacles for others, and to do so is indeed an occasion of sin.
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May a Man and a Woman Live Together without Having Sex?

Some Christians claim that Peter, the man, is not the rock on which Jesus builds his Church, but Peter&#8217;s profession of faith is. Actually, no. Apologist Suan Sonna explains why.

Peter (Not His Profession of Faith) Is the Rock

In this episode Trent sits down with atheist John Loftus and talks about his new anthology The Case Against Miracles. They then discuss whether any testimony could justify believing in miracles like the resurrection of Christ.

“Is it Rational to Believe in Miracles?” Part 1 (with John Loftus)

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent sits down with Seamus of Freedomtoons to talk about his new project Twisted Plots.

FFAF: New Conservative Comedy (with Freedom Toons)

Could the Pope or Magisterium receive a revelation (e.g., about aliens having souls) and would that become dogma?

How to respond when Protestants cite the exorcist Jesus told the disciples not to stop?

Is it material cooperation with evil for a Catholic executive to enforce company abortion policies?

Does God know all possible futures (Many Worlds idea)?

How to tell if guidance is from the Holy Spirit vs. a Guardian Angel?

Is experimenting with manifestation sinful?

Do Daleks have souls?

&#8220;Can the Pope receive new revelations?&#8221; This episode explores the implications of potential papal revelations, including whether such insights could become dogma. Additionally, we tackle questions about responding to Protestant views on exorcism, the moral dilemmas faced by Catholics in corporate settings, and discerning spiritual guidance. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion!
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Can the Pope Receive New Revelations and Manifestation Questions

The Protestant Canon REBUTTED (Gavin Ortlund, Cleave to Antiquity and Javier Perdomo)

When was the first mass after the resurrection?

I know there is one sacrifice but is it one or many offerings?

What is the catholic view, if there is a view, on the order of melchizedek? Is there an accepted catholic teaching?

Is it appropriate to receive communion on the hand?

What’s the history or background of the doxology?

What do the Hanc Igitur and communicantes mean in the roman canon and what do they mean during easter?

Was the Road to Emmaus the First mass or was the last supper the first mass?

How do I approach someone who receives communion who you know shouldn’t? Where in the bible can I show people to encourage them to go to mass every Sunday?

My friend loudly says ‘my Lord and my God’ during the consecration. Is this appropriate?

Did Cy blow it by saying the sorrowful mysteries during the Easter octave?

Is it true to say everything in the Church builds towards the Mass?

Does Divine Mercy Sunday count as to fulfill the obligation since it’s later in the day?

&#8220;Is the Road to Emmaus the First Mass?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the significance of the Emmaus encounter, while also addressing when the first Mass after the resurrection occurred and the Catholic understanding of the order of Melchizedek. Additional topics include the appropriateness of receiving communion in the hand and the history of the doxology.
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Is the Road to Emmaus the First Mass? Communion and Doxology

In this episode Trent replies to Redeemed Zoomer&#8217;s recent critiques of Catholicism and shows off his retro video game skills at the same time. Teaching With Authority by Jimmy Akin: https://shop.catholic.com/teaching-with-authority/
Transcription:
Hey everyone, in today’s episode I’m going to do something a little different. Last week Redeemed Zoomer released a video saying he studied Catholicism intensely for a month, on top of the previous study he’s done on the Faith, and he shared some reasons why his studies led him to the conclusion Catholicism is false.
RZ gave a casual explanation while playing Minecraft rather than a formal, knockdown argument, so in today’s episode I’m going to give my own casual response while playing Super Mario World. Why? Because I was born in the 80’s so I don’t know how to play Minecraft but I can still play a decent game of Mario, though as you’ll see I’m rusty. And yes this is me playing, here’s me with the same Super Nintendo I got for Christmas when I was 7-years-old and it still works.
I don’t have a capture so bare with the footage I recorded on my phone, but I figured you pefer this to generic play footage from someone else.
So RZ’s basic argument is that he’s not Catholic because Catholicism proposes an infallible rule of faith beyond scripture, the magisterium, mostly in the form of ecumenical councils. However, he says this rule has contradicted itself on salvation outside the Church and papal authority so it’s not infallible, therefore Catholicism is false.
First, I want to point out that RZ faces the same problem. He believes scripture is the only infallible rule of faith but those who reject biblical inerrancy claim scripture has contradictions. Now, RZ says the contradictions in Catholic history are irreconcilable but the contradictions in scripture can be reconciled. But both cases have similar difficulties, even on the same issues.
Consider the issue of no salvation outside the Church, which RZ first brings up. It comes down to this question: is it possible for non-Catholics to be saved, or is it impossible? RZ says the Council of Florence and Unam Sanctam say it is impossible but Vatican II says it is possible. He also says Bishop Barron and others go further by saying it’s probable they’re saved but Bishop Barron’s less than ideal answers in an interview with Ben Shapiro are magisterial teaching. The same goes for me if I don’t articulate my thoughts as clearly as I wish I had in an interview.
RZ faces the problem of alleged contradiction on this issue, but in a synchronic way rather than a diachronic way. Diachronic means across time, so when people say Catholicism contradicts itself they will go across 2000 years of Church history to find alleged magisterial contradictions. Synchronic means at the same time. So when people try to say the Bible, especially the New Testament, contradicts itself, they will go to different books written around the same time period.
RZ says “look Florence teaches non-Catholics aren’t saved but Vatican II says they can be saved.” Contradiction! But a critic of biblical inerrancy can do the same thing. They will say John 14 teaches non-Christians can’t be saved but Romans 2 teaches non-Christians can be saved. Contradiction!
We know there’s a tension in scripture on salvation outside of Christ because Protestants exclusivists have to explain the scripture that seems to say non-Christians can be saved, and Protestant inclusivists have to explain the scripture that seems to say non-Christians can’t be saved. The latter group, like Catholics, say these verses teach that nothing beside Christ saves us, but Christ can save a person without the person knowing it, which explains how someone who wasn’t part of the visible church could still have received God’s saving grace in some invisible way.
St. Thomas Aquinas even proposed that God could use some extraordinary mean to save a man raised by wolves and God wouldn’t let him go to hell just because he was ignorant of the Gospel through no fault of his own, or what we call being invincibly ignorant. A century before Vatican II Pope Pius IX referred to people being invincibly ignorant, so this isn’t a liberal, post-Vatican II concept.
Pius IX did condemn the idea that we can have good hope in the salvation of non-Catholics in his syllabus of errors and Vatican II says salvation is a possibility for those who are ignorant of the Gospel through no fault of their own. It admits that people often succumb to lies and final despair so that’s why the Church quote, “fosters the missions with care and attention.” So I agree some people take it too far and start to become universalists.
So my answer to RZ on this issue is that the Church has always taught that a person cannot be saved apart from the Church Christ established, but there has always a strain of thought, which can be seen even in early Church fathers like Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, that God provides a way to save those who are outside the Church through no fault of their own. In fact, in the first three centuries of Church history the phrase no salvation outside the Church was used for Christian heretics, not people who had always been pagans.
During the time of Florence many people believed that those who weren’t Catholic were fully culpable for their non-belief and so one could say if they weren’t Catholic then they weren’t saved. But the discovery of the New World by Columbus fifty years later caused theologians to question the empirical assumption used in applying “no salvation outside the church” because some people were truly ignorant because of geographic isolation. Others still remained in ignorance, as 16th century Spanish theologians noted, because they were given a deficient Gospel at the hands of cruel conquistadores.
So this isn’t a contradiction. The Church, through its theologians, harmonizes apparently absolute exclusivist past magisterial statements in the same way Protestant inclusivist theologians harmonize apparently absolute exclusivist Bible passages – by noting the difference between objective salvation only through Christ and his church but God subjectively saving people outside the visible confines of his church through extraordinary means, like revelation to their conscience as seen in Romans 2:14-16.
When it comes to this issue, I would recommend you check out some resources that show how the Church’s doctrine on this issue developed without being contradictory. The Jesuit scholar Frances Sullivan has a book on this called No Salvation Outside the Church though I think some of his claims are a bit too far for my tastes. Jimmy Akin also discusses this subject in a chapter of his book The Drama of Salvation.
When it comes to the Vatican I definition of the papacy being found in the first millennium of church history, this depends on how you understand Vatican I and the papacy. The historical claims on councils, like the papacy in Vatican I or icons in Nicaea II, are not part of the council’s infallible definition. People like Elijah Yasi and Erick Ybarra have done great work at showing a moderate or minimal understanding of Vatican I’s doctrine of the papacy can be found throughout Church history, including in the first millennium so I recommend their work on those questions. I’ll link to Elijah’s video on this in the description below.
When it comes to icons I’ll revisit this hopefully in a dialogue with Gavin Ortlund at some point but this is another example where Protestants also have a burden of proof. Their view is that images are okay, even in churches for some of them, but you shouldn’t venerate images. However, the earliest Christians who were against icons didn’t even think you could have images at all, which is not the Protestant position so Protestants also have to say their view is a doctrinal development to some degree.
Nicaea II is condemning those who don’t’ follow the liturgical rubrics in the East that require icon veneration but no such rubrics exist for the vast majority of Catholics in the West, so it is not the case that Catholics must do things like kiss icons, they just can’t condemn someone who believes it is okay to physically show respect for a holy person in an icon.
RZ also said Nicaea II anathematized those who were friends with people who don’t’ venerate icons. But I don’t see a canon from the council that says that. There is a canon that anathematizes communicating with those who dishonor and revile holy icons, which is different than a Christian who just doesn’t venerate them.
But this also brings up the issue, as RZ mentions, that not everything in a council document is an infallible declaration. The councils use specific formulas for infallible decrees that are different from disciplinary decrees that are not perpetually binding. This is covered in Jimmy Akin’s book Teaching with authority so be sure to check his book out if you have questions on that, I’ll link to that below.
This is also a nice segue into the remaining minor points RZ brought up. He said that the Church’s infallibility isn’t so amazing because Catholics put a lot of parameters on it, like that not everything an ecumenical council says is infallible or binding, but Protestants do the same thing with scripture. They say scripture is inerrant but only under certain conditions. For example, RZ believes in theistic evolution so he would say Genesis I is without error but it isn’t trying to give a strictly historical description of how organic life came to be in the period before humans existed. Other Protestants disagree with him and say his approach contradicts scripture’s inerrancy and would prove Genesis is wrong.
RZ would say, correctly I would add, that biblical inerrancy doesn’t mean that everything the Bible says is true in a literal sense. He would also say that doesn’t mean everything the Bible teaches is normative today. The New Testament says slaves should obey their masters and women should wear veils, but RZ would probably say those are culturally bound prescriptions that aren’t binding upon Christians today. Women can worship without veils and it isn’t sinful for a slave today in another part of the world to disobey his master and escape from his slavery.
Well, the same thing is true for many of the disciplinary canons of the ecumenical councils. In fact, I thought it was interesting when RZ criticized the councils for getting more complicated over time. That’s would be expected as Christendom becomes more expansive in history. Nicaea was held before Christianity was the religion of the Roman Empire and Christianity wouldn’t become a unifying force for the state until centuries later in the early Middle Ages after Rome’s fall. That’s when the councils become more complicated and need to excommunicate kings and heretics causing harm to the body of Christ.
Some of RZ’s critiques aren’t even about infallibility at all. For example, he disagrees with the Council of Constance saying only the bread should be given to the laity and not the chalice containing Christ’s blood. But there is no infallible prior teaching saying both must be given that this contradicts. RZ just says Jesus commanded that both must be given, but Jesus neve said that. Jesus gave an instruction at the Last Supper to the Apostles but that doesn’t mean this is normative for all Christians going forward. In John 6:58 Jesus says whoever eats his flesh will live forever, without mentioning his blood and in 1 Cor 11:27 Paul refers to those who eat the bread *or* drink the cup, which implies that people may take one or the other.
RZ also said Thomas Aquinas didn’t believe in the Immaculate Conception, which some people like Christian Wagner doubt so you can check his research on that. Regardless, Aquinas still believed Mary was sinless but he thought Mary’s freedom from sin came just after her conception. Since knowledge of human development was hazy during this time, such as Aquinas believing in delayed ensoulment, this would make it understandable why he might have some doubts about the immaculate conception but Aquinas’s views are still far from modern protestants.
Finally, RZ says he doesn’t like Aquinas because Aquinas endorses natural theology, using reason to know some facts about God’s existence and nature. RZ says this leads to Vatican II saying Christians and Muslims worship the same God and, I think this is implied, the inclusivism that allows for salvation of non-Christians and non-Catholics.
Joe Heschmeyer and Jimmy Akin both did videos recently on Christians, Islam and the same God question so check them out on that. If I can add anything else of substance might in the future but they show saying Muslims worship God or the one God who created the universe, even though they deny the trinity,  has a long history in Christian thought before Vatican II.
But more to the issue of Natural theology, if you don’t start with basic facts about God built on reason this can easily lead you into false and heretical views about God. For example, through reason we can know God is necessary, infinite, timeless, immaterial, and unlimited in knowledge, power, and goodness. This means we must reject interpretations of scripture that make it seem like God is ignorant or powerless, like that he repents or has body parts, as divine condescension, meant for ancient people in salvation history to better understand the ineffable God. Once again I wonder if it is contradictions that bother RZ, or that Catholicism affirms doctrines he disagrees with, like natural theology which is infallibly affirmed at Vatican I. Also, see my debate with Jay Dyer if you also want a defense of natural theology.
Ultimately, the way I look at this is that anyone who believes in an infallible rule of faith, whether it’s Protestants with sola scriptura or Catholics with scripture, tradition, and the magisterium, is going to have the problem of apparent contradictions in those rules. So the way I approach the denominational question is to ask who has the least problems to deal with?
Each side has to deal with critics who say their infallible rule has contradictions. But Catholicism and Orthodoxy have a much easier time showing how get to Jesus rising from the dead to the 27 book inerrant canon of the New Testament because they have recourse to authoritative sacred tradition, and I’ll address that in a future episode on the canon and why it’s still a problem for Protestants.
I appreciate that RZ wants to have a Reconquista and rescue Protestants from liberalism, especially Presbyterians. But he will have to deal with people who say, “biblical inerrancy has so many contradictions, we can still get the Gospel from scripture without believing scripture is infallible.” To which RZ would say, no you can’t, that’s how you got a mess of women sparkle priests officiating gay weddings. But RZ says we can get the fullness of the Faith from scripture alone and we don’t need an infallible magisterium, to which I’d say no you can’t because tha’s how you got the mess of Protestants who can’t agree on essential doctrines. You see for example, in Protestants who criticize redeemed zoomer for believing that Catholics are Christians.
And that’s one reason I enjoy talking with him and engaging his work and I really appreciate that he tries his best to understand Catholicism even though he disagrees with it. And he and I are scheduled to have a dialogue soon on my channel so stay tuned for that. With that said, thank you guys so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.

I studied Protestantism for 20 years. . . I’m not converting. (Reply to Redeemed Zoomer)

In this episode Trent examines rabbi Daniel Polish’s criticisms of Pope Francis published in America Magazine and shows why the Holy Father said nothing wrong when he discussed the Mosaic Law in a recent homily.

America Magazine Contributor Says Pope Francis Should Apologize

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;

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Did King Solomon from the Book of Kings lose his soul?

In Mark 5, when the possessed man recognizes Jesus as the Christ, is this example of a bestowed grace?

Why in Gen 32:27-28 does Jacob’s name change to Israel, but then not used in full force until Gen 35?

How does the Book of Revelation relate to cosmology?

In today’s First Reading (Gen 1:26), God uses “we” and “us” in the creation of man. Who is this referring to?

Jimmy Akin answers key Catholic questions on Jewish forgiveness without the Temple, King Solomon’s salvation, Jacob’s name change, Revelation’s link to cosmology, Jesus’ identity, demons recognizing Christ, and the Apocrypha’s role in reading and study.