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What ACTUALLY happens during a Conclave? (How to Become Pope)

Did Science Kill the Biblical Worldview?
Astrophysicist (not historian) Neil deGrasse Tyson gives a little history lesson about how science forced Christians to give up the biblical worldview. Is this real history, or did he make it up? We asked Jimmy Akin to give us a take.

Was Genesis Re-interpreted After Scientific Discoveries?

Transcript:
Host: We go to Tom in Los Angeles, California listening on the mighty 930 AM Immaculate Heart Radio. Tom, you are on with Trent Horn, what&#8217;s your question?
Caller: Yeah, I&#8217;ll try to be succinct, and I hope you&#8217;ll let me finish before you answer. I appreciate, you guys are extremely wise. I have a problem with the institution of the Catholic Church being intertwined with government politics, and I think that, you know, God set up His Church, and God set up governments, and the role in my view, of what is my understanding, is that God set up governments for one purpose: To dole out justice. And, you know, and then the Church is a separate entity, it&#8217;s His body of Christ, okay.
Now, you&#8217;re talking a lot about immigration. It&#8217;s a classic situation where I think the Catholic institution has really let God down. Because I&#8217;m not talking about legal immigration, I&#8217;m not talking about people who are here, as, you know, because they&#8217;re fleeing war, I&#8217;m not talking about&#8211;and I&#8217;m for immigration, I&#8217;m for NEAT immigration. What I&#8217;m not for, and what I think God is not for, is illegal immigration, because illegal immigrants are here, and what they&#8217;re doing is it&#8217;s a form of theft.
Trent: Okay Tom, hang on, just a quick sec, I really tried to let you finish because you asked me to let you finish, but it seems like the point is, you&#8217;re objecting to the Catholic Church being so connected to politics. Is that about right, Tom?
Caller: Yeah, and, well, with the illegal immigrants, like I went to the Catholic Church Sanctuary in East LA and there&#8217;s prayers, they were asking Trump to do the right thing and let the government&#8211;because there&#8217;s a lot of the illegal immigrants in that particular Church&#8211;
Host: All right, hang on Tom, let&#8217;s let Trent give it a shot.
Trent: Yeah Tom, we&#8217;ve gone over the issue of immigration, I think, to its satisfaction, throughout this hour, so I don&#8217;t want to belabor the point more, that the Church teaches that nations have a right to control and protect their borders and they also have a right to care for migrants as best that they can. And so you&#8217;re correct, illegal immigration is a crime, and that crime needs to be managed in a way that respects the dignity of the person and the common good of society. I don&#8217;t think anyone disagrees with that.
But your point, though, about, &#8220;Well, the Church is too intertwined in politics,&#8221; that the state exists to dole out justice, and the Church does its thing apart from that, I don&#8217;t think that means that the Church has no involvement with the state whatsoever, and here&#8217;s my question: If the state is doing something unjust, should the Church do something about that?
Caller: Yes.
Trent: Okay, we have common ground there, great.
Caller: And also&#8211;but the problem is, the Catholic Church, to me in my mind, is bigger than the government, and I think that when people are praying the rosary or praying to Mary to let the government do the right thing, I think what the priest should be saying in the prayer should be, &#8220;God, Mary, please,&#8221; you know, &#8220;forgive me for doing something illegal, and let me have the strength to go back and do things right, because I am taking money, and I&#8217;m taking resources from so many, we&#8217;ve got&#8211;&#8221;
Host: Okay, you gotta let Trent address it.
Trent: Yeah let&#8217;s&#8230;okay. I think what I&#8217;ve been hearing a lot in the in the calls this hour is an interesting animus towards those who have immigrated illegally to our country. And I certainly understand the hardship that many people face in that regard, the example of ranchers who suffer violence or damage to their lands. Obviously those things would be wrong, and breaking a country&#8217;s laws, there should be consequences for that, I certainly agree. But&#8230;well, one, hearing that, another&#8211;and once again, if someone wants to correct me later, that&#8217;s fine&#8211;my understanding is that that immigrants actually pay, they still pay a fair share of taxes back in to the countries where they work, providing for their economies through things like sales tax, other things like this, and don&#8217;t collect certain government benefits because of that.
But that&#8217;s a separate issue. That&#8217;s a separate issue. It seems to me that what I&#8217;m hearing from the callers is, &#8220;Well if the Church was really Christian, it would tell immigrants to immediately self-deport, or encourage their deportation.&#8221; And that&#8217;s not a teaching of the Church. That&#8217;s up to people to discuss and dialogue about whether that is the most prudent solution for those who exist, you know, those who live illegally in a certain country. That is one solution, but it&#8217;s quite forceful to say, &#8220;Well, if you were truly Christian, you would promote that solution.&#8221; Well, you know, when I look at Jesus in the Gospels, and the love he calls us for others, you know, I don&#8217;t see that. What I see is the understanding of what St. Paul says in Galatians 3:28, is that in Christ there&#8217;s neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, neither male and female, we&#8217;re one in Christ Jesus.
And so what we have to understand, then, is to to respect the dignity of other people, not to infringe on our property rights, not to flagrantly violate the sovereignty of different nations; but at the same time, to simply label a group of people as just, you know, &#8220;ne&#8217;er-do-wells,&#8221; as just a scourge, and to remove them will solve our problems&#8211;I&#8217;m very skeptical of that approach as well.
But once again, that doesn&#8217;t go back to the main teaching of the Church, which I&#8217;ve reiterated several times in this broadcast. These are issues of reasonable disagreement about immigration policy Catholics can have and do have, and we should continue to have that dialogue, but let&#8217;s let&#8217;s not cut it short by saying, &#8220;Well, my way on this prudential judgment is the Catholic way, and that&#8217;s it.&#8221; Sorry, the Church gives us these general principles on issues like immigration, then we have to do the hard work of seeing how they apply, and respect the dignity of all people, regardless, as I said before, of their legal or residential status.

Is the Catholic Church too Connected to Politics?

More Proof that the Early Church was Catholic

Did Bad Popes Break the Line of Apostolic Succession?

What is religious freedom? Did the Church err about religious freedom at Vatican II? Michael Lofton from &#8220;Reason and Theology&#8221; tackles one of the great controversies of the council.

The Controversies Around Religious Freedom

Men and Women are Different (And That’s A Good Thing)

What do we get wrong about reaching teens?

I teach catechism. What resources do you recommend implementing those principles?

I’m a catechist. The teens don’t even want to talk. How do you even start to engage them?

How do you capture the kids younger since in their teen years, we’ve already lost them?

I made my students feel like this was their program, their opportunity. What are your thoughts on that approach?

How do you talk about prayer to teens?

What things can you do to keep your young adult kids engaged when they come home from Catholic university?

&#8220;How do we engage teens in faith and Eucharistic adoration?&#8221; This episode explores effective strategies for connecting with young people, addressing common misconceptions about reaching teens, and discussing the biblical foundations of Eucharistic adoration. Additionally, we delve into resources for catechists and ways to foster meaningful conversations about prayer with teens.
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How Do We Engage Teens in Faith?

Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin joins host Cy Kellett to respond to a thoughtful caller’s question: Can someone really speak in the tongues of angels? And what does the Catholic Church actually teach about the gift of tongues? Jimmy explains the biblical context of speaking in tongues, clarifies the difference between real human languages and “angelic speech,” and affirms that Catholics are free to hold differing views.
Transcript:
Cy: What&#8217;s the Catholic position on the gift of tongues? Does it have to include unintelligible sounds, just real languages, or are Catholics free to have different opinions on this?
Jimmy: Catholics are free to have different opinions on this. There is no single Catholic teaching on this. And you will find Catholics who do have different opinions on this, if you&#8217;re interested.
For what it&#8217;s worth, my opinion is that the phenomena spoken of in the Bible that are regarded, that are called speaking in tongues, both in the Book of Acts and in Paul&#8217;s writings, especially First Corinthians, are languages that are not naturally known by the person who speaks them, and they are normal human languages.
There are other proposals that have been made, like these are maybe the tongues of angels, and Paul does in First Corinthians 13 refer to the tongues of angels. But I think that that&#8217;s not to be taken literally. He&#8217;s using that as kind of hyperbolic case. Like, even if I were to speak in the tongues of angels, he&#8217;s not. And so that&#8217;s not typical of what&#8217;s happening.
Furthermore, I don&#8217;t think angels have literal languages because they don&#8217;t have bodies. So they certainly don&#8217;t have the physical organ of a tongue. And they correspondingly would not have the concept of language the way we have it, which is where you take your thought, which is at the base level, expressed in what sometimes referred to as mentalese, and then you turn that.
For most people, it happens so naturally, you&#8217;re not even aware of the mentalese behind the linguistic expression. Like, if I have the thought, &#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s cold in here,&#8221; that comes to me as phenomenologically, or what it&#8217;s like to have that experience, it comes to me prepackaged in words. But really there is a mental articulation of it that is prior to words.
I have seen examples of that, typically in situations where I don&#8217;t have time to express something in words. Like I remember driving down a curvy hill, you know, with these switchbacks and stuff, some years ago, and the vehicle I was driving suddenly started to slide because of rocks on the road. I could see, you know, the next turn coming up and what I needed to do, and I didn&#8217;t have time to articulate it in words, but in mentalese, I knew exactly what I needed to do.
So there are situations where you can become aware of your own ment. But normally it&#8217;s so bound up in our language that when we think to ourselves, if we have an internal monologue, which most people do, then we don&#8217;t really distinguish them. But with angels, since they don&#8217;t have physical bodies, they&#8217;re gonna think in mentalese and they&#8217;re gonna be telepathic creatures that communicate in mentalese. So they&#8217;re not gonna need languages the way we have them.
So I think both because Paul is being hyperbolic and because angels don&#8217;t really have languages, certainly not ones that humans could pronounce, I don&#8217;t think that tongues of angels is a good explanation of what&#8217;s going on in the Bible.
Other people have tried to propose that this is a miracle of hearing because they&#8217;ll say in Acts, when the apostles start speaking in tongues, you have this multi-ethnic crowd. And they say, &#8220;Aren&#8217;t we hearing them all in our own languages?&#8221; And they think, &#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s a miracle of hearing.&#8221; You know, it&#8217;s like you, whatever language they&#8217;re speaking, you hear it in your own language.
But that doesn&#8217;t really fit the text. That&#8217;s bad exegesis, to use a term we defined a little bit earlier. The crowd is speaking in the mode of a Greek chorus, where Luke presents the crowd as having one unified voice, as if they&#8217;re one character and they&#8217;re all saying the same words together.
&#8220;Are we not Cretans and Libyans and visitors from Rome, both Jewish and Greek?&#8221; You know, this is not what they were literally saying. It was a crowd of people; they weren&#8217;t all saying the same thing. And Luke is just summarizing their experience. Their experience is they did hear these Galileans speaking in their own languages.
And that&#8217;s what this is. This is Galileans speaking in languages they did not naturally know. And that also fits the same. That&#8217;s the best fit for the data in the Bible. So I&#8217;m convinced that what is happening in biblical tongues is you&#8217;re speaking a language that you don&#8217;t naturally know and you don&#8217;t even know what you&#8217;re saying.
That&#8217;s why Paul says in First Corinthians that you may need to pray for the gift of interpretation to be able to understand what you&#8217;re saying.
Now there are a couple of terms that get used for this sometimes. The two terms are glossolalia and xenoglossy. In Greek, glossa means tongue. And so it can either be the tongue in your mouth or it can be the language you&#8217;re speaking. Glossolalia means speaking in tongues, where by its etymology, whereas xeno means foreign, and so xenoglossy is speaking a foreign language.
The way these two terms have evolved, sometimes any kind of speaking in tongues is called glossolalia, and it would include the kind of tongues I&#8217;ve been talking about. But other times, people distinguish these two and they&#8217;ll say, okay, glossolalia is what happens when someone is not speaking a real human language that they just don&#8217;t know, whereas xenoglossy is speaking a real human language that they don&#8217;t naturally know.
And so you may encounter those two terms, and sometimes they&#8217;re used in ways that distinguish them.
What about the kind of speaking in tongues that goes on today? Well, there are reports of people speaking in foreign languages, and some of these are well grounded. You know, where you have a native speaker of whatever language is being spoken, and they can identify the language and translate what was being said. So there are reliable reports of glossolalia occurring.
Most of the time, though, I don&#8217;t think that a lot of it is real human languages. It&#8217;s something else. And so the question could be, what else is it? I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s languages of angels, because I don&#8217;t think angels really have languages, certainly not ones we could pronounce.
So one possibility is that it is someone doing what they think is speaking another language as a kind of private prayer language. That&#8217;s a proposal that&#8217;s often made in some Pentecostal and Charismatic circles, that it&#8217;s not a real language that anybody uses, but it&#8217;s sort of a private prayer language for you, that the Holy Spirit is. You&#8217;re having a spiritual experience and this private prayer language comes out, and that&#8217;s what speaking in tongues is.
Well, I wouldn&#8217;t say that&#8217;s what tongues is in the Bible, of course.
Another possibility that a skeptic would propose is that you&#8217;re just babbling and it doesn&#8217;t really have any meaning at all. I tend not to take a hard position either way. A few years ago, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, as it&#8217;s now called, put out a document on charismatic gifts called *Juvenesque Ecclesia*.
In this document, it pointed out that none of the lists of spiritual gifts in the New Testament are exhaustive and that God can give new spiritual gifts to people at different periods in church history. So it&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s a single list, and this is all God gives and all he&#8217;s ever going to give.
So I don&#8217;t preclude the possibility that God could have someone speaking in a private prayer language today. I would say that&#8217;s different than the biblical understanding of tongues. So it would be a different kind of tongues, but I don&#8217;t rule it out.
On the other hand, I also don&#8217;t rule out the skeptical position that in some cases nothing supernatural is going on here and the person is just generating speech content that sounds like what they&#8217;ve seen other people do when they are speaking in tongues, but that they&#8217;re not. Actually, nothing supernatural is happening here.
So I leave that question open. What I can say with confidence is that the best fit for the biblical understanding of speaking in tongues is it&#8217;s a real human language that you don&#8217;t naturally know. But I don&#8217;t rule out other understandings of tongues that could be active today. But that&#8217;s just my opinion.
Cy: Magic Carp, thank you very much. That&#8217;ll take us to the break. We&#8217;ll be right back with more Jimmy Akin Ask Me Anything Internet questions right after this on Catholic Answers Live!

Can Catholics Speak in “Tongues of Angels”?

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There is so much more to Matthew 16 than finding out who the "rock" is!

Some Catholics, especially parents of young children, find <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-go-to-mass">Sunday Mass</a> attendance difficult. As a parent of young children, I get it.
But despite our parental hardships, we recognize that we have a moral duty to be there. The Catholic Church reflects this obligation in its Code of Canon Law: “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass” (1247). The Sunday liturgy is mandatory, like showing up for work—and, just as skipping work can have serious consequences, so can skipping church. In fact, it is a mortal sin to miss Sunday Mass without good reason. For a Catholic, then, whether or not to attend on Sunday is no small decision.
But is the “Sunday obligation” too strict of an expectation upon Catholics?
<h2>Moral laws are like signposts</h2>
Moral laws are like signposts: they properly orient us, and once we have been properly oriented, we cease to notice them. The first time I traveled to Calgary, I needed to follow the signs; they told me where to go and thus imposed a direction upon me. That was a long time ago. Years later, I know how to get there without the aid of signs. I have been properly oriented. The signs are still there—they still hold their objective force—but I no longer notice them. They are unimposing.
Likewise, the Sunday obligation helps to orient us spiritually. It can be easy to forget that Sunday marks the beginning of our week, not the end. In a sense, the Sunday Mass prepares us for the days ahead and sets the spiritual tone for the week, filling us with God’s word and grace so we might glorify the Lord with our lives. By starting our week with the Sunday liturgy, we publicly profess with our whole being that we are sons and daughters of God and members of his Church. We are God’s first. Without him we are nothing.
That is why Jesus can say, “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37). Furthermore, the first and greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:38). Our unique love for God (and his for us!) is specially consummated when we receive the Eucharist at Mass.
A Catholic is permitted to be absent from Sunday Mass in light of serious circumstances such as illness. But it is not licit to skip for trivial reasons. We might be tempted to do this, nonetheless, because Mass is not always an engaging way to spend Sunday morning. Many of us lead dynamic lives. We are used to the continual stimulation of caffeine and conversation. We are not used to the slowness or the silence of the liturgy. We are not used to the language of the Bible readings and the prayers. Even for a devout Catholic, it can be difficult to slow down and settle into a day of rest—and especially into a solemn hour of prayer and worship.
We can’t grasp the intrinsic value of the Mass until we understand that its aim is not to stimulate like a form of entertainment; its aim is to sanctify. Although the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life” according to the Catechism, it is not uncommon for a Catholic—through no fault of his own—to feel almost nothing when he receives it (1324). Since the grace received in the Eucharist is not a physical or emotional sensation, but a spiritual reality, it tends to leave the senses unmoved. For this reason, a Catholic’s experience of Sunday Mass can be deceptively dry and may leave him feeling as if nothing special has gone on at all. This does not necessarily reflect a defect in the liturgy or the believer. Rather, it moves the Catholic to a deeper mental conviction of things not seen: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29).
The Mass presents an essential challenge to Catholics—in its slow and leisurely rhythm, in its moments of deep silence, in its demands of faith. Two grave dangers to the human soul are a lack of contemplation and lack of love. A human being cannot have enduring happiness without these two things. The Mass fosters both.
<h2>To remember the Sabbath and keep it holy was not optional for the first-century Jew.</h2>
To remember the Sabbath and keep it holy was not optional for the first-century Jew. To fail to do so was a violation of the third commandment and a grave sin (Num. 15:32-36). Christians replaced the Sabbath, the last day of the week, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/should-christians-keep-the-sabbath-or-celebrate-the-lords-day">with a new day of rest that they called the Lord’s Day</a>, the first day of the week. The essential moral prescription of the third commandment nonetheless remained: man ought to set apart a full day each week for rest and worship. “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them,” Jesus said (Matt. 5:17).
Why Sunday? We are told in the Gospels that Jesus rose from the dead “on the first day of the week” (Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1), and ever since the time of the apostles Christians have congregated on Sunday to worship God and receive the Eucharist together as one body in Christ (Acts 20:7). To compound this, it is primarily in the act of receiving the Sunday Eucharist—the real body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ—that the members of the Church unite themselves to their Lord and one another. Hence, St. Paul writes, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17).
Every Sunday, “the whole Christ” is reunited in and through the Holy Eucharist. Moreover, our choice to participate is salvific: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Theologian Colin Donovan reminds us that “in the Mass it is Christ himself who worships the Father, joining our worship to his. In no other way is it possible to adequately give thanks (eucharistia) to God . . . than by uniting our offerings to that of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-the-eucharist-is-the-source-and-summit-of-christianity" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Jesus Christ</a> himself.” Christ does with us in the Mass what we cannot do alone: make a perfect offering to the Father.
The key to understanding why <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/catholic-answers-guide-for-getting-to-mass" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Catholics must attend Sunday Mass</a> lies above all in the essence of the Mass itself. Our duty to be willing participants is not rooted in how it makes us feel, but in what it is. As the sacred meeting place of God and man, the Mass reorients our lives towards God, reunites us with him in love, and thereby communicates the grace of salvation to our souls. In the long run, there can be nothing more productive than that.

Even in Summer, You Must Go to Sunday Mass

How do I approach discussing IVF with couples who are infertile?

How much weight does a Catholic politician like J.D. Vance have on topics like IVF?

Are we aware of CRISPR technology? What does the Church say about this?

Is it morally permissible for couples to adopt abandoned embryos?

How do we as individuals who’ve been through IVF deal with the damage and advise others?

Are there resources that help infertile couples understand the Church’s position on IVF?

Fr. Tad Pacholozcyk dives into complex ethical and moral questions surrounding IVF, infertility, and bioethics. He discusses how to approach conversations about IVF with struggling couples, the Church’s stance on embryo adoption, and the moral implications of CRISPR technology. Tim also examines the influence of Catholic politicians on these issues and guides those who have undergone IVF and are seeking healing. Plus, discover resources to help infertile couples understand the Church’s teachings. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion!

Is IVF an Option for Couples Struggling with Infertility?

Is 2 Tim 1:12-14 linked to sensus fidelium?

Is the Archangel Gabriel, Mary’s guardian angel?

How should we understand doing works of mercy and how it relates to the final judgment?

I’m reading a book on purgatory and saw the phrase imputed righteousness of Christ. What does that mean?

What are your thoughts on the claim that Jesus was a master hypnotist and trained his apostles?

Am I allowed to genuflect after communion?

Many hear the phrase &#8220;imputed righteousness&#8221; and think it&#8217;s a Catholic belief—but is it? We explain how Catholicism differs from Protestant views on righteousness, justification, and purgatory.
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What Does ‘Imputed Righteousness of Christ’ Mean in Catholic Teaching?

In this episode, Trent shares a version of his opening statement with Pearl Davis in their debate on the question, &#8220;Is Marriage Bad for Men?&#8221;
Transcription:
The following is adapted from my opening statement in my debate with Pearl Davis.
A lot of people in the so-called Red-pill community claim that marriage is a bad deal for men. They use false statistics and fallacious arguments to get men to reject marriage, but in today’s episode I’m going to show what’s wrong with their case. Usually it boils down to one of the following fallacies or errors in reasoning.
First, there is the wrong target fallacy. This happens when a critic focuses on a bad thing related to marriage but concludes this proves that only marriage is bad. For example, anti-marriage advocates often talk about how marriage is a bad deal because men are sometimes mistreated in child custody cases. But that’s not unique to marriage. If you cohabit or even just hookup with a woman you can still father a child and deal with custody issues. However, marriage makes a man the presumed father of the child with natural rights unmarried fathers don’t have, even though unmarried fathers can still be liable to pay child support. The children of unmarried men are 10 times more likely to be aborted. If the child does survive the pregnancy, he is 3-6 times more likely to live in poverty.
Another wrong target is women themselves. Marriage skeptics say it is a bad deal for men because modern women are worse than previous generations of women. They say there just aren’t any women worth marrying. But this argument says nothing about the goodness or badness of marriage.
For many red-pillers, women are good enough for hookups that can result in child custody issues or cohabiting relationships that superficially feel like marriage but are far more likely to fail. But for some reason women aren’t good enough for marriage which, as we will see, benefits men more than hookups and cohabiting.
Also, if there aren’t any good women, then that means there aren’t any good men either because men can’t meet the red pill standards either. Modern men are just as promiscuous and even more overweight than modern women. A 2019 Experian study found that men carry more credit, auto, and mortgage debt than women. Millennial and Gen Z men have weaker grip strength and make less money than older men did at their age.
These critics haven’t shown women are not good enough for men. Instead, the data shows men and women are both in bad shape compared to older generations. But there’s hope! Marriage is the best way for men and women to mature together and bring out the best in one another.
Second, red pillers often rely on the anecdote fallacy. But one sad story about a marriage doesn’t show marriage itself is bad because for every sad story there are statistically 2-3 stories of happy marriages. And there are many stories about sad, sick, lonely men who never marry.
Even marriage skeptics in academia will only argue that, at best, that marriage doesn’t increase happiness. But even they agree that men who marry are better off concerning health, wealth, and happiness than men who never marry.
Third, there’s the comparison fallacy. For example, Pearl Davis says just as you wouldn’t fly on a plane that has a 5% chance of crashing, you shouldn’t get married even if it has similar low odds of divorcing. But you can’t focus on the worst outcomes of one choice while ignoring the worst outcomes of the only other choice. That’s the comparison fallacy. It’s like someone who thinks driving is safer than flying because he only reads a bunch of stories about plane crashes and never thinks about car crashes. Of course, flying is far safer than driving and marriage is less risky than non-marriage.
You can’t compare the best outcomes of non-marriage to the worst outcomes of marriage. You have to compare the typical outcomes in each case, be it flying and driving or marriage and non-marriage. And anti-marriage advocates exaggerate the harms of marriage.
According to the National Center for Family &amp; Marriage Research, the median length of all marriages is not 7-8 years, which is the length of marriages that end in divorce, not all marriages. The median for all marriages is 21 years.
And the divorce rate is closer to 35% not 50%. 50% was a future projection from the 80’s that has since been falsified. In fact, we are now seeing the lowest divorce rates since 1970, about 14 divorces per 1000 married women. For weekly church goers the divorce rate is half the average rate.
Also, just because 35% of marriages end in divorce, that doesn’t mean you have a 1 in 3 chance of absolute misery. Divorce sucks, but people typically survive it intact. In fact, men do better than women after divorce. Men’s income increases by 20% while women are twice as likely to fall into poverty. Alimony is only paid out in less than 10 percent of divorces and, according to the U.S. Census, the average child support payment is $441 dollars a month, of which only 60% usually ends up getting paid. Saying marriage is an arrangement where women are “paid to leave” only reveals a person’s ignorance of child and maternal poverty.
Moreover, women do not get child custody 90% of the time. 95% of custody cases are mutually agreed upon outside the courtroom. Women get full custody 40% of the time, men get full custody 20% of the time, and shared custody makes up the remaining 40%. Women usually get full custody because men don’t ask for it. In a Massachusetts study of 24,000 divorces only 8 percent of men sought custody and 94% of them got full or partial custody.
Finally, a 2006 study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showed that while divorced men were 27% more likely to die prematurely, 58% of never married men were more likely to die early.
Never married men risk growing older and having few or no social connections. Yes, there are stories of messy divorces but my wife who was a registered nurse can tell you horror stories of men dying alone in the hospital spending every day by themselves staring at the same blotch on the ceiling because they had no one to ever come and visit them.
Now, some men desire marriage and are unable to find a wife, which is tragic. But rejecting marriage out of fear is like the person who refuses to go to the hospital because he worries about medical errors but doesn’t think about people dying at home from easily treatable illnesses.
This doesn’t mean every married man will be happy or that every man who doesn’t marry will be miserable. We are talking about the average results of both groups and, on average, married men fare better.
65% of divorced men get remarried. 93% of men say they would marry their spouse again if they could do marriage over. If anti-marriages advocates are right that marriage is a “death sentence” for men, then why do most men voluntarily go back to the death row after they are “released.” i.e. divorced.
The answer is that these men correctly identify what red pillers fail to grasp: marriage isn’t bad for men. In fact, marriage is good for men. No wonder God told Adam in the book of Genesis, it is not good for the man to be alone, and so he made Eve to remedy this problem.
To make it clear: it&#8217;s a lie half of all marriages end in divorce. The truth is that most marriages last a lifetime and 80% to 90% of them identify as happy.
A Gallup survey conducted between 2008 and 2020 of 2.5 million adults showed that married people rate their well-being 12-17 points higher than unmarried people. The General Social Survey from the University of Chicago also shows that married men are twice likely to rate their lives as very happy when compared to non-married men. Married men also make 10% to 20% more money per hour, and have more sex than never married men.. Studies also show that even men who end up divorced live longer, are economically better off, and are just as or even happier than never married men.
Now, marriage skeptics might say these studies only prove that happier, richer men get married and unhappy, poor men don’t get married. But, when you look at the typical married man, he isn’t a 6’2” rich chad. More importantly, if a man chooses to marry then he needs to become marriageable, which involves developing positive traits that make him desirable to women and at the same time improve his own self-esteem and happiness.
But I’m not arguing that marriage makes men happy. I’m arguing against the red pill claim that marriage is bad deal for men, or that it’s likely to make them unhappy. That’s simply not true. In fact, marriage is the best way for men to not just hang on to happiness, but to increase it. The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which tracked people for 80 years, said good relationships were the number one predictor of happiness and it showed that men who married ended up happier and lived 7-17 years longer than men who never married.
When I was unmarried, like many unmarried men, I was content thinking two folding chairs and a TV on the ground were sufficient living room furniture. But after you get married, your wife helps you see how much better life can be. You have a desire to provide the best life you can for your wife and children. And you have someone in your corner to root for you even when things get tough. A 2013 Harvard study showed that married men are less likely to get cancer and are even more likely to survive cancer.
Never married men, however, are more likely to not build up for their futures. This leads to a greater chance of living in poverty and suffering premature deaths from suicide, drug overdoses, or just unhealthy lifestyles.
To summarize. Pointing out flaws in women doesn’t prove marriage is bad, because men have those same flaws and marriage is the best way to grow out of those flaws. Telling a sad story about a married man doesn’t prove marriage is bad for all men. Looking only at the risks of marriage doesn’t prove marriage is bad because you have to compare those risks, especially low-risk marriages, to the greater risks of not marrying. And if you do choose to have sex, you face far worse risks than married men.
I am not saying every man needs to get married. My boss likes to say “Man was meant to live in the context of a vow.” Maybe you are called to the priesthood, religious life, or you can make a private vow to use your life to serve others, like Batman.
But we call those things sacrifices because they involve giving up the great good of marriage. If you are a man considering marriage, carefully discern if you should marry the woman you love, but don’t give into hopeless fear.
As a man you weren’t made to live in fear. You were made to cross oceans in small wooden ships. You were made to stare down an invading army and fight until you’re the last man standing. You were made for greatness, not sitting around all day watching cynical YouTube videos and complaining about women.
God invented marriage and gave it to the human race so we would be fruitful and multiply. And Christ raised marriage to a sacrament. And the data is clear from hundreds of thousands of men, that marriage is the primary engine that helps them live a long, healthy, happy life.
Thank you guys so much for watching, if you’d like to learn more check out Brian Wilcox’s book get Married and my debate with Pearl Davis on Pints with Aquinas, also don’t forget to like this video and subscribe to get more great content.

“Marriage is Bad for Men” (REBUTTED)

I don’t find enough evidence for the filioque.

How can the HS proceed from either the Father or the Son and still be co-eternal?

Do we have a burden to correct the wrong even after confession?

Would like some clarification on the sinlessness of Mary?

Is confessing a venial sin displaying a lack of confidence in God being able to forgive sins through other means, like attending mass?

How objective can sins of fornication, birth control, or homosexuality be since many Catholics don’t believe them to be sins. (Full knowledge seems to be a requirement for sin)

How can we defend clerical celibacy? (Is Corinthian the best source)

The creed says Jesus went to hell for three days before entering heaven but scripture says that Jesus told the good thief he will be with Him in paradise that day. It seems like a contradiction?

In this Catholic Answers Live episode, Karlo Broussard tackles challenging theological and moral questions, including the biblical basis for the Filioque and how the Holy Spirit can proceed from the Father and the Son while remaining co-eternal. He also explains Catholic teaching on confession, whether venial sins should be confessed, and our responsibility to correct wrongdoing after reconciliation. The discussion continues with clarity on Mary’s sinlessness, how mortal sin is determined in debates over sexuality and moral issues, how to defend clerical celibacy, and how to reconcile the Creed’s statement that Christ “descended to hell” with Jesus’ promise to the good thief.
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Making Sense of the Filioque | AMA: Dropped Calls

In this episode, Trent answers a wide variety of questions from his patrons.

Am I a Novus Ordo Hypocrite? (Patron Q+A)

In this episode Trent examines the strangest theories about Jesus from modern academics and authors that have been featured in popular media.
<ul>
<li>00:00 &#8211; Intro</li>
<li>02:47 &#8211; Globetrotting Guru</li>
<li>06:07 &#8211; Married Dynastic Jesus</li>
<li>13:48 &#8211; Caesar-approved Jesus</li>
<li>18:12 &#8211; Fakes His Own Death</li>
<li>21:19 &#8211; Jesus Was a Mushroom</li>
</ul>

5 Wacky, Modern Theories About Jesus

In this episode Trent discusses some unusual and ironic punishments found in Greek mythology.

FFAF: Ironic Punishments in Greek Mythology

How does someone with addiction come back to Church?

I have a sponsor who thinks I’m going to Church too much and not enough to attend meetings. What is your advice?

I have a brother in recovery. Is the 12-step program a substitute for Catholicism?

How common are compulsions in alcoholism? Can they eventually become an OCD problem?

Why do AA meetings refer to God as high power?

How do you stay sober?

I’ve been to CIR meetings, I love the fact that it is Catholic!

What’s your opinion on Anne Grace and the help she offers?

I’m a recovering addict and am Catholic. What ways do you think we can build our community back in 12-step programs?

Have you read Fulton Sheen’s description of alcoholism?

&#8220;How can I return to the Church?&#8221; This question is central for many facing addiction and recovery. In this episode, we also address concerns about balancing church attendance with recovery meetings, the role of the 12-step program in relation to Catholicism, and the nature of compulsions in alcoholism.
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How Can I Return to The Church? Addiction and Recovery AMA

In this episode Trent sits down with Armenian Christian Simone Rizkallah to discuss the past and current Genocide of Armenian Christians and what we can do to help stop this tragedy.

The Forgotten Christian Genocide

In this debate Jay Dyer defends the claim that Christians should abandon natural theology and Trent Horn critiques that claim.

DEBATE: Should Christians Reject Natural Theology? (with Jay Dyer)

On this encore special Holy Thursday episode of Catholic Answers Live, Cy Kellett sits down with apologist Joe Heschmeyer to explore the profound meaning of the Last Supper. Why did Jesus institute the Eucharist and the priesthood on this night? How does the Gospel of John’s account—focused on the washing of the feet—fit with the synoptic Gospels’ focus on the bread and wine?
Joe connects the dots between the Passover sacrifice, Christ’s role as the Paschal Lamb, and the liturgical richness of the early Church. You’ll also learn why Holy Thursday marks the beginning of the Church’s most sacred three-day liturgy—and how Catholics today are called to enter into this mystery.
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>

What Happened on Holy Thursday? The Last Supper and the Priesthood

St. Josephine Bakhita | Patroness of human trafficking victims

Is it appropriate for a Catholic to attend 12-step recovery programs?

Compared to the early Church and the saints, have modern Catholics lost some of their spiritual fervor?

Are laypeople supposed to raise their hands during the Our Father at Mass? Is there a resource that explains what’s appropriate for the laity?

The Book of Jubilees says Adam was buried next to his son and had a proper funeral. How does this relate to the tradition that Adam’s skull is buried under Calvary?

Can Catholics attend 12-step recovery programs? Are we less spiritually zealous today than the early Church? What’s the proper posture for laity during the Our Father at Mass? And how do ancient texts like the Book of Jubilees align with Catholic tradition on Adam’s burial? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, we dive into these thoughtful questions from listeners across the country. Discover what the Church teaches about appropriate behavior during Mass, explore how Catholic spirituality has changed over time, and examine intriguing connections between biblical traditions and apocryphal writings.
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From the Early Church to Calvary: Catholic Insights on Worship, Recovery, and Scripture

In the wake of the first (human) sin of Adam and Eve, God spoke directly to our original parents and indirectly to all mankind concerning some of the far-reaching consequences of that sin: physical death and disorder would be the lot of all mankind until the end of time. Indeed, in some sense, all of creation was changed for the worse as a result of this cataclysmic sin. But for our purpose, we want to focus on Genesis 3:16 and one particular effect of original sin:
<blockquote>To the woman [the Lord God] said, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.”</blockquote>
Scripture teaches that as a result of original sin, God would “greatly multiply” the pains of labor not only for Eve, but for all women. Many Fathers of the Church and theologians down through the centuries deemed it fitting that Mary alone would be exempt from such pains as a sign of her unique holiness. Thus, Mary’s freedom from the pains of labor is one of many reasons for <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/did-our-blessed-mother-suffer-labor-pains">belief in her immaculate conception</a>.
The Church has taught this as well on the level of the ordinary Magisterium, though not with the same degree of authority with which it has taught that Mary remained an “intact” virgin in giving birth to Jesus. However, we should note the fact that it has been taught on the level of the ordinary Magisterium and that it was taught by many Fathers of the Church. This is significant.
Although there is certainly no argument from necessity here, and this teaching is a matter of legitimate debate in the Church today, I argue it to be most fitting as a sign of hope for the entire body of Christ. All can see in this unique gift to Mary a sign of the ultimate deliverance from all bodily pain and suffering that awaits the Church through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Mary we see the fullness of the grace of Easter incarnated in a human person. Analogous to God preserving Mary in virginal integrity in giving birth to our Lord, his preserving her from the pains of delivery demonstrates in a more profound way the truth of the Immaculate Conception and the saving power of Christ in preserving her from this effect of original sin.
Moreover, when we consider Mary in one of her many titles demonstrating her sinlessness—“the beginning of the new creation”—how fitting indeed it is that the “new creation” would be inaugurated without the pains of childbirth, one of the principal effects of sin in the first creation.
More to the point, what evidence do we have for this belief? We can examine it from two sources: Scripture and the teaching of the Catholic Church as it is communicated to the faithful through both magisterial teaching and in the liturgy.
Let&#8217;s look at Sacred Scripture first. In a chapter laden with references to the coming of the New Covenant, or “the new heavens and the new earth,” as we see in Isaiah 66:22—a text referenced in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/the-woman-in-revelation-and-the-pangs-of-childbirth">Revelation</a> 21:1—we find this startling prophecy:
<blockquote>Listen, an uproar from the city! A voice from the temple! The voice of the Lord, rendering recompense to his enemies! Before she was in labor she gave birth; before her pain came upon her she was delivered of a son. Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things?</blockquote>
Not only do we find many of the Fathers of the Church referencing this text as referring to the miraculous birthing of Christ, but we find it difficult to apply it in its fullest sense to anything else.
Then there&#8217;s Luke 2:7: &#8220;And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.&#8221;
Some critics will say the fact that Mary “brought forth” Jesus would mean she experienced labor pains. Not necessarily. The teaching that claims that Mary was freed from labor pains would agree Mary brought forth Jesus, but miraculously aided by God. There would be no reason not to use the language of Mary having brought forth Jesus.
According to St. Thomas Aquinas (who references St. Jerome), Mary being depicted as “wrapping” and then “laying” Christ in a manger is an indicator that she did not endure the normal pains of labor. Even in our day, doctors or nurses would do this kind of work. In the first century, it would be a midwife. Yet the Bible seems to indicate that Mary did this by herself.
Now let&#8217;s examine the Church&#8217;s magisterial teaching. Though this teaching has never been the object of a formal definition of the Church and therefore is not infallible, the Catechism of the Council of Trent gives perhaps the clearest example of the general understanding of the Church through centuries past:
<blockquote>But as the conception itself transcends the order of nature, so also the birth of our Lord . . . just as the rays of the sun penetrate without breaking or injuring in the least the solid substance of glass, so after a like but more exalted manner did Jesus Christ come forth from his mother’s womb without injury to her maternal virginity.</blockquote>
<blockquote>From Eve we are born children of wrath; from Mary we have received Jesus Christ. . . . To Eve it was said: In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Mary was exempt from this law, for preserving her virginal integrity inviolate she brought forth Jesus . . . without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of pain.</blockquote>
It seems fitting: Eve’s sin is causally linked to labor pain. The New Eve was uniquely free from the sin of Eve and did not experience that pain. Indeed, I argue that it would seem contrary to our sense of Jesus and Mary as the “New Adam” and the “New Eve.” And, as I said above, it would not seem right to inaugurate this great and glorious New Covenant by experiencing pains that were the result of failure in the Old.
Pope Alexander III (1169) wrote:
<blockquote>[Mary,] indeed conceived without shame, gave birth without pain, and went hence without corruption, according to the word of the angel, or rather [the word] of God through the angel, so that she should be proved to be full, not merely half filled, with grace and [so that] God her son should faithfully fulfill the ancient commandment that he had formerly given, namely, to treat one’s father and mother with honor.</blockquote>
The Church at prayer, both East and West, reveals a common understanding of Mary having been freed from labor pains. In the Mass of “Mary at the Foot of the Cross II,” celebrated in the pre-1969 Latin Rite, the Church prays:
<blockquote>In your divine wisdom, you planned the redemption of the human race, and decreed that the new Eve should stand by the cross of the new Adam: as she became his mother by the power of the Holy Spirit, so, by a new gift of your love, she was to be a partner in his passion, and she who had given him birth without the pains of childbirth was to endure the greatest of pains in bringing forth to new life the family of your Church.</blockquote>
In the Byzantine liturgy, from the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord God and Savior, Jesus Christ and from the Synaxis of the Theotokos, Tone 2:
<blockquote>Behold! The image of the Father and his unchangeable eternity has taken the form of a servant. Without suffering he has come forth to us from an all-pure virgin, and yet he has remained unchanged. He is true God as he was before, and he has taken on himself what he had not been, becoming man out of his love for all. Therefore, let us raise our voices in hymns, singing: O God, born of the virgin, have mercy on us.</blockquote>
The liturgy of the Church has always been an exemplary tool of catechetics and moral certitude theologically as well as the primary instrument of our spiritual nourishment in Christ. Thus, the fact that the Church asks its children to affirm Mary’s freedom from the pains of labor in liturgical prayer at Mass is a testimony as to the authority of this teaching of the Church.
For more on this, check out my book, <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/behold-your-mother-a-biblical-and-historical-defense-of-the-marian-doctrines/">Behold Your Mother: A Biblical and Historical Defense of the Marian Doctrines</a>.

Mary and the Pain of Childbirth

In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent shares some of his favorite meal tips and tricks for tasty, healthy food.

FFAF: My Favorite Food Hacks

<a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/is-mary-the-mother-of-god">Mary is the Mother of God</a>, and the Bible says so! That&#8217;s why we honor her more than any creature—but not more than God. Tim Staples explains.

The Bible Says Mary Is the Mother of God

In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent covers 5 strange foods and drinks that were doomed to fail.

FFAF: 5 Gross Food Products Doomed to Fail

Reviewing the Shapiro vs. O’Connor Religion Debate

In this episode Trent sits down with Cy Kellett from the Catholic Answers Focus podcast to refute Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks and other pro-choice advocates who claim that the Bible is actually “pro” abortion.

Refuting “The Young Turks” on the Bible and Abortion

Is there Such a thing as an addictive personality and how do i know i have one?

I think my son struggles with nicotine and vaping, possibly some ADD. I think he is self-medicating. Any suggestions on how to help him?

I was part of Al Anon and I feel like it brought me back to my Catholic faith. Ultimately I stopped going because they seemed to shun my Catholicism. Yet, it is interesting that they say they are a God-centered program.

I have been in a 12 step program for food addiction for almost 20 years. I have recently had the epiphany that I can continue those meetings, but also go to Catholic in Recovery meetings where I can feel more relaxed about being open about my faith.

I think the sacraments were the force that pulled me out of addiction.

I sobered up in AA. I found that most people there who were against talking about Catholic faith were people who grew up Catholic but were hurt in some way. I found after a meeting was a great time to do apologetics.

My dad is elderly and an alcoholic. Now he is sick. If he stopped his drinking his medication would work better. I don’t know how to approach it. Sometimes I feel like I’m giving up on him.

I was addicted to pornography and I’m wondering if I’m doing the right thing by staying away from it.

&#8220;Is addictive personality real?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the complexities of addiction, including insights on how to recognize an addictive personality. Other topics include strategies for helping a son struggling with nicotine and vaping, the intersection of faith and recovery in programs like Al Anon, and the role of sacraments in overcoming addiction.
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Is Addictive Personality Real? Faith, Healing, and Recovery

What makes music sacred?

I altar serve at the TLM and have a hard time chant sheets. Where do you recommend I find them?

Would you agree that sacred music has to be a product of faith?

&#8220;What makes music sacred?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the essence of sacred music, touching on its spiritual significance. The conversation also addresses practical concerns like where to find chant sheets for traditional Latin Mass altar serving and whether sacred music must stem from a place of faith.
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What Makes Music Sacred? Chant Sheets and Faith in Music

My Take on “Same-sex Blessings” (with Ben Shapiro)

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DAY 206
CHALLENGE
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“There’s no good evidence that Jesus actually rose from the dead.”
DEFENSE
The Resurrection explains the evidence we have better than any alternative hypothesis does.
According to the Christian message, Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried. He rose from the dead, his tomb was found empty, and he appeared to his disciples. Finally, he ascended into heaven in their presence.
The pivotal claims here are that he died, rose from the dead, and ascended. The latter is often overlooked, but it was a key part of the Christian message, both for its theological significance and—for our present purposes—because it explains why Jesus was no longer walk- ing the streets of Jerusalem.
People saw Jesus die and ascend, but nobody saw him resurrect, since it happened while he was in the tomb. The evidence the apostles offered for the Resurrection is that the tomb was found empty and Jesus began appearing—alive—to the disciples.
How else might one explain the above? Some have proposed that the disciples lied: They were crooks, stole Jesus’ body, and lied about the Resurrection appearances and the Ascension.
If they didn’t lie, how could we explain the empty tomb? Some have proposed the disciples went to the wrong tomb, that someone other than the disciples stole the body, or that Jesus didn’t die—he just became unconscious on the cross. That could also explain how he later appeared to the disciples.
Other proposals for how he could have appeared include that it wasn’t really Jesus who was crucified but an identical twin, that an impostor afterward appeared to the disciples, or that they simply hallucinated. Some have even proposed that the disciples didn’t think the tomb was empty and that they believed Jesus had been “spiritually” resurrected.
All these hypotheses are fraught with problems. Most explain either the empty tomb or the Resurrection appearances, but not both. Most also ignore Jesus’ Ascension into heaven.
To fix the problems, it could be tempting to combine hypotheses (e.g., the disciples went to the wrong tomb, then hallucinated the Resurrection appearances), but combined hypotheses inherit problems from both originals.
In the next few days, we will look at the problems with each of the alternative theories (see Days 207–215), leading to the conclusion that Jesus was, indeed, raised from the dead.
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The Resurrection of Jesus

Two Unrelated Facts

Mayor puts Catholic statues in public building

Shrinking population

&#8220;What happened when the Louvre was robbed?&#8221; In this episode of Flannel Panel, we explore intriguing topics including a man&#8217;s encounter with God and the recent decision by a mayor to place Catholic statues in a public building. We also touch on the implications of a shrinking population, offering a diverse range of discussions for listeners.
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The Louvre Was Robbed, A Man Saw God, and Statues of Saints – Flannel Panel!

Getting Grilled on American Politics

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent sits down with Protestant Sean McDowell to compare their surveys on the arguments for the existence of God.

FFAF: Argument for God Survey Follow Up (with Sean McDowell)

Trent and David continue their discussion of C.S. Lewis’s works including parts you may have never heard before like “the argument from desire” for the existence of God and the role of imagination in defending the Faith.

The Genius of C.S. Lewis (with David Bates)

Was the Holy Spirit on earth before Jesus?

Are Christians “psychopaths on a leash”?

Did Christ carry the whole cross or just the beam?

What happened between Jesus’ death and Resurrection?

Can critical scholarship undermine Church teaching?

Is Luke 9:49-50 About Protestants Casting Out Demons?

Why are the Gospels in this order?

Dating/authorship of Job?

What’s the deal with Malachi Martin?

Do animals show rationality/personhood?

&#8220;Was the Holy Spirit on Earth before Jesus?&#8221; This episode explores the role of the Holy Spirit in the context of the Gospel order and apologetics. Additionally, we tackle intriguing questions such as whether Christians can be labeled as “psychopaths on a leash,” the nature of Christ&#8217;s cross, and the implications of critical scholarship on Church teaching.
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Was the Holy Spirit on Earth Before Jesus? Gospel Order and Apologetics

In this episode Trent shows how focusing exclusively on acts of kindness and ignoring evangelism can come off as patronizing to people who identify as LGBT or dissent from Church teaching.

Why Kindness to LGBT/Dissenters isn’t Enough

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent breaks down the good, the bad, and the ugly of DC comics legends like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman when they are brought to the big screen.

FFAF: DC Comics at the Movies

Protestant claim we shouldn’t take Jesus literally when he says that he is the bread of life because he also says he is a door. What is the best response to this?

How do we know that hell is forever and how do we justify God being merciful with that reality being taken into consideration?

What angle can we use when talking to protestants when discussing the intercession of the saints. It seems like they get hung up on the ‘praying to’ wording.

Since Jesus is omniscient and omnipotent, did that take away from his suffering?

Why is it uncommon to pray to Old Testament saints?

I’ve heard it said that the reason Satan fell was because he knew God would become man. Wouldn’t this imply that Satan has some kind of foreknowledge?

&#8220;Can we take Jesus literally as the Bread of Life?&#8221; This episode explores the nuances of interpreting Jesus&#8217; words, addressing the Protestant claim about literalism and metaphor. Additionally, we delve into the nature of hell and God&#8217;s mercy, and discuss how to approach conversations with Protestants regarding the intercession of saints. Tune in for a thoughtful exploration of these important topics.
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Can We Take Jesus Literally as the Bread of Life? Hell, Mercy, and Saints

What’s the difference between a Baptist view of baptism and a Catholic view of baptism?

Does baptism save?

My daughter left the faith when she left home. She is now an adult and got re-baptized at a non-denominational church. How do I handle sharing to her that you can’t be re-baptized without harming her returning to Christianity?

What’s the difference between what protestants and Catholics mean by being saved through baptism?

How concerned should I be for my 18-month-old grandson who isn’t baptized?

Does the Catholic Church consider my baptism valid? I was baptized in the independent Baptist church.

How do I square us being told that infants don’t need to understand, but adults need to go through OCIA in order to be baptized?

&#8220;What is the Catholic view of baptism?&#8221; This episode addresses the significance of baptism in Catholicism, including the differences between Baptist and Catholic perspectives. Other questions tackled include whether baptism saves, how to approach a family member who has been re-baptized, and concerns about unbaptized infants.
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What Is the Catholic View of Baptism? Infants and Salvation

Is it sinful to watch MMA? In this episode Trent examines Fr. Mike Schmitz&#8217;s arguments against MMA and reveals when it is sinful for Christians to watch this sport.
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Transcript:
If Christians are called peacemakers, then is it okay for them to watch people punch each other in the head or choke another person into a submission? That&#8217;s the issue that&#8217;s raised when people say Christians should not support mixed martial arts or MMA. But other people say there&#8217;s nothing wrong with it, and in fact, Christians should be more involved in athletic combat sports. In today&#8217;s episode, I&#8217;m going to give my thoughts on the matter, but I will talk about one circumstance where Christians definitely should not watch MMA. There&#8217;s a particular circumstance where that would be wrong, but there&#8217;s other circumstances where it would be right. Before I get to that though, we&#8217;ll need a little bit of background.
What is mixed martial arts or MMA? The term mixed martial arts comes from a review of the first ultimate fighting championship hosted in 1993. It pioneered matches where fighters could use different styles to engage one another, and in the early years, you had some pretty wild matchups. Like what happens if a sumo wrestler fights a kickboxer? The answer is the sumo wrestler goes down pretty fast. Or what happens when a little guy named Royce Gracie fights the same kickboxer using a style we call Brazilian jujitsu? The answer is that Gracie closes the distance so that the kickboxer&#8217;s kicks can&#8217;t hurt him, and focuses on grappling to use a choke hold to force him into a submission. Now, 30 years later, MMA has evolved so that most fighters learn a mixture of kickboxing, jujitsu, and wrestling in order to maximize their effectiveness in the ring or the octagon.
I&#8217;ve trained in Muay Thai kickboxing until I tore my ACL a year ago, and I hope to get back into it, but I&#8217;ve been doing jujitsu on and off during that time while I&#8217;m healing. I&#8217;m not very good. I&#8217;m literally one rung above a training dummy, but it&#8217;s fun, I enjoy it even when I get hurt. Now, jujitsu isn&#8217;t as violent as MMA because you&#8217;re not allowed to punch or kick the other person, and there can be some brutal injuries in mixed martial arts. I&#8217;ll admit some of the matches are hard to watch, but is it wrong for Christians to watch MMA or even participate in it? I was especially interested in these two videos from Father Mike Schmitz who summarizes his essential objection to MMA.
Before I share that though, I need to add a Father Mike is awesome disclaimer here. He&#8217;s done a tremendous amount of good for the church. My son and I love listening to Bible in a Year with him, so this video represents a minor disagreement I have with him because as I&#8217;ve said overall, Father Mike is awesome. I love the work that he does. With that being clear, here&#8217;s his objection to watching MMA as a form of entertainment.
There is nothing that is noble about dominating someone or beating another human being into submission for someone else&#8217;s entertainment.
Now, I agree with Father Mike when it comes to doing this to innocent people. It&#8217;s wrong to watch videos of random attacks against innocent people you might find on the internet because you enjoy watching people get attacked and you get a thrill out of it. This isn&#8217;t entertainment. These are crimes of assault and battery that do take away a person&#8217;s dignity, so people shouldn&#8217;t be watching them for thrills.
But what about when two people agree to a fight with fair rules? When I engage in jujitsu or role with someone, we aren&#8217;t beating each other with our hands and fists, but one of us may be dominating the other person. In this case, my coach who is a black belt is absolutely dominating me, and while there is pain and discomfort, I haven&#8217;t lost my dignity, even if it&#8217;s a little embarrassing sometimes. That&#8217;s because every time someone better than me dominates me and has good sportsmanship and is willing to teach me what I can do better, I learn more. This is how I learn to not be dominated in the next fight or not be dominated if someone tries to attack me out of nowhere on the street.
Now you might say it&#8217;s okay to be educated by this like me, but it&#8217;s wrong to be entertained by watching someone else be dominated. But I don&#8217;t feel that way. If someone watching this gets to see what jujitsu is like, how good black belts are, and how every black belt started as a white belt, I think that&#8217;s great. I haven&#8217;t been dehumanized. I find it very dignifying to learn from my other coaches both in class and when I watch them compete in competitions where they dominate someone else. Like here where my coach gets a sweet flying arm-bar on his opponent. It&#8217;s fun to watch, and even his opponent would say, this is good for human dignity, not opposed to it.
I think what most people are squeamish about with MMA are the strikes and kicks more than the grappling, even though grappling and throwing like what you might have in judo causes injuries too. But more importantly, other sports have the same, if not more risk of injury. MMA fighters wear light gloves while boxers wear heavier gloves, and the heavier gloves allow them to have more head strikes against the hard skulls of their opponents. And football players with helmets are at even more risk of head injury. Father Mike also says this.
I think about this story Saint Augustine recounted in his book Confessions. Saint Augustine&#8217;s problem was lust, right? One of his problems was lust. He had a friend whose problem was violence. This friend who was a convert to Christ, he was obsessed with the gladiator arenas. At one point, he and some of his non-Christian friends were walking by an arena and they said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s come on in, let&#8217;s go watch.&#8221; And he was like, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to go. I&#8217;m not going to go.&#8221; They said, &#8220;No, come on in. You&#8217;re going to love it.&#8221; He said, &#8220;Fine, I&#8217;ll go, but I&#8217;m not going to look. I&#8217;m not going to watch.&#8221;
He went in and he kept his eyes down, like knowing I know what happens here. I know what they&#8217;re doing right now. I know as a Christian, I don&#8217;t want any part of it, but he said there was a moment when the crowd cheered in such a way that he knew what was going on and he wanted to see it with his own eyes in the arena and he looked up and it was in an instant that what Augustine calls the blood lust returned to him, and he was cheering the victimization. He was cheering the dominance. He was cheering the violence of one human being against another human being just as much as any non-Christian who was there in that arena.
I agree that if you watch MMA because you enjoy seeing other people getting hurt, then you shouldn&#8217;t watch MMA because you have blood lust or lust for violence. This is definitely one circumstance where Christians or anybody for that matter, shouldn&#8217;t watch mixed martial arts. But that&#8217;s a you problem, not an MMA or a martial arts problem.
To give another example, if you look at Renaissance art because you enjoy seeing naked people and it makes you feel aroused and excited, then you shouldn&#8217;t look at Renaissance art. But that&#8217;s a you problem, not a Renaissance art problem. But if you enjoy combat sports because you appreciate the skill on display and the commitment to athleticism, then it can be a healthy thing for Christians to enjoy watching or participating in. In response he made to his original video, Father Mike boiled down his essential objection to watching mixed martial arts.
Human beings have dignity. Violence strips a human being of dignity. Violence as entertainment has no place in the life of the Christian.
My response would be this. Violence itself is neutral towards human dignity. It&#8217;s not always wrong. I mean, what is violence? Most definitions say something like the use of physical force to cause injury to something. But when a surgeon cuts open a person&#8217;s chest for open heart surgery or amputates a gangrenous limb, that&#8217;s a violent act. The body suffers injury and needs time to heal afterwards, but the violence is justified. Or when the police wrestle a suspect to the ground who is resisting arrest, they don&#8217;t harm that person&#8217;s dignity, even though they commit violence, as long as the violence or force they use is not excessive. Raping an evildoer or torturing him would take away his dignity, but proportional violence to subdue him actually respects his dignity because we&#8217;re keeping him from committing more evil. This also applies to sports since other contact sports involve acts where you know you&#8217;re going to cause the other player pain and possibly injury.
Think about when a football player tackles someone on the field. If tackling someone in a fight would be considered violent, isn&#8217;t this also violent? Hockey would be another example where fights are expected. I mean, to me, this just looks like mixed martial arts are boxing on ice. The question isn&#8217;t, is the act violent? Lots of things are violent that are not immoral. The question is, is there a proportionate reason to justify the violent act?
When it comes to MMA, a few of those reasons might be that it encourages people to learn or value non-lethal means of self-defense and disabling attackers if they&#8217;re forced into a fight. Or it celebrates human creativity, athleticism, health and sportsmanship. And here I actually agree with Father Mike with one of the points he was trying to achieve in his original video.
All that last video was trying to do was propose that there is a line, right? Maybe the line goes to boxing. People wrote to me and said, &#8220;More people die boxing than doing MMA.&#8221; Like, okay. More people get serious brain damage playing professional football than MMA. I don&#8217;t know. I wasn&#8217;t trying to establish how far the line went. All I was trying to offer was that there is a line somewhere.
He&#8217;s absolutely correct. There is a line to be drawn where consensual acts of violence between two people cannot be justified. In the 12th century, the Second Lateran Council banned jousting, saying it condemned, &#8220;those abominable jousts and tournaments in which knights come together by agreement and rashly engage in showing off their physical prowess and daring, and which often result in human deaths and danger to souls. If any of them dies on these occasions, although penance and viaticum are not to be denied him when he requests them, he is to be deprived of a church burial.&#8221;
During the Middle Ages, several popes and ecumenical councils banned dueling or fighting to the death. The Council of Trent said, &#8220;the detestable custom of dueling, introduced by the contrivance of the devil, that by the bloody death of the body, he may accomplish the ruin of the soul, shall be utterly exterminated from the Christian world.&#8221;
Acts of entertainment where there&#8217;s a good chance people can be killed, are incompatible with human dignity. I&#8217;d also say this is true of other engagements where there&#8217;s an unreasonable risk of serious injury. Things like underground street fights where there are no rules. Even in MMA, there are rules governing what is allowed and a set of moves that are prohibited because they&#8217;re too dangerous. I also wouldn&#8217;t support watching competitions where people simply endured severe pain and injury, like seeing how many nails they can drive through their hands. It&#8217;s also why I&#8217;m not a fan of slap fighting where contestants just compete to see who can endure harder slaps from the other person. I think this one probably goes over the line into being unacceptable because now this isn&#8217;t about celebration of skill in combat where you can dodge punches as well as receive them. It&#8217;s just about tolerating injury.
I agree with Father Mike that when we seek out entertainment, we have to make sure what entertains us never violates the dignity of the people who are involved. But I&#8217;d say MMA is on par with the amount of violence and risk one would find in boxing, football, rugby, and other high intensity sports. So if there are proportional reasons to justify those activities, then they also justify MMA. That doesn&#8217;t mean everybody has to watch or that there aren&#8217;t individual examples where behavior in the octagon is over the line, just that MMA doesn&#8217;t seem like a moral hazard we have to worry about because we have enough of those in the world as it is.
Thanks for watching today&#8217;s episode. If you want more great content, be sure to check out these other great episodes and don&#8217;t forget to like and subscribe to help our channel grow. Finally, if you want to help us create more content like this, please support us at trenthornpodcast.com.

Is it SINFUL to Watch MMA?

In this episode Trent shares his recent work on the Counsel of Trent YouTube channel where he engages in rebuttals of videos that are critical of the Catholic faith, including Jeff Durbin’s defense of sola scriptura and Mike Winger’s criticism of the papacy.

Protestant Pastors vs. the Catholic Faith

What Killed the “New Atheism”?

In this episode Trent reveals the results of a survey involving 50 Catholic apologists who each answered the question: What is the best argument for the existence of God?
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_bArb3ADOM">REBUTTAL of Rationality Rules&#8217;s &#8220;Debunking&#8221; of Aquinas</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI8KT6EDeP0">REBUTTING Rationality Rules on Ben Shapiro, Ed Feser, and Aquinas</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYF9Wsn4yzk&amp;t=1983s">Alex O’Connor deconstructs Ben Shapiro and Ed Feser (REBUTTED)</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1anAMDsQ5w">How the Essentia Argument for God’s Existence Works (Aquinas 101)</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDPfoywKO4E&amp;t=237s">Why Did Christian Apologists Stop Using the Classical Arguments for God&#8217;s Existence?</a>
Transcription:
Trent:
I asked 50 Catholic apologists, philosophers, theologians, and influencers. One question, what is the best argument for the existence of God? In today&#8217;s episode, I&#8217;m going to break down their answers and what this means for how we as Christians should answer atheism and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to a thoroughly secular world. But first, a little background. Back in June, Protestant scholar Sean McDowell asked 100 Christian Apologists, including myself, what is the best argument for God? By the way, Sean has written the best treatment on the martyrdom of the apostles, so I highly recommend it if you want to ramp up your who would die for a lie argument for the resurrection of Jesus. Now, I had a tough time deciding on my answer to the question for Sean&#8217;s survey, but I eventually settled on the contingency argument for God&#8217;s existence. I was shocked, however, to find out that no other Christian apologist in Sean&#8217;s survey mentioned this argument. I was the only one.
CLIP:
Trent Horn, a Catholic apologist was the only one who said contingency. Now, this is a kind of caus logical argument, but it moves from the existence of contingent things like the universe that didn&#8217;t have to exist as saying the best explanation for its existence is a necessary being.
Trent:
Afterwards, I went back through Sean&#8217;s list of apologists and notice that the vast majority of them, probably over 95% were Protestant. Many of them were associated with the Talbot School of Theology, which is part of the Evangelical Biola University. So that got me thinking. What would Catholic scholars say about this same question and how might their results mirror or diverge from these Protestant scholars? So I sent out a bunch of emails and I ended up getting 50 responses. I wanted to make it to the full 100, but things have been a tad busy having to work and manage a lot of household duties while my wife Laura recovers from brain cancer treatment. I think our favorite gift we received during this time is this t-shirt, which says Brain surgery one star did not enjoy, would not recommend. Still, I think 50 responses provides a wide enough sample to get reliable results among Catholics who engage to some degree in the public defense of the faith.
So first I&#8217;m going to summarize the results of Sean&#8217;s survey of 100 Christian apologists and then I&#8217;ll compare it to the results from my survey. Sean divided up the arguments for God&#8217;s existence into five categories, and here&#8217;s how his respondents fell into those categories. Number one were existential arguments about 5.5% of respondents. Number two were unique arguments, a kind of grab bag if you will, at about 12%. Number three were arguments related to the evidence for Jesus at about 14%. Number four was the moral argument at about 21% of respondents and finally was creation. At about 47% of respondents picked one of these arguments as the best for showing God exists. Now here&#8217;s how the Catholic apologists came out using Sean&#8217;s categories. Number one existential arguments, 0%. Sean used the example of John Lennox saying, A transformed life is the best evidence for God. None of the respondents in my survey said anything like that, but what I grouped under unique arguments might also be called existential.
So let&#8217;s take a look at those unique arguments came out to about 12%. This included Keith Nestor choosing the argument from common consent, which says Universal belief in God is good evidence. God exists Catholic apologist Gary Chuda who said the argument from the existence of abstract objects like numbers shows God exists, and Peter Crave said, the best argument for God is the argument from beauty. I love how Crave puts it in his handbook. For Christian apologetics, there is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Therefore there must be a God. You either see this one or you don&#8217;t. Next we have evidence for Jesus and in my survey this also came out to about 12%. We have Stephanie Gray, Connors reprising her answer from Sean&#8217;s survey with Christ resurrection biblical bookworm who mentions the teachings of Christ and also things like Eucharistic miracles, which as a Catholic I will say counts as Jesus.
When it comes to the moral argument, this one came in lower among Catholic apologists at 12%. Eric salmons from Crisis magazine and philosophy Professor Logan G were among those who voted for this argument. And finally, creation, which you can probably tell ate up a way bigger piece of the pie chart among Catholic apologists coming in at a whopping 64%. But things get even more interesting. In Sean&#8217;s video, he notes that creation is somewhat of a broad category and it included people who voted for the Kal cosmological argument, fine tuning and even intelligent design or evidence from design seen in things like the structure of the cell as the best arguments for the existence of God. However, in my survey, only one respondent, Adrian from Sips with Sarah picked the KALM cosmological argument and only two respondents, Cameron Bertuzzi and Luis Dizon picked the fine tuning argument as the best argument for the existence of God.
And no respondent picked intelligent design or evidence from the biological structure of living organisms. What&#8217;s interesting is that one of the most famous defenders of intelligent design, Michael Behe is Catholic. However, the intelligent design movement tends to be overwhelmingly Protestant and Catholic philosophers are usually quite critical of it. So what part of creation did the Catholic apologists in my survey pick as being the best reason to believe that God exists? Remember, I was the only apologist in Sean&#8217;s survey to mention the contingency argument by name. However, that was certainly not the case with my survey. In my survey, 26% of all the Catholic respondents one out of four picked the contingency argument by name as the best argument for God. This included Catholic apologists like Pat Madrid, Joe Meyer, Matt Fra, and Jimmy Aiken, as well as Catholic philosophers like Tyler McNabb and Alex Press. Logan G also said the contingency argument was a very close second for him.
Thank you guys. I knew I was not alone out there and 24% of respondents pick something that in many cases is very close to the contingency argument and that would be one of St. Thomas Aquinas&#8217;s arguments for the existence of God. This included Tim Staples Catholic answers Christian Wagner of Scholastic answers who chose the argument for motion, which is Aquinas&#8217;s first way as well as Catholic philosopher Ed Faser who chose the Arisal argument, which expands on what is commonly known as the argument from motion to see some of my episodes defending the argument from motion that St. Thomas Aquinas makes. Check out the links below. Catholic philosopher Frank Beckwith said The contingency argument is the best, and in particular he mentions St. Thomas Aquinas&#8217;s argument in his work Deante at Essentia. Dr. Faser also added as a runner up Thomas&#8217;s argument from the distinction between essence and existence.
In fact, 12% of the respondents brought up not just St Thomas Aquinas, but the Dete at Essentia argument by name as being the best argument for God&#8217;s existence. This includes Catholic philosophers like Carla Broussard, Rob Koons and Gavin Kerr, who&#8217;s written an entire book Just on this argument, this argument notes that there is essence what something is and existence that something is. The argument shows that the only way things exist with different kinds of essences is that there must be something whose essence just is existence and that reality is most fittingly called God. Now, there&#8217;s a lot more that can be said about the argument and I&#8217;ll save a defense of it for a future episode, though I&#8217;ll link to some defenses of it in the description below. Instead, what I want to explore is why the Catholic and Protestant apologetic responses to this question are so different.
I emailed Sean and asked him if anyone in his survey mentioned St. Thomas Aquinas by name as having the best arguments for God, and he said he didn&#8217;t recall anyone mentioning Aquinas. So why is that? Why are contingency arguments and mistic arguments, especially mistic contingency arguments, which was essentially my answer to the question, so popular among Catholics and not Protestants. When it comes to Aquinas, the answer might seem pretty obvious. He&#8217;s one of the most famous doctors of the church, and Pope Leo XIII said his philosophy has a pride of place in the life of the church. The Pope encouraged the church at the end of the 19th century to return to the scholastic method in order to combat modern secularism. In contrast, while the early Protestant reformers like the Lutheran Johan Gerhard or the Reform Francis Turtin preserved much of the scholastic method, later, Protestants gradually moved away from this mode of thinking Instead of viewing the universe through the lens of God&#8217;s continual conservation of material, formal, essential, and finally ordered causal series that actively sustain everything in existence, these newer Protestants saw the universe as being more like a great machine that God made in the past and now lovingly watches over in the present proving God made the universe relied more on inferences from the presence of design.
As can be seen in the 18th century Protestant scholar, William Paley&#8217;s famous watchmaker argument for God, this gave way to modern intelligent design arguments I mentioned earlier. Under this view, God ended up becoming one. All being among other beings who like them is subject to time and laws of existence, arguments to prove God exists. Ended up focusing on showing that God started this universal machine like the Kal cosmological argument, one that Aquinas did not agree with by the way, which is another reason it&#8217;s not popular among Catholics or that God designed this big universe machine. This stands in contrast to classical theisms view that God simply is being itself. For example, when I spoke at a Protestant apologetic conference on God&#8217;s existence years ago, only one other speaker along with me agreed that God has no parts and that God is timeless. The rest of the Protestant speakers of this conference held to what Father Brian Davies calls theistic personalism God is a being, but not the infinite act of being that sustains all beings.
Unlike the Kalm or design arguments, classical theist defenses of God show not just that a powerful being created the universe in the past who itself may no longer exist, but that the infinite act of being itself created and sustains the universe. And so it still exists because it just is existence itself. Finally, I think many Protestants don&#8217;t use St. Thomas Aquinas&#8217;s arguments because they either simply aren&#8217;t familiar with them or because there&#8217;s a fear that Aquinas is a kind of gateway drug to Catholicism. Catholic author Doug Beaumont&#8217;s book Evangelical Exodus describes several students at Southern Evangelical Seminary who became Catholic due to the school&#8217;s heavy emphasis on studying Aquinas in spite of its Protestant mission. One review in the Protestant Journal, Emilio says this, for all intents and purposes, St. Thomas Aquinas was the seminary&#8217;s patron saint. Another author admits that the first thing that brought me to Catholicism was the Tomism at SES.
Frank Beckwith was once the president of the Evangelical Theological Society, but he stepped down in May of 2007 after his decision to revert to the Catholic faith of his childhood. I remember discussing this bombshell with a Protestant friend at the time who himself became Catholic. A few years later, Beckwith credits part of his reversion to studying Aquinas, and in 2019 he published the book, never Doubt Thomas the Catholic Aquinas as Evangelical and Protestant to show how Aquinas can benefit Protestant readers. And as you might expect, not every Protestant is enthused at that invitation. Here&#8217;s James White from two years ago complaining about then Baptist author Matthew Barrett being too much of a Thomas Aquinas fanboy.
CLIP:
When I point out Barrett&#8217;s wildly imbalanced fascination with Thomas Aquinas, I don&#8217;t know if he&#8217;ll ever become Roman Catholic. Maybe he will, maybe he won&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t know, but it&#8217;s wildly imbalanced. If you are at a Southern Baptist seminary and your students are drawing pictures of Thomas Aquinas for you, you might want to go, huh, something strange. There&#8217;s an imbalance, a massive imbalance. Just look at his timeline. I mean, if I as a Calvinist talked about Calvin half as much as Matthew Barrett talks about Thomas Aquinas, and all you got to do is go back to 2016 when he wrote a book on solo scriptura that&#8217;s not the same guy
Trent:
White reared this clip a few weeks ago to run a victory lap. Now that Barrett has announced he&#8217;s become Anglican, which White thinks is a gateway denomination to Catholicism.
CLIP:
All this scholasticism that has been coming into reform Baptist circles was coming into Midwestern. This is inconsistent with what defines Baptist theology practice and quality as well. And so if your students are drawing pictures of Aquinas, pretty soon they&#8217;ll be drawing pictures of Pope Leo the 14th. It&#8217;s inevitable. That&#8217;s the progress. So what I did warn about is that once you collapse on certain foundational issues regarding scriptural sufficiency over against any kind of whatever terminology of tradition you want to use, those are the people who if they continue to seek consistency, will end up not only leaving our churches but moving toward a different expression of Christian faith. And that might be certain highly liturgical churches,
Trent:
White&#8217;s perspective is fairly common among particular American evangelicals who were skeptical of anything being an infallible rule of faith beyond scripture even reason itself. Mark Knoll warned about this all the way back in 1994 with his book, the Scandal of The Evangelical Mind, but not all evangelicals are like that. I ask Gavin Orland, who holds to classical theism and agrees with me that God is absolutely simple and timeless to share with me some of his thoughts on the differences between these two surveys.
CLIP:
Hey everyone, as a long time appreciative viewer of the Council of Trent podcast, it&#8217;s fun to be able to share some thoughts here, and I kind of want to acknowledge some of the weaknesses of my tribe of Christendom, which is evangelicalism, at least where I see things in the United States and I think elsewhere as well. The nice way to say it may be that we have an underdeveloped appreciation of the contingency argument and many arguments like it. I would say probably all of Thomas Aquinas&#8217;s five ways these are well-known, but I think evangelicals neglect them a lot. There are exceptions to that, so there&#8217;s plenty of great evangelical philosophers, but I think they&#8217;re probably more the exception now, personally, I love the contingency argument. The moral argument is the one that moves me the most existentially and emotionally I think because conscience is such a lively place where we experience God.
But the contingency argument to me is maybe the simplest and best and just most forceful argument for God at least philosophically. And over the last year and a half as I&#8217;m working on a book on Christianity, it&#8217;s the argument I&#8217;m leading off with. So my appreciation for it has deepened. I wonder if there&#8217;s two reasons why evangelicals have been a bit weaker when it comes to the contingency argument. One is that we tend to not focus on philosophy as much in general, and to the extent that we do focus upon cosmological arguments, we tend to focus on the Kal version of this argument. And part of that is probably due to the influence of William Lane Craig, who has popularized that argument and done a lot of great work rehabilitating it, but so much of the focus has gone there and that argument has some weaknesses that the contingency argument doesn&#8217;t.
Another reason though, I think, and this is a huge area where I think there can be mutual benefit from Evangelicals and Catholics and other Christians talking more, and that is the weakness in my tribe with respect to classical theism and the doctrine of divine simplicity, especially, this is an area where many evangelicals are a bit weak from my vantage point, and we&#8217;ve sort of fallen away from what standard views have been throughout church history, and it&#8217;s just amazing how much the doctrine of divine simplicity comes up in the context of arguments for God and just in general sort of apologetics and philosophy when you&#8217;re looking for the unexplained explainer, the stopping point for explanation that which makes sense of everything else, the idea of a God who is perfectly simple ends up being exactly what you need. And so I hope that evangelicals will do more to rehabilitate our use of the contingency argument and Thomas&#8217;s other arguments. And I think this is an area where there can be a lot of fruitful conversation between evangelicals, Catholics, and other Christians.
Trent:
I also ask the Lutheran scholar, Jordan Cooper to share his thoughts on mainline Protestantisms move away from contingency and scholastic arguments for God&#8217;s existence since his doctoral dissertation covers this phenomenon among the radical Lutherans. Check out Jordan&#8217;s full explanation of the history of this shift in theology in the link in the description below. So if you&#8217;re a Protestant, I would encourage you to learn about these powerful evidences for the existence of God even though they have some Catholic accouts. And if you&#8217;re Catholic, well, it doesn&#8217;t hurt to study up on these resources. If you want to get started, I highly recommend Ed ER&#8217;s book five Proofs Through the Existence of God. If you want the abridged version of that book, just read the first chapter on the Aristotelian argument for God, and then chapter seven, easily the best chapter of the book that answers lots of common objections to natural theology. I also recommend Pat Flynn&#8217;s book The Best Argument for God, Gavin Kerr&#8217;s book on Aquinas&#8217;s Deante argument, and John de Rosa&#8217;s classical theism podcast. If you like a nice evangelical start to your arguments for God, check out Gavin Orland&#8217;s book Why God Makes Sense. Thank you so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.

The Best Argument for God (According to 50 Catholic Apologists)

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DAY 35
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CHALLENGE
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“Matthew and Luke contradict each other. Matthew says the field of blood got its name because it was bought with blood money (Matt. 27:6–7), but Luke says it was because people knew that Judas died a gruesome death there (Acts 1:18–19).”
DEFENSE
Names can have more than one significance, and the two explanations are compatible.
The fact that Matthew and Luke record different expressions of the tradition regarding Judas’s fate indicate that both were in circulation.
Some people—aware of Matthew’s tradition—knew the priests bought the field and called it “field of blood” because it was bought with blood money. Others—aware of Luke’s tradition—knew about Judas’s bloody fate and called it “field of blood” for that reason. Some Jerusalemites may have been aware of both versions—like modern readers are—and called it “field of blood” for both reasons.
There are parallels to this elsewhere in the Bible. The biblical authors and their audiences often saw a single name as having more than one significance.
For example, the name of the city Be’er-sheva can mean “Well of the Seven” or “Well of the Oath,” and the author of Genesis preserves more than one tradition regarding its significance. He notes that at this location Abraham dug a well, gave Abimelech seven lambs, and swore an oath with Abimelech (Gen. 21:30–32). He also notes that Isaac later dug a well and swore an oath with Abimelech there (Gen. 26:31–33). Ancient readers of Genesis were thus aware of both traditions and saw them as complementary explanations for the name of Be’er-sheva: It was called that for both reasons.
Similarly, the field of blood was so called both because it was bought with blood money and because of Judas’s death. (Note that Luke says Judas bought a field, that he died a bloody death, and that people thus called the place “field of blood,” but he doesn’t say Judas died there. He may or may not have.)
One explanation would have originated first, but both were in circulation in the first century, and both contributed to why people called the field what they did.
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How Did the Field of Blood Get Its Name?

Was the power of binding and loosing meant to be passed down indefinitely?

How does the Church minister to veterans who carry the burden of the memories of war?

Does suffering necessitate consciousness?

Could we use historical claims in favor of Catholicism as an apologetical strategy?

How do I explain the idea of infant baptism to a protestant who is considering Catholicism?

Why do we refer to Jesus returning as the second coming if technically it would be the third if we count his resurrection as another coming?

I’m moving to a retirement community where they only offer one mass a month and don’t have the ability to drive. Is it okay for me to attend ecumenical services?

Could Jesus have manifested through a different cultural lens in other places of the world?

If technologies like contraception are bad then how come other technologies like pacemakers are good and permissible?

Was polygamy a part of God’s permissive will?

In this episode, Jimmy Akin tackles a wide range of thought-provoking questions on Catholicism, from biblical authority to moral theology. He explains whether the power of binding and loosing was meant to continue indefinitely, how the Church supports veterans burdened by war, and whether suffering requires consciousness. He also addresses apologetics strategies, the rationale behind infant baptism, and why we call Jesus’ return the “Second Coming.” Other key topics include attending ecumenical services, the possibility of Jesus manifesting in different cultures, the moral distinction between contraception and medical technology, and whether polygamy was ever part of God&#8217;s permissive will.

Was the Power of Binding and Loosing Meant to Continue? and More

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When people want to criticize Catholic history the inquisition is one of the “go-to” topics. In this episode Trent sits down with Catholic Answers president Chris Check to expose the myths and realities of the inquisition and how its lessons still apply today.
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Actually, everybody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Patrick Novecosky, Editor-In-Chief of Legatus Magazine since 2005, discusses Legatus’s efforts to form executives in the Faith. He also discusses changes within Catholic media, and the influence of Opus Dei on ideas about faith and the work world.

Living the Faith in the World

Episode 66: Year B &#8211; 2nd Sunday of Lent
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on three details that come into play when engaging in apologetical discussions. The first two come from the first reading, which is taken from the story of Abraham’s offering of Isaac in Genesis 22:1-18. The relevant topics here are several. First, there’s the issue of whether it’s consistent with God’s goodness for him to will the death of an innocent human being and command someone to carry out that will. The others deal with the topic of justification—that it’s a process and works do justify. The relevant topic that comes to the fore for the detail in the Gospel reading, which is taken from Mark 9:2-10, is the invocation of the saints.
Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/022524.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Can a Good God Will the Death of the Innocent?

What JESUS Teaches About HIS Church!

OG Apologetics and Apostolic Martyrdom (with Sean McDowell)

The Council of Constantinople

Do we count the Council of Jerusalem among the first councils?

Pope Leo announced reintroducing Deaconess based on Church History? Were there Deaconess in the Early Church?

What the basic stuff to know about the Council of Nicea?

Arianism sounds like Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Why did the council of Ephesus do?

I feel like there is a popular opinion that the church was united up until 1054. But at the Council of Ephesus and Council of Calcedon there was a split by assyrian church of the East and oriental orthodox Church. Is this an argument that the church wa...

What is Nestorianism?

Who are the heroes of the Council of Ephesus?

&#8220;Did the Early Church Have Deaconesses?&#8221; This episode explores the role of women in the early Church, including discussions on the Council of Constantinople and whether the Council of Jerusalem should be counted among the ecumenical councils. We also delve into Arianism&#8217;s connections to modern groups and the significance of the Council of Ephesus.
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Did the Early Church Have Deaconesses? Councils and Arianism

DIALOGUE: Can Reason Prove the Universe Began? (with Jimmy Akin)

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DAY 67
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CHALLENGE
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“The sacrament of confirmation is an invention of men with no biblical basis.
DEFENSE
The sacrament of confirmation is recorded in Scripture.
The laying on of hands is used in several Christian rites, including healing (Mark 6:5; Acts 28:8) and ordination for ministry (Acts 6:1–6, 13:2–3). It is also used in Christian initiation.
The book of Hebrews lists the laying on of hands among the “elementary doctrines of Christ”—basic things a convert would need instruction on—alongside repentance, faith, baptism, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment (Heb. 6:1–2).
We see it used in Christian initiation in Acts 8, where Philip the evangelist (cf. Acts 6:5, 21:8–9) converts a number of Samaritans. Al- though he baptized them (Acts 8:12), he did not have the ability to lay hands on them. Thus two apostles—Peter and John—came from Jerusalem and prayed “that they might receive the Holy Spirit; for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit” (8:15–17).
We see the same in Acts 19, where Paul administers Christian baptism to a group and then lays his hands upon them, which results in the Holy Spirit coming upon them (19:5–6).
The Holy Spirit is associated with and received in baptism (Matt. 3:11; Mark 1:8; Luke 3:16; John 1:33; Acts 2:38; 1 Cor. 12:13), but the passages above show there was also a laying on of hands for further strengthening with the Holy Spirit as part of Christian initiation.
The passages also show this laying on of hands was distinct from baptism and that not all ministers performed it. Philip the evangelist baptized but did not lay on hands, while higher-ranking ministers, such as Peter, John, and Paul, both baptized and laid on hands.
“Very early, the better to signify the gift of the Holy Spirit, an anointing with perfumed oil (chrism) was added to the laying on of hands” (CCC 1289). This rite is today known in the West as confirmation and in the East as chrismation.
Today as then, not all ministers are able to celebrate it. Bishops—the successors of the apostles—are able, as are priests under certain conditions, but other ministers are not.
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The Sacrament of Confirmation

St. Thomas’ proofs for the existence of God are tried and true. And science today makes an excellent case for the existence of God. In the end, however, Tim maintains there is one most effective way we can prove to an unbelieving world that God is real. And he takes it right from Scripture: St. Paul’s encounter with the philosophers on Mars Hill will lead the way.&#8221;