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Karlo Broussard explains why Catholics are obligated to go to mass every Sunday.

Why We Go to Mass Every Sunday

Fr. David Michael Moses discusses using social media as a tool for evangelization, noting that the disciples would likely use it to spread Jesus&#8217; message if they were alive today.
Transcript:
Sometimes we look at all this social media stuff and we very rightly, I think, go, &#8220;This is so dangerous. Look what it&#8217;s doing to kids.&#8221; But there&#8217;s also the other side of it. There&#8217;s always the other side. Well, here&#8217;s also a tool that God put in your hands. And do you think the apostles would have done it? Do you think the apostles would have used social media or no? Would they have not?
Oh, I definitely think so. I definitely think so. I mean, I will say, you&#8217;re absolutely right. Social media is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. I would recommend for most parents just to keep their kids off of social media, honestly. The way I look at it, you know, a quick analogy is like social media is like a bad neighborhood. You know, a bad neighborhood is a dangerous place to be. I would not recommend my family, my nieces, and my nephews go live in a bad neighborhood.
But I do think that every bad neighborhood should have a Catholic church. And I think there should be a Catholic priest at that church who gets to know the area, gets to know the culture. They ought to be able to minister to the people. So I feel like even though it&#8217;s dangerous, that&#8217;s not a reason to just abandon it. I think certain people with the right disposition, the right training can go into that landscape and hopefully bring some goodness there.
So it is certainly dangerous, but I think it&#8217;s worth leaning into. And I could certainly see Jesus. I&#8217;m not sure if he would have his own account, you know, but I do think there would be people around recording what he was saying and posting it everywhere, and that would be part of the vehicle of spreading the message.
Judas would be monetizing it.
That&#8217;s a quality joke right now! Judas on the side, monetizing without telling anybody
Yeah, I got this Lord.
Too funny.
We got this, Lord. We&#8217;re going to make you famous.
So, well, yeah, I really like your dangerous neighborhood analogy. And there&#8217;s also a certain attitude sometimes in the modern world that Christians don&#8217;t belong in this space. You know, get out of our space. You know, there&#8217;s a secular bias that&#8217;s not a healthy secularism, but is a denuded secularism. Like, yeah, we don&#8217;t need you here. Do you feel that pushback sometimes?
Well, I do think that sometimes people try to avoid it, maybe avoid evangelizing there too much. You know, I just kind of think about maybe the enemy. If we were to say, &#8220;None of the Catholics are on social media anymore,&#8221; I think the devil would be like, &#8220;Really? You guys are just going to let me have it? You&#8217;re just going to give it to me and I can just run all of it.&#8221; You know, that would be his response.
I think when we say, &#8220;No, we&#8217;re going to enter in a very careful, mindful, prayerful way, look at this and see what we can do here,&#8221; that&#8217;s when the enemy is like, &#8220;Gosh, you know, I&#8217;ve got to deal with this now.&#8221; So I think it is something that&#8217;s really worth investing in the right way and can be a very, very powerful tool.
A lot of, I mean, one of, well, I should tell you this, the most common prayer request we get here at Catholic Answers is, &#8220;can we pray for something for you?&#8221; is that &#8220;my adult children will come back to the faith&#8221;. That is the most common prayer request we get.
And I saw a video that you did, by the way, we&#8217;re talking with Father David Michael Moses, if you&#8217;re just joining us. He&#8217;s a priest of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, but he&#8217;s also very popular online and reaching lots of people with the joy of his own priesthood and with the joy of the gospel. You made a video, which was very, very negative.
It was about how the churches are empty and young people are not vitalized and all that, but the images did not match the words. So you were saying the clichés about the Catholic Church, &#8220;Nobody comes, the pews are empty.&#8221; And a lot of it was at the SEEK Conference where there were like 20,000 young people. Was it the one that was up in Salt Lake City just recently?
That&#8217;s right. Yeah, absolutely right. So young people are interested in the faith. They do want the faith. They do want the faith. So how are you reaching them? And maybe that could help all the rest of us who are thinking about how to reach young people with the gospel.
Yeah, well, I think, you know, the church has a great history, right, of going into different places, learning the language, learning the culture, and then bringing the tried and true, faithful gospel to that culture and that place in that language. And I think in modern times, that&#8217;s very much the reality now is that a lot of the young people have kind of a new culture, right, and a new language.
And that&#8217;s not a reason to be afraid or to tell them to speak a different language. I think it&#8217;s fair for us to say, &#8220;Okay, well, let&#8217;s learn the language then,&#8221; right? Like the great missionaries in the past, learn the language, learn the culture, and try to engage as much as you can.
And just for me, you know, I&#8217;ve heard a friend say recently, &#8220;People don&#8217;t let you into their homes, but they let you into their phones.&#8221; And I think that&#8217;s very, very true. If we are going after the lost sheep. And in many cases, those are young sheep, right? It&#8217;s often the lambs who kind of lose their way.
If we&#8217;re going after the lost sheep, then, you know, I&#8217;m going to perish called, it&#8217;s called Christ the Good Shepherd. And Jesus tells us the Good Shepherd goes after the sheep. And so for me, if I&#8217;m a good shepherd, I want to be a good shepherd. That means I need to go after the lost sheep, but that probably looks like learning the language.
Because people don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t think you learn, people really don&#8217;t like the gospel. They don&#8217;t like what they think the gospel is. To kind of riff off of what Fulton Sheen talk about. People think they know the gospel, but they really don&#8217;t, right? They haven&#8217;t really encountered Jesus.
So I think if we are able to package things in the right way, then that can really make all the difference.
Tell me about that encounter with Jesus, because that&#8217;s the thing, isn&#8217;t it? The difference between the joy of the Christian life and the Christian life as obligation or as a series of &#8220;no&#8217;s&#8221; that God gives, it all comes down to that, the meeting and the knowing of the person of Jesus.
Oh, totally. I mean, that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s about. You know, and people get somewhat frustrated with the idea of religion, but really, religion is an organized way of most effectively encountering the person of Jesus Christ.
And you know, I think young people, they do think one thing that gets kind of lost today is this idea of greatness. Sometimes it&#8217;s framed as the kind of the Andrew Tate worldly, you know, having the cars and the mansions as greatness. But really, greatness is knowing the person of Jesus Christ. And that&#8217;s where the joy comes from ultimately. And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re searching for.
So, you know, I heard a quote recently, &#8220;The magic that you&#8217;re looking for is in the things that you&#8217;re avoiding.&#8221; And I think the world so often puts out there the pleasure and the status and the comfort and all those things. And that&#8217;s not really what we&#8217;re looking for.
Like, that&#8217;s not really what we want. The magic we&#8217;re looking for—not magic in the world, it&#8217;s not magic—but magic like the meaning and the peace and the joy and the purpose. The magic is usually in the things that we&#8217;re avoiding, which is suffering, self-denial, taking up the cross.
These are the things that actually give purpose to our lives. And so I think it is about, with young people especially, saying, &#8220;No, sacrifice and suffering are not the worst evil to be avoided,&#8221; which is what the world says. It&#8217;s actually like pushing through these things. On the other side of some of that sacrifice is really going to be everything that you actually long for in life.
And what is that actually going to find there? It is the person of Jesus Christ.

Would Jesus Preach on Instagram? | Fr. David Michael Moses

The man who wrote the book <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-how-to-talk-about-our-cultures-toughest-issue/">Persuasive Pro-Life</a> gives us a primer on how to share arguments against abortion. Use these effective techniques to move yourself and others closer to the truth about tiny, little, unborn people.

Pro-Life Bootcamp

Some Christians object to the practice of invoking the saints’ intercession because they think it takes away from the unique mediation of Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5—“There is one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ”). But those who invoke the saints counter that just because Jesus is the one mediator who “always lives to make intercession” (Heb. 7:25), that doesn’t mean he can’t share that intercessory role with his saints.
In fact, we know that Jesus shares that intercessory role with at least some of his saints: the Christians here on earth. Saints, after all, is a common word used for all Christians in the New Testament, as seen, for example, in 2 Corinthians 1:1, Ephesians 1:1, and Philippians 1:1. St. Paul urges Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:1 that “intercessions . . . be made for all men.”
Now, some Protestants might counter the above argumentation and say, “Your response misses the mark. We’re not concerned with earthly mediation taking away from Christ’s unique mediation. We’re concerned only with the claim that there are other heavenly intercessors.”
Take, for example, Jordan Cooper, a Lutheran pastor and professor of systematic theology. In his online <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3046OcXloZU">video</a> “A Critique of Prayer to the Saints,” he argues that the Letter to the Hebrews’ description of what’s going on before the Father in the heavenly throne room doesn’t “leave room at all for a kind of other heavenly intercession.”
There are two ways that we can respond to this argument. One is more general, which considers Cooper’s argument itself. The other is more specific to what Cooper says elsewhere in his video.
Here’s the general response. Recall that Cooper’s argument says there can be no other heavenly intercessor because that role belongs to Jesus alone, who has ascended into the heavenly sanctuary to minister as our high priest. But isn’t the Holy Spirit a heavenly intercessor also? Paul says he is:
<blockquote>Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Rom. 8:26-27).</blockquote>
Must we deny Paul’s teaching that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us in heaven? Cooper’s logic would have us say yes.
Now, Cooper might counter, “Of course the Holy Spirit can intercede for us because he’s God. The heavenly intercession that I’m concerned with is creaturely intercession.”
But if creaturely intercession in heaven is the problem, then we’d have to reject the heavenly intercession of the elders in Revelation 5:8 and the angel in Revelation 8:3-4. Here’s what John sees in Revelation 5:8:
<blockquote>And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.</blockquote>
In Revelation 8:3-4, John describes an angel doing the same thing:
<blockquote>And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.</blockquote>
The “prayers of the saints” in both passages refers to Christians on earth. And the elders and the angel are presenting their prayers to the Lamb, Jesus, in the heavenly throne room. That’s heavenly intercession, performed by creatures.
If the elders in Revelation 5:8 and the angel in Revelation 8:3-4 can be heavenly intercessors without taking away from Christ’s unique mediation as our heavenly high priest, then so can the saints. There is in fact enough “room” in the heavenly throne room for multiple intercessors, especially when those other intercessors intercede with Christ in virtue of their union with Christ through grace.
Now, concerning our more specific response, Cooper contradicts himself in his video. In the above argument, he restricts any and all heavenly intercession to Christ. Yet, later in the video, when commenting on the elders in Revelation 5:8, he concedes that they intercede for us in a general way, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3046OcXloZU">saying</a>, “Certainly they are before God; it is likely that the saints in heaven pray for the church.” Which is it? Is it Christ alone who intercedes in the heavenly throne room, or do the elders intercede as well? That’s something for Cooper to answer.
In the end, Cooper’s objection to the appropriateness of invoking the saints in heaven fails. Jesus’ unique mediation in the heavenly sanctuary does not exclude other heavenly intercessors, like the saints. As members of his mystical body, the saints share in such heavenly mediation and thereby are made our heavenly allies.

Don’t Exclude the Saints

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Favorite Apologist?!

Sunday Catholic Word is the only podcast that looks at the Sunday Mass readings and focuses on the details that are relevant to explaining and defending the Catholic faith.

Sunday Catholic Word

Just a few days after celebrating a holiday that recognizes the end of slavery in the United States, today we mark one year since <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-the-deal-with-dobbs-v-jackson">the fall of Roe v. Wade</a>.
It still seems a touch surreal. When I was active in pro-life efforts as a college student and young adult, Roe was the boss monster at the end of the level that we could sometimes manage to take a few whacks at but never defeat. Time and again, we put our hope in legislators and presidents and judges only to have them let us down. We had to be content with nibbling around the edges of the law—parental consent here, partial-birth there—while keeping the focus locally on aiding and persuading women in crisis pregnancies and nationally on “changing hearts and minds.”
In fact, whether due to discouragement, mission creep, or an ultimate lack of conviction, in some pro-life quarters “changing hearts and minds” became the only goal—the most we could hope or rightly want to do. I recall many a debate over the years with other self-identified pro-lifers who claimed that it was imprudent, even wrong to change the legal abortion paradigm in America without first changing how Americans felt about abortion. And of course, the other side <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/it-was-never-about-just-hearts-and-minds">was all too happy</a> to echo this rhetoric. (Though they weren’t keen on “changing hearts and minds, either, so they invited us instead to “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/faith-abortion-and-voting-part-5">reduce the root causes</a>” of abortion, usually by expanding the welfare state.)
Now, changing hearts and minds is great. It’s the core of our mission here at Catholic Answers. But there’s another great truth we need to remember: the law is a teacher. That is, laws are not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of persuasion—they are instruments of persuasion, too.
As Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons remarked when asked whether the arrival of legalized gambling to Springfield was a sin, “Once something is approved by the government, it’s no longer immoral.” It was a dry joke that underscores a truth of human experience: people look to the law for moral guidance, even when it’s bad.
We have seen this principle in action. Prior to 2012, same-sex marriage had been put to popular vote in states thirty-two times—including in California’s Prop 8 in 2008—and lost each time. Legislators and state courts in “progressive” states, unconcerned with changing hearts and minds first, kept testing the ramparts of the popular will: a <a href="https://www.mynbc5.com/article/from-the-archives-vermont-becomes-first-state-to-introduce-civil-unions/30337708">half-a-loaf measure</a> here, a seemingly <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160213204203/https:/www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8760044.html">harmless executive order</a> there, in each case teaching the people just a little more. Just prior to the Obergefell decision that mandated legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, national support for it was in the low 50 percent range. Today it’s in the mid-70s. A Prop 8 today would have a vastly different result. We have been taught.
We could point to a similar pattern with other historical issues: <a href="https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-evolution-of-divorce">divorce</a>, contraception, abortion, marijuana legalization. Revolutionaries use the instrument of law to gradually shift majority opinion as well as the “Overton Window” of socially acceptable viewpoints.
This phenomenon occurs because we reflexively equate legality and morality—and for reasons that make sense. We have implicit trust in the wisdom of our lawmakers and in the inherent rightness and validity of law. Plus, being opposed to the legal status quo is psychically exhausting over time. Most people aren’t moral philosophers or cultural boat-rockers; it’s easiest just to let the law inform our values, even if sometimes imperceptibly slowly.
Today, as we mark Dobbs+1, we hope that new state-level abortion laws will save lives, indeed <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/dobbs-saves-lives">as they have already done</a>. But we can also expect such laws to teach—this time for good. That pro-life activism has managed to keep the fires burning for so many years in the face of Roe’s chilling effect is truly extraordinary; a work of God. Now, post-Roe culture will have to think and argue about abortion without the conclusion having been predetermined by nine judges from 1973. State laws banning or restricting abortion will form citizens and institutions in new habits of thinking about the humanity of the unborn. What was once unthinkable under the old, radical abortion paradigm—that the “right to choose” was anything but sacrosanct—is now the new normal, the baseline for further battles in capitols and courts.

Thoughts on Dobbs +1

<div>Is hell a just punishment? I hear this question many times from skeptics, and that "No human being deserves such a punishment." How would I combat this claim? </div><div>The Church reminds us that hell is the “definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm">CCC 1033</a>, emphasis added; see 1033-37).
For further perspective, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/to-hell-with-heaven">this previous response</a> in which I explain that the fallen angels basically said, “To hell with heaven.”
</div>

Is Hell a Just Punishment?

The story about the ten lepers is paired in the lectionary with the condensed version of the story of Naaman the Syrian. It’s one of those combinations that makes it clear that although there are some crucial new things happening in the ministry of Jesus, there is also a great deal that stands in continuity with the ministry of the Old Testament prophets. Here in particular we see in stark terms both the ingratitude of God’s own people and the receptivity of the Gentiles to God’s saving work. As one fourth-century writer describes it, strangers were more ready to receive the faith than Israel (Titus Bostrensis, quoted in Thomas’ Catena aurea).
Israel is supposed to be the light to enlighten the nations, a sign to the peoples of God’s goodness. Yet so often Israel is a sign of contradiction as well: a sign of humanity’s failure to acknowledge its divine vocation. This too, we should observe, is part of God’s good providence, for Israel’s failure is thus turned to a good end, to show how God is able to be faithful despite our unfaithfulness—as St. Paul puts it in 2 Timothy, “he cannot deny himself”—and how even this sign of failure can be transformed as a witness to the nations. Likewise the Church, figured, according to the tradition of the Fathers, in the ten lepers, is a sign of failure, for though her members are washed and made clean in the sacramental waters of baptism, they more often than not fail to accept with gratitude the new life offered.
Beyond these layers of reading, there is also a present reality that we can observe in Catholic life, which is how often those “strangers”—whether Protestants or non-Christians or whatever—seem more grateful for the gift of the Catholic faith than those who have known it all their lives. What’s more, the zeal and gratitude of these strangers, at times, get ridiculed and marginalized by Catholics who, like those nine lepers, would rather just “get their sacraments” and move on.
If I can venture a bold observation, the existence of the Ordinariates is one place where the Church has in a way institutionalized this experience, almost as if to say, this zeal for the goods of the Church is “meet and right”; it is normal; and it would be a distortion of the gospel of grace to act as if the response of the nine ungrateful is somehow what ought to be expected simply because it is more typical. We should not be surprised when the Naamans of this world approach us looking for salvation. This is why God created Israel in the first place. It wasn’t just to make one people feel special; it was so that “all the nations of the of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 18:18). This is why the Church exists.
Whether we are Israelites or Gentiles—which is to say, cradle Catholics or converts—the point of the story in the Gospel remains that the most important thing is not how we got here, but where we are—that the Lord has healed us, that the Lord has made us one of us own. And so today’s epistle from 2 Timothy is relevant, because in it Paul exhorts us to be faithful to our calling.
<blockquote>If we have died with him
we shall also live with him; 
if we persevere 
we shall also reign with him. 
But if we deny him 
he will deny us. 
If we are unfaithful 
he remains faithful, 
for he cannot deny himself.</blockquote>
That last bit can seem a bit contradictory, but it is meant I think to emphasize the fidelity of the Lord to his own promises. In other words, baptism is irrevocable, indelible. When he forgives your sins, they really are forgiven. When he incorporates you into his body, the Church, he really does incorporate you. The variable isn’t he, but we: our denial, our lack of perseverance, our infidelity. Or, in terms of the lepers of today’s readings, our ingratitude or our inability to recognize the gifts that we have been given, the gifts that ever stand before us, the grace constantly available in the Church through the sacraments.
Let us then strive for the enthusiasm and joy of Naaman and the gratitude of the Samaritan leper—not just to sit by and watch our healing, but to recognize that this gift is the sign of an even greater invitation to take part more permanently in the great work of God’s love.

Don’t Be Such a Leper

News flash: “Catholicism is “Bull#!*%” Hmmm…news to me, but apparently not to one of our followers:

The reason? The Church teaches, “Death was contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1008).
Why is this teaching so foul? “Scooby MIKE” argues that it runs contrary to the creation of human beings via evolution, which presupposes death.
Fortunately for “Scooby MIKE,” and all of us Catholics, there’s no stench here for us to worry about. Evolution indeed involves death. But when it comes to the creation of human beings, that is, beings with spiritual souls, evolution is hands-off. As Pope Pius XII stated in Humani Generis, the creation of a spiritual soul and its union with requires a direct and immediate act by God (sec. 36). Thus, the creation of human beings lies outside the material mechanistic processes of evolution.
This doesn’t mean, however, that God couldn’t have directed evolutionary processes (which would have involved death) to develop non-rational animals that would eventually become apt for union with a rational soul. Pope Pius XII teaches that when it comes to “inquiries into the origin of the human body,” it could have come from “pre-existent and living matter” (Humani Generis 36). Of course, this origin would have been under the governance of God.
That pre-existent and living matter very well could have been an animal somewhat like us in its biological makeup but lacking a rational soul. Therefore, the first true human being would only have come about upon the union of a rational soul with such matter.
But note that, before this union, such an evolutionary process wouldn’t have been the evolution of a human being. Rather, it would have been the evolution of a non-human being.
So, contrary to our friend’s claim, there’s no stench in the Church’s teaching that death entered human history after Adam’s sin in light of evolution

Evolution’s Not a Death Sentence

What are popular online Protestant apologists today telling their coreligionists who are encountering Catholic critiques of their religious tradition? “Confessional Lutheran, published apologetics researcher, and Church History enthusiast” Javier Perdomo gave us one such glimpse in his interview on the Protestant <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEucTL17vaA">YouTube channel Gospel Simplicity</a>. In a video entitled “What&#8217;s the Protestant Response to Catholic Apologetics?”, Perdomo not only responded to some examples of what we might call “soundbite” Catholic apologetics, but also offered recommendations to Protestants struggling with how to navigate these debates.
Some of Perdomo’s advice is commendable and relevant for all ecumenical debate, regardless of one’s religious convictions. Despite being an online influencer, Perdomo urges viewers (and listeners) to get off their devices, touch grass, read, and pray—a worthy exhortation, given how much time we waste consuming content that does little more than elevate anxiety, or engaging in less-than-edifying debate that is little more than caricature and name-calling. He complains about Catholic over-simplifications and straw-manning of Protestants, which of course should be avoided—whatever we are debating, all sides should always charitably attempt to interact with the very best arguments our interlocutors can offer.
The interview features some responses to common Catholic criticisms of the Protestant position. These include the Catholic contention that Protestantism is hopelessly divided (Perdomo: <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/you-catholics-are-divided-too">Catholics are divided, too</a>), or that the Protestant position reduces to individualism and subjectivity (Perdomo: Catholics suffer <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/stuck-in-a-circle-with-you">the same dilemma</a> because they have to individually and subjectively identify the contents of and then interpret magisterial teaching).
I will not belabor here what has been written elsewhere on these topics. Rather, I would like to focus on what Perdomo says at the end of the interview, when he speaks to Protestants trying to determine how to work their way through these often complicated ecumenical debates, many of which originate in the Reformation itself. He encourages Protestants to read the catechisms of various Protestant traditions, as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He urges them to read the early Church Fathers and “most importantly” Scripture, because otherwise, “you’re not going to even be able to know who’s right.” He tells them to join a church and “submit yourself to whatever elder you’re under.”
In one sense, this advice resonates with me, because it’s similar to what I often offered others when I was a Presbyterian seminary student almost twenty years ago. I vividly remember getting frustrated with evangelical friends of mine who loved debating the Bible and theology but who were not regularly attending any church or studying Scripture. But in another sense, I recognize now that such advice is incoherent and based on flawed premises.
Perdomo hints at one of these premises in his exhortation to Protestants to read the Bible to determine which theologians or scholars are right. Such advice presumes the <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/store/the-obscurity-in-scripture-disputing-sola-scriptura-and-the-protestant-notion-of-biblical-perspicuity">Protestant doctrine of perspicuity</a>, which, though it has a variety of definitions over more than five hundred years of Protestant history, is typically articulated as meaning that the Bible is sufficiently clear that the self-identifying Christian, regardless of intellectual acuity or academic training, should be able to read it and determine what is necessary for salvation or the essentials of the Christian faith. To presume this doctrine is necessarily to define myself as the final interpretive authority of Scripture—whatever theologian or scholar I read, that source is evaluated according to my interpretation of the Bible. Moreover, such a presumption undermines the ability even to engage in open-minded research and charitable ecumenical dialogue, because any position at odds with what is the so-called clear teaching of Scripture would necessarily be disregarded as de facto erroneous.
Let me provide an example of what this incoherence looks like in practice. Imagine yourself as a self-identifying Protestant who wants to better understand debate among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox. You hold (perhaps inchoately) to some variation of sola fide, as do many Protestants across a variety of Reformation-originating traditions, and you do so because you’ve been taught, and perhaps you’ve even yourself determined, that it’s what the Bible plainly teaches. (By extension, this implicitly means you presume perspicuity, too).
So you begin reading the Church Fathers and prominent theologians and scholars across various Christian traditions, and some of what you encounter seems to contradict sola fide.
What should you do with such data? One option would be simply to disregard such positions out of hand. After all sola fide is clearly taught in the Bible! That would certainly be consistent with the doctrine of perspicuity, which since the earliest days of the Reformation has operated in close correlation with sola fide. Yet that option would also be contrary to the entire enterprise of rational discourse, in which we allow our opinions and beliefs to be challenged and welcome the possibility that we are actually wrong. It would be to effectively declare, “I refuse to have my opinions on the Bible’s meaning regarding salvation questioned, because I consider them indisputable!”
Another option would be to entertain the possibility of alternative interpretations of Scripture as equally possible. Perhaps the Bible doesn’t clearly teach sola fide, but it does teach something else, such as the historic Catholic position often understood as “faith and works,” or “faith working through love,” to use St. Paul’s expression (Gal. 5:6). But even to entertain that possibility would be to vitiate perspicuity—after all, the Bible is supposed to be clear on this. It’s not up for debate!
I hope you can perceive the dilemma here. The Protestant can resolutely hold to perspicuity in the face of contrary arguments, effectively treating the doctrine as a philosophical first principle, such as the law of non-contradiction or that the whole is greater than its parts. Such first principles cannot be proved; they simply are. Or he can consider the possibility that sola fide is wrong, but that would necessitate abandoning the perspicuity thesis, because he would have to grant that other interpretive positions on salvation have sufficient merit to be evaluated as possibly true—and so the historic Protestant doctrine would thus not be perspicuous. And if Scripture isn’t clear on salvation, dialogue and debate are required, as well as some means of authoritatively resolving those disputes (assuming we want them resolved).
What I’m getting at is that even to engage in the kind of open-minded study and debate that Perdomo calls for is to jettison the doctrine of perspicuity, because the doctrine itself is an obstacle to that enterprise. Perdomo (rightly and to his credit) wants to move beyond the caricatures, over-simplification, and even illogic that define so much of modern religious debate. The question is whether his own Protestant premises enable Protestant apologists to be up to the task.

A Protestant Advises Protestants

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DAY 229
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CHALLENGE
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“We don’t need the Church to help us identify Scripture. God’s word is self-authenticating.”
DEFENSE
This makes for good rhetoric but does not stand up to examination.
The word of God is powerful (Ps. 33:6; Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12), but this does not mean it is self-authenticating. Scripture records that even prophets could be mistaken about whether a word they heard came from God (1 Sam. 3:2–9).
Taken literally, the claim that Scripture is self-authenticating would mean that the text of Scripture has certain qualities that prove it to be (that is, authenticate it as) the word of God. What might these be?
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, “the heavenliness of the matter [in the Bible], the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God” (1:5). This is stirring rhetoric, but it can’t be cashed out in practical terms:
<ul>
<li>It is impossible to state a list of objective literary qualities that characterize all the books of the Bible and only the books of the Bible.</li>
<li>Even if one did so, one would need to argue why this collection of qualities shows it to be the word of God.</li>
<li>And why couldn’t someone write new literature that also displayed those qualities? If so, such writings would also self-authenticate as the word of God and would be new scriptures.</li>
</ul>
For a closed canon, one thus would need to specify a set of literary qualities that not only marked out the Bible as unique and as the word of God but that would also be impossible to duplicate.
This is not possible, as shown by the fact that nobody really applies this test. Those who claim Scripture is self-authenticating (including the authors of the Westminster Confession; see Day 236) end up appealing to factors other than the text, such as the witness of the Holy Spirit, meaning that the text is not self-authenticating.
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Self-Authenticating Scriptures?

Do you ever wish someone could explain <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/baptism">baptism</a> to you like you&#8217;re seven? Come on, there&#8217;s no shame in it! Listen to Jimmy Akin explain the basics of why we&#8217;re baptized on Catholic Answers Live.

Kids’ Show: Why Do We Get Baptized?

<div>For some particularly grievous sins, such as abortion, must priests consult first with their bishop before absolution?</div><div>
Certain sins are not just sins but also considered canonical &#8220;crimes&#8221; and thus receive canonical penalties that need to be lifted. Most reserved penalties can be lifted by the local bishop, but some are reserved to the pope. In the case of danger of death, any priest can remit validly and licitly virtually all penalties (can. 976).
In the situation of sins that are accompanied by a penalty that is reserved to the local bishop, he can grant the faculty of lifting the penalty to some or all of the priests of his diocese.
Sins that carry a canonical penalty are:
<ul>
<li>Apostasy, heresy, schism</li>
<li>Violation of consecrated species</li>
<li>Physical attack on a pope or bishop</li>
<li>A priest who absolves an accomplice in sexual sin</li>
<li>Unauthorized ordination of a bishop</li>
<li>Direct violation by a confessor of the seal of confession</li>
<li>Anyone who reveals the overheard confession of another</li>
<li>Pretended celebration of the Eucharist by a non-priest</li>
<li>Attempt to hear confession by one who cannot validly do so</li>
<li>False accusation of the crime of solicitation in the confessional</li>
<li>Attempted marriage by a religious or cleric</li>
<li>Formal cooperation in abortion</li>
</ul>
Formal cooperation in an abortion had previously been reserved for the bishop to lift the canonical penalty. However, <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-lettera-ap_20161120_misericordia-et-misera.html">Pope Francis in 2016</a> extended that authority to all priests in the sacrament of confession.
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Reserved Sins?

Why Doesn’t God Reveal Himself?

The New Testament teaches that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/predestination">predestination</a> is real. St. Paul says, “Those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29-30).
Scripture also refers to those whom God has “elected” (Greek, eklektos, “chosen”), and theologians often link this term to predestination, understanding the elect as those God has predestined to salvation.
Because the Bible mentions predestination, all Christian groups have a belief in the concept. The question is how predestination works, and on this subject there is considerable debate.
At the time of Christ, some Jews—such as the Essenes—thought that everything is fated by God to happen, so that people <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-gods-foreknowledge-doesnt-negate-free-will">have no free will</a>. Other Jews—such as the Sadducees—denied predestination and attributed everything to free will. Finally, some Jews—such as the Pharisees—believed that both predestination and free will have a role. For Christians, Paul rules out the view taken by the Sadducees. But the other two views have found supporters.
Calvinists take the position closest to that of the Essenes and place a strong emphasis on predestination. According to Calvinism, God actively chooses certain individuals to be saved, and he gives them grace that will unfailingly result in their salvation. Those whom God does not choose don’t receive this grace, so they are inevitably damned.
In Calvinist thought, God’s choice is said to be “unconditional,” meaning that it isn’t based on anything about the individuals. Belief in unconditional election also is traditionally shared by Lutherans, with various qualifiers.
Not all Calvinists speak of “free will,” but many do. When they use the term, it refers to the fact that individuals are not forced to do something against their wills. They can choose what they desire. However, their desires are determined by God either giving or withholding saving grace from them, so it is God who ultimately determines whether an individual will choose salvation or damnation.
This view also was held by Luther, who compared a man’s will to an animal whose destination is determined by its rider, which is either God or the devil:
<blockquote>The human will is placed between the two like a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills. . . . If Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run to either of the two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of it (On the Bondage of the Will, 25).</blockquote>
Advocates of this view sometimes accuse those who disagree with them of teaching, or at least implying, salvation by works, since it is the decision of an individual’s will—not God—that determines whether he will be saved. But this relies on an overly broad understanding of “works” that doesn’t correspond to the way the term is used in Scripture. Using the freedom that God himself has given an individual to accept his offer of salvation would not be either an action done out of a sense of obligation to the Mosaic Law or a “good work” that would earn one’s place before God. It would simply be accepting his gift.
Critics of Calvinism often accuse its view of portraying God as capricious and cruel. They argue that the doctrine of unconditional election implies that God arbitrarily saves some and damns others. They also argue that the Calvinist understanding of free will robs the term of its meaning, since individuals are not actually free to choose between salvation and damnation. They are slaves to their desires, which are determined by God.
Other Christians understand free will as freedom not only from external coercion, but also from internal necessity. That is, God has given human beings freedom to make choices that are not strictly determined by their desires. They can thus choose whether or not to accept his offer of salvation.
Being omniscient, God knows in advance whether they will freely choose to cooperate with his grace, and he predestines them to salvation based on this foreknowledge. Non-Calvinists often argue that this is what Paul is referring to when he says, “Those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined.”
The Catholic Church permits a range of views on the subject of predestination, but there are certain points on which it is firm: “God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end” (CCC 1037). It also rejects the idea of unconditional election, stating that when God “establishes his eternal plan of ‘predestination,’ he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace” (CCC 600).

What Is Predestination?

Dr. Edward Sri notes the similarities of Pilate&#8217;s indifference to the truth that sent Jesus to death and modern society&#8217;s indifference to truth that sends the unborn to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/abortion">abortion</a>.

Relativism and Abortion

Catholics and Intelligent Design

<div>Can a layperson have a permanent key to the tabernacle in order to get hosts to take to homebound people?</div><div>The Code of Canon Law:
<blockquote>The person responsible for the church or oratory is to take care that the key of the tabernacle in which the Most Holy Eucharist is reserved is safeguarded most diligently (can. 938 §5).</blockquote>
General Instruction of the Roman Missal:
<blockquote>The one tabernacle should be immovable, be made of solid and inviolable material that is not transparent, and be locked in such a way that the danger of profanation is prevented to the greatest extent possible (314).</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.romanrite.com/nullo.html">Nullo Unquam Tempore</a>
<blockquote>The key of the tabernacle, in which the Most Holy Sacrament is kept, should be guarded with the utmost diligence, its custody resting as a grave burden of conscience on the priest who has charge of the church or oratory.
The key of the tabernacle must be most diligently kept by a priest. All the cautions mentioned up to the present will be in vain, if the chief caution, namely, the safe-keeping of the key of the tabernacle be neglected. . . . The key must be kept by the rector at home, or always carried about by him, care being taken against losing it; or let it be kept in the sacristy in a safe and secret place, under lock and key, the second key being kept by the rector as above. . . .
If he leaves the key in the sacristy under another key; he can give this latter to the sacristan during such time as he is absent and the key of the tabernacle may be needed.</blockquote>
The documents of the Church are very clear that there are not to be other keys to the tabernacle floating around. The actual key to the tabernacle must always be kept at the church. If someone has need of the tabernacle key, then it should be kept in a location under another key or code that the individual can have access to rather than keeping the tabernacle key. After all, if the person holding onto a key were to lose it, it is easier and simpler to change where the tabernacle key is kept than to change the lock for the tabernacle.
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How Should the Tabernacle Key Be Handled?

Is Christianity a religion full of contradictions? <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@bashir_gift_ug/video/7278195520537955589?is_from_webapp=1&amp;sender_device=pc&amp;web_id=6983056260526589446">This Muslim fellow on TikTok</a> thinks so. He thinks that, in professing Jesus to be God, we thereby affirm and deny at the same time certain attributes of God.
For example, he argues, “If you say God became man, you would put God in the nature of ‘not-knowingness,’&#8221; since “it is in the nature of man not to know everything.” Therefore, so it seems, to say that God became man is to say that God is all-knowing and not all-knowing at the same time.
He also thinks affirming the Incarnation robs God of his immutability. If God became man, he argues, then God would be subject to changing his mind, since that’s a quality of human beings. But insofar as He is God, He cannot change his mind. Therefore, our gent concludes, we Christians affirm and deny the immutability of God at the same time.
Here&#8217;s his other example related to Jesus’ divinity: “The Bible says in Mark 12:29 that God is one. So, if you say God is one and three at the same time, [that’s] a contradiction. One is one.”
Does the belief that God became man entail the contradictions that this Muslim thinks it does?
Well, for there to be a contradiction something must be affirmed and denied at the same time and in the same respect. For example, if I were to affirm that the tree in my yard exists outside and deny that it exists outside at the same time, then I’d be affirming a contradiction.
But if I were to affirm that the tree exists outside and, at the same time, deny its existence in my mother’s mind back in Louisiana (she doesn’t even know about the tree), then I wouldn’t be affirming a contradiction, since I’d be denying the tree’s existence in one sense and affirming its existence in another. Given the different senses, there is no contradiction.
The Muslim in the video fails to consider the different senses in which Christians say God is all-knowing and not all-knowing, immutable and mutable, and one and three.
Consider the all-knowing part. Jesus, who is God become man, is all-knowing in his divine intellect in virtue of the divine nature that he is identical to (along with the Father and the Holy Spirit). Yet, he is not-all-knowing in his human intellect in virtue of the human nature that he assumed to himself, since, as our Muslim friend rightly recognizes, human nature excludes the all-knowing nature of divinity. The sense in which he is all-knowing is not the same as the sense in which he is not-all-knowing. Therefore, there is no contradiction.
On to the alleged <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/gods-immutability-and-the-incarnation-irreconcilable-differences">immutable and mutable contradiction</a>. Christians profess that Jesus is subject to change insofar as he has a human nature, which allows him, a subject of action, to experience change. But he does not experience change in his divine nature. So, we don’t affirm and deny Jesus’ immutability in the same sense. Affirming X of one nature and denying X of another doesn’t entail a contradiction, because the affirmation and the denial are not in the same sense.
Finally, Christians don’t believe that God is one and three in the same sense. Oneness is attributed to divinity concerning being. There can be only one being that is subsistent being itself. “Threeness,” however, is attributed to divinity concerning the persons, or relations, that are identical to the one divine being. Being and relations are distinct concepts. Therefore, to affirm “threeness” in persons, or relations, is not to deny “oneness” in being. Thus, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/explaining-the-trinity">there is no contradiction</a>.
Of course, these responses don’t come close the depths of what great thinkers, like Aquinas and the early Church fathers, have probed concerning these issues. It’s always frustrating that objections like those in the above video only take seconds to make, yet a full answer requires a semester’s worth of theology and philosophy on the graduate level. It suffices to say, however, that since the above arguments from our Muslim gent fail, we can conclude that the Christian faith doesn’t entail a contradiction on these counts.

God Became Man, No Problem

<div>May a priest use an iPad to say daily Mass?</div><div>As far as I know, no universal rule has been issued by the Church, so it if the local bishops conference has not prohibited its use (<a href="https://cathnews.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Ipads-at-Mass.pdf">as the bishops in New Zealand did</a>), and the appropriate liturgical texts are legally available on the tablet device, then it would technically be an option.
The Church usually uses blessed objects for Mass that cannot be used for other purposes. So it would seem a bit odd that an object used for answering emails would also be used to say Mass.
However, if for some reason the proper liturgical books have gone missing or were ruined, it would seem reasonable to use an electronic device for immediate and temporary use. I could also envision an electronic device that is used only for Mass that is carried by a priest who travels between assignments that require him to bring his own liturgical books.
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Say Mass Using an iPad?

<div>What are the options for the "Mystery of Faith" prayer during Mass?</div><div>In the English Roman Missal, the priest simply says or intones, &#8220;The mystery of faith.&#8221; There are no other options in English.
In the English Roman Missal, there are three possible responses to this acclamation:
<ol>
<li>We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection until you come again.</li>
<li>When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again.</li>
<li>Save us, Savior of the world, for by your cross and resurrection you have set us free.</li>
</ol>
</div>

Memorial Acclamation?

Tim Staples delves into the complex theological concepts surrounding Mary&#8217;s power and the importance of free will. Responding to a caller&#8217;s question about St. Louis de Montfort&#8217;s &#8220;True Devotion to Mary,&#8221; Staples provides a comprehensive explanation of Catholic doctrine in contrast to Protestant perspectives, particularly those of Luther and Calvin. He highlights the significance of Mary&#8217;s role in salvation history and the necessity of human cooperation with God&#8217;s grace.
&nbsp;
Transcript:
Let&#8217;s go to Lincoln, Nebraska, where Sammy is listening. Sammy, thank you very much for the call. You got a question for Tim Staples?
You bet, thank you guys. All right, bro. Big fan of the show, first time caller. I&#8217;m trying to also entertain my two year old, so. Oh, this should be good. This should be good. So I&#8217;m reading The True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort. Awesome book. For that very reason, you know, to try to develop a true devotion. And I am really early into it. And I&#8217;m in the introduction here, paragraph seven.
And I could read the whole thing here, it&#8217;s pretty short, but basically what he&#8217;s saying, he gets to a point where he says the saints are saying admirable things about this holy city of God. I assume that&#8217;s in reference to Mary, but I&#8217;m not 100% sure, because then it goes on to say that, &#8220;Is in true immeasurable that the grander of her power, &#8220;which she exercises even over God himself, &#8220;incomprehensible.&#8221; 
So yeah, I just wanted further clarification on that. I just was questioning, you know, if this is in reference to Mary, how does she exercise power over God himself? Oh yeah, awesome brother. I tell you, that book is so rich. St. Louis de Montfort was of course the master when it came to the Blessed Mother. But here&#8217;s the key, what St. Louis is emphasizing, and especially at a time, you know, we&#8217;re in the same time in this sense that he was, where Protestantism is all the rage, and in particular Calvinism. And unfortunately, Luther and Calvin, who are two of, I would say of all of the reformers, those two were probably the most dangerous in their errors because they&#8217;re the language they used. And thanks be to God, you know, in our dialogue with the Lutherans, I know that doesn&#8217;t represent all Lutherans, because of course the Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Synod, and others didn&#8217;t have anything to do with that. I&#8217;m referring to the famous declaration that the Catholic Church signed with the Lutherans, of the Lutheran World Federation.
Where we came to certain agreements, at least on the initial grace of justification, that yes, there is human cooperation involved. But you know, just to give you a sense of things though, remember, Luther taught in his greatest work, as it&#8217;s called, his magnum opus, where he essentially denies free will. The book is called The Bondage of the Will. And in two different places in that book, he says that you and I are like a beast, right? If God gets on our back and rides us, he&#8217;ll ride us to heaven. If the devil gets on our back and rides us, he&#8217;ll ride us to hell. But the beast has no choice as to who rides him, right? And that was, of course, his whole thesis of Bondage of the Will. There is no free will. He calls free will every name in the book. And of course he&#8217;s dialoguing with Erasmus, who was a Catholic theologian, who I think does a pretty darn good job, even though he himself had his own theological issues, but he was a good son of the church. But here&#8217;s the point.
That sort of free will is a farce. There is no free will. And John Calvin took that, that Luther said, and put it on steroids with his idea of double predestination. So that you and I are basically puppets, dude. There is no free will. There is no cooperation. The idea of cooperation was absolutely anathema to Luther, right? And whether that&#8217;s cooperation preceding justification, because when God calls us, he never coerces us. We can, you know, as Acts 7, verse 55, in fact, verses 51 through 55, if you remember St. Stephen, when he&#8217;s about to get stoned to death, when he&#8217;s preaching the gospel there in Jerusalem, and they kill him for it, he says to them, &#8220;You,&#8221; to the elders of Jerusalem, he says, &#8220;You are stiff-necked at you who resist the Holy Spirit of God.&#8221; Right, they resist the Holy Spirit. They resist the grace of God, whom Stephen knew was calling them to salvation. Now, that means in preparation for the grace of justification, or after we receive the grace of justification, we can always resist. But understand, you and I know that as a Catholic. But remember, Luther and Calvin talk, that is absolute heresy. There is no free will and such. So when you read St. Louis, of course he&#8217;s coming with this as a backdrop, and he&#8217;s presenting the importance of understanding free will. Now, of course free will, we have no power to merit anything, unless it&#8217;s as St. Peter says in 2 Peter 3, 18.
He says, &#8220;Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.&#8221; You can only begin to merit and do what St. Louis is talking about. Once you enter into Christ, with our last caller, I talked about baptism. Baptism is the first sacrament, first chronologically, and it has a first in primacy as well. Of course, the Eucharist is the greatest because it&#8217;s Jesus and all other sacraments are ordered toward it. But baptism has a certain primacy because that&#8217;s the sacrament whereby we enter into Christ and then the doors are opened for all the other sacraments and the power of God so that we can begin to do what St. Louis is talking about. Right now, let&#8217;s get to that. Because once we enter into Christ, here&#8217;s the key, before Christ, what can we do? John 15.5, Jesus says, &#8220;apart from me, you can do nothing.&#8221; But what happens when we enter into Christ as my old Greek professor, Father Patrick Brennan, he&#8217;s long since gone to his reward, but I quote him all the time, one of the most brilliant men, if not the most brilliant man I ever met, he said, &#8220;Before Christ, we can do nothing after.&#8221; Look at John 14.12, right? Jesus says, &#8220;You will do greater things than I did.&#8221; We could talk a whole lot about what that means, right?
And St. Paul, in Philippians 4.13, he says, &#8220;I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.&#8221; Right, now why is that? Because we now have the power of Christ working in us. However, my friend, we also have free will. So God, even when we&#8217;re in him, Si, God doesn&#8217;t force us to do meritorious actions. We must freely choose, see? But if we do as Christians, we can literally change the world. Now you say, but wait a minute, this thing, you got power over God? Absolutely.
Why? Because that&#8217;s the way God established his economy of salvation.
Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution on the church has a beautiful section on this, as does the catechism, especially, I&#8217;ll point you to the catechism section 2008 through 2010, glorious section where it says that God has chosen to use the free cooperation of his creatures in his plan of salvation. What does that mean? That means if I choose to walk with Jesus, to say yes to Jesus at that coffee shop, let&#8217;s say, and go over and talk to some folks, and by God&#8217;s grace, they come to faith in Jesus. They come to the sacraments. Guess what?
I have cooperated with God in saving a soul. See, that&#8217;s why the Bible will say all over the place in 2 Corinthians 9.22, St. Paul&#8217;s, not 2 Corinthians, that would be 1 Corinthians 9.22, St. Paul says, &#8220;I&#8217;ve become all things to all men &#8220;that by all means I might save.&#8221; How can Paul save anybody? Because of his cooperation. Now, it&#8217;s God who&#8217;s the first principle of salvation. He&#8217;s the first cause. But because we have free will, and that&#8217;s the sticking point with Luther and Calvin, my friend, because we have free will, yes, if I choose not to walk over there, guess what? That person may not. Now, it&#8217;s true somebody else could come and whatever, but maybe not too, Cycala. The point is, yes, we have power over God. Now, granted, I know in our modern theology, we don&#8217;t like to use that language of over. I get what St. Louis is saying, I actually like it, because I think it&#8217;s poetic and I think it&#8217;s beautiful. But it also gets at the point here that God could do everything. 
He could come down here right now and answer this question a lot better than this knucklehead is doing. He could come down here and do literally everything we do at Catholic Answers and everything every Christian does. But he does not do that, Cycala. He chooses to use us and our free cooperation. And in that, we become, as St. Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians chapter three, verse nine, he says we are co-laborers with Christ, right? So yeah, there&#8217;s a certain power because, and maybe the ultimate example is what St. Louis is gonna get to if you keep reading with the Blessed Mother. We have example after example of the Blessed Mother who until she says, let it be done unto me, in Luke chapter one, verse 37, there&#8217;s no incarnation, my friend. But when she says, let it be done, the entire universe is changed. Jesus did not perform the miracle at the wedding of feast of Cana until mama says so in John chapter two, that is just a fact. That&#8217;s what it says. In fact, Jesus pushes back. He says, (Speaking In Foreign Language) In other words, what is this between you and me woman? I&#8217;m not gonna do this. I mean, that&#8217;s basically what he&#8217;s saying.
If you understand the Hebraism in that text that goes back to the Old Testament, that&#8217;s a powerful line of rebuke. Mama&#8217;s coming and saying, hey, these folks need a miracle here. And Jesus is basically saying no. But what does Mary say? Get ready, here comes the miracle. Basically, no, it&#8217;s not exactly. Pair of phrase, it&#8217;s a pair of phrase. That&#8217;s right. He says, she says, do whatever he tells and he performs the miracle. And by the way, he performs the miracle basically at the request of the Blessed Mother. And through that, Jesus performs his first miracle, enters into his ministry, and the apostles come to faith. That is a quote from John chapter two, verse 11. And we could go on to the foot of the cross.
It&#8217;s Jesus who prepares his mother for that sacred moment that was prophesied in Luke chapter two, verses 34 and 35 by Simeon the prophet, where he says, behold, this child is set for the fallen rising again. And basically, for the salvation of all, he says, for the many, and to be a sign of contradiction which shall be spoken against. But then he turns to her and a sword will pierce your soul that the dialogue, the thoughts out of many hearts would be manifest. That is the same people Simeon said Jesus was gonna die for, Mary was gonna spiritually die for.
Powerful text there. Of course, it&#8217;s fulfilled on the cross. And so yeah, Jesus in a sense didn&#8217;t even go and die on the cross until first he prepares his mother through the preparation of the prophet Simeon to understand Mary&#8217;s role at the foot of the cross, where Pope John Paul, I think brings it out so powerfully and beautifully in his masterpiece in cyclical on suffering. Salvatici Delores section 25, where Pope St. John Paul the Great says at that moment, the sufferings of Mary and Jesus were so intimately and integrally interwoven that her sufferings became a participation in the redemption of all. And we see that portrayed in the book of Revelation, chapter 12, the woman who gives birth to the Messiah in verses four and five, and then in verse 17 gives birth to all of us. So look, I think to sum all this up brother, it all really gets back to free will, the free will that Luther and Calvin rejected. 
And by the way, many of their followers are coming back to a belief in free will. Thanks be to God, but we can&#8217;t pass over. This is devastating when you deny this, because of course, if there&#8217;s no free will, we are puppets, we can&#8217;t merit anything, we can&#8217;t do anything, and it&#8217;s just a matter of if God&#8217;s gonna choose Cykeleth, he&#8217;s going to heaven, if not gonna choose Timsek, well, you&#8217;re going to hell and so forth. So understand that&#8217;s the context in what Saint Louis is saying. We have power over God in as much as, if we choose to cooperate, all heaven will break loose.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

Does Mary Exercise Power Over God?

Defenders of divine simplicity claim that God does not actually get angry. Although it might seem to us as if God gets angry at things, this is simply the human interpretation of God, and not actually what is happening.
There are a few objections. First, it might seem rational to say that God gets angry at things. We sometimes see this in Scripture, like when the Israelites are worshiping the golden calf. Furthermore, it seems as if God would get angry at sin. If I see a bunch of sinful things, I am likely to get upset or angry. So why not God, too?
When speaking of God’s anger, it’s important to note that it’s not wrong to say that God has anger. After all, God speaks of his anger throughout Scripture (Jer. 21:5; Ezek. 5:13; Hos. 11:8-9).
However, the language of God “getting angry” is not exactly correct. The verses above talk about only God’s anger, not God going from being not angry to angry. Instead of saying, “God got angry,” it would be more accurate to say, “We are now noticing God’s anger.”
For an analogy, imagine that I am standing on the driver’s side (left side for Americans) of my car. It would be accurate to say I am standing on the left side of the car. Say I then move over to the passenger side. Then it would be accurate to say I am standing on the right side of the car. As obvious as this may seem, it’s a great example of my relation to something changing while that thing remains the same. Did the car change in any way? No—rather, my relationship with the car changed. Likewise, if I get sunburnt while my friend doesn’t even get a tan, does the sun change? Of course not. What changed was not the sun, but my relationship with it. Similarly, when God “gets angry,” it is not God who is changing; it is our relation to God.
Biblical depictions of God’s emotions are ways that we relate to God, not how he relates to us. When we say, “God is angry,” we aren’t saying anything about God. Rather, we notice that we have moved ourselves away from God’s infinite goodness. We use terms like “God is angry” to better understand the relationship turmoil. After all, if you do something your friend doesn’t like, he will be angry with you.
Humans get angry because we cannot think about everything at once. As such, we get angry in different circumstances. We can have a reaction that is excessive, and we can be mistaken about what is truly unjust.
Alternatively, for God, anger does not begin or end, and it is never excessive or mistaken. It is part of his perfect knowledge and will. (He likewise has the perfection of mercy, which must be kept in mind.)
Although it might seem rational, if God were to “get angry” at someone sinning, he would be in time and would be influenced by humans. Both of these are not allowed under the traditional view of God. It may seem to us as if God is becoming angry, but his emotions (for lack of a better term) are constant.
In order to better understand this, here are some quotes from the great St. Augustine:
<blockquote>We must take care . . . to understand that the anger of God is free from any turbulent emotion; for his anger is an expression of his just method of taking vengeance, as the law might be said to be angry when its ministers are moved to punish by its sanction (On the Psalms, 83, 10).</blockquote>
And . . .
<blockquote>Now when God is said to be angry, we do not attribute to him such a disturbed feeling as exists in the mind of an angry man, but we call his just displeasure against sin by the name ‘anger’, a word transferred by analogy from human emotions (Enchiridion, 36, 33).</blockquote>
Finally, <a href="https://aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/st-ia-q-3">here is a quote</a> from Thomas Aquinas discussing anger as we attribute it to God:
<blockquote>Anger and the like are attributed to God on account of a similitude of effect. Thus, because to punish is properly the act of an angry man, God’s punishment is metaphorically spoken of as his anger.</blockquote>
As Aquinas notes, God’s “anger” is an expression of the human interpretation of God. We view God as “getting angry” when he punishes humans, because when humans punish other humans, the person doing the punishing is usually unhappy. However, it is not as if humans made God angry. Rather, we entered into a relationship with God that had us interpret his love as anger. Much like how Adam and Eve did not make God change to become merciful, humans do not make God change to become angry.
Overall, we can somewhat understand God through attributing human emotions to him, despite these emotions being much too simple for a timeless, immaterial, and immutable being. God does not have emotions and does not change, but humans throughout time and in Scripture have attributed these emotions to God to better understand him, despite being technically inaccurate.

God Does Not ‘Get Angry’

Many of us will celebrate Labor Day today by taking some well-deserved time off before the back-to-school, back-to-work, back-to-reality September rush kicks in. But sometimes, the chatter over Labor Day barbecues can actually be a cultural conversation about the dignity of work.
Take, for example, this attempted public shaming that backfired. Back in 2018, a shopper named Karma Lawrence spied former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens working at a Trader Joe’s in New Jersey, scanning groceries, and took a picture of him. On social media, Lawrence lamented what she thought was the bad . . . uh, karma that life had doled out to Owens. 
News sites picked up the story, which quickly went viral, leading to a torrent of support from friends of the actor as well as fellow thespians. They noted that most actors look for other types of work to support themselves between gigs, just as Owens was doing. Then superstar producer Tyler Perry <a href="https://abc7ny.com/entertainment/tyler-perry-offers-geoffrey-owens-a-job/4151534/">offered him a job</a>, and soon Owens’s phone was blowing up with opportunities to tell his story on talk shows. 
As for Karma? Well, you know what they say about that. She was forced to endure a social media shaming of her own. 
Owens, a Yale graduate, explained that decreasing royalties from Cosby reruns had put pressure on him to earn a regular living to support his family. Many of the tweets in support of Owens asked the question, “What’s wrong with someone doing an honest job?” At least, they wrote, he was working to support his family—no shame in that. In fact, it’s quite honorable.
What’s interesting to me about Owens’s story is what it says about the dignity and meaning of work.
We live in a culture in which labor is frowned on and retirement—the earlier, the better—the goal, with many Millennials embracing the FIRE (financially independent, retired early) movement, dropping out of the workforce often in their late twenties and early thirties. For some, such freedom means having the time to do what they see as meaningful, even if that happens to be another type of work. But there are many more who view any type of work as a sort of necessary evil, with the ideal life amounting to uninterrupted leisure. 
Even some Christians actually view work simply as part of the punishments stemming from original sin. But does that view . . . work?
The Bible notes that before our first parents fell into sin, work was there. God himself “worked,” establishing the heavens and the earth, after which he rested (Gen. 2:1-3). Yes, we are to imitate God in his rest, but his plan isn’t “all play and no work.” in fact, work is also one of the joyful gifts God gave his children in Eden’s paradise. Adam had a job to do: he was to “till” (Hebrew: ’abodah) and “keep” (Hebrew: shamar) the garden. These verbs are later used in the Old Testament to describe the Levitical priests’ service in the Temple, connecting Adam’s work with the task of worship!
Of course, the entry of sin into creation adversely affected the arena of work, too. The joy of work became toil: because of the disobedience of our first parents, God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen. 3:17-19). 
But the goodness of work for humanity remains. As birds were created to fly, we were created to share in God’s work of creation, no matter what our job might be. 
When interviewed, Owens said to Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, “There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a résumé and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”
This is straight out of the Catholic playbook: the dignity of work and worker. Any honest job can be a means of worship and a means of personal holiness for the worker. The micro-marvel of tiny ants, dutifully working, carrying many times their body weight, gives God just as much glory as do the macro-marvels, like majestic mountain peaks piercing the clouds. 
It’s like that with our work, too. As St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, <a href="http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/furrow.htm">wrote</a>, “before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything acquires the value of the love with which it is done.” One might say that the greatest job, then, is the one that is done with the most love, for the glory of God.
Jesus spent the vast majority of his life as a worker. In that, he was redeeming us, too, albeit in a different way, by sanctifying work. God worked in St. Joseph’s workshop just as he did in building the heavens and the earth, in order to remind us that, through service in the most ordinary things of life—yes, even at Trader Joe’s—we can discover the divine.

Work as Worship

January 24 is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, a 16th&#8211; and 17th-century bishop. Looking at the Church’s liturgical calendar, somebody might ask, “Who cares about some guy that died 403 years ago? How does he matter to me?”
One reason Pope St. John Paul II canonized as many saints as he did was to provide people with more modern examples of holiness. But note the key point: the saints are examples, and holiness never goes out of style.
Holiness is not some ethereal quality, some optional je ne sais quoi. If you don’t end up holy, if you don’t end up a saint, your life was a failure. There are only two places to spend eternity: heaven and hell. And sanctity—holiness—is the admission ticket to the former.
That’s why St. Francis de Sales matters.
Francis came from a noble family of Savoy, a region that today would be the east of France bordering Switzerland, running down to the French coast around Nice, and then extending eastward into Italy around the Turin area. In the 1500s, it was on the frontlines of religious division: Geneva was just over the border, and that city was a Calvinist theocracy. Now, remember that Geneva and its environs are part of French-speaking Switzerland, which meant <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/advice-from-the-guy-who-makes-converts">there were still Catholics</a> left there. Francis was eventually sent to be their bishop. As a Catholic bishop, however, he was not going to get living space in Calvinist Geneva, so his episcopal see was in nearby Annecy, France.
Okay, you say, and so what? Why does a bishop from four centuries ago—even one with a tough assignment—matter to me today? Two reasons.
First, he was accessible. Though of noble birth and aware of the privileges of the episcopacy, Francis reduced himself to simplicity to hike the Alps to personally meet and tend to the spiritual needs of his flock scattered across the valleys. He met people where they were at. He realized that among the reasons the Reformation could spread was religious illiteracy: the debates were about refined theological distinctions, but many average people had only a rudimentary knowledge of the Faith, more the consequence of inheritance, social practice, and custom than explained teaching. Francis sought to remedy that.
He sought to remedy that because he himself, far better educated, had been caught up in it. As a nobleman, his family had big plans for him that included politics, not the priesthood. But at a certain point, Francis began seriously to worry about the question of his own salvation (the kind of anxiety that led a scrupulous Martin Luther into inventing a whole new theology). In the environs of Geneva, that anxiety was driven by the Protestant doctrine of predestination: that God had assigned some people (probably most) to damnation and there was nothing they could do about it, given that good works avail nothing to salvation. At a certain point, however, Francis became conscious of the fact that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) and wants our salvation perhaps even more than we do. Buoyed by that trust, Francis shook off his anxieties and, with joy, embraced the priesthood.
Second, Francis countered the bleak hellfire and damnation of Calvinism with a focus on holiness. Holiness was not a rarefied virtue for some people: it was sine qua non for everybody. Holiness was not a clerical or religious preserve, while the laity mostly skated on the borderline between sin and grace. Everybody faces that borderline, but it is God’s will not that we simply squeeze under some minimal bar, but that we become holy. “Be ye perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) is directed to everybody.
Nor did Francis approach holiness with glumness and depression, as if “I’ll have so much fun if I’m not holy.” No, Francis presented holiness as joy, as happiness. In our language today, he presented it as self-fulfillment. As Karol Wojtyła would write long before becoming pope, living the kind of life God wants us to live and a truly human life are in direct, not inverse proportion. To the degree human beings live the kind of life God wants, they also live a truly fulfilled human life. Holiness does not “alienate” us from our humanity (to riff on Immanuel Kant); it leads us to it.
Francis did not just talk. He wrote two wonderful books, directed to lay people. The <a href="https://ccel.org/ccel/desales/devout_life/devout_life">Introduction to the Devout Life</a> and the <a href="https://ccel.org/ccel/desales/love.all.html">Treatise on the Love of God</a> offered practical guidance in living a holy life. The Introduction was especially pathbreaking because Francis wrote it for ordinary lay people, not for religious, something quite unusual in his day.
The Second Vatican Council <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html">reminded us</a> of the “universal call to holiness” (Lumen Gentium 39-42). In doing so, it reminded us of Our Lord’s call to perfection, something we may never obtain but for which we can and should always try. (After all, if your lover ever told you, “I think I love you enough,” would you take that as a sign that everything is wonderful or that something is awry? Love is dynamic: if you are not moving forward, you’re falling backward.) We should not forget, however, that in the Church’s history, all the saints remind us that holiness applies to everyone. Some of them—like St. Francis de Sales—even made the effort to present that teaching explicitly to others.
Space limits us from talking about how Francis collaborated with St. Jane Frances de Chantal to tailor that call to holiness to women. She was responsible for founding the Institute of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin for those women who felt called to religious life. Both saints remind us that holiness is everybody’s affair in every time and place.
And that’s why, four centuries later, Francis still matters.

Why Francis Will Be Relevant Forever

Why is God silent?

Catholic Answers Focus, the world's premier podcast on Catholic apologetics, helps you explain and defend the Catholic Faith. If you want to take a deep dive into the reasons behind Church teaching, Catholic Answers Focus is for you.

Catholic Answers Focus

Tickets are going fast, and I want to see you there! www.conferenceoftrent.com

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“Catholics are wrong to pray the rosary. Jesus condemned ‘vain repetitions.’”
DEFENSE
Jesus did not condemn prayer that involves repetition—he endorsed it.
In the King James Version, Jesus says, “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matt. 6:7). Even in this translation, he does not condemn repetition but vain (useless) repetition.
But there is a problem with this translation. In Greek, Jesus says we should not battalogēsēte. This is a rare word not found elsewhere in the New Testament. It’s meaning is unclear, so we shouldn’t draw dogmatic conclusions about what he meant.
The word appears to come from battos (Greek, “a stammerer”). Gentiles did not literally stammer when they prayed, but they could ramble in prayer, thinking that they needed to wear down their gods using many words. This is the attitude Jesus rejects, saying “they think they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
It’s not repeating words that he’s concerned about. It’s thinking the efficacy of prayer depends on saying a lot. He points out God knows what we need before we ask him (Matt. 6:8). Jesus makes it clear he doesn’t have a problem with repeating things because the next thing he does is teach the Lord’s Prayer—a prayer he intends to be repeated (Matt. 6:9–13).
Repetition is essential to corporate worship. It’s not possible for people to pray aloud, in unison, unless they know the prayer they’re going to use. That’s why prayers in the synagogue and the temple of Jesus’ day were memorized and repeated.
A striking example is the Psalms—ancient hymns, or prayers set to music. The book of Psalms was Israel’s hymn book. In fact, Psalms is one of the most frequently quoted books in the New Testament (Luke 20:42, 24:44; Acts 1:20, 13:33, 35, etc.). Yet the Psalms, by their nature, are meant to be repeated.
The Psalms even involve repetition within themselves. Psalm 136 has a refrain that occurs over and over. In the King James Version, the refrain is translated “for his mercy endureth for ever,” and it occurs so frequently that it even interrupts and appears in the middle of sentences. Yet Psalm 136 is a beautiful and spiritually meaningful prayer that was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
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Repetitious Prayer

Episode 98: Year B &#8211; 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode, we look at three details in the readings for this upcoming 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B. Two of the three come from the second reading, which is taken from Hebrews 2:9-11. Both details pertain to the topic of Jesus’ divinity. If Jesus is God, so it’s asked, how can he be “lower than the angels” and “made perfect”? The third detail comes from the Gospel reading, taken from Mark 10:2-12 and it has to do with the topic of divorce and remarriage
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Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/100624.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a>
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Is Jesus Lower than the Angels?

<div>Who were the three women at tomb of Christ?</div><div>Mark 16:1 says they were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome.
Mary Magdalene is, of course, one of Christ’s first and closet women disciples, from whom seven demons had been exorcised (Luke 8:2).
Mary the mother of James is not the mother of Jesus, as many modern-day Protestants believe, but another Mary who is elsewhere also identified as the mother of a son, Joseph (Matt. 13:55-56, Mark 15:40). For more on the perpetual virginity of Mary the Mother of Jesus, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-case-for-marys-perpetual-virginity">please see this article by Tim Staples</a>.
Salome is a disciple who, like Mary Magdalene, also witnessed the crucifixion (Mark 15:40). The parallel passage on the crucifixion in Matthew 27:56 conveys she is the mother of the apostles James and John and thus the wife of Zebedee.
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Which Women Were at Christ’s Tomb on Easter Sunday?

I’m looking into Catholicism. What should I be doing in preparation for starting OCIA classes?

I’ve been told that I have really bad scrupulosity, and I don’t see how that is compatible with Catholicism.

Are Catholics wrong about the Eucharist because of John 6:60-63?

I’m in OCIA. What do candidates do if they sin since they can’t go to confession?

Why do Catholics pray to the saints? Is there a scriptural basis for it?

Struggling with scrupulosity and unsure how it fits within the Catholic faith? Joe Heschmeyer explores how to navigate this challenge, along with preparing for OCIA, understanding the Eucharist in John 6, and the biblical basis for praying to saints.
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>

Is Scrupulosity Compatible with Catholicism? And More

Ever wished for a killer proof to convince all of Twitter that God exists? Logan Gage, head of the philosophy department at Franciscan University, says there is actually a better strategy. Maybe just point to the variety of evidence, and help others to see it.

You Don’t Need the Silver Bullet Proof for God

The author of <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-bible-is-a-catholic-book/">The Bible Is a Catholic Book</a> reviews the biblical evidence for the Star of Bethlehem. What was it? How did the Magi follow it? Was it real or just a literary device?

The Real Star of Bethlehem

Jimmy Akin dives deep into the controversial topic of &#8220;no salvation outside the Church.&#8221; He clarifies whether this refers to the Catholic Church as an institution or the body of Christ, exploring historical interpretations and modern implications. Discover how the Church has evolved in its understanding of this complex doctrine.
Transcript:
I&#8217;d like to know, Jimmy, when the Church says that there is no salvation outside the Church, is she referring to the Catholic Church as an institution, or is she referring to the Church as the body of Christ?
The way the Church has historically used that phrase, it&#8217;s a reference to the Catholic Church as a visible institution, but the key is how you interpret it, because it has never been understood to mean that there are literally no people who are saved, who are not full members of the institution of the Catholic Church.
Going back to the age of the Church Fathers, there is an awareness that, for example, catechumens, people who planned on becoming Catholic, but who died before they became Catholic, could still be saved. You know, St. Augustine talks about that, for example. That was recognized all the way down through the Middle Ages,
including when the teaching on this reached the papal level.
What&#8217;s happened is subsequent to the discovery of the New World, it&#8217;s been recognized there are more people who are not Catholic through no fault of their own than was previously realized. So if you read in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this is a round paragraph 846 or so. I don&#8217;t know that that&#8217;s the exact paragraph, but it&#8217;s around that. When it quotes this saying from the Church Fathers, &#8220;Outside the Church, there is no salvation,&#8221; it explicitly makes the point that this is not directed to those who are not Catholic through no fault of their own. So that&#8217;s how the phrase has historically been used. It would be a bit of a reinterpretation to interpret it to mean the body of Christ in general, because there is a truth to be captured there in reference to the visible institution. If you know Jesus Christ wants you to become a member of the visible institution of the Catholic Church, and you know he&#8217;s serious about that, and you say, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going to do that,&#8221; and you&#8217;re not a Catholic through your own fault, then that will jeopardize your salvation. So I wouldn&#8217;t suggest just reinterpreting this phrase, but understanding it in the correct sense that the Church has articulated.
Hey, thanks for watching! If you like this Catholic answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

What Does “No Salvation Outside the Church” Mean?

Apologist vs. Ex-Catholics of Reddit (Mass Grave Conspiracy Debunked)

Dinesh’s Debate Flop Doesn’t Prove Alex O’Connor’s Biblical Critique

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“We have no evidence the saints are aware of our prayer requests. How would they even know? They are not omniscient.”
DEFENSE
We have evidence they are aware of our prayers.
You don’t have to know everything to know some things, so the saints don’t have to be omniscient to be aware of our prayer requests.
We do not know much about how the human intellect works in heaven, but the fact that heaven is a higher state than this life suggests we will have more rather than less awareness. This is also suggested because we will be made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4) and transformed to be like God by virtue of the beatific vision (1 John 3:2).
Scripture does not give many pictures of what life in heaven is like, but it shows saints and angels aware of what is happening on earth (Rev. 6:9–11, 7:13–14, 11:15–18, 16:5–6, 18:20).
The common understanding is that the saints are aware of our prayer requests through union with God. It is reasonable to suppose that, in the perfect state of heaven, people will have whatever information is relevant to them. Thus God can make a saint aware that someone is asking for his intercession.
However saints and angels are aware of our prayer requests, Scripture indicates that they are. In Revelation 5:8, the twenty-four elders, who appear to represent the leaders of the people of God in heaven, offer incense to God. We are told that the incense is “the prayers of the saints.” In Revelation 8:3–4, an angel offers incense that is mingled with “the prayers of all the saints.”
At that time, the term “saint” was commonly used to refer to liv- ing Christians (2 Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; Phil. 1:1). It is natural to see these passages as depicting the inhabitants of heaven presenting the prayer requests of the saints on earth to God. This is surely part of what 8:3 means by the reference to the prayers of “all the saints.”
TIP 
If it is suggested that these passages don’t deal with prayer requests made to those in heaven, then our point is made even stronger, for the passages would show that those in heaven were aware of prayer requests that weren’t even addressed to them!
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Can the Saints Hear Us?

Episode 148: 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C
In today’s episode, there are two details that we reflect on from the second reading, taken from 1Timothy 2:1-8. The first detail has a two-fold relation to apologetics. One is that it relates to the topic of “Double Predestination.” The other detail relates to the topic of Hell, which is related to the previous topic of double predestination. The second detail is related to the topic of the invocation of Mary and the saints.

Does God Will Some to Hell? St. Paul, Predestination, and the Saints

Episode 124: Year C &#8211; 5th Sunday of Lent
In today’s episode, we focus on two details in the second reading and Gospel for this upcoming Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year C. The second reading is taken from Philippians 3:8-14, and the detail that has apologetical significance is Paul’s teaching that we receive righteousness that comes from Christ. For many Christians, this is proof that our justification is merely forensic/external and doesn’t involve interior righteousness. The Gospel reading, taken from John 8:1-11, involves the woman caught in adultery. The apologetical detail is Jesus’ ability to avoid the trap set by his enemies. The relevance this detail has is that it comes up in conversations concerning the famous Trilemma argument for Jesus’ divinity.
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Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/033025.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Does Righteousness from God Mean We’re Not Actually Made Righteous?

Why Would God Create Someone to Go to Hell?

CCC 841 says we worship the same God as Islam. Does that contradict Christian teaching?

If we are all part of the universal priesthood, why are there no priestesses?

In the old testament when they had the manna, they were told not to gather it, that it would be given day to day. I have concerns that we’re doing that with the Eucharist, that maybe we shouldn’t be saving it after Mass. Also, when the host is in the m...

How can I explain the saints to my Protestant friend who doesn’t believe in saints?

My husband and I are in the process of adoption. What is the Church’s stance on embryo adoption?

It says clearly in scripture when Jesus consecrates the wine that they should receive it. So isn’t it contrary to scripture that my diocese doesn’t offer the cup during Mass?

I struggle with the granularity of the terms surrounding indulgences. I embrace wholeheartedly the concept of indulgences, but when things say “do x amount and you’ll get y days off purgatory” it just seems so transactional and rings untrue to me.

Overcoming Obstacles to Catholic Beliefs

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Should we consider President Trump's & Vice President Vance's "Thoughts and Prayers" controversial?

Tim Staples, Catholic Answers Apologist, provides a detailed response to a viewer&#8217;s question about faith and works in Romans 3:28. Tim emphasizes the importance of charity and good works for salvation, citing James 2 and other biblical passages.

Caller: “Critique My Thoughts on Faith and Works”

One argument that Protestants like Dr. Gavin Ortlund make is that early Christians like Origen (185-253) denied that intercessory prayers could be made to the Saints. But is that true? It turns out, digging a little deeper reveals a very different picture.

Why Origen Believed in Intercessory Prayer to the Saints

Does 1 Corinthians really reject philosophy—or is Paul the Apostle targeting a false “wisdom” that opposes the Gospel? In this episode, I unpack Scripture with the help of St. Thomas Aquinas to show how Paul is not rejecting the use of philosophy when it comes to knowing God but rather a human “wisdom” that focuses on the things of this world alone and attempts explain the world without God.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Does the bible reject the use of philosophy? There are some Bible passages that would seem to indicate it does. But, as we’ll see, the operative word there is “seem.”
Hey guys, Welcome back to the channel! So glad to have you with me. If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and hit that bell notification so you can be notified when new videos are released. Also, I’d like to invite you to consider helping keep this podcast going by financially supporting us on Patreon at doctorkarlo.com with “doctor” spelled out.
So, as I mentioned, the question we’re looking at today is whether using philosophy to talk about God and his revelation goes against the Bible.
There’s one passage that seems to say it does: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.
There, Paul talks about the message of Christ crucified as God’s wisdom—and he contrasts that with what he calls the “wisdom of the world.”
Here’s what he says:
[PHONE READ]
“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? . . . For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified . . . Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God [Christ crucified] is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Cor. 1:18–25)
Some Christians take Paul to be rejecting human wisdom entirely as a legitimate way to know God. Here’s what the author of Enduring Word Commentary David Guzik has to say about it:
[VIDEO]
[W]hy has God destroyed the wisdom of the wise did you see that in 11:52 verse 21 this is staggering friends for since in the wisdom of God the world 12:01 through wisdom did not know 12:07 God my friends there is a constant tendency to think that the smartest and 12:13 the wisest humans will know the most about God but God cannot be found through 12:22 human wisdom but only through what through the message of the cross the 12:29 pursuit of human wisdom may bring Earthly contentment it may bring Earthly 12:34 happiness though that may be rare I mean I don&#8217;t know many philosophy Majors that I think are really happy 12:41 people my friends this pursuit of of human wisdom it and in it of itself it can 12:48 never bring the true knowledge of the true God
Did you catch that? Guzik thinks Paul is saying that
[VIDEO]
“God cannot be found through 12:22 human wisdom but only through what through the message of the cross. . . this pursuit of of human wisdom it and in it of itself it can 12:48 never bring the true knowledge of the true God”
Is Guzik’s interpretation, right? If so, then philosophy is out the question for explaining and defending the faith. We’d have to leave all that philosophical stuff behind and focus merely on preaching the cross of Christ.
Let’s walk through a few things we can say in response.
First off, from a Catholic perspective this interpretation can’t fly. It goes directly against what Vatican I definitively taught in Dei Filius. Here’s what Canon 1 “On Revelation” says:
[PHONE READ]
If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.
Stated positively: God can be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason.
So, at least, Catholics must reject Guzik’s interpretation on magisterial grounds.
But not everybody’s Catholic. What should other Bible believing Christians think?
They should be suspect of this interpretation because it runs contrary to what Paul teaches elsewhere. Check out what he says in Romans 1:20:
[PHONE READ]
Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.
That means God can be known through human wisdom—that’s to say, philosophy is a legit tool to know at least some things about God.
Okay, what else can we say in response?
Well, if we take God’s words, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever,” as a blanket rejection of all philosophical reasoning, we end up with some big problems.
For starters, Guzik’s take is actually self-defeating. Why? Because he’s using human wisdom—philosophical reasoning—to make his case!
He’s saying, “Paul teaches that God destroys human wisdom,” and then concludes, “therefore human wisdom can’t help us know God.” To reason from premise to conclusion is nothing less than the use of philosophical reasoning, which is human wisdom.
But here’s the kicker: Guzik is using human wisdom—philosophical reasoning—to arrive at knowledge about God. What’s that knowledge? God can’t be known by human wisdom.
So if Paul really meant we can’t use human wisdom—like philosophical reasoning—to know anything about God, then Guzik wouldn’t even know the truth of his own conclusion that God can’t be known by human wisdom, since the human wisdom of philosophical reasoning was used to know such a conclusion. That’s a classic self-defeating argument.
Another big problem with the idea that Paul is forbidding the use of philosophy to talk about God is that it would mean God is acting foolishly, since he would be acting contrary to His own nature, which can’t be.
Let me break that down.
As human beings, it’s part of our very nature to be rational. We have an intellect, and our intellect naturally reaches out to understand reality. That’s basically what philosophy is: the pursuit of truth, trying to understand the deepest causes of things using our natural reason.
So when we engage in philosophy—especially when we use it to help guide our lives toward God—we’re actually doing something good.
Now, if God, through Paul, were to tell us not to use our reason like that—not to pursue truth through philosophy—He’d be telling us to go against something that’s actually good for us as human beings. That would mean God is asking us to act against our own nature.
But here’s the kicker: If we act against our nature by acting against what’s truly good for us, we’re actually turning away from God, since to act against our own good is to act against the divine will. The order of good built into our human nature is really just an expression of God’s will—because, after all, He’s the one who created our nature in the first place.”
So, if God were to ask us not to use our reason by using philosophy in talking about God, he’d be asking us to turn away from him, which means he’d be asking us not to love Him.
But that can’t be, because that would mean God would be failing to love himself, which is absurd. God by definition is fully actualized in His love because he is pure actuality or existence itself. He cannot do anything but love himself.
So the bottom line is: God isn’t condemning all philosophical reasoning here. That can’t be what Paul means either, since Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit and wouldn’t be saying something that contradicts what human reason can clearly understand.
So what does God (and Paul) mean when He says,
 “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever”?
Let’s call in some help from St. Thomas Aquinas.
In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, Aquinas points out that God can’t be saying, “I’ll destroy all wisdom.” After all, Sirach 1:1 says,
“all wisdom is from the Lord God.” 
Instead, so Aquinas argues, God is saying He’ll destroy the kind of wisdom “the wise of this world have invented for themselves against the true wisdom of God.”
James 3:15 puts it this way:
“This is not wisdom, descending from above; but earthly, sensual, devilish.”
In other words, God’s going after the kind of distorted thinking that leads people to live only for the things of this world. That’s the kind of “wisdom” the cross overturns.
What Paul’s getting at comes into sharper focus when we look at what seems to be his Old Testament backdrop: Isaiah 29:14. There, God says,
[PHONE READ]
[T]herefore, behold, I will again do marvelous things with this people, wonderful and marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.” 
What does God mean here? In their Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Curtis Mitch and Scott Hahn explain:
[PHONE READ] 
Originally this was a warning for the leaders of Israel, whose overconfidence in human understanding was manifest when they paid more attention to politicians than to prophets. The same warning is now posted for the Corinthians, who prize the rational wisdom of men over the revealed wisdom of the gospel (pg. 286). 
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So it’s wisdom opposed to the Gospel, or the desire for human wisdom before God’s wisdom, that Paul is rejecting.
Aquinas continues in his commentary by saying God’s not rejecting prudence altogether either. Instead, He’s targeting worldly prudence—the kind that focuses only on temporary goods and completely ignores the eternal, which is what true prudence deals with. As Paul writes in Romans 8:6,
“The prudence of the flesh is death.”
And here’s where it hits home: When we live just for this world, we start interpreting everything in terms of this world too. We explain the world only through natural causes and push away any thought of God or divine revelation. That’s what Aquinas means when he says,
“[O]n account of the vanity of his heart man wandered from the right path of divine knowledge.”
Fr. Thomas Joseph White, a Dominican priest, explains this beautifully in his 2014 article “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Wisdom of the Cross,” published in the journal Nova Et Vetera. He says that this kind of human confusion—this misery, really—is precisely what the wisdom of God in the crucified Christ comes to heal.
It “opens reason up,” he writes, “to an authentic horizon of intellectual universality.” That’s a fancy way of saying the cross helps us see the big picture.
And in Aquinas’s words,
[PHONE READ]
“God brought believers to a saving knowledge of himself by other things, which are not found in the natures of creatures.”
Translation: God comes to help us out by giving us saving knowledge that’s we can’t have by reason alone—it’s supernatural.
Think of it this way: If a teacher sees their students totally missing the point, what do they do? They switch gears. They try a different example, a new explanation—whatever it takes to help them understand.
God does the same. When He sees that we’re struggling to grasp life’s meaning through the natural order alone—by reason alone, He speaks to us through something that hits at the heart—the cross.
And what’s the cross saying?
Love.
That’s the message. Christ crucified reveals the deep, powerful truth that we’re called to a loving relationship with God the Father, through Jesus, by the Holy Spirit.
Fr. White puts it this way:
[PHONE READ]
The “love of Christ crucified . . . redeems the human mind by introducing it at once to the heights and depths of the mystery of the Trinity.”
So how do we live out this loving relationship with the Trinity?
By imitating Jesus. By living a life of self-giving love, offering ourselves for the good of others—just like He did. By living the sacramental life and living the life of grace.
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So, bottom line: Paul isn’t rejecting philosophy—he’s rejecting the kind of false “wisdom” that pulls us away from God. Real wisdom, the kind rooted in truth, actually leads us closer to Him because it reflects the way He made us. That’s why the Church embraces both faith and reason, not one against the other.
And in the end, the wisdom of the cross doesn’t shut down human reason—it transforms it, heals it, redeems it, elevates and opens it up to see the bigger picture. Which means that when we use philosophy in service of the Gospel, we’re not going against the Bible—we’re actually doing exactly what God designed us to do.
Well, my friends, that’s it for today! If you found this video helpful, make sure to like, subscribe, comment below, and share it with someone who might need to hear this. And for more resources, check out my website at karlobroussard.com.
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Thanks for hanging out, and I’ll see you next time!

Does the Bible Reject the Use of Philosophy?

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

<div>What does it look like to love sinners, instead of rebuke them?</div><div>The two can—and should—go hand in hand. One of the spiritual works of mercy is <a href="http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/how-we-teach/new-evangelization/jubilee-of-mercy/the-spiritual-works-of-mercy.cfm">admonishing the sinner</a>, and this should be done out <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/philip-kosloski/admonish-the-sinner-pope-francis-and-the-third-spiritual-work-of-mercy">of true love.</a> “Admonish” is less of a harsh word, though “rebuke” need not exclude genuine love.
In short, we can and should correct sinners out of love for them and the harm sin can do in their lives and those of others, and yet we should continue to interact with them in love if they don’t immediately repent. Sometimes people can take awhile to have a major conversion, and so we want to support them throughout that process, while never condoning, let alone participating in, their wrongdoing.
Finally, learning from St. Thomas Aquinas, fraternal correction should be brief, charitable and rare, meaning that people should really see that we love them holistically and do not want simply to correct them regarding their sin.
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How Do You Love Sinners Instead of Rebuking Them?

How to discern between Catholic and Protestant apologetics?

How were the apostles chosen?

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

Why does God allow suffering and evil?

Do we receive the full Eucharist with just the host?

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

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“Solomon’s temple held a metal basin or ‘sea’ used for ceremonial washings. According to Scripture, it was ten cubits across and ‘a line of thirty cubits measured its circumference’ (1 Kings 7:23; 2 Chron. 4:2). This implies that the value of π (pi) is 3, but that is incorrect. We know that π is an irrational number slightly greater than 3.14159.”
DEFENSE
Thank you, Mr. Spock. This confuses an approximation with an error.
If the sea was exactly ten cubits across then it would have a radius (r) of 5 cubits, and if it were perfectly circular then its circumference (C) would be just over 31.4159 cubits, according to the formula for the circumference of a circle, C=2πr.
How are we to account for the difference of just over 1.4 cubits be- tween the biblical and predicted values?
Some note that the Bible says the sea had a curved rim (1 Kings 7:26; 2 Chron. 4:5). Second-century mathematician Rabbi Nehemiah pro- posed the difference is because the sea’s circumference was measured around the inside of the rim while the diameter was measured from the outside of the rim (see Petr Beckmann, A History of Pi, chapter 7).
This is possible, but there is a simpler solution: We are dealing with approximations.
The cubit (the length from a man’s elbow to middle fingertip) is itself an approximation. So were most ancient measurements. If the circumference of the sea were exactly 30 cubits and its diameter thus turned out to be 9.5493 cubits, the ancient writer would have simply rounded to 10. Most likely, both the diameter and circumference are rounded, approximate values.
Then there is the problem of doing the measurement. The reference to a measuring line suggests someone measured it using a line, but did they get the line to fit the rim exactly? If they had men holding the line at points around the rim, it likely would not have fit exactly, resulting in an approximate measurement. Further, we’re assuming the sea was perfectly circular, which it may not have been.
Ultimately, since π is an irrational number, everything using it must involve an approximation. The biblical author has simply chosen a different level of approximation than the modern critic. The fact that the biblical author’s math works within the level of approximation he selects shows he is giving an honest and accurate report.
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The Bible and Pi

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

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“The synoptic Gospels say the Last Supper was a Passover meal, but John indicates it wasn’t (John 18:28, 19:14).”
DEFENSE
There are multiple resolutions to this challenge.
First, there were disputes about the calendar in first-century Judaism. Some have proposed Jesus used a different calendar than the temple authorities, so he ate the Passover meal a day earlier than the Jewish authorities mentioned in John 18:28.
Second, it’s been proposed Jesus simply celebrated the Passover a day early because he knew he was going to die. He made other changes to the meal as well (e.g., instituting the Eucharist), and the disciples— who recognized him as having “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68)— would have gone along with their Lord’s celebration a day early.
Third, it’s been argued John has been misunderstood.
There are several indications in John that [the Last Supper] was a Passover meal: It was held in Jerusalem, although Jesus was staying in Bethany for the festival (John 12:1). Jesus and his disciples did not return to Bethany that evening—it was required that the Passover night be spent within the ritual limits of the city. Jesus’ statement that those who have washed need only their feet cleaned implies that the disciples had washed before the meal (John 13:10). This would have been a ceremonial cleansing to prepare for the Passover meal. The disciples thought that Judas left the meal to buy (additional?) provisions for the feast or to donate money to the poor. It was customary to donate to the poor on Passover night (Andrew Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul, 275).
On this view, the passages in John thought to show the Crucifix-on occurred before Passover have been similarly misunderstood. John 18:28 says the Jewish authorities had not yet eaten the Passover meal, but they had been busy all night, preparing for Jesus’ arrest, taking him into custody, and interrogating him (Steinmann, 278–79). They hadn’t had time yet! John 19:14 says the Crucifixion happened on “the day of preparation of the Passover.” This wasn’t the day before Passover. “The day of preparation” was an idiom referring to Friday, and “Passover” was commonly reckoned as including the weeklong feast of unleavened bread. John means Jesus was crucified on the Friday of Passover week (Steinmann, 275–78).
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The Last Supper and Passover

SHOCKINGLY STRONG (and a lil cringe) Moments From the Alex O’Connor vs David Wood DEBATE

Episode 89: Year B &#8211; 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on one detail in the Gospel reading, taken from John 6:24-35, that pertains to the Sacrament of the Eucharist. It is Jesus’ metaphorical use of the images of eating and drinking. For many Protestants, such a metaphorical use is the key to unlocking the meaning of Jesus’ instructions to “eat his flesh” and “drink his blood” later in John 6. But we argue this is not the case.
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Metaphors and the Bread of Life Discourse

Episode 86: Year B &#8211; 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focuse on three details in the readings for this upcoming 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, one of which comes from the second reading, taken from Ephesians 1: 3-14. The relevant apologetical topic is the gratuity of the initial grace of salvation. The other two details are found in the Gospel reading, which is taken from Mark 6:7-13. The first detail has to do with the topic of Jesus’ authority over unclean spirits, which he gives to the apostles. The second detail is the report that the twelve went out anointing the sick with oil and healing them. This, of course, relates to the topic of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.
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The Initial Grace of Salvation

How do I know when its good to defend the sacraments or when its not worth explaining them to someone?

If you’re trying to convince someone why marriage is important what would you say?

How do respond to the protestant claim that we need to recite the sinners prayer while they discount the importance of the sacraments?

What does the Church teach about people who receive communion with mortal sin on their soul?

Would you be able to offer up suffering from your own sin?

Why aren’t we going back to communion on the tongue?

&#8220;Are these mock baptisms dangerous?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the significance of sacramental integrity, alongside inquiries about when to defend the sacraments, the importance of marriage, and responses to Protestant views on the sinner&#8217;s prayer. The conversation also touches on receiving communion with mortal sin and the practice of communion on the tongue.
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Are These Mock Baptisms Dangerous? – Buffalo Bills Mafia Baptisms

Advent is upon us! In this episode Trent talks about the origin of the Nativity scene as well as how it can help us evangelize both the non-religious and even our Protestant brothers and sisters.

Evangelizing Through Nativity Scenes

Jimmy Akin delves into the complex question of whether Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy of reuniting the 12 tribes of Israel. He examines different perspectives on the matter, including the view that the prophecy may have been fulfilled spiritually through the early Church. Learn about the historical context and theological implications of this intriguing topic.
Transcript:
How did Jesus fulfill the prophecy, the Messianic prophecy about bringing in all 12 lost tribes of Israel back into the land of Israel?
Okay, so the first thing to know is James Tabor is a very eccentric individual. He has a lot of views on various matters that basically there&#8217;s no other support for in the scholarly community. He&#8217;s an eccentric. That doesn&#8217;t mean he&#8217;s always wrong, but it does mean whenever you hear him say something, you really want to look at it to say, &#8220;How good is the evidence here?&#8221;
When we&#8217;re talking about the prophecy that the tribes would be reunited, there&#8217;s actually a debate in the Jewish community about that prophecy.
And it seems pretty evenly split.
What you find in Talmudic times, the rabbis debating about that, and does this prophecy still apply, or has it been canceled? Because when the 10 lost tribes left, they lost their Jewish identities. When they were taken into captivity, they eventually lost their Jewish faith, they lost their Jewish identities, they got integrated with other peoples, and they disobeyed God. And so for those tribes, are they going to be brought back? Well, there&#8217;s a lot of Jewish scholars who would say, &#8220;No, they&#8217;re not.
They invalidated the promise by abandoning God.&#8221; And so that&#8217;s one possible solution here.
And I should say James Tabor&#8217;s idea about Gad being in Spain, that&#8217;s the Gadarenes. That&#8217;s all just crazy. The Gadarenes, as the Gospels indicate, were on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, not over in Spain.
And we also know where the 10 lost tribes went, and they didn&#8217;t go to Spain.
But one solution is the prophecy became invalid, and so Jesus didn&#8217;t need to fulfill it because it became invalid.
Another solution is, well, and this is actually one that there&#8217;s support for in some of the Church Fathers, is Jesus did reunite the tribes after his first coming because they blended in with these other people in Mesopotamia, and Mesopotamia became Christian. So they were spiritually reunited with his other people, and thus all the different tribes were reunited because there are Jewish Christians and there are Israeli Christians, even if they lost their identity. Their descendants still became part of Christianity, and so he may have fulfilled the prophecy that way. And then a third possibility is he hadn&#8217;t gotten around to it yet, but he&#8217;ll do it at the Second Coming, just like there are other prophecies about bringing world peace and stuff that haven&#8217;t yet been fulfilled, but will be fulfilled in a greater way at the Second Coming. And obviously, this is just one of those prophecies too.

Did Jesus Reunite the Tribes of Israel?

On the night of October 4, 1582, the citizens of Spain and its colonies, Portugal, Poland, and most of Italy went to bed and woke up ten days later.
The peculiar event was not some medieval miracle but was, in fact, an effort by the Church to bring about a badly needed change to time. Having decreed months before that a reform of the calendar was essential for the good of Western civilization, Pope Gregory XIII (r. 1572-1585) implemented a new calendar on the night of October 4. The next day, part of the massive fix of the Julian calendar, was counted not as October 5, but October 15, 1582. The calendar reform proved one of the most important and impressive accomplishments for the progress of Europe in the whole of the Renaissance.
For critics of the Church, the sixteenth century is a seeming treasury of embarrassments for Catholics—from the so-called &#8220;<a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/what-about-the-bad-popes">bad popes</a>&#8221; to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-inquisition">the Inquisition</a> to the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/not-a-reformation-but-a-revolution">Protestant Reformation</a>. But the crown jewel for criticism is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-galileo-controversy">Galileo and his supposed persecution</a> by an obscurantist, tyrannical, and unenlightened papacy. Lost in much of the rhetoric surrounding Galileo, however, was the immense accomplishment of Pope Gregory XIII in bringing desperately needed changes to the calendar.
The problem has always been the fact that a year cannot contain neatly organized days or months. Put simply, the interval between successive vernal equinoxes (every 365.2424 days) is approximately eleven minutes less than 365 and one quarter days. At the same time, the synodic period of the moon (i.e., the time between each full moon or new moon) is around twenty-nine and a half days, so that twelve months add up to only about 354 days. A calendar that incorporates the movements of both the sun and the moon thus becomes quite a challenge, and people of many civilizations have certainly given it their best shot.
The most influential, not to mention widely adopted, effort to solve the dilemma was the Julian calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C. to replace the longstanding Roman calendar that had grown hopelessly inaccurate by the use of the lunar year and the intercalary month. His idea, with a little help from Sosigenes, an Alexandrine astronomer, was to create a solar calendar with months of fixed lengths. Rather than try to introduce a gentle change, Caesar instituted what became called the &#8220;year of confusion&#8221; by adding ninety days to the year to realign the months of the Roman calendar with the seasons. The first Julian year commenced with January 1, 46 B.C., the 708th year from the foundation of the city.
The result was that the average length of the Julian calendar year was 365.25 days. To account as best it could for the subtle but important deviations in the passage of time, every fourth year included an intercalary day to maintain synchrony between the calendar year and the tropical year. Caesar organized the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh months (i.e., January, March, May, July, September, and November) to have thirty-one days, and the other months thirty, excepting February, which in common years should have only twenty-nine days, but every fourth year thirty days. To keep himself even with his illustrious predecessor, Emperor Augustus added an extra day to August to have as many days as July, which had been named after the first Caesar. So a day was taken from February and given to August; to prevent three months straight of thirty-one days, September and November were reduced to thirty days, and October and December were assigned thirty-one. The additional day every fourth year was added to February, the shortest month. In modern calendars, the intercalary day is still added to February, but as the twenty-ninth.
The Julian calendar remained in use throughout the entire history of the Roman Empire. The Church naturally adopted it in the development of the liturgical calendar. Easter was placed on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal (spring) equinox. Obviously, then, the calculation of the equinox assumed considerable and understandable importance. If the equinox was wrong, then Easter was celebrated on the wrong day, and the placement of most of the other observances—such as the starts of Lent and Pentecost—would also be in error.
As the Julian calendar was far from perfect, errors did indeed begin to creep into the keeping of time. Because of the inherent imprecision of the calendar, the calculated year was too long by eleven minutes and fourteen seconds. The problem only grew worse with each passing year as the equinox slipped backward one full day on the calendar every 130 years. For example, at the time of its introduction, the Julian calendar placed the equinox on March 25. By the time of the Council of Nicea in 325, the equinox had fallen back to March 21. By 1500, the equinox had shifted by ten days.
The ten days were of increasing importance also to navigation and agriculture, causing severe problems for sailors, merchants, and farmers whose livelihood depended upon precise measurements of time and the seasons. At the same time, throughout the Middle Ages, the use of the Julian calendar brought many local variations and peculiarities that are the constant source of frustration to historians. For example, many medieval ecclesiastical records, financial transactions, and the counting of dates from the feast days of saints did not adhere to the standard Julian calendar, but reflected local adjustments. Not surprisingly, confusion was the result.
The Church was aware of the inaccuracy, and by the end of the fifteenth century, there was widespread agreement among Church leaders that not celebrating Easter on the right day—the most important and most solemn event on the calendar—was a scandal.
Pope Sixtus IV (r. 1471-1484) made the first effort to reform the calendar, hiring the astronomer Johann Müller, who, unfortunately, was murdered soon after. As the work of other astronomers could not gain universal acceptance owing to problems of competing national interests and varying opinions, the Church remained the best chance of promulgating a definitive solution to a growing crisis.
Pope St. Pius V introduced a new breviary in 1568 and missal in 1570 in keeping with the mandate of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-history-of-the-council-of-trent">Council of Trent</a>, and both of the new texts included adjustments to the lunar tables and the leap year system. The problem of Easter, however, remained, as did the basic difficulties with the Julian calendar.
In 1563, the Council of Trent had approved a plan in principle to restore the date of the vernal equinox to that of 325 and to install the needed changes to the calendar to make the calculation of Easter more accurate. Italian astronomer and doctor Luigi Lilius proposed a solution in his ambitious work Compendium novae rationis restituendi kalendarium (Compendium of the New Plan for the Restoration of the Calendar). He suggested a slow ten-day correction to amend the temporal drift since Nicaea and a more careful application of the leap day. Lilius died in 1576, but his brother presented his theories to the one person who could do something about them: the pope.
Cardinal Ugo Buoncompagni had been elected Pope Gregory XIII on May 13, 1572 as successor to Pope Pius, and he was determined to fix things once and for all. Happily receiving the manuscript, the pope appointed a commission to investigate solutions. He placed at its head a Jesuit mathematician and astronomer named Christoph Clavius. The basic ideas of Lilius were adopted, but Clavius preferred that any correction should take place in one sweeping move rather than a gradual implementation. The commission’s recommendations were then presented to the pope and were promulgated by the pontiff in the papal bull Inter Gravissimus, signed on February 24, 1582.
Like Julius Caesar before him, the pope agreed that small adjustments were no longer viable. Instead, he decreed that Clavius’s approach should be followed: ten days would be removed from the calendar. So October 4 was followed by October 15. With one act, the vernal equinox of 1583 and those that followed would occur around March 20, a date much closer to that of the Council of Nicaea. To overcome the challenge of losing one day every 130 years, the new calendar omitted three leap years every 400 years so that century years were leap years only when divisible by 400. Using this method, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not.
Technically, the pope could not decree that nations and kingdoms adopt the new calendar, but its value was noted immediately in repairing centuries of inaccuracy on the part of the Julian calendar. The new calendar was first inaugurated in Spain, Portugal, Spanish colonies in the New World, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and most of Italy. The Holy Roman Empire followed, and then the rest of the Catholic world. France deployed the new calendar in December 1582.
Had the reform occurred a century before, it would have been much easier to implement across all of what was then a united Christendom. As it was, in a post-Reformation Europe, the new computations were greeted with suspicion in the lands that were no longer Catholic. Protestant Germany adopted the calendar slowly. Prussia accepted it in 1610, while the rest of the Protestant states decreed it only in 1700.
The English, especially during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), rejected any thought of adopting a calendar created under the name of a pope and remained long suspicious that this was some Catholic plot. Consequently, even as anti-Catholic bigots in the English Isles lampooned the popes as enemies of progress, they were ten days behind everyone else in Western Europe for over 150 years. And after the leap year of 1700, they were eleven days behind. The English compounded the dating dilemma further by celebrating New Year not on January 1, but according to the older custom of March 25. As the American colonies adhered to the English system, they shared in the temporal displacement. Americans now celebrate the birth of George Washington on February 22, 1732, according to the Gregorian calendar. However, according to the English reckoning, he was born on February 11, 1731-32.
Acknowledging at last that the continued use of the Julian calendar and celebrating the new year on March 25 were &#8220;attended with divers inconveniences,&#8221; the British Parliament passed the Calendar (New Style) Act in 1750. The New Year would begin on January 1 rather than March 25, and time would be counted according to the Gregorian calendar. The act went into effect on September 2, 1752, and the next day was decreed September 14, 1782.
Russia and the Eastern Orthodox churches rejected the new calendar and continued to use the Julian calendar in their calculations for Easter. The Gregorian calendar was accepted as the civic calendar in Russia only after the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Eastern Orthodox continue to use a revised Julian calendar, with the exception of the Finnish Orthodox Church, which adopted the Gregorian calendar.
The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today and has fulfilled well the aspirations of Pope Gregory XIII. And so, the same Church that was supposedly the obstacle to progress and science gave to the world a reliable means of counting the days that has withstood the test of time.

Like Your Calendar? Thank the Catholic Church

What factors had the Jews expecting the messiah in the 1st century?

Where is a good start when reading the Deuterocanonical books? Books Protestant bible doesn’t?

Should Isaiah 65:20 be taken literally or symbolically?

How do you decide what content to consume when reading or listening to videos?

Why do people rip or tear garments so often in the Old Testament?

What is the historical tradition behind male altar servers?

What does the church know or teach about the life of St. Joseph?

Could blasphemy of the Holy Spirit prevent Jeffrey Dahmer Baptism from being valid?

What Made Jews Expect a Messiah?
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What Made Jews Expect a Messiah? Altar Servers and St. Joseph

<div>Did people in the Bible really live to be 900 years old?
</div><div>The fifth and eleventh chapters of the book of Genesis describe the descendants of Adam, who apparently lived for centuries. These include Adam’s son Seth,<a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/did-people-in-the-bible-really-live-for-900-years"> who lived to be 920,</a> and Methuselah, who lived a whopping 969 years, making him the oldest person in the Bible.
But don’t these long ages contradict what we know about the average human life span? They certainly are way above average. Being omnipotent, God could have caused these people to live this long, but there is reason to believe these ages are symbolic and not literal.
In ancient Mesopotamia, it was a common practice to ascribe greatness to someone by inflating his lifespan. This is evident in an ancient list of the kings of Sumer (a region in what is modern-day Iraq) that describes rulers who allegedly lived for tens of thousands of years. The earliest king on this list to be confirmed as having an actual historical existence is Enmebaragesi, who was recorded to have lived for 900 years. Another historically verifiable king, Aga of Kish, was recorded to have lived for 625 years.
Since historians don’t discount the existence of these kings despite their inflated lifespans, we should not discount the trustworthiness of the Bible just because it describes people with similar lifespans. These descriptions may be nonliteral ways of ascribing greatness to someone, or, as Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch say, “this may be simply a literary technique used to assert the remarkable age of the human race itself” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible entry for genesis).
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Did people in the Bible really live to be 900 years old?

Protestants often claim that the Church that Jesus founded was the “Christian Church,” not the Catholic Church. The biblical evidence cited for this claim is found in the Acts of the Apostles: “So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul; and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church, and taught a large company of people; and in Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians” (Acts 11:25-26).
Many modern Christians then suppose that the Catholic Church was founded by mere men much later in Christian history.
No doubt, disciples in the early Church became known as Christians. But does this mean that their Church was not the Catholic Church? A little historical study into the church at Antioch reveals that these early Christians’ church was, indeed, the Catholic Church.
One of the things Peter did before he went to Rome was to found the church in Antioch, the third largest city in the Roman Empire at the time. He ordained a disciple there named Evodius to the episcopacy and appointed him the bishop of Antioch. Evodius is believed by many to have been one of the seventy disciples Jesus appointed to go ahead of him to the towns and places where he taught during his second missionary journey (see Luke 10:1). It was during Evodius’s reign as bishop of Antioch that the disciples there were for the first time called Christians. But this isn’t the end of the story!
While Paul was teaching the Christians in Antioch during Evodius’s reign, another young disciple was moving up through the ranks. His name was Ignatius, and he would later become known as Saint Ignatius of Antioch, an early Christian martyr. Ignatius was a disciple of John. Legend has it that, much earlier in his life, Ignatius was the child whom Jesus took in his arms in a passage recorded by Mark:
<blockquote>[Jesus] sat down and called the twelve; and he said to them, “If any one would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.” And he took a child, and put him in the midst of them; and taking him in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me.” (Mark 9:35-37)</blockquote>
This legend demonstrates the great esteem his memory has enjoyed since the early centuries of the Church.
At Antioch, Ignatius was ordained by Paul, and then, at the end of the reign of Evodius, he was appointed bishop of Antioch by Peter. He reigned there for many years before his martyrdom in Rome. On his way to Rome to be martyred, he wrote several letters to fellow Christians in various locations, expounding on Christian theology. He especially emphasized unity among Christians (see John 17) and became known as an Apostolic Father of the Church.
In one of his letters (to Christians in Smyrna), he wrote, “Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church.” This is the earliest known written record of the term “Catholic Church” (written around A.D. 107), but Ignatius seemingly used it with the presumption that the Christians of his day were quite familiar with it. In other words, even though his is the earliest known written record of the term, the term likely had been in use for quite some time by then, dating back to the time of the apostles.
The term “Catholic Church” (Gk. katholike ekklesia) broadly means “universal assembly,” and Ignatius used it when writing to the Christians of Smyrna as a term of unity. He exhorted these Christians to follow their bishop just as the broader universal assembly of Christians follows Christ. He clearly uses the terms “Christian” and “Catholic Church” distinctly: disciples of Christ are Christians; the universal assembly of Christians is the Catholic Church.
Some might claim that Ignatius intended to use the term “Catholic Church” not as a proper name for the Church, but only as a general reference to the larger assembly of Christians. If so, then the universal assembly had no proper name yet, but “Catholic Church” continued in use until it became the proper name of the one church that Christ built on Peter and his successors.
Thus, we see that the Christians of Antioch were part of the Catholic Church. They were indeed Christian disciples, but they were also Catholic. Given the unbroken chain of succession at Antioch—from Peter (sent by Christ) to Evodius to Ignatius—if any Christian today wishes to identify with the biblical Christians of the first century mentioned in Acts 11, it follows quite logically that he must also identify with those same Christians’ universal assembly: the Catholic Church.

Was the Early Church ‘Catholic’ or Just ‘Christian’?

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DAY 62
CHALLENGE
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“Catholics should not use crucifixes because Jesus is no longer on the cross.”
DEFENSE
The reason that the cross is important is because of the Crucifixion.
This objection has more to do with group identity markers than se- rious theological reflection. Every group has practices that mark its identity with respect to other groups (e.g., circumcision and keeping kosher among Jewish people).
In Western Europe at the time of the Reformation, Protestants be- gan to distinguish themselves from Catholics by certain practices. One was an avoidance of three-dimensional images of Jesus, though two- dimensional images (e.g., paintings and illustrations) were retained. The aversion to three-dimensional images of Christ led to the use of bare crosses, without the figure of Christ.
There is nothing wrong with bare crosses. They were used long before the Reformation, and they are still used in Catholic circles. The reasons for them are not theological or ideological but practical (e.g., a cross may be too small to accommodate a figure of Christ) or artistic (e.g., so that a cross can be specially decorated).
There is also nothing wrong with crucifixes, which depict Jesus hanging on the cross. They are more vivid reminders of what Jesus did for us.
The cross was not important for its own sake but because Jesus died on it. Thus, Protestants also create paintings and illustrations of Jesus hanging on the cross. This reveals that the objection sometimes made to crucifixes is not based on an aversion to depicting Jesus on the cross. A three-dimensional depiction of the Crucifixion is not intrinsically any different than a two-dimensional depiction, which suggests that the Protestant preference for bare crosses over crucifixes is a matter of culture rather than theological principle.
True, Jesus is not on the cross today, but that is irrelevant. Today, the cross on which Jesus hung no longer exists as a single object, and it is questionable whether it ever stood without Jesus on it. Frequently the patibulum (the horizontal bar of a cross) was a separate piece of wood that was raised onto the stipes (the vertical pole) at the time of Crucifixion and then taken down when the victim was dead.
All Christian crosses—whether bare or not—recall the Crucifixion. It’s just a question of how vividly you want to do this.
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Crosses and Crucifixes

In this episode Trent addresses whether it is bigoted for Christians to convert &#8220;savages&#8221;.
Transcription:
Trent:
It isn&#8217;t politically correct to call groups of people savages, but I care about being correct not politically correct, and in today&#8217;s episode we&#8217;ll see why it was necessary for Christians to extinguish savage evils and the barbaric people that still need to be evangelized today. Now, if you&#8217;re my age, the word savages probably makes you think of English settlers and Pooh Hatan Indians singing about each other being savages in the 1995 film. Pocahontas. But Pocahontas is wildly inaccurate and is part of a modern propaganda campaign to teach the myth of the noble savage. This is the idea that indigenous peoples are inherently good, peaceful, and live in harmony with nature, whereas European culture is inherently evil, exploitative and materialistic. The myth was propagated by accounts like those of the 18th century explorer, James Cook, who said of Australian aborigines, they live in a tranquility which is not disturbed by the inequality of condition.
The earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life. They covet not magnificent houses, household stuff, et cetera. This is ironic because nine years later a group of Hawaiian natives killed cook while he was trying to kidnap their chief in retaliation for the Hawaiian stealing one of cook&#8217;s boats in the animated Pocahontas film, the English colonist leader John Ratcliffe, is a cartoonishly evil villain obsessed with gold, who becomes the victim of a righteous mutiny that sends him back to England to be tried for his crimes. However, the real ratcliffe was at worst, a poor leader who tried his best in 1610 after a lack of supplies resulted in 90% of the colonists dying. Ratcliffe went to the Po hatan Indians to trade for food, but was instead ambushed and had his skin fla off with muscle shells. His friend George Percy, described his death this way by women. His flesh was scraped from his bones with muscle shells and before his face thrown into the fire. And so for want of circumspection, he miserably perished. A few months ago, vice president JD Vance made a point about savagery in the Americas and how Christianity helped extinguish it.
CLIP:
Settlers came to the new world, they found very widespread child sacrifice. There is a reason why Christian civilization ended the practice of child sacrifice all over the world, and it&#8217;s one of the great accomplishments of Christian civilization.
Trent:
Critics are saying this was a flat out lie, but there are several reports of human sacrifice taking place in North America before Columbus, such as a mass grave of sacrifice. Teenage girls at Mound 72 in the huge city of Kochia Vance also said the new world, not North America specifically in central and South America. Human sacrifice was well-documented both in the archeological records and in written sources as can be seen in pictures of child sacrifice victims. This makes the ending of the awesome 2006 film Apocalypto even better as it portrays the arrival of Spanish missionaries as a saving grace against the film&#8217;s blood thirsty indigenous antagonists. Historically, Christian missionaries and rulers were crucial in stamping out barbaric violations, human dignity that occurred in non-Christian cultures. This included rescuing children left to die in the wilderness in ancient Rome, the binding of women&#8217;s feet in East Asia, and the practice of sat or burning a widow on her husband&#8217;s funeral pyre in India and Christians still do this when it comes to modern savage practices like the killing of fetal and infant girls in China and India. However, academics often romanticize indigenous cultures and as a result ignore their more unsavory aspects. Historian Mark Vander Lock said that for tribes like the Sue and Pawnee, the taking of a scalp of a woman or child was considered honorable because the signified that the scalp taker had dared to enter the very heart of the enemy&#8217;s territory or consider this woman who recorded a video at the ink and ruins in South America.
CLIP:
This reminds me of exactly what happened in Teno Chilan. When Cortez laid eyes on that city for the first time, he wrote in his diary that the temples were grander than anything he would&#8217;ve seen in Seve. Yeah, you&#8217;re telling me the Spanish saw this and they said, nah, inferior.
Trent:
Ah, yes, the glorious capital of the Aztec Empire, 10 land, the Spanish Explorer and non Cortez had this to say about the people who lived there. They have another custom, horrible and abominable and deserving punishment in which we have never before seen in any other place, and it is this that as often as they have anything to ask of their idols in order that their petition may be more acceptable, they take many boys or girls and even grown men and women, and in the presence of those idols, they open their breasts while they are alive and take out the hearts and end trails and burn the said end trails and hearts before the idols offering that smoke and sacrifice to them. Some of us who have seen this say that is the most terrible and frightful thing to behold that has ever been seen. And here&#8217;s that same professor doubling down on her praise of South American culture saying, yeah, well human sacrifice isn&#8217;t that bad.
CLIP:
I&#8217;ll die on this hill. I&#8217;m specifically talking about the Inga here. We&#8217;re not talking about the ika. That&#8217;s a whole separate type of sacrifice if we&#8217;re just looking at to want to ens sue you, the chua people of the in and empire, they practice sacrifices like most other civilizations throughout history did in times of crisis, so famine, natural disasters
Trent:
Except Christian cultures. When Christians experienced famines or other crises, they did not sacrifice people to Jesus because Jesus is the only sacrifice that we need.
CLIP:
Sacrifices were volunteers from the elite class because they believed that the elites were closer to the gods and could therefore appease them better
Trent:
Children. It was the children of the ink and elite who were the sacrificial victims.
CLIP:
Also in terms of sacrifice. They were kind about it, hear me out, because unlike the ika, when you&#8217;re ripping out, still beating heart out of someone&#8217;s chest, the Inca would intentionally use coca leaves and would use chicha and would drug up the sacrifice and then leave them on a mountain, a cold mountain, to be exposed to the elements, which if you&#8217;re a volunteer sacrifice where you&#8217;re heavily drugged before you die,
Trent:
Actually that was only in very cold areas. In other cases, the children were bludgeoned, buried, alive or suffocated to death. And even if that were true, it&#8217;s still savagery and the world is a better place when these cultural elements are banished from the face of the earth. After a group of people embrace Christianity or at least Christian principles,
CLIP:
The fact that a lot of people are commenting, oh, but the sacrifice is again indicative of the fact that you have received a quite white education because you are knowing them for the bad things that they have done and not all of the wonders that they accomplished.
Trent:
I bet this teacher would say European fascists like Mussolini were evil for slaughtering thousands of innocent people and not give them credit for the good things they did, like getting the trains to run on time. No Mussolini&#8217;s trains being on time was probably fascist propaganda and is solely being used here for humorous rhetorical purposes. Now, many liberals scoff at the idea of calling groups of people savages because they have bought into a cultural relativism that says No culture is morally superior to any other culture, but this is self refuting because they have no ground to say that for example, a traditional Catholic culture that seeks to evangelize barbaric people is morally inferior to their relativistic culture. Plus, what do you do when two cultures interact with each other? This is why I appreciate the following quote, attributed to a 19th century British general disputing the practice of saee or widow burning.
He said this, the burning of widows is your custom prepare the funeral pile, but my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive, we hang them and confiscate all their property. My carpenter shall therefore erect Gibbs on which to hang all concern when the widow is consumed, let us all act according to national customs. However, the critics do have a point in that some calls to civilized savages are rooted in the racist idea that skin color determines moral worth. Any group of people who are not enlightened by the gospel or do not remain in God&#8217;s grace after receiving the gospel can succumb to savage tendencies. Julius Caesar recorded how Celtic people engaged in human sacrifice through things like setting people on fire and giant wickerman and the fair-skinned redheaded vikings not only practiced human sacrifice, they brutally pillaged seafaring communities including Christian monasteries like Lindas Farn.
So moral savagery is not unique to skin color or ethnic heritage. Canada has a higher white population than the United States, but they engage in a kind of human sacrifice through their assisted suicide program. Medically approved manslaughter is now the cause of death in one out of every 20 deaths in the country. It&#8217;s also wrong to say a group of people are savage merely because they&#8217;re less technologically developed. As you can see in films like What is a Woman when it comes to basic human truths, rural African, that mock transgender ideology are the enlightened ones compared to many affluent white cultures that mutilate people&#8217;s genitals and so would be the real savages. What ultimately matters is not your skin color or having a certain kind of food dress or level of technology. What matters is being united to the person of Jesus Christ. That&#8217;s why Colossians three 11 says here, there cannot be Greek and Jew circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, cian, slave freeman, but Christ is all and in all that means during the age of exploration, some natives may have been more united to Christ through following their God-given conscience than some con or explorers who ignored their consciences and brutally oppressed them.
This was why heroes like Servant of God, Bartholomew Dela CAAs fought for the rights of native people. And while it is true, indigenous people used cruel punishments that violated people&#8217;s dignity, which was one reason some Europeans claim they weren&#8217;t fully human. European Christians also engaged in barbaric rituals that violated human dignity. This includes inflicting punishments like drawing and quartering, which involves cutting off genitals and disemboweling the victim while he is alive, then beheading him and cutting his body into four pieces. This is why the catechism of the Catholic Church says, in times past cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order often without protests from the pastors of the church who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. And that in recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person.
Being a savage just means you&#8217;re far from God&#8217;s grace and that can happen to anyone, which is why even the church has had to reflect on her customs and practices and the effect they have on the dignity of the human person. Jesus has clear that someone who follows him must love his enemy and show mercy to others. Mercy does not preclude just punishment, but it does preclude Christians from relishing in cruelty. For example, Protestant pastor Dale Partridge posted a picture of arena&#8217;s rusko right before she was stabbed to death, and next to it he posted a picture of a man with a stake driven through his body. With this message, bring back impaling for violent criminals. In the comments, many self-professed Christians praised doing this to criminals, to which I would say, if you think Jesus Christ would see no problem with guiding a pole through a man&#8217;s anus along his spine, past his vital organs and out his mouth so that he slowly dies over the course of a few days, then your God is not Christ the redeemer.
It&#8217;s Vlad the Impaler partridge at least does not endorse impalment for execution, just for displaying the body. But most people would still consider this savagery at home with heartless, pagan, not merciful Christians, we should practice justice not vengeance and pray for repentance like how St Theres of laue whose prayers for the repentance of a triple murderer were answered when the murderer kissed a crucifix shortly before his execution, and in some cases the savagery I see among Christians is not even towards an evil act like murder, which is at least understandable. Instead, it&#8217;s savagery towards moral goods like adoption. A few weeks ago, Protestant lay elder Alex Copeman, shared a photo of his adoptive black son turning 13. This photo has been viewed over 13 million times with tens of thousands of people, including self-professed Christians, denouncing copeman as an evil race trader and levying many brutal cruel insults against him and his son.
Pope Xi warned that a person who turns race into an idol like this is far from the true faith in God or considered this self-professed Catholic on X. With over a hundred thousand followers telling Lila Rose to shut the F up, you insufferable be. I cover this more in my episode, how being base can send you to hell, but the behavior of self-professed Christians who delight in wrath, cruelty, and hatred for others reminds me of Paul&#8217;s warning to Timothy about those who are inhuman, implacable, slanders propagates fierce haters of good, treacherous, reckless, swollen, with conceit lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God holding the form of religion but denying the power of it. Avoid such people. Notice Paul is warning about people who like to claim to be religious and look religious, but inside are cruel and merciless and contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if many of these self-professed Christian savages end up in hell, but they think hell is actually heaven because their only companions will be ethnically similar bigots who spend all their time miserably ranting about how bad heaven, which they call hell is because it&#8217;s racially diverse and the overabundance of joy there is to them fake and gay. But I don&#8217;t want these people to go to hell. I don&#8217;t want anyone to go to hell because one Timothy two, four says, God desires the salvation of all people. Some people get mad when I critique fellow Catholics or Christians, but it would be unloving if I gave those people a free pass just because they&#8217;re on my team. The only team that matters is the body of Christ. And so I don&#8217;t care about offending people on the left by saying all people, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, and animus and isolated jungles must join this mystical body of Christ to be saved.
And this can be done without annihilating the neutral or good aspects of their cultures which can be retained. This can be seen in the wide variety of ways the Catholic faith is lived out around the world. Pope St. John Paul II said, the church must make itself all things for all men. Bringing today&#8217;s cultures together with sympathy. There still are mils and mentalities as there are entire countries and regions to evangelize, which supposes a long and courageous process of enculturation so that the gospel may penetrate the soul of living cultures, respond to their highest expectations and make them grow in the dimension of Christian faith, hope and charity. So I don&#8217;t care about people on the left who would call this ethnocentrism and I don&#8217;t care about offending people on the right by admonishing members of the body of Christ who have separated themselves from the body through sin.
Even if that sin is popular in some dark corners of the internet, it&#8217;s one thing to be a little rough around the edges to reach people on the margins like making a heavy metal version of, oh, come Emmanuel. It&#8217;s another thing to just slap a Christian name tag on moral filth and try to defend it by saying it&#8217;s just a joke. And look, I know that without God&#8217;s grace, I would be a savage or at best, a nice person who is good at aping a Christian charity until my soul is exposed by the gaze of the Almighty on the day of judgment. The savages the church must convert today can be found in every place, every culture, and within the pews of our own churches and even in the mirror. We look at each morning when we let our guard down and the devil gets a foothold. Savages are just people who have fallen under the power of the devil and must be freed from his grip through the sacraments God gave us so that through faith we are united to Christ and can have eternal life with him. Thank you so much for watching and if you like this content, please support us@trenthornpodcast.com. And if you want to meet me and 30 other Catholic creators, get your tickets today for our conference on April 11th in Dallas, texas@conferenceoftrent.com. Thank you so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.

Why Christians Must Convert “Savages”

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DAY 124
CHALLENGE
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“The Gospels contain error since they describe different people performing the same action. Matthew says a centurion approached Jesus about healing his servant, but Luke says Jewish elders did this (Matt. 8:5–13; Luke 7:1–10). Mark says James and John made a request, but Matthew says their mother made it (Mark 10:35–45; Matt. 20:20–28).”
DEFENSE
The biblical authors had liberty to describe events in terms of the principals or their agents.
More than one person can be involved in an action. The person on whose behalf the action is performed is known as the principal, while the person who actually does the action is known as the agent. Both today and in the ancient world, actions can be described as if the principal or the agent performed them.
During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, newspapers might have re- ported, “American president Kennedy told Soviet premier Khrushchev to take his missiles out of Cuba.” In reality, Kennedy and Khrushchev (the principals) never spoke. Their exchanges were carried on through diplomatic intermediaries (their agents). Because the principals were the main actors, newspapers could speak as if the two directly engaged each other. The diplomatic intermediaries were secondary.
In Scripture, we read that Moses built the tabernacle (2 Chron. 1:3) and Solomon built the temple (1 Kings 6:1–38). In reality, both were leaders too lofty to do the labor themselves. They used workmen who acted on their behalf (Exod. 38:22–23; 1 Kings 7:13–45). Because Mo- ses and Solomon were the principals, they are sometimes mentioned, while the workmen who were their agents may not be mentioned.
The evangelists had the same freedom choosing how to describe an incident. They could describe it in terms of the agents acting (as with Luke’s mention of the Jewish elders and Matthew’s mention of the apostles’ mother) or the principals acting (as with Matthew’s mention of the centurion and Mark’s mention of James and John).
When the evangelists chose the latter, the action of the agents may be said to be “telescoped” into the principals on whose behalf they acted. This literary technique is used in the Bible in more situations than we use it today, but it is not an error. It is a known literary device.
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Who Did What in the Gospels?

Why would God allow creatures to come into existence if they are not the right way? Why would God ensoul then?

Could you explain philosophically, why is IVF dominating, not cooperating?

Could you educate me more, at what stage is the human being frozen?

I have 2 nieces who were IVF children. Where do I fit in as a Catholic who loves them but disagrees with IVF?

How do people get a baby naturally if they have been told that they have bad egg quality and they feel that IVF is the only hope?

How do you approach when someone you know tells you they are going to use IVF and have family who have been successful in using it?

Do a lot of people have a hard time bringing the children to term through IVF?

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Many Catholics struggle with how to oppose IVF while still loving children conceived through it. We explain how the Church separates the dignity of the child from the morality of the method—and how to navigate this with clarity and compassion.
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>
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Can You Love IVF Children While Still Opposing IVF?

Featured Guests: Jimmy Akin, Tim Staples, Karlo Broussard, Fr. Hugh Barbour, Trent Horn
Featured Questions:
<ul>
<li>01:01 &#8211; Can you have doubts about the faith and still call yourself Catholic? – Tim Staples</li>
<li>08:00 &#8211; How should we feel about Purgatory? – Fr. Hugh Barbour</li>
<li>15:57 &#8211; Is it OK to pray for your favorite sports team to win? – Brandon Vogt</li>
<li>19:03 &#8211; Capitol punishment and just-war are legal, so what’s the problem with abortion? – Trent Horn</li>
<li>21:21 &#8211; Where is the Ark of the Covenant? – Jimmy Akin</li>
</ul>

Catholic Answers Live TV | Season 3 | Episode 2

Have you ever heard of this fallacy? Or have you ever used it?

Trent was recently invited on Protestant YouTuber Sam Shamoun’s channel to explain the Catholic position on sola scriptura. In the previous episode, Trent made his case against sola scriptura and now he takes questions from Sam’s Protestant audience.

Answering Protestant Questions on Sola Scriptura

Why should we follow the natural law?

Is it considered idolatry when protestants use grape juice for their communion?

In John 17:12 it makes it sound like Judas is destined to be condemned. How is this not evidence for predestination?

Why did the devil exist in the first place?

How does my exploring Catholicism fit in with invincible ignorance?

AMA: Natural Law, Predestination, and Invincible Ignorance

Are the Black Hebrew Israelites the Real Jews?

Who are the two witnesses at the end time in Revelation 11?

What are some tips on selecting God Parents?

If Jesus is the most high God, how can He have a Father?

Can you clarify the Hypostatic union?

Can a Roman Catholic appreciate St. Gregory Palamas’s energy essence distinction?

How are Catholics to understand Ephesians 2 considering the contradiction in James ?

&#8220;How Can Jesus be both God and Son?&#8221; This episode explores the complex doctrine of the Hypostatic Union, while also addressing varied questions such as the identity of the Black Hebrew Israelites, the significance of Godparents, and the role of the two witnesses in Revelation.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

How Can Jesus Be Both God and Son? Hypostatic Union and More

In this episode Trent sits down for an interview with Protestant YouTuber Cameron Bertuzzi to talk about his conversion to Catholicism and what Protestants should keep in mind when they examine the Church’s teaching.

Sharing Catholicism with “Capturing Christianity”

I do hope you noticed that story from Luke just now, because it is in so many ways weird, challenging, extraordinary. It’s usually called the parable of the “dishonest steward,” which in our translation is the “dishonest manager.”
Let’s put this story in a more modern setting, if we can. There’s a very rich man—the sort of man who owns multiple businesses and businesses that own other businesses and buildings and assets and a house here and a house there and more property than he knows what to do with. And so he has a top manager, a wealth adviser, a CFO, an executive of some sort, who runs the day-to-day operations for the rich man’s empire. And it comes to the rich man’s attention that the manager is not doing his job, which is to say he is not extracting the greatest amount of money from the greatest number of people. So he calls him in one day and fires him.
Our manager, however, is a smart man. Perhaps the reason he has not extracted the greatest amount of money from the greatest number of people is that he knows they are people who have responsibilities and needs of their own. Perhaps he knows that they have some purpose in life other than making the rich man richer. And so he comes up with a plan. He pays a visit to the various companies, the individuals, the small people, who owe the big man money—and he says to them, The rich man would like to forgive some of your debt. This says you owe $1M? Now you owe $500K. This says you owe $10,000? Now you owe $1. And by the wave of a hand, it is gone.
The people are ecstatic, grateful, amazed: what for them had been this impossibly large burden, this huge shadow over all their work, was lifted. And they are excited that now their debts are manageable, possible, doable within their means.
He does this, of course, with no authority whatsoever. It is in legal terms unjust. It is dishonest. It is not his debt to forgive, if it ever had been, and certainly not since he lost his job.
So what happens? The rich man, visiting some of these smaller companies and individuals, perhaps on the quest to find a new top manager, starts getting these amazing expressions of gratitude. People are so excited that they can finally start paying down their debt to him. People are praising his generosity, saying that he’s the best boss they’ve had for decades. Productivity is up, morale is up, and everything is a win-win.
Except for that dishonest manager. What’s the rich man to do? He can’t really go around and say, “It’s all a big mistake! I didn’t cancel your debts.” Imagine saying that on a factory floor full of workers. Imagine saying that, going back a couple of thousand years, to a whole village full of laborers, seeing their smiles turn to anger and resentment and hatred. No—the rich man acts as if everything is in order. He calls the manager back, commends him for his clever work, and tells him to keep it up.
What’s the moral? Jesus says, pretty bluntly, “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”
What could this possibly mean for us?
I think it is really quite simple: Forgive.
Forgive. Whether it’s motivated by virtue or vice, by fear or by love, by desperation or by duty. Forgive.
And maybe what’s interesting to us is that, in the story, material forgiveness, financial forgiveness, is the first thing. Other things follow. In Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, our familiar words “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” becomes “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” and the Greek is pretty clear that “debts” and “debtors” are financial terms, not symbolic ideas. Luke replaces “debts” with the more direct “sins,” so we needn’t limit the petition to economic matters. Still, if we want God to forgive us, we have to be prepared to forgive those who owe us something, whether it’s money, or stuff, or whatever kind of emotional or spiritual or legal obligation we can come up with.
Whether you’re motivated by goodness, or fear, or selfish interest, forgive.
Why? Because forgiveness brings us closer to the God who has forgiven us.
God has forgiven us of everything: of all that we owe him for our very existence; of what we owe him for the particular gifts of our lives; of what we owe him for the evils, small and large, that we have done.
God has forgiven us, at great cost. God’s forgiveness was embodied on the cross, when God the Son opened himself to the consequences of a world indebted to debt in every form. And so forgiveness of any kind brings us closer to God, opens us more deeply to God’s goodness and power in us, transforms us more into his image and likeness.
What can you forgive? Can you forgive that parent who wronged you? Can you forgive the $2 debt of the friend who forgot his wallet and really needed something to eat? Can you forgive the stranger who looked at you and judged you without saying a word? Can you forgive that colleague who said something incredibly rude? Can you forgive the person who wasn’t there when you needed him?
On your own power, on our own power, probably not. Forgiveness is not something you can get from Amazon Prime, or from the power of positive thinking. It’s always hard; it always comes with a variety of feelings and motivations. But it is possible and, in the end, necessary. We can do it when we understand that to forgive is to participate in the power of God, to participate in the work of God in this world, to participate in God’s goodness in this world. Amen.

What’s the Deal with the Dishonest Steward?

Here’s something scary for Halloween. Wolves, tigers, sharks, and . . . snails? Trent runs down the list of the world’s most dangerous animals and proposes some Liam Neeson movies about them.

Scariest Animals Attack!

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DAY 144
CHALLENGE
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“The Bible can’t be the word of God. It has passages where God commands the Israelites to exterminate whole populations when they entered the promised land (Deut. 7:1–2, 20:16–17).”
DEFENSE
The response still depends on whether the passages are meant literally.
Yesterday we considered the view that they are literal. Here we consider the view that they are non-literal. According to this view, God did not literally expect the Israelites to exterminate certain peoples.
Moses is conventionally referred to as the Pentateuch’s author be- cause he is the principal leader it discusses. The Pentateuch does not say Moses is its author, and it contains material he could not have authored, such as the account of his death (Deut. 34).
Although the Pentateuch may contain material that dates to the time of Moses, it was not put in its final form until later. Consequently, the passages concerning the extermination of the Canaanites may not have been written until later. If they are post-Mosaic then they were not intended to be carried out literally, for Israel was already living in the land. In that case, they would have been meant to communicate a spiritual lesson.
Though not a body of the Church’s Magisterium, the Pontifical Biblical Commission expresses a common view when it writes:
As the best interpreters of the patristic tradition [i.e., the Church Fathers] had already suggested, the narration of the conquest epic should be seen as a sort of parable presenting characters of symbolic value; the law of extermination, for its part, requires a non-literal interpretation, as in the case of the command of the Lord to cut off one’s hand or pluck out one’s eye, if they are a cause of scandal (Matt 5:29; 18:9) (The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture 127).
The portrait given of the Canaanites in the Pentateuch is one of great depravity that even involved child sacrifice (Deut. 12:31, 18:10– 12). By contrast, the Israelites are called to holiness, for they are “a people holy to the Lord” (Deut. 7:6, 14:2; cf. Lev. 11:44, 20:26).
The extermination commands may thus be a way of signifying the radical incompatibility of paganism and serving God: Paganism is to be entirely avoided, though this does not mean literal extermination any more than Christ meant we should literally cut off our hand to avoid sin.
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Genocide in the Bible (2)

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reflects on the growth of the Counsel of Trent podcast and shares his thoughts on its future, including as a series on YouTube.