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Which is more effective in defending the Resurrection of Jesus: the minimal facts approach or the maximal facts approach?

What is the Catholic perspective on the morality of “reality shifting,” or shifting consciousness to an alternate version of reality?

How should someone discern whether changing their surname dishonors their father, and whether they should change it back out of respect?

defense and situations involving lethal force?

Can Mary hear our silent prayers and thoughts, such as when praying the Rosary silently rather than aloud?

Does Genesis 1:30 support the claim that all animals were originally vegetarian, as some fundamentalists suggest?

<p>Is it a sin to change your surname? Can Mary hear our silent prayers? In this episode, we explore unique and thought-provoking questions about Catholic belief and morality. Learn the difference between the minimal and maximal facts approaches to defending the Resurrection of Jesus, and discover the Church’s perspective on “reality shifting”—a concept involving altered states of consciousness. We also address whether it’s morally acceptable to own and use firearms, especially in cases of self-defense. Finally, we examine Genesis 1:30 and whether it truly suggests that all animals were originally vegetarian.</p>
<p><a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a></p>
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Resurrection Facts, Reality Shifting Morality, and the Church’s View on Firearms

Discover

<p>In this episode, Trent commemorates the anniversary of Roe v Wade by sharing two examples of how to dialogue with pro-choice advocates.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Transcript:</p>
<div>
<div>
<p>Have you ever talked about the issue of abortion and lost your cool, or felt like the conversation wasn&#8217;t going anywhere? Today is the commemoration of Roe vs. Wade, and so I thought it&#8217;d be helpful to model for you how to have these difficult conversations by using real conversations that I&#8217;ve had on Catholic Answers Live.</p>
<p>In the first conversation, you&#8217;ll see how to engage someone on the issue of abortion who is really not open to changing his mind. In the second conversation, I&#8217;ll model how to engage a person who truly is open to changing their mind and receiving the gospel of life. Our first caller is pro-choice because he doesn&#8217;t know when life begins. Ed, thank you very much for the call. Why are you pro-choice?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Because I do not believe that life begins at conception.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Alrighty. Ed, when do you think the life of an individual human being begins?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Well, technically when it&#8217;s born, as in out of the womb, but that doesn&#8217;t necessarily&#8230; I believe that abortion should be allowed up until the moment at nine months or something like that.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay. Before the child is born, would you agree there&#8217;s a human fetus inside of the mother&#8217;s body before the child is born, correct?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Affirmative.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>What is a human fetus?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>It is the potential to be a life, human being, if it comes to full gestation and development.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay. Well, a potential X is always an actual Y. So if I say that a bachelor is a potential husband, what that means is he&#8217;s an actual unmarried man. I didn&#8217;t ask what it potentially could be. Tell me what is a human fetus? What is that thing now?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>To me, it&#8217;s not a baby, that&#8217;s for sure, and it&#8217;s not-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Is it-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; something-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay. Is it growing?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Yes, it is. Hopefully it is, yes.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay, so that means-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[inaudible 00:02:24].</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; it&#8217;s alive. It&#8217;s alive then?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Yes.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I would-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Does it-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; agree that it&#8217;s alive, as in it&#8217;s growing hopefully, if that&#8217;s what you want.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Does this living thing have human parents?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I would hope so, yes.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay. Well, why can&#8217;t we say then that a human fetus&#8230; So this is a living thing, a living human thing because it has human parents. How is that not a human being?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I see what you&#8217;re saying. No, I would not call it a human being because a month or so into the process, it looks like a chicken also. So-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So you think a person&#8217;s value depends on what they look like?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I wouldn&#8217;t use the word like values or stuff like that. That&#8217;s objective and emotional and not very precise.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Right, so I think, just because somebody looks different than you and I, that doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re not human. I&#8217;m just going to put it to you this way, that every human embryo and human fetus, it&#8217;s growing, so it&#8217;s alive. It has human parents and human DNA.</p>
<p>What a human being is, a human being is just a individual living thing that belongs to the human species. If you know this thing is not a human being&#8230; The definition I gave applies to humans before they are born, from the moment of conception. It sounds like you&#8217;re not giving me a real reason as to why this is not a human being. You&#8217;re just picking birth as a difference.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Right. Kind of, I guess. Because it&#8217;s at birth that I would say that you actually are a human being because you&#8217;re not alive until you&#8217;re born. If you&#8217;re not born-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So if the fetus isn&#8217;t alive before birth, do we need abortion to kill it?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Well, I know that an acorn that turns into a tree is still just an acorn while it&#8217;s a seed, and then it&#8217;ll eventually go through its little stages of life.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Well, Ed, let me ask you this then. An acorn is a seed. It&#8217;s kind of like how you have ovum, a human egg. But an acorn, when it&#8217;s in the ground and it&#8217;s a sapling, you got that little one green chute that comes out. That&#8217;s not an oak tree, but is it a very small oak?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>No. It&#8217;s a plant, at that point, I would say. [inaudible 00:05:13]-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>What kind of plant is it?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>It&#8217;s an oak plant.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay. Then why can&#8217;t we say a human fetus is not an adult, but it is a biological human being is just a very small human being, it&#8217;s a small human, just like an oak sapling is a small oak?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>No, I get what you&#8217;re saying, but I think there&#8217;s many things wrong with what you just said.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Like what?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>It&#8217;s not a human being because it&#8217;s not been born yet. [inaudible 00:05:47] it&#8217;s at fetus stage, it&#8217;s not-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Why does birth matter? You&#8217;re telling me that when that baby, eight-pound baby in the womb, 39 weeks-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Yeah?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>It&#8217;s okay-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[inaudible 00:06:00].</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So let&#8217;s say that&#8217;s nine months. Normal pregnancy is 40 weeks. So five seconds before that child moves down the birth canal, it&#8217;s okay to dismember that child because they&#8217;re in one place, not another?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Personally, because I got to think different than&#8230; Everybody thinks differently. I would not be okay at past the point of easy viability. Let&#8217;s face it, one of these days we&#8217;re going to have tank babies, and women won&#8217;t even have babies at all.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay, so-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>They&#8217;ll be grown in tanks.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So it looks like your position&#8217;s, it&#8217;s changed a bit. All right, so I think I would ask you to reconsider your position. You see the absurdity of drawing the line at birth. That&#8217;s just a change of location. If you pick viability-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>No, I don&#8217;t see-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; the time-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; [inaudible 00:06:53] absurdity at all.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Why does the difference-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[inaudible 00:06:57].</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; between&#8230; What is birth? It&#8217;s just the baby is living in the uterus, and then later he&#8217;s-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[inaudible 00:07:03]-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; living on a hospital table?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Because it is out and alive, and it can grow on its own and function on its own, assuming you give it nutrients and all of that good stuff.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>But before that-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>It can&#8217;t grow on its own, right? If you leave a baby alone, in two days they&#8217;ll be dead, right?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Absolutely. Most living things, correct, without nutrients and stuff, it&#8217;ll die, yes.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So a newborn baby needs its parents to give him food and shelter?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[inaudible 00:07:39].</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>But he&#8217;s still a person. But he&#8217;s still a person, even though he needs his parents to give him food and shelter.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Yes. If it&#8217;s outside the womb and alive and kicking, yep.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay. Well, a baby before it&#8217;s born can kick. Mom feels it-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>But it&#8217;s not a baby-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; in the third trimester.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>But if no-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>A-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; [inaudible 00:08:00].</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>A human being, before birth, can kick. It&#8217;s growing, so it&#8217;s alive. And mom gives him food through the umbilical cord. Why not treat them the same? There&#8217;s no real difference.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>No, there&#8217;s a whole lot of difference there. Because at like three months, if you were to put the thing out of her, it&#8217;s not going to live.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So yeah, you shouldn&#8217;t kill babies.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[inaudible 00:08:24].</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Right, you shouldn&#8217;t kill babies. Is it okay to take a baby where he can live and put him in a place where he can&#8217;t live?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>But it&#8217;s not a baby until it&#8217;s born.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Is it okay to take a human being and put him in a place where he can&#8217;t live? Okay, we&#8217;re about to go to a break here soon, but I&#8217;m just going to ask you one last question. Can you give me a definition, a one-sentence definition of the word human being?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>No. No, I&#8217;m sorry.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Here&#8217;s what I think you&#8217;re doing, Ed. You have a prejudice toward the unborn. You don&#8217;t have a rational argument to show why they&#8217;re not human beings. You just don&#8217;t want them to be human beings. The only way you could know that they&#8217;re not human beings is if you already knew what a human being was. I feel like your position is born out of prejudice towards the unborn rather than a rational argument. So I hope that you will reconsider that prejudice and definitely give us a call back when you can.</p>
<p>Before we get to our second caller, I do want to let you know that the second edition of my book, Persuasive Pro-Life, is available. If you want to master how to talk about this issue, pick up a copy by clicking the link in the description below. Now I want to show you how to accompany someone who is more open to the pro-life message.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Women should have the choice, and I think also that even if we were to make abortion illegal, people are still going to get them, and I just want it to be safe for the women.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay, well, that part&#8217;s true. Abortions are still obtained even if it&#8217;s illegal, but you haven&#8217;t really answered why you&#8217;re for pro-choice.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I think I&#8217;ve-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Can you answer that?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>&#8230; taken them from that, Caitlyn, are you worried that if you&#8217;re pro-choice, because if we make abortion illegal, it becomes more dangerous for the woman choosing it?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Yes, that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m worried about.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay. Alrighty. Well, here&#8217;s my position on that. I agree with you. I agree that abortion should be safe. In fact, I would be okay with abortion, totally fine with it, if it were as safe for the child as it is for the mother. Do you see what I mean by that?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I do.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>What do I mean by that?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I think you mean it might be safe for the woman, but the child&#8217;s the one that&#8217;s not being able to live any longer, so they don&#8217;t get the choice.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>That&#8217;s inherently the problem. You&#8217;re right. If abortion didn&#8217;t involve another human being&#8217;s life, then it&#8217;d be obvious we should keep it legal so it&#8217;s safer. For example, if tonsillectomies, the removal of the tonsils becomes more dangerous, if it&#8217;s illegal, well, we should just make that procedure legal. If the tonsils are damaged in some way, go ahead and surgically remove them. But for me, there&#8217;s no safe way to do an abortion because half the people involved always end up getting killed. I owe that one to my friend Jason in Arizona. It&#8217;s a good observation.</p>
<p>I guess, Caitlin&#8230; This was actually, when I was at the University of California in Berkeley, this objection was raised a lot during a debate I had, and this was my response to them. I said, &#8220;Should we keep it legal so it&#8217;s safer for bigger people to end the lives of smaller people?&#8221; What do you think?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Gosh, no. Okay, well, when you put it that way, I don&#8217;t know. I&#8217;m a social worker, so obviously I&#8217;m the one that fights for the people that don&#8217;t have a voice, so it&#8217;s hard to make this decision.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>What is it about abortion that makes it so hard?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I don&#8217;t know. I understand that the fetus has a right, that the baby has a right, but I think a woman should have the right to choose too.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>You see how those would conflict, wouldn&#8217;t they?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Yeah, I understand that it&#8217;s-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So-</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>It&#8217;s kind of hypocritical.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Well, but here&#8217;s the thing, I guess, Caitlyn. When one person, we&#8217;re talking about their right to have a life, and the other person, we&#8217;re talking about their right to live their life how they want to, shouldn&#8217;t we put the right for one person to even live it all to be at least a bit higher than the other person&#8217;s right to choose things?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I don&#8217;t know.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Would you be willing to think that over, that it&#8217;s plausible that one person&#8217;s life, that should count more than what another person wants to choose to do with their life?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Maybe.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Well, I think that&#8217;s something to think over when it comes to this issue because that&#8217;s the crux when we talk about abortion. I would encourage you, when you think about this issue, to not think about the choice because choice is a very abstract word. What abortion is, technically speaking, is it&#8217;s the removal of a child from the womb, before they can survive, with the intent of ending their life.</p>
<p>Now, I agree with you, men and women find themselves in difficult situations where they may choose this. But my question is this: does being in a difficult life situation give us the right to hurt other people, so we can make our situation better? I don&#8217;t think it does. What do you think?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>No. Gosh, I don&#8217;t think it does either.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay. Thank you guys so much for watching. You can check out my other pro-life content here on the channel, and please be sure to like this video and subscribe to help us grow and definitely support us at trenthornpodcast.com.</p>
</div>
</div>

Trent Debates Pro-choice Callers

<p>Joe replies to &#8220;THE ROSARY || The SHOCKING TRUTH that most people don&#8217;t know&#8230;&#8221; by DLM Christian Lifestyle. He unpacks how a misreading a Scripture can lead to misunderstandings about the rosary.</p>
<p><strong>Transcript:</strong></p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe, Heschmeyer, and today I want to explore the rosary because the rosary is perhaps the most practiced Catholic devotion outside of mass and the sacraments, and it&#8217;s been suggested as part of your regular prayer life by many of the Great Saints people like Padre Pio, Louis de Montfort, Therese of Lisieux, as well as countless popes. So it goes almost without saying that Catholics hold the rosary in high esteem and many non-Catholics in their hand find the rosary strange, maybe unbiblical, even pagan. So today I want to look at some objections to the rosary raised by Daniel Martiz, a non-denominational Christian who has a YouTube channel called DLM Christian Lifestyle, and he&#8217;s got a very popular video against the rosary. He&#8217;s got more than 300,000 views at the time of this recording, so it really seems to resonate with people and he makes several arguments against the rosary, chiefly that it&#8217;s unbiblical because number one, it&#8217;s not found in scripture.</p>
<p>Number two, it&#8217;s too repetitive. Number three, it&#8217;s too focused on Mary, and number four is to physical. So I want to address each of those objections in turn, but first, if it&#8217;s not too repetitive, I want to thank all of my supporters over on shameless joe.com. Particularly today. I want to thank Andy and Anna supporters and friends who recommended that I do a video on the Rosary. So for as little as $5 a month, you too can need access to ad-free episodes exclusive q and a live streams. And lately we&#8217;ve been trying to include notes and other resources used in each episode. Now your direct support is what keeps this channel going and keeps the production quality as high as it is. So I just want to say thank you to everyone who&#8217;s currently supporting, and if you&#8217;re not yet and would like to, you could do that over@shamelessjoe.com. And with that, let&#8217;s get into Daniel&#8217;s first objection. Namely, the word rosary is never mentioned in the Bible, and since scripture doesn&#8217;t tell us that we have to pray the rosary, it&#8217;s therefore wrong to pray it.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>Now, I need you to listen very carefully because this is very important. Nowhere in scripture does it say you have to pray with the rosary, so it&#8217;s unbiblical.</p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>Ironically, Daniel wrote a nearly six minute long prayer of his own that he says we should start our day with. We don&#8217;t find his prayer in the Bible. So is it wrong to write your own original prayers or not? And if it&#8217;s not wrong, well, is it wrong to pray a prayer that somebody else wrote or is it okay when Daniel does it and bad when Catholics do it? Well, even more ironically, the prayers that Daniel&#8217;s complaining about are actually drawn from scripture, but we&#8217;re going to get to that shortly at the heart of his confusion is this idea that he and many other people have that unless the Bible says you must do X, then it&#8217;s unbiblical and you&#8217;re not allowed to do X. Okay, so let&#8217;s just grant that premise for a moment and think about where it goes. How far does that rule extend?</p>
<p>Nowhere in the Bible says we have to pray to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit. Does that mean it&#8217;s wrong to cry to Jesus for that matter? Nowhere in the Bible tells me which books we have to believe are in the Bible, and just as we don&#8217;t find the word rosary in the Bible, we also don&#8217;t find the word Bible in the Bible. So does that mean it&#8217;s unbiblical to have a Bible? In fact, what about this itself nor in the Bible says we have to do only those things taught in the Bible. That&#8217;s a manmade Protestant tradition. It&#8217;s not something that Jesus or the apostles ever taught. So the rule is really self-refuting since it actually outlaws itself. So the problem with the rosary can&#8217;t just be that Jesus didn&#8217;t give it to us. A better objection is that the rosary is too repetitive.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>Wow. It is like we learn nothing from what Jesus even told the Pharisees back in the day telling them to stop repeating their prayers because that is exactly what the rosary was made for, and that&#8217;s exactly what people are doing today.</p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>Now, Daniel doesn&#8217;t explicitly cite any biblical support for his claim here, but I suspect that he&#8217;s got in mind Matthew chapter six, verse seven, in which Jesus says not to heap up empty phrases or in the King James version, not to use vain repetitions, but Jesus is clearly not saying that we&#8217;re not allowed to use form prayers. The Psalms are formed prayers, and he&#8217;s not saying that we&#8217;re not allowed to pray the same prayer repeatedly after all. In the very next breath, he gives us a form prayer. He gives us the our Father, and we know that even as far back as the first century Christians were in the habit of praying this prayer three times a day. Jesus himself in the garden of Gethsemane, prays the same prayer three times in a row as Matthew 26 tells us, Jesus went away and prayed for the third time saying the same words.</p>
<p>St. Paul likewise describes going to God with the same prayer request repeatedly. So what does Jesus actually prohibit in Matthew chapter six? Well, the Greek word there refers to someone stammering or rambling or a mindless sort of repetition. In other words, when you&#8217;re praying, don&#8217;t just do it mindlessly and Catholics agree as Pope St. John Paul II explained, the recitation of the rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace helping the individual to meditate on the mystery of the Lord&#8217;s life as seen through the eyes of Mary. In contrast, if we&#8217;re just mindlessly saying the words, that kind of mechanical repetition of formulas is the very thing that Jesus warns against, but this is true of any prayer, even the prayer that Jesus himself gives us in Matthew six. So repetitive prayer and form prayer are good and perfectly biblical, but only have done in a way that is contemplative and not just mindlessly mechanical. Now, a third objection that Daniel raises and one which I know that many people have is that the rosary is focused too much on Mary. Now, there&#8217;s two versions of this argument. One is that we&#8217;re not allowed to ask for Mary&#8217;s intercession at all.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>In fact, nowhere does it say that you should pray to Mary because Mary is dead.</p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>When the Sadducees made a similar argument against those saints who had died, Jesus responded by reminding them that God is the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and that he is not the God of the dead, but of the living even tells them you are quite wrong and suggests that this is because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. And I think that is a sufficient response here. If you think that the saints are simply dead in the grave, if you don&#8217;t realize that they&#8217;re alive right now in the presence of the living God in heaven, then you don&#8217;t understand scripture or the power of God.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>There is no other mediator, only Jesus Christ. He&#8217;s the only mediator between humans and God, one Timothy two verse five, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.</p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>Just once, I wish that Protestants misquoting that verse would finish the sentence because as you might guess, it doesn&#8217;t end with the comma as it appears in Daniel&#8217;s presentation. If you read what St. Paul actually wrote, you&#8217;ll see how badly that passage is being taken out of context. Not only is Paul not denouncing going to other people for intercession, he literally begins the chapter by urging that supplications prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all men. He then refers to Jesus as the one mediator who gave himself as a ransom for all that testimony to which was born at the proper time. So notice in calling Jesus our one mediator, he&#8217;s not saying that Jesus is our one intercessor that would contradict what he&#8217;s just said about our need to intercede for one another. Rather by calling him the one mediator. He means that he&#8217;s the one who died on the cross for all of us as the ransom for the sins of all mankind. It&#8217;s not an argument against going to somebody else for intercession at all. A stronger objection yet is that while it is fine to go to other Christians, including the saints to pray for us, the rosary goes to Mary just too many times</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>Today the basic rosary only has 59 beats. Listen to this, 53 of them are for Hail Mary&#8217;s, the other six for our father&#8217;s prayer,</p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>And he&#8217;s actually leaving a couple of prayers off there. I mean, on each of the five decades of the rosary, there&#8217;s a Lord&#8217;s prayer, an our Father, 10 Hail Marys. Then a glory be which is directed to each of the persons of the Trinity. And then many people add a prayer at the end. Someone&#8217;s called the oh my Jesus prayer or the Fatima Prayer, which is as you might imagine directed to Jesus. So it&#8217;s not really a 53 to six kind of split, but nevertheless, I take the broader point. It is true that the most common prayer in the rosary is the Hail Mary. So I completely understand the concern of people who think that&#8217;s too much focus on Mary. Now, I think that&#8217;s a needless anxiety. You don&#8217;t actually have to measure how many times you talk to your fellow Christians and ask them to pray for you compared to how many times you talk directly to God.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s not a principle found anywhere in the Bible. In fact, we want to watch out for any anxiety that pits one good thing like intercession against another good thing like going directly to God. Remember in John 12, when M anoints Jesus&#8217; feet with oil, it&#8217;s Judas who objects that the money could have been used for the poor. And Jesus shows us in his response that this kind of anxiety isn&#8217;t from God. Oftentimes when you do something good, you&#8217;ll find people complaining that you didn&#8217;t do some other good thing. If you spend a lot of money on a church, people will complain about how that money could have gone to the poor. But if you spend a lot of money on a casino or at a casino, they don&#8217;t even think twice about it. That&#8217;s how you know this kind of anxiety isn&#8217;t really coming from God.</p>
<p>And the same is true about anxiety, but how you&#8217;re spending your time. Now, look, if you are not praying to God enough, fix that. Go to him more. But do that by cutting out the distractions from God in your life, the worldly pleasures, the self indulgences, that sort of thing. Don&#8217;t do it by pitting prayer to God against asking your brothers and sisters in Christ for their intercession. But okay, look, many Protestants believe it&#8217;s not just about balance. Even one hail Mary is too many because it&#8217;s idolatrous to that. I would ask if you&#8217;re worried about the Hail Mary, which part is it that strikes you as idolatrous? Let&#8217;s take it piece by piece. The first part goes Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Now, that&#8217;s basically verbatim the angel Gabriel&#8217;s greeting to Mary in Luke 1 28. The second part goes, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.</p>
<p>Jesus. Here again, basically verbatim of Elizabeth&#8217;s greeting in Luke 1 42. Now granted we&#8217;ve added the names Mary and Jesus to signal who we&#8217;re talking about, but surely that&#8217;s not idolatry, right? So that leaves us with the third part, holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Now, hopefully you think Mary is a Christian, and hopefully you don&#8217;t think asking another Christian to pray to God for you is idolatry. So where is the problem with the hail Mary? Exactly. Well, according to Daniel, the problem is insane. Holy Mary, that we shouldn&#8217;t call Mary holy at all.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>Nowhere in scripture does it say that Mary is holy. It&#8217;s unbiblical.</p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>But Daniel is quite mistaken Here, the Greek word for holiness, hagios is used to refer to the holiness of God, certainly, but the exact same word is also used to describe anyone or anything set aside for God. So the exact same word is used to describe the holy of Holies, the holy women in prophets of the Old Testament and all the saints. The word that gets translated as saints and English is literally just the plural of the word holy. It&#8217;s the holies. The saints are the holies. So it&#8217;s perfectly biblical to describe Mary as Holy Mary, or in fact to refer to the Holy saints in heaven. Other Protestants are going to object to a different part. They&#8217;re going to say, the problem isn&#8217;t that you said Holy Mary, it&#8217;s that you said mother of God, but you really can&#8217;t deny that without denying either A, that Mary is the mother of Jesus, or B, that Jesus is God. And scripture refers to Mary is Jesus&#8217; mother and to Jesus&#8217; God. So here again, we should listen to Elizabeth who greets Mary as the mother of my Lord and Luke one, this is all perfectly biblical. Finally, Daniel argues that the rosary is wrong because it uses beads and we&#8217;re not allowed to use material things in worship. Now, bear in mind that as Daniel himself points out the rosary, beads aren&#8217;t like an object of our worship. They&#8217;re literally just keeping track of where we are in our prayers.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>The beads are used by Catholics to help the practitioner to keep track of around 180 prayers.</p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>So rosary beads are no more idolatrous than an abacus or a bookmark. You don&#8217;t even need them to pray the rosary. You can use your fingers, but Daniel claims that this is still evil because it&#8217;s using material things.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>It&#8217;s strange that people always want to add manmade traditions to their religion, to the Bible, never add something to the Bible. Don&#8217;t add holy water crosses and all of these things and thinking that it will have more power. No, listen carefully. Scripture says that we can only worship God in spirit and in truth, no material things.</p>
<p>Joe:</p>
<p>When Jesus talks about worshiping in spirit and in truth, he&#8217;s not disparaging the use of material things at all. In fact, Jesus in scripture works through physical things quite regularly, water into wine, clay, the touch of his hands, bread and wine into his body and blood, and ultimately his life, giving death on the wood of the cross as he bodily dies for us and pours out his blood on the wood of the cross. That&#8217;s Christianity. Now, Daniel and many other Protestants bring up this objection to material things and worship ultimately due to what I call the gnostic strain in Protestantism. It&#8217;s rooted in this idea that spiritual things are good while physical things are evil, or at least unspiritual in a way that gets in the way. Now to some that might make even intuitive sense, we talk about sins of the flesh and earthly pleasures, but this is rooted in this much deeper problem, and it&#8217;s one that I addressed last week. One of the arguments against relics is based on the same worldview. So where does this rejection of physical objects and worship come from and how can we answer it using the Bible? Well, you&#8217;re going to have to click here to find out. For Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.</p>
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Does the Bible CONDEMN the Rosary? (Reply to DLM Christian Lifestyle)

Why was Enoch not considered canon if the disciples referenced it?

Why is confession to a priest necessary?

Who is St. Mary Salome? Was she the Blessed Mother’s sister?

Why is the penalty of sin, death? It seems so harsh.

Rather than having a Catholic funeral Is having a mortuary service burial, okay?

Is there any truth to the rumor that the baptism formula was in Jesus name early on?

What would be the implications of a person without a soul?

Could a Catholic accept Jesus as the new Isaac and Peter as the new Abraham as an explanation of Mt. 16:18-19?

My husband is interested in Catholicism. He asked: 1 Peter 2:25 Why is the word bishop replaced to overseer in some versions?

<p>In this episode of <em data-start="225" data-end="248">Catholic Answers Live</em>, we tackle one of the most intriguing questions about the Bible’s development: <em data-start="328" data-end="438">If the disciples and early Christians referenced the Book of Enoch, why isn’t it part of the biblical canon?</em> We explore the Church’s criteria for canonization, Enoch’s influence, and why it ultimately didn’t make the cut.</p>
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<p>Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a></p>
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Why Isn’t the Book of Enoch in the Bible If the Disciples Referenced It?

Do Protestants receive the Holy Spirit in (valid) baptism? If so, then why would they need to be Catholic?

Protestants are claiming that the book of James was written before the Council of Jerusalem and together with Acts 15 shows that James doesn’t understand the Gospel because he emphasizes works. How would you respond?

Is our time set in stone?

If Marian apparitions are private revelation, why does the church recognize apparitions such as our lady of Guadalupe on the church calendar?

What are your thoughts on the studies done that aim to determine if prayer is an effective medical tool. I’m referring specifically to prayer groups praying for the patients and not the patients themselves. Also if a non-Christian group prayed for the ...

If the catholic church doesn’t accept a Mormon baptism because of their understanding of God… why does the catholic church accept a marriage when the people involved have a misunderstanding about the nature of the marriage [it doesn’t line ...

Jesus sent his disciples to heal the sick, expel demons, purify the lepers and resurrect the dead (Matt 10). Why do we not hear much about the resurrection of dead people, but only of exorcism and healing of sickness?

Thanks for your important work! Could you explain how the Old Testament practice of sacrificing an animal then eating it is really a sacrifice?

Could you explain what Christian non-exclusivism entails. And more importantly, what the biblical and patristic evidence is that this is an acceptable/non-heretical position. I watched the Theology Unleashed videos you were in, and feel like this posit...

<p><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">If </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Marian </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">apparitions </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">are </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">considered </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">private </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">revelations, </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">why </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">are </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">events </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">like </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Our </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Lady </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">of </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Guadalupe </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">on </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">the </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Church </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">calendar? </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">We </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">explain </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">the </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Church’s </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">distinction </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">between </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">public </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">and </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">private </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">revelation—</span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">and </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">why </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">some </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">apparitions </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">are </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">recognized </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">liturgically.</span></p>
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Why Does the Church Celebrate Marian Apparitions If They’re Private Revelation?

<p>In this episode Trent rebuts arguments from Living Waters evangelist Ray Comfort in his recent video “This Will Make You Think Differently About Catholicism&#8230;”.</p>

REBUTTING Ray Comfort on Catholicism

<p>In this episode Trent’s wife Laura answers Patron questions and anything goes: From TLM to TMI!</p>

Ask My Wife Anything!

<p>Trent watches a lot of Pixar movies with his kids and so in this episode you’ll hear his thoughts on the hidden themes in these movies and the questions that come up on your 100th viewing of these films!</p>

Hidden Themes and Consequences in Pixar Films

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<p><strong>DAY 58</strong></p>
<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
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<p>“The pagan roots of Christianity are shown by the popular Madonna-and-Child images depicting Mary and the baby Jesus. Similar images depicting a goddess and her child are found in pagan religions all over the world.”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>Images of the Madonna and Child neither date from the origin of Christianity nor prove it has a pagan origin.</p>
<p>Images of Mary and the baby Jesus did not become common in Christian art until the fifth century. There are a few possible examples of them from the second to the fourth centuries, but none from the first. These images do not go back to the founding of Christianity and thus cannot show it to have pagan origins.</p>
<p>The most they could show is that at some point Christian artists drew on themes that were already present in pagan art, but there is nothing sinister or surprising about mother and child images. They appear in every culture because of a simple fact: There are mothers with children in every culture!</p>
<p>What’s more, you don’t have to be a goddess to be represented in such images. Today, every mother has photos of herself holding each baby she has had, and before the invention of photography, families could have drawings or paintings of such scenes.</p>
<p>The depiction of mothers with children is a natural expression of mankind’s artistic impulse. Motherhood is a profound aspect of the human experience, and it is naturally reflected in a culture’s art.</p>
<p>In cultures that believed in goddesses, it was natural to depict some of them with their children, but that is not what is happening in Ma- donna and Child images. Although Jesus is God, Mary is a human being—not a goddess.</p>
<p>She is a noteworthy biblical figure who is mentioned in multiple books of the New Testament, and it is natural that she would find a place in Christian art. One of the easiest ways to indicate her identity in a work of art is to depict her with her even more famous Son. The fact that two Gospels have infancy narratives in which people visit Mary and the child Jesus (Matt. 2:11; Luke 2:16) made it certain that such images would be depicted in Christian art.</p>
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Madonna-and-Child Images

Understanding the grid of extremes

Cafeteria Christian conformist and morally lax

Prog Christian Conformist and morally rigorous

Barbaric Nonconformist and morally lax

Fundamentalists nonconformist and morally rigorous

<p>&#8220;Can Cafeteria Christians be saved?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the complexities of faith and morality, addressing the challenges faced by those who pick and choose their beliefs. Other topics include the moral implications of conformist and nonconformist attitudes, as well as the distinctions between various types of Christians and their approaches to morality.</p>
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Can “Cafeteria Christians” Be Saved? The Four Types of Bad Christians

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<p>“The Christian idea of an omnipotent God is logically contradictory. Can God make a stone so heavy he can’t lift it? If he can then there is something he can’t do (lift the stone), but if he can’t, then there’s also something he can’t do (make the stone).”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>To accuse others of a logical contradiction, first you must understand their idea correctly. Otherwise you commit the straw man fallacy. This objection misunderstands omnipotence.</p>
<p>The term “omnipotent” means “all-powerful” (Latin, omnis, “all,” and potens, “powerful”). This is often said to mean that God can “do anything,” but this statement is ambiguous, and the ambiguity leads to the objection above.</p>
<p>What does it mean to say God can do anything? If “anything” means anything that you can say, then the idea would involve logical contradictions. You could, for example, say that God could make four-sided triangles, square circles, married bachelors, two-horned unicorns, and other entities whose definitions involve logical contradictions.</p>
<p>This is not what Christian theologians mean by omnipotence. Instead, they mean that God can do anything that is logically possible—that is, anything that does not involve a logical contradiction. This causes the objection to vanish, because if omnipotence excludes logical contradictions, then, by definition, it does not involve them.</p>
<p>It thus resolves the question of whether God can make a stone so heavy he can’t lift it. By virtue of omnipotence, God has infinite, or unlimited, lifting power. There is no upper limit to what God can lift. Thus a stone too heavy for God to lift would have to have more than infinite weight, and the idea of “more than infinite” weight involves a logical contradiction.</p>
<p>Stones too heavy for an omnipotent being to lift fall in the same category as four-sided triangles and married bachelors. They contain logical contradictions and thus represent jibberish rather than logically possible entities.</p>
<p><strong>TIP</strong></p>
<p>For more, see St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I:25:3–4.</p>
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A Stone Too Heavy for God to Lift?

<p>In this episode Trent rebuts the arguments of a viral video called &#8220;Satan&#8217;s Guide to the Bible&#8221;.</p>

Satan’s Guide to the Bible (REBUTTED)

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent breaks down the weirdest phobias and also shares some of his own weird fears.</p>

FFAF: The Weirdest Phobias (Including Mine)

<p>In this episode Trent comments on the recent documentary <em>AKA Jane Roe</em> which purports to include a “deathbed recanting” of Norma McCorvey’s (Roe from Roe v Wade) pro-life convictions.</p>

Investigating Norma McCorvey’s “Deathbed Confession”

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reminisces about the unexpected good things that came out of the Covid-19 pandemic.</p>

FFAF: A Few Good Things From the Pandemic

Where does the Church in scripture get the idea of Mary as Mediatrix of All Graces?

I’m not Catholic. Where do you see confession in the bible?

Where in the bible that Mary was without sin?

<p>&#8220;Is Mary the Mediatrix of All Graces?&#8221; This episode explores the scriptural basis for Mary&#8217;s role in grace, addressing questions like the biblical foundation for confession and the scriptural evidence of Mary&#8217;s sinlessness. Join us as we delve into these important topics and more in this enlightening Q&amp;A session.</p>
<p><a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a></p>
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Why Is Mary the Mediatrix of All Graces? Is Confession Biblical?

<p>In this “live rebuttal” Trent is joined by Catholic apologist William Albrecht who has also been a recent subject of James White’s critiques. In this episode the duo discuss his views on the Marian dogmas.</p>

James White *still* Doesn’t Like One Of My Old Talks

Faith Delivered “Once For All”

<p>In this episode Trent responds to memes and quotes from new atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens that are still getting shared online.</p>

Answering Atheist Memes and Quotes

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<p><strong><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'segoe ui', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'helvetica neue', sans-serif">DAY 351</span></strong></p>
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<p>“If something is good just because God says it is, then morality is arbitrary. But if there’s an independent standard of morality that even God is bound to, that means there exists something besides God that is eternal and that is able to bind God.”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>God is the ultimate standard of goodness.</p>
<p>A version of this argument was proposed in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro around 400 B.C. In it, Socrates debates whether piety is whatever the gods love or whether the gods love something because it is pious. In philosophy, this has become known as the “Euthyphro dilemma.”</p>
<p>The view that goodness is whatever God (or the gods) command is known as divine command theory. There is some truth to this view, for some moral requirements are based on divine commands. An example was the weekly observance of the Sabbath by the Jewish people. There is nothing in the eternal moral law that requires Saturday in particular, rather than some other day, to be set aside for rest and worship.</p>
<p>However, the Sabbath was based on deeper moral principles. Humans do need to set aside adequate time for rest and worship. The way in which these were to be fulfilled in Israel may have been determined by divine command, but the command was based on a deeper set of principles that God designed into human nature. Today these principles are fulfilled in a different way (CCC 2175–76).</p>
<p>Consequently, the element of truth in divine command theory is limited, and the important question is where the deeper principles come from.</p>
<p>It would be possible to combine an independent standard of goodness with the idea of the Greek gods since they were held to be finite, created beings and thus not the ultimate standard of reference in the world. However, it does not fit with the Judeo-Christian understanding of God.</p>
<p>According to this view, God and the things he has created are all that exist. Consequently, if the ultimate standard of goodness is not created (as in divine command theory), then it must be God. This is the ultimate solution to the Euthyphro dilemma: The standard of goodness is God’s eternal nature, and thus it is neither arbitrary nor independent of God. All particular moral laws are an unfolding of God’s own goodness.</p>
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The Standard of Goodness

My Response to Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

<p>In this episode, Trent engages astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s arguments against God as well as his critiques of atheism.</p>
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<p><strong>Transcript:</strong></p>
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<p>Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.</p>
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<p>Just because you&#8217;re smart about one thing, that doesn&#8217;t mean you&#8217;re smart about everything. And that&#8217;s especially true when smart scientists start talking about philosophical issues like the existence of God. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast. I&#8217;m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker Trent Horn, and today we&#8217;ll be talking about famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson&#8217;s thoughts on atheism and the existence of God. Before we do that, I know that you are smarter than Neil deGrasse Tyson, at least on one subject, because you click the subscribe button for our channel. Now, if you haven&#8217;t done that yet, don&#8217;t worry. Smart people make mistakes all the time, as we will see. But definitely don&#8217;t forget to click the subscribe button and to support us at trenthornpodcast.com to help keep the channel going and growing.</p>
<p>All right, so Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist who many people find to be smug and condescending. He has a bad habit of chiming in about many subjects or nitpicking things on the internet. He is the living embodiment of the &#8220;Actually&#8221; meme, actually. So sometimes he does this for stuff that&#8217;s true, but nobody cares, like pointing out how Star Wars tie fighters make noise in space when they shouldn&#8217;t, or how we don&#8217;t actually leap anywhere on leap day. And in other cases he opines on things outside his area of expertise, and he gets that stuff wrong. Like when he said sex couldn&#8217;t possibly be painful in other species or they&#8217;d go extinct, which is not true. There are animals that engage in sex that is painful for those involved, and they&#8217;re certainly not extinct. Or when he said that helicopters, when they lose their engines, drop like bricks out of the sky. There are helicopter pilots actually who have made videos showing how you can turn off a helicopter&#8217;s engine and use auto rotation to slow the helicopter&#8217;s descent so it doesn&#8217;t fall like a brick out of the sky.</p>
<p>Now, look, everybody makes mistakes when they talk about a wide variety of subjects. I know I&#8217;ve done it. But Tyson never seems to learn his lesson on this, and he continues to confidently assert things, especially in areas that are not subjects of his expertise. One of those subjects that Tyson misunderstands is the existence of God, since his opinions on that matter, they parallel those of a freshman philosophy student. As we continue though, keep in mind that Tyson does not call himself an atheist. He prefers to be called an agnostic.</p>
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<p>I don&#8217;t call myself an atheist. Find a word that came closest, it would be agnostic.</p>
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<p>But some of the reasons Tyson gives for not being an atheist, they really apply more to obnoxious online atheism, not atheism in general. For example, Tyson says he&#8217;s not an atheist because unlike atheists, he has no problem using BC and AD for calendar years, before Christ and Anno Domini, the year of our Lord.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>The reason why I disavow the atheist title is very simple. The most visible atheists today say things, do things, and think things that I don&#8217;t do.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Such as?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Oh, they&#8217;re quick to use CE and BCE when referencing dates on the calendar, CE common era, BCE before.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Okay.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>They have eschewed the BC and AD. I&#8217;m not going to say, &#8220;No, I&#8217;m taking the Christianity out of this reference because they figured out the calendar that we all use.&#8221; Clearly I&#8217;m not an atheist.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>What are you?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>My favorite Broadway musical of all time is Jesus Christ Superstar, which I saw in real time in New York City.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Except there are atheists who find BCE, before current era, and CE, current era, to just be silly. Richard Carrier is an atheist who doesn&#8217;t even think Jesus existed, but he still thinks that it&#8217;s stupid, in his words, to use BCE and CE instead of BC and AD, because they refer to the same division of time surrounding the birth of Jesus Christ. Tyson&#8217;s other reasons, like enjoying Jesus Christ Superstar, for example, well, only the most obnoxious of online atheists would dislike that musical because it happens to reference Jesus. So what arguments does Tyson give for defending his brand of agnosticism? Unfortunately, they reduce the case for God to being just God of the gap&#8217;s reasoning that can be rejected. We don&#8217;t know what caused X, therefore God caused X.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Is there a God then, Neil deGrasse Tyson? I&#8217;ll be about to have breaking news.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>I don&#8217;t know.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Is there a God?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So what I will tell you is that there are a lot of unknowns in the universe, but just because there are unknowns does not mean there&#8217;s a deity in the unknown. The track record of people saying, &#8220;God is behind this,&#8221; and then you add a little science to it and you find out, no, we can completely explain it and control it. Then the history of that exercise is so rich with science discovering the unknowns that were previously ascribed to deity, like lightning bolts and weather systems. There was Poseidon, there was Zeus. Just look at the history of this. I&#8217;m not given reason to say we&#8217;re going to find something, God is going to be at the center of that, and there&#8217;ll be no science to apply. I have no problems if, as we probe the origins of things, we bump up into the bearded man. If that shows up, we&#8217;re good to go. Okay? Not a problem. There&#8217;s just no evidence of it.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>The classical arguments for the existence of God do not reason from an absence of a natural explanation for an observation, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know.&#8221; They reason from the impossibility of a natural explanation. &#8220;I know it can&#8217;t be a natural explanation.&#8221; The question of why contingent things exist, or why objects actualize potential, or whether infinite causal chains are possible, or whether humans have intrinsic dignity and moral responsibility. These are not scientific questions where we&#8217;re just waiting on processing computers in order to figure out the answers. They are philosophical questions that we can know the answer to based on things like metaphysical, modal, and ethical reasoning. And when we reason in the correct way, those questions lead us to the conclusion of the existence of an infinite, purely actual foundation of all reality, God. But God is not a thing in the universe we detect using scientific instruments. God especially is not a bearded man hanging out in the universe somewhere. God is the ultimate foundation of reality. God is the infinite act of being itself. In other cases Tyson, in spite of being a thoughtful agnostic, he makes just the typical new atheist arguments against God.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>So when you say you believe in God, which God? Is it Zeus? Is it Poseidon? Is it the Jewish God? Is it the Christian God?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>In his book Aristotle on Religion, Mor Segev shows that Aristotle considered Greek mythology to be absurd, so he rejected the existence of gods and demigods, creatures like Zeus or Poseidon. However, Aristotle did believe that there was a true God, a prime mover of the whole universe. The philosopher Xenophon also said the following. He said, &#8220;Ethiopians say that their gods are snub nosed and black, Thracians that they are pale and red haired. But if cows, horses, and lions had hands or could paint and sculpture with their hands like humans, then the horses would represent the gods as horses and bullocks as bullocks, and they would create bodies in the same way as their own bodies.&#8221; But Xenophon was not an atheist, even though he recognized that many of the gods that were worshiped in his time, they&#8217;re just projections from human beings, they didn&#8217;t actually exist.</p>
<p>He said that beyond these false depictions of God there was a true God, or as he wrote, &#8220;One God, greatest among gods and humans, like mortals neither in form nor in thought.&#8221; So reason tells us that a purely actual, necessary, infinite, timeless, immaterial cause created and sustains the universe. I don&#8217;t believe in gods with a lowercase G like Zeus, because they&#8217;re not purely actual, necessary, infinite, timeless, immaterial. They are not God with a capital G. Once one does believe there is an infinite God, the God of classical theism, well, then you can narrow down what religion is most correct about the nature and will of God. But the fact that you have candidates you have to narrow down does not mean the question, &#8220;Which God?&#8221; is a debate stopper.</p>
<p>For example, if you believe there is fundamental matter in the universe, the next question&#8217;s going to be, &#8220;Which matter? Quarks, strings, mathematical points?&#8221; A similar debate arose recently on Twitter, where physicists and philosophers debated whether electrons actually exist or if they&#8217;re just fictional bookkeeping devices in the formulas of physics. Sabine Hossenfelder, a physicist who has a popular YouTube channel, and Philip Goff, a philosopher who defends panpsychism, kind of got into it.</p>
<p>Goff rejects the existence of the classical God, but he thinks the entire universe has a kind of consciousness running through it. In discussing the multiverse, Hossenfelder said, &#8220;Assuming the existence of something you cannot observe is unnecessary to explain anything you can observe.&#8221; Goff fired back by saying we can&#8217;t observe electrons, but they&#8217;re still part of our explanations. Hossenfelder said in reply that when we say that electrons exist, we mean that a certain set of mathematical assumptions turn out to be good to describe observations. Their existence is not an assumption. Now, I&#8217;m not going to try to settle the realist versus anti-realist views of science in this episode, though I&#8217;m quite a committed realist. Electrons, subatomic particles, they really do exist, and many other scientists and philosophers hold to the realist position. My point is just that answering the question, &#8220;Does X exist?&#8221; does not always involve scientific investigation. And this is especially true when we&#8217;re talking about the most fundamental elements of reality like electrons, quarks, numbers, minds, moral truths, and of course God. Now back to Tyson&#8217;s use of new atheist arguments.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>And it&#8217;s odd that the word atheist even exists. I don&#8217;t play golf. Is there a word for non-golf players? Do non-golf players gather and strategize?</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Belief in God is not a hobby like golf. It&#8217;s a position on a fundamental question about existence. And we have names for people who reject other fundamental aspects of existence. For example, if you think there is no purpose, you are a nihilist. If you think there should be no government, you are an anarchist. If you think there is no objective morality, you are amoral. And if you think there is no God, then you&#8217;re an atheist. And all of those big assertions about what does not exist carries a corresponding burden of proof.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>There&#8217;s just no evidence of it. And this is why religions are called faiths collectively, because you believe something in the absence of evidence. That&#8217;s what it is. That&#8217;s why it&#8217;s called faith. Otherwise we would call all religions evidence, but we don&#8217;t.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Faith just means trust. People have trust or faith in God, but they also have faith or trust in other people, in the uniformity of the laws of nature, and in their own senses when they observe and record the evidence they gather from scientific experiments. The evidence for God is not going to be something material, like finding God&#8217;s energy signature in a scan of the universe. It&#8217;s going to be in the natural world having features that only make sense or at least make the most sense in light of God&#8217;s existence.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>When you look at the large scale universe and you see these structures, what you have to ask yourself is, suppose all the galaxies were exactly equally spaced rather than in these filaments and structures. Perhaps you&#8217;d be asking the same thing. &#8220;Oh, look, is there some intent here? Look how beautifully ordered it is.&#8221; Ask yourself, is there some configuration of the universe where you wouldn&#8217;t ask that? Because if there isn&#8217;t, then the question doesn&#8217;t actually aim towards a unique answer. If anything you see out there looks like it&#8217;s ordered to you, then you can&#8217;t ask the question.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>Yes, there is a configuration like that, one where the universe and its physical laws are totally chaotic and random and its fundamental structures do not allow life to exist. Tyson&#8217;s argument is treading into the observer effect response to the design argument for God. That argument says, &#8220;Well, we shouldn&#8217;t be surprised to find an ordered universe, because if it weren&#8217;t ordered, well, we wouldn&#8217;t be here to appreciate that fact.&#8221; But to borrow John Leslie&#8217;s firing squad example, that&#8217;s like saying we should not be surprised 50 trained marksmen all failed to execute us via firing squad, because if they had done so, we wouldn&#8217;t be here to notice that fact. So the fact that you were an observer, you wouldn&#8217;t be here if it wasn&#8217;t designed, that does not explain why the design exists in the first place. You still need that additional explanation.</p>
<p>In fact, there have been recent non-theistic authors, authors and experts who do not believe in God, or at least the classical God, who say that the fine-tuning of the laws of nature in the universe would prove God exists, it would prove it to them, if it weren&#8217;t for the problem of evil making it unlikely the classical God exists. Astrophysicists Luke Barnes and Geraint Lewis defend the existence of the universe&#8217;s fine-tuning, for example, in their book A Fortunate Universe. But in that book they disagree on the cause of the fine-tuning. Barnes says that God is the best explanation, while Lewis says the multiverse is the best explanation. And Lewis takes that approach because he cannot reconcile God with the problem of evil, even though the problem of fine-tuning would lead him to the existence of God if it weren&#8217;t for the challenge of the problem of evil.</p>
<p>Likewise, Philip Goff, the panpsychist that I mentioned earlier, he believes that fine-tuning does show the universe has a cosmic purpose. He doesn&#8217;t just believe in atheistic materialism, but he does not believe in the traditional or classical view of God, once again because of the problem of evil. However, Goff does think that the unlikelihood of life existing is evidence of some kind of universal cosmic design or purpose, which he explains in more detail in his recent book, Why: the Purpose of the Universe. So both of those examples show that the fine-tuning argument does provide really strong evidence for the existence of God that several authors have only discounted by using not a scientific argument, but a philosophical argument like the problem of evil.</p>
<p>Ultimately I just hope that Tyson will see that the question of God&#8217;s existence is not one posed by ancient simpletons that we are now in a position to comprehensively answer with a naturalistic hypothesis because we have scientists now. It is a question that philosophers have always wrestled with and will always continue to wrestle with until the second coming, just as they wrestle with the existence of other fundamental realities whose existence cannot be proven by science but has to be philosophically argued, including those that make science possible itself, like the laws of logic or basic principles of non-contradiction, things like that. And so because of these basic principles like the reliability of our senses, the uniformity of the laws of nature, we can&#8217;t use science to adjudicate their existence, and science depends on these things to operate. At the least one would hope that Tyson would see that as a scientist, the question of God&#8217;s existence is beyond his area of expertise, so he should tread cautiously. Or, as he once put it &#8230;</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you&#8217;re right, but not enough about the subject to know you&#8217;re wrong.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>He&#8217;s so close. He&#8217;s so close. All right, well, thank you all so much for watching. And remember, if you&#8217;d like to help our channel to grow, definitely please hit that subscribe button, and I hope that you just have a very blessed day.</p>
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What Neil deGrasse Tyson Gets Wrong About God (and Atheism)

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What are the rules and guidelines for picking a confirmation saint?

Do you think it real or possible for people to experience demonic activity due to family curses?

What does it take to be considered a martyr in the Church?

Why do some people not see a change in their lives after they receive communion for many years?

If we consider Baptist Christians, would they go to heaven, purgatory or hell?

<p>Is it really possible for spiritual harm to be passed down through families? We explore the Church&#8217;s view on generational curses and demonic influence, along with insights on martyrdom, the Eucharist, and the connection between Revelation and the Gospel of John.</p>
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Can Family Curses Lead to Demonic Activity? And More Questions

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Is the female vote ruining America? Let’s look at the facts.

An Update on my Wife’s Recovery from Brain Surgery

<p>In this episode Trent reflects on the overuse of nostalgia at the Super Bowl last weekend.</p>
<p><strong>Transcript:</strong></p>
<p>Trent Horn (00:00):</p>
<p>If you listen to this show long and if you know that I have a bad case in nostalgia for the nineties, early two thousands, but even I know when nostalgia gets to be too much, and I really felt that way on the Super Bowl last weekend. That&#8217;s what I want to talk about today. Decompress a little bit about. So yeah, Monday&#8217;s, Wednesdays here on the Council of Trent. We talk apologetics and theology. But Friday, hey, we talk about whatever I want to talk about and today is the Super Bowl and it was an okay Super Bowl Seahawks versus the Patriots. I think we kind of, it&#8217;s always hard when you watch a game and you feel like you see the end coming in the first five minutes of the game. I know the Seahawks were favored. I&#8217;m glad that it at least wasn&#8217;t a shutout and there were at least touchdowns and things freed up a little bit more later in the game. (00:43):</p>
<p>I mean, I didn&#8217;t end up finishing the last part of the game. So when you have kids, you&#8217;re just like, ah, I&#8217;m tired and the kids went to bed. I&#8217;m going to go to bed too. That&#8217;s the life when you get a bit older. But I mean, I would&#8217;ve stayed if it was more of a Nailbiter game, but it definitely moved a lot slower. Both teams, their defense was just really high. So I mean, the Seahawks only, they were only to get any points just with field goal kicks, not even, it took a while. I mean, you get to, this was the fifth Super Bowl where nobody had scored a touchdown by halftime. So it&#8217;s like, okay, it&#8217;s not moving that great. So yeah, I was thinking about just watching it and it was fun. We just had a little family party, just got the kids together to watch. (01:30):</p>
<p>But it was really an interesting contrast, especially when you have kids and you&#8217;re really paying attention to the Super Bowl versus when you don&#8217;t have kids or you&#8217;re not married and you go to a Super Bowl party. It&#8217;s a lot different because when you go to a Super Bowl party, especially before you&#8217;re married, or especially if you go to a party where all the kids are running around, if it&#8217;s a big thing, everybody&#8217;s running around and talking, you&#8217;re actually not watching the game that much. I saw a clip online of somebody who during the Super Bowl, they were playing a recording of an old Super Bowl instead is like a joke and nobody noticed. And it was a lot of young women who were in the crowd at this party, so they might&#8217;ve just been wanting to be at the party anyways, and the game is just an afterthought. (02:09):</p>
<p>So there is that element when you go to a big Super Bowl party that the game really takes a backseat. So it&#8217;s a lot different. We wanted to have just a nice little family, just immediate family, just my wife and our kids. They&#8217;re ages 11, nine and five. It was still fun. We got little decorations, got the buffalo dip, my wife put out a little spread. It was delightful, it was exquisite, but it&#8217;s a lot interesting. Then when you sit down, especially with your kids and you&#8217;re focusing on the game, rather than having chit-chat walking around and always getting excuse to go back up for more of that seven layer dip. So when you watch with kids though, you&#8217;ll notice things like, oh, the commercials, and you&#8217;re a lot more on high alert, by the way, for the commercials before you have kids, you can laugh at whatever, but then when they got the horror movies coming on your five-year-old&#8217;s, like that&#8217;s too, that&#8217;s too scary. (03:03):</p>
<p>Like, oh gosh, why did they put in this horror movie thing? Is this supposed to be for families? So it&#8217;s always hard. Then when you watch kids, I&#8217;m clenching the remote in my hand just waiting for something family and appropriate to pop up and I want to see a good commercial, right? I remember back in the day, I remember you could watch Super Bowl commercials and they would be hilarious. The What&#8217;s up guys, what&#8217;s up? Or just a lot of ones that would just come up and you&#8217;re like, oh man, that was great. Some of them relied on nostalgia, but a lot of them did it. They were just funny or kooky or zany or well</p>
<p>thought out. But in watching this year especially because what do you watch with the Super Bowl? The game, the commercials are big. The commercials are supposed to be like, oh yeah, this is the biggest thing or the biggest commercials they&#8217;re going to show up here at the Super Bowl. (03:56):</p>
<p>And then you watch and it&#8217;s just like one, a lot of them are for gambling websites. It&#8217;s like, oh, this is depressing. Almost like dystopian all of these crypto and gambling commercials. But then I thought about it, but I was making a list of the commercials that I could remember from the Super Bowl this year, and there&#8217;s only four that pop out of my mind. And the four that I remember, it&#8217;s just because of nostalgia and they&#8217;re just mining nostalgia. Hopefully you&#8217;ll think like, oh, remember this South Bark has the member berries, remember Chewbacca? And it&#8217;s like, remember this? And I was like, oh my goodness, is that what we have to rely on now? Well actually two of them had funny moments to them that I liked. So one was the T-Mobile Backstreet Boys commercial where Backstreet comes and they&#8217;re doing T-Mobile and singing about that. (04:47):</p>
<p>And my wife was a huge Backstreet fan back in the day because she was like, what, nine? So of course that&#8217;s a big kick for her. And I guess if you&#8217;re trying to get people, millennials with disposable income who are buying a bunch of cell phone lines or land or whatever, you&#8217;re probably going to pick music from the late nineties or early two thousands to get your target demographic. And so I just lighten that commercial they&#8217;re performing. And there&#8217;s the one black guy, he&#8217;s crying, he&#8217;s got tears running down when he sees Backstreet Boys. I mean, I&#8217;ll admit that was funny, but it&#8217;s a very shameless nostalgia plug for that. The other was the Dunkin Donuts commercial. I actually liked this one. The idea behind it, I&#8217;ll play just a short clip of it so you can get a sense of it. But the idea is that there&#8217;s a info before as the commercial starts is instead of Goodwill Hunting the movie with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, instead of the movie Goodwill Hunting, there was a sitcom made before that with the real geniuses. (05:46):</p>
<p>I can&#8217;t do the Boston accent for it. And it&#8217;s basically, it&#8217;s like a cheesy sitcom riff set in a Dunkin Donuts with Ben Affleck as Wheel Duncan, like a misunderstood genius. But then there&#8217;s a ton of other sitcom stars there. Ted Danson, Alfonso Re, who plays Carlton on freshmen of Bel Air, Julia White, who&#8217;s Urkel, Matt LeBlanc, who&#8217;s Joey, obviously from Friends and you&#8217;ve got all of them together and Jennifer Anderson shows up and Tom Brady. So a ton of celebrities. So I&#8217;ll just play a short clip of it. Hey, did you arrange the munchkins in the Fibonacci sequence? I got a genius weapon from me. He&#8217;s such a genius. And why did he put ice in his coffee here? Come on, Chucky. I&#8217;m just will hunting. I&#8217;m not a genius. I will marry the first man that can help me with the Fibonacci sequence. (06:41):</p>
<p>Oh, you knew it. Oh, and I forgot that Jason Alexander is the manager of this Dunking Donuts. It&#8217;s a whole commercial instead of goodwill. Hunting, hunting, hunting, it&#8217;s goodwill, dunking Dunking Donuts, and it got a lot of hate online. I was surprised by so many people just despised this ad and they called it AI slop. They were like, I can&#8217;t believe we&#8217;re doing AI ads like this. This is so unreal. But it was a real ad. They got those people in there to film them. Now they used aging technology. So you&#8217;re using AI in that sense to de-age these people to look like they did in the mid nineties, but it was a real ad that was filmed and like, oh, it was an AI script. I mean maybe, but the idea of the dialogue being stilted or weird, it&#8217;s just supposed to draw back to those sitcom tropes of not the greatest dialogue. (07:33):</p>
<p>And so I liked it. So you&#8217;ll have weird criticisms if it&#8217;s going to be Dunking Donuts and it&#8217;s back east, you have to call it donkeys. If you&#8217;re in Massachusetts, go donkeys. Well, yeah, but it&#8217;s goodwill hunting, so it&#8217;s goodwill dunking. I see what the trend, I&#8217;m not saying this ad was a masterpiece by any means. I&#8217;m not saying that, but I thought it was entertaining. It made me laugh. It wasn&#8217;t offensive. I liked watching it with my kids and it was memorable. So it&#8217;s like, okay, that&#8217;s good enough for me. But yeah, just so many people hated it. So now I wonder, am I just like the out of touch older person who thinks the minions memes on Facebook are funny when everybody else knows that they&#8217;re not funny? Which makes me think back to The Simpsons, the episode where Bart is a truant and Skinner&#8217;s trying to track him down. (08:17):</p>
<p>And he goes, where would a kid who&#8217;s skipping school go to? I know the four H Club. And he goes there and it&#8217;s all abandoned. And he&#8217;s like, am I so out of touch? No, it&#8217;s the children who are wrong. And that&#8217;s how I feel. Am I so out of touch? No, it&#8217;s Gen Alpha and Gen Z who are wrong. So yeah, people just absolutely blast this commercial, but I liked it. The thing I don&#8217;t like though is that all these commercials, the other ones I can think of that are memorable was the crypto coin commercial that was, now I will admit that it was original. It was the one where they just had the karaoke screen and it was a Backstreet Boys song and it&#8217;s just going through and it has the background music, but it has the text. And we started singing along to it. (09:00):</p>
<p>And so I thought, okay, that was minimal and creative because you just see as the karaoke words in the music like, Hey, no one&#8217;s singing. Why don&#8217;t we start singing? And so I thought that was good. And then the other one I remember, which wasn&#8217;t a great commercial, but I&#8217;m like, oh, Bon Jovi&#8217;s in. This was the one for State Farm. But notice what they all have in common though. It&#8217;s like to get you invested, it&#8217;s like, remember this back in the day. So I really worry that it&#8217;s like is the only thing that we as a culture enjoy with stuff that was from 30 years ago? What are we going to do 30 years into the future? I mean, now nostalgia is something people have always had, right? In the seventies, people were nostalgic for the fifties. So had shows, that&#8217;s why shows Happy Days were so successful. (09:38):</p>
<p>Or in the nineties, people were nostalgic for the seventies. So you had that seventies show, they did the Brady Bunch movie, you had a lot of callbacks things from there. So now it makes sense. Now we&#8217;re in the 2020s, people are nostalgic for the nineties and the early two thousands maybe it&#8217;s just like when you grow up and you&#8217;re in your middle age. The middle age people are nostalgic for the things of when they were young in their twenties. But then what are we going to do 20 years from now, or in 20 years from now? Is Super Bowl 2046, are they going to have a commercial like look, it&#8217;s Mark Applier and Bad Bunny. Oh man, that&#8217;s crazy. I don&#8217;t know. With the Death of Monoculture, which I talked about previously for All Friday with Matt Walsh, I have no idea what it&#8217;ll be like 20 years from now. (10:22):</p>
<p>I&#8217;m ready if the Lord lets me live that long, I&#8217;m ready to buckle my seatbelt in for what could be a really wild ride. But yeah, but that&#8217;s just sad to me that it&#8217;s like the only things people could come up with are interesting are reboots, reimaginings, prequels, legacy sequels, this kind of stuff. And so the Super Bowl commercials really shown out to me in that respect. So I&#8217;d love to see, I wish it was more creativity in that regard. The other thing that really stuck out to me was the halftime show. Now, we didn&#8217;t watch, I watched some clips of it online, and that&#8217;s what&#8217;s sad too. You have your kids and it just would be nice now, I mean, this wasn&#8217;t a recent thing. For a long time, football has had inappropriate elements in the commercials or cheerleaders or whatever it may be. (11:06):</p>
<p>So it&#8217;s not always the most family friendly, but at least it didn&#8217;t super cross the line. But yeah, I just saw clips of the halftime show. And the thing that was honestly saddest for me in looking at the halftime show was that it was really a show for the television viewing audience rather than those who are attending the game live that the Bad Bunny halftime show. And I admit that the set design was really creative with the sugar cane and the shacks and just all the other stuff there. I certainly don&#8217;t agree with all of the message and politics behind it, but I mean, that element was just creative. But you can tell the Super Bowl halftime show now, it just becomes, oh, it&#8217;s an elaborate live music video. Whereas in the past it was something where you were watching and everyone in the Super Bowl was having this awesome time on their feet rocking out to a cool, and the television viewing audience at home wanted to feel like you were a part of that vicariously living through them. (12:00):</p>
<p>But now the Super Bowl is weird. The cheapest seats of the Super Bowl, I think they&#8217;re like $5,000 to be up in the bleachers. Why would you do that? And I feel like it&#8217;s just for status to be like, just say, oh, so where are you going this weekend? Oh, I, I&#8217;m just going to the Super Bowl. But it seems so utterly unenjoyable the people who are there. It&#8217;s a status symbol to be able to say, yeah, you went to the Super Bowl. Or it&#8217;s like people now who pay $150,000 go climb Mount Everest, even though they&#8217;re not mountain climbers. They do it for the clout and the status not to really go and enjoy a game. And so I feel like it&#8217;s so corporatized that who cares? Those people, it doesn&#8217;t matter about pleasing them. They paid their money. All they want to do is be able to say they went to the Super Bowl. (12:38):</p>
<p>They don&#8217;t even have to have a good time. So you watch, if you watch the videos, people are hardly dancing or doing anything or singing along to the bad bunny performance and everything. And plus, with that sugar cane field and the set, you can&#8217;t see what&#8217;s going on from the stands at the Super Bowl. So you&#8217;re just watching like, okay, that&#8217;s cool. And instead it&#8217;s just everything for the television viewing audience. And it wasn&#8217;t like that in the past. Probably the best Super Bowl halftime show of all time. There&#8217;s a few that stand out. I did like the one with Dr. Dre and Crew a few years ago. I thought that was pretty awesome. What were some other ones? At least the ones that I remember, Michael Jackson, 1993 was amazing. I was too young to really remember that. I was only eight years old, but that one, it had, I think a billion people were watching that on television around the world. Rolling Stones was cool. I think probably the best one though. And you ask a lot of people online, they&#8217;ll say this too. It was Prince, I think in 2007, just Rock the House totally. But having something like that, that&#8217;s just what I wish we had. And so it&#8217;s really sad for me is we didn&#8217;t watch Bad Bunny. (13:47):</p>
<p>We said a few decades of the Rosary, but then we clicked over to the T-P-U-S-A halftime show. It&#8217;s like, okay, I want to give him a chance. I want to give him a chance. Alternative programming, family friendly, and well, I wouldn&#8217;t say it was family friendly. I miss the Kid Rock part, which the lyrics, I would honestly say are not that family friendly. But the rest of it, the stuff we did sing, it&#8217;s just like one country music act after another. And it&#8217;s like, look, conservatives Republicans, the alternative to a degenerate culture does not automatically have to be country music. It&#8217;s not like, well, it&#8217;s either degenerate hip hop or country music. Take your pick. Which by the way, a lot of country music is degenerate when you listen to the lyrics and the things they promote. It&#8217;s like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, it may not be all the stuff that rappers say, but they will promote themes that I would say, oh, actually this is not quite appropriate. (14:38):</p>
<p>But the halftime show, my kids are watching and they just kind of got bored with it. So I give them credit. At least they were trying so good on them for giving it a try and still getting a lot of viewers. But I would encourage you, if you&#8217;re going to make family friendly things, it does not have to be a bunch of country music. It doesn&#8217;t have to be that there&#8217;s really good family friendly ska bands, rock bands, hip hop. Let&#8217;s have a medley of that and let&#8217;s be creative with set design and interesting funny elements to it. It can be done people, it can be done. I hope that in the future, I hope T-P-U-S-A keeps up that tradition, but I hope they break out of the mold and feel like, no, they don&#8217;t have to just stick to one thing where it&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s not like the Republican National Convention. The Democrat National Convention has all the big stars in Hollywood is are all super liberal. And the best that the Republican National Convention can get is always just like country music and Roseanne Bar. And that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s the best you can do. We can do better. Let&#8217;s just put on our creative hats. So that&#8217;s my rant. That&#8217;s all I wanted to talk about today. I hope you enjoyed your Super Bowl weekend, and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.</p>

FFAF: The Super Bowl and Nostalgia Sickness

<p>Trent is back from Australia with an update on how the coronavirus affected his travel. He then weighs in on the debate over whether churches should close in order to curb the spread of this pandemic.</p>
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</ul>

Coronavirus and Church Closures

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reflects on the consequences of Russia’s war with Ukraine and helps you prepare (or at least soberly face) a doomsday scenario.</p>

FFAF: I’m a tad freaked out about nuclear war . . .

<p>Tim Staples explains the Church&#8217;s doctrine on predestination, with emphasis on how a member of the Body of Christ can lose their salvation only by rejecting, with their own free will, the sufficient grace that God gives them.</p>

Can Members of the Body of Christ Go to Hell?

When can you fulfill your Easter duty?

How can we know that the Scriptures are divinely inspired?

Have you in your learnings come to understand what causes Same-Sex Attraction? Is there a theory you find convincing? Do you have a theory of your own?

Is monasticism selfish?  For example, how could have the apostles fulfilled the Great Commission if they were cloistered? And how would that apply today?  Can evangelization be accomplished from inside a monastic cell?

It seems to me that God’s ultimate goal is to get us back bodily in heaven with him. Would that be like the garden of Eden again and how does us eating the eucharist help with that? Or does it? It seems we need to eat our savior to be bodily with...

If somebody does something evil out of stupidity, how responsible is he for said action? Can he be at least partly excused?

This might sound silly, but I’ve wondered it a lot: If you are in mass and you’ve fasted the hour but find something in your teeth, does it break the fast to swallow it?

Would it be moral to shoot down a hijacked plane full of civilians over an unpopulated area, if it is believed the hijackers intend to crash it in a populated area? Would this be considered doing evil that good may come of it or double effect?

<p>When exactly can Catholics fulfill their Easter duty, and why does the Church require it? In this episode of <em data-start="246" data-end="269" data-is-only-node="">Catholic Answers Live</em>, Jimmy Akin answers thoughtful questions from listeners on a wide range of topics. He explains how we know the Scriptures are divinely inspired without falling into circular reasoning, discusses theories about the causes of same-sex attraction, and examines whether monastic life conflicts with the Church’s mission to evangelize. Jimmy also explores the relationship between the Eucharist and the resurrection of the body, moral responsibility for actions done in ignorance, whether swallowing something stuck in your teeth breaks the Eucharistic fast, and how Catholic moral theology evaluates difficult scenarios like stopping a hijacked plane. A wide-ranging discussion covering Scripture, moral theology, and practical questions about living the Catholic faith.</p>
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<p>Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a></p>

When Can You Fulfill Your Easter Duty? Jimmy Akin Answers Your Catholic Questions

What is dispensationalism?

Are we currently in the End Times?

What are the signs that will precede the return of Jesus?

Did Jesus get end-of-the-world prophecies wrong?

Will Jesus really return—like “a thief in the night”?

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<p>“Are we currently in the End Times?” This episode explores the signs of Jesus’ return, delving into questions like what dispensationalism is and whether Jesus got end-of-the-world prophecies wrong. Join us as we navigate these important topics and more in this thought-provoking discussion.</p>
<p>[Encore episode, original air date July 25, 2025]</p>
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Are We Currently in the End Times? Signs of Jesus’ Return

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Temptation grows in the dark. Bring it to the light through Confession, the Church, the sacraments.

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<p><strong><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'segoe ui', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'helvetica neue', sans-serif">DAY 255</span></strong></p>
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<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
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<p>“There were two Old Testament canons in Jesus’ day—the Palestinian canon and the Alexandrian canon. As Palestinian Jews, Jesus and his disciples would’ve accepted the Palestinian canon, which excluded the deuterocanonical books. Therefore, they are not Scripture.”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>This claim is based on outdated scholarship and is false.</p>
<p>In Jesus’ day different groups of Jews held that different collections of books were canonical, and some of these collections had fuzzy boundaries. It is more accurate to speak of there being different canonical traditions rather than different canons. There were four prominent traditions:</p>
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<li>The Sadducee/Samaritan tradition: This included the Torah or Penta- teuch (Gen.-Deut.) and only those books. Thus the Sadducees rejected doctrines like the resurrection of the dead (Matt. 22:23; Acts 23:8), which are clearly attested outside the Torah (Dan. 12:2; 2 Macc. 12:43–45). This is why Jesus only quoted from the Torah when refut- ing them (Matt. 22:31–32; cf. Exod. 3:6). The Samaritan tradition was identical except for using the Samaritan edition of the Torah.</li>
<li>The Pharisee tradition: This canonical tradition was still being formed in Jesus’ day. It was broadly similar to the canon later adopted by rabbinic Judaism (used in Protestant Old Testaments), but precisely which books belonged to it was debated until at least the third century.</li>
<li>The Septuagint tradition: This tradition also was still being formed in Jesus’ day. It was broadly similar to the canon later used in the Christian church (including the deuterocanonical books), though precisely which books belong to it was also debated. (Note: We may refer to this tradition by the name of the major Greek translation of the Old Testament, but virtually all its books were written in Hebrew or Aramaic; see Day 27).</li>
<li>The Qumran tradition: This tradition was used by the Qumran sect (commonly identified as the Essenes). We do not know whether it was closed. It was similar to the Pharisee tradition but also included certain other books, including 1 Enoch, Jubilees, and the Temple Scroll (James VanderKam, The Dead Sea Scrolls Today, 149–57).</li>
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<p>All four traditions were used in first-century Palestine, and many individuals undoubtedly held to further variations that are no longer identifiable. The New Testament reveals that Jesus and his followers used the Septuagint tradition, which they passed on to the Church (see Days 273 and 305).</p>
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The Old Testament Canon in Jesus’ Day

<p>In this episode Trent responds to a recent article from Fr. Thomas Reese called “Religious conservatives have lost LGBTQ rights battle. It’s time to surrender.” Trent shows why this is a bad option and gives us cause for hope (along with a healthy dose of pop culture references along the way).</p>

No Fr. Reese, the Church Will Never Surrender

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent’s wife Laura answers your questions about her faith and what it’s really like being married to Trent!</p>

Q+A with my wife!

<p>It’s time to put on our thinking caps as Trent takes us on a tour of the philosophy of time and shows why it’s important to our Catholic faith.</p>

Thinking Deeply About the Nature of Time

<p><strong>Episode 71: Year B &#8211; Easter Sunday</strong></p>
<p>In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on five details found in each of the readings for this upcoming Easter Sunday, Year B. The first detail comes from the first reading, taken from Acts 10:34a, 37-43, which is Peter’s testimony that they have witnessed the ministry of Jesus and his resurrection. The relevant apologetical topic is that Christian faith is not blind faith. The next two details are taken from each of the optional second readings, Colossians 3:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8. The relevant topics are the nature of justification and the Real Presence of Jesus’ flesh in the Eucharist. The last two details are found in the Gospel reading, which is John’s report of the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb, taken from John 20:1-9. Each detail is alleged to be in contradiction with reports from the Synoptics, thereby giving rise to an opportunity to reflect on the historical reliability of John’s Gospel.</p>
<p><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'segoe ui', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'helvetica neue', sans-serif;">The Readings: </span><a style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'segoe ui', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'helvetica neue', sans-serif;" href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040118.cfm">Click Here</a></p>
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Historical Contradictions of the Empty Tomb

The Worst Argument Against the Bible

<div>A friend told me that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was the sin of inhospitality and not sodomy. I know that is not true. But when I tried looking it up in the Bible, I only confused myself more. How do I respond?</div><div><p>It’s true that <em>one </em>of the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality. Ezekiel 16:49 says as much: “Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, surfeit of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”</p>
<p>However, the narrative in Genesis 19 clearly indicates that the Sodomite men’s desire to have sexual relations with the two angels disguised as men was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”</p>
<p>In Genesis 19:5, they say, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” The phrase “to know them” signifies sexual relations. Right after this encounter, the angels begin instructing Lot to gather his family members because they are about to destroy the city (Gen. 19:12–14).</p>
<p>So, while inhospitality is one of the sins of Sodom, it was not the <em>sole reason </em>for its destruction. It would be a gross error to simply ignore the sin of their desire for same-sex sexual relations as playing a key role in meriting destruction (see Rom. 1:24–27).</p>
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Sodom and Gomorrah and the Sin of Inhospitality

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent joins the faith, reason, and geekdom podcast to discuss his favorite live-action, DC films.</p>

FFAF: My Top 5 DC Live Action Films

What is the Islamic Dilemma?

What are the theological differences in calling Jesus Yeshua and Eisaa apart from the linguistic differences?

Why does our leadership try to find so much common ground with Islam instead of highlighting the controversial side of it?

My sister converted to Islam. She sent us a video saying that sharia law is actually a scare tactic made up by Christians. What are your thoughts on this?

Do Muslims believe all Christians need to convert or be killed?

Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? What about Christians and Jews?

What is the best way to evangelize Muslims?

<p>&#8220;What is the Islamic Dilemma?&#8221; addresses the complexities surrounding Sharia law and its implications for evangelization. The discussion also touches on the theological differences in naming Jesus, the reasons behind seeking common ground with Islam, and the misconceptions surrounding sharia law as a scare tactic. Additionally, the episode examines whether Muslims believe all Christians must convert or face dire consequences.</p>
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What Is the Islamic Dilemma? Sharia Law and Evangelization

<div>What does it mean if you suddenly smell flowers? I asked my granddaughter and she said she couldn’t smell it. </div><div><p>It may just mean that you’re near flowers and the recognition of their scent confirms their proximity to you, even if you don’t see them. The scent of flowers, particularly roses, has been associated with the presence of the Blessed Mother, e.g., when there was no natural explanation otherwise for the scent.</p>
<p>In any event, what’s most important is that we should remember that our Lord Jesus Christ and Our Lady, his Blessed Mother, are with us, even when we can’t sense any accompanying wondrous signs.</p>
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What Is the Significance of Suddenly Smelling Flowers?

The Tetramorph: 4 Mysterious Symbols!

<p><strong>Episode 123: Year C &#8211; 4th Sunday of Lent</strong></p>
<p>In today’s episode, we focus on three details that are relevant for doing apologetics. The first comes from the first reading, which is taken from Joshua 5:9a, 10-12. The relevant apologetic topic is the Eucharist, and more specifically the belief that the Eucharist is not merely a symbol. The other two details come from the second reading, which is taken from 2 Corinthians 5:17-21, and each has to do with the question of whether justification is merely forensic or a state of interior righteousness. One detail is presented as support for the interior righteousness view, and the other detail is presented against it.</p>
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<p>Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/033025.cfm">Click Here</a></p>
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<p>Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a></p>
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Why the Miraculous Manna Proves the Eucharist Is More Than a Symbol

Is AI the Modern Tower of Babel?

AI helped me to defend the Catholic Church by helping translate the arguments.

<p>&#8220;Is AI becoming the modern Tower of Babel?&#8221; This episode explores the implications of artificial intelligence on faith and communication. Additionally, we delve into how AI can assist in defending the Catholic Church and the challenges it presents in understanding complex theological arguments. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on technology and spirituality.</p>
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Is AI Becoming the Modern Tower of Babel? w/ Drago Dimitrov

<p>In this free-for-Friday, Trent reveals the little-known origins of popular phrases and idioms like &#8220;Okay&#8221;, &#8220;paint the town red&#8221;, &#8220;white elephants&#8221; and many others.</p>

FFAF: Why we say “OK” (and other idioms)

I struggle with not seeing the papacy in the first century. Can you help clarify where we see it?

How close have we ever gotten to the pope who was the minimal requirement, a male baptized Catholic?

Regarding his debate with Ubi Petrus. Do you have clarification from one of your questions from the debate?

How is it ok that we added the filioque to the Nicene creed? Didn’t the Nicene Creed have a clause that not one word could be changed?

How do you think the Church balances separating itself from being too political and how it’s done that historically?

How closely do we tie our belief in Christ to our belief in the Church? If the pope were to dogmatically declare heresy, would it invalidate the magisterium?

What do you think about the passages in First Clement where he says the Holy Spirit is writing/speaking through him? Is this evidence of papal infallibility?

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<p>Many Christians find it hard to see the papacy in the first-century Church. In this episode, Erick Ybarra addresses the historical and biblical foundations for the papal office. Was Peter truly the first pope? How did early Christians view his authority? And what evidence do we have from Scripture and tradition that connects the leadership of Peter to the role of today’s pope?</p>
<p>Join The <em>CA Live Club</em> Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a></p>
<p>Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a></p>
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Was There a Pope in the First Century? And More on the Papacy

<p>In this episode Trent reveals how atheist&#8217;s moral indignation at some Christians is inconsistent with a worldview that denies the existence of free will. He shows that God&#8217;s existence makes the most sense of our unique ability to be morally responsible for our actions.</p>

Why Atheists Can’t Blame Christians for Anything

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals the real reason we have summer vacation and PE class as well as new studies on “black markets” in schools.</p>

FFAF: Secrets of U.S. Public Schools

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<p><strong>DAY 108</strong></p>
<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
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<p>“Science and religion seem antagonistic. How can they coexist?”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>We elsewhere cover the fact that the two fields aren’t intrinsically hostile (see Day 266). This, plus the fact that they largely deal with different subjects, makes their coexistence possible.</p>
<p>Scripture does not dwell on the details of creation for, when inspiring the biblical authors, the Spirit of God “did not wish to teach men these facts that would be of no avail for their salvation” (St. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis 2:9:20).</p>
<p>Similarly, Cardinal Caesar Baronius is credited with saying, “The Holy Spirit’s intention was to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go” (quoted in Galileo Galilei, Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina).</p>
<p>According to John Paul II:</p>
<p>The Bible does not concern itself with the details of the physical world, the understanding of which is the competence of human experience and reasoning. There exist two realms of knowledge, one which has its source in revelation and one which reason can discover by its own power. To the latter belong especially the experimental sciences and philosophy. The distinction between the two realms of knowledge ought not to be understood as opposition. The two realms are not altogether foreign to each other, they have points of contact. The methodologies proper to each make it possible to bring out different aspects of reality (Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 31, 1992).</p>
<p>The same point was made by evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who argued that science and religion each have a magisterium (teaching authority) with respect to their fields of study, but these largely do not overlap, stating:</p>
<p>This resolution might remain all neat and clean if the non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) of science and religion were separated by an ex- tensive no man’s land. But, in fact, the two magisteria bump right up against each other, interdigitating [i.e., weaving their fingers together] in wondrously complex ways along their joint border. Many of our deepest questions call upon aspects of both for different parts of a full answer—and the sorting of legitimate domains can become quite complex and difficult (“Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” available online).</p>
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The Coexistence of Science and Religion

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent talks about new glasses that treat myopia and his own experience with spectacles.</p>
<p><strong>Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/mcuqp2iaQZMGMD9Vdfn8aGcrwZesD_rGxNsJyFrObdVgQf2HKUfLKJZoAE1oXB4BBAVDLhdGDj2yC2e8IVHHN-YRKGQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=0.44">00:00</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>I finally got glasses. I was trying to go my whole life without having glasses and I basically still do, but I decided to get them. I&#8217;ve joined the world of glasses wearers. Well, I&#8217;m not fully joining it. I live in it at work and then I retreat from that world when I leave. And so I just wanted to talk about that today. Welcome to the Council of Trent. Mondays and Wednesdays we talk apologetics and theology, but Friday, well, we talk about whatever I want to talk about and I just got glasses and I got glasses for one of my children and there&#8217;s new technology now to help children with issues to their eyes I really wanted to share with you about in today&#8217;s episode. Okay, so here&#8217;s what happens. I go take my children in, they get to go and do an eye exam. And I found out that one of my children has nearsightedness, myopia.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/g4-tLsM_CrDj0Wia4q4xb1s5Y7tK-udHgyf4Xrqn4SCk0rCWjBfkheZ3ojCE6WEiA_rgd35Tt35UUGNvuvTF_h1usHA?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=50.96">00:50</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>And it&#8217;s something that we hadn&#8217;t recognized before and I&#8217;m really grateful. He&#8217;s still very young, so I&#8217;m grateful that we took him into the eye doctor to go and do all of the tests to recognize this because it turns out like the doctor asked him, &#8220;Do you ever have to really squint to see things on the board or do you have a hard time seeing things on the board at the front of the class?&#8221; And so we hadn&#8217;t noticed before if he was sitting at the front of the class, but like this year he&#8217;s sitting his seats more in the back of the class and he can&#8217;t read the board as well. He has to squint really hard to see it and that strains his eyes. So it turns out that he has childhood myopia or nearsightedness. And so there&#8217;s different things that were recommended for treating it because if you don&#8217;t treat nearsightedness as the eye grows, as the child gets older, the nearsightedness gets worse over time.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/kHUOR6CVxeLFkg9eINWPqDDx3Ulde8D_sWMz0MEmuS64ioVcfDbSMAXprWqVoOWeO4FaNXGVWBFwC6hp6tSWJYXEd1o?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=103.02">01:43</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>Now it can be treated with laser surgery, but you can&#8217;t do laser surgery on children because the eye is still growing so you have to manage it. And so it can get worse. And they used to just have eye drops and other ways of treating this, but now they have just a new pair of glasses that if you wear these glasses, it can treat the issue at hand. So we helped them with that. And I&#8217;m going to tell you a little bit more about this here in a second, but back to me, it&#8217;s about May. So I decided, it&#8217;s been a while since I had an eye exam. I&#8217;ll go and I&#8217;ll do an eye exam. And so I sit and I do it and they said, &#8220;Okay, it came back. You have twenty twenty vision. Your eyes are looking great. We did notice a little bit of a defect in your left eye, just a little bit that could get worse as you get older due to eye strain, but you still have twenty twenty vision, your vision&#8217;s great, but we recommend that you wear glasses when you have to look at a computer screen because if you don&#8217;t, this defect is going to get worse and worse over time.&#8221; And so they recommended glasses for that and I got glasses with a special blue light blocking tint.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/USptyHJp8Qj4M67x4t8UUcY4511y2Dhb64Fn1oBZGVdi7HFbHSbO08rWW_5pkvFcGpXO5SYJcI5VdiugoKzJ410qTFY?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=169.04">02:49</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>I&#8217;ve bought those before, but they&#8217;re kind of the cheapy ones you get on Amazon. These are like the real deal that I have. And when I put them on, because I have to look at a computer like eight hours a day, it stinks. So that&#8217;s how my job. I read PDFs, I write 8,000 words, not 8,000 words, sorry. I write, well, probably four to 6,000 words a week scripts for Council of Trent. So I&#8217;m in front of my computer all the time or looking at my phone for things, which I wish I didn&#8217;t do as much, but that&#8217;s just how it is right now. So my eyes get strained and I&#8217;ll realize it. And when they gave me these new glasses, it was insane. I put them on and looked at my computer. And the one thing that I noticed was that when I looked at a Word document, the black text for me, it actually looked like a dark gray.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/UwFCEog8i-oVPqkAMjXAAmOU6eJ_5nlqDvJp7N3jgOjy6-L1i1Xs_xok1GR1pnTvmnnN1jEuCLFSkyVh4zQjh9Tx-nQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=216.5">03:36</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>With these new glasses, the blue light blockers, it now looked like just straight black ink that I was reading and it was sharper, a little bit sharper, but noticeably sharper. And I realized that I would&#8217;ve been straining my eyes to see the text, that it was sharp enough for me, but my eyes are doing work I don&#8217;t even recognize, but that&#8217;s going to burn out the muscles in them over time and defects will get worse and worse. And so I saw that I said, &#8220;Okay, wow, this is just a brand new thing.&#8221; So I started wearing them and I noticed, well, two things. One, the slide down. Oh man, they&#8217;re always sliding down my nose. So I might need to get different frames for that, but I got like big thick frame. I just wanted the biggest frame so that I can barely see the rims of the glasses.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/Zy5yWRGWOElFR-uPXgUR_fUAWfEZMsunnxl45A71VEyT2Q8m03uqXp-2-OW9GPAIIFVLFfcd7o7HSn-2KEJ9adQ0cOg?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=261.68">04:21</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>I&#8217;m not distracted by them. I want big old glasses because I&#8217;m not going out wearing them. So I&#8217;m not wearing them out in public. So I don&#8217;t have as much anxiety about them. And I like them. I think I&#8217;d look fine with glasses, but I like not having to wear them. I remember growing up, the big anxiety, there was a special episode of Full House where Stephanie has to get glasses and she&#8217;s all nervous and everyone&#8217;s going to make fun of her. And it&#8217;s like, who&#8217;s going to help Stephanie? She&#8217;s so sad. But who walks in the front door? Crossover alert. Jaleel White, who of course portrays, we all know what I&#8217;m talking about here, Steve Urkel on Family Matters for some reason comes to visit the family full house in San Francisco and he comes over and he tells Stephanie. Well, he plays Steve Urkel and Stefan Urkel where he&#8217;s &#8230; Although here&#8217;s the thing.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/cs8EFPksRl4Jwal4wKh_4m3jWAtlu389Cf3YEbk6jcBXkOTKGvzZOBqjkTmscsG25PoA8055-0f--5PypjE_meOQNuM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=311.21">05:11</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>So he tells Stephanie, &#8220;Oh, you don&#8217;t need glasses. You look better with glasses and hey, hold your head up high.&#8221; And it is a heartwarming message, but it&#8217;s undercut a bit because I remember he says in there, some people look better with glasses, but in another episode of Family Matters, Steve Urkel creates the transformation machine and it makes him the cool version of Steve Urkel who is Stefan Urkel who does not wear glasses. And that&#8217;s part of the reason that he&#8217;s so cool and tries to win over Laura Winslow. Family Matters, by the way, is an absolutely hilarious show. And that season on is basically a Cosby show-esque type show about a cop and his family and he&#8217;s trying to be a good dad and they&#8217;re learning life lessons. Then season two, Urkel shows up as a guest star and everyone loves him. They get Urkel Fever and he becomes the main element of the show and he&#8217;s a nerd so he can invent things.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/fEk1uSOG4VZBjRZDtyBIqgW04YSzMstQ5NlhFKqg8K5NK_Ea2GRctE1UwK4WjpbIwpg62tDx_1SZddzW-qb472qhJUM?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=362.99">06:02</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>And if he invents things, you have a wacky adventure. So by the time you get to the later seasons of Family Matters, we have left the family drama and it has just become what crazy invention did Steve come up with this time that&#8217;s him and Carl are on a pirate ship or they travel through time and they get shrunk or absolutely absolute. I love the total breakdown of family matters in that regard. So let&#8217;s see, I should have a clip here of Urkel and Stephanie from Full House. So here&#8217;s one. Window face. The trick is to make them laugh with you before they laugh at you. And always remember, hold your head up high, otherwise those suckers are swiped right off your nose.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/r1yKzBf85ENvIubqvaT_1AajBiIKdxq_gn5CRf109jv2_5n23J48e2VGupnT7MI788mjBwayfYJPKq52g9pju3YQsFA?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=401.51">06:41</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>So yeah, I&#8217;m not worried about glasses like Stephanie, but I don&#8217;t necessarily want to wear them out everywhere. You don&#8217;t want accessories when you don&#8217;t need them, but they slide down the nose, they get in the way a little bit. So I don&#8217;t need to wear them when I&#8217;m out. But the thing I have noticed, the bigger thing I&#8217;ve noticed is now I&#8217;m kind of addicted to them. I need these glasses Before I could look at my computer and it&#8217;s fine, but now I&#8217;m so used to looking through this corrective lens, even though it&#8217;s a minor adjustment, like my eyes strain, it gets fuzzy and blurry. I really need them now when I look at a computer. I&#8217;m spoiled. So that&#8217;s been a big thing that I&#8217;ve been trying to get used to. So yeah, a lot of this came from my son who has childhood myopia and nearsightedness and we got him these things called stellist lenses in order to help treat &#8230; Well, it doesn&#8217;t treat, you can&#8217;t stop myopia or reverse it, but it can slow it.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/wxLA3cSXX4QIl7PD9dDHZFiR4-IPVNzcL0V6poQRCnRnZTGeq-_VKR7Be2MTlVvu1fY6CwgTNpI77fObG9Ly3ukByPs?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=453.45">07:33</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>So that way he doesn&#8217;t have to deal with really severe nearsightedness as an adult and it could be very minor and he could decide if he wants to get laser surgery or not when he is an adult. It also says that high levels of myopia increase the risk of serious eye diseases later in life like retinal detachment, glaucoma cataracts and macular degeneration. Stellas lenses use a unique optical design that combines a clear central viewing zone with thousands of tiny lens lets, arranging concentric rings around the periphery of the lens. And I look at his glasses and almost looks like the bottom of a beer bottle, like there&#8217;s these weird little indentations in it. It says, &#8220;These lens lets create what is known as peripheral myopic defocus, a visual signal that helps reduce the eye&#8217;s tendency to elongate. By slowing eye growth, the lenses can help reduce the rate at which myopia worsens over time.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/EyqK--oR0hQC_WCtNMCjncVoGJoRxFKmkp5sdw9284NO7NLUEL9pvHrxRTBRXBrQQLazgfO7hGC_xgTiEzuxfG_CQ4k?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=503.95">08:23</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>And clinical studies have shown promising results. The data review by regulators, children wearing stellas lenses have significantly less myopic progression than children who wear conventional lenses. It says it slows myopic progression by approximately 71% on average. So it was then in 2021 brought to the FDA, Food and Drug Administration, and granted a breakthrough device designation. And then in September 2025, I think it was given more of the full authorization and now you can get that. So yeah, if you&#8217;re dealing with especially children between the ages of six and 12 who have nearsightedness, I mean, they&#8217;re expensive. They&#8217;re not horribly expensive, but they&#8217;re more expensive than regular glasses. But I think it&#8217;s really great for kids. You don&#8217;t have to do with the eyedrops, although the big thing is you got to make sure they wear them. And little kids, they play and are rough. So I have the rule like no glasses on the trampoline, no glasses while wrestling, but they give them pretty good frames, like the bendy frames that don&#8217;t &#8230; I mean, most kid glasses have those things.</strong></p>
<p><strong>(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/c3_rn0Om0mGRsTV1IeI7zEFmFeecIr9N42oUxuZy9aSMmowoXB7aw4BumByGcDL18Ba1JTHcXF9LfJRxRXRodT3srdc?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=568.35">09:28</a>):</strong></p>
<p><strong>So I find that to be very helpful. But yeah, that is my adventure, my family&#8217;s adventure with glasses. Now I am in the club if you wear glasses while I wear them at work. You&#8217;re going to be like, &#8220;You&#8217;re not a true glasses person. You&#8217;re not like Velma. You&#8217;re not blind without your glasses.&#8221; No, I&#8217;m not Velma, but I&#8217;m glad I got glasses so I don&#8217;t end up as Velma. As much respect as I give Velma on Scooby-Doo, I don&#8217;t want to have to be dependent on my glasses in that way. So all right, thank you guys so much for listening and I hope you have a very blessed day. I</strong></p>
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FFAF: I Finally Got Glasses

<p>In this episode Trent and Tim discuss the Catechism’s revision on capital punishment and take different views on how we should understand this change.</p>

DIALOGUE: Should Catholics Support the Death Penalty? (with Timothy Gordon)

<div>Scripture makes clear that Jesus offered himself “once for all” on the cross (Heb. 7:27; 9:28). Indeed, on the cross, Jesus proclaims, “It is finished,” affirming that his one sacrifice—his saving work—ended on the cross (John 19:30). Consequently, to say we need a ministerial priesthood in which Jesus is offered again and again is blasphemous. Why can’t the Catholic Church see this?</div><div><h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3>Short Answer:</h3>
<p>Jesus’ sacrifice did not begin and end with Passion and death. Rather, it culminated in everlasting glory in the heavenly sanctuary (Heb. 8:1–3; 9:23–24) and is sacramentally re-presented and offered anew through liturgical remembrance and according to the order of Melchizedek (Luke 22:19–20; Heb. 5:7–10).</p>
<h3>Longer Answer:</h3>
<p>There is no doubt that Jesus’ suffering to atone for our sins is over, so that he suffers and dies only once. But did Jesus complete his one paschal sacrifice when he died? Or even when he rose from the dead?</p>
<p>Recall what Jesus says to Mary Magdalene when she recognizes him on Easter Sunday. As we read in John 20:17,</p>
<p>Jesus said to her, <em>“Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father</em>” (emphasis added).</p>
<p>So as great as Easter is—and indeed Easter is the high point of the Church’s liturgical year— <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-did-jesus-finish-his-sacrifice"><em>Jesus conveys to Mary that he has something left to do</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p>What could that <em>something</em> be?</p>
<p>We learn more in Hebrews 9:11–12:</p>
<p>But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation), he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.</p>
<p>Hebrews 9 is referencing the Old Covenant sacrifices of the Day of Atonement/Yom Kippur (see Lev. 16), and their <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/biblical-roots-of-the-mass-3189">New Covenant fulfillment <em>in Jesus</em></a>.</p>
<p>So, Jesus’ <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-did-jesus-finish-his-sacrifice"><em>one</em> sacrifice culminated in everlasting glory in the heavenly sanctuary</a>, where he continues to offer it <em>now</em>. Scripture says that Jesus holds his priesthood permanently (Heb. 7:23–25), and the prime function of a high priest is “to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” (Heb. 5:1). Hebrews affirms that Jesus is a high priest <em>in heaven</em>, so he must have something to offer <em>now</em> (Heb. 8:1–3; 9:23–24).</p>
<p>In this light, although the suffering and death of Jesus is finished on Calvary, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-did-jesus-finish-his-sacrifice">his sacrifice as a whole <em>continues</em></a>, because his ministry as the high priest of heaven continues.</p>
<p>In this light, we see better that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-the-mass-when-theres-no-need-for-sin-offering">the Mass is the sacramental offering <em>anew</em> of his <em>one</em> sacrifice</a> in fulfillment of the Old Covenant Day of Atonement sacrifice. In the process we grasp that Jesus also <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-the-eucharist-is-the-source-and-summit-of-christianity">fulfills</a> the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-do-i-explain-the-mass">Old Covenant Passover sacrifice</a>, according <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-mass-beats-the-4th-of-july">to the liturgical principle of biblical remembrance</a>, which applies to <em>memorial</em> sacrifices. And so we partake of his body and blood, the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/illustrating-how-special-the-mass-is">New Covenant Lamb of God</a> (John 1:29, 35–36), under the appearances of bread and wine, that is, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-the-point-of-a-priest">according to the order of Melchizedek</a>.</p>
<p>The Eucharist is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-receiving-the-eucharist-cannibalism"><em>not</em></a> <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/are-catholics-cannibals">cannibalism</a>, nor does it violate the Old Covenant <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/did-jesus-violate-the-law-by-instituting-the-eucharist">prohibition against consuming blood</a>; nor does <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/o-come-let-us-adore-him-in-the-eucharist">the Hebrew idiom to “to eat my flesh”</a> help the Protestant argument that the Eucharist is merely symbolic. Consequently, we see again that Jesus’ words at the Last Supper, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-the-eucharist-a-symbol-or-is-it-real">“Do this in memory/remembrance of me,”</a> are not a call for merely symbolic recollection, but <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/evidence-christ-offered-the-last-supper-as-a-sacrifice">something much more powerful</a>.</p>
<p>For more information on the sacrifice of the Mass, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-sacrifice-of-the-mass">see our related tract</a> and Dr. Scott Hahn’s insightful article, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/hunt-for-the-fourth-cup">“Hunt for the Fourth Cup.”</a></p>
<p>See also our tracts on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/christ-in-the-eucharist">Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist</a>, including what Jesus discusses in John 6, as well as how the early Church Fathers <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-real-presence">affirm this key doctrine</a>.</p>
</div>

If Jesus’ sacrifice was once for all, why does the Catholic Church have a priesthood?

<p>In this episode Trent answers a variety of questions submitted by his patrons at trenthornpodcast.com.</p>

The Daily Wire, Boycotting Disney, and Polyamory

<p>In this episode Trent sits down with Dr. Scott Hahn to talk about his latest book <em>Hope to Die: The Christian Meaning of Death and the Resurrection of the Body</em> and how the recent pandemic sheds light on our mortality and helps us understand the true meaning of life.</p>

Hope to Die (with Scott Hahn)

<div>St. Paul says to the Greeks in Athens, “God . . . does not live in shrines made by man” (Acts 17:24). Doesn’t the Catholic belief that God dwells in the tabernacle via the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist contradict this passage?</div><div><p>The short answer is “No, it doesn’t!” Consider that what Paul meant—and what his audience would have understood by a deity living within a shrine—is the <em>Greek</em> understanding of divine-temple indwelling. For the Greeks, their deities dwelt within the walls of Greek temples and nowhere else, especially because they believed their deities dwelt within the carved statues located within their temples.</p>
<p>Such a pagan understanding of divinity stands in stark contrast to the Christian understanding of God, who is <em>omnipresent</em>—existing in all places. It’s <em>this contrast</em> that Paul is drawing out for the Greeks in Athens.</p>
<p>Paul intends to target the Greeks’ view of divinity and their worship that they give to such divinities, and he says that such belief and worship are false. And he offers Christian belief and worship in their place.</p>
<p>With this in mind, it becomes clear that Paul is not rejecting the idea of divine-temple indwelling <em>absolutely</em> speaking. Rather, he’s rejecting the <em>Greek </em>view of divine-temple indwelling.</p>
<p>So, Paul’s teaching in Acts 17:24 doesn’t conflict with the belief of God dwelling in churches via Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist.</p>
</div>

Does the Catholic belief that God dwells in the tabernacle via the Real Presence contradict Acts 17:24?

<p>In this episode Trent shows how one claim about Jesus&#8217; historical status backfires on Christians.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxjqG5qDR0s">New Evidence for Jesus from Outside the Bible</a></p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzklRPDfAj0&amp;t=17s">The Resurrection Question Skeptics Can&#8217;t Answer</a></p>
<p><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/counterfeit-christs-finding-the-real-jesus-among-the-impostors/">Counterfeit Christs: Finding the Real Jesus Among the Impostors</a></p>
<p><strong>Transcription:</strong></p>
<p>Trent:</p>
<p>It&#8217;s great when Christians stand up to extreme skeptics who say Jesus never existed, but sometimes they make a misstep and say things about Jesus that aren&#8217;t true and it makes them look historically naive. So in today&#8217;s episode, we&#8217;ll find out what that misstep is and how to make a case for the historicity of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But before we do that, don&#8217;t forget to hit the subscribe button and support us at trenthornpodcast.com where you get access to bonus content and help us keep creating awesome episodes. All right, so I&#8217;ll see Christians respond to critics who say Jesus never existed with memes like this one that say Jesus is the most recorded figure in the ancient world or videos where people say Jesus&#8217; life is one of the best established facts of the ancient world, but that&#8217;s not true. And you risk getting exposed by a skeptic who knows how the evidence stacks up.</p>
<p>Let&#8217;s take a look at a few examples of this.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>If you asked your friends who are thinking this way, if they think Alexander the Great is a fairytale, what would they say? If you ask that if George Washington, the first president of our country was a fairy tale, would they say yes, he&#8217;s a fairytale? Both of those, Alexander the Great and George Washington, the amount of historical documentation about them is paltry compared to what we have about Jesus. We have documents not just from Jesus&#8217;s closest friends, the apostles, right? The Apostle Peter, Apostle Paul who saw him on the road to Damascus, the apostles. We have documentation about Jesus from his enemies.</p>
<p>Trent:</p>
<p>Except we don&#8217;t have documents from Jesus&#8217; first century enemies like the Sanhedrin or Pontius Pilate. The so- called report from Pilate to Emperor Hiberius is a well-known fourth or fifth century forgery. And we obviously have more evidence for the life of George Washington than we have for the life of Jesus Christ. We have portraits of George Washington, his diary entries, his personal papers, contemporary newspaper accounts, and accounts from British newspapers and commanders who oppose Washington, and we don&#8217;t have similar sources like that for Jesus. That doesn&#8217;t mean we have bad evidence for Jesus. It just means we should not overstate our case about the good evidence for Jesus we do have by claiming it&#8217;s the best evidence of all the cases. In this next clip, Jeremiah Johnson does this when talking about the evidence for Jesus&#8217; death by crucifixion.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>It&#8217;s the best established fact of the ancient world Jesus death by Roman crucifixion.</p>
<p>Trent:</p>
<p>What does that mean?</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>Meaning that if we can&#8217;t know that Jesus died by Roman crucifixion based on the historical record, we shouldn&#8217;t believe anything from history at all. We have as much evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus that we have from Roman empires or the Roman emperors of the same period.</p>
<p>Trent:</p>
<p>Now on the one hand, you can say that if you follow the standards of history, then we can be confident Jesus was crucified just as we can be confident in many other ancient events and skepticism of Jesus would cause us to reject much of ancient history if you&#8217;re being consistent. John Dominic Crossen, for example, denies Jesus&#8217;s resurrection, but still says, &#8220;Jesus&#8217; death by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate is as sure as anything historical can ever be. &#8221; On the other hand, Jesus&#8217;s crucifixion is not the best established fact of the ancient world. For example, there&#8217;s more evidence for Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon and starting the Civil War between himself and Pompe than for Jesus being crucified in Jerusalem. This includes evidence from other historians alive at the time, letters from Caesar&#8217;s enemy, Pompe, and testimony from Caesar himself who records the event in his work entitled Civil War.</p>
<p>Caesar also minted coins commemorating the event with an elephant on them to Be homage to Hannibal who accomplished a similar feat when he crossed the Alps. Now, in other videos, Christians say that Jesus is the best documented figure of the ancient world because there are more manuscript copies of the New Testament than other ancient works. Like this video comparing 12 manuscripts for Julius Caesar to 25,000 manuscripts for Jesus.</p>
<p>CLIP:</p>
<p>You want to know how many Jesus Christ has?This is unbelievable. 5,800. I was reading that. I&#8217;m like, &#8220;That can&#8217;t be right.&#8221; So I researched it. 5,800 Greek that we have in total out of all of them, over 25,000. Unbelievable blew my mind. And they were written a few years after his death to a century, to a hundred years. So he has the most out of anybody wouldn&#8217;t even come close. Plus, they were written closer to his life than any other person alive.</p>
<p>Trent:</p>
<p>The number of manuscript copies of a text only tells us the reliability of how the text was transmitted through history, not the number of sources that gave us the text in the first place. For massively influential figures in the ancient world like Julius Caesar, we have many different sources, including sources from when he was alive. We may not have as many manuscript copies of those sources as we do for the New Testament, but we have enough to reliably know what those sources said about someone like Julius Caesar. That&#8217;s why I tend to bring up manuscript evidence of the New Testament, not as a positive argument for Christianity, but as a response to critics who say we can&#8217;t possibly know what the original New Testament document said and that they&#8217;re just copies of copies of copies. If you don&#8217;t trust the New Testament that has much better manuscript evidence than other ancient works, then you couldn&#8217;t trust anything from the ancient world or do any ancient history.</p>
<p>However, it is absolutely not true to say that these 25,000 manuscripts were all written within a century of Jesus&#8217; life. The majority of manuscript copies of the New Testament come from the Middle Ages. According to this graph of the 5,800 Greek manuscripts in the New Testament, only about 100 come from the first three centuries after the crucifixion, and almost all of these are partial fragments, but that&#8217;s not surprising because the fragmentary nature of manuscripts is true for most ancient works. Homer&#8217;s Iliad, for example, was written in the eighth century before Christ, and a few fragments of it can be dated to within 500 years of Homer, but the oldest complete copy of the Iliad, a manuscript scholars call Venitus A, was written in the 10th century AD, 1800 years later. This stands in sharp contrast to the first complete copy of the New Testament written just 300 years after the time of the apostles.</p>
<p>Biblical scholar F.F. Bruce put it bluntly. &#8220;There is no body of ancient literature in the world, which enjoys such a wealth of good textural attestation as the New Testament. And we have to remember a lot of the New Testament was quoted in the writings of the church father, so we have further corroborating evidence of what these original documents said. But this manuscript evidence doesn&#8217;t mean that Jesus was more documented than other ancient figures at the time, because as I said, manuscript copies only told us how stories were preserved, not how they were composed. Of course, we would not expect an itinerant preacher from a backwoods province like Judea, Jesus, to have lots of people writing about him. I mean, Pontius Pilate was a procurator of a whole region, and yet archeological evidence for him was not found until 1961, and only one non-Jewish Roman source, Tacsitus, mentions Pilate, and that is in relation to Pilate being the one who sentenced Christ to death.</p>
<p>Now, some skeptics like to list dozens of ancient historians and say Jesus Christ never existed because these ancient non-Christian historians never mentioned Jesus. However, some of the people on this list do mention Jesus like Tacsitus and Josephus and probably Satonius. But the others also never mentioned Christians, but obviously Christians existed because Pliny the Younger talks about how to police them in an early second century letter, and we have first century writings from Christians like St. Paul, which no serious scholar doubts. That means we can be confident that Jesus and his followers, Christians, existed in the first century, even though these ancient non-Christian historians did not mention either of them. And for many of these writers, Jesus wasn&#8217;t a subject they would be concerned about. For example, Palsanis and Pompanmello wrote Greek and Roman geographies. Talami and plenty of the elder were scientists who recorded things about the natural world.</p>
<p>Theono Smirna, Favorinis and Gelius wrote about philosophy, Hermoganis, Quintillian, and Deochrisisum focused on things like speechmaking and Kalamella only wrote about different types of trees in the Roman Empire. I could go on and on, but you get the point. We can say though that Jesus was well documented relative to other members of the non-ruling class of his time. Now, as we saw, Tacidus mentions Jesus being crucified and the Jewish historian Josephus testifies to Jesus having a relative that was executed and that Jesus accomplished startling deeds and won over people before he was killed, but that his followers did not abandon him. Plus, as I mentioned in a recent episode that I&#8217;ll link to below, new evidence suggests that Josephus&#8217;s account of Jesus is completely accurate. And the older view that it is a partial forgery doesn&#8217;t account for all the data. Finally, it&#8217;s prejudicial to not include the authors of the New Testament as ancient witnesses who attest to the existence of Jesus.</p>
<p>Just because some of these sources describe miracles doesn&#8217;t mean we should reject them because many ancient historians believed in the supernatural and things like omens, but we don&#8217;t throw out their works. Instead, we weigh the evidence for unusual claims and see which unusual claims are more likely to be true. And the most unusual and extraordinary claim would be that a massive movement in the first century that resulted in churches rapidly coming into existence throughout the Roman Empire, along with documents describing the founder of this movement being widely distributed in this community, even though the founding figure of this movement never existed in the first place. Those who deny Jesus existed, answer this argument by saying that Christianity began with a few people like Peter and Paul having hallucinatory visions about a heavenly Jesus. Over the next few decades, these stories turned into legends about an earthly Jesus, but the earliest sources we have about Jesus, the writings of St. Paul, describe Jesus having an earthly existence.</p>
<p>Paul makes it clear that Jesus was a man who is descended from David, he was born of a woman, had a last supper with his disciples, was crucified and rose from the dead, and Paul knew those who knew Jesus, including James, one of the Lord&#8217;s own brothers, which a Hebrew Greek speaker could use to mean cousin or half brother. Now it&#8217;d be difficult to have all of that if you never existed in the first place. That&#8217;s why no one in the entire history of Christianity, not even early pagan critics like Kelsus or Lucian argued for a mythical Jesus. That didn&#8217;t happen until the 18th century. Alternate theories about Christianity plagued the church for century after century, but mythicism, the claim Jesus never existed at all, is not among them. The evidence is clear that Christians always believed in an historical Jesus because such a person really did exist and we can know basic facts about him, such as that he had a group of dedicated followers and that he had a reputation for being a miracle worker.</p>
<p>These are bedrock facts that even skeptical scholars admit to being part of our foundational understanding of Jesus of Nazareth. So when debating people on the evidence for Jesus, you should point out that the claim Jesus never existed is pseudoscience rejected by basically everyone, even academic non-Christians. According to respected New Testament scholar Bard Erman, the view that Jesus existed is held by virtually every expert on the planet. And because of this, you don&#8217;t need to overstate your case by saying Jesus is the best attested figure of the ancient world. You just need to say we have well established evidence that Jesus of Nazareth lived, died by crucifixion, and as I&#8217;ve shown in other videos, so I&#8217;ll link to below, his followers claim to see him alive after his death. The question then becomes what theory best accounts for all of this data without trying to explain away the unique impact of Jesus of Nazareth.</p>
<p>If you like more resources related to today&#8217;s episode, I recommend my book Counterfeit Christ linked in the description below. And I hope you can join us April 11th in Dallas for our evangelism conference, which myself and over 30 other Catholic creators will be attending. Over 60% of tickets have already been sold, so get yours today at conferenceoftrent.com. Or if you can&#8217;t attend, consider supporting this channel at trenhornpodcast.com. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.</p>

Christians, Stop Saying This About Jesus

Mary’s bodily assumption doesn’t make sense because Jesus says in John 3:13, “No one has ascended up to heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” If no man has ascended into heaven, wouldn’t that include the Blessed Virgin Mary?

Where do we find the communion of saints in scripture?

Is it true that a person who is infertile cannot get married in the Catholic Church?

I cannot wrap my mind around indulgences.

How do I defend Jesus and the accusations that he was a fraud?

Why do we profess in the Nicene Creed that the power of the Holy Spirit made Jesus incarnate not the power of the Son?

Are we called to suffer or do we ask the saints to relieve our suffering?

<p>&#8220;How Could Mary ascend to heaven?&#8221; This question leads to a discussion about the implications of Jesus&#8217; words in John 3:13 regarding who has ascended to heaven. The conversation also touches on the scriptural basis for the communion of saints, the Church&#8217;s stance on marriage for the infertile, and the complexities of indulgences.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</span></a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit </span><a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</span></a></p>

How Could Mary Ascend to Heaven? Indulgences and the Saints

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent explains one of the most common plot devices that shows up in our favorite films.</p>

FFAF: What the heck is a Macguffin?

<p>Karlo Broussard explains why the souls of the deceased described in Ecclesiastes 9:5 do not know about anything on Earth, as opposed to the souls of the deceased who have the Beatific Vision after profiting from Christ&#8217;s sacrifice.</p>

Are the Saints in Heaven Too Busy Worshiping God to Worry about Us?

<p><strong>Episode 141: 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C</strong></p>
<p>In today’s episode, we reflect on some details in the second reading for this upcoming 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time that are not directly related to apologetical topics but rather are indirectly related. The topics that these details give rise to are Paul’s belief in Jesus’ Messiahship and divinity, Paul’s teaching on the salvific efficacy of baptism, and Paul’s teaching on the second coming of our Lord, which in turn is related to discussions surrounding the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine that is common among some Protestants.</p>
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<p>Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080325.cfm">Click Here</a></p>
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<p>Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a></p>
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<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Hey everyone,</p>
<p>Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.</p>
<p>I’m Dr. Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.</p>
<p>In today’s episode, we’re going to reflect on some details in the second reading for this upcoming 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time that are not directly related to apologetical topics but rather are indirectly related. The topics that these details give rise to are Paul’s belief in Jesus’ Messiahship and divinity, Paul’s teaching on the salvific efficacy of baptism, and Paul’s teaching on the second coming of our Lord, which in turn is related to discussions surrounding the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine that is common among some Protestants.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s the second reading, which is taken from Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11:</p>
<p>If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above,
where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.<br/>
Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.<br/>
For you have died,<br/>
and your life is hidden with Christ in God.<br/>
When Christ your life appears,<br/>
then you too will appear with him in glory.</p>
<p>Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly:<br/>
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire,<br/>
and the greed that is idolatry.<br/>
Stop lying to one another,<br/>
since you have taken off the old self with its practices<br/>
and have put on the new self,<br/>
which is being renewed, for knowledge,<br/>
in the image of its creator.<br/>
Here there is not Greek and Jew,<br/>
circumcision and uncircumcision,<br/>
barbarian, Scythian, slave, free;<br/>
but Christ is all and in all.</p>
<p>The first detail that stands out for apologetical purposes is Paul’s statement, “Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” The first thing this signifies is Paul’s belief that Jesus is Messiah.</p>
<p>Consider that the theme of Christ sitting at the right hand of God conveys the idea of reigning with God. Now, this in turn alludes to Daniel’s vision in 7:13-14 concerning the Messianic King who will reign forever with the Ancient of Days. Daniel describes his vision as follows:</p>
<p>[A]nd behold, with the clouds of heaven<br/>
there came one like a son of man,<br/>
and he came to the Ancient of Days<br/>
and was presented before him.<br/>
14 And to him was given dominion<br/>
and glory and kingdom.<br/>
that all peoples, nations, and languages<br/>
should serve him;<br/>
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,<br/>
which shall not pass away,<br/>
and his kingdom one<br/>
that shall not be destroyed.</p>
<p>Paul is saying that Jesus is this one “like a son of man” who is given dominion to reign with the Ancient of Days forever.</p>
<p>The Catechism of the Catholic Church picks up on this line of exegesis in paragraph 664. It states, “Being seated at the Father’s right hand signifies the inauguration of the Messiah’s kingdom, the fulfillment of the prophet Daniel’s vision concerning the Son of man.”</p>
<p>Now, this allusion to the “son of man” in Daniel’s vision doesn’t only reveal Jesus was the Messiah. But I argue there is good reason to think this reveals Jesus’ divinity as well.</p>
<p>New Testament scholar Brant Pitre argues for this in his book The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ (143-145).</p>
<p>Pitre highlights two details that suggest the figure’s divinity. First, Daniel describes him as “coming on the clouds.” According to the Old Testament, this is something only God does, according to Jeremiah 4:13.</p>
<p>Second, Daniel doesn’t say, “He is a son of man,” but he is “like a son of man.” Dr. Pitre writes, “He appears to be a merely human figure but is in fact a heavenly being” (The Case for Jesus, 144; emphasis in original).</p>
<p>The contemporary Jewish scholar Daniel Boyarin describes this figure as a “second divine figure” (the first being the ancient of days) and “a God who looks like a human being” (The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ, 32-33).</p>
<p>Finally, such an exegesis of this figure in Daniel’s vision would provide a rationale as to why the high priest charged Jesus of blasphemy in Mark 14:63-64 when Jesus claimed himself to be this figure from Daniel. Recall, Jesus said to the High priest in 14:62, “[Y]ou will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven,” to which the high priest responded while tearing his clothes, “You have heard his blasphemy.”</p>
<p>The second detail that I want to focus on is Paul’s teaching that we as Christians have “died” and “raised with Christ.” This calls to mind his more elaborated teaching on the same theme in Romans 6:3-7, where he introduces baptism as the experience of this death and resurrection in Christ. He writes,</p>
<p>Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life (vv. 3-4).</p>
<p>Paul goes on to articulate the effects of this baptismal death and resurrection in verses 6-7:</p>
<p>We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin (vv.6-7).</p>
<p>What’s interesting about this passage, as pointed out in Catholic circles by apologist Jimmy Akin, is that the Greek doesn’t say “freed from sin.” The Greek word translated “freed” is dikaioō, which means “to put into a right relationship (with God); acquit, declare and treat as righteous.” This is the same word Paul uses when he speaks of our justification by faith: “Since we are justified [Greek, dikaiōthentes] by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:1). So the phrase “freed from sin” in Romans 6:7 can literally be translated “justified from sin.”</p>
<p>Modern translations render it as “freed from sin” because the context is clearly about sanctification. For example, in the verse before Paul speaks of baptismal death, he speaks of those in Christ as having “died to sin.” As quoted above, Paul speaks of those who have died the death of baptism as “no longer enslaved to sin.”</p>
<p>In verses 17-18, Paul actually uses a form of the Greek word for “free” (eleutheroō) in relation to the freedom from sin that we receive in Christ:</p>
<p>But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free [Greek, eleutherōthentes] from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.</p>
<p>This tells us that, for Paul, justification can include sanctification, which is the interior renewal of the soul whereby the objective guilt of sin is removed. And that justification, or new birth, takes place in baptism.</p>
<p>In sum, Paul is teaching us here in Romans 6 that baptism saves us. And the detail from our second reading for this upcoming Sunday prompts us to reflect on this teaching.</p>
<p>Okay, the third and last detail that we’ll focus on for today’s episode is Paul’s teaching, “When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.” I do think that Paul is primarily calling our attention to the bodily resurrection at the end of time. But this theme of “appearing with him in glory” as he returns reminds me to Paul’s similar teaching in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, where he speaks of those Christians who are still alive at Christ’s coming will be “caught up together with [those raised from the dead] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (v.17).</p>
<p>Some Christians view this as evidence for the pre-tribulation rapture view. But as I argue in my book Meeting the Protestant Challenge: How to Answer 50 Biblical Objections to Catholic Beliefs, this is not the case. Rather, Paul is describing how Christians will meet the Lord in the air to escort him as he returns, in a way that is analogous to the ancient custom of citizens ushering in important visitors.</p>
<p>It was common for citizens to meet an illustrious person (such as dignitary or victorious military leader) and his entourage outside the walls of their city and accompany him back in. This was a way for people to honor the visitor and take part in the celebration of the visitor’s coming.</p>
<p>We see an example of this in Acts 28:14-15, where the brethren at Rome went out of the city to meet Paul as he approached: “And so we came to Rome. And the brethren there, when they heard of us, came as far as the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns to meet us.” This ancient custom also explains why the crowds go out to meet Jesus on Palm Sunday and usher him into Jerusalem (see Matt. 21:1-17).</p>
<p>So, for Paul, those who are alive at the Second Coming, will join the resurrected Christians and do for our blessed Lord what the ancients did for their dignitaries: they will be caught up in the air to meet the approaching king Jesus and escort him as he “descend[s] from heaven with a cry of command” (1 Thess. 4:16).</p>
<p>And we know this is at the final coming of Christ at the end of time because Paul says this will happen at the time of the bodily resurrection. He writes in verse 16: “And the dead in Christ will rise first” (v.16).</p>
<p>We know this refers to the end of time because Paul teaches as much in 1 Corinthians 15—the end happens in tandem with the resurrection of the dead:</p>
<p>For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power (1 Cor. 15:22-24).</p>
<p>If Paul viewed the resurrection of the dead as occurring in tandem with the end of time, and if he speaks of the resurrection of the dead in tandem with Christ’s coming in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, it follows that Christ’s coming in those verses is his coming at the end of time and not the beginning of a pre-tribulation rapture.</p>
<p>For more details, see episode 51 for the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A.</p>
<p>Conclusion</p>
<p>Well, my friends, that’s all I have for this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The second reading for this upcoming 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C provides us with some material that is at least indirectly related to apologetical topics.</p>
<p>• We have details that relate to Jesus’ Messiahship and divinity,<br/>
• The salvific efficacy of baptism, and<br/>
• Paul’s view of what happens at Christ’s return at the end of time.</p>
<p>As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well through any podcast platform that they use. You can also access the archived episodes of the Sunday Catholic Word at sundaycatholicword.com.</p>
<p>You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, and Jimmy Akin’s The Jimmy Akin podcast,” all of which can be found at catholic.com. And if you want to follow more of my own work, check out my website at karlobroussard.com</p>
<p>One last thing: if you’re interested in getting some cool mugs and stickers with my logo, “Mr. Sunday podcast,” go to shop.catholic.com.</p>
<p>I hope you have a blessed 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C. Until next time, God Bless.</p>

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<p>&#8220;Richard Dawkins Shook My Faith&#8221; This episode addresses concerns about doubt and belief, offering clarity on how to navigate challenges to your faith. Additionally, we explore how Jesus is the son of David and delve into the topic of papal succession, tracing the lineage from Peter to the current pope.</p>
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