Manage Account

<div>Could John the Baptist forgive sins?</div><div>No, John could not forgive sins, or, more precisely, he could not absolve people of their sins. His baptism was a baptism of repentance, which prefigured that won by the merits of Jesus through his sacrifice of Calvary, i.e., the sacrament of baptism (CCC 700). Baptism absolves one of all his sins and gives him new life in God through the indwelling of the Holy Trinity (see CCC 1262-70).
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How Were John’s Baptisms Different Than the Sacrament?

Why Christmas Was Unnecessary (sorta)

<div>If mankind evolved over thousands of years, when was a soul introduced?</div><div><blockquote>The teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions . . . take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God (Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis 36).</blockquote>
The Church teaches that the physical and genetic makeup of the human person can come from an evolutionary process. The soul, on the other hand, is something that was immediately created by God.
When that happened is open to theological speculation. The Church has no official teaching on when in the human soul first appeared in history.
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When Was the First Human Soul?

This year marks the ten-year anniversary of Peter Leithart’s “<a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2015/10/what-i-want-from-catholics/">What I Want From Catholics</a>.” The 2015 wish list may seem like a trivial thing to mark an anniversary of. It made some waves when it was first published but has since died the quiet death of most internet blogs posts, being largely forgotten in the decade since.
But for me, the anniversary is like the death of a pop star from my youth. I vaguely remember when it was published, as I was starting to obsessively follow the Catholic blogosphere. When I stumbled upon it again more recently, it was another sharp reminder that many of my youthful memories are now measured in decades rather than years.
So I reread the list for nostalgia’s sake—and was hit by a passage that contributed to its initial rage-circulation:
<blockquote>I want Catholics to give up veneration of the consecrated host and other sacred objects. Jesus gave us his body and blood to eat and drink, not to admire. Whatever Catholics think they are doing, to Protestants they appear to be indulging in a form of liturgical idolatry. At the very least, they are distracting from Jesus’ purpose for the Eucharist: take, eat; take, drink.</blockquote>
These words are unremarkable from Rev. Leithart himself. He is a <a href="https://theopolisinstitute.com/staff/peter-leithart/">Protestant minister</a>, and so he calls Catholics to do exactly what we’d expect: Become more Protestant. I have no problem with that (though I think he is wrong); he’s asking what he ought within his tradition.
What’s more surprising is how many Catholics seem to have taken up his advice in the ten years since his letter.
As an altar server, I had a priest stop me from praying before Mass, claiming that it would take away from my “reception” of the Eucharist. In seminary, I had formators who discouraged us from adoration, dismissing such eucharistic prayer in words very similar to Leithart’s. Many readers could offer their own stories. We need not look to Protestant brethren for examples; in many parishes, schools, and internet caves, you’ll still find Catholics suspicious of eucharistic adoration, though often for the same reasons as Protestants: The Eucharist is to take and eat, not to look at.
These Catholics <a href="https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2011-06/vatican-tries-revive-eucharistic-adoration">didn’t originate</a> with Leithart, and realistically, they haven’t increased because of him, either. They’re instead another remnant of the post-Vatican II liturgical and spiritual upheavals.
In that sense, the argument is worth reexamining in 2025 just as in 2015. After all, the point is largely correct: The Eucharist <a href="https://www.usccb.org/sites/default/files/flipbooks/catechism/336/">is a meal</a>. It has its origin in the Last Supper, comes to us today in the ritual meal of the Mass, and is given to the faithful for consumption. Isn’t there a tension between this divine intention and adoration, where the Eucharist decidedly isn’t consumed?
This is a false competition, as anyone who has tried adoring the Eucharist knows. The Eucharist is meant for consumption, but that doesn’t necessitate that it’s meant for only consumption. But still, we shouldn’t presume God’s purposes of a gift as precious as Jesus’ body beyond what he told us—and it seems as though he’s told us to take and eat, without mentioning taking and adoring.
So let’s see if we can reason additional insight into the Eucharist from what Jesus did tell us. Perhaps he implied more than he was able to explicitly say in that little room 2,000 years ago.
Let’s instead use the closest analogy we have to the soul and the Eucharist—a man and his wife.
St. Paul prompts us in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ephesians%205&amp;version=NIV">Ephesians 5</a> to make the connection. <a href="https://suscopts.org/resources/literature/300/a-spiritual-study-of-the-song-of-songs-during-the-/#:~:text=In%20the%20fifth%20chapter%20of,is%20the%20celebration%20of%20marriage.">The Song of Songs</a>, and the <a href="https://www.eucharisticrevival.org/post/st-thomas-aquinas-on-the-eucharist">saintly commentaries</a> on it, prompt us to do the same, as does <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation%2019%3A6-9&amp;version=ESV">Revelation</a>. Most importantly, Jesus himself implies a nuptial dimension when he <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Matthew%2026%3A26">gives us his body</a>.
A woman gives her body to her husband in marriage in some sense for the purpose of sexual union and the bearing of children (perhaps among other purposes). After all, this is the consummation that seals the sacrament into an unbreakable bond; this is the action that separates marriage from other forms of friendship and relationship, and the core of why it’s a separate sacrament in the first place, as opposed to, say, sacramentalizing “friendship.”
But imagine the husband who says, “Honey, I really don’t want you wearing such beautiful clothes anymore, or doing your hair. When you do, I can’t help but admire the beauty of your body—but I don’t want to admire it; I want to experience it. So, except for when we’re in the marital embrace, I want you to wear this burka at all times.”
That husband clearly misunderstands the nature of a sexual union. Even Islamic cultures that laud the burka and the hijab <a href="https://iqranetwork.com/blog/when-can-a-woman-take-off-her-hijab-guidelines-and-exceptions/">do not do so at home</a> with the woman’s husband.
The admiration of the other, including of their body, outside of the actual sexual act clearly is ordered toward and helps facilitate the sexual act. As do other forms of bodily self-gift: taking out the garbage, giving a back rub, speaking pleasantries, or cuddling on the couch. The wife’s purpose in giving her body in the sacrament of marriage is for the husband to “take, have; take, hold.” That purpose is not frustrated by “take, look; take, admire.” In fact, it is furthered.
Of course, this “looking” isn’t the full story in marriage, either. My wife would doubtless be perturbed if I stared at her all day, especially if I refused to do anything else. My gaze of admiration can go awry if it is made into the goal rather than an instrument. Like a marital relationship, the Eucharist indeed is transgressed if “looking” and “adoring” eclipse the “taking” and “eating” and becomes a substitute for the clear primary intention Jesus had in giving us his body to consume.
This might also give an objection that even Leithart misses but is levied at times by the Orthodox: The Eucharist is too sacred for display. Yes, gazing and adoring are normally ordered toward reception and intimacy. But the Eucharist is so special that we ought to shield it from the ravenous gazes that may fall upon it.
This is the sensibility of Islamic and Eastern cultures in general. A Muslim woman needn’t wear the hijab with her husband, since everything about their relationship can be ordered toward intimacy, but she needs to wear it in most other situations because all men except her husband are not meant for that same intimacy with her. And though this seems extreme to most Christian cultures, the principle is shared by all faiths. A husband may not object to his wife’s lingerie at home, but he certainly objects to it on the street corner.
But this goes beyond adoration in general and gets to prudential applications of when and how the Eucharist should be exposed to faithful eyes. This is why the Church <a href="https://fdlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Guidelines-for-Adoration-and-Exposition-of-the-Blessed-Sacrament-Diocese-of-Lansing.pdf">has rules</a> about adoration: to protect it from abuses. Debates about the exact rules and application will rage on, as ever they have.
Perhaps the East ought to be less obscure, just as the West ought to be more modest. Or perhaps both are appropriate for their sensibilities, just as there are legitimate variations of physical intimacy among married couples. But the ever-changing mores about how, when, and where the Eucharist ought to be adored shouldn’t cause doubt that it should be adored at all.
The Eucharist is too sacred to look at, too sacred to touch, and too sacred to eat. Yet the Eucharist is “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands” (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20John%201%3A1">1 John 1:1</a>). Though we should guard against abuses, we must also remember that anything we do in relation to the Eucharist is a generous gift.
So, whereas objections can be excused from Protestants, and even from the Orthodox, fellow Catholics should know better. We look upon our beloved in love and admiration, and then, with hearts primed, we’re all the more able to unite in true affection in the eucharistic liturgy. For where the Eucharist is, there is Christ. And where Christ is, there is God.

Eucharistic Adoration: Good or Bad?

This is an encore episode, originally aired on October 1, 2025
“Does God Want Organized Religion?” In this episode, we explore the role of organized faith and its significance, along with questions like why Protestants should respect the Pope and how a priest can absolve sin. We also delve into the historical presence of bishops and the continuity of apostolic authority, providing a comprehensive look at these vital topics.
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Does God Want Organized Religion? & More Questions on Hierarchy

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Does the Pro-Life Position Have an Answer for this Abortion Question?

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DAY 350
CHALLENGE
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“Catholic teaching on justification is confused. Catholics hold that, when God justifies us, he gives us more than legal righteousness, yet we obviously aren’t fully righteous in our behavior.”
DEFENSE
This concern is caused by the categories used to look at the question.
In the Protestant community, justification (here meaning the initial justification at the beginning of the Christian life) is usually thought to involve the bestowal of only legal righteousness (sometimes called “forensic” righteousness). On this model, God acts like a courtroom judge and declares the sinner innocent, giving him legal righteousness, regardless of his past sins.
The other form of righteousness typically discussed in Protestant circles has to do with our behavior and may be called behavioral righteousness. It is understood that God gives us this form of righteousness over time through the process of sanctification, so that we progressively overcome sinful patterns of behavior.
If these are the only two forms of righteousness, then the Catholic claim that justification involves more than legal righteousness would be problematic because we obviously aren’t completely behaviorally righteous after initial justification.
However, these two are not the only types of righteousness Catholics envision. There is another, which may be called objective or metaphysical righteousness. Metaphysics is the study of what is ultimately real, and the idea is that when we sin, it changes the condition of our souls in a real, objective way by depriving them of holiness. This is reflected in the biblical images depicting sin as dirty, unclean, or defiling.
But when God justifies us, he changes this and gives us the objective holiness that we had been deprived of due to our sins. This inward transformation is reflected, for example, in the famous statement, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Isa. 1:18).
On the Catholic view, God’s word is efficacious and brings about what he declares (Isa. 55:11). Thus, when he declares a person righteous, that person becomes objectively (metaphysically) righteous. This is what prevents God’s declaration of righteousness from simply being a legal fiction.
This objective righteousness is also referred to as “sanctifying grace” (cf. CCC 2023), and it is what grows during the process of ongoing justification (see Days 99 and 257).
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Objective Righteousness

Why does the Catholic Church “police” who can receive the Eucharist? After all, many Protestant churches practice “open communion,” in which the Lord’s Supper is offered to all baptized Christians in attendance, or to all believers (including the unbaptized), or simply to whoever wishes to receive.
But as a non-Catholic attending a Catholic Mass quickly discovers, this is not the case in reverse: non-Catholics are (typically) not permitted to receive. And <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib4-cann879-958_en.html">Catholics are themselves reminded</a> that “a person who is conscious of grave sin” may not “receive the body of the Lord without previous sacramental confession unless there is a grave reason and there is no opportunity to confess” (CIC 916). And ministers of Holy Communion are instructed that those who have been excommunicated or are otherwise “obstinately persevering in manifest grave sin are not to be admitted to holy communion” (915).
On the surface, it’s easy to see why the Catholic practice of “closed communion” appears scandalous and pharisaical. After all, when “the tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear” Jesus, it’s the hypocritical Pharisees who complain that “this man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:1-2). If Jesus dined with sinners, then why do we refuse them the Lord’s Supper?
The answer is because Jesus treats the Last Supper differently. For starters, whereas Jesus dined with others quite freely, the Last Supper is presented in the Gospels as a more exclusive affair, between Jesus and his chosen twelve. St. Matthew says that Jesus “sat at table with the twelve disciples,” and St. Luke describes how Jesus said to them, “You are those who have continued with me in my trials; as my Father appointed a kingdom for me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (22:28-30).
This is a special, intimate moment between Jesus and his closest followers. Jesus tells them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). This Jewish context is significant, since the Passover was a decidedly “closed” affair: “When a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised, then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it” (Exod. 12:48). In other words, anyone was free to join the Passover table . . . as long as he first entered the covenant people through circumcision.
It’s not only that the Last Supper is an intimate affair between Jesus and his disciples, or that it’s the fulfillment of the Jewish Passover. It’s also that the Eucharist is communion with Jesus Christ. This is why Catholics, who believe that the Eucharist really is Jesus, treat the Eucharist with more reverence, and in a more exclusive manner, than those Christians who believe it’s only a symbol. We take seriously St. Paul’s warning that whoever “eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord,” and that “any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself” (1 Cor. 11:27,29).
Christians treat hospitality (open to all!) very differently from how they treat marital intimacy (reserved for the one with whom you’re in a covenantal relationship!). So which of these is the Eucharist more like? If you think the Eucharist is just a symbol, you might think the former. But Scripture is clear that it’s the latter. St. Paul takes the words of Genesis 2:24, about how “the two shall become one flesh” in sexual union, and applies them to the union of Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:31-32). And how does this union occur? As Paul explains, “the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” And Paul insists that “we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16-17). In other words, Christ and the Church become one body through the Eucharist.
<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0126.htm">St. Justin Martyr told us all of this</a> back in about the year 160, writing,
<blockquote>And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of his word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.</blockquote>
So the earliest Christians didn’t practice open communion. They required anyone presenting themselves for the Eucharist to be (1) baptized, (2) a believing Catholic, and (3) not living in sin. Why? Because, as Justin says, the earliest Christians realized that the Eucharist isn’t common food and drink, but truly the flesh and blood of Jesus. <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Liturgy-of-the-Catechumens">So seriously did the early Christians take this guarding of the Eucharist</a> that “in the early Church, the catechumens, or hearers who had not yet been baptized, were dismissed at the conclusion of the Liturgy of the Catechumens, and the faithful, or baptized Christians, remained to celebrate the mystery of the Eucharist.”
But what about Judas? It’s all well and good to say, as the Eastern Liturgy does, “Holy things for holy people.” But at that first Eucharist, we find Judas Iscariot. Benjamin Perry, a Protestant minister at Middle Church in New York City (“<a href="https://www.middlechurch.org/first-time/">where therapy meets Broadway</a>”), puts the argument <a href="https://twitter.com/FaithfullyBP/status/1189241063044714501">this way</a>:
<blockquote>Do not deny anyone communion. Ever.
Communion is not a reward. It is not a privilege for the righteous. It is an invitation to step towards God’s table where everyone has enough and everyone a place.
Remember: Jesus fed Judas.</blockquote>
How do we make sense of this? For starters, it’s not entirely clear that Jesus did give the Eucharist to Judas, and the early Christians disagreed on this point. Nevertheless, the majority opinion is that he probably did, and for good reason: Judas’s sin was a secret. As <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4081.htm">St. Thomas Aquinas explains</a>, “Christ did not repel Judas from Communion so as to furnish an example that such secret sinners are not to be repelled by other priests.”
This is an important distinction. Take the case of two people who commit adultery. One of them repents and goes to confession; the other doesn’t. If the priest knows about the adultery only through the confessional, he may not deny the unrepentant sinner Communion, since to do so would be to reveal this secret sin. Similarly, “if your brother sins against you,” you should first “go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (Matt. 18:15). People should have the space to quietly repent without being publicly humiliated.  But none of that applies when the person is openly non-Catholic, either in creed or in action. That’s why canon 915 says you deny Communion in cases of “manifest grave sin”—the sin has to be out in the open.
In the case of Judas, we see these principles at play. Initially, Aquinas points out, “the wickedness of Judas was known to Christ as God; but it was unknown to him after the manner in which men know it.” Jesus doesn’t want to reveal his secret sin publicly, and so he instead says, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” His disciples, including Judas, then ask, “Is it I, Lord?” (Matt. 26:20-25). Jesus has given Judas one last chance to convert without naming him openly. In so doing, he’s also pricked the consciences of the other disciples, who aren’t confident it won’t be they who betray Jesus. It’s only once Judas’s sin becomes manifest, when he’s openly betraying Jesus, that Jesus rebukes him openly: “Judas, would you betray the Son of man with a kiss?” (Luke 22:48).
This is the model the Church has sought to follow for the past two thousand years. If the person’s sin is private, handle the issue privately (including by instructing him not to present himself for Communion); if the person’s sin is open, then prevent scandal by refusing to allow him to eat and drink “judgment upon himself.”

Why Did Jesus Give Judas Communion?

A Catholic Priest changed biology FOREVER!

What does &#8220;Lead us not into temptation&#8221; really mean? Join Joe Heschmeyer as he delves into the deeper meaning behind this line from the Lord&#8217;s Prayer. Discover the nuances of the original Greek text and explore how the Catechism sheds light on this essential petition. Understand why we pray this and how it aligns with God&#8217;s character.
Transcript:
Jamie wanted to know why Jesus taught us to pray, &#8220;lead us not into temptation.&#8221;
Yes. And so fortunately, this is an area that Catechism talks about directly. It&#8217;s my job very easy. So the catechism in its section on prayer goes through the our father bit by bit. And it&#8217;s extremely worth your while. It you do a deep dive on a prayer given to us by Jesus Christ. And in paragraph 28 46, it explains that our sins come from our consenting to temptation. So if we want to not sin, we want to not just not sin, we want to avoid temptation that might lead us to sin, but that the Greek verb being translated as lead us doesn&#8217;t neatly translate into English because the Greek means both. Do not allow us to enter into temptation and do not let us yield the temptation. But this is one of those words where it cannot be easily kind of translated in a way you could just pray.
If you&#8217;re giving the footnote every time you try to do our father, that&#8217;d be a cumbersome and unwieldy. So you just have to settle on good enough kind of language. Similarly with give us this day our daily bread, the word daily there could also be translated super substantial. And St. Jerome translates it both ways because the daily bread is the manna from heaven and it&#8217;s pointing us to the super substantial food of the Eucharist. And so the word Jesus uses in Greek to describe this, food isn&#8217;t just an ordinary word for daily. There&#8217;s something a little more going on that&#8217;s sometimes hard to get in translation. So we&#8217;re reminded in the catechism that God cannot be tempted and tempts no one. That&#8217;s James one, verse 13. So he doesn&#8217;t literally lead us into temptation, but on the contrary wants to deliver us from, he wants to set us free from evil. And so we ask him not to allow us to take the way that leads to sin that lead us not into temptation is not because we&#8217;re worried that God is going to lead us into temptation, but that we might go into temptation on our own and we&#8217;re asking him to lead us in a different direction.

Why Do We Pray “Lead Us Not into Temptation”?

Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer joins Cy Kellett to tackle a thought-provoking question from a listener who grew up in Mormonism and is curious about why he should consider becoming Catholic.
Transcript:
Caller: I left the Mormon Church when I was 8. I left because I didn&#8217;t think it was true. I also left because I think my friend oversold it for me when I was baptized in the Mormon Church. When I was baptized, he said that I would feel the love of God. I came from a broken family, and I just wanted my family back together.
Joe: Oh, man, I&#8217;m so sorry. That&#8217;s tragic.
Cy: That&#8217;s awful.
Joe: And I want to apologize. I know we&#8217;re not Mormons, but I want to apologize on behalf of your friend, because that&#8217;s such a rough thing to do to a kid, to promise, like, hey, you know, this terrible tragedy you&#8217;re experiencing. Just undergo this ritual, and then you won&#8217;t feel that tragedy. You&#8217;ll feel the love of God instead. That&#8217;s a terrible thing to do to a person. I&#8217;m sure he meant well, but that&#8217;s awful. I&#8217;m so sorry about that. You know, you were right to not go where the truth wasn&#8217;t. In other words, not being Mormon because it isn&#8217;t true. That&#8217;s enough of a reason not to be Mormon.
And the flip side to that is, I think the best reason to be Catholic is that it&#8217;s true if you are someone who loves Jesus Christ, and if you take him seriously in Matthew 16, when he says he&#8217;s building the Church and that the gates of hell won&#8217;t overcome the Church.
And if you take&#8230; You know, I mentioned in Acts 5 earlier that Gamaliel the Pharisee lays out this challenge, that there&#8217;ve been all these failed messianic movements that splinter and fracture and all of that and kind of peter out when the leader of the movement dies. It&#8217;s one of the ways we know they&#8217;re not real, that the Catholic claim is that for 2,000 years, the Church has stood here, and it can make that historical claim.
Mormonism, of course, can&#8217;t. You know, it&#8217;s claiming, no, the Church actually failed and had to be rebooted by a prophet in the 19th century in America. Now, there are times when being Catholic feels totally amazing, and there are times where it really does not. So I don&#8217;t want to oversell it to you. Being Catholic is the beginning of a journey, and it&#8217;s by no means a completion of it, but the completion of it is that this hunger you have for truth and goodness and beauty will one day be satisfied by a God who loves you infinitely, who loves you more than anyone&#8217;s ever loved anyone. I think that&#8217;s the best reason to be Catholic.
Cy: What do you think, Adam?
Caller: Well, I definitely am curious. So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m calling in because, yeah, I was hoping you can help me get directed towards the truth and clarification.
Joe: Yeah, let me give you a very brief 5,000-year sketch. I know I&#8217;m not going to do this justice. There is a longing in the human heart to see God. Even when God reveals himself just a little bit to Abraham and then a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more, he&#8217;s fulfilling something that&#8217;s always been in the human heart. We want to know, love, and serve God. We want to be known by God, and we want to be loved by God, and we want to spend eternity with God.
You read the writings of pagans like Aristotle and Plato when he&#8217;s recounting the Symposium of Socrates; this is baked into us. We want union with God. It&#8217;s why religion exists. We don&#8217;t feel that in the way that we all know we should, and we can&#8217;t do anything on our end to close that gap in any meaningful sense. Every religion in the world has tried and has failed, has come up short.
The radical difference between those religions and Judaism and Christianity is that the Judeo-Christian message is that God is going to close the gap. God comes to us because we can&#8217;t actually go to Him. Like the Tower of Babel is us trying to reach up to God. Pentecost is God coming down to us. The incarnation is God coming down to us. These things are&#8230; God&#8217;s search for man is what it&#8217;s sometimes called, because our search for God without his help is totally fruitless.
God ultimately enters history not just through revelation, not just by telling us things, but from the second person of the Holy Trinity taking on a human nature. That entrance into history isn&#8217;t just a one-and-done kind of thing, but that endures. In the Church, we see the manifestation of the incarnation lived out. That&#8217;s why the Church, which is, if you know anything about the Catholic Church, you know it&#8217;s very often incompetent and corrupt and can&#8217;t seem to get anything done, and yet it&#8217;s the oldest government in the world.
It has survived all of the odds; all of these much stronger, better human enterprises have failed and collapsed and crumbled. This strange little Church has continued to grow and endure. That&#8217;s all a sign that God is in control. That&#8217;s all a sign that in the midst of our ineptitude and our sin and our evil, God is still active and working among us for our good and out of love for each of us. So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m Catholic, and that&#8217;s why I think you should be Catholic.
Caller: Well, I definitely am curious, and I&#8217;m definitely going to pay a visit to my local church.
Cy: God bless you, Adam.
Joe: Excellent. Why don&#8217;t we send you Trent Horn&#8217;s book?
Cy: Our colleague Trent Horn wrote a book called *Why We&#8217;re Catholic*, and it just goes through bit by bit why we&#8217;re, you know, various explanations of why we&#8217;re Catholic and why we believe the specific things we believe. I&#8217;d love it if you call back maybe when Joe&#8217;s on, and we can continue this conversation, because it&#8217;s about the most inspiring thing in the world that can happen to people like me and Joe. For someone to say, I&#8217;m seriously considering it, because it is. And by it, I mean the person of Jesus as given to us in the Catholic Church, is worth considering. It&#8217;s worth taking the time to consider. And we&#8217;re so grateful and moved by the fact that you are.
So you want to hang on the line, and we&#8217;ll send you a couple of books?
Caller: Okay.
Cy: Call us back when Joe&#8217;s on.
Caller: Okay.
Joe: All right. Can I ask something for everybody else listening just to offer up a prayer right now while we&#8217;re doing the boring part in between now and the next caller just for Adam&#8217;s journey?
Cy: Yes, please do that. It&#8217;s not the&#8230; When I&#8217;m talking, it&#8217;s not the boring part between callers.
Joe: That&#8217;s what everybody&#8230; That&#8217;s what we call it.
Cy: No.
Joe: Can you pick up the line with Adam and make sure he gets those books before Adam&#8217;s attitude turns him off to the whole Catholic thing?
Cy: This is not boring right now.
Joe: This is what people look forward to. You&#8217;re distracting people praying right now.
Cy: Oh, I&#8217;m sorry. Stop saying horrible things, Joe.
Joe: All right.

If God Never Made Me Happy, Why Be Catholic?

In the last few years, there has been a sometimes-heated discussion in certain Catholic circles about whether Muslims and Christians worship “the same God.”
The phrase “same God” is fraught in that it can mean different things. Obviously, Muslims do not worship God as a Trinity of Persons, so they do not worship the same God in that sense. However, they do worship God as the single, omnipotent Creator who appeared to Abraham.
Without getting into deeper philosophical waters about what counts as sameness and difference, it’s worth noting that Vatican II does not use the phrase “same God.” Instead, it says that Muslims worship “the one and merciful God” (Lumen Gentium 16) and “the one God” (Nostra Aetate 3).
Despite the concerns expressed by some modern traditionalists—namely, that this sort of language is one more example of modernism infecting the Church—the recognition that Muslims worship God has not been controversial in Catholic history. Catholic Tradition actually incorporates this concept.
It appears that the idea that Muslims don’t worship God actually comes from outside Catholicism and originates in the Protestant community.
A key text in those circles is 2 Corinthians 11:4, which says that “if someone comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you submit to it readily enough.” This is used to argue that a different understanding of Jesus invalidates one’s faith, since one has “a different Christ.”
This is then often backed up by appeals to Galatians 1:8, where Paul says that “even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you, let him be accursed.”
Protestant apologists frequently apply this chain of reasoning to Catholics and argue that they are not Christians, alleging that they have a different understanding of the gospel from Protestants’ understanding.
But they also apply this in anti-Muslim apologetics to argue that they worship “a different God” from the God of Christians, since they reject the doctrine of the Trinity and thus Jesus as the Son of God.
Though the former argument has been rejected by Catholics, some in contemporary traditionalist circles have picked up the latter.
There is an obvious objection, which is that non-Christian Jews also reject the Trinity, but Catholic Tradition has never held that Jews don’t worship God. The doctrine of the Trinity had not been clearly revealed in Old Testament times, and Jews prior to the time of Christ did not believe in it. Jesus even acknowledges this. As he says in John 14:1, “You believe in God, believe also in me.”
The Trinity was new revelation with the Christian age, but that didn’t stop previous Jews—or those who maintained the previous, non-trinitarian understanding of God—from genuinely directing their prayers to the Creator of the universe.
This is a reflection of the fact that you don’t have to know everything about someone in order to talk to him or give him honor and worship.
But if non-Christian Jews disbelieve in the Trinity and nevertheless worship God, then the same will be true of Muslims, who do the same thing. They may not understand God with the full Christian understanding of him—just as contemporary Jews don’t—but they do recognize that there is a Creator who appeared to Abraham and to whom they direct their worship.
What may come as a surprise is that this has been the traditional Catholic understanding. If you read traditional authors interacting with Islam—like St. Thomas Aquinas or St. John Damascene—they criticize it, but you don’t find them saying things like, “Muslims worship a different God from the God we Christians worship.”
The more one delves into the Tradition, the more clear it is that Catholics have accepted the basic premise that Muslims—despite what is flawed and incomplete in their understanding of him—do worship God.
This comes out more clearly the deeper one goes into the Tradition, as we can see by examining the footnotes of Vatican II’s discussion of the subject.
There are two passages where the council discusses Muslims, as mentioned above. One is in Lumen Gentium 16, and the other is in Nostra Aetate 3. The latter says,
<blockquote>The Church regards with esteem also the Muslims. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even his inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, his virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving, and fasting.
Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Muslims, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom.</blockquote>
There is a footnote toward the beginning of this passage, just after the statement that Muslims “adore the one God, living and subsisting in himself; merciful and all-powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth.” It reads,
<blockquote>Cf. St. Gregory VII, Letter XXI to Anzir (Nacir), King of Mauritania (PL 148, col. 450f.)</blockquote>
Pope St. Gregory VII reigned from 1073 to 1085, and he was one of the great reforming popes of the Middle Ages. He was a key figure in the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/is-china-policy-a-new-investiture-controversy">investiture controversy</a> and promoted the right of the Church—rather than the state—to install bishops and abbots. It was before Gregory that the Holy Roman emperor Henry IV did <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/matilda-of-tuscany-the-warrior-countess">penance in the snow</a> at Canossa. Gregory mandated that priests be celibate, and for the efforts of his reign, he died in exile. He was beatified by Gregory XIII in 1584 and canonized by Benedict XIII in 1728.
Unfortunately, few look up the letter that Nostrate Aetate cites. It’s difficult to find the letter in English, but it is revealing about the Medieval Catholic attitude toward Muslims and worth quoting in full so that the relevant statement can go on the record with its full context:
<blockquote>Gregory, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Anazir, king of the province of Mauretania Sitifensis in Africa, health and apostolic blessing.
Your highness sent to us within a year a request that we would ordain the priest Servandus as bishop according to the Christian order. This we have taken pains to do, as your request seemed proper and of good promise.
You also sent gifts to us, released some Christian captives out of regard for St. Peter, chief of the apostles, and affection for us, and promised to release others. This good action was inspired in your heart by God, the creator of all things, without whom we can neither do nor think any good thing.
He who enlightens every man that comes into the world enlightened your mind in this purpose. For Almighty God, who desires that all men shall be saved and that none shall perish, approves nothing more highly in us than this: that a man love his fellow man next to his God and do nothing to him which he would not that others should do to himself.
This affection we and you owe to each other in a more peculiar way than to people of other races because we worship and confess the same God though in diverse forms and daily praise and adore him as the Creator and ruler of this world. For, in the words of the Apostle, &#8220;He is our peace who has made both one&#8221; (Eph. 2:14).
This grace granted to you by God is admired and praised by many of the Roman nobility who have learned from us of your benevolence and high qualities. Two of these, Alberic and Cencius, intimate friends of ours brought up with us from early youth at the Roman court, earnestly desiring to enjoy your friendship and to serve your interests here, are sending their messengers to you to let you know how highly they regard your prudence and high character and how greatly they desire and are able to be of service to you.
In recommending these messengers to your highness, we beg you to show them, out of regard for us and in return for the loyalty of the men aforesaid, the same respect which we desire always to show toward you and all who belong to you. For God knows our true regard for you to his glory and how truly we desire your prosperity and honor, both in this life and in the life to come, and how earnestly we pray both with our lips and with our heart that God himself, after the long journey of this life, may lead you into the bosom of the most holy patriarch Abraham (Letters 3:21, emphasis added).</blockquote>
This letter is very diplomatic but also revealing. Although Gregory was firm on the clerical investiture of bishops in Christian lands, he was prepared to accept Anazir’s request to have a particular priest ordained as a bishop in a non-Christian land. This is different from European states insisting that they had the right to appoint bishops.
For our purposes, the most important thing is that we see that one of the great reforming and saintly popes of the Middle Ages had no difficulty acknowledging to a Muslim leader that “we worship and confess the same God,” although in “diverse” or different forms, and that both Christians and Muslims “daily praise and adore him as the Creator and ruler of this world.”
It is helpful to be deep in Tradition, and achieving that goal can involve checking the footnotes.

Catholic Tradition, Islam, and God

Agnostics say they just don&#8217;t know the answer to life&#8217;s biggest question. Pat Flynn, Host of Philosophy for the People, says that, while agnostics make some good points, their decision not to decide is ultimately a mistake.

3 Things Agnostics Get Right

In some passages in the Bible, like Abraham bartering with God over Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18) or Jesus at the wedding at Cana (Jn. 2), God appears to change his mind. But how can this be, when philosophy and Catholic theology are adamant that God is utterly unchanging? Jimmy Akin clears up the confusion.

How Can God Change His Mind If He’s Unchanging?

“‘Soberish’ can mean drinking more mindfully, drinking less or avoiding alcohol altogether but not other drugs.”
—Emily Schmall, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/15/well/alcohol-soberish-health.html">Not Drunk, Not Dry</a>: What It Means to Be ‘Soberish,’” New York Times, January 15, 2025
Periodic abstinence is one of the key ways to maintain a healthy relationship with alcohol, and many Catholics use Lent as the occasion for such a dry spell. The Soberish Septuagesima program builds upon this practice as well as another hallowed tradition.
The Sunday of Septuagesima (pronounced sep-two-a-JAY-see-mah) is the roughly seventieth day before Easter and the beginning of Pre-Lent, a period of gradual voluntary food abstinence that took place in preparation for the Great Fast of Lent. Eastern-rite Christians begin abstaining from meat on the penultimate Sunday before Lent and from dairy products on the Sunday immediately before Lent. Roman-rite Christians, on the other hand, used to abstain from meat on the Sunday before Lent, which they called Domenica Carnevala because it was the time to remove (levare) meat (caro) from one’s diet. It is from carnem levare that our word carnival <a href="https://italoamericano.org/sicily-and-its-carnevale/">originates</a>.
The Soberish Septuagesima Sodality charts a similar course, starting with a gradual change in alcohol consumption and ending with a booze-free, mocktail-rich Lent. The idea is to change yourself both in body and in soul: your body with a regenerated liver,better health, and a new tolerance level, your soul with strong new virtuous habits.
The program consists of:
1) A Menu Schedule for the weeks prior to Easter (see below),
2) Tips for Completing the Program successfully (see <a href="https://drinkingwiththesaints.com/soberish-septuagesima/">here</a>), and
3) Tips for Reentry after completion of the program.
“Soberish Septuagesima Sodality” is a mouthful, but we chose it for a reason. A sodality is not a mere club, but a companionship of believers united in a common cause. That means, among other things, that despite not being in the same place at the same time, we pray for one another. Join the Soberish Septuagesima Sodality, and wherever you are, there are others praying for you. All you have to do is pray for them in return. As for the schedule:
Septuagesima Week
Septuagesima Sunday was on February 16 this year, but no matter; it is not too late to jump in. Your goal this weekend is to abstain from your favorite alcoholic beverage and replace it with something for which you are less enthusiastic. It does not have to be a drink that you find abhorrent. I, for instance, will drink Jägermeister only as an extreme form of penance. Instead, during Septuagesima week, I have abstained from hard liquor in general and limited myself to beer or wine.
But tastes and temperaments differ. If you drink only beer or wine, perhaps your form of mortification is hard liquor. The point is to step outside your comfort zone but without losing the comfort of the bottle—for now. And the goal is to reduce the amount of alcohol you consume.
Finally, use the time we have left to plan. Next week, we will be enjoying mood-enhancing non-alcoholic spirits and spritzes. Take a gander at the recommendations for Sexagesima Week and plan accordingly. You can find this list on our <a href="https://drinkingwiththesaints.com/soberish-septuagesima/">website</a>.
Sexagesima Week
Congratulations! You have already broken some bad habits by refraining from your favorite intoxicating beverage. Now it is time to assert your independence from C2H6O, the active ingredient in alcohol. Providentially, the no- and low-alcoholic spirit industry is teeming with alternatives. Many a producer promises a buzz without the hangover or any of the other side effects of alcohol. Their secret is to use other ingredients that create a relaxing effect on the soul called adaptogens: lion’s mane mushroom, ashwagandha, L-theanine, elderflower, passionflower, kava, etc. We have tested these products, and to our surprise, they work—especially after having toned down prior alcohol consumption.
Shrovetide 
The three days before Ash Wednesday—Quinquagesima Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday—were known as Shrovetide because it was a good time to get “shriven,” that is, receive absolution through the sacrament of confession. We concur, and it is also a good time to continue enjoying mood-enhancing nonalcoholic spirits.
Lent
The Great Fast of Lent, as it was once called, extends from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday. You can continue with your mood-enhancing beverages if you like, or you can try something new. Nonalcoholic spirits, wine, and beer have reached new heights in recent years. Here are some options. Athletic Brewing Company, for example, sells almost half of nonalcoholic craft beer in the country, and for good reason: their beers are outstanding. And some distillers have done an impressive job mimicking the flavor profiles of gin, bourbon, scotch, tequila, etc. We provide a list of options on our website.
Since you no longer need to have a full stomach (since you’re not drinking), we also recommend observing the traditional Lenten fast, which is one full meal per day at which meat can be consumed (unless it is a Friday or Ash Wednesday), and two other meatless meals that together cannot equal one full meal. (Some rubrics included Saturdays as days of total abstinence from meat as well.) According to today’s Church law, this fast is mandatory only on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, but when Pope St. Paul VI ended the mandatory fast in 1966, he did so with the hope that all Catholics would continue the fast voluntarily and thus be even more meritorious. As it turns out, he badly misread his flock, and the Great Fast became a thing of the past, but we can still take his advice and observe this worthy practice.
Fasting has numerous health benefits for both body and soul. Regarding the soul, we recall the words of Our Lord: that some demons can only be cast out by prayer and fasting (Matt. 17:20). That may include the demons of drunkenness and addiction.
(The Soberish Septuagesima Sodality can be found on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/dwsaints">Meta</a> and Instagram [drinkingsaints], including updates and encouragement.)

Sanctify Your Drinking in Pre-Lent!

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DAY 183
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CHALLENGE
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How can you believe the Bible is the true word of God? It contains numerous accounts of people saying and doing horrible things.
DEFENSE
So does a typical newspaper.
A newspaper’s job is to report significant things that happened. That doesn’t mean it approves. Newspapers report rapes, murders, and crimes the paper does not approve of. They also report people saying things that the paper’s reporters and editors completely disagree with.
Similarly, just because Scripture records something doesn’t mean it endorses it. It does mean the biblical author thought the event was significant for his audience to know, but it doesn’t mean that he—or God—approved. Scripture records the words and actions of the devil, but the devil’s activities are strongly disapproved of.
Similarly, when Jephthah makes a rash vow that apparently leads to his daughter being sacrificed as a burnt offering (Judg. 11:30–40), the audience is meant to understand his action was barbarous and horrific. Jephthah is only one example of Scripture’s brutal honesty about the leaders of Israel, who were often deeply flawed. Even respected figures like David and Solomon have their blackest sins reported (cf. 2 Sam. 11, 1 Kings 11:1–13).
Consequently, one cannot simply note that Scripture reports someone saying or doing something abominable and conclude that it teaches something abominable. When evaluating such charges, one must ask whether the proposed evil is condemned.
Sometimes, there will be an explicit condemnation (thus the biblical author condemns Solomon’s idolatry; 1 Kings 11:9–10). Other times, the condemnation will be implicit, but clues in the text reveal the dis- approval (as when the daughters of Israel mourn what Jephthah did; Judges 11:39b–40). Or disapproval can be inferred because the action is condemned elsewhere in Scripture (e.g., even if David’s adultery wasn’t explicitly condemned in 2 Sam. 12, we would know his act was wrong because it violates the Ten Commandments; Exod. 20:14, Deut. 5:18).
Finally, our native moral sense can be a clue to the biblical author’s disapproval (e.g., even though David didn’t personally kill Uriah the Hittite, he engineered the man’s death, and even without the explicit condemnation in 2 Sam. 12, the audience would sense he violated the moral prohibition on killing). In general, when our moral sense tells us that something Scripture reports is problematic, it is a clue that Scrip- ture may disapprove too.
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Horrible Things in Scripture

Once, we had a couple of converts to the Catholic faith come by the Catholic Answers office to get a tour of our facility and to meet the apologists who had been instrumental in their conversions. One of the two gave me a letter she had received from her Pentecostal pastor. He had written to her upon his discovery that she was on her way into full communion with the Catholic Church. She asked for advice concerning how to respond, or whether she should respond at all.
As I read through the multiple points her former pastor made, one brought back particular memories for me, because it was one of my favorites to use in evangelizing Catholics back in my Protestant days. The Catholic Church, he warned, teaches “doctrines of demons,” according to the plain words of 1 Timothy 4:1-3:
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the Faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared, who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.
What is consecrated celibacy if not “forbid[ding] marriage”? And what is mandatory abstinence from meat during the Fridays of Lent if not “enjoin[ing] abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving”? So says this Pentecostal pastor. How do we respond?
Despite appearances, there are at least two central reasons these claims fail when held up to deeper scrutiny:
First, St. Paul in 1 Timothy 4 was obviously not condemning consecrated celibacy, because in the very next chapter of this same letter, he instructed Timothy pastorally concerning the proper implementation of consecrated celibacy with regard to “enrolled” widows:
Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband . . . well attested for her good deeds. . . . But refuse to enroll younger widows; for when they grow wanton against Christ they desire to marry, and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge (5:9-11).
There is nothing ordinarily wrong with a widow remarrying. Paul himself makes this clear in Romans 7:2-3:
A married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives. . . . But if her husband dies she is free from that law, and if she remarries another man she is not an adulteress.
Yet the “widow” of 1 Timothy 5 is condemned if she remarries? In the words of Ricky Ricardo, Paul has some “‘splainin’ to do.”
The answer lies in the fact that the widow in question had been “enrolled,” which was a first-century equivalent to being “consecrated.” Thus, according to Paul, these “enrolled” widows were not only celibate, but consecrated as such.
Second, Paul was obviously not condemning the Church making abstinence from certain foods mandatory, because the Council of Jerusalem, of which Paul was a key participant in A.D. 49, did just that in declaring concerning Gentile converts,
It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity (Acts 15:28).
This sounds just like &#8220;enjoining abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving.&#8221; So there is obviously something more to 1 Timothy 4 than what we get at first glance.
What was Paul actually calling “doctrines of demons”? In A Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, the 1953 classic for Scripture study, Fr. R.J. Foster gives us crucial insight into what Paul was writing about in 1 Timothy 4:
Behind these prohibitions there may lie the dualistic principles which were already apparent in Asia Minor when this epistle was written and which were part of the Gnostic heresy.
Evidently, Paul was writing against what might be termed the founding fathers of the Gnostic movement, which split away from the Church in the first century and would last over 1,000 years, forming many different sects and taking many different forms.
Generally speaking, Gnostics taught that spirit was good and matter was pure evil. We know that <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/285.htm">some of them even taught</a> that there were two gods, or two eternal principles, that are the sources of all that is. There was a good principle, or god, who created all spirit, whereas an evil principle created the material world.
Moreover, we humans had a pre-human existence, according to the Gnostics, and were in perfect bliss as pure spirits dwelling in light and in the fullness of the gnosis or “knowledge”—perfect bliss, that is, until our parents did something evil: they got married. Through the conjugal act, perfectly pure spirits are snatched out of that perfect bliss and trapped in evil bodies, causing the darkening of the intellect and the loss of the fullness of the gnosis. Thus, salvation would come only through the gaining, or regaining, of the gnosis that the Gnostics alone possessed.
Eating meat was also forbidden because its consumption would bring more evil matter into the body, keeping a person bound to his evil body and further darkening the intellect.
Thus, these early Gnostics forbade “marriage and enjoined abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving.”
If there are any remaining doubts as to whom Paul was referring to as teaching &#8220;doctrines of demons,&#8221; he tips his hand in his final exhortation in 1 Timothy 6:20-21:
O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you. Avoid the godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, for by professing it some have missed the mark as regards faith. Grace be with you.
The Greek word translated above as “knowledge” is gnoseos. Sound familiar?
The bottom line is this: Paul was not condemning the Catholic Church in 1 Timothy 4; he was warning against the early Gnostics, who were leading Christians astray via their “gnosis,” which was no true gnosis at all.

Catholic ‘Doctrines of Demons’

Have you ever heard something like this before?
If pro-lifers really cared about ending abortion, they’d give out contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies. But they don&#8217;t really want to do anything practical to help end abortion—they just want to punish women who have sex!
Of course, even if pro-lifers were hypocrites, their argument that abortion kills an innocent human being would still be correct. But are pro-life advocates hypocrites if they don’t promote contraception? No, and here’s why.
The goal of the pro-life movement is to restore the right to life of unborn human beings. Does promoting contraception help or hinder that goal?
I think it’s safe to say contraception doesn’t help that goal. Birth control pills and condoms don’t teach people that unborn children are biological human beings who are entitled to the same basic rights you and I possess. To many people, contraception just prevents “pregnancy,” or it prevents a “potential person” (who will one day become a baby) from being created inside a woman. There’s nothing hypocritical about pro-life advocates&#8217; not promoting contraception, because it doesn’t do anything to help our ultimate goal of changing both public opinion and public policy to protect unborn children from harm.
But critics might respond by saying that using contraception could prevent some abortions from happening, and don’t pro-lifers still care about accomplishing that goal? Yes, but that doesn’t mean every way to accomplish that goal should be used. Contraception teaches couples that unborn children are objects who are valuable only if the couple &#8220;wants&#8221; a child. Pope John Paul II wrote in Evangelium Vitae,
<blockquote>It may be that many people use contraception with a view to excluding the subsequent temptation of abortion. But the negative values inherent in the &#8220;contraceptive mentality&#8221;-which is very different from responsible parenthood, lived in respect for the full truth of the conjugal act-are such that they in fact strengthen this temptation when an unwanted life is conceived (emphasis added). Indeed, the pro- abortion culture is especially strong precisely where the Church&#8217;s teaching on contraception is rejected (13).</blockquote>
Unborn children have not only a right to life, but also a right to be created by parents who love them and are willing to make sacrifices for the child’s good. However, contraception use creates a mentality that views children as a “negative side effect” of sex, or even a disease, whose interests are superseded by their parents&#8217; desire for sexual union just for its own sake. This attitude is especially common among the <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/US-Abortion-Patients.pdf">85 percent of unmarried couples</a> who seek abortions.
It shouldn&#8217;t be surprising, then, that the Supreme Court once even affirmed that one reason abortion must stay legal is because women rely on it when contraception fails. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court said that Roe v. Wade
<blockquote>could not be repudiated without serious inequity to people who, for two decades of economic and social developments, have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.</blockquote>
I’m all in favor of teaching people how to <a href="http://ccli.org/nfp/">responsibly </a><a href="http://ccli.org/nfp/">plan their families</a>, but if contraception fosters an attitude that unborn children are disposable (and in some forms <a href="http://www.abort73.com/abortion_facts/which_birth_control_methods_cause_abortion/">could be abortifacient</a>), then it shouldn’t be promoted as the way to achieve the goals of the pro-life movement.
Promoting contraception may also reinforce attitudes towards sex and pregnancy that conflict with the goal of creating a culture of life. On one university campus, a group of students chastised me for not passing out condoms. I told them I didn’t have to, because the campus health center gave condoms away for free. One man responded, “But the center is all the way on the other side of campus. I don’t want to have to walk all the way over there just for condoms. You guys should be passing them out here.” If this man were too lazy to walk a few hundred yards for condoms, why in the world would we expect him to work hard to provide for a child should the condom fail and his partner become pregnant?
Pro-life advocates should not be suckered into thinking that abortion is a public health problem that we have to help alleviate by dispensing contraceptives as “the cure.” We must continue to teach our culture that abortion is a moral problem and that the unborn deserve cultural recognition and legal protection as a remedy.
Granted, it will be easier to pass laws against abortion when fewer people seek abortion services, so there is value in developing strategies to reduce unintended pregnancies. But pro-life advocates should not have to compromise their belief that the unborn are human beings just so that everyone can “play nice together.” Instead, we must refocus our strategy and find better ways to achieve the goal of restoring legal protection for unborn human beings.

Pro-Lifers Should Question Contraception

Was St. Patrick a Baptist?

<div>Are we obligated to forgive someone who has not asked for forgiveness? </div><div>Yes, we must forgive him. As Jesus makes clear in the Sermon on the Mount after providing the Lord’s Prayer, “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt. 6:14-15). Jesus sets the example on the cross in asking his Father to forgive those who have crucified him.
On the other hand, we need not necessarily associate with a person we forgive, especially if the wrongdoing he has committed against us is grave. And even if someone has repented of a grave offense, we need not necessarily associate with him. For example, if a woman has been sexually assaulted by a friend, she is morally obligated to forgive that friend but not morally obligated to continue having a friendship.
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Should I Forgive Someone Who Hasn’t Repented?

John 3:5—Jesus’ words about being “born of water and Spirit”—is one of the strongest biblical proofs for baptismal regeneration. But not everyone agrees that he’s talking about baptism here. Some Christians push back with a familiar objection: if salvation is a free gift of God, not based on anything we do, and baptism is something we do, then it can’t possibly be the way God gives salvation.
Protestant author Todd Baker makes this argument in his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Rome-Biblical-Historical-Catholicism/dp/1491724706/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1EWWVDZK84W0Z&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.K8a96IlUbwcWMMBfq4LaPDdKVN7aKBMa6_hO0U9CbkR7kF-BGBKPUw62OuzuThvPlvutR6RYt57YHWusbAI4mRxfO_Qw23NyV4Ccwi2ryW2Ssmy3_5kYSdlXmQUkcavtBF9qT1qRHTaMe4iJBCVBYA2zJtjJ4zTGIDNH9ll6ATHzPGsqnGjEbdyzUi9bEyGpSYRlZ4LZZY1uv7NdksJxpuNn6Bi1qmqPgolVW4HrpZQ.rOKdNNS8-K1nXDtMn-xcpaJupvwgbtvGnJFH-Xw5dJA&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=exodus+from+rome&amp;qid=1755207926&amp;sprefix=exodus+from+rom%2Caps%2C135&amp;sr=8-1">Exodus from Rome</a> (Vol. I). For Baker, the idea that baptism saves “contradicts every passage in the Bible where the reader is plainly informed that salvation is a gift of God’s unmerited grace, not of works, or anything the sinner does to earn it (e.g., John 3:16; Rom. 10:9-10; Eph. 2:8-9).”
Baker makes his argument based on the assumption that Catholics (and all believers in baptismal regeneration) believe that baptism is a work that merits the gift of initial salvation—which, of course, does contradict Ephesians 2:8-9: “You have been saved by grace and not of works.”
But this assumption is false. Catholics don’t believe that baptism merits the gift of salvation. Rather, we believe that baptism is the means stipulated by Christ by which he intends to give us the gift of salvation, not a work that merits the gift. The stipulation of a means doesn’t entail an act that merits.
For example, Cy Kellett, the host of Catholic Answers Live, often tells those who call in to the show, “We want to give you a book as a gift. Just hang on the line, give us your mailing address, and we’ll send it to you.” Does the caller’s act of giving the call screener his mailing address, receiving the gift in the mail, and opening the package merit the gift? No. The gift is a gift, even if there is a specific way that the recipient must receive it.
Protestants even teach that a person is saved, or justified, on account of a profession of faith—a profession that is often verbalized at an altar call. Yet they don’t think such a profession of faith “merits” the gift of salvation, or justification. Rather, they teach that faith is the instrument of justification.
Thus, the Catholic view of baptism being the instrument of salvation is no more a meritorious work than a Protestant’s view of faith being the instrument of salvation.
Moreover, the interior regeneration that we believe takes place in baptism—the transference from a state of unrighteousness to a state of righteousness—is nothing of our own doing. It is entirely an act of God. Only he can bring about such a change within us. Therefore, according to a Catholic understanding, baptism is a not a work in the way that Baker thinks it is. And given that Baker’s argument here is based on a flawed assumption, it has no force against the baptismal interpretation of the second birth.
Baker, however, has another counterargument that latches on to what was said above—namely, that spiritual rebirth is something that only God can bring about. He <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Rome-Biblical-Historical-Catholicism/dp/1491724706/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1EWWVDZK84W0Z&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.K8a96IlUbwcWMMBfq4LaPDdKVN7aKBMa6_hO0U9CbkR7kF-BGBKPUw62OuzuThvPlvutR6RYt57YHWusbAI4mRxfO_Qw23NyV4Ccwi2ryW2Ssmy3_5kYSdlXmQUkcavtBF9qT1qRHTaMe4iJBCVBYA2zJtjJ4zTGIDNH9ll6ATHzPGsqnGjEbdyzUi9bEyGpSYRlZ4LZZY1uv7NdksJxpuNn6Bi1qmqPgolVW4HrpZQ.rOKdNNS8-K1nXDtMn-xcpaJupvwgbtvGnJFH-Xw5dJA&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=exodus+from+rome&amp;qid=1755207926&amp;sprefix=exodus+from+rom%2Caps%2C135&amp;sr=8-1">writes</a>,
<blockquote>Nothing in this world can generate the power of spiritual rebirth; flesh can produce only flesh. Although things in nature, like water, wind, and physical birth, are symbols to picture and describe how spiritual rebirth from God occurs, and the particular effects it has on the person who believes in Jesus Christ for salvation.
Even in the beginning of John’s Gospel, the reader is told that the power of spiritual rebirth, whereby the believer in Christ becomes a child of God, is not an act that can be exercised by human act of will, or physical generation, or performance of any kind—the act of sacramental baptism included—but is a supernatural, sovereign act of God alone, bestowed upon those who believe in Jesus Christ. Those who are baptized do so by an act of their own will. The new birth is altogether different from this; it is an act of God! . . .
So then, “born of water” in John 3:5 cannot mean the physical rite of baptism as the agent for spiritual rebirth; it must mean something else.</blockquote>
So, for Baker, since the spiritual rebirth is an act of God, it cannot involve any human act. And since the ritual of water baptism involves a human act, it follows that the spiritual rebirth can’t be a reference to ritual water baptism.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it would preclude humans being involved in several things that the Bible affirms humans are involved in when God exercises his sovereignty.
Consider, for example, the healing of the lame beggar that Peter performs in Acts 3:1-10. The effect of the miracle can be brought about only by God. Yet that doesn’t mean Peter’s action isn’t involved. God used Peter as an instrumental cause to bring about the miraculous effect.
Consider also Paul’s teaching that we are justified by “faith.” Faith is a gift that God alone can give. Yet the act of faith itself, which God moves us to engage in, involves the act of our intellect, moved by the will, to assent to what God reveals and the act of directing our hearts and minds to God as our ultimate supernatural end. That’s human action, actualized within us by God.
More examples abound. In John 16:8, we’re told that the Spirit will convict the world of sin and righteousness. However, we know that the Spirit uses preachers to establish that conviction. Life itself is from God, yet God uses the actions of a human mother and father to be participants in giving that life to us.
One more example, which perhaps relates best to our topic at hand: Jesus in John 9:1-7 heals a blind man. And he intentionally involves the blind man’s action—namely, Jesus commands him to go and wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. Once the blind man does that human act, Jesus heals him.
So just because an effect is brought about by God alone, like the spiritual rebirth, that doesn’t necessarily exclude human action, like ritual water baptism. It’s God’s prerogative to will ritual water baptism to be the means or instrument through which he communicates the blessing.
In the end, Baker’s reasoning falters because it assumes that God’s sovereign action excludes any human involvement. Scripture repeatedly shows that God often brings about supernatural effects through human instruments—whether it’s healing the sick, proclaiming the gospel, or even giving physical life itself. Baptism, in the Catholic view, fits this same biblical pattern: it’s not a human work that earns salvation, but the divinely chosen means by which God imparts it.
Thus, “born of water and Spirit” in John 3:5 can rightly be understood as baptism without undermining God’s grace or sovereignty.

When Baptism Is Too Manly for Protestants

<div>Peter is not the "rock" of the Church. If you read the verse in Matthew 16:17-19 and do a Greek word study, Christ is referring to the Holy Spirit.</div><div>Here&#8217;s what a couple of Church Fathers believed about Peter being the Rock:
Augustine:
<blockquote>If the very order of episcopal succession is to be considered, how much more surely, truly, and safely do we number them [the bishops of Rome] from Peter himself, to whom, as to one representing the whole Church, the Lord said, ‘Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not conquer it.’ Peter was succeeded by Linus, Linus by Clement. . . . In this order of succession a Donatist bishop is not to be found (Letters 53:1:2 [A.D. 412]).</blockquote>
Cyprian:
<blockquote>The Lord says to Peter: &#8220;I say to you,&#8221; he says, &#8220;that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. And to you I will give the keys of the kingdom of heaven&#8221; (Matt. 16:18–19). On him [Peter] he builds the Church, and to him he gives the command to feed the sheep (cf. John 21:17), and although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single chair [cathedra], and he established by his own authority a source and an intrinsic reason for that unity. Indeed, the others were that also which Peter was [i.e., apostles], but a primacy is given to Peter, whereby it is made clear that there is but one Church and one chair. . . . If someone does not hold fast to this unity of Peter, can he imagine that he still holds the faith? If he [should] desert the chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, can he still be confident that he is in the Church (The Unity of the Catholic Church 4; 1st edition [A.D. 251])?</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/peter-the-rock">This article</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/peter-the-rock-0">this article</a>, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/peter-the-rock">this one</a> will give you a better understanding of the Greek used in Matthew 16:17-19.
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How Can You Say Peter Is the ‘Rock’?

How can I get across to my confirmation students the importance of going to confession?

How did the Magi know that the star of Bethlehem was leading them to the king of the Jews?

Does Joe still hate cheesecake or have you repented of that sin? And is Cy going to release a full version of St. Irenaeus and the Goblet of Fire?

I heard Catholics say that Scripture has a kind of primacy over Tradition. But that seems to contradict what I’ve read in the Catechism and Dei Verbum. Can you explain?

The shroud of turin is one cloth, but one of the Gospels clearly says there’s a separate cloth for his head. Is that a problem?

What is the Catholic position on embryos? Are they alive or just tissue?

Can you help me explain the role of Mary in salvation history?

How can we know God, and in what way is a person able to know God?

How can be there different levels of approach to God in heaven? I’m uncomfortable with that idea.

Ask Me Anything

Why was Judas necessary?

Is abortion wrong just because a uterus is for the purpose of fostering children?

Nondenominational people in my area have begun believing the idea that the pope is going to make a one world religion that will usher in the end times. Are you familiar with this idea and where it stems from?

You mentioned earlier that you didn’t think very highly of the author Dan Brown. I’m genuinely curious why.

I’m engaged to a man in the military and started having visions of his friends who have died in battle. What should I make of this?

What bible translation do you think is the most accurate? Coming from a protestant background, what translation would you recommend for me?

Are our deceased loved ones able to recall the pain they endured?

Why does God let children suffer?

With the Church constantly under attack, why aren’t we praying for victory but peace instead?

Could life have come about naturalistically?

My wife is agnostic. How do I reply to the questions, why should she care, and why should she believe that it’s the Christian God that exists?

My convert friend is asking how do you know when something is dogma vs doctrine?

Within the holy family, did Joseph have the spiritual authority of Mary and Jesus?

What is the rule of the magisterium in regard to translation of the bible and why should we heed to those translations?

How specific does my confession have to be for it to be valid?

How do we know that St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letters are reliable?

Can an unbaptized person receive the sacrament of confession?

Has the use of extraordinary ministers of holy communion been abused?

There are verses in the bible that say that miracles are signs, but it also says the devil will use them. How can the Church confidently say that the miracles it approved of are from God and not the devil?

How is Onan responsible for a sin that wasn’t given until Deuteronomy?

How could have Mary said no if God had the plan since the beginning of time?

Which Gospel passages on John are indicative of him filling in the gaps on Luke?

Where does the Church get the belief that Peter was crucified upside down?

How do you get Protestants to stop dismissing the Church Fathers?

How do we know that Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp were disciples of John the Apostle?

Why are Ed and Lorraine Warren problematic since they were Catholic?

What are the consequences of being re-baptized?

If Jews get a new temple they would begin animal sacrifices, but Christ was the final sacrifice. Is this why God has allowed enemies to control the temple mount?

What exactly constitutes full consent of the will in regard to mortal sin?

The Church teaches that baptism is a once-in-a-lifetime sacrament—but what are the consequences of being re-baptized? We break down the theological and spiritual implications, and also explore topics like Peter’s crucifixion, the authority of the Church Fathers, and what makes a sin truly mortal.
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Why Is Being Re-Baptized Spiritually Problematic? And More Questions

Does the Bible have a definitive teaching on homosexuality?

One of my family members is now a Sedevacantist and doesn’t recognize JP2. How can I help guide him back?

Why does the placement of Maccabees in the bible vary depending on the bible?

In Genesis it says God’s presence dwelled in the presence of the garden of Eden and since marriage/sex is the manifestation of our desire to be in union with God, then why did Adam yearn for a partner/Eve?

Does the bible mention miscarriages in Numbers?

Does a bankruptcy also forgive the moral obligation to pay off the debt?

What are the reasons that orthodox Jews don’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah?

In my psych class we were told that you can detect violent behavior in young children that could manifest itself if it goes unchecked. What would be the ethical stance on hospitalizing them for life?

Does the bible say anything about how to approach relationships with the in-laws?

Did Fatima want us to be enrolled in the scapular? Do you need to get a scapular blessed?

Is it possible for the devil to steal souls from purgatory?

I see that the Anglican Church is going to have a female archbishop, should we end dialogue with them?

Why do Catholics honor the Sabbath day on Sundays?

The one Papacy question that STUMPS Protestants…

In this Q&amp;A highlight from Catholic Answers Live, Trent Horn addresses a common challenge in sharing faith: the apathetic response of &#8220;I just don&#8217;t think about it.&#8221; He provides practical strategies for engaging those who seem indifferent to deeper questions about God and existence.
Transcript:
I work at a fast food place in Indiana too.
Whenever I try to ask my co-workers what they believe or just about important things, they always just shrug their shoulders and say, &#8220;Well, I just don&#8217;t think about it.&#8221; When I started on the contingency argument for God, they just responded, &#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t think that everything has to have a reason. How do I respond to that statement?
I know I can&#8217;t make people care, but how can I get through to them better?&#8221;
Well, it&#8217;s hard. People respond to different kinds of reasons and evidences for the existence of God. For some people, I know especially for philosophers, the contingency argument is one of the most powerful reasons for the existence of God.
Although he has to be formulated very carefully. You don&#8217;t necessarily have to say, &#8220;Well, everything had to have a reason for existence.&#8221;
But you could say, &#8220;Look, things either exist because of something else, they exist for no reason at all, or they exist because of their own nature.&#8221;
We look around the world, we see there&#8217;s&#8230; We at least can say, &#8220;All right, aren&#8217;t there at least some things that don&#8217;t have to exist like this fast food restaurant we work in? It didn&#8217;t have to exist, right? It has a reason for existing.
And the reasons that it exists, those things, they didn&#8217;t have to exist either. The founders and the creators, well, they&#8217;re from human beings. I mean, human beings didn&#8217;t have to exist. Evolution could have been different. The Earth didn&#8217;t have to exist. So you don&#8217;t have to necessarily say, &#8220;Well, everything needs a reason or this or that.&#8221; You could say, &#8220;Look, are there at least some things that need a reason for why they exist? Are there at least some things like that? Okay,
well, then what explains at least those things that need a reason? They just exist for no reason?&#8221; Well, we don&#8217;t say that for just anything that we happen to come across. We don&#8217;t use that to explain just other things. If something could exist for no reason at all, you couldn&#8217;t even do science. How could you ever rule something like that out? You might say, &#8220;Well, all the things that don&#8217;t have to exist,
the things that could have failed to exist, they all explain each other in a great web of explanation.
So there&#8217;s nothing else outside like God that needs to explain it.&#8221; But I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a good explanation. That&#8217;s like saying, there&#8217;s an old story, why are there five Eskimos in New York City? You might say, &#8220;Well, number two followed, number one, three followed, number two, four followed, number three, five followed, number four, and number one followed, number five.&#8221; And that&#8217;s why they&#8217;re all there.
Okay, but wait, that still doesn&#8217;t explain why they&#8217;re there. You&#8217;ve made a great circle of explanation that doesn&#8217;t really explain why all of them are there at all.
So that&#8217;s a problem when people try to outsource the contingency argument that way. We have things that don&#8217;t have to exist. You can&#8217;t have an infinite regress that doesn&#8217;t really explain anything. So we need something that doesn&#8217;t need explanation, something that exists necessarily, it must exist, it is existence itself. And then there&#8217;s other reasons you can give. I also like the argument from motion.
Also, you could say, &#8220;Look, if the universe began to exist, then that means you couldn&#8217;t just say, &#8220;Oh, well, it just exists because it came into existence.&#8221; How do you get something from nothing? You can&#8217;t. So those are cosmological arguments. But you might find also that people who,
a lot of people, they don&#8217;t have their head up in the clouds as much, they don&#8217;t want to grapple with cosmology. I see as Lewis, I mentioned this to the previous caller, he thought morality was a really big clue to the existence of God. And there&#8217;s certain elements of morality, like the fact that humans have a special dignity that other animals, even if they&#8217;re animals smarter than human beings, do not. We treat a disabled infant as having more dignity than a really smart dolphin or pig. They have more rights and value. Why? Well, because just humans matter. Well, there&#8217;s no biological explanation for that. There has to be a theological explanation. Or your fast food friends. If your manager takes away your pay and doesn&#8217;t pay you, you would blame him, right? You would say, &#8220;Hey, he did something wrong. I can&#8217;t believe he would do that. That&#8217;s so awful.&#8221; But if atheism is true,
well, he doesn&#8217;t have free will. He just does whatever chemicals in his brain basically program him to do or what different external events program. He could not have done otherwise. He&#8217;s determined. That&#8217;s at least what many atheists, not all, but many atheists would say.
But if we believe people can have moral responsibility, there has to be something that allows us to rise above just the chains of physical causation in the world. So a lot of these elements sort of come together to show the existence of God. If you&#8217;d like, Lily, if you stay on the line, I&#8217;d be happy to send you my book, &#8220;Why We&#8217;re Catholic.&#8221; And you could read it, take a few things from there, and then maybe give the book to a friend and see what they think about it. But is that at least like a helpful start?
Yeah.
So, yeah, I kind of asked her, &#8220;Well,
do you believe the universe has a beginning or is eternal?&#8221; And in either case, it would still need a reason as to why it&#8217;s there.
But it&#8217;s just kind of like&#8230; I&#8217;m not sure if it&#8217;s relativism or anything, but it&#8217;s like sometimes it just seems like people can kind of shrug off religion as just kind of a comfort thing because the world is so brutal. And it&#8217;s like, but this matters. It might be comforting, but it&#8217;s true.
It does matter. You&#8217;re right, because you could say, I find it quite the opposite. The people who suffer, who are more likely to suffer, are more likely to embrace religion, and those who have managed to distract themselves enough with modern distractions avoid the question.
And then they&#8217;re more open to the question when they&#8217;re reaching the end of their life or maybe they&#8217;re facing the end of their life, seeing the void ahead of them. &#8220;Oh, wow, what is waiting for me there? Is it just this finite life or do I have unending life ahead of me?&#8221; That&#8217;s something you should really work out first before you&#8217;re looking at that great expanse where we&#8217;re the press of us at the moment of death. And then other things too, when people get married and they have children and start to see the world in a sort of richer, multifaceted way, those arguments from human dignity, from morality, I think can be very helpful there. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve also thought though about approaching the topic of atheism again for a book. I&#8217;m finishing a book now on the Catholic view of salvation that will hopefully come out in a few months. Well, the manuscript needs to go in, so maybe like early spring, late fall if we&#8217;re lucky. But after that, I&#8217;d love to approach the topic of atheism again to really pose this in a way that helps people like you&#8217;re describing get out of this kind of, it&#8217;s not really relativism, it&#8217;s more like apathy to help them to see, look, there&#8217;s really serious things that if atheism are true, we wouldn&#8217;t expect the world to be this way. And yet it is, shouldn&#8217;t that shake your atheism a bit?
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Do We Have a Reason to Exist and Pursue God?

Skeptics of Christianity sometimes say that God is an egotistical maniac who requires worship or otherwise sends people to an eternal fire. Here I will explain, from the perspective of divine simplicity, why this objection does not hold up to scrutiny, and give reasons as to why we should worship God.
First, let’s explore what we mean when we say someone is egotistical. Generally, we think this person has a higher view of himself than reality warrants. If I thought I was the best person in a room of 10,000 people, many would view that as an egotistical statement.
Now take another example. Say I had just won an Olympic gold medal in an individual sport, like ping-pong. Would it be egotistical to say I am the best known ping-pong player in the world? Although it might sound prideful, it really wouldn’t be egotistical. It would be accurate.
We can imagine this with God. Because God is the greatest conceivable being, it would not be egotistical for him to believe that he is the greatest conceivable being.
Once this has been established, we can ask why we should worship God. But before going into this, let’s establish what worship even is, because it seems to me that many misunderstand it. There are several ways in which one can worship. First would be offering sacrifices. If a deity gives you everything, you can worship by giving some of it back. Another way in which you can worship this being is by thanking him for performing miracles. Since all miracles originate with God, this would be worship.
Some will make the claim that apostolic churches worship saints by asking them to pray for us. This would be the case only if we believed that the saints can do things by themselves and do not need God—but we don’t. Apostolic Christians do not worship the saints when we ask for something on their behalf, since we are really asking them to ask God. However, when we ask God for something, it is worship, since we know that he is power itself and has the ability to do all by his own accord. Orthodox and Catholic Christians also believe that these saints cannot hear prayers unless God grants that they hear them. They can do nothing by themselves.
One objection to the above is that pursuing a relationship with God (<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-loving-god-requires-hell">love itself</a>) is different from worshiping him. We can imagine a skeptic saying that through pursuing a relationship with God, we become closer to love itself. In doing so, we show God that we do not want to be away from him and go to hell, but we are also not technically worshiping him by pursuing said relationship.
This may sound promising, but these sorts of objections work only when we are discussing relationships with things that are not God. For instance, many Catholics have a relationship with Mary, the mother of God. Many have called Mary adjectives like “loving” and “holy.” However, when we call her these things, we are not worshipping her.
On the other hand, when we call God loving or holy, we are saying that God is love, because he is the first cause. Because of this, when we call God loving, it is worship, but when we call Mary or any other creature loving, it is not.
This means that by pursuing a relationship with God, which would involve conversations about his love, his power, his knowledge, or anything in between, we are actually worshiping him, even if we do not realize it!
This is why, as an example, it’s worship when we say “Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of hosts” during Mass, but we are not worshiping Mary when we call her “holy” when praying the Hail Mary. When we say God is holy, we are worshiping him, because we are saying he is holiness itself. Alternatively, when we say Mary or any other creature is holy, we are saying that these creatures participate in holiness itself—in the life of God—to a finite degree.
Likewise, we would also say that nothing outside perfection should ever be worshiped. It wouldn’t make sense for me to offer sacrifices to someone who does not give me everything. It also wouldn’t make much sense for me to thank a friend for allowing me to exist.
For St. Thomas Aquinas, God must possess all perfections, because <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1004.htm">he is the source of all perfections</a>. If God were not the source of all perfections, he would cease to be God. If he did not possess all perfections, he could not be the source of all perfections.
Divine simplicity also relates to eternity and our heavenly experience. For instance, it’s often asked whether the souls in heaven would be happy knowing a loved one is in hell. How happy could you possibly be, knowing that an immediate family member is burning for eternity? This is something I’ve struggled with a lot personally, but in my study of divine simplicity, I came to understand the answer. We would be happy, regardless of anything else going on, because of our relationship with God in Heaven. Because God literally is love itself, we would be happy with just him.
If you would not be happy with just God in heaven, even without a certain family member, you most likely are not understanding who God is. Furthermore, you’ll most likely be spending a longer time in Purgatory than you would like. Telling God he is not enough tells him that you are not ready to see him.
All in all, it seems as though many Christians do not understand worship or why we should worship God. Many also do not realize that even calling God holy or loving is a form of worship, because if these things are equal to God, then we are basically calling God “God.” Others may not realize that God is not egotistical for claiming that he is the greatest conceivable being, since he is. In realizing this, and that God is holiness and love itself, we realize what worship consists of for this being.

Do Christians Worship an Egomaniac?

Objections to the belief in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist are numerous. Some attempt to expose the absurdities (<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-the-baker-misunderstands-the-bread">here</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/if-you-dont-eat-youll-die">here</a>) of such belief. Others attempt to show that such belief contradicts what we know elsewhere in the Bible.
Consider, for example, the teaching that Paul gives to the Greeks in Athens: “The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man” (Acts 17:24).
Someone recently asked me, “How can we say God dwells in the tabernacle of every Catholic Church via Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist when Paul explicitly says otherwise?” It would seem that belief in the Real Presence contradicts what Paul says in Acts 17:24.
Is this true? Are believers in the Real Presence falling into the errors of ancient pagan Greeks?
If there’s one thing Catholics can agree on with Protestants, it’s that whatever we believe at least can’t contradict the Bible. Therefore, let’s see why this belief doesn’t contradict Paul’s teaching.
We must first establish the universe of discourse in which Paul makes the statement “God does not live in shrines made by man.” In other words, we need to know what Paul was targeting and what his listeners would have understood by “does not live in shrines.”
Recall that Paul is in Athens, and thus speaking to Greeks. For the Greeks, deities “lived” in these temples such that they were confined within the walls of the temples and didn’t exist anywhere else. The reason for this belief was due to their more fundamental belief that their deities dwelt in the carved statues located within the temple.
This is the sort of belief that was the target of criticism for several early Christian theologians. Take, for example, Justin Martyr. He argues against pagan idols in his First Apology, writing,
<blockquote>Neither do we honor with many sacrifices and garlands of flowers such deities as men have formed and set in shrines and called gods; since we see that these are soulless and dead (ch. 9, emphasis added).</blockquote>
Why would Justin need to make such an argument unless the pagans of his time thought their carved statues within their temples were alive, or at least had the deity dwelling within the image?
Clement of Alexandria also gives us insight that pagans, at least at the turn of the third century (A.D. 200), believed this as well. In his Stromata, Clement criticizes the pagans and their worship, writing,
<blockquote>Is it not the case that rightly and truly we do not circumscribe in any place that which cannot be circumscribed; nor do we shut up in temples made with hands that which contains all things? . . . And what can be localized, there being nothing that is not localized? Since all things are in a place. And that which is localized having been formerly not localized, is localized by something. If, then, God is localized by men, he was once not localized, and did not exist at all (7.5).</blockquote>
Clement is responding to pagans who worshiped the images of their pagan deities because they believed that their deities were “localized,” or contained, within such images.
This explains what Clement means in the preceding context when he says in Book 5, “for familiarity with the sight disparages the reverence of what is divine; and to worship that which is immaterial by matter, is to dishonor it by sense.” Of course, to think of divinity as being reducible to or confined within matter is to “disparage the reverence of what is divine.”
Such a pagan understanding of divinity stands in stark contrast to the Christian understanding of God, who is omnipresent—existing in all places. It’s this contrast that Paul is drawing out for the Greeks in Athens.
Paul intends to target the Greeks’ view of divinity and their worship that they give to such divinities and say that such belief and worship is false. And he offers Christian belief and worship in its place.
Now, here’s the key to dissolving the force of the objection: the denial of the Greek view of divine temple indwelling doesn’t logically entail the denial of all views of divine temple indwelling.
As mentioned above, the view of divine temple indwelling that Paul rejects is the Greek view. But that doesn’t mean a Christian can’t believe that God dwells in a Church via Jesus’ real presence in the tabernacle.
The reason such a rejection doesn’t follow is because belief in the Real Presence doesn’t necessarily entail the idea that God is confined within the four walls of a Christian church, like what the Greeks believed. A believer in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist can believe that God is omnipresent and at the same time affirm that he dwells in the tabernacle via the Eucharist in a unique way, like how the Jews believed that God is omnipresent and yet dwelt within the holy of holies in the holy tent of meeting and subsequently in Solomon’s temple (Exod. 40:34-38, Lev. 16, 1 Kings 8:1-13) in a unique way.
So, rather than belief in the Real Presence entailing a model of divine temple indwelling based on the Greeks, and thus subject to condemnation by Paul’s teaching, Christians who believe in the Real Presence have a model based on Jewish belief of divine temple indwelling, which is not subject to condemnation by Paul’s teaching.
Catholics, therefore, ought not to fear contradicting the Bible in their belief that God dwells in their churches via Jesus’ real presence in the Eucharist.

Jesus Is Not a Pagan Greek God

What does the Bible mean when it says, “You are gods” in Psalm 82? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Cy Kellett sits down with Jimmy Akin to explore this often misunderstood verse. Does it mean humans become divine? Is it symbolic, literal, or something else entirely? Jimmy offers a faithful Catholic interpretation rooted in Scripture, Church teaching, and the context of Jesus quoting this passage in John 10.
Transcript:
Caller: She quoted these two Bible verses that I hadn&#8217;t really heard before as evidence of the Mormon belief in polytheism and that we will become gods after death. The verses are Psalm 82:6, and again, Jesus quotes it in John 10:31-33. Basically, Jesus is talking to some Jews, and they criticize him for saying he&#8217;s God. He says, &#8220;Is it not written in your law? I have said you are gods.&#8221; Sorry, I have toddlers in the background.
Jimmy: That&#8217;s good. It&#8217;s better to have toddlers in the background than not to have toddlers in the background.
Caller: Yeah, it is.
Jimmy: So the first thing to do, since we&#8217;re dealing with an Old Testament text here that&#8217;s then used in a New Testament text, which then needs to be related to Christian theology, is to start with the original, figure out what the original text means, then we can look at how it&#8217;s used in the New Testament, and then we can figure out how it relates. What we don&#8217;t want to do is take a modern theology and read it backwards onto the text. That&#8217;s eisegesis rather than exegesis.
So in this case, just starting with Psalm 82, it says, &#8220;God presides in the great assembly. He renders judgment among the gods.&#8221; Now, what this is referring to is what&#8217;s known in scholarly literature as the divine council. One of the things that you find in ancient Near Eastern literature is that the high God was pictured as a king. Kings are surrounded by their councils, you know, who were their officials. It was assumed that, well, okay, our God, you know, Yahweh, he&#8217;s a great king, so he&#8217;s going to have this divine council around him, and he&#8217;s the high God.
So any other heavenly beings up there are subordinate to him. And there&#8217;s a question of do you want to call them gods or not at that point? Now, today we tend to use a different word for the subordinate heavenly beings. Today we call them angels, but back then they would call them gods. They recognized there&#8217;s a difference of kind between Yahweh, who&#8217;s the infinite creator of everything, who&#8217;s way above everybody else, and these lesser gods.
They might say, okay, these other nations, you know, like the Moabites and the Egyptians and stuff, like they have their gods, but they&#8217;ve got these little bitty gods that are not comparable to the true creator, Yahweh. So the image that Psalm 82 is using here is of Yahweh and his divine council. God is presiding in this council, in this great assembly. It says he renders judgment among the gods.
Then Yahweh says to the members of the divine assembly, &#8220;How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?&#8221; So he&#8217;s charging them with doing bad stuff. He says, &#8220;Defend the weak and the fatherless, uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed, rescue the weak and the needy, deliver them from the hand of the wicked.&#8221;
&#8220;The gods know nothing, they understand nothing. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaken.&#8221; And Yahweh says, &#8220;I said you are gods, you are all sons of the Most High. But you will die like mere mortals, you will fall like every other ruler.&#8221;
Then the psalmist says, &#8220;Rise up, O God, judge the earth, for all the nations are your inheritance.&#8221; This is based on an idea that we find in a number of places in the Old Testament that God has this heavenly council. They&#8217;re referred to as the sons of God, even though they&#8217;re really created beings. Today we call them angels. He put them in charge of the other nations, but they&#8217;ve done bad stuff. Among other things, they&#8217;ve encouraged the people subject to them to worship them instead of the Creator.
So here God is denouncing these so-called sons of God that are governing the nations, and he&#8217;s going to topple them. The psalmist is encouraging this. It&#8217;s like, &#8220;Rise up, God, the whole earth is yours. We don&#8217;t need these other gods or angels ruling in these other nations. I mean, you take charge, God, you go, God.&#8221;
So that&#8217;s basically what&#8217;s happening in Psalm 82, according to its background with ancient Near Eastern literature. But not everyone agrees with that. There have been attempts to interpret the word &#8220;elohim&#8221; or gods in this passage in a different sense as referring to judges. The idea here is that God is judging human rulers, like he&#8217;s judging human judges and accusing them of misconduct.
But that reading is really strained. It really does look like here we have God, the true God, the ultimate God, berating these other heavenly beings, who in this context are called gods, but we today would call them angels. So I think that&#8217;s what this psalm is referring to.
I would agree that this text does envision God as being part of the leader of a heavenly council that includes beings who are at least described as sons of God, even though today, as a Christian, I would classify them as created beings who were also angels.
So that&#8217;s what I&#8217;d have to say, unless something else occurs to me that&#8217;s relevant to this Old Testament text.
Then we move to the New Testament and Jesus&#8217; use of this in the Gospel of John. As you point out, Jesus&#8217; critics have been objecting to him on the grounds that he makes himself equal with God. He then cites Psalm 82, where Yahweh is depicted as saying to the members of the council, &#8220;You are gods.&#8221;
Jesus says something very interesting. He says, &#8220;If therefore, those to whom the word of God came can be called gods, then why are you objecting to me doing that?&#8221; Now, it&#8217;s interesting. I find that it&#8217;s interesting that he uses the phrase &#8220;those to whom the word of God came.&#8221; That fits with Psalm 82 because Yahweh himself is talking to the members of the divine council when he says, &#8220;You&#8217;re all gods, you&#8217;re all sons of the Most High.&#8221;
So he&#8217;s talking to them. The word of God came to them. Whatever else is the case about these beings that are being addressed in Psalm 82, they are those to whom the word of God came. God was talking to them.
That sidesteps the issue of are they really gods or are they really angels, or are they really human judges? So Jesus is dodging the question, or at least one construction of this is he&#8217;s dodging the question of what&#8217;s the exact nature of these beings that are under discussion in Psalm 82. You could support any of those three theories I just mentioned.
Jesus seems to be sidestepping that question and just saying, &#8220;Hey, look, the Old Testament calls people besides Yahweh God, so shouldn&#8217;t that really happen? You shouldn&#8217;t automatically be condemning me for making myself equal to God.&#8221;
He&#8217;s using this passage as what you might call a squelch to shut up his opponents by giving them a conundrum that they don&#8217;t know how to solve because it&#8217;s undeniable. The people in this psalm get called gods, and they are those to whom the word of God came.
So I think that&#8217;s what Jesus is doing in John&#8217;s Gospel with this passage.
Now, how do we relate this to theology, to later theology? Well, Mormons have proposed that humans and God and angels are all the same species and that it&#8217;s possible for humans and angels to ultimately become gods of their own planets. But there&#8217;s nothing in the text that says that. That is not in Psalm 82. That is not in John&#8217;s Gospel. Neither of the passages that we&#8217;ve talked about have said humans can progress to become gods of the same type that the Creator is.
So that&#8217;s something that they&#8217;re reading into the text. They&#8217;re not getting it out of the text. On the other hand, Christians, in their use of this text, on the assumption that I think is correct, that these are lesser beings in Psalm 82, are lesser heavenly beings than the Creator who rules them. Today, we&#8217;d simply call them angels, and we don&#8217;t need to make assumptions about who can become a deity or what&#8217;s the exact relationship between angels and humans.
On the Christian understanding, angels and humans are two different species. So humans do not become angels. That is consistent now with both of these texts. It&#8217;s not proved by either of these texts, but it is consistent with them.
So what I would say to your friend is that there are things that Christians can acknowledge here, but they are consistent with a Christian understanding of the Divine Trinity, where there are these lesser beings that are sometimes in the Old Testament called gods, and sometimes they&#8217;re called sons of God. Today we call them angels.
But on the Christian view, we can&#8217;t become them, and we certainly cannot become equal to the Creator. That&#8217;s something that is nowhere envisioned in either testament.
So that kind of sketches what I&#8217;d have to say to your friend if we were having a discussion of these points.

Why Does the Bible Say “You Are Gods”?

<div>Did Mary and Joseph ever have conjugal relations?</div><div>In early Christian tradition St. Athanasius, Didymus the Blind, St. Epiphanius of Salamis, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, Leoporius, St. Cyril of Alexandria all famously referred to Mary as ever virgin or perpetual virgin without controversy.
The Council of the Lateran (649) declared that Mary conceived “without any detriment to her virginity, which remained inviolate even after his birth.”
The Second Council of Constantinople II (553-554) referred to Mary as “ever virgin” in Anathemas 2 and 6.
And Pope Pius XII’s infallible definition of the Assumption of Mary refers to Mary as “ever virgin.”
Mary as ever virgin has a long tradition that extends back to the earliest Church fathers up to this very day.  This teaching was never controversial throughout the centuries.
For further reading:
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/more-reasons-for-marys-perpetual-virginity">More Reasons for Mary&#8217;s Perpetual Virginity</a>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/mary-ever-virgin">Mary&#8217;s Perpetual Virginity</a>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-to-explain-the-perpetual-virginity-of-mary">How to Explain the Perpetual Virginity of Mary</a>
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Did Mary and Joseph Ever Have Conjugal Relations?

I read in the Catechism that you need to be in the state of grace to receive the sacrament of confirmation. What happens if you’re not?

If a Catholic and a non-Catholic both do something that’s a mortal sin, and they both know what the Catholic Church teaches, is the non-Catholic also culpable for mortal sin?

Was there anything Pope Francis actually did to change any teachings in the Catholic Church?

Why did the Catholic Church need to dogmatize the Assumption of Mary?

What is the practical effect that the pope has on the world when he makes a pronouncement or encourages the world, considering most of the world isn’t Catholic and doesn’t have reason to listen to him?

How does the Pope’s authority compare to the Bible’s?

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If a non-Catholic knowingly rejects Catholic teaching and commits a grave sin, are they just as culpable as a Catholic? We explore moral responsibility, Church teaching on invincible ignorance, and how conscience and knowledge affect culpability.
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>
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Is a Non-Catholic Guilty of Mortal Sin If They Reject Catholic Teaching?

I’m close to coming to faith but hell doesn’t seem to fit with an all-loving God. Can you explain?

Can you give a summary on the Catholic Moral life?

If you start worshiping Buddha, Is that a big sin?

Do animals go to heaven?

What are the rules on mixed marriages in Catholicism?

Why is it wrong for parishioners to wear hats in Church even for medical reasons?

What’s the Church’s response to the excessive self-flagellation especially in Latin America?

How do we justify Mary being the Queen of all Christians?

are there any spiritual ramifications to seeking medical attention from a Shriners hospital?

Christ heals a man with mud he made with spit. And he had to do it twice for the person to be fully healed. Why was that detail included?

My Baptist parents want me to be on birth control. Do I disobey them or go against the Church?

Why aren’t the other 4 archangels in our canon anymore? Why aren’t they named?

What is your favorite Super Nintendo game?

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DAY 326
CHALLENGE
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“We know we can’t lose our salvation by committing mortal sin because Scripture says we can’t be separated from God (John 6:37, 39, 10:27–29, Rom. 8:38–39).”
DEFENSE
None of those biblical passages show that we cannot separate ourselves from God.
John 6:37 states: “All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out.” Jesus will not cast us out, but that doesn’t mean we can’t leave Jesus voluntarily.
John 6:39 states: “this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day.” It is God’s will that Christians not be lost, but it’s also God’s will that they not commit adultery, and some do. Later in John, Jesus refers to the Twelve as those God “hast given me” (17:11) and says, “none of them is lost but the son of perdition [i.e., Judas Iscariot]” (17:12)—indicating it’s possible to once be given to Jesus and yet be lost.
John 10:27–29 states: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me; and I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch
them out of the Father’s hand.” 
This doesn’t say the sheep can’t leave voluntarily. We’ve already
seen Judas was once given to Jesus and then lost. Further, Jesus tells the disciples later in John: “Abide in me. . . . If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned” (15:4–6). This indicates it’s possible for the disciples to fail to abide in Jesus.
Romans 8:38–39 states: “I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
As with the other passages, this doesn’t say we can’t separate our- selves from God. Paul elsewhere indicates we can (see Day 302).
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Separation from God

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Should I Bring Shameless Popery to Europe?

<div>Did Mary, the mother of Jesus, ascend to heaven?</div><div>&#8230;We normally say that the Blessed Mother &#8220;was assumed&#8221; into heaven rather than &#8220;ascended.&#8221; The reason for this is that using &#8220;assumed&#8221; emphasizes that it is God who brought her to heaven, whereas &#8220;ascended&#8221; has as its emphasis the one who is going to heaven. The Church wants to make clear that it is God who brought the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/mary-the-blessed-virgin">Blessed Mother</a> bodily to heaven and not something she was capable of by her own power (unlike the Ascension of Jesus).
The Assumption of Mary is not found in Scripture; it&#8217;s based on Sacred Tradition. It is something that has essentially always and everywhere been believed by Catholics. The early Christians revered those they considered to be saints. Tombs were places of pilgrimage, and many churches were built with relics. Yet no church or tomb ever claimed to be the current resting place of the body of Mary.
<blockquote>Finally, the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all guilt of original sin, on the completion of her earthly sojourn, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen of the universe, that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and the conqueror of sin and death (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html">Lumen Gentium</a> 59).</blockquote>
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Why Mary ‘Was Assumed’ Instead of ‘Ascended’?

Would other intelligent creatures (like hobbits or vulcans) become priests?

Could a Catholic holding all that the Church teaches on Mary believe that she’s overemphasized?

What are the “living waters” discussed in John 4?

I’ve seen your videos on dowsing. Is dowsing for future events permissible, or is it considered divination?

Can a consecration be valid if one item is defective?

Why do most people who have Near-Death Experiences that are not religious or mention Jesus?

How do you meditate on the rosary while saying the vocal prayers?

When Jesus talks about “a divided kingdom” and the demons, what is he talking about?

If the pope were to make a definitive statement, could half of it be infallible and the other half be fallible?

What are the limitations of a bishop over the liturgical functions of a diocese?

If intelligent alien or fictional species like Vulcans or Hobbits existed, could they be ordained as priests? We dive into this speculative theology question and also explore Marian devotion, dowsing, near-death experiences, and papal infallibility.

Could Hobbits or Vulcans Become Catholic Priests?

James White misquoting Scripture to "disprove" Purgatory didn't end well for him...

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DAY 224
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“Mary says, ‘My spirit rejoices in God my Savior’ (Luke 1:47). This means that she was a sinner and couldn’t have been immaculately conceived.”
DEFENSE
God can save a person in multiple ways, and Mary was saved by God in more than one sense.
Salvation from the eternal consequences of sin only comes into focus with the ministry of Jesus. Prior to this, the Bible is overwhelmingly concerned with salvation from temporal calamities (war, disease, famine, death, and so on). We may refer to this as temporal salvation.
This seems to be what Mary has in mind. She says she rejoices in God her Savior, “for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden—for behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me.” God has thus saved her from a low estate and given her an exalted one to be remembered and honored forever.
This is reinforced as Mary then lists multiple kinds of temporal salvation (“He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away. He has helped his servant Israel” Luke 1:51–54). It is also suggested by the parallel canticle in which Zechariah proclaims the praise of God as temporal Savior (Luke 1:68–75).
There is also a sense in which God saves Mary from sin: He saved her from ever contracting it. Theologians sometimes compare the way God rescued Mary from sin to stopping a person from falling into a pit as opposed to pulling him out of a pit. Both can be described as saving a person from a pit, but which would you prefer?
Being saved from ever committing sin is a more excellent form of salvation than rescuing a person from sin after he has fallen into it. Thus Mary was redeemed, in view of what Christ would do on the cross, in a way that prevented her from falling into sin, and so the Catechism refers to her as “the most excellent fruit of redemption” (CCC 508).
TIP
See Jimmy Akin, The Drama of Salvation, for more on temporal salvation.
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Mary’s Savior

<div>Which early Church Father or theologian reasoned against polygamy by stating that Christ only had one bride?</div><div>I am not aware of any early Church Father who cited Christ’s one mystical Bride, the Church, as an argument against polygamy, and I double-checked the Fathers up through the fourth century.
Polygamy simply wasn’t an issue in the early Church. Jesus made clear the monogamous nature and indissolubility of marriage (see Matthew 19:1-9, Genesis 2:23-24). What was an issue in Jesus’ time and in the early Church was not polygamy but divorce and invalid remarriage, and the early Church Father cited Jesus’ aforementioned words to teach against such adulterous conduct.
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The Church Fathers on Polygamy

Is it possible to do a group Reconciliation or is the individual way the best practice?

Was the early Eucharist psychedelic?

How can we verify the claims of the Papacy without falling on a dogmatic assertion?

The Catholic Church killed William Tyndale for translating the Bible into English because they didn’t want anyone to have it.

What is the difference between social and classical Trinitarianism?

What can laity do for wayward souls?

Can girls be altar servers?

Can Saul pursuing David be viewed as a prefiguration to Saul, in the New Testament, persecuting Christians?

Do you think action figures can be considered the modern-day idols referenced in Revelations 9:20?

Joe dissects the argument that the Presentation at the Temple in Luke 2 is proof that Mary sinned, because she had to make a &#8220;sin offering.&#8221;
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer, and I wanted to respond to an argument. I sometimes see Protestants raise against the Sinlessness of Mary. The argument is very simple. If Mary was sinless, then why does Luke 2 22 to 24 show her offering the required sin purification sacrifice commanded in Leviticus 12 for women after childbirth? And sure enough, Luke two describes Mary offering a sacrifice in the temple according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves are two young pigeons. Now, Luke is quoting Leviticus 12, which in most English translations says it&#8217;s about a sin offering to be made after a woman has born a son. So it looks like a slam dunk case Mary must have sent, and you&#8217;ll find even well-respected Protestant scholars making this argument. For example, norm Geisler and Ralph McKinsey argue in their book Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, that scripture disproves Mary&#8217;s Sinlessness because she even presented an offering to the Jewish priest arising out of her sinful condition, which was required by law.
This would not have been necessary if she were sinless, but if that&#8217;s right, what sin did Mary commit that required a sin offering? Leviticus 12 is about the offering women make after giving birth to a son, but hopefully no Christian thinks that this proves it was a sin for Mary to give birth to Jesus. So what is actually going on here as we&#8217;re going to see Leviticus 12 is talking about ritual purification after childbirth. It&#8217;s not talking about moral guilt. And there&#8217;s a fascinating aspect to the passage that the early Christians realized and many people today don&#8217;t, that Mary was explicitly exempted from needing to make this sacrifice, and yet she did so anyway. But if Mary didn&#8217;t need to make the sacrifice, then why did she? Well, speaking of sacrificial offerings you don&#8217;t need to make. I want to thank everyone who does just that over@shamelessjoe.com.
It&#8217;s wonderful to not need to take sponsors and you all make that possible. I try to show my gratitude by sharing cool perks like ad free episodes that drop a day early. I&#8217;m going to have a longer version of this episode along with things called Joe Notes that have sources used in each episode with a PDF cheat sheet so you can geek out on whatever the topic is, plus weekly live streams in which I answer patron questions. So if you want to join the party, come over to shameless joe.com if you&#8217;re already there. Thank you. So the first thing to know is that what Mary is offering in the temple is what&#8217;s called a hatta In Hebrew, this is often translated as SAN offering, but it&#8217;s actually a purification offering. The Jewish scholar Rabbi Jacob Milgram pointed out decades ago translating the Hebrew here is sin offering is inaccurate on all grounds, contextually morphologically and etymologically.
That is calling it a sin offering doesn&#8217;t really capture either what the Hebrew actually says or what the context means or what the sacrifice actually is. Now I&#8217;m going to spare you the finer details of the grammatical argument except to say that he points out that the Hebrew conjunction here always means purity or purification and other scholars agree. So there has been a shift among some scholars and some Bible translations to translate this as purification offering instead. But most people, and most Bibles still know it as sin offering. But even if you don&#8217;t know Hebrew, you can see that Milgram is right, that the offering is not principally about the forgiveness of sins. It&#8217;s about being purified to go before God. Leviticus actually prescribes a different type of sacrifice called the guilt offering for the forgiveness of moral transgressions. But the hatta is offered for instances in which you become ritually impure and couldn&#8217;t enter the temple.
Now, to be sure that could be because of some sin you&#8217;d committed either intentionally or unintentionally, but it could also happen for reasons having nothing to do with sin. For instance, if a woman menstruated or if a man had a bodily discharge that rendered you ritually unclean, and you needed to offer the hit habitat, likewise, think about the way sick people like lepers were treated. They had to announce that they were unclean. But the Bible isn&#8217;t saying that they are morally sinful for being lepers. The problem is that they&#8217;re potentially contagious and they&#8217;re also richly impure. And so if you were sick and then recovered, the priest would make a huta to render you clean again. Now the same rules applied if you touched a dead body say, now if you remember the parable of the Good Samaritan, this is what&#8217;s going on. The priest and Levite are worried about helping this man because he might already be dead and touching a dead body renders you impure and you can&#8217;t go into the temple.
You would need a purification offering an attack before you did so. But Jesus is clear that the priests and Levite are wrong in this instance. They shouldn&#8217;t be so worried about ritual impurity that they&#8217;re unwilling to help their neighbor. In fact, Jesus repeatedly criticizes those like the Pharisees who obsess about ritual impurity rather than about moral purity. Think about the difference like this. If you commit a mortal sin, you need to go to confession before mass. But if you go on a morning run and get all sweaty, you need to take a shower and change clothes before mass. So both of those things are in some way about going before the Lord in the right way, but it would be a mistake to conflate them or to assume that this means running and being sweaty as a sin. I can&#8217;t be too careful, but it&#8217;s not sinful.
Ancient Jews and early Christians understood this difference. As Rabbi Milgram points out, the ancient rabbinical commentators were very clear that these sacrifices are prescribed for specific physical impurities, whether that&#8217;s having given birth suffering from leprosy. In the case of a Nazarite touching a dead body and not one sage claims that the afflicted brings this sacrifice because of his sins. Indeed, this idea is vigorously denied. Milgram actually offers one example that is so clear. I&#8217;m not sure how someone would even argue against it in Exodus 29 when it&#8217;s talking about the right for the ordination of priests and for the consecration of the altar, a hatta, a purification offering is made for the altar. Now, obviously it makes no sense to say that the altar send and it needed to be forgiven. Rather the altar is being consecrated just as an individual be cleansed from all impurities before entering the temple or embarking on divine service.
Okay, so given all of that, why is Mary making a hatta in the temple 40 days after Christmas? Well, because childbirth makes you richly impure, and Leviticus 12 says that you were to make a purification offering 40 days later. This has nothing to do with sin here and everything to do with the fact that women have come in contact with blood during childbirth. That is why Leviticus 12 explicitly talks about the blood of her purifying. And again, hopefully no Christian is going to argue. This means it was sinful for Mary to give birth to Jesus or that the birth of Christ was a kind of transgression that needed a sin offering as atonement. Instead, the presentation of the temple is about exactly what Luke tells us. It&#8217;s about their purification according to the law of Moses. But there&#8217;s another dimension as well that I think is just fascinating here.
Leviticus 12 doesn&#8217;t just talk about a woman who has a son. It talks about a woman who conceives and bears a male child. On the surface, it might just sound like it&#8217;s spelling out the different stages of pregnancy like it does in Isaiah seven where it says that a virgin will conceive and bear a son. But in Isaiah seven, the verb used as hurrah, which just means conceive. But in Leviticus 12 here, the root word is actually coming from Zara, which means seed. The Hebrew here literally seems to be saying that a purification offering is needed when a woman receives seed and bears a male child. This might not seem like an important point. I mean, how else is a woman going to get pregnant? Well, there is one obvious exception, and early Christians like origin noticed remarkably quickly, I might add that Leviticus 12 literally does not apply to Mary because of the virgin birth.
Since Mary never received seed, she was free from the demands of the law, and yet she submits to the law. Anyway, that is, she knew she wasn&#8217;t bound by Leviticus 12 here, she could have just stayed home. So why doesn&#8217;t she? Well, for starters, it&#8217;s probably fair to point out that her neighbors wouldn&#8217;t have known the virginal nature of Jesus&#8217;s conception and birth. So rather than going around insisting, no, trust me, this was a virgin birth, she avoids scandalizing others by simply submitting to the law. And her son actually does something similar throughout his earthly ministry. For instance, in Matthew 17, Jesus points out that he and Peter are actually exempt from paying the temple tax yet to avoid giving scandal, causing offense, he performs a miracle and pays it for the two of them anyway. Now, this fact, Mary&#8217;s voluntary submission to the law would give rise to some beautiful reflections like this one from the venerable bead dearly beloved brothers.
Let us look more carefully at the words of the law which we have set before you, and we will see most clearly how Mary, God&#8217;s blessed mother and a perpetual virgin was along with the sun sheor most free from all objection to the law. Since the law says that a woman who had received seed and given birth was to be judged unclean, and that after a long period she, along with the offspring she had born were to be cleansed by victims offered to God. It is evident that the law does not describe as unclean that woman who without receiving man&#8217;s seed, gives birth as a virgin, nor does it so describe the son who is born to her, nor does it teach that she had to be cleansed by saving sacrificial offerings. So neither Mary nor Jesus are actually impure here. Neither one is in need of sacrificial offerings to purify them here.
And yet bead says, but as our Lord and Savior, who in his divinity was the one who gave the law when he appeared as a human being willed to be under the law so that he might redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. He&#8217;s quoting Galatians four there. So to his blessed mother, who by a singular privilege was above the law, nevertheless did not shun being made subject to the principles of the law for the sake of showing us an example of humility according to that saying of the wise man. And here he quotes, sir, act three. The greater you are, the more you should humble yourself in all things. So where is evangelicals like Geisler and McKinsey? See, and Mary&#8217;s purification a proof of her sinfulness. That argument is based on a misunderstanding of the attack and one which frankly treats Christmas as a sin that needs atoning.
The much older and better Christian reading is that Mary&#8217;s offering in the temple here points to her incredible humility and offering a purification sacrifice that strictly speaking, she didn&#8217;t need to offer. No, Luke two doesn&#8217;t show us that Mary was a sinner. But in fairness, Luke two by itself doesn&#8217;t show us that Mary wasn&#8217;t a sinner. I know many Protestants get very hung up on this Catholic teaching, understandably so, which is why you have people using Luke two as evidence that she did sin. They&#8217;re taught that Jesus was the only sinless human who ever lived. And since we&#8217;re not explicitly told in scripture that Mary never sinned or that she wasn&#8217;t immaculately conceived, therefore, it must not be true. But you may be surprised to find out that many early Christians believe that she was sinless. So if that&#8217;s not explicitly spelled out in scripture, why do so many early Christians believe she was without sin? Well, I explore one of those reasons right here. For Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
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Does Luke 2 DISPROVE Mary’s Sinlessness?

Genesis 6 says that shortly before the Flood, “the sons of God” married “the daughters of men,” who gave birth to unusually tall people whom the Bible refers to as the Nephilim (Aramaic, “giants”).
In a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-angels-mate-with-human-women">previous post</a>, we mentioned the three main theories about this mysterious incident:
<ol>
<li>The sons of God were the righteous line of Seth, and the daughters of men were the wicked line of Cain.</li>
<li>The sons of God were human rulers, and the daughters of men were common women.</li>
<li>The sons of God were fallen angels, and the daughters of men were human women.</li>
</ol>
As we saw, the first of these doesn’t work because the line of Cain went extinct with the Great Flood, and Genesis says the sons of God also mated with the daughters of men after the Flood, allowing the Israelites to later encounter “the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim)” (Num. 13:33) when they entered the Promised Land.
The second theory is also problematic because the phrase “sons of God” is never used for human rulers in the Bible.
On the other hand, “sons of God” is consistently used in the Old Testament to refer to high-ranking angels, which would support the third interpretation.
Modern people tend to dismiss the third option because angels don’t have physical bodies, but this is something doctrinal development has made clear. This fact was not clear to the ancient Israelites, who didn’t have a problem with embodied angels, and when trying to figure out what an ancient text means, we need to determine what it would have meant to the original author.
Further, Christian thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas have held that even if angels don’t normally have physical bodies, they can assume them. So before we set the third theory aside, let’s consider what evidence we have for it.
One of the books that some New Testament authors read was 1 Enoch. This book is directly quoted in Jude 14-15, which describes it as containing prophecy.
In 1 Enoch, a group of angels decide to leave heaven and marry human women. They also teach mankind destructive skills like how to make weapons for war, how to make cosmetics for seduction, and how to perform magic. They corrupt mankind by these skills, and after they get married, their sons are violent giants, and the resulting corruption brings on the Great Flood.
The fact is that the angelic interpretation of Genesis 6 is the most ancient one we have on record. In The Word Biblical Commentary on Jude 6, the British scholar Richard Bauckham writes:
<blockquote>According to Jewish tradition, [angels] descended from heaven to marry human wives and corrupt the human race in the period before the Flood. This was how the account of the “sons of God” in Gen 6:1-4 was universally understood (so far as our evidence goes) until the mid-second century a.d., though the tradition took several varying forms.
From the time of R. Simeon b. Yohai in the mid-second century a.d., the traditional exegesis was replaced in Judaism by an insistence that the “sons of God” were not angels but men. In Christianity, however, the traditional exegesis had a longer life, questioned only in the third century and disappearing in the fifth century.</blockquote>
This understanding was not limited to just one or two sources. In The Word Biblical Commentary on Genesis 6:1, another British scholar, Gordon Wenham, writes,
<blockquote>The “angel” interpretation is at once the oldest view and that of most modern commentators. It is assumed in the earliest Jewish exegesis (e.g., the books of 1 Enoch 6:2ff; Jubilees 5:1), [the Septuagint], Philo De Gigant. 2:358), Josephus (Ant. 1.31) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QapGen 2:1; CD 2:17–19). The [New Testament] (2 Pet 2:4, Jude 6, 7) and the earliest Christian writers (e.g., Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen) also take this line.</blockquote>
The angelic interpretation of the “sons of God” in Genesis 6 is thus the universal and earliest view in both Jewish and Christian circles, across a wide range of sources.
What all of the sources have in common, though, is that they were all written in the period around the birth of Christ—either a few centuries before or afterward. But Genesis itself is from an earlier period, and how a text was later interpreted does not automatically tell us how it was interpreted at the time it was written. What would help is if we had material from before Genesis was written that could shed light on the matter . . . and we do.
One of the things that scholars of Genesis have noted is that its author frequently engages in anti-pagan polemics by giving an orthodox alternative to the ideas of surrounding pagan cultures. This is why in Genesis 1:16, he says that “God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night,” but he does not name them as the sun and the moon.
The reason is that the words for “sun” and “moon” were also the names of the sun god and the moon god, and he doesn’t want the reader thinking that the high God made the sun god and the moon god. The message is, “They’re just lights! Don’t worship them!”
For those familiar with the ancient Near Eastern background that the author of Genesis is undermining, the background to Genesis 6 is clear. In Mesopotamian literature, there was a group of demigods known as the Apkallu. They were wise and taught mankind the skills that made Mesopotamian civilization great.
The Apkallu also mated with human women before the Great Flood and fathered divine-human hybrid children who were Mesopotamian king-heroes.
The Flood itself comes about differently in Mesopotamian mythology. There, the Flood happened because the human race multiplied so much that it was making too much noise at night and keeping the gods awake, so they sent the Flood to get rid of the problem.
It thus appears that the author of Genesis is rebutting these Mesopotamian ideas in his introduction to the Flood narrative.
Instead of the Apkallu being the good guys who made Mesopotamia great, the sons of God were fallen angels who abandoned heaven and improperly mated with human women. And the skills they taught corrupted mankind and brought on the Flood, which wasn’t a petulant act of the gods because mankind was making too much noise; it was sent because of man’s wickedness.
It thus looks as though we have evidence for the angelic interpretation of Genesis 6 both before Genesis was written (with the Mesopotamian Apkallu) and after it was written (in the Jewish literature from around the time of Christ).
This provides significant support for the angelic interpretation, but is there any way we can confirm it? That’s what we’ll discuss in my next post.
Posts in series: <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/are-the-nephilim-biblical-aliens">one</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/7-mysteries-about-the-nephilim">two</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-angels-mate-with-human-women">three</a>

Rebellious Angels and the Great Flood

Some Protestants criticize the doctrine of purgatory by saying it’s “bad news” in contrast to the “good news” of salvation revealed in the Bible. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory is indeed good news, even providing consolation for believers. It does so in a variety of ways. 
For one thing, purgatory consoles believers who struggle with sin. We’re all too familiar with our own weaknesses. Perhaps it’s binging of Netflix, texting when someone is trying to have a conversation with you, a brief indulgence of an uncharitable thought, a failure to promptly meet the needs of your spouse or friend when able. The list goes on and on.  
It would be pretty darn hard to go through a day without falling short of Christian perfection in some way, at least for us ordinary folks. Such a task would be heroic. Heroes are rare!  
Now think about the fact that death can surprise us at any moment. Jesus says, “The Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matt. 24:44). Elsewhere, he says, “Remember then what you received and heard; keep that, and repent. If you will not awake, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you” (Rev. 3:3). 
If death can come upon us so quickly, and we’re as spiritually ill adjusted as we are, it would seem there’s no hope for us entering into the glory of heaven. We might not die with our wills turned fully away from God as our life’s goal, but the guilt of venial sin and the effects of sin would impede us from entering such glory. Despair of final salvation would be inevitable—that is, if purgatory weren’t real.  
Purgatory remedies that despair and infuses joy within the soul. It allows believers who love Jesus but continue to struggle with sin in their lives to know that their shortcomings against Christian perfection are not enough to guarantee keeping them from the glory of heaven. What’s so bad about that?
Purgatory also consoles us in that it manifests God’s love for us. God loves us so much that he does everything he can to make it possible for us to be united with him, including providing us a postmortem opportunity to be freed from venial sin and any remnants of sin that impede us from entrance into heaven.  
Isn’t God’s love for us part of the gospel’s “good news”? Sure, it is! Purgatory is a doctrine that manifests such love to us. And all this applies to those we love as well. So purgatory consoles us not just with regard to our own entrance into heaven, but also with regard to our loved ones.  
Purgatory gives us the assurance that even though our loved ones die without the perfect holiness required for heaven, we know they’re not forever excluded from there. The late Marian scholar Fr. Martin Jugie puts it beautifully:  
<blockquote>They who mournfully follow the coffin, are consoled with thoughts of the mercy of God; of the expiation of venial sin and the cleansing of the wounds, left by mortal sin, after death; of extenuating circumstances which may have rendered certain sins venial for the dear deceased one. The anguished heart, torn with dread about the fate of the loved one, clings to this last hope, and there finds solace and some peace.</blockquote>
That’s good news!  
Next, the doctrine of purgatory provides consolation for a believer because it offers hope that our loved ones who die with imperfection aren’t forever excluded from heaven. But a believer might still be disheartened by the thought that if his loved one isn’t in heaven yet, then he can’t have a relationship with that person in the present moment. He would have to wait.  
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The doctrine of purgatory entails that we can assist our loved ones in purgatory by offering the Mass, prayers, indulgences, almsgiving, and other works of love for them. This is based on the Christian belief in the communion of saints, which includes the souls in purgatory.  
The holy souls are still members of the mystical body of Christ. Death did not separate them from us. As St. Paul writes, “who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall . . . [the] sword? . . . I am sure that neither death . . . nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:35, 38-39).   
From this it follows that we are not separated from our loved ones who might be in purgatory. We are still united to them by grace. Consequently, our relationship with them can continue. We don’t have to wait until they get to heaven. That provides a believer great consolation. That’s definitely not bad news.  
Some Protestants say we’re blurring the real distinction between the visible (Christians on earth) and invisible (Christians in purgatory) dimensions of the one body of Christ. Just because there’s one body, so it’s argued, it doesn’t follow that our relationship with each dimension is the same.  
It’s true that our relationship with our loved ones in purgatory is not the same as our relationship with them here on earth. But the relationship we have with them by grace is the same. In fact, it’s even better because they’re confirmed in grace without the possibility of falling from it. From this it follows that the relationship with them is secure, on condition that we stay in grace.  
This relationship we have with them by grace is what allows us to continue expressing love toward them, even though it’s not the same kind of expressions of love as when they were on earth. We can’t hear or see them when we talk to them. We can’t give them a hug. But we can pray for them and will what’s good for them—namely, the removal of any impediments to entrance into heaven.  
The relationship might not be the same. But it is a relationship nevertheless! 
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One rationale for this is that the souls in purgatory are perfected in charity. Since charity involves not only love of God, but also love of neighbor, and love of neighbor is expressed in intercessory prayer, it seems reasonable to conclude that the souls in purgatory would express their love by interceding for us.  
That our loved ones in purgatory are praying for us is a consoling thought. Their prayer for us, and our private request for their prayers, is one way by which we keep a relationship with them.  
It’s good news to know we have friends who can’t waver in charity and are constantly praying for us. For St. James says, “The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (James 5:16).   
The consolation we can provide the holy souls in purgatory in turn brings us consolation. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that love is “to wish good to someone,” “just as he wills good to himself.”
It follows from this definition of love that the good the souls in purgatory experience by having their impediments to heaven removed is experienced as our own good. That means that their consolation is our consolation; their source of joy is our source of joy. As the late Frank Sheed writes, “there is a special joy for the Catholic in praying for his dead, if only the feeling that there is still something he can do for people he loved upon earth.”

Keeping Up with Loved Ones in Purgatory

St. Martin’s Academy in Kansas is meant to be a place for the whole person: body, mind and soul. It&#8217;s founders, Daniel Kerr and Patrick Whalen explain their vision for a boys boarding school offering farm-work, study and prayer. Can such a school be a place for God to cultivate saints?

A School for Wholeness

Is it possible to reconcile Young-Earth Creationism with findings of science that appear to say the earth is much older?

During the apostolic age, was a mustard seed considered a weed or a harvestable crop?

Did Jesus have an elemental soul like humans do?

I’m having a lot of problems with two dioceses. They’re restricting my ministry and not telling me what’s wrong. What’s the next level I can go to to try and sort this out?

How do the Catholic observances of holidays and seasons and feasts reconcile with Mathetes’ Epistle to Diogenetus, which seems to say that holidays and seasons are not Christian?

With all the suffering in the world today, has anyone proposed that purgatory might be this world?

Is it okay for Catholics to use supplements for your mood like adaptogens?

What are some good sources I can read concerning typology of St. Peter in the Old Testament?

In recent days, my diocese has been all over Catholic headlines. This is due to the bishop of Charlotte, Bishop Michael Martin, drafting numerous documents that <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/264333/diocese-of-charlotte-will-restrict-latin-mass-in-line-with-pope-francis-directive">restricted</a> the traditional Latin mass (TLM), updated liturgical expectations for the <a href="https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2025/05/rorate-%20exclusive-anti-traditional-and.html">New Mass</a>, and then <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/charlotte-bishop-delays-traditional-latin-mass-restrictions-after-backlash">postponed</a> the restrictions on the TLM. All this to say, it has been quite chaotic to be a member of the Charlotte Diocese these past two weeks.
As someone who joined the Catholic Church later in life, I think I have fresh eyes with which to view the Church. Having transitioned from the Archdiocese of Chicago to the Diocese of Charlotte, I have witnessed and experienced the “cultural tug-of-war” within the Church and among its members that Martin references in his draft letter on the liturgy. As a result, I have tried my best to avoid living in ideological extremes.
Martin, in his leaked drafted letter, acknowledged the vast division of liturgical expression within the Church and especially within our diocese. To attempt to solve this issue, he created some liturgical norms and expectations for parishes in the diocese that troubled a lot of people (me included).
Although it is easy to jump to conclusions and concern, it is important to keep in mind that the letter was only a draft, and Martin seems open and willing to change, considering his recent reversal of the restriction of the TLM. Additionally, my experience with many priests in the diocese has been immensely positive, and I am hopeful that the bishop will listen especially to the concerns of the presbyterate, who empathize with many people’s reactions to this letter.
The liturgical division that Martin addresses is something I find troubling at times, too. Within our diocese, you can walk into a parish that is booming with conversation right before Mass, with modern instruments and music in the liturgy—and then walk into a parish that is silent before Mass, with an organ and Latin hymns. It is strange that someone may have vastly different experiences with the Catholic Mass depending on the parish he chooses that morning.
As someone who previously was a non-denominational Christian, I can understand the appeal of a parish similar in temperament to other Christian churches. That’s what I would have wanted If someone had invited me to Mass while I was not Catholic. Therefore, I can understand the openness to a liturgical style that embraces outsiders more easily and makes the Mass more accessible to them. With that being said, it is also important that this parish obeys what Vatican II envisioned for the liturgy (which means, among other things, sacred silence at times, preference for Latin in the prayers, and no guitars or drums).
On the flip side, as a convert from non-denominationalism, one of my biggest draws to the Catholic Church was its reverent liturgy. I struggled for so long with the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-protestant-worship-isnt-worship">normalized worship</a> in the non-denominational Protestant world, since it was so drastically different from the liturgy and worship God commands in the Old Testament. I desired something sacred—something set apart from my day-to-day experiences as a SoCal teenage girl. Entering a church with coffee in my hand to sing some songs and listen to a sermon was not an elevated, set-apart experience for me.
When I discovered the Catholic liturgy and all its biblical and historical roots, I realized just how much I was missing in the non-denominational world—and just how much I desired to worship God through the sacrifice of the Mass. My love and yearning for beautiful priestly vestments, churches, language, and music increased drastically as I was brought into the Church. All I wanted was to worship God in accordance with the scriptures and the councils of the Church, which so beautifully laid the groundwork.
One of my favorite quotes is from St. Augustine, who refers to God as “beauty ever ancient and ever new.” The more I sought Our Lord, especially in the Eucharist, the greater my desire was to encounter beauty, most especially in the Holy Mass. My experience was not unique. The more I encountered converts from the Protestant world, especially in Charlotte, the more I discovered just how much other young people share this sentiment.
This makes sense, considering what our generation has experienced and struggled with, especially in the West. With ever-declining churchgoer rates, and with ever-increasing nihilism and technological advancements, we are facing something that no previous generation had to deal with: a deep void and an epidemic of purposelessness. If we can have anything at our fingertips, at any time we want, what is the need for religion or God? If many of our friends and families do not attend church or practice any faith, why should we?
When you are a young person taking your faith seriously, you are often an outsider in the West. You feel alone, misunderstood, and even mocked or judged at times. This was my experience beginning at fourteen years old, and this is the experience of many young converts.
As a result, when we step into church, we desire two things: community and sacredness. We want a reminder that we are not alone, but are surrounded by people on the same mission as us: to become saints. We also desire to be immersed in a place that reminds us that this world is not our home, but raises our hearts and minds to our heavenly home. This is what gives us the strength and hope to persevere in a world that can be so cruel at times toward Christians.
Since the liturgy “is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed” and “the font from which all her power flows,” it is important to get the liturgy right (Sacrosanctum Concilium 10). I sympathize with Bishop Martin’s desire for unity in the liturgy and the Church, in our country and our world—but I am hesitant to prescribe uniformity as the means to get there. The greatest mysteries of our faith make us question how God can be both three and one, and how both humanity and divinity can coexist in the same person. In God, we find the ultimate reconciliation of two seemingly opposing concepts. If this is the case, I have faith that there is a way for God to reconcile our diocese, with all its different preferences and expressions.

Liturgy Wars to a Young Woman

Assemblies of God Pastor Josh Mangels came into the Catholic Church this Easter with his family and members of his congregation. It all began with a desire to live as the first Christians lived.

Pastor and Flock Become Catholic

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DAY 93
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CHALLENGE
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“Jesus displayed gratuitous malice when he cursed a fig tree for not having fruit when it wasn’t even the season for figs.”
DEFENSE
Jesus didn’t display gratuitous malice. He was teaching a lesson.
“Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, [Jesus] went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs” (Mark 11:13).
The fig tree was known to produce fruit before putting forth leaves (Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 16:49). Seeing a fig tree in leaf, Jesus had reason to suppose it had put forth figs earlier than usual. By its leaves, the tree made an outward show indicating fruit, but there was none. Jesus therefore used it to teach a lesson.
On other occasions, Jesus criticized Jewish leaders of making a false, outward show of spirituality (Matt. 23:5–7, 25–28). He also used fruit to symbolize the results of true spirituality (Matt. 7:16–20, 12:33, 13:23, etc.). In particular, he indicted the chief priests and Pharisees for failing to produce spiritual fruit, saying: “I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it” (Matt. 21:43).
By cursing the fig tree and causing it to wither, Jesus symbolized the fate of spiritual hypocrites and the judgment coming upon the Jewish leadership.
This is confirmed in Mark’s account. Scholars have noted that Mark often sequences material so that two halves of a story are interrupted by something important that sheds light on them. Places where Mark sandwiches material this way are known as “Markan sandwiches.”
The cursing of the fig tree is such a case: Jesus first curses the fig tree (Mark 11:12–14), then he clears the temple of those abusing its holiness (11:15–19), and then the disciples return and see the fig tree withered (11:20–21). The Jewish authorities, despite their outward religiosity, had allowed the temple to be corrupted, and juxtaposing Jesus’ judgment on the temple with the cursing of the fig tree reveals the message that the latter teaches. It also foretells the doom of the Jewish authorities and the temple itself (Mark 12:1–12, 13:1–2).
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Cursing the Fig Tree

One of the reasons people object to Christian morality is that it seems so negative: just a bunch of things you’re not allowed to do. It’s easy to see why this perception exists.
Take the Ten Commandments, for instance. Instead of a positive commandment like “love God,” God says, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod. 20:3). And then, with the exception of “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” and “honor your father and your mother,” what follows is a long list of what not to do: “you shall not make for yourself a graven image,” “you shall not bow down to [idols] or serve them,” “you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,”  “you shall not kill,” “you shall not commit adultery,” “you shall not steal,” “you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” and “you shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s” (vv. 4-17). In fact, even one of the two positive commandments, the one about keeping the Sabbath holy, goes on to say that “you shall not do any work” on the Sabbath (v. 10). This is true of the Law of Moses as a whole, and it’s also true of a lot of Christian morality today: there are a lot of things that we’re explicitly told not to do.
But when Jesus is asked, he sums up the entire Law (including the Ten Commandments) as two positive commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets” (Matt. 22:37-40). So why not just leave it at that?
The best answer is that the negative commandments are a necessary starting place, but not an ending place, for living morally. Here, it’s worth recognizing a fascinating feature of morality: that prohibitions are absolute, but positive commandments aren’t. This is true even of natural law (that is, those parts of the moral law knowable to everyone by reason alone), as Pope John Paul II points out in his encyclical <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html">Veritatis Splendor</a>:
<blockquote>The negative precepts of the natural law are universally valid. They oblige each and every individual, always and in every circumstance. It is a matter of prohibitions which forbid a given action semper et pro semper [always and in each instance], without exception, because the choice of this kind of behavior is in no case compatible with the goodness of the will of the acting person, with his vocation to life with God and to communion with his neighbor. It is prohibited—to everyone and in every case—to violate these precepts. They oblige everyone, regardless of the cost, never to offend in anyone, beginning with oneself, the personal dignity common to all.</blockquote>
For instance, one of the positive commandments we’re called to is the feeding of the hungry (see Matt. 25:35, 40). But if someone asks you for money to buy food, you’re not always required to give it to him—but you are always forbidden from mugging or murdering him. The negative commandments are thus a helpful starting place. But they’re not enough on their own. You can go through life not mugging the hungry, and still be told at the Last Judgment, “depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food” (v. 41-42).
So why is it that sinful actions are always forbidden, but specific virtuous actions are never required? John Paul II offers three reasons. The first is that “the commandment of love of God and neighbor does not have in its dynamic any higher limit, but it does have a lower limit, beneath which the commandment is broken.” In other words, the negative parts of the moral law create a “floor”—don’t go beneath this point. But the positive parts of the moral law don’t create a “ceiling”: go as high as charity calls you! A second reason is pragmatic: “what must be done in any given situation depends on the circumstances, not all of which can be foreseen.” You can’t feed everyone on earth. Whom, and how many, you feed depends on the particulars of your life, and there’s no way to create a one-size-fits-all rule. Finally, John Paul points out that “coercion or other circumstances” may render a positive action impossible—e.g., you can’t feed the hungry because you’re imprisoned. But circumstances never permit you to do evil.
The negative commandments thus serve the positive commandments by creating some parameters for moral creativity. G.K. Chesterton famously gave the example of <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Orthodoxy/C2yeO2v8HqsC?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;bsq=%22We%20might%20fancy%20some%20children%20playing%20on%20the%20flat%20grassy%20top%20of%20some%20tall%20island%20in%20the%20sea.%22%20">children on an island</a>:
<blockquote>We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff’s edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.</blockquote>
A society that abandons rules of conduct creates terrible confusion, not joyous freedom. Conversely, once we know what not to do, the possibilities of what to do are endless.
But precisely because the possibilities are endless, Christians may reasonably disagree about the best ways of living out the positive commandments. This is true both at the individual level and at the societal level. For instance, “concern for the health of its citizens requires that society help in the attainment of living-conditions that allow them to grow and reach maturity: food and clothing, housing, health care, basic education, employment, and social assistance” (CCC 2288). But there’s more than one way that a society can ensure that health care is affordable, or that education is available to all, or that social assistance is offered to those in need. Those goals ought to be shared by all Catholics, but we need not agree on the best means of getting to those goals.
In contrast, it’s much easier to say what a Catholic can’t support. <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html">For instance</a>, “laws which legitimize the direct killing of innocent human beings through abortion or euthanasia are in complete opposition to the inviolable right to life proper to every individual; they thus deny the equality of everyone before the law.” Indeed, this is one reason for the <a href="https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/01/2380/">lazy slander</a> that pro-lifers are pro-birth and not pro-life: it’s much easier to identify the kind of legislation that all pro-lifers reject than the kind of legislation that all pro-lifers would support. That’s the inherent nature of the difference between positive and negative commandments.
As Catholics, it’s important that we keep this distinction in mind for two reasons. First, to avoid falling into that lazy slander ourselves: of saying that our neighbors aren’t “really” Catholic or aren’t “really” pro-life if they don’t support the particular social programs we happen to favor. Second, because we can never be satisfied with the floor of the negative commandments.
The thou shalt nots of the Ten Commandments give us a floor. Christ’s two great commandments of loving God and loving neighbor give us no ceiling, but call us to move continuously onward and upward.