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Where can I learn more about St. Stephen, the proto-martyr?

How does devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart not take away from Jesus?

Does John 6:37 contradict the Catholic view of Salvation?

Why are Catholics allowed to marry non-Catholics including non-Christians with a dispensation?

How can others outside the Catholic faith be saved if they have never had the chance to hear about Christ?

A Protestant friend says the Bible dictates that Eucharist was a full meal, and not just a bit of bread and wine, so how does the Catholic Church respond to this?

<p>This episode tackles common Protestant objections, including John 6, the nature of the Eucharistic meal, and how non-Catholics can be saved.</p>

Is the Eucharist a Full Meal? the Eucharist, Marriage, and Biblical Salvation Explained

<p>In this episode Trent breaks down his conversation with Tim about feminism and highlights agreements and differences that weren’t discussed enough in their conversation.</p>

The Feminism Dialogue Debrief

I heard the words “Be aware” just prior to witnessing an attempted kidnapping; how should I interpret this?

Is there significance in everything?

In Gen 24, Abraham asks his servant to place his hand under his thigh when making a promise. Why is placing the hand under his thigh considered important to the oath?

How would you respond to the claim of the deuterocanonical books (second canon) not being canon?

What does the Pope mean by “All religions are paths to God”?

Is Rabbonic Judaism a response to Christianity? What are we to think of this religion as Catholics?

I grew up in a Protestant Church, fell away, and am now warming up to Catholicism; how do I approach my parents who are Anti-Catholic?

Is forgiveness more of an internal process or an external process?

<p>Jimmy Akin tackles deep Catholic questions on mysterious warnings, biblical oaths, the deuterocanonical books, forgiveness, interfaith views, and navigating faith with anti-Catholic family—offering thoughtful and theologically sound insights.</p>

Are All Religions Paths to God? And More Questions

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals the famous &#8220;last meals&#8221; of death row inmates.</p>

FFAF- My Favorite “Last Meals”

<p>Catholics will often take for granted the answer to this question: did Christ abolish the law or not? The Catechism of the Council of Trent, in its section entitled “The Third Commandment,” answers just how it is that Christ abrogated the Law of Moses in the context of explaining why Christians no longer observe <em>the Sabbath.</em></p>
<blockquote><p>The other commandments of the Decalogue [other than <em>the day </em>on which the faithful are to worship] are precepts of the natural law, obligatory at all times and unalterable. Hence, after the abrogation of the Law of Moses, all the commandments contained in the two tables are observed by Christians, not indeed because their observance is commanded by Moses, but because they are in conformity with nature which dictates obedience to them.</p></blockquote>
<p>That’s all well and good. But it doesn’t answer the question often posed by skeptics:</p>
<p>Jesus seems clear in Matthew 5:17 that <em>he did not abolish the law</em> when he said, “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.” And yet, what do we find in Ephesians 2:14-15? “For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, <em>by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances</em>” (cf. Rom. 7:1-4, Heb. 10:9-16).</p>
<p>Looks to me like a contradiction in Scripture!</p>
<p><strong>But in fact, there is no contradiction.</strong> Jesus speaks of “fulfilling the Law” in Matthew 5 in the context of the Sermon on the Mount, where he is acting as the new Moses, teaching <em>the new Law</em>, which was a central part of Jesus’ earthly mission (see 1 Cor. 9:21, Gal. 6:2, Heb. 7:11-12). Jesus makes very clear that the old law <em>was going to be abolished</em>, or “pass away.” The question was, when?</p>
<blockquote><p>Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfil them.<sup> </sup>For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.</p></blockquote>
<p>Two things are abundantly clear. First, the Greek word for “<em>pass </em>(<em>parelthei</em>) from the law” means to “disappear,” “go away,” or “pass away.” So Jesus’ intention was for the law to be abolished, eventually, or for it to “pass away.” Second, the “when” of the abolishment would only fully come to pass when the law was <em>fulfilled</em>.</p>
<p><strong>The first way through which the old law was abrogated</strong> came through Christ teaching a new Law that <em>perfected </em>and thus <em>fulfilled </em>the old. But that would mean that the <em>fulfilling</em> of the old and the establishment of the new <em>law of Christ</em> would be accomplished over time. Christ would teach aspects of the new law all the way up until he would ascend into heaven (see Matt. 28:16-20).</p>
<p>The second way Christ “fulfilled” the Law was <em>by living it</em> . . . perfectly! But even there, at times, we see Jesus giving definitive interpretations of what the Law truly means in the process of his living the Law. Such was the case in Mark 7:1-23, when Jesus encountered “the Pharisees . . . and some of the Scribes,” who were angered by Jesus and the apostles failing to wash their hands (Greek, <em>baptizontai</em>, or “baptize” their hands of ritual impurity). Was Jesus failing to live the Law here? By no means! Notice that when Jesus responds, he not only answers “the Pharisees and some of the Scribes” as regards the truth of the Law concerning “the washing of hands,” but also dispels their underlying error of failing to understand what defiles a man in general. He gave the Pharisees, the Scribes, the apostles, and all of us the definitive teaching of “the Law” concerning what is perhaps the most important truth of the moral life:</p>
<blockquote><p>Do you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him, since it enters, not his heart but his stomach, and so passes on?” (Thus, he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a man is what defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a man” (Mark 7:18-23, see also CCC 582).</p></blockquote>
<p>Here is the key to understanding: whether we are speaking of Christ’s teaching or living the law, all would not come to complete fulfillment until <em>at least</em> his death on the cross. Hebrews 9:15-17 clarifies:</p>
<blockquote><p>Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. For where a will (or “testament”) is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.<sup> </sup>For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.</p></blockquote>
<p><strong>One could argue that Christ continued to give us his new law</strong> <em>in toto</em> until his ascension. As far as the Sermon on the Mount goes, Jesus was clearly speaking there during the transition. He was <em>still alive</em> when he preached it. But the inspired epistles are coming at this decades later, when the New Covenant Church had been teaching for decades the <em>abolishing</em> of the Old Law in its proper context. Why? Because <em>all had been fulfilled. </em>The teaching of Christ was essential to the creation of the New Covenant, but for it to fully “take effect,” as Hebrews 9:17 says, “the death of the one who made it must be established” (v. 16).</p>
<p>“But what about CCC 2053?” says the skeptic. Here, the <em>Catholic Church </em>teaches,</p>
<blockquote><p>Following Jesus Christ involves keeping the commandments. The Law has not been abolished, but rather man is invited to rediscover it in the person of his Master who is its perfect fulfillment.</p></blockquote>
<p>How do we respond as Catholics?</p>
<p>The <em>Catechism</em> is saying the same thing the Church&#8217;s Lord and Master said. The Law has not been “abolished,” but Christ in his “person” is its “fulfillment.” But notice, the <em>Catechism</em> says Christ “fulfills” the law in a way that we are called to “rediscover” the commandments of the Old Law in the person (and teaching) of Christ. That is another crucial point. The old law was not abolished in the sense of <em>correcting errors</em>. There were no errors to correct. It was abolished in the sense of being <em>fulfilled</em> and <em>superseded</em>. Enter the <em>new commandments</em> or new <em>law of Christ</em>, some of which we see expressed immediately after Matthew 5:17, in verses 21 through 45, where <em>five times</em> Jesus refers to different aspects of the Old Testament in terms of “you have heard it said . . . but I say.” For the sake of brevity, we’ll consider just his first example:</p>
<blockquote><p>You have heard that it was said to the men of old, “You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment” [referring to Exod. 20:13, Deut. 30:15ff]. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment (Matt. 5:21-22).</p></blockquote>
<p>This powerful teaching would lead St. John to famously declare, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15). Here we see an example of how Christ does not destroy the law for the sake of its destruction; rather, he builds upon the good while replacing it with the better.</p>
<p>Thus, the Sermon on the Mount cannot be understood apart from its context of Christ giving us the new law that would both fulfill and supersede (or abolish) the Old Law. Jesus was emphasizing the <em>fulfillment</em> part of the equation because he was in the process of fulfilling it. He does not want to be seen as introducing lawlessness. If he were to say just, “I am abolishing the law,” that would have been reckless as well as incorrect. The Law and the prophets had not been completely “fulfilled” by that time. As the master teacher, Jesus emphasized the fulfillment of the law until such time that it would finally and fully be accomplished on the cross. Then, through his spirit (see Heb. 10:9-16), he would reveal that “all [things are] accomplished” and the Old Law has <em>passed away</em>.</p>

Did Jesus Abolish the Law of Moses or Not?

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals how some of the modern things we use every day are actually hundreds or even thousands of years old.</p>

5 Inventions That are Way Older Than You Think

I’m an Eastern Rite Catholic. Every year in Holy Week we receive the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. My Roman Rite friends have said if you can only receive it if you are seriously ill. They’ve also said it can wipe away mortal sin. But that is...

How can there never be instances where lying is okay?

I’m having trouble with the doctrine of eternal conscious torment.

Why do we have to accept the teaching of the magisterium even when it’s not infallible?

what do you think of equivocation?

<p>&#8220;How do we respond to sola scriptura?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the challenges of infallible testimony in the context of biblical canon, particularly in light of Protestant perspectives. Other topics include the sacrament of anointing of the sick in Eastern and Roman Rite practices, the morality of lying, and the doctrine of eternal conscious torment.</p>
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How Do We Respond to Sola Scriptura? Magisterium and Truth

Fixing William Lane Craig’s Biggest Mistake

<p>In this adorable free-for-all-Friday Trent shares the results of scientific experiments that show us how babies understand the world and the best ways for us to communicate with them.</p>

How to Talk to Babies

<p>To lure parents who want their kids to be competitive in a high-tech society, some Catholic schools promote themselves vigorously as providing a top-notch STEM education. But just how compatible is the STEM mentality with Catholic ideas about formation and education? Dr. William Fahey, President of New Hampshire&#8217;s Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, joins us to explain why the Catholic educational tradition is better for students than STEM training.</p>
<p><em>NOTE FROM HOST: Dr. Fahey and I both used the word “Medicine” instead of “Math” as the last word in the STEM acronym. This use is uncommon, and I should have been clear in the interview that STEM is almost always taken to mean “Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.” The acronym STEMM is sometimes used by those who want to include medicine. “STEMM” is also the name of a heavy metal band from New York.</em></p>

The Unchristian Roots of STEM Education

How do which parts of Esther are original Hebrew if we don’t have all the original Hebrew texts?

Why did God pick St. Michael the Archangel to defeat Satan?

From the Churches mentioned in the Bible, are any still remaining?

Is the battle 2 Maccabees 10:29-38 (5 magical men leading the Jews) to be taken literally?

How do you explain sanctification and justification in light of the book of James?

What are the differences between the Catholic and Greek Orthodox canons of scripture?

In the Bible, you hear of apparitions of Jesus or Mary. Have there been apparitions of other people from the Bible?

If someone who received the gospel of Jesus and believed, should the Church immediately baptize him since we have a similar example in the Ethiopian eunuch?

Why do we say “the Hebrew texts” when Hebrew is a more modern language?

<p>Jimmy Akin answers key Catholic questions on biblical texts, St. Michael’s role, surviving biblical churches, the Ethiopian eunuch’s baptism, differences in Catholic and Orthodox canons, and biblical apparitions beyond Jesus and Mary.&#8221;</p>

Should the Church Baptize Immediately? And More Bible Questions

<p>In this free-for-all-Friday Trent shares an excerpt from his discussion with the channel &#8220;Catholic Christian&#8221; about how some Catholic Youtube channels lack fruits of the spirit online.</p>

FFAF: The Dark Side of Catholic Youtube

<p>In this episode Trent sits down with author Leila Miller to discuss the many ways divorce parallels the evil of abortion, including in the ways some faithful Catholics try to justify it.</p>

Uncanny Similarities Between Abortion and Divorce

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There’s a lot of misinformation surrounding the Adriana Smith abortion case.

<p><strong>Episode 131: 6th Sunday of Easter | Year C</strong></p>
<p>In today’s episode, we focus on two details in the first reading and one detail in the Gospel reading that are relevant for doing apologetics. The details in the first reading, which is taken from Acts 15:1-2, 22-29, relate to the topic of the magisterium and the role it has in relation to theological and disciplinary issues in the Church. The second detail, found in the Gospel reading, which is taken from John 14:23-29, relates to both Jesus’ divinity and humanity.</p>
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<p>Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051825.cfm">Click Here</a></p>
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<p>Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a></p>
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Did the Early Church Have a Magisterium? Plus Jesus’ Divinity & Humanity

Jerome made a comment on Titus 1:7 that the presbyters were basically the same as bishops, then there was a development that made the distinction between them, and also the papacy. How would you respond to that?

Why do we have to learn God’s love language but he doesn’t have to learn ours? It seems like it’s a one-way relationship.

I’ve been inquiring about Catholicism for a long time, and I agree with a lot of Catholic points. But I worry about a lot of liturgical abuse happening in the Church and that the Vatican doesn’t do anything about it. Any thoughts?

If you are in friendship with God, but then commit a mortal sin and get hit by a train on the way to confession, do you go to Hell because you didn’t confess? Also, I have been told that Catholics are not required to confess to a priest, they can confe...

Questions from Non-Catholics

<div>At Mass every Sunday in my parish, able-bodied lectors and Extraordinary Minsters of Holy Communion (EMHCs) do not kneel at the consecration. Is this allowed? And one priest keeps saying, at the consecration, “which will be poured out for you and FOR ALL.” Is this permitted as well?</div><div><p>Let’s consider your second question first because, while both are errors, the second is the more serious matter. No priest or even a bishop can change the translation of the holy sacrifice of the Mass from “for many” to “for all.” Only the Apostolic See, with the confirmation of the pope, can do that. Canon 846 of the<em> Code of Canon Law</em> states, “The liturgical books approved by the competent authority are to be faithfully observed in the celebration of the sacraments; therefore no one on personal authority may add, remove or change anything in them.&#8221;</p>
<p>It is true that “for all” was once permitted in the vernacular Mass translations of the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, but this was officially changed as a part of the process of the Church’s offering a more faithful translation of the liturgy—more faithful, that is, to the official Latin text of the <em>Missale Romanum</em> promulgated by Pope St. Paul VI and later revised by Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI.</p>
<p>In answer to your first question, the <em>General Instruction of the Roman Missal</em> (GIRM) 43 clearly provides, “In the dioceses of the United States of America, they [the faithful] should kneel beginning after the singing or recitation of the <em>Sanctus</em> [Holy, Holy, Holy] until after the Amen of the Eucharistic Prayer, except when prevented on occasion by reasons of health, lack of space, the large number of people present, or some other good reason. Those who do not kneel ought to make a profound bow when the priest genuflects after the consecration.”</p>
<p>Notice that, in normal circumstances, the priest alone is presumed to be standing (he has to be in order to genuflect). Of course he is, because everyone else was standing for the prayers of the faithful until the end of the <em>Sanctus</em>. The priest (or priests) alone are to be standing at this point; all other members of the faithful are to be kneeling. There are no exceptions for lectors and EMHCs unless, as noted, there is some extraordinary circumstance(s). Even deacons are to kneel (GIRM 179).</p>
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Should Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion kneel at the consecration?

<p>Join The <em>CA Live Club</em> Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a></p>
<p>Why did Jesus have to suffer and die on the cross? On this Good Friday episode of <em data-start="335" data-end="358">Catholic Answers Live</em>, Cy Kellett speaks with Joe Heschmeyer, author of <em data-start="409" data-end="451">The Early Church Was the Catholic Church</em>, to unpack the meaning behind Christ’s crucifixion.</p>
<p class="" data-start="505" data-end="732">Joe explains how the cross is not divine punishment but the ultimate act of love—God offering Himself for our salvation. Drawing from Scripture, the Church Fathers, and the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, this episode explores:</p>
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<p class="" data-start="736" data-end="772">Why there’s no Mass on Good Friday</p>
</li>
<li class="" data-start="773" data-end="810">
<p class="" data-start="775" data-end="810">The meaning of Christ’s sacrifice</p>
</li>
<li class="" data-start="811" data-end="860">
<p class="" data-start="813" data-end="860">How the cross heals our relationship with God</p>
</li>
<li class="" data-start="861" data-end="915">
<p class="" data-start="863" data-end="915">The spiritual power of praying before the crucifix</p>
</li>
<li class="" data-start="916" data-end="979">
<p class="" data-start="918" data-end="979">Why Good Friday is both history’s darkest and brightest day</p>
</li>
</ul>

Why Did Jesus Die on the Cross? The Love and Logic of Good Friday

<p>As Christian Europe tore at her own throat during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), the Ottoman Turks missed a golden opportunity to strike their centuries-old enemy.  Why?  They were themselves absorbed with war in Persia.  Moreover, they were beset by a turbulent period of harem intrigue and governed—or not—by a string of ineffectual and self-indulgent sultans, one of whom was deposed and two of whom were murdered.  The last of these was Ibrahim I. He was deposed <em>and</em> murdered.</p>
<p>Known as “the Debauched,” Ibrahim was famous for his vigorous and unusual harem enthusiasms, although at one point he had the whole lot of them drowned in the Bosporus—280 ladies in all—when he discovered that he was not the only man enjoying their affections. A liaison one night, however, with a Russian concubine produced the son that would reverse Ottoman fortunes.</p>
<p><strong>Mehmed IV was what we would call today an “outdoorsman.”</strong> He preferred hunting to war, but unlike his recent predecessors, he made decisions and stuck by them. Indeed, history remembers Mehmed for two decisions in particular. The first was to give control of the empire to the Koprulu family, which produced a series of grand viziers who restored internal order to the empire, recaptured many of the Aegean Islands from Venice, and extended the boundaries of the empire northward through battlefield victories in Transylvania and Poland.</p>
<p>Best known and last of these grand viziers was Kara Mustafa Pasha. Kara Mustafa Pasha was the source of Mehmed’s other famous decision: in the summer of 1682, the grand vizier persuaded his sultan to violate the Peace of Vasvár and lay siege to Vienna.</p>
<p>A century and a half had passed since Suleiman the Magnificent had tried and failed to take the fortress city on the Danube. Mehmed was determined not to fail, and more than that, he was convinced, like all sultans before him, that the Ottomans were, as conquerors of Constantinople, the true heirs of the patrimony of the Roman Empire. The Hapsburgs in Vienna were impostors who needed to submit to the rule of Islam.</p>
<p>By the autumn of 1682, the Ottoman army had crossed the Bosporus and proceeded to Adrianople. There the sultan wintered his army, and as they trained for war, he read and reread the abundant accounts of earlier Turkish campaigns into Eastern Europe. Along the road-of-march to Belgrade (in Ottoman hands since 1521), bridges and roads were repaired. A draft or “ban” was proclaimed for auxiliaries throughout the empire, and Arabs, Bosnians, Bulgars, Greeks, Macedonians, and Serbs poured into the White City to await the arrival of Mehmed’s force, led by his 12,000 janissaries. Among the sultan’s army were Protestant soldiers loyal to the Magyar Lutheran Imre Thököly, who looked to the Islamic east to back his dubious claim to the throne of Hungary.</p>
<p>Less detestable than Protestants allying themselves with Islam against Catholic Hapsburg rule, but considerably more savage and fearsome, were the Sultan’s mobile shock-action cavalry: the Tatars. Descendants of the bloody convergence of Sarmatians, Scythians, and Mongols, these natural horsemen were the stuff of nightmare.  Like the African corsairs who raided the coastal fishing villages of Italy in the sixteenth century, the Tatars were the front line of the Ottoman slave trade. Rape, pillage, plunder, and arson composed their <em>modus operandi</em>, tales of which made their way as far as France and England. To the villagers on the Christian Ottoman border in Hungary and Poland, however, the Tatars were no mere story to frighten ill-behaved children. They were a terrifying reality. To the Polish, Lithuanian, and Austrian soldiers who had faced them in battle, they were extraordinary archers capable of a rapid rate of fire and deadly accuracy from their short bows and all from the saddle of a galloping pony.</p>
<p><strong>In March of 1683, as the army left Adrianople amid great fanfare,</strong> a sudden squall blew the sultan’s turban from his head. All his men, from the highest-ranking officer to the lowliest conscript, recognized the bad omen. Superstitions aside, spring storms swelled rivers, and the usual fords required pontoon bridges to cross. At Belgrade, Mehmed handed the Flag of the Prophet (a facsimile, because the original had been captured by the Venetians <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-battle-that-saved-the-christian-west">at Lepanto</a> a century before) to his grand vizier, Kara Mustafa, and with it command of the Ottoman host.</p>
<p>Mehmed remained in Belgrade to hunt and play. The real ruler of the Ottoman Empire pressed north for Buda, sending his siege cannons on barges up the Danube. Buda had endured Turkish occupation since 1541—another conquest of Suleiman the Magnificent. The Church of Our Lady there to this day bears in one alcove the decorations of the building’s days as a mosque. Was it a misguided ecumenical gesture, or is it a reminder of what may come again to a West grown soft and inattentive?</p>
<p>By the second half of June, the Turkish army, now greater than 150,000 strong, had arrived in Buda. There the grand vizier announced to his war council his plan to take Vienna. “It is for thee to command and for us to serve,” answered the governor of Damascus. Following the Danube west, the Turks pressed on for Vienna, raiding and burning along the way.</p>
<p>Leopold I, holy Roman emperor, could no longer deny that Vienna was the Ottoman objective. The man who had guided his country through the Thirty Years War ruled an empire pinched between a France under the Sun King determined to expand eastward and the Ottoman Empire resurgent. The condition called for a less vacillating character than the emperor, who permitted himself to be talked into abandoning Vienna.</p>
<p>Two men of sterner stuff he left behind: Count Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, to command the garrison in Vienna, and Charles Sixte, duke of Lorraine, to command the imperial army in the field. It bears noting that the heroic figure for whom the Siege of Vienna is most remembered, John Sobieski, arrived in the eleventh hour. Both Starhemberg and Lorraine, severely outnumbered, acquitted themselves well throughout the two-month siege, masterfully resisting the Turks and prudently delaying a decisive engagement until the Polish and Saxon reinforcements could muster.</p>
<p><strong>The Turks arrived at the walls of Vienna on the twelfth of July.</strong> On the thirteenth, an emissary from the grand vizier rode to the city’s walls with an invitation to surrender the city and submit to Islamic rule.</p>
<p>Starhemberg declined.</p>
<p>On the fourteenth, the Turks began to bombard the city’s walls. The walls of Vienna had been much improved since the medieval days when they were first constructed, paid for by Richard Lionheart’s ransom. By the seventeenth century, the city’s defenses included all the designs developed in Italy during the Renaissance: mutually supporting bastions and ravelins, scarp and counterscarp, glacis and curtain wall. Tightly packed earth faced with brick and gently sloped both absorbed and deflected the rounds from the Turkish bombards. But the walls were not everywhere strong, and the Turks located on the south side Vienna’s weak spot, between two bastions that fronted the imperial palace.  Toward this point in the wall, they began a process at which they were very good: the steady digging of parallel trenches to close on the city’s defenses, followed by mining—the digging of underground galleries to be packed with explosives to tumble the walls from beneath.</p>
<p>By August, the combination of mining and artillery fire had taken its toll of the city’s outer wall and seriously damaged the palace bastion. Musketball-to-arrow, pike-to-cutlass, and hand-to-hand encounters in the ditch and on the ramparts grew more frequent and more fierce. Viennese counter-miners clashed with Turkish sappers in torchlit underground tunnels. Flamboyant and fearless, Starhemberg, a pistol in each hand, was ever in the thick of these contests, yet he knew that without relief, the fighting would soon be street to street and house to house.</p>
<p>In the plains and woods surrounding Vienna, Charles Sixte, with his small force of 10,000 horse and no infantry (critical for seizing and holding terrain), did his best to limit the depredations of the merciless Tatar raiders. Dozens of villages south of the Danube were put to the torch, their women raped and their men slaughtered.</p>
<p><strong>As grim as events appeared, hope was within sight.</strong> Four days after the start of the Turkish bombardment, John III Sobieski, king of Poland, marshaled his army of nearly 40,000 in Warsaw and began the 435-mile march southwest toward Vienna. A similar force under John George III, elector of Saxony, came southeast from Dresden. A third force came straight east from Munich under Maximilian II Emanuel, elector of Bavaria. They united near Krems, some forty miles upriver from Vienna.</p>
<p>The Holy League, under command of Sobieski, now began its difficult passage through the Wienerwald, known to us as the Vienna Woods, the 30-miles-long and 20-miles-wide expanse of thickly wooded foothills that dominate the terrain southwest of Vienna. Moving the artillery over steep slopes and rugged ground cut with ravines was particularly difficult, but by the eleventh of September, the Christian force had reached the Kahlenberg ridge. Looking down on the plain below, they saw the countless brightly colored tents of the Ottoman host stretching north toward the city walls.</p>
<p>Sobieski also saw that the south slope of the ridge was of the same difficult terrain as the rest of the Wienerwald and was crisscrossed with the high stone walls of vineyards and farms. The descent to the plain below would be as painstaking as the climb, but also under attack from Janissary skirmishers.</p>
<p>Before dawn, Sobieski assisted at Mass in the ruined Church of the Camaldolites, offered by Bl. Marco D’Viano. Gathering his force, he commended their mission and their souls to the care of the Blessed Virgin.</p>
<p>The descent began.</p>
<p><strong>As the sun rose on the morning of September 12, the Ottomans saw,</strong> according to their own account, “a flood of black pitch flowing down the hill, smothering and incinerating everything that lay in its way.”</p>
<p>Taking one ridge at a time, the Christians fought their way down the hill. Little could the commanders do but exhort their forces to press ahead in the confusion. The Saxons on the left of the Holy League line were the first to engage the forward-deployed Ottomans, but by ten, the whole Turkish army was arrayed for counterattack. For several hours, the battle traded advantage, the Holy League ever closing on the city.</p>
<p style="text-align: left">By late afternoon, Sobieski’s army had reached the plain, and he was now positioned to exploit his greatest asset: the famed Winged Hussars. Drawing up these courageous cavalrymen, their feathered plumes streaming off their backs, he led them himself, lances couched in a full-tilt charge at the center of the Ottoman line.  Shouting “<em>Jezus Maria ratuj!</em>”, they charged and reformed, charged and reformed, charged and reformed. The Polish horsemen followed their intrepid king deeper and deeper into the army of Islam, smashing what remained of their resistance, setting the followers of Muhammad to flight, relieving the siege, and carrying the day.</p>
<p>“We came, we saw, God conquered,” Sobieski wrote to Innocent XI.</p>
<p>The Polish king—taking a privilege that ought to have gone to Emperor Leopold—entered the city feted with parade and feast. Writing to his wife, Sobieski described Vienna’s gratitude: “All the common people kissed my hands, my feet, my clothes, saying, ‘Ah, let us kiss so valiant a hand!’”</p>
<p>The event was the last great Ottoman effort. Their borders receded. Within three years, Buda was back in Christian hands.</p>
<p>One year after Sobieski’s victory, Pope Innocent XI—also dearly remembered for his explicit condemnations of usury and of “mental reservation”—extended the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary to the universal calendar of the Roman Rite to honor the great victory that Our Lady granted the Christian West. When it fell out of fashion three centuries later in 1969 to recall the heroics of Christian soldiers against the enemies of Jesus Christ, the feast was removed from the liturgical calendar. In 2002, however, Pope St. John Paul II restored the feast. It is hard not to imagine that the Trade Tower attacks of the preceding year were to the fore of his thoughts when he did, but that we do not know.</p>
<p>We do know that Islam is an age-old enemy of the Christian West, and that the West, the United States included, emptied of Christianity, is also emptied of meaning. Catholics in our time, and this month in particular, have a duty and a privilege to honor Our Lady, and to honor the heroic Polish king and his warriors under the walls of Vienna—at least by not pretending that the Crescent is not again resurgent and intent on trampling the Cross.</p>

Under Mary’s Holy Name: Victory in Vienna

<p><strong>Episode 114: Year C &#8211; 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time</strong></p>
<p>In today’s episode, we focus on six details in the readings for this upcoming 3rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C. The first detail is the whole of the first reading, taken from Nehemiah 8:2-4a, 5-6, and 8-10. It’s not necessarily a detail that comes up in apologetical discussions. But it does serve an apologetical purpose insofar as it gives biblical justification for the Catholic Liturgy of the Word. The next three details come from the second reading, taken from 1 Corinthians 12:12-30. The relevant apologetical topics are the intercession of the saints, the salvific efficacy of baptism, and the Holy Spirit’s distribution of spiritual charisms. The last two details are found in the Gospel reading, taken from Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21, and the apologetical topics there are Luke’s credibility as an historian and Jesus’ Messiahship.</p>
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<p>Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012625.cfm">Click Here</a></p>
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<p>Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a></p>
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Saints, Baptism, and Jesus’ Messiahship | Year C

<p><span class="ui-provider bdj bdk bdl bdm bdn bdo bdp bdq bdr bds bdt bdu bdv bdw bdx bdy bdz bea beb bec bed bee bef beg beh bei bej bek bel bem ben beo bep beq ber" dir="ltr">Protestants sometimes describe the Reformation as a sort of return to the early Church, away from what are claimed to be corrupt Medieval Catholic practices. But is that really true? Let&#8217;s take a closer look at six major controversies in the earliest days of Christianity,/ (including the fights against Docetism, Gnosticism, Novatianism, Donatism, and the persecution of Christians by the Romans). The results might surprise you!</span></p>