Manage Account

What do you think about the supposed references to Jesus in the Talmud?

Please explain how does the process work when a priest earns the title of Monsignor I’d like to understand how that whole process works.

Who is the “destroyer” / angel of death in Exodus? An actual angel?

Do you think the Jewish faith was reinterpreted after Jesus’s death and resurrection 25:10 - Why is the word Holy Ghost said instead of Holy Spirit?

Why are there so many people who say that the Catholic Church is evil? The red shoes are evil. The room that looks like a serpent, at the Vatican. And other claims…?

I was recently challenged on the papal bulls allowing conquest and enslavement, followed by the bull Sublimis Deus forbidding enslavement, which I take as an abrogation of the prior. The interlocutor asked 1) how can one infallible bull overrule anothe...

Can you explain how the Godhead and the Trinity are not conflicting ideas or doctrines. I get SO MANY people who challenge the Trinity and say that Catholics try to replace the Godhead with the “false doctrine” of the Trinity.

Let’s say a person was properly baptized as a child but didn’t remember. They grow up and live a secular life until finding the faith later. They go through RCIA and, not remembering that they had been already baptized, are baptized and con...

Jimmy Akin, what’s your most recent and thorough reflection on Numbers 12?

Do we have one guardian angel for our whole life?

What are your thoughts on the “manna machine”?

Ask Me Anything

What is life like for Christian refugees from Syria and Iraq? We ask Dalal Saied, who left Iraq when she was seven, lived for years as a refugee in Syria, and finally settled in the United States as part of the Middle Eastern Christian diaspora.

Life as a Refugee

Chris Stefanick encourages parents who send their kids to slacking Catholic schools to bring their complaints to the administration and demand better education of the faith for their children.

What Should We Do When Catholic Schools Fail to Pass on Faith?

Get the JOE NOTES, sources for this episode, and more Shameless Popery on Patreon!
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Listen to Shameless Popery on Catholic.com:
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Are you ACTUALLY worshipping?

The Eucharist is the most Christian act.

Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers has an apparently unpopular answer to the scourge of racism—imitating Jesus. Our society refuses this path, preferring a culture of constant critique and revolution. It is time that the revolutionaries heard the hard truth—their cure is no cure at all. Real healing requires us to take up the Gospel with courage and humility.

Catholicism and Race

Why isn’t there an instance in the bible where a child is adopted into faith?

What is the Catholic view of Matthew 16:28? Is it an unfulfilled prophecy?

Is it sinful to work on Sunday?

Today in class they were talking about schizophrenia and my teacher asked if anyone was religious, to make a comparison between the two. I didn’t raise my hand. Did I do something wrong by not speaking up?

I just found out that one of my friends is a Freemason. Am I still allowed to associate with him?

Would a land value tax be better than an income tax in light of Catholic Social teaching on just taxation?

What does the mark of the beast mean? Are we all born with it? What was Jesus doing after the Resurrection but before the Ascension?

<div>Why did Jesus weep before he raised Lazarus from the dead? </div><div>It’s likely that Jesus wept out of love and sympathy for Lazarus and his family. It occurs within the context of Martha and those Jews who came with her weeping (John 11:33). John tells us that in response to their sorrow Jesus was “moved in spirit and troubled” (v. 34). The people present took his weeping to be a sign of friendship: “So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him&#8217;” (v. 36).
Another possible explanation is that Jesus wept because of human death that sin wrought within his creation. According to W. Leonard in A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, when Jesus says, “Take away the stone,” the Greek verb used suggests that Jesus felt angry. The implication is that Jesus was angry with death, an effect of the original sin of Adam and Eve.
Such a detail on the surface seems frivolous. But it reveals a profound theological mystery: “Jesus, who became man in every respect except sin, experienced a full range of human emotions” (Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, 184).
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What Moved Jesus to Tears?

<div>Would it be a sin to participate in facilitating a divorce as a family law attorney?</div><div>Saint Pope John Paul II had this to say about Catholic legal professionals and divorce:
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<blockquote>For grave and proportionate motives [judges] may therefore act in accord with the traditional principles of material cooperation. But they too must seek effective means to encourage marital unions, especially through a wisely handled work of reconciliation.
Lawyers, as independent professionals, should always decline the use of their profession for an end that is contrary to justice, as is divorce. They can only cooperate in this kind of activity when, in the intention of the client, it is not directed to the break-up of the marriage, but to the securing of other legitimate effects that can only be obtained through such a judicial process in the established legal order (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2383). In this way, with their work of assisting and reconciling persons who are going through a marital crises, lawyers truly serve the rights of the person and avoid becoming mere technicians at the service of any interest whatever.
(<a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2002/january/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20020128_roman-rota.html">Discourse to the Roman Rota on Divorce &#8211; 28 January 2002</a>)</blockquote>
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Judges and lawyers may only &#8220;cooperate&#8221; in a divorce proceeding if their cooperation is material and not formal. Formal cooperation would be to encourage divorce as an end in itself or support divorce as good. Material cooperation, on the other hand, is when someone is engaged in a morally good or neutral action that only incidentally enables the bad action of another.
Catholic divorce lawyers must never cooperate in a divorce if the proceedings result in injustice. However if the relationship between the two spouses is in such terrible shape that only civil remedies (including divorce) will protect an individual&#8217;s rights, safety, or mental health then Catholic lawyers may cooperate in order to further justice in such circumstances.
Each divorce must be handled on a case by case basis. Catholic lawyers must ask themselves if the case before them is in the interest of justice and the natural law or if it will result in an injustice to both natural law and the rights of persons. Catholic lawyers do not need to do an indepth analysis of each client and their motives but should examine their own conscience as to whether the legal action is something they would feel comfortable cooperating with and standing before God.
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Catholic Lawyers and Divorce

<blockquote>Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty, to judge both the quick and the dead; we may rise to the life immortal.</blockquote>
This prayer, used in the Ordinariate form (Divine Worship) of the Mass, is remarkable, and quite different from what most Catholics hear today.
In the extraordinary form, this Sunday has a collect which may be familiar to some of us in English: “Stir up thy power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” It’s a Latin prayer, of course, but in English translation it was used in the prayer book tradition, and in our missal, on the fourth Sunday of Advent—not to be confused with a different “stir up” prayer, which was used on the final Sunday before Advent. That one became associated not just with the necessary stirring up of those ingredients for the Christmas pudding—which, if you live in cold, damp England, are sitting under the bed in the spare room for most of the month.
Today, I want to point out the clarity with which our prayer highlights the meaning of Advent. It does so in two ways.
First, it reminds us that Advent is a time of penitence. This is a time to “cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light.” This is a particularly good reminder for us Americans who have exited the fleshly excesses of Thanksgiving only to enter the consumer extravaganza that is Black Friday and Christmas shopping. Advent is not, emphatically, a time to be artificially cheerful for the sake of a Christmas season that will not actually arrive for another four weeks. This isn’t to say that we are supposed to be gloomy in Advent, any more than we are supposed to be gloomy in Lent. But whereas much of the world is content to skip over Advent to make an endless season of feasting, Holy Church invites us to the countercultural witness of acknowledging that Jesus is coming but that he is not yet here, both in terms of Christmas and in terms of the end of the world. Like the birth of a baby in a normal family, the final month of preparation is joyful but also serious: things are getting real, and the preparations aren’t just fun and games, but serious work. When the baby comes, we need to be ready for more than a dinner party.
Second, the prayer reminds us that the first Advent is intrinsically related to the second. The purpose of Advent is not merely to commemorate the nativity; it is to prepare ourselves for the final and definitive Advent of Christ in the world—the Advent spoken of in the Gospels, when the Son of Man will come in glory to judge the world. We prepare for this Advent, lest it “come upon [us] suddenly like a snare,” as Luke says.
How then, should we prepare to avoid being taken suddenly and unawares? I think Scripture and tradition give us two definite ways to prepare.
The first is in a way the most direct, for it is a third form of Christ’s Advent. He comes to us daily on all the altars of the Catholic Church under the external form of bread and wine. This is the way that he himself instituted his ongoing presence among and for us. And so the first way to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ in the last day is to learn to meet him in the way that he already comes to us day after day in the Eucharist. We should spend time with him in adoration; we should receive Holy Communion with a right intention and in a state of grace. Christ ordained to be known to us in this form precisely because it is both present to our senses and beyond our senses. Our senses are trained, in other words, both to acknowledge what is present and to recognize a presence beyond what is visible.
The second is less direct, but no less real: Christ is present in his members, the Church. Think about why the lectionary gives us this reading from 1 Thessalonians alongside the others. St. Paul speaks about growing in love for the brethren; he speaks of treating one another with love so that we will be blameless when Christ comes again. In other words, how can we expect to meet Christ with joy when he comes to judge when we cannot be bothered to see him in the brothers and sisters who stand next to us in his Church?
In a way, it is harder to see Jesus in our fellow Christians than it is to see him in the monstrance. In the Eucharist, he doesn’t speak back: he is passive, silent, waiting to be known and loved. But in our brethren, he is veiled under human personality, physical variety, and social connection.
All of this is to say that the hospitality and interaction of the coming season is not irrelevant to the more sober purposes of Advent. No, Advent is not Christmas. But if we want to get Christmas when it comes, we have to, in a sense, find Christmas here and now—in the Eucharist, and in God’s people. Like at Christmas, our Lord comes to us in great humility. May we learn to see him wherever he is.

Find Christmas Now

St. Thomas Aquinas lists fortitude—courage—among the four cardinal virtues. For the Angelic Doctor, fortitude is the virtue that enables a person to overcome great difficulties or obstacles to do what is right and good. I want to suggest that marriage, particularly in our day, requires fortitude.
I make that observation in conjunction with modern sociological data, which show that people are putting marriage off. Men and women marry on average later than ever before, if they marry at all. Plenty of ersatz substitutes today replace permanent marriage. And even though the Church still speaks of marital indissolubility, our society puts less enforcement behind the marriage contract than a plumbing contract.
Yes, I know—there are many socio-economic factors that inhibit marriage. Prolonged education, college debt, finding a job, establishing oneself in one’s profession, inflation, the cost of housing, woke norms for relations between the sexes—all these factors impinge negatively on getting married. Facing and then surmounting them takes courage. Advancing to parenthood—which, as the Church sees it, is a normal next step, not an “optional accessory” to marriage—requires even more courage. The fact that the gap between marriage and having children is also growing attests to this.
Young people might say, “Well, I’m not afraid of marriage per se. I don’t know how to find the right person, and I’m afraid I’ll lose my kids and money if she divorces me.” I’ve met good spouses like this, left on ice.
We shouldn’t downplay those concerns. Dating, too, has not just declined, but also assumed some unhealthy forms. If there’s one thing young adults criticize about the Church, it is how it’s “there” (or, rather, “not there”) for them. In an earlier, more church-going age, parishes might be places to meet. But today’s parish social life more often caters to seniors than spouse-seekers. Male educational and earning declines, coupled with something of a mutated double standard (“I’m independent, but I want a guy who protects and can support me”) make concerns about permanence real (even though the divorce rate has been declining).
These are real worries. Some require social fixes (e.g., how men are “falling behind”). Some can be addressed at the parish (e.g., a parish supper or movie night for young adults). All helping hands welcome!
In the end, though, we still come back to courage. It takes courage to set out into the deep, whether in the particular circumstances that living in our day requires or those certain constants to marriage that have always required courage.
One of them is faith. Do you believe in love? Do you believe that God gives you the grace to be with this one person, ’til death do you part?
In conjunction with that, do you see marriage as a vocation? The Church’s vocabulary has long cheated marriage by speaking of “vocations” as primarily connected with the priesthood and religious life. But marriage is a vocation.
“Marriage as vocation” probably requires a new catechesis of marriage. Young Catholics know that marriage is a sacrament. But what does that mean? First, as a sacrament of vocation, marriage is not—to borrow a modern phrase—a “moment.” It is not just “the wedding day.” It begins on the wedding day but ends on the day of death. Second, one is assuming spiritual responsibility for another. Marriage affects the spiritual, which means that thinking about marriage—and the things that lead up to it, like courtship and dating—will require Catholics to get a bit “serious.” Juice Newton had it right: “It’s hard to be a lover when you say you’re only in it for fun.”
That, of course, therefore implies that the choice of a spouse also involves spiritual discernment. Does this person share my values in what counts? In God? In the Church? In how we live as married people? In how we bear and raise children? Those things—and not just common interests, hobbies, or preferences—are what matters. They also raise questions about “mixed marriages.”
When people tell me that the religious dimension of their wedding and wedding plans are something subordinate, something “I’ll get to,” that should be a warning bell: it’s the marital equivalent of doing everything for Christmas except getting ready for Christ.
If one can trust another “’til death do us part” after such a process of discernment, then by all means, do the courageous thing and marry. Of course, that requires prudence (another cardinal virtue). Do I have a job? Some savings? Can we make a go of things?
But don’t let “prudence” turn into fearful paralysis. You cannot control everything. In fact, you’ll find in life that what you can control is relatively modest. Prudence means not being reckless, but prudence also is paired with another vital reality: faith in Providence, that “God who has begun this good work in you will now bring it to completion” . . . even if you might not know just how he’s going to do it. Because it may be in totally unexpected ways. All you should do is recognize that “God makes all things work for the good of those who love him” (Rom. 8:28)—especially when that love is multiplied by two or more “gathered in my name” (Matt. 18:20).
National Marriage Week is February 7-14, World Marriage Sunday February 9. Reading the signs of the times, we know there are challenges out there, and they are real. We know that there are lots of resistance to the Catholic vision of marriage. But when we consider the vision the Church offers us in marriage and, with faith that “God is for us,” let us make Jesus’s words our own: “Take courage; I have conquered the world” (John 16:33).

Marriage Takes Courage

The New Testament quotes Psalm 69 over a dozen times as being fulfilled in the life of Christ and the Church, including such well known texts as verse 9, which St. John quotes as referring to Jesus after his famous cleansing of the Temple: “For zeal for your house has consumed me” (see 2:17). All four Evangelists refer to verse 21 as foretelling the offering of cheap wine, or “vinegar,” to Jesus on the cross (John 19:28-29; see also Matt. 27:45-50, Mark 15:33-37, Luke 23:44-46). There are multiple additional prophetic references we could consider.
Many of our Protestant friends like to point out what they see as a problematic couple of verses for Catholics in Psalm 69:7-8, which prophesies the intense reproach Our Blessed Lord would experience in his life and especially his passion:
<blockquote>For it is for thy sake that I have borne reproach, that shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brethren, an alien to my mother’s sons.</blockquote>
The idea here is this: if this is a heavily messianic psalm, with multiple allusions to Jesus Christ, here we have a clear prophecy not only that Jesus would have “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/brethren-of-the-lord">brothers</a>,” but that Mary would have other “sons.” That would make belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary untenable.
Our goal here is not a full-fledged defense of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (You can find those <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-to-explain-the-perpetual-virginity-of-mary">here</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-case-for-marys-perpetual-virginity">here</a>, among many other places.) Rather, we’re going to show how Protestant attacks against Catholic doctrines are bound to fail when they involve taking a literalistic approach to Old Testament types and prophecies. The Protestant will end up denying more than he bargained for—like the whole foundation of New Covenant fulfillment!
So how are Catholics to respond?
First, in considering prophecies or types from Old Testament texts, we never find their fulfillments or antitypes to be perfectly one-to-one. Hebrews 1:1 tells us that “in many (Gr. polumeros, ‘partial’ or ‘piecemeal’) and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets.” We see a clear example of this in this same psalm (69:24-25), where the Psalmist prays that God will deal with his enemies in justice:
<blockquote>Pour out thy indignation upon them, and let thy burning anger overtake them. May their camp be a desolation, let no one dwell in their tents.</blockquote>
St. Peter declares this text to find its ultimate fulfillment in Judas’s apostolic office proceeding to St. Matthias. Even though the Hebrew of Psalm 69 uses the plural, and David is clearly referring to a whole class of people, Peter declares definitively that it refers to Judas in its fullest sense:
<blockquote>For it is written in the Book of Psalms, &#8220;Let his habitation become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it”; and “His office [Gr. episcope, ‘bishopric’] let another take” (Acts 1:20).</blockquote>
Not exactly a one-to-one fulfillment.
Second, if we are going to insist on one-to-one fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and types, then we have a real problem in Psalm 69:5-6. Just three verses before the Psalmist speaks of his “mother’s sons,” he also says,
<blockquote>Oh God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you. Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me. O Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek you be brought to dishonor through me.</blockquote>
In this text, King David is, no doubt, thinking of his famous sins as well as the general “sin which clings so closely” to us in our fallen state (Heb. 12:1). But we don’t want to say Jesus must have had sin in his life because of what’s here in this messianic psalm. By no means!
The truth is that all of the Old Testament types and the overwhelming majority of prophecies we could consider in the Old Testament have multiple fulfillments: immediate ones on the literal level at the time they were published in history and their New Testament fulfillments, where they find their fuller meaning.
A defense of the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary is beyond the scope of this article. And non-Christians won’t find satisfaction here because they deny the inerrancy of Scripture completely. But for those non-Catholics who claim to follow the Bible, there is one big lesson to be taken from this brief consideration: be very careful before taking Old Testament types or prophecies to a place where your conclusions about them end up denying some of the crucial infrastructure of the New Covenant.
Yes, the New Covenant is “hidden in the Old,” as St. Augustine famously said, but that doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same. Rather, Augustine continued, the Old Covenant is “fully revealed in the New”—which means we can expect some surprises when it comes to how types and their fulfillments shake out.

The Psalm that Disproves Mary’s Perpetual Virginity?

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DAY 366
CHALLENGE
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“This book doesn’t include my objection to the Faith!”
DEFENSE
A single book can only do so much. Therefore, let me recommend some more resources that may help.
<ul>
<li>The Handbook of Catholic Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli: This is an excellent survey of the general evidences for the Christian faith, written by a pair of scholars who communicate in a manner easily accessible to all.</li>
<li>Scaling the Secular City by J.P. Moreland: This was one of the first apologetic books I read when I began studying the field. Dr. Moreland is an outstanding scholar who carries the discussion to a level satisfying for those who want to go deeper.</li>
<li>Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: This is another popular-level work that covers the basics of why one should choose to be a Christian, written by one of the greatest Christian authors of the twentieth century.</li>
<li>Miracles by C.S. Lewis: The topic of miracles and how they relate to science is one of the most misunderstood subjects in apologetics. This book contains valuable insights.</li>
<li>Hard Sayings by Trent Horn: There are many books about passages of the Bible that are difficult to accept for one reason or another. Trent’s book is written from a Catholic perspective and takes advantage of the current state of magisterial thinking.</li>
<li>The Fathers Know Best by Jimmy Akin: As we’ve seen in this book, the Church Fathers are an important witness to the teaching of Christ and the apostles. My own book on the subject shows what they taught on numerous subjects and how this corresponds to the teaching of the Church today.</li>
<li>The Drama of Salvation by Jimmy Akin: One of the most sensitive subjects between Protestants and Catholics is how we are saved. This book discusses the subject in what I hope is a calm and constructive manner.
I hope these recommendations help. God loves you; may he reward your further studies and bless you richly!
Your pal,
—Jimmy Akin</li>
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What This Book Doesn’t Cover

The author of Meeting the Protestant Challenge explains why Catholics believe that the Church is a visible hierarchical institution when Jesus says that the Church in Matthew 18:20 is an invisible union of believers.