Manage Account

<div>Is the apostolic pardon the same as the anointing of the sick?</div><div>
The anointing of the sick is the sacrament given to those who are seriously ill.
The Apostolic Pardon is blessing with an indulgence that happens at the conclusion of the anointing of the sick if the recipient is in danger of death. The usual process is confession then anointing of the sick, and it is concluded with the Apostolic Pardon. While confession forgives the eternal punishment for sin, the indulgence attached to the Apostolic Pardon forgives temporal punishment due to sin.
The words of the blessing said by the priest for the Apostolic Pardon are:
<blockquote>&#8220;Through the holy mysteries of our redemption may almighty God release you from all punishments in this life and in the life to come. May he open to you the gates of paradise and welcome you to everlasting joy.&#8221;
or
&#8220;By the authority which the Apostolic See has given me, I grant you a full pardon and the remission of all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.&#8221;</blockquote>
</div>

The Apostolic Pardon

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Why Christians MUST convert SAVAGES!

The problem with "Bible Alone" Christianity... #biblicalinterpretation

<div>Can a non-Catholic Gospel singer sing at Mass?</div><div>In the Church’s <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_25031993_principles-and-norms-on-ecumenism_en.html">Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism</a>, this issue isn’t directly addressed. But based on the Directory’s provisions for non-Catholic readers at Mass, we think an inference can be made for a non-Catholic cantor or other singer:
<blockquote>The reading of Scripture during a Eucharistic celebration in the Catholic Church is to be done by members of that Church. On exceptional occasions and for a just cause, the Bishop of the diocese may permit a member of another Church or ecclesial Community to take on the task of reader (no. 133).</blockquote>
For similar reasons, including ecumenical ones, a bishop may allow—including through power deputed to his parish priests—a non-Catholic’s singing in such circumstances.
</div>

May a Non-Catholic Sing at Mass?

Why Did God Create Judas?

In the secular historical attack, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) is the symbol of European greed and genocidal imperialism. In reality, Columbus was a man of his time—a devout Catholic with an interest in evangelization, motivated by religious and personal goals.
During his lifetime, Columbus’s achievements were criticized and downplayed, and he waned in the public memory until preparations to celebrate the quadricentennial of his first voyage were undertaken in the United States. Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants embraced him and revived his memory, but the man and his motivations became lost in a political, societal, and cultural conflict, anchored by the secular historical attack, which culminated in slandering him as deliberately genocidal—a harbinger of destruction, enslavement, and death upon the happy and prosperous people of the Americas.
Russell Means, a leader of the American Indian Movement, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=columbus+and+the+crisis+of+the+west&amp;adgrpid=1332608666263490&amp;hvadid=83288113859176&amp;hvbmt=be&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocint=60677&amp;hvlocphy=91361&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83288407877894%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=3441_10851927&amp;mcid=2ae0518a79573e20b6ce0f4981cf8661&amp;tag=mh0b-20&amp;ref=pd_sl_1ax2uzc724_e">characterized this sentiment</a> with his opinion on the explorer: “Columbus makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent” (40). Other critics liken Columbus’s voyage to opening <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Crusaders-Epic-History-Wars-Lands/dp/0525428313">a new front in the Crusades</a> as that movement to the east became impossible with the rise of the Ottoman Turks.
In the United States, the vitriol directed against Columbus produces annual protests every October with the observance of Columbus Day. A growing movement wants to abolish Columbus Day as a federal holiday, and several cities already celebrate instead “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Columbus has become a Catholic symbol of the modern Western world’s obsession with a sanctimonious, victimhood-focused narratives rooted in anti-Catholic bias.
The real story of Christopher Columbus and his voyages to the New World begins in Portugal, with the actions of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460). Henry studied ocean currents and wind movement to improve navigation for sailing ships and sent Portuguese vessels and sailors down the West African coast, seeking a trade route to India. He also invented the caravel, a light ship that was perfect for long-distance, uncharted exploration.
Henry and his sailors inaugurated the great age of explorers finding new lands and creating shipping lanes for the import and export of goods, including consumables never before seen in Europe. Their efforts also created intense competition among the sailing nations of Europe, each striving to outdo the others in finding new and more efficient trade routes.
It was into this world of innovation, exploration, and economic competition that Columbus was born. A native of the Italian city-state of Genoa, Columbus became a sailor at the age of fourteen. He learned the nautical trade sailing on Genoese merchant vessels and became an accomplished navigator.
Finally, in May 1486, he secured a royal audience with King Fernando and Queen Isabel of Spain. The queen was intrigued by Columbus’s proposal to seek the east by going west. The explorer requested a patent of nobility, the titles of admiral of the Ocean Sea and viceroy and governor of all discovered lands, and ten percent in dividends of all future trade for his daring trip. Isabel agreed, and queen and sailor signed an agreement in April 1492.
Columbus embarked from Spain on August 3, 1492, with ninety men on three ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. The crew comprised mostly Spanish sailors, with no soldiers, illustrating that the voyage was bent on not conquest, but exploration.
After thirty-three days at sea, Columbus’s flotilla spotted land (the Bahamas), which he claimed in the name of the Spanish monarchs. Columbus’s modern-day detractors view that as a sign of imperial conquest. It was not; it was simply a sign to other European nations that they could not establish trading posts on the Spanish possession.
On this first voyage, Columbus also reached the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. He stayed four months in the New World and arrived home on March 15, 1493. The Santa María ran aground on Hispaniola, so Columbus was forced to leave forty-two men behind. He ordered the Spaniards to treat the indigenous people well and especially to respect the women, but he discovered on his second voyage that his order had not been heeded.
Columbus made four voyages to the New World, and each brought its own discoveries and adventures. Columbus left on his second voyage in September 1493 with a fleet of seventeen ships and 1,200 crewmen, including five missionaries. The third voyage was the most difficult for Columbus, as he was arrested on charges of mismanagement of the Spanish trading enterprise in the New World and sent back to Spain in chains (though he was later exonerated). Columbus’s fourth and final voyage took place in 1502-1504, with his son Fernando among the crew. The crossing of the Atlantic was the fastest ever: sixteen days. The expedition visited Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica and was marooned for a time on Jamaica.
Most modern accounts of Columbus’s voyages mistake his motives by focusing narrowly on the “what”—usually pecuniary or political—rather than on the “why” behind his expeditions. Columbus embraced the Catholic worldview of his age. In a letter to King Fernando and Queen Isabel in December 1492, Columbus <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Quest-Jerusalem-Religion-Voyages/dp/1439102376">encouraged the monarchs</a> to “spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem” (vii). And so his primary motive was to find gold . . . but to finance a crusade to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims and fulfill the conditions he believed were necessary for the Second Coming of Christ!<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a>
Columbus considered himself a “Christ-bearer” like his namesake, St. Christopher, and believed that the evangelization of all peoples was a condition for Jesus’ return. His first words to the people of Hispaniola illustrated his focus <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Age-Renewal-Catholic-Reformation/dp/168595247X">on evangelization</a>: “The monarchs of Castile have sent us not to subjugate you, but to teach you the true religion” (27). The explorer recognized that the native peoples of the New World required catechesis and was angered by the chief missionary who accompanied his second voyage, who believed that baptism with no further instruction was sufficient for the new converts. In a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503), Columbus asked the pontiff to send missionaries to the indigenous peoples of the New World so they could accept Christ. Columbus desired the evangelization efforts in the New World to continue after his death, and he established an evangelization fund in his will to finance missionary efforts to the lands he discovered.
Columbus’s interactions with the indigenous peoples of the New World generate significant interest among modern people and are the foundation of much myth-making from the secular historical attack. Contrary to the popular myth, Columbus initially treated many of the native peoples with great respect and friendship. He was impressed by their “generosity, intelligence, and ingenuity” (see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Quest-Jerusalem-Religion-Voyages/dp/1439102376">Delaney</a>, 97). He recorded in his diary that “in the world there are no better people or a better land. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest speech in the world and [they are] gentle and always laughing” (107).
Columbus demanded that his men exchange gifts with the natives they encountered and not just take what they wanted. He enforced this policy rigorously: on his third voyage in August 1500, he hanged men who disobeyed him by harming the native people.
The secular historical attack posits that Columbus sailed to the New World intent on the enslavement of the native peoples. That myth is widely believed and difficult to eradicate despite the evidence in the historical record.
Columbus had no plan to enslave native peoples when he began his expeditions, but circumstances during the second and third voyages drove him to implement harsh measures, “including enslavement of Indians captured in military actions when there seemed no other way to restore order. But this was not a policy intended to establish a regime of slavery” (see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=columbus+and+the+crisis+of+the+west&amp;adgrpid=1332608666263490&amp;hvadid=83288113859176&amp;hvbmt=be&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocint=60677&amp;hvlocphy=91361&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83288407877894%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=3441_10851927&amp;mcid=2ae0518a79573e20b6ce0f4981cf8661&amp;tag=mh0b-20&amp;ref=pd_sl_1ax2uzc724_e">Royal</a>, 66).
Columbus’s views concerning the native peoples changed over the course of his multiple voyages based on his interaction with the various tribes and with unruly Spanish settlers. He was a brilliant sailor, navigator, and fearless explorer, but he was not an able administrator. He was not a violent man, but he utilized violence at times when his poor leadership led to preventable crises. His intentions were good, as his contemporaries, including <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-church-and-the-native-americans">Bartolomé de las Casas</a>, who knew him, maintained, but he made critical errors in judgment from which the indigenous peoples suffered.
Columbus and his actions in the New World are not immune to legitimate criticism, but the use of this daring explorer, who fundamentally altered world history, as a Catholic target to attack the Church and Western history is a travesty of justice. There is no doubt that Columbus was a complex man, and his actions in the New World reflected the complexities of his experiences and the time in which he lived. He is neither the saint nor the genocidal fanatic portrayed by different groups with their own agendas in the modern world.
Read more on the Catholic black sheep of history in <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/canceled-twelve-catholic-heroes-that-history-turned-into-villains/?searchid=10400412&amp;search_query=canceled">Canceled</a>, available for sale in the Catholic Answers shop.

The Truth About Christopher Columbus

<div>If the Church declares someone a saint, how can we know with absolute certainty that he or she is in heaven?</div><div>While the Church has never formally defined canonization as an act of infallibility, the definitive and therefore infallible nature of this teaching is rooted in its necessary connection with the dogma of the communion of saints, which is professed in the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/apostles-creed">Apostles&#8217; Creed</a> and also—in summary form—within the Nicene Creed&#8217;s profession of &#8220;the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.&#8221; As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) provides,
<blockquote>The supreme degree of participation in the authority of Christ is ensured by the charism of infallibility. This infallibility extends as far as does the deposit of divine Revelation; it also extends to all those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, or observed (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c3a3.htm#I">CCC 2036</a>, emphasis added).</blockquote>
St. Thomas Aquinas elaborates:
<blockquote>Since the honor we pay the saints is in a certain sense a profession of faith, i.e., a belief in the glory of the saints, we must piously believe that in this matter also the judgment of the Church is not liable to error (Quodlib. IX, a. 16).</blockquote>
Because the Pope is formally decreeing that all Christians are to believe that a certain person is in heaven, and thus can be prayerfully invoked in a fruitful manner, the certitude of his decree also flows from the pope&#8217;s divinely given charism of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/papal-infallibility">papal infallibility</a>.
</div>

Are Canonizations Infallible?

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FAKE versions don’t kill the real thing!

Do Pets Go To Heaven? Jimmy Akin and host Cy Kellett tackle this question in light of records of near death experience.
Transcript:
Caller: We just lost our cat. And I told my son that you have an argument that pets go to heaven. So if you could give your argument that good pets go to heaven, we would really appreciate it.
Jimmy: Okay, so I should introduce a clarification, which is I don&#8217;t claim. Okay, so first of all, this idea that you hear that animals don&#8217;t have an afterlife is not church teaching. That is a theological speculation that is based on Aristotelian physics or metaphysics.
Physics in this case. And I, in episode 203, which is where I discuss this more fully of *Mysterious World*, which you can get to by going to Mysterious FM203, I go through the arguments for animals not having an afterlife and I conclude they don&#8217;t work. I think they&#8217;re bad arguments.
So I&#8217;m not convinced by that. I would say that I don&#8217;t propose they go to heaven. I don&#8217;t know whether they go to heaven or not. Heaven is full spiritual union with God. But I do think there is evidence that they have an afterlife and that at least some animals do, and that it may be a positive afterlife, even if it isn&#8217;t the kind of full union with God, you know, where you have this intellectual vision of God known as the beatific vision that humans can get.
I don&#8217;t know what animals get, but I do have evidence that they may well have an afterlife and that it may be a positive afterlife. Whether it would or would not count as heaven is a separate question.
So there are a number of lines of evidence, and I&#8217;m going to propose at least three lines of evidence that we have in favor of some animals having an afterlife.
One, and I&#8217;ve already mentioned the first one, which is that when humans have near-death experiences, they not only see like their departed relatives in the afterlife while they&#8217;re temporarily clinically dead, they also see animals.
And I did it. And I talk about this in episode 203 of *Mysterious World*. I did a search of a major database of near-death experiences. It has like more than 5,000 near-death experiences in it. And I found by searching on terms like, you know, cat, dog, rabbit, horse, pet animal, things like that, that as many as a quarter of the near-death experience reports that the database contained might have references to animals in them.
Now, I can&#8217;t say it&#8217;s exactly a quarter because what I didn&#8217;t do is read all 5,000 of the reports, but I did find that many. I did find like a quarter of that number that mentioned animals in some way. The actual percentage may be lower than a quarter because you might have one that has the word animal in it and pet in it and dog in it. And so that would look like three hits when really it would count as one if you actually read them.
But this is still a very common thing in human near-death experiences. So that&#8217;s piece of evidence number one.
Piece of evidence number two is a sub-case of piece of evidence number one. There is a kind of experience, and this occurs both in deathbed visions and it occurs in near-death experiences. It&#8217;s what&#8217;s called a peak in Darien experience.
And that&#8217;s P, E, A K, like a mountain peak. This is based on a literary allusion to a poem about a mountain peak in Darien Province, Panama. And I won&#8217;t go through exactly what the allusion involves, but basically the term has become attached to a kind of experience where you see someone in the afterlife, or you see. Basically you see someone in the afterlife that you did not previously know was dead.
For example, an early peak in Darien experience that got recorded about 100 years ago, you had this woman who had just given birth to a child, and she had this heart condition, and the birth was too much of a strain on her system. And so she was in the process of dying.
And they&#8217;d been afraid during her pregnancy that she might not even survive to give birth. So they had her in this maternity hospital and they were rigorously screening what information she was exposed to. But then as she&#8217;s in the process of dying, she starts having a deathbed vision and she&#8217;s like, oh, here&#8217;s my father, and he looks very happy and he&#8217;s welcoming me into the afterlife and oh, hey, what&#8217;s my sister Vita doing here too?
Because as far as the woman knew, her sister Vita was alive. But in fact, her sister Vita had died three weeks earlier. And they had asked the matron of the maternity hospital, is it safe to tell her with her heart condition that her sister Vita has passed on? And the matron said, no, don&#8217;t mention that to her.
And they even had the woman&#8217;s husband screen the woman&#8217;s mail to avoid anyone accidentally mentioning that Vita had died, because they thought that could trigger a cardiac event and she might not survive to give birth to the baby.
So as she&#8217;s having the near-death experience, she sees her father, which would be expected because everybody knew he had passed on. But then she sees someone that she didn&#8217;t know had passed on, namely her sister Vita. And that&#8217;s an example of a peak in Darien experience.
If you see someone in either a deathbed vision or a near-death experience that you did not previously know was dead, and then it turns out it&#8217;s true that they&#8217;re dead, that&#8217;s a peak in Darien experience.
So here&#8217;s the thing. Peak in Darien experiences happen with animals. So someone will be having a near-death experience or a deathbed vision and they&#8217;ll say, oh, here&#8217;s my grandmother and she&#8217;s holding my cat. And the person knew previously the grandmother had died, but they didn&#8217;t know that their cat had died. And it turns out to be true.
So they just like they saw their grandmother in the afterlife, they saw their cat in the afterlife. And in this case, what makes this different than the first type of evidence I mentioned is that it&#8217;s verifiable their cat had died while they were in the hospital and they didn&#8217;t know that.
So this would be, you know, preternatural evidence that they&#8217;re having a real experience that they&#8217;re really learning about their cat being in the afterlife because they had no natural way of knowing that. So it would be a preternatural experience.
Then there&#8217;s the third form of evidence that I would point to, which is that we have so. And again, this parallels other things with humans. Humans very frequently, it tends not to be talked about in our culture, but humans very frequently have experiences that are what are known as after-death communications.
And this is after-death communications are where you have like lost somebody who is close to you and then after they&#8217;re dead they show up again. And they can show up in a number of different ways. I also have *Mysterious World* episodes about after-death communications. So you can check those out for more info.
But like 40 to 50% of the population globally has at least one after-death communication at some point in their lives. Okay, well, turns out it happens with animals too. There are animal after-death communications.
I haven&#8217;t yet done a *Mysterious World* about those, but I have in the last couple of years there have been some research papers done on this, and I will be doing an animal after-death communications episode in the near future. But you can hear about the other stuff that I talked about, for example, by going to Mysterious FM203.
So the three pieces of evidence I pointed to here, and I could name others, but the three pieces of evidence I pointed to here are, number one, people having near-death experiences report seeing animals in the afterlife.
Piece of evidence number two, people have peak in Darien experiences involving animals that they&#8217;ve known which are then verifiable. And piece of evidence number three, people have after-death communications, particularly from animals that they&#8217;ve known.
So those would be the three pieces of evidence I would mention. Also, and this is something you might be interested in, but I just recently did an episode on animal end-of-life experiences.
So if you go to, and I can get the number for you for that pretty quick I think. Yeah, it&#8217;s episode 366. So if you go to Mysterious FM 366, you can learn about the kinds of end-of-life experiences that animals frequently have and see if you think your animal, your cat may have had any of the experiences that have otherwise been reported.
Cy: Annie, thank you. Thanks very much.
Jimmy Very sorry to learn that you lost your cat. That&#8217;s always sad.
Cy: Thank you for the call, Annie. Mike&#8217;s in Pennsylvania watching on YouTube. Mike, welcome. Go ahead with your question.

Do Pets Go To Heaven?

Many argue the story of the good thief on the cross disproves Purgatory&#8217;s existence. But was Purgatory always rejected by Protestants? Dr. Karlo Broussard explores the surprising history of the doctrine and reveals why the good thief might not be the slam dunk some believe.
Transcript:
Questions I often get from Protestant converts are obviously about saints intercession, but another big one is purgatory.
They tend to really struggle with the belief of purgatory.
One thing they usually bring up is the thief on the cross to reinforce that, &#8220;Oh, there&#8217;s no purgatory.&#8221; But I was just wondering, when did the belief in purgatory kind of end? Was it with the Reformation?
That&#8217;s a good question. So with regard to the ending of the belief in purgatory, Martin Luther initially believed in purgatory. So for example, in his 95 Theses in 1517, he wrote, &#8220;The Pope does very well when he grants for a mission to souls and purgatory, not by the power of the keys, which he does not have, but by way of intercession for them.&#8221; So there you have implied in there an affirmation of purgatory elsewhere in 1521, he would write the existence of a purgatory I&#8217;ve never denied. Yet in 1537, he calls purgatory a specter of the devil. And so there you have evidence of Luther rejecting the doctrine of purgatory, and many would follow suit after that. As far as the specific argument that Luther would give to reject purgatory, I&#8217;m not quite sure I would have to do more research on that to see which specific articles he uses, arguments he utilizes, and whether it maps on with contemporary arguments that Protestants will give, such as the good thief on the cross, or maybe 2 Corinthians 5-8, where some will interpret that passage to reveal that heaven is given to the saved immediately after death. With regard to the good thief on the cross, I actually wrote an article at catholic.com, and it&#8217;s entitled, &#8220;The Good Thief Isn&#8217;t Good for Protestant Doctrine.&#8221; I think that&#8217;s the title of it, yeah, &#8220;The Good Thief Isn&#8217;t Good for Protestant Doctions.&#8221; And they&#8217;re in ideal with this idea that the good thief reveals purgatory is not necessary, and it&#8217;s based upon our Lord saying, &#8220;Today you will be with me in paradise.&#8221; I also deal with this objection in my book, &#8220;Purgatory is for Real,&#8221; but you can get a snippet of that for free at catholic.com with that article. And our response there, Michael, is that even, first of all, it&#8217;s not quite certain that whenever our Lord says, &#8220;Today you will be with me in paradise,&#8221; he&#8217;s referring to heaven. It&#8217;s most likely he&#8217;s referring to Sheol, or the righteous abode of the dead before the ascension of Christ, where the Old Testament righteous souls received a beatific vision. So Jesus literally would have been telling him, &#8220;You&#8217;re going to be with me in this righteous abode of the dead,&#8221; or &#8220;Abraham&#8217;s bosom,&#8221; not heaven. And that would in no way exclude purgatory. The good thief may have to have undergone a final purification immediately after death before entering into Abraham&#8217;s bosom. But let&#8217;s say, Michael, even if Jesus were promising the good thief heaven on that day such that the good thief did not need purgatory, that fits with the Catholic understanding because the Catholic Church does not teach that purgatory is absolutely necessary for everyone. The Catholic Church actually teaches it&#8217;s possible for someone to die with such a fervent degree of charity where no final purification would be needed after death such that the soul could immediately enter into the presence of God in the beatific vision. So it&#8217;s possible that that could have been the good thief. The good thief could have fit that bill, so to speak, and met that description such that he would not need purgatory. So depending upon how we interpret what our Lord is telling the good thief on the cross, neither interpretation excludes or refutes the doctrine of purgatory. And so that&#8217;s a sketch of what I say in more detail in my book, Purgatory is for Real, and then also in that article, The Good Thief Isn&#8217;t Good for Protestant Doctions.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic Answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific. Or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

When Did People Stop Believing in Purgatory?

Luke 1:43, where Elizabeth proclaims Mary as the “Mother of my Lord,” is usually the go-to biblical text for defending Mary “Mother of God.” But did you know there’s another text that we can appeal to?
It’s Galatians 4:4. There, Paul writes, “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.” The key is that God’s Son is said to be born of a woman.
There are two things to unpack here.
First, assuming we accept early conciliar Christology, like that of the Council of Nicaea, God’s Son, the Word, is divine, and thus is properly called “God.”
Second, any woman who gives birth to a person is a mother to the person to whom she gives birth.
With these two things in place, we can reason as follows:
P1:  Any woman who gives birth to a person is a mother to the person to whom she gives birth.
P2:  Mary gave birth to God’s Son (per Gal. 4:4).
C1:  Therefore, Mary is the mother of God’s Son.
P3:  God’s Son is divine, and thus is properly called “God.”
C2:  Therefore, Mary is the mother of God.
With the argument laid out like this, it becomes clear what a person has to deny if he wants to deny Mary as the Mother of God. Such a person would have to deny either premise one, a mother is someone who gives birth to a person; premise two, Mary did not give birth to God’s Son; or premise three, God’s Son is not Divine.
Common sense tells us that we can’t deny premise one. The very definition of a biological mother is someone who gives birth to a person. Mothers don’t give birth to anything else, like a nature or a body. The subject that is birthed is a person.
No Christian can deny premise two without denying an essential truth of the Bible, a truth that Paul makes explicit: “God sent his Son, born of a woman.”
Finally, no Christian can deny the divinity of God’s Son, the Word, lest he cease being a Christian. Recall John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
With a little help of reason to bring to light certain hidden premises, Galatians 4:4 provides a biblical basis for belief that Mary is the Mother of God, thereby providing another arrow in the quiver for hitting the target for this Marian dogma.

When Paul Does Your Homework for You

Tim Staples discusses how he would explain and defend <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/canon-law">Canon Law</a> to Protestants, and dispels the common misconception that it is meant to &#8220;add to the Bible.&#8221;
Transcript:
Host: Alexandria, who&#8217;s watching on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/catholiccom">YouTube Live</a>—hi Alexandria—asks the following, Tim: &#8220;How would you explain, or begin to introduce Canon Law to a Protestant?&#8221;
Tim: Great question. I know from my own experience, in fact Cy and I were talking off air here just a minute ago, but to me, as a young Baptist, and as a Pentecostal, Canon Law was that evil, dark book that these Catholics created to add to the Bible. &#8220;See, the Bible&#8217;s not enough! You gotta have&#8230;&#8217;Canon Law.'&#8221;
Actually, the way I like to explain it to folks is—I can tell you, from being a former Protestant youth minister, at my&#8230;we would call it an ecclesial community, but in our community, we had what&#8217;s called Church bylaws. The Assemblies of God has bylaws. Every organization, I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s a company, if it&#8217;s a business, you know what, even families, often you&#8217;ll find—we have in my house, we have a poster, up in the rec room, that says, &#8220;Staples Household Ten Commandments.&#8221;
Host: Oh really?
Tim: Including things like, &#8220;NO WHINING.&#8221; Okay, things like that.
Host: Oh, come on!
Tim: And just in case my kids are watching right now, NO WHINING! Alright? But anyway, the Code of Canon Law is just that. In a nutshell, it governs what we do as Catholics. And remember, and you discover this as a Protestant minister as well, you know, Scripture does not provide everything. Jesus doesn&#8217;t give us all the rules. Even around baptism, okay, yeah, you baptize with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Is that it? What else do you do? Are there any other—yes. There&#8217;s all sorts of things that you have to govern. You have to create a liturgy around this.
Now my Protestant friends would say, &#8220;Well wait a minute, liturgy, we don&#8217;t believe in liturgy.&#8221; Yes you do! Your whole church—I can tell you, when I was a minister, how many songs we were gonna sing&#8211;although sometimes we would &#8220;let the Holy Ghost move.&#8221; We&#8217;d sing an extra couple songs, right? But you had the worship, then you had pastor get up and preach, then you had altar call, then you had more music, you know, the dismissal—in fact, you have to have rules governing everything that you do. As human beings, we need it.
The Code of Canon Law is such a blessing to the Church, however, because it&#8217;s not done just by a group of guys who get together and say, &#8220;Hey, this is what we think.&#8221; But Canon Law is something that grew organically for centuries, out of the practice—out of—it comes out of Scripture, no doubt. Cause when you look at, for example, the section on the Sacraments, a lot of that comes right out of Sacred Scripture, when it comes to form and matter of what the Sacraments are. But when it comes to the rules and such surrounding the Sacraments, that develops organically over the centuries, and you need these rules in order to have a coherent practice of the faith.
So anyway, that&#8217;s a good way to get started in helping people understand, this is not some dark thing that adds to, you know, the revelation that God gave us in the first century, we have—no, it&#8217;s not that. But it helps us to be able to formulate what we believe as well as what we do in the Church.
Host: Thanks very much Alexandria, and everybody else watching on YouTube.

What is Canon Law?

<div>What is liturgical prayer?</div><div><blockquote>The word &#8220;liturgy&#8221; originally meant a &#8220;public work&#8221; or a &#8220;service in the name of/on behalf of the people.&#8221; In Christian tradition it means the participation of the People of God in &#8220;the work of God.&#8221; Through the liturgy Christ, our redeemer and high priest, continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through his Church. (Catechism, 1069)</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/liturgy">Liturgy</a> is the public prayer and worship of the Church.  Liturgical prayers are prayers set by the Church for a particular liturgy (e.g. Mass, confession, baptism, the Divine Office, etc).  They differ from private prayers in that they are not the intention of any one person or group but are the prayers of the Church as a whole.  As such they should not be altered by the presider since they do not belong to him.
</div>

What Is Liturgical Prayer?

A man from Turkey, raised Muslim, calls in to Catholic Answers Live to ask how he can become Catholic and practice the Catholic faith without putting himself in danger. Karlo Broussard and Jimmy Akin explain how he can be a faithful, practicing Catholic in a dangerously anti-Catholic environment.

Muslim Risks Everything to Become Christian

Were the author&#8217;s of Genesis inspired by other myths? Jimmy Akin and host Cy Kellett tackle this question in light of Humani Generis.
Transcript:
Cy: M. Duff Beer asks if we interpret Genesis as describing God&#8217;s creation of man through evolution and the Flood as describing a population bottleneck thousands or hundreds of thousands of years before Genesis was recorded. Is it possible that the author incorporated contemporary myths into the writing of Genesis? There are Mesopotamian flood myths that predate the writing of Genesis by at least 100 years, likely inspired by the flooding of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. If God revealed to me the knowledge of a battle between good and evil, I might visualize it as an Avengers-style fight or a Lord of the Rings-style battle. Because of my contemporary culture, would it be acceptable to think the writer of Genesis did the same thing, using a popular myth that already existed when Genesis was being recorded to convey why God destroyed the wicked and created the covenant, even if the means God used were different in prehistory?
Jimmy: Okay, so I wanna make sure we&#8217;re clear on what Duff Beer is proposing here. He&#8217;s assuming that we are interpreting Genesis as describing a population bottleneck that occurred thousands or hundreds of thousands of years before Genesis. And what he&#8217;s asking is if that&#8217;s what Genesis is talking about. Could the author of Genesis have described that population bottleneck? A population bottleneck is when a large part of a population dies off. So it&#8217;s like all the genetic material that survives has to go through this smaller number of people, which is why it&#8217;s called a bottleneck.
But he&#8217;s asking, could an earlier population bottleneck have been described in terms of stories that were told in Mesopotamia that were likely based on the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates, which is a well-known phenomenon that happens over there?
Well, personally, I don&#8217;t think that Genesis should be interpreted in terms of a population bottleneck that occurred hundreds of thousands of years earlier. I don&#8217;t think that there is any plausible mechanism for the societies to have transmitted information about such a population bottleneck up to the time Genesis was written, about 1000 BC. I think whatever Genesis is describing, it&#8217;s much more recent than that.
But we can go with Duff Beer&#8217;s framing of the issue. So if Genesis is describing a much earlier population bottleneck, could the author of Genesis have taken more recent events or stories and used them to depict that population bottleneck the same way that he says he might envision a fight between good and evil as something you&#8217;d see in the Avengers or a Lord of the Rings movie?
Well, we actually have a discussion of the extent to which Genesis might incorporate prior popular stories. This comes from Pope Pius XII&#8217;s encyclical *Humanae Generis*, which was released in 1950, 75 years ago. And things have shifted some since *Humanae Generis* was released 75 years ago. But the same fundamental principles are going to apply.
So if you look in sections 38 and 39 of *Humanae Generis*, Pope Pius XII says this. He says the first 11 chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking, not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which, however, must be further studied and determined by exegetes, which is what&#8217;s been happening in the last 75 years.
The same chapters, in simple and metaphorical language, adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narration, and this may be conceded, Pius XII says so. He&#8217;s conceded they may have. The author of Genesis may have taken material from popular narrations.
It must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents. Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations had been inserted into the sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on par with the my other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for the truth and simplicity which in the sacred books also of the Old Testament is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers.
So he&#8217;s saying that the author of Genesis, especially in the first 11 chapters, may have taken stuff from popular narrations. He doesn&#8217;t call them myths, as that would have a pejorative connotation that he wants to avoid. But there were narrations, or stories, as I called them, about great floods. In the Mesopotamian context, there&#8217;s the equivalent of Noah, who was a guy named Utnapishtim. And so there were stories about Utnapishtim and how he survived the great flood.
In Greek stories, there was Deucalion, who was the survivor of the great flood. And what Pope Pius XII is saying is that the author of Genesis may have used earlier narrations like those coming from Babylonia, but in the process of incorporating them into sacred Scripture, he was protected by divine inspiration.
So I would say that the answer to Duff Beer&#8217;s question is, yes, these texts could have been influenced by earlier stories about a great flood and how people survived it, the same way that he&#8217;s proposing that you might have an earlier population bottleneck that then gets depicted in terms of more recent stories.
So I would say the basic answer to his question is, yes, it could have happened this way. But personally, I don&#8217;t think Genesis is talking about something that happened hundreds of thousands of years earlier. But if you do, you do you.
Cy: Good advice for Duff Beer. M. Duff Beer, thank you very much for the question. Lots more questions to come. We&#8217;ve got&#8230; Well, the Internet, because it&#8217;s made by people, has endless questions. And so we will get to more of those questions with Jimmy Akin right after this on *CATHOLIC ANSWERS LIVE*.

Was Genesis Inspired by Ancient Myths?

Did the Catholic Church remove the 2nd commandment?

<div>How does one deal with religious debates without getting angry?</div><div>When you speak with people about God and his revelation, you are working for their salvation and happiness, and this means that you love them. So loving the ones we speak with is the best way not to give in to anger. Better to be angry at the devil, the deceiver, than at the poor souls who labor under various errors. You should see yourself as helping the Good Shepherd to bring back his lost sheep, not as an opponent or accuser.
Pray for the ones with whom you speak before, during, and after your talking. Ask the Lord to give them all he desires for them and to use you as his humble and peaceful instrument. Then you will be imitating Christ and the apostles, and then, if anger against evil is warranted, it will be appropriately expressed and won&#8217;t be a general attitude.
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Keeping Your Temper in Religious Debates

Many Protestant-Christians argue that Christians should use <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/sola-scriptura-doesnt-work/">only the Bible</a> as the infallible source of truth. One way they do this is by attacking the ambiguity of Tradition. Catholicism claims that “Tradition” is basically everything that the apostles passed down to their followers orally, rather than through their written letters. Tradition, for Catholics, is just as infallible as the Bible.
But, Protestants contend, Catholicism does not point to any specific examples of Tradition. Scripture is easily consulted by opening the book in our hands, whereas Tradition is less easily consulted. As Protestant apologist Robert Zins said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRDUue2NgjQ">debate</a> on Catholicism, “How many of you in here have held Paul’s tradition in your hand? And read it, and studied it, and obeyed it?” His point is that there is no infallible listing of teachings handed on by the apostles orally. Because of this, Protestants argue that Catholicism could simply invent new teachings and claim that they came from this mysterious source of “Tradition.”
To address this claim, I’ve compiled a few teachings that principally derive from Tradition. These teachings are examples of Tradition for two reasons.
First, the earliest Christians sometimes explicitly claim that the specific teaching was handed down from the apostles. If the earliest Christians are trustworthy, then this is a good first criterion.
Second, the earliest Christians sometimes unanimously hold to a specific teaching. If nearly every Christian writer throughout the world teaches the specific teaching or does not dispute it, then this implies that the source of the teaching is the apostles. A teaching would likely be widespread because it was a part of the Tradition. On the other hand, if the teaching was not held by men all over the world, but was just one particular thought from one particular man, then the teaching was likely not an apostolic tradition.
The following teachings of Tradition can be found in Scripture, but only implicitly. Many will debate whether these teachings come from Scripture, but if we know that a given teaching was handed down from the apostles orally, then the debate is cleared up.
Below are seven teachings that meet the above two criteria and thus qualify as specific traditions.
1. Prayer for the Dead. Catholicism teaches that Christians can <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-saints-pray-for-you-how-the-christians-in-heaven-help-us-here-on-earth/">pray for the souls</a> of the dead, for the dead might be getting purged of their sins before God. Prayer for the speeding up of this after-life purgation comes from the apostles, according to the popular patriarch of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom (347-407). He <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230203.htm">said</a>, “Not in vain did the apostles order that remembrance should be made of the dead in the dreadful Mysteries [of the Eucharistic liturgy].” The apostles taught that the prayer of the Mass would refresh the souls of the dead being purified.
2. Infant Baptism. Catholics hold to the teaching that infants, who are incapable of having faith in Jesus, can be baptized. The faith of the Church makes up for the infant’s deficit. This teaching of infant baptism has its origins in the apostles, according to Origen of Alexandria (184-254). He said that the “Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants” (Commentary on Romans 5:9).
3. The Perpetual Virginity of Mary. This teaching says that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was a virgin her entire life. She never had sexual relations with Joseph. This dogma was <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/mary-ever-virgin">universally taught</a> by the early Church, even though there is no Scripture verse that says, &#8220;Mary never had relations with Joseph for her entire life.&#8221; St. Jerome refuted a man named Helvidius who claimed that Mary had sexual relations, by saying, “Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? . . . Ignatius [A.D. 108], Polycarp [65-155], Irenaeus [130-200], Justin Martyr [100-165], and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against [the heretics] Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus held these same views and wrote volumes replete with wisdom. If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man&#8221; (19).
4. The Real Presence. Although many Protestants teach that Jesus’ phrase “this is my body” was purely symbolic, Catholicism teaches that Jesus was speaking literally. The bread mystically transformed into the body of Jesus yet remained under the form of bread. This teaching was affirmed by <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/the-real-presence">all of the early Church Fathers</a>. The reason nobody doubted or denied it is that the apostles had handed it down.
5. The Sacrifice of the Mass. Catholicism teaches that the Last Supper of Jesus (the first Mass), wherein he offered bread and wine, was truly united to his sacrificial death. All Masses offered by priests are therefore sacrifices to God. Many Protestant Christians deny that the Mass is a sacrifice, yet <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/the-sacrifice-of-the-mass">all of the Church Fathers</a> unanimously taught this. Scripture never says explicitly &#8220;the sacrifice of the Mass,&#8221; but this teaching is nonetheless a tradition. Church Historian JND Kelly <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Early_Christian_Doctrines.html?id=UivDgM0WywoC">said</a>, “The Eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian sacrifice from the closing decade of the first century, if not earlier. . . . It was natural for early Christians to think of the Eucharist as a sacrifice” (196).
6. Apostolic Succession. Catholics teach that bishops need to be ordained from someone with a direct lineage of succession to the apostles. This was never explained in Scripture as a requirement. Yet why did the <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/apostolic-succession">Church Fathers</a> consider it essential? Probably because it was an apostolic tradition. In fact, heretics who claimed that their doctrines stemmed from the apostles were refuted by Tertullian (160-220), who <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0311.htm">noted</a> that such heretics did not have lists of their bishops linking them to the apostles (ch. 32).
7. Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Scripture never says that there are three offices of leadership in the Church: bishops, priests, and deacons. It says only that there are elders or overseers and deacons. Yet St. Ignatius of Antioch spoke of a tripartite governance of orders that already existed for a while and was spread out in the various churches of Asia Minor (Letter to the Trallians 2:1-3). <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/bishop-priest-deacon">Other early Christians</a> spoke of the same. Where did they get such an idea if not from Tradition? How could they be so confident that every Church had a single bishop above the priests and deacons?
Those who claim that Tradition is just a murky soup of undefined messiness are wrong. Catholics cannot pull doctrines from Tradition, as if from a magician’s hat. Instead, the apostles handed down teachings verbally, and the early Christians attested to them.

7 Specific Church Traditions

<div>Can you help clear up the misunderstanding about St Junipero Serra? Many say he mistreated the Native Americans, but he must not have been bad if he was declared a saint.</div><div>After an extensive investigation over many years, Pope Francis was pleased to culminate the Catholic Church’s examination <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150923_usa-omelia-washington-dc.html">by canonizing Junipero Serra</a>.
In summary, St. Junipero gave his life for the temporal and eternal well-being of the people he served in Mexico and modern California, and that is why he was much beloved by the Indian and Hispanic populations he served.
For more on St. Junipero in historical context, please see <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/01/padre-mestizo#login">this article</a>, <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimgraves/st.-junipero-serra-is-a-great-american-hero">this article</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/junipero-serra">this article</a>
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Setting the Record Straight on St. Junipero Serra

The Catholic Church in the United States observes the Sunday after January 1 as the Solemnity of the Epiphany. (Most of the rest of the world observes it on its traditional date, January 6, which makes it the “Twelfth Day of Christmas.”) It is also sometimes called “Three Kings Day.” Many Latin American Catholics celebrate it as Día de los Tres Reyes Magos.” 
Its practical marginalization in Catholic circles in the United States obscures the significance of this feast, which, at one time, rivaled Christmas as the celebration of the Lord’s Incarnation.
Epiphany comes from the Greek epiphania, which means “revelation” or “manifestation.” That’s the core of this celebration: the manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh. That’s why it was—and remains—so important.
We think of Epiphany in terms of the coming of the magi with their gifts to Bethlehem. The Church certainly celebrates that, but in its joy, the Church also gathers together a multiplicity of themes connected with the “revelation” of Jesus and his mission. The Magnificat antiphon for Epiphany Evening Prayer I captures them:
<blockquote>Three wonders mark this day we celebrate: today the star led the Magi to the manger; today water was changed into wine at the marriage feast; today Christ desired to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation, alleluia.</blockquote>
Yes, Jesus was revealed to the Three Kings, who came to him in his infancy. But Jesus is revealed as “my Son” when the Holy Spirit descends on him in the Jordan River, following his baptism by John the Baptist. And, as John the Evangelist writes, the first “sign” (John never calls them “miracles,” because they are “signs” of who Jesus is) happened at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, where he turned water into wine.
If we look at the Gospel (Matt. 2:1-12) the Church employs on Epiphany—the account of the Three Kings—we also see “revelation” occurring on multiple levels.
The magi are Gentiles. They are the first non-Jews to come to and acknowledge Christ. Yes, there were shepherds, but we can assume they were Jews. They lived in the neighborhood of Bethlehem. They receive a supernatural message: angels appear to proclaim the birth of a savior in the City of David. This is Jewish language, conveying Jewish Messianic expectations, involving a place, described in Jewish terms, pertaining to the quintessential Jewish king, David. After visiting the Christ Child, the shepherds depart “praising God,” suggesting they did so as Jews.
They might not have been highly regarded Jews—shepherds were relatively low on Israel’s social totem pole, in view of their nomadic mobility—but they’re Jews who receive a supernatural revelation in Jewish categories.
The magi are none of that. It is clear they come from a “faraway country.” In our terminology, they were part astronomer, part astrologer: they sought to discern in the movements of the heavens the designs of highest heaven. They acknowledge that their path in search of the “newborn king of the Jews” has been led by a star.
We should not dismiss them as “superstitious.” God meets people where they are. If the receiver isn’t ready for FM, God will send his message on AM.
And what the magi did is also something the Church encourages of its faithful. God reveals himself in the sacred books of the Bible, so we should come to know Scripture. But God also reveals himself in the book of nature, in a world whose order, beauty, contingency, and purposefulness all point beyond itself. They point to One who ordered it, gave it that beauty and purpose, and both created and sustains its being. The Church teaches that man can come to a certain knowledge of God even from the created world.
It was that knowledge that led the magi to search for the Christ Child.
That knowledge is not complete: although man can come to know that God exists from creation, just who that God is and what his designs are toward men is something he has to tell us. And that’s where supernatural revelation completes natural revelation.
The Epiphany Gospel shows that. The star led them far, to Jerusalem. The Gospel tells us they stopped at Herod’s court to supplement their information. Presumably, Israel should be glad it has a newborn king!
Revelation illumines our minds but does not necessarily bend our wills. Instead of a happy court, the magi find Herod and Jerusalem “disturbed.” It’s not that they lacked supernatural revelation. When Herod consults the Jerusalem establishment about where the Messiah is to be born, they readily pull out the appropriate index card: “Bethlehem of Judea: see Micah 5: 2,4.” They know—in a sense better than the magi—about this child. But only their heads are ready, in contrast to the magi’s heads and hearts.
Fortified with a booster shot of supernatural revelation, they continue in the light of natural revelation—the star—which leads them to the manifestation of him whom they sought: the child in Bethlehem. They see him for what he is: Israel’s true and greatest king. Herod and his sycophants see him only as competition.
Their gifts also “manifest” who this child is. At first glance, those presents seem odd for a child. I’ll admit I’ve never given any of my kids some frankincense under the Christmas tree.
Nor should I. Those gifts were symbolic, not in the sense that they weren’t real or didn’t matter, but because they symbolized the identity of their recipient. We try to give presents appropriate to the recipient. The magi’s consummately were. Gold is the gift for a king. Incense is a gift offered in worship to God. Myrrh—perhaps the strangest—was an ancient spice used for burial. Myrrh is needed for one who will die.
People today might think it strange to give a child a bottle of formaldehyde against his future embalming. But the gift of myrrh makes clear, even from his infancy, that this child’s life and destiny involve suffering and wrestling with death. Calvary already casts a shadow on Bethlehem.
A king, God, and one who is to die—how do those seemingly incongruent elements fit together? They fit in this child, and in the unfolding of his life, which is first revealed to and proclaimed by not those privileged with Scripture and supernatural revelation, but the natural revelation of a star. And through that revelation, we come to know the “light for the Gentiles and the glory of Israel,” in whom God’s universal offer of salvation is manifest.

Epiphany and the Magic Road Trip

<div>Who are the Nephilim and where did the Nephilim come from? Were the Nephilim aliens?</div><div>The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/7-mysteries-about-the-nephilim" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nephilim</a> were a group mentioned briefly in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/explaining-the-nephilim-of-genesis" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Genesis 6:4</a> and again in Numbers 13:33. The best-supported reading, both linguistically and historically, is that &#8220;Nephilim&#8221; refers <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/are-the-nephilim-biblical-aliens">to unusually tall, powerful humans</a>. The term is likely a loanword meaning &#8220;giants,&#8221; and the biblical text itself describes them as &#8220;mighty men of old, men of renown.&#8221; However, there is no biblical or other historical basis for believing them to be aliens, as some have claimed.
Genesis links the Nephilim to the union of the &#8220;sons of God&#8221; and the &#8220;daughters of men.&#8221; The oldest Jewish and Christian interpretation holds that &#8220;<a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/tjap/who-are-the-nephilim" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">sons of God</a>&#8221; refers to angelic beings who rebelled, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/tjap/who-are-the-nephilim">fashioned temporary bodies for themselves</a>, took human wives, and produced offspring who were large in size and possessed super-human strength. This reading was standard in ancient Judaism and appears in some apocryphal texts like 1 Enoch.
Genesis 6:4 explicitly notes that the same kind of unions happened again &#8220;afterward,&#8221; which explains why the Israelites later encountered tall peoples in Canaan who were identified with the Nephilim. In brief, the Nephilim were human giants, and Scripture ties their origins to illicit unions between fallen angels (demons) and human women. This is an interpretation that best fits the language of the text and the earliest historical understanding of it.
For more information, including another perspective on who the sons of God in Genesis 6:4 may be, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/explaining-the-nephilim-of-genesis">please see this resource of ours</a>.
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Who Were the Nephilim?

<div>My three-year-old nephew has an imaginary friend he calls "Mark." Are imaginary friends considered guardian angels or demons?</div><div>Imaginary friends are just that: imaginary. Young children often use their imagination to &#8220;bring alive&#8221; their toys and stuffed animals. Some children go a step further and create in their minds an invisible friend. There is nothing to worry about. What your nephew has created in his mind is perfectly normal and is a sign of creativity.
</div>

Are Imaginary Friends Bad?

<div>I recall a married Catholic couple who separated but didn’t divorce so that one or the other could enter religious life. What are their names? </div><div>You may be thinking of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/was-there-a-catholic-couple-who-separated-but-did-not-divorce-so-that-one-spouse-could-enter">Cornelia Connelly</a> (1809-1879), who with her husband, Pierce, an Episcopalian minister, converted to the Catholic Church. Pierce Connelly decided he wanted to become a Catholic priest. In those days, no special dispensation existed to allow a converted Episcopal priest to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood and continue to share a common life with his wife. To accommodate his vocation, Cornelia became a religious sister and founded the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.
Pierce’s vocation didn’t last. He eventually left the priesthood and the Church altogether, denied Cornelia contact with their three children, and pressured her to abandon religious life to resume life with him and the children. She refused and entrusted her children’s future to God.
A cause for her canonization has been opened and she has been given the title <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/all-saints-in-the-family">Venerable</a>. You can read more about her in Ronda De Sola Chervin’s book <a href="https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/avoiding-bitterness-in-suffering">Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering</a> (Sophia Institute Press).
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Cornelia and Pierce Connelly

For anyone who has grown up in the Christian tradition, the Good Samaritan is a familiar story. Even in mainstream culture, the concept, if not the story itself, is pretty well embedded. And so you might find a lot of people who know something of what a “good Samaritan” is even without knowing anything about the parable as told in the Gospel of Luke.
The meaning of the mainstream concept sticks pretty closely to the literal meaning of the parable. The man asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”—seeking, perhaps, some excuse to limit the concept. The answer is classic Jesus, if we can put it that way. It’s not just that the category of “neighbor” includes people like the Samaritans—a people that any pious Jew in the first century would take great pains to avoid—but such a person, a heretic and a schismatic, is proposed as an example, above even a priest and a Levite, of someone who understands and practices the true heart of the Law.
The Lord is not here suggesting that heresy or schism don’t matter. It’s quite clear elsewhere in the Gospels that the Samaritans are in fact wrong, and they are in fact outsiders to the covenant. Doing good deeds in no way cancels out all those problems, so we should never read this parable as some kind of progressive tale about how religious differences are meaningless and we should all just be nice and get along. But the story does caution us against invoking boundaries in self-defeating ways. The boundaries that we have—whether we’re talking about the social-ethnic boundaries of ancient Israel or the sacramental and religious boundaries of the modern Christian landscape—are supposed to promote the authentic truth and goodness and beauty of divine revelation. They should never be an excuse from rationality or a mere cloak for petty sectarianism.
In other words, if a Samaritan can have mercy on a Jew, we should certainly be able to have mercy on a Samaritan—whoever that is for us. I don’t think this is meant to be very complicated, even if it remains challenging for people in every age.
But the sheer difficulty of this proposition—the fact that we so often do find excuses to avoid loving our neighbor as ourselves—gives us a little opening into the spiritual meaning of this parable that has been long recognized in the Tradition. How, if the priest and the Levite fail to follow the spirit of the Law, do the rest of us stand a chance? Who is this Samaritan?
When you’ve heard all your life, as many of us have, that the Good Samaritan is supposed to be a role model for us, it can be a bit shocking to realize that for the vast majority of Christians in history, our place in the story is not as the (potential) Samaritan, but as the semivif, the half-dead man on the road. (Indeed, if you have a pew missal from any time prior to 1970, you’ll likely see just this interpretation summarized in the notes on the Mass propers for the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.)
The Samaritan, then, is Christ himself. The priest and the Levite are the ministers of the old Law—or perhaps the Law and the Prophets—who are unable to help. As St. Paul says, the Law is good at offering condemnation, but it does not provide the power to save, the power to heal us and elevate our nature. Christ, the Good Samaritan, heals our wounds—with wine and oil, pretty obvious symbols of the sacraments—and puts us in a hostel—that is, the Church—to provide for all our needs until he returns. He promises to pay for everything from his own resources.
I first encountered this classic interpretation in William Langland’s great fourteenth-century English poem, Piers Plowman. In that version, the priest and the Levite represent faith and hope. The Samaritan—you guessed it—is charity. But again, Langland emphasizes the inadequacy of the Old Covenant, represented by faith and hope, to heal the wounds of sin and death.
Here are the words of Langland’s Samaritan:
<blockquote>“Have them excused,” quoth he,“their help may little avail:
May no medicine under molde the man to health bring— 
Neither Faith nor fine Hope, so festered be his wounds, 
Without the blood of a bairn born of a maid.
And be he bathed in that blood, baptised as it were, 
And then plastered with penance and passion of that baby, 
He should stand and step—as stalwart worth he never 
Till he have eaten all the barn and his blood y-drunk.
(B-Version, Passus XVII)</blockquote>
It’s a graphic image—no doubt a bit much for modern ears. Bairn in Middle English means a child, but otherwise I think the lines are pretty clear. The child is Jesus, and it is only through his blood, which in some sense “bathes” us in baptism and nourishes us in the Eucharist, that we shall ever be able to stand on two feet again.
The wounds of sin are simply too “festered” to be aided by mere faith and hope. We have heard the lesson from Deuteronomy where Moses insists that the word is “very near” to us. It’s a beautiful description of what the Catholic tradition has often called the natural law. In other word, the moral law is not some arbitrary imposition from on high; it is embedded in the structure and reality of creation.
Even in the Old Testament, though, people need God’s help to know this law. It may be written on their hearts, but that writing is hard to read when the heart is weighed down and corrupted by sin. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we see that even having an accurate understanding of the moral law is insufficient. It is only through grace—that is, through the intervention of Christ our Good Samaritan—that we can be healed. And it is only in holy Church, his halfway house between the world and our ultimate home, that this healing can continue until he returns.
Having understood this, though, we can return at last to the literal meaning of the parable, which is a lesson about loving our neighbor. If we have been so loved by God, if Christ has laid down his life for us, surely part of the healing and the power that he gives is the ability, in and through his grace, to ourselves act as neighbors—to risk ourselves on the dangerous highways of this world for the sake of the people that God created and loves and wants to bring home. As we receive his gifts of grace, his own body and blood, may we also share in his love for his people and his passionate desire to carry them home by way of the hospital that is the Church.

Heretics and the Good Samaritan

Jimmy Akin delves into the question of whether receiving the Eucharist is essential for salvation, and whether this excludes Protestants and Evangelicals. He explores Jesus&#8217; teaching in John 6 and explains the Church&#8217;s nuanced understanding, highlighting Vatican II&#8217;s clarification on the salvation of those outside the Catholic Church. Jimmy emphasizes the concept of normative necessity versus absolute necessity for salvation, providing a clear and insightful perspective on this complex theological topic.
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Transcript:
My question is kind of a two-parter. Is it true that receiving the Eucharist is necessary for salvation? And if so, would it therefore logically follow that Protestants and evangelicals who don&#8217;t have the Eucharist fall outside of that? And would that not contradict some of what Vatican II has said about someone being baptized, being a Christian, even though it&#8217;s outside of the church? Does that make sense?
Oh yeah, Jesus clearly teaches in John 6 that if you don&#8217;t eat his flesh and drink his blood, you have no life in you. However,
the church has also&#8230; that clearly doesn&#8217;t apply to everybody because it didn&#8217;t apply to the Jews who lived before the time of Christ. You know, they can get into heaven and they didn&#8217;t receive the Eucharist. Similarly, Jews living in other parts of the Roman Empire before the Christian message got to them, they could be saved and they didn&#8217;t receive the body and blood of Christ even after the time of Christ because the gospel hadn&#8217;t reached them yet. And the Catholic Church has clarified, particularly at Vatican II, that those who through no fault of their own are not Christian or not Catholic can be saved as long as under the influence of God&#8217;s grace they otherwise live up to the degree of light and grace that they have received, whatever level that may be. So it is possible for people who are Protestant or even non-Christian through no fault of their own to be saved. So the way we want to understand the normativity of receiving the Eucharist is not as an absolute necessity, but as a normative necessity. It&#8217;s something that is the normal way that it is a normal way that we receive salvation the same way faith in Christ is and the same way baptism is. And so this just goes into the same category as the other things that we need to do for salvation. We need to have faith in Christ, we need to be baptized, we need to receive the Eucharist, but all of those are normative necessities, not absolute necessities. And so if a person is not able to do one of those things through no fault of their own, then God knows they&#8217;re not at fault and he&#8217;s not going to hold them accountable for it.
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Is the Eucharist Necessary for Salvation?

Could this tactic help you win debates? @shamelesspopery

Protestant worship lacks this one thing… the Eucharist.

<div>Is there an archangel named Cassiel?</div><div>The Church rejects any attempt to name or identify angels that are not directly referred to in the canon of Scripture. Gabriel and Michael are mentioned in the New Testament and Raphael is mentioned in the book of Tobit.
</div>

Archangel Cassiel?

Some Protestants are quick to use Ephesians 2:8-9 as an objection to the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-the-catholic-understanding-of-the-biblical-plan-of-salvation">Catholic </a>understanding of salvation, particularly when it comes to baptism. Take, for example,<a href="https://www.gty.org/library/Print/Articles/A190"> this article</a> adapted from the writings of John MacArthur. Regarding the Catholic view of baptism, MacArthur claims:
<blockquote>The means by which justification is initially obtained is not faith, but the sacrament of baptism…As thousands of former Catholics will testify, Roman Catholic doctrine and liturgy obscure the essential truth that the believer is saved by grace through faith and not by his own works (Ephesians 2:8-9). In a simple sense, Catholics genuinely believe they are saved by doing good, confessing sin, and observing ceremonies.</blockquote>
MacArthur and many more Protestants view the sacrament of baptism as akin to a &#8220;good work&#8221; or &#8220;ceremony.&#8221; This differs from the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-baptism-really-necessary">Catholic belief</a> that baptism is a necessary instrument for receiving God&#8217;s sanctifying graces. Under MacArthur’s view, the Catholic view conflicts with Ephesians 2:8-9, which emphasizes salvation through faith rather than works.
Ironically, however, this very passage is actually about baptism.
Here is Ephesians 2:8-9 in context:
<blockquote>But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast (v. 4-9, emphasis added).</blockquote>
Now consider this passage in Colossians 2, which St. Paul wrote around the same time, in the same prison:
<blockquote>&#8230;and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses (v. 12-13, emphasis added).</blockquote>
St. Paul uses strikingly similar language in both passages. In each epistle, he describes how we are:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">dead in our trespasses,</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">raised up with Christ through faith, and</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">made alive together with Christ.</li>
</ul>
In Colossians, however, St. Paul specifies that all of this happens as a result of us being “buried with him in baptism.” Considering this, it is fitting to also interpret Ephesians 2:8-9 as referring to baptism, when we receive Christ’s sanctifying graces. Baptism is not a work, so that man may boast, but is the gift of God, as Ephesians describes. 
Thus, Catholics should not be threatened by the Protestant’s use of Ephesians 2, but can instead take the opportunity to discuss the sanctifying graces of baptism.

Turning the Tables on a Protestant Prooftext

The Book of Acts does not tell us the full story of early Church history. It provides only partial information.
This is obvious from the fact that it covers just the period between A.D. 33 and 60, when it suddenly stops (providing us an important clue to when it was written). Even within that time frame, though, it is only a partial record.
For example, the book of Acts tracks the activities of basically three individuals:
<ul>
<li>Peter (chapters 1-6, 9-12)</li>
<li>Philip the Evangelist (chapter 8)</li>
<li>Paul (chapters 9, 11, 13-28)</li>
</ul>
This gives us a big clue about who Luke’s main sources were in composing the book—at least for those parts that he didn’t personally witness, which are found in the so-called “we” passages later in the book, where Luke describes what “we” did.
Luke tells us almost nothing of the activities of the other apostles, or of other Christians, and so the book is also incomplete in that way.
It does not even give us a complete record of what its main figures did:
<ul>
<li>Peter vanishes from the narrative after chapter 12, except for a brief reappearance in chapter 15.</li>
<li>Philip has only a single chapter devoted to his activities.</li>
<li>And, as we will see, Acts does not record many of the activities of Paul.</li>
</ul>
Some time ago, I did a study of the flow of time in the book of Acts. Periodically, Luke will provide time cues, saying that Paul spent three years in Ephesus (20:31) or that he stayed in Thessalonica for three weeks (17:1-2) or that they sailed from Mitylene and the next day arrived at Chios (20:14-15).
As a Bible chronology geek, I couldn’t resist going through the book of Acts and making a list of all the explicit time cues—as well as providing estimates for the  implicit ones (e.g., when Paul goes from one place to another and we can estimate how long it took based on ancient travel times and methods) and the vague ones (e.g., if Luke says Paul spent “many days” somewhere, I might reckon that as a month).
I wanted to add all these up and see if they fit within the chronological framework that the book covers as a whole. Could all of the activities ascribed to Paul have taken place in the years within the book that he was active?
The good news, from an apologetic perspective, is that they did. Acts appears to cover a period of twenty-seven years (A.D. 33 to 60), but my time estimates for the events it mentions came to only thirteen years in total.
That means that there is plenty of room in the twenty-seven years that the book covers for all of the events Luke records—and more! So Luke passes that test as a historian. He does not give us an impossible chronology. But he also does not give us a complete chronology.
We know that the record is incomplete because of the information recorded in Paul’s letters. For example, in 2 Corinthians, there is a famous passage where Paul is so frustrated with some of the people at Corinth that he has an epistolary meltdown, and he says some very interesting things about what he has done in his life. When comparing himself to his opponents, Paul writes:
<blockquote>Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.
Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.
Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned.
Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure (11:23-27).</blockquote>
So here are the totals:
<ul>
<li>Forty lashes minus one from the Jews: 5</li>
<li>Beaten with rods: 3</li>
<li>Stoned: 1</li>
<li>Shipwrecked: 3</li>
<li>Adrift at sea for a night and a day: 1</li>
</ul>
How many of these does Luke record in the book of Acts? Exactly two.
The thing is, 2 Corinthians was written some time between A.D. 55 and 57, depending on which chronology you accept. No matter what, though, it was written before Paul went to Jerusalem for the final time, because in 2 Corinthians 9:1-5 he tells the Corinthians to be ready to make donations so that he can take them to the Jerusalem church when he makes his final visit.
That trip is already underway—and he has already passed the city of Corinth—by Acts 20:5-6. We know this because in that passage, Paul is in Troas—a city to the east of Corinth. Therefore, 2 Corinthians had to be written before this point on his final journey to Jerusalem, and so what is found in 2 Corinthians must have happened before Acts 20:5.
This means that all the perils Paul mentioned above must have occurred before this point in Acts.
But only two such perils are mentioned by Luke. One is the stoning at Lystra that occurs in Acts 14:19. This is the single stoning that Paul mentions in his list. (Another stoning, at Iconium, was attempted in 14:5, but it apparently fell through because Paul mentions being stoned only once.)
The second is in Acts 16:22-37, where Paul is beaten with rods at Philippi. That’s likely one of the three beatings he refers to in 2 Corinthians.
But these are the only events in 2 Corinthians that can be referred to in Acts.
There must, therefore, be two other beatings with rods. They happened during the period that Acts covers, but they are not mentioned in Acts.
In addition, all five of the times that Paul received the “forty lashes minus one” from the Jews are not mentioned in Acts.
Nor are the three times he was shipwrecked, because the only shipwreck mentioned is in Acts 27, which is after his final journey to Jerusalem and thus after 2 Corinthians was written.
Furthermore, when that shipwreck occurs, Paul and his companions ran the ship aground in a bay of the island of Malta (27:44-28:1). They do not spend a night and a day in the sea. That must refer to an earlier event.
There are several other events mentioned in Paul’s letters that aren’t found in Acts. Some of these are in the pastoral epistles (1-2 Timothy, Titus), but these letters likely were written after the book of Acts closed.
This is not the case, however, for events found in Galatians, which was clearly written during the time period covered by Acts.
An example is the fifteen-day visit Paul made to Jerusalem, where he saw only Peter and James the Lord’s brother (Gal. 1:18-19). That’s not in Acts.
Neither is the much more consequential visit that Peter (Cephas) made to Antioch while Paul was staying there. There were fireworks between the two during this meeting (Gal. 2:11-16), but Luke does not mention it in Acts.
We thus see that Acts is not just a limited record of a few key figures (Peter, Phillip, and Paul). It is restricted even in what it records about all of these three. Undoubtedly, each did many more things than are recorded in Acts.
In particular, Paul experienced many things that aren’t mentioned in the book even though they fell in the period it covers.
Why didn’t Luke record them? In some cases, he may not have wanted to because he didn&#8217;t want to distract the reader from his overall message. For example, if he included Paul&#8217;s rebuke of Peter at Antioch, it could have distracted from the fundamental agreement (present both in Acts and Galatians) between Peter and Paul.
In other cases, Luke may not have known about the event. He wasn’t by Paul’s side during the whole time of his ministry. Indeed, the first “we” passage doesn’t occur until Acts 16:10-17, so there was a lot of Paul’s ministry that Luke didn’t witness.
Paul may have recounted some of them to Luke, though, just as he did for the readers of 2 Corinthians. So why wouldn’t Luke include those?
Likely, because they would have been too repetitive for his own readers. Recording five lashings, three beatings with rods, and three shipwrecks before we get to the one in chapter 27 could be seen as overkill.
It also could have taken more space than Luke felt he had available to him if he were going to keep Acts approximately the same length as his Gospel, which was the length of a typical scroll.
Luke thus may have had good reasons for not recording everything that happened to Paul. Still, it would be fascinating to know more.

What Acts Leaves Out

Saying you’re “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-catholics-cant-be-pro-choice">Catholics for choice</a>” (i.e. the choice to kill unborn children) is like saying you’re a vegetarian for beef and pork BBQ. It doesn’t make sense, but if you repeat loud enough and long enough some people will let you get away with it and maybe even some other doozies.
I think Catholics for Choice could change their name to “Catholics for Clout Chasing” because their recent X post is a shameless example of that. Just say something blasphemous about the Blessed Virgin and guarantee yourself publicity in a world where there is no such thing as “bad press.”

Most informed people recognize this is a dumb argument, but they may not know the specific logical fallacy it employs. That’s the fallacy of equivocation: using the same word but with two different meanings.
The argument appears to be saying, “Mary had a reproductive ‘choice’ so everyone should have a reproductive ‘choice.’” And sure—Mary was free to choose to not conceive a child in her womb, and every woman should also have that choice because the marital act involves a free gift of self. But abortion is not a “reproductive choice.” <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-to-prove-life-begins-at-conception">Reproduction has already happened!</a> Abortion is instead the choice to kill a child before he or she is born.
Saying Mary was free to not become pregnant doesn’t mean women should have the freedom to not remain pregnant. That’s like saying the choice to not become a pilot means a person should also have the choice to not remain a pilot and be able to parachute out of a packed plane mid-flight, leaving the passengers to do the flying instead.
Pregnancy isn’t a job. It’s a sacred responsibility God entrusted to women. Mary received the most sacred responsibility of all: bearing the savior of the world. It’s blasphemous to use the sublime beauty of the Incarnation to argue for the evil of abortion—but when an organization’s very name is a nonsensical blasphemy, what more can you expect from them?

A New Low for “Catholics for Choice”

<div>May I marry on a Sunday?</div><div>Yes, a couple may get married on a Sunday subject to the availability of the parish and priest. There are only two days on which a wedding cannot be celebrated (Good Friday and Easter Saturday).
Outside of those two days, the sacrament of marriage may be celebrated, but there is a caveat. During the Sundays of Advent, Lent, and Easter, there cannot be a ritual Mass on a Sunday (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ordinamento-messale_en.html">GIRM, 372</a>). Therefore, on those Sundays, the couple would be married at a Mass in which the prayers and readings are from the Sunday Mass of the day rather than a nuptial Mass. On those Sundays, the Order of Matrimony without Mass may be fully used.
This, of course, is subject to the availability of the parish and priest. Some parishes simply cannot reasonably accommodate a wedding on a Sunday, and some priests have too many things on their schedule to accept a Sunday wedding.
</div>

Is a Sunday Wedding Possible?

I have to begin by saying that this is, as far as I can tell, the first time I have ever preached a normal homily on All Souls’ Day, because it is the first time I have ever observed it on a Sunday. It is a strange experience, if, at least, you treat All Souls as what it has always been: a day of prayer for the dead.
Some of our separated brethren, in a misguided appropriation of the November devotions, often conflate All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, basically making it a time to throw Grandma into the same category as Our Lady and just make a generic celebration of everything of the past without remembering the Church’s most basic intuition that there are some in glory who can pray for us, and there are many others for whom we are bound to pray. Unfortunately, I think many celebrations of All Souls in the modern Roman Rite, like funeral liturgies in the same, with white vestments and without all the hard old prayers like the Dies Irae, add to this confusion.
Some years ago, Pope Benedict lamented that the revised propers for the dead in the new missal seem to have expunged every reference to the soul. One priest is certainly not going to fix all this by complaining in a homily, but I bring it up because it is something of a scandalous elephant in the room, and even in places where all the old rites are observed—the sequence for the dead, the long old propers, the rite of absolution, and so on—we have a long road ahead of us to reclaim an authentically Catholic understanding of death, which would be the same thing as having an authentically Catholic understanding of the body.
This is, to put it mildly, a hard sell in our culture, because it would require us to accept that to be human means not unbounded freedom, but specifically a freedom limited by the givenness of the body. Death is both a mercy and a penalty, a further limit, and the temporary separation of body and soul requires a confrontation with these limits.
Part of the death-denial of our culture is that favorite trope wherein the mourning loved one gazes on the body in the coffin, declaring with confidence, “That’s not really Grandpa! He’s gone.” But this is a lie, even while it tells something partly true, because we really are our bodies, so the separation of death is no small thing, but a real crisis of human identity. We can speak of an enduring human identity—that is, the soul—only insofar as somehow the entirety of human existence is held in the memory of God who alone gives us being. So although the saints in heaven, the souls in purgatory, and the souls in hell are all really alive in God, their state is temporary until the resurrection, and we know very little about what these things are like apart from the bare bones of Catholic teaching and the occasional speculative vision from history.
A lot of Christians think of reality as a three-story building—the main floor is where we are, hell is something below us, heaven is above. And even if most Christians don’t believe that hell is literally underneath the ground, or heaven is up above the clouds, the way we think about them tends to rely on these spatial analogies. But in fact the formal teaching on heaven and hell is quite simple: heaven is where God is most present; hell is where God is most absent. But when you put it this way, things get confusing, because Christians are supposed to believe that God is everywhere. Does it mean that heaven and hell are just a state of mind
Not exactly. C.S. Lewis suggests in his wonderful book, The Great Divorce that hell is a state of mind—using one’s own mind as a prison—whereas heaven is reality itself. In other words, heaven and hell are not equals, just as God and the devil are not equals. Think of heaven as a beautiful open country with fields and mountains and forests, teeming with life and beauty. And if that wonderful place is heaven, hell is the shadow under a pebble under a blade of grass. You can live under that pebble if you want. You can convince yourself that it is the best place to be. But to live there, you have to become very small, very shadowy, and less and less like yourself, more and more subject to the tortures and cold and darkness of your own choice.
That vision from Lewis is incomplete, of course, especially when it comes to the role of the resurrected body, not to mention the way that God names and confirms our judgment after death. But it is still a helpful picture. The saints, whom we celebrated on All Saints’ Day yesterday, are the people who already live in the heavenly country. Some of them we know well, because we have a relationship with them and because they have in visible signs shown us their direct participation in the vision of God. Some of them we do not know at all, and that’s no surprise, because how could Holy Church, even with her supernatural gifts, ever presume to exhaustively catalogue the courts of heaven?
The “all souls” we remember today are everybody else. And just as we don’t really know everyone who’s definitely one of the saints, we don’t really know for sure who isn’t. This is why we pray: because we don’t let our ignorance of the afterlife stop us from loving those we love.
When Christians pray for the dead, we pray, in effect, that the people we know and remember will end up, hopefully with us, in that heavenly country. We don’t know how this works. Not really.
There are quite a few Christians, especially since the Reformation, who think it’s a bad idea to pray for the dead because we don’t know for sure what it accomplishes or how. This is just about the worst reason I can think of in the world. I don’t know exactly what it accomplishes for me to kiss my child. But sometimes we do things not because they’re useful, but because they’re good. And Holy Church does, in the end, assure us that, whatever the mechanics of purgatory, these prayers are both good and useful. Just as with the living, we know that prayer works. The fact that the working of prayer is a mystery should not prevent us from doing it.
Whereas All Saints’ Day is a celebration, All Souls’ Day is a general funeral for all our dead. It is sad, because death is sad. It is not a “celebration of life” or any other such nonsense. Even when it’s a good death, and when the family gather and share their love and their memories, it’s still sad. And what the Church offers in the All Souls’ requiem is a place to channel those feelings into prayer, to commend our friends and our family to God, not as a gesture of usefulness, but as a gesture of love. Love and hope—hope that in his mercy, God will bring us together at the Last Day in the place where he reigns in glory.
That personal hope is never very far from our prayers for the dead. Two of the more prolix parts of the traditional funeral rites, the Dies Irae and the Libera Me, speak in the first person, summing up, perhaps, the prayers of the faithful for their own deliverance. For example, in the Dies Irae we pray,
Through the sinful woman shriven,
Through the dying thief forgiven, 
Thou to me a hope hast given.
Despite all the language of hell, and punishment, and undying fires, and realms of darkness, these classic texts center on hope. Real hope requires a sober awareness of our situation! But the knowledge of these things grounds us more fully in the incredible grace and mercy of God, who pours out his gifts to us without measure. Because of that grace and mercy, we can wait a moment in the darkness of Good Friday with our beloved dead, waiting with them for the final joy of the resurrection.

Pray for the Dead Today

Is Praying to the Saints Wrong?

When it comes to biblical evidence for Purgatory, Catholics <a href="https://www.catholic.com/bible-navigator/purgatory/1corinthians315">know to turn to 1 Corinthians 3:11-15</a>. There, Paul writes,
<blockquote>For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man’s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.</blockquote>
Paul describes a saved Christian on the day of judgment being purified by “fire” after death in a state of existence that’s neither heaven nor hell. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/purgatory">That’s got to be Purgatory</a>, right?
Well, some Protestants argue, “Not so fast!” There’s nothing here, so they say, about suffering that discharges the debt of temporal punishment, which is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/are-indulgences-a-scam">part and parcel</a> of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory.
For example, the late Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Roman-Catholics-Evangelicals-Agreements-Differences/dp/0801038758/ref=sr_1_1?crid=174A574X9Y98Z&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Aukvl2JfzDONJyHQIlzbk5Abvfc6a4bF1_JbUkh8tDrGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.0bVFcj7im9Lq0Qb3v4mdh3Leylm7yNgjC3aP_74YiRc&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=geisler+and+mackenzie&amp;qid=1733332522&amp;sprefix=geisler+and+mackenzi%2Caps%2C141&amp;sr=8-1">state</a>, “There is absolutely nothing here about suffering for our sins or their consequences after death.” For Geisler and MacKenzie, Paul’s comment “he will suffer loss” merely refers to “a loss of reward [in heaven] for not serving Christ faithfully.”
How should we respond?
Notice how, for Geisler and MacKenzie, “there is absolutely nothing here about suffering for our sins.” Yet Paul makes it clear that the individual who “suffers loss” (v.15) suffers loss because his works, represented by wood, hay, and straw, are “burned up”—that’s to say, he suffers for his sins.
The suffering may be caused by the distress of losing a reward in heaven. But that’s beside the point. The individual still suffers on account of past sins. And to suffer on account of sin, even if the suffering is due to a deprivation of some good, is the meaning of punishment. That the punishment is temporary, or not everlasting, is evidenced by the fact that the soul in question is saved.
We can also look to the Greek for evidence of a punitive dimension to this passage. The phrase “he will suffer loss” translates the Greek word zēmiōthēsetai, which is a future indicative of the Greek verb zēmioō. The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Greek-English-Lexicon-New-Testament-Semantic/dp/0826703437">definition</a> of zēmioō is “to be punished, with the implication of suffering damage.” Zēmioō can be understood without a punitive character, in the sense of simply losing something (Phil. 3:8). But even if we understand it that way in 1 Corinthians 3:15, the context reveals that the loss is on account of the bad works, thus punitive in character.
It’s interesting to note that in the Septuagint, zēmioō (corresponding to Hebrew anash) is used in several places as a monetary fine (Exod. 21:22; Deut. 22:19; Prov. 17:26) and punishment for an evil deed (Prov. 19:9, 21:11, 22:3).
Finally, the punitive character can be seen in that the individual is temporarily detained from receiving the reward of heaven on account of his bad works. He has to go through fire in order to be saved. As mentioned above, deprivation of a good on account of sin is an essential aspect of punishment. And since this is a temporary deprivation, it’s a temporary form of punishment.
So 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 supports not only the purification of the individual, which would involve the purging of any moral defilement remaining in the soul, but also suffering on account of venial sins, which by its nature discharges the debt of temporal punishment.

Biblical Evidence for Purgatory

Dr. Karlo Broussard argues that apologetics should not be abandoned, because reasoned arguments—alongside love and prayer—remain essential for defending the faith, leading people to truth, and helping others share fully in the spiritual goods of the Catholic Church.
TRANSCRIPT: Should We Ditch Apologetics?
Are we wasting our time with apologetics? Is it time to give it up? I don’t think so. And I’d like to share a few reasons why.
Hey guys, Welcome back to the channel! So glad to have you with me. If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to subscribe…and also , I’d like to invite you to consider helping keep this podcast going by financially supporting us over at patreon at doctorkarlo.com with “doctor” spelled out.
So, ever since I started doing apologetics and sharing my love for it with others, I’ve had plenty of people try to stifle that passion. Some have even gone so far as to say we really shouldn’t be doing apologetics at all.
One common objection is that proofs don’t always work—so, why even bother with apologetics?
Another reason is that we should just focus on love, not arguments.
Yet another: why bother in persuading others when the Church teaches it’s possible for someone who’s outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church to be saved?
Do these sound familiar? Maybe you’ve run into these ideas as well—or maybe even wrestled with them yourself.
In this video, I want to offer a few thoughts in response.
And in doing so, I hope to also share a vision of how I view apologetics.
Let’s start with that first objection: “Proofs don’t always work, so what’s the point?”
Well, first off, let’s be honest—lots of things don’t always work when it comes to evangelization.
Take love, for example. Just loving someone doesn’t guarantee they’ll come to faith.
But does that mean we should give up on love? Of course not.
Same thing with prayer. Some folks say, “We don’t need apologetics—we should just pray for people.”
Well, while prayer is powerful and important, guess what? Sometimes it doesn’t bring about the desired result, at least not right away.
But do we give up on prayer? Absolutely not.
So here’s how we can frame it logically:
<ul>
<li>Premise 1: If we give up on apologetics because it doesn’t always work, then we’d have to give up on love and prayer, too.</li>
<li>Premise 2: But we shouldn’t give up on love and prayer.</li>
<li>Conclusion: Therefore, we shouldn’t give up on apologetics either.</li>
</ul>
Here’s another response to this objection: sometimes arguments do work.
Speaking from personal experience as an apologist with Catholic Answers, I can’t tell you how many people have told me that something I said or wrote helped them come to the Catholic faith—or strengthened their belief in it, for those who are already Catholic.
And I’m not the only one. My colleagues—many of whom themselves converted through apologetics—have shared similar stories. They too experience firsthand how reasoned arguments lead people into the Church.
So, if apologetical arguments sometimes work, that alone is reason enough to use them.
And that leads right into my next response:
If we toss out apologetics just because some people aren’t convinced by the arguments, then we’re ignoring the people who would be convinced.
And that’s a big deal.
We don’t want to miss the chance to reach hearts and minds that are genuinely open to the truth. That wouldn’t just be a strategic failure—it would be a failure of charity.
So let’s not throw apologetics out just because not everyone finds the arguments persuasive.
Now, there’s something underneath this objection that we need to address:
The idea that arguments have to work every time in order to be worth using.
But that’s just not a fair or realistic expectation.
Many arguments in apologetics don’t lead to ironclad, undeniable conclusions. Now, here me: I’m not saying there are no arguments that lead to undeniable conclusions. I do think the conclusions of some philosophical arguments, like Aquinas’s Five Ways for proving God’s existence, can’t be denied without the pain of contradiction.
What I am saying is that many (or perhaps most) arguments don’t lead to the ironclad undeniable conclusions. Instead, they usually give us probable knowledge, which means the person still has to choose to believe.
And when belief involves the will, that means the thing being proposed for belief can also be rejected.
Why? Well, lots of reasons.
<ul>
<li>Maybe the person doesn’t like the conclusion and rejects it out of pride or emotional resistance.</li>
<li>Maybe they just don’t have the intellectual background to really follow the argument.</li>
<li>Maybe past sin has clouded their intellect and made it harder for them to see the truth.</li>
</ul>
Or maybe the problem is on our end. 
Perhaps the person presenting the argument didn’t explain it clearly—even if the argument itself was sound.
So when someone says, “Apologetics doesn’t always work,” we can say, “Of course not. We don’t expect it to always work.”
The ineffectiveness of apologetics for this or that person isn’t a reason to give up on it entirely.
Here’s something else to keep in mind: just because someone doesn’t accept an argument now doesn’t mean they never will.
Coming to the truth is a journey. Some people aren’t ready today—but they might be ready a week, a year, or even a decade from now.
That’s why it’s still worth offering the arguments. You never know when someone will be in the right place to hear them.
Here’s a final point in response to that first objection:
Even if the arguments don’t convince the person we’re speaking to, they still have value.
<ul>
<li>They can strengthen the faith of the person offering them—or the faith of those hearing the arguments.</li>
<li>They help satisfy our rational nature. Our minds are wired to ask “why?” and seek reasons behind what we believe. Apologetical arguments give such reasons.</li>
<li>And that makes apologetics a matter of justice. People have a right to know the reasons behind the faith they’re being invited to embrace.</li>
</ul>
So even when apologetics doesn’t “work” in the obvious way of bringing about a conversion—it’s still doing important work.
Now, what about that second objection—“Forget apologetics, just focus on love”?
Well, as Christians, we absolutely agree that love is the most important thing.
In fact, Scripture tells us love—supernatural love—is the greatest among the supernatural gifts, even above faith and hope. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 13. Also, love is the condition for entrance to heaven, as Jesus teaches with the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46.
But just because love is most important doesn’t mean apologetics isn’t important at all.
Another thing to remember: apologetics is about reason—and reason isn’t the enemy of love. It’s actually its friend.
When we lead someone to the truth, we’re enabling them to love God more deeply. Truth and love go hand in hand.
And let’s not forget: love defends what it loves.
If you love something—or someone—and you see it being attacked, you step in to protect and defend it.
We love Jesus. We love the truth He revealed. And both are under attack in today’s world.
That’s why we do apologetics: to defend what we love.
Alright, so much for the love objection. Let’s now tackle the objection that might go like this: Why bother with apologetics? I mean, the Church says people outside the visible boundaries of Catholicism can still be saved, right? 
Well . . . the short answer is: yes, the Church does teach that. You can see it in paragraphs 846 to 848 of the Catechism. Let me read you part of paragraph 847—it’s quoting Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium, section 16:
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation (LG, 16).
Okay—so if that’s the case, why keep doing apologetics? I can think of five reasons.
Reason #1: As the 2007 Doctrinal Note on Evangelization points out (which was published by then the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, now called the Dicastery for the Faith), people outside the visible Church are missing out on a tremendous benefit in this life. Or actually, benefits, plural.
The fullness of revelation about God, His son Jesus Christ, and the Church that he established.
The fullness of revelation about life’s biggest questions.
The fullness of revelation about the “inestimable benefit to live within the universal embrace of the friends of God—the communion of saints.”
The certainty of forgiveness of sins through Baptism and Confession.
The fullness of revelation concerning the means of attaining and preserving friendship with Christ, which is what Jesus reveals to be “eternal life.”
In light of this, the Doctrinal Note concludes,
The Church wants everyone to share in these goods so that they may possess the fullness of truth and the fullness of the means of salvation, in order “to enter into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:21).
So, we continue to bother with apologetics because we want others to experience all the goods/gifts that Christ entrusted to His Church.
This is the same idea you see in the 2000 declaration Dominus Iesus. It stated,
If it is true that the followers of other religions can receive divine grace, it is also certain that objectively speaking they are in a gravely deficient situation in comparison with those who, in the Church, have the fullness of the means of salvation.
Notice it says those outside the Church are in a gravely deficient situation? I think that’s a pretty good motivator for apologetics.
Reason #2: It’s a matter of justice. I mentioned this briefly earlier. But I think it’s worth mentioning again. That same Doctrinal Note on Evangelization quotes Pope St. John Paul II’s 1990 Encyclical Redemptoris Missio, stating,
“[E]very person has the right to hear the ‘Good News’ of the god who reveals and gives himself in Christ . . . It is a right which the Lord himself confers on every person . . . This right implies the corresponding duty to evangelize.” 
If we opt out of giving persuasive reasons to embrace the truth of Christ in his Church, then we’re selling people short of what’s due to them. That’s definitely not an option!
Reason #3: Non-Catholics can miss out on growing their soul’s capacity for happiness in heaven. Frank Sheed nails this point in his book Theology and Sanity. Sorry for the long quote, but it’s worth it:
A man who does not accept the Catholic Church may be saved; that is, he may enter heaven. But not having all the truths or all the means of grace, he will not have grown to the soul-capacity that the totality of Christ&#8217;s gifts would have meant to him. A given non-Catholic may indeed have made better use of his smaller share of gifts than a given Catholic has made of the totality. Yet his capacity, though it may be greater than this or that Catholic actually has, is not as great as he himself as a Catholic would have had. And the difference matters far beyond our power to conceive (pg. 344).
Friends, I can’t improve on that. Sheed had a way with words.
Fourth reason to keep doing apologetics even though someone possibly can be saved outside the visible boundaries of the Church: Truth is a good—especially the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church. And love means wanting the good for others. So if we love our neighbor, we’ll want them to know and live that truth. And what better way to help them know that truth than through apologetics.
Finally, reason #5: The Church only says it’s possible for someone outside the visible Church to be saved. We don’t know exactly who that includes. So to be safe—and loving—we still need to share the truth as persuasively as we can. And that can happen through apologetics.
So, should we ditch apologetics just because arguments don’t always “work,” or because love is more important, or because it’s possible for a non-Catholic to be saved Absolutely not.
Ditching apologetics definitely wasn’t the way for St. Peter. Remember what he said in 1 Peter 3:15: “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.”
My friends, we need all the tools in the tool kit for evangelization—love, prayer, and reasoned argumentation. All of these work together to lead people to the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church.
Well, my friends, that’s it for today! If you found this video helpful, make sure to like, subscribe, and share it with someone who might need to hear this. And for more resources, check out my website at karlobroussard.com.
If you want me to come and speak at your event, visit catholicanswersspeakers.com.
Lastly, I’d love for you to consider supporting me over on Patreon. I can’t continue doing this podcast without your financial support. You can find me over at doctorkarlo.com with doctor spelled out.
Thanks for hanging out, and I’ll see you next time!
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Should We Ditch Apologetics?

How should Catholics think about immigration? @catholic.converts

Is this a valid argument against Christianity?

Can You Choose the Wrong Husband or Wife? In this video, Jimmy Akin explores this question and explains how God wants us to use our gift of free will.
Transcript:
Um, I&#8217;ve discerned into marriage and proposed to my girlfriend. Problem is, I&#8217;m experiencing cold feet and severe stress with a chance I picked the wrong person. Told myself, just trust God. If He wanted me to be with someone else, He’d move my heart in another direction. But since many have tried to tell me God doesn&#8217;t have a particular individual planned out for anyone, i.e., a soulmate, not sure God will ever intervene. Should I be expecting help from God?
Okay, well, um, I would say that what people have told you—that God doesn&#8217;t have a single individual who&#8217;s like destined for you and you either get that person or you miss forever—I would say those people are right. This idea of a soulmate is not something that&#8217;s found in the Bible. And we see, um, people like the patriarch Abraham—he was originally married to Sarah, but after she passed on, he got married to a woman named Keturah. And as far as we know, they had a successful marriage. Moses had more than one wife too, one after the other. And so, um, it&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s this one and only person out there for you. You&#8217;ve got options.
And so I would say if, uh, you&#8217;re having cold feet, well, that&#8217;s understandable. I remember when I got married, it—you know, there was a certain moment when we were actually saying the vows, and we got up to the &#8220;I take you to be my spouse&#8221; part, and I&#8217;m starting to say that, and all of a sudden, I&#8217;m getting really weak in the knees. Um, and actually, I&#8217;m told if you watch videos of people, um, getting married, sometimes you&#8217;ll see one of the two parties just faint on the spot as they&#8217;re saying the vows, because you&#8217;ve got that adrenaline going with the fight-or-flight reflex. And what that does—when you have the fight-or-flight reflex—is it, um, will suck blood away from your head in order to enable you to run. And sucking the blood away from your head can cause you to faint.
Um, so that is something that, you know, one can experience. I&#8217;ve experienced that. I&#8217;ve been—I&#8217;ve had butterflies, uh, regarding, &#8220;Do I want to say these vows or not?&#8221; And in fact, um, I&#8217;ve been told that about a third of all marriage licenses that get taken out end up not getting used. So, like, a lot of people do get cold feet.
Um, whether and what to do in your situation—I would say divine revelation is always a gift. It is, and it is not to be presumed. So I think it&#8217;s fine for you to ask God to give you a sign. And it needs to be a notable sign, not just, &#8220;May the sun come up tomorrow.&#8221; It needs to be something really unexpected. And I would name the sign that you want, because otherwise, you leave anything strange that happens open to, &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s the sign, that’s the sign!&#8221; Um, no. Name it. If you&#8217;re going to ask God for a sign, name the sign, and it needs to be something rare.
Um, so you can ask God for a sign to give you guidance one way or another on this question. But do not expect the sign. God may or may not choose to give it. And God&#8217;s not in the business of giving signs that often. So if it happens, great. But don&#8217;t expect it.
What do you do in the absence of God, um, giving you a sign? Well, you fall back on human reason. He gave you your gift of reason to guide you through this life, and He expects you to use it. So use your reason to look at the situation and say, &#8220;Is this person someone that would be good to be married to for the rest of my life, to hopefully raise a family with?&#8221;
Um, if you see major warning signs now, I would say listen to those warning signs, because people are on their best behavior when they&#8217;re trying to get married. When they start slacking off is after the vows have been said, and they don&#8217;t have to worry about, &#8220;Am I going to catch this person or not?&#8221; You&#8217;ve already been caught at that point. So people are on—it&#8217;s like a job interview. People are on their best behavior when they&#8217;re in the job interview. And so if you see danger signs now, then you should appropriately consider those.
On the other hand, you shouldn&#8217;t expect a perfect marriage where it&#8217;s going to be bliss every minute and you&#8217;re never going to—you&#8217;re never going to have frustrations or get mad at each other or things like that, because that&#8217;s not life. Um, even good marriages have difficulties that the partners have to go through. So don&#8217;t let a few difficulties scare you off. That&#8217;s just part of life. That&#8217;s going to happen whether you get married or not. So don&#8217;t be afraid of difficulties. But if you see major warning signs now, take them seriously.
Use your own intellect. And since your emotions are wrapped up in this, you&#8217;re not necessarily the best judge one way or the other, because your emotions, on the one hand, are pulling you to want to marry this person. But your fears are also pulling you to want to not marry this person. I would—I would talk to people who know you and know your prospective spouse, like maybe your parents or friends or things like that, and say, &#8220;What do you think?&#8221; Swear them to privacy, because you don&#8217;t want to undermine what, uh, you know, what your spouse is thinking. Um, and don&#8217;t go probing into, &#8220;Oh, maybe my fiancé has been having similar conversations.&#8221; Leave those things to the privacy of your fiancé, and keep your own privacy.
But, you know, think about talking to people who know both of you and say, &#8220;I just wanted to get your perspective on this. What do you think?&#8221; without trying to prejudice it one way or another, and get their ideas as well. Because they have—they&#8217;re coming from a position that&#8217;s less emotionally invested, and therefore, um, they may have some additional insights or perspective that you would otherwise miss.
How&#8217;s that for marriage advice, Matt?
Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, great stuff. Um, I appreciate that. I mean, going back to the—the idea of a soulmate, I just have a hard time believing God doesn&#8217;t care who I marry, because He cares what—oh—which occupation you pick. So why wouldn&#8217;t He help you out, or why wouldn&#8217;t He have a preference with a arguably more important decision in marriage?
Who—who says God cares what occupation you pick? You could be a doctor, you could be an engineer, you could be a lawyer, you could flip burgers—you could do any number of things to glorify God by doing work in the world. Now, He may have given you certain talents and opportunities that make it logical for you to pursue a particular career, but that&#8217;s not the only one. You could do lots of things. People change careers throughout their lives.
I kind of compare it to buying bread in the store. You know, there&#8217;s—at least here in America—there&#8217;s a bunch of different kinds of bread, and they all work. And so you&#8217;ve got a choice. It&#8217;s not like God really wants you to pick the Wonder Bread rather than the Oroweat bread, you know? God doesn&#8217;t really care about that. Um, God wants you to have adequate food. But what food you buy is up to you. And so, um, what career you pick to glorify God is up to you. He&#8217;s got a bunch of options for you.
Similarly, who you marry and who you glorify God by being married to—that&#8217;s up to you. He&#8217;s got a bunch of options that are just fine. And so, just like there&#8217;s not one person you&#8217;ve got to marry, or one career you&#8217;ve got to identify, or one job you&#8217;ve got to get, or one loaf of bread above all other loaves of bread that you&#8217;ve got to buy—it just doesn&#8217;t work that way. God gives us options, and we glorify Him by using our free will among those options.
With that, the, uh, Jimmy Marriage Advice Line will shut down right there. So, thank you so much for your call. Uh, we&#8217;re going to go to our break, and when we come back, we&#8217;ll continue more with &#8220;Ask Me Anything with Jimmy Akin.&#8221;
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“Did I Choose the Wrong Wife?”

How do we know Adam and Eve existed? How can we know what the Bible tells us about them is true? Tim Staples explains.

How do we know Adam and Eve existed?

I teach at a boarding school that operates out of a venerable century-old brick building that used to be an orphanage run by the Sisters of the Greek Catholic Union. The place has seen the coming and going of countless souls. Many, now lost to anonymity, have laughed, suffered, wept, and even died within its walls. It’s one of those buildings with many memories—places with an atmosphere, that give a feeling, whether good or bad.
We have our ghosts, and the boys who attend our school are accustomed to ghost stories—as boys should be. There is a long, narrow, ill-lit, seldom-used hallway up on the third floor with closets on one side and what used to be nuns’ cells on the other. The closet doors are sometimes found inexplicably unlocked and ajar. Further, there are legends of a shadowy form at the dark end of the hall, appearing where there isn’t enough light to see anything, accompanied by the swishing sound of a broom.
The Sweeping Nun is real for the boys at our boarding school. She is accepted—just as one might accept a mouse or a creaky floorboard. These things just happen in old places, and so do they happen here, from the third-floor hall to the Water Tower up on the hill to the old Orphan Cemetery out in the back woods.
I recently had my own hair-raising experience in our building. It was late on a summer night of shrieking crickets, and the school was empty—except for Farmer John, who tended our pigs and may or may not have been rattling about. I was passing in front of the building and admiring a great big orange moon bellying up over the black Pocono ridge, when I noticed a curious light glowing dimly in the windowed sun porch above me on the second floor. I went in to investigate.
Entering the dark balcony, flanked on one side with faculty office windows and on the other with the auburn moonscape, I slipped beneath the brick archways toward the mysterious glow—only to discover a small lamp left on by the natural history teacher over a tank of pond culture. I turned away from the window and the silent seating area at the far end, shrouded in shadow.
I then heard footsteps approaching me out of the darkness. I started, and immediately intuited that Farmer John must have been sitting at the end invisibly and was now walking sharply toward me. I turned with an apology for not noticing him, but I found the darkness empty. The footsteps clacked on across the concrete floor, notwithstanding, right up to where I stood, and ceased in silence. The step was a man’s, on hard, urgent heels.
I am not a signs-and-wonders person, but I enjoy the challenge this shivering time of year poses, with its bumps in the night that seem to concern those who have passed away. As Catholics, dare we say <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-are-ghosts">ghosts</a>? There is too much evidence and report to discount stories like the one I have here recounted. I don’t know what that was, but it was something.
Does it go against the grain of our Faith to believe in phantoms? Granted, much of haunted history is laced with hoax and hocus-pocus. But, on the other hand, is it right to call a place “haunted” and keep a straight face and a straight faith?
The Church doesn’t hold any dogmatic position on the matter of ghosts. So what might be said of ghosts from anything like a Catholic perspective, something that does not contradict Catholic theology? Is there any way that we can entertain what people would call “ghosts” without contradicting the doctrines of purgatory, heaven, and hell?
“The dead often do appear to the living,” wrote philosopher Peter Kreeft. “There is enormous evidence of ‘ghosts’ in all cultures.” And we mustn’t, as Carl Jung said, “commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything [we] cannot explain as a fraud.” As Catholics, we should be comfortable with the spiritual side of things—even if it is startling.
Catholics concede that all are spiritual beings. We have souls, we have a spirit, we bear the image of God. What’s more, all beings—whether they have souls or that divine image or not—have some spiritual aspect because existence itself is a type of supernatural reality. God is being; he is existence, He is. And all things that are must have a spiritual element or be part of a spiritual plane, insofar as they must participate in God’s existence.
As spiritual beings moving and living against the spiritual fabric of everything else, whatever that means exactly, we can perhaps, by some mystery, make and leave invisible impressions in that invisible atmosphere that surrounds us. These might be caused, we can imagine, in moments of tremendous spiritual consequence—moments of profundity, joy, sadness, terror, violence, death—and it is that impression only, like an image embedded in wax, that can manifest in things like doors, sounds, furniture, or even apparitions.
Such spiritual remnants, such lingering energies, may be what people have recognized as ghosts or ghostly presences. Whatever they are, I don’t believe they are sentient, self-conscious beings that can see us or speak to us. I think they are more like photographs or footprints left behind by some powerful spiritual event. By this thought, these phenomena would be akin to mystical “weather events” in the spiritual atmosphere of a place.
I once heard about a European priest who visited a parishioner’s family and, upon arriving, asked after the children. Their mother said they were in the next room, playing under a table. “Under a table?” The priest asked. “Yes, they like playing under there for some reason.” Approaching the table, where he could hear their little voices, the priest suddenly paused.
The children were singing—and from his musical studies, the priest recognized an old form of sacred chant. “Who taught you to sing that?” he asked. The children replied matter-of-factly, “The table taught us.” The priest traced the antique table to a period and place where it had been used as an altar during a time of persecution—a time when such chants may well have been sung at Mass.
It short, according to these musings, spiritual beings and spiritual events may be able to make a mark. In other words, we change the places where we live, where life happens. We leave behind wispy traces, enduring memories—or hauntings. That is one way of assigning some cause to the unaccountable events that so many have experienced without contradicting the doctrines of where souls reside after death. For, as Hamlet famously put it, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
This is not to deny that visitations from the departed have been permitted by God for some holy purpose, or that the dark powers that hate God and his children cannot control manifestations for some dread purpose. There are times when the blessed have communed with those on earth. But none of these spiritual demonstrations, which St. Thomas Aquinas <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5069.htm#article3">wrote</a> about with thirteenth-century credence, is a ghost in the way that we tend to imagine ghosts.
There is plenty of room for speculation when it comes to specters. But it is remarkable how, almost across the board, ghosts rarely seem to be accomplishing any purpose. They open doors or sweep hallways. They flit by and stare and rarely speak. And though some say that these are attempts at communication, it always seems humdrum. Who’s to say?
How these mundane manifestations fit in with moments of spiritual significance might point to how the simplest things in our lives can be of eternal moment. For all we know, that hallway and a broom were the means of a nun’s salvation. But if we might apply any purpose or point to any of these mysteries, it is simply to pray for the dead—to help those along as we may to their final resting place, which is not an earthly place.

A Catholic Entertains Ghost Stories

<div>Can Christmas Eve Mass be celebrated twice in a single church? </div><div>Yes, multiple Christmas Eve Masses may be celebrated in a single church. There is no liturgical prohibition against multiple Christmas Eve Masses.
The only time that there may be only one Mass in a church is the Easter Vigil (<a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdweastf.htm">Circular Letter Concerning the Preparation and Celebration of the Paschal Feasts</a>, 94).
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Multiple Christmas Eve Masses

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Why Wasn't Jesus Clearer?

Are Christians atheists?

I’ve had my share of Black Friday adventures, especially with toddlers in tow. One year, when my oldest two children were just three and four, we made an impromptu trip to that store with the big red bulls-eye late in the afternoon. The scene was a craze of shoppers rushing for deals, with the automatic entrance doors in a perpetual state of “open”; but things took a turn when an employee handed me a scratch-off ticket at the door. To my surprise, I was the one millionth customer! The prize: a giant toy box filled with $1,000 worth of gifts.
Like most young families, our budget was stretched tight. You can imagine the excitement and relief my husband and I experienced at our windfall. Our little family was stunned; and yet, while the kids were eyeing the treasure chest in wonder, we saw this as a perfect opportunity to teach them about sharing. We let each child pick one toy, and then we donated the rest to a local toy drive on our way home. I won’t lie— I was tempted to hold on to more than we did! But our small car and house—too small for all this free stuff—helped us learn a lesson in charity in a world where it&#8217;s easy to get caught up in Black Friday&#8217;s consumerism.
As Catholics, we know that materialism isn&#8217;t the goal—<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/decoding-the-widows-mite">Christian stewardship is</a>, and that requires generosity. The Church teaches that detachment from material goods isn’t about rejecting the things we need, but about prioritizing what really matters: spiritual wealth and helping others. The virtue of temperance reminds us to enjoy material blessings without letting them control us. So, while there’s nothing wrong with snagging a good deal on Black Friday, we need to ask ourselves: Am I buying things I truly need, or am I just caught in the frenzy of more, more, more?
The Church calls us to practice responsible stewardship, which means using our resources—whether financial, material, or spiritual—for the good of others and the glory of God. On Black Friday, this can mean skipping that extra gadget we don’t need and focusing on acts of charity, generosity, and investing in relationships that build up our spiritual lives.
Maybe my kids were too young to really learn the lesson at the time or even remember it, and maybe we don’t give nearly as much as we did that fateful Advent season . . . but in a world that shouts, “Buy more to be happy,” our Lord gently whispers, “True happiness comes from giving, not getting” (Acts 20:35). Let’s bring that message to Black Friday this year!

Black Friday the Catholic Way

How can Catholic theology respond to Calvinist interpretations of Matthew 1:21, Philippians 1:6, or 1 Peter 3:18?

Does receiving Holy Communion also mean receiving the Holy Spirit and God the Father, based on the doctrine of the Trinity?

What prevents a pope from changing infallible Catholic doctrine?

What is the origin of the teaching that the Eucharist is the reception of Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity—not just His flesh and blood?

Why doesn’t the Catholic Church practice full immersion Baptism as the normative form?&nbsp;

Can a pope change infallible doctrine? What does the Church teach about receiving the entire Trinity in Holy Communion? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, we explore key theological topics and respond to common questions about the Catholic faith. Learn how to respond to Calvinist interpretations of key Scripture passages, understand why the Eucharist is more than just Christ’s flesh and blood, and dive into the origins of the doctrine of receiving Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity. We also examine why the Catholic Church typically uses pouring rather than full immersion for Baptism.
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Catholic Doctrine Explained: Eucharist, Baptism, and Scriptural Challenges

In the United States, we usually identify ideological differences as liberal or conservative, right or left, Democrat or Republican. The categories are helpful to some extent. Disciples of Jesus worship the Word made Flesh, “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Thoughtful Christians prefer to distinguish between truth and error. So when we pledge our allegiance to the flag, we must pay close attention to the words for purposes of personal integrity.
A Union Army officer during the Civil War composed the first Pledge of Allegiance of the United States. Decades later, in 1892, Francis Bellamy penned the Pledge that is in use today. In 1942, Congress adopted it: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
During the Cold War, the Knights of Columbus and veterans’ organizations called on Congress to add “under God” to the Pledge. When President Dwight D. Eisenhower attended a service in honor of Lincoln’s birthday, he heard the Presbyterian Rev. George Docherty <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/14/the-gripping-sermon-that-got-under-god-added-to-the-pledge-of-allegiance-on-flag-day/">sermonize</a>: “To omit the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is to omit the definitive factor in the American way of life.” He added, “An atheistic American is a contradiction in terms. If you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.” On Flag Day in 1954, Congress—with Eisenhower’s signature—added the words “under God” to the Pledge.
What about today? Will the rapid and almost inevitable degradation of our culture and nation force us to renounce our beloved American flag and refuse formal expressions of patriotism? Have abortion, profiteering on aborted baby body parts, and institutional sexual perversion mortally wounded the country’s moral stature? Has the nation become the moral equivalent of the murderous Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Communist China, or North Korea?
In many respects, these questions are not new. Historically, could we honestly pledge allegiance to the flag that in effect 1) tolerated slavery; 2) waged the Mexican-American War, which President Grant considered the most unjust war in history; 3) racially segregated communities; and, especially for the last fifty years, 4) legally denies the humanity of unborn babies?
We must remember that good and evil permeate every social institution—families, communities, nations. And patriots have loved their countries, unconventionally when necessary, in even the most debased and barbarous nations, from <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/sophie-scholl-and-white-rose">Sophie Scholl</a> in Nazi Germany to <a href="https://mercatornet.com/a-soviet-dissident-shatters-western-illusions/46358/">Vladimir Bukovsky</a> in the USSR. Loyal Catholics, too, recite the Creed despite the faithlessness and treason of so many Church leaders.
So it comes down to this: even the worst of times cannot extinguish our obligation for patriotism, which struggles against national suicide.
Patriotism is a form of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-seven-gifts-of-the-holy-spirit">piety</a>—the acknowledgment that we owe our gratitude to God, our family, and our nation for the gift of life and sustenance. We owe our lives to God, our parents, and to a country that provides the soil and cultural structures for communal living. Piety—and, deriving from it, patriotism—renders the affection and loyalty due to our benefactors. Patriotism is indispensable to our love of God and neighbor.
Just as we love our imperfect parents and follow the Fourth Commandment by lawfully obeying them, we can and should love and lawfully subject ourselves to our morally flawed nation, according to the dictates of conscience.
When President Ronald Reagan <a href="https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-welcoming-ceremony-pope-john-paul-ii-miami-florida">greeted</a> Pope John Paul II in Miami in 1987, he said: “In freedom, we Americans have in these 200 years built a great country, a country of goodness and abundance. . . . It is precisely because we believe in freedom, because we respect the liberty of the individual in the economic as well as the political sphere, that we have achieved such prosperity.”
Pope John Paul II <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1987/september/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_19870910_reagan-museo.html">responded</a> with a profound clarification: “The only true freedom, the only freedom that can truly satisfy, is the freedom to do what we ought as human beings created by God according to his plan. It is the freedom to live the truth of what we are and who we are before God, the truth of our identity as children of God, as brothers and sisters in common humanity. That is why Jesus Christ linked truth and freedom together, stating solemnly: ‘You will know the truth and the truth will set you free’” (John 8:32).
Back in 1954, in one providential phrase, Congress purified—and perhaps redeemed—the Pledge of Allegiance as an enduring expression of Christian patriotism. The recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance “renders unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” in patriotism, and it also “renders unto to God the things that are God’s” in Christian piety (see Mark 12:13-17). Regardless of how far we slip in the direction of injustice, lawlessness, totalitarianism, and even barbarism, our resolve to live under God is the gold standard of patriotism and is the remedy for all imperfections, past, present, and future.
During that same 1987 address to President Reagan, John Paul II concluded by quoting the Pledge of Allegiance: “A new birth of freedom is repeatedly necessary: freedom to exercise responsibility and generosity, freedom to meet the challenge of serving humanity, the freedom necessary to fulfill human destiny, the freedom to live by truth, to defend it against whatever distorts and manipulates it, the freedom to observe God’s law—which is the supreme standard of all human liberty—the freedom to live as children of God, secure and happy: the freedom to be America in that constitutional democracy which was conceived to be ‘one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’”
As it reads, a robust and sincere patriotic recitation of the Pledge does not undermine Christian integrity. Rather, it challenges the foundations of an atheistic <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-catholics-get-woke">woke culture</a>.

Catholics and Patriotism

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<h3>Third Sunday of Easter
Lectionary: 46</h3>
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<h4>Reading 1    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/acts/2:14">ACTS 2:14, 22-33</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, 
raised his voice, and proclaimed: 
“You who are Jews, indeed all of you staying in Jerusalem. 
Let this be known to you, and listen to my words. 
You who are Israelites, hear these words. 
Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God 
with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, 
which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. 
This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, 
you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. 
But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, 
because it was impossible for him to be held by it. 
For David says of him: 
I saw the Lord ever before me, 
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed. 
Therefore my heart has been glad and my tongue has exulted; 
my flesh, too, will dwell in hope, 
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, 
nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption. 
You have made known to me the paths of life; 
you will fill me with joy in your presence.
“My brothers, one can confidently say to you 
about the patriarch David that he died and was buried, 
and his tomb is in our midst to this day. 
But since he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn an oath to him 
that he would set one of his descendants upon his throne, 
he foresaw and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, 
that neither was he abandoned to the netherworld 
nor did his flesh see corruption. 
God raised this Jesus; 
of this we are all witnesses. 
Exalted at the right hand of God, 
he received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father 
and poured him forth, as you see and hear.”
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<h4>Responsorial Psalm    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/psalms/16:1">PS 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
R. (11a) Lord, you will show us the path of life. 
or: 
R. Alleluia. 
Keep me, O God, for in you I take refuge; 
I say to the LORD, “My Lord are you.” 
O LORD, my allotted portion and my cup, 
you it is who hold fast my lot. 
R. Lord, you will show us the path of life. 
or: 
R. Alleluia. 
I bless the LORD who counsels me; 
even in the night my heart exhorts me. 
I set the LORD ever before me; 
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed. 
R. Lord, you will show us the path of life. 
or: 
R. Alleluia. 
Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices, 
my body, too, abides in confidence; 
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, 
nor will you suffer your faithful one to undergo corruption. 
R. Lord, you will show us the path of life. 
or: 
R. Alleluia. 
You will show me the path to life, 
abounding joy in your presence, 
the delights at your right hand forever. 
R. Lord, you will show us the path of life. 
or: 
R. Alleluia.
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<h4>Reading 2    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/1peter/1:17">1 PT 1:17-21</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
Beloved: 
If you invoke as Father him who judges impartially 
according to each one’s works, 
conduct yourselves with reverence during the time of your sojourning, 
realizing that you were ransomed from your futile conduct, 
handed on by your ancestors, 
not with perishable things like silver or gold 
but with the precious blood of Christ 
as of a spotless unblemished lamb.
He was known before the foundation of the world 
but revealed in the final time for you, 
who through him believe in God 
who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, 
so that your faith and hope are in God.
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<h4>Alleluia    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/luke/24:32">LK 24:32</a></h4>
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R. Alleluia, alleluia. 
Lord Jesus, open the Scriptures to us; 
make our hearts burn while you speak to us. 
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
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<h4>Gospel    <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/luke/24:13">LK 24:13-35</a></h4>
<div class="poetry">
That very day, the first day of the week, 
two of Jesus’ disciples were going 
to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, 
and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. 
And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, 
Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, 
but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. 
He asked them, 
“What are you discussing as you walk along?” 
They stopped, looking downcast. 
One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, 
“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem 
who does not know of the things 
that have taken place there in these days?” 
And he replied to them, “What sort of things?” 
They said to him, 
“The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, 
who was a prophet mighty in deed and word 
before God and all the people, 
how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over 
to a sentence of death and crucified him. 
But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; 
and besides all this, 
it is now the third day since this took place. 
Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: 
they were at the tomb early in the morning 
and did not find his body; 
they came back and reported 
that they had indeed seen a vision of angels 
who announced that he was alive. 
Then some of those with us went to the tomb 
and found things just as the women had described, 
but him they did not see.” 
And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! 
How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! 
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things 
and enter into his glory?” 
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, 
he interpreted to them what referred to him 
in all the Scriptures. 
As they approached the village to which they were going, 
he gave the impression that he was going on farther. 
But they urged him, “Stay with us, 
for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” 
So he went in to stay with them. 
And it happened that, while he was with them at table, 
he took bread, said the blessing, 
broke it, and gave it to them. 
With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, 
but he vanished from their sight. 
Then they said to each other, 
“Were not our hearts burning within us 
while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?” 
So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem 
where they found gathered together 
the eleven and those with them who were saying, 
“The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!” 
Then the two recounted 
what had taken place on the way 
and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
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Source: <a href="http://cms.usccb.org/bible/readings">cms.usccb.org</a>
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Sunday Mass: April 26, 2020

What Makes a War “Just?”

Caller asks how to respond to the claim that Thomas wrote a Gospel. Jimmy Akin explains how the Bible got its books in this clip from Catholic Answers Live.
For more reading on the subject, Jimmy suggests reading “Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas&#8217;s Familiarity with the Synoptics” by Mark Goodacre.
The question was taken from this episode of Catholic Answers Live: https://youtu.be/eaKhOUJRQCc

How the Bible Got Its Books

<div>Can blessed wedding rings be resized to a larger size?</div><div>Yes, blessed wedding rings can be resized.
A blessed object only loses its blessing if it is used for a secular purpose, is destroyed, or is rendered unable to fulfill its purpose.
Resizing of a wedding ring does not meet any of those conditions, and therefore the ring would remain blessed.
</div>

Do Resized Wedding Rings Need a New Blessing?

Why are YOU Christian?!

Zechariah and Mary give seemingly similar questions in response to Gabriel telling them that they will have children under impossible circumstances; yet Zechariah is struck dumb for it, while Mary is praised. Jimmy Akin explains the difference in what the two of them asked, to show why each response merited its consequence.

What is the Difference Between Mary’s Response and Zechariah’s?

Is Karma Compatible with Christianity?

<div>Is it possible to spend purgatory on Earth instead of after death? Can it be a combination of both?</div><div><a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/purgatory">Purgatory</a> is not for those who are alive; it is the purification of the deceased who are going to heaven. We can most definitely undergo purification while on Earth through our trials and sufferings, but that is not purgatory. Purification can take place in this life as well as the next, but purgatory refers to the specific state of a soul after death.
</div>

No Purgatory on Earth

If Jesus was SINLESS, why was He BAPTIZED?

Way back in 1981, it was biblical archaeology that kick-started my interest in and call to Christian apologetics. It’s also what spurred me to write <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-word-set-in-stone-how-archaeology-science-and-history-back-up-the-bible/">The Word Set in Stone</a>.  I discovered so many fascinating things, including new finds in archaeology—several from just the last few years. After everything I learned, I couldn’t help but be enthusiastic about passing along the information to others.
The Word Set in Stone was such a pleasure to research and write. It truly excited me and bolstered my faith. I believe that it can and will do the same for readers—obviously Christians, but also open-minded seekers and skeptics who have questions about the intersection of science and faith. It’s written from a general Christian perspective. Protestants and Orthodox shouldn’t be offended or put off by any “Catholic stuff” in it, and all Christians should agree on maybe 97 percent of its content.
How can The Word Set in Stone bolster belief in and persuade folks of the inspired and infallible nature of Holy Scripture? Here are four ways:
1) Its popular, non-academic level approach, without sacrificing serious academic scientific corroboration.
2) The “general Christian” presentation. I could have written this book as an evangelical Protestant with no change except for removing a few “footnote-like” and strictly optional, non-essential clarifications of Catholic Church teachings.
3) The simultaneously exciting, faith-boosting, and educational nature of the subject matter.
4) The potential to utilize this information in sharing Christianity with non-believers, especially atheists and those skeptical of the Bible and the Christian faith.
I wrote in my Introduction (slightly condensed):
<blockquote>I want to deal with specific objective matters in relation to the text of the Bible that can be addressed by archaeology or other forms of science, starting with premises (for the most part) that Christians and non-Christians accept in common. What I’m doing is “defeating the defeaters” offered up by biblical skeptics, anti-theist atheists. If they argue, for example, that a particular city wasn’t in existence when the Bible says it was, then, in response, I seek archaeological data to prove or at least offer strong evidential support for the biblical view. This approach defends the Bible’s accuracy.
Skeptical arguments against biblical accuracy are often incorrect and fallacious. In other words, if a skeptic contends, “The Bible is inaccurate history and therefore clearly not inspired because of errors a, b, c, d, e, and f,” I will  argue via secular science—most often, but not exclusively, archaeology—that supposed errors a, b, c, d, e, and f are actually not errors and can almost always be resolved in a way that is consistent with belief in biblical inspiration.
This book deals with objective, historical issues that we can analyze through the means of scientific (mostly archaeological) analysis. It’s what Christians are often asked to do: give solid evidence for what we believe.</blockquote>
I tried my best to provide a “fresh” analysis that incorporated many truly “cutting-edge” discoveries. Our age is an invigorating period of biblical archaeology, with so many new finds being presented virtually on a monthly basis. What scientists are learning is no less than astonishing, and it all affirms the historical accuracy of the Bible. I take the reader on a fun tour of what has been happening in the field. And quite often, I am responding to actual atheist objections, expressed personally to me. Thus, the book has an “on the field” flavor to it.
Here are some of the subjects tackled in the book:
<ul>
<li>Evidence for the existence of the Pishon River, which the Bible (Gen. 2:10-12) says flowed out of the Garden of Eden, discovered in satellite photos that suggest a dry river bed in Saudi Arabia, consistent with other geographical and mineralogical clues mentioned in the Bible.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Analogies of the great Mississippi River flood of 1926-27 to Noah’s Flood. The former involved rainfall for eight straight months, and it took an entire year to totally dry up, compared to ten and a half months for Noah’s Flood (Gen. 7:11, 8:13).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Scientific, chemical evidence that a “meteoritic airburst event” obliterated the area of Sodom and Gomorrah between 1750 and 1650 B.C. (cf. Gen. 19:24).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Many archaeological and historical evidences supporting several aspects of the story of Joseph (born c. 1737-1717 B.C.) in Egypt.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Serious scientific analysis (a phenomenon called “wind setdown”) suggesting a possible and plausible explanation for the parting of the Red Sea.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Scientific support for a natural explanation of the quails in the wilderness, and Moses (c. 1340 or 1330 to c. 1220 or 1210 B.C.) drawing water from rocks.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>A plausible theory involving a salt-induced erosion process called haloclasty that adequately explains, I believe, why the walls of Jericho from the time of Joshua seem to have disappeared.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>The remarkable mounting evidence for the historical King David (r. c. 1010-c. 970 B.C.) and his kingdom, starting with the famous Tel Dan Stele, found in 1993.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Various “fantastic” elements of the book of Daniel, analyzed as plausible historical events, rightly understood.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>An astronomically backed theory of what accounted for the star of Bethlehem, including a possible different death date for Herod the Great (which would change the “standard” birthdate for Jesus), and the fascinating celestial phenomenon called retrograde motion of the planets, which we know was already understood by ancient Babylonians and Persian sky-gazers. Consider the story in a new light, based on typical phenomenological biblical language and the support of the records of astronomy.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Dozens of archaeological and historiographical evidences for the incredible and minute accuracy of the Gospels of Luke and John and the book of Acts.</li>
</ul>
Many readers have stated that The Word Set in Stone was difficult to put down. Heartfelt thanks to all my present and future readers!

Dig Deep and Defend the Bible

<div>How do we understand what Paul says, that there is no one who is without sin in view of the Immaculate Conception? Protestants quote this line to argue against Mary being sinless.</div><div>In Romans 3:10–11, St. Paul says that “as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God.’” And in verses 22–23, he says, “For there is no distinction; since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
These passages are sometimes used to “disprove” Mary’s Immaculate Conception by arguing that this literally means everyone is a sinner. But is Paul really trying to say that there are no righteous individuals who have ever lived? This reading does not work.
First, we know Jesus Christ is both fully man and sinless. It’s tempting to say, “Well, obviously, Paul doesn’t mean to include Jesus,” but if your argument is that “no one” literally means no one, you can’t make one exception.
Second, we know that there were righteous men and women in the Old Testament. Paul spends time in Romans talking about Abraham (Rom. 4:1–12; see Gen. 15:6), but there are plenty of others. For instance, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Gen. 6:9).
Third, we know that there were men and women who sought God in the Old and New Testaments alike. 2 Chronicles 15:3–4, for instance, talks about how the Israelites went astray from God, but then sought him again.
So, if Paul isn’t trying to say that literally no people have ever been without sin, or have ever been righteous, or have ever sought God, what is going on here? There are two clues. The first clue is that Paul says, “as it is written.” In other words, if you want to understand what Paul is talking about, you need to understand the reference.
The reference is to Psalm 14, which is clearly using poetic and hyperbolic language. In verses 2–3, the Psalmist says that “the Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one.” But just two verses later, he says that the godless “shall be in great terror, for God is with the generation of the righteous.” So clearly, the righteous do exist, since they are being persecuted by the unrighteous.
The second clue is the phrase “for there is no distinction.” Naturally, we should be asking, distinction between whom? In context, it’s perfectly clear: Paul is saying that “all men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin” (Rom. 3:9).
In other words, he’s not saying anything for or against the sinlessness of Mary (or of Jesus). He’s instead showing that both Jews and Gentiles need the gospel, which “is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). So the “no one” in question in Romans 3:11 refers to no tribe or group or class of people.
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“All Have Sinned” and the Immaculate Conception

Among the images Jesus presents us with during Eastertide is him as the “true vine” into whom we are engrafted.
Jesus saying he “is” the “true vine” may be prone to misunderstanding by some Catholics, who take it merely as an image or analogy. The problem with such a reading (and, by extension, of Jesus’s other “is” statements in John)—as Fr. Paul Scalia masterfully <a href="https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2024/04/28/true-and-false-vines/">notes</a>—is that it swaps the reality for the image. We tend to think of a “vine” as real and Jesus as simply providing an image—“vine” “bread,” “light,” “life,” etc. But the truth is that the most real “bread,” “light,” “vine,” etc. is Jesus, not its earthly referent.
As Scalia notes, Jesus is not just talking about any vine. He’s talking about a grape vine—one that bears fruit. Jesus is not some showy, shiny ivy that produces nothing and can even be toxic. He is fruitful.
Fruitfulness is the gospel’s normal and natural expectation. Being engrafted into Christ is to be fruitful, to “bear fruit.” Jesus curses the fig tree that bears no figs (Matt. 21:18-19). He even turns it into a parable (Luke 13:6-9): a landowner plants a fig tree, coming in vain for three years in search of fruit. But instead of succulent figs, he has a barren tree. After three years, he has no intention of keeping it: he even considers it to be cluttering up his garden, wasting good space. Only his vineyard worker’s entreaties earn the tree another year, while “I dig around it and manure it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; if not, it will be cut down.” Even the extension carries an expectation: the tree should be fruitful.
This expectation permeates the Gospels. The “good” seed—the seed not trampled underfoot, eaten by the birds, burnt by the sun, or choked off by weeds—bears fruit. The harvest is different—thirty-, sixty-, or a hundredfold—but fruit is borne. The wheat and tares grow together, but there is a separation: the wheat, which produced fruit, goes to the barn, the tares, which produced nothing, go to the fire.
When Elizabeth becomes pregnant with John, one of her comments is that the “Lord has removed my reproach from among men” (Luke 1:25). Having a child was a sign in ancient Israel of divine blessing, a continuation of your life. That’s why the Psalmist, speaking of God’s blessing, talks of how “your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children like olive shoots around your table” (Ps. 128:3). When God created man and woman, his first blessing was fertility: “Be fruitful and multiply” (1:28). Having just given life to everything, including man, the first thing God says to man is to share in that life-giving work.
For the biblical vision—i.e., the vision of Jews and Christians—fruitfulness is natural, normal, and God’s blessing. That’s why, for Jesus’ disciples, speaking of the true vine and branches makes sense.
Does it make sense to us?
How many people, including Catholics, see fruitfulness as an unalloyed blessing? How many see it as a blessing at all? At best, there is a broad cultural consensus that fruitfulness may be neutral, depending on its usefulness and convenience to you. But there is also a broad undercurrent that sees fruitfulness as bad, an individual curse that ruins life plans (especially when it gets in the way of sexual pleasure), a social curse that amplifies the deleterious human “carbon footprint” on “Mother Earth.”
Let’s not play games. The Christian understanding of the meaning of fertility is diametrically opposed to the mainstream understanding of our culture. And too many Christians think they can somehow just maneuver between the two.
You cannot. Either fertility is God’s blessing, which means it is something good in itself (bonum honestum), or it is merely something useful or not, depending on your desires at the moment—at best a bonum utile.
But fertility is not a “thing.” It is just not some “rhythm” or “biological facticity.” A thing acquires its value and meaning from its end, and what is the end of human fertility? A human being. So is a human being a good-in-himself (bonum honestum), or is he merely useful, depending on his convenience for you (bonum utile)? You don’t even have to be Catholic to answer that one (though love of neighbor helps). Kant talked about persons as being ends and never means, objects of use.
This reduction of a true good to a merely useful good has enormously distorted medicine. We now prescribe chemical compounds to destroy the natural and normal rhythm of a person because it is inconvenient. Fertility is not pathological. Fertility is normal.
Beyond its effect on medicine is an effect on the broader culture. Our times now face a unique phenomenon in human history: an indifference, if not antipathy, to the continuation of life. People are delaying marriage, and they are even more delaying parenthood. Parenthood, far from being a natural and normal aspect of adulthood, is increasingly becoming a hobby for certain classes. Case in point: In his new book, <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/family-unfriendly-timothy-p-carney?variant=41076298219554">Family Unfriendly</a>, Tim Carney makes a profound observation about language. Our times have invented a new verb: “parenting.” As he notes, it makes it sound like some expert endeavor, reserved to those practiced in the art. He compares it to how previous generations spoke of the phenomenon: “having children.” That doesn’t sound particularly exotic or specialized. In fact, it shifts the focus from you “parenting” to them, the “children.”
The psychologist Erik Erikson identifies various stages of human maturity. One of the more advanced ones is generativity. Generativity, for Erikson, is usually expressed in childbearing, and it usually follows marriage. How is it a marker of advancing maturity? Well, all the steps gradually lead to growing out of myself toward others (sounds like “dying to self”). Marriage obviously involves a stepping out of self to take responsibility for a contemporary peer. Generativity goes it one step further: to take responsibility not just for somebody looking at you, but for someone who currently is not but whose very existence depends on you. Maturity, by the way, is not an “optional” thing for human beings: we want everybody to mature. It&#8217;s part of the glory of God in man fully alive (see St. Irenaeus).
Recognizing the blessing of fertility would change our approach to raising children. We fret a lot about their careers. Some parents even worry about whether they’ve gotten into the right nursery school to prepare for Harvard or Columbia. (Check if they have properly sized picket signs.) But we do little to nothing to prepare children to think about being spouses and parents. Somehow, we think that aspect of life—arguably more important than one’s job—will somehow happen by autopilot.
In her new book, <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/mybodyforyou/">My Body for You</a>, pro-life author Stephanie Gray Connors writes that she would initiate the discussion of marriage and parenthood early, so that it’s something “natural” in a person’s worldview. The thoughts “I want to be a husband/wife” and “I want to be a mother/father” should be considered before there is a concrete other in view . . . in part because it may determine whether there will ever be a concrete other in view. Once upon a time, little girls played “mommy” and little kids “house.” In our fear of “gender roles,” we have abandoned that innocent play, which helped socialize the idea that marriage and parenthood are natural adult things. Instead, we allow our teenagers to “play house” (primarily in the bedroom), preferably after being outfitted with the “accessories” and behavioral mindset that teach fertility to be a curse, not a blessing.
Jesus’ words of vine and branches also remind us of another important dimension of fertility: not only is it good and a blessing, but it is God’s work. The life of the branch is not its life. The branch is alive only insofar as it shares in the life of the vine, the life of Christ. Likewise, fertility is also always God’s work, because no human person or human couple can create a soul. As we say we believe every Sunday at Mass, only God is “lord and giver of life.” We parents do not “give” life so much as we “share” the life that has been shared with us by God, “from whom all Fatherhood in heaven and earth takes its name” (Eph. 3:15).
Jesus’ gospel of the vine and branches is extraordinarily rich in terms of its application to marriage and life questions. Let’s plumb its life-giving depths.

Fertility Is Not a Curse

So you want to talk with people about Jesus.
Well, no need to run out and get yourself a bullhorn. You won’t need it. Nor will you need any hand-painted signs about hell or the apocalypse. Also, you can leave your debate skills at home, for the most part.
Will you need a degree in theology? No.
The holiness of a saint? Nope.
How about a magnetic personality?
It probably couldn’t hurt, but no need for charm school.
What about toughness? Do you need to be the kind of hard-shelled person who can handle lots of rejection and yelling and spite?
Actually, not so much. You’ll almost certainly deal with less conflict than your average McDonald’s worker.
The truth is this: if you have met Jesus, if you have received the sacraments, and if you now live the life of faith, you already have almost everything you need to talk with anyone about Jesus.
What more do you need? Consider the conversion of the apostle Paul:
<blockquote>Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do” (Acts 9:3-6).</blockquote>
When Paul followed this command, he met the Church in Damascus and received the help of Ananias. Certainly, there he received instruction and formation.
Like Paul, we who have received Jesus need to “get up and enter the city” so that we can be told what to do. We need basic instruction, and we need the community and sacraments of the Church. But lots of us have already received these things. And if we have this basic formation, we have most of what we need to share Jesus with others.
All we might need in that case is the confidence that comes from having a bit of instruction in the best methods. The good news is that for more than a century, the leaders of the Church, especially popes, have been calling on Catholics to get out and share the good news. And, because many people have heeded these calls, there is a good amount of contemporary experience for us to draw on as we consider how to evangelize today. We also have what might be the greatest possible help in the example of the great missionary saints throughout the ages.
With all that in mind, the first thing to know about talking with anyone about Jesus is that you—by virtue of your own Christian faith—have been called to do it. Having received Jesus and been brought into friendship with him, you, like Paul on the road to Damascus, have become enlisted in a great effort to bring the whole world to him so that the whole world can be saved from sin and death.
The second thing to know is that, though it might take you a while to get going, sharing Jesus is generally a pleasant activity, one you can do with friends, and one that can bring unexpected rewards.
The third thing to know is that you are not going to fail.
We can promise you that. You are guaranteed not to fail.
Are we telling you that every time you talk to someone about Jesus, that person will come to Jesus?
No.
Are we saying that most of the time the person will come to Jesus?
Nope.
So we’re saying that sometime, at least one time, some person will come to Jesus?
Not even that.
We don’t know what will happen once you start talking to others about Jesus. What we are telling you is that you are called to talk to others about Jesus, and all you have to do to be successful in answering this call is to talk to others about Jesus. What happens after that isn’t for you—or us, or anyone else—to worry about. If you do what you have been called to do, that is success. Anything that follows from your efforts is up to God.
Now, in our experience, you will find that some of the people you talk with do come to Jesus. Some will return to Mass. Some will turn from atheism. Lots of great things are likely to happen. But none of that is for you, or us, or anyone who talks about Jesus to worry about.
He is not asking us, nor has he ever asked us, to “convert” others, not even our family members. Whether people con- vert to the Faith or refuse the Faith is ultimately out of our hands. We are to carry the news, share the story, make sure that people have had a chance to hear it, and, if at all possible, to hear it in a personal and direct way.
Certainly, if they respond, there is much more we can do. We can help people to get their questions answered, to learn Scripture and Church Tradition, and many other things. What we cannot do is make anyone respond. Instead, we can propose.
Quite clearly one of the difficulties we will face as we propose Christ is that the fast-paced, media-saturated, and morally confused world we live in has, in many ways, hardened people against him. Vast numbers of people today believe that the age of Christianity has passed and the age of personal spiritualities has replaced it. Such people don’t like Christians telling them that Christianity is unique, and that having faith in Jesus is the only way to the fullness of truth and light—to eternal life.
Also, many people today believe that Christian morals are outdated, even offensive. To talk about Jesus in such an atmosphere thus poses challenges. It makes the transmission of the gospel harder. But the very features of our society that create these challenges for the gospel also create an urgency that should encourage us to talk about Jesus.
Great suffering has accompanied the modern world’s turn from Jesus. The world that hardens hearts against Jesus is also a wounded world, one in which the need for explicit talk of Jesus is all the more needed.
All around you, now, you see people who need healing but are unable to turn to the one who can heal because they have been convinced that any such turn to Jesus is a turn backward. These people need guidance, but they can no longer hear the voice of the one who can bring them to joy, peace, and love.
If compassion for the suffering in this world, and for the possibility of suffering in the next, were not motivation enough, we have the commands of Jesus himself and the constant exhortations of the Church to take up the work of sharing the Faith.
Matthew ends his Gospel with Jesus’ command to “make disciples of all nations” (28:19). This ending has the dual effect of making it clear, in a final sense, what Jesus has spent three years preparing his disciples for and, also, making it clear to us, who have just finished reading the Gospel, what we are now supposed to do.
The apostle Paul, having seen the risen Jesus, said “an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I don’t proclaim the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16).
This is true for everyone who has come to Christ. We must not receive the gospel of love and fail to love. Loving God, we must keep his commandment to go and make disciples; and, loving our neighbors, we must share with them the most precious gift: Jesus, who heals in this life and gives eternal life to all who accept him.

Go, Make Disciples. Yes, You.

<div>Is there a Catholic edition of the King James Version of the Bible?</div><div>No. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version">King James Version</a> of the Bible, also known as the Authorized Version, is a Protestant translation of Scripture into English that was commissioned and promulgated by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_VI_and_I">James I of England</a> for use in the Anglican church. The Douay-Rheims translation is a Catholic translation of Scripture into English and was published around the same time as the KJV. In fact, the Douay-Rheims was completed first, but it should not be considered a Catholic edition of the King James Version.
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No Catholic King James Version

Once, I was driving to a Catholic summer camp for a speaking engagement in an area without cell phone service. I relied on the car’s GPS unit, though my doubts multiplied as it took me down a featureless dirt road. I then stopped the car and saw the unit display the following: “No Satellite Connection—Indoor Mode.”
I estimated I had gone at least fifty miles in the wrong direction, and a wave of panic swept over me as I looked at the “no service” bar on my cell phone. I reset the GPS unit and saw my estimated arrival time: 6:57 P.M., or three minutes before I was scheduled to give my talk. Thankfully, the hosts understood, and everything worked out. But it worked out only because I realized I had made a huge mistake, stopped what I was doing, turned around, and went the other way.
I share up this story because this is the first thing a sinner must do in order to be saved. And there is a word for it: repent.
The Greek word we translate as “repentance” is metanoia (the verb “to repent” is metanoeo), and it means “to change your mind.” Metanoia’s Hebrew counterpart is tshuva, which means “to return.” For example, God told the people of Israel, “Repent and turn away from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations” (Ezek. 14:6). So when Jesus says, “Repent [metanoeite] and believe in the gospel,” he is basically saying: change your mind about sin, and return to God by believing the good news!
So, in order to be saved, we must repent. Repentance means not just running back to God, but running away from anything that would keep us from God. In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul laid out a list of sins that would keep people from inheriting the kingdom of God. He said “neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you” (1 Cor. 6:9-10).
Let that sink in. Paul is saying that these Christians repented from sins like robbery, adultery and engaging in homosexual conduct. Even if the desires still remained in their hearts, they no longer committed these sins. Why? Paul gives us the answer: “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” He makes this even clearer in his second letter to the community, saying “If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.”
Before I was baptized, the priest asked me “Do you reject Satan? And all his works? And all his empty promises?”—to which I solemnly responded, “I do.” These are the traditional baptismal vows, and they show that a person has repented and now wants God’s salvation. But what makes it hard to preach the gospel today is that people don’t think they need to be “saved” from anything.
The first step is repentance: to recognize that we are lost without God, and we are doomed to an eternal death apart from him because we lack his grace, which makes us alive in him. We must turn away from anything that would lead us away from God and then turn to God in faith.
We won’t make progress as evangelists if we share the Christian faith only as a kind of “self-help” program that take you from “okay” to “A-okay!” Indeed, one thing that makes it hard to preach the gospel today is that people don’t think they need to be “saved” from anything. As far back as 1946, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/speeches/1946/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19461026_congresso-catechistico-naz.html">Pope Pius XII said</a>, “Perhaps the greatest sin in the world today is that men have begun to lose the sense of sin.” Christianity doesn’t seem like good news unless you think the ugliness of your sins constitutes bad news.
But it’s also tempting for Catholics to fall into a kind of Protestant legalism and treat repentance and the gospel as a transaction: I repent and give God faith, and he gives me salvation. And although it is true that salvation comes from repenting from sin, believing in Jesus, and receiving Jesus through sacraments like baptism and the Eucharist, the Catholic view is more familial than forensic. It’s not a legal transaction; rather, it is about being joined to God’s family through baptism and—when we have turned away from God through consciously chosen grave sins—being reconciled through the sacrament of penance.
My favorite image of this form of repentance and salvation comes from the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15). Remember, the son was able to waste a bunch of money in a foreign land because he demanded his inheritance before his father’s death (v. 12). He basically told his dad, “I wish you would drop dead so I could get what’s mine and live the life I’ve always wanted.” When we sin, we say the same thing to God: I wish you didn’t exist so I could do whatever I want with my life. And then he almost starves to death in a foreign country, far away from his family.
Because of what he’s done, the son thinks his father will never welcome him home. At best, maybe he could return as a slave and not starve. But the father, who is our Father in heaven, was always waiting for his son to return. Jesus says, “While he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.”
That’s my favorite detail in the story: that the father saw the son “while he was yet at a distance.” As a father of three little boys, I know that if they ever ran away, I would never stop looking for them. The father of the prodigal son probably went to the edge of his land every day to stare at the horizon and see if his son was on his way. When his son did appear on the road, he was probably downcast, slowly shuffling to the house, preparing his “apology speech.” But his father would have been smiling ear to ear and running as fast as he could to embrace him.
That is how God feels when we repent, or return home. That’s why Jesus said, “There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). And it is that attitude we should always recall so we can have hope rather than fear when we “turn around” and head to confession . . . even when it is a sin we’ve confessed “a thousand times.” Because God, our heavenly Father, is waiting on the road to meet us.

The First Step to Being Saved

In this clip Cy Kellett and apologist Joe Heschmeyer discuss the reasons for different numbering of the 10 commandments.
Transcript:
Caller: Well, how come the Catholics have their Ten Commandments and we&#8217;ve got our Ten Commandments?
Joe: That&#8217;s a great question. So there are two issues that give rise to this. The first is that the Ten Commandments are given twice in Exodus 20 and then Deuteronomy 5, and they&#8217;re not given in exactly the same order, which is strange. The second issue is that they&#8217;re not numbered in the Bible. Actually, we&#8217;ll add a third issue. They&#8217;re called in the Bible the Decalogue, which means the ten words. Now, that could mean Ten Commandments, but it doesn&#8217;t have to mean commandments. But either way you look at it, there&#8217;s certainly more than 10 words given. There&#8217;s certainly more than 10 commandments given. And so trying to figure out where to number them is a little tricky. Different people have numbered them differently throughout the ages.
So the numbering you&#8217;re used to, like what you&#8217;d get in a Baptist church, you&#8217;ll find the same numbering in the Eastern Catholic Church. On the other hand, Western Catholics number them more along the lines of Deuteronomy than along Exodus. You&#8217;ll find that numbering as well in a Lutheran church. So Protestants don&#8217;t agree, and Catholics use different numbering among Catholics. It&#8217;s confusing. And then to make it more confusing, the Jewish numbering begins with Exodus 20, verse 2: &#8220;I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.&#8221; This is only an issue of how we number them. The same content is true on all sides. We agree on what Exodus 20 says; we agree on what Deuteronomy 5 says. The only question is which number is which? And so it&#8217;s not a substantive disagreement.
Caller: Well, since you allowed us to be mean, while I was on hold, I went to Deuteronomy 5, and I happened to have a New King James here. I just so happened in Deuteronomy 5 to have circled the bullet points, as you talk about, and these seem to line up exactly with Exodus. But what I noticed on the Catholic version is they divide what I would call the tenth commandment, the coveting part, into two different covet clauses. They ignore this one about &#8220;You shall not make for yourself any carved image.&#8221; That&#8217;s the difference in the wording that Joe was talking about.
Joe: So we would have that as part of number one.
Cy: It&#8217;s not that the words aren&#8217;t missing; they&#8217;re just in number one.
Caller: Okay?
Cy: The &#8220;You shall have no other gods before me,&#8221; and then you shall not&#8230; So you&#8217;re saying what that means is you shall not make a carved image and bow down to it, and that&#8217;s all part of it. That&#8217;s all meaning no other gods.
Caller: Right. So what Exodus and Deuteronomy covet part&#8230;
Joe: Yeah. So, okay, on the covet part, the numbering in Deuteronomy 5 is clear on this in verse 21: &#8220;Neither shall you covet your neighbor&#8217;s wife.&#8221; This is the sin of lust, and that&#8217;s the ninth commandment. And then after that, &#8220;And you shall not desire your neighbor&#8217;s house, his field, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor&#8217;s.&#8221; That&#8217;s greed. That&#8217;s a different kind of covetousness. So they&#8217;re two different sins because sexual covetousness and material covetousness are just not the same thing.
Now, you can group those two things together as just a prohibition against coveting, and that&#8217;s one way of numbering them. I&#8217;m not saying it&#8217;s bad to do that; it&#8217;s fine to do that. You can also number those as two different sins where one is about the sin of lust and one is about the sin of covetous greed.
Caller: Very good. Well, I&#8217;ll take that because that makes sense to me as far as how to break that one up.
Joe: And then, if I may, the other two things to point out there, when it says &#8220;don&#8217;t make the pesel&#8221; (P-E-C-E-L is the Hebrew transliteration there), it literally means engraved image or graven image or something like that. But in context, it always means an idol. So it&#8217;s not literally wrong to, like, engrave a quarter, for example. And God even commands in Exodus the engraving of cherubim to put on the Ark of the Covenant. So it&#8217;s not a literal prohibition against engraving things; it is a prohibition against idolatry.
So one of the other reasons we number them as we do in the West is because the first commandment is about not having other gods, and an idol is having another god. So if you understand what is being prohibited in the prohibition against graven images, it is an extension of, or a part of, &#8220;You shall have no gods before me.&#8221;
Caller: So when it comes to all of the statues, this will be the other argument. So we&#8217;ve covered the graven image part, and that&#8217;ll be okay. But when we have all of the saints, let&#8217;s say, how do I defend the fact that the Catholic Church has all these saints that they pray to?
Joe: Yeah, great question. So it depends on what we mean by prayer. Because if prayer is worship, which is what many Protestants understand it to be, then it would be wrong to do that. But biblically, prayer and worship are related, but they&#8217;re not the same thing.
So to give just an example, where could you pray at the time of Christ? Well, the answer was anywhere. You could go in your room to pray; you could go&#8230; The Pharisees liked to go to the street corners in the synagogue to pray so that it could be seen by others. You could pray wherever you wanted to. Jesus would go to a lonely place. Everyone could pray wherever they wanted to; they knew this. What you couldn&#8217;t do was offer worship in the strict sense of worship because worship is a sacrificial offering. That&#8217;s at the heart of worship.
In John 4, when Jesus and the Samaritan woman are talking, one of the things she points out correctly is that the Samaritans worshiped on Mount Gerizim and the Jews worshiped at the temple in Jerusalem. But that didn&#8217;t mean that was the only place they prayed.
So I mention this to say one of the reasons people sometimes think Catholics worship saints is because they don&#8217;t know biblically the difference between prayer and worship. But prayer is conversation. It&#8217;s asking for things, like &#8220;Pray, Tao, I want you to tell me something.&#8221; I&#8217;m asking you to tell me; that&#8217;s literally a prayer. And that&#8217;s not&#8230; I&#8217;m not worshiping you when I do that.
And so if we ask the saints to ask for things for us, that&#8217;s not worship. That is prayer. It is conversation with them, but it&#8217;s not worship. And so should Christians have that kind of conversation with other Christians where they ask for their prayers? They should. In fact, we&#8217;re told to make supplications for one another, and we&#8217;re told to go to one another when we need prayers. We see St. Paul doing this, and we see, you know, there&#8217;s this long history of Christians praying for one another as part of the body of Christ.
So I would just say this: Number one, should the members of the body of Christ pray for each other and ask for prayers from one another? Yes. Number two, is the body of Christ on earth only, or is it also in heaven? Well, it&#8217;s also in heaven. Number three, so is it okay to ask other members of the body of Christ that are in heaven to pray for us? Seemingly, yes.
In fact, if we take the Bible seriously, that the prayer of a righteous man is efficacious, people who are in right relation with God will have their prayers heard in a way that those mired in sin won&#8217;t. So one of the great things about the saints is you&#8217;re not worried that they&#8217;re secretly mired in sin. You&#8217;re not worried that they&#8217;re far from God. They&#8217;ll actually pray for you, where your Christian neighbor on earth may or may not. So go to your neighbor on earth; I&#8217;m not saying don&#8217;t, but it makes sense to go to your Christian neighbor who&#8217;s in heaven as well.
Cy: I&#8217;ll tell you what, Mark, I&#8217;d love to send you a book. Thank you so much for a wonderful conversation. Very, very helpful and enlightening. And even when you try to be mean, I gotta say, you&#8217;re not a very mean person.
So if you&#8217;d like the book, we have a book called *The Saints Pray for You*, which is about the very question that you just asked. If you would like it, all you have to do is stay on the line and give us an address, and we&#8217;ll send it to you there.

I’m Not Catholic Because You “Changed” The 10 Commandments…

Sedevacantism is the claim, espoused by certain extreme traditionalist Catholics, that there is currently no valid pope because of a great apostasy by either the pope or the whole Church. Jimmy Akin explains why the reasons given by sedevacantists for their position are faulty and contrary to the promises of Christ.

The Errors of Sedevacantism

Did God the Father punish Jesus on the cross?
Some Christians say, “Yes.” For example, the late Reformed theologian R.C. Sproul, in his 1985 book The Holiness of God, writes, “[Jesus] was the only innocent man ever to be punished by God” (emphasis added).
Sproul isn’t the only one. In their book Pierced for Our Trangressions, Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach write, “The Lord Jesus Christ died for us . . . suffering the wrath of his own Father in our place.”
This view has come to be known as penal substitution. “Penal” captures the active punishment that God the Father inflicts on Christ. “Substitution” captures the idea that Christ takes our place.
Now, as seen from the quotes above, a key to penal substitution is that God the Father is the active agent who inflicts the punishment on Jesus. This is consistent with the nature of punishment.
As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, when we sin, there are three orders that we disturb: the order of reason, the order of human law, and the order of divine law. Consequently, every sinner incurs a threefold punishment: “one inflicted by himself [we would call this penance],” “another inflicted by man,” and “a third inflicted by God” (Summa Theologiae I-II:87:1). It’s the third infliction, the infliction by God, that penal substitution affirms Jesus fell under.
I argue that it’s this active agency of God the Father in the alleged punishment of Jesus that’s problematic.
Consider that the “punishment” Christ supposedly endures is his death, which wasn’t a direct effect of God the Father’s agency—like in the case of God killing the innocent firstborn of the Egyptians—but rather was inflicted by the Roman soldiers. St. Thomas Aquinas makes this point in his Summa Theologiae. He writes,
<blockquote>A thing may cause an effect in two ways: in the first instance by acting directly so as to produce the effect; and in this manner Christ’s persecutors slew him because they inflicted on him what was a sufficient cause of death, and with the intention of slaying him, and the effect followed, since death resulted from that cause (III:47:1).</blockquote>
So Christ’s persecutors were a direct cause of Jesus’ death. The Father was not. Aquinas affirms that the Father “delivered up Christ to the Passion,” but that deliverance was merely a permission of Christ’s executors to execute him. He writes, “God the Father did deliver up Christ to the Passion . . . by not shielding him from the Passion” (ST III:47:3). Just as a side note, Aquinas doesn’t think this is cruel of the Father, because the Father moved Christ’s human will to suffer for us (see ST III:47:3 ad 1).
Now, as Aquinas points out, the act of slaying Jesus was an injustice—i.e., a sin—on the part of the participating Jews and Jesus’ executioners (Summa Theologiae III:47:6 ad 3; Summa Contra Gentiles 4.55). And I think it’s safe to say that most Christians <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-the-jews-kill-jesus">would agree</a> with Aquinas on this point.
With these relevant points in place, we’re now able to begin seeing the problem with the idea that God the Father is the active agent of punishment in Jesus’ death. According to the penal substitution theory, the punishment that the Father inflicts is Jesus’ death. With Aquinas, we can say that Jesus’ death was inflicted by his executioners. It follows, therefore, that the Father was the direct cause of Jesus’ enemies inflicting death upon him.
But the act of slaying Jesus was an injustice—a sin. Therefore, according to penal substitution, the Father was the direct cause of the injustice or sin committed by Jesus’ executioners.
This idea would immediately repulse most Christians, since most intuitively would reject the idea that God can cause someone to sin. And they’d be in good company with Aquinas, who writes, concerning the Jews, at least, “[The Father] did not will the unjust action of the Jews.” He applies the same reasoning to the Roman soldiers.
The Council of Trent also rejected the idea that God can cause someone to sin. In fact, the Council anathematized the idea:
<blockquote>If anyone says that it is not in man’s power to make his ways evil, but that the works that are evil God worketh as well as those that are good, not permissibly only, but properly and of himself, in such wise that the treason of Judas is no less his own proper work than the vocation of Paul; let him be anathema (Decree on Justification, Canon VI).</blockquote>
Since penal substitution logically entails God the Father causing Jesus’ executioners to sin, which most would accept to be absurd, the “penal substitution” theory should be rejected. For someone of this mindset, there would be no need to go farther.
However, for someone like John Calvin, the idea that God directly causes someone to sin is not out of bounds. Calvin is famous for teaching that God doesn’t just permit moral evil, but positively directs sinners to sin. Of “wicked” and “obstinate” men, he writes,
<blockquote>[God] bends them to execute his judgments, just as if they carried their orders engraven on their minds. And hence it appears that they are impelled by the sure appointment of God (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Bk. 1, Ch. 18, sec. 3).</blockquote>
Notice that for Calvin, sinners sin not merely because God allows them to do so (his permissive will). Rather, he “impels” or “bends” (forces) them to sin.
So for someone who follows Calvin on this, more work must be done to defend our critique of penal substitution. We must explain why it’s not possible for God to directly cause someone to sin.
We could appeal to Scripture. The Psalmist states in Psalm 5:4, “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not sojourn with you.” If God the Father were to directly cause someone to sin, even if it were for some further perceived good, his will would be terminating in that sin, and thus “delighting” in it, which is contrary to divine revelation.
There’s also a philosophical reason why God can’t cause someone to sin. Consider that if God were to move us to sin, he would be turning us away from him, away from our ultimate end or goal—“for,” as Aquinas states, “man sins through wandering away from [God] who is his last end” (Summa Contra Gentiles 3.162). In other words, God would be directly moving us not to love him, and if so, he would fail to will the divine goodness more than any other good, which is impossible for the infinite and perfect God. Aquinas confirms this in his Summa Theologiae:
<blockquote>Now God wills no good more than he wills his own goodness; yet he wills one good more than another. Hence he in no way wills the evil of sin, which is the privation of right order towards the divine good (I:19:9).</blockquote>
As to why it’s impossible, consider that this failure on the part of God would be due either to a lack of knowledge that he is the supreme good or a failure in due attraction to himself as the supreme good.
But God can’t possibly fail in knowledge that he’s the supreme good because he’s omniscient. Nor can he fail to be attracted to himself as the highest good, for that would entail a desire for some good outside the order of reason, which is impossible, because he’s perfectly good.
In fact, God can’t fail in any sense. Failure necessarily entails unactualized potential. But God is traditionally understood to be <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/what-is-god/">pure actuality</a>, or pure existence itself, the very notion of which excludes the idea of unactualized potential. Therefore, God can’t fail, lest he cease being God.
Since God moving us to sin entails a failure on God’s part, and on the classical view God can’t fail, it follows that on the classical view God can’t move us to sin.
Now, someone may just reject the classical notion of God to keep the idea that God moves us to sin. But then there’s not much value in a deity who’s finite and subject to defect. Such a move would undermine the same sovereignty of God that one tries to uphold with penal substitution.
So in the end, an advocate of penal substitution comes to a fork in the road: either give up penal substitution as an adequate explanation of the nature of Christ’s death on the cross or give up God’s absolute perfection. I’m going with the former option!

The Problem with ‘God Punished Jesus’

<div>How do hermits benefit the Church?</div><div>Hermits benefit the Church through their prayers for the Church. The power of individuals whose lives are close to God is made clear in Scripture:
<ul>
<li>. . . and then God remembered Noah and all the animals, wild and tame, that were with him in the ark. So God made a wind sweep over the earth, and the waters began to subside (Gen. 8:1).</li>
<li>Thus it came to pass: when God destroyed the Cities of the Plain, he was mindful of Abraham by sending Lot away from the upheaval by which God overthrew the cities where Lot had been living (Gen. 19:29).</li>
<li>For he remembered his holy promise given to his servant Abraham. He brought out his people with rejoicing, his chosen ones with shouts of joy (Psalm 105:42-43).</li>
<li>God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jaco. (Exod. 2:24).</li>
<li>The Lord saw that there was no one, and was appalled that there was none to intervene (Isa. 59:16).</li>
<li>Thus I have searched among them for someone who could build a wall or stand in the breach before me to keep me from destroying the land; but I found no one (Ezek. 22:30).</li>
<li>As for me, far be it from me to sin against the LORD by ceasing to pray for you and to teach you the good and right way (1 Sam. 12:23).</li>
</ul>
And then, of course, there is the example of the great prophets of the Old Testament who prayed and interceded for the people of Israel.
Hermits stand as an example of emptying oneself for the sake of the gospel and intercede for us in the Church.
<blockquote>Without always professing the three evangelical counsels publicly, hermits &#8220;devote their life to the praise of God and salvation of the world through a stricter separation from the world, the silence of solitude and assiduous prayer and penance&#8221; (Catechism, 920).
They manifest to everyone the interior aspect of the mystery of the Church, that is, personal intimacy with Christ. Hidden from the eyes of men, the life of the hermit is a silent preaching of the Lord, to whom he has surrendered his life simply because he is everything to him. Here is a particular call to find in the desert, in the thick of spiritual battle, the glory of the Crucified One (Catechism, 921).</blockquote>
</div>

What Good Are Hermits?

When discussing the Catholic faith with Protestants, it’s not uncommon to face what I call the Bible blitzkrieg. This especially happens in email or social media exchanges where the other person will defend their position with a string of Bible verses. He might say, “Catholics are wrong about salvation because we are saved by grace alone” and then list a dozen Scripture passages after that statement that he claims proves his point.
Some Protestants are capable of reciting those verses (or at least citations of them) in conversations because they’ve spent their childhood memorizing various Bible passages. And that is a good thing! St. Jerome famously quipped that “ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” Therefore, we should always commend a person’s intimate knowledge of Scripture.
On the other hand, it is one thing to know what the Bible says and another thing to know what it means. Jerome said of a heretical group called the Luciferians, “Let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning” (Dialogue with Luciferians).
You should point out to your Protestant friend that simply listing Bible passages isn’t the way to determine what theology is correct. The Protestant scholar D.A. Carson once said, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” Making a statement and then defending it with only a dozen Bible citations is nothing more than grandstanding, or a mild form of intimidation. It’s like saying, “How can I be wrong when all these Bible verses say I’m right?”
As Jerome shows us, any heretic can string along biblical citations and say he is correct. You can find Jehovah’s Witness literature, for example, that cites dozens of passages that, according to the Witnesses, show that Jesus is not truly divine. Your Protestant friend would rightly tell them that when each of those verses is reviewed one at a time, you can see that none of them disproves the deity of Christ. He just needs to see that the same is true when we go through the dozens of Bible verses he has cited as evidence against Catholicism.
I find in many of these instances that the cited verses aren’t just incorrect interpretations; they are irrelevant interpretations. The verse has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. For example, when defending <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/sola-scriptura-is-not-so-easy-to-kill">sola scriptura</a>, Protestants often cite biblical passages that affirm the goodness and utility of Scripture. But sola scriptura isn’t the claim that Scripture is good. It’s the claim that Scripture is the only source that contains all Christian doctrine.
One gentleman I encountered included a string of citations that included Hebrews 4:12. I then said he should slowly read the passage: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
I asked him where that verse says anything about Scripture being the only infallible rule of faith or containing all Christian doctrine. He admitted it didn’t. Then I asked him, “And where does this passage say anything about Scripture?” He said, “Well, it says ‘the word of God.’”
“Right,” I told him, “but the word of God and Scripture aren’t identical. First Thessalonians 2:13 says the preaching of the apostles was ‘the word of God,’ so ‘word of God’ doesn’t always mean Scripture. In some cases, it’s talking about Jesus, the Word made flesh, which is what Hebrews 4:12 is talking about. It’s talking about the living word, and we know that because the very next verse says, ‘And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.’”
At this point, the gentleman was so startled at having misunderstood the passage for so long that he was more receptive to my concern that he had made similar errors in the other passages he cited in defense of his arguments against Catholicism.
When you are faced with a Bible blitzkrieg, remember that this isn’t an actual war. You’re allowed to ask for a break so you can look up these verses and get back to your interlocutor with your thoughts. You can remind him that studying Bible verses is always better than <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-to-avoid-verse-slinging-with-protestants">slinging Bible verses</a>. Moreover, St. Peter reminds us that Scripture contains difficult passages that people can misunderstand to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:16), so you want to consult authoritative sources to find out what these verses might mean and, at the least, what they absolutely cannot mean.
This can be helpful, because some Protestants operate under the mistaken assumption that Catholics are prohibited from reading or interpreting the Bible for themselves. They might cite the Second Vatican Council, which said, “The task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church” (Dei Verbum 10).
But the Church has infallibly defined the meaning of only a handful of biblical passages. The Church allows biblical scholars a wide degree of latitude in interpreting the literal and spiritual meaning of biblical texts, provided that they follow the council’s direction to be attentive to the “analogy of faith” and interpret the texts in light of all divine revelation (CCC 114). So, for example, a biblical interpreter could not conclude that a particular Bible passage teaches that Mary gave birth to other children or that Christ is not fully divine, since the Church has infallibly taught that those beliefs are in error, and Scripture is without error (Dei Verbum 11).
Finally, don’t get discouraged if your Protestant friend knows more biblical citations than you do.
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/scott-hahn-bishop-barron-and-guilt-by-association">Scott Hahn</a>, a professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, once said that Protestants know the Bible the way a mailman knows the neighborhood. The mailman knows that the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood Street, and so if he needs to get the mail to them, he knows which streets to follow to get there. In the same way, Protestants who have a deep passion for understanding the Bible can cite a biblical passage’s exact chapter and verse.
Catholics, on the other hand, know the Bible the way  kids know a neighborhood. They may not know that the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood Street, but they do know that the Johnsons live on the top of the hill next to the house with the old green fence and the barking dog. They can get you to the same place, but in a less direct way.
Catholics know a lot of Scripture. Even if they don’t read the Bible, they hear the Bible at Mass, and they might read biblical passages in Catholic devotionals and prayer books. They may not be able to cite Scripture verses, but the chapters-and-verses convention we use to cite these passages came into existence only in the Middle Ages. It wasn’t an original part of the Bible.
When Jesus showed the Sadducees that the Old Testament does refer to a resurrection of the dead, he said, “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush [emphasis added], where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.”
So don’t feel as though you can’t talk about the Bible just because you may not remember the chapter and verse where a passage is located. Even our Lord didn’t cite the Bible in this way! You can survive the Bible blitzkrieg by humbling leading the person through different parts of Scripture with the light of the Church’s teaching as a helpful guide to interpreting it.

The Bible Blitzkrieg

Why did Christ choose Bread and Wine?

<div>Can you listen to music with earbuds during adoration?</div><div>I’m not aware of any Church regulation on wearing earbuds during adoration. But adoration chapels do have guidelines for chapel conduct, usually with a reminder to turn off cell phones (or place on silent/vibrate mode) and all electronic devices. This is to minimize distractions and to place the focus where it belongs: on Jesus and his presence. &#8220;Be still, and know that I am God,&#8221; says the psalmist (Psalm 56:10).
Why not unplug for an hour when you&#8217;re with the Lord? Sadly, we live in a culture of noise and distraction where earbuds, cell phones, and Muzak drown out the beauty of silence. In an address during a pastoral visit to Turin, John Paul II reminded us of the value of silence: &#8220;Our age needs to rediscover the fruitfulness of silence in order to overcome the dissipation of sounds, images, and chatter that too often prevent the voice of God from being heard.&#8221;
Recommended reading: <a href="https://www.ignatius.com/The-Power-of-Silence-P1989.aspx">The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise</a> by Cardinal Robert Sarah.
</div>

Earbuds During Adoration

Bodily Autonomy vs Right to Life

Gotta love the Catholic interwebs. There never seems to be a shortage of brothers and sisters arguing about the important things, like whether to go see a movie or not. If you are on the fence about seeing the new film Cabrini, I would like to share with you three reasons I think it’s worth your time.
<h2>Girl Power</h2>
Back in my day, when someone was trying undeservedly to claim the moral high ground, it was not uncommon to respond by saying “You’re no Mother Teresa.” I don’t recall anyone ever saying “You’re no JPII.” That’s not because St. John Paul II was not viewed by many as a particularly holy man. It’s simply because stories of Mother Teresa and her mission to help the poor and sick in India made news around the world. It’s also worth pointing out that EWTN was <a href="https://www.ewtn.com/motherangelica">founded by a woman</a> who persevered against the odds to create a literal Catholic media empire. In a similar vein, the story of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini is a shining example of the tremendous witness one woman can provide for our Faith even if she can’t be a priest or bishop. You simply can’t tell her story without this element.
<h2>Fighting Bigotry</h2>
Cabrini is set around 1889 when Pope Leo XIII sends Mother Cabrini to New York to care for the poor Italians who immigrated there. An unfortunate fact of our country’s past is that certain ethnic communities have been disparaged and oppressed. Mother Cabrini was Italian, female, and Catholic; all three were strikes against her in 1880’s New York. She fought back hard against all of these obstacles and achieved great things in her life. That alone is inspiring—which brings me to my third reason.
<h2>Evangelization</h2>
Most of the criticisms over Cabrini that I have seen focus on a lack of clear Catholic piety. This likely has to do with the purpose of the film.
Catholic Answers was asked by the producers to host a viewing of Cabrini (before it was finished) here in San Diego. I spoke to one of them in the hallway afterwards. He told me that Cabrini’s story was chosen because of its value for evangelization. If that is the case, then it doesn’t surprise me that they didn’t try to pepper the film with a lot of images of explicitly Catholic devotion.
Imagine a scene showing Mother Cabrini praying silently in Eucharistic Adoration. Who besides you and I, dear reader (assuming you’re Catholic) would understand what is going on in that scene without some amount of explanation? It’s possible that the filmmakers went too far in this regard, but that still doesn&#8217;t mean you should avoid the film, in my humble opinion.
Or, putting it another way (as <a href="https://x.com/ethan_stueve/status/1767285743905280068?s=20">this tweeter does</a>):

Furthermore, before my conversion, the thing that attracted me most to Catholicism was the heroic missionary work of a Mother Teresa or a Mother Cabrini. It wasn’t how much time they spent praying the rosary that caught my attention, but how selflessly they gave their lives to the poor and downtrodden. If the creators of Cabrini want to evangelize, then focusing the bulk of the film upon that facet of a saint&#8217;s life is a perfectly acceptable and effective way to achieve that goal.
When it comes to entertainment and Catholic storytelling, there’s simply no way to please everyone. If you have not seen the film already, my recommendation is to stop reading reviews and go see it for yourself.

Three Things I Enjoyed About ‘Cabrini’

In September I had the privilege of attending the 2024 Catholic Answers Conference where I heard talks by many of my favorite apologists like Joe Heschmeyer, Trent Horn, and Cy Kellett. A recurring theme across their talks was how to do proper apologetics. Specifically, they emphasized that good apologetics centers more on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/winning-the-person-not-the-argument">conversations than arguments</a>. This is because the Catholic faith is not just one of many philosophies that can be proven by debate, but the most transformative and fundamental truth we can encounter.
It is tempting, especially online, to reduce the faith to a series of talking points and proofs. Since it is now possible to speak to hundreds of new people a day about the faith, it becomes easy to use the same spiel about why this or that person should become Catholic. The apologist makes a checklist in his mind about topics to cover: baptism, the Eucharist, apostolic succession, sola scriptura, and the like. He checks this box and that box, and expects the other person to convert upon hearing the logical arguments just provided. 
But the truth is that conversion begins with the heart, not the mind. Only someone that has <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/answer-endless-objections-with-this-one-weird-trick">opened his heart to God</a> will allow himself to freely hear the truth about the faith. By treating the faith as the subject of a mere intellectual debate—and not the true transformative belief that it is—the apologist forgets the need for the assistance of grace and the Holy Spirit in apologetics. 

Not only is this type of apologetics ultimately ineffective, but it also leads to serious repercussions for the apologist. Each new non-Catholic he encounters is reduced to a subject to receive a checklist of arguments. The apologist no longer perceives him as a fellow sinner in need of God’s grace but as an adversary to intellectually conquer. Scripture is no longer the living, inspired word of God but simply a collection of prooftexts to wield against non-Catholics. The Church is no longer the bride of Christ but is simply an institution of great historical proof and significance.
Throughout my time in online apologetics, I have had to take multiple breaks to re-center myself after falling into these errors. I knew I had crossed a line once I noticed that I couldn’t interact with non-Catholics without being overcome by thoughts of how to prove the truth of the Catholic faith to them. Instead of allowing God’s grace and the Holy Spirit to work in their hearts, I felt the burden of proving everything to everyone. 
So what do we do if we find ourselves inside this same trap? We must look back to the greatest Catholic apologist: Jesus Christ. Jesus debated with others—often in Socratic fashion by asking a series of questions to his opponents. This approach served to reveal the wisdom of Christ and the truth behind his ministry, leading to the conversion of many sinners. Certainly, then, debate has its place in apologetics and conversion.
However, Christ’s ministry did not consist solely of debate. Many of his most healing and transformative interactions came not as a result of debate but of mercy, compassion, and love. This should always be at the heart of apologetics: not simply giving the “right answer” to religious questions, but giving hope and mercy in a world filled with hopelessness and condemnation. Only then can true, long-lasting conversions take place.

Don’t Reduce Faith to Arguments

The author of the highly acclaimed book, On the Third Part of the Secret of Fatima, helps explain the controversies surrounding the apparition. A meticulously researched account, On the Third Part of the Secret of Fatima replaces sensationalism with scholarship, and helps set the record straight.

Fatima’s Secrets in Context

How is Jesus involved in the sacrament of marriage?

What are good tips to evangelize fallen away and lukewarm family?

Jn 5:24, Act 10:44, Gal 3:2 point to Justification by faith alone. How are works involved?

Is Lev 19:22 to show as evidence as to why we go to priests for confession?

When did they change the words ‘cup’ to ‘chalice’ in the mass?

Ask Me Anything

The doctrine of <a href="https://amzn.to/3IruTwN">divine simplicity</a> denies that God is a composite—that is, that God is built up from any parts (components, constituents, etc.) more basic than himself. For Catholics, the doctrine of divine simplicity is a matter of dogma; there is no wiggle room in affirming that God is simple, though there is space for how best to understand this commitment—a topic for another time.
Whereas divine simplicity was historically the dominant theological perspective, in more recent decades, it has become controversial. Many Christian philosophers actively deny and attack it, arguing that it leads to various absurd results.
But divine simplicity should not be controversial at all. Rather, it follows straightforwardly from <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/GELRKA">conceptual truths</a>—that is, truths that hold by virtue of the meanings of the terms or concepts involved, with no empirical investigation required. Put differently, once we are clear on what we mean by composite, on the one hand, and God, on the other, there really is no way around the idea that God—if God is to be God—must be absolutely simple.
Here&#8217;s a little argument that will help us see why:
<ol>
<li>Whatever is composite depends on prior components.</li>
<li>Whatever depends on something prior is not ultimate.</li>
<li>God is ultimate.</li>
</ol>
So God is not composite.
The first step in the argument is just one of these conceptual truths. After all, a composite just means something that depends on (or derives from) more basic components. Everyday, obvious examples would be LEGO towers and cars, where the entire entity is metaphysically downstream, as it were, from the bits and pieces that constitute it. No LEGO blocks, no LEGO tower—fairly obvious.
The second step is also, obviously, a basic conceptual truth—if something is ultimate, that means that’s where the buck stops. There can be nothing deeper down, nothing further back, and so forth. To say something is, at once, ultimate and yet dependent upon something else is just a straightforward contradiction in terms.
Next, we say that God is ultimate. It is a tricky matter to pin down exactly what must be affirmed about God to ensure that we’re actually talking about . . . well, God. But once we omit the notion of ultimacy or fundamentality and begin to talk about something dependent, derivative, or caused, we have lost successful reference to God. At that point, we are talking about something else entirely—something definitely not God.
If everything is right so far, then we have an argument that seems totally decisive. For it logically follows that God is not, and could not be, composite. This is just to say that God is simple: not made up of any parts, components, or constituents more basic than himself.
The final step to atheism here is simple. If we cannot affirm God without affirming that God is simple (or minimally, at least not denying that God is simple), then the moment we deny divine simplicity—deny that whatever is fundamental is absolutely and ontologically simple—we are, in fact, denying God altogether. And the denial of God altogether is atheism!
So, as annoying as it may be for non-classical theists (sometimes called theistic personalists, neo-classical theists, or—my preference—complex theists) to hear this, the logic is straightforward. A Chrisitan (or self-professed Christian) who denies divine simplicity is—sad to say—an atheist, even if he is unable to see it or simply unwilling to admit it. (To pull the polemics back a bit, we might say he is functionally—metaphysically—an atheist, even if not sociologically one.)
Let us now consider a way we might try to evade this argument. As with any argument, there are possible escape hatches, but here I will say the cost of attempted escape is enormous.
This approach is to attenuate the traditional notion of ultimacy—or, as the case may be, aseity. Someone might say that by calling God ultimate or a se, he simply means that God does not depend upon anything outside himself, even if he still depends on or derives from internal components.
This is a mess of a position, however, for several reasons. First, it’s contrived: a way to weasel out of the obvious. Second, it leaves God entirely brute—that is, with no further explanation of why or how God exists. (Note that simply saying God is necessary doesn’t actually explain why God exists or why God exists necessarily—especially if God is conceived as a composite entity whose existence is downstream of prior parts existing and being organized just so.) In particular, it fails to explain—because it cannot without circularity—why God has the components he does, or why and how they are organized and bound together in just the way they are.
Second, making this move hands the atheist an identical card to play: the atheist can now claim that his fundamental entity—nature, or evolution, or the Big Bang—is equally ultimate and a se. Yes, it may be composite and brute as well, but if the theist can posit brute, composite entities as the ultimate (pseudo-)explanatory stopper, then so can the atheist. From there, the atheist can even claim that his theory is overall simpler, since it avoids positing one further, highly complex entity. (Just think about it: if an atheist can so easily co-opt the notion of ultimacy or aseity being used by the theist, surely something has gone terribly wrong.)
Notice that the classical theist doesn’t face these problems. God is not brute, but has the reason for his existence in the fact that, given simplicity, God is identical to his existence (hence why God exists necessarily: God is not a composite, where an essence must be conjoined to an act of existence; God simply is his “to be”). Moreover, this reality can ultimately ground all composite entities and thus provide a more tightly unified and satisfying theory overall; all compositeness traces back to absolute simplicity—and complex theism cannot, for obvious reasons, offer such an account. It leaves compositeness as a bare brute fact. Finally, given simplicity, God requires no further explanation for why or how his “parts” exist or are organized in just the way they are—because God has no parts at all.
At the end of the day, I believe that the doctrine of divine simplicity is one of the most obvious truths about God. If one is committed to the notion of God at all, the very least he should be committed to is the idea that God is absolutely simple—just as so many great philosophers have held for so many centuries, from Plato to Plotinus, Aristotle to Aquinas.
What these intellectual titans well understood is that if God is really and truly God, there can be no markers—no indicators—of contingency, dependency, or derivation. Why? Because whatever else God is, he has always been taken to be the ultimate—the sole, the ultimate—reality. That, in turn, tells us that whatever else is true of God, he cannot be made up of, or built up from, anything more basic than himself. It tells us that God is simple—and, in being simple, supreme.

Atheism Is Complicated

Joe Heschmeyer helps a caller who asks how to defend against those who claim that the church went through a Great Apostasy after the apostles died.
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Transcript (Auto-Generated):
My question is about the great apostasy.
As a Catholic, how do I defend the stance that the church did not fall into apostasy once the apostles died?
word apostasy means falling away.
And the Bible talks about apostasy, talk about people who fall away from Christianity, fall away from the church. But there are Protestants and Mormons who believe in a great apostasy, where the problem isn&#8217;t that people are falling away from the church, the ideas of the church has itself become apostate. Now I wanted to just point out that these are, even though the same word is used, they&#8217;re actually kind of opposite concepts. Because if I fall into apostasy, the problem is I&#8217;m not Catholic enough.
If the church is apostate, the problem is that I&#8217;m too Catholic.
And so even though apostasy is used in both cases,
the great apostasy isn&#8217;t people falling away from the church, it&#8217;s the church being false.
And so that&#8217;s kind of the thing I would point out. Just to kind of clarify what we&#8217;re talking about. So how do we know great apostasy isn&#8217;t true? Well, besides the fact that there&#8217;s zero biblical evidence for the church falling away, like as a church, rather than people falling away from the church. You also have all of the biblical data about the church. So I&#8217;m gonna give you just a few pieces, because there&#8217;s a lot here.
In Matthew 16, Jesus says, &#8220;I will build my church.&#8221; And I started to say, if he hadn&#8217;t have said that, if Jesus was just this great teacher, Messiah, prophet, son of God, and he didn&#8217;t build the church though,
his followers wouldn&#8217;t just say, &#8220;Well, we&#8217;re gonna go back to our old ways of life.&#8221; They would still try to follow him. They would just have to build their own denominations.
And so I like to point this out, like when Protestants approach Christianity, they&#8217;re doing it as if Jesus had said, &#8220;I will not build my church, you have to do it.&#8221; But he says the opposite. He says, &#8220;I will build my church.&#8221; So the church isn&#8217;t something we have to build. The church is something we have to find and join.
That you also have these other passages, Daniel two, for instance, Nebuchadnezzar&#8217;s dream. There&#8217;s the four tiers, gold, silver, bronze, and then iron and clay mixed together. And they represent the four kingdoms that conquer Israel. It&#8217;s Babylon, then it&#8217;s the Persian, Medo-Persian empire, then the Greek empire, then the Roman empire. And we&#8217;re told during the days of the fourth empire, so during the days of the Roman empire, a stone not formed by human hands will come and crush this, like the feet of clay, and will build a mountain that will never be destroyed. Now that to all appearances looks like someone is coming from heaven to build a kingdom on earth and that kingdom won&#8217;t be destroyed. That&#8217;s not consistent with the idea someone came from heaven, built a kingdom, and the kingdom was destroyed.
Third, you have just the description of the church. It&#8217;s the bride of Christ and it&#8217;s the body of Christ. And the entire picture all the way up to and including the book of Revelation with the wedding feast of the lamb is about this everlasting relationship between Christ and the church. And Jesus speaks of it in this way. Luke 22, he talks about the apostles sitting on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel. And so the apostolic nature of the church, his body and bride lasts forever. And Ephesians 1, St. Paul talks about the church as the fullness of him who fills all in all. That the church is the continuation of Christ on earth. So to say that the church went into a great apostasy is to say that Christ left us as orphans when he promised he wouldn&#8217;t do that.
So all of that is the theological approach. And I would heavily lean in that. The other thing I would do though, number two is looking at the historical approach. And I&#8217;ve actually written an entire book about this. If you&#8217;d like a copy of my book, the early church was the Catholic church. Because if you&#8217;re gonna say the church originally believed X, this thing that I believe is a Protestant, as a Mormon, as whatever. And then over time, this false teaching, Y crept in. We should be able to find that in history. We shouldn&#8217;t just have to take your word for it. You should be able to show, here are all of these early Christians who interpreted the Bible the way that I do. But almost invariably, when someone makes these claims about the church going into apostasy, when you ask for the historical evidence, they point to a Bible verse and say, well, I read it this way. It&#8217;s like, well, I don&#8217;t care how you read it. Show me the centuries of people who read it the way that you do. And then that there was a switch. Because we should see a number of things. If you walked into a Protestant denomination and said, now we&#8217;re gonna start believing in the Pope, now we&#8217;re gonna start believing in the real presence, now we&#8217;re gonna start praying to Mary, there would be an outrage. Because that would be a major change. And so if all of these things that people protest about
were major changes to the structure of Christianity, to the theology of Christianity, we should see major outcry. So show me the outcry. Because we can find outcry on much smaller issues along the way, and just not this one. That is a very strange absence of evidence. But more than that, we can actually find people from remarkably early on,
taking for granted that everybody believes these very Catholic things. So that&#8217;s what I would say, that you&#8217;ve got the theological approach. It doesn&#8217;t make sense if you understand what the church is and who built it to suggest that it was destroyed by the gates of hell.
Second, you&#8217;ve got the historical approach. We can talk about the earliest Christians, people like Saint Polycarpus Smyrna, the Enignations of Antioch, Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, and Saint Justin Martyr, all before the year 200, who look and sound astonishingly Catholic.

Did the Church Have a Great Apostasy?

Was Fr. Junipero Serra a dark part of history, deserving of his statues and memorials&#8217; desecration, or was he a holy man of God who directly resisted the mistreatment and enslavement of the native peoples he evangelized? Find out here, with Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.

Who Was Fr. Junipero Serra?

Dr. Michael Barber explains why &#8220;Sola Ecclesia&#8221; is an imprecise description of Catholicism, opting instead for &#8220;Solo Christus,&#8221; and then lays out why Catholics do not need the Church to infallibly declare every single correct interpretation of Scripture for them.
Transcript:
Host: We&#8217;ll go to Sabian in Santa Barbara, California, listening on Immaculate Heart Radio. Sabian, are you with us?
Caller: Yeah, I&#8217;m here, how you doing, Dr. Barber and Cy?
Host: Very good, thank you.
Dr. Barber: We&#8217;re great, thanks for calling in.
Caller: All right, so I have a question that you kind of touched on already. My question was, how do I&#8211;I wanna better polish my argument, cause I heard James White bring it up one time, when he was making the claim that we are &#8220;Sola Ecclesia,&#8221; because we interpret what tradition is, we interpret what Scripture is, therefore we are only about the Pope and not about the other two pillars that we hold to. And also, how can we, as Catholics, better defend&#8230;when we talk to Protestants about Scripture, and say, &#8220;Well that&#8217;s&#8211;you&#8217;re taking that out of context,&#8221; when they&#8217;ll come back to it with an argument that says, &#8220;Well, how can you tell me that, the Church infallibly defines what the Scripture means,&#8221; how can I refute that argument right there? So these are my two questions, Dr. Barber.
Dr. Barber: Okay, let&#8217;s get back to the second one in a minute, but let&#8217;s talk about the first one. Is the Church&#8211;does the Church actually believe in &#8220;Sola Ecclesia?&#8221; Actually, I would say, if you really wanna be precise, the Church actually is even more focused&#8211;the Church is ultimately, I would say, focused on the Son. So I would say, if anything, for Catholics, we want to focus on Christ Himself. But if we want to be fair about that, we should recognize that Christ is not just the individual person of Jesus, but, as Augustine and the fathers long noted, Christ&#8211;the whole Christ&#8211;would include the Church. So I think it might be problematic to say&#8211;well, it would be wrongheaded to think that we only should look to a text, and not to Christ, and not to the Church.
So I would push back and say, well, I think maybe, you know, White, or maybe somebody else&#8211;I haven&#8217;t heard White, so I don&#8217;t want to&#8211;I haven&#8217;t heard White on this particular point, so I don&#8217;t want to misrepresent what he&#8217;s saying, I may not fully understand what his argument is there&#8211;but I would want to make the case for us as Catholics that we are &#8220;Solo Christus.&#8221; I mean, we want to focus on Christ Himself, and Christ is understood also in terms of His body, and so I think it&#8217;s a huge problem when you say you should interpret Scripture apart from His mystical body, the Church. So that&#8217;s how I would respond to that particular line of thought, we could talk a lot more about that, obviously.
But let me try to understand the second point that you were trying to make. How do we respond&#8230;.can you follow up with that? I sort of lost the thread.
Caller: Oh yeah, it&#8217;s the argument of when I hear Protestants say, &#8220;Well how can you tell me that I&#8217;m reading the Scriptures wrong when your Church hasn&#8217;t infallibly told us that this is what the Scripture means?&#8221; So how can I tell them, &#8220;This is not in the light of tradition according to the Church,&#8221; when they&#8217;re Protestant and the Church hasn&#8217;t, you know, dogmatically, or whatever, however you want to say it, said that this is what this Bible passage stands for, and what it means?
Dr. Barber: Right, well, let&#8217;s be clear about this, right? The Catholic Church has always recognized that it&#8217;s not necessary for the Church to officially or infallibly define something in order for Catholics to believe it. Going back to the argument I think you were explaining from White, I think some people actually have this kind of strange view of the Catholic Church, and actually I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s just Protestants, I think some Catholics have this view too, you might call it &#8220;Magisteriology,&#8221; right? Where we think that what constitutes Catholic teaching is SIMPLY defined by Church doctrine, or Church statements.
But you know, we don&#8217;t ever read the encyclicals of John Paul II in Mass; we never read the writings of Thomas Aquinas in Mass; we read Sacred Scripture. We read the Old Testament and we read the New Testament. And the Church is just fine for us to hear those words in Sacred Scripture, and for us to reflect on them, interpret them, and to, you know, follow what we think makes the most sense out of those statements. So sometimes the Church will intervene and say &#8220;No, wait a minute, here&#8217;s a boundary over here, that particular view is out of bounds,&#8221; but I think most of the time&#8211;you know, as someone who went to Azusa Pacific University as a Catholic, and then I got my PhD at Fuller Theological Seminary as a Catholic, you know, we have a lot more common ground with our non-Catholic brothers and sisters when it comes to interpreting Scripture than maybe a lot of people want to make it out to be.
So just because the Church hasn&#8217;t officially defined some particular teaching in Scripture, that doesn&#8217;t mean that Catholics are, somehow, you know, adrift at sea and not really clear on what the Lord is trying to communicate to us, right? I mean, the Catholic Church does not need to come out, the Pope does not need to come out tomorrow and teach infallibly, &#8220;Thou shalt not murder.&#8221; It&#8217;s clear! That&#8217;s one of the Ten Commandments. The Pope doesn&#8217;t need to do that. He only does that in cases where there&#8217;s some tremendous debate or confusion. Otherwise, Scripture should be, you know, interpreted reasonably and responsibly by Catholics.

Does the Church Believe in ‘Sola Ecclesia’?

How can Mary and the Saints hear our prayers?

<div>Does God have a perfect, predestined plan for my life? What about free will?</div><div>The short answer is yes. God does have a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/predestination">predestined</a> plan for your life, but it involves your free will. The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it succinctly:
<blockquote>To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore he establishes his eternal plan of “predestination,” he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness (CCC 600; emphasis added).</blockquote>
For more information on how to square the doctrine of predestination and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/free-will">free will,</a> see Predestination: The Meaning of Predestination in Scripture and the Church by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, O.P.
</div>

How Does My Free Will Square with God’s Plan for My Life?

What did ancient people (by that I mean anyone born before the modern period with phones and movies) do for fun?

How do we know if it is God or a coincidence, when a prayer is “answered”?

If a third of the angels fell along with Lucifer, and these were the angels created to adore Jesus, do you suppose in some way that all of our guardian angels will fill this void when we enter the Church Triumphant? And sorry if this has been asked bef...

My daughter missed confirmation because of COVID then leukemia. She still doesn’t have confirmation, does she need confirmation to still receive the Eucharist?

Can you explain why some priests say the charismatic movement is not real and the talking in tongues in that movement is diabolical or that Baptism in the Spirit is not real, and then other priests say they have the gift of tongues and run charismatic ...

Christ said he had to go to the Father or the Holy Spirit would not come. Did Divine Procession effectively change due to the hypostatic union?

Was the Blessed Mother’s “appearance” to James in Spain an “apparition” or ” biolocation”?

Will we eat food in Heaven? Jesus in His resurrected and glorified body asked the apostles if they had something to eat.

Can one who obeys the Natural Law be saved even if he doesn’t explicitly affirm Christ and his Church?

Does the Holy Spirit prevent Popes from making prudential/pastoral decisions that can harm the Church, including undermining our understanding of the doctrines of the Church?

We have consecrated virgins. My understanding is in the Latin rite we don’t have consecrated widows. Is it just the Latin rite, or all Catholic Rites?

Was it a condition of the rich young man’s salvation to sell all he had and follow Christ? Was it an invitation he could morally decline? What about Mary when she was asked to be the mother of Jesus? More broadly, is choosing to not live the voca...

Why is Boethius not viewed as a Saint and Martyr?

“1 Peter 3:21 says that baptism is ‘an appeal to God for a clear conscience.’ Therefore, babies cannot get baptized because they cannot make appeals.” How would you answer that objection to infant baptism?

Can you explain the speaking of tongue references in Acts 2?

Why don’t Catholics need to receive the body and blood at the same time?

When someone receive absolution at confession, is there ever a need to do additional penance above what the priest asks?

When God said he is a jealous God what does He mean?

Why would we need our body after second resurrection references in CCC 1059?

Can you explain the option of internal forum for a Catholic who was denied annulment?

Is there anything we are encouraged to do for St. Catherine of Siena’s feast day?

When Catholics discuss things with Muslim, should we mention the personal life of Mohamed?

Hypothetically, if a Catholic priest was elected in the next election, would he have to be laicized to take office?

Is there any place in the bible that mentions the existence of Dinosaurs?

What is the maximum age for a man to become a priest?

Ask a Priest

I can trace many of my life choices back to a loved one’s comment made in passing, or to a book lying around the house, or to a television show I once watched. And so I can say, strange as it may sound, that it was actress Raquel Welch who put me on the path to paganism.
We moved to southern California in 1987, when I was just eighteen months old, and some of my first memories are from the four years we spent there: playing hopscotch with a babysitter on the sidewalk outside our little apartment and popping Lemon Heads into my mouth as I watched my dad tinker on a car. After a lifetime in the cold Northeast, my mother began to blossom in the perpetual warmth and sunshine of San Diego and became interested in her health. White bread was swapped out for whole grain, tofu appeared on the dinner table from time to time, and we all started taking daily vitamins. Yoga and long walks became staples in her daily regimen.
At some point during those California years, the book Raquel: The Raquel Welch Total Beauty and Fitness Program arrived in the house. Mostly a collection of black-and-white glamor shots of Raquel from long-ago films and photo shoots, which were beautiful but a little confusing, the book also gave instructions for a complete yoga routine, which inspired me. I wanted to be like my fit mama, so when she wasn’t using the book, I took it into my room and thumbed through the pages, testing my own levels of flexibility and balance.
As I got older and became aware of my body and my weight, I wanted to adopt an exercise regimen of my own. In our North Carolina home, I went in search of that old book, placed it at my bedside, and set an alarm extra-early each morning so I’d have time to run through the entire routine before school. I wanted a tough workout, so I rushed through the practice, working up a sweat in my little bedroom. Eventually I could hold half-moon poses and inversions without needing the wall or a support block. I could bend over backward and easily touch my forehead to my knees in a forward bend. I wanted something harder, something more, so I added running and ate increasingly smaller portions. I became light, fast, and strong. And I was hooked.
I didn’t delve deeper into yoga and its spiritual aspects until years later, but Raquel’s book opened the door to yoga—and to that barnacle of New Age spirituality that drew me over the threshold.
Dreams also started playing a role in my development. These weren’t run-of-the-mill dreams—the stress-induced ones, the flying ones, the I-ate-spicy-food-right-before-bed dreams. This type of dream was powerful and prophetic; they revealed things to me that I firmly believed couldn’t have come from anywhere but the spirit world—dreams of things that later came true in my life or in world events.
Sometimes, a dream would be scary, an apocalyptic dream, filled with death and fire and bones. Those dreams were to be expected. In my New Age beliefs, the End Times figured prominently. However, two of the dreams were downright demonic. Though occurring some years apart, they were connected. In the first, I was in a large shadowy cavern, lit only by torches. Awful haunting music echoed against the walls, and I watched as a well known politician pulled out his eyeball to reveal a secret scroll kept hidden inside his skull. The scroll, when unrolled, contained the names of the damned. Though I didn’t believe in it at the time, I knew I was not in a good place. This was hell.
The music struck me most, so when I heard those same out-of-tune, misshapen notes again, I knew from where it came, which terrified me. During that second time, I am convinced I wasn’t entirely asleep.
Had I been savvier, I would have taken all this as a warning, but no—I kept chasing the dreams anyway, inviting them, wishing for them, praying to the Universe to give me more, more.
After my conversion, I came to learn that dream interpretations can play a legitimate role in our Christian lives. But pursuing dream interpretation didn’t bring me closer to God. I never intended it to. I was beyond the Christian God then, too self-fulfilled to fall into the constraints of an organized religion that didn’t honor and promote my own path to spiritual advancement. With an insatiable hunger for special knowledge, I filled notebooks with the themes and imagery of my dreams and thoughts on what they could mean for me and for the world.
Had someone asked where I thought my dreams originated, I would have replied with certainty, “The Universe!”, which was a synonym, along with the Universal Mind, the Great Spirit, the Force, etc. for the idea that all of creation—every rock, branch, sea slug, human, and spirit—was of the same substance and held the same life force, even if the thing in question was seemingly inanimate. Humans might hold a special rank among creation, but it was all to be respected together with “Brother Rock,” “Sister Polar Bear,” and so on. There was only the “spiritual fabric.”
Little did I know then how this notion of oneness had elements of truth. In the body of Christ, believers are spiritually joined through baptism. In the sense that God created everyone, yes, we are all one. All creatures ultimately find an explanation for why and how they exist in the absolutely simple eternal Being, which is God. Through mystical prayer, we may ascend to greater union with our Creator, made possible through Christ. Not all false beliefs are wrong all the way through. We are attracted to their elements of truth, and this leads us to perilous errors. Instead of rightly seeing, for example, that there must be a simple unified source of all creation, we run the risk of believing that we are it.
Whatever elements of truth were attracting me then, the dreams also gave me what I wanted to get from them—a privileged peek into a blanketed universe. I desired secret knowledge of the physical and spiritual worlds that wouldn’t fade with the stars each morning—a permanent doorway to a realm that remained hidden from the eyes of the spiritually unconscious. This realm would be similar to Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods, with its hidden world beyond the veil that gods and goddesses could slip into, and would seem like our world, but would be different. Spiritual. A place where the godlike could find peace living in a place that optimizes who they were created to be.
But how to do this? How could I extend into waking hours the quality of the feelings and information I received in a dream? How could I be sure that what I dreamed about was accurate, not cluttered by my brain processing the sights and sounds of the previous day? Finally, and perhaps most revealing about my real motivations (which were veiled under the guise of a desire for spiritual enlightenment), it was imperative that the messaging from the Universe continue. Because without such a special power, what was I? I was like everyone else.
Still a young teen, I turned to the Ouija board.

Yoga, Dream Reading, Holier Than Thou

Modern Catholics have experienced a “creeping universalism,” with many now convinced that few people, if any, go to hell. Ralph Martin defends traditional Church teaching on hell, and explains why it is not going away.
Cy Kellett: Does anyone actually go to hell? Ralph Martin is here. Lets find out.
Cy Kellett: Hello, and welcome again to Catholic Answers Focus. Delighted to have you here with us. Thank you for joining us. I am Cy Kellett, your host. This week, we tackle the question of salvation. Not what it is, but to how many will it be, in the end, extended. Our guest is Ralph Martin, who is the president of Renewal Ministries. He&#8217;s a doctorate in theology, and he teaches the new evangelization at Sacred Heart Seminary in the archdiocese of New York. He was named-
Ralph Martin: Detroit.
Kellett: Excuse me, Detroit. I beg your pardon. You were named by Pope Benedict as a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization.
Martin: Yes.
Kellett: And you are also a peritus &#8230; I&#8217;ve never met a peritus before. This is my first time.
Martin: Yeah, they&#8217;re harmless.
Kellett: Are they? Okay.
Martin: Yeah, they&#8217;re okay.
Kellett: &#8230; To the Synod on the New Evangelization, in 2012. You wrote a book, actually, Will Many Be Saved? Bishop Robert Barron, who at the time was Father Barron, familiar to probably almost everybody in the Catholic world &#8230; wrote a review of that book. You wrote a reply, and the two of you carried on a conversation about salvation.
Martin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kellett: What was your concern in writing the book, Will Many Be Saved?
Martin: Yeah. I would say that over the last 50 or 60 years or so, there&#8217;s been a remarkable change of mentality and worldview amongst Catholics, that hasn&#8217;t really been paid too much attention to. I would say that the way many of our fellow Catholics look at the world today, would describe it like this: Broad and wide is the way that leads to Heaven. Almost everybody&#8217;s going there. Narrow is the door that leads to hell. Hardly anybody&#8217;s going there. Now, you might say, like, &#8220;What&#8217;s wrong with this picture?&#8221;
Kellett: I think I can hear the resonances of someone else, who used similar terminology.
Martin: Yes, yes. It&#8217;s exactly the opposite of what Jesus Himself said. In Matthew, chapter seven, he says, &#8220;Broad and wide is the way that&#8217;s leading to destruction. Many are traveling that way. Narrow is the door that leads to life, difficult is the road, and few there are who are finding it.&#8221; Now, Jesus didn&#8217;t say this because he was happy about the situation. He didn&#8217;t say it because this is how it has to be. But when you look out on the world as it is, many, many people are not honoring God. They&#8217;re not believing in Jesus. They&#8217;re not living righteous lives.
Kellett: Right.
Martin: And so, what Jesus is kind of trying to wake us up to is saying, &#8220;Hey. This isn&#8217;t a game. You know? If you don&#8217;t hold on to the bread of life, if you don&#8217;t really hold on to the one that the Father has sent to bring us to Heaven, you&#8217;re not gonna go there.&#8221; You know?
Kellett: Yeah. Right.
Martin: It&#8217;s just really, really serious, and this isn&#8217;t an isolated text. Like Luke, chapter 13. Imagine, people asked Jesus, &#8220;Will there be few in number who are saved?&#8221; Now, that&#8217;s a pretty interesting question, isn&#8217;t it?
Kellett: Yes.
Martin: And his answer isn&#8217;t like giving numbers, but then again, it&#8217;s not saying, &#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m sorry I upset you. I was just using Jewish hyperbole. Don&#8217;t you know about literary form? I mean, you know. Come on, guys. Chill.&#8221; You know? He didn&#8217;t say that.
Kellett: Right.
Martin: He said, &#8220;Try very hard to enter by the narrow door, because many will try to enter, but will not be able to.&#8221; And then it goes on to say &#8230; Well, people say, &#8220;Hey, wait a second, Jesus. We came to your preaching. We ate and drank with you in the streets. What do you mean?&#8221; He says, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know you. Depart from me.&#8221; So, people heard about Jesus. They knew about Jesus. They enjoyed his preaching. Maybe they even got healed. But they didn&#8217;t respond with faith and repentance, and change their lives. They didn&#8217;t become disciples. They didn&#8217;t enter into a relationship with Him, and pay attention to the instructions He&#8217;s trying to give us about how to end up in Heaven, rather than hell. That&#8217;s why I wrote the book.
Kellett: I think anybody who is familiar with the history of the church would say what you&#8217;re describing there is the standard belief of Christians down through the centuries. But here&#8217;s what I think many people would say. &#8220;Look. The Second Vatican Council cleared that up for us.&#8221;
Martin: Yeah. No. Yeah, people say it. They say, &#8220;Ralph, haven&#8217;t you heard that Vatican Two changed all that? I know we used to believe that, but haven&#8217;t you heard that that&#8217;s all been changed now, and it&#8217;s all about mercy and compassion, and all that kind of stuff?&#8221;
Kellett: Right.
Martin: I actually did my doctoral dissertation to study what exactly the Catholic Church is officially teaching in Vatican Two. The main text is, in the Constitution of the Church, chapter 16, where it says, &#8220;It is possible, under certain circumstances, for people who haven&#8217;t heard the Gospels to be saved.&#8221; And then it lists what the conditions are. People who are inculpably ignorant of the Gospel. People who are nevertheless trying to know who God is, because God reveals something of Himself to the whole human race, through the creation. People who are trying to live according to the light of conscience, because God gives everybody&#8217;s conscience a sense of right and wrong. And then it says, assisted by grace, it&#8217;s possible for these people to be saved.
Martin: So people hear that, and &#8230; You know, I say the same thing. I say, &#8220;I&#8217;m really glad to hear that God&#8217;s gonna give a chance to everybody, even if through no fault of their own, they don&#8217;t hear the Gospel.&#8221;
Kellett: Right.
Martin: But then, the last three sentences are almost completely ignored. Some of the most famous theologians in the Catholic Church who write on this issue kind of talk about salvation optimism. That&#8217;s a little bit what Father Barron was kind of talking about, too, based on von Balthasar. But, the last three sentences say, &#8220;However, very often, deceived by the evil one, human beings actually exchange the truth of God for a lie, and worship the creature rather than the Creator.&#8221;
Martin: Therefore, it&#8217;s really urgent that we preach the Gospel, because people aren&#8217;t naturally responding to God automatically. We hope they&#8217;re given the chance to, but hey, the world of the flesh and the devil are really powerful, and it&#8217;s really easy for people to give into disordered desires of original sin. It&#8217;s really easy for people to be brainwashed by the culture, but give themselves to the brainwashing, because it confirms them in their disordered desires. And it&#8217;s really easy to be deceived by the deception that the devil is sowing in people&#8217;s lives, and in the culture at large.
Martin: So, it&#8217;s really important that we preach the Gospel. And I don&#8217;t think the whole emphasis on new evangelization is going to last very long, unless people know that something&#8217;s really at stake. It&#8217;s just gonna be another passing kind of craze, another buzzword for a while. The only thing that&#8217;s really motivated people to persevere in preaching the Gospel is knowing that the eternal salvation of their souls are at stake.
Kellett: Certainly, we have seen that. I think most of the popes &#8230; I can remember Benedict the 16th, I think in an interview. One of those book linked interviews that he did talked about a dampening, a consequence of this kind of modern idea that the way is wide, and that&#8217;s the way. I&#8217;ve seen a dampening of enthusiasm for evangelization, and that&#8217;s very hard to overcome.
Martin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kellett: Now, so Bishop Barron, in his response then &#8230; Or his review, really, of the book.
Martin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kellett: He does talk about Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, and I think you both would agree, they were the two major 20th century proponents of this wide &#8230; What&#8217;d you call it? Salvation optimism?
Martin: Yeah, salvation optimism is what Karl Rahner described Vatican Two of bringing into the church.
Kellett: It doesn&#8217;t seem to me now that as many people are, that Rahner is invoked as much as von Balthasar.
Martin: Yeah.
Kellett: Maybe because his reputation hasn&#8217;t &#8230; I don&#8217;t know, but &#8230;
Martin: Yeah.
Kellett: So we can look at these theologians, and say that this optimism comes from them. And in his review, Bishop Barron says that &#8230; I think what he&#8217;s attempting to do is say, &#8220;Look, Pope Benedict the 16th is among these,&#8221; and he wants to say you&#8217;re dismissing the teaching of Pope Benedict the 16th in spaceality. Now, I know you responded to that-
Martin: Yeah.
Kellett: But, what is your response to that?
Martin: Well, there&#8217;s a certain phrase in Benedict&#8217;s encyclical spaceality where he says something like this. He says, &#8220;One may suppose that most people end up in purgatory.&#8221; You know?
Kellett: Yes. It&#8217;s a very striking turn of phrase, for an encyclical letter.
Martin: Yeah, yeah. So, he&#8217;s not like teaching authoritatively. He&#8217;s sort of like speculating, or supposing, or something like that.
Kellett: Yeah.
Martin: But actually, in the footnote he refers people to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where it talks about the reality of hell and purgatory and Heaven, so he&#8217;s acknowledging the traditional teaching of the church. But he&#8217;s sort of like speculating, saying, &#8220;Gee. You know, one may suppose that most people end up in purgatory.&#8221; So, I said I felt like that was a misleading formulation, that could lead people to really think it&#8217;s actually a teaching of the church. That most people are gonna be saved, you know?
Kellett: Yes.
Martin: We just don&#8217;t know. So Bishop Barron accused me of being a dissenter, because of raising that as a question. Which, anyway.
Kellett: But it&#8217;s hard to dissent from a supposition.
Martin: Exactly. But also, in my response I pointed out a document that the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith published, about how to interpret Magisterial statements. And depending on how they&#8217;re formulated, depending about whether they&#8217;re repeated, depending on whether they&#8217;re given in a sort of formal, definitive way, there&#8217;s lots of room for development and for discussion and for dialogue, and for that type of thing.
Kellett: Maybe upon further reflection, Bishop Barron would agree. You&#8217;re not a dissenter. You&#8217;re not dissenting.
Martin: Well, I would hope that that would be his position, yeah.
Kellett: But he does &#8230; He argues that &#8230; He doesn&#8217;t flesh out the argument, but he does conclude by saying he actually thinks it&#8217;s a better tool of evangelization to have this idea of a more broad salvation.
Martin: I actually don&#8217;t think it is. I was just talking to the founder of Saint Paul Street Evangelization, Steve Dawson. What they do is they go out in the street and they hand out miraculous medals, and try to get into conversations with people. And my friend was just asking, &#8220;Have you ever seen anybody actually convert through that street evangelization?&#8221; And Steve said the only time he&#8217;s ever seen it happen, he&#8217;s seen it happen a number of times now, is when they talk about the final judgment, and the eternal consequences about not really surrendering your life to Jesus, and the reality of hell. And they said that&#8217;s the only thing that&#8217;s ever been effective in actually helping people right there on the spot, really turn to the Lord. There&#8217;s a reason why Jesus gave all those warnings. I mean-
Kellett: Yeah, he seemed to agree with that.
Martin: Yeah. In fact, he even said, &#8220;Don&#8217;t fear those who can kill the body, but fear the death of the soul.&#8221; So Jesus is saying, &#8220;Hey, it&#8217;s okay to be afraid of going to hell. In fact, you&#8217;re pretty smart if you&#8217;re afraid of going to hell.&#8221; It doesn&#8217;t end there. It grows in a relationship of love and honor and reverence. But, being afraid of going to hell is really helpful for people. It&#8217;s kept a lot of people out of hell.
Kellett: Right. Your position, however, is not that the vast majority of people are going to hell.
Martin: No, no. I don&#8217;t think we know the numbers. I mean, only God knows numbers, and probably the numbers are still to be decided by the decisions that people are gonna be making or not making.
Kellett: Right.
Martin: Jesus is giving us the indication that you don&#8217;t just drift into Heaven, that you gotta make some decisions. He says the Kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent bear it away. You don&#8217;t just kind of hear Jesus saying nice things, and go on with your merry life. He says, &#8220;Let he who hears these things heed them.&#8221;
Kellett: Yeah.
Martin: You know. Don&#8217;t let these words fall on you, and not bear fruit in your life. So, repentance and conversion and faithfully following Jesus is absolutely essential. I mean, the Father has sent Jesus because eternal life is in Jesus, and if you want eternal life, get with Jesus. I mean, that&#8217;s where it is.
Kellett: Amen. Right.
Martin: You know? I mean, that&#8217;s where it is. It&#8217;s in Jesus. It&#8217;s in the church. It&#8217;s in Jesus&#8217;s sacraments. That&#8217;s where eternal life is. And if you want eternal life, come on. Get with it.
Kellett: Yeah, and as an evangelizer &#8230; We&#8217;re all meant to be evangelizers. I mean, I can&#8217;t imagine anything more motivating than the thought that this person can be damned, this person can be saved. There are two utterly distinct possibilities for this life.
Martin: There&#8217;s only two final destinations, and life isn&#8217;t a game. It&#8217;s a time to kind of get redeemed, or not to get redeemed. And Our Lady of Fatima, all her warnings. She showed the children a vision of hell, and it changed their life forever. They became so concerned about the salvation of the souls. You know, little Saint Jacinta, a day didn&#8217;t go by where she said, &#8220;Have you made any sacrifices today?&#8221; She said, &#8220;It&#8217;s so terrible that souls go to hell.&#8221; And Mary said, &#8220;Pray very much, because so many souls are going to hell because so few people are praying and offering sacrifice for them.&#8221;
Martin: So, my goodness. There&#8217;s never been a Marian apparition more highly accepted by the church. You know, Lourdes, Fatima, Guadalupe. And here we have the church saying, &#8220;This is a reliable prophetic warning from God, sent through His own mother.&#8221; You know, listen to what she&#8217;s saying.
Kellett: And again about the real possibility of damnation, how do I get to Heaven, then?
Martin: You get to Heaven by putting your faith in Jesus Christ, and doing what he says. Becoming part of His body of the church, eating His body, drinking His blood, obeying His word, and living the life that He&#8217;s gonna give us the power to live. First Corinthians, chapter six, Galatians five, Ephesians five, it says, &#8220;If you keep on committing serious sin, you will be excluded from the Kingdom of God.&#8221; We need to repent. We need to ask God to help us overcome our sins, and begin to live a life of holiness in the church.
Kellett: Ralph Martin, thank you very, very much.
Martin: Thank you, Cy.

Do People Really Go To Hell?

<div>Is committing a small sin knowingly (thinking that God will forgive you) mortal?</div><div><a href="http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson30.htm">The Baltimore Catechism</a>:
<blockquote>Q. 1183. What is presumption?
A. Presumption is a rash expectation of salvation without making proper use of the necessary means to obtain it.
Q. 1184. How may we be guilty of presumption?
A. We may be guilty of presumption:
1. By putting off confession when in a state of mortal sin; 
2. By delaying the amendment of our lives and repentance for past sins; 
3. By being indifferent about the number of times we yield to any temptation after we have once yielded and broken our resolution to resist it; 
4. By thinking we can avoid sin without avoiding its near occasion; 
5. By relying too much on ourselves and neglecting to follow the advice of our confessor in regard to the sins we confess.</blockquote>
In the situation you describe, the sin to be the most worried about is the sin of presumption. The sin of presumption starts out with committing small sins presuming that God will forgive them. But over time our conscience will become dulled to sin and we will be led to presume that God will forgive our mortal sins. However, at that point, because of our presumption, we will be missing the necessary condition for the forgiveness of mortal sins: sorrow for our sin.
</div>

The Sin of Presumption?

What Happens When Someone Confesses Murder to a Priest?

Fire up your imagination for a moment and imagine you are standing on a busy street corner with a handful of rosaries. Most people pass by hurriedly, but a stranger walks by and makes eye contact long enough for you to ask a simple question: &#8220;What do you think of the Catholic Church?&#8221;
What sort of responses would you receive? My guess is that many, if not most of the responses would be critical of the Church’s moral teachings, especially in the areas of sex, marriage, and human life. Would you be prepared to confidently respond to those criticisms?
Sound arguments often begin with basic facts that your interlocutor is likely to agree with. The late Catholic apologist Frank Sheed identifies one such key principle for defending the Church’s moral teachings. He <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/society-and-sanity-frank-sheed/1113952980">writes</a>, &#8220;Our treatment of anything must depend, in the last resort, on what we think it is.&#8221; This is the first principle we must establish before entering the depths of rational argument. From that follows another principle on which all moral arguments hinge: our treatment of man must depend on what we think he is.
So then: What are we that makes us so special?
<h3>1. An immortal soul</h3>
In his book, In the Beginning, Pope Benedict XVI affirms that the inner unity between faith and reason is reflected in the revealed story of creation and the scientific theory of evolution. Science can inform us about man’s development as a physical being, but alongside the discoveries of science, the disciplines of theology and philosophy can tell us more about man: that he has an immortal soul infused by God. Therefore, man is a unity of body and spirit, which makes him utterly distinct from the rest of creation. &#8220;Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution,&#8221; muses G.K. Chesterton.
With this rational soul, man alone can know by his intellect, love through his will. Unlike the animals, we can freely choose, and we can deliberate before choosing.
Another difference is that human souls are incorruptible, which means they are immortal: death of the body is not the end for us. This potentiality to “share in God’s blessed life” for all of eternity sets us apart from animals (CCC 1).
<h3>2. Made like God</h3>
In the opening chapter of Genesis, God says, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness&#8221; (1:26). But what exactly is God like? And what are the particular attributes of God that we similarly possess?
God is infinite and perfect. Therefore, to describe him, we use words such as all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. God thereby possesses power, knowledge, and love without limit. We too are able—by virtue of the spiritual powers of our will and intellect—to exercise power, obtain knowledge, and will the good of others, albeit to a finite degree. You can see these “likenesses” to God fully manifested in distinctly human activities such as artistic endeavors, academic pursuits, and charity work.
But that&#8217;s not all. The opening to Genesis also introduces us to a theology of the body. The Church, especially through the teachings of Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II, teaches us that in our bodies we possess the sexual makeup through which we can enter into free, total, faithful, and fruitful union with another. This nuptial love profoundly images the free, total, faithful, and fruitful relationship among the three eternal persons of the Blessed Trinity.
<h3>3. Saved by God</h3>
“Christian, recognize your dignity,” commands the Catechism (1691). There is perhaps no better and direct way to recognize your dignity than by looking at a crucifix.
“The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me,” wrote St. Paul (Gal. 2:20). Just as God gave himself for Paul, so too did God suffer and die to save you. God desires for all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), and along with God’s desire for all men to be saved is the desire inside every man and woman to be saved. As C.S. Lewis puts it, “He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, he would have done no less.”
Christ’s death on the cross both proves and symbolizes our human worth in addition to God’s undying love for us. Not only are we loved by God; we are redeemed by him. We are now free—with the necessary graces readily available—to fulfill God’s original plan for us: to “partake in his divine nature” and spend all of eternity perfected in the bliss of heaven.
Now back to that imaginary street corner. Do you feel a bit more prepared to respond to the objections you will undoubtedly encounter? Remember: your objective in that scenario (or any evangelistic situation) is not ultimately to “convert on the spot.” Your task is really to plant little mental seeds for consideration. If you find yourself at a loss for words, then I suggest starting with Frank Sheed’s first principle: that our treatment of anything must depend on what we think it is, from which it follows that our treatment of man must depend on what we think he is.
What is man? Man is a union of body and spirit purposed for heaven. Only from this starting point can the truths about what is right and good for man as man become clear.

You’re Better than Any Animal

A group of Baptist seminary students invited me to speak to them about why I reject the Protestant principle of sola scriptura (that doctrines come from the Bible alone). Here&#8217;s what I told them.