Manage Account

Atheists often point to science—especially evolution—as a way to explain the world without needing God. One famous voice to make this case is Christopher Hitchens. In his 2009 <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tYm41hb48o">debate</a> with William Lane Craig, Hitchens opined,
<blockquote>It&#8217;s not very much contested any more that we are not designed as creatures, but that we evolved by a rather laborious combination of random mutation and natural selection into the species that we are today.</blockquote>
Later in the debate, Hitchens would reaffirm, “I don’t believe that we are here as the result of a design.” Both statements were ordered in the debate to block any appeal to design as evidence for a Creative Designer.
But why? Because evolution, as Hitchens sees it, is driven by “random mutation”—that’s to say chance. If things happen by chance, so Hitchens’s argument implies, then they’re not designed—and if there’s no design, then why assume there’s a designer, like God?
But not so fast. Philosophers have pushed back on this idea by challenging the assumption that chance and design are somehow at odds.
In fact, going all the way back to Aristotle, many philosophers have pointed out that chance isn’t a thing that does stuff. It’s not an existing thing out there bringing about effects all on its own. Instead, chance happens when there’s some effect that results from different causes coming together in a way that none of those causes specifically intended.
Let me give you a down-to-earth example.
Let’s say I head to the grocery store to grab some milk so my kids can eat cereal in the morning. At the same time, Joe Heschmeyer goes to the same store to pick up bread for his kids’ toast. We run into each other, and—of course—we start nerding out about philosophy in the cereal aisle.
Now, that meeting was by chance. But notice: I had a goal, Joe had a goal, and both of us were acting intentionally. The “chance” meeting happened because of our purposeful or designed actions. In other words, it was a byproduct of two things that were already aimed at something—what you might call “design.”
Here’s another classic example. Imagine someone digging a grave and stumbling upon buried treasure. The person digging had one goal—to make a hole. The person who buried the treasure had another—to hide something valuable. The discovery wasn’t part of either person’s plan, but it came about as a result of two separate, directed actions crossing paths.
The key point here is that chance doesn’t stand on its own. It’s not something basic or fundamental. It makes sense only within a world where things are already moving toward goals—that is, where there’s already design or order at play.
And guess what! The same idea applies to evolution.
Sure, genetic mutations might be random. But randomness doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For mutations to occur, there must be living organisms already striving to survive and reproduce. Mutations don’t just pop out of nowhere—they depend on a whole framework of life, biology, and physical laws that are already in motion with design.
Also, mutations follow tendencies. A dinosaur might evolve into a bird under the right conditions, but it’s not going to turn into a daisy. There’s a certain directionality built into the process.
And when one thing acts on another—like a chemical or a gene—it produces a specific kind of result. Philosophers would say that’s because each thing has built-in tendencies toward certain effects. An acorn, for instance, doesn’t randomly sprout into just anything—it grows into an oak tree, not a banana tree. That kind of directed behavior is what we mean by “order” or “design.”
The bottom line is this: chance doesn’t cancel out design. In fact, you can’t even have chance without design already in place.
If that’s true, and design points to a supreme designer (as theists argue), then the random aspects of evolution don’t actually eliminate the need for God. They just happen within a system that’s already designed.
So the first objection—that evolution removes the need for an intelligent Creator—doesn’t hold up.
Let’s look at a second objection. Some people argue that if new creatures emerge through chance, then there must be parts of the universe that are outside of God’s control—things that weren’t part of the plan.
Philosophers who believe in God usually respond by going back to what we already said: chance happens when causes come together to bring about some effect in a way that neither cause intended directly. But in the traditional theistic view, those causes themselves exist and operate because of God. Their activity—the very reason they act at all—traces back to God’s divine power.
St. Thomas Aquinas puts it this way in his Summa Contra Gentiles:
<blockquote>All power of any agent whatsoever is from God, as from the first principle of all perfection. Therefore since all operation is consequent to some power, it follows that God is the cause of every operation.</blockquote>
In other words, God isn’t in competition with the causes he created. It’s not an either/or situation. Created causes are real and meaningful because of the divine cause.
This understanding of divine causality led Aquinas to explain two things that make up what we generally call God’s “providence,” which is helpful for us here (see Summa Theologiae I:22:3). First, there’s the plan—the order of all things foreordained toward an end. God holds this in his mind, right down to the smallest detail. This is technically called “providence.” Second, there’s the execution of that plan—how things actually play out, which often happens through a chain of created things causing other things. This part, Aquinas calls “government.”
So if God is the ultimate source of every cause and effect, then he will also know—and include in his plan—the convergences of causes that we call “chance.” Even in evolution, what we see as randomness still fits within both parts of God’s providential plan: his providence and governance.
This leads to one more helpful point: what chance is in relation to causes that converge in their actions is not chance in relation to God.
Aquinas talks about this, too. He says,
<blockquote>It happens sometimes that something is lucky or chance-like, as compared to inferior causes, which, if compared to some higher cause is directly intended (ST I:116:1).</blockquote>
Let’s go back to that buried treasure example. Suppose the person digging the grave is a poor laborer hired by a wealthy man. And suppose the wealthy man buried the treasure himself years ago, then hired the laborer on purpose, hoping he’d find it—but without telling him.
From the laborer’s point of view, finding the treasure was a total fluke. But from the employer’s point of view, it was fully intentional. The chance occurrence, therefore, ultimately reduces to the directing activity of the employer—the intelligent cause.
Same goes for the world. We might experience some event as a lucky break or a random occurrence, but from God’s vantage point—the ultimate perspective—it was part of the plan all along.
Even things like genetic mutations that help species evolve—like dinosaurs developing feathers, or fish adapting to breathe air—might be beyond what the causes themselves “expect” to do, but they’re not beyond what God intends through them, since he’s their ultimate directing cause in the first place.
So the idea that something “escaped” God’s plan because it happened by chance doesn’t really work, either.
In the end, there’s no need for a believer to feel threatened by evolution. The presence of chance in the process doesn’t rule out God. In fact, without design, there wouldn’t even be chance. And since design points us to God, it follows that chance doesn’t eliminate God—it actually depends on him.

Why Chance Can’t Eliminate God

The earliest extra-biblical surviving historical record of the Church comes from Eusebius (c. 260-339), a bishop of Caesarea in Palestine. For that reason alone, Eusebius’s History of the Church is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the first three centuries of Christianity. And, as even a cursory study of his ten-chapter work shows, there is much to confirm a singularly Catholic understanding of the Church.
It’s important to acknowledge Eusebius’s shortcomings. The fourth-century bishop was an overt advocate and defender of the emperor Constantine (the tenth chapter of his history is a not so subtle paean to the emperor), which provoked criticisms from later Church historians that Eusebius was a bit of a toady and his writings too politicized. He was an early supporter of the heretic Arius, leading to accusations that he was himself an Arian. (Eusebius was later exonerated of the heresy charges with the approval of Constantine at the Council of Nicaea.) And his history has been the object of much criticism, with many scholars, including the great patristic scholar William Jurgens, noting various historical errors in Eusebius’s work.
Nevertheless, despite these legitimate concerns, it’s hard not to overstate the value of The History of the Church. It is the first extra-biblical history of the Church. (Luke’s Acts of the Apostles is the first ecclesial history.) Even with various errors, modern scholars, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, recognize Eusebius’s work as invaluable to understanding the early Church. Indeed, in many cases, we are aware of other early Church thinkers (and their writings) because the Cesarean bishop cites them. And, whatever error Eusebius made, there is also plenty in his history that is confirmed by other ancient sources. Thus, whatever broad trends we can decipher from The History of the Church are incredibly important for us as we contemplate Christianity in its first three centuries.
There are several key themes in Eusebius’s history that illuminate the identity and interests of the early Church. The first of these is the centrality of apostolic succession. Eusebius begins the chapter, or book, noting the “chief matters” he intends to address in his work, and at the top of his list is “the lines of succession from the holy apostles, and the periods that have elapsed from our Savior’s time to our own.” Thus, throughout his history, we find reference to apostolic succession in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome (what are called patriarchates).
Eusebius at one point cites a churchman named Gaius, who not only claims to know where the monuments to Ss. Peter and Paul lie, but also refers to the two as “those who founded this church.” Eusebius also refers to Alexander as “fifth successor to Peter and Paul.” He cites the second-century “Easter Controversy,” over the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-pope-vs-tradition">dating of Easter</a>, noting that bishops in the East—as well as Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon—disagreed with the Roman bishop (that is, the pope) Victor over his decision to excommunicate some dioceses in Asia Minor. Yet even in his criticism of Victor, Eusebius implies that he and Irenaeus both recognized the Roman bishop to possess an authority to excommunicate, since “he [Victor] should not cut off entire churches of God.” Moreover, Eusebius refers to Peter as the first bishop of Rome and describes how the great theologian Origen felt the need to prove his orthodoxy to Fabian, bishop of Rome.
A second central theme of the history is the repudiation of heresies. Among the heretical groups Eusebius discusses are the Ebionites, who rejected Christ’s divinity; the Montanists, charismatics who believed in new prophetic revelations; the Novatians, who refused readmission to lapsed Catholics; and the Sabellians, who believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three distinct “modes” of God. In each case, Eusebius repudiates heretics because they are not faithful to Scripture or the traditions of the apostles preserved through their successors, the bishops. For example, the historian mentions Pope Stephen and unnamed synods of bishops as authorities in the debate over baptizing lapsed Christians.
This emphasis on alignment with apostolic teaching preserved through the episcopacy is also relevant to a third critical theme in Eusebius: the persecution of the early Church and the coeval significance of martyrs. Every chapter of the history contains stories of martyrs, and some, like book nine, contain little else. Eusebius points to their value in his citation of Justin Martyr, who writes, “When I found them [Christians] fearless in the face of death and all that men think terrible, it dawned on me that they could not possibly be living in wickedness and self-indulgence.” In other words, martyrs served as an effective, provocative testimony—the Greek word literally means “witness”—to the veracity of the Church’s claims.
Yet Eusebius recognizes that there is a potential problem with this “motive of credibility”: some heretical groups also claimed martyrs, such as the Marcionites or Montanists. The historian in response cites an unnamed Christian writer who argues that false martyrs are those who “do not truly acknowledge Christ,” and with whom members of the Church refuse to fellowship. In effect, true martyrs are those in communion with the true Church, and, by extension, the true Church is identified by apostolic succession.
There are other currents in The History of the Church worth exploring. Eusebius’s descriptions of the sometimes acrimonious debates over the dating of Easter will likely surprise twenty-first Christians (especially non-Catholics), who place less of a premium on the liturgical calendar. His hagiography of Origen evinces his theological leanings. But the themes of apostolic succession, combating heresy, and celebrating martyrs loom largest across the text. And, regardless of the historicity of Eusebius&#8217; various accounts, the work demonstrates what issues and controversies dominated the first three centuries of the Church.
In sum, the early Church put a pedigree on apostolic succession, not only as a means of identifying the true Christianity against false imitators, but also to recognize its true martyrs. Certainly, Eusebius also believed that heresies could be refuted by reference to Holy Scripture, but it was the apostolic Church that was Scripture’s faithful protector and interpreter. And that the Roman bishop—beginning with Peter but continuing with such figures as Clement, Stephen I, Sixtus II, and Fabian—is so central to the debates of the early Church is at least suggestive of the growing recognition of the pre-eminent authority of the Roman see in the early centuries.
Whatever its historical limitations, Eusebius’ The History of the Church quite demonstrably shows that <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-early-church-was-the-catholic-church-softcover/">the early Church was</a> a singularly Catholic institution.

Catholic History: Good Even When It’s Bad

<div>If I had an invalid baptism, then had the other sacraments up through confirmation, then was baptized properly, is my confirmation valid?</div><div>No, if your baptism was invalid then your confirmation would need to be repeated. Your confessions would also need to be repeated, at least as well as you can remember, unless you are absolutely certain that your baptism was invalid, in which case you to do not need to repeat your confessions. If you are married to a baptized person then, upon your valid baptism, your union becomes a sacrament, as long as both of you still retain your original consent.
Baptism is the entry to all the other sacraments; without it, none of them have for us a properly sacramental grace. Consult your parish priest or your diocese chancery or pastoral center about your situation, and they will help you resolve it.
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Does Invalid Baptism Invalidate Other Sacraments?

“Yes, but have you read [fill in the blank]?” It’s a common enough question in any debate, be it religious, political, or anything else.
All of us (or perhaps I should say, I hope all of us) come to serious conversations having read some number of sources that have informed our thinking on the topic we’re debating. More often than not, we’ve probably read sources that our interlocutors have not, which we believe they would benefit from reading. Nothing wrong with that, of course—it’s how every side of a debate engages with new ideas and refines opinions.
But there is another context in which the question is asked that is common in ecumenical debates. It seems, at face, a rhetorically effective tactic, though I would argue that is ultimately diversionary and purposeless. Catholics should be aware of it in order to point it out, and Protestants, if they are to argue in good faith, should be hesitant ever to employ it.
Typically, the exchange goes something like the following. You bring up a particular Protestant doctrine, perhaps articulated in a specific Reformation-era creedal document (e.g., the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Belgic Confession of Faith, or the Heidelberg Catechism) or by a specific famous Protestant thinker (e.g., Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, or Wesley). You offer an objection to that doctrine, maybe citing the internal incoherency of that doctrine. Or maybe you meet the Protestant on his own sola scriptura terms and argue that the doctrine isn’t biblical.
Perhaps the Protestant is prepared for that line of criticism and <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/meeting-the-protestant-response-how-to-answer-common-comebacks-to-catholic-arguments/">offers a retort</a>. Or perhaps he doesn’t. Either way, there is a way before him to redirect the conversation away from any perceived failings in his own system: to ask you if you’re familiar with some other Protestant historical document or thinker. The less well known that source, the better, because it decreases the likelihood that you’ll have any familiarity with it. Your Protestant interlocutor doesn’t even necessarily need to formulate an extensive summary of that source—oftentimes it’s enough simply to cite it and argue something along the lines of “Well, you really need to consider that source in order to understand [fill in the blank].”
Granted, it would be unfair to impugn upon any Protestant doing what I’ve described above as intentionally committing the “sin” of manipulative distraction. The Protestant may not be conscientiously seeking to deflect (as if he knows he’s beat) in order to avoid admitting defeat. He may very well think the key to that debate is found in some source he’s encountered. Indeed, I’ve observed Protestants often doing this to one another, as I experienced firsthand when I was a Presbyterian seminary student fifteen years ago.
When I was a Reformed Protestant, I would sometimes have a question or concern about a particular point of Reformed theology (the system of thought that defines many Protestant churches, including Presbyterians) as articulated in some standard text—say, the Westminster Confession of Faith; Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion; or a popular, widely recommended systematic theology. The answer to my question would vary depending on whom I asked—pastor, seminary professor, elder—and, because of that, would lead me in a variety of often contradictory directions. If I raised a particular theologian or writer to contextualize my question or concern, I would often be met with a shake of the head or even a scoff. “No, no, no” they would tell me—that person is wrong or simplistic. “You must read so-and-so for the best defense of that doctrine.” For every fellow Protestant I asked, there would be a different answer as to what source would provide me the explanation to resolve my questions or concerns.
This seemed, upon reflection, a curious problem for a religious tradition founded, so the narrative went, to rescue Scripture from the obscurantism and esotericism to which it had been subjected by an insular, hierarchical Catholic Church. Isn’t Protestantism premised on a layman’s accessibility to the Bible, that it is clear on the essentials of the faith, or what is necessary for salvation—called the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture—so that one shouldn’t have to read a long list of secondary sources to understand, say, how one is saved, or how the church is to be organized? And what should I do, as I increasingly encountered, when the sources I was recommended by those I respected disagreed with one another? And on what grounds, ultimately, should I trust Calvin, Luther, Beza, Turretin, or Peter Martyr Vermigli?
The trouble, I realized, was that the only authority all Protestants—indeed, even all Reformed Protestants—agreed upon was the Bible. And appealing to the Bible amounted to little more than question-begging, because it was precisely the Bible over which everyone was forming differing, often contradictory opinions. Thus, every Protestant had to identify which creedal documents, theologians, and scholars he trusted to direct him to its proper meaning. Even then, according to Protestantism’s own internal modus essendi, the Protestant had to make up his own mind by evaluating those creeds, theologians, and scholars against his own personal interpretation of Scripture. In the end, every Protestant was his own magisterial authority.
For as much as Protestantism became to me increasingly complicated and abstruse, Catholicism presented itself straightforwardly. Want to know what the Catholic Church teaches? Consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which enjoys the formal approval of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Need more? Consult the various other magisterial documents of the Church. If you encounter Catholics rejecting the Church’s catechisms, creeds, or councils, they’re offering not an equally legitimate alternative interpretation of divine revelation, but heresy.
Now, to anticipate a Protestant retort, of course Catholics disagree over many finer points of theology or praxis that have not been definitely resolved by the Magisterium (our “liturgy wars” perhaps being the most current example). But those Catholics cannot disagree over what has been declared to be de fide doctrine. The Trinity? Settled. Seven sacraments? Settled. Mary’s immaculate conception and assumption? <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/immaculate-conception-and-assumption">Settled.</a> You may disagree with these doctrines or the evidence from Scripture or Tradition cited to defend them. But those doctrines—and how they are defended as legitimate—are universally, accessibly taught by the Church. Any priest, theologian, or layman determined to publicly reject them risks excommunication.
In the Catholic paradigm, no one needs to read St. Augustine, St. Thomas, or St. Robert Bellarmine to know the Church’s teachings on salvation, the sacraments, church polity, or human sexuality. Certainly, reading the Doctors of the Church, saints, and respected Catholic thinkers is helpful. But the Magisterium is itself sufficient to know what the Church teaches.
Protestants, in contrast, have no such magisterial authority. They can only contrive an ersatz one, built on the unsteady ground of creedal documents and theologians who, in the end, have no ultimate authority and thus can be picked up or taken off like a set of clothes.
Thus, the next time a Protestant tells you that your critique of his beliefs fails because you haven’t consulted a theologian or scholar you’ve never heard of, ask him why that person has any more authority than the ones you’ve read. No, you may not have read that. But it probably doesn’t matter.

No, I Haven’t Read That

On February 25, 2026, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops filed <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25365/399395/20260226144523582_25-365%20bsac%20United%20States%20Conference%20of%20Catholic%20Bishops.pdf">an amicus curiae brief</a> in Trump v. Barbara, a birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court. One phrase caught my eye: “As Catholics, our faith compels us to protest laws that deny the dignity of the human person and harm innocent children.”
Immigration is a complex issue. Since I study resistance and protest from the Middle Ages down to the present day, how (and how well) my fellow Catholics understand our obligation to engage in political protest is highly interesting to me.
In many domains—family life, liturgy, even the nature of citizenship—Catholics rely on a centuries-old tradition of reflection. Political protest is not one such area, however. As Charles Taylor, the Catholic philosopher <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-11/pope-francis-ratzinger-prize-taylor-bere.html">who won the Ratzinger Prize</a> in 2019, explains in A Secular Age, the public sphere is less than three hundred years old. Medieval kings considered “public opinion” no more than they met anarcho-syndicalist peasants out in the fields—the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6s9IrXxGGc">gag</a> in Monty Python and the Holy Grail notwithstanding. There is no venerable old tradition, then, that instructs Catholics about how to protest in public.
The is no consensus in society at large about political protest, either. Are political protests about persuasion, pressure, or performance? Some political theorists argue that protests raise awareness about issues, communicate grievance, and aim to persuade public opinion. This is why they have megaphones and signs. For others, protesters are pressure groups that cause a ruckus so that certain policies become costly to implement. One recent example is the civil disobedience in Minneapolis, where protesters blocked traffic and blew whistles to obstruct federal officers working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And some radical professors even argue that protest is a liberating performance or transformative experience for protesters’ own sake. Think of protesters encamped at Columbia University who performed an act of solidarity with besieged Palestinians by inviting the New York Police Department to besiege them.
Political protest in the United States might take the form of persuasion, protest, performance, or all of these at once. Nobody agrees in advance what protest should look like.
Recent popes and the U.S. bishops <a href="https://www.usccb.org/news/2010/usccb-pro-life-committee-chairman-issues-statement-respect-life-month">call for</a> political protest as public witness. It is important to recognize that this is a fourth way of understanding political protest, and <a href="https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/faithful-citizenship/upload/forming-consciences-for-faithful-citizenship.pdf">a distinctly Catholic one</a>.
Church teaching about public witness is anchored in the last and longest apostolic constitution of the Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html">describes</a> the obligation of Catholic laypeople to engage in honest and charitable discussion about the laws of our nations, even when we disagree:
<blockquote>Laymen should know that it is generally the function of their well-formed Christian conscience to see that the divine law is inscribed in the life of the earthly city. . . . Yet it happens rather frequently, and legitimately so, that with equal sincerity some of the faithful will disagree with others on a given matter. . . .
Hence it is necessary for people to remember that no one is allowed . . . to appropriate the Church&#8217;s authority for his opinion. They should always try to enlighten one another through honest discussion, preserving mutual charity and caring above all for the common good (43).</blockquote>
Public witness requires neither the political unity of Catholics nor the explicit instruction of the clergy. But what it does require is a certain attitude. Gaudium et Spes informs how Catholics ought to protest: in the spirit of honest discussion, mutual charity, and the common good.
Catholic public witness involves persuasion, (perhaps) pressure, and performance, but it must exceed the usual standards for each of these. Honest discussion aims at persuasion, but public witness furthermore requires communicating in a charitable way. Pressure and civil disobedience are possibilities presented to our prudential judgment, because Catholics can draw on the principle of lex iniusta non est lex—<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-martin-luther-king-jr-get-it-right">an unjust law is no law</a>. However, this principle involves strict “side constraints” that prohibit giving scandal to others, for example, by undermining the authority of law in general.
Finally, public witness is a performance, but our role model must be Christ. Gaudium et Spes explains, “Since they have an active role to play in the whole life of the Church, laymen are not only bound to penetrate the world with a Christian spirit, but are also called to be witnesses to Christ in all things in the midst of human society.”
Public witness is one of several ways, at least in the United States and in American culture, that Catholics may take an “active part in public life” to fulfill our obligations to promote the common good. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1914) <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/section_one/chapter_two/article_2/iii_responsibility_and_participation.html">rightly suggests</a> that public witness is less important than primary obligations of social participation that involve our personal responsibilities in our families and workplaces. This is consistent with <a href="https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/DeRegno.htm">Catholic Tradition</a>, where there is a place for political resistance, but in which revolutionaries cannot outshine the teachings of the apostles and the example of the martyrs.
Preponderantly Catholic protests like the March for Life, unsurprisingly, are marked by the public witness of families, Catholic schools, priests, and religious communities. Many marchers are honest, charitable, and willing to suffer opprobrium for their public witness. Protest demonstrations against mass deportation and war, on the contrary, often draw individuals who are attracted to a protest lifestyle.
Public witness against the foreseeable evils involved in mass deportation and war is important. But here, Catholic protesters must hold themselves to higher standards of conduct than other protesters do. We cannot utilize dishonest and uncharitable techniques of persuasion, engage in civil disobedience that undermines respect for the law and legitimate authority, or embrace protest as a form of self-expression. Our public witness is to Christ.
The political optimism of Church documents since the 1960s sometimes stands in glaring contrast to the everyday realities of polarization, the culture war, and the politics of resentment. For example, Pope Francis went further than the U.S. bishops to call not only Americans, but Catholics in every nation to “desire integration” and to <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#_ftn180">draw closer</a> with their compatriots in a “multifaceted culture of encounter.” But public witness reminds us that we must be prepared to suffer for the common good along the way. This realistic expectation is in line with the perennial tradition of the Church. In his commentary on Romans 13:1-7, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html#_ftn180">emphasizes</a> how wicked rulers are part of God’s punishment for sin, no less than natural evils like storms and sicknesses. We can simultaneously have democratic hope that our people will come together and recognize that, on our part, this will always include our suffering witness to injustice.
The highest and oldest meaning of public witness is martyrdom. Understanding political protest as a suffering witness can be part of a “spiritual discipline against resentment.” Patrick Deneen, a leading Catholic political theorist who teaches at the University of Notre Dame, <a href="https://firstthings.com/christopher-lasch-and-the-limits-of-hope/">reminds us</a> of the role of this distinctively Christian political virtue in advancing American democracy and civil rights. Whereas secular progressives might express frustration and indignation at progress that ought to have been made, Christians who prepare themselves to suffer patiently for the common good will be more resilient. Public witness must counteract, rather than perpetuate, our present politics of resentment.

How Catholics Do Political Protest

<div>Is acupuncture okay to do?</div><div>Yes, as long as its divorced from its non-Christian spirituality. And, as always, done in consultation with a medical doctor.
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May a Catholic Receive Acupuncture?

In Catholic parenting circles, nothing seems to incite more rage and disgust than video games. They are a waste of time. They are conduit for sin and the devil. They are the breeding ground of vice. Etc., etc., etc. That’s what I’ve heard about video games, and for a long time, I held similar thoughts. But then, at a work conference years ago, I sat in on a presentation detailing the benefits of video-gaming. I somewhat reluctantly changed my mind, and our family has greatly benefited because of it.
Video games, believe it or not, are able to do much good in the world, even for faithful Catholics. That’s not to say there aren’t better or worse ways of gaming. No, there are many nuances and caveats to that statement, some of which we’ll cover here. But hopefully the reader will see that there is a wide spectrum of how we can view video games, from the puritanical “all gaming is sinful” to the gluttonous “gaming is life.” Catholics can find a pleasant and recreational middle ground, on which to grow in virtue, boost quality family time, and cultivate a safe arena in which to learn and navigate the inevitable use of technology in our age. We can have our games and play them, too.
The science behind the benefits of gaming is clear: everyone, from children learning better <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01853.x?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&amp;rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&amp;rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed">spatial recognition</a> and <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/201608/video-game-play-benefits-coordination">hand-eye coordination</a> to military veterans <a href="https://www.research.va.gov/currents/0519-Video-games-can-help-Veterans-recover-from-mental-health-challenges.cfm">healing</a> post-traumatic stress disorder, can benefit from video games. Video games can improve <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28522259/">manual dexterity</a>, increase the brain’s <a href="https://www.sciencealert.com/gamers-have-more-grey-matter-and-better-brain-connectivity-study-suggests">gray matter </a>and connectivity, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/games/video-games-children-learning-intelligence-social-skills-study-a6920961.html">improve social intelligence</a> among children, boost <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/11/video-games">problem-solving</a> skills, improve <a href="https://www.livescience.com/1382-study-playing-video-games-improves-eyesight.html">vision</a>, and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3978245/">improve mood and overall mental health</a>. None of these benefits is isolated to time spent while playing games; rather, all of them are infused into everyday life. Playing video games off the job <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2008/08/video-games">makes a surgeon better</a> at performing intricate medical procedures while on the job.
All of this research paints a different picture from the vilified image of “the gamer”: the socially awkward, unproductive, miserable kid (or adult) hiding out in a darkened basement, fostering a hatred of his fellow man and a love for junk food and raunchy images.
That’s not to say such a person doesn’t exist, but it isn’t what all gamers, or even the majority of gamers, are like. Anyone who routinely plays video games as a hobby is “a gamer,” and whether folks are talking about it or not, a ton of people fall into that category, from a peak 77 percent of eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-old men to a still impressive 25 percent of men and women over the age of sixty-five. Those numbers cover a lot of ground, a lot of personalities, and a range of games, from the obscene to the educational.
Of course, just because a lot of people are doing it doesn’t make it right, but are video games really so bad that good Catholics should eschew them?
To be sure, some video games certainly are. Gore, extreme violence, foul language, and suggestive imagery can be found in quite a few games, and those are the ones l bet the anti-video game constituency have in mind when they claim that Catholics shouldn’t play video games or that the world, or at least their homes, would be better off without them.
But the same claims can be made of movies, TV, and print media. Just as Catholics ought to avoid video games that promote or lionize licentiousness, violence, and depravity of all stripes, so too should they avoid all forms of media that do. It isn’t just video games.
Unlike some other forms of modern media, however, video games, when “done right,” offer the Catholic family a slew of benefits. Over the past five years of playing games as a family, we’ve experienced some great teaching moments and quality time together.
What we’ve found is that video games offer wonderful opportunities for siblings to work collaboratively toward a goal, helping older children to be patient with and learn to teach younger siblings. The younger siblings learn to ask for help and be comfortable taking guidance from older siblings. And when communication breaks down, a nearby parent reminds everyone that respectful and patient tones are the only permissible ones to use while gaming together.
Video games also give kids a chance to practice good sportsmanship and fair play. Nothing ends a child’s turn at video games faster in our home than whining, cheating, or gloating. This means they’ve had to pause and reflect before saying anything that might get the system switched off.
Like <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/bl-carlo-acutis-and-saints-in-sneakers">Bl. Carlo Acutis</a> and his self-imposed video game limits, gaming has helped our children with time management skills, temperance, and work-play balance. Through games, which themselves offer benefits as discussed above, lessons can be imparted on how to moderate media usage. How much is too much? Too long? Is this a worthwhile game on which to spend the little time I do have?
We also have a rule about not even asking to play video games until all chores and schoolwork have been done—and not just completed, but done well. No shortcuts here. If they ask before the work has been done, then the answer is no for two days. And if they haven’t completed their daily tasks early enough in the day, then there won’t be time for games. (We typically limit screen time to before dinner so there isn’t blue light or visual stimulation leading up to bedtime.)
It’s also a group effort. No one can play until everyone is finished with his work, so they cheer each other on in order to get the job done. And as they often work together, they play together. Video games that offer multiplayer or collaborative play get emphasized. Or for single-player games, those with more intricate puzzles or problems are played, and the family helps to solve them.
Overall, as a family unit, we are creating positive memories around wholesome games while promoting temperance and prudence, among other virtues. So far, we have yet to find another simple, accessible, and enjoyable activity that is relatively low in cost and that we can hop into at any time.
Video games (the good ones, and for this I refer almost exclusively to Nintendo) have greatly benefited our Catholic family. I firmly believe we can set aside the “all video games are sinful” bias and introduce them into our homes in a mindful and meaningful way.

A Catholic Case for Video Games

The verse immediately following our first reading from Jeremiah makes this striking claim:
The heart is deceitful above all things,
and desperately corrupt; 
who can understand it? (Jer 17:9).
Of course the answer is “God can.” He is the one who can see clearly through our motivations and excuses. But I think we can say even more. Jeremiah asks, “Who can understand it?” The answer also might be “no one.” Because the Christian tradition thinks of sin and evil as something irrational and incoherent. It is wrong not just because God says it is, or because it is against this or that rule; it is wrong because it makes no sense.
In our Gospel passage, Jesus lays out two pathways: a way of blessing, or happiness, and a way of woe. These are strange options. We don’t normally think it is a blessing to be poor or a curse to be rich. We don’t normally look forward to being hurt, nor do we usually think it a bad thing when people speak well of us. These seem to be the exact opposite of what you might see online if you look around for people labeling things with #blessed. I never go into the home décor section and see cutesy little framed artwork or wood carvings that you hang in your entryway saying, “Hunger, weep, be insulted.” What’s happening here, apart from the fact that many people loudly proclaiming their Christian values seem to have mistaken the gospel for a celebration of their own comfort?
Jeremiah makes a distinction between those who rely on “flesh,” who put their trust in people, and those who put their trust first in God. This is the same choice that Jesus is showing in Luke. We could also say that it is a choice between this world and the kingdom of heaven.
It’s not that riches are intrinsically evil or poverty intrinsically good. It’s that when you’re rewarded and feel happy about the things of this life, it becomes easy to forget that this life isn’t the end goal. The things of this world are passing away. They will not last. As St. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians, our hope centers on the resurrection from the dead. “If the dead are not raised . . . your faith is in vain.”
The reason it is wrong to put our trust in created things is that it is ultimately unreasonable. Think about it like this: Would I put my toddler in charge of making dinner or watching her siblings? Would I trust an important document to the table outside on a windy day? In comparison with God, created things are all ephemeral, unreliable, temporary.
We live in a time in American politics where a lot of people seem full of despair while a lot of people seem full of optimism. Certainly both groups can’t be right, though we might wonder if both are wrong. Perhaps we could attempt to agree on the goodness, in principle, of both dismantling corrupt structures and preserving good constitutional order. But as Christians, it is essential to remember that none of these things saves us.
You can hear a lot of Catholics in the public square complaining about ways that the government is failing to uphold this or that value. I wonder if that witness would be more meaningful if it came across as a little more apocalyptic—not, mind you, in suggesting that a policy is going to usher in the end of the world, but by reminding politicians that their own souls are definitely on the line, and by insisting again and again that even if, miraculously, the nation suddenly embraced a fully and recognizably Catholic policy on immigration, on abortion, on marriage and family, on education and poverty, we would not somehow be able to sit down and say, At last, the work is done! For as good as these goals are, they are no more lasting than the other kinds of “blessings” that the world gives. When we face the great judgment seat of Christ, the question isn’t going to be about the general direction of the country.
To translate this into a more local context, I want so badly to build up my parish into a shining example of stability, mission, holiness, and beauty. I want people to invest in it with their time, their energy, their money, because this is the place where, for us, heaven meets earth, where salvation is worked out with fear and trembling. This matters for us every bit as much as big questions of national policy matter, maybe more. So here the contradiction is perhaps more acute, because at the center of our witness is the crucified God who reminds us that we can find strength only in weakness, that our success is never really success, our blessing never really blessing, if it leads us to imagine that we do not need to depend on God at every moment for every breath and every act of existence.
This is the hardest lesson of the beatitudes: it is easier to have faith when you have nothing else. The more goods you have, the harder it is to remember the true and ultimate Good. The more food you have, the harder it is to appreciate the sweetness of the bread of heaven.
This world is good. God created it. And it is full of good things, not to mention God’s own people and their enormous potential to do good work. But none of these things is trustworthy in the way that God is. None of them is reliable in the way that God is. So reason demands that we put our trust in God over these other things. This is the way to happiness—to understand that nothing in this world can ever finally make us permanently happy. Nothing but God.
Today is the third Sunday before Lent. And as we approach that season, I encourage you to go ahead and think about how you might use Lent as a time to get your priorities straight. Often we give up things for Lent—but it’s important to remember that we give up things not because they’re bad—if they’re bad, we shouldn’t be doing them anyway! We give up things to help us remember that they cannot truly make us happy. Nothing can make us completely and finally happy but God. To him be glory now and forever. Amen.

The Upside to Having Nothing

Imagine that a king establishes a new country on the other side of the ocean. It is called the Celestial City and has streets paved with gold. To populate his new land, he summons the people and invites them to be citizens. Next, he builds a ship and prepares his chosen people for the long journey across the ocean.
The ship he provides is a large, beautiful ocean liner, well equipped with everything needed for the journey: food and water, showers with hot water, navigation charts, maps and GPS. He has ordained a captain and a crew and an engine with dynamic power to move the ship. The king invites many to join, and soon the ship is full.
Everything needed to reach the new country can be found aboard that ship. The founder of this new country is God, the new country is heaven, and you and I are the ones he has chosen to join the voyage. The ship that he built is the Catholic Church; the captain is the pope; and the crew are the bishops, priests, and deacons. The navigation charts and GPS are Scripture; the maps are Sacred Tradition.
The food is the Eucharist—the food for the journey. The water is the grace of baptism and the life that flows from Christ through the sacraments. What are the showers? Confession, of course. When we get dirty, we need to be cleaned up. The power that moves the ship is the Holy Spirit.
Everything we need to reach heaven can be found within the Catholic Church.
He warns the passengers, before they commit, that there will be troubles along the way. Storms will hit the ship and threaten to dash it to kindling wood. They will get so sick at times that they may wish they had never come aboard the ship.
There will be problems within, too. The captain and crew may not always conduct themselves as expected, and some may even attempt to sabotage the ship. But he promises them, boldly, that if they stay with the ship, he will get them to the other side.
Everyone agrees to go. So the king steps up to the bow. He smashes the bottle of champagne with great solemnity and christens her the Catholic Church. The engines roar, and fire is seen as he moves away from the port.
Over the first 1,500 years, there are some awful storms and waves, and within, there are debilitating intrigues and rebellions. But in the end, the ship is always righted and still on course. Some who fall overboard, due to their own recklessness and disregard for rules. The ship is battered but remains intact and seaworthy, under full steam by the powerful engine.
About halfway across the ocean, some of the passengers start to argue and protest. Like the Israelites who grumbled about the manna in the desert, they begin to complain about eating the same food all the time. They ask, “Who is this captain, and why should he be in charge? Who gave these crew members the right to tell us what to do?” They stir up emotions and rile up some factions and instigate a mutiny.
The protesters go down into the belly of the ship, where they find wood and rope, and they lash them together and build rafts. They collect food and water, clothing and anything else they can find, and throw themselves and their rafts over the side of the ship. Now they are free! No more captain, no more crew. Now they are on their own, to their own!
Instead of a single ship sailing through the sea, there are now thousands of small rafts bobbing around in the water around the ship! Each of these, surrounding the ship, has its own self-appointed captain, with all of the various captains giving conflicting and contradictory orders. Rafts are crashing into one another, competing with one another for people to jump off their rafts and swim to other ones.
As the ship continues toward heaven, some of the rafts remain close by, but others drift off into the distance, and some are moving in the opposite direction and have lost their way completely. Those rafts that are close to the ship are sheltered from some of the wind and waves; those farther away are tossed about during the storms. The farther away they are, the less chance they have to make it to the other side.
And here is a question for you. Everything good they have on their raft—where did they get it from? It all came from the ship. But now they are cut off. Eventually, the king’s food runs out, and the people begin to eat something other than what the king provided. There are no hot showers available for people to get clean.
(When I was a Protestant, I never realized that everything good that I had on my raft came from the Catholic Church. For example, the Bible was put together by Catholic bishops and copied and preserved by Catholic monks. Martin Luther even admitted that we wouldn’t have a Bible if it were not for “the papists.” My Protestant fellowship had only two sacraments—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—whereas the Catholic Church has seven. I did not define the Faith, such as the Trinity. That was hammered out by Catholic councils over the first 500 years of the Church.)
One interesting point: I wasn’t one of those who jumped off the ship. I was born on a raft. For most of my life, I didn’t even know there was ship—it was nowhere in sight! I was born on a Baptist raft, and I could yell over to the Methodist raft, and they could yell over to the Episcopalian raft, and they could yell over to the Pentecostal raft, and so forth. Our view of unity was just all trying to get along. We called that fellowship, and we had an invisible unity. How could it really be a visible unity, since we were all split up on separate and competing rafts?
Then, one day, I caught a glimpse of something large. I had no idea what it was. I yelled out, “Hey, what is that on the horizon?”
Those on my raft answered, “We don’t know!” So I yelled louder to nearby rafts, and they responded over the waves, “We don’t want to talk about it.”
“Why not?” I yelled.
“Because it’s an enemy.”
“But what is it?”
“It’s . . . it’s . . . well, it’s the ship.”
As I gazed upon the ship, I thought, “If the founder of the Celestial City had any sense, he would never have pushed all these thousands of rafts into the ocean and expected them all to successfully make the voyage. He would have prepared a ship with everything needed for the voyage.”
It dawned on me that that the founder of the country I was trying to reach had created the ship to carry me home safely. I began to ask questions and discovered from ancient documents that indeed, the founder had chartered only one ship, and the rafts were all a result of a protest!
After a year of paddling around the ship and looking up at it from every angle, and after much reading and researching and praying, I got back on board. I pulled my whole family up with me.
I became a Catholic on May 22, 1994, and I’m amazed at what I have found onboard. Cradle Catholics may take these things for granted, but we converts are in awe. You have seven sacraments, and they work! You have navigation charts—the Scriptures—and the Tradition that helps you make sense of the maps.
You have a crew that understands how to read the maps and charts without error, how to prepare the food of the Eucharist properly, and how to operate the showers so that we can get cleaned up from all the foul-smelling sins we commit. You also have a captain, the pope. There have been good and bad popes and clergy, but throughout history, the papacy has known how to navigate the ship!
So do I now want to shoot cannons at all the Protestants out on the rafts? No! My mom and dad are out there, and Vatican II reminds me that those who are baptized and recite the creeds are my brothers and sisters in Christ, though separated from the ship. Some of the people on the rafts can even sing better than some of the people on the ship.
No, I don&#8217;t want to shoot them. I have decided I will spend the rest of my life calling out to the people on the rafts: “Hey, you out there. I too was born on one of your rafts, but I have discovered the fullness of the Faith in this ship, the way the founder originally planned it. Problems, yeah! But the ship is great. Come rejoin us!”
And when I get a few minutes, I turn around and look at the people on the deck. I say, “Why are you grumbling? Don’t you realize where you are?”

Struggling Catholic? Don’t Jump Ship.

<div>Where can I donate a first-class relic of a pope?</div><div>The best thing to do is to try and contact a parish that is named after the pope. Such a parish would most likely be very interested in the relic. Failing that, I would suggest that you contact a local parish or religious community.
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Where Can I Donate a Relic?

Jimmy Akin explains the Biblical basis for free will in man, which is indicated wherever Scripture instructs us to make the right choice, and then walks through the concept of logical contradictions to show exactly what we mean when we say that God has free will.

Is Free Will Biblical and Does God Have It?

The pope’s first words: PERFECT

<div>Was St. John Chrysostom a Greek Orthodox priest or a Catholic one?</div><div>St. John Chrysostom lived in the fourth century, the Catholic and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/eastern-orthodoxy">Orthodox Churches</a> did not split into two separate churches until the eleventh century. He was simply a priest of the Church in Antioch of the one universal Church. Toward the end of his life (c. 398), he became the bishop of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/constantinople">Constantinople</a>, which would eventually split with the Western Church, but that would not be until six centuries later.
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John Chrysostom: Catholic or Orthodox?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says “Of all the divine attributes, only God&#8217;s omnipotence is named in the Creed: to confess this power has great bearing on our lives. We believe that his might is universal, for God who created everything also rules everything and can do everything” (268).
Yet how can God be omnipotent when the Bible says he was defeated by iron chariots? This is a common atheist meme and was even the title of a now-defunct atheist wiki called “Iron Chariots.” The claim references Judges 1:19: “And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain, because they had chariots of iron.”
This part of the book of Judges describes the Israelites attempting to drive the remaining Canaanites out of the promised land. You should know that later in the book the tribe of Judah was able to drive out the Canaanites and their iron chariots. Judges 4:15 describes how God “routed” the Canaanite commander, Sisera, and his 900 iron chariots.
Judges 1:19 isn’t saying God failed to drive out the Canaanites in the plain. The pronoun “he” in this verse refers to the nearest proper noun, or the tribe of Judah. It was Judah who took possession of the hill country but failed to secure the plains. The Lord was “with Judah,” but that doesn’t mean Judah accomplished all their goals. Genesis 39:21 says the Lord was with Joseph while he remained falsely imprisoned for two years because a person who promised to free him forgot to do this (Gen. 40:23)
This only meant God did not abandon Judah during their failure to capture the valley, which was due in part to a lack of faith. According to James Jordan’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Judges-Theological-Commentary-James-Jordan/dp/1579102492">commentary on Judges</a>:
<blockquote>Chariots could not function in the hills, so Judah did not have to fight them there. Where the iron chariots could function, however, Judah did not succeed . . . as Judges 4 and 5 will show, God is fully capable of dealing with iron chariots. Thus, the problem was not the iron chariots. The problem was faith, or rather the lack of it. (13)</blockquote>
Ultimately, the book of Judges reveals that God keeps his promises to us even when we break our promises to him. That’s why in the next chapter in Judges, after the defeat of other tribes is described, God says “you have not obeyed my command. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you; but they shall become adversaries to you”. (Judges 2:2-3).
God never abandons us, but he also lets us suffer the consequences of abandoning him, so let us pray to always remain faithful to him no matter how many “iron chariots” we face in our own lives.

Iron Chariots vs. Almighty God

“I will turn aside and see this great sight.”
You might be forgiven for attributing this line from Christmas morning to the shepherds. Or so it seems to me. Here is what they do say, in Luke 2:15 (read at the dawn Mass, just a verse following the reading at night): “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened.”
The language is not, perhaps, as similar as my imagination wants it to be. In fact, the situations are rather different. Moses, while keeping his flocks near Mount Sinai, sees in the distance a bush alive with flame that does not burn up. The shepherds, keeping their flocks near Bethlehem, are confronted with what was no doubt a terrifying and amazing sight: an angelic announcement followed by the eruption of the heavens into song. Rather than being quietly pulled away, they are instructed in vivid detail: “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12).
Differences aside, I cannot help but see that first “go and see” moment—Moses on Mt. Sinai—as a figure of the second—the shepherds summoned to the manger. In fact, the Byzantine tradition has always seen in the burning bush a type of the holy <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/mary-mother-of-whom">Theotokos</a>, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the unburnt bush who carries the fire of the divine nature without being consumed. Many icons show Moses looking at a burning bush in which she and her divine son are enclosed, hidden for later revelation. And so, in a very real sense, the shepherds are called to see in fact what Moses saw only in symbol. To Moses, at the bush, was revealed the holy name of God. Yet in the manger, the shepherds see God, face to face. To Moses was revealed the Law. To the shepherds was revealed the Word made flesh.
And why is the manger such an important “sign” of this news? Luke sees fit to mention the manger three times in his short story. It’s an odd detail, in many ways—one we have trouble detaching from several centuries of imaginative nostalgia. Modern Christians seem to like imagining the Holy Family as outcasts, relegated to some faraway place inhabited only by the “friendly beasts.” But there simply were no such places in first-century Judea. Animals often shared the same structure as people. Not that babies were ordinarily placed in mangers, or that there is nothing unusual about the fact that seemingly no one in the household was willing to make room for a woman heavy with child. But the manger is a sign not just of lowliness somehow separated from human society, but rather a kind of lowliness within the ordinary crowded hustle of human life.
Still, Luke’s emphasis that this is a sign bears repeating, because it was not, before Luke’s account, a sign of very much emphasis among most Christians. We do not, after all, know what those first generations knew about the Lord’s nativity. There were several reliable witnesses, first of all Our Lady, who possibly shared such details with the apostles in due time. But the Nativity enters not at all in, for example, the teaching of St. Paul, which occupies most of the New Testament. In the epistle readings for Christmas, we heard about how Christ has “appeared,” as the promised fulfillment of God’s promises. It does not seem significant that the Lord first appeared in a manger.
Yet Luke finds this important. Maybe we could pin this to Luke as, by tradition, the first painter and iconographer of Our Lord and his mother—the Evangelist, in other words, with a real sense of visual impact. This is no small thing to point out, as the ancient iconographic tradition of the Nativity almost always includes representation of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/whats-the-deal-with-the-christmas-ox-and-ass">an ox and an ass</a>, emphasizing not so much a “stable” in the modern picture as the manger itself and the animals it normally served.
That visual tradition, I suspect, recalls a biblical memory that Luke would also have known, a verse from the opening lines of Isaiah, where God begins to indict his people for their failure in living up to the covenant:
The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib; 
but Israel does not know, 
my people do not understand (1:3).
The word “crib” there is sometimes translated “manger.” Either way it is the same thing we see in Luke 2. Israel, unlike the ox and even the famously stubborn donkey, cannot even recognize his master’s manger. The Lord tries to feed him, but he turns away.
Back to the Nativity, we begin to see, not very long into the story, how Israel fails to see his master. First there is the apparent scandal of the Lord’s own distant relations in Bethlehem who cannot find anywhere better for him to stay. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). Much later, when Jesus begins to tell people how he is their food and drink, how his flesh and blood will be their salvation, they walk away, scandalized. How could this man give us his flesh and blood to drink? How could this man be our manger?
In the Nativity story itself, the whole thing is painted with sign after sign, layer upon layer. God the Son lies in a feeding trough—a feeding trough that God’s people refuse to see. He is born in Bethlehem, which means “house of bread.” And the shepherds, who do acknowledge him, suggest that the mediation of Moses between God and man has now transformed into a more lavish personal investment, where God’s favor is available even in the face of a child.
This child welcomes our love regardless of whether we bring him the perfect gift. We might see the manger as a reason to scold Joseph’s cousins, all these centuries later, for their failure to see the obvious. But failing to see the obvious is rather like what humanity has been doing since Adam and Eve, since Israel’s chronic failure to keep faith, like what you and I do time after time with our favorite, habitual sins, our routine shrinking away from baptismal grace. So in God’s providence, Joseph’s uncaring family become for us another sign. God incarnate certainly deserved more, but he didn’t need more. He was, after all, enthroned on the lap of the most beautiful creature under heaven, the crown of all God’s works, the future queen of heaven, the unburnt bush, the mystical rose. Just as at the Annunciation, her welcome was enough. We made no room for him, but she made for him a “meet dwelling place.” All we have to do is, like Moses, like the shepherds, turn aside to see.
Could it be any easier? There is a necessary time to confront the teaching of Jesus in his adult ministry, a necessary time to confront the doctrinal implications of his passion and resurrection, a time to weigh the consequences of our relationship with him and the Church he founded. But before we do any of that, we have to let him in. We have to make room. He is very small, but there is no avoiding this step. Sometimes we can treat Christianity as an elaborate exercise in building the perfect nursery, rearranging the furniture, finding the perfect décor, laying out linens, toys, books. But none of that has any point unless you actually take the baby home.
This Christmas, bring the Lord Jesus home. Let him in your heart. He stands at the door and knocks.

Bring the Child Home

<div>Is it within Catholic orthodoxy to believe that Mary had freedom to commit personal sin but chose to cooperate with God’s grace?</div><div>Yes, Mary most certainly had the freedom to commit sin.  Even though she did not suffer from Original Sin and its disordered desires she still had the human power of free will.  Adam and Eve were created without Original Sin yet chose to sin, Mary chose to cooperate with the grace of God.
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Did Mary Have Free Will?

Can we trust the historical accuracy of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/gospel-and-gospels">Gospels</a> if they were written decades after Jesus? Doesn&#8217;t that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/are-the-gospels-myth">make them unreliable</a>? Trent Horn answers this common challenge from atheists on Catholic Answers Live.

Are the Gospels Historically Reliable?

Why did the Church Fasting rules change so much? Jimmy Akin and host Cy Kellett tackle this question in light of the industrial revolution.
Transcript:
Cy: Why did the Church go from severe fasting to weekly fasting to weekly abstinence? And now in the U.S., some other penance can substitute for abstinence. There are currently only two days a year of actual fasting and abstinence that are required in the U.S. Is this a good or bad progression, spiritually speaking?
Jimmy: Okay, so we got two questions here, but first, I need to make a minor factual correction. Shalon says that now in the U.S., some other penance can substitute for abstinence, meaning on Fridays outside of Lent. During Lent, you still have to abstain on Fridays. Abstain from meat. That&#8217;s actually not quite accurate. If you go back—and this is something all kinds of folks get wrong—the idea that if you don&#8217;t want to abstain, you gotta substitute some other penance. That is not what the Church&#8217;s legal documents actually say. Most people never go back and look up these documents, and most of the ones who do don&#8217;t read them carefully. But I have.
If you go back and look at the implemented legislation that the U.S. bishops authorized in the 1960s, they don&#8217;t say that you need to substitute another penance for abstinence if you don&#8217;t want to abstain from meat. What they say is, we hereby terminate the requirement to abstain from meat on Fridays outside of Lent, and we recommend that you either abstain or do something else. But they don&#8217;t require that you do something else. So it&#8217;s not the case that other penances can substitute for the requirement of abstinence. In the United States, on Fridays outside of Lent, there just is no requirement to do a specific form of penance. You&#8217;re advised to do so, you&#8217;re encouraged to do so, but it&#8217;s not required.
So having said that, let&#8217;s look at the first question. Why did the Church go from more severe fasting to less, notably, less severe fasting? Well, basically, the fundamental reason is the Church adapts its practices to the conditions of the time. And so conditions have changed over the last 2000 years, and bishops have ramped up and ramped down various practical requirements of how we practice the faith. This is one of them.
Now, if you&#8217;re looking for a specific circumstance that has changed in society that would lead the bishops to decrease the amount of fasting that people need to do, I don&#8217;t have an official source on this, but what I would say is it was industrialization. What you find is, if you look in the Middle Ages, when they had the more severe fasting requirements, it was during a period where people had a fairly relaxed approach to work by modern standards. In fact, in some places, almost half the year would be holy days. And so they didn&#8217;t have the kind of intense work schedules that we do now.
But then, beginning in the 1700s, this industrialization started, and we got factories. People started moving off the farm where they couldn&#8217;t just take a day off, and they had to show up for work every day in the factory and work hard in those factories— you know, the dark satanic mills that they talk about in England. You had to keep your strength up while you were working. You&#8217;re using heavy factory equipment. You know, you&#8217;re running band saws and metal presses and all kinds of things like that. You got to be careful. You got to keep your strength up. You got to keep your alertness up. And that makes it harder for a lot of folks to fast, especially people who are not used to fasting.
You know, most people here in the West historically would eat three times a day. Now, because of some recent very bad health advice that some people have gotten, they encourage a grazing strategy where you&#8217;re eating like six or seven little meals a day. That&#8217;s terrible advice. But historically, people would eat three times a day. You&#8217;d break your fast in the morning, which is where we get the word breakfast. You&#8217;d have a meal around noon, and you&#8217;d have another meal in the evening.
And if you&#8217;re used to eating three times a day, then your body will adapt to eating three times a day. If you suddenly stop, then your body says, wait a minute, something&#8217;s going on here. Food&#8217;s not available. We better slow down our metabolism and ramp up the hunger at the same time to encourage him to go find food. So that would cause problems for people in factories to keep up their alertness and strength.
And so you started finding more and more exceptions written into the Church&#8217;s moral and pastoral theology handbooks and canon law books and things like that, where it would say, well, you need to fast on Friday. But if you work in a job that would be dangerous if you did that, or you need to keep your strength up, then you can have some food. More and more exceptions got written in, and eventually they just said, let&#8217;s just diminish the requirement. Because people today work job schedules where they can&#8217;t just say, oh, today&#8217;s a fasting day, so we&#8217;re really going to kind of kick back and not spend a lot of energy.
So I think that&#8217;s the primary factor—industrialization—for why the requirements got less. Now, that actually wouldn&#8217;t bug me because I fast every day except Sundays and holy days of obligation. I have one meal a day, so it doesn&#8217;t bug me to be fasting during the day. But if you&#8217;re used to eating three times a day, it will bug you. So I think that&#8217;s the basic reason.
Shalon then asks, is this a good or a bad progression, spiritually speaking? I think that that&#8217;s something people can have different opinions on. There&#8217;s no magic level of fasting that all Christians are obliged to observe. Fasting is meant to—and like abstinence—is meant to help us grow closer to God. And so if more fasting would help us grow closer to God, then that would be a good thing to do. If less fasting would help more people grow closer to God, then that would be a good thing to do.
You know, you can imagine how in the age of industrialization, with all these folks working in factories, if they suddenly said, oh, we got to do a bunch more fasting now, well, that&#8217;s going to cause a bunch of people a bunch of problems and could alienate them from the Church and thus from God. So I think that what you think of the current level of fasting, which I acknowledge is pretty darn minimal, is something that people can have different opinions on.
Cy: Shalon, thank you very much. That brings us exactly to the break, so we&#8217;ll take a very quick break. Back with more Ask Me Anything with Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers Live.

Why Did the Church Kill Off Weekly Fasting?

Gary Zimak shares his own struggles with hypochondria and explains how developing and deepening his relationship with Jesus helped him overcome his inordinate fear of death.
Transcript:
Host: Michelle in York, Nebraska, listening on Spirit Catholic Radio 102.7 FM. Michelle, your question for Gary Zimak.
Caller: Hi, thanks for taking my call, and I just want to say Hi, Gary. I had the pleasure and honor of introducing you when you came to speak at McCool Junction at our church, so anyways&#8230;
Gary: Oh, yes! Great to talk to you again! Good to talk to you!
Caller: Anyway, I have a special person in my life who is sort of a hypochondriac. They&#8217;re very concerned about a certain pain that they&#8217;re having, and they&#8217;ve gone to several doctors&#8230;everyone says nothing&#8217;s wrong, lots and lots of tests, it&#8217;s really taking a toll on their family. And I was just wondering, whatever your resources, maybe I could provide to him that would help, or what would you recommend?
Gary: Well first of all, Michelle, I want to say, the last time I was in McCool Junction it was 10 degrees below zero. Has it warmed up a little since then?
Caller: It is warm, it&#8217;s 63 degrees.
Gary: Alright, that&#8217;s much better. Hey, I want to say, first, it&#8217;s great to hear from you again. But, you know, in all my books I make it clear I&#8217;ve always suffered with being a hypochondriac. That&#8217;s my weakness. I had every disease imaginable, at least in my mind, and really I didn&#8217;t have any of them, as it turned out. The way I have been able to combat this is&#8230;again, I sound like I&#8217;m saying the same thing over and over but it really is true: the more I have gotten to know Jesus, the more I have been able to read in Scripture, to read his promises, to read about how much he loves me, about how much my Heavenly Father cares about me, the less I am concerned with death.
I guess that was my big fear, I was afraid to die, and the fear led to being a hypochondriac. I was afraid of all these different diseases. The personal relationship with Christ, getting to know him better, has taken away that fear of dying; and accepting whatever his will is for my life, that&#8217;s gotten better; so that&#8217;s what I would say, I mean, it really boils down to getting to know Jesus. And that has worked tremendously for me. I still have a tendency, especially with my family; if they get an illness, I start to think fatally initially, then I have to catch myself and and go back to the relationship with Jesus. But that works for me

What Can I Do to Help a Hypochondriac?

<div>Is the Will of God dependent on what is good, or is good dependent on what is the Will of God?</div><div>In short, God is good and thus cannot do moral evil. Some might respond, “Then God cannot do everything and therefore is not all-powerful (omnipotent).” In fact, doing evil would be an impoverishment of God, showing there is something outside God that can impair or limit him. Which would thereby show that God is not omnipotent and therefore not God.
St. Paul affirms God’s goodness:
<blockquote>Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation which in Christ Jesus goes with eternal glory. The saying is sure:
If we have died with him, we shall also live with him;
if we endure, we shall also reign with him; 
if we deny him, he also will deny us; 
if we are faithless, he remains faithful—</blockquote>
for he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:10-13).
If we are unfaithful, God will seek us out like the Good Shepherd after a lost sheep (Matt. 18:12-13). Yet, he will not coerce our love, for that would not be truly loving and a violation of the free will he gave us. Still, as St. Paul says elsewhere, God demonstrates his merciful love in coming to die for our sins:
<blockquote>While we were yet helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:6-8; see John 3:16-17).</blockquote>
</div>

God Is Truly Good, Not Arbitrary

Jimmy Akin, Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, delves into how the Catholic Church determines if an oral tradition originates from God or humans.

How Do We Know Traditions Are from God?

I recently had the pleasure of attending a good friend’s wedding. It was a wonderful time. The bride was beautiful; the groom was giddy. The hum of strings wafted through the tiny, richly decorated chapel, and the crowd of friends and family huddled tightly, beaming with joy.
It was one of those weddings that make you happy—not just for the couple, but for the institution of marriage in general.
The mood made it all the more striking, then, when the priest’s voice boomed out over the small congregation: “Marriage is the greatest symbol the Bible uses to describe God and his people. Not king and subjects. Not shepherd and sheep. Marriage.”
The assertion challenged me. My temperament is more inclined to view God as a king than a spouse. So I did what I don’t do nearly enough. I opened up my Bible.
Lo and behold, the priest was right. Scripture uses many symbols for God’s relationship with us, but none seems more frequent or more vivid than marriage. The Bible is full of marriage imagery, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation. The love between God and his people is like a marriage (Isa. 54:5). The relationship between the soul and God is like the relationship between spouses (Song of Songs 1:1-4). Jesus repeatedly describes himself as “the bridegroom” (Matt. 9:15). The list goes on.
Young couples understand something about this metaphor when they fall in love. In an instant, the world gets turned upside-down. Previous cares evaporate. The vision blurs, and the stomach drops. Everything suddenly revolves around their sweetheart, and, if they’re fortunate enough to be loved in return, they soon experience a depth of tenderness and care for another beyond anything they’ve known in this world.
It&#8217;s a powerful image of the enormousness of God’s love for us and his desire of our love for him. But for a young lover, it’s more than just an image of God with the world. His love becomes an image of God himself. God is love, and the beauty of romantic love gives us a hint of the Divine’s identity.
The analogy runs both ways. By comparing himself to marriage, God teaches us that he is like married love—but also that married love ought to be like him. Many elements of marriage flow out of this understanding. Marriage is total; the immensity of the love between partners demands this, but so does the comparison to the love of God. God gives his whole self when he loves, since he is love, and lovers want to give their whole selves to their beloved. Similarly, marriage is free; God gives his gifts without condition or coercion, making the rain fall on the bad and the good alike. Marriage is also forever; God is faithful to his promises for all eternity—and true lovers never say, “I love you for today only.”
This is why marriage gets to the core of God’s identity. It stands almost unique among human relationships, with a love as near the Divine as we can conceive. Of course, all human loves speak something of the love of God. The love of friendship is pure, and God loves us purely. The love of country is sacrificial, and God loves us sacrificially. But the love of country is impersonal. And the love of friendship is rarely total. Married love includes intimate friendship, but brought to new depths of commitment. And that commitment gives a sacrificial nobility even greater than sacrificing for country.
Here the analogy might break down for the Christian. Marriage and married love are between two people. But we know that the full identity of God is Trinity. Like marriage, God is a community of love between persons. But unlike marriage, it seems, God is a community of love among three Persons.
There is another important element of marriage that has so far been unmentioned: children. Marriage doesn’t just cement two individuals in their love for each other. It also establishes a family.
In the Trinity, the Father first loves the Son, who in turn loves the Father. But the love between them is so strong that it cannot be contained to two Persons only. That love is itself a third Person: the Holy Spirit, eternally proceeding from Father and Son.
A family is an image of this trinitarian love. Husband and wife love each other, but that love does not stay merely between them. In time, it produces another person—a child—who subsequently is also loved and loves in turn.
My wife and I have been blessed to experience this. We had fallen deeply in love, and lived for several happy months as husband and wife. We couldn’t have imagined a third person, who it seemed could only come between us. But something about our relationship, something even greater than that first giddy love, came to be with the birth of our son. There is the special love I have for him. But that love isn’t just a love for another person. It’s a love that’s tied into my love for my wife. He looks like his father. He laughs like his mother. In many ways, he’s a physical manifestation of the relationship between us. When I love him, I love his mother. And when she loves him, she loves me.
This is marriage as the image of God, which is the image of the Trinity. The love between two spouses shows us the depths of love between each individual Person: the Father and the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit and the Son. And the love of the whole family shows how this intense love is unable to remain merely between two Persons, but branches out into a trinitarian community.
Of course, marriage, and the family it begets, is an image of God. For finite creatures, the image works in ways that the literal, infinite Trinity does not. There can be multiple children, each one a unique manifestation of the spouses’ love. For those struggling with infertility, there can be no children, but the love of the spouses is still real, still made concrete in the family life between husband and wife, just in a less visible way. In all cases, it is the possibility of children that is more important than the number. The kind of love is the same—the kind of love that is open to the birth of a new person. In the infinite Godhead, this love eternally gives three infinite persons. In finite marriages, that love may or may not produce any number of finite persons.
Yet in both cases, love is an image of the other. That priest was right that marriage is a special symbol for God’s love. It’s an image of the Trinity, revealing to us something important about who God is and how he loves us. That connection should fill us with joy at weddings, like my friend’s recent ceremony—and at godly marriages everywhere.

What Your Marriage Really Represents

Jimmy Akin answers a caller who has a problem with Catholics worshipping the Eucharist.

Worship of the Eucharist

In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Joe Heschmeyer to discuss why Catholics have a different Bible than other Christian denominations. Joe continues with details about the historical context of the Old Testament and the significance of the Septuagint in Catholic tradition.
Transcript:
Cy: Robert, we&#8217;re very glad to have you. Why aren&#8217;t you Catholic?
Caller: I was born and raised a Southern Baptist and I&#8217;ve got my ESV, English Standard Version Bible. I&#8217;ve heard you guys reference other books like the Book of Enoch. Do the Catholics have a different Bible with different books than the other Christian denominations?
Cy: Great, Robert, thank you.
Joe: Yeah, that&#8217;s a fantastic question. Yes, but Enoch is actually not one of them. So let me explain, just as best I can, kind of the short version of this. And there&#8217;s a lot of history to this. If you go back to the time of Christ, there was some confusion among the Jews about which books were and were not inspired. So for instance, the Sadducees only accepted the first five books of the Bible, the Torah. And so you&#8217;ll see anytime Jesus talks with them, he only quotes the Torah to them. But the fact that they didn&#8217;t have the rest of the Old Testament actually really hurt because it meant that they didn&#8217;t accept the resurrection of the dead. It meant they didn&#8217;t believe in angels. And so, you know, you have to prove all of those things from the first five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
The Pharisees tended to have a Bible that was closer to like the Protestant Old Testament, but there are exceptions with that. And then the Jews living, what are called the Hellenistic Jews, meaning the Greek-speaking Jews living in places like Greece and Alexandria, Egypt, and across the Roman Empire, they had usually the Greek translation called the Septuagint. The Septuagint, there&#8217;s kind of a family of translations, but it usually is the Catholic Old Testament. Now, I&#8217;m putting the word &#8220;usually&#8221; in there for a reason. Those are kind of oversimplifications on both ends.
But this difference in the Old Testament isn&#8217;t something that originally is a Catholic-Protestant issue. It&#8217;s an issue within Judaism. So how do we know which version is the right one? Well, there&#8217;s a few ways. Number one, the Septuagint is the one that&#8217;s usually quoted in the New Testament. About 80-85% of the biblical quotations of the Old Testament are to this Greek version that includes these other books. And I&#8217;ll get to what those other books are in a second.
Number two, we see things like, for instance, in the Book of Acts where the noble Bereans, these Christians in Berea, Greece, are praised for searching the Scriptures. Well, the scriptures they&#8217;re searching are going to be including these books that modern Protestants don&#8217;t accept.
Number three, we see references to the events of these books. For instance, in places like Hebrews 11, when it talks about the woman whose sons are killed, that&#8217;s a reference to an event that happens in the books of Maccabees, specifically in 2 Maccabees. It&#8217;s also where we get feasts like the Feast of Hanukkah; that&#8217;s also from 1 and 2 Maccabees. We see Jesus celebrating that feast called the Feast of Dedication in John 10.
So we see lots of these places where these things that aren&#8217;t in Protestant Bibles are in Catholic Bibles, and they are seemingly referenced in the New Testament. Now, Protestants will sometimes say that there is a 400 or 450-year period of divine silence between the prophet Malachi, the last chronological book of the Protestant Old Testament, and the New Testament. But that notion of 400 years of silence or 450 years of silence is totally unbiblical. Jesus instead says that the prophets testify and tell John; there&#8217;s no cessation of prophecy. In Luke 2, we see the prophetess Anna in the Temple. We see prophecy is still very much alive, even in the first century.
So that&#8217;d be the first thing: the normal arguments being made for the shorter 66-book Protestant Bible are not, I think, well supported biblically. Additionally, we see that the early Christians, while there was initially confusion about which books belonged in the Bible, with basically two exceptions—St. Jerome and Rufinus, who most people don&#8217;t even know who that is—everyone agreed on some or all of these what are sometimes called apocryphal or, a better term, is deuterocanonical books.
Now, Protestants will use the term &#8220;Apocrypha&#8221; for a wide collection of books that they reject. The more technically accurate term is &#8220;Deuterocanon.&#8221; The reason I mention that is because Enoch is apocrypha, but it&#8217;s not deuterocanon. Deuterocanon has a specific meaning of seven books that are accepted by Catholics and not accepted by Protestants. Those books are the Book of Tobit, Judith, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, Sirach, Baruch, and then Wisdom or Wisdom of Solomon.
In addition to that, there are longer forms of the Book of Esther and the Book of Daniel, where the Greek version of those books is longer than the Hebrew version. So we accept the canonicity of all of those. You&#8217;ll find those if you go back and read the writings of the early Christians; you&#8217;ll find them regularly cited as scripture.
So the question we should be asking is, well, how do we know which books are in Scripture at all? There&#8217;s an important role that the Church plays, not in making it become. In other words, the Church&#8217;s role is not to take an uninspired text and then, like through a magical decree, make it an inspired text. It&#8217;s rather that we trust that the Holy Spirit, working through the Church, recognizes which books are of inspired status and which ones aren&#8217;t.
If we can&#8217;t trust the early Church to get that right, that raises some grave threats for, like, how do we know that we got the New Testament right? On what basis do Protestants know which books belong in their Bible? You know, those kinds of questions are the ones that I think we ought to be asking.
Cy: Robert, thank you for the question. How does that address what you wanted to know?
Caller: Yes, in several ways. Now, I know that there are very specific books. Then if you know the whole calling into question the whole New Testament because early Christianity is Catholicism, I just don&#8217;t get why Protestants don&#8217;t accept those books. Like, I had never heard of them growing up, and I grew up in a private Christian school. I never even heard of it. And like, the Book of Enoch I heard of because of some crazy Internet video.
Cy: Oh, that might have been ours. We did a crazy Internet video on the Book of Enoch. But actually, no, it was about how Catholics don&#8217;t accept it and why Catholics don&#8217;t accept it. But, Joe, how did it come about that someone raised as a Baptist in Georgia might have entire books of the Bible that are not in their Bible?
Joe: Yeah, I mean, well, it&#8217;s a kind of a complicated history. So it&#8217;s the Third Council of Carthage in 397 that it&#8217;s a local council, not an ecumenical council, but one that St. Augustine&#8217;s at that really clarifies in the West what the canon of Scripture is. The canon of Scripture is a fancy way of saying which books belong in the Bible. There is no divinely inspired table of contents.
So when you get to the Reformation, when people call into question saying, well, the Church has gotten a lot of things wrong, maybe the Church got which books are in the Bible wrong, it creates some real problems. Martin Luther begins this process. He calls into question the status of four New Testament books as well as these seven Old Testament books. John Calvin calls into question six of the seven Old Testament books.
So what&#8217;s striking is that the resulting Protestant Bible doesn&#8217;t agree with the early Church, doesn&#8217;t agree with the Catholic Church throughout the ages, doesn&#8217;t agree with what Martin Luther argued for, doesn&#8217;t agree with what John Calvin argued for, and is actually the result of this kind of several centuries-long process of first lowering the status of these seven books and then eventually removing them from Bibles entirely.
It was, I believe, the British Foreign Mission and Bible Society that, just by a private decision, this missionary group decided, you know what, we&#8217;re not going to include these books in our Bibles anymore. And that changed the course of like English-speaking Protestantism. It&#8217;s a group no one&#8217;s ever heard of. It had no authority, no status to decide which books belonged in the Bible and which ones didn&#8217;t. It would be like the Gideons, you know, the ones who leave the Bibles in the hotel rooms, deciding to include some new book. They don&#8217;t have the authority to do that.
So that&#8217;s kind of the crux of the issue right there. Now we could talk for an hour about kind of related issues with that, but that&#8217;s kind of the simplified version.
Cy: We do have a book by the great Gary Machuda that&#8217;s called *Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger*, and it&#8217;s comprehensive; it explains the whole history. If you&#8217;d like it, we&#8217;ll give it to you free. You just give your address to Thomas, and Thomas will send it to you. But if you don&#8217;t want to give us your address, that&#8217;s fine. But we&#8217;re happy to send you a free copy of it.

I’m Not Catholic Because My Bible is Different…

Was Saul&#8217;s contacting the dead prophet Samuel by means of necromancy the same kind of action as our praying to the saints? Jim Blackburn tackles this question and explains why it’s OK for us to ask saints for their intercession.
Transcript:
Host: Damien in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, watching us on YouTube Live, what&#8217;s your question for Jim Blackburn?
Caller: Hi, thanks for taking my call today. We&#8217;ve got, in first Samuel, when Saul visits a witch and called up the prophet Samuel; my question is, how is that different from our prayers to Saints, and the communion of saints in general? Thank you.
Jim: Okay yeah, this is a question that comes up from time to time because it appears that that Saul is, in a sense, you know, reaching out to what he might believe to be a Saint for assistance.
But number one, what Saul is doing is different in that he&#8217;s not just offering his prayers up to a Saint, asking that a Saint take, you know, pray for me, pray with me for my intentions and take my intentions to Christ, take my intentions to God in Heaven. That&#8217;s what we do when we&#8217;re praying to the Saints. We&#8217;re not asking for their intervention in this life, we&#8217;re not asking for them to respond to us, for example, or interact with us in any way. We know that they&#8217;re in Heaven, and they&#8217;re closer to God than we are, and they might have his ear a little better than we do sometimes, and they can, in that regard, take our prayers to God, pray along with us, pray for us, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing when we pray to the Saints.
What Saul was doing did seem to be, you know, wanting more of an interaction with Samuel than that, and Samuel&#8217;s own assistance, not God&#8217;s assistance, with Samuels assistance. So this is&#8211;there&#8217;s distinct differences there. Also, the story of Saul doing this is not presented in such a way that we are to understand that that was even approved, that that was a good thing Saul was doing. The fact that Saul did this is is told to us in Scripture, but it&#8217;s not told to us in such a way that it that encouraged to do it or that we are somehow supposed to take this as necessarily as a good thing.
Okay, does that help, Damien?
Caller: Yes, thanks for clearing that up for me.

How are Our Prayers to Saints Different from Necromancy?

<div>What is the Black Madonna?</div><div>A &#8220;black Madonna&#8221; is a state or image of Mary that depicts her with black or dark skin. The most famous one is Our Lady of Czestochowa, a Polish image that has been proclaimed the &#8220;Queen of Poland.&#8221; Various pious legends abound as to its origins. One claims it was originally painted by St. Luke. Another claims that it was discovered by Emperor Constantine&#8217;s mother in the fourth century, and the Emperor built a shrine to venerate it. Various miracles are also attributed to it, and it is credited with saving various Christian armies and communities from destruction.
</div>

The Black Madonna

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This is incompatible with loving God.

Today is <a href="https://www.pennlive.com/life/2022/08/heres-how-you-can-celebrate-national-beach-day.html">National Beach Day</a>, at which time corporate America will likely fill most of our social media feeds with pictures of scantily clad beachgoers. What we wear on beaches has gradually become more revealing as the decades have gone by, with plenty of female attire now being less concealing than the underwear worn below their regular clothing.
It&#8217;s tragic, because the people who dress in such a way to attract the attention of the opposite sex do so while <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/homecoming-dresses-and-the-dreaded-m-word">effacing their own dignity</a>. To dress modestly is, in the words of Josef Pieper, a habit of &#8220;selfless self-preservation,&#8221; which is a demonstration of self-respect that is rightly grounded on the appreciation of one&#8217;s body as the temple of the Holy Spirit.
The modern age tends to regard modesty as something of an antiquated notion, as if it were an ancient custom specifically commanding the dress codes of women for the benefit of men. That&#8217;s horribly reversed. Modest attire is for the benefit of the person who wears it. It denotes a person&#8217;s value, asserts her dignity as something worthy of protection, and prevents her reduction into a display piece for the benefit of strangers.
One area in which modesty is too often forgotten in the modern age is with regard to church. How we dress when attending Mass ought to be considered because our attire affects us and those around us.
Whereas it was once accepted that we should wear formal clothing to Mass, this understanding has been gradually eroded, spurred by those who will (loudly) argue some variation of &#8220;Church isn&#8217;t a fashion contest.&#8221; They are correct: it&#8217;s the house of God, and thus infinitely more important than a fashion contest. The acknowledgment that it is his house should entail respect. Similar to how we genuflect in a physical recognition of his presence in the tabernacle, so too should we dress in accordance with that same reality.
Most people, when made aware that they are visiting someone of importance, attempt to dress their best. It&#8217;s a token of respect and a recognition of the position the important person holds. And so if we consider ourselves visiting God in a holy place of worship, that will help to provide context as to why dressing respectfully ought to be done.
Some will call the suggestion of dressing formally an assault on the poor, but that is absurd. Nobody is suggesting that parishioners should be comparing name brands of outfits after Mass or contrasting price tags. Rather, simply dress with respect and humility. Most Americans can manage that. The poorest in our society dress as they can. The issue is those among us who do not dress as we can, but impart minimal effort compared to every other respectful occasion.
Shorts and a t-shirt are often not appropriate even for an afternoon golf session. All the more, then,  in the context of worshiping God, on his day of worship, in his house of worship.
How we act (including what we choose to wear) is a reflection of what we believe. At a time when belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is at a record low, we should reflect on whether our actions denote our beliefs.
Here&#8217;s a thought exercise: would a child look at me in church and understand that the Mass is an important event? Would the child believe that this event matters deeply to me? Does the way I behave before, during, and after Mass reveal that something special is happening at the altar?
Remember that since the formal attire we choose is to denote our respect for God, it&#8217;s not appropriate to wear clothing to attract attention to ourselves. This is one area of differentiation from some other formal occasions. So it&#8217;s generally accepted that a woman&#8217;s shoulders should be covered, that she shouldn&#8217;t wear a low-cut top or dress, and that her skirt length should be below the knee.  Some women choose to wear veils, as <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/why-do-women-wear-veils-to-mass">the sacred is veiled</a>, because they themselves are sacred as vessels of life. Their share in the divine power of life-giving is veiled, like a sacred vessel, and is revealed under controlled circumstances, rather than merely exposed. Veiling was once the norm but has become a private choice.
If we believe what we say we do, then we should care about the symbolism of our choices. Just as churches were historically designed to remind people of God&#8217;s presence therein via grandeur, art, and beauty, individuals should do the same by their dress and behavior.

Modesty in Church

Today marks the three hundred and twentieth birthday of the American Protestant theologian and revivalist preacher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), who is credited with unleashing the Great Awakening Protestant revival in the American colonies during the 1730s. Edwards preached a cycle of sermons to his congregation in Massachusetts, which he later published in the 1737 book A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God.
Edwards’s preaching and book sparked a renewed interest in spirituality among colonial Protestant congregations in the 1740s. The movement spawned a market for revivalist literature and spread rapidly throughout parts of New England. Although there were many supporters of the movement, its focus on individual expressions of spirituality, as well as some of its teachings, clashed with the practices and doctrines of various Protestant groups. The extent of the Great Awakening’s impact is debated, but there is no doubt that the movement marked a significant historical event in the spiritual life of the American colonies.
Several centuries earlier, the Catholic Church underwent its own “awakening,” although the revival of Catholic life and spirituality in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is more aptly described as a renewal and authentic reform. The Catholic Reformation, undertaken mostly as a response to the Protestant Revolt unleashed by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others, was initiated by Pope Paul III (r. 1534-1549). Before his papal election, Alessandro Farnese had been a cardinal for forty years and was unceremoniously known as “Cardinal Petticoat” because he was the brother of Giulia Farnese, the mistress of Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503), who created Alessandro a cardinal. Paul had been the oldest cardinal (sixty-seven years) in the college, and so expectations of his pontificate were not high, but he surprised his contemporaries with the longest pontificate, fifteen years, in a century.
Paul III focused his energies on providing the foundation for the most comprehensive and successful renewal movement in Church history, the key component of which was the calling of an ecumenical council that eventually opened in 1545 in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-history-of-the-council-of-trent">the city of Trent</a>. The first meeting produced doctrinal decrees concerning the role of Scripture and Tradition, the canon of Scripture, original sin and justification, and the sacraments of baptism and confirmation. Reform decrees banning the practices of absenteeism and pluralism were also approved. However, the outbreak of plague dictated a suspension, which lasted four years.
Sadly, Paul III did not live to see the completion of the Council of Trent because he died during the suspension. It would take another sixteen years for the council to complete its work to undertake the necessary renewal and reform of the Church.
The Council of Trent was a key component of the Catholic Reformation, but the work of implementing the conciliar decrees and inculcating them into everyday Catholic life was undertaken by multiple saints and the establishment of a new religious order, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). The Jesuits focused their efforts for the Catholic Reformation on the sacraments, education, and missionary activity. Additionally, the Jesuits placed an emphasis on catechesis as well as higher levels of learning, and their educational work was expressed in the establishment and staffing of universities throughout Christendom.
The reform and renewal of Catholic life during the Catholic Reformation produced a Catholic “awakening” in individual piety, new religious orders, and renewed artistic expression. It also sparked one of the greatest evangelization efforts in Catholic history.
While the Protestant Great Awakening was ongoing in colonial America, the Church was moving toward the end of the Catholic Reformation, which had produced a period of growth and vitality not seen for centuries. After the death of Pope Clement XII and a tedious and long six-month conclave, the mid-eighteenth century witnessed the pontificate of compromise candidate Pope Benedict XIV (r. 1740-1758), an erudite scholar with interests in science and literature. As pope, Benedict made conciliation and concession the hallmarks of his pontifical policy concerning both internal and external issues. A peaceful and pious man, he eschewed conflict and division, and his actions increased esteem for the moral authority of the papacy among Protestant and Catholic secular rulers. As an example, Benedict deftly navigated the vexing question of mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants, which had impacted the Church for some time with different theological opinion and pastoral practice. In the 1748 bull Magnae nobis admirationis, Benedict XIV decreed the permissibility of mixed marriages under certain conditions, pre-eminent among them the raising and education of children from these unions as Catholics. Other pontifical actions included ecumenical dialogue with the Eastern churches, the renewal of Pope Clement XII (r. 1730-1740)’s prohibition of Catholic membership in Freemasonry, a revision to the Roman Martyrology, and the establishment of academies in Rome for the clerical studies in Roman and Christian antiquities and Church history. Benedict went to his eternal rest on May 3, 1758.
Pope Benedict XIV’s successors did not enjoy the time of peace present in his pontificate. The tranquility experienced by the Church at the time of the Protestant “Great Awakening” in colonial America and initiated by the earlier Catholic Reformation was shattered by the end of the eighteenth century. The vitality of Catholic institutions and missionary activity was sorely tested in the “Enlightened” age of absolutist monarchs, revolutionary elements, and the post-Christian world. By the end of the century, the Church faced attacks from secular rulers bent on controlling all aspects of national life, and from “enlightened” skeptics, who sought to diminish or eradicate the Church’s role in the public arena. The Society of Jesus, at the forefront of the Catholic Reformation and responsible for great missionary activity and a revitalization of lay Catholic piety, was attacked and expelled from most European nations and, eventually, suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773. Soon after that infamous event, the Church suffered the bloodlust of French revolutionaries, who dismantled Catholic life within the “Eldest Daughter of the Church.”
Although the attacks against the Church in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from external and internal enemies were substantial, the “awakening” of Catholic living from the Catholic Reformation provided the solid foundation for the Church to weather the storms of the modern age.

The Catholic ‘Great Awakening’

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Infant Baptism isn't JUST CATHOLIC!

Marriage theology makes the papacy unavoidable.

<div>I am an Orthodox Christian. If the ancient church truly believed that the bishop of Rome was the leader that could clarify the dogmas, why did the emperors call for the ecumenical councils? Wouldn’t it be much more easy and orthodox to just ask the bishop of Rome? </div><div>First of all, I am heartened to hear that you recognize how close Catholics and Orthodox are. Although there remain tragic divisions, we shouldn’t overlook the profound agreement between the two. In terms of ecumenical councils, I think that this was largely pragmatic. For instance, the emperor Constantine paid for the travel (and board!) of the 318 participating bishops at the Council of Nicaea, even permitting them to bring guests (for instance, influential monks). The cost and logistics involved would have been difficult or impossible for Pope Sylvester to manage back then. 
But I think that your deeper question is whether the pope makes ecumenical councils irrelevant. As Catholics, we believe in both the infallibility of the pope and in the infallibility of ecumenical councils. Think about it this way: on the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/judaizers">Judaizer</a> question (the question of whether Gentile Christians need to follow the Mosaic Law to be saved), we get the answer first from St. Peter (Acts 10–11), and then from the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15). Did Peter have the ability to settle the question? Yes, in the sense that God had shown him the correct answer and preserved him from error. But it was clear that there were some Christians who thought that the apostle was wrong, and the Council of Jerusalem provided additional support. Peter, the first pope, was an apostle. As such, he had the ability to not only speak infallibly, but (unlike modern popes) to enjoy divine inspiration in particular contexts, such as when he preached on Pentecost (Acts 2), or when he wrote 1 Peter and 2 Peter. Nevertheless, the Judaizer controversy wasn’t settled by his acting alone. 
Far from making ecumenical councils irrelevant, I would argue that it’s only through the pope that we know which are the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-authority-of-ecumenical-councils">true ecumenical councils</a>. Between the legalization of Christianity and the end of 787, there were more than seven attempts to hold an ecumenical council. Famously, in 449, Emperor Theodosius II convened the so-called “Second Council of Ephesus,” under the authority of Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria. But the pope condemns this as a “robber council,” and today, neither Catholics nor Orthodox accept its legitimacy. So why do we only have “seven ecumenical councils” during this period? Because these are the seven accepted by the pope. 
Without the pope, there’s no clear principle by which to determine which councils are real, and which are robbers. Even the late Orthodox theologian and Bishop Kallistos Ware admitted, <a href="http://orthodoxeurope.org/print/11/1/6.aspx">“All Orthodox know which are the seven councils that their Church accepts as ecumenical, but precisely what it is that makes a council ecumenical is not so clear.”</a> (And in fact, some Orthodox claim there are really eight or nine ecumenical councils, which demonstrates the lack of clarity on the matter). 
The Bible doesn’t render the Church irrelevant, as some Protestants believe—and it’s actually from the Church that we know which are the proper books of the Bible. Likewise, the pope doesn’t render ecumenical councils irrelevant—it’s actually from the pope that we know which are the proper councils. 
</div>

Papal Infallibility Does Not Make Ecumenical Councils Irrelevant

Karlo Broussard, Catholic Answers apologist, addresses the misconception that consecrating oneself to Mary is a form of idolatry. He clarifies that consecration is an act of entrusting oneself to Mary&#8217;s care as our spiritual mother, not worshiping her as God.
Transcript:
I guess I need a new definition for worship. And the reason why is I was talking to the Protestants, and I was saying, you know, what you guys do is not worship, you just listen to someone giving a sermon. And so they go, well, Mr. Roman Catholic,do you consider when you give yourself your entire life and your soul to Jesus that that&#8217;s worship, and you&#8217;re sacrificing your earthly desires to follow Jesus? And I go, yeah, exactly, sacrifice. That&#8217;s what worship is. And they go, oh, well, Roman Catholic, you are worshiping Mary. Now you may say you&#8217;re worshiping Jesus through Mary, but you&#8217;re worshiping Mary. I go, what? And they go, well, look at your prayer. And they go on the EWTN website, when you guys consecrate yourself to Mary, this is what it says, we consecrate to thee our very being our whole life, all that we have, all that we love, all that we are to thee, we give our bodies, our hearts and our souls. To thee we give our homes, our families, our country. So Mr. Roman Catholic, you are indeed worshiping Mary.
Yeah, yeah, it&#8217;s a great question. I would first of all recommend an article that I wrote, and it&#8217;s entitled &#8220;Consecration to Mary, It&#8217;s Not Idolatry.&#8221; So that would be a resource that you can look to as a quick read. And basically what I point out in that article, Tony, is that consecration generally is just used to express the idea that something is given over to God in the service of God, right? And so this is why some would think that, well, when we consecrate ourselves to Mary, we&#8217;re kind of giving ourselves over to Mary as if she were God, but that&#8217;s not what&#8217;s going on.
Pope St. John Paul II expressed this idea with the term entrustment. Like just as Jesus entrusted John into the care of Mary, the foot of the cross, when he said, &#8220;Behold your mother.&#8221; So too, we&#8217;re entrusting ourselves into Mary&#8217;s care and look to her as our mother. And after all, she is the queen of Jesus&#8217;s new and transfigured Davidic kingdom, which is the church. And that makes her our spiritual mother for us who are citizens within the kingdom. And that maps on with Revelation 12, 17, where the woman Mary described in the heavenly vision as having offspring and those offspring being those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus, that is Christians. So whenever we consecrate ourselves to Mary, we are entrusting ourselves to Mary, that is true. But here&#8217;s the key, Tony, we recognize that when we do that, we are not entrusting ourselves to her as the source of all goodness and of our being, which such an entrustment belongs to God alone. Rather, it&#8217;s an entrustment of ourselves as spiritual children to our spiritual mother and looking to our mother for help, for guidance and saying, &#8220;Mary, our mother, I&#8217;m entrusting my whole life into your care, recognizing that in this order of providence, Jesus, the source of all of my blessings wills to give me those blessings through your motherly care.&#8221;
And so by way of analogy, Tony, it would be like a son or a daughter making an act of entrustment to their earthly mother and father, earthly parents and saying, &#8220;I&#8217;m relying on you to help me within my life as a son or a daughter of you who are my parents.&#8221; And that&#8217;s the lens through which we need to look in order to see how we&#8217;re &#8220;entrusting&#8221; or &#8220;consecrating ourselves&#8221; to Mary. The key is within the intention of the wheel and the mind to recognize the type or the kind of entrustment. Is it an entrustment to her as the source of all being and goodness? The answer is no. If it were, that would be idolatry. But our entrustment to Mary is not an entrustment of our lives to her as if she is the source of all blessing and goodness, rather is an entrustment to her as our spiritual mother through whom God wills to give us the blessings and the goodness that he wants to give us in our lives. And so that would be sort of an approach to how we begin to see our consecration to Mary as not involving idolatry or not involving worship, and thereby it being idolatry, but rather it being a legitimate form of honor that can be given to her as our queen mother, as our spiritual mother within the kingdom of Jesus. I&#8217;m gonna come back to you, Tony, and see if you think that&#8217;d be helpful to you. Oh yeah, so well, I just imagine the Protestant then is going to say, &#8220;Well, then it&#8217;s not really true what you&#8217;ve told me that you&#8217;re just praying to her for intercession, you&#8217;re actually leaning on her for her to act in your life and to give you something from heaven. So you&#8217;re not really just praying for intercession.&#8221; I see that that might be a big deal for some of my Protestant friends.
Yeah, well, that would be no different than a son or a daughter relying on the help and the assistance of their mother or father here on earth. A reliance that&#8217;s justified because God has given children, their mothers and their fathers here on earth to help them out, although God could do that stuff by himself. He doesn&#8217;t need a mom and a dad to take care of his children here on earth, but yet he wills to do so through their help. So to spiritually, we believe as Catholics that God wills to provide for us help spiritually speaking and even in temporal matters through the intercessory prayer of our mother Mary. So it is wrapped up in our reliance on her help in this life is an expression of her intercession, right? Because we recognize that through her prayers, obviously she&#8217;s not like helping me out physically, like my physical mother might help me out physically. And so the implication is that we recognize help will be administered to us through her prayers. And so there you have the intercession of Mary at the heart and the center of consecrating ourselves to Mary and trusting our lives to her, the implication being that Mary, through your prayers, we&#8217;re asking for you to intercede for us to bring about these blessings in our lives in accordance with the divine will. And so that&#8217;s the meaning of the consecration. Again, as Pope St. John Paul II put it, an entrustment to our Queen Mother as our mother, not as the source of all being and goodness which belongs to God alone.
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 Protestants Claim that Catholics Worship Mary

Who were these Romans who play such a big part in the New Testament and in the life of the early Church? How did they get to be a world power, and what did they make of these new Christians?

Ancient Rome

If sin is finite, how can it possibly be just for someone to go to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-hell">hell</a> for all eternity? <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/doesnt-hell-make-god-an-unjust-tyrant">Isn&#8217;t it unfair</a> to give an eternal punishment for a crime that took a finite time to commit? As Karlo notes, there&#8217;s more to consider here.

Is Eternity in Hell an Unfair Punishment?

Fr. John Hardon once said that bad Mariology leads to bad Christology. That is definitely true among those who reject calling Mary Mother of God, which comes from the more ancient title Theotokos, which means “God-bearer.”
Consider these words in a sermon from <a href="https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/90-314/exposing-the-idolatry-of-mary-worship-an-overview">the popular Protestant pastor John MacArthur</a>:
<blockquote>Roman Catholics . . . say she gave birth to God and thus is to be elevated and adored. She gave birth to God. That is a terrible misconception. She gave birth to Jesus in his humanity. She did not give birth to God. God was never born.</blockquote>
I understand how a Protestant might think God can’t be “born” if he equates birth with coming into existence, since God is eternal. But in order to understand how Mary is the mother of God, we need to define our terms.
By “God,” I mean a divine person. When Thomas said to Jesus, “My Lord and my God,” he was not saying, “My Lord and my Trinity.” Thomas was saying Jesus is a divine person—the infinite God made man. Likewise, when we say “God was born” or “God died on a cross,” we are not saying the Trinity was born or that the Trinity died on the cross, we are saying that a divine person was born and a divine person died—namely, the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, who became the man Jesus of Nazareth.
By “Mother,” I mean a human who conceives, gestates, and gives birth to another person. Being the mother of God does not mean that Mary created Jesus’ divine nature, or even his human soul. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Every spiritual soul is created immediately by God—it is not ‘produced’ by the parents” (366). Instead, Mary gave the Son his human nature and cared for this divine person in her womb, just as every other human mother gives a human nature to a person, her son or daughter, who resides in her womb.
Saying Mary is the mother of God simply means that Mary conceived a person within her womb, and that person was the divine Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son. Mary also gestated that divine person in her womb as he grew and developed, and then she gave birth to that divine person, who had assumed a fully human nature.
Saying Mary is the mother of God is another way of saying that Jesus was God throughout his entire human existence. And this shows why this dogma is so important, and why it was officially proclaimed in the early Church at the Council of Ephesus. Namely, it is heretical to deny that Mary is the mother of God because, in doing that, you deny the divinity of Christ.
In the early Church, adoptionist heretics claimed that Jesus Christ was a human person who became divine later in life—at his baptism, or even at his resurrection. But this theology denies the Incarnation, or that God became man, and replaces it with the heresy that a man became God. To safeguard against this heresy, we call the Blessed Virgin Mary Theotokos, the God-bearer, or mother of God.
In response, the Protestant apologist Eric Svendsen claims in his book Evangelical Answers that “the Person of Jesus isn’t merely God, any more than the person of Jesus is merely man. Put another way, Mary gave birth to a person who is both God and man. She did not give birth to the pre-incarnate form of the Logos. It is proper to call Mary ‘the mother of Jesus,’ but not ‘the mother of God’” (106).
Sure, Mary didn’t give birth to anything “preincarnate,” because Jesus’ birth occurred after his Incarnation, when he became a human embryo in Mary’s womb. But Mary did give birth to the Word, the Logos. John 1:14 says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” To say Jesus is a human person and a divine person can be easily twisted to say the Second Person of the Trinity, a divine person, changed in his person, at the Incarnation, to be become a composite human-divine person. But God is infinite being itself. He cannot change.
That’s why St. Cyril of Alexandria told Nestorius, “We do not say that his flesh was turned into the nature of the godhead, nor that the unspeakable Word of God was changed into the nature of the flesh. For he, the Word, is unalterable and absolutely unchangeable and remains always the same as the Scriptures say” (Third Letter to Nestorius).
A critic who denies the dogma of Mary’s divine maternity is really in a pickle. If he says Mary was only the mother of Jesus’ body or his human nature, then I would ask, “Where was the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, when Mary was pregnant with fetal Jesus?” If he says God the Son was identical to the fetus in Mary’s womb, then he has to affirm that Mary is the mother of God. If that fetus is God, and being pregnant with a human fetus means you are a mother, then Mary is the mother of God. End of discussion.

Mary as Mother Matters

When does a fetus become a ‘person?’

Which Church did Christ establish?

Once you believe in Jesus, can&#8217;t you be done? Why do we need to belong to the Catholic Church instead of any other Christian congregation? Trent Horn discusses these questions on Catholic Answers Live.

Why Be Catholic and Not Just Christian?

When I began an article celebrating the beauty and value of the male person, I expected it to flow easily. I’m married to one man and raising two more, so I certainly appreciate the masculine.
However, as I began my research, I soon came upon a void on the subject. Who is celebrating the male genius? No one, apparently. In popular culture, the “man’s man” is one who eats steak, drinks plenty of alcohol, and has no control over his sex drive. The reduction of man to such a carnal beast is the work of the devil. In the words of St. Josemaria Escrivia, “There is a need for a crusade of manliness and purity to counteract and undo the savage work of those who think that man is a beast. And that crusade is a matter for you.”
But what should men be crusading toward? Our vision of the masculine is lost somewhere between the listless plains of apathy that plague most of our men and the sex-crazed pits of the <a href="https://emilystimpsonchapman.substack.com/p/the-heresies-of-the-manosphere-part">manosphere</a>. We’re all swimming in a sea of gender confusion, and more than a few of our men are drowning. The world laughs at them, mocks them, hurls insults, and encourages them to give up their glory and diminish to brutes. Sometimes, like Sisyphus, they fight an endless uphill battle against the evil that grasps at their domain.
However, that is not what God ordained men to be. Men are the backbone of strength, protection, and provision society requires to thrive. This battle against evil can be won only with the help of a man. Our maker set this so firmly in the created order that even his own Son, the incarnate God, humbled himself in submission to a man, his father Joseph. St. Joseph is the essential link between Adam, the first man, and Jesus, the God-man. He is the icon of God the Father and a noble example of the masculine at its finest.
It’s worth noting that Joseph isn’t the stereotypical hero we tend to idealize. He wasn’t climbing mountains, fighting wars, and accomplishing impressive feats of shirtless strength. In the Gospels, he is ascribed no lines of dialogue despite being a central figure in the Nativity story. His glory wasn’t extravagant or showy; rather, it was in his role as a husband and a father.
The glory of the male is in his work and self-giving. Adam was called to cultivate the garden; Joseph cultivated the holy family. It was he who led the family away to Egypt and safely home again. It was he who worked to provide for them and modeled for Jesus how to be a man. It was he who protected and loved the Queen of Heaven. His role was essential.
A family is wrecked without a leader, society is unmoored without good men at the helm, and all of humanity was doomed until God became incarnate as a man. These are controversial statements, even appalling ones in our culture, but they remain true. At creation, Adam was established as the ruler over the created order. When God came to earth, he took the form of a man and submitted himself to the leadership of his foster father. When he established his Church, he placed at its head Peter. Every church and family since the beginning of time has been in need of the masculine in order to be whole and healthy and successful.
My husband and I recently attended the funeral of his business partner, a devout Catholic who died suddenly at the age of sixty-one, leaving behind a wife and six grown children. I was struck, in his son’s eulogy, how clearly the description reflected St. Joseph.
In Redemptoris Custos, Pope St. John Paul II analyzes multiple aspect of the life of St. Joseph including his marriage, fatherhood, work, and interior life. The eulogy followed a similar pattern, lauding how deeply our friend loved his wife, how he supported and guided his children, how he joyfully gave himself in his work and his consistent devotion to his faith. It was the image of leadership in each realm of life, with sacrifice and love. It was the life of a true man, and we are poorer for his loss but thankful for his work and influence. A man who lives his life well is a pillar of strength to all who come into contact with him.
Asking what’s so great about men is like asking what’s so great about having a backbone or lungs. They’re magnificent because they are essential and designed perfectly for the role they fill. They—men—are beautiful in the noble, rigorous work of their function. Without them, we all are lost.

What’s So Great About Men

<div>I’ve heard Mormons say they worship the same Jesus we do and so they are Christians. After all, their church is “the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
</div><div>Just because someone says he’s a Christian doesn’t make him a Christian, because a Christian must be validly baptized and believe in the God of Christianity. The Catholic Church holds Mormon baptisms invalid because, even though the baptismal formula they use is correct, the meaning of the words “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” are so alien to Christian belief that they essentially belong to another religion.
When it comes to Jesus, Christians believe he is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/jesus-is-god">fully human and fully divine</a>, and he has always been divine given that he is the second person of the Trinity, God the Son. Mormons, however, believe that Jesus Christ was once an “intelligence” such as us who existed from eternity. He was not always divine, and he was not always the Son of God. Instead, God chose him to become the “firstborn” among the intelligences by giving him the first spirit body. In 1909, the Mormon Church’s leadership released a statement that read, “The Father of Jesus is our Father also. . . . Jesus, however, is the firstborn among all the sons of God—the first begotten in the spirit, and the only begotten in the flesh. He is our elder brother, and we, like him, are in the image of God.”
Instead of being completely different in kind from human beings, this <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-mormon-christ">counterfeit Christ</a> is different from us only in degree (hence the term “eldest brother”). He is just a more exalted spirit-child of God the Father, which reduces him from being the eternal creator of the universe to being merely one highly praised part of it, which is antithetical to true Christian belief.
</div>

Are Mormons Christian?

Jimmy Akin advises a caller whose parish priest publicly doubts the authenticity of Pope Francis, suggesting that the caller first talk directly to the priest and then contact his bishop if the problem continues.Jimmy Akin advises a caller whose parish priest publicly doubts the authenticity of Pope Francis, suggesting that the caller first talk directly to the priest and then contact his bishop if the problem continues.
Transcript:
Host: We go to Christopher in Tennessee. Christopher, you are on with Jimmy Akin, what&#8217;s your question?
Caller: Hey guys, thanks for taking my call. So my question is, how do I deal with a priest that is borderline <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/the-problem-with-sedevacantism">Sedevacantist</a>? I say &#8220;borderline&#8221; because he doesn&#8217;t outright say that the chair is vacant. But he does spend time during his homilies to not only criticize the Pope but also his writings, most recently Amoris Laetitia&#8211; which, by the way, thank you guys for <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-pope-francis-a-heretic-part-i">your write-up on that</a> on the Catholic Answers website, that was immensely helpful to me, at least as far as being able to understand what&#8217;s going on there.
But back to this predicament: Father has an interesting theory that I won&#8217;t go into here, but basically boils down to, he doesn&#8217;t know who the valid Pope is, but out of an abundance of caution he still says &#8220;Francis&#8221; during the prayers of the faithful, so it&#8217;s irksome, to say the least. And a few of us&#8211;parishioners, that is&#8211;tried to talk to him about it and he, for lack of better terms, pulls rank on us saying that we&#8217;re just not as studied on the current situation as he is. I mean, I get that he&#8217;s not an ultra-Montanist, that&#8217;s fine, I can dig that. But if he&#8217;s referring to the Pope by his given name instead of his Papal name, and criticizing him during Mass&#8211;and in his podcast, because he&#8217;s hip on technology&#8211;is there anything that we as laypeople can do about it if we feel that it&#8217;s inappropriate for him to do so&#8211;or is it appropriate for him to do so?
Jimmy: Okay, so you, let me make sure of something now. You&#8217;ve already talked to him personally, right?
Caller: Yes.
Jimmy: Okay. One thing, I&#8217;ll just mention this as just a small matter, I wouldn&#8217;t I wouldn&#8217;t sweat over the fact that he sometimes refers to the Pope by his given name. That can sound a little unusual to American ears, but it&#8217;s actually quite common in Europe. If you read, like, famous Vaticanistas, you know, journalists who make a study of the Vatican, like Sandro Magister and people like that who are quite Orthodox, they will regularly talk about, you know, Papa, or not just him, but for a long time they&#8217;ll say, you know, like, Papa Wojtyla. That would be John Paul II. Or Papa Ratzinger. Or Papa Bergoglio now. So that&#8217;s actually not that uncommon. Now, if he was calling him George, well, okay, that&#8217;s a little familiar for His Holiness. But I probably wouldn&#8217;t worry too much about that.
The thing that concerns me is that this guy is saying he&#8217;s not sure who the Pope is. And that&#8217;s a serious thing, and it&#8217;s a very problematic thing for a priest to say in an ordinary parish setting. I assume that you&#8217;re going to an ordinary diocesan parish and, you know, not like some kind of independent chapel. Is that correct, Christopher?
Caller: That&#8217;s correct.
Jimmy: Yeah, so this is totally over the line, for a priest who has the care of souls in a parish, to be publicly doubting who the Pope is. That&#8217;s just way over the line. And so you&#8217;ve tried talking to him already on your own, and I would, I&#8217;d probably go back to him and say, &#8220;Look, this is a really unreasonable sentiment to be expressing to the faithful, because it&#8217;s going to scandalize them, and not just in the sense of outraging them, but tempting them towards the sin of schism.&#8221;
Because if Father&#8217;s expressing these doubts, then that&#8217;s going to stir up doubts on their part. And that could lead people into schism, which is a grave sin and a canonical crime. And so for him to be doing that is just completely pastorally irresponsible.
And I&#8217;d be frank with him and say, &#8220;You know, if you have doubts that are like this, and you&#8217;re expressing them in public, that&#8217;s something I think you need to have a talk with the bishop about. And so if, you know, I feel the need to let the bishop know about this. I mean, I tried talking to you individually&#8211;&#8221; and by the way, that&#8217;s something I always recommend. You never start by going behind somebody&#8217;s back. You start the way our Lord said to in Matthew 18, which is talking to the person directly.
But if you don&#8217;t get the problem resolved by talking to the person directly, then it can be necessary to escalate, and in this case, where you have a priest publicly doubting in front of the faithful whether the Pope is the Pope, that&#8217;s the kind of thing that you need to escalate over. And so I&#8217;d talk to him once more and say, &#8220;I think this needs to be brought to the attention of the bishop, and I want to let you know that as a courtesy to you, but this is a very serious matter and I feel I need to do that.&#8221;
Caller: Okay. And is it appropriate to try and, you know&#8211;let me just say I&#8217;ve never tried to contact the bishop directly before, is it more appropriate to, like, write an anonymous letter?
Jimmy: No. Do not write anonymous letters to the bishop, that doesn&#8217;t do anybody any good, you need to take responsibility for what you&#8217;re doing. When a bishop sees an anonymous letter it decreases the credibility of it, because the person who wrote it didn&#8217;t have the courage to put their name to it. For all the bishop knows, it could be misreporting something just based on a personal rivalry, someone has it in for the priest, and&#8211;or just doesn&#8217;t like him and wants to do him harm by making up a story.
What I would do is, I&#8217;d write the bishop a letter, I&#8217;d write it directly to the bishop with the bishop&#8217;s name on it, he will see it. And say, you know, &#8220;Father so-and-so has said this on this occasion,&#8221; supply dates and exact quotations if you can, maybe from his podcast, if he said this stuff in his podcast. Point the Bishop to where he can listen to the podcast and which episodes to listen to and he can hear it for himself, and then, you know, ask that, you know, you can say, &#8220;This is obviously a very serious matter for a priest who has pastoral care of the faithful to be expressing these sentiments in public, and I wanted to call it to your attention, Respectfully submitted,&#8221; and sign your name.
Caller: Gotcha, thanks.
Host: Thank you, Christopher.

Dealing with a Sedevacantist Priest

Cy sits down with Karlo Broussard, author of Prepare the Way, for a conversation about God and evolution. Karlo lists six common ways people use Darwin’s insights as the basis for arguments against God.

Why Evolution Doesn’t Eliminate God (Part 1)

On his last full day as president of the United States, it is reported that Joe Biden <a href="https://www.conferenceofgrandmasterspha.org/news-events-scholarships">joined the Freemasons</a>.
Canonists <a href="https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/did-joe-biden-join-the-freemasons">are debating</a> whether one incurs a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication for joining the Masons, given that the 1983 Code of Canon Law does not explicitly forbid Catholics to join, whereas one did incur an automatic excommunication under the previous 1917 Code (<a href="https://www.canonlaw.info/1917vatorig.htm#LIBER_QUINTUS">see can. 2335</a>). There is also the issue of President Biden’s mental capacity in making such a choice, as his cognitive decline was evident in his one debate in June 2024 with President Donald Trump, after which Biden was pressured by his Democratic Party colleagues to end his re-election bid.
In <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19831126_declaration-masonic_en.html">a 1983 declaration</a> from the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, now DDF), the Church reaffirmed that “the faithful who enroll in Masonic associations are in a state of grave [mortal] sin and may not receive Holy Communion.” Although excommunication and being in a state of grave sin usually go hand in hand, they don’t always, depending on who levies the excommunication and on what basis. Being in a state of grave sin is more serious, though, given that one who does not repent of such wrongdoing will go to hell (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c1a8.htm#IV">see CCC 1861</a>). In addition, to be subjectively culpable of a mortal sin, one must fulfill three criteria: its moral object must be grave matter, and one must commit the sin with full knowledge and deliberate or complete consent (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c1a8.htm#IV">see CCC 1857-1860</a>).
In 2023, the DDF reaffirmed <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20231113_richiesta-cortes-massoneria_en.html">the Church’s ban</a> on membership in the Freemasons, and the president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-does-the-church-say-about-freemasonry">reaffirmed it again in February 2024</a>.
Whatever his personal culpability in joining the Masons, President Biden’s choice sadly caps a series of decisions in which he as a public official repudiated the Faith. That includes his many decisions to uphold legalized abortion as a U.S. senator as well as president. Others include supporting the redefinition of marriage and even <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/vice-president-joe-biden-officiated-wedding-sex-couple/story?id=41058123">officiating</a> at the “wedding” of at least one same-sex couple.
We can make principled arguments <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/dialogue-is-abortion-a-human-right-or-an-inhumane-wrong-with-nathan-nobis">against abortion</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/prepping-for-pride-month">the redefinition of marriage</a> based on objective biology and basic human rights, despite the empty attempt by Biden and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-light-toward-the-darkness">other politicians</a> to say, “I am personally opposed” on these issues, “but I cannot legally impose my religious convictions on others.” In any event, let us pray for our brother in Christ, President Biden, that he might yet see the light and publicly repent, both for his benefit and for many others’.
Many Catholics don’t understand why the Catholic Church forbids the faithful to become Freemasons, including because they may have neighbors or co-workers who are Masons, and because they see positive philanthropic work the Masons oversee, such as providing major health care for children at their hospitals.
The Freemasons were established in Europe several centuries ago to oppose the Catholic Church, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-great-modern-attack-on-the-church">and indeed to destroy the Church</a>. Because of this enmity, popes issued a series of pronouncements, beginning with Pope Clement XII’s constitution <a href="https://www.papalencyclicals.net/clem12/c12inemengl.htm">In Eminenti</a> in 1738 and including Pope Leo XIII’s 1884 encyclical <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_18840420_humanum-genus.html">Humanum Genus</a>. In addition, St. Maximilian Kolbe founded his Militia of the Immaculate in significant part to combat the Masons, whom he observed proclaiming in 1917—as part of their bicentennial celebration in Rome—that “<a href="https://saintmaximiliankolbe.com/st-maximilian-kolbe-and-the-second-page/#:~:text=The%20secret%20founding%20of%20the,of%20heresies%20called%20M%20o%20d%20e%20r%20n%20i%20s%20m%20.">Satan must reign in the Vatican</a>. The pope will be his slave.” Also, a key reason Fr. Michael McGivney established the Knights of Columbus in 1882 was to provide fraternity and life insurance for the faithful, as many Catholic men were being tempted to join the Masons for those reasons.
In modern-day America, Masonic lodges typically serve as social clubs that also help members network professionally. But make no mistake: the Masons are qualitatively different from the Kiwanis Club or your local Elks lodge, because Masonry is a naturalistic religion. As the New Catholic Encyclopedia states,
<blockquote>Freemasonry displays all the elements of religion, and as such it becomes a rival to the religion of the Gospel. It includes temples and altars, prayers, a moral code, worship, vestments, feast days, the promise of reward or punishment in the afterlife, a hierarchy, and initiation and burial rites.</blockquote>
In his <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/it/vaticano/news/2024-02/chiesa-massoneria-stagliano-inconciliabili.html#:~:text=Chiesa%20e%20massoneria%2C%20Staglian%C3%B2%3A%20%E2%80%9CEcco%20perch%C3%A9%20sono%20profondamente%20inconciliabili%E2%80%9D,-Il%20presidente%20della&amp;text=%E2%80%9CQuella%20massonica%20%C3%A8%20un'eresia,tra%20Chiesa%20cattolica%20e%20massoneria.">February 2024 interview with Vatican News</a>, Bishop Antonio Stagliano, the president of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, distinguished Freemasonry from Catholic belief on several important matters.
For example, Masons view God as “the Great Architect,” and their <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/masonry">longstanding emblem is an architect’s basic instruments</a>. Consequently, <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/bishop-who-participated-in-freemasonry-event-affirms-its-incompatibility-with-catholicism">Stagliano said</a>, “Freemasonry is a heresy that is fundamentally aligned with the Arian heresy,” because it was Arius “who imagined that Jesus was a great architect of the universe” while also denying Christ’s divinity. In addition, Stagliano said, as a natural religion, Freemasonry “is the fruit of human reasoning that tries to imagine a god, whereas the God of Catholics is the fruit of the very revelation of God in Christ Jesus!”
“In essence,” he added, Catholicism “is the result of a historical event in which God became flesh, drew near to men, spoke to all human beings, and destined them for his salvation.”
Similarly, Masonry and Catholicism differ on the concept of mystery. Freemasonry is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-does-the-church-say-about-freemasonry">a secret society</a> that espouses a form of Gnosticism—special, secret knowledge available only to its initiated members. In marked contrast, Stagliano notes, for Christians, the mystery “hidden throughout the centuries does not cease to be a mystery but rather ceases to be hidden, because the mystery hidden throughout the centuries has been revealed,” referring to God’s self-revelation, especially through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, infallibly taught in and proclaimed by his Catholic Church to the whole world (Matt. 28:18-20).
The bishop also distinguished Catholic from Masonic brotherhood: “Our fraternity is established on the sacrament of the love of God in Jesus; it is founded on the Eucharist, not only on the generic idea of being brothers.” He also said that Freemasonry’s concept of doing good works should not be confused with the life in Christ that Jesus calls the faithful to exemplify. The practice of Christian charity “has nothing to do with Masonic philanthropy,” he says, because “Christian charity is based on the historical event of a God who died and rose again for us and asks his children not to be merely philanthropic but to be, finally, crucified for love.”
“In short,” <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/bishop-who-participated-in-freemasonry-event-affirms-its-incompatibility-with-catholicism">Stagliano summarized,</a> “when we talk about incompatibility, we are referring to profound contradictions.”

Joe Biden, Freemason?

Of course you can’t baptize with Gatorade. Everybody knows this. When a blogger got the Catholic Answers <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/ai">AI apologetics app</a> to say you could, in an emergency situation, it was justly mocked all over the Catholic internet. When CNN and countless news sites <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/14/business/video/ai-catholic-priest-gatorade-baptize-digvid">ran stories</a> about that app, they led with the same lurid, ludicrous Gatorade angle.
Whatever else we might say about Catholicism, there’s one thing on which everyone can agree: Gatorade isn’t valid matter for baptism.
Except . . . wait a second . . . maybe it is?
Sacramental theologians classify types of sacramental matter in three categories: certainly valid, doubtful, and certainly invalid. These classifications find their way into sacramental manuals that become normative guides for practical reference in seminaries, parishes, dioceses, and so on. This is necessary because, even though the basic prescribed matter for the sacraments is pretty straightforward—things like bread, water, wine, oil—in each case, there are many possible small variants. Each needs to be examined and held up to Catholic standards for liceity (adherence to Church requirements for legally proper celebration of a sacrament) and validity (suitability for effecting the sacrament).
Water is the matter (specifically, what&#8217;s called the proximate matter) for the sacrament of baptism. For the licit (lawful) celebration of the sacrament in an ordinary circumstance, it must be pure, clean, blessed, fresh water. But the category of valid matter for baptism is larger. The Catholic Encyclopedia, drawing on the sacramental tradition, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/baptism#vi-matter-and-form-of-the-sacrament">notes that valid matter includes</a> liquids like sea water, bog or marsh water, dew, melted ice, and condensation. The water can be “fresh or salty; hot or cold; colored or uncolored.” It doesn’t have to be blessed to be valid matter.
In <a href="https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/ITOPL_OCR-layer-only/7c%20&amp;%208.%20Moral%20Theology%20&amp;%20Sacraments/Sacraments/d-The%20Administration%20of%20the%20Sacraments-%20Halligan%20OP_OCR.pdf">The Administration of the Sacraments,</a> a well-regarded 1963 manual by Dominican Nicholas Halligan, we find still more specificity. Water that seeps from walls is valid, as is “water mixed with a small amount of an extraneous element.” Certainly invalid, on the other hand, are substances like blood, oil, urine, gravy, shoe polish (!), and “all things not in a liquid state.”
Then we have the doubtful category. These are liquids that are water-like but about which validity can’t be determined for certain or fully agreed upon. Doubtful substances may be deemed more or less probable in their validity, and different people may rank their probability differently. The Church hasn’t ruled definitively on them, and theologians are still hashing out the arguments. Halligan lists in this category such liquids as light broths and tea, water extracted from vines or flowers, and even “thin ink.”
So where does Gatorade fit in?
Well, let’s use “Gatorade” as a stand-in for a category of modern non-alcoholic beverages that are mostly water, including thirst-quenching sports drinks, sodas, and the kind of flavored sparkling waters that line the aisles of your local Costco. What are they? That is, what are they made of, on a molecular level?
Sports drinks come in many varieties, ranging from roughly 90 percent water (with the rest consisting of sugars, salt and other minerals, and coloring) to 99 percent water in the clear, sugar-free versions. The range is similar for colas and other soft drinks: some are packed with significant amounts of sugar by weight, whereas others, like Diet Coke, are 99 percent water. Then come drinks like <a href="https://www.lacroixwater.com/">La Croix</a> and <a href="https://www.sanpellegrino.com/us/essenza-flavored-sparkling-water">San Pellegrino Essenza</a>, marketed under names that may or may not include “water” and composed of 99+ percent water with trace amounts of flavoring and no caloric matter. (In contrast, common fruit juices, which are invalid matter, range from 50 to 85 percent water.)
How do those numbers compare to substances in the “valid” category? Well, without a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrometer">spectrometer</a> handy to analyze various kinds of bog, swamp, and cave-wall water, it’s hard to say, but we do know that sea water is about 96.5 percent true water. The rest is salt, minerals, and traces of decaying seaweed, whale poop, microplastics, and everything else floating around the teeming brine.
That number seems like a good baseline for what qualifies as valid baptismal matter, at least with regard to water purity. And, judging by that criterion, the sugar-free sports drinks, diet colas, and flavored waters seem to compare well. After all, those drinks are really just “flavored waters” or “slightly impure waters” to one degree or another. That they may be colored, unlike pure water, does not invalidate them as baptismal matter. And some of these sports and soft drinks are actually more water-y, in their composition, than sea water.
But wait: as many will point out, the spectrometer is not the final judge of whether a substance is suitable for baptism. It also has to be something that, as the Encyclopedia puts it, “men will ordinarily declare water.” That’s because the sacrament is a sign, not the product of a recipe. Applying this commonsense test, they will say that these beverages in question aren’t valid matter because we don’t call them “water,” and so they can’t signify what water signifies—cleansing—in baptism.
Although this strikes me as teetering on the brink of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-bread-what-is-wine">nominalism</a>—things are what they are, not <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-protestant-roots-of-the-pronoun-wars">what we call them</a>—the point about sign-value is important. Yes, Diet Coke is 99 percent water, and sea water is only 96.5 percent. Yes, Diet Coke, like true water, will hydrate you if you drink it, whereas sea water can kill you if you drink it. And yes, Diet Coke can actually be a <a href="https://www.cookist.com/7-things-that-can-be-cleaned-using-coca-cola/">pretty good cleansing agent</a> (arguably more so than baptism-valid muddy water or bog water). But, Diet Coke is called “Diet Coke,” and sea water is called “water,” and if it’s the sign of water you’re after, that matters.
If, however, an argumentative person wanted to press the Gatorade case, he might point out that many of these sports drinks, soft drinks, and hybrid flavored waters have simply been given their names by the machine of modern marketing. Is Madison Avenue’s word dispositive in the world of Catholic sacraments?
What would a medieval peasant think of Gatorade? Very possibly he would call it slightly sweet, slightly salty water. The bubbles of Diet Coke would tickle his tongue, and he would have nothing in his experience to compare with its artificial sweetener, but I bet he would describe that liquid phenomenon as something in the neighborhood of water. (He certainly would not call it wine or a spirit, or oil, or blood, or poison.) It took modern focus groups and clever ad men to give new, catchy names to what our forebears would recognize as tricked-up water variants.
And where would we be if they hadn’t? What if the <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gatorade-sports-drinks-inventions">scientists at the University of Florida</a> in the 1960s had called their new hydrating drink “sports water” instead of “Gatorade”? Would it have been valid matter in that case?
Perhaps not all the variants of Gatorade we have today. Just as the alcohol content in wine can affect its validity as matter for confecting the Precious Blood, so too, perhaps, may excessive sugar or mineral content—say, pushing a liquid below sea water’s 96.5 percent purity threshold—take a soft drink out of the valid category for baptism, no matter what we call it. But the no-calorie thirst-quenchers and lightly flavored sugarless sparkling drinks? At the very least, we ought to recognize the case they make for being valid matter. They are almost entirely water, they can do everything water does, and the names by which we call them could be considered mere accidents of corporate branding rather than indicative of their ontology.
Without further magisterial guidance, though, we can’t say that these drinks belong in the certainly valid class, though possibly those beverages with “water” <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Propel-Flavored-Electrolytes-Vitamins-Ounces/dp/B000VDV27Q/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.KnBe5WT3QcdBKubIxLsUM6du1XbeiFfRAhzGPHlf-0j69UgNJ5UUf5qSSELmyLlI1eQ4ypvTCbQX7nIC9STkuVXOnFX-vdWZpTaTpHrkJTWDUOB7y4or6eIPyHQ0yogBgBTV7fSprN2qOHkKFfqhYvEjLY16-dONT4YoSdr-JxKvZHPuVriK3PRBnNrc3cXvaqHG575ttHAwSoaF-3cCssYRDCSfJjiPEQWEknilonvwOSO8uuD9Bpoxb7zLOz5V3pv0f809N1f8q2kV4vqw1ajq3gCIk6LnU-_0_phfZVk.52VXsgjXEKztqOJDkOU4YhK94spz_8c08aJoBBlcgA4&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=sugar+free+sports+drink&amp;qid=1718744522&amp;sr=8-2-spons&amp;sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&amp;psc=1">in their name</a> already would have a strong-enough case. And of course they’re unquestionably illicit. So don’t baptize with them!
Unless . . .
Here we arrive at that middle category: liquids of “doubtful”—that is, uncertain—validity. These are liquids that, according to Halligan, “do not certainly imply natural water” or whose “mixture with other elements almost supplants the water.” We noted some examples above, and if our sports drinks and other beverages under discussion do not reach the level of valid, they would certainly wind up here—and likely at a higher level of probability than some other doubtful liquids, such as soup and ink.
This category is important for more than just wonkish theology debates, because doubtful liquids, in Halligan’s words, “can and must” be used to baptize in a case of necessity (danger of death) when there is no certainly valid water available (emphasis added). Even those liquids, he adds, “with the least probability” of validity can and must be used. This reflects the consensus tradition and practice of the Church when dealing with doubtful matter. (Baptism may never be attempted with invalid matter.)
Imagine you are hiking in the desert with your unbaptized friend. You wander from the trail and get lost, and then he suffers a bad fall. He can’t walk, he may have internal injuries, you have no cell service, and it is very possible that he will die before you both can be rescued. Frightened, but possessing a sound mind, he makes a statement of faith and asks you to baptize him. You can&#8217;t find any stream, pond, or even puddle nearby, but you have a few bottles of a certain orange sports drink.
There is no debate about what you can and must do: take the Gatorade and baptize him. Halligan advises adding a few words noting the doubtful nature of the matter (e.g., “If this be valid matter, I baptize you . . .”). Then, if he makes it back to safety and recovers, he must be baptized again in a licit rite, likewise with added conditional language acknowledging that the first baptism might have been valid.
And if he doesn’t make it back? Well, doubtful means not certain. But you will have done your full duty as a Christian, within the bounds of what is reasonable and permitted by the Church. And you will have good reason to hope that he was reborn as a child of God and set on the path to his eternal reward.

Gatorade: A Sin-Quencher?

<div>Why isn’t the Confiteor said at every Mass?</div><div>The Penitential Act is an essential part of the Sacrifice of the Mass, although the Confiteor need not be prayed as part of it. For more information, see the “Order of the Mass” section of your parish missal.
</div>

Why Not Confiteor at Every Mass?

<div>If the saints are in heaven, then why is King David not in heaven (Acts 2:29-34)?</div><div><blockquote>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 Messiah, 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 it forth, as you (both) see and hear.
For David did not go up into heaven, but he himself said:
&#8220;The Lord said to my Lord, &#8216;Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.&#8217;”
Therefore let the whole house of Israel know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified (Acts 2:29-35).</blockquote>
The author is not saying that David did not go to heaven after the resurrection of Jesus. The context is that Peter is pointing out that in certain Psalm passages David was not talking about himself but about Jesus.
Peter began his preaching by saying, &#8220;For David says of him . . . you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption&#8221; (Acts 2:25,27).
By saying David was buried in their midst and was not resurrected, Peter was saying that David could not have speaking about himself, because the Psalm clearly states that the person will not remain in the grave. Peter was preaching the fulfillment of Scripture in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
</div>

Is King David in Heaven?

<div>Can Mary hear everybody, everywhere as can God Father and Jesus can?</div><div>To be sure, the Blessed Mother is a finite creature, whereas God the Father and Jesus are omnipotent God.
However, because the Blessed Mother continues to abide in Jesus and the Father in heaven (see John 15:1-11), and because she is not constrained by the limits of time and space that we are on earth, Mary is blessed to be able to receive and intercede for the prayers of the multitudes who seek her intercession.
For more on this subject, please see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/praying-to-the-saints">our tract “Praying to the Saints.”</a>
</div>

How Can Mary Hear So Many Prayers?

In his Etymologies, St. Isidore of Seville describes wisdom (sapientia) as a kind of tasty knowledge. The wise person “is able to distinguish things and their causes, because he understands each thing, and makes distinctions with his sense of truth. The opposite of this is a fool (insipiens), because he is without taste, and has no discretion or sense.”
The world tells us that taste is something impossible to discuss. To each his own, they say: de gustibus non disputandum est. There’s no disputing taste. It could be the motto of a technocratic age, the slogan of the kind of hedonistic dystopia imagined in Huxley’s Brave New World, where matters of pain and pleasure do not matter very much so long as economic productivity endures.
But it is very difficult—no, let’s just say it: it is impossible—to reconcile this view with the Catholic and biblical understanding of the human vocation. We are, as the divine and natural law teaches us, called not merely to do the right things, but also to desire the right things. So matters of taste—whether we’re talking morality, aesthetics, or food—are tied, like everything else, to our integral humanity. O taste and see how gracious the Lord is. The psalmist doesn’t say: O taste and see if your completely subjective taste is into God, or not. God is good. And the fact that sometimes he and his ways are not always “to our taste” is just another way of saying that we live in a world corrupted by sin and death. Our tastes are skewed by addiction and disorder. How can they be made right?
It takes time, for a start. “Only through time time is conquered” (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “Burnt Norton”). Our illness happened in time and must be healed in time. Killing the virus, quickening the nerves, is only the start. We need slow nourishment, subtle medicine. The Eucharist, in its veiled reality, sneaks into our consciousness, slowly enters our souls and bodies, hides its virtue. It is not much to look at, is it? A wafer. Hardly even the appearance of “bread.” Such a small thing. It is almost absurd to look at it and imagine that the Catholic claims about it are true: how could our Lord suffer himself to be so gazed upon, so reduced, so deprived, so used? How could he allow himself to become mere food?
“My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him” (John 6:55-56). So said the Lord, losing many disciples. It is too much, really, the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist. It cannot be borne.
But imagine the alternative. Well, there are two, really. The one proposed by many of our separated brethren is far more tolerable, proposing a kind of spiritual reality given by a spiritual Lord. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/if-you-dont-eat-youll-die">No carnal eating required!</a> No flesh and blood lurking under visible signs! Pure spirit! Put aside the body, that useless thing that has nothing to do with the spiritual life. Christianity is the Great Idea, the triumph of the Word . . . and this alternative is tolerable just insofar as it robs us of our nature, wishing that we could just be like the angels, beings of pure intellect and will. More tolerable, we might think, but utterly foreign to the whole historical experience of Christianity from the start.
The other alternative is that the absolute real presence of the divine Son should visit us unveiled: that he should again and again, in his ubiquitous reality, assault us with the overwhelming glory of his light and goodness, that he would plunge us into the infinite fire of the divine sun, destroying us and recreating us only to be destroyed again, confronted by the prospect of an eternal sacrifice, the blood entered, as Hebrews tells us, into the heavenly places, poured out endlessly, age upon age, from the never-ending source: that we would drown in the electric blood of the God-Man, that we would imbibe it to our utter dissolution as if we were trying to drink the ocean, swallow the sun, wrap our hands around the incomprehensible cosmos. How could we cope with such a reality? How could we begin to understand and accept such a salvation? I think we would go mad.
But we do not go mad, because in fact the Catholic teaching about the Eucharist is true. Christ gives us his whole self, but in a particular form. As one twelfth-century commentator puts it,
<blockquote>Christ willed that his flesh be taken up by the faithful so that through this eating of flesh he might invite them to the taste of divinity, and that what we carry here temporally might follow to eternal joys; that here it might be for medicine and there for delight. He willed that both be taken, that our body and our soul alike might be glorified with him. He is not taken in the species of flesh and blood, lest the human soul shrink back and sense be frightened by something to which it is unaccustomed. . . . It is taken under the sacrament and not under its proper form so that the faithful might accept what is not seen from those things that are (Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae).</blockquote>
Sometimes, when distributing Holy Communion, I confess that I tremble under the weight of what is real. I imagine my hands collapsing under the weight, melting in the heat of that dread chalice. But I confess that at other times I forget entirely, and my eyes see only what they see and think for a time that the altar of sacrifice is some ordinary human vessel containing ordinary human things.
The veil of the sacraments is a gift. It is part of our medicine, our healing, drawing us from visible things to invisible things, sanctifying not just our intellect, but our sight, our taste, our imagination, our desire.
But what I want to emphasize today is that what that twelfth-century writer says is true: it is here for medicine but there for delight. The role of the sacraments is temporary, if by that we mean that the current sacramental economy will not last for eternity. But they are not temporary if by that we mean that we are supposed to merely pass through them for the sake of what is beyond, that they are merely vessels containing greater things. They train us not just to know eternal things, but to enjoy them in our temporal nature. We cannot handle the direct vision of God in the body now, but that vision is our destiny. We will, actually, walk into the sun and not die. We will drink the ocean of infinity and not collapse. But for now we have to learn to put away our small toys and reach for something greater. The Eucharist isn’t merely Presence, but Person. In it we meet not something, but someone. We learn to love and be loved.
Perhaps you’ve heard this eucharistic prayer of St. Bonaventure: “May my heart ever hunger after and feed upon thee, whom the angels desire to look upon, and may my inmost soul be filled with the sweetness of thy savor; may it ever thirst for thee, the fountain of life, the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, the fountain of eternal light, the torrent of pleasure, the fullness of the house of God.” To the unprepared mind, this is shocking language. God the “torrent of pleasure”? This is not, as many a postmodern cynic would have it, some kind of delusional psychosis in which the saint’s carnal desires accidentally transfer themselves to the next available spiritual thing. Rather, it is a recognition that the deepest human impulses, both bodily and intellectual, find their fulfillment and meaning in the knowledge and love of God.
Eating was supposed to be our downfall. Our bodies were supposed to be our doom. Our tastes are supposed to be our downfall, something we cannot control or change. That is what the demons tell us every time we fall into lust or gluttony or the countless sins of the flesh that weigh us down and reveal our weakness. That was what the ancient serpent wanted in Eden. Eating became death. And eating is death, in many literal and metaphorical ways, for to eat something is to destroy it, to kill it. But in the most Blessed Sacrament, eating becomes our life. Something physical becomes infinite. As today’s wonderful sequence proclaims:
Whoso of this Food partaketh,
Rendeth not the Lord nor breaketh: 
Christ is whole to all that taste. 
Thousands are, as one, receivers; 
One, as thousands of believers, 
Takes the Food that cannot waste.
Praise the God who meets us in our weakness and offers far more than an idea: he gives us food. And in this food is medicine, strength, comfort, joy, hope, and above all the love that cannot be conquered and cannot die. May the heart of Jesus, in the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, be praised, worshiped, and adored, with grateful affection, on all the altars and tabernacles of the world, now and even to the end of time.

Catholics Mustn’t Have Bad Taste

On April 2, the National Catholic Reporter published <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/latin-mass-community-moved-then-wrecked-historic-vatican-ii-altar">an article</a> titled, “A Latin Mass community moved in. Then wrecked a historic Vatican II altar.” The accompanying photo shows a forlorn seventy-one-year-old parishioner at Cleveland’s St. Elizabeth of Hungary Church examining one of the pieces of a wooden altar which appears to have been taken apart and placed in a storage room. The only thing missing is the man looking into the camera with a tear rolling down his face.
According to the Reporter, the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-altar">altar</a> had been “built by a priest and once used by a cardinal who’s on the path to canonization” and was damaged after the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest—which exclusively celebrates the Latin Mass—came to the parish at the invitation of Cleveland’s bishop.
Forgive the spit take, but the irony here could be cut with a knife. It seems the story’s author, who graduated from college in 1978, has a short memory—seeing as how throughout the 1970s, stunningly beautiful and historic <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/high-altar">high altar</a> pieces were suddenly removed from churches, particularly in the U.S., in the wake of the so-called “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/will-the-real-vatican-ii-please-stand-up">Spirit of Vatican II</a>.”
In fact, you may recall—and the reporter who wrote this article should certainly recall—that following the global promulgation of the reformed liturgy in 1969, many bishops and priests took the first opportunity to strip historic churches’ sanctuaries of these high altars, some over a century old. They couldn’t wait to do it despite the fact that bishops and priests who were already canonized had used these altars. These beautiful gifts to God were often replaced by altars resembling wooden tables placed in the middle of the sanctuary, while intricate frescoes were covered over with white paint and cloth banners hung in place of sacred images. I can only imagine what some of those parishioners thought as they walked into Mass that first Sunday after the “renovation.”
Some have actually referred to this post-Vatican II time period as a “wreckovation,” and looking at selections of <a href="https://www.liturgicalartsjournal.com/2018/02/the-restoration-of-st-turibius-chapel.html">before and after photos</a>, it’s hard to argue. Meanwhile, the accompanying article back then (the article could be written today, even) might have had a line in it like, “This altar was built by the hands of immigrants and paid for with the meager wages of the poor. Canonized saints celebrated Mass there. But now it’s in pieces and headed for the landfill.” (Adding to the irony, NCR’s article references the 1892 establishment of St. Elizabeth by Hungarian immigrants.)
Damaging or destroying sacred artifacts—especially a consecrated altar, provided it was not de-consecrated by the Church—should never be condoned.  It’s not for me to say, but perhaps the Institute should even apologize to St. Elizabeth’s parishioners. To decry such treatment of a 56-year-old “historic Vatican II altar,” however, as if it was done simply because of its association with the Council is disingenuous and, at best, historically ignorant. At worst, it’s just one more dose of propaganda from the typically selective National Catholic Reporter.

Dude, Where’s My Altar?

Easter Vigil Mass celebrated by Fr. Paul Check at St. John Fisher Seminary.
Exsultet
Exult, let them exult, the hosts of heaven, exult, let Angel ministers of God exult, let the trumpet of 
salvation sound aloud our mighty King&#8217;s triumph! Be glad, let earth be glad, as glory floods her, 
ablaze with light from her eternal King, let all corners of the earth be glad, knowing an end to gloom 
and darkness. Rejoice, let Mother Church also rejoice, arrayed with the lightning of his glory, let 
this holy building shake with joy, filled with the mighty voices of the peoples. Therefore, dearest 
friends, standing in the awesome glory of this holy light, invoke with me, I ask you, the mercy of 
God almighty, that he, who has been pleased to number me, though unworthy, among the Levites, 
may pour into me his light unshadowed, that I may sing this candle&#8217;s perfect praises.
V. The Lord be with you. 
R. And with your spirit. 
V. Lift up your hearts. 
R. We lift them up to the Lord. 
V. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. 
R. It is right and just.
It is truly right and just, with ardent love of mind and heart and with devoted service of our voice, 
to acclaim our God invisible, the almighty Father, and Jesus Christ, our Lord, his Son, his Only 
Begotten. Who for our sake paid Adam&#8217;s debt to the eternal Father, and, pouring out his own dear 
Blood, wiped clean the record of our ancient sinfulness. These, then, are the feasts of Passover, in 
which is slain the Lamb, the one true Lamb, whose Blood anoints the doorposts of believers. This 
is the night, when once you led our forebears, Israel&#8217;s children, from slavery in Egypt and made them 
pass dry-shod through the Red Sea. This is the night that with a pillar of fire banished the darkness 
of sin. This is the night that even now, throughout the world, sets Christian believers apart from 
worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, leading them to grace and joining them to his holy ones. 
This is the night, when Christ broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the 
underworld. Our birth would have been no gain, had we not been redeemed. O wonder of your 
humble care for us! O love, O charity beyond all telling, to ransom a slave you gave away your Son! 
O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ! O happy fault that 
earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer! O truly blessed night, worthy alone to know the time and 
hour when Christ rose from the underworld! This is the night of which it is written: The night shall 
be as bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness. The sanctifying power of this 
night dispels wickedness, washes faults away, restores innocence to the fallen, and joy to mourners, 
drives out hatred, fosters concord, and brings down the mighty. On this, your night of grace, O holy 
Father, accept this candle, a solemn offering, the work of bees and of your servants’ hands, an 
evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church. But now we know the praises of 
this pillar, which glowing fire ignites for God&#8217;s honor, a fire into many flames divided, yet never 
dimmed by sharing of its light, for it is fed by melting wax, drawn out by mother bees to build a 
torch so precious. O truly blessed night, when things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and divine 
to the human. Therefore, O Lord, we pray you that this candle, hallowed to the honor of your name, 
may persevere undimmed, to overcome the darkness of this night. Receive it as a pleasing fragrance, 
and let it mingle with the lights of heaven. May this flame be found still burning by the Morning 
Star: the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son, who, coming back from death&#8217;s domain, 
has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns for ever and ever. R. Amen.

Easter Vigil Mass: April 11, 2020

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Before you prove it, make them care.

Edgar Lujano and Joe Heschmeyer tackle a question about the Society of Saint Pius the Tenth (SSPX).
Transcript:
Caller: The St. Pius X Society, what is their status with regards to being in communion with the Church? And also how is one able to, you know, respectfully say, wait a minute, I don&#8217;t agree with certain things that happened in Vatican II without falling out of full communion with the Church.
Joe Heschmeyer: State of a contest and SSPX are in a different situation. They&#8217;re both complicated. I&#8217;ll do my best to be fair and nuanced, but sedevit contest would say that the Pope isn&#8217;t really the Pope, the chair of Peter is empty and therefore there hasn&#8217;t been a Pope. Usually they&#8217;ll say since Pius xii, but you can have different people who kind of have different versions of the history. And so they&#8217;ll just deny that, you know, John XXIII or any of his successors were really Popes. And this explanation is because they think that Vatican II is wrong. They think the Pope taught error and therefore he must not have really been the Pope. So this ceases to be Catholic. Like when you say the Pope isn&#8217;t the Pope, you run into a lot of problems and you run into a lot of problems in several ways. One, union with the Bishop of Rome is one of the hallmarks of Catholicity. I mean, historically, this is one of the ways your union with the Church of Rome, I should say is one of the hallmarks of Catholicity. And sedevicantists aren&#8217;t in union with the Church of Rome. And so using this 2,000 year old standard, or, you know, nearly 2,000-year-old standard and they are not Catholic. Additionally, Vatican I, in talking about the papacy, describes it as a perpetual institution. This is something that&#8217;s part of the DNA of the Church. The Papacy isn&#8217;t just like, well, maybe sometimes when we want there to be a Pope, or maybe God will sometimes raise up a Pope. No, this is an ongoing office in the Church. Now. You can have brief periods of seine of a conte where the sea of Peter is empty. You know, when Pope Francis died, there were a few weeks where we didn&#8217;t have a Pope. And that&#8217;s standard. But all of that is still governed in an orderly way. So there are church laws talking about how to hold elections. Now those laws can change over time, just like the laws of electing presidents can change over time. But the reality is you&#8217;re never gonna have a situation where there&#8217;s both a no Pope and b, no lawful way of having a Pope. Because if you have both of those things, no Pope and no way of getting a Pope, then the Papacy is just gone. You would need some new divine intervention to create a papacy again. And then you have something like a great apostasy. And there are a wealth of passages in the Bible that discount the possibility of a great apostasy. The gates of hell won&#8217;t overcome against the church. And if you think the visible church fell into heresy and that it&#8217;s just, you know, a small group of people who broke away from the Bishop of Rome and denied the Bishop of Rome as bishop and as pope, like that&#8217;s not, that&#8217;s never going to be the answer. That was not the answer in the 16th century, that was not the answer in the 11th century. That&#8217;s not going to be the answer in the 22nd century. There&#8217;s not going to be a time where God wants you to break away from the visible church because he prays for the opposite. In John 17, when Jesus, foretelling what&#8217;s going to happen, prays for future disciples, the one thing he prays for is that we&#8217;ll all be one now. Sedive contests aren&#8217;t one even with each other. The amount of disunity and dissension within the world of Sedeh vacantism is pretty extreme. And you have people who grow up in this space where they won&#8217;t even go to mass because they don&#8217;t believe any of the priests have valid sacraments. That&#8217;s a mess. Like that is an obvious repudiation of the visibility of the Church. When you&#8217;ve created this church in your own mind that&#8217;s so small you can&#8217;t find anyone who&#8217;s part of it. That&#8217;s not what Jesus gives us. He gives us a mustard seed that grows into a mustard tree. It&#8217;s big, it&#8217;s obvious. It&#8217;s the kingdom of God. Daniel 2. It&#8217;s a stone that forms into a mountain. Like that&#8217;s the prophecy that we&#8217;re given. And so that&#8217;s state of a contest. SSPX is more complicated because they will say, yes, the Pope is the Pope. And they will say some of the things he&#8217;s doing are wrong, some of the non infallible teachings are wrong. That by itself there&#8217;s some amount of that that can be fair play. Like we don&#8217;t claim everything that the Pope says or does is infallible. You wouldn&#8217;t have to have standards for infallibility if you just said everything&#8217;s infallible now. You should approach everything with humility, that you should be ready to submit your intellect and will towards even the fallible teachings. But they are not infallible. So you could have something where you say, well, this was not very well formulated, etc. Your default assumption should be the Church is right and I&#8217;m wrong. But it may be a situation where you say, I&#8217;m not sure, you know, how the Church comes out this way on this issue or that issue. And it might be something that needs greater formulation, greater clarity. Because what&#8217;s frequently the case is a thing is said that can be read in one of two ways or one of three ways, and people will get upset. And it turns out there&#8217;s a perfectly legitimate sense of it, and people were maybe just misinterpreting. So with Vatican ii, like, the teachings on religious liberty are very much like this. Like, how do we harmonize these teachings? There are good ways of reading these documents, there&#8217;s bad ways of reading the documents. And so sometimes people are worried. And the problem isn&#8217;t the documents themselves, it&#8217;s the way that they&#8217;ve been construed or misunderstood. So we should strive to take a charitable interpretation of any of this stuff, the same way we would with anything. There are Bible passages you might get to and say, I don&#8217;t know how to make sense of that passage. But hopefully you don&#8217;t say, I guess, you know, I&#8217;m just going to chuck the Bible. I don&#8217;t need that anymore. You would say, I probably just don&#8217;t understand. So I would encourage the same kind of docility of saying, there&#8217;s probably more here than I get. I&#8217;m probably misunderstanding it, or maybe I&#8217;m wrong. So that&#8217;s kind of the domain SSPX is in in some regards. But the deeper issue is one of just outright disobedience. So this has come up just this past week where they&#8217;ve announced that they&#8217;re planning to ordain new bishops without the approval of the Pope. And this will incur an automatic excommunication for everyone who participates in it. And that&#8217;s just a schismatic action, because you like abusing sacramental authority in this way, which is what this is. When the Pope doesn&#8217;t want you to do this and you decide you&#8217;re just going to go around him to create bishops that are more in keeping with what you want the bishops to look like, and they are not bishops of any diocese because they don&#8217;t have any jurisdiction, you&#8217;re creating this. This spiritually chaotic situation that that truly is a schismatic act. So there&#8217;s some ambiguity as to whether the SSPX are schismatics or not. With this action, the leaders involved will be very clearly schismatics and very clearly excommunicated for it. So that&#8217;s the kind of situation that we&#8217;re in right now. If you imagine, like city of a contest, they&#8217;re divorced from the church. Sspx it&#8217;s more like they&#8217;re separated but not fully divorced. But with this act, they&#8217;re going to be doing something that breaches union in a. In a very big way.

Are SSPX Priests No Longer Catholic?

&#8220;<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/modernism">Modernism</a>&#8221; is the charge against the Church in many parts of the internet. In fact, it is common to find Catholics <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cal/tba-49">attacking the Second Vatican Council</a> as modernist heresy. So what is modernism, and has it infected the Church? Father Sebastian Walshe, author of <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/secrets-from-heaven/">Secrets From Heaven</a> and <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/always-a-catholic-how-to-keep-your-kids-in-the-faith-for-life-and-bring-them-back-if-they-have-strayed/">Always a Catholic</a>, explains modernism and engages with the charge of modernism against the Church.

Modernism

Kyle Washut, president of Wyoming Catholic College, joins us to discuss the difficulties of evangelization and apologetics in the plugged-in era. He explains why, if you want to come to WCC, you won’t need to bring your phone.

Apologetics in a Digitized Age

The fact of suffering poses real intellectual challenges to the Christian message. So how do we share the gospel of a loving God, when suffering seems to reflect so poorly on him? Mark Giszcack, author of Suffering: What Every Catholic Should Know, joins us.

Suffering 101

<div>Why did St. Thomas Aquinas’s feast day get moved?</div><div>St. Thomas Aquinas&#8217;s traditional feast day was March 7, the day he died. However, that day almost always falls during Lent. The Church moved his feast day to January 28, the day his remains were placed in their final resting place, so that his feast day would not be superseded by Lent.
When a saint is of particular importance to the universal Church, as is Aquinas, the Church may assign a date that doesn&#8217;t conflict with major feasts so as to ensure the saint can be honored throughout the Church. (This is, by the way, also why St. John Paul II was assigned a feast day in October. The day he died, April 2, always falls during Lent, Holy Week, or Easter.)
</div>

Why Was Aquinas’s Feast Day Moved?

“Are you baptized in the Holy Ghost?”
This is a question you’ll often hear if you hang around <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/the-catholic-charismatic-renewal">Charismatic Christians</a>—whether Protestant or Catholic. What they usually mean is, “Have you experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit in a powerful way?” Often they think a sign of this “baptism” is the outward manifestation of certain spiritual gifts, like speaking in tongues.
But for Catholics, the language of “being baptized in the Holy Spirit” need not be reduced to a subjective experience that we may have of him or the ability to speak in strange tongues. It refers to a sacrament: namely, the sacrament of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/what-does-confirmation-do">confirmation</a>.
In Acts 1:4-5, Jesus instructs the apostles not to leave Jerusalem until they receive the promise of the Father to be “baptized with the Holy Spirit,” which, according to St. Peter in Acts 11:15-16, refers to the descent of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost (recorded in Acts 2).
Now, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the sacrament of confirmation “in a certain way perpetuates the grace of Pentecost in the Church” (1288). This is in Acts 8 when Peter and John lay hands on the newly baptized Christians in Samaria and give them a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, similar to that of the Christians in Acts 2 on the day of Pentecost.
If Pentecost was the event where the early Christians received their “baptism” of the Holy Spirit, and the laying on of hands in confirmation perpetuates the graces of Pentecost, it follows that to be confirmed is to be “baptized the Holy Spirit.” By by means of the sacrament we receive the same outpouring of the Spirit that allows us courageously to spread and defend the faith in word and deed.
Furthermore, just because some confirmed Christians might not have <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/who-understands-those-tongues">the gift of tongues</a>, this doesn’t mean they haven’t been “baptized in the Holy Spirit,” since, according to St. Paul in 1 Cor. 12:30, not all members of Christ’s Body have this gift.
So, to the question, “Have you been baptized in the Holy Ghost?” Christians who’ve been validly confirmed can say with some charismatic flair, “Amen, brotha!”

What “Baptized In the Holy Ghost” Means

In this video, Alex Jurado from Voice Of Reason responds to a caller who asks if there is any weight to the claim that St. Jerome, first translator of the Bible, agreed with the Protestant canon of scripture in a conversation hosted by Cy Kellett.
Transcript:
Caller: So my question is, oftentimes I&#8217;ll see Protestant apologists and they&#8217;ll use, you know, very prominent Catholic scholars, like they&#8217;ll use St. Jerome or they&#8217;ll use Cardinal Tommaso Vio Kayetan, the Catholic cardinal who was very anti-Protestant and was a very vocal critic of the Protestant quote unquote Reformation. They&#8217;ll often use them as sources to try and support the 66-book canon. So I was wondering, what are your thoughts on that?
And if I could ask, just a really quick follow-up, how do you respond to Protestants that will try to say that they&#8217;ll try to bring up, you know, contradictions in the Deuterocanon? Like they&#8217;ll try to say Tobit promotes witchcraft or they&#8217;ll try to say that Judith 1:1 is a historical error.
Alex: Sure. Really good question. So let me start off by saying that, you know, my dear Protestant friends, you know, Protestant apologists, they really need to retire the Jerome argument because it just doesn&#8217;t work anymore. And they also don&#8217;t want to appeal to Cardinal Kayetan because Cardinal Kayetan is no friend of theirs either.
And I&#8217;ll explain why. The reason that you don&#8217;t want to appeal to Jerome is because Jerome, and it seems like a lot of Protestants don&#8217;t know that Jerome actually changed his mind. Jerome actually changed his mind twice on the inspiration of the Deuterocanon. What a lot of people don&#8217;t know is that Jerome, early in his career, before he was commissioned by Pope Saint Damasus to translate the Bible into Latin, he actually used the Deuterocanonical writings as inspired scripture, and he calls them inspired scripture. He&#8217;ll cite them and he&#8217;ll quote them and he&#8217;ll say it is written in God&#8217;s divine word and then he&#8217;ll quote one of the Deuterocanonical books.
It wasn&#8217;t until after Jerome was commissioned by Pope Saint Damasus to translate the Bible into Latin that he actually went to go learn biblical Hebrew from Jewish rabbis. And it&#8217;s in talking to the Jewish rabbis that the Jewish rabbis told him that these extra books that the Christians had in their Bible, that they had no Hebrew basis for them, that St. Jerome posited this idea or this theory which really was just speculation, that perhaps those seven Deuterocanonical books didn&#8217;t belong in the Bible because they don&#8217;t have Hebrew originals.
But here&#8217;s the problem with that. First of all, we actually now know that the vast majority of the seven Deuterocanonical books, five of the seven actually were originally written in Hebrew. And as a matter of fact, St. Jerome himself actually tells us this. He&#8217;ll tell us that the book of Baruch, Tobit, and Judith, that those three books were originally written in Hebrew and in Aramaic, which is why he actually did translate them when he was writing the Latin Vulgate.
But we also now know that the book of First Maccabees and also Sirach, that those books were also originally written in Hebrew. The only books that we know were originally written in Greek were Second Maccabees and Wisdom. So if we actually use St. Jerome&#8217;s standard, the standard that he posited, then Protestants have to explain why they don&#8217;t have those five books that were originally written in Hebrew if we&#8217;re using St. Jerome&#8217;s standard.
But then a further problem, it&#8217;s complicated when towards the end of St. Jerome&#8217;s life, around the year 394, is when he actually starts using those plural canonical books again as inspired scripture. So the reason that Protestants appealed to St. Jerome is because he is the only Church Father ever, the only Church Father that ever called the Deuterocanonical books apocryphal, meaning that he said that those books were uninspired, that they weren&#8217;t inspired.
However, he changed his mind again towards the end of his life. And do you know why he changed his mind? St. Jerome changed his mind because the North African Council, starting with Hippo in 393, said that those books were indeed inspired. And it was in 394, the very next year, when St. Jerome in his writings started citing and quoting those Deuterocanonical books as inspired scripture.
So at the end of his life, he did hold to their inspiration. It was only during a small period of his life where he questioned the inspiration or even said that they were probably apocryphal. But the question that we have for Protestants is why are you going with what Jerome said during this, you know, 15-year period of his life? But you&#8217;re ignoring what he said before that period and then you&#8217;re ignoring what he said after that period.
Especially because in one of his writings, he says that everybody needs to follow the Pope in all things. Pope Innocent, he said that those seven Deuterocanonical books were indeed inspired scripture, and St. Jerome followed suit.
Now, so following St. Jerome, appealing to St. Jerome just doesn&#8217;t work anymore because it&#8217;s ignoring so much context. And again, the standard that St. Jerome himself was using we now know was wrong because we know that the vast majority of those books were indeed written in Hebrew. But even then the question is, why is that the standard? Why is it that all of the Old Testament books have to be written in Hebrew and only Hebrew?
Because if we&#8217;re using that standard, then it doesn&#8217;t work when we look at the New Testament books, because we know that the New Testament books were written in Greek and that&#8217;s the inspired language of the New Testament. So then the question is this standard of only the Old Testament can be inspired in Hebrew. Where does the Bible say that? Does the Bible say that all of the Old Testament books have to be only in Hebrew? The Bible doesn&#8217;t say that.
So it&#8217;s actually a tradition of men that is a non-biblical tradition that Protestants are holding to. And they&#8217;re ignoring everything else that St. Jerome said in between, including what he said at the end of his life when he started using them as inspired scripture following the teachings of the Pope and of the Church Universal. Because 393 and the Council of Hippo, 397, the Council of Carthage, and the decrees of Pope Galatius and the decrees of Pope Innocent, they all said that those books were indeed inspired.
So that&#8217;s why appealing to Jerome just doesn&#8217;t work. Appealing to Cardinal Kayetan doesn&#8217;t work either. Because when Protestants appeal to him, it&#8217;s clear that they&#8217;ve actually never read what Cardinal Kayetan actually said. Because Cardinal Kayetan also said that the Deuterocanon of the New Testament also wasn&#8217;t Scripture either.
So Cardinal Kayetan said that Hebrews, James, Jude, Second Peter, Second and Third John, and Revelation did not belong in the Bible either for the same reasons that he said that the Old Testament Deuterocanon didn&#8217;t belong in the Bible either. So why is it that Protestants are listening to what Cardinal Kayetan said about the Old Testament canon, but they&#8217;re ignoring what he said about the New Testament canon? It&#8217;s a huge inconsistency.
Also, we have to know that Cardinal Kayetan said the reason that he said that these books should be removed, especially when it comes to the Old Testament, is because he actually was appealing to Jerome, ignoring what Jerome said at the beginning of his career as a theologian and at the end of his career. But Cardinal Kayetan actually said that all of the councils of the Church, that those councils need to conform to what Jerome taught during this specific period in his life. He actually was teaching that Jerome was infallible only during this period of his life.
So it&#8217;s completely inconsistent. And Protestants who appeal to him are ignoring what he said about the New Testament Deuterocanon as well. So Cardinal Kayetan is on a whole other extreme and he shouldn&#8217;t be appealed to either, because clearly there are other things that he said that we wouldn&#8217;t hold to.
And if Cardinal Kayetan is right and he says that St. Jerome is infallible, right, let&#8217;s say that St. Jerome is infallible. Well, St. Jerome had all of these other uniquely Catholic beliefs that Protestants reject to this day as well. So it is completely inconsistent. It just doesn&#8217;t work. Protestants need to retire the argument from Jerome and the argument from Cardinal Kayetan.
And if they want to say that the Deuterocanonical books have certain historical errors in them, well, there are atheists that will actually say the same thing about the proto-canonical books, that there are historical errors in the proto-canonical books. But all of the errors of both the proto-canonical books or the alleged errors of the proto-canonical books and the Deuterocanonical books, they&#8217;ve actually already been answered and settled.
So there are no errors in any of these books. But when Protestants want to point to alleged or supposed errors in the Deuterocanon, they&#8217;re actually, you know, not being consistent because then we could point them to the alleged errors in the proto-canon. And if they&#8217;re able to find the answers to these alleged contradictions in the proto-canon, why can&#8217;t they do the same for the Deuterocanon? Especially because we know that there are indeed responses to these alleged errors of the Deuterocanonical books.
Cy: So, yeah, so that was your answer to his second part, which was about Tobit and Judith. Right? In other words, especially he was saying, I think the historical error in the beginning of Judith naming the wrong king. But the answer to that is no. This has been dealt with. There is no error there. And you need to apply the same standard you apply when you say, oh, is there an error about King David or something like that in the books that we all share an acceptance of.
Alex: Right? Because non-Christians will be quick to point out that even the proto-canon has all of these alleged errors and contradictions or historical inaccuracies. But if the Protestants that hold of the proto-canon are able to explain those and actually give a good, you know, true response for those, why can&#8217;t they do the same thing to the Deuterocanonical books? Especially because we know there are answers that exist.
And even actually, the Church Fathers noticed this too, long before Protestants, long before Protestants ever pointed out these alleged contradictions. St. Thomas Aquinas was talking about them too, and he was able to explain them away as well, or not explain them away. He was able to respond and give answers.
Cy: Yeah. All right, Ignatius, thanks very much. Let&#8217;s go to Sean in Austin, Texas.

Was the First Bible Protestant or Catholic?

How do you know when God answers your prayer vs when he doesn’t?

Am I over-spiritualizing my situation? I’ve been diagnosed with a disease that’s completely changed my life. What should I do?

Most of my life I’ve felt alone. I’m married and now have a tendency to want to be alone, lazy, and unhappy. What am I battling?

Hyper-spiritualization

<div>If a person is a catechumen going through RCIA and passes away before receiving the sacrament of baptism, is he saved?</div><div>A catechumen who dies prior to water baptism is considered to have received the baptism of desire at the moment of their death.
<blockquote>For catechumens who die before their baptism, their explicit desire to receive it, together with repentance for their sins, and charity, assures them the salvation that they were not able to receive through the sacrament (Catechism, 1259).</blockquote>
</div>

What If a Catechumen Dies Before Baptism?

<div>Can magic be a central theme in a novel? (Not promoting witchcraft, of course.)</div><div>By and large, the Catholic Church has no position on such things. Some Church officials have had <a href="http://www.christianpost.com/news/vatican-slams-harry-potter-as-wrong-kind-of-hero-30859/">negative opinions</a> and some have had <a href="http://www.osservatoreromano.va/portal/dt?JSPTabContainer.setSelected=JSPTabContainer%2FDetail&amp;last=false=&amp;path=/news/cultura/2011/159q11-L-ultima-battaglia-di-Harry-Potter.html&amp;title=Harry%20Potter%27s%20last%20battle&amp;locale=en">positive opinions</a> of the most famous recent magical books, the Harry Potter series. It comes down to prudent judgment.
Ultimately, we need simply to ask ourselves if the story is advancing values that are contrary to our faith. If so, avoid it. If not, feel free. Reasonable and well-meaning people will disagree, but we should be asking the same question.
</div>

Is Magic in Stories OK?

Jimmy Akin describes the basic claim of the &#8220;seamless garment&#8221; philosophy and explains its strengths and its weaknesses in the realm of Catholic social justice.

Issues With the Seamless Garment Philosophy

A Disabled Child is Not a Punishment

Does Catholicism teach works save you?

Who is God referring to in Genesis 1:26 when He says, &#8220;Let us make man in our image&#8221;? Is it the Trinity, angels, or something else? In this video, Jimmy Akin explores the meaning behind this passage, examining whether the common explanation of the &#8220;royal we&#8221; aligns with Hebrew language and tradition.
Transcript:
Um, I was listening to the first reading this morning, and the, um, it was talking about the creation of man, and all of a sudden, it changed from singular to plural, where it said, &#8220;God—then God said, &#8216;Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish and sea,&#8217; etc.&#8221; So I was just wondering, um, on your take on how it went from singular to plural.
Okay, okay. Well, one theory that you hear some folks propose is that this is the Royal We. The Royal We is used when someone of very high authority—often a monarch, which is why it&#8217;s called the Royal We—speaks of themselves in the plural. And a famous example of this is the phrase attributed to Queen Victoria, where she allegedly said, &#8220;We are not amused,&#8221; meaning &#8220;I am not amused.&#8221; But because she was using the Royal We, um, she said it in the plural.
And so some people have said, &#8220;Oh, well, there&#8217;s no one else here at this time, so God must be using the Royal We.&#8221; Well, okay, that&#8217;s a proposal you commonly hear. But the problem is, the Royal We exists in Latin, and it exists in English, and it exists in a few other languages, but it does not exist in Hebrew. There is no Royal We in Hebrew. So, um, so God is not actually talking of himself as a single individual using a plural, uh, using plural pronouns.
Um, so who might he be talking to? Well, some people have seen here an allusion to the Holy Trinity. And if you want to say that within the spiritual sense of the text, there&#8217;s an allusion to the Holy Trinity here, I think that&#8217;s totally fine. But the Holy Trinity had not been clearly revealed in the Old Testament period. And so that makes it unlikely that that&#8217;s what is the literal sense of the text, which is the one that the human author of Genesis would have been aware of.
Okay, so what we need to do to figure out who God is referring to here is say, well, who would the Hebrew author of Genesis have understood him to be talking to? Who are the—who&#8217;s available in the Hebrew worldview for God to be talking to and saying this stuff to about &#8220;Let us make man in our image,&#8221; and so forth?
Um, and the answer is pretty clear, because even though the Trinity had not been revealed in Old Testament times—certainly not in a clear way—the idea that God was all alone in heaven was not part of the Hebrew worldview. Um, God was depicted as a Heavenly King ruling over creation. And any king has his court. And so, uh, Hebrews understood that, yeah, God is the creator, he&#8217;s at the top of everything, but he&#8217;s like any king—he&#8217;s going to have a heavenly court around him.
And in scholarly literature, this court is called the Divine Council. And today we would refer to the members of the Divine Council as angels. Um, that term was a little more restricted—I mean, technically, an angel is a messenger. So angels or messengers are part of the Divine Council, but they&#8217;re like the low-ranking guys. They just run messages here and there. Um, there are much higher officials in the Divine Council that, you know, aren&#8217;t—they&#8217;re not just the little nobodies at the bottom. Um, and they wouldn&#8217;t have been called angels in the, in the Old Testament, but they are today because language changes over time.
So the natural understanding of, well, who would the Hebrew author of Genesis have envisioned God talking to? It would have been the Divine Council. And so that&#8217;s who God&#8217;s talking to here.
Now, that raises a related question of, did members of the Divine Council actually do anything, or did God do it all himself? And you might suppose, well, if he says, &#8220;Let&#8217;s do this,&#8221; you might suppose, um, that it—more than just God is going to be involved in the creation of man. But that is not a requirement of the language, because I could say—let&#8217;s say, let&#8217;s say Cy Kellett and I are getting together after the show, and I&#8217;m planning on buying dinner for us. And I say, &#8220;Cy, let&#8217;s get pizza.&#8221;
All I&#8217;m asking for Cy to do here is consent. I&#8217;m going to pay for the pizza. I&#8217;m going to order the pizza. I&#8217;m just associating Cy with my plan to get pizza, which I, of course, know he&#8217;s going to agree to.
So, so, um, yeah, so, so that seems to be what God is doing here. He&#8217;s using—just like I used just now—what you could call an associative we, where I&#8217;m associating Cy with my action of buying pizza. It appears God is using an associative we with the Divine Council, not expecting the Divine Council to do anything. He&#8217;s the Creator, and the text makes it clear that God, not the Divine Council, created man.
But, um, he&#8217;s associating the Divine Council with his own action of creating man. And so it appears that God is talking to the Divine Council, and that he&#8217;s using an associative we in talking about his plan to create man.
Okay, Jennifer?
Yes, thank you! I think my puppy agrees too.
Oh, you—oh, good! Thank you so much.
All right, a Bible-loving puppy! Thank you. Glad to have your puppy&#8217;s approval.

Were There Multiple “gods” In Genesis 1?

As Catholics, we are rightly reminded that in the Church’s social teaching, there is a preferential option for the poor. This idea reflects the canon law obligation for us, in the first place, to do all we can within our means to assist the poor and most vulnerable (<a href="https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/cornwall/en/hearings/exhibits/Frank_Morrisey/pdf/27_Canon_Law.pdf#:~:text=They%20are%20also%20obliged%20to%20promote%20social%20justice,poor%20from%20their%20own%20resources.%20Can.%20223%20%C2%A71.">can. 222 §2</a>). One of the most important ways to answer this obligation, in addition to material assistance, is to pray regularly for the poor.
Recent data show that the economic gap between the rich and the poor in our society has widened over the past few decades, and that expansion has sparked conflict. Added to this longer-term trend, the recent COVID pandemic only exacerbated the divide, as those with plenty were able to keep their jobs and work from an extra room converted into a home office, for example, whereas many with hourly jobs found themselves with no job at all when their employers shut down, often permanently.
In the Gospels, Our Lord speaks often of the dignity of the poor and our responsibility for their care. He goes even farther when, in several well known instances, he speaks pointedly to the rich and unflinchingly lays out <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-a-rich-person-get-to-heaven">the difficult path to heaven</a> ahead of them.
But is open conflict between the classes—the “haves” and the “have-nots”—what Our Lord had in mind? On the spiritual level, one thing that unites us all is our need for prayers. Who among us can say we are completely, or even mostly, self-sufficient? On the contrary, Jesus says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
With that in mind, consider the following questions:
How often, if ever, do we pray for the rich—for those who experience material plenty? And if we are affluent ourselves, do we pray for God’s assistance as fervently and as often as we should?
Hold on a second, we might retort. If indeed we should pray for the rich, does that mean we should ask God to provide the wealthy with greater abundance? Prosperity gospel preachers like Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, and Joyce Meyer might say sure, but no, that’s not at all what we are talking about.
From the beginning, spiritual warfare has been a central reality of Christian life—perhaps today more than ever—regardless of whether we recognize it and how much wealth we have. Given the general human tendency toward sin, all of us will be tempted by any number of vices. But if we do not have wealth, we may also be tempted to envy or jealousy—not only resenting the rich, but even wishing misfortune on them. Envy is a cardinal sin, so this is clearly not what God desires from us.
On the other hand, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/was-jesus-wealthy">the wealthy among us</a> might be tempted by different sins, like pride, vanity, and outright disregard for our fellow man. But consider how the rich succumbing to these temptations might have an outsized effect on society. Got an extra million dollars in your pocket? Well, Satan says, “Forget the poor. Buy a new yacht!” Own a prime piece of real estate? The Deceiver cajoles, “You don’t really want to donate that. Maximize your profit. And buy an even bigger yacht!”
These may seem like solutions looking for real problems, but there are significant implications of the wealthy losing such spiritual battles, above and beyond the ultimate destination of their souls. What could that million dollars, donated, have meant to a struggling pro-life ministry? Or that piece of land for a church bursting at the seams, needing both a new building and a place to put it?
Certainly, let us first pray for the poor, whose needs may well involve life or death and include such tragic hardships as homelessness, hunger, and untreated illness. But thereafter, let us also pray for the wealthy, that they might be strong against the temptation to selfishness and so use their largesse for the furtherance of the kingdom of God and the benefit of their fellow man.
Such a use of wealth in the context of the Church has brought great spiritual fruit over the centuries, as we can see in the smattering of canonized kings and queens—the heroic St. Louis IX of France among them—and some of the world’s great cathedrals and basilicas built primarily because of the generosity of the “haves.” And that’s not to mention how the wealth and influence of certain of Jesus’ followers enabled them to play pivotal roles in salvation history. For example, Joseph of Arimathea had the means to buy a tomb for Our Lord and the cachet to petition Pontius Pilate for the delivery of Jesus’ body. It is quite possible that right stewardship of significant wealth, the owner of which is seeking to use it according to the will of God, could have an even greater impact in the modern world than it ever had before.
Finally, for those of us who have few (if any) material needs, it is a given that we must pray for the poor first. But afterward, let us pray for ourselves, just as fervently as we might have done before we had wealth. Any Christian, frankly, who feels he does not need God’s help—even if it comes from a well-intentioned but mistaken desire for the Lord to “spend his time with those who need it more”—is putting his eternal destination at risk. God’s grace is available and necessary for all, though it can take different forms depending on our state in life. Pray for spiritual poverty at a level of fervor that matches our material wealth. Pray for the wisdom and courage that will allow us to use a significant portion of our resources for the benefit of our neighbor. Pray for humility, a virtue of which most of us could use more.
And let us pray for one another, in charity, regardless of our means or lack thereof. May we remain steadfast against the sin of envy on the one hand and the sin of selfishness on the other. The Lord desires that all men spend eternity with him in heaven. And we can not only strive for that ultimate goal ourselves, but also help each other get there.

The Rich Need Prayers, Too

Are the gospel accounts of Jesus&#8217; resurrection reliable? Or did the Apostles make the whole thing up? Karlo Broussard discusses why we can believe the gospels when it comes to their account of the resurrection narrative.
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Transcript:
Often when confronted with the apostles’ claim that Jesus rose from the dead people ask if they made this stuff up. And I don’t fault them because ‘a man rising from the dead’ is an extraordinary claim. A healthy skepticism is in order when it comes to such things.
So, did they make it up? I don’t think so, and here are a few reasons why.
First, the early Christians had nothing to gain and everything to lose in lying about Jesus’ Resurrection. As Paul argues in 1Corinthians 15, if they still believed in God, then they would be bearing false witness, in which case they would merit damnation. Not much to gain there! Paul then considers what they might gain from the lie if they were unbelievers and didn’t believe in God or the Resurrection. His conclusion? Persecution and death! Having nothing to gain from the lie makes the early Christian testimony very credible.
The second reason I don’t think the early Christians were making this stuff up is they include women as the first witnesses. This detail wouldn’t have served the apostles story well since, according to first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, the testimony of women in first-century Judaism wasn’t considered reliable. If the Gospel writers were fabricating this story, you would think they would have chosen men—not women—to be the first witnesses.
So, while it’s natural to have a healthy form of skepticism when faced with the early Christian claims about Jesus’ resurrection, we can be sure they were sincere and weren’t making it up.
If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com.
For Catholic Answers, I’m Karlo Broussard. Thanks for watching.

Is The Resurrection A Lie?

Does St. Paul ACTUALLY disprove the Eucharist?

Here in this final week of Advent, our readings turn to the big stories of the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth. This year, the focus is on St. Joseph in Matthew 1. This gives us an opportunity, a little bit before Christmas, to reflect on the circumstances leading to the Nativity. Though the Gospel writers do not spend a lot of time on these questions—only Matthew and Luke talk about them directly—the scenes we do get are quite memorable and have always figured prominently in the Church’s worship and teaching.
Matthew frequently shows a particular interest in questions of prophecy and continuity. He begins his book with a genealogy! It is hardly the kind of action-packed beginning we get in Mark, or the poetic heights of theology that we get in John, or for that matter the somewhat cryptic beginning of Luke with Zechariah in the Temple. After the genealogy, we get this matter-of-fact introduction to the story proper: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.”
The fact of Jesus being conceived in Mary without a man was no less incredible two thousand years ago than it is today. Sometimes modern people can be painfully naïve about this, scornfully imagining that ancient peoples somehow did not understand the way nature works. Judging by our falling birth rates in the West and our constant attempts to redefine human biology, I think rather the opposite is the case.)
So it is not so much that they found the Virgin Birth easier to believe than we do, but that, in light of Christ’s resurrection from the dead, this detail about his origin was a relatively minor thing. More often the modern skepticism about this is less about a disbelief in anything supernatural than it is a cynicism about human relationships—or at times it stems from that strange Protestant overcompensating negativity about Mary that, in fear of overemphasizing her role, zealously removes from her agency even what Scripture clearly gives her. (Case in point: we recently saw on display at a store a nativity set complete with every figure of the scene . . . except Mary and Joseph. It’s almost as if some people would prefer to believe that Jesus fell down to earth in a space shuttle than that he was born of a virgin who willingly cooperated in the miracle.)
But why the Virgin Birth? The early Church felt little need to justify the fact. But there is a long line of speculation on why it was fitting. This is a common theological way of suggesting how something makes sense and is somehow harmonious with reason, even while stopping short of suggesting that it constitutes some kind of necessary proof. Arguments from fittingness are often a form of speculative wonder; rather than forcing the mind into a certain reason, they delight the imagination.
I think some of these descriptions of fittingness are better than others. Many of the Fathers had a somewhat dim view of even chaste marital relations, taking to heart the Apostle’s praise of celibacy. In some cases, like St. Augustine, this comes from their own bad experience and wandering ways. Whatever their motivations, they thought it would have been inherently risky for the Lord to have been conceived in the ordinary way. In light of the now formally defined teaching about Mary’s immaculate conception—i.e., that she was preserved from original sin even though she was conceived by her parents in the ordinary way—we have to be cautious about this line of thinking. But certainly we can recognize that there is some truth in the Fathers’ instinct here to recognize sexuality as one of the most obvious ways that people can fall into sin.
Apart from that general suspicion of marital relations, there is in the tradition a long line of thinking about the meaning of the Virgin Birth. Adam, it is said, was conceived without man or woman; Eve was conceived only from a man; other human beings are conceived from a man and a woman; therefore, it is a sign of completion that the new and more perfect Adam would be conceived only from a woman. So that’s another idea about fittingness.
Perhaps the most enduring and, I think, compelling reason for the Virgin Birth centers on the full revelation of the Trinity. Jesus is the incarnate divine Son. His Father is God the Father. In fact, this relationship of filiation and paternity is the only way we can identify and distinguish the persons from one another, being otherwise absolutely equal in power, wisdom, goodness, and all the other divine attributes. So it would not be fitting—indeed, it would be somewhat scandalous—to have any confusion about who is the Father of the Son. Mary is his Mother, and there is no confusion about that. Joseph is his foster father or his guardian.
Tradition often speaks of Mary as the new Eve, reversing the curse of Genesis 3. St. Paul speaks directly of Christ as the new Adam. But St. Joseph is an adamic figure as well, as Remigius writes in an ancient commentary: “Life returned by the same entrance through which death had entered in. By Adam’s disobedience we were ruined; by Joseph’s obedience we all begin to be recalled to our former condition.” Here is another quite beautiful observation about fittingness.
Again, by speaking of Mary as the new Eve, the tradition emphasizes her “yes” to God in contrast to Eve’s “no,” her obedience in response to Eve’s disobedience, her willingness to cooperate with God rather than doing her own thing. But of course Adam had a role as well—and, to be frank, it is not a flattering one. Joseph’s response to our Lady, then, is also a fitting redemption of husbands and fathers. Adam failed to guard his wife from evil. Joseph rises to the challenge of guarding his wife and her divine Son. Interestingly, Matthew doesn’t show Mary explaining herself at all. Joseph has to listen and obey God. So it’s almost as though Mary is standing back, allowing Joseph to rise to the challenge. And he is given the privilege of naming Mary’s son Jesus, which means “salvation.”
Most modern readers assume that Joseph’s desire to “put Mary away quietly” is in response to the potential scandal of her pregnancy. But an older view is that he was hesitant to marry a woman he knew to be consecrated to virginity. Origen expresses it like this: “He sought to put her away because he saw in her a great sacrament, to approach which he thought himself unworthy.” So there are two sides to Joseph’s obedience: trusting God in the face of doubts and public scandal or trusting God that he is able to fulfill this very great vocation. Perhaps it is both.
Either way, there is an amazing strength and courage from this silent figure at the heart of the Gospel story. No wonder Joseph has often been called “terror of demons”! May his prayers prepare our hearts for the coming festival, and may his love inspire us to cherish and guard the life of Christ that has been entrusted to us.

Why the Virgin Birth?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a prominent former Muslim turned vociferous critic of the Islamic religion, has now left <a href="https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/?fbclid=IwAR1lt9j9zmjWuA5HPQWen9W99yquUkyIsXNLO14ETpwi824FR4CK-9kJ6Ao_aem_AXSmtQDSe11JmDNDPXAm7JGe1Lpk_rLGtCyxOL46hLB5virj-VKU1Pxv5ubY5pB2uMI">atheism for Christianity</a>.
“In 2002,” Ali wrote this month, “I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled ‘Why I am Not a Christian.’ It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.”
Russell has long been an inspiration for atheists the world over, not just Ali. And though it may seem as though Ali has finally repudiated the reasoning of Russell’s ilk, in fact, nothing about Ali’s account of her conversion to Christianity rebuts Russell—directly, that is. Rather, Ali presents a negative or indirect apologetic.
The “negative” approach to apologetics is this: expose the disastrous consequences of an atheistic starting point, existential or political or both. Ali sounds the alarm against the global threats of “great-power authoritarianism,” “global Islamism,” and “woke ideology.” How to fight them?
<blockquote>We can’t fight off these formidable forces unless we can answer the question: what is it that unites us? The response that “God is dead!” seems insufficient. So, too, does the attempt to find solace in “the rules-based liberal international order.” The only credible answer, I believe, lies in our desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition.</blockquote>
Without Christianity—or, at least, “the Judeo-Christian tradition”—to unite us, Ali contends, we have only a bleak and hopeless tyranny to look forward to.
As an apologetical tactic, it’s important to understand both the potential usefulness and the inherent limitedness of the negative way. It is useful insofar as the consequences of no religion are of such magnitude that most people cannot bear to accept them, and so they question the starting point that produces the described result. But it is limited insofar as this approach does not show that atheism is false or that Christianity is true. Maybe a bleak, hopeless tyranny really is all the world has to offer!
Ali contends that atheism is nihilistic and absurdist. Moreover, it has been tried and found wanting: we are reaping the results of discarding Christianity, and they are seriously bad. Secularists promised us one thing; we have gotten quite another.
The negative approach is an obvious way to help the open-minded skeptic set a foot in the religious door. So what else about atheism do many, including Ali, find unpalatable?
First are the failed predictions. Most prominent is the New Atheism’s grandest promise: wipe out religion, and we’ll be living in a utopian sci-fi movie, guided by science and reason. And so who, taken in by these starry-eyed assurances, would have ever thought it believable that we could inhabit a world where discussions about “biological female penises” are on the table, and exploring bizarre sexual fantasies is just another Tuesday? I would not believe it myself, except for the fact that, well . . . <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterSinger/status/1722440246972018857">have you been on Twitter</a> (sorry, X) lately?
Ali, like many other secularists, discovered that Christianity isn’t the logic-eating monster portrayed in non-believing folklore. Rather, it’s more like the sensible friend who keeps the conversation from going off the rails, a stabilizing agent of rational thought. As an increasing number of secularists are now acknowledging, however reluctantly, the world has started to resemble a frenetic, disjointed plot line—much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only somehow worse—correlating strongly with our drift from Christian commitments. Might this be more than mere coincidence?
On the morality front, atheism invites nihilism—the rejection of objective value, meaning, and purpose. Some naturalists resist this implication, but their denial seems to be a flight into fantasy. During my time as a naturalist, nihilism struck me as the only honest, consistent option, the unavoidable consequence of a worldview driven by indifference and Darwinian forces. As atheist philosopher Michael Ruse put it in The Darwinian Paradigm, “considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction.”
Does Ali ever move from the “negative” into the “positive”? Well, there is this:
<blockquote>I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realization that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable—indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: what is the meaning and purpose of life?</blockquote>
This part is less “negative” than “without religion, we’re all gonna die,” but even here, the argument is practical, and ultimately still a negative apologetic. She suggests that Christianity is instrumental (if not indispensable) in creating and upholding a civilized, free society; absent its foundational Christian ethos, societal decay ensues. Cut the metaphysical root, and the ethical flower rots.
This line of reasoning has its strengths, since it has appealed to other prominent secularists left scratching their heads in our state of collective schizophrenia, notably Jordan Peterson. Focusing on the political or personal spiritual consequences of adopting atheism is often sufficient to pull people toward Christianity even if they lack any other reason for supposing Christianity is true. But if pragmatic concerns were the end of the story, Christianity would be far less credible, and also far less interesting. Worse for the Christian apologist employing this tool, prioritizing a belief’s utility over its truthfulness reflects the same atheistic-secular-utilitarian perspective that thinkers like Ali and Peterson are calling into suspicion. They just haven’t connected the dots yet.
This is not to presume that Ali doesn’t believe Christianity’s fundamental tenets (such as the existence of God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement)—tenets that have substantial <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/why-to-believe-in-god-simplified">rational and evidential backing</a>—or that she lacks reasons for these beliefs. However, those reasons are not evident in Ali’s essay, and so she does nothing there to directly counter the attacks of atheist critics like Bertrand Russell.
Obviously, most people do not think nihilism is true. Our commonsense intuitions cause us to rebel intensely against the idea that all our moral judgments—about the value of persons, about the inherent indignities and atrocities of slavery and genocide—are somehow on all fours with disputes about preferences of yogurt flavor. The negative approach, then, if successful, sets up the following: one worldview, atheism, forces an elimination, rather than explanation, of commonsense morality. Another worldview, Christianity, does not. Take your pick.
By itself, this indirect apologetic does not prove Christianity or the existence of God; it merely highlights the consequences, presumably catastrophic, of a godless worldview. Still, the negative way is not without merit, since many people will connect the dots, if only implicitly, as follows: the world is not meaningless, senseless, valueless—a void. So atheism cannot be true. If that’s where Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now, then more power to her, and may she take the next step in God’s time.

Goodbye, New Atheism

<div>Do you have to be Catholic to be an altar server?</div><div>Yes, an altar server normally is one who is baptized and can receive Holy Communion. Liturgical roles are reserved for those who are in communion with the Catholic Church. Perhaps an exception can be made for a baptized Christian at a funeral or wedding of a Catholic relative, but this would evidently not be an habitual practice.
</div>

Must Altar Servers Be Catholic?

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:17 that Christ did not send him to baptize. Does this mean that baptism is not necessary for salvation? Karlo Broussard gives the reason why the answer is no and explains what Paul meant.

Is Baptism Necessary For Salvation?

<div>What is adoptionism?</div><div><a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/adoptionism">Adoptionists</a> claim Jesus was merely a man God adopted and made to be his divine Son (hence the term) but that he is not eternal with the Father. Paul of Samosata first held this view, and he was promptly deposed from his bishopric by a local synod of seventy clerics. However, Paul was backed by the powerful Queen of Zenobia, who ruled the Palmyrene Empire that stretched across Egypt, Judea, Edessa, and Antioch, and he refused to give up his rule.
His fortunes changed in A.D. 272 when the Roman Emperor Aurelian conquered the Palmyrene Empire, which resulted in the first destruction of the library of Alexandria (something for which Christians are often erroneously blamed). Aurelian was then petitioned to adjudicate the case involving Paul. Eusebius says he deferred to the judgment of the Church in Rome, which is evidence that even secular authorities understood the primacy of the successor of St. Peter and the authority he possessed. Paul of Samosata was deposed.
</div>

What is adoptionism?

<div>Why did God punish David and Bathsheba’s innocent child with death?</div><div>This tragic event is addressed in 2 Samuel 12. Scripture explains this phenomena as the iniquity of the fathers being visited upon their children to the third or fourth generation (e.g., Exod. 34:7; Num. 14:18; Deut. 5:9). Scripture also says that the conduct of good parents redounds to the thousandth generation (Exod. 20:4-6). We see the former played out in modern times when children who grow up fatherless because of a delinquent father, or who grow up with an abusive father, tend to suffer more than those who are spared such an upbringing. Similarly for children whose mothers are drug addicts, as they are more likely to be harmed by birth defects.
These are the sad consequences of free will exercised badly.
Regarding David and Bathsheba, they are to blame for the child’s death, not God. Similarly, by virtue of original sin, every merely human child, save for the Blessed Mother, is subject to the contraction of original sin, the preeminent way in which the sins of the father (Adam) are visited upon their offspring (see CCC 404). So it is not unjust for death to be visited them by God (see Rom. 6:23).
Finally, just because a child like David and Bathsheba’s dies in infancy doesn’t mean God has abandoned them. Death doesn’t have the last word with God, and the early death of David and Bathsheba’s child—as with the deaths of Egyptian firstborn just prior to Israel’s exodus—does not necessarily portend their eternal destiny. We commend them all to God’s mercy, and we heartened by Scripture that God sent his only divine Son because he loves and wants to save us all (John 3:16-17, 1 Tim. 2:4, 2 Pet. 3:9).
</div>

Why Punish Innocent Offspring?

Are we too Catholic?

<div>Is chicken broth considered meat?</div><div>No, it is not considered meat.
The USCCB&#8217;s <a href="http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year/lent/questions-and-answers-about-lent.cfm">Questions and Answers About Lenten Practices</a>:
Abstinence laws consider that meat comes only from animals such as chickens, cows, sheep or pigs—all of which live on land. Birds are also considered meat. Abstinence does not include meat juices and liquid foods made from meat. Thus, such foods as chicken broth, consomme, soups cooked or flavored with meat, meat gravies or sauces, as well as seasonings or condiments made from animal fat are technically not forbidden. However, moral theologians have traditionally taught that we should abstain from all animal-derived products (except foods such as gelatin, butter, cheese and eggs, which do not have any meat taste).
</div>

Does Chicken Broth Break a Meat Fast?

<div>Why can’t same-sex couples adopt?</div><div>There are many reasons that we could give, such as how <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610">studies show that same-sex relationships have negative effects on children</a>, but suffice it to say the fundamental reason is that it presents the adopted child with a false view of human sexual relationships. It teaches a child that it’s okay to have romantic relationships with members of the same sex.
But such relationships are <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/for-goodness-sake">contrary to our human good</a>. Consequently, it does grave harm to children to bring them up in an environment where such relationships are promoted as a moral good. Rather than providing the child with proper human formation, which is the duty of every parent (whether biological or adoptive), it provides malformation.
This might sound unjust to some. But it’s unjust only if same-sex sexual relationships are morally good. In that case, there would be nothing wrong in principle with a same-sex couple adopting and raising a child. And to oppose a same-sex couple from adopting a child would be unjust.
But such relationships are not morally good. Therefore, there is no way in principle that it could be good for a same-sex couple to adopt a child. To oppose a same-sex couple adopting a child is no more of an injustice than it is to oppose a couple that has had a history of abusing children.
We must look out for the well-being of children. And since an environment where same-sex romantic relationships are promoted as good is not ordered to the well-being of a child, it ought to be avoided.
</div>

Why Same-Sex Couples Shouldn’t Adopt

Candlemas, the Presentation, the Purification. There are three significantly different names for this feast in the Latin Church. The main events, given in our Gospel reading, center on our Lord’s entrance into the Temple as a child—his presentation as the firstborn son, as well as Our Lady’s ritual purification after childbirth. As a result, the feast has traditionally emphasized two further theological notes behind these two events: first, the integrity of our human nature or substance in the Son of God, which comes up in our reading from Hebrews, and second, the preservation of Mary’s virginity even after childbirth.
To these four mysteries, we then add two more. Some Eastern Christians call this day the Meeting in the Temple—first with Simeon and then with Anna. Our tally now comes to six mysteries. Next, from Simeon we get a prophecy about Jesus’ passion and Mary’s sorrow. Eight. Lastly, in Simeon’s exuberant song, the Nunc dimittis, we find a ninth aspect—light. Christ is the light of the world, and so we bless and light candles.
If I were preaching in a different century, I might make a big deal about the numerical symbolism in that list of nine mysteries. For now, though, it’s probably best just to acknowledge and wonder at all these layers. One of the old antiphons appointed for the procession appears to touch on almost all of them, adding to them that familiar nuptial language that seems to show up everywhere in Scripture and Tradition: “O Sion, adorn thy bridechamber, and receive Christ thy King: greet Mary who is the gate of heaven: for she beareth the King of the glory of the new light: she remaineth a virgin, yet beareth in her arms a Son begotten before the morning star: whom Simeon took in his arms declaring to all nations that he is Lord of life and death, and Savior of the world” (Adorna thalamum).
With that beautifully prolix antiphon in mind, perhaps it’s helpful to think of this feast through the lens of one of my favorite concepts: the liturgical stammer. This is not an official dogmatic concept (maybe it goes without saying), but some scholars have used it to think about the ways that the liturgy seems to repeatedly stumble over itself in the struggle of saying what needs to be said.
The liturgical stammer is more obvious in some places than others. If you’ve ever been to a Byzantine liturgy, you’ll notice the repetition, almost bewilderingly excessive to many modern Western ears, of “Lord have mercy” and other key phrases. But the traditional Roman liturgy does this as well, and not just with the Kyrie. Sometimes it is as subtle as the priest’s constant turning back and forth between congregation and altar; the need to repeat “The Lord be with you” at several different moments; the repetition of orations when in theory one would suffice; the multiple opportunities to kiss the altar; the seeming indecision, in the Roman canon itself, about whether or not we even have any right to be doing what we’re doing, whether we really dare to approach the altar of God. Often it feels like two steps forward and one step back.
Much, much more can be said about that, but here I mainly want to show the kind of stammer that we see in today’s feast. What is the feast about? Well, it’s about the Presentation—no, the purification—no, the Incarnation—no, the virginity of Mary—no, the meeting with Simeon—and so on and so forth. It is about each of these things and all of them, and part of the meaning of this kind of restless movement from one to the other is the fact that we can never, in this world, finally get it in any decisive and permanent way.
We see the stammer, again, in that great text from today’s Gospel, the canticle of Simeon, the Nunc dimittis:
<blockquote>Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,
according to thy word; 
for mine eyes have seen thy salvation 
which thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, 
a light for revelation to the Gentiles, 
and for glory to thy people Israel.</blockquote>
Perhaps it’s overdramatic to call such eloquent words stammering. There is after all a great biblical tradition of repetition and parallel structures. What we get here are three things all together:
<ul>
<li>First, the Lord’s salvation.</li>
<li>Second, the light for the Gentiles.</li>
<li>Third, the glory of Israel.</li>
</ul>
What Simeon implies is not that these are three separate things, but that these three things are, precisely, the thing that his eyes have seen. He repeats it three times, using three different concepts: salvation, light, glory.
First there is a very this-worldly hope—the salvation of a people long oppressed. Then there is another hope, still of this world, but somewhat higher: a light that enlightens. Here, with this notion of enlightenment, we’ve entered a more intellectual level. Light, even the smallest candle on a dark path, is knowledge. But, it seems, the story gets even better, because with salvation and knowledge also comes glory. The glory of thy people Israel.
And what, we might ask, is glory? We use the word constantly in our worship. Glory be to God on high. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. Glory be to thee, O Lord.
Glory in the New Testament can mean a variety of things: praise, fame, honor, dignity, splendor.
Maybe, though, this doesn’t really help us at all, because it brings us to one more layer of conceptual language. “Glory” is not normally something you can sink your teeth into or grasp in your hands. But here, in Simeon’s song, is something different: he holds in his hands “the glory of Israel.”
The key to Simeon’s three things—salvation, light, glory—is not another concept, or another word, or another secret definition. The key is a baby, barely more than a month born.
Babies are, in so many ways, signs that exceed their meaning. Despite all that we do in this age to control the making of babies, to make childbearing and childrearing one more consumer choice alongside buying furniture or using natural gas, babies always come to us as strangers.
It’s fitting, then, that this baby stands for a meaning that is not subject to our control or manipulation. We can try to manipulate him, try to control what he stands for, but at the end of the day what he stands for is himself. He is not a symbol of something else. With Jesus, it is no longer proper to speak of salvation, or the light of the world, or the glory of Israel, apart from this person who is the new Israel, the new salvation, the new light.
If we find this feast disorienting, we do well to look, with Simeon, to the Lord. We do not have to choose between Jesus and Mary, between Israel and the nations, between heaven and earth. Christ himself is our peace, as St. Paul writes, “who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14). We cannot really describe this peace, in worldly terms, in the language of human violence. We can only stammer on about Jesus.
It is a bold stammer, like Simeon and like Anna. But there is no further explanation, no deeper key, than Jesus himself. We can try to offer the world other things: a Jesus who is pure enlightenment, a Jesus who is political liberation, a Jesus who is simple Jewish prophet. Yet what Simeon sees is none of these things and all of them: a person who in himself is the fulfillment and the end of all things.
Our call as Catholics is to stammer and stutter our way to glory. This will look strange, because peace looks strange. We are too used to our divisions. The world cannot understand, for example, how the Church can speak on both hospitality and judgment, on unconditional love and the reality of sin. The world cannot understand how Christians can care for the good of all while proclaiming the end of all things. The world cannot understand how a virgin could be the Mother of God, how God could be man, and how death could become life.
That is what Simeon says, in the end: that death has become life, that a human woman has become the Mother of God and the Queen of Heaven, that the glory of the Lord has been made visible, in veiled form, even as it will be made visible on our altar this morning. And in response he says: I have seen Life himself, so my own life is of no account. Use it as you will, Lord, in witness to your glory.
God make us such witnesses. Amen.

Stammering at Mass

In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Trent Horn to discuss why some individuals, like Randy from Alberta, choose not to identify as Catholic. Trent continues with details on how historical injustices do not negate the truth of religious beliefs, particularly the existence of God.
Transcript:
Caller: Yeah. Being a Canadian, it can never be a Catholic or a Christian just for the fact of the way North America was kind of stolen and the persecution that the Native Americans suffered when the Christians and Catholics came here by the millions and took their land.
Trent Horn: What do you, what do you mean that, by that, do you mean when people settled here two or 300 years ago, you wouldn&#8217;t, you can&#8217;t adopt the belief they have now because of their actions back then?
Caller: You bet
Trent Horn: you, yeah. Okay, would you. So I&#8217;m also guessing you wouldn&#8217;t belong to any Native American tribe that stole land from another tribe. Well, I am part Native. Native American there, but you are. Okay. Have Native American tribes ever taken land from other tribes? I&#8217;m sure they have, yeah. Okay, does that prove that everything they believe in their tribe is false?
Caller: Well, yeah, but Native people, you know, kind of came here for tens of thousands of years and then the Christians and Catholics, that is the Europeans came by the millions.
Trent Horn: Right. Well, so, so Randy. Overran their lands. Right. So Randy, what it seems to be is that, you know, 10,000 years ago there was a land bridge. Then people from Asia came here to North America. Various tribes engaged with one another, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not peacefully. Then you had European settlers that came here that engaged with these tribes, sometimes peacefully, sometimes not peacefully. But to me it doesn&#8217;t seem like the actions of someone in the past prove whether what someone believes now or the belief system as a whole is false or not. You know, for example, whatever settlers did 300 years ago, like when it comes to the question of just being a Christian, that doesn&#8217;t prove whether Jesus rose from the dead or not. Right. So what do you identify? What is your belief system? Now? How would you describe yourself?
Caller: Well, I&#8217;m not a believer in any faith area.
Trent Horn: Okay, well what would it take for you? So do you believe in God? No. Okay, so right off the bat, well, you know, why don&#8217;t you believe like the existence of God doesn&#8217;t depend on Christian behavior in, you know, in a certain context. So why don&#8217;t you believe in God? Well, that&#8217;s. Well, because there&#8217;s so many and it&#8217;s all human beliefs there. But again, it gets back to how the Native Americans were treated. Right? The so called Gods, God forbid, people came here by the millions and pushed them off their lands and there&#8217;s a trail of tears. Okay, well Randy, let&#8217;s assume, I think that&#8217;s a more complicated scenario you&#8217;re making it out to, but let&#8217;s just assume that you&#8217;re right, that Christians acted horribly 300 years ago. Can a bad person still believe true things? Okay, I&#8217;m just asking you a question. Can a bad person still actually have true beliefs?
Caller: Sure.
Trent Horn: Okay. Should we have true beliefs? We as in who? You and I? Should we try to make sure that what we believe is true? Well, yeah. And I believe there&#8217;s no God, so I know I&#8217;m right. You believe there is. So how do you do?
Caller: Sure.
Caller: And then I want to ask you about that. How do you know there is no God? How do you know that?
Caller: Well, it&#8217;s. It. It&#8217;s. Man made
Trent Horn: Okay, but you&#8217;re just saying the same thing again. You&#8217;re saying, I believe there&#8217;s no God because God was made up, which is the same as saying there is no God because there is no God. Where&#8217;s your evidence? Okay, well, I&#8217;m pretty sure I haven&#8217;t seen a God or you haven&#8217;t seen a God, you know, so. Okay, you may. You can&#8217;t see God because he&#8217;s immaterial, but you can know God exists based upon effects in the world. So, for example, if a. Let&#8217;s say a car showed up in your driveway with a card in the windshield wiper and it says, you know, happy birthday, would you say that someone gave you that car or that it just kind of popped into existence from nothing? Sure. Somebody built it and somebody gave it to me. Okay. Why would you think that? Well, because it&#8217;s in your yard. Right. And it&#8217;s not just going to pop. You know, things don&#8217;t just pop into existence from nothing like that. Sure. So the same. So the same would be true for the universe. If we have scientific evidence and also we have philosophical evidence that the universe came into existence, there was nothing, and now there&#8217;s a universe, which is much more impressive than a car that came into existence, you know, 13, 14 billion years ago, Then shouldn&#8217;t we apply that same logic and say, hey, there&#8217;s a cause behind this, something greater than the universe itself? So where would God come from? Obviously, somebody must have created God. Well, that intuition of yours is helpful. You&#8217;re saying, so if something exists, it needs a cause. So that shows us the universe has got to have a cause. Now, what if I asked you this question? Let&#8217;s say there&#8217;s a bunch of boxcars going down a train, right? In order for a boxcar to go down a train track, what has to pull it? Well, locomotive. Okay, but what&#8217;s pulling the locomotive? Well, an engine, right? What&#8217;s making the engine go? So my point Here with the analogy is when you ask the question, who made God? That&#8217;s sort of like asking what&#8217;s pulling the locomotive. God is very different from the universe, just like the locomotive is different from the boxcar. That if something exists or it moves and it changes, or we need a reason to explain that. But our reasons, we just can&#8217;t have an infinite number of reasons. Because in the end, if you have an infinite number of reasons, this did this, then this, and this and this, and there&#8217;s an infinite chain, you actually don&#8217;t explain anything at all. Instead, you need some kind of ultimate explanation that is the cause of everything, but itself is not cause. And that&#8217;s kind of the fundamental argument for the existence of God. So. So I tell you what, Randy, we&#8217;re going to have to go to a break here soon. Why don&#8217;t you stay on the line and our call screener will get your contact information, and I&#8217;d like to send you a copy of my book, why We&#8217;re Catholic. And you can start right at the beginning. I talk about why you should believe in God, then why you should believe in Jesus, then why you should be Catholic, and you can go through that and see what you think of the reasons. I&#8217;ll probably be back on air in, I don&#8217;t know, probably about a month or so. And if you read through, you can always call me back and you can discuss what you think of the arguments in there. So please stay on the line and I&#8217;d like to send you a copy of why We&#8217;re Catholic.

I’m Not Catholic Because I’m Canadian…

What would the Church do if it were discovered that it had allowed a marriage between two males unwittingly? That is to say, what if one of those men “identified” as a woman, and the job of appearing as a woman had been done so well that no one, from marriage prep all the way to the ceremony, suspected anything?
On one level, the answer is simple. That attempted marriage would be null and void, because a valid marriage, either on the natural or the sacramental level, can be validly ratified and consummated only between one male and one female. Simple enough.
However, the question opens up more things for us to consider. For example, according to the language the Church uses, rooted in the metaphysical reality of mankind as created by God, there are only two sexes: male and female. Gender is a synonym for sex (see CCC 2331-2336). There is no such thing as a “biological male” who becomes a “female by gender.” That is fiction, pure and simple.
The Catholic Church teaches the soul to be the form of the body. That means that it is the soul—immediately created by God—that determines, along with the body, the sex of the individual. The soul is both the unifying and the life-giving principle that makes the body a human body. Thus, the sex or gender of a human being is not determined in the mind. It is determined by God at conception, and it later manifests in the body.
A person can “identify” himself in any way he wants to. He can “identify” himself as a tomato plant. But a male human being is truly a “he”—not a “she,” not an “it”—and this reality can be scientifically verified, apart from any delusions a man may have about who or what he thinks he is. Scientists can take a blood sample from him, and they can tell beyond a shadow of a doubt that this particular human being is a “he.”
In Scripture, the reality of the two sexes (or genders) of human beings, which can be known through the natural light of reason and science, is also revealed as such in the Old Testament in texts like Genesis 1:27—“male and female he created them”—and by Jesus in Matthew 19:4-6, which refers back to Genesis 1:27 along with Genesis 2:24.
<blockquote>He answered, “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one’? So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.”</blockquote>
One of the really beautiful things about answering the question of the sneaky transgender wedding is that here we find ourselves in a scenario (and there are many other examples) where faith and science work wonderfully and in unison to get at the reality of the situation. We know through revelation that God creates male and female exclusively. And science confirms this fundamental truth, from the chromosomal level upward. So, whether we speak of this from a religious perspective or purely from a scientific or a philosophical perspective, a man or woman cannot “assign,” or “identify” as, whatever gender he or she may wish to be. Each human being’s gender has already been “assigned” to each man, each woman, at the moment of conception.
But are there exceptions? The Church does accept the fact that there are real people who suffer from mental disorders, such as gender dysphoria, where they struggle to accept their God-given nature. But these are not “exceptions.” We believe that these folks need to be helped on the psychological and psychiatric level so they can come to terms with who they are. Unfortunately, our culture today actually encourages these people in their disorder. In fact, our culture and much of the political establishment encourage these people all the way up to them mutilating themselves to “change” their sex, as if they could. But giving male hormones to a woman does not make her a male. And putting fake breasts on a man and cutting off his genitals does not make him a “her.” It only results in a growing number of mutilated males and females in our culture.
Tragically, we now even have children being mutilated. This is child abuse.
The Church also acknowledges cases like PAIS (partial androgen insensitivity syndrome), where genetic defects occur that can lead to confusion concerning the sex of certain individuals. PAIS is a genetic disorder with various manifestations, some of which can make a male look feminine. But men afflicted with PAIS are not women. They have no uterus and no ovaries. They are men. (And yes, my friends, we Catholics do know what a woman is: simply, the adult female of the human species, whose body is ordered toward the procreation and nurturing of children. Those suffering from PAIS do not fit the bill.)
Thanks be to God that science has afforded us ways of treating these men so that some, at least, can come to function normally. But that depends upon the severity of the situation. Often, these men are sterile. And unfortunately, it represents a cross they must carry for the rest of their lives.
At any rate, here is how the Church determines these matters. Because of the fact that in 99.9999 percent of cases, the sex of each person attempting marriage is obvious to all involved, there has been no need for scientific inquiry beyond the general preparation for marriage done by priests all around the world. In fact, I have yet to hear of a single case in the entire world of a homosexual “couple” slipping by the process and getting “married” in a Catholic Church because the “transgender” half of the couple looked so authentic.
However, I would say this. The way things are going, with the growing number of mutilations going on in our culture, where it is becoming more difficult to distinguish between men and women—and given the level of immorality in our culture, generally speaking—perhaps we might get to the place where the Church starts requiring blood tests. In the old days, these tests looked for (and still look for, in the case of Montana) venereal diseases, rubella, and such. But could the Church one day require a test one day to be sure of the sexes of the couple presenting themselves for marriage? Perhaps.
Thanks be to God that we have not reached a level of cultural depravity to require a need for this kind of medical scrutiny in the Church. At least not yet.

A Secret Same-Sex Marriage?

Episode 63: Year B &#8211; 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on two apologetical details found in the second reading and Gospel reading for this upcoming 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B. The first detail is found in the second reading, which is taken from 1 Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23. The relevant apologetical topic that we discuss is the idea of our participation in the saving work of Christ, which can be used to illuminate two apologetical topics: a) a proper understanding of the relation between the saints’ intercession and b) the unique mediation of Christ and a proper understanding of Mary as “co-redemptrix.” There are two topics of focus for the detail in the Gospel reading, taken from Mark 1:29-39, both of which are related—a) the historicity of the early church’s portrait of Jesus as an exorcist and b) Jesus’ divinity.
Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020424.cfm">Click Here</a>
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How is Mary Co-Redemptrix?

The decade that broke American Catholicism...

LGBT History in California Schools

“Where is that in the Bible?” is a challenge Protestants commonly issue to Catholics when disputes over doctrine arise. Two common response strategies include trying to find a biblical reference to support the belief in question or to return the challenge by asking, “Where in the Bible does it say something must be in the Bible before you can believe it?” While both of these have merit, I would like to suggest a third strategy that can cut to the deeper issue more quickly.
Before getting into this third way, imagine what Catholic-Protestant doctrinal discussions might look like if
<ul>
<li>Baptists (who believe that baptism is merely a picture of salvation) found a verse in the Bible that said, “Baptism does not save.”</li>
<li>Calvinists (who believe that salvation comes through faith alone apart from works—AKA sola fide) discovered a passage that said, “Faith without works is useful. . . . A person is not justified by works, but by faith alone.”</li>
<li>Evangelicals (who think communion is just a symbol of Jesus’ body) came up with a proof text that read, “Any one who eats and drinks without discerning the symbolism of the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.”</li>
</ul>
If Protestants had proof texts such as these above to support their doctrines, they would rightly insist that Catholics answer for ignoring the clear word of God.
Of course, these verses are not in Scripture. So, instead, Protestants build their scriptural cases for these beliefs from more indirect passages that likely seem clear to them in the light of their prior theological positions.
Now, Catholics must do the same thing in many cases. Certainly not all Catholic beliefs have clear biblical proof texts, either, and in these cases, verses must be called forth that are open to reinterpretation from those who disagree. When interpretation becomes necessary, the Church often relies on more than just Scripture for help. Because the Church is not limited to biblical proof texts for doctrinal support, we can cite authoritative Church teaching to determine the correct interpretation.
In the above examples, though, such a procedure is less necessary because Catholics do in fact have rather clear biblical proof texts to support what they believe:
<ul>
<li>As to baptism, the Bible says, “In the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you” (1 Pet. 3:20-21).</li>
<li>When it comes to salvation, the Bible says, “Faith apart from works is barren. . . . You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:20-24).</li>
<li>As to Communion, the Bible says, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself” (1 Cor. 11:27-29).</li>
</ul>
What is interesting is that although what the Bible says in these three examples is precisely what the Catholic Church teaches, it is exactly what most Protestants deny. Of course, Protestants have had 500 years to come up with alternative interpretations of these passages that get around a theological contradiction—but that’s not the point. Rather, it is that even if Catholics do produce statements from Scripture that clearly state exactly what the Church teaches, most Protestants remain unfazed. Thus, whether a given belief can be found in the Bible is almost a moot point.
So, when a Catholic is challenged by a Protestant that a given belief is &#8220;not found in the Bible,&#8221; instead of arguing over disputed interpretations or trying a little apologetic judo and flipping the question around on him, a good strategy might be to simply ask, “Would it matter to you if it were?” Such a question will be shocking to a Protestant who prides himself on his commitment to the Bible. Not only would it matter—nothing else would!
The Catholic can then point out that although the Bible says “justification is not by faith alone,” Protestants believe that justification is by faith alone. And although the Bible says baptism saves, some Protestants believe that it does not save. And although the Bible says Communion is eating the body of Christ, Protestants believe that it is only a symbol. In other words, both sides have “clear proof texts” that say things the other denies. Thus, “where is that in the Bible” is often a non-starter.
What this strategy does is keep the conversation from turning into a scriptural ping-pong match, and focuses on the true underlying issue: namely, that the Bible can often be understood in numerous ways and that without an authoritative body to interpret it, disagreement and division are inevitable. Indeed, Protestantism itself is the best evidence of this tendency.
Moreover, it shows that in many cases the Protestant does not actually have the scriptural high ground he is told he does when dealing with Catholics. For the Protestant apologist who sees himself as always having the Bible on his side, this can be an eye-opening realization.

‘But That’s Not in the Bible’

How the Eucharist Defeated Gnosticism

Can I attend a wedding of protestant family members?

Does a priest have to touch the host during the consecration for the mass to be valid?

Why does Jesus say that divorce is allowed only during infidelity in Matthew 19?

Mt. 27:9. Is it true that there are ancient rabbinical documents that quote one prophet but attribute it to another prophet?

When I talk to my protestant friends about a sacrifice at the mass they say that they have a sacrifice of praise. How do I respond to that?

Ask Me Anything

The open mailbag is back and Trent takes on questions from gold-level subscribers of the podcast on topics like infused vs. imputed righteousness, the validity of confession, and how we know when to celebrate Easter every year.

Open mailbag returns!

The Bible teaches that Jesus is “the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). This is the heart of the Christian message: Christ made satisfaction for our sins (paid a debt) through his death on the cross.
But the question is, “Was this necessary?” Did Jesus have to die on a cross to expiate our sins? Or could God have done it some other way?
Some Christians say it was necessary (absolutely speaking—i.e., it couldn’t be any other way, regardless of what God willed). But others say it wasn’t (i.e., redemption could have been accomplished some other way). What should we think?
Christians who say it was absolutely necessary often appeal to passages like the one quoted above. “The Bible says Jesus satisfied for our sins,” so it’s argued, “therefore, it was necessary.”
But the mere affirmation that Jesus’ death satisfied for our sins doesn’t logically entail that it was the only way to satisfy for our sins. It’s true that if Jesus wills to order his death for the satisfaction for our sins, then our sins will be satisfied. But to conclude that our sins wouldn’t be satisfied if Jesus didn’t die would be to commit the fallacy of negating the antecedent (if A, then B; not A; therefore, not B).
Now, concerning the positive reasons for why Jesus’ death wasn’t absolutely necessary for our redemption, we can turn to St. Thomas Aquinas for help. Here are three reasons that he gives in a variety of his works.
Reason #1: God is omnipotent.
Given his omnipotence, God can bring about anything that doesn’t entail a logical contradiction. As Mary says, “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). The idea of God remitting the debt of sin in some way other than Jesus’ death doesn’t entail a logical contradiction. Therefore, as Aquinas concludes, “it was possible for God to deliver mankind otherwise than by the passion of Christ” (Summa Theologiae III:46:2).
Reason #2: Sin is ultimately against God alone and not some other.
One might think God couldn’t remit the sin of the human race without satisfaction (imposed suffering) lest he act unjustly. A judge, for example, can’t justly pardon fault without penalty when such fault has befallen another (another man, the State, etc.).
But, as Aquinas points out, sin has “the formality of fault in that it is committed against [God] himself” (ST III:46:2 ad 3, emphasis added). In other words, it’s a personal trespass against God. David captures this nicely in his psalm of repentance: “Against you, you alone have I sinned” (Ps. 51:6).
So for God to forgive sin without willing satisfaction he would in no way act against justice. Rather, his forgiveness would simply be an act of mercy. Such forgiveness would be no more unjust than me forgiving my friend’s offense without willing that he pay for it.
Reason #3: The dignity of Christ’s person is infinite.
In question two of his Quodlibet II, Aquinas appeals to the infinite dignity of Christ’s person as a reason why Jesus’ death wasn’t absolutely necessary. Given that Jesus is the Word of God, and thereby divine, any act that he performs has infinite power. Aquinas focuses merely on acts of suffering in this text. But the principle applies to any act Jesus performs. Thus, Jesus could have ordered any of his acts to the redemption of the human race and thereby accomplished it.
Now, if Jesus’ death wasn’t absolutely necessary to satisfy for sin, then why did the Father ordain it? Here are eight reasons.
First, sacrifice is understood by both Jews and all humans as that which brings about good relation between man and the divine (see Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense, Day 4).
Second, sacrifice has a particular meaning for the Jews, given that they were delivered from slavery in Egypt through the sacrifice of the Passover lamb. Since Jesus is revealed to be the new Passover lamb (1 Cor. 5:7; see also John 1:29), it’s fitting that Jesus be sacrificed (see Jimmy Akin, A Daily Defense, Day 4).
Third, Jesus’ death on the cross manifests certain truths about God. It manifests God’s justice because Jesus’ death on the cross did in fact satisfy for sin, paying a debt that the human race could not pay (ST III:46:1). But Jesus’ death also manifests God’s mercy, since “man of himself could not satisfy for the sin of all human nature” (ST III:46:1; Cf. I:2 ad 2). Finally, Jesus’ death manifests how much God loves us (ST III:46:3). As Jesus teaches, “greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus speaks a language that we all understand—sacrificial death equals love. Paul concurs, writing, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).
Fourth, Jesus’ death on the cross helps us progress on the path of holiness and conform our lives to his. It gives us an example of virtue—in particular, the virtues of “obedience, humility, constancy, [and] justice” (ST III:46:3). As Peter writes, “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” Jesus’ death also gives us an example to die to sin spiritually and our carnal desires (ST III:50:1; cf. Quodlibet II.2), for Paul teaches, “The death he died he died to sin . . . so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin” (Rom. 6:10). Finally, the ugliness of Jesus’ death inspires us to refrain from sin (ST III:46:3).
Fifth, Jesus’ death fittingly counters the devil’s combat tactics. Through Adam’s sin, which was brought about by the temptation of the devil, man experiences death as a penalty for sin. Christ takes on death to deliver us from death (ST III:46:3, 50:1). Jesus also counters the devil with his humility. It was the devil’s pride that prompted him to tempt Adam, which brough about the de-redemption of man. Jesus counters such pride with humility to redeem mankind (ST III:46:3 ad 3). Finally, Jesus redeems through justice (satisfying for sin) to counter the devil’s unjust assault on man (ST III:46:3 ad 3).
Sixth, Jesus’ death confirms three truths. It confirms the truth of Jesus’ resurrection. As Aquinas writes, “how could Christ’s victory over death appear, unless he endured it in the sight of men, and so proved that death was vanquished by the incorruption of his body?” (ST III:46:3 ad 2). The truth of Jesus’ humanity is also confirmed because a phantom cannot suffer and die (ST III:50:1). Finally, it confirms the ugliness of sin (ST III:46:3).
Seventh, given that the Word assumes to himself a human nature and redeems the human race through that nature, a certain dignity is bestowed upon man by incorporating him into the Father’s providential plan to overthrow Satan (ST III:46:3).
Eighth, it was fitting that Jesus merit the glory of exaltation through lowliness (ST III:46:1). Jesus says of himself, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). Christ’s exaltation is threefold: his resurrection, the manifestation of his divinity, and the reverence shown to him by every creature (Phil. 2:8-10).
In 1 John 4:8, St. John tells us that God is love. It’s no surprise, therefore, that Jesus’ death on the cross, which is an expression of God’s love, would exclude absolute necessity, since love is an expression of the greatest freedom. God’s freedom to have done otherwise gets to the heart of the Christian message: God loves you!

Did Jesus Have to Die for Us?

Jimmy Akin lays out the Catholic Church&#8217;s position on when medical use of marijuana and other mind-altering substances is appropriate, and explains the principles behind the Church&#8217;s general opposition to marijuana&#8217;s recreational use.
Transcript:
Host: We go now to Jim in Brighton, Michigan, listening on Ave Maria Radio. Jim, you’re on with Jimmy Akin.
Caller: Hey, thanks for taking my call. I have not heard a whole lot—we’re in Michigan, and I assume it’s gonna be on the ballot here about legalization of marijuana—but also the medical marijuana exists here in our state, and I don’t see a lot of response or any kind of, well, opinion from the Church—maybe they’re not putting it out yet, but is there a position at this point from the Catholic Church yet on these two areas?
Jimmy: On medical marijuana and recreational marijuana, and should they be allowed legally?
Caller: Well, I should say, does the Church have a position on them? For example, if I was a patient that had some type of illness where my doctor said, “You should be consuming marijuana,” is that acceptable within the Church?
Jimmy: Okay. Well, so, assuming that your doctor is right, yeah. I mean, now, in assessing that somebody should be pursuing a particular course of treatment, there need to be several facts that are verified: number one, that there’s a genuine condition, medical condition that the person has; number two, that this treatment will effectively address it; number three, that there aren’t better alternatives, such as alternatives that are more effective or less expensive or have fewer side effects.
But assuming that those conditions are fulfilled, then…the medical advice is sound, and the Church doesn’t have a problem with sound medical advice. Now there’s a question, when it comes to marijuana, about&#8211;well, how effective is it, and what conditions might it be appropriate for? It is obviously a substance that affects the way your mind works, but there are lots of substances that do that; I mean, morphine does that, and doctors give patients morphine all the time, because it’s a pain reliever and there are conditions in which you need serious pain relief. And so morphine has some side effects, but there are situations where it’s appropriate to use morphine; and in the same way, hypothetically, there could be situations where the medical use of marijuana is appropriate.
However, because the medical marijuana movement in this country has been part of a broader movement towards pushing for its recreational use, there’s some question about, well, how effective is it, really? Is this just a cover for recreational use? And that’s something that is—whether there are legitimate uses for it medically—is an empirical question. And it’s one that, I’m not a doctor, I haven’t studied the evidence, I can’t give you an opinion on that. I can sketch out the principles that are involved in when use of a treatment, including a narcotic, is appropriate; but then there are appropriate situations, medically, for the use of narcotics—like morphine, to mention just one.
In terms of recreational use, the problem there is that…when people use marijuana or alcohol or anything in a way that deprives them of their ability to make moral decisions, then they are—and they’re doing it just for fun, not because there’s a compelling reason, like “I need to have surgery,” but they’re doing it just for fun, and they’re depriving themselves of the capacity for moral reason—that’s something that, of itself, is sinful because it puts you in the proximate occasion of committing sins, potentially even grave sins; like when a person gets drunk on alcohol and goes out driving, okay. That would be an example. In terms of marijuana, I’m not aware of a specific position paper that’s been taken on this; however, the Church, in general, opposes the legalization of recreational use of narcotics. And so that’s the calculus that would likely be applied in this situation.
Now there can be situations where a law, even though it’s a good idea in principle, could be producing really bad effects in society; for example, when the United States tried to outlaw alcohol, you know, in almost all circumstances, during prohibition. That produced some really negative consequences, including the rise of organized crime. And so…now, the use of alcohol is not, in principle, problematic, as long as it’s used in moderation; but the United States experienced the problems of a law that a lot of people thought had a good moral justification, but it had really bad consequences and ended up getting repealed. So the question of legalization of recreational use of marijuana, or any other narcotic, is something the Church is going to be opposed to in principle; however, if there were really horrendous problems being caused by it, then there could be some discussion of that question.
Host: We’ll have to leave it there, Jim. I hope that was helpful.

What is the Church’s Position on Marijuana?

Why do Catholics pray to Mary and the Saints?

Last week in Luke 16 we heard the very strange story of the dishonest steward. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/whats-the-deal-with-the-dishonest-steward">I spoke about</a> the joy of forgiveness, and how the steward’s clever scheme, while perhaps superficially unjust, shows the value of forgiveness and grace.
But in today’s parable of Lazarus in the rich man (Dives in the Latin, and in much of the Western art tradition), we see an object lesson in the Lord’s command to “make friends for ourselves by unrighteous mammon” (16:9). According to some of the old commentators, like St. Bede, this parable is meant directly as a confirmation of that principle.
How so? Because Dives had an opportunity to use his wealth—however it was gained—for the good of someone in need right in front of him. Had he done so, perhaps when that wealth failed, he might have been “received into the eternal habitations.”
The “make friends by unrighteous mammon” instruction, then, isn’t a general commendation of dishonest business practices, but a reinforcement that what may be “unrighteous” in the world of money-making may end up being “righteous” in the world of eternity. Helping lift a poor, ailing man out of poverty isn’t going to win the rich man any friends or give him any rewards in this life, but it gains him a friendship and reward for the life to come, which is ultimately more important.
Does this parable mean that helping the poor will bring us to heaven, or that failing to help the poor will send us to hell? Maybe, but we had better be careful about an approach to almsgiving and the works of mercy that treats it like a simplistic credit in the cosmic accounting — almost like the businesses proudly saying that they plant a tree for every item sold. Salvation isn’t a marketing gimmick, and we can’t buy our way into heaven, as if it were just a matter of doing a work of kindness to counteract every work of selfishness or greed. Ultimately, our presence with God in heaven comes down to our relationship with Jesus: have we turned away from sin, away from our own desires, and cooperated with the grace wherein he unites us to himself?
So I think Augustine’s reading of this parable is helpful. He says Lazarus is a type of Christ. He is the wounded man sitting on the doorstep waiting for us to notice him. Augustine even gives us a rather vivid and unsettling image of the Gentiles as the dogs licking the poor man’s sores: they may be dogs, but they at least partake of the Lord’s own body and blood!
Lest we think this Christological reading of the parable means that the Lord doesn’t think we should notice and care for the poor in a more general way, remember that haunting reminder about the “least of these” in Matthew 25. The only path to eternal life is noticing Jesus, and this requires not only noticing his particular life as it appears to us in history, or even his life as it is presented to us in the Church and its sacraments, but also his life as it appears to us in one another. Suffering doesn’t make one holy any more than poverty does, but both suffering and poverty can bring us closer to Christ in a way that riches and comfort never can. So an attitude like that of the parable’s rich man, where we despise and ignore the poor and suffering lest they violate our own comfort and pleasure moves us toward hell in that it represents a habitual lack of interest in finding Jesus where he has promised us he will be.
The final words of this parable further reinforce our Christ-centered reading: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.” It may sound heartless, but remember that only a few chapters back, Jesus appeared on the mountainside alongside Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets. In other words, he’s saying, if you will not listen to me, there is nothing else, no higher or clearer proof that preserves human freedom.
The Fathers and later readers often speak about the “unbridgeable chasm” between Lazarus, in the “bosom of Abraham,” and Dives in hell. This chasm does of course support the idea, maintained by Catholic teaching, that there really is a division and an immediate judgment at the point of death. We may be further purified and perfected, but there is no additional change to revivify a soul that has committed itself to eternal death.
There is, however, another way of looking at this chasm, which is that, if we take Augustine’s Christological reading to heart, we can see the incredible generosity of Christ in bridging the gap between death and life, in rising from the dead as a sign not of necessity, but of overwhelming love and favor. Yes, we should have listened to Moses and the Prophets, but we didn’t. So he is going to make a way through his own flesh. He is going to lower himself to the lowest state possible, even the state of death, so that he might burst open the doors of the eternal habitations.
So although the parable of Dives and Lazarus is a warning, it is also a promise: that conversion is possible in this life. We do not have to follow the way of the world, the way of pleasure and comfort and wealth for its own sake. We can instead turn and follow Christ, recognizing that in the final eternal scheme, all our worldly wealth and status are the most abject poverty in light of his glory and power. Yet he wants to share all his goodness with us, if only we can toss aside the many things of this life holding us down.

A Deeper Look at Lazarus and the Rich Man

Episode 149: 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C
In today’s episode, we look at the readings for this upcoming 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C, which provide us with a treasure chest of apologetical details. The detail from the first reading, which is taken from Amos 6:1a,4-7 relates to the question of whether the Bible forbids drinking alcoholic beverages, like wine. The detail from the second reading, which is taken from 1 Timothy 6:11-16, relates to discussions with Seventh Day Adventists about the immortality of the soul. Finally, the Gospel reading from Luke 16:19-31—the Parable of the rich man and Lazarus, provides us with details that relate to the topic of Hell.
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