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Is the Word of God limited to written word?

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What Day Was Jesus Crucified?

Do Catholics believe you have to earn Heaven? #indulgences

Last year, I wrote a piece for Catholic Answers called “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-to-find-a-husband">How to Find a Husband</a>.” Here is the belated companion piece for men who are looking for a good Catholic wife.
Much of the advice is the same: expand your social circle by attending both Catholic and not-necessarily-Catholic events that attract single adults, then challenge yourself to actually speak to at least one single woman at each social event. Have a “wing man” hold you accountable to this goal if needed.
However, I have some specific tips for men, too, based on what I liked when I was looking for a husband a couple of years ago, and what I heard from other women as I researched for my book, <a href="http://prettygoodcatholic.com">Pretty Good Catholic</a>.
Many Catholic women complained that the devout Catholic men they met were . . . well, boring. They tended to have fewer hobbies and interests than non-Catholic men and didn’t joke or flirt as much. So you can take three concrete steps to make sure you stand out from the crowd.
1. Develop or rekindle some interests so that you’re well rounded. Ideally, you should do something physical that keeps you fit and doubles as a social activity, where you can meet women who share the interest. (I know a married couple who met through a casual Ultimate Frisbee group, and plenty of Catholic women love partner dancing!)
Intellectual and creative pursuits are great, too: play an instrument, learn a new language, or read some great works of literature. Basically, do things that women also do, so that you have something to talk about with them, and somewhere to take them on dates besides coffee or dinner. If you find that you and she are both into art, inviting her to a museum comes naturally.
If you’re using a dating app or website, showcase all these interests on your profile, via words and pictures, so women can really see who you are.
2. Lighten up a little bit! You should have a good prayer life and know your faith well, but you should be capable of talking about less serious things and joking around. Women love a man who can make them laugh, and they usually don’t love a man who obsesses over the finer points of the liturgy. Serious discussions about the Faith have their place, but these should come a little later. As a friend of mine says, “don’t mention the Fourth Lateran Council on a first date!”
3. Related: Learn the art of appropriate flirtation. That is, show a woman you are interested in her in a confident, yet playful and non-pushy way. Compliment her, tease her mildly in a way that makes her laugh (if you know her well enough to know she won’t be hurt), ask her questions about herself, and generally give her attention and observe how she responds.
If she’s responding well—laughing, smiling, keeping the conversation going rather than trying to find a polite exit—ask her out! Most Catholic men need to ask for dates more boldly and more quickly than they think they should. A matchmaker I know says that if you talk to a woman for more than ten minutes, you should ask for her number, and if you ask for her number, you should call her (yes, call!) within a few days to ask her for a date.
If this scares you a little, remember that a date doesn’t mean you have to commit to being her boyfriend and actively considering marriage right away. It’s just a chance to get to know her a little better, to see if you want to go on a second date, and so on. Step by step, you’ll learn more about her, and you’ll have plenty of time to decide whether to propose to her or not.
Every date can help you discern better who would make a good spouse for you and vice versa. Plus, dates are fun! Although we shouldn’t date just for fun, without thoughts of marriage, we should enjoy dates and see them as time well spent, regardless of whether the relationship continues. After all, getting to know another image of God is always a gift.
Once you’ve secured that first date, it’s your job to continue pursuing her for as long as you’re still interested. Keep planning thoughtful dates based on your shared interests, or trying new experiences together. Ask her questions about herself, progressing slowly from more surface-level topics to deeper things over the course of several months. When you’re more seriously interested in her (and no one else), ask her to be your girlfriend, and talk about what that means. Also, ask her before attempting any <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/chastity-in-dating-not-just-no-sex">physical gestures</a>. They might not do it in the movies, but saying, “May I kiss you?” is actually very romantic!
All these conversations take courage, but courage is attractive. Plus, they are good practice for your eventual proposal, and for many important discussions that will come up during marriage.
Being the one to initiate all these important steps in a relationship means risking rejection. On behalf of all women, thank you for being brave enough to risk rejection! All the times you heard “no” will be completely worth it when the right woman says “yes.”

How to Find a Wife

Editor&#8217;s note: The below is satire, written to mark the American custom of April Fool&#8217;s Day. Although the details in this article are fictitious, the criticism that Catholic Answers receives from different factions in the Church, for being too traditional or not traditional enough, is real. So we thought we&#8217;d have a little fun with it. We hope you&#8217;ll have a laugh and pray for us!

Catholic Answers to Face Canonical Trial

<div>What is the difference between a rite and a particular church?</div><div>As Colin Donovan, Vice-President for Theology at <a href="https://www.ewtn.com">EWTN</a> notes well, <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_28051992_communionis-notio_en.html">“A Rite represents an ecclesiastical, or church, tradition about how the sacraments are to be celebrated.”  </a>
A “Particular Church” is an ecclesiastical grouping of the faithful by the Pope, and overseen by a validly ordained bishop or some other lawfully deputed representative of the Pope.
The most common example of a “particular Church” is diocese, over which governs a bishop who is in full communion with the Pope. As The Code of Canon Law provides:
<blockquote>Particular churches, in which and from which the one and only Catholic Church exists, are first of all dioceses, to which, unless it is otherwise evident, are likened a territorial prelature and territorial abbacy, an apostolic vicariate and an apostolic prefecture, and an apostolic administration erected in a stable manner (canon 368).</blockquote>
The Archdiocese of Detroit provides more info on a diocese as a <a href="http://www.aod.org/our-archdiocese/archbishop-allen-vigneron/sharing-the-light-communications/parish-finances/faq-about-parish-finances/#1">“particular Church”</a>:
<blockquote>A diocese is a section of the People of God entrusted to a bishop to be guided by him with the assistance of his clergy so that, loyal to its pastor and formed by him into one community in the Holy Spirit through the Gospel and the Eucharist, it constitutes one particular church in which the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and active.</blockquote>
Churches not in full communion with the Pope, yet which have valid apostolic successors (bishops) and a valid Eucharist, are still “true particular Churches” (CDF, <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html">Dominus Iesus, no. 17</a>).
For on more particular Churches, see The Code of Canon Law, canon 368ff.
</div>

Difference Between Rite and Particular Church

<div>Are mortal sins that are committed while mentally ill required to be dealt with by confession? What if the mental illness is serious and the individual can lead a normal life but at times falls apart?</div><div>One of the requirements to be culpable of a mortal sin is that the person needs to have known the seriousness of the sin and freely chosen to commit it.  Someone with mental illness may have diminished capacity to understand or freely choose.  However, that does not mean they are devoid of all freedom and understanding and therefore confession may be entirely appropriate in some situations.
<a href="http://www.usccb.org/about/divine-worship/policies/guidelines-sacraments-persons-with-disabilities.cfm">Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons with Disabilities</a>:
<blockquote>28. Only those who have the use of reason are capable of committing serious sin. Nevertheless, even young children and persons with mental disabilities often are conscious of committing acts that are sinful to some degree and may experience a sense of guilt and sorrow. As long as the individual is capable of having a sense of contrition for having committed sin, even if he or she cannot describe the sin precisely in words, the person may receive sacramental absolution. Those with profound mental disabilities, who cannot experience even minimal contrition, may be invited to participate in penitential services with the rest of the community to the extent of their ability.
29. In the case of individuals with poor communication skills, sorrow for sin is to be accepted even if this repentance is expressed through some gesture rather than verbally. . .</blockquote>
</div>

Mortal Sin and Mental Illness

<div>is there biblical evidence of individual judgement and a judgement at the second coming?</div><div>The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) covers the particular judgment in CCC 1021-22. The Catechism cites several biblical passages that affirm each person will have a particular judgment with God, including Matthew 16:26; 2 Corinthians 5:10; and Hebrews 9:27.
The Catechism covers the Final or Last Judgment in CCC 1038-41. Two classic biblical passages that support this teaching are Jesus’ words in John 5:28-29 and Matthew 25:31-46.
</div>

Biblical Basis of Particular and Final Judgments

Sometimes the Old Testament can seem radically different from the New. There appear to be curses, harsh judgments, and capital punishments instead of the tender loving care of Christ as seen in the New Testament. However, the reason we think this way is because God fully reveals himself in the New Testament. He comes in the flesh, embraces children, says to turn the other cheek, and forgives his torturers. The unseen God became a man suddenly and revealed his heart in ways that people could not have fathomed over the previous 1,700 years or so.
It&#8217;d be like seeing the end of the story or visiting a class at the end of the school year, where a teacher has a deep bond with his students, and everybody knows the rules and one another. Yet we can focus on how the class is growing in intimacy and forget something. God has been patient with some of his disobedient children from week one, and he spells out future grave warnings to Billy in seat six if he continues on his path. Jesus is still substantially connected to the Old Testament, as we will see.
Whereas the New Testament is the last week of school, the Old Testament is the first week of school. God needed to be the first-week high school teacher in a rough part of town. The ancient Near East was the rough area, which did not have a strong police force, guarded prison systems, or an understanding of the inestimable value of the human being. Canaanites were throwing their babies into a furnace to appease the demon-god Molech. The ancient Israelites did not respect God; they literally witnessed multiple miracles in Egypt and then started worshipping a golden calf almost as soon as they got out of there! God needed to be stern and communicate in the ways that the people would understand.
In the analogy of the last week of school versus the first week of school, the teacher stays the same. His approach differs over time, but he is essentially the same person. The same applies to Jesus, whose teachings and actions have significant precedent and carryover from the Old Testament. Let’s look at some passages from the New Testament while keeping the “harshness” of the Old Testament in the back of our minds.
Jesus warned that the destruction by fire of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19:23-29) would happen again (Matt. 11:23-24). The city of Capernaum was to receive an even more severe experience of fire and brimstone than Sodom! Jesus also threatened a false prophetess named Jezebel, saying that if she continued with her sexual sins, she would become sick, and if anyone committed adultery with her, then he would receive great tribulation, and her children would die (Rev. 2:20-23). Jesus, like Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia, is not a tame lion.
Capital punishment was acceptable in the Old Testament. Jesus said it would be better for someone to have a millstone fastened to his neck and he be “drowned” in the sea than to mislead a little one (Matt. 18:6).  God punished Israel in the Old Testament with the destruction of the holy city, Jerusalem, and Jesus prophesied that it would happen again (Matt. 24). In Jude 5, Jesus is said to be the one who saved Israel from Egypt during the Exodus with Moses, but not only that; he was the one who destroyed those who did not believe! That is probably a reference to the generation that died in the forty-year wilderness wanderings (ca. 1400-1200 B.C.). Jesus is not exactly night and day from the Old Testament.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus offered curses and woes in similar fashion to the Old Testament (Matt. 11:20-24, 23:1-37, 26:24). He cursed Israel with the phrase “May you never bear fruit again” (Mark 11:13-14, 20-21, NIV). Jesus delivered seven woes to the Pharisees due to their prideful hearts (Matt. 23:1-37). The gentleness and humility of the Son of God do not exclude his justice.
The parables of Jesus buttress the point powerfully as well. For within them, he offers punishments for evildoers that seem substantially similar to the Old Testament punishments. Check out five of them.
<ol>
<li>In Matthew 18:34-35, God is described as a king who finds out that, after forgiving a servant of his debt, the servant refuses to forgive other people’s debts. “And his lord, moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.”</li>
<li>In Matthew 22:1-13, God is described as a king inviting people to a wedding. When one of the people attending does not follow the decorum, he says, “Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (v. 13).</li>
<li>In Luke 19:11-27, God is compared to a king giving money to his servants and expecting them to use the money to expand the kingdom. He then says to his enemies who refuse his rule, “Bring them here and slay them in my presence” (v. 27).</li>
<li>In Luke 20:9-18, God is compared to a vineyard owner who sends servants and ultimately his own son to the tenants over his vineyard. When the tenants abuse the servants and kill the son, God says he will “come and destroy these vine-growers and will give the vineyard to others” (v. 16).</li>
<li>In Luke 12:41-48, God is compared to a master over a house who installs a manager over to distribute food. If the manager over the house grows lazy while the master is away, and begins to beat the servants and eat and drink gluttonously, the master will arrive and “cut him in pieces” (v. 46).</li>
</ol>
These punishments for evildoers do not seem to be far from the Old Testament. Torture, binding of limbs, slaughter, destruction, and dismemberment are actions that grind up against the image of Jesus being completely separate and “pure.” In fact, at times, the Old Testament appears to be kinder and softer than the New!
This can also be seen in light of Jesus’ seemingly new teaching about hell. The Jews understood an earthly capital punishment, but not so much a state of eternal suffering. Jesus may have shocked the living daylights out of his audience when he spoke of an eternal hell after death (Matt. 25:46). Such a teaching makes the passages from the Old Testament seem desirable!
All of this is not to say that Jesus is terrifying, and so we should cower at his presence. Jesus, as the embodiment of God, stays with his classroom through and through, with abundant patience. From Abraham down over a thousand years to the first-century Israelites who meet Jesus, God is a Father who does not abandon his children.
That deep bond between teacher and student inspires trust, for this is a teacher who is literally willing to give up his life for his classroom. He has our ultimate good at heart. God’s rules evoke the tender father, who tells his child, “Don’t hurt yourself.”
(If you’d like to read more, I recommend Paul Copan’s book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/God-Vindictive-Bully-Reconciling-Portrayals/dp/1540964558">Is God a Vindictive Bully?</a>, which this article draws from.)

Old Testament God Mean, Jesus Nice?

What do Catholics believe about the anti-Christ? Jimmy Akin explains what the Bible and the Catechism tells us about it.

Who or what is the anti-Christ?

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

Fertility Is Not a Curse

Sociologist Mark Regnerus became a controversial figure with his study of the children of gay parents. Today, he studies Christian marriage. We discuss difficult questions considered taboo in most professions.

Social Science and Modern Sex (Part One)

<div>Did the pope charge the bishops of Vatican II with specific issues or did they meet with a clean slate?</div><div>No, there was no clean slate. Ecumenical councils are always called for a specific reason or reasons. For example, the Council of Nicaea was called to address the Arian heresy, which denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. Similarly, the Council of Trent was called to deal with the ecclesiastical fallout initiated by the actions of Martin Luther and other neo-Protestants.
So too the Second Vatican Council. As Pope John XXIII said <a href="https://fwdioc.org/solemn-opening-of-council-10-11-62-john-XXIII-english.pdf">in his opening speech</a> in October 1962, “The supreme interest of the Ecumenical Council is that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine be guarded and taught in an increasingly effective way.”
Teaching the deposit of the faith in an increasingly effective way was eventually given various expressions, including the dogmatic constitutions on the Church (Lumen Gentium) and Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum).
</div>

Vatican II Had an Agenda

<div>Do we have to wait until after Advent to decorate the church for Christmas?</div><div>The Church counsels that we should wait until Christmas to put up decorations. That is, in anticipation and preparation of the Christmas Vigil after Mass on the last day of Advent.
The Church provides binding liturgical guidelines in the <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ordinamento-messale_en.html">General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM)</a>. Regarding the decoration of churches, GIRM 305 provides:
<blockquote>Moderation should be observed in the decoration of the altar.
During Advent the floral decoration of the altar should be marked by a moderation suited to the character of this season, without expressing prematurely the full joy of the Nativity of the Lord. During Lent it is forbidden for the altar to be decorated with flowers. Laetare Sunday (Fourth Sunday of Lent), solemnities, and feasts are exceptions.
Floral decorations should always be done with moderation and placed around the altar rather than on its mensa.</blockquote>
In addition, in 2000, the U.S. Bishops issued general liturgical guidelines in <a href="http://www.sfdslg.org/Church/Documents/ChurchReno/Built%20of%20Living%20Stones.pdf">Built of Living Stones</a>, which in its preface says:
<blockquote>The document presents guidelines that can serve as the basis for diocesan bishops to issue further guidelines and directives for their dioceses. Where the document quotes or reiterates norms from liturgical books and the Code of Canon Law, those prescriptions are binding on local communities and dioceses.</blockquote>
In addition, in chapter two (“The Church Building and the Sacred Rites Celebrated There”) of Built of Living Stones, the U.S. Bishops counsel:
<blockquote>These seasonal decorations are maintained throughout the entire liturgical season. Since the Christmas season begins with the Vigil Mass on Christmas Eve and ends with the baptism of the Lord, the placement and removal of Christmas decorations should coincide with these times. Since the Easter season lasts fifty days, planning will encompass ways to sustain the decor until the fiftieth day of Pentecost.</blockquote>
</div>

No Christmas Decorations During Advent?

In this episode Trent reveals how good Christian practices can take a dark, irrational turn if they are abused.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGL_0wRKKIk">Can Catholics Follow Astrology? &#8211; Jimmy Akin&#8217;s Mysterious World</a>
Transcription:
Trent:
Most of us know it&#8217;s superstitious to worry about black cats or walking under ladders, but even faithful Christians can involve victim to superstitions that put their souls in grave jeopardy. So what are these superstitions and how can we avoid them? That&#8217;s what we&#8217;ll be talking about in today&#8217;s episode, and to do that, we need to define our terms. One author says, superstitions are irrational beliefs that an object, action, or circumstance that is not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome. All sin is irrational, but not everything that is irrational is sinful. Some superstitions are just silly beliefs a person needs to think more clearly about so they can be freed from them, which applies to everybody, not just religious people. According to a 2024 study in the Journal of Individual Differences, 97% of people engage in some kind of superstition. For example, every year, hundreds of millions of dollars is lost by people afraid to travel or do business on Friday the 13th. What the study found is that many people might say they aren&#8217;t superstitious, but they end up sending chain emails or not stepping on cracks just to be safe. Something researchers call half belief in superstition, or as Michael Scott put it,
CLIP:
I&#8217;m not superstitious, but I am a little superstitious.
Trent:
One of the reasons Christianity spread so rapidly in the ancient world was that it offered hope of salvation in the face of superstitious paganism that made people feel trapped by omens and capricious deities that controlled their fates. However, Christians are not immune to superstition and relying on these practices when God warns us against them is sinful. The catechism of the Catholic Church says the sin of superstition happens when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices, otherwise lawful or necessary to attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition. For example, I&#8217;ve seen prayers in adoration chapels that promise they never fail, which is something no prayer can promise because God is not a cosmic vending machine. James four three says, you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.
This kind of thinking is the backbone of prosperity theology, which I&#8217;ve covered in a previous episode that teaches certain prayers or tithing practices guarantee God&#8217;s blessings. In Bruce Wilkinson&#8217;s New York Times bestselling book, the Prayer of Jobes, he promises to teach the reader quote, a daring prayer that God always answers. That prayer comes from one Chronicles four 10 Jobes called on the God of Israel saying, oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border and that your hand might be with me and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not hurt me. And God granted what he asked. However, in his book, Wilkinson has turned a single request, God graciously answered in salvation history into a formulaic, superstitious prayer, although it&#8217;s possible to take any good thing and become superstitious about it. For example, in the early church, some Christians replaced pagan amulets worn as good luck charms and put Bible verses inside of them instead, which the church fathers said bordered on sinful idolatry.
Even today, some Christians treat the Bible like a magic eight ball and flip to a random page expecting it to tell them their future. Of course, just because the Bible can be misused, it doesn&#8217;t prove the Bible has no proper use. Likewise, some Catholic devotional items like a brown scapular can be misused when people think the act of merely wearing them guarantees salvation. One promise associated with the brown scapular of the CARite is that whoever wears the scapular until death will be preserved from hell. But the Catholic encyclopedia notes that this refers to those who faithfully imitate the mother of God in loving her son and the person is not presumptuously relying on the scapular as on a miraculous amulet. It&#8217;s similar to someone faithfully wearing a cross necklace until death as a personal act of faith to show their love for Jesus Christ. In my debate on purgatory with James White, he brought up the so-called sasine privilege related to the scapular during the last statement of the debate,
CLIP:
The sasine privilege that when you wear the brown scapular, I wonder if there&#8217;s someone in this room wearing the brown scapular right now because the promise is that when you die, that Mary will come down into purgatory and release you on the Saturday after your death.
Trent:
Except scholars agree the sabot privilege comes from a forged papal bull, and this belief was discouraged all the way back in the 17th century. In 1613, the holy office prohibited paintings being made of Mary descending into purgatory in accord with that fake papal bull. The medieval veneration of relics like the bones of holy people also became an opportunity for people to superstitiously trust these relics to guarantee good luck and for greedy people to make money off of possessing them. Now, that doesn&#8217;t disprove venerating relics because as I said before, abuse does not a null proper use. Acts 19 says, God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. And in the Old Testament, the bones of Elijah brought a dead man back to life.
So there is biblical and historical precedent for venerating objects and things associated with holy people, but when a practice is abused, the church will step in to guide the faithful back to its proper use. That&#8217;s why the 16th Century Council of Trent said, in the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics and the sacred use of images, every superstition shall be removed and all filthy Luca money abolished. But like heresy, superstitions always find a way to come back into the body of Christ just in different forms. For example, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with sending a group text or a group email asking for prayers, but prayer chain emails and social media posts that bribe or threaten people into passing the chain along make Christians as one Protestant website puts it, appear weak minded and superstitious. Likewise, Catholics know there&#8217;s nothing wrong with asking saints in heaven to pray for us, but sometimes respect for saints can turn into superstition.
This happens, for example, when Catholics try to sell their home faster by burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down in their yard, the idea is that St. Joseph will be so annoyed at being placed in this position. He will pray very hard for the house to be sold so he can be dug up and placed upright. Father Donald Callaway and his book on St. Joseph says, whatever you do never bury a statue of St. Joseph. Upside down, such a practice is akin to treating a statue of St. Joseph as a talisman or a good luck charm. St. Joseph is your spiritual father, not a trinket. And to my Protestant listeners who might be concerned about the spiritual father language, remember that St. Paul said he was a spiritual father to the Christians in Corinth, we believe the foster father of Jesus praised for all Christians to be united to the person who was the Christ child.
He faithfully guarded during his earthly life. Another form of superstition claims that the gift of knowledge can be derived from occult practices apart from God. However, the catechism of the Catholic church says consulting, horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history. And in the last analysis other human beings as well as the wish to conciliate hidden powers, they contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone. In the ancient world, the line between astrology and astronomy was fuzzy. So you could find people like St. Thomas Aquinas speaking positively of astrology and even the biblical story of the Magi noting a star in the sky being a sign of the Messiah&#8217;s birth. But there was also an understanding that purely natural astrology was faulty as can be seen in St.
Augustine&#8217;s criticism that twins born at the same time could have very different lives and temperaments for a nuanced take on how Christians should understand astrology and its development. See this episode from Jimmy Akins, mysterious world link below. Most modern horoscopes and astrologers rely on something called the for rare effect to du people psychologist Bertram Forer called this the fallacy of personal validation, noting that people often ascribe vague positive statements to themselves. In one study, a group of participants were each given the same horoscope that had lines in it like this. At times you were extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. All the respondents were amazed at the horoscopes accuracy until they found out they each got the same one. Here&#8217;s a clip from ABC&#8217;s John Stossel revealing this to a group of people.
CLIP:
I don&#8217;t know, it&#8217;s just weird that everyone thinks it&#8217;s about them. Everyone is saying, oh, it&#8217;s me, it&#8217;s me, it&#8217;s me. And then it was the same horoscope. I think these people are looking for something. There&#8217;s something missing in their life and that&#8217;s why they&#8217;re following the stars. I think it&#8217;s ridiculous.
Trent:
Psychics also use the for air effect in cold readings to make it seem like they can talk to the dead. What they do is they ask the subject vague questions that could apply to almost anyone. Like, did your loved one have pain in their chest or head, or did they need medicine before they died? The psychic hopes the audience will ignore his failures and only remember his successful guesses. Here&#8217;s self-proclaimed psychic, James von Prague, not Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy. Though there is some resemblance trying to do a cold reading using the for air effect, and he still botches it,
CLIP:
And I feel some arthritis. By the way, there&#8217;s a lot of arthritis and there&#8217;s a bone problem. There&#8217;s also something with the back. So I dunno if she sees us sitting up a pillow with the back of her or is that you? No, no, that doesn&#8217;t make sense to you. Okay, and we&#8217;re not trouble with legs. No. Okay. Who has trouble with the legs now? Well, my father&#8217;s had two hip replacements, two hip replacements if cannot walk as well as he used to. Oh, no. He walks very well. Okay, okay.
Trent:
Now the catechism does tell us that God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of providence for whatever concerns the future and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. When someone claims to be a seer or have a vision from God about the future, we should treat that very cautiously and look to the church&#8217;s guidance on the issue. In some cases, a saint or even the blessed virgin Mary might reveal a message to someone through an apparition. The catechism says that this is not part of God&#8217;s public revelation, which was given once during the apostolic age, but these private revelations are something that can be useful to the faithful, but they&#8217;re not obligatory to hold. And since Protestants believe it&#8217;s impossible for groups of people like the apostles to hallucinate seeing the risen Jesus, then they shouldn&#8217;t write off groups of people seeing the blessed Virgin Mary as a mere hallucination either in his dissertation defending Christ resurrection, Michael Laona says, for myself, I&#8217;m not prepared to adjudicate on the matter of Marian Apparitions because I am Protestant, I carry a theological bias against an appearance of Mary.
However, I am not predisposed to reject the reality of apparitions in general. But one thing we absolutely cannot do is to try and learn about the future by consulting creatures in the next life. The catechism says all forms of divination are to be rejected recourse to Satan or demons conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to unveil the future. The Catholic and Orthodox practice of asking the saints in heaven to pray for us is not the sin of divination or necromancy because Catholics and Orthodox are not trying to extract information from the departed saints. And if you&#8217;re a Protestant who finds this devotion challenging, try this prayer to God. Lord, if my departed loved one is in heaven, please let him or her know about my current struggle so he or she can pray for me. This is far different than the sin of necromancy conversing with the dead like in one Samuel 28, where Saul uses the witch of Endor to speak to the deceased prophet Samuel.
But it isn&#8217;t always a sin to make a message known to a deceased person because Jesus did just that on the Mount of Transfiguration when he spoke with Moses who had died centuries earlier. While psychics sometimes use tricks, they may also have seemingly impossible knowledge because of demonic assistance. That&#8217;s why Christians should not initiate any two-way communication with a spiritual creature, be they souls in heaven or demonic spirits in hell. In some cases trying to contact the former to acquire information just results in reaching the latter. You can see this in practices like the Ouija board, where participants place their fingers on a pointer and spirits allegedly moved the pointer over letters on the board to transmit a message. As a youth. Prior to his conversion, GK Chesterton and his brother would play with the Ouija board and receive strange and even evil messages through it.
He writes in his autobiography, I would not altogether rule out the suggestion of some that we were playing with fire or even hellfire. So instead of trusting in our own abilities to wield devotional items, passages of scripture or specific prayers like magical objects in a superstitious way, let&#8217;s trust in God and use these spiritual tools to grow closer to him in accord with his plan of salvation. And I trust in your ability to like this channel and leave a comment on the episode because it&#8217;s not superstitious to say that this actually helps our videos be recommended and reach more people. And if you like our episodes, please consider supporting us@trenthornpodcast.com. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.
&nbsp;

How Christians Fall for This “Unlucky” Sin

Both Catholics and Protestants of the Reformed tradition actually agree on something pretty important: when we’re initially justified, we become a “new creation.” To back this up, both sides regularly point to two passages from St. Paul:
<ul>
<li>2 Corinthians 5:17—“Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”</li>
<li>Galatians 6:15—“For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”</li>
</ul>
So where’s the disagreement? It’s not over whether Paul is talking about being a new creation. Rather, it’s over what that has to do with justification.
Catholics see these passages as evidence for their view that justification is rooted in an interior transformation—what we often call sanctification. Reformed Protestants agree that these texts describe sanctification, but they resist identifying sanctification with justification. On their view, sanctification certainly accompanies justification, but it isn’t what justifies us.
So which reading is right? I’m going to suggest it’s the Catholic one.
Before getting into that, though, let me say this: I don’t fault our Protestant friends for missing the connection between “being a new creation” and justification. After all, the word justification doesn’t appear in either passage. If the connection is there—and I think it is—it takes a bit of unpacking to see it.
Let’s start with 2 Corinthians 5:17.
Paul tells us that the condition for being a new creation is being “in Christ.” That phrase is doing a lot of work here.
In Romans 8:1, Paul explains what it means to be in Christ: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” To be in Christ, then, is to be free from condemnation.
Now, here’s the key move. The state of being justified and the state of being free from condemnation are logically identical. To be justified—to be in a right relationship with God—is precisely to not be subject to condemnation. And the reverse is true as well: if you’re not subject to condemnation, you’re justified.
Romans 6:23 reinforces this point. Paul writes, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” To possess eternal life is to be justified. And Paul tells us that eternal life comes only in Christ. So once again, being in Christ and being justified are the same reality.
Now take that insight back to 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation.”
Since being in Christ means being justified (as Romans 8:1 and 6:23 indicate), and since being in Christ also means being a new creation, which entails interior righteousness (as Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:17), it follows that Paul is linking justification with becoming interiorly new—interiorly righteous. In other words, to be justified is to be transformed within. Or, said another way, interior righteousness belongs to justification itself.
That’s exactly how Catholics understand justification: as an interior state of righteousness that God brings about in us, not merely a legal declaration made from the outside.
Now let’s turn to Galatians 6:15.
The context makes it clear that Paul is talking about personal salvation—about justification. Just one verse earlier, in Galatians 6:14, Paul says he boasts in “the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” because through it, “the world has been crucified to [him], and [he] to the world.” That’s Paul’s vivid way of saying he’s no longer under the dominion of sin. He’s describing his new, justified state.
Immediately after this, Paul contrasts circumcision with “a new creation.” Given what he’s just said about being crucified to the world, it’s reasonable to assume that he’s including himself—and every other Christian who has been crucified to the world—among those who are new creations.
This contrast is crucial. Circumcision was something some were relying on to be justified before God. Paul even spells this out earlier in Galatians 5:4, where he speaks of those who week to be “justified by the law.”
So Paul is setting two models side by side. On the one hand, there’s justification sought through circumcision and the Old Law. On the other hand, there’s being a new creation in Christ. The implication is hard to miss: being interiorly renewed—being a new creation—is the new basis for justification.
In short, our interior righteousness is not just something that is present alongside justification; it belongs what to justification is. It’s that on account that we are justified.
All of this means that Paul’s “new creation” language does support the Catholic understanding of justification—once the relevant texts are carefully unpacked.
And that leads to an important takeaway for Catholics today. Simply pointing to a verse about sanctification isn’t enough to make the case. We have to do the extra work of showing how Paul himself connects sanctification and justification. When we do that, the Catholic reading comes clearly into view.

Catholics and Protestants Agree! Kind Of . . .

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

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

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

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

Can a consecration be valid if one item is defective?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Could Hobbits or Vulcans Become Catholic Priests?

<div>Why are some of the books of the septuagint (such as Maccabees 3 or 4) not part of the Catholic Canon, if that’s what we used for forming the canon?</div><div>There was disparity in ancient versions of the Septuagint, and the Church did not uncritically accept every book listed in the respective versions.
1 and 2 Maccabees, which are canonical, address the history of Maccabean revolt. Meanwhile, 4 Maccabees treats the subject of Maccabean martyrs and 3 Maccabees, which does not have any historical connection with the Maccabean period, derives its name because it addresses another persecution of Jews.
The Catholic Encyclopedia gives further details on why <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09495a.htm">3 and 4 Maccabees were not included in the biblical canon</a>:
<blockquote>III Mach. is the story of a persecution of the Jews in Egypt under Ptolemy IV Philopator (222-205 BC), and therefore has no right to its title. Though the work contains much that is historical, the story is a fiction. IV Mach. is a Jewish-Stoic philosophical treatise on the supremacy of pious reason, that is, religious principles, over the passions. The martyrdom of Eleazar and of the seven brothers (2 Maccabees 6:18-7) is introduced to illustrate the author&#8217;s thesis. Neither book has any claim to canonicity, though the first for awhile received favourable consideration in some Churches.</blockquote>
In addition in compiling the biblical canon, the shepherds of the Church, by a process of spiritual discernment and investigation into the liturgical traditions of the Church spread throughout the world, had to draw clear lines of distinction between books that are truly inspired by God and those that aren’t, including whether excerpts from the books were proclaimed at Mass in the early Church, as well as read and preached about otherwise. 3 and 4 Maccabees didn’t make the cut.
</div>

Why Are 3 and 4 Maccabees Not in the Bible?

In this episode Trent turns the tables on those who say Catholicism preaches a false Gospel.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiiHMFoI4II">What Is the Gospel? | The Jimmy Akin Podcast</a>
<a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-drama-of-salvation-paperback">The Drama of Salvation by Jimmy Akin</a>
<a href="https://shop.catholic.com/salvation-is-from-the-catholic-church/">Salvation Is From the Catholic Church by Trent Horn</a>
Transcription:
Trent:
As a Catholic, it&#8217;s not hard to find other Christians who say my religion teaches a false gospel, and so it isn&#8217;t even Christian. Thankfully, most Protestants don&#8217;t make these unpleasant claims, which is why I call them pleasant Protestants. Their unpleasant counterparts, however, say Catholicism is not Christian because it teaches a false gospel, but unpleasant Protestants shoot themselves in the foot because they can&#8217;t consistently and biblically answer this question. What is the gospel? The word gospel comes from the Greek word Eugelion, literally good news. But in almost every case, the word is used in scripture without any explanation of what the good news is. Matthew refers to the good news of the kingdom or the good news being preached. Mark describes Jesus speaking of the good news or the good news of God. Luke shows Jesus preaching good news for the poor, and these passages also point back to verses in Isaiah proclaiming the good news of God&#8217;s victory over his enemies.
We know the gospel was preached during Christ&#8217;s earthly ministry, but what was initially preached was not a message about Christ&#8217;s death, his resurrection, or how he would redeem humanity from sin. At this point, the gospel was just the good news that God&#8217;s kingdom was entering the world and things would finally be set right. After Christ&#8217;s resurrection, we find some passages in Paul&#8217;s letters that are closer to a definition of the gospel as we know it today. Romans 1:16 says the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. In one Corinthians 15, Paul says, &#8220;Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preach to you the gospel, the good news, which you received, in which you stand, by which you were saved if you hold it fast, unless you believed in vain.&#8221; Paul then describes this good news through what many scholars identify as an early creed that was formulated just a few years after Christ&#8217;s crucifixion.
It says, &#8220;Christ died for our sins, was buried, rose three days later, and appeared to numerous people, including Paul. Notice though that there&#8217;s no description of the gospel being about our individual salvation from damnnable sin, even though that is how the gospel is often summarized. Instead, as my colleague Jimmy Akin points out &#8230;
CLIP:
The core of the gospel beginning with texts in the Old Testament is that the time for God&#8217;s kingdom has arrived and all opposing powers will be overthrown. The elaboration of the gospel is that God&#8217;s kingdom will be implemented through his son. And a happy consequence of that fact is that we can be saved through his son. The New Testament&#8217;s understanding is not about us as individuals and how we can benefit. The gospel is just not about us. Instead, the good news is about what God and his son are doing in the world, what they&#8217;re doing to their enemies like the devil and the pagan world order and how we can benefit his individuals, how we can get on board with God&#8217;s plan is a consequence of the gospel, but it&#8217;s not the essence of the good news.
Trent:
For an extended treatment of the question, what is the gospel? See Jimmy&#8217;s full video link below. So at minimum, we can say the gospel is the good news of God&#8217;s kingdom entering the world that saves God&#8217;s people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is why Paul says it is in Christ that we have the good news of our salvation. But these verses about the gospel never say the good news is about salvation through faith alone or grace alone or any other doctrinal formula. The gospel is just the salvation that comes through God&#8217;s power being implemented in his kingdom through his son. Since Catholicism affirms this truth, that means the Catholic church is not preaching a false gospel. The glossary of the catechism of the Catholic church defines the gospel as the good news of God&#8217;s mercy and love revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
It is this gospel or good news that the apostles and the church following them are to proclaim to the entire world. People who say Catholicism teaches a false gospel usually arrive at this conclusion through two mistaken lines of thought. First, they assume the gospel is identical to all essential doctrines of the faith. But as we&#8217;ve seen, the Bible never defines the gospel in this way. The Trinity and Jesus&#8217; messianic status are essential doctrines of Christianity, but scripture never says that these truths are part of the gospel or the good news. Second, these critics assume essential doctrines for their denomination must also be essential doctrines of the Christian faith, and so those doctrines must be part of the gospel as well. Consider this sermon from the late Vadi Bacham.
CLIP:
And God imputes our sinfulness to him and he nails our sinfulness to the tree and Christ dies and raises again on the third day for our justification. And there&#8217;s another imputation. The righteousness of Christ is actually imputed to us. That&#8217;s the gospel that we preach.
Trent:
But as Protestant Theologian Randall Rouser notes, this articulation of the gospel doesn&#8217;t come from the Bible. Instead, it comes from reformed theological traditions about things like the double imputation of sin and Christ righteousness. Bacham seems to have conflated his summary of the Calvinist plan of salvation with the gospel. So Rouser says-
CLIP:
But it&#8217;s not the gospel. It&#8217;s an interpretation of the gospel. The Greek danger, when people like Bacham conflate their theoretical understanding of the gospel with the gospel is, first of all, now they end up changing the gospel because now the gospel becomes essentially about proclaiming reformed theology.
Trent:
And Rauser says this approach leads to people like Bacham treating Christians who disagree with him on doctrines like the specific nature of the atonement as being less Christian than him or not even Christian at all. For example, when many people are asked to summarize the gospel in one Bible verse, they&#8217;ll often point to John 3:16, where John says, &#8220;For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. Even though many Protestants say the gospel of John is sufficient to proclaim the gospel, the word gospel is not in John&#8217;s gospel. At best, this verse serves as a loose summary of the plan of salvation that flows from what the gospel is, but this verse is at least the start of a much better answer to the question, what is the gospel than what the late John MacArthur said in the following clip when he was asked to summarize the gospel in a single verse.
CLIP:
Greatest gospel verse in the Bible. Second Corinthians 5:21. He made him who knew no sin. Sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. God punished Jesus for my sin, turns right around and treats me as if I lived his life. That&#8217;s the great doctrine of substitution, and on that doctrine turned the whole reformation of the church, that is the heart of the gospel. And what you get is complete forgiveness covered by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. When he looks at the cross, he sees you. When he looks at you, he sees Christ.
Trent:
So MacArthur said the heart of the gospel is his particular reformed interpretation of two Corinthians 5:21. This involves our sins being imputed to Christ so that God sees us on the cross and so he consequently punishes us while punishing Christ. And now God only sees Christ when he looks at us and so he rewards us with eternal life. But once again, the Bible does not say this is the gospel. Even though Eugelian is used nine times in two Corinthians, even if the passage was teaching the doctrine MacArthur thinks it&#8217;s teaching, that doesn&#8217;t make it part of the gospel. Protestants know the gospel is not identical to everything the New Testament teaches because each of the major Protestant denominations differ on what they think the New Testament teaches, but they do not anathematize every other Protestant as preaching a false gospel just because they have mistaken theology.
Well, classical Protestants don&#8217;t do this, but some evangelicals venture into this rhetoric as can be seen in this exchange between Redeem Zoomer and Ryan from needgod.net.
CLIP:
Because I think Luther was someone who did think baptism was required for salvation.
So would you say Luther is preaching a false gospel then?
If that&#8217;s what he sincerely believed, then yeah, he would be preaching a false gospel on that basis.
Trent:
Returning to MacArthur&#8217;s answer, if the heart of the gospel was a particular reformed understanding of two Corinthians 5:21, then followers of John Wesley, i.e. Many Methodists, who believe in an imparted righteousness rather than an imputed righteousness would have a false gospel. The same is true for any Christian who denies the doctrine of double imputation and believes Seton Corinthians 5:21 teaches something else. This includes believing the verse as a reference to just the incarnation or Christ coming in the form of sinful flesh, as Romans eight three says. The verse could also mean Christ became sin in the sense that Christ became a sacrificial sin offering on our behalf. Since the Hebrew word for sin is the same word for sin offering. Ironically, in another interview later in his life, MacArthur warned about expanding the concept of the gospel to include doctrines that are not a part of the good news.
CLIP:
It&#8217;s very easy to pile stuff on top of the gospel and then even eliminate the real gospel, but it has to do with the best news that anyone will ever hear, and that is you can escape eternal punishment, spend eternity in heaven.
Trent:
But we also have to be careful to not radically underdefine the gospel because it has essential elements a Christian cannot reject. In Galatians one, Paul chastises the Galatians for deserting the faith for a different gospel, which isn&#8217;t real good news, but a perversion of the true gospel. For example, Islam teaches a false gospel because its good news about salvation rejects Christ&#8217;s death and resurrection, which we&#8217;ve seen are fundamental parts of the gospel. Likewise, claiming that circumcision is necessary for salvation, as some Galatians had done, constituted a false gospel. That&#8217;s because the circumcision requirement basically said to be a Christian, you have to become a Jew first, but the good news is that through the son, God&#8217;s kingdom would be universal and not belong only to one group of people. Hence, this is why while Paul chastises other theological errors in his letters, he reserves the charge of having another gospel or a false gospel for doctrines that contradict the core message of the gospel.
So to summarize, pleasant Protestants can answer the question, what is the gospel by agreeing with Catholics and letting the Bible speak for itself. The gospel is the good news of God&#8217;s kingdom being implemented through the death and resurrection of his son. Unpleasant Protestants who say Catholics preach a false unbiblical gospel themselves rely on an unbiblical definition of the gospel in order to make that argument, which becomes obvious when you ask them where the Bible specifically says the gospel, Yugelian, is identical to their pet doctrines. However, the Christian faith, even the essential doctrines of the Christian faith involve much more than the message of the gospel. Even pleasant Protestants who believe Catholicism preaches the gospel still have to wrestle with a difficult question. Which doctrines are essential to the Christian faith and how do we know they are essential? Many Protestants believe scripture is perspicuous or that it clearly reveals the essential doctrines Christians must believe.
The Westminster confession says those things which are &#8220;necessary to be known, believed and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or other that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain undo a sufficient understanding of them. But isn&#8217;t it necessary for salvation to know if the largest Christian denomination in the world, Catholicism, preaches a true gospel or a false gospel? Even learned Protestants using ordinary means do not have agreement on this question, as can be seen in debates between Protestants on the question of whether Catholics are Christian or if they have a false gospel. Ironically, this provides evidence that God&#8217;s authority structure for the church is not grounded in something like solo scriptura, but a living teaching office or a magisterium capable of settling disputes definitively through authoritative, universal, and infallible teachings.
Finally, I hope this episode will encourage Catholics to be able to give an elevator pitch answer to the question, what is the gospel? Many Protestants will not take you seriously if you are unable to answer this question. So as one Peter 3:15 says, always be ready to give a reason or an answer for the hope within, but with gentleness and reverence. For more on this issue, I recommend my colleague Jimmy Akin&#8217;s book, The Drama of Salvation, and my new book, Salvation is from the Catholic Church available at the links below. And if you want to meet me and over 30 other Catholic creators this spring, then register for our April 11th evangelism conference hosted right here in Dallas. Tickets are available at conferenceoftrent.com. Over half of them have been sold already, so be sure to get yours today. And if you enjoy our content and wanted to grow and expand, please support us at trenthornpodcast.com.
Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.

The Question “Unpleasant Protestants” Can’t Answer

In this episode Trent responds to Wes Huff&#8217;s recent defense of Protestant justifications for the New Testament canon.
Joe Heschmeyer – <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHwR8Gj5YKY">THROWING OUT Scripture to Save Sola Scriptura</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWFlknJgLIY">Does Water Baptism Save? | ‪@NeedGodnet‬ vs ‪@shamelesspopery‬</a>
<a href="https://shop.catholic.com/when-protestants-argue-like-atheists-12-weird-ways-that-anti-catholics-mimic-secular-skeptics/">When Protestants Argue Like Atheists</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4DeTvPysW4">Michael Horton&#8217;s Response to Me on Sola Scriptura (REBUTTED)</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO7g-ZvURxk">Did the First Christians Have a Protestant Old Testament?</a>
Transcription:
Trent:
Recently Protestant Bible Scholar Wes Huff published a video addressing what he calls the Protestant Bible problem or the problem related to Protestant attempts to justify the canon of scripture apart from authoritative church teaching. In today&#8217;s episode, we&#8217;re going to go through Huff&#8217;s video and see the problem is still not solved, so let&#8217;s take a look.
CLIP:
The church is not the origin of scripture. God is when I say that scripture is the so infallible rule of faith and practice for the church. What I&#8217;m making there is a statement on the origin of scripture. The origin of scripture is divine and to a degree the Roman Catholic position can agree with the origin statement, although clearly disagreeing with that being the sole infallible rule. In insofar as Vatican one states that these books, the church holds to be sacred and canonical, not because she subsequently approved them by her authority, but because being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and we&#8217;re as much committed to the church.
Trent:
Notice that this quote from Vatican one has an ellipses, which means huff has not cited the entire passage. That isn&#8217;t always bad, but it can be unhelpful if crucial details are left out. Here&#8217;s the full passage. These books the church holds to be sacred and canonical, not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and were as such committed to the church. The church did not determine the canon of scripture in the sense that some bishops voted and then transformed uninspired human writings, IE those written by unaided human skills Vatican one says and then turned them into divinely inspired writings. The 27 books of the New Testament were each divinely inspired texts the moment they were written because they have God as their author.
However, the church didn&#8217;t discover the canon of scripture either. The church didn&#8217;t unknowingly discover the canon through a providentially guided process like how Pharaoh&#8217;s wife providentially found Moses in the Nile River. Rather than unilaterally determine or fortunately discover the canon of scripture, the church authoritatively declared the canon of scripture, so not determine or discover but declare and it did this through its use in the liturgy, then the proclamations at regional councils and finally through infallible declarations at ecumenical councils. Through this, the church teaches the faithful what is scripture and that it is the sin of heresy to deny any of these books are scripture.
CLIP:
By the time the church was having discussions of canon lists and what books did or didn&#8217;t possess, the mark of inspiration, the books of inspired scripture had already been written, read, copied, passed around and disseminated for some time. Paul is already being recognized as scripture within the first century by Peter in two Peter three 16 and Paul himself is quoting Luke as scriptural alongside Deuteronomy In one Timothy five,
Trent:
Some Protestants including Huff it seems try to come up with criteria that allow them to reverse engineer the canon of scripture based on qualities like apostolic authorship or an apostle sighting of a non apostolic writer being scripture Gavin Orland made a similar argument in our debate on Sola scriptura.
CLIP:
The cannon is one that the process starts in the New Testament itself because we&#8217;ve got Luke Gospel referred to as scripture by Paul quoted a scripture, and we&#8217;ve got Paul&#8217;s writings quoted as scripture by Peter in the New Testament, so
Trent:
We got 13 out of 27.
CLIP:
Well, Paul&#8217;s writings, yeah, so you&#8217;ve got, but it&#8217;s not just which ones you have, it&#8217;s that there&#8217;s a recognition that there is scripture that these documents are scripture.
Trent:
There was an early recognition of some New Testament documents being scripture, but as I noted in the debate and in previous episodes in the first 150 years of church history, there are less than a dozen formal citations of the New Testament as scripture. The primary source of authority during this time in church history was the church, specifically the bishops who succeeded the apostles. So at best these apostolic citations might give you the gospel of Luke and the 13 Pauline letters, but they can&#8217;t prove Hebrews is canonical for example, since this is an anonymous document and they can&#8217;t prove the gospel of Mark is canonical since Mark was not an apostle and no apostolic writing quotes mark as scripture, the reverse engineering argument also assumes that all of these works attributed to an apostle like Matthew&#8217;s Gospel or Paul&#8217;s letters were actually written by those people, but modern textual scholarship, which Huff is certainly aware of, has cast some of those authorship claims into doubt.
For example, most New Testament scholars don&#8217;t think Peter wrote second Peter or that Paul wrote second Timothy, which isn&#8217;t great for Protestants because they rely on these writings to ground the doctrine of Sola scriptura. In fact, as my colleague Joe Hess Meyer notes in a recent episode where he also interacts with Huff&#8217;s arguments, Protestants end up having to reject passages like Mark&#8217;s account of the post-resurrection appearances because modern scholarship denies that this was part of Mark&#8217;s original gospel and claims that someone else wrote it. Joe&#8217;s recent debate with Ryan from ne god.net on baptism also highlighted this problem. You see this when Joe showed that Mark 1616 proves baptism is necessary for salvation because in that verse Jesus says he who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned. In response, Ryan just denied that this passage was a part of scripture.
CLIP:
He brought up Mark 16, which was I think his first verse that he actually referred to and he said this is a very clear one because it says, Hey, whoever believes in is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. I&#8217;m actually really surprised that he brings this one up even particularly as his opening argument when the vast majority of textual scholars including conservative ones actually think it&#8217;s unlikely that even Mark 16 verses nine through the 20 is authentically part of Mark&#8217;s gospel.
Trent:
However, Catholics don&#8217;t have the problem of having to ground scriptures authority in direct apostolic authorship or citation because the church authoritatively teaches which human documents are scripture regardless of which individual or individuals in the first century actually wrote these documents. Paul says he used secretaries to write his letters, so we know multiple people would be involved in these works, but we don&#8217;t ground our authority for the canon of scripture on strict authorship claims that modern scholarship calls into doubt. Instead, we ground them in the perennial tradition of the Catholic church safeguarded in the church&#8217;s teaching office of which documents are scripture. I&#8217;d also add that it&#8217;s inconsistent for Protestants to dismiss modern scholarship that denies the apostolic origin of the 27 books of the New Testament and saying that&#8217;s just liberal or unbelieving scholarship, but then embrace those same scholars when they deny the apostolic origin of things like the first century bishop of Rome. I call this tactics scholars for me but not for thee. In my book, when Protestants argue like atheists,
CLIP:
The early church did not invent the Bible, they merely recognized the inspiration. The books already possessed and formally identified them as such as J Packer put it. The church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Sir Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity. Newton did not create gravity but recognized it.
Trent:
Yes, the church did not create scripture and Isaac Newton did not create gravity. God created both of those things because God created everything. However, the church also didn&#8217;t happen upon scripture as if it fell out of a tree and hit St. Peter on the head like the apocryphal story about an apple falling out of a tree and hitting Newton in the head, helping him to discover gravity. We are confident gravity exists because we can do scientific experiments to prove Newton was correct about that concept. Moreover, those same experiments also tell us where Newton was wrong about gravity and where Einstein and other scientists have to supplement his conclusions. We don&#8217;t just have to take Newton&#8217;s word for it when it comes to the existence of gravity, however, there are no experiments we can do to prove the early church was correct when it articulated the 27 book can and of the New Testament.
Instead, we have to rely on the authority of the church declaring this truth. Now, a Protestant might say that the church can get the canon of scripture right even if it gets a bunch of other doctrines wrong and the church doesn&#8217;t have to be infallible to give a scripture. That&#8217;s logically possible, but how do you know that&#8217;s the case? If I tell you that my doctor incorrectly diagnosed seven of the last diseases that I had, why would you trust his catalog of known diseases? Likewise, my question to Huff and other Protestant apologists is this, how do you know the fourth century church got the canon of scripture right? When you think it got so many other doctrines about salvation, the priesthood, the Eucharist, and the blessed Virgin Mary wrong? Here&#8217;s how Huff attempts to answer the question,
CLIP:
The early church, the canonization process, right? Not because they&#8217;re infallible, but because we can trust the Holy Spirit in his act of leading and because God&#8217;s word is self-authenticating,
Trent:
The first reason is just circular reasoning. We know the early church got the cannon right, because the Holy Spirit would make sure the church got the cannon right. Okay, well, how do you know then that according to your perspective, the Holy Spirit botched it or failed to keep the church on correct doctrine? As a Catholic, I can make the same argument. We know the Catholic church preserves apostolic teachings because we can trust the Holy Spirit protected God&#8217;s church. If you don&#8217;t accept that reasoning for the Catholic church&#8217;s divine authority, then you can&#8217;t accept that same reasoning for the 27 book collection of the New Testament&#8217;s divine authority. Now, a Protestant might say that scripture is not like the Catholic church because scripture is self-authenticating. Huff doesn&#8217;t give much detail on what it means to be self-authenticating, but he may be referring to arguments that have their roots in John Calvin and have been defended today by Michael Krueger, that scripture authenticates itself. For example, Krueger says, if the created world general revelation is able to speak clearly that it is from God, then how much more so would the canon of scripture special revelation speak clearly that it is from God? Gavin Orland makes a similar argument that Huff includes in his video
CLIP:
When Moses is at the burning bush and he hears God. He doesn&#8217;t need a secondary voice whispering in his ear, confirming some kind of infallible reception of this voice when the prophets receive words from God, when Adam hears God in the garden, you don&#8217;t need to be infallible to recognize God&#8217;s voice for what it&#8217;s,
Trent:
The problem with these explanations is that the divine quality of the world or of a miracle is just much more obvious than the divine quality of a piece of writing. We believe God made the world or that a voice coming from a burning bushes from God because there is no natural explanation for these things. Scripture verses that show we can recognize God through creation like Romans one 20 or Psalm 19, one, do not refer to the beauty of creation testifying to God. They instead refer to God&#8217;s power being displayed in his mighty craft or they speak of effects that only an all powerful God could create, but the claim that a piece of writing is inspired because it&#8217;s beautiful or impossible for a particular human being to write. Those are the same arguments used to try to prove the Quran or the Book of Mormon are inspired.
Scripture plus some parts of the New Testament don&#8217;t sound very inspired like when Paul forgets who he baptized when he was writing First Corinthians, but they are still scripture. Finally, Krueger&#8217;s claim that the canon of scripture speaks more clearly than it is from God in the natural world is patently false. While the early church unanimously agreed that God created the entire world even in the face of gnostic heretics who thought otherwise, the early church did not possess a similar agreement over the canon of scripture. The church fathers disagreed about what constituted the canon. Instead, the church had to intervene and settle this disagreement.
CLIP:
Even Roman Catholicism, which holds to holy tradition as infallible, has no formal infallible list of infallible traditions. There is no reference source. A modern Roman Catholic can cite or source from say the Vatican or a church council somewhere that infallibly lists the infallible traditions that all Roman Catholics must adhere to, but neither of us need such a source. I can say that two plus two is four, not because I&#8217;m infallible, but because I have a reasonable confidence to ground the truth of that statement in
Trent:
There is not and there never will be an infallible list of all the infallible teachings of the Catholic church. That&#8217;s because Christ created the church with a living teaching office, which he says has the authority to bind and loose throughout church history, the church guided by the Holy Spirit has issued infallible teachings to resolve things like new heresies. There can never be a document that says only these teachings are infallible because what if in a few centuries the church has to face a novel heresy, and so it needs to make an infallible declaration that&#8217;s not on that list. Because of the church&#8217;s living teaching office and reliance on sacred tradition that has lived out in the church&#8217;s liturgical life, there was not a pressing need in the early church to define what is and isn&#8217;t scripture. That&#8217;s why you don&#8217;t have cannon lists being promulgated until the fourth century, but Protestantism doesn&#8217;t have a magisterium or any teaching office in the church because Protestant denominations disagree on key doctrines.
Their teaching office, if you can call it that just is scripture, and so they need a way to define what scripture even is, which creates a problem for them because scripture doesn&#8217;t give us that answer. Huff and I know that two plus two equals four because of self-evident axioms mathematics, but there is no similar self-evident axiom or even well-grounded historical claims like early use among the church fathers or apostolic teaching on scripture&#8217;s identity for him to use to determine the canon of scripture. All he has to use is the witness of the early church that he selectively chooses to follow for his theological foundations.
CLIP:
This is why the BS in Acts chapter 17 verses 11 are commended as being more noble because when they receive Paul&#8217;s message, they immediately tested it by the solid and unshakeable standard of scripture. Scripture, and scripture alone was their discerning authority. The early church held a pivotal rule in the ultimate coming together of what we now call the Bible, but the church then today and for all times stands under the authority of scripture. Paul tells us that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, those who communicated the word of God with the cornerstone being Jesus himself.
Trent:
Notice that Huff says scripture is the only infallible rule of faith for the church, but he then cites a scripture passage that doesn&#8217;t say that or even say anything about scripture prior to his ascension into heaven. Jesus Christ never told anyone to write anything down. The apostles never said all of their teachings would be confined to the written word. The New Testament doesn&#8217;t even give us criteria to determine what human writings are and are not Scripture. Huff quotes Act 1711 claiming the berean practice sola scriptura, but that&#8217;s not what the passage says. Luke is contrasting the berean with the Thessalonians. If Luke was making a point about Sola scriptura, he would&#8217;ve said the Thessalonians were bad because they gull agreed with Paul and didn&#8217;t check scripture, whereas the Berean did check Paul against scripture, but that&#8217;s not Luke&#8217;s comparison. Luke says that some of the Thessalonians accepted Paul&#8217;s oral teaching, which Paul commended them for doing because his spoken words, as he says in verse Thessalonians, were the word of God, but other people in Thessalonica rejected Paul&#8217;s teachings and started a riot.
The Berean, on the other hand were more noble and they gave Paul a chance. They were the kind of people who love truth, and this was shown by their willingness to search the scriptures daily. Paul&#8217;s message didn&#8217;t contradict scripture, but it also wasn&#8217;t explicitly found in scripture because the Old Testament didn&#8217;t outright say the Messiah would be crucified and rise three days later from the dead. The Berean had to trust Paul&#8217;s message that went beyond the scriptures in their possession, and so they accepted the word of God. Paul preached to them about Jesus who is God&#8217;s word made flesh. Huff also ends this video with a citation from serial of Jerusalem, but you can see my reply to Michael Horton where I show that it&#8217;s fruitless for Protestants to enlist the church fathers to support Soul of s Scriptura. I also recommend my recent reply to West Huff on the Old Testament canon of scripture. Both of these are listed below in the description if you want to watch them and if Wes Huff would like to come into the studio and have a chat with me about the canon or biblical scholarship, I&#8217;d be happy to oblige Jim. So thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.

The Protestant Bible still has a problem (Wes Huff Response)

The Emptiness of “Political Christianity”

Some say Catholics are inconsistent for not baptizing stillborn babies while claiming to be pro-life

On October 16, 1793, in the Parisian public square once dedicated to her husband’s grandfather, Louis XV, Marie-Antoinette of Austria, widow of Louis XVI, was decapitated on the new machine of public execution called the guillotine. She was two weeks away from her thirty-eighth birthday.
Why a daughter of the powerful Habsburg dynasty, who had been the wife of the most powerful ruler in Europe, would come to such a violent end has never ceased to haunt and fascinate historians. In the popular mind, she is the queen who danced while the people starved, who spent extravagantly on clothes and jewels without a thought for her subjects’ plight. Such is the image of the much-maligned Austrian archduchess, sent to France at age fourteen to marry the fifteen-year-old dauphin.
In reality, Marie-Antoinette was a teetotaler who ate frugally. She was notorious for her intense modesty. Yes, she had a gambling problem when young. She loved to entertain and had wonderful parties. Her clothes, yes, were magnificent; volumes could be and have been written about Marie-Antoinette&#8217;s style. She did gradually introduce simpler fashions to France, however. Her charitable works on behalf of the indigent were extensive.
But for her enemies, she stood between them and political power; she stood between them and destroying the Catholic Church; she stood between them and the complete overturning of society. As beloved wife of the king and as mother of not only the heir to the throne, but all the French people, she had to be destroyed.
Although some historians are intent upon proving that Marie-Antoinette had an extramarital affair with a Swedish diplomat, evidence of the queen&#8217;s fervent Catholic faith continues to surface. Recently auctioned in Paris was the Holy Week missal of the late queen Marie Leszczynska, the grandmother of Louis XVI. The book ended up in the hands of the king’s sister, Madame Elisabeth, who shared her brother’s imprisonment. When in prison, the royal family made use of the missal throughout the year, reading aloud the words of the Mass every day. Later, when Marie-Antoinette was taken to the Conciergerie for her trial, the prayer book went with her. To this day, the book opens easily to certain pages, including page 310, which has the passage:
<blockquote>Scarcely is he [Jesus] raised to the sight of all these people, that he is insulted, and charged on all sides with curses and reproaches. In the end, he makes one last effort to raise his eyes to heaven: my Father, he exclaims, forgive them, I pray you, because they know not what they do.</blockquote>
I first visited Marie-Antoinette’s private retreat at Petit Trianon when I was seventeen years old. It was January, but the birds were singing in the gardens. Then and on successive trips, I experienced a strong sense of timelessness. Others have confided to me a similar feeling of enchantment when wandering through the gardens of Trianon.
People frequently ask me why I write about Marie-Antoinette. One of the reasons is that I keep encountering educated people who really think she said, “Let them eat cake.” I continue to encounter Christians who think Marie-Antoinette was killed as punishment for some egregious wickedness or, at least, for unforgivable stupidity. Having read books about her since childhood, I knew she was misunderstood; it was only after a great deal more research that I came to see how completely false are the common beliefs about her.
But the demonization of Marie-Antoinette in the popular mind is necessary to justify the excesses of the French Revolution. When people have a false and distorted view of history, it is difficult for them to grasp the present, and almost impossible to meet the future with any kind of preparedness.
The French Revolution was not necessary, simply because it is never necessary to murder tens of thousands of people. Reform certainly was needed, but reform can happen without mass murder.
Louis XVI was an intrepid reformer. He was not afraid to break with the past and abolish outdated customs while introducing new ways of doing things. Louis was not resistant to change, although that is how he is usually portrayed. The changes were slow but over time might have been effective, had the violent upheavals not swept everything away.
Too often, the violence is represented as a sad but unavoidable means of achieving freedom and democracy. But it is not only that the French Revolution overturned the social order; it was ultimately an attack on the Catholic Church. Many Catholics were killed, especially those peasants who did not want their religion taken away.
The French Revolution has been the blueprint for every totalitarian regime that has followed and has continued to be the model for those wishing not only to destroy the Catholic Church, but all Christian society.
Modern people love Marie-Antoinette for her glamor and style, but mostly for her courage when the glamor disappeared. Hers is a tragedy akin to those of ancient Greece, yet without the element of total despair. For Antoinette remains a Christian heroine, and her end is characterized by virtues that can be found in many an acta sanctorum. Although we weep for her, we are simultaneously uplifted—for the hallmark of Christian charity involves the ability to forgive.
Whatever faults Marie-Antoinette may have had, there can be no doubt that she bore wrongs patiently and forgave her enemies in a Christlike manner. And her forgiveness has an especially supernatural aura. When she wrote her last letter to her sister-in-law Elisabeth, she was hours away from death. She was half-blind, and her health was broken. She had been put through the ordeal of a humiliating trial, designed to break her will. Her little son had been dragged from her arms and tormented into accusing his own mother of incest.
That Marie-Antoinette was able to forgive the monsters who had tried to destroy her by corrupting her little boy surely required a special grace from God. Here are her words to Elisabeth, who had also been falsely accused:
<blockquote>I have to speak to you of one thing which is very painful to my heart, I know how much pain the child must have caused you. Forgive him, my dear sister; think of his age, and how easy it is to make a child say whatever one wishes, especially when he does not understand it. . . . I pardon all my enemies the evils that they have done me.</blockquote>
Christian love overcomes hatred. Only someone who sincerely believed in and loved Jesus Christ could make that leap from hellish circumstances to the heights of courage, love, and martyrdom. And thus Marie-Antoinette, a wife and mother who had witnessed her family suffering, whose husband had been killed, whose little son had been tormented, is an example of Christian fortitude for all time.
&nbsp;

What Does Marie-Antoinette Mean to Us Now?

<div>Is there any truth to the "Jesuit roots of dispensationalism" claim?</div><div>This is basically a theological debate between two branches of Protestantism: those who oppose dispensationalism and argue that its roots are founded on the doctrine of a Jesuit theologian of the latter seventeenth century, while others (the dispensationalists) maintain that although the priest may have gotten some things right, he was dead wrong in not recognizing the Catholic Church as the biblical Whore of Babylon of Revelation 13, and that, in any event, authentic dispensationalism is biblical.
Those who argue for Jesuit roots base their theory on the writings of only one Jesuit, the Spaniard Fr. Manuel Lacunza, who expressed his eschatological views in his multi-volume work The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty.
In contrast to authentic Catholic teaching, and similar to the doctrine of later Protestant dispensationalists, Fr. Lacunza espoused a literal, one-thousand-year reign of Jesus prior to the end of the world.
However, Fr. Lacunza’s work didn’t receive support from the Spanish government authorities, and it was later banned by the Spanish Inquisition and put on the Index of Forbidden Books by Pope Leo XII in 1824.
For a faithfully Catholic perspective on premillennialism, dispensationalism, and the related doctrine of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-rapture">Rapture</a>, see our related tract and articles on catholic.com.
In addition, in a tract on our website, we respond to nine charges of how the Catholic Church is allegedly the Whore of Babylon noted in Revelation 13 (“<a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-whore-of-babylon">The Whore of Babylon</a>,” www.catholic.com. In reading this resource, you will see well that the ancient pagan Roman Empire—not Christ’s Catholic Church headquartered in Rome—is the great persecutor of Christians.
We also have a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/what-is-the-mark-of-the-beast-a-k-a-666-with-jimmy-akin">podcast episode</a> on the biblical number 666, a.k.a. “the mark of the beast.”
</div>

Is there any truth to the “Jesuit roots of dispensationalism” claim?

In case you were too immersed in the recent flaps over <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/scott-hahn-bishop-barron-and-guilt-by-association">whether Scott Hahn is a schismatic</a> (TLDR: he’s not) or whether conservative American Catholics are backward-looking (we are: to Jesus and the apostles) to notice: Bishop Robert Barron and papal biographer Austen Ivereigh had their own recent dustup.
First, Ivereigh <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/francis-world-youth-day-lisbon-ivereigh-catholic-vatican-synodality?_ga=2.82660563.478251029.1693600592-801038572.1693600592">criticized Bp. Barron’s World Youth Day talks</a> as being over-concerned with persuasion-toward-conversion rather than simple evangelization. The good bishop, in response, <a href="https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/barron/when-did-conversion-become-a-dirty-word/">cautioned against a weak-sauce approach</a> to evangelization that accompanies someone to such an extent that we leave out evangelization’s end goal: conversion to Christ and his Church.
Into the exchange stepped Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter, who<a href="https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/why-does-bishop-barron-keep-attacking-pope-francis-allies"> knocked Bp. Barron’s approach to evangelization</a>—marked by patient, rational dialogue and appeals to truth and beauty—as “semi-Pelagian.” He quoted approvingly Ivereigh’s follow-up charge that Barron was crossing the line from true evangelism (good) to the awful, impermissible proselytism—the most dreadful thing the Church has concocted since the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2ncJ6ciGyM">Comfy Chair</a>.
Now, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-by-your-own-bootstraps-heretic">semi-Pelagianism</a> is the ancient heresy that claimed we can make the initial act of faith or movement toward God solely by our own free will, without the aid of his grace. Winters doesn’t really believe that Bp. Barron is a semi-Pelagian; he is using the term loosely to refer to an over-emphasis on human devices (to the exclusion of the Holy Spirit) in the work of evangelization. And this charge is directly connected, apparently, with that of proselytism, which means . . . well, we’ll get to that.
Let’s look at those two points real quick.
First, I’m sure that Bp. Barron would be the last to claim that conversion is properly our work, not God&#8217;s. But it’s a false dilemma to say that either a) God draws people to himself by grace or b) we draw people to God by reason—or friendship, or beauty, or charity, or anything else we do. Instead, we have a both/and. As the <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1993.htm">Catechism</a> puts it, the work of salvation is a “cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom.”
No one can have faith unless God first gives him grace. At the same time, God wills that we cooperate with him as instruments of our own salvation and each other’s. When it comes to others, we do this in a number of ways, but we might boil them down to three P’s:
Prayer: we ask God to do for others what we can’t
Proclamation: we tell other people the Good News
Persuasion: by word or deed, we make Christ and his truth attractive and understandable
In none of these do we forget that God’s grace is the first and necessary motive power in conversion; but at the same time, in all of them we recognize that we have a legitimate role to play. This isn’t Pelagian or semi-Pelagian or three-quarters Pelagian—it’s Catholic.
Now what about “proselytism”? This has become an especially dirty word over the last decade or so, but it has never been clear to me why, since at root it just means an effort to bring someone to a new religious point of view (see: the Great Commission). Some say that Pope Benedict XVI, who warned against it in an address to a Brazilian audience in 2007, had in mind an aggressive and coercive form of faux-evangelization that seeks to manipulate people into professing belief rather than letting them come to it in freedom—as had been practiced, at times, in the missionary field and is said to occur among the “sheep-stealing” sects of Latin America and elsewhere today.
If so, that’s a good definition and a good warning. None of us should be doing that.
But to let the definition of proselytism creep so much that it now refers, in Ivereigh’s words, to “means of persuasion, strategies, theological explanations, and apologetics programs”?? That’s going way too far. As with the false charge of semi-Pelagianism, this leaves out the role of human cooperation in the work of getting people saved.
Pope John Paul II, in fact, hit this nail right on the head. In his 1990 encyclical <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_redemptoris-missio.html">Redemptoris Missio</a>, he rebuked those who dismiss or decry the missionary “call to conversion” as “an act of ‘proselytizing.” Everyone, he said, “has the right to hear the Good News,” and so it’s not enough to “help people to become more human or more faithful in their own religion.”
Whose job is it to tell people about this Good News? It’s ours—the whole Church’s. And not only to tell people about it, but to model it for them in the way we live; and not only to model it, but to clear away their mental obstacles to it and help explain the tricky parts. And, ideally, to do it with a skill and zeal that Ivereigh &amp; co. shouldn&#8217;t dismiss as mere illicit cleverness.
Catholic Answers exists to do just this job, in a specially direct and focused way. May it please God to continue allowing us to be his humble cooperators in the salvation of souls.

No, Not the Dreaded Proselytism!

<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?

<div>Would a man still be committing the "sin of Onan" if his wife is beyond child-bearing age?</div><div>Onanism, i.e., a husband’s spilling his seed outside of his wife’s womb, is never morally permissible (see Gen. 38:1-10). God has inscribed an unbreakable bond between the love-giving and life-giving aspects of the marital act, which endures even if a wife is beyond child-bearing years. Otherwise, the marital act would be prohibited altogether after child-bearing years, illustrating that the life-giving aspect is not restricted to the procreative fruit of children but also extends to the mutual building up of husband and wife.
God designed the marital act for husband and wife to become one and to renew that covenant in conjugal relations throughout their married lives. Indeed, God designed marriage to be a free, total, faithful, and fruitful covenant between a husband and wife; and conjugal love, as the quintessentially marital act, is to reflect that whole and unreserved commitment between the spouses. Onanism is certainly not a total giving of husband to his wife, nor a faithful one, irrespective of whether procreation is possible. And an onanistic husband also deprives his wife of the non-procreative beneficial effects his seed provides her.
For more on onanism, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-sin-of-onan">please see this article from our magazine</a>.
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Is “Onanism” OK Beyond Child-Bearing Years?

What Does God Really Want?

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

As a father of three young children, I enjoy reading and listening to fairy tales with my kids. But I can’t help but notice that in addition to all of the strange and supernatural features of these tales, there are a striking number of canonical irregularities . . . particularly in how the characters approach the sacraments of baptism and holy matrimony.
Let’s start with one of the most famous fairy tales: the story of Cinderella. Versions of this story have existed for millennia, dating back at least to the ancient Greek story of Rhodopis, from about the time of Christ. Charles Perrault’s 1697 version is the most famous, serving as the basis for the 1950 Disney film. It’s a charming story, but it’s hard not to be alarmed at the canonical irregularities. To wit:
<blockquote>At last the happy day came; they went to Court, and Cinderella followed them with her eyes as long as she could, and when she had lost sight of them, she fell a-crying.
Her godmother, who saw her all in tears, asked her what was the matter.
&#8220;I wish I could—I wish I could—&#8221; but she could not finish for sobbing.
Her godmother, who was a fairy, said to her, “You wish you could go to the ball; is it not so?”</blockquote>
Hold on a moment. Her godmother is a fairy?
The first canonical problem this raises is the whole idea of having a non-human godmother. A godparent (technically called a sponsor in canon law) must “be a Catholic who has been confirmed and has already received the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist and who leads a life of faith in keeping with the function to be taken on” (874 §1.3). Are we to believe that this fairy has been baptized and confirmed, and has received her first Communion?
But the second canonical problem is that fairies are notorious dabblers in magic. Lest you think this an uncharitable stereotype, I’ll point you to the text:
<blockquote>Cinderella went at once to gather the finest she could get, and brought it to her godmother, not being able to imagine how this pumpkin could help her to go to the ball. Her godmother scooped out all the inside of it, leaving nothing but the rind. Then she struck it with her wand, and the pumpkin was instantly turned into a fine gilded coach.</blockquote>
Magic wands? Sorcery? What kind of godmother doesn’t realize that “all practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one&#8217;s service and have a supernatural power over others—even if this were for the sake of restoring their health—are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion” (CCC 2117)? This hardly sounds like someone “who leads a life of faith in keeping with” her role as Cinderella’s godmother.
Whatever canonical problems apply to Cinderella, they apply sevenfold to Sleeping Beauty. I don’t mean that hyperbolically, either. Read for yourself:
<blockquote>At last, however, the queen had a daughter. There was a very fine christening; and the princess had for her godmothers all the fairies they could find in the whole kingdom (there were seven of them), so that every one of them might confer a gift upon her, as was the custom of fairies in those days. By this means the princess had all the perfections imaginable.</blockquote>
This is quite contrary to canon 873, which specifies that “there is to be only one male sponsor or one female sponsor or one of each.”
Admittedly, canon law acknowledges the proper place of local customs (23-28), such that a reasonable “custom contrary to or beyond canon law” (24 §1) may nevertheless carry the force of law in a particular community of the faithful. Still, it’s hard to defend the “custom of fairies in those days” on any kind of moral or canonical grounds. After all, “no custom which is contrary to divine law can obtain the force of law” (24 §1), and a custom of occultic rituals performed by inhuman godmothers would certainly seem to fit that bill.
As is so often the case, the most egregious canonical problems come from Germany . . . in this case, from the story <a href="https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm108.html">Hans-My-Hedgehog</a> by the Brothers Grimm. The story begins with a peasant couple unable to conceive, such that the frustrated husband finally declares to his wife, “I will have a child, even if it is a hedgehog.” The story only get weirder from here:
<blockquote>Then his wife had a baby, and the top half was a hedgehog and the bottom half a boy. When she saw the baby, she was horrified and said, “Now see what you have wished upon us!”
The man said, “It cannot be helped. The boy must be baptized, but we cannot ask anyone to be his godfather.”
The woman said, “And the only name that we can give him is Hans-My-Hedgehog.”</blockquote>
Although the text doesn’t tell us whether any human woman, hedgehog, or fairy was asked to be godmother, it appears that Hans-My-Hedgehog (why not just Hans?)’s parents have decided to deprive him of a godparent of any kind for . . . unknown and vaguely malicious reasons. This is contrary to both Christian charity and canon law, which says,
<blockquote>Insofar as possible, a person to be baptized is to be given a sponsor who assists an adult in Christian initiation or together with the parents presents an infant for baptism. A sponsor also helps the baptized person to lead a Christian life in keeping with baptism and to fulfill faithfully the obligations inherent in it (872).</blockquote>
There’s good reason for this. As the earlier (1917) Code of Canon Law points out, “from baptism a spiritual relationship is contracted only between the one baptizing, the one being baptized, and the sponsor.” So seriously does the Church take this spiritual relationship that it was previously required (although this is no longer the liturgical norm) that the sponsor “himself or through another physically hold or touch the one to be baptized in the act of baptism or immediately lift him up or receive him from the sacred font or from the hands of the one baptizing.”
We could perhaps excuse the misguided actions of Hans-My-Hedgehog’s parents, as they may not have been particularly educated and were almost certainly feeling overwhelmed by both the usual stresses of becoming new parents and the unusual stresses of your child being half-man and half-hedgehog. This is a place where both the priest and the Rite of Baptism can help. The Order of Baptism of Children explains the role of the brief homily provided by the celebrant:
<blockquote>After the Reading, the celebrant preaches a brief homily in which light is shed on what has been read, and those present are led to a deeper understanding of the mystery of baptism and to a more eager fulfillment of the responsibility that arises from it, especially for parents and godparents.</blockquote>
So this would be a great opportunity for Mr. and Mrs. -My-Hedgehog to be led into a “deeper understanding of the mystery of baptism,” and to realize that perhaps their child does need godparents after all to help him through life’s many challenges. But alas, the pastor in this story fails dramatically in his duties:
<blockquote>When he was baptized, the pastor said, “Because of his quills he cannot be given an ordinary bed.” So they put a little straw behind the stove and laid him in it. And he could not drink from his mother, for he would have stuck her with his quills. He lay there behind the stove for eight years, and his father grew tired of him, and thought, “if only he would die.” But he did not die, but just lay there.</blockquote>
The behavior of both pastor and parents is alarming in this account. Hans-My-Hedgehog’s parents would perhaps have benefited from a brief homily explaining that “parents’ respect and affection are expressed by the care and attention they devote to bringing up their young children and providing for their physical and spiritual needs” (CCC 2228). But instead of focusing on this, or the sacramental richness of baptism, the pastor’s homily seemed indifferent toward (or even fearful of) baby Hans-My-Hedgehog, choosing to focus on the dangers that quills can pose to ordinary beds.
The pastor here would do well to remember that the Christian faithful have their own mission “in the Church and in the world” (can. 275 §2), which he should be promoting rather than micromanaging. Admittedly, he’s probably right that quills aren’t going to go well in a bed, and the parents don’t seem to be doing a great job, but that’s why they need support!
Lest you think I’m being nitpicky about the canonical irregularities of various fairy tales, let me point out that I’ve been focusing on only the irregularities around baptism. Do you want to talk about marriage? In Sleeping Beauty, after the Prince awakens Sleeping Beauty, they eat dinner, and “after supper, without losing any time, the lord almoner married them in the chapel of the castle.”
This appears to have been a secret wedding. Ordinarily, that would be forbidden (the Council of Trent forbade the general practice of clandestine marriage), but in this case, the Prince’s motivation was that his mother “was of the race of the Ogres, and the King married her for her vast riches alone.” More specifically, the Prince had a fear (which later proved well founded) that if his mother learned that he was married, she would try to eat his children. Fortunately, canon law provides that “for a grave and urgent cause, the local ordinary can permit a marriage to be celebrated secretly” (1130).
So the clandestine nature of the wedding isn’t the canonical problem this time. The canonical problem is that “before a marriage is celebrated, it must be evident that nothing stands in the way of its valid and licit celebration” (1066). Even in the case of a clandestine marriage, there are certain “investigations necessary before marriage” which must first take to ensure that the couple is free to marry (1067, 1131.1). Since there’s no imminent danger of death for the couple (see can. 1068), the lord almoner should have made the couple wait until appropriate preparations and investigations could occur.
Unsurprisingly, the weirdest fairy tale wedding is in Hans-My-Hedgehog. First, a king promises Hans-My-Hedgehog his daughter’s hand in marriage and then breaks the promise. Hans-My-Hedgehog responds by invading the king’s castle and shouting to the king to “give him what he had promised, or it would cost him and his daughter their lives.” This is quite specifically forbidden in canon law, as “a marriage is invalid if entered into because of force or grave fear from without, even if unintentionally inflicted, so that a person is compelled to choose marriage in order to be free from it” (1103). This first marriage is in fact a ruse: Hans-My-Hedgehog attacks the woman, sticking her “with his quills until she was bloody all over” and then sending her home bloodied and accursed.
After this, Hans-My-Hedgehog attempts marriage with a second princess. This time, “when the princess saw him she was horrified, because he looked so strange, but she thought that nothing could be done about it, because she had promised her father to go with him. She welcomed Hans-My-Hedgehog, and they were married.” Nothing about this seems obviously irregular, other than the groom being half-hedgehog. But that evening, Hans-My-Hedgehog is cured of his half-hedgehogness and is transformed into “a handsome young gentleman.” And then we’re told that “when the princess saw what had happened, she was overjoyed, and they got up and ate and drank. Now their wedding was celebrated for real, and Hans-My-Hedgehog inherited the old king&#8217;s kingdom.”
It’s not just the fact that we’re still calling him Hans-My-Hedgehog even now that he’s not a hedgehog anymore that’s confusing. It’s also the throwaway reference to the wedding now being “celebrated for real”? Are we to take from this that the earlier wedding was a sham for some reason? Perhaps this was a convalidation of some sort (cans. 1156-60). That might be appropriate here, as the idea of marrying half-hedgehogs appears canonically dubious.
Don’t worry: I’m not unpacking the canonical implications of these different fairy tales to my children while we read these stories (nor am I letting them anywhere near Hans-My-Hedgehog until they’re older). But it’s a pleasant diversion to ponder the bizarre worlds of these fairy tales, if for no other reason than to think more clearly about the irregular sacramental situations we sometimes find ourselves in in this one.

Canonical Problems in Fairy Tales

Cy Kellett, host of Catholic Answers Live, sits down with Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, TX as he offers clarity and light, encouragement and inspiration to the faithful in a difficult time in the history of the Church and the world.
If you would like to order Bishop Strickland’s new book, Light and Leaven, find it at <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/light-and-leaven">lightandleavenbook.com.</a>

Catholic Answers Webinar: Forming the Catholic Conscience in a World of Confusion

Why don’t the media get religion, and what can churches do to change that fact? Revered religion reporter and founder of <a href="http://GetReligion.org">GetReligion.org</a> Terry Mattingly joins us for a wide-ranging look at the state of religion reporting in America.

Why Don’t the Media Get Religion?

<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.
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Why Same-Sex Couples Shouldn’t Adopt

Do Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?

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DAY 92
CHALLENGE
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“The practice of celibacy is unbiblical. Paul describes forbidding marriage as a ‘doctrine of demons’ (1 Tim. 4:1–3).”
DEFENSE
Celibacy is grounded in Scripture, including the writings of Paul.
Celibacy is the state of being unmarried. This is not the condition most people are called to, but it is for some. In the Latin Church, most ordained ministers are celibate, as are many in Eastern Catholic Churches (CCC 1579–80).
This is a matter of discipline rather than doctrine, and it could change for sufficient reason. However, being unmarried allows clergy to fully consecrate themselves to Christ and his service. It also conforms them to the model of life adopted by Christ during his ministry and by all the saved in the next life (Matt. 22:30).
The way the discipline has been practiced has varied in different periods, but it is far from unbiblical. Although Jesus recognized marriage as a good instituted by God (Matt. 19:4–6), he was celibate (see Day 25), and he recommended celibacy to those who could accept it (Matt. 19:10–12).
Celibacy is also discussed by Paul. He indicates that he was celibate and wished everyone was, though he acknowledged it is not everyone’s calling (1 Cor. 7:7, cf. vv. 1–9). In view of the conditions of his day, he counseled the unmarried to remain as they were, noting it would spare them worldly troubles and allow them to be single-minded in their devotion to Christ. Yet he acknowledged that it was not sinful for them to marry (1 Cor. 7:25–38). He also appears to recommend celibacy to Timothy as a minister (2 Tim. 2:3–4).
With this background, we can understand what Paul means when he refers to forbidding marriage as a “doctrine of demons.” He is not condemning celibacy, which he both practiced and recommended. He is condemning the idea that nobody should marry, that marriage is somehow immoral (a view endorsed by some heretics).
In the same letter, Paul endorses vows of celibacy. When discussing an order of consecrated widows, he said, “Refuse to enroll younger widows; for when they grow wanton against Christ they desire to marry, and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge” (1 Tim. 5:11–12). He therefore recommended that younger widows remarry and avoid violating the consecrated widow’s vow of celibacy (vv. 14–15).
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The Practice of Celibacy

<div>Is it a mortal sin to forget to follow your Lenten promise?</div><div>So long as your Lenten promise was not to avoid committing a grave sin then, no, it is not a mortal sin for forget your Lenten promise.
However, it might be a good spiritual idea to reflect on why the promise was made in the first place and why it was forgotten so easily.
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Is It a Mortal Sin to Forget to Follow Your Lenten Promise?

Get the JOE NOTES, sources for this episode, and more Shameless Popery on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/ShamelessPopery

Listen to Shameless Popery on Catholic.com:
https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp

The first Christians were CATHOLIC

<div>What do you do when someone only focuses on the bad stuff in the Church?</div><div>It depends on how well you know this person. If this person is merely an acquaintance, you can offer information that addresses that person&#8217;s concerns, and then move on if it is not received well. With someone you do know well, you can also offer information, but if it is not received well then you can politely ask that person for a respite from negative discussions. I recommend Joanna Bogle&#8217;s article <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/seek-something-to-be-glad-about">Seek Something to Be Glad About</a>.
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Focusing on the Bad

The Book of Proverbs is a powerful mix of human striving for wisdom and divine inspiration. Far more than just a collection of sayings, the proverbs form a blueprint for Christian living. In this installment of CA Focus, Father Mitch Pacwa, host of <a href="https://www.ewtn.com">EWTN</a> Live, shares some of the history and import of the proverbs with us.

The Proverbs Explained

The Megiddo Mosaic might be one of the earliest pieces of evidence for belief in Jesus as God!

Did Vatican II introduce harmful changes to the Catholic Church, and does Catholic theology go too far in defining mysteries like the Eucharist? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Catholic Answers apologists respond to major Orthodox objections to Catholicism, covering theology, Church history, and doctrine. The discussion examines Catholic teaching on remarriage and original sin, the necessity of the Immaculate Conception, and the Christological differences between the Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Additional topics include whether transubstantiation “overdefines” the Eucharist, why Orthodox and Catholic biblical canons differ, and whether Catholic theology lacks the Orthodox essence–energies distinction. A thoughtful and charitable look at some of the deepest divisions between East and West.
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<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>
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Objections Covered:
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<li>02:12 &#8211; Vatican II introduced harmful theological and liturgical changes. </li>
<li>05:51 &#8211; Catholic teaching on remarriage is too rigid. </li>
<li>13:36 &#8211; Catholic original sin wrongly teaches inherited guilt. </li>
<li>17:14 &#8211; The Immaculate Conception is unnecessary and unfounded. </li>
<li>28:52 &#8211; What does one say about the Christological differences between the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Catholic. They claim they hold to the early definitions of Ephesus that we have abandoned. </li>
<li>36:14 &#8211; Transubstantiation overdefines the Eucharistic mystery. </li>
<li>39:57 &#8211; Why do Orthodox Churches differ with us on the canon of Scriptura? </li>
<li>47:57 &#8211; Catholicism lacks the essence–energies distinction. </li>
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Every Orthodox Objection to Catholicism—Answered Part 2

Can a Catholic Support Abortion or Assisted Suicide?

How does one properly incorporate my new confirmation saint into my prayer life?

There’s a lot of pictures online of people in Spain with what look like KKK hoods. They are the Nazarene Brothers of the Holy Week of Seville. Are they Catholic?

What is the early Church evidence for the state of the dead? Soul sleep vs entering heaven or hell?

How do we make sense of 2 Maccabees 15 and it stating that taking one’s own life is an honorable thing?

With the pope passing, what would happen if the east and west were to be united? Would we have to choose from the patriarchs to be the next pope?

How do we know that the bible truly is the Word of God?

I watched a video online that said Pope Francis is in hell. Is this true?

I’m writing a series of articles debunking Chick Tracts. What actually happened during the Roman Inquisition?

Can we trust Scripture as divinely inspired? We look at the historical and theological reasons Catholics believe the Bible is the Word of God, plus tackle topics like the early Church’s view of the afterlife, confirmation saints, and what really happened in the Roman Inquisition.
Join The CA Live Club Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a>

How Do We Know the Bible Is Truly the Word of God?

<div>Is John Michael Talbot in good standing with the Catholic Church?</div><div>John Michael Talbot is the founder of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity community. The community is canonically categorized as a public association of the faithful. The community is under the authority of the Diocese of Little Rock and is accountable to the bishop of that diocese.
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Is John Michael Talbot in Good Standing with the Church?

Recently Alex O'Connor had a "dialogue" with Catholic Answers' AI apologist Justin...

In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes William Albrecht to discuss the Catholic Church&#8217;s approach to evangelization, particularly in relation to Islam. Albrecht emphasizes the importance of building bridges while inviting others to the fullness of truth, countering the caller&#8217;s concerns about cowardice in dialogue.
Transcript:
Caller: I&#8217;ve been Catholic for, like, three decades, and I&#8217;m really disappointed that my Roman Catholic Church has now become the Roman cowardly Church, because in Nostra883 or something, it says, we regard the Muslims with esteem, blah, blah, blah. Why is the Catholic Church not talking about the age of Aisha and about apostasy and blasphemy laws? And why isn&#8217;t Islam being banned in all Christian countries? And why aren&#8217;t Catholic schools teaching, you know, the truth about Islam? I even talked to, like, some of my priests and teachers in my old schools, and they&#8217;re afraid to talk about Islam, and they&#8217;re even blocking me on Facebook.
Cy Kellett: Wait a second, Nick. I just got to. Hang on. Did you just. Blah, blah, blah? A document of the Catholic Church, like, that&#8217;s. That seems to be a little bit dismissive of the teachings of the Catholic Church.
William Albrecht: Yeah, and that&#8217;s a real tough thing there, Nick. Let me. Let me just say one thing, Nick. Maybe you&#8217;re being blocked because maybe you&#8217;re coming across as hostile. We&#8217;re able to have fruitful dialogue, my friend, but you need to come across as one that is willing to have charitable dialogue and not attack a very important document of the church. Number one, there are a lot of phenomenal priests, and I know because I work with many of them that critique Islam. Many of them, I work with a lot of phenomenal Catholic apologists that critique Islam as well, besides Islam. We&#8217;re able to do that, and we&#8217;re able to do that by examining their holy book and being fair about it. But I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;re being fair. Being a Catholic for three decades, I would recommend you read Nostra Aetate because Nostra Aetate is very clear. It is looking for common ground in certain things in regards to Islam. But let me be very clear. It is not saying that we are not to evangelize, though all of Vatican II&#8217;s documents are very clear that we do need to evangelize. That is the number one call, indeed to evangelize. And even though Nostra Aetate is not number one, it&#8217;s not a. A moral judgment to where it&#8217;s going to get into a discussion on Aisha that you brought up there, but rather what it&#8217;s doing. It is showing you that there are shared spiritual truths that we have in common with other religions, not only Islam. And those can be bridges to then evangelize and bring them to the fullness of the truth, my friend. So we need to look at bridges to then be able to use Them as a theological and a pastoral manner to. To bring them to the fullness. It is a call to evangelize, not merely a call to say, okay, well, we have this in common. We&#8217;re not meant to evangelize. No, we are meant to then preach the truth in charity, even if sometimes the charity is rough. So I can tell you right now, maybe the people that you&#8217;re dialoguing with don&#8217;t want to talk about this because I know it might be difficult in some countries. I can tell sai right now in England what we&#8217;re doing right now. Not so easy to do over there in England. That is an unfortunate thing. So it might be that case that maybe depending on the country, maybe people are being urged to not speak out against certain things. But I can tell you right now, the church has done a phenomenal job in building a bridge to show that really we want Muslims to come to the fullness of the truth.
Cy Kellett: Nick, go ahead. What&#8217;s your response?
Caller: That&#8217;s your response?
Caller: Matthew 23:33. Matthew 23:33. Isn&#8217;t it the one where he. Where Jesus was like, condemning all those Pharisees? I mean, Jesus wasn&#8217;t, like, looking for bridges or, you know, whatever there he was just calling out everyone, you know, religious hypocrisy. That seems. It&#8217;s not like what the Catholic Church is doing at all. You&#8217;re looking for common ground, building bridges, because obviously you&#8217;re afraid of being beheaded and afraid of extremists. And that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m disappointed. My Roman Catholic Church is not the Roman cowardly church.
William Albrecht: Unfortunately, brother, you&#8217;re incorrect, because our Lord did look to build bridges and bring people to the fullness. An example would be the Samaritan woman that he dialogues with. He does cross a religious boundary there to show that he can associate with her and try to bring her to the fullness of the truth. But there are many other examples. There are many examples. We find one other one would be The Centurion, Matthew 8, 5, 13, who is a centurion. You know very well he was a Roman. He was a pagan. And our Lord listens to his faith. He listens to it. Now, the goal is to build a bridge and then to call people to the fullness. So you&#8217;re right. Our Lord will tell you the truth. When one is steeped in hypocrisy and they are refusing to come to the fullness, he will call that out. But then there are others that he realizes we can listen to them and then evangelize people that aren&#8217;t hard of heart. There&#8217;s a great difference, my friend. And I would really, really recommend that you look at how the church has done a great job in evangelizing. Another example would be Pope Benedict. He would go and he would dialogue with Muslims and he would call them to conversion in a friendly way. He would look at what do we have in common and then call them to the fullness of the faith. I can give you an example. Pope Benedict and many people don&#8217;t focus on this. In a mosque, he prayed a trinitarian prayer that tells you all you need, my friend.
Caller: I mean, you build bridges when it comes to, like, the good people, the centurion, the Samaritan, the Hindu, the Buddhist, the atheist, but not the Pharisees. You don&#8217;t build bridges with them.
Cy Kellett: Are your senses that all Muslims fall into the bad people category?
Caller: Yes. Yes.
Cy Kellett: Okay.
William Albrecht: Well, then the big problem there, my friend, is then should we just abandon all of them and not try to bring anyone to the fullness? Let me tell you one thing, my friend. I was dialoguing a few days ago with a woman who her whole family has come into the Catholic Church because she&#8217;s been hearing my evangelization efforts along with my friend Sam&#8217;s for many months now. She&#8217;s been hearing us as we&#8217;ve been trying to teach the faith. By your logic, if I would have connected and merely tried to pummel her and call her a Pharisee, I would have lost her immediately and her whole family, and they would have never come to Jesus, who we are able to criticize a religion but then show there are commonalities. But you need to come to the fullness of the truth, which is found only within Catholicism. I think you need to realize that there are a lot of Muslims out there that are steeped in ignorance because they have known nothing other than Islam their whole life. And we really need to evangelize those people.
Cy Kellett: William, I imagine that you and I hate being called a coward for two different reasons. You, because you&#8217;re not a coward.
William Albrecht: Right.
Cy Kellett: And me, I hate that when it hits close to home like that. But I do very much appreciate Nick calling. Look, it does seem to me that it&#8217;s quite obvious that relations between Christians and Muslims, relations between the west and the Muslim world are fraught because there&#8217;s tremendous violence has been perpetrated in, you know, in. Over the course of the last. Well, I actually don&#8217;t know how far back to go, but certainly since 911 here in the United States, we&#8217;re aware that there are violent streams of Islam that are very active in the world. Very, very active in the world. So I don&#8217;t want to just act like, oh, yeah, none of that ever happened. We&#8217;ve forgotten that that happened. But I don&#8217;t know exactly what Nick thinks we&#8217;re supposed to do about that.
William Albrecht: Right, yeah, no, that&#8217;s a very good point there. And I sympathize and I understand Nick and I want to be very clear. Nobody here is defending Islam. In fact, we&#8217;re doing a whole show here showing that Islam is false and people need to be Catholic. Indeed, we&#8217;re in Catholic Answers, showing that the fullness of the truth is found only within the Catholic Church. So we are urging people to come to that fullness. But all the while doing that, we realize that it is valuable to evangelize Muslims. And when we look at the Vatican II documents, we look at Nostra Aetate and many others, I don&#8217;t think that a lot of people give them a fair shake or are realizing what they say. Many people think that they are bending the knee to Islam. That is not the truth. Because if you read the whole of the document, it will look for, okay, what do we have in common then? To show we need to evangelize and to evangelize it is a non negotiable. Our Lord is almighty God. We believe in the Trinity. We believe all these things that are Catholic. But remember by me telling you to build a bridge, I am not telling you to then bend the knee and become Muslim. No, I am telling you there are certain things in common. Now it is time to evangelize and bring them to the fullness of the truth.
Cy Kellett: Again, the numbers. 8, 8, 831-87-8, 8 4. Our guest is William Albrecht. We&#8217;re talking about Islam both hours today and it is an opportunity for hard conversations. So I don&#8217;t want anyone to feel that you are not welcome here.

Angry Caller Says We’re Too Kind to Islam….

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

What Good Are Hermits?

Why is the Filioque such a big deal?

Was Mohammeds spiritual encounter authentic, and if it was, was it angelic or some other nefarious being?

I was raised Pentecostal. I think I understand the Marian dogmas, but it feels weird, and it feels like worship. How can I make it feel less like worship?

If your name is in the book of life then how could it ever be removed?

What is the response to the claim that speaking in tongues is necessary?

How and when did the Catholic faith start?

If a priest is in mortal sin, how can he absolve me of my sins?

How can we challenge the claim that only the apostles had the ability to forgive sins and not the successors?

I want to go back to church, will it cost me money? What are the requirements?

Questions from Non-Catholics

How would you explain to a protestant that the reformation did more harm than good?

How would I reply to a friend who says that a Catholic shouldn’t judge a gay relationship?

Can I receive communion more than once a day?

Our priest seems to rush the Mass. Is it appropriate to approach him and ask him to slow down?

Is it good to assume that the people being addressed in Romans 10 were already baptized with great faith? Thus, faith being what was needed for salvation for them?

My friend favors the spiritual presence view of the eucharist? How do I explain to him that this view is insufficient?

I’m thinking of leaving the Catholic church because they won’t give the precious blood? Why am I being denied a sacrament?

I agree with the limiting of microplastics. We need to do what we can to save God’s planet?

Are the different Churches in the new testaments akin to what today are modern dioceses?

In light of 2 Cor 5:20, what is a good way to evangelize senior citizens whose memory isn’t good?

Ask Me Anything

My Take on “Same-sex Blessings” (with Ben Shapiro)

<div>May I use a normal bottle for holy water? </div><div>Sure you may, but just make sure it is clean. There is no rule for storing holy water at home except that it be used reverently. Often a nice bottle or container is more beautiful than a cheap plastic bottle stamped with the words &#8220;Holy Water.&#8221; Such things may be useful, but they are not required.
In the liturgy, there is a vessel for holy water and a sprinkler as well, but this is not a domestic requirement. There are holy water fonts you can buy to hang on the wall, usually by a doorway, that make it easy to bless oneself. These are smaller versions of the ones we see in churches.
</div>

May I Use a Normal Bottle for Holy Water?

<div>How can the Catholic Church teach that it’s possible for a non-baptized person to be saved (Catechism 847-848) yet at the same time teach that baptism is necessary for salvation? Isn’t that a contradiction? </div><div>The short answer is no, it’s not a contradiction. The key is explicated in paragraph 1257 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
<blockquote>God has bound salvation to the sacrament of baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.</blockquote>
What this means is that the only ordinary means that the Church knows of by which a person is to be saved is the sacrament of baptism (CCC 1257). This is all that has been revealed to us (John 3:3-5). Therefore, those to whom this necessary means of salvation has been revealed are bound to use it.
But those who are not responsible for their ignorance of this revelation will not be held accountable:
<blockquote>This affirmation [the necessity to be baptized] is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church (CCC 847).</blockquote>
For these individuals, God administers the grace of salvation in ways known to him alone:
<blockquote>Although in ways known to himself God can lead those who, through no fault of their own, are ignorant of the Gospel, to that faith without which it is impossible to please him (CCC 848; cf. 1260).</blockquote>
Invincible ignorance, however, is not the only condition for salvation apart from the sacrament of baptism. The Church also teaches that such individuals must “seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience&#8221; (CCC 847).
Despite the fact that non-baptized individuals who are not responsible for their ignorance can be saved (CCC 847), “the Church still has the obligation and also the sacred right to evangelize all men” (CCC 848).
For more reading, see our articles <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/baptism-of-desire">Baptism of Desire</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/does-scripture-support-baptism-by-desire">Does Scripture Support Baptism by Desire?</a>
</div>

Is Baptism Necessary for Salvation or Not?

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals what might be America’s most evil airport, or at least one that is a mixture of annoying, spooky, and maybe . . . evil?

FFAF: What is America’s Spookiest Airport?

Featured Guests: Karlo Broussard, Carrie Gress, Scott Weeman, Tim Staples
<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hDwRQKsjoc&amp;t=21s">00:21</a> Is receiving the Eucharist necessary for salvation? – Karlo Broussard 
<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hDwRQKsjoc&amp;t=316s">05:16</a> How is toxic femininity affecting modern society? – Carrie Gress 
<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hDwRQKsjoc&amp;t=851s">14:11</a> What do you do when you’ve tried everything and can’t seem to reach a loved one struggling with addiction? – Scott Weeman 
<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hDwRQKsjoc&amp;t=1044s">17:24</a> How can we resolve doubts and difficulties as Catholics? – Tim Staples

Catholic Answers | Season 5 | Episode 1

In this episode Trent reviews a new documentary on Fr. James Martin and shows where Fr. Martin subtly reveals how he undermines Church teaching.

My Review of Fr. James Martin’s New Documentary

Can Mary Hear Your Prayers?

<div>Are Eastern Orthodox canonizations valid? Like the Romanov royal family, for example?</div><div>There are several saints in the offical Roman rite martyrology published under St. John Paul II who lived after the Great Schism of East and West—for example, Sts. Boris and Gleb and St. Sergius of Radonezh in Russia. Some of the Byzantine rite usages, for example, venerate St. Gregory Palamas, whose office is in an appendix in the office book published for Greek Catholics in Italy. So the simple answer is yes, the Catholic Church would generally accept the veneration of Orthodox saints in the case where there is a reconciliation of the communities. This seems to be the case with St. Seraphim of Sarov for Russian Catholics under St. Pius X.
A lot of this is just a question of local custom. This does not mean the Catholic Church would approve of all the actions or teaching of these saints, any more than it does for its own officially canonized saints. It is clear, however, that this attitude is not reciprocated by the Orthodox for Catholic saints. An example of this is the patriarch of Constantinople&#8217;s Orthodox canonization of St. Stephen of Hungary just a few years ago; St. Stephen was canonized already in the twelfth century!
</div>

Are Eastern Orthodox Canonizations Valid?

<div>Did Mary have marital relations with Joseph after Christ's birth, as stated in Matthew 1:25?</div><div>For many, it would seem so, since Matthew uses the word until: “[Joseph] knew her [Mary] not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus” (Matt. 1:25; emphasis added). But the word until (Greek, heos) can be used in more than one way.
It can indicate a change in the future when a select period of time is complete. And this is how many critics of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/mary-ever-virgin">Mary’s perpetual virginity</a> understand Matthew to be using the word in the above passage.
Heos, however, can also be used in a way that doesn’t indicate a change in the future. It can be used merely to express “hither to” or “up to” (Strong’s #2193)—that’s to say, a select period of time without indicating change in the future.
For example, Deuteronomy 34:6 speaks of no man knowing the precise location of Moses’ body “until [Greek Septuagint, heos]  this present day.” Did the author intend to express that circumstances had changed when these words were penned? Of course not.
Heos is used similarly in the Greek version of 2 Samuel 6:23: “And Michal the daughter of Saul had no child to (Greek, heos, meaning until) the day of her death.” If heos is being used to indicate change after a select period of time, then we’d have to say that Michal had children after her death. But that’s absurd.
Paul also uses heos to indicate only a select period of time without change in the future in 1 Timothy 4:13, 1 Timothy 6:14, and 1 Corinthians 15:25.
Since heos doesn’t necessarily connote a change in the future after a select period of time but can be used only to reference a select period of time without change in the future, it follows that Matthew 1:25 doesn’t undermine the Catholic belief in Mary’s Perpetual Virginity.
As such, it’s sound exegesis to conclude that Matthew uses heos merely to emphasize that Joseph had no sexual relations with Mary before Jesus’ birth without indicating any change in the future.
For more information on this topic, see Tim Staples&#8217;s article, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-we-know-mary-was-a-perpetual-virgin-0">&#8220;How We Know Mary was a Perpetual Virgin.&#8221; </a>
</div>

Marital Relations Between Mary and Joseph?

@Philippians19Ministries got THIS WRONG!

I always believed baptizing a baby should be immediate. I’ve recently heard that if the family isn’t practicing the faith, they maybe shouldn’t. Is this true?

I’m a new Catholic. What is the best way to witness others, especially non-Catholic?

We know Jesus said there is no marriage in heaven. How do we look at this passage with optimism?

&#8220;How Do I Witness to Others?&#8221; This question leads to a discussion about the importance of faith in the family when considering baptism. Other topics include effective ways for new Catholics to witness to non-Catholics and a hopeful interpretation of Jesus&#8217; teaching on marriage in heaven.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

How Do I Witness to Others? No Marriage in Heaven

Did the Early Church believe in Sola Scriptura?

Karlo Broussard explains how to talk to Christians who believe that they only need their own personal relationship with Jesus, and belonging to a particular Church is unnecessary for a full spiritual life.
Transcript:
Host: We go to Ron in Wintersville, Ohio, listening on God’s Word. Is that right, Ron?
Caller: Yes.
Host: Oh, very good.
Caller: Thank you so much, this must be fathers/sons day, because I was with my adult son just last week, and it’s an aspect of relativism, and it’s syncretism, I guess. It’s that he has many friends who are…who say, “All I need is a relationship with Jesus, and religion is so divisive, so I don’t need to be part of a church—“ some actually do attend some Protestant churches, but a good number of them don’t. And I wondered if there’s some audio resource that would be good for him to listen to, to, in a nice way, obviously these are his friends, but he wants to sort of help work with them as well.
Karlo: Alright, so what you’re saying is that this idea of relativism seems to have in some way made its way into these particular forms of Christianity, and the argument being, “Because religion is so divisive, well then, I don’t need to belong to any religion, but I just need to believe in Jesus.” Is that the gist of it?
Caller: “Me and Jesus.”
Karlo: “Just me and Jesus,” right? Well, first of all, here’s one thought, Ron. Notice that the argument, or the basis for the argument, is that religions are divisive. Well, you can simply turn the tables on the individual who’s making that argument and say, “Well, do you believe in an absolute truth?” And you mentioned that some of these folks are Christian, coming from a Christian community. Well yes, they’re going to believe in absolute truth, namely: Jesus Christ is God. Okay. Well, that’s a claim of objective truth. But there are others who do not believe that Jesus Christ is God. There are others who do not believe that God exists in the first place. So the very fact that these Christian individuals are making an objective claim, a claim about objective reality—Jesus is God, God exists—by its very nature constitutes a dividing line from those who do not believe that Jesus God and who do not believe that God exists.
So their argument from religion being divisive doesn’t hold water, because inasmuch as they profess objective truths, they’re constituting boundaries and dividing lines. That’s just the very nature of truth itself. P, not P, right? If you say, “God exists,” well, the contrary to that is “God doesn’t exist.” So the minute you make a statement about objective reality, you’re drawing a dividing line, you’re drawing a boundary. So that’s what I would say in regard to the argument from divisiveness.
Now concerning the “Me and Jesus thing,” Ron, here’s the key: Okay, “Me and Jesus.” Alright, I look at these historical documents, these early Christian writers are talking about the historical Jesus, right, and we can go through all the historiographical research to say that Jesus existed, I can trust the Gospels, alright. We don’t have time to do that, but let’s say we’ve done that; we’ve done our research, this Jesus guy made some claims to be God. Okay, I accept that, he rose from the dead, vindicated those claims.
Now we also have to look, Ron, at what Jesus left us. He left us a Christian community. And not just a Christian community where everybody’s relative in their Christian thinking, of saying, “Oh, well, I’m gonna believe what I think Jesus taught, and you just go ahead and believe what you think Jesus taught.” No, Jesus gave us a Church, Ron, a Christian community with constituted officials to guide and lead His group of people, His flock. And we see this explicitly in Matthew 16:18-19; He constitutes Peter as the visible and central leader of the twelve. In Matthew 18:15-17, He talks about when there’s a disagreement, you take it to the Church, and the Church is going to have the final say regarding the matter. We see this played out in Acts chapter 15 at the Council of Jerusalem; when there was a theological debate about circumcision, they brought it to the Church, they brought it to the Church leaders and the truth was declared.
So no such thing as “Only me and Jesus,” but “Me, Jesus, and His Church.”

Can You Have a Relationship with Jesus without Religion?

Where did the Bible come from?

Episode 88: Year B &#8211; 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on two details, both of which come from the Gospel reading for this upcoming 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, taken from John 6:1-15, which is John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand. One detail, Jesus’ question to Philip, gives rise to the topic of the historical reliability of John and Luke’s Gospels. The second detail, the fragments picked up after the crowd ate, pertains to the Eucharist.
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Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072824.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a>
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The Reliability of the Gospels

Which Gospel Was Written First

Former inmates often struggle adjusting to everyday life. In this episode, we talk to Joe Gilbreath, founder of RiseUp Industries and Mike Lucero on bringing hope to those adjusting to life after prison.
<a href="http://riseupindustries.org">riseupindustries.org</a>

Hope and Life After Prison

Every life has dignity. Not every method does.

Get more Shameless Popery on Patreon!
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Christians can enjoy Halloween without embracing evil. Be reminded of death. Memento Mori. 🎃☠️

<div>Is it true that Yahweh and El are but two originally distinct gods lifted by Israelites from Canaanite mythology? It is said to be the current opinion among biblical archeologists. </div><div>The names we give to God are always taken from naturally developing human languages. When the inspired authors of Sacred Scripture used names for God, they did the same. So the names El and Ya were different gods in the earlier religious understanding of the people, whether the Hebrews or the other peoples of Mesopotamian origins and beyond.
What is important is that these two terms are meant in the Old Testament to refer to one and the same God. Even our word for God goes back through Indo-European etymological roots and is related to the Latin Deus, and even to Zeus, and of course to the Greek Theos. The word origin can shed some light on the mentality or formation of the writers, but what is most important is the new, revealed meaning that the older, existing vocabulary was used to convey.
For example in Arabic the word for God is Allah or Illah, but the conceptions of God differ greatly among the Christians, Muslims, and even Jews who have historically used the Arabic language. So etymology is useful, but it does not prove any particular theological point all by itself.
</div>

Did the Israelites Rip Off Their Name for God?

Trent Horn explains to a caller who is living chastely in an invalid marriage why he is allowed to enter the Church but is not allowed on a retreat, and lists the steps he can take to rectify the situation.
Transcript:
Host: We go now to Vince in Cape Girardeau, Missouri listening on 89.1 FM, Vince, you are on with Trent Horn.
Caller: Thank you so much for taking my call. Trent, my question is this&#8230;let me preface with, what I&#8217;m rejecting is the apparent contradiction in the application of the Catholic morality code. I came into the Church in 2014 with an invalid marriage. My wife had been married previously and I had not, and we got married before I came into the Church some years before. I was told initially that I couldn&#8217;t come fully into the Church because of the marriage and so I asked the priest, &#8220;Does it matter if I&#8217;ve been living in abstinence?&#8221; And he said, &#8220;Yes that does, if you&#8217;re living as brother and sister you can come into the Church.&#8221; So I get that.
Well, this year in January, I had one of my RCIA teachers asked me if I would like to go to a Cursillo movement in March, and I said absolutely, I was excited and it thrilled, and then when I sold out the paperwork and then, you know, he was going to be my sponsor, he said, &#8220;Well, the priest has said that you can&#8217;t go because of your marriage, even though I&#8217;m still living abstinently from my wife. So the most important thing, coming into the Church, is allowable and acceptable; however for me to utilize the&#8230; like the Cursillo movement, the tools I guess, so to speak, to advance my faith, and help me be able to share my faith, I mean I can&#8217;t take part in that, because of the invalid marriage in which I&#8217;m still living abstinently, so do I stay where I&#8217;m at, and have conjugal relations, and just go to confession every week, or, you know, what—I am rejecting the application of&#8230;it&#8217;s not consistent. I can come into the Church but I can&#8217;t go to a Cursillo movement. Can you help me with that?
Trent: I think I can, though I do commend you, Vince, as people have been discussing in the Catholic blogosphere and news a lot lately about those individuals who are in invalid marriages, and speaking about whether they can receive Communion or not, and whether we can expect anyone to live as brother and sister, to live chastely if they&#8217;re in an invalid marriage, and many people just say, &#8220;Well, it can&#8217;t be done.&#8221;
Well you, my friend, are living proof it most certainly CAN be done, and so I commend you for that, and to—in this day and age when people think that God&#8217;s grace is&#8230;its power has no standing, can&#8217;t hold a candle to the power of the sexual urge, it&#8217;s very very sad, even when some Catholics say, &#8220;Well, yeah yeah, there&#8217;s grace, yeah yeah yeah, but look, you can&#8217;t expect people to live this way.&#8221; Yes you can, &#8217;cause as St. Paul says in the letter to the Philippians, through Christ—&#8221;I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.&#8221; So don&#8217;t give that up, continue to let God&#8217;s grace in your heart and to live the moral life you are living now. And it&#8217;s wonderful to see that, to uphold the beauty and dignity of marriage in what you&#8217;re doing.
So I would say it&#8217;s definitely—it makes no sense to say—I mean the only argument one could give is if, maybe if you were a leader in this program, and there&#8217;s a worry about about scandal or something like that, but I would say that if you have made this commitment to living chastely, that shouldn&#8217;t be an impediment at all to taking part in a retreat or any kind of other spiritual practice. Now, is the priest who said this, Vince, the same priest you spoke with about coming into the Church in the first place, or a different priest?
Caller: No, actually, it&#8217;s not. Since I came into the Church, there has been a changing of the guard, so to speak, so yeah, the priest that has told me that I can&#8217;t go to the Cursillo movement is a different priest than the one who said that I could come into the Church under the condition of chastity.
Trent: It reminds me of what happened to the Israelites in the Exodus. It says in the book of Exodus, you know, Joseph, a Hebrew, saved Egypt, and all the Jews were welcome to be there, and the book of Exodus says, well, then there was a new Pharaoh that came into town who didn&#8217;t know Joseph, and then everything fell apart for the Hebrews after that and they were enslaved. So here&#8217;s another priest that&#8217;s come along and may not be as familiar with your situation, you know, so I would recommend stay living the chaste, moral life you&#8217;re living, and understand that in living this life, the devil is going to throw all kinds of temptations at you, including temptations to be frustrated or want to give that up, through other Catholics who are not understanding, so I pray that you don&#8217;t give in to that temptation.
And to find a resolution here, you may want to appeal to go to maybe a larger regional director for the Cursillo movement, or a representative from the diocese, from the office of marriage and family, for example, in your own diocese, to go one rung up and say, &#8220;Hey, here&#8217;s my situation, I really want to do this, and the person involved here isn&#8217;t understanding. Can you help me?&#8221; It&#8217;s just similar to how we would resolve an issue anywhere else. That might be what I would recommend, but I&#8217;d also recommend to keep praying and stay strong in the face of temptations like these, to want to kind of give up in frustration, so do you see what I&#8217;m saying here?
Caller: I do. And you have been helpful, and you&#8217;ve given me a resource and I so much appreciate it, and I listen to the show often, a Catholic channel every day basically, and it has been very helpful and I appreciate you, Trent, thank you so much.
Trent: No problem. Stay strong, God bless, my friend Vince, have a good one.

Contradictions in the Church’s Application of Moral Teachings?

<div>Is it moral to be a manager of spirituality at a hospital for a practicing Catholic?</div><div>Yes, a Catholic can be a &#8220;spiritual coordinator&#8221; at a health care facility. Some things that are involved in that role do not require ordination. A lay person can bring communion, pray, and talk with patients and residents. When it comes to sacraments like last rites, confession and Mass the lay coordinator simply needs to schedule priests or have a call list of nearby priests.
</div>

Can a Catholic Be a Manager of Spirituality at a Hospital?

Usually the Catholic tradition speaks of the Council of Nicaea, in 325, as the first “ecumenical” council. This year we are celebrating the 1,700th anniversary of that great council. But the council of Jerusalem, briefly summarized in our reading from Acts, is a kind of proto-ecumenical council, showing the apostles and other leaders of the Church gathering in Jerusalem, led by St. Peter and St. James, to settle a doctrinal dispute. The question was the status of the Mosaic law. Should Gentile followers of Jesus be circumcised and practice the whole of the Law? One party said yes; another said no.
I don’t know if this was the intention of those who devised the current lectionary, but it’s interesting to pair this story with the passage from John 14, where Jesus speaks about sending the Holy Spirit to the disciples to “teach all things” and to make them “remember” all that he has said to them. When we talk about the infallibility, or the indefectibility of the Church, we’re neither saying that the Church is magical nor that it is not full of sinful and imperfect men. We are saying just that the Holy Spirit will preserve it despite its members. And that is what is on display in the Council of Jerusalem. We can be confident that when the apostles agree, the Lord will use such decisions to preserve his Church.
In a portion from Acts omitted from today’s selection, Peter stands up in the assembly and says, “Why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?” That is putting the question with characteristically Petrine flare. In other words, we, as the people of Israel, have failed time and time again over many centuries to perfectly keep the Law. How in the world would it make sense to impose that failure on everyone else?
In the end, the Council of Jerusalem sets up a tradition of interpretation continued by St. Paul and the broader Catholic tradition, which is to make a distinction in the Old Testament law between what reflects universal moral norms—what later Catholic tradition would call natural law—and what reflects merely the ritual and civic ordering of Israel as a nation. Although the council in Acts doesn’t make this clear, within the same generation, St. Paul and St. Peter both will say it quite explicitly in their epistles: If circumcision was the marker by which one verified one’s membership in the holy people of God, we can now say the same of baptism, which incorporates us into Christ, the true Israel.
Often this passage from Acts has been used to insert artificial discontinuities between the Old Law and the New. In the modern era, certain streams of Protestantism are quick to see in Acts, and in Paul, the rejection of all Jewishness—which is to say, all rule and ritual in general. What’s fascinating about this tradition of interpretation, apart from its associations with both antisemitism and anti-Catholicism, is the way that a supposed rejection of the Law’s burden tends to lead, paradoxically, to a new kind of legalism. So in so-called “conservative” traditions, the rejection of law weirdly results in a whole new, often less clear set of laws, which must be rigidly enforced. In the so-called “progressive” versions, rejection of law likewise results in an obsessive escalation of “freedom” to such heights that it must become actually coercive. We might label both sides as a kind of puritanism. And I think it goes without saying that these various forms of puritanism are alive and well in 2025.
But what should we actually think and say about law? The council in Acts does not reject Moses and the Jewish law tradition wholesale, as if it were meaningless. It simply recognizes that to truly follow the law of God now requires following Jesus. And the Lord speaks in John 14 about following his commandments. Far from replacing law with some loose concept of “love,” he insists that love finds its proper demonstration in obedience. Such obedience is ultimately possible through the assistance of the Spirit, the Comforter, whom he will send when he returns to the Father.
There’s an obvious and concrete way to think about these ideas in relation to current events. For several years now, our bishops have been struggling to implement the principle of “eucharistic coherence,” which is a fancy way of saying they are trying to figure out how follow the rules about who should and who shouldn’t receive Holy Communion, especially when it comes to public personalities. It remains a bit of a scandal that the bishops can’t seem to unite behind a common approach. So, for example, some famous Catholic politicians who championed deeply un-Catholic and immoral policies were cheerfully ignored by the relevant diocesan bishops (case in point: former president <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/joe-bidens-midterm-misconception">Joe Biden</a>). Others, like former speaker <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/7-defenses-for-barring-nancy-pelosi-from-communion">Nancy Pelosi</a>, received public rebuke from some bishops but polite indifference from others.
Those particular two situations have retreated from the forefront of public life, but many others remain. Indeed, we now have a Catholic vice president who, while much more Catholic on some of the items at issue with the previous administration, still seems at times willing to put aside Catholic moral teaching when it is convenient. Whether it is as extreme or significant as the others isn’t really my question today; I only point out that it raises the same questions and the same worries about the places where politics begins to have religious implications, or where religious teaching begins to have political implications.
Among the countless commentators in the public square, we always seem to circle around the same basic complaint: People are upset about bishops and priests “politicizing” religion. We heard this from the “left” a few years ago, when that mean old bishop barred Pelosi from Communion, but now we’re hearing a similar complaint from the “right” about how the bishops need to stay in their lane and stop talking about politics.
I have no intention of hashing out all these problems from the pulpit, both because I don’t have the best solutions and because I don’t think it would be especially edifying to dwell on them. But I do want to respond to the persistent claim that we see repeated—especially when someone hears a perspective they don’t like—that Christianity and Catholicism should somehow stay out of politics.
Christianity has been “political” from day one, because Christianity is concerned with human salvation, and humanity just is political, which is to say it is always involved in making decisions and working things out together. There are reasons why the early Christians seemed like a threat to the state. They recognized that their ultimate citizenship was from above, so they both respected secular authority and rejected it, depending entirely on whether it was acting in its God-given duty to promote the common good and moral order. They refused to act as if the only goods were wealth and power. And since many of our modern “political” arguments seem to come back to abortion, we ought to say: The Church’s teaching on abortion was just as controversial in the first century as it is today. Church teaching on this matter is very clear and always has been: It is the intentional taking of an innocent human life, never to be permitted, even in the service of some other good end. That is not the same as saying that the Church has definite and prescribed strategies for promoting this moral principle in the political realm.
The misunderstanding often in play on all sides of today’s debates about politicians and Communion is the idea that barring someone from Communion is somehow a punishment. But it is a medicine. That is how the canon law tradition of the Church has always understood it. The chief law of the Church is the salvation of souls. The fact that a soul is a public persona does not fundamentally alter the Church’s obligation, or the obligations of particular pastoral authorities. If anything, the Church’s obligations are heightened, with additional stakes involving public perception and scandal.
To say to a person, “You may not receive Communion” may feel mean, may feel exclusive or whatever. The point is to shock, to jolt, to get the person’s attention so that they may repent. It is a mercy, because the Church is saying: To receive Holy Communion would be dangerous for your soul. We cannot simply allow someone to go on publicly submitting his soul to corruption and spiritual death as if it didn’t matter.
So whatever you think about politics and eucharistic boundaries—and maybe you’d rather not think about it too much, which is probably healthy—the important thing here is that love and justice go together. To love Jesus is to obey his commandments. To show his love in the world is to show his teachings as they are, not as we might wish them to be, not just so far as they conform to the party platform we like, or just so far as we believe them to be practical.
That is a challenge not just for the Church as a hierarchical institution, but for each of us as individuals. And this is impossible without a life of constant prayer and offering ourselves up to Christ. Because ultimately, the law is he—himself. He is the new temple and the new law. He is the burden that we must receive, not another. And so we could do worse than to offer, as a kind of daily reminder, the traditional vesting prayer that the priest says when he puts on the chasuble: O LORD, who hast said, My yoke is easy, and My burden is light, grant that I may so bear it, as to merit Thy grace. Amen.
Image: J.D. Vance. Credit: Gage Skidmore via <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gageskidmore/53809626825">Flickr</a>, <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>.

Christianity Is Political

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

The author of <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/prepare-the-way-overcoming-obstacles-to-god-the-gospel-and-the-church/">Prepare the Way: Overcoming Obstacles to God, the Gospel, and the Church</a> joins us to reflect on Coca-Cola’s “Love is love” ad campaign. Is all sexual love equal as the campaign suggests?

Is All Love Equal?

Karlo Broussard helps a caller navigate the many rules and dogmas of the Catholic Church.
Transcription:
I&#8217;m a non-Catholic. I&#8217;ve been listening, I&#8217;ve been studying Catholicism for about four or five months now, I guess. You know, I finally decided there&#8217;s so many things that are just so beyond what I am used to from my upbringing that I thought, &#8220;Well, I&#8217;m going to start listening.&#8221; So I started with Pines with the Aquinas, I went to Trent Horn,
I listened to Call to Communion, and now here I am on your guys&#8217; show.
Oh, you were working uphill that whole time. It was getting better and better as you went. Excellent.
Yeah, well, it&#8217;s been very, very intriguing. But it just seems a bit overwhelming to me. I&#8217;m sure I&#8217;d be almost excommunicated from my family, or some of them anyways. But, you know, there are so many things. Like, there&#8217;s plenary indulgences, there&#8217;s this deposit of faith, there&#8217;s obligations. It just seems like there are so many rules that have been over, you know, the last couple of thousand years. So I guess that&#8217;s kind of a stumbling block for me. I&#8217;m guessing I know more about Catholicism than a lot of the people that are coming into the Catholic Church, just from listening to you guys&#8217; podcasts over the last number of months.
Well, Stacey, let&#8217;s let Carlo take a shot at where all this came. At least that&#8217;s the way I understood the question, is where did all these rules come from? These rules and practices and where did all that get added on?
And yeah, go ahead, Carlo. Yeah, so Stacey, first of all, I think I would agree with you that in the six months that you&#8217;ve been listening to all of these Catholic, different Catholic radio programs, you probably do know more now than the majority of Catholics sitting in the pew on Sundays. And that&#8217;s an unfortunate thing. And we&#8217;re working on that, brother, because there are some parishes where you have some really good equipped Catholics sitting in the pew on Sundays and some parishes, not so. So my first thought is, I would just extend the invitation for you to join the church and come tell us how to show us how it&#8217;s done, brother.
So that would be my first thought. Now, with regard to your question about the rules, notice how in Acts chapter 15 at the Council of Jerusalem, you have the apostles and the elders convened in the council to declare a theological truth concerning God&#8217;s revelation, circumcision does not save, rather were saved by grace through faith. St. Peter declares that. What&#8217;s interesting is Jesus never taught us that, but the Holy Spirit moved St. Peter to declare that to us. Now, my point is that later in that council, James proposes some disciplinary precepts to govern the relationship of members of the household of God, namely the church, the relationship between the Gentile Christians and the Jewish Christians. In order to meet some of the sensibilities of Jewish Christians and help Jewish converts and Gentile converts to Christianity get along, the council fathers declare and impose upon Gentile Christians disciplinary precepts forbidding them to partake of meats that were offered and sacrificed to pagan deities, even though they&#8217;re free to eat the meat, but there&#8217;s a disciplinary precept imposed also to abstain from blood and any meats not fully drained of blood. Now, notice there, Stacey, that those are rules that come about in the life of the church that&#8217;s not specified by our Lord at the beginning. Now, what we see there, Stacey, is rules being developed in order to, as I emphasized earlier, govern the relationship of the members of God&#8217;s family, the children of God within the household of God, namely the church. And so the same can be said of certain rules, as you put it, that develop in our history as Catholics, that the church develops in order to do what? To exercise her ministry as mother and govern the children of God within the household of God, namely the church, which St. Paul calls the church in 1 Timothy 3.15. So as I point out in that chapter of my book, &#8220;Prepare the Way,&#8221; we can show that rules are not in and of themselves bad. They actually can serve the good. We see this in mundane examples. We need rules for sports in order for children to enjoy, and even adults, to enjoy playing sports. If no rules, then you ain&#8217;t going to have any fun playing sports. The rules are meant to govern and order the game so that we can enjoy the game and also to exclude any sort of unnecessary harm from the games. And so similarly, with regard to the household of God and the game of being a Christian, you might say, and being a son and a daughter of God and living within the church that Jesus Christ established, there are going to be certain rules that develop, subject to the governance of God. They&#8217;re going to be subject to the governance of the overseers, the bishops, in order to keep us children spiritually safe, to help foster this &#8220;game&#8221; of being in relationship with Jesus Christ. Some of the rules are ordered toward that relationship with Jesus to help us grow in holiness. And you know, Stacy, this is implied, it&#8217;s implicit in the very command that Jesus gives the apostles in Matthew 18, 18, &#8220;Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven.&#8221; And that language, Stacy, is charged with judicial authority. That&#8217;s the language that was used for Jewish rabbis having judicial authority, authority to govern God&#8217;s people, to exclude some, to readmit some, to impose laws, bind, to re- to retain, to bind to loose laws, that is, to no longer have the laws binding. Now notice what that implies. That implies that there are going to be laws to be imposed and not imposed. And that also implies that there&#8217;s going to be a variety of laws for different times and different circumstances. Why? Again, to govern the people of God. So that&#8217;s sort of an explanation, Stacy, as to the rationale behind the laws. And there are other things that I say in the chapter in my book, &#8220;Prepare the Way,&#8221; that can help you with this obstacle that you&#8217;re facing. But hopefully you can see that laws in and of themselves are not bad. And finally, I would say this, Stacy, if the claim is made there are too many laws, too many rules, well then I would invite you to ponder the question, &#8220;Well, what&#8217;s the number of rules that&#8217;s the right amount such that I would become Catholic if the rules were at that number?&#8221; So notice how the claim that there are too many rules is a bit of an arbitrary standard that&#8217;s presupposed. What counts as too many and what counts as a sufficient number such that one can join the church? And I would argue, and I would submit to you, Stacy, that there&#8217;s really no boundary of number of rules in principle that we could determine that would create that line to say, &#8220;Well, across the line we can&#8217;t join the church because it&#8217;s too many, and it has to be on this other side of the line.&#8221; I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any sort of boundary in principle that we can determine. And so this is why we look to the church that Jesus established with that authority to create some of the rules that we need to help govern our relationship with the Lord, and also to protect and to govern how we relate to the divine revelation itself, how we meditate on it, and the things that we draw forth from it.

Are The Catholic Church’s Rules Overwhelming?

<div>Can the Annunciation be moved to a permanent date out of the shadow of Divine Mercy Sunday?</div><div>The date of the Feast of the Annunciation is March 25. In 2018 March 25 was Palm Sunday and then Holy Week, and the Octave of Easter took precedence over the feast, and so it was moved to April 9.
You might also recall that the feast was moved in 2016 because Good Friday fell on March 25.
While this happens occasionally, the feast usually is able to remain on March 25. Over the next twelve years the feast will need to be moved only three times (in 2024, 2027, and 2029).
In the Latin Church, it has been almost always and universally celebrated on March 25, with evidence going back the seventh century.
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On What Date Do We Celebrate the Annunciation?

Last Friday marked seventy-six years since the foundational book for Scientology, Dianetics, was published. Born in 2003, I was privileged enough to grow up in a world where commercials for Dianetics did not bombard our TV channels. For my generation, Scientology has become practically irrelevant—that is, up until a few weeks ago with reports of a new trend of Gen Zers and Gen Alphas<a href="https://theweek.com/culture-life/people-across-the-us-are-speed-running-into-scientology-buildings"> filming themselves storming through Scientology buildings</a>.
So what is this book anyway, and how did it lead to the creation of the “church” of Scientology?
Science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard wrote <a href="https://www.dianetics.org/">Dianetics</a> in 1950, intending to give a “practical guide to help eliminate your negative emotions, insecurities and daily stress and anxiety.” His big theory was that when the mind stores memories during moments of traumatic “unconsciousness” (such as being anesthetized for a procedure or becoming delirious from an illness) this can cause fear, pain, and psychosomatic illnesses to develop. To free someone from these issues, they must be led to recount these “unconscious” experiences from beginning to end.
But what happens if your fear or pain can’t be traced back to an unconscious experience? This is where the theories of “past lives” developed. According to the <a href="https://www.scientology.org/faq/background-and-basic-principles/what-is-the-difference-between-scientology-and-dianetics.html">Scientology website</a>, “By use of the procedures of Dianetics it became apparent that the source of these conditions were not cells or cellular memory, but a beingness [sic] that defied time.”
This “beingness” is known in the Scientology world as a thetan. A thetan is the Scientologist version of a spiritual being, which all men are. It is immortal and lives countless lifetimes, with distinct urges toward survival. These urges are broken down into eight “dynamics,” with the first dynamic embodying the urge to have an individualized existence, and the eighth being the urge toward “existence as infinity” or the “Supreme Being”—their version of God.
The goal of Scientology is to help its members become aware that they are thetans and to restore their spiritual abilities through counseling, or “auditing,” sessions, the study of Hubbard’s work, and training courses. Through the completion of these tasks, one can reach the state of “Operating Thetan” (OT), allowing him to <a href="https://www.scientology.org/faq/operating-thetan/how-would-you-describe-the-state-of-operating-thetan.html">“willingly and knowingly be at cause over life, thought, matter, energy, space and time.”</a> This sounds an awful like God, but <a href="https://www.scientology.org/faq/operating-thetan/what-is-ot.html">according to the church</a>, one does not become God but becomes “more like oneself.”
If you’re like me, you might be wondering: what the heck does that actually mean? And who the heck has these magical powers? Well, <a href="https://www.scientology-birmingham.org/faq/operating-thetan/how-would-you-describe-the-state-of-operating-thetan.html">the church suggests</a> that in reaching OT, you gain control over yourself and your environment. Those who have claimed to reach OT describe having complete control over their emotional state, control over their friends and family, and even control over the weather…But that’s “not God.”
Don’t worry, though—these abilities aren’t available to just anyone. <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/3721663/leah-remini-scientology-bridge-total-freedom/">According to</a> ex-scientologists Leah Remini and Mike Rinder, “it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for an individual to spend approximately $500,000 to reach the top tiers.” Only the rich can afford these powers.
So maybe that’s how Tom Cruise got so good at his stunts…

What Do Scientologists Actually Believe?

Episode 71: Year B &#8211; Easter Sunday
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on five details found in each of the readings for this upcoming Easter Sunday, Year B. The first detail comes from the first reading, taken from Acts 10:34a, 37-43, which is Peter’s testimony that they have witnessed the ministry of Jesus and his resurrection. The relevant apologetical topic is that Christian faith is not blind faith. The next two details are taken from each of the optional second readings, Colossians 3:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 5:6b-8. The relevant topics are the nature of justification and the Real Presence of Jesus’ flesh in the Eucharist. The last two details are found in the Gospel reading, which is John’s report of the discovery of Jesus’ empty tomb, taken from John 20:1-9. Each detail is alleged to be in contradiction with reports from the Synoptics, thereby giving rise to an opportunity to reflect on the historical reliability of John’s Gospel.
The Readings: <a style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'segoe ui', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'helvetica neue', sans-serif;" href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/040118.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Historical Contradictions of the Empty Tomb

Episode 62: Year B &#8211; 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on three details that are relevant for doing apologetics. The first comes from the first reading, taken from Deuteronomy 18:15-20. The apologetical topic that comes to the fore is the intercession of the saints, and particularly the objection from necromancy. The second and third details come from the Gospel reading, which is taken from Mark 1:21-28, and it relates to Jesus’ divinity.
Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012824.cfm">Click Here</a>
Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/012824.cfm">Click Here</a>
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Is Intercession of Saints Necromancy?

<div>Does the nine first Fridays devotion have to be done on every first Friday?</div><div>The devotion is for nine consecutive first Fridays. However, many people maintain the devotion even after they have completed it as an act of reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
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Is the First Friday Devotion Consecutive?

<div>Is a man with two children born out of wedlock six weeks apart with two different mothers free to marry a third woman?</div><div>Having children out of wedlock is not an impediment to marriage. However, the man needs to examine his intention to be in a bond of marriage as a lifetime commitment. Children by several partners may indicate a lack of responsibility, so this needs to be addressed. Also, his potential wife should recognize that unless he is caring for the children he already has by other women, then he will likely not be a suitable partner for her. She has to be aware of everything and accept his existing children as part of their life together. And he needs to take care of them. This means that his previous relationships will always be present in some way in his marriage to the third woman. This is a great challenge for both of them, and they should be clear-headed about it before they marry.
</div>

Is a Man with Illegitimate Children Free to Marry Another Woman?

Episode 18: Year A &#8211; Fifth Sunday of Lent
In this episode of The Sunday Catholic Word, we focus on several details found in the Gospel and second reading for the 5th Sunday of Lent, Year A. The story of the raising of Lazarus in John 11:1-45 and Paul’s teaching on “the flesh” in Romans 8:8-11 equips us with tools needed to engage in conversations about the problem of evil, soul-sleep objections, the Eucharist, Jesus’ resurrection, the doctrine of the resurrection in general, the divinity of Jesus, and the historical reliability of the Bible.
The Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032623.cfm">https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032623.cfm</a>
Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday</a>

Who Will Be Resurrected?

Tim Staples answers a caller who wonders whether a marriage between a Catholic and a non-Catholic is still valid, and whether that marriage could be ended by annulment.

The Difference Between Sacramental and Natural Marriage

St. Teresa of Calcutta is often described as having lived for decades in a “dark night of the soul.” The phrase has become so common that people apply it broadly to mean any prolonged period of aridity, or dryness, in prayer, or any season of difficulty in the spiritual life. How many times have you heard someone say, “I’m going through a dark night of the soul” when what he really means is that he feels distant from God, or is merely not feeling spiritual consolations?
But here’s the truth: that’s not what the dark night of the soul is—at least, not as St. John of the Cross describes it. The term has a precise meaning in the spiritual writings of mystics and Doctors of the Church. When we conflate it with mere spiritual dryness, we not only misuse the term, but miss the profound beauty of what God is really doing in the soul.
Let’s clear this up by first laying out what John of the Cross actually meant when he wrote about the two (yes, two) dark nights.
<h2>The Two Dark Nights</h2>
First, I would like to make a PSA about the writings of John of the Cross. People flock to read The Dark Night of the Soul, but most do so out of context. John first wrote Ascent of Mount Carmel, which explains the dark night of the senses (which traces a soul’s elevation toward God as it grows in holiness in the earlier part of the spiritual life). Ascent of Mount Carmel is written in three parts. Originally, John intended to write this as four parts, with Dark Night of the Soul as part four. Ultimately, he ended up writing Dark Night of the Soul as a separate work, but when we read it without first reading Ascent of Mount Carmel, we can miss important context.
Across these two works, John describes two phases of purification through which a soul passes on its way to union with God:
<ol>
<li>The Dark Night of the Sense</li>
<li>The Dark Night of the Spirit (what many simply call “the dark night of the soul”)</li>
</ol>
The first of the two nights—the dark night of the senses—occurs when God begins to lead the soul beyond simple meditation into mystical prayer—a stage in the spiritual life where a soul experiences God spiritually rather than through the senses. The familiar experiences of sweetness in prayer, consolations, and pleasant feelings are removed. This is not simply because God is testing the soul, nor is he withholding his love. Rather, he is drawing the soul into a deeper, more raw love for him—one no longer dependent on feelings or consolations.
As John writes,
<blockquote>this first night pertains to beginners, occurring at the time when God begins to bring them into the state of contemplation. . . . And the second night, or purification, pertains to those who are already proficient, occurring at the time when God desires to bring them to the state of union with God (Ascent, Book I, ch. 1).</blockquote>
This purification strips away attachment to the lower faculties of the soul—the senses, imagination, and emotions—so the soul may enter into a type of prayer called infused contemplation, through which God himself illumines the soul. Also contrary to modern vernacular, infused contemplation is not simply a deeper kind of meditation, but a type of prayer into which only God can bring a person, and in which the person tastes the sweetness of prayer spiritually rather than physically.
The second night, the night of the spirit, comes much later. It is far more intense, rare, and  transforming. This is the true “dark night of the soul.” It purifies the higher faculties of the soul—intellect, memory, and will—in preparation for the final stage of union with God, what John calls the transforming union. To take a step back here, the dark night of the spirit comes only once a soul has gone beyond the introductory stages of contemplation and into divine union (and progressed beyond the initial simple union with God, even!).
In this second night, faith, hope, and charity are all purified and deepened. The soul experiences profound darkness—not because God has abandoned it, but because his light is so overwhelming that, as with staring directly at the sun, the soul experiences it as darkness.
<blockquote>The more clear and evident divine things are, the more dark and hidden they are to the soul naturally. Thus . . . the stronger the sun’s rays the more it blinds the visual organs; overcoming them by reason of their weakness, and depriving them of the power of seeing. So the divine light of contemplation, when it beats on the soul, not yet perfectly enlightened, causes spiritual darkness (Dark Night, Book II, ch. 5).</blockquote>
The dark night of the spirit is not ordinary dryness. It is due to not the distance of God, but the closeness of God. It is God working in the soul, burning away even the most hidden imperfections so that nothing remains but pure love. John uses the analogy of a drum of dirty oil that is set on fire—at first, the flame is dirty and filled with pollutants, but over time, the impurities are burned away, and the flame burns clean. The flame represents God’s love, which burns more purely in the soul after the two nights.
<h2>Ordinary Dryness vs. the Two Dark Nights</h2>
It’s important, then, to distinguish between the ordinary dryness most of us experience and the supernatural purifications of the dark nights.
<ul>
<li>Spiritual dryness can come from many sources: fatigue, stress, illness, distraction, sin, or even God gently leading us to love him beyond consolations. These periods are normal and to be expected. They test our perseverance and faithfulness.</li>
<li>The dark night of the sense is not just dryness, but the beginning of infused contemplation. The soul is no longer able to meditate as before. It feels empty in prayer but is secretly being drawn closer to God.</li>
<li>The dark night of the spirit is the profound purification of the higher faculties of the soul. It is not just difficulty in prayer, but an all-encompassing purging of the soul, preparing the soul for total union with God.</li>
</ul>
This is why we must be careful with language. Not every dry patch in prayer is a dark night. Sometimes it is just dryness. Sometimes it’s the night of the sense. The dark night of the spirit is a rare and advanced stage in the ascent to divine union.
It can be dangerous to misuse the term because we can either over-spiritualize our experiences or trivialize the true grandeur of God’s purifying work in the soul. So let’s use the proper language, acknowledging that all three experiences have their place in the spiritual life.

Dark Night of the Soul: Not What You Think

Some Catholics, especially parents of young children, find <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-go-to-mass">Sunday Mass</a> attendance difficult. As a parent of young children, I get it.
But despite our parental hardships, we recognize that we have a moral duty to be there. The Catholic Church reflects this obligation in its Code of Canon Law: “On Sundays and other holy days of obligation, the faithful are bound to participate in the Mass” (1247). The Sunday liturgy is mandatory, like showing up for work—and, just as skipping work can have serious consequences, so can skipping church. In fact, it is a mortal sin to miss Sunday Mass without good reason. For a Catholic, then, whether or not to attend on Sunday is no small decision.
But is the “Sunday obligation” too strict of an expectation upon Catholics?
<h2>Moral laws are like signposts</h2>
Moral laws are like signposts: they properly orient us, and once we have been properly oriented, we cease to notice them. The first time I traveled to Calgary, I needed to follow the signs; they told me where to go and thus imposed a direction upon me. That was a long time ago. Years later, I know how to get there without the aid of signs. I have been properly oriented. The signs are still there—they still hold their objective force—but I no longer notice them. They are unimposing.
Likewise, the Sunday obligation helps to orient us spiritually. It can be easy to forget that Sunday marks the beginning of our week, not the end. In a sense, the Sunday Mass prepares us for the days ahead and sets the spiritual tone for the week, filling us with God’s word and grace so we might glorify the Lord with our lives. By starting our week with the Sunday liturgy, we publicly profess with our whole being that we are sons and daughters of God and members of his Church. We are God’s first. Without him we are nothing.
That is why Jesus can say, “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37). Furthermore, the first and greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:38). Our unique love for God (and his for us!) is specially consummated when we receive the Eucharist at Mass.
A Catholic is permitted to be absent from Sunday Mass in light of serious circumstances such as illness. But it is not licit to skip for trivial reasons. We might be tempted to do this, nonetheless, because Mass is not always an engaging way to spend Sunday morning. Many of us lead dynamic lives. We are used to the continual stimulation of caffeine and conversation. We are not used to the slowness or the silence of the liturgy. We are not used to the language of the Bible readings and the prayers. Even for a devout Catholic, it can be difficult to slow down and settle into a day of rest—and especially into a solemn hour of prayer and worship.
We can’t grasp the intrinsic value of the Mass until we understand that its aim is not to stimulate like a form of entertainment; its aim is to sanctify. Although the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life” according to the Catechism, it is not uncommon for a Catholic—through no fault of his own—to feel almost nothing when he receives it (1324). Since the grace received in the Eucharist is not a physical or emotional sensation, but a spiritual reality, it tends to leave the senses unmoved. For this reason, a Catholic’s experience of Sunday Mass can be deceptively dry and may leave him feeling as if nothing special has gone on at all. This does not necessarily reflect a defect in the liturgy or the believer. Rather, it moves the Catholic to a deeper mental conviction of things not seen: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (John 20:29).
The Mass presents an essential challenge to Catholics—in its slow and leisurely rhythm, in its moments of deep silence, in its demands of faith. Two grave dangers to the human soul are a lack of contemplation and lack of love. A human being cannot have enduring happiness without these two things. The Mass fosters both.
<h2>To remember the Sabbath and keep it holy was not optional for the first-century Jew.</h2>
To remember the Sabbath and keep it holy was not optional for the first-century Jew. To fail to do so was a violation of the third commandment and a grave sin (Num. 15:32-36). Christians replaced the Sabbath, the last day of the week, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/should-christians-keep-the-sabbath-or-celebrate-the-lords-day">with a new day of rest that they called the Lord’s Day</a>, the first day of the week. The essential moral prescription of the third commandment nonetheless remained: man ought to set apart a full day each week for rest and worship. “Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them,” Jesus said (Matt. 5:17).
Why Sunday? We are told in the Gospels that Jesus rose from the dead “on the first day of the week” (Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1), and ever since the time of the apostles Christians have congregated on Sunday to worship God and receive the Eucharist together as one body in Christ (Acts 20:7). To compound this, it is primarily in the act of receiving the Sunday Eucharist—the real body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ—that the members of the Church unite themselves to their Lord and one another. Hence, St. Paul writes, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:17).
Every Sunday, “the whole Christ” is reunited in and through the Holy Eucharist. Moreover, our choice to participate is salvific: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Theologian Colin Donovan reminds us that “in the Mass it is Christ himself who worships the Father, joining our worship to his. In no other way is it possible to adequately give thanks (eucharistia) to God . . . than by uniting our offerings to that of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-the-eucharist-is-the-source-and-summit-of-christianity" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Jesus Christ</a> himself.” Christ does with us in the Mass what we cannot do alone: make a perfect offering to the Father.
The key to understanding why <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/catholic-answers-guide-for-getting-to-mass" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Catholics must attend Sunday Mass</a> lies above all in the essence of the Mass itself. Our duty to be willing participants is not rooted in how it makes us feel, but in what it is. As the sacred meeting place of God and man, the Mass reorients our lives towards God, reunites us with him in love, and thereby communicates the grace of salvation to our souls. In the long run, there can be nothing more productive than that.

Even in Summer, You Must Go to Sunday Mass

It’s become an annual tradition in the internet age to commemorate major Christian holidays like Christmas, Easter, and even Halloween with articles claiming that these really are old pagan holidays that Christians appropriated. The evidence for this ranges from “flimsy” to “literally disproved in the early sources.”
Even Snopes.com, which prides itself on debunking misinformation, shared an article by Lorna Piatti-Farnell (professor of popular culture at the Auckland University of Technology) on “<a href="https://www.snopes.com/news/2020/12/21/the-borrowed-customs-and-traditions-of-christmas-celebrations/">The Borrowed Customs and Traditions of Christmas Celebrations</a>,” in which she claimed to find traces of a number of pagan holidays beneath the veneer of Christmas. According to Piatti-Farnell, “while Christmas is ostensibly a Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus, many of the rituals and customs come from other traditions, both spiritual and secular.” Let’s see how that claim holds up.
First up, was Christmas a borrowing from Saturnalia? Piatti-Farnell finds the December 25 dating suggestive, saying,
<blockquote>It is not difficult to spot the similarities between our now long-standing Christmas traditions and the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was also celebrated in December and co-existed with Christian belief for a period of time.
Saturnalia placed an emphasis on the sharing of food and drink, and spending time with loved ones as the colder winter period arrived. There is even evidence that the Romans exchanged little gifts of food to mark the occasion.</blockquote>
The reason it’s “not difficult to spot the similarities” between Christmas and Saturnalia is that the similarities she mentions—people ate and drank together, and sometimes shared gifts—are so generic that they could describe nearly any major holiday in almost any culture. Should we conclude (for instance) that Saturnalia was itself borrowed from the older Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, simply because people ate and drank together in December? Or is it possible that different religions and cultures might all have their own feast days in December?
The more you look at the particulars, the less the two holidays look like one another. For instance, Saturnalia was on December 17, although the Roman historian <a href="https://archive.org/details/macrobius-saturnalia-book-01-english-1969/page/73/mode/2up?q=rejoicing">Macrobius reports</a> that people would extend their “general excitement and religious rejoicing” until the feast of Sigillaria on December 23. The “twelve days of Christmas,” in contrast, run from December 25 to January 6. If the date of Christmas was set to appease (or compete with) the pagan festival of Saturnalia, why wasn’t Christmas set during Saturnalia? And why does none of the early Christians seem to notice or mention this connection?
But maybe Christmas comes not from Rome, but from Scandinavia. Piatti-Farnell makes the bold claim that “through the idea of gift-giving, we see the obvious connections between Odin and Santa Claus.” What are these “obvious connections”? Here’s her argument:
<blockquote>In the Norse religion, Yule was a winter festival celebrated during the period we now roughly associate with December.
The beginning of Yule was marked by the arrival of the Wild Hunt, a spiritual occurrence when the Norse god Odin would ride across the sky on his eight-legged white horse.
While the hunt was a frightening sight to behold, it also brought excitement for families, and especially children, as Odin was known to leave little gifts at each household as he rode past.</blockquote>
It’s true that there was a winter festival called Yule celebrated by Norse pagans before the arrival of Christianity, but we know little about it, other than it seems to have involved drinking, as well as the ritual eating of horse liver. In other words, what little bit we do know doesn’t look particularly Christmas-y. (The word “Yule” would later become a catch-all for Christmastime, which is why we have phrases like “yule logs” despite these originating only in the sixteenth century.)
As for the idea that Odin rode across the sky in a “Wild Hunt,” as a kind of forerunner of the popular image of Santa’s magical sleigh, the historian (and pagan) Ronald Hutton has pointed out that this simply isn’t true. “Behind the whole concept of the Wild Hunt,” he explains, “ultimately lies a single book, Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche Mythologie (German, or ‘Teutonic,’ Mythology) published in 1835.” Grimm (one of the two Brothers Grimm of fairy tale fame) was convinced that there were certain common myths, including a myth of the “wild hunt” found across the various “Teutonic” cultures. But no ancient sources bear out this idea. Instead,
<blockquote>as [Claude] Lecouteux has shown, medieval and early modern sources refer to three different kinds of spectral huntsman: a demon, chasing sinners; a sinful human huntsman, condemned to roam without rest as a penance; and a wild man who chases otherworldly prey and sometimes human livestock (Lecouteux 2011, 56-84). None usually has a retinue, of the living or the dead, and so are not aspects of what the Wild Hunt was later taken to be.</blockquote>
The popular image of Santa in his sleigh doesn’t come from Odin’s Wild Hunt (since that isn’t a real myth of the ancient Norse), nor from the ancient myths about demons chasing sinners, or hunter chasing prey. It’s also not even from Grimm’s inaccurate 1835 book. Instead, we can squarely trace this element of the Christmas tradition to an American poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, dating to 1827.
As for the idea that Odin gave gifts to good little girls and boys, the Old Norse specialist Jackson Crawford <a href="https://youtu.be/_o5ih9WuCxQ?t=205">has pointed out</a> that this is a wild distortion of Odin’s “gifts”:
<blockquote>Odin is also not a figure associated with gift-giving, certainly not the kind of kind and selfless and friendly gift-giving that Santa Claus participates in. Odin gives gifts to men, for example in the Saga of the Völsungs, but those are always gifts to men that he is later going to directly harvest or kill for his army in Valhalla.</blockquote>
Once again, as soon as we actually compare the pagan custom and the Christian one, we see that they have less in common than it might first appear.
But that still leaves one detail: what about the fact that the one-eyed Odin rode an eight-legged horse, Sleipnir? This was a significant enough detail that in The Saga of Hervor &amp; King Heidrek the Wise, Gestumblindi (who is really Odin in disguise) asks a riddle: “Who are those two, who have ten feet, three eyes, and one tail?” The answer, of course, is Odin riding his eight-legged horse. And sure enough, this does look just like Santa and his reindeer . . . provided that you don’t know the difference between a reindeer and a horse, or between a one-eyed Norse god and a two-eyed saint, or between one animal with eight legs and eight animals with four legs apiece.
Gestumblindi would surely be surprised to learn that scholars like Lorna Piatti-Farnell thought that Santa and his reindeer (for a total of eighteen eyes, thirty-four legs, and eight tails) looked just like the “ten feet, three eyes, and one tail” of Odin and Sleipnir.
In the end, there’s a strange reluctance by some to believe that Christianity (with its population of 2.5 billion believers and its 2,000-year history) is incapable of having come up with any of its own feast days. All of the apparently native practices of Christianity must really be imported from Rome or Scandinavia. But none of this is true. We find early arguments for the dating of Jesus’ birthday to December 25 <a href="https://www.academia.edu/18110500/Calculating_December_25_as_the_Birth_of_Jesus_in_Hippolytus_Canon_and_Chronicon_Vigiliae_Christianae_69_5_2015_542_63">in the writings of St. Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170-c. 235)</a>, centuries before Christians would ever hear of a holiday called “Yule.”
And as for the basic details of the Christmas festivities, one need not meet a Norseman or a centurion to know that food and drink and gift-giving make for good merrymaking. Jesus even takes that sort of knowledge as a given: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). So this Christmas, celebrate the feast of Our Lord with the knowledge that this is what Christmas is, and always has been, all about.
*Not counting Rudolph.

Does Christmas Come from Pagan Feasts?

Here’s a criticism we hear all the time in one form or another: the Church has oppressed women throughout history—and continues to do so. When I say I think it’s the right moment to pay attention to women in a particular way, I’m only echoing the prophetic voice of the Church itself. Pope Paul VI, at the end of the Second Vatican Council, wrote these words:
<blockquote>Women, you do know how to make truth sweet, tender, and accessible. Make it your task to bring the spirit of this council into institutions, schools, homes, and daily life. Women of the entire universe, whether Christian or non-believing, you to whom life is entrusted at this grave moment in history, it is for you to save the peace of the world (Address to Women, 1965).</blockquote>
But it was his successor Pope St. John Paul II who most promoted women when he said, “Woman has a genius all her own, which is vitally essential to both society and the Church” (Angelus address of July 23, 1995, 2). I’m convinced that part of the reason we have barely made a dent in the New Evangelization is because we have a long way to go when it comes to the recognition not only of women’s dignity but of their feminine genius.
I would like to structure this article in the way St. Thomas Aquinas structured his Summa Theologica: by offering objections to our question and then answering those objections. So, the question I pose is regarding women, and the article is, “Does the Catholic Church oppress women?” We will answer it in a series of three objections.
<h2>Objection 1
“It would seem the Catholic Church does oppress women because it doesn’t allow women to be priests.”</h2>
On the contrary, I answer that women are already priests, as are all members of God’s priestly people. This isn’t a profound philosophical or theological point, but it has worked with a lot of my secular friends when they ask about this objection. In fact, by not allowing women priests, the Church is woman’s great liberator and allows women to become truly themselves.
I’ve also tried theology, but the only approach that has really worked is to ask: do women really need more to do? If the heart of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-we-have-a-ministerial-priesthood">priesthood</a> is sacrifice, can we not say that, both in body and soul, through biological and spiritual motherhood, women are experts at sacrifice? This is not a question of the priesthood to which all the baptized are called but a question of the ministerial priesthood to which women are not called—and, frankly, to which most men also are not called. This is the point of a vocation, the root word of vocation being vocare, “to call.” God must call you, and you must be granted permission through the discernment of the Church to pursue that call.
A vocation isn’t to be seized or grasped at, because the decision for an exclusively male priesthood was made through the wisdom of Our Lord, as John Paul II rightly says: “I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination of women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful” (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 4). But he also writes:
<blockquote>Non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. The presence and the role of women in life and in the mission of the Church, although not linked to the ministerial priesthood, remains absolutely necessary and absolutely irreplaceable. As the declaration Inter Insigniores points out, “The Church desires that Christian women should become fully aware of the greatness of their mission; today their role is of capital importance, both for the renewal and humanization of society and for the rediscovery by believers of the true face of the Church” (Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, 3).</blockquote>
The greatest creature is a woman, the blessed Virgin Mary. She was born without original sin and is literally the mother of God and the greatest disciple of Jesus. With power like that, I doubt she concerned herself with becoming an ordained minister.
And what about Mary Magdalene, the first witness to the Resurrection? She was the first evangelist of the gospel. So privileged is her place in history that she is celebrated liturgically just like the rest of the apostles. She’s given the title by the Church, which Aquinas gave her first, Apostolorum Apostola, “the apostle to the apostles.” She tells them, “He has risen. I have seen the Lord.” She tells them what they will in turn 
tell the whole world.
The earliest and the first followers and converts to the Church were women. Women were such a majority in the early Church that one Roman emperor believed that the Christian movement was a women’s movement. Jesus and his Church dignified women, who in the time of the early Church had zero legal rights; who were considered the property of their fathers, the property of their husbands; women whose husbands could commit matricide; women who were immersed in a culture of infanticide and abortion, mainly of girl babies.
I think it’s a privilege to be a Catholic woman. Catholic women enjoy the privilege of knowing they have dignity because Jesus has revealed it to them through the teaching of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.
<h2>Objection 2 
“It would seem that the Catholic Church does oppress women because it is opposed to the feminist movement, which has gained women civil equality.”</h2>
On the contrary, the Catholic Church is not opposed to the feminist movement insofar as the movement respects woman’s nature and dignity. John Paul II supported first-wave feminism but opposed the second- and third-wave versions. Here’s what he wrote:
<blockquote>My word of thanks to women thus becomes a heartfelt appeal that everyone in a special way states international institutions should make every effort to ensure that women regain full respect for their dignity and role. Here I cannot fail to express my admiration for these women of goodwill who have devoted their lives to defending the dignity of womanhood by fighting for their basic social, economic, and political rights, demonstrating courageous initiative at a time when this was considered extremely inappropriate, the sign of a lack of femininity, a manifestation of exhibitionism, and even a sin! (Letter to Women, 6).</blockquote>
The first wave of feminism started in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The key players were Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The key issues were voting rights, property ownership, and educational opportunities. First-wave feminists opposed abortion. They promoted traditional marriage and motherhood, everything we would say is in line with Catholic social teaching today.
Things, of course, got problematic with second- and third-wave feminism. The former started in the post-World War II era. The key players were Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan. These women denied the good of marriage, they supported contraception, they supported abortion, and they supported promiscuity. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/from-feminism-to-faith">Third-wave feminism</a> started in the late 1980s into the ’90s, and the key issue was gender ideology.
It’s obvious the Church had to withdraw its support for these latter stages of the feminist movement precisely because they’re anti-woman. Although he affirms what we now categorize as first-wave feminism, John Paul II calls for a new feminism to replace the second and third waves, since they are clearly not authentic expressions of the feminine genius. Here is a key excerpt from the document:
<blockquote>In transforming culture so that it supports life, women occupy a place in thought and in action which is unique and decisive. It depends on them to promote a new feminism which rejects the temptation of imitating models of male domination in order to acknowledge and affirm the true genius of women in every aspect of the life of society, and overcome all discrimination, violence, and exploitation (Evangelium Vitae, 99).</blockquote>
<h2>Objection 3 
“It would seem that the Catholic Church does oppress women because it has treated its female members unjustly and therefore prevented them from reaching their full potential as human beings.”</h2>
On the contrary, it is not the Church per se that has harmed women, but its sinful members have at times, causing great scandal.
I answer that this is a fallen world, but the Church is the one place where women can become truly themselves through the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Again, this is John Paul II, apologizing to women:
<blockquote>I know of course that simply saying thank you is not enough. Unfortunately, we are heirs to a history which has conditioned us to a remarkable extent. In every time and place, this conditioning has been an obstacle to the progress of women. Women’s dignity has often been unacknowledged and their prerogatives misrepresented; they have often been relegated to the margins of society and even reduced to servitude. This has prevented women from truly being themselves, and it has resulted in a spiritual impoverishment of humanity. Certainly, it is no easy task to assign the blame for this, considering the many kinds of cultural conditioning which down the centuries have shaped ways of thinking and acting. And if objective blame, especially in particular historical contexts, has belonged to not just a few members of the Church, for this I am truly sorry.
May this regret be transformed, on the part of the whole Church, into a renewed commitment of fidelity to the gospel vision. When it comes to setting women free from every kind of exploitation and domination, the gospel contains an ever relevant message which goes back to the attitude of Jesus Christ himself. Transcending the established norms of his own culture, Jesus treated women with openness, respect, acceptance, and tenderness. In this way he honored the dignity which women have always possessed according to God’s plan and in his love. As we look to Christ at the end of this second millennium, it is natural to ask ourselves: how much of his message has been heard and acted upon? (Letter to Women, 3).</blockquote>
For any woman who has experienced an injustice within the Church precisely because she’s a woman, let’s follow John Paul II’s example and in all humility apologize.
Despite the obstacles placed before women, whether coming from sinners within the Church or from without, the Church still has the ability to generate women who are truly themselves, which is what sanctity is all about. We all are aware of what the Catholic Church has done in terms of women founding schools, hospitals, monasteries, and religious orders. Without the cooperation and innovation and creative genius of women, many of these things would not have happened.
<h2>The way forward</h2>
The secular world isn’t wrong when it proclaims, “The future is female.” But the future is female insofar as the future is Marian. Therefore, I propose three action items.
One, listen to women. One of my favorite stories is of Pope Leo XIII and Bl. Elena Guerra (1835-1914). She was a contemplative Italian nun, and she wrote a series of letters to the pope requesting in no uncertain terms renewed devotion to the Holy Spirit. Being the good, holy listener that he was, Pope Leo wrote an apostolic letter and later an encyclical encouraging the faithful to celebrate a solemn novena to the Holy Spirit between the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost for the intention of Christian unity. And don’t forget the story of Catherine of Siena; her influence with Pope Gregory XI played a key role in his leaving Avignon for Rome in 1376.
These stories exemplify a beautiful complementarity: these secluded nuns communicating with the pope, the head of the universal Church, and the popes obliging them.
Two, read Church documents on the feminine genius. I interviewed a man, a great Catholic husband and father, who told me that until he read Mulieris Dignitatem and John Paul II’s document on women, he was still having a spirit of competition with his wife. Reading that document helped him see her as a partner and not as a competitor.
“John Paul didn’t write this document for women,” he told me. “He wrote it for men to read.”
Three, men need to take their own emotional health seriously to keep women healthy. And this means that economic systems should keep women, children, and family in mind. This is of course what John Paul II wrote about in Evangelium Vitae (94). Here’s one expression of this aspect of his thought: Communities and states must guarantee all the support, including economic support, which families need in order to meet their problems in a truly human way. For its part, the Church must untiringly promote a plan of pastoral care for families, capable of making every family rediscover and live with joy and courage its mission to further the Gospel of life.
What he’s saying from a Catholic worldview is something that secular trauma-informed physicians are saying from the scientific point of view. Gabo Maté, a Canadian doctor with expertise in trauma, addiction, and stress says, “Women are more chronically ill. For every one man who’s chronically ill, there are three women who are chronically ill.” Why? He says, “Because women are society’s shock absorbers.”
What Maté is saying from a secular, scientific point of view, John Paul II is saying from a Catholic point of view. He’s saying economic systems should be set up so that women who are mothers shouldn’t be punished for being mothers. For working women, work should be designed to support motherhood. Women who want to stay at home with their children also should not be punished economically.
As laypeople, we must be salt and light; we are called to not just stay in our cozy Church circles but to go out and propose the gospel in this way. I love this quote from Flannery O’Connor: “You have to suffer as much from the Church as for her, but somehow this is the body of Christ, and this is where I’m fed.”
Does the Church oppress women? I think our discussion here shows that the answer is an emphatic no.

Does the Church Oppress Women? An Appreciation of the Feminine Genius

In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent bemoans the current state of the MCU and proposes a plan for a reset.
Support this podcast: https://trenthornpodcast.com
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Transcript:
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Welcome to The Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
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MCU, more like MCU later because I don&#8217;t want to watch anymore because it stinkT now. That&#8217;s terrible. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I&#8217;m your host Catholic Answers Apologist and speaker Trent Horn. Monday/Wednesday we talk Apologetics and theology. Friday we talk about whatever I want to talk about. It&#8217;s free for all Friday, and today I want to talk about the Marvel Cinematic Universe or the Colossal Wreck, the Shattered Facade, if you can count the poetry reference there, of what something great this obelisk, this monolith, what it used to be, and now it&#8217;s in shattered woke remains of poor writing and poor planning and bad CGI. And what happened here? What needs to happen? I think we got to just do control, alt, delete. We got to do a hard reset. We got to take the MCU, unplug it from the wall, and plug it back in, and do that a few times if we have to fix what is going on with it.
So that&#8217;s just what I want to talk about today. Maybe you&#8217;re not a big MCU person, but you&#8217;re probably familiar with it. It&#8217;s a cultural touchstone and I think it really became that way in 2012, like the MCU became this cultural juggernaut in 2012 with the release of Avengers, and that was monumental. Nobody had really been able to come up with a framework like that before where they had four relatively well-received films before that point to put forward major characters. Ironman was the sleeper hit that came out of nowhere. People loved that. Robert Downey Jr. was just perfect for the role. The Incredible Hulk was not as good. It&#8217;s very hard to make a good Hulk movie. Hulk not good protagonist. So that could be difficult, but it still put it out there, and it was really saved by having Robert Downey Jr. in the post credit scene that blew people away. Like wait, are these connected? What&#8217;s going on here? Oh man, it&#8217;s Avengers initiative.
Thor was okay because the show was trying to figure out Thor. They were trying to be faithful to the comics and he&#8217;s very Shakespearean and serious, and they realized you know what? That just doesn&#8217;t work. By Thor Ragnorak, and Captain America, which is pretty good because Captain America is kind of a goofy sort of nerdy idea, but they did a really good job with Chris Evans pulling that off all of the Hollywood Chris&#8217;, they&#8217;re pulling a lot of weight here. Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Pine, Chris Pratt. Chris&#8217;, man, they are just taking over. Chris Catan from Night at the Roxbury, Saturday Night Live. Anybody? Anybody? All right.
But recently it&#8217;s gotten bad, so it&#8217;s height like 2012. It&#8217;s when it ignited like oh man, what is this? And then they really couldn&#8217;t do anything wrong the next few years. I mean, Thor, The Dark World was not very good, but the films were generally where it was seen, and they were cultural events like people looked forward. And I remember that I &#8230; I don&#8217;t go to the movies very much, but when a Marvel movie came out, generally with rare exceptions, but generally I&#8217;d make sure to buy tickets in advance, reserve it, and I wanted to be there Thursday at three o&#8217;clock because there&#8217;s going to be spoilers, there&#8217;s going to be hints on where the saga is going, especially when it got towards the end where the Infinity Saga was becoming very clear, where it was all going, you&#8217;re like what is happening here?
And then Endgame, I remember I was in a little theater in North Dakota going to graduate from University of Mary Bismarck, but it was still amazing, this little theater, we all cheered when Cap holds Mjolnir and wallops Thanos with it. Oh man, you just want to cry. Now when I watch it with my kids at home, I still tear up for them to see that, it&#8217;s just &#8230; And then when everybody comes out of the portals, but that was the day it died, people. And then after that, the problem was Marvel Cinematic Universe is sort of like TV. It is. That&#8217;s what the Marvel Cinematic Universe was. Every movie was basically a new episode in the TV show, and so people watched it in that way just like you might get hooked on a TV show.
The problem is a lot of TV shows they don&#8217;t know where they&#8217;re going exactly. That&#8217;s the problem with television, right? Like making a great movie is still difficult, but at least if you make one movie, there&#8217;s a beginning, a middle, and an end, and you know what you&#8217;re doing and you&#8217;re just going to go for it. And if you plan it all right, you can make it work. You could even stretch that maybe into a trilogy if you have a clearly defined end goal and you push it through to that, though like Indiana Jones, that trilogy ended perfectly. The Toy Story trilogy ended perfectly. And yet, the quest for money continues and the studios will never let a perfect ending just be a perfect ending.
So movies have that advantage where you know where you&#8217;re going and you can tell an encapsulated story, but television shows are hard. Why is it so hard to have great television? Because there&#8217;s a pressure to keep the series going season after season, and if you don&#8217;t know where the story is going, it can become aimless. It can lose its focus, its purpose, so many great television shows you can think of, think Scrubs or Community, lots of shows, very few television shows end gracefully.
My wife and I love Monk. We thought that Monk was a great series and it ended perfectly, though Monk is a little bit of a cheating, it&#8217;s mystery of the week. There are some plot threads and arcs, story arcs, but overall it&#8217;s very episodic, so if you decide to end it, you can just basically end it in one episode and it feels good. But it always maintained its same structure. But a lot of other shows you look at, I mean, The Simpsons is still on air and it&#8217;s just terrible now. Lost was the same way. You don&#8217;t know where you&#8217;re going, and I think that&#8217;s what happened with the MCU. The MCU was like a big television show, and then after the finale should have been End Game. That was it, it ended perfectly. It&#8217;s done. You don&#8217;t need anymore. But what if we had some more characters to throw? We got other Marvel characters, people. Don&#8217;t you want some Eternals? Don&#8217;t you guys want some Shang Chi? Don&#8217;t you want maybe some She Hulk? Hey, what if Wanda had a show? What if we did that?
And what&#8217;s hard was that after End Game, there was still a lot of morale, there was a lot of goodwill towards the MCU and I gave them a chance. I gave them a chance on Wanda Vision and Loki, and I kind of liked Wanda Vision until the ending. I didn&#8217;t think the ending was very good, but it was really interesting. If they had just made Wanda the villain, that would&#8217;ve been great. They make her a villain for phase four, that would&#8217;ve been good, but the other &#8230; And Loki was pretty decent. But then I just kind of &#8230; I did stick with it in the end because I thought it was really fascinating. But now all of the shows, there&#8217;s no direction.
I guess here&#8217;s the big problems with the MCU now, why they need this reset. So for a few reasons. One, there&#8217;s really no direction. Where is this going? At least with the Infinity Saga, it was clear at the beginning, Thanos, the Infinity Stones, there was an idea for it. It was there, so it all fit together. Now this thing with the multiverse, it doesn&#8217;t really make any sense at all. I feel like it&#8217;s going to end up with Secret Wars and there&#8217;s going to be like 30 minutes of exposition of grabbing people throughout the multiverse like hey, remember this guy from this Marvel Disney+ show you never saw? No, and they&#8217;re all going to be jumbled together like action figures thrown on each other without a heartfelt story that you really built to.
And that&#8217;s the other problem, these characters haven&#8217;t been built up well because you have to do homework to keep up with it. You have to watch &#8230; There&#8217;s so much content on Disney+. It used to be that once a year a Marvel film came out and it was a cultural event, but now it&#8217;s like every &#8230; At one point in phase four, every three months, there was a new Marvel television series, and they didn&#8217;t do that before. They just had Agents of Shield and you didn&#8217;t have to watch Agents of Shield, it was more of an Easter egg. So there&#8217;s just way too much content. You don&#8217;t want to keep up with it, and it&#8217;s not that interesting.
The people that you do like the people that you do want that had heart, they&#8217;re gone. They&#8217;re talking now to try to juice up the final Avengers movies, bringing back Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson, bringing back the original Avengers for the last films or get audience butts in the seats. And I just really loathe that idea. It would be one, I don&#8217;t even think they could make money doing that because it would cost them probably $30, $50 million to get Robert Downey Jr. Back, Scarlett Johansson.
And also, it&#8217;s ridiculous. It&#8217;s going to be a multiverse version or time travel and all the stakes are lost now that you have multiverse and time travel. Now that you have that, there&#8217;s really no stakes. Nobody can stay dead. It&#8217;s just pointless, really. And the people that gave it the heart, even Nick Fury, I mean, Samuel Jackson&#8217;s getting old. He can&#8217;t do this role forever. You see, eventually characters die or get written out or they age out like Chris Evans didn&#8217;t want to be Captain America forever, even though that is really his most famous role. Robert Downey Jr. is good. He was in Oppenheimer. He&#8217;s trying to become a movie star again, which is good.
But MCU actors aren&#8217;t really movie stars. I mean, the only exception would be like Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr., but the others, you don&#8217;t see them in a lot of other stuff. They&#8217;re not breaking out in other films. They get used to Marvel and Marvel &#8230; Martin Scorsese had a good point in his criticism of Marvel. Marvel doesn&#8217;t really make films, it makes product. It makes stuff that&#8217;s safe and widely consumable and there&#8217;s a time and a place for that, but it&#8217;s hard. They don&#8217;t take risks, so every movie feels the same. It&#8217;s cheap. It&#8217;s not lovingly directed as a piece of art. So it&#8217;s sent off to some CGI workshop in South Korea or the Philippines or who knows where, where it&#8217;s all done terribly or it&#8217;s just companies here that are the lowest bidders and get it done cheap. And it shows, it shows in some of the more recent work.
The other problem, it got woke. It got woke. It&#8217;s just like I love the original Infinity Saga. I can show it to my kids. No worries. None of this woke politics or identity politics in it, but now you have She Hulk twerking. You&#8217;ve got identity politics. It&#8217;s like just forget it. I don&#8217;t want my kids to watch She Hulk twerking, okay? Well, it&#8217;s not for kids. Well, who&#8217;s it for? Who is She Hulk for? She Hulk, there are men who like She Hulk comics. She Hulk comics are funny, but you are leaning into it with too much of that girl boss, weird modern feminism, all of this raunch, and it&#8217;s terrible. So it goes woke and you&#8217;re just not interested.
Oh, and here&#8217;s the other thing about woke that I don&#8217;t like, so the Marvels just came out. I have not seen it. It&#8217;s the sequel to &#8230; It&#8217;s supposed to be Captain Marvel II, but it&#8217;s the Marvels and it&#8217;s got Bree Larson&#8217;s, Captain Marvel, an unlikeable character, Monica Rambo, that other Miss Marvel, who&#8217;s like the Pakistani teenage girl who has powers, who is a Disney+ show, didn&#8217;t watch it, don&#8217;t care. And they&#8217;re all together and they did this film, and I hear it&#8217;s garbage. I hear it&#8217;s bad. It&#8217;s like got weird &#8230; Like now the MCU does a lot of weird humor where they over crank the humor and it&#8217;s not funny. That was really bad in Thor: Love and Thunder. And they do it in this film as well, but it&#8217;s girl power, it&#8217;s woke, but it&#8217;s bad storytelling. It&#8217;s disparate. It&#8217;s all over the place.
And what makes me really mad is that the cultural critics protect this because they love if something is woke and &#8220;on their side&#8221;. So you go to Rotten Tomatoes, like the Marvels, they were hovering &#8230; Rotten, I hate Rotten Tomatoes. I cannot stand them because it&#8217;s just a business now, and they&#8217;re in cahoots with Hollywood. And so for certain studios, they will rig the critical algorithm so that a film, a film is 60%. If it gets 60% positive reviews, it&#8217;s rotten. It gets the red tomato. It&#8217;s below 60%, it gets a splat, which I think is a horrible dichotomy.
A movie is not good or bad, it&#8217;s on a gradient. At least Meta Critic puts it on a gradient. That makes more sense, but just oh, does it have red orange tomato or the green splat? But they&#8217;ll finagle it. Like they&#8217;ll categorize a review that gives it as 2.5 stars. Is that good or bad? I would say that&#8217;s bad, but if they need it, they need that review to get over the 60% threshold, they&#8217;ll label it a red tomato instead of a green splat. And I&#8217;m thinking wow, that&#8217;s real sheisty. So all of it is just like give me a break.
I really do feel like though that the superhero, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with superheroes. The problem is this superhero genre where learns powers, goes out, fights disposable CGI army, big blue sky beam at the end, tension then quip, tension then quip. That&#8217;s the superhero genre. And it&#8217;s old and we&#8217;re sick of it. It reminds me of how the western genre was. I mean, before what was it like? The fifties through the sixties, at least in the fifties especially, but during a period in the 20th century, it was just westerns were dominating the landscape, and eventually people get sick of westerns. They want grittier crime dramas. People get sick of gritty crime dramas and they want romantic comedies. They want the comedy, the great comedies we had in the nineties.
So you go through these phase where you get genres. People get all hopped up and they get sick of them, and that&#8217;s the way it should go. I remember in the 2000s, this also reminds me of zombies from 2003 to &#8217;05. I mean, it&#8217;s like in the early two thousands, everybody was zombies after Romero&#8217;s Dawn of the Dead. I mean, that was &#8230; It was a cool zombie horror, apocalypse survival film, and I remember going with my friends and after we saw Dawn of the Dead, for months we would talk about nothing but how are we going to survive the zombies? How do we survive the zombie apocalypse? That&#8217;s all we would talk about. So it was a cultural zeitgeist. But what&#8217;s nice about zombies, it&#8217;s such a basic premise, that genre flamed out after a few years. Like okay, we saw zombies we&#8217;re done now.
I think superhero is the same thing, the superhero genre, but you can make a movie with a superhero that doesn&#8217;t follow that genre. That&#8217;s more of an interesting genre play, and that&#8217;s what Marvel needs to do. So what do they need to do? They need to reset or they got to nuke the whole thing, reset it, get rid of it, we&#8217;re done. It was a good run, but reset. Comics do that all the time. DC does that, did that with a crisis on Infinite Earths where they reset all the continuity. That was back in 1985. They have crisis events in DC to reset things, but you can reset it and just try something new.
For example, during phase four, one film that I liked was Werewolf By Night. It was really cool. The first intro of it, &#8230; I mean, I&#8217;ve mentioned this before on the channel multiple times, but I love the intro of the Screams and the Gothic MCU theme. And it was so different from other MCU films, it made it enjoyable to watch. Try a radically different genre. MCU films are at their best when they really lean into a genre that&#8217;s not the superhero genre. Captain America Winter Soldier is a noir crime thriller. Antman, people don&#8217;t like Antman, I like Antman. It&#8217;s a heist film, but it&#8217;s at least it&#8217;s different. But when you lean into something in a different genre than superhero, then it can be really good.
So I think with Secret Wars and the new Avengers movies coming out, nuke that multiverse or shut it down, combine &#8230; It ends with combining. The heroes save the day, but combining everything into one. And they&#8217;re probably going to do this. Save the day, combine everything into one universe, and that&#8217;s it. And the next phase of the MCU, they got to have two rules. There is only one universe and time travel is impossible. Now the stakes are back. You can&#8217;t travel through time and you can&#8217;t go to another universe. It&#8217;s collapsed into one universe. But maybe you could have the X-Men come into the MCU finally. They&#8217;re going to have that X-Men 97 series, and I just hope it&#8217;s not woke.
Like in the original X-Men animated series, Wolverine was a Christian. He would talk to Nightcrawler about it. I don&#8217;t know if he was a very strong Christian, but there was an episode where we find out Nightcrawler is Catholic and that&#8217;s pretty awesome. They&#8217;re in a German monastery talking about that stuff. I remember that. It&#8217;s back when you could have that kind of stuff in a cartoon. So reset it and it&#8217;s one universe and open it up where the superheroes already exist. They&#8217;re already there. You don&#8217;t have to establish it, but make it so that people don&#8217;t love superheroes as much, that there&#8217;s a lot of tension there. Like the mutants are really treated like mutants, and those mutants who can hide their abilities or facial features and can be more like superheroes, so to speak, put them in. Put them out there. Others are hiding in the shadows more. There&#8217;s a lot that you can do there, and just change up the tone a bit and allow the stories to unfold naturally. Try different genres. Don&#8217;t worry about a mega crossover event. That&#8217;s just my free advice for Marvel Studios.
So that is all. If you didn&#8217;t like Marvel MCU stuff, I doubt you stuck with me this long unless you&#8217;re a super fan. If you did, hopefully, maybe you agree, maybe you don&#8217;t. Always love to hear people&#8217;s thoughts. Go to TrentHornpodcast.com, or you can comment on the episodes there. Love to see what you think. Thank you guys so much and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.
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FFAF: The MCU Needs a Reset

In this episode Trent sits down with Geoff from “a Goy for Jesus” and Steve Christie, two Protestants who critique his claim that Protestants act like atheists when they make arguments against the Catholic faith.