Manage Account

Karlo Broussard explains why Catholics are obligated to go to mass every Sunday.

Why We Go to Mass Every Sunday

Fr. David Michael Moses discusses using social media as a tool for evangelization, noting that the disciples would likely use it to spread Jesus&#8217; message if they were alive today.
Transcript:
Sometimes we look at all this social media stuff and we very rightly, I think, go, &#8220;This is so dangerous. Look what it&#8217;s doing to kids.&#8221; But there&#8217;s also the other side of it. There&#8217;s always the other side. Well, here&#8217;s also a tool that God put in your hands. And do you think the apostles would have done it? Do you think the apostles would have used social media or no? Would they have not?
Oh, I definitely think so. I definitely think so. I mean, I will say, you&#8217;re absolutely right. Social media is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. I would recommend for most parents just to keep their kids off of social media, honestly. The way I look at it, you know, a quick analogy is like social media is like a bad neighborhood. You know, a bad neighborhood is a dangerous place to be. I would not recommend my family, my nieces, and my nephews go live in a bad neighborhood.
But I do think that every bad neighborhood should have a Catholic church. And I think there should be a Catholic priest at that church who gets to know the area, gets to know the culture. They ought to be able to minister to the people. So I feel like even though it&#8217;s dangerous, that&#8217;s not a reason to just abandon it. I think certain people with the right disposition, the right training can go into that landscape and hopefully bring some goodness there.
So it is certainly dangerous, but I think it&#8217;s worth leaning into. And I could certainly see Jesus. I&#8217;m not sure if he would have his own account, you know, but I do think there would be people around recording what he was saying and posting it everywhere, and that would be part of the vehicle of spreading the message.
Judas would be monetizing it.
That&#8217;s a quality joke right now! Judas on the side, monetizing without telling anybody
Yeah, I got this Lord.
Too funny.
We got this, Lord. We&#8217;re going to make you famous.
So, well, yeah, I really like your dangerous neighborhood analogy. And there&#8217;s also a certain attitude sometimes in the modern world that Christians don&#8217;t belong in this space. You know, get out of our space. You know, there&#8217;s a secular bias that&#8217;s not a healthy secularism, but is a denuded secularism. Like, yeah, we don&#8217;t need you here. Do you feel that pushback sometimes?
Well, I do think that sometimes people try to avoid it, maybe avoid evangelizing there too much. You know, I just kind of think about maybe the enemy. If we were to say, &#8220;None of the Catholics are on social media anymore,&#8221; I think the devil would be like, &#8220;Really? You guys are just going to let me have it? You&#8217;re just going to give it to me and I can just run all of it.&#8221; You know, that would be his response.
I think when we say, &#8220;No, we&#8217;re going to enter in a very careful, mindful, prayerful way, look at this and see what we can do here,&#8221; that&#8217;s when the enemy is like, &#8220;Gosh, you know, I&#8217;ve got to deal with this now.&#8221; So I think it is something that&#8217;s really worth investing in the right way and can be a very, very powerful tool.
A lot of, I mean, one of, well, I should tell you this, the most common prayer request we get here at Catholic Answers is, &#8220;can we pray for something for you?&#8221; is that &#8220;my adult children will come back to the faith&#8221;. That is the most common prayer request we get.
And I saw a video that you did, by the way, we&#8217;re talking with Father David Michael Moses, if you&#8217;re just joining us. He&#8217;s a priest of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, but he&#8217;s also very popular online and reaching lots of people with the joy of his own priesthood and with the joy of the gospel. You made a video, which was very, very negative.
It was about how the churches are empty and young people are not vitalized and all that, but the images did not match the words. So you were saying the clichés about the Catholic Church, &#8220;Nobody comes, the pews are empty.&#8221; And a lot of it was at the SEEK Conference where there were like 20,000 young people. Was it the one that was up in Salt Lake City just recently?
That&#8217;s right. Yeah, absolutely right. So young people are interested in the faith. They do want the faith. They do want the faith. So how are you reaching them? And maybe that could help all the rest of us who are thinking about how to reach young people with the gospel.
Yeah, well, I think, you know, the church has a great history, right, of going into different places, learning the language, learning the culture, and then bringing the tried and true, faithful gospel to that culture and that place in that language. And I think in modern times, that&#8217;s very much the reality now is that a lot of the young people have kind of a new culture, right, and a new language.
And that&#8217;s not a reason to be afraid or to tell them to speak a different language. I think it&#8217;s fair for us to say, &#8220;Okay, well, let&#8217;s learn the language then,&#8221; right? Like the great missionaries in the past, learn the language, learn the culture, and try to engage as much as you can.
And just for me, you know, I&#8217;ve heard a friend say recently, &#8220;People don&#8217;t let you into their homes, but they let you into their phones.&#8221; And I think that&#8217;s very, very true. If we are going after the lost sheep. And in many cases, those are young sheep, right? It&#8217;s often the lambs who kind of lose their way.
If we&#8217;re going after the lost sheep, then, you know, I&#8217;m going to perish called, it&#8217;s called Christ the Good Shepherd. And Jesus tells us the Good Shepherd goes after the sheep. And so for me, if I&#8217;m a good shepherd, I want to be a good shepherd. That means I need to go after the lost sheep, but that probably looks like learning the language.
Because people don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t think you learn, people really don&#8217;t like the gospel. They don&#8217;t like what they think the gospel is. To kind of riff off of what Fulton Sheen talk about. People think they know the gospel, but they really don&#8217;t, right? They haven&#8217;t really encountered Jesus.
So I think if we are able to package things in the right way, then that can really make all the difference.
Tell me about that encounter with Jesus, because that&#8217;s the thing, isn&#8217;t it? The difference between the joy of the Christian life and the Christian life as obligation or as a series of &#8220;no&#8217;s&#8221; that God gives, it all comes down to that, the meeting and the knowing of the person of Jesus.
Oh, totally. I mean, that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s about. You know, and people get somewhat frustrated with the idea of religion, but really, religion is an organized way of most effectively encountering the person of Jesus Christ.
And you know, I think young people, they do think one thing that gets kind of lost today is this idea of greatness. Sometimes it&#8217;s framed as the kind of the Andrew Tate worldly, you know, having the cars and the mansions as greatness. But really, greatness is knowing the person of Jesus Christ. And that&#8217;s where the joy comes from ultimately. And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re searching for.
So, you know, I heard a quote recently, &#8220;The magic that you&#8217;re looking for is in the things that you&#8217;re avoiding.&#8221; And I think the world so often puts out there the pleasure and the status and the comfort and all those things. And that&#8217;s not really what we&#8217;re looking for.
Like, that&#8217;s not really what we want. The magic we&#8217;re looking for—not magic in the world, it&#8217;s not magic—but magic like the meaning and the peace and the joy and the purpose. The magic is usually in the things that we&#8217;re avoiding, which is suffering, self-denial, taking up the cross.
These are the things that actually give purpose to our lives. And so I think it is about, with young people especially, saying, &#8220;No, sacrifice and suffering are not the worst evil to be avoided,&#8221; which is what the world says. It&#8217;s actually like pushing through these things. On the other side of some of that sacrifice is really going to be everything that you actually long for in life.
And what is that actually going to find there? It is the person of Jesus Christ.

Would Jesus Preach on Instagram? | Fr. David Michael Moses

The man who wrote the book <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-how-to-talk-about-our-cultures-toughest-issue/">Persuasive Pro-Life</a> gives us a primer on how to share arguments against abortion. Use these effective techniques to move yourself and others closer to the truth about tiny, little, unborn people.

Pro-Life Bootcamp

Some Christians object to the practice of invoking the saints’ intercession because they think it takes away from the unique mediation of Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5—“There is one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ”). But those who invoke the saints counter that just because Jesus is the one mediator who “always lives to make intercession” (Heb. 7:25), that doesn’t mean he can’t share that intercessory role with his saints.
In fact, we know that Jesus shares that intercessory role with at least some of his saints: the Christians here on earth. Saints, after all, is a common word used for all Christians in the New Testament, as seen, for example, in 2 Corinthians 1:1, Ephesians 1:1, and Philippians 1:1. St. Paul urges Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:1 that “intercessions . . . be made for all men.”
Now, some Protestants might counter the above argumentation and say, “Your response misses the mark. We’re not concerned with earthly mediation taking away from Christ’s unique mediation. We’re concerned only with the claim that there are other heavenly intercessors.”
Take, for example, Jordan Cooper, a Lutheran pastor and professor of systematic theology. In his online <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3046OcXloZU">video</a> “A Critique of Prayer to the Saints,” he argues that the Letter to the Hebrews’ description of what’s going on before the Father in the heavenly throne room doesn’t “leave room at all for a kind of other heavenly intercession.”
There are two ways that we can respond to this argument. One is more general, which considers Cooper’s argument itself. The other is more specific to what Cooper says elsewhere in his video.
Here’s the general response. Recall that Cooper’s argument says there can be no other heavenly intercessor because that role belongs to Jesus alone, who has ascended into the heavenly sanctuary to minister as our high priest. But isn’t the Holy Spirit a heavenly intercessor also? Paul says he is:
<blockquote>Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Rom. 8:26-27).</blockquote>
Must we deny Paul’s teaching that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us in heaven? Cooper’s logic would have us say yes.
Now, Cooper might counter, “Of course the Holy Spirit can intercede for us because he’s God. The heavenly intercession that I’m concerned with is creaturely intercession.”
But if creaturely intercession in heaven is the problem, then we’d have to reject the heavenly intercession of the elders in Revelation 5:8 and the angel in Revelation 8:3-4. Here’s what John sees in Revelation 5:8:
<blockquote>And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.</blockquote>
In Revelation 8:3-4, John describes an angel doing the same thing:
<blockquote>And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.</blockquote>
The “prayers of the saints” in both passages refers to Christians on earth. And the elders and the angel are presenting their prayers to the Lamb, Jesus, in the heavenly throne room. That’s heavenly intercession, performed by creatures.
If the elders in Revelation 5:8 and the angel in Revelation 8:3-4 can be heavenly intercessors without taking away from Christ’s unique mediation as our heavenly high priest, then so can the saints. There is in fact enough “room” in the heavenly throne room for multiple intercessors, especially when those other intercessors intercede with Christ in virtue of their union with Christ through grace.
Now, concerning our more specific response, Cooper contradicts himself in his video. In the above argument, he restricts any and all heavenly intercession to Christ. Yet, later in the video, when commenting on the elders in Revelation 5:8, he concedes that they intercede for us in a general way, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3046OcXloZU">saying</a>, “Certainly they are before God; it is likely that the saints in heaven pray for the church.” Which is it? Is it Christ alone who intercedes in the heavenly throne room, or do the elders intercede as well? That’s something for Cooper to answer.
In the end, Cooper’s objection to the appropriateness of invoking the saints in heaven fails. Jesus’ unique mediation in the heavenly sanctuary does not exclude other heavenly intercessors, like the saints. As members of his mystical body, the saints share in such heavenly mediation and thereby are made our heavenly allies.

Don’t Exclude the Saints

To support this channel: https://www.patreon.com/counseloftrent

[NEW] Counsel of Trent merch: https://shop.catholic.com/apologists-alley/trent-horn-resources/

Be sure to keep up with our socials!
https://www.tiktok.com/@counseloftrent
https://www.twitter.com/counseloftrent
https://www.instagram.com/counseloftrentpodcast

Favorite Apologist?!

Sunday Catholic Word is the only podcast that looks at the Sunday Mass readings and focuses on the details that are relevant to explaining and defending the Catholic faith.

Sunday Catholic Word

Just a few days after celebrating a holiday that recognizes the end of slavery in the United States, today we mark one year since <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-the-deal-with-dobbs-v-jackson">the fall of Roe v. Wade</a>.
It still seems a touch surreal. When I was active in pro-life efforts as a college student and young adult, Roe was the boss monster at the end of the level that we could sometimes manage to take a few whacks at but never defeat. Time and again, we put our hope in legislators and presidents and judges only to have them let us down. We had to be content with nibbling around the edges of the law—parental consent here, partial-birth there—while keeping the focus locally on aiding and persuading women in crisis pregnancies and nationally on “changing hearts and minds.”
In fact, whether due to discouragement, mission creep, or an ultimate lack of conviction, in some pro-life quarters “changing hearts and minds” became the only goal—the most we could hope or rightly want to do. I recall many a debate over the years with other self-identified pro-lifers who claimed that it was imprudent, even wrong to change the legal abortion paradigm in America without first changing how Americans felt about abortion. And of course, the other side <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/it-was-never-about-just-hearts-and-minds">was all too happy</a> to echo this rhetoric. (Though they weren’t keen on “changing hearts and minds, either, so they invited us instead to “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/faith-abortion-and-voting-part-5">reduce the root causes</a>” of abortion, usually by expanding the welfare state.)
Now, changing hearts and minds is great. It’s the core of our mission here at Catholic Answers. But there’s another great truth we need to remember: the law is a teacher. That is, laws are not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of persuasion—they are instruments of persuasion, too.
As Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons remarked when asked whether the arrival of legalized gambling to Springfield was a sin, “Once something is approved by the government, it’s no longer immoral.” It was a dry joke that underscores a truth of human experience: people look to the law for moral guidance, even when it’s bad.
We have seen this principle in action. Prior to 2012, same-sex marriage had been put to popular vote in states thirty-two times—including in California’s Prop 8 in 2008—and lost each time. Legislators and state courts in “progressive” states, unconcerned with changing hearts and minds first, kept testing the ramparts of the popular will: a <a href="https://www.mynbc5.com/article/from-the-archives-vermont-becomes-first-state-to-introduce-civil-unions/30337708">half-a-loaf measure</a> here, a seemingly <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160213204203/https:/www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8760044.html">harmless executive order</a> there, in each case teaching the people just a little more. Just prior to the Obergefell decision that mandated legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, national support for it was in the low 50 percent range. Today it’s in the mid-70s. A Prop 8 today would have a vastly different result. We have been taught.
We could point to a similar pattern with other historical issues: <a href="https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-evolution-of-divorce">divorce</a>, contraception, abortion, marijuana legalization. Revolutionaries use the instrument of law to gradually shift majority opinion as well as the “Overton Window” of socially acceptable viewpoints.
This phenomenon occurs because we reflexively equate legality and morality—and for reasons that make sense. We have implicit trust in the wisdom of our lawmakers and in the inherent rightness and validity of law. Plus, being opposed to the legal status quo is psychically exhausting over time. Most people aren’t moral philosophers or cultural boat-rockers; it’s easiest just to let the law inform our values, even if sometimes imperceptibly slowly.
Today, as we mark Dobbs+1, we hope that new state-level abortion laws will save lives, indeed <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/dobbs-saves-lives">as they have already done</a>. But we can also expect such laws to teach—this time for good. That pro-life activism has managed to keep the fires burning for so many years in the face of Roe’s chilling effect is truly extraordinary; a work of God. Now, post-Roe culture will have to think and argue about abortion without the conclusion having been predetermined by nine judges from 1973. State laws banning or restricting abortion will form citizens and institutions in new habits of thinking about the humanity of the unborn. What was once unthinkable under the old, radical abortion paradigm—that the “right to choose” was anything but sacrosanct—is now the new normal, the baseline for further battles in capitols and courts.

Thoughts on Dobbs +1

<div>Is hell a just punishment? I hear this question many times from skeptics, and that "No human being deserves such a punishment." How would I combat this claim? </div><div>The Church reminds us that hell is the “definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm">CCC 1033</a>, emphasis added; see 1033-37).
For further perspective, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/to-hell-with-heaven">this previous response</a> in which I explain that the fallen angels basically said, “To hell with heaven.”
</div>