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Protestants, many of us Catholic apologists argue, effectively act as their own popes. The reason why, we allege, is that every Protestant is ultimately accountable to his personal interpretation of divine revelation, which for Protestants is solely the sixty-six-book Protestant Bible. Every Protestant, we posit, acts as his own magisterial authority, both in interpreting the Bible and even in deciding what constitutes the Bible, given their rejection of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-to-defend-the-deuterocanonicals">deuterocanon</a>.
But not so, declare our Protestant counterparts! They, like us Catholics, have confessions and creeds to which they submit. Carl R. Trueman, one of the most brilliant and interesting intellects in modern Protestantism, last year <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/11/protestants-need-to-go-back-to-basics">urged</a> his fellow Protestants to return to “orthodox Christian doctrines as set forth by the creeds, the Great Tradition of theology exemplified by the ancient ecumenical councils, and traditional Protestant confessions such as the Westminster Confession.” Kim Riddlebarger, a co-host of the popular White Horse Inn podcast, <a href="https://www.kimriddlebarger.com/about-the-author">declares</a>, “If you were to ask, ‘what is it that defines Christianity?’, my answer now would be ‘the definition of Christianity is given us in the Creed.’”
Recently, a friend sent me a video of Methodist lay apologist Joshua Pearsall, who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjbNPvzH8QI&amp;t=105s">makes a similar argument</a> in reference to my book, <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/product/the-obscurity-in-scripture-disputing-sola-scriptura-and-the-protestant-notion-of-biblical-perspicuity/?srsltid=AfmBOor7SNuNT5o002l6Y6MiuN14F4UagxCOJWCBmGhv1rN3cnnkD79G">The Obscurity of Scripture</a>. Citing confessional standards of such denominations as Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and his own Methodist tradition, Pearsall asserts, “You literally can’t be your own pope. You are accountable to the standards of your tradition and of course the Scriptures on top of that.” Others, such as <a href="https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/10/01/the-reformation-as-renewal-is-an-exemplar-of-special-pleading/">Reformed scholar Matthew Barrett</a> in his recent work The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, claims much the same.
I can appreciate the thinking behind this Protestant line of argumentation. Indeed, I would have mouthed similar things fifteen years ago when I was a Presbyterian seminary student. Of course I wasn’t like those ignorant, low-church evangelicals with no knowledge of church history, no knowledge of Nicaea or Chalcedon, no knowledge even of their own Protestant theological ancestry. I eagerly submitted to the Westminster Standards, believing them to be an accurate interpretation of biblical truth.
But that, I eventually realized, was exactly the problem. I adhered to Reformed confessional documents based on their conformity to Holy Scripture—but whose interpretation of it? My own, ultimately. Nor was this my own novel understanding of how things are supposed to work within the Protestant paradigm. This is precisely the way they are supposed to work.
Why, for example, was I a Presbyterian rather than an Anglican, Lutheran, or Methodist? Why was I submitting to the Westminster Confession of Faith rather than the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Augsburg Confession, or the Articles of Religion and Confession of Faith? Because I, as a conscientious, “Bible-believing” Christian, had determined that the particular confessional documents of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) were sufficiently biblical to merit my allegiance. My own pastors and professors told me that if I believed another Protestant denomination was more biblically faithful, I should follow my conscience and go there instead.
Who is in the interpretative drivers’ seat in such a scenario? The individual Christian, naturally. If Carl Trueman, Kim Riddlebarger, Matthew Barrett, or any other Protestant Christian read his Bible and came to believe that his particular Protestant tradition and its confessional documents are erroneous, it would be his prerogative to either protest those errors within his own denomination or, if he viewed them as sufficiently egregious, to join a different ecclesial community. He might even feel compelled to establish his own.
And that explains not only five hundred years of fissiparous Protestant history, but the remarkable explosion of non-denominational, Bible-based, evangelical churches in the last few generations. All of them purport to be simply returning to the fundamentals of Scripture, and all of them cannot help but offer their own bespoke takes on Christian doctrine and praxis.
Granted, I presume that many if not most Protestants do not intend this. They do not want to be postmodern individualists determining reality for themselves. They want to be embedded in the history and traditions of Christianity. That’s why they constantly cite not only Reformers such as Luther, Calvin, Turretin, Cranmer, and Owen, but also Church Fathers such as Irenaeus, Jerome, and Augustine. What Catholics and traditionally minded Protestants share is a desire to be united to something greater than themselves, a proclivity for the ancient and venerable. We all want to believe that our faith was not born yesterday, but descends from the apostles.
The question is whether the Protestant paradigm, in any of its manifold manifestations, is actually capable of coherently doing so. What I came to realize almost fifteen years ago is no, it cannot. Even Pearsall in his YouTube videos attempting to refute my book cannot help but undermine his position, acknowledging that many Protestants are failing to honor their own confessional standards . . . and then immediately admitting that confessional standards are not infallible and “can be corrected down the line if they need to be.” Corrected according to what standard? The standard of the individual’s interpretation of Scripture.
In other words, Protestant creeds and confessional standards have only as much authority as Protestants are willing to grant them. If a Protestant comes to assess them as inadequate, on whatever grounds related to his conscience, he may edit or even dispense with them. And this applies not only to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant creeds, but the ecumenical councils of the ancient Church. This is why Protestants <a href="https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/ask-ligonier/what-does-it-mean-that-the-first-seven-church-councils-were-ecumenical">pick and choose which ecumenical councils they accept</a>. Indeed, many Protestants even argue that <a href="https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/confess-jesus-descended-into-hell/">parts of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed</a> are unbiblical and need not be accepted. And why not?
Catholics do not inhabit the same paradigmatic position. We do not pick and choose which councils or creeds to which we submit. We accept the authority of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church en totale, because we recognize that it has been granted that authority by Christ himself, preserved by the Holy Spirit. Such a recognition requires an act of faith, but it is based on evidence and reason, pre-eminently the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/my-church-is-more-credible-than-yours">motives of credibility</a>. And, unlike Protestants, whose interpretive authority of divine revelation rests in the conscience of each individual Christian, Catholics acknowledge a living Magisterium, whose voice is manifested not only through ecumenical councils, but, in certain narrow circumstances, through the living pope.
Creeds can’t save Protestantism from its inevitable descent into an individualism that equates to every individual Christian acting as his own pope. Only the Catholic Church with its internally coherent and historically verifiable magisterial authority can resolve the Protestant’s dilemma and give him the certitude that he is indeed following Christ and the fullness of his teaching, rather than the (often well-meaning) whims of his own conscience.

Creeds Can’t Save Protestantism

The Romans, as any first-year Latin student can tell you, were in the practice of ending their sentences with verbs. Regina agricolam amat, for example—literally, “The queen the farmer loves.” Unless you are Yoda, however, you would speak this sentence in English this way: “The queen loves the farmer.” (Something tells me this relationship is not going to work out.)
In any case, Latin word order often (not always) proceeds this way: subject, object, verb. In English, word order often (not always) proceeds this way: subject, verb, object. Because Latin nouns are declined—that is, they are assigned distinct endings for how they function in a sentence—it is easy to identify the subject and the object.
The Church preserves the practice of ending sentences and clauses with the predicate. Indeed, here is a sentence from Benedict XVI&#8217;s renunciation of the Petrine Office.
<blockquote>
Nunc autem Sanctam Dei Ecclesiam curae Summi eius Pastoris, Domini nostri Iesu Christi confidimus sanctamque eius Matrem Mariam imploramus, ut patribus Cardinalibus in eligendo novo Summo Pontifice materna sua bonitate assistat.
</blockquote>
 And here it is in English:
<blockquote>
And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff.
</blockquote>
I’ve put the verbs in italics so that you can see where they fall in their respective clauses.
What’s the point of this little exposition on Latin syntax? Well, sometimes a translator can alter the quality of a sentence, even unintentionally, by failing to appreciate how a verb at the end of sentence delivers a certain emphasis. Here is an example that you will know. It is the second sentence of Pope Leo XIII’s exorcism prayer that we know as the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel.
First the Latin (with diacritics from the 1962 Roman Missal):
<blockquote>
Ímperet ílli Déus, súpplices deprecámur: tuque, prínceps milítiæ cæléstis, Sátanam aliósque spíritus malígnos, qui ad perditiónem animárum pervagántur in múndo, divína virtúte, in inférnum detrúde. Amen.
</blockquote>
And here is the English:
<blockquote>
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.
</blockquote>
Now, before I make my point about verbs, there are a few things about the English translation that are of interest:
<ul>
<li class="p1">“Rebuke” is not a strict translation of imperet, which really means &#8220;rule&#8221; or &#8220;command.&#8221; But &#8220;rebuke&#8221; gives a more militant emphasis to the prayer, so a gold star to the translator for that one.</li>
<li class="p1">“Wander . . . through” is a faithful translation of pervagantur (we find the same root in “vagabond” and “vague”), but I prefer “prowl” because it has an emphasis of menace.</li>
<li class="p1">“Divine power” would be a more faithful translation of divina virtute than “power of God” (and you hear some people say that), but even &#8220;power&#8221; does not give the Latin sense of virtu, which really means something closer to “manly strength” and even “courage under fire” or “courage in adversity.” (For an extensive consideration of this concept of virtu and what it meant to the Romans, see Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy.) The fact is, however, that we really don’t have an English word for this concept, so “power” is about as close as we can come without ham-handing the translation.</li>
</ul>
But here is the main problem with the English. The ending of the prayer, we have to admit, is a bit of a downer. This prayer is a vigorous battle cry, and the English translation ends with an image of defeat—that is, “the ruin of souls.” Not inspiring, I’m afraid, and certainly not what Leo intended.
The Latin, however, ends with the action verb detrude, from detrudere, which means “to thrust away.” In fact, I prefer “thrust into hell” to “cast into hell,” and detrude in English is a transitive verb that the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “to thrust or force down.” Whether you like “thrust” or “cast,” the sense at the end of the prayer when it is said in Latin is one of victory, not of defeat. We have an image of the vigorous warrior-angel casting Satan and his demons into hell. In English, we are left with an image of souls falling into perdition.
There is a canard about translations: they can be faithful or beautiful. Alas, here the translator has been as faithful as he can be while still hewing to the practices of English word order. If he wanted to preserve the sense of vigorous victory, however, he would have to get a little creative and add another verb—in this case, “bind.” Sure, he would have to take some liberty with the original Latin, but in so doing, I think he would better preserve the martial quality of the prayer. How about this?
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray . . . and do thou, o Prince of the heavenly host, by the divine power, bind Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls, and thrust them into hell!
Feel the difference? I think Leo would approve.

St. Michael Prayer: A Better Translation?

Cy Kellett talks about beauty and the revitalization of culture with Bernardo Aparicio Garcia, founder and publisher of Dappled Things, a literary magazine dedicated to providing a space for emerging writers to engage the literary world from a Catholic perspective. Why does the literary world need the Catholic perspective? Bernardo gets into that and more in this wide-ranging interview.

Dappled Things

<div>If I commit a good act, such as protesting an abortion clinic, but the act produces bad consequences, such as provoking stricter anti-protest legislation so that fewer sidewalk counselors are allowed outside the clinic, have I done a bad act? </div><div>Not necessarily. Our good actions do not cause the bad consequences that accompany them sometimes; they are just occasional opportunities for people to do evil in reaction to them. They are not the causes of the bad actions. If this were not the case, what could we say of God himself as Creator? Surely there would be no sins at all if he had not created angels and men, creatures capable of sinning!
The principal example would be the Incarnation of the Lord. How many sins would never have been committed if the Savior had not revealed himself to us, only to be rejected by many, or if he had not taught the new law, which is far more demanding than the old. But this is most certain: &#8220;Christ Jesus came into the world to call sinners,&#8221; and there would be no forgiveness for us if he had not come.
Of course, it is necessary for us to evaluate our actions prudently and seek to avoid their being the pretext for any evil deeds. But it is impossible to do any good without the possibility that our good deed may be misused or misinterpreted by someone. So go ahead and do what you are doing, at least until some prudent persons determine that it is no longer useful for your cause.
</div>

Can Bad Consequences Make a Good Act Bad?

Jimmy Akin addresses the ongoing controversy surrounding the alleged apparitions of Our Lady in Međugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

New Medjugorje Apparition?

<div>Matthew 24:36 says, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the son, but the Father only." If Jesus is God, wouldn’t he know when the end would come? Why then does it say "nor the son, but the Father only"? </div><div>The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the orthodox interpretation of these words of the Lord:
<blockquote>By its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal. What he admitted to not knowing in this area, he elsewhere declared himself not sent to reveal (474).</blockquote>
What this means then is that &#8220;not knowing&#8221; refers to his not being sent to reveal the day and the hour in his human nature, leaving that office to the Father. It has always been understood that as God, Christ knows the day and the hour but that in his mission on Earth he was not sent to reveal this. We need to remember that the word to know in the Semitic senses used in Scripture is very diverse and rich and does not refer only to mental information but to actions and offices.
</div>

Jesus Knows When the End Will Come

Ever wondered about the mysterious and obscure aspects of the Catholic faith? Dive into our podcast where Jimmy pushes the boundaries of apologetics, blending insights from various fields. Ready for an accessible, informative, and entertaining journey?

The Jimmy Akin Podcast

Tim Staples cites Scripture and early Church writings to refute the common Protestant claim that the Eucharist is only a symbol of Christ&#8217;s body.

Is the Eucharist Just A Symbol?

<div>Would it be appropriate for me to use the sign of the cross when I pray if I am not Catholic yet? </div><div>Certainly you may and should make the sign of the cross. It is not reserved for Catholics, and it is a powerful prayer for enlightenment and protection. If you make it while saying, &#8220;In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen,&#8221; then you are combining an act of faith in Christ&#8217;s Cross and Passion with the profession of faith in the Holy Trinity, and this will be very good for your soul. But become a Catholic as soon as you can. I will pray for you.
</div>

Should a Non-Catholic Sign Himself?

<div>What happened to the Church teaching about Limbo?</div><div><a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/limbo">Limbo</a> was never an official teaching of the Church, as The Catholic Encyclopedia, published in the early 1900s, makes clear. But it was a common theological opinion for a good number of years. Limbo describes a place where unbaptized children and those unbaptized persons who had reached the age of reason but had not committed mortal sin would go upon their deaths. It is not heaven yet it is a state of complete natural happiness.
For more on this subject, please see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/out-on-a-limbo">this article</a> by Catholic Answers founder Karl Keating.
</div>

Whatever Happened to Limbo?

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Is the Eucharist REALLY JESUS?

Does the Bible predict or explain pagan gods? How do Greek and Roman deities fit into the ancient Jewish worldview? In this video, Jimmy Akin unpacks this question and discusses leading theories on this matter.
Transcript:
Adam and Eve were the first human beings. How come there was this period of time, or how about all these cultures and people and beliefs that people had that had nothing to do with the Jewish God? What about, you know, like the ancient Greek philosophers not talking about God a lot? Or did they?
Oh, they talked about—they talked about all kinds of gods. They had loads of them. Um, but, uh, in terms of where the idea of pagan gods came from, there&#8217;s not a single answer to that question. Now, there are, um, there are various ways of answering it, and some of them are found in the Bible. Like, for example, um, there&#8217;s one passage that talks about how people made statues, and then they—of, of, of humans—and then they, uh, began to regard these statues as statues of deities. And that&#8217;s how, uh, the idea of, of some pagan gods came about.
But that&#8217;s not actually the majority explanation in the Bible. There, the biblical worldview holds that there are—there is more than one spirit up in heaven. I mean, God, he&#8217;s the supreme spirit, he&#8217;s the creator, he&#8217;s the one who made everything. But he&#8217;s not the only dude up there.
Um, in the Old Testament, God is depicted as, uh, as being surrounded by a heavenly court. And there are different levels within that court. Some people rank higher in the heavenly court than others. Some people rank lower in the heavenly court than others. The ones that we get to deal with—the angels—that term just means messenger. And if you think about any king&#8217;s court, the messengers, they&#8217;re like the lowest, you know. They just run—they just run messages from one place to another.
Um, but there are much higher officials in the court. There are also, you know, a king is going to have his army, and he&#8217;s going to have his high counselors. He&#8217;s going to have a prosecutor. That&#8217;s what Satan is. Uh, Satan means, in Hebrew, means—means adversary or prosecutor.
And so we see, uh, in various books of the Old Testament—and it&#8217;s also referenced in the New Testament—um, uh, you know, discussions of the heavenly court that surrounds God. And according to Deuteronomy, what happened was, when the nations divided—so this is when they&#8217;re starting to separate and become independent nations—God put each nation under a different high-ranking heavenly official.
Um, they&#8217;re sometimes referred to as the sons of God. They&#8217;re also sometimes referred to as the sarim, sarim being a Hebrew word that means prince or commander. And so God, like, put a different—different heavenly official over each of the nations, but he kept Israel for himself. And he eventually, uh, enlisted Michael, the angel Michael, to, uh, help him in overseeing Israel.
But he put each nation under its own prince or its own son of God. And eventually, those—a lot of those sons of God went bad, and they started opposing God&#8217;s plan. We see references to that, for example, in the Book of Daniel, where there are wars in heaven between the, uh, good angels like Michael and Gabriel and the bad angels like the prince of Persia and the prince of Greece.
And this is the biblical explanation—the main biblical explanation—of the origin of the pagan gods. They&#8217;re angels that God entrusted the nations to that then went bad and started demanding that people worship them instead of the true God.
Brian, that brings us to the break. I hope that that was helpful to you. Thank you very much for the question. Lots of lines full, but we got lots of time left with Jimmy Akin.
&nbsp;

A Biblical Explanation for Pagan Gods

Mary shows us the RIGHT WAY to read Scripture.

The annual celebration of Thanksgiving is one of the few remaining modern occasions where openly religious and civil sentiments intersect. Americans on the fourth Thursday of November still voice something of a social expectation that some acknowledgment of debt is owed in a world otherwise marked by entitlements. Precisely to whom that debt is owed is somewhat ever murkier, some even suggesting that it is more of a “debt of memory,” to contemplate the blessings of liberty and prosperity. But sufficient fumes still remain that most Americans invoke a beneficent God as the recipient of that gratitude.
Is there a distinctive Catholic approach to Thanksgiving? I ask that not especially as a holiday as much as a phenomenon. My answer is yes.
In his pre-papal book on the implementation of Vatican II, Sources of Renewal, the future St. John Paul II wrote about “consciousness” and “attitudes.” Consciousness is an awareness of a particular dimension of faith, an awareness that keeps that particular understanding in our sights, a lens through which we see reality. For example, Wojtyła spoke of “creation” as a consciousness: if I see the world as the intentional gift of God, that will affect how I approach it. It will engender “attitudes” about how to look at the world, both positive (“this is what it is”) and negative (“this is what it isn’t).
Let me argue that thanksgiving is a basic attitude of the Christian toward everything . . . because everything he has is a gift.
As beguiling as creation sometimes is, the Christian is aware that of everything that is, none of it has to be. Nothing had to be, and in a world beset by terrorism, war, and violence, we are also increasingly aware of the fragility of what is.
Dame Julian of Norwich captures this in one of her visions. She says that God showed her something like a walnut. Wondering why she saw this, she asked God and was made to understand that it represented “all that is.” Astonished that all the things that tempt man in the material world could be contained in such a small and fragile vessel, she was beset with the question of how it continues nevertheless to exist. God’s answer was simple: “Because I love it.”
In a series of lectures in Austria recently transcribed and published, Josef Ratzinger (prior to his papal election) spoke of creation as “the divine project.” Creation is not some thing that evolved by happenstance or even just started from a divine bang only for its own internal dynamism to take over. Creation is part of God’s plan, and since God’s plan is one, creation is inherently tied to salvation: to God’s plan to enter in loving relation with those created persons called human beings he created and, through them, to give voice to the whole cosmos to the greater glory of God.
When we realize the contingency of everything that is, and yet its—and our—existence being personally willed and wanted “because I love it,” should the human response be anything less than thanksgiving? Isn’t that response captured in the verse of an old Polish hymn (Kiedy ranne wstają zorze)?
And man, whom You without limit
Have showered with all your gifts, 
Whom You have created and redeemed, 
Why wouldn’t he praise You?
Our age pays at least lip service to “social justice,” yet we often forget that for St. Thomas Aquinas, religion as a virtue is part of the cardinal virtue of justice. Justice is about giving another <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-you-really-just-need-to-kill-someone">what is owed</a> him, his “due.” People have no greater “due” than to him from whom their existence, at its start and in its continuation at this moment, comes. At the very least, thanksgiving is what we owe him from whom we have everything.
Yet, as Preface IV for Weekdays in Ordinary Time reminds us, God has “no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift. Our prayer of thanksgiving adds nothing to your greatness but makes us grow in your grace.”
As much as basic fairness requires us to acknowledge that everything we have comes from God, the truth is that even the good desire to thank him is God’s own gift. So, in giving thanks, it is not just that we discharge an obligation in justice that—when compared to the immensity of the gift—can never be commensurate. No, thanksgiving perfects our own consciousness of our created dependence on God and shapes our attitude toward life. A person who recognizes his dependency is less likely to succumb to illusions of self-sufficient grandeur, exaggerated autonomy, or defining “one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”
Nor is it just a question of acknowledging our dependency. Americans give thanks for <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/freedom-and-the-americans-error">freedom</a>, something also ultimately rooted in creation (we are made in God’s image, one aspect of which being that we enjoy free will) and redemption (Jesus came to give us true freedom).
So a distinctly Catholic approach to Thanksgiving recognizes that the attitude the holiday seeks to embody should, in fact, be the attitude that marks a person’s approach to life every day of the year. The Church not only preaches, but practices that: she celebrates the Eucharist—a Greek word that itself means “thanksgiving”—every day of the year (but <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/no-communion-on-good-friday">Good Friday</a>). Each and every day, the Church invites her children to give thanks for creation and redemption. For the Church, every day is Thanksgiving.
And, again, that celebration of Thanksgiving “makes us grow in [God’s] grace.” In its votive Mass for Thanksgiving Day, the Church uses the Gospel of Luke, 17:11-19, the account of Jesus healing ten lepers, only one of whom returned to say “thank you.” “Ten were healed, were they not? Where are the other nine?”
The leper who returned to give thanks was a Samaritan—i.e., someone whom Israel considered not truly worshiping God because not truly part of the covenant. Yet—in contrast to his Jewish brothers who were part of that covenant and revelation and so should have known better—he did come to give thanks. He embodies the model of the real attitude of thanksgiving.
Having raised kids in Generations Y and Z, I had plenty of exposure to “Barney,” the purple dinosaur, who reminded children that “‘please’ and ‘thank you’—they are the magic words.” Magic not because <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-to-do-with-witches">they cast spells</a>, but because they speak love to another person, human … or divine. Let them be a Catholic’s “magic” words every day—not just, but especially on, the fourth Thursday of November.
Happy Thanksgiving!

What Catholics Should Be Thankful For

Trent Horn explains what confirmation bias is and why it is not a valid reason to discredit faith in any <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/religion">religion</a>.
Transcript:
Host: Let&#8217;s go real quick to try to get this in before the break, Anonymous in Fairfax, Virginia, listening online, you are on with Trent Horn, what&#8217;s your question, Anonymous?
Caller: Hey, so I just recently watched a video on Vice news that was talking about <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/interview-with-an-exorcist">exorcisms</a>, and they showed this one atheist activist named Michael Shermer who was trying to debunk exorcisms, and one of his premises was that &#8220;You know, religion and faith and all that, it&#8217;s nothing more than just confirmation bias.&#8221; And I kind of hear this a lot too, that, you know, &#8220;Oh, faith is nothing more than just confirmation bias. People with their beliefs, they&#8217;ll go wherever their beliefs&#8230;&#8221; You know, kind of ad hoc. But how do you respond to stuff like that, Trent?
Trent: What I would say is that confirmation bias is not an objection to Catholicism, or even to religion in general. Confirmation bias is a psychological defect that all people suffer from, including atheists. It&#8217;s just a part of the human condition, as fallen creatures, as fallible creatures. Confirmation bias is a tendency among human beings to only notice evidence that supports a belief they already hold, and then to ignore or suppress evidence that contradicts that belief.
And everyone does this, including atheists, and I would say even Shermer himself would do this, that if you were talking about exorcisms that he and others may bring up, yeah, there are cases where you might say someone who seems possessed may have a mental illness and it&#8217;s indistinguishable, but then people don&#8217;t bring up the other cases where the person who&#8217;s possessed speaks a language they never knew before, or has superhuman strength. That part gets kind of pushed to the side. That would be an example of confirmation bias. I don&#8217;t know if Shermer does that, but I can imagine there are atheists who do.
So I would say, to repeat that, well we have a little bit of time, I can go into this before we have to go to a break, that confirmation bias, it is a psychological defect, an error in thinking, everybody suffers from it. So everyone has to watch out for it, so there are atheists—and I&#8217;ve seen this in literature, where atheists will attack, you know, weak arguments against the Catholic faith, but then they don&#8217;t deal with other stronger issues or things that may contradict a belief that they hold.
So everyone does this, we have to be watchful for it, but it&#8217;s not an objection against the faith. It&#8217;s just something everyone has to watch out for, and Catholics believe in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/arent-faith-and-reason-incompatible">faith seeking understanding</a>, and everyone&#8217;s biased, but we can work hard to look at evidence objectively, and I would say the evidence objectively supports the truth of the Catholic faith.

Is Religion Just ‘Confirmation Bias’?

In this engaging clip, Cy Kellett and Trent Horn dive into a thought-provoking discussion about why some individuals, like a viewer from Ohio, choose not to embrace Catholicism. Drawing from personal experiences in a Pentecostal background, they explore the impact of miraculous claims and the complexities of faith, challenging assumptions about doctrine and authenticity in religious practices.
Transcript:
Caller: So I would say the reason I am not Catholic is because of the denomination I was born and raised in. I was born and raised in a Pentecostal denomination. You know, emphasis on spiritual church services, speaking in tongues, healings, things like that.
We have ministers all the time from foreign countries that told us miracle stories, converting people by the millions. There&#8217;s one story of a woman who had a kidney that miraculously grew back after this Pentecostal preacher laid hands on her. So I&#8217;d say it&#8217;s that environment that I&#8217;m not Catholic and also because, well, can these people be teaching false doctrine if all these miracles are happening? So that&#8217;s why I&#8217;m not Catholic.
Trent: Sure. I think those are two good points. Number one, it seems to be you&#8217;re thinking, well, if these people are capable, let&#8217;s assume that at least some of the miracle claims they&#8217;re making are authentic. I mean, there have unfortunately been cases of preachers, including Pentecostal preachers, who claim to be faith healers. But it seems quite suspect what they&#8217;re exactly doing.
But let&#8217;s just. I think it&#8217;s. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s improbable that some non-Catholic Christians, whether they be ministers or lay people, are capable of performing miracles or having God work through them. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s improbable. But I don&#8217;t think that it follows that because God works a miracle through them, that God validates their theology completely.
It reminds me in the Gospels when there were the apostles, those who were following Jesus, that there were other people who weren&#8217;t direct disciples, who were also casting out demons and doing things. And Jesus said, look, if they&#8217;re not against us, they&#8217;re with us. Though that wouldn&#8217;t mean they had the same apostolic authority as Peter, John, and the other apostles just because other Christians, God empowers them to do miracles.
Because would you agree that, I mean, there are, you know, you said you grew up in the Pentecostal tradition. Would you agree that it&#8217;s possible there are, let&#8217;s say, Calvinists who have done miracles? God has worked through them with charisms. But that wouldn&#8217;t mean you should become a Calvinist, right?
Caller: Well, I guess that&#8217;s a fair point because I&#8217;ve heard of Mormon missionaries, to change the subject a little bit, who have prayed for miracles. Like I saw one video where they claim to stop a drought. And this one lady was cured of cancer after he was baptized in a Mormon baptism. So I guess that&#8217;s a fair point, right?
Trent: And that&#8217;s actually a great example because Mormons are not Christians. So God, I mean, He could choose to work a miracle through anyone, even someone who&#8217;s non-Christian, who&#8217;s not a believer. I mean, you know, God spoke through Balaam&#8217;s donkey, for example, in order to move him.
So there could be non-Christians or non-Catholics God could work through to do a miracle, but that doesn&#8217;t mean automatically their theology is correct. God&#8217;s sovereign. He can choose to do miracles through whoever He wants. For me, I would rather look at trying to determine which theology to believe in. I try to say, look, which one coheres with Scripture and two, which one coheres with history?
Because the Bible, you know, we didn&#8217;t have the Bible in the first century. There wasn&#8217;t a canon, really. There wasn&#8217;t one that was universally recognized until the 4th century. I would say, well, what does early tradition, history, and Scripture tell us? And my full study has led me to the Catholic faith.
I&#8217;d also offer you one more thought, Cole, and that would be that some of the traditions in Pentecostalism, so, you know, charism, speaking in tongues, healings, those kinds of things, they&#8217;re not contradictory to the Catholic faith. Catholics would agree that God can give different charisms to people all the time.
In fact, there are a group of Catholics that have a special devotion to that. They&#8217;re called Charismatic Catholics or part of the Charismatic Catholic Renewal. And that&#8217;s something you could look into, that you can kind of see there how those elements of spirituality that you may find to be positive within Pentecostalism, the Catholic Church also fully supports as well, as long as it doesn&#8217;t contradict Catholic doctrine or Catholic dogma.
Trent: So does that sound like something you might want to look into or&#8230;
Caller: Worth the thought?
Trent: Sure. Yeah. Well, why don&#8217;t you take a look at it? And again&#8230;
Oh, go ahead.
Caller: Well, I just like to say, well, just these preachers have such&#8230; They seem to have such authority when they&#8217;re speaking, and that&#8217;s just hard to kind of argue against, you know.
Trent: But remember, though, when you say authority, they may sound very confident, they may sound, you know, bombastic, they may sound very winsome. I&#8217;ll agree with you there. There are Protestant preachers that can preach up a storm, my friend, but we have to always be careful.
I remember, I believe it&#8217;s in the letter to the Thessalonians, Paul says there will come a time where people will not stand for true doctrine and hoping that their ears will be tickled or pleased, they will go after false teachers. So just because someone&#8217;s really impressive to listen to, sometimes that&#8217;s a warning sign they can be leading people astray.
So when we say speak with authority, we should not mean that they&#8217;re very confident. We should ask what is their authority? Who gave them the right to speak on behalf of Christ? If it&#8217;s just, well, I read the Bible, how do you know your interpretation is right? First Peter 1:20 says, no prophecy of Scripture comes about by one&#8217;s own interpretation.
So I would say the real authority lies in those people who are the successors of the apostles. And we find that apostolic succession fully in the Catholic Church. So something to think about and do. Call back at another time or maybe in an open forum if you want to get more answers.
Cy: Cole, thank you very, very much for that call. Our topic this hour, why aren&#8217;t you a Catholic? Why are you not a Catholic?

Pentecostal Miracles are Why I’m Not Catholic…

Reject the Mass, reject history.

Salvation often seems more like a Protestant issue than a Catholic one. And when Catholics don’t engage with the doctrine of salvation, they can develop some misunderstandings about it.
For instance, the topic of salvation can be grouped in our bookstores in the “self-help” section. Lots of things under that heading can be helpful, but salvation is not a self-help concept, as we will see. Another misunderstanding is viewing the issue purely from a “fire insurance policy” framework. Salvation is objectively a “saving” from hell, yes, but that significantly condenses the breadth of the matter.
<h2>Not Just Self-Help</h2>
Salvation isn’t something we do to become better. Rather, it is about something that God has done for us. God has given us a gift beyond comprehension.
Before exploring this gift, it will be helpful to get some background on what the ancient Roman Empire thought about gift-giving.
Recently within Pauline scholarship, John Barclay published a monumental work called “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Gift-John-M-Barclay/dp/0802868894">Paul and the Gift</a>.” He notes how gift-giving was a major part of daily life in the ancient world, and how the Greek word charis was used often by nonreligious writers. A wealthy individual would give a gift to somebody he considered worthy—that is, someone who would not pocket the gift and walk away. Rather, the worthy person would gratefully receive the gift and give a gift back in return. A relationship of mutual gift-giving would develop.
With this background in mind, let’s look at Paul’s famous quote on gift-giving. He says, “By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). God has engaged in gift-giving to humanity! How exciting! Everybody likes to receive gifts.
But there are some differences between what God does in Ephesians 2 and what the ancient world thought of gift-giving.
God does not focus on giving gifts to worthy individuals, as the Romans did. Like the parable of the sower (Matt. 13), God spreads the gift-seeds recklessly, whether on good soil or bad soil. The latter looks like an utter waste of seed! Yet Paul says in his letter to these Romans that Christ died for the ungodly and unworthy (Rom. 5:6). This is saying that the gift God offers to humans is to unworthy receivers. Humans are sinful, defiant, and inclined to nasty selfishness. It flips the Roman concept of charis on its head. Surely humans are just going to pocket salvation and walk away. Yet God gives gifts to all.
A good example of this gift-giving in the Gospels is the episode of Zaccheus. In Luke 19, a worker for the Romans, Zaccheus, is approached by Jesus, who desires to give the gift of his presence. Anybody in his right mind would not offer a gift to this guy. He is not worthy and, from a human standpoint, will not offer a gift in return. Zaccheus is stealing from the people of Israel as a tax collector. His primary concern is taking money with the force of the Romans behind him, not receiving and giving gifts!
Keep in mind who the Romans were, too. They were terrorists and bullies. There are coins that depict them raping their subjects. Any basic respect for the human person went out the window for the Romans. Zaccheus is on the wrong team! He should not be approached by Jesus! Certainly, he will be ungrateful for a gift.
Yet Zaccheus turns into a worthy recipient. He experiences a conversion instantaneously, it seems, and gives a gift back to Jesus in a way that he knows Jesus would want: to return his stolen goods back to the injured parties and to give alms to the poor. Jesus gives a gift, it is received, and a gift is given back.
Now let’s turn to the specific gift God gives to humanity. Primarily, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus. This gift of atonement and payment of debts is for another article, but what needs to be highlighted here is that humans receive this gift by dying and rising themselves. What do I mean? They mystically, invisibly, and spiritually enter into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Humans are “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20), are “buried with him&#8221; under the waters of baptism (Rom. 6:3), and “rise” to new life (Col. 2:12).
This concept of entering into Jesus’ resurrection life is connected to the second misconception about salvation:
<h2>Not Just Fire Insurance</h2>
Salvation is not just a protection against hell, although that is a weighty advantage in and of itself. Condensing it into a “get out of hell free” card is a tremendous disservice. For it’s also about new life.
Humans receive the gift of Jesus’ resurrection life—the life that involved Jesus being able to defy logic and reality when he appeared to the disciples in their room although their doors were locked (John 20:26). This is the life that changes wealthy people to suddenly give their lives to lepers, whose skin is decaying and falling off (St. Francis of Assisi). It is the life that changes the jobs of comfortable people to the jobs of suddenly picking dying people off the streets and caring for them with tenderness (St. Mother Teresa). In a word, we enter Christ’s school of love.
This new life involves an ontological change in our being. Humans *partake* of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). They share in Jesus’s divinity. Christians truly become the body of Christ, which is why when people persecute Christians, Jesus says they are persecuting him (Acts 9:4-5).
Christians are literally what their title is: Christian means “little Christ.” As Fr. Jose Maria Castillo once emphasized, when I look at my hand, I don’t look at just a hand—I look at Jesus’ hand. This is why numerous miracles occur even today (see the studies found in Craig Keener’s book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Miracles-Today-Supernatural-Modern-World/dp/1540963837/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1J4GIO1GWC71G&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.IEObadFBzNp20zQW9K9lACoOaVYMT44Yzluw1iWwWxNi6ZpbGpEZ3pzhC1x7f1UndqUbOr8pUid3ms3QnrRJZia7orlcmTBVxWlu5-Urwy-oXzH-AvKGW0zqd9hKc0VUZOkr_ZzbvZpjsF1PTEBjuzuBLSkUe35d3w2B6aTvF9Pl2rchtg0iYCVMIfZ4qzFimh3Kh-d9Nq7BIdQ_abP0EZ3piaiRVY3JHpvJg4u_TXQ.EqAJ7n0m484ej3Sv0hl9e4e74spdn5gv99WC2anfgw8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=miracles+by+craig+keener&amp;qid=1762965501&amp;sprefix=miracles+by%2Caps%2C118&amp;sr=8-1">Miracles</a>). I witnessed one last year at <a href="https://www.damascus.net/">Damascus Catholic Youth Summer Camp</a>, in fact.
To conclude, salvation is neither a self-help issue nor just about fire insurance. However, there is a sense in which salvation is self-help. For if you truly care about your well-being, you’ll gratefully receive the gift of salvation from Jesus. You’ll die to your old ways of selfishness and pride, enter into a gift-giving relationship with God, and give immense gifts back to God (the highest gift of which is your gift of self). As Paul continues in Ephesians, “we are his [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). We are made for giving gifts back to God, for God is the one invisibly propelling us to do this. Nor is salvation just fire insurance; rather, it is about receiving the gift of eternal life.
(To learn more about other misunderstandings on the topic of salvation, see the book by my professor at the Augustine Institute called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Salvation-What-Every-Catholic-Should/dp/1733522182">Salvation</a>.)

Salvation Is Better than You Think

Gary Zimak gives some advice on staying close to God while trying to discern his will for our lives.
Transcript:
Host: We go now to Jennifer in Algonquin, Illinois, listening to <a href="https://www.ewtn.com">EWTN</a> on WSFI. Jennifer, your question for Gary Zimak.
Caller: Hi, thanks so much for your time.
Gary: Hey, Jennifer.
Caller: So my question is with anxiety and discernment. For me personally, I&#8217;m trying to discern a vocation, and every single person in my life is very much more on the secular side, or even anti-Catholic specifically, so every voice in my life is saying &#8220;No, don&#8217;t do that,&#8221; but there&#8217;s also part of me that&#8217;s like, &#8220;Well, what if?&#8221; So how do you move through the fear to actually determine what God really wants you to do?
Gary: Good question, and this is something that, even though I&#8217;m married, I have a family, I, five years ago, made the decision to go into full-time ministry. So this is a constant question for me: &#8220;Lord you really want me to keep doing this?&#8221; Because it gets challenging financially sometimes, so I&#8217;m very familiar with this whole idea of &#8220;Lord, what do you want me to do?&#8221;
One thing I would recommend&#8211;and I have a lot of details in my book &#8220;Faith, Hope and Clarity,&#8221; that really grew out of my own discernment&#8211;I would say stay close to the Lord, keep asking Him, &#8220;Lord, do you want me to do this? What do you want me to do?&#8221; You can always go through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, there&#8217;s some books written that simplify the Spiritual Exercises, which were written in order to help people discern vocations.
And then oftentimes the Lord, after we&#8217;ve discerned, we think, &#8220;Well, this is what I should do,&#8221; He wants us to try things and then pay attention to circumstances. I thought I was called to be a permanent Deacon one time&#8211;nothing worked out at all for me in that regard, so now looking back I don&#8217;t think it was the Lord&#8217;s will for me. But I would say stay with Him, keep asking Him, and then if you get an inspiration, try it and see what happens. Mother Angelica was big on that. If she got an idea, she ran with it, and she said, &#8220;If it&#8217;s from the Lord it&#8217;ll work; if not, it&#8217;ll fall apart.&#8221; Hope that helps.

How Do I Tackle Anxiety When Discerning a Vocation?

<blockquote>As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man’s eyes with the clay, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9:1-7).</blockquote>
Wow! If ever there were a reading that is right on target for our current days of bodily fears and dangers, this is it. Two marvelous truths are both implied and concretely shown in this delightful gospel lesson. (Note: Read the whole passage, not just the portion given above: how charming are the Lord and the Blind Man! They are like true, humble brothers, each made for the other for the glory of God.) There are of course many other truths found in this richly woven tapestry of spiritual power; we will speak of two of them here.
1. We are our bodies.
When you see or touch or hear my body, you see, touch, or hear me. Here, in contrast, is a surprising look into the religious beliefs of some Jews of our Lord’s time (and even among some sects of religious Jews now). Notice that the Savior’s disciples seem to think someone might be able to sin before he is born. They believed that the soul existed before it entered the body. This was a common error: it was hard to eliminate among the first Christians and even was considered by some of the early Church Fathers and writers.
Why do we reject this idea, common as it has been? Because, again, we are our bodies, living by the power of our spiritual souls. The very word soul means that it is a principle of life in a body, not a simple spirit. Our soul comes to be, is created by God, at its union with the body. A body is simply dead without a soul, and a soul is “out of place” without a body. My mother’s body lying in its grave is not my mother. My mother’s soul in the life to come did not give birth to me. She is both.
That is why death is a loss, and why we fear and mourn it. And that is why we are so afraid of epidemics and pestilence. We do not want ourselves or our loved ones to experience the separation of soul and body that is death. Angels do not fear disease; they do not need to take any precautions; they do not observe “social distancing.” Neither do the Risen Lord and His Holy Mother, likewise glorious, because they are immortal; they cannot die. Even the disembodied souls of the saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory, who will not die a second time, still are not “completely” immortal until their bodies are no longer dead, but alive!
Disease points to death, and death is the end of our complete, personal existence. This is a fearsome thought. We know that only a power infinitely greater than ours can heal all bodily disease and overcome death in the resurrection to endless life in body and soul.
2. The Body of God is God. Believe in, touch, receive, love, see, hear, desire, embrace the body of Christ, and you believe, touch, receive, love, see, hear, desire, and embrace God himself. This is because he was incarnate in a body, and he did not abandon it ever. His is always the body of God; he is not dead. He is ever your Jesus. This is why the Lord used his body to work miraculous cures.
St. Thomas Aquinas comments on the passage above and, speaking of the Lord’s miracles, says, “Frequently he uses his body in his miracles in order to demonstrate that his body, insofar as it is the instrument (literally “organ”) of his Godhead, has received a certain saving power&#8221; (Commentary on the Gospel of John).
We must stir up our faith and desire for the body of our God and the saving power it possesses to heal and even to raise up from the dead. It is a truth of the creed that we infallibly profess and declare that he will raise us up from bodily death on the last day by the power of his own incarnation, of his own body.
Let us confront sickness and death with this confidence, and all will be well! The same body that is the battleground of sin, passions, and sickness will be the place of victory, health and healing, and undying life. All glory to the glorious body of the Lord, born of the Virgin Mary, and dwelling in our tabernacles! All glory to the resurrection of his holy ones, unto which happy lot may he draw us by the power of that same body!
He is the one who said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth [in his body on the cross], will draw all men to myself,” and elsewhere, &#8220;He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.&#8221; Let us feed on him by faith and love, and this will calm our fear of bodily death!

The Christian Confronts Death

<div>Is John the Baptist Elijah? </div><div>John the Baptist is believed to have the role of Elijah. He is not literally the person Elijah.
Elijah did not die but was taken up to heaven (2 Kings 2:1-11) and thus the Jewish people believe he will physically return to Earth from heaven before the coming of the Messiah (Sirach 48:4-11, Malachi 3:23-24). That is why John the Baptist denied he was the literal physical return of Elijah from heaven, but the Gospel affirmed he was a &#8220;typology&#8221; of Elijah (Luke 1:17).
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