Manage Account

Miracles in Other Religions?

<div>When should Catholics put up their Christmas tree and decorations? Are there any rules about this?</div><div>There is no rule about when to put up <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/christmas">Christmas</a> decorations. You can put them up and take them down whenever you want. You can even leave them up all year long!
</div>

Christmas Decorations

Protestants often challenge Catholics to provide biblical evidence for their belief in indulgences. Can such a challenge be met? Karlo Broussard shows that it can.
&nbsp;
Transcript:
Paragraph 1471 of the Catechism defines an indulgence as “a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven.”
This presupposes that punishment remains after God has forgiven our sins and that we can do something to satisfy it.
But is this biblical? I think it is.
The Bible is full of examples of God remitting the eternal punishment due to sin while still willing temporal consequences. For example, David is forgiven of his sin in 2 Samuel <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TuyZej_SxQ&amp;t=733s">12:13</a>-18 yet must suffer the death of his son. The Psalmist says in Psalm 99:7-8 that God forgives but avenges wrongdoing. Even Jesus teaches in Luke <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TuyZej_SxQ&amp;t=767s">12:47</a>-48 that the servant who did what is deserving of punishment without full knowledge will be punished, but in lesser degree.
It is such temporal consequences that indulgences remit. By virtue of its authority to bind and loose, the Church declares certain acts to be of such value that, if they are performed under certain prescribed conditions, sin’s temporal consequences can be remitted, either partially or fully. It is no different than Jesus’ teaching in Luke <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TuyZej_SxQ&amp;t=701s">11:41</a>, “give alms…and behold, everything is clean for you.”
The Church grants indulgences to help its children heed St. Paul’s exhortation in Philippians <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TuyZej_SxQ&amp;t=132s">2:12</a>, “work out your salvation,” and to cooperate with God in bringing to completion the good work he has begun in us—Philippians 1:6.
So, the motifs of temporal consequences due to sin and the Church’s authority to bind and loose make a solid biblical foundation for the Catholic dogma of indulgences.
If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com.
For Catholic Answers, I’m Karlo Broussard. Thanks for watching.

Are Indulgences Biblical?

Jonah is a familiar story. The prophet hears the call of God. He says no. He gets on a boat to go as far away from Nineveh as possible. There are unaccountably fierce storms, so he rightly discerns God’s judgment and has the crew toss him into the sea, where he is swallowed by a large fish—or perhaps a whale—and spit up after three days. He journeys to Nineveh, where our story picks up this morning, to preach repentance. The people repent, as does God—more on that in a moment—and then, after today’s selection, Jonah goes into a fit of pouting self-pity.
It&#8217;s an odd story in many ways, which is part of why it is one of the most memorable stories of the Old Testament. But it’s worth pointing out how the content of the book as a whole is also unusual in the context of the whole Bible. Jonah is sent not to the kings of Judah or of Israel; he is not sent to the people of the covenant. He is sent to heathen foreigners who have no direct contact with the God of Israel. In much of the Old Testament, we could easily forget that promise to Abraham long ago that in his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Yet here we have this clear insistence that God is interested in and cares for the Gentiles.
One other interesting aspect of the book is how it subtly asserts the absolute singularity of Israel’s God in the world. It wasn’t that unusual for ancient peoples to make large claims about their gods. But for the most part, those claims end at the border of the nation. It seems strange to us, but this was a typical ancient attitude: well sure, our god is the creator of all things, but by “all things” we really mean this village or this river or this nation. The other nations and cities have their own gods, and we leave them alone. Yet in Jonah, there’s this seeming ignorance that anyone even claims to worship other gods. We see God’s power first on his native turf—his call to Jonah. But then we see God’s power over the wind and the waves, his power over the animal kingdom, his power over plant life, over the sun, his power over a huge city that has never even heard of him. No other gods are even mentioned. The implication is that they are too small, too insignificant to warrant notice. Their power, if it is power, is illusory and limited. They are not really, in the end, gods at all.
But, hold on. Doesn’t Jonah’s God “repent” at the end of the story, changing his mind from the evil he intended to do to the city? This might seem the final nail in the coffin for a view of God’s transcendent, changeless perfection, but not so. First, the book as a whole seems designed to show God’s absolute singular and unique holiness in the face of the diverse powers of the world. Second, Scripture and Tradition as a whole insist that God is perfect and unchanging. How then do we interpret this line about God’s “repentance”?
We’d best go with analogy here. If you live in a hot, sunny place, and you defy the sun’s power, walking about at midday without cover or sunscreen or hydration, it may seem as though the sun is out to get you: it threatens dehydration, sunburn, heatstroke. If, however, you respect the sun’s power and prepare to be in its presence, it will seem that the sun is no longer your enemy. What once seemed the source of pain will now seem like a warm embrace. In these two scenarios, the sun didn’t change. You did.
Not that God is merely some great natural force like the sun. But for the ancient writer to say that God “repented” is a sort of shorthand for the idea that people have adapted to the reality of who God says he is, and so what once seemed like judgment now seems like mercy and grace.
Our Lord himself says, in that long conversation with the disciples on Maundy Thursday, that “in a little while” their sorrow “will be turned to joy” (John 16:20). The cause—in this case, the cross—hasn’t changed. But what changes is the disciples themselves, for when they really encounter the cross in all its power, and the one who gives it power through the divine life he most fully reveals in his resurrection, they experience it in a new way.
This radically different experience of the same ultimate reality goes at the heart of the Christian understanding of heaven and hell. We can say that hell is “absence” from the presence of God. But this is an absurdity, since God is everywhere. Hell is, rather, the experience of God’s presence as absence—or the experience of the good as something painful. It is like the person so worn down and corrupted by hatred and anger that he perceives a gesture of love as an attack.
Those aren’t perfect descriptions at all, but they suggest something of the paradox of God’s relation with the world. God never changes. But we do, and the world does. Furthermore, God has, in a mysterious way, chosen in his eternal will to allow our choice to matter. When we say that prayer matters, part of what we mean is that God’s changeless decision is to decide certain things in relation to our free will.
I think it is very much in the light of this same divine transcendence that St. Paul declares in 1 Corinthians that we should live as if we were not married when we are, as if we had nothing when we don’t, as if we were rejoicing when we are not. It seems clear that these paradoxical statements aren’t concrete instructions—elsewhere, for example, he has some lofty things to say about marriage. The point is that whatever good things there are in this world—and there are some truly good things—cannot compare with the glories of eternity. Maybe we could even describe this as a Pauline argument for wit and good humor.
Anyway, we have to hold even the best things of this world, its joys and its sorrows, with a light touch. Here the Buddhist notion of “detachment” gets it right in some important ways, recognizing that the source of much suffering comes from holding on to things that do not last. Where St. Paul and Christianity part ways from Buddhism is on the recognition that detachment isn’t itself the ultimate goal; the ultimate goal is actually to be attached, just to the right thing: God. When we orient our hearts to him, all the earthly forms of goodness can shine with the reflected light of the true sun. But if we try to take these various mirrors away from the light, they will only ever be dull and meaningless.
The true light of Christ, the transcendent and eternal divine Son, is in fact the only thing worthy of the kind of devotion we see in the early disciples. For a serious Jewish man in the first century, there was nothing more important than family and work. The only thing that could dare call one away from that was . . . well, God himself. The fact that Peter and Andrew, James and John, drop their nets and follow him, suggests that they recognized in him something precious beyond price. Nothing is more important than following him. Nothing.
Today we don’t see those old visible competitions between gods of river and mountain and nation. But there are plenty of other gods demanding their place—gods of commerce, of political party, of family comfort, of wellness and self-care, of pleasure, of self-expression, of control. All of these want a small piece of us, and it seems reasonable because they want just that little piece, and they’re fine leaving the rest to somebody else. But Jesus does claim more, because he’s not just the god of Sunday or the god of traditional morality or the god of Catholics: he is Lord of the nations, King of Kings, the Alpha and the Omega. It is God, or it is nothing.
The time is running out, Paul says. That was a theme of Jonah’s preaching too, it turns out. Maybe we’re like the disciples, or like Jonah, or like the citizens of Nineveh. We cannot run forever. The city of this world will not last forever. Our family and our work will not last forever. All the best things will pass away. But if we choose first the kingdom of God, all the good things of this life will shine with the brightness of God’s own light.

How God Repents

Judging by social-media reactions, this year’s most controversial Super Bowl commercial was not the VW spot featuring a prairie-church wedding with two brides (and <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/02/12/volkswagen-vw-super-bowl-advert-hiding-nazi-past/">making some choice omissions</a> about the company’s past) but <a href="https://youtu.be/94BqlDQ-Ppo">the latest installment of “He Gets Us.”</a>
That big-dollar media-evangelization brand, with its characteristic ads featuring emotion-baiting soundtracks, stark tableaus of human suffering, and the reassuring message that Jesus understands that suffering, is no stranger to controversy. Last year, for instance, it <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/should-jesus-have-super-bowl-ads">came under fire</a> from “progressive” Christians for receiving underwriting from conservative Evangelicals who must have been using the ads as a front for a homophobic, racist, exclusionist agenda.
This year, the brand is under control of <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/Ad-Meter/2024/02/11/he-gets-us-super-bowl-commercials-jesus/72562492007/">a new nonprofit group</a>, and apparently gone are the ties to the old conservative donors. And now the script has flipped, with conservative and traditional Christians largely panning the Super Bowl ad (though some on the religious left are still <a href="https://www.salon.com/2024/02/13/hobby-lobby-funded-jesus-super-bowl-ads-cant-hide-the-hate-that-fuels-the-christian-right/">warning us not to fall for the pro-Maga trickery</a>).
One reason for the criticism is the new ad’s embrace of hot-button political imagery. In the sixty-second spot, set to a cover of the 1980’s torch standard “Never Tear Us Apart,” various figures intended to represent the downtrodden are having their feet washed by figures intended to represent the powerful, followed by the message, “Jesus Didn’t Teach Hate.” Images include:
<ul>
<li>a pro-life protester washing the feet of a pregnant girl outside an abortion clinic</li>
<li>a cop washing a young, tough-looking black man in an alley</li>
<li>a suburban woman washing a bussed-in migrant girl</li>
<li>a Christian minister washing a gay man who had been roller-skating at the beach</li>
</ul>
Whether or not I agree with them, I “get” the criticisms over some of these images and others (still others were non-controversial and even poignant). The Gospel example of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet should not be appropriated for another context without extreme care, and it’s certainly debatable whether invoking modern politics and culture wars constitutes such care. It’s also debatable whether the ad is communicating opinions on some of those issues that are contrary to Catholic teaching or right reason.
But I’m noticing a deeper vein of debate dividing Christians: over the question of whether this approach is evangelically fruitful.
In one corner is the camp that says that messages like this “He Gets Us” ad are all bark and no bite; all Easter and no Good Friday; all consolation and no conversion. That the promise that Jesus &#8220;gets us,&#8221; full-stop, is too easy to take as an assurance that we are good just as we are. And so you end up converting people to <a href="https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.catholic.com%2Fmagazine%2Fonline-edition%2Fme-my-god-and-i&amp;data=05%7C02%7Ctaglialoro%40catholic.com%7Caf2a9611deec49a684fa08dc2cdca754%7Cdd9faf74765b495cac09cabd182c95a7%7C0%7C0%7C638434573421864749%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=Qc44xOsVjXL%2FAmvQKmstH0t1t3aTdmvGwKsUp%2FPyFR8%3D&amp;reserved=0">moral therapeutic deism</a>, which is probably where they already were anyway.
The other side counters that simply to be told that we are loved and understood in our suffering—and, yes, sin—is revolutionary. That for many people it’s all they’re able to hear and process at this point in their lives. And so it’s the milk they need before the harder food of faith and conversion, a necessary first baby step on the road to discipleship.
The parameters of this debate seem to me strikingly like those around the recent declaration <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20231218_fiducia-supplicans_en.html">Fiducia Supplicans</a>, which permitted clerical blessings for couples in “irregular” unions. One side saw it as a capitulation that will have the effect of confirming people in their sin; the other, as a gentle invitation to begin hearing the promptings of the Spirit.
Me? I think these are both examples of a classic evangelistic balancing act: to challenge but not repel; to sympathize but not enable; to convict but not pronounce judgment. I think the “He Gets Us” spot, whatever else may be said of its methods, its enormous cost, its underlying theology, and so on, both succeeds and fails at achieving that balance. Which is probably the case with most of our efforts to evangelize.

Will ‘He Gets Us’ Get Souls?

Get more Shameless Popery on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/ShamelessPopery

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

The problem of "eternal security"...

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

Catholic school ≠ Catholic expert.

One of the frequent claims made by Protestants and skeptics of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/transubstantiation-for-beginners">Catholic eucharistic doctrine</a> is that it’s just too complicated. The doctrine of transubstantiation is too much for the human mind to grasp. It’s just ridiculous to believe that bread and wine are completely transformed into the substance of flesh and blood. The bread and wine are clearly still there, for crying out loud. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/william-of-ockham">Occam&#8217;s razor</a> points to a simpler solution.
Eucharistic theology is not meant to be easy. The early Church writer Pseudo-Dionysius found that it is, in fact, impossible to sufficiently explain the truths surrounding the divine essence. But even if theology were meant to be comprehensible, Protestants would be at a loss, for the only thing less sensible than transubstantiation is its alternatives.
Whereas all too many Protestants now dismiss the Eucharist as merely a symbol, the original Reformers and many of the more orthodox Protestant denominations (Lutherans, Irvingians, Presbyterians, Anglicans, etc.) hold to some version of the theological concept of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/consubstantiation">consubstantiation</a>. This theology seeks to reconcile the physical “breadlike” properties of the post-consecration Eucharist with Jesus’ insistence that this substance is his body.
Consubstantial means “of the same substance.” The idea is that the Eucharist is two things simultaneously, fully Christ and fully bread. When we put it this way, it instantly brings to mind another similar doctrine, the theology of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/did-the-incarnation-cause-god-to-change">hypostatic union</a>, by which Christ incarnated is fully man and fully God. The Arian heresy argued that Christ himself was something along the lines of “just a symbol”— just a created fleshly being who serves as a representative from God to men. The modern orthodox Protestants respond to eucharistic Arianism the same way the early Church responded to Christological Arianism in the Nicene creed: Just as Christ is consubstantial with the Father, the bread is consubstantial with Christ.
Protestants disputing transubstantiation can say what they will in favor of consubstantiation, however they may define it—but one thing they can’t say is that it’s more rational or more simple than Catholic eucharistic dogma. After all, if consubstantiation means consubstantial—and it does—and if God is consubstantial with Christ—and he is—and if Christ is consubstantial with a piece of bread—which he is not—then a piece of bread would be something of a Fourth Person of the Trinity. And that’s going to require a lot more mental legwork to explain than the simple, albeit mysterious, dogma of transubstantiation.
Now, the Trinity is a mystery of faith that is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-not-to-share-the-trinity">almost impossible</a> to grasp. But the various creeds dogmatically assert that the three persons therein are consubstantial. The Athanasian creed—which most orthodox Protestants profess—says specifically that “we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.” It is precisely the fact that the three persons are identical in their substance that makes them one God. So if something else were to become consubstantial with any person of the Trinity, it would become God. Humans, by contrast, become the body of Christ in the Church, and so we “become” God through a process called <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-word-that-every-catholic-needs-to-know">theosis</a>, or participation in the life of Christ by grace. But there’s a major difference between theosis and consubstantiation. Theosis is a perfection of our human nature to (in a manner of speaking) make us “gods, sons of the Most High (Ps. 82:6; see John 10:34),” but consubstantiation specifically does not change the nature of bread. It is not any closer to the platonic form of bread—as anyone who has eaten stale matzoh knows well—yet, according to the teaching, it is fully God while still retaining its bread-nature. The bread is consubstantial with the Son, and therefore with the Father, and therefore with the Holy Spirit. How can it be called anything but a second Incarnation?
There is a way of working around this issue: by claiming that Jesus is only spiritually consubstantial with the bread. This, however, runs up against other significant problems. First of all, saying that Jesus’ soul can be present without his body is problematic to begin with. Jesus is a man, which means he has a human soul. Protestants profess this, too, when they recite the Athanasian creed. The soul and the body are a union for human beings (Gaudium et Spes 14). The soul is not a free-floating entity that can be supported by any kind of physical object. But even if humans were spiritual beings who only possess our bodies—<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-fake-quote-from-c-s-lewis">as the Gnostics taught</a>—it would still be hard to make the case for Christ being spiritually present in a piece of bread. But even if we take this case for granted, a spirit “present” in an object is not at all “consubstantial” with the object. A human is not fully body and fully soul, but a unity of the two. We are not, for instance, consubstantial with the Holy Spirit merely because he is present in us.
Detractors of transubstantiation can <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/catholic-cannibals">accuse us</a> of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-receiving-the-eucharist-cannibalism">cannibalism</a> if they like, but railing at us for creating a stumbling block with our overly confusing eucharistic theology is unjust. Actually, I think Protestants really have the opposite problem with transubstantiation. The problem with it is not that it’s abstruse and philosophical, but rather that it&#8217;s incredibly simple. All it requires is the unassuming faith of a child. The only explanation needed is “ecce agnus dei.” The Protestant view—meant to appeal to the intellect—is truly the head-scratcher.

Nothing Beats Transubstantiation

Most religious conversations between believers and nonbelievers lead to a contrast between religion and science. “Science is based upon reason; religion relies upon faith,” the nonbeliever will assert, believing that this in some way damages the respectability of belief. In fact, he is only echoing St. Thomas Aquinas, who taught that theology is done on the light of faith while philosophy—including the philosophy of nature and hence modern science—is based upon the natural light of reason. 
This, of course, is not what the nonbeliever wants to say. In contrasting religion and science, he is implying that the believer is a victim of superstition who fails to acknowledge that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-the-only-real-knowledge-scientific-knowledge">only science can lead to true knowledge</a> because it alone is based on empirical verification and rigorous testing. 
How is the believer to respond? Is it true that science alone is rational because it is based on demonstration and logical reasoning? 
Most people would agree that religious faith is grounded in truths that cannot be demonstrated empirically using the scientific method. For the Catholic, these beliefs of faith are justified because they are accepted as true on the revelation and authority of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. What is not obvious is that scientific knowledge too must be grounded in essential, nonprovable beliefs about the nature of the universe. 
What follows is a brief summary of the scientific method that grounds the scientific enterprise. As many philosophers of science have shown, the success and justification of the method rests on premises that cannot be demonstrated. Instead, these premises are accepted as true by the scientific community because science would be unable to function without them. These premises constitute the essential beliefs of every scientist—his natural faith—and reflect his implicit acceptance of classical metaphysics. 
<h2>First step: induction</h2>
The first step in the scientific method involves the process of induction. The scientist looks around himself, collects data, then makes a probable conclusion. For example, all the swans he sees are white. He therefore proposes the hypothesis that all swans are white.  
But using this process of induction alone, the scientist can never assert truths with absolute certainty. No great number of white swans could rule out the possibility that the next swan could be black. Consequently, the scientist often constructs his hypothesis so that it can be verified and tested through experimentation. The experiment is then thought to confirm or dismiss the hypothesis. 
But even this safeguard cannot guarantee the truth of scientific conclusions. This is illustrated by a simple example used by the philosopher Richard Swinburne (Simplicity as Evidence of Truth, 15-19). Let us say that a scientist is analyzing data composed of four pairs of numbers, the first number in each set being designated “x” and the second “y”: (1,2), (2,4), (3,6), and (4,8). He wants to determine the relationship between the first and the second numbers in the series where x increases by 1 and y increases by 2. 
Using induction, he compares the pairs of numbers and proposes that y = 2x. It is a reasonable hypothesis, but he resorts to more testing and comes up with two more pairs of numbers, (5,10) and (6,12). They seem to confirm his hypothesis, and he rejoices.  
What is not usually realized, however, is that this series of paired numbers can be adequately explained by an infinite number of alternate equations of the form y = 2x + x(x-1)(x-2)(x-3)(x-4)(x-5)(x6)z, where z can be a constant or another function of x. No further testing and collecting of data would be able to distinguish between these alternative equations and the basic equation y = 2x.
 In choosing y = 2x as his hypothesis, the scientist has made the assumption that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-divine-simplicity">simplicity</a> is a marker for truth. 
<h2>Does simplicity beg the question?</h2>
James D. Watson, describing his and F.H.C. Crick’s discovery of the double helical structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, said it was “an adventure characterized by youthful arrogance and by the belief that the truth, once found, would be simple as well as pretty” (The Double Helix, ix). And despite the absence of any definitive data that would favor the heliocentric over the geocentric model for the solar system, Copernicus believed that his hypothesis that the Earth revolved around the sun was true because it was simpler. These are only two examples that suggest that the simplest theories are most likely to be true. Most scientists believe this. Why? 
Swinburne discusses three possible answers (Simplicity, 44-51). First, some might claim that there are reasons why scientists choose simple theories beyond the greater probable truth of a simple theory. But examples from the history of science suggest this is not true. As Watson believed, simplicity itself is thought to be a marker of truth. 
Second, some might argue that the presumption of simplicity is justified because history has shown that simplicity is a reasonable assumption that has worked. Swinburne points out that justifying simplicity this way itself already relies upon the criterion of simplicity and as such begs the question. He points out there are many ways of extrapolating from past historical data.  
“Usually, simplest theories predict better than more complex theories” is one way, but “Usually theories formulated by Greeks in the bath, by Englishmen who watch apples drop, or Germans who work in patent offices . . . predict better than other theories” is another way. (Swinburne is referring here to Archimedes, Newton, and Einstein.)  
This second explanation of past data explains history equally well but is obviously absurd. The first alternative, the simpler one, has to be preferred. However, since simplicity itself is presumed, the appeal to history cannot be used to justify simplicity. 
The third possibility is that some mathematical or logical theorem justifies belief in simplicity. This, in fact, is only a more sophisticated way of saying that some mathematical formula can be devised to demonstrate that induction can give rise to certain knowledge. But, as the skeptic philosopher <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/to-err-is-humean">David Hume</a> wrote, “There can be no demonstrative arguments to prove that those instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (Treatise on Human Nature. 1:3:6). 
The future always remains contingent. Ultimately, if the principle of simplicity is true, it is a fundamental, indemonstrable truth that the scientist must accept on faith. It allows him to do science. 
<h2>Truth is beautiful</h2>
The quote from Watson above is a reminder that the conviction that truth is simple is not the only belief held by the scientist. Closely related to this is the belief that the truth is beautiful or, using Watson’s word, “pretty.”  
The mathematical physicist Paul M. Dirac—after recalling that the greatest modern physicists have looked for “beautiful theories,” “beautiful equations,” and “beautiful generalizations” to explain nature—recounts the case of a physicist who refused to accept his mathematical theory because it did not agree exactly with the observed data. Eventually, it turned out that the mathematical solution was true, and the observation was erroneous. Dirac wrote: 
<blockquote>I think that there is a moral to this story—namely, that it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiments. . . . It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one’s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress” (<a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-evolution-of-the-physicists-picture-of-nature/">“The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature,”</a> Scientific American, vol. 208, 47).</blockquote>
Today, theoretical physicists still use elegance and coherence, elements that reflect the beautiful, as signposts for formulating explanations for nature that may not at first be provable with empirical methods. String theory, with which scientists are attempting to unify all the fundamental forces with gravity, is one example.  
In fact, string theory is just one of many attempts to find a theory-of-everything, a single equation that can be emblazoned on the T-shirt of an M.I.T. student. It is a search driven by the realization that the standard model used by physicists to describe the structure of nature seems too complicated. It is not pretty enough. 
Clearly, it is not easy to justify this intuitive understanding that truth is beautiful in a logical demonstration. However, alongside simplicity, beauty allows the scientists to choose among his different hypotheses. It allows him to accomplish his task. 
Finally, as Pope St. John Paul II points out, the scientist takes for granted that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-it-true-that-there-is-no-truth">truth exists</a> and is the object of his endeavors: 
<blockquote>When scientists, following their intuition, set out in search of the logical and verifiable explanation of a phenomenon, they are confident from the first that they will find an answer, and they do not give up in the face of setbacks. They do not judge their original intuition useless simply because they have not reached their goal; rightly enough they will say that they have not yet found a satisfactory answer (Fides et Ratio 29.). </blockquote>
Hence, for the scientist, the truth is attractive—or, in classical terminology, the truth, because it attracts, is good. 
<h2> Based on an act of faith</h2>
We have seen that the scientific assumption that truth is simple, beautiful, and good cannot be demonstrated and yet must be accepted as true. As Swinburne has pointed out, an inductive argument cannot be used to justify this belief, since it has to be assumed in order to construct any conclusions from historical data. It is a metaphysical first principle, a basic assertion about the nature of reality that, as the ancient and medieval philosophers understood, is fundamental and non-demonstrable. 
Ultimately, it is nothing more than the scientist’s implicit acceptance of classical metaphysics that equates being with truth, unity, beauty, and goodness. Every scientist has to accept that reality is ordered and intelligible. As such, simplicity, beauty, and goodness constitute non-empirical criteria that must be adopted by every scientist in order to accomplish his work.  
These attributes reflect common metaphysical beliefs that must be presupposed in order for anyone—scientist or philosopher or theologian—to be rational. Hence, at the very heart of science’s rationality is an act of the will—an act of faith. 
Science is one example of human reasoning at its best. Most scientists would contend that their work attains truth, pointing at the successes of science—we fly planes, we cure diseases, we communicate on the Internet—to support their argument. These same scientists often fail to realize that these successes necessarily presuppose metaphysical and methodological principles that though non-demonstrable are accepted by them as true and certain. 
Is it surprising that there are truths that cannot be proved? Though most scientists would be suspicious, they shouldn’t be. Kurt Gödel, one of their own, showed in 1930 that there would always be some truths whose truth or falsity cannot be established using the axioms and deductive rules of arithmetic (John Barrow, Impossibility: The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits, 218-231). He used logic to prove that there were things that could not be proved. Some of these include the metaphysical first principles that ground the scientific enterprise. 
Thus, if science is considered the paradigm of rationality as many people suppose, then one must conclude that believing is also rational. The believer can now correct the nonbeliever who has contrasted science and religion: science is based primarily upon reason but, as does every rational enterprise, including religion, science relies upon principles that are grounded in faith.

Science is Based on Faith

Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer delves into the complex question of Christ&#8217;s presence in the Eucharist within Protestant denominations. He emphasizes the distinction between different modes of presence, acknowledging that Christ can be present in various ways, even in non-Catholic gatherings.
Transcript:
My question is, does the church teach that Christ can&#8217;t be substantially present in the Eucharist in Protestant churches? If so, where do we find this teaching in either scripture or apostolic tradition? I can certainly see how the church could teach that we only know for sure, that Christ is present when consecrated by a validly ordained priest, but it seems to me that Christ could indwell the host in a Protestant church if he chose to do so. The twist on your question is the particularity of substantially present, because Christ makes it very clear he&#8217;s present in a lot of different ways. Like it&#8217;s through Christ that the entire universe is held together in existence. We believe in the omnipresence of God, Jesus is God. Yet he&#8217;s present in another mode of presence as he&#8217;s walking the shores of Galilee teaching.
He talks about being present in some way where two or more are gathered in his name. And then in the Eucharist, he&#8217;s not simply present. Presence is maybe not a strong enough term. And we talk about it as his sacramental presence.
But the way we use the term presence now makes it sound like he&#8217;s simply in with it under the bread and wine, as Lutherans believe. And we believe in something richer, that when he says, this is my body, that what had previously been bread is now his body, and not his body substantially united to bread. So in terms of modes of presence,
Lutherans do not claim to have the kind of sacramental mode of presence that Christ declares, and that Catholics have and believe we have in the Eucharist.
So I would say that at the outset, but that there are different modes of presence. So even like in a different Protestant church, you may have what is purely and obviously merely a symbolic representation. And this wouldn&#8217;t be Lutherans, but maybe non-denominationals or Baptists, someone from more of a Zwingian tradition, would take merely a representational view. And yet, Christ is still present in some way in the proclamation of Scripture. He&#8217;s present in some way in the gathering of the people together in his name. And so we wouldn&#8217;t deny even there that there can be modes in which Christ is present, simply not in the full sacramental presence where it is his body that we find in the Eucharist.
Lutheranism is somewhat special because they are desirous of and pursuing
a deeper encounter with the presence of God than many other Protestants are.
And so there&#8217;s a pretty famous line from a letter that then Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in 1983 to a Lutheran, Johannes Hanselman, in which he writes, &#8220;Even a theology oriented to the concept of succession,&#8221; meaning apostolic succession, &#8220;such as that which holds in the Catholic and in the Orthodox Church, need not in any way deny the salvation granting presence of the Lord in a Lutheran Lord&#8217;s Supper.&#8221; In other words, like Lutherans don&#8217;t have the Eucharist as Catholics and Orthodox, there it is, understand. And they don&#8217;t really claim to have the same thing. And they don&#8217;t offer the Eucharistic sacrifice because only a priest offers a sacrifice.
And this is not a power given to the lay faithful. Nevertheless, Christ can still be present in a really rich way in a Lutheran Lord&#8217;s Supper, just not in the same way that he&#8217;s present in the Mass. Now, if you want to know the biblical evidence for why that is,
the biblical depiction of the Eucharist is that of a sacrificial offering. This was foretold in the Old Testament in Malachi, where we were told in chapter 1, verse 11, that from the rise of the Son to its setting, a pure offering or pure sacrifice would be offered to his name by the Gentiles.
They did okay. One of the first Christian texts outside of the Bible itself views this as foretelling how Gentiles will offer the Eucharistic sacrifice. Moreover, St. Paul, in trying to describe what happens in the Eucharist, compares it to the pagan and the Jewish sacrifices in 1 Corinthians 10. And the reason this matters is, as I mentioned, only a priest offers sacrifice. And so there is a clear sense of there being, especially even though we&#8217;re all a priestly people, as God said of Israel and as St. Peter reminds us of the Church, within this priestly people, there is a class of ordained priests. This was true in the Old Covenant, it&#8217;s true in the New Covenant as well. Isaiah 66, verse 21, talks about how the Gentiles will be gathered together and some of them, God will take as priests and Levites of the New Covenant. So that the priestly and Levitical system wasn&#8217;t simply like a beta test that God just scraps and decides to do something totally different. It is rather a prefigurement of what he&#8217;s doing with the priesthood in Diaconate. So all that&#8217;s to say, that&#8217;s a long answer. We don&#8217;t want to deny the presence of Christ in Christian gatherings, even if they&#8217;re not Catholic. If they&#8217;re baptized, if they are united in Christ in baptism, Christ shows up in many and various ways, including in a Lord&#8217;s Supper that they&#8217;re offering, particularly if they are trying to do what he tells them to do at the Last Supper. But his full presence, the real presence we talk about in the Catholic Church, the real presence believed in by Catholics and Orthodox, this requires the priesthood, only the priests at the time of Jesus, that&#8217;s just the apostles. Only the priests are brought to the Last Supper and told, &#8220;Do this.&#8221; He doesn&#8217;t tell the crowds, he doesn&#8217;t tell everybody. So it is a particular office tied to the ministerial priesthood and a sacrificial offering, and Lutheranism doesn&#8217;t have that, even if they have other modes of presence.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic Answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

Is Christ Present in Protestant Churches?

<div>Can you tell me about consecration to St. Joseph?</div><div>In short, consecrating oneself to St. Joseph is an act of entrustment to his fatherly care, protection, and guidance. In the same way that St. Joseph was Jesus’ guardian, the Church calls us to put ourselves under his faithful care and patronage. 
Redemptoris Custos:
<blockquote>
Leo XIII explained “Joseph was in his day the lawful and natural guardian, head and defender of the Holy Family&#8230;. It is thus fitting and most worthy of Joseph&#8217;s dignity that, in the same way that he once kept unceasing holy watch over the family of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly patronage the Church of Christ&#8221;(44).
</blockquote>
What are the reasons for such great confidence? Leo XIII explained it in this way:
<blockquote>
Recalling that God wished to entrust the beginnings of our redemption to the faithful care of St. Joseph, she asks God to grant that she may faithfully cooperate in the work of salvation; that she may receive the same faithfulness and purity of heart that inspired Joseph in serving the Incarnate World; and that she may walk before God in the ways of holiness and justice, following Joseph&#8217;s example and through his intercession (48).
Even today we have many reasons to pray in a similar way: &#8220;Most beloved father, dispel the evil of falsehood and sin . . . graciously assist us from heaven in our struggle with the powers of darkness . . . and just as once you saved the Child Jesus from mortal danger, so now defend God&#8217;s holy Church from the snares of her enemies (49).
</blockquote>
Today we still have good reason to commend everyone to St. Joseph.
</div>

Consecration to St. Joseph

Karlo Broussard gives a quick overview on the doctrine of predestination, what it means to say that all of our actions are present to God, and why His knowledge of our actions does not take away from our free will.

Do Catholics Believe in Predestination?

<div>May I get a mole removed for aesthetic purposes?</div><div>Yes, skin blemishes may be removed for aesthetic purposes. If the mole is particularly prominent, it could also be argued that removing it also serves a preventive healthcare purpose, to guard against future risk of skin cancer.
</div>