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Jesus appeared to engage in rioting when he <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/did-jesus-sin-in-cleansing-the-temple">made a whip of cords and drove out the moneychangers</a> from the temple in Jerusalem. Does that mean it&#8217;s okay to riot and loot businesses to protest the murder of George Floyd? Trent Horn explains why the two situations are completely different.

Jesus Was Not a Rioter

Karlo Broussard, the author of <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/purgatory-is-for-real/">Purgatory is for Real</a>, addresses an email correspondent who asks: &#8220;Isn&#8217;t eternal punishment unfair for finite sins?&#8221;

Is Hell Unfair?

Thanksgiving is, in many ways, the quintessential American holiday. Its origins—an English non-conformist Protestant sect’s celebration with pagan Indians—hardly seems the stuff of Catholicism. Is the author then going to try to wedge a Catholic angle into Thanksgiving?
No. I’m going to argue that Thanksgiving is the quintessential Catholic celebration.
Why? Because we do it every day (except for <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/no-communion-on-good-friday">Good Friday</a>), when we celebrate the Eucharist. Eucharistia (εὐχαριστία) literally means “thanksgiving.” (No trademark infringement proceedings against Pilgrims anticipated.)
Whenever Catholics celebrate the Eucharist, they celebrate “thanksgiving”—thanksgiving that, in his sacrifice on the cross made present again here on the altar, Jesus Christ rescued us from death and gave us the opportunity for life everlasting. He restored to us what Adam had lost for us. Now the only reason to be lost is that you want to be.
That’s a lot to be thankful for.
And, I’d add, something to be constantly thankful for. It’s a paradox that the Pilgrims and certainly the Puritans—but to a large extent, most Protestants—actually marginalized the Eucharist. Yes, Catholics ideally have celebrated the Eucharist every day. But let’s make one thing perfectly clear: the Eucharist was the focus of what Christians gathering in churches every week for centuries celebrated. Up until the sixteenth century, the celebration of the Eucharist was the Sunday liturgy. It was what Christians East and West gathered for on the Lord’s Day.
It is only after the Protestant Revolution that the Eucharist was displaced by Bible reading and preaching services. That’s not to say that Protestants “recovered” the Bible, because they didn’t: the Christian Sunday liturgy was always composed of “the Liturgy of the Word” and “the Liturgy of the Eucharist.” In the ancient Church, the Liturgy of the Word came first, because catechumens (those preparing for baptism) gathered with Christians to hear it. But they were then dismissed. Only those “initiated in the mysteries”—i.e., baptized and not serious sinners—took part in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. What John Calvin et al. did was amputate the central act of the Church’s weekly liturgy—her liturgy of “thanksgiving”—reducing it to a monthly or quarterly occasional “service.”
Besides being historically ungrounded, the marginalization of the Eucharist arguably undermined what Karol Wojtyła (the future St. John Paul II) called the Christian “attitude of thanksgiving.”
In his pre-papal book, Sources of Renewal, Wojtyła speaks of “consciousness” and “attitudes.” “Consciousness” is an awareness of certain realities (like “creation”) seen explicitly through the Christian lens. “Creation” is a “consciousness,” an awareness of all that we have that didn’t have to be, even if it is; that it did not come about randomly or accidentally, but by the design of a loving intellect and will (however that intellect and will arranged for it to happen); and that it is good. We can see how that “consciousness of creation” is at odds with secular presumptions of random chance, lack of design, and lack of intrinsic value. The man who is conscious of creation has already made an incipient act of faith.
“Attitudes” then define how we look at what we are conscious of. If we regard creation as gift, good, and intended, our attitude should be one of thanksgiving. As everything that exists is created and depends on God—not just for a one-time creation from which he is now on permanent leave (deism), but rather his constant sustaining presence (since contingent being is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/an-acorn-for-atheists">not self-sufficient</a>)—man can never evade creation. And since he can never evade something that did not have to be, but is, and is good, how can his attitude be anything but a constant act of thanksgiving?
We should not be surprised, therefore, that the Church’s tradition from its earliest days (e.g., Acts 20) was to celebrate the Eucharist (i.e., “break bread”) on “the first day of the week.” (Please spare the tendentious attempts to claim that this was just a farewell supper for Paul.) Neither should we be surprised that, in her best spiritual tradition, the Church sought to celebrate Eucharist as often as she could, even daily. She could not avoid sacramental thanksgiving when thanksgiving is the essential attitude of Christians—not just for the creation that constantly surrounds them, but in consciousness of redemption from sin and death through Jesus’ death and resurrection, a reality made present in the Eucharist.
Familiarity sometimes breeds forgetfulness, and so perhaps we sometime forget thanksgiving for creation and redemption. But circumstances also sometimes make human beings particularly aware of what they have to be thankful for. Those Pilgrims still alive in the fall of 1621—roughly half—had reasons to be thankful. They had not succumbed to disease. They had not landed among hostile Native Americans. They managed to produce an initial harvest. The darkest months seemed arguably behind them. They had reason to be thankful and, in that act, also bequeathed to a nation they would know nothing of a tradition it still keeps four centuries later.
But the Christian origins of thanksgiving go back not to a harvest festival. They go back to a Last Supper.

A Catholic Approach to Thanksgiving

Did the prophet Elisha command a bear to maul a group of boys who mocked him? Jimmy Akin gives the Catholic Answer.

What’s with 2 Kings 2:23-25?

<div>Why did Vatican City end up in Rome, as opposed to another location, like Jerusalem?</div><div>It is not Rome that &#8220;inherited&#8221; the primacy of St. Peter, it is St. Peter&#8217;s successor who inherits the primacy. St. Peter died in Rome, and that is where he was succeeded by Pope St. Linus. At one time in Church history, valid popes were stationed in Avignon, France. The successor of St. Peter is where the primacy subsists, not the location.
Rome is where the successor of St. Peter has traditionally been bishop, because that is where Sts. Peter and Paul died, and it is historically where he has almost always been (except for the Avignon years). Early Church Fathers often referred to Pope St. Linus as succeeding Peter in Rome.
The bishops of Antioch and Jerusalem cannot claim to have succeeded St. Peter, because St. Peter was still active after leaving those cities. The bishops of Rome were seen as the high authority in the early Church, evidenced by Pope Clement&#8217;s letter to Corinth in which he has no doubts that he has the authority to intervene in the local Church dispute. And by the third century, St. Cyprian made no hesitation to refer to Rome as the chair of Peter and the principle Church.
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Why Is the Vatican in Rome?

RuslanKD is a very respected YouTuber in the Evangelical space, and recently he made a video explaining why he wasn&#8217;t Catholic or Orthodox. Joe responds to his video explaining why he SHOULD BE CATHOLIC!
Transcript:
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THIS is Why Ruslan Should BE CATHOLIC…

On the kids-only edition of Catholic Answers Live, Fr. Hugh Barbour explains how God is made, and how &#8220;made&#8221; means something different with God than it does with everything else.

Kids’ Show: How Was God Made?

Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by historian Will Durant as “the most brilliant writer that ever lived,” Voltaire produced novels, plays, and histories. His first love was theater, a passion he cultivated during a stay in England with exposure to Shakespeare’s works, but he is mostly known for his satirical, witty, and critical commentaries on politics and religion. His satirical novel and philosophical fantasy Candide is still read and admired nearly three centuries after its publication in 1758.
Voltaire may have remained just a gifted French writer of the eighteenth century if not for his association with the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment came to the forefront of European life in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and comprised numerous philosophes, who contributed to the so-called “Age of Reason.”
Enlightenment intellectuals were not a monolithic group, but they shared a general critical and even inimical attitude toward organized religion. Voltaire, and other philosophes, condemned organized religion generally and the Catholic Church particularly. They believed that society was happier without the influence of the Church, which they argued contained selfish, ruthless clerics who demanded unconditional obedience from the superstitious multitude and enforced societal conformity through violent persecution. Faith enslaved the mind, and it was only reason that could “enlighten” the intellect and free it from the darkness of faith.
Enlightened thinkers examined other topics besides religion and questioned nearly every aspect of society, including humanity in general. Many Enlightenment intellectuals viewed humans in different groups and advocated that some ethnic groups were different species and less human than others, especially the natives of America and Africa. Voltaire delved into these discussions and argued that Africans were a completely different species of humans, destined for slavery.
Enlightenment intellectuals were not content just to discuss their ideas. They desired radical change in society, where “reason” reigned supreme and political, economic, and moral actions were unencumbered by Christian influence. The achievement of that goal depended on controlling the institutions of higher learning in Europe, which required weakening the Catholic Church’s role in society in general and the eradication of the Society of Jesus in particular.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits controlled hundreds of universities and seminaries in Europe. Enlightened philosophes embarked on a campaign to expel the Jesuits from European countries so that royal and secular control of their institutions of higher learning could occur, which would allow the cult of reason to become dominant.
Voltaire led the charge against the Church and the Jesuits by actively campaigning for their suppression. He recognized that if secular rulers could be convinced to expel the Society and confiscate their colleges and universities, it would be an easier task to convince those same rulers to suppress the Church and its influence in society. In 1773, he wrote, “Once we have destroyed the Jesuits, we shall have our own way with the infamous thing [l’infâme — i.e., the Church].” Once the Jesuits were suppressed, Voltaire wrote, “in twenty years there will be nothing left of the Church.” And indeed, Voltaire’s dream was realized twenty years later in his homeland, when the French revolutionary government persecuted Catholics, confiscated the property of the Church, and suppressed it.
The Enlightenment attack against the Jesuits began in Portugal, when King Joseph I (r. 1750-1777) signed a decree ordering their expulsion from Portugal and Brazil in 1755. A few years later, in 1764, King Louis XV (r. 1715-1774) expelled the Jesuits from France and all its dominions. The Spanish king Charles III (r. 1759-1788) followed suit and in 1767 ejected the Society from Spain and its territories.
Pope Clement XIV (r. 1769-1774) was under intense political pressure from the leading monarchs of Europe to enact ecclesiastical penalties against the Jesuits. The pontiff acquiesced on July 21, 1773 in the bull Dominus ac Redemptor, which suppressed the Society of Jesus after 239 years of faithful service to the Church. Although the pope did not pass judgment on the Society in terms of the charges brought against it by secular rulers, his shameful surrendering to political pressure caused the Jesuits to cease existing for a generation, until the Society was re-established by Pope Pius VII (r. 1800-1823) in 1814.
Freed from the “clutches” of the Jesuits, the colleges and universities of Europe were ripe for the influence and control of Enlightenment thinkers to take root. The age of faith had succumbed to the “age of reason,” which produced skepticism, moral relativism, and secular humanism.
Although many Enlightenment thinkers focused their attack mainly on the Church, they also sought the re-interpretation of academic subjects, including history. History, for the philosophes, provided an example of the barbarity and cruelty of humanity influenced by religion. Voltaire utilized historical events and persons as weapons against the Church by re-interpreting them through a lens of negativity and cynicism. He wrote that the Crusades were “marked by every cruelty, every perfidy, every debauchery, and every folly of which human nature is capable.” The Spanish Inquisition was the ultimate expression of religious intolerance; in the 1764 Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire described one inquisitor as the “embodiment of fanaticism.” And perhaps no greater martyr of intellectual freedom existed than the seventeenth-century Italian mathematician Galileo, who, according to Voltaire, “groaned away his days in the dungeons of the Inquisition, because he had demonstrated by irrefutable proofs the motion of the earth.” Apparently, the fact that Galileo’s most strident critics were fellow scientists, and that he did not irrefutably scientifically prove the earth’s motion, did not sway Voltaire from championing Galileo’s cause in his efforts to discredit the Church.
Interestingly, Voltaire’s public vitriol for the Church did not correlate to his private life. He built a chapel on Ferney, his estate; asked the pope to send relics for the altar; and etched the inscription, “Voltaire erected this to God” on the façade. Voltaire allowed his estate workers to attend Mass and provided instruction in the Catholic faith for their children. He expressed deep admiration for the Sisters of Charity and their work.
Toward the end of his life, Voltaire stated his desire for Christian burial upon his death, which was granted. Although he worked for the eradication of the Church’s dominance in political affairs, he appreciated the contribution of individual Christians to society and the necessity of personal faith in a Supreme Being for the general welfare.
Voltaire died a decade before the beginning of the French Revolution, but many contemporaries, along with modern scholars, credit his political and philosophical works for laying the foundation for that cataclysmic event and its catastrophic impact on the Catholic Church. However, those who ascribe credit to Voltaire for the Revolution fail to recognize that he would not have supported the radical elements who overthrew the monarchy and the Church. Voltaire desired an intelligentsia free from the supposed suffocation of the Church, but he certainly did not subscribe to the notions of democracy and rule by the common people.
Nonetheless, the Revolutionary government disinterred his remains from the Abbey of Selliéres in July 1791 and brought them to Paris in a wagon train, where they were interred in the Panthéon for veneration of the masses and the ultimate expression of gratitude from the “democratic” government. It is an ironic end to the story of one of the most indefatigable enemies of the Church.

Kill the Jesuits, Kill the Church

<div>When and why were the popes based in Avignon, France?</div><div>The Popes were in Avignon from 1309 to 1377.
In short, the influence of the French government resulted in the movement of the papal headquarters from Rome to Avignon. A clash between Pope Boniface VIII (r. 1294 -1303) and “Philip the Fair” of France (King Philip IV, r. 1295-1314) set in motion the events that would lead to the relocation, which took place during the pontificate of the French Pope Clement V (r. 1305-14). Clement V acceded to Philip IV’s demand to move the papal residence to Avignon.
St. Catherine of Siena was instrumental in ending the Avignon papacy. For more on this period in the Church, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-st-catherine-brought-the-pope-back-to-rome">this article by Steve Weidenkopf</a>.
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