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<div>How do I respond to claims that Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, not Pope St. John XXIII, was validly elected in October 1958?</div><div>This view espousing sedevacantism is historically untenable, at the least because it was held by no one at the October 1958 conclave, including Cardinal Siri of Genoa, Italy, despite the claims of modern <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/the-errors-of-sedevacantism">sedevacantists</a>. 
Had he been validly elected pope, Siri would not have been bound by the oath that normally binds cardinal electors from discussing a papal election, except when a validly elected pope releases them from it. (The Church requires electors to take the vow of secrecy so that an existing conclave—and possibly a future one—cannot be adversely impacted by outside forces, whether political, financial, and the like.) 
Instead, Siri accepted the authority of all popes in his lifetime. Pope John XXIII appointed him president of the Italian Episcopal Conference in 1959, and Siri remained in that position under Pope St. Paul VI until 1964. He also accepted and signed the documents of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), a council that sedevacantists do not accept as a valid ecumenical council. Siri also participated in the papal conclave of 1963 and the two conclaves of 1978, actions further inconsistent with one who believed that he was the validly elected pope all along. 
Also, this theory only developed many years later, that is, in the 1980s, in an apparent attempt to make sense of problems in the post-conciliar Church. (Siri died in May 1989.) 
Sedevacantists also face a real problem in resolving who would be the new and validly elected pope and how he would be elected, given that Church law for more than eight hundred years has affirmed the college of cardinals election system, and yet all of the cardinals validly appointed by Ven. Pope Pius XII, who died in October 1958, are long dead. 
In addition, there are more recent sedevacantists who think that Pope Benedict XVI never validly resigned his office (Joe Heschmeyer, “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/was-benedict-xvi-the-true-pope-the-whole-time">Was Benedict XVI the True Pope the Whole Time?</a>”). But how do they propose we get a new pope when the majority of cardinal electors have been named by a pope whom they consider an antipope, that is, Pope Francis? 
Further, who gets to definitively decide that a previous pope was an antipope, oversee an updated process to fill the sedevacantist void, and, finally, certify that the subsequent conclave has produced a validly elected pope? No sedevacantist, clerical or lay, has the ecclesiastical standing to make those decisions. 
Finally, if what they say is true, then the gates of hell have indeed prevailed against the Church, contrary to what Jesus said in Matthew 16:18–20, because only these relative few—with their secret/gnostic knowledge—have &#8220;discovered” the truth, and only a good number of years later after the 1958 conclave when this supposedly happened, or more recently in the case of Benedict XVI. As a result, they inevitably—whether wittingly or unwittingly—impugn the Providence of God in doing what he said regarding the sustenance of his Catholic Church. 
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Responding to Sedevacantists

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What is Zionism?

<div>Did Pope Francis really teach that relationship with Jesus is dangerous and harmful?</div><div>Not at all! This is an example of a malicious and silly misrepresentation of what the Holy Father actually said. Here is a <a href="https://www.truthorfiction.com/pope-francis-relationships-jesus-dangerous/">link</a> which will clear the matter up for you.
What the pope taught is simply that to claim a personal relationship with Jesus while rejecting a relationship with his community the Church is false. As the Beloved Disciple says, how can you love the God you cannot see if you do not love the brother you can see? Those who love Jesus but hate the Church he founded are deceived. We could say that Jesus does not want friends who are not friends with all his friends, and these are to be found in the Church which he founded!
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Did Pope Francis Really Say That?

Immigration is a complex issue, and the Church wisely rejects two false approaches to it. On the one hand, it affirms that people have a right to migrate, and so countries cannot absolutely prohibit immigration. On the other hand, the Church rejects the view that governments must allow anyone to enter and remain within their borders. This means that the right to immigrate can be legally restricted. The Catechism says, “Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions” (2241).
These conditions would entail that some people are not permitted to immigrate into a country, and, if they illegally do so anyway, they may face legal punishment, including being deported.
However, some Catholics claim the Church teaches that deportation is intrinsically evil. Rachel Amiri of Where Peter Is <a href="https://wherepeteris.com/deportation-is-evil/">writes</a>, “It is worth recalling that deportation is evil, and that Catholics affirm that all human beings possess a God-given right to migrate.”
Amiri <a href="https://www.chausa.org/publications/health-progress/article/july-august-2017/deportation-a-moral-morass">cites an article</a> in a journal affiliated with the Catholic Health Association of the United States: “The Catholic moral tradition has identified deportation — not simply mass deportation — with strong, morally objectionable language.” It cites the personal statements of some cardinals, but the only magisterial documents it cites are Veritatis Splendor and Gaudium et Spes.
In the former document, Pope John Paul II discusses the issue of intrinsic evils:
<blockquote>Reason attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their nature “incapable of being ordered” to God, because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image. These are the acts which, in the Church’s moral tradition, have been termed “intrinsically evil” (80).</blockquote>
The pontiff then cites Gaudium et Spes to provide specific examples. That document says, in part, “Whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children” (27).
However, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-deportation-intrinsically-evil">my colleague Jimmy Akin says</a> Gaudium et Spes is probably not referring to every kind of expulsion of a person from a place or country. Instead, it is referring to mass deportations connected with evils like genocide. In this article, I will support Akin’s original argument by surveying how the Magisterium has used the word deportation over the past century.
As Akin notes, the Latin word deportatio used in Gaudium et Spes has the same basic range of meaning as the English word deport. As of this writing, the Vatican website listed ninety-one mentions of the English word deport in its document archive. This includes papal documents that possess a range of authority, such as encyclicals and general audiences. It also includes documents from other departments in the Vatican and exchanges with the pope at things like press conferences, which, while they do not have teaching authority, can help us better understand the pope’s thoughts on a certain issue.
For example, every mention of the word deport prior to Gaudium et Spes uses the word as a synonym for comportment, or as a way of conducting oneself. In his encyclical on education of the clergy, Pope Leo XIII said, “What sad effects would not arise if that gravity of conduct which belongs to the priest, should be in any way lessened . . . if he should deport himself with pretentious indocility towards his superiors” (Fin Dal Principio 6).
The issue of immigration was discussed prior to Vatican II without any teaching that deporting those who had illegally entered a country is intrinsically evil. <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/speeches/1947/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19471031_senatori-usa.html">In an address to members of the U.S. Senate</a>, Pope Pius XII mentioned immigration from Europe due to the aftermath of the Second World War and said:
<blockquote>The question of immigration today however presents wholly new problems. As always the welfare of the country must be considered as well as the interest of the individual seeking to enter, and in the nature of things circumstances will at times dictate a law of restriction. But by the same token circumstances at time will almost cry out for an easing of the application of that law. Wise legislation will ever be conscious of humanity and the calamities, distress and woes to which it is heir.</blockquote>
The pope was probably referring to instances where countries like the United States refused entry to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe, who were then murdered upon being returned to their homeland. But notice that Pius does not condemn deportation itself. He even acknowledges that restrictions on immigration will need to be made but that governments should mercifully consider exceptions to those restrictions in grave circumstances.
After Gaudium et Spes, the word deport occurs nearly ninety times in various documents. In seven cases it involves quoting Gaudium et Spes, and in twenty-five cases, it refers to biblical exiles like the Jews sent into Babylon in 586 B.C. or St. John’s exile on the island of Patmos. Most often, or in nearly fifty cases, the word refers to mass deportations that are part of an organized campaign to commit genocide and ethnic cleansing.
For example, it’s often used to refer to Nazi deportation to concentration camps, such as in <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20131011_70-deportazione-ebrei-roma.html">Pope Francis’s address</a> on the seventieth anniversary of the 1943 deportation of Jews from Rome to places like Auschwitz. Or in a <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19781115.html">1978 address</a> where Pope John Paul II said, “Courageous men must be sought not only on battlefields, but also in hospital wards or on a bed of pain. Such men could often be found in concentration camps or in places of deportation. They were real heroes.”
It’s also used to describe totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union that expelled dissenters into wilderness areas unfit for human habitation. In 2001, Pope John Paul II noted this transition from fascist persecution to communist persecution, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2001/june/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20010623_ucraina-meeting.html">saying</a>, “Liberation from Nazism marked the return of a regime which continued to trample on the most elementary human rights, deporting defenseless citizens, imprisoning dissidents, persecuting believers, and even attempting to erase the very idea of freedom.”
After Pope Francis visited the former Soviet state of Estonia in 2018, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2018/september/documents/papa-francesco_20180925_voloritorno-estonia.html">he said during a press conference on the flight back to Rome</a>, “I went to the monument to the memory of those who were condemned, killed, tortured, deported. That day—I’ll tell you the truth—I was destroyed.”
The Church’s compendium on social doctrine mentions deportation only once, and it also links it to genocide:
<blockquote>The solemn proclamation of human rights is contradicted by a painful reality of violations, wars and violence of every kind, in the first place, genocides and mass deportations, the spreading on a virtual worldwide dimension of ever new forms of slavery such as trafficking in human beings, child soldiers, the exploitation of workers, illegal drug trafficking, prostitution. “Even in countries with democratic forms of government, these rights are not always fully respected” (158).</blockquote>
Finally, the essay Amiri cites notes this connection in the Compendium and expresses doubt concerning the moral status of deportation. It says,
<blockquote>Theological scholarship must grapple with the Second Vatican Council’s mentioning of deportation, John Paul II’s identification of it as intrinsically evil and subsequent references to mass deportation. Might the qualification of “mass” deportation be akin to moral distinctions between direct and indirect abortion? If so, is this distinction sufficient, or does moral wrongdoing linger in at least some instances of deportation per se?</blockquote>
In the ninety-one references to the English word deport, I found only two instances where the word is mentioned in the context of expelling someone from a country because he has broken a law related to the immigration process. In both cases, the word is uttered by a reporter asking the pope a question.
In the first case, a reporter from Reuters asked the pope about then President Trump’s comments on deporting illegal aliens and building a border wall. <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2016/february/documents/papa-francesco_20160217_messico-conferenza-stampa.html">The pope replied, in part,</a>
<blockquote>A person who thinks only of building walls, wherever it may be, and not of building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the gospel. What you were asking me, whom to vote for or not: I won’t interfere. I only say: If a man says these things, he is not Christian. We have to see if he said these things, and thus I will give him the benefit of the doubt.</blockquote>
In this exchange, it’s not clear why the pope suggested that Trump might be “not Christian,” but it is clear that the pope doesn’t say deportation is intrinsically evil or even that it is evil in general.
More striking is a question the pope was asked during a flight from Colombia to Rome. In the context, the pope said it is important for young people to “find their roots” and their heritage. A reporter raised the issue of how “those young people can be deported from the United States.” <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2017/september/documents/papa-francesco_20170910_viaggioapostolico-colombia-voloritorno.html">Pope Francis then replied</a>, “True enough, they lose a root. . . . It is a problem. But really, I don’t want to express an opinion on that case, because I have not read about it, and I don’t like to speak about something I haven’t first studied.”
Notice that in response to a question about deportation, the pope doesn’t immediately call it evil, but reserves judgment on the matter. This stands in contrast to his previously unabashed denunciations of intrinsic evils like <a href="https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pope-francis-health-ap-top-news-religion-5137019e19c5410aa7e2c2b68f21824f">abortion</a> and <a href="https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250333/at-general-audience-pope-francis-says-the-dying-need-palliative-care-not-euthanasia-or-assisted-suicide">euthanasia</a>. Instead, he recognizes there could be mitigating circumstances that justify deporting at least some people from the United States—which means the pope does not think deportation is intrinsically evil since no circumstance can justify an intrinsic evil. Indeed, as Akin notes, in 1929, the Vatican signed an extradition treaty with Italy agreeing to return alleged criminals who sought refuge in the Holy See, which is not what we’d expect if all deportations were intrinsically evil.
But if deportation isn’t intrinsically evil, then why did Pope John Paul II list it as such in Veritatis Splendor? <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2005/10/development-or-reversal">Cardinal Avery Dulles notes,</a>
<blockquote>Individual deportations of undesirable aliens occur continually as a matter of national policy today; mass deportations could perhaps be necessary for the sake of peace and security. . . . If pressed, I suspect, the pope would have admitted the need for some qualifications, but he could not have specified these without a rather long excursus that would have been distracting in the framework of his encyclical.</blockquote>
In response, some defenders of the view that deportation is intrinsically evil say words like expulsion and extradition should be used to describe morally removing someone from a country, whereas deportation refers to immoral removal from a country. They say this is like how murder refers to immoral killing, whereas homicide can refer to morally ending a human life. But although the Church has distinguished the conditions that make killing licit (CCC 2263-2264), it has done no such thing when it comes to distinguishing moral and immoral forms of deportation.
Even the defenders of this view can’t provide an objective standard to determine which reasons justify deportation (for example, committing violent felonies) and which do not (for example, illegal entry after fleeing genocide in one’s home country). Instead, it has referenced only obviously immoral deportations and allows civil leaders to make prudential judgements about whether other kinds of deportations are just or unjust.
In conclusion, Catholics should continue to promote immigration policies that respect the right to migrate and treat migrants with compassion while also respecting the right of nations to maintain sovereign borders. This would include the right, in at least some circumstances, to deport people who illegally enter.

Is Deportation Immoral?

<div>Does every country have a bishop?</div><div>Basically, yes, every country falls under the authority of a bishop. However that is not exactly the same as every country having a functioning bishop. For example, Saudi Arabia has no Catholic churches whatsoever but the territory of the country technically falls under the authority of Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia which is based in Bahrain. It is not a diocese but rather is a territory that falls under the authority of an office of the Church which is headed by a Bishop.
Every diocese has a Bishop. If a country has no dioceses (like Saudi Arabia) it is usually deemed mission territory and is placed under the authority of a religious order or Church Congregation.
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Does Every Country Have a Bishop?

<div>Isn’t Lucifer not Satan?</div><div>They are the same. However, the name &#8220;Satan&#8221; is used exclusively of the evil one. It means &#8220;accuser&#8221; and refers to his constant accusation of the brethren before God. The name &#8220;Lucifer&#8221; means &#8220;light-bearer&#8221; or &#8220;morning star&#8221; and so is used also of Our Lord, as in the Easter Vigil&#8217;s Easter Chant, or in the blessing of holy water late, and is even the name of a saint in the Martyrology, St. Lucifer of Caligliari. So you could name your son Lucifer, and it would be a saint&#8217;s name! (I wouldn&#8217;t advise this, however, since we want the child to have a happy childhood!)
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Isn’t Lucifer not Satan?

<div>My wife is moving out and asked that I sign a "postnup" agreement. It seemed it may help her stress level, but I wanted to check whether it would be wrong, like a prenup is. We are both Catholic (I am actively so).</div><div>A postnuptial agreement is one made after a man and a woman are married but which, like a prenuptial agreement, pertains to how a couple’s affairs and assets will be settled if a separation or divorce—typically the latter— takes place.
Because a valid marriage entails the total and unconditional mutual giving of a husband and wife, any legal agreement that undermines the unbreakable nature of that marital commitment is necessarily immoral. Consequently, a postnup is immoral like a prenup is immoral: they both involve commitments with strings attached and thus incentivize for one or both spouses a breakup instead of striving to keep the marriage together. Postnuptial agreements are a foot out the door while professing still to be married.
Please advise your wife that you hope and pray you and she will be reconciled. If she persists in moving out and files for a legal separation, you may be required by law to help finance her new living arrangement. In addition, you may want to do so prior to any legal intervention to help foster your marital reconciliation. If you have children at home, the courts may also intervene regarding custody.
But there is no need for a postnup. Only when there is actually a legal divorce does any agreement regarding assets and other affairs need to be reached. You are in our prayers.
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Are Postnuptial Agreements Moral?

<div>I want to get married but don’t want a wedding. What are my options?</div><div>I am not entirely sure what you mean by &#8220;wedding.&#8221; I will assume you mean that you do not want a full nuptial Mass. In that case, there are a few options:
<ul>
<li>A Liturgy of the Word with the exchange of vows. This is the usual choice when one spouse is not Catholic.</li>
<li>Exchanging vows at any regular parish Mass. I have seen couples exchange vows at a regular Sunday or daily Mass.</li>
<li>A simple exchange of vows and reception of the marriage blessing with nothing else. This is rare but not unheard of.</li>
</ul>
If the marriage is between two Catholics, the normative expectation is that the exchange of vows will take place within Mass (<a href="https://litpress.org/Products/GetSample/4641/9780814646410">Order of Celebrating Matrimony,</a> 29).  In this situation, you would need to explain to the priest your reasons for not wanting to exchange vows during a Mass.
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Can I Marry Without a Wedding?

Often when asked where the Bible condemns contraception some Christians appeal to Genesis 38:8-10. There, Onan, son of Judah, is told to have intercourse with his deceased brother’s wife to “perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her and raise up offspring for [his] brother” (v.8). But knowing the offspring wouldn’t be his, Onan “spilled the semen on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother” (v.9). The author immediately reports that “[God] slew” Onan because of his deed. This, it’s argued, reveals that contraception is contrary to God’s will.
Recently, <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@catholicanswers/video/7269917297798794542?is_from_webapp=1&amp;sender_device=pc&amp;web_id=6983056260526589446">someone in our TikTok comment section</a> was not convinced:

Let’s take the latter objection first—that the text only describes what happens and doesn’t give us the prescription that we ought not to contracept.
Our critic is simply wrong. The text does tell us Onan’s deed conflicted with God’s will: “And what he did was displeasing in the sight of the LORD” (v.10). Given the implied assumption for this kind of religious text that we should avoid doing what displeases God, we can conclude that the passage is prescriptive and not merely descriptive. We can derive an “ought” from this event pertaining to at least one form of contraception: spilling semen to avoid conception.
This leads me to the first objection.
Our critic is right in saying it would be fallacious to move from God’s displeasure with one form of contraception to His displeasure with all forms of contraception. Spilling semen is not the only way a couple can contracept. Since that’s the only form of contraception that the above passage deals with, the appeal to Onan’s sin would only achieve the goal of providing evidence against that specific form of contraceptive act that Onan committed. More work would have to be done, whether biblically or philosophically, to determine whether other forms of contraception (e.g., the pill) are also displeasing to God. For an introductory philosophical explanation, see my articles <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/for-goodness-sake">“Sex for Goodness Sake,”</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-contraception-thwarts-love">“How Contraception Thwarts Love.”</a>
This is not to say, however, that a Catholic who makes the above argument is blameworthy for his lack of nuance. Often, the argument is given as an answer to the basic question of whether the Bible condemns contraception without any specification as to a particular form. And for a general question like that, Genesis 38:8-10 suffices.

Onan Died for This (and Nothing Else?)

<div>In 1 Samuel, David and Saul’s son Jonathan make a sacred covenant. What type of covenant was it?</div><div><blockquote>By the time David finished speaking with Saul, Jonathan’s life became bound up with David’s life; he loved him as his very self. Saul retained David on that day and did not allow him to return to his father’s house. Jonathan and David made a covenant, because Jonathan loved him as his very self. Jonathan took off the cloak he was wearing and handed it over to David, along with his military dress, even his sword, bow, and belt (1 Sam. 18:1-4).</blockquote>
The exact nature of the covenant is not explained. The fact that Jonathan hands over his clothing and weapon, which as the king&#8217;s son and a military commander would have been royal clothing and a royal weapon, is generally interpreted as a sign that Jonathan is ready to hand over the future throne to David. The general idea seems to be that Jonathan knows that David is a potential rival to the throne after Saul dies. Jonathan&#8217;s actions symbolize that he does not care if David is the one to ascend to the throne instead of him; he values David&#8217;s friendship too much to fight over the throne. This appears to be a covenant to mutually support one another as close friends, no matter what happens.
We see this arise when Saul plots to kill David (1 Sam. 20). Saul, knowing Jonathan&#8217;s affection for David, conceals his plan from his son. When David confronts Jonathan about the plot, Jonathan pleads his ignorance and promises to find out the truth and warn David if his life is truly in danger. For upholding his half of the covenant, Jonathan is rewarded by never having his family and descendants cast off as enemies of David when he ascends to the throne.
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What Was David and Jonathan’s Covenant?

The Summer Olympics open today in Paris, with a flotilla along the Seine reported to be replacing the traditional parade of nations into the main stadium. Very bold, very French. And this is before we get to the entertainment, which is always avante-garde no matter what country it’s in.
Another Olympic tradition seems to be popular cynicism. By the time we reach the opening ceremonies, the advertiser hype has already been cranked up for a year and the networks have been hard at work pre-curating our viewing experience. (It’s not enough for the Olympics to showcase elite international athletic competition—they have to create Memories that Will Last Forever and canonize a new crop of household heroes, every night at 9:38 p.m., live on tape.) And it wouldn’t be an Olympic year without fresh cheating and judging scandals that mar the purity of the Olympic ideal.
For Catholics, it seems like the Olympic ideal itself might suffer under scrutiny. Were not the modern Games, originated in 1896, based on competitions in ancient <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/is-catholicism-pagan">pagan</a> Greece, with their very name taken from the mountain where Zeus &amp; co. lived? Is not the conceit of the Games’ supposed transcendent ability to unite peoples a weak imposture of the only thing that can so unite them: <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/what-does-catholic-mean">Christ and his universal Church?</a>
I would say to both: yes, kind of. Certainly, the lore of the modern Olympics reaches back to ancient predecessors, who were pagan. And you can detect a hint of something quasi-religious about the glorification of athletic bodies (ever-more-immodestly clad with each iteration!) and about the idolization of sport as global Redeemer and Savior.
That said, I don’t think Catholics need to frown on the Olympics or avoid watching them (though I recommend skipping beach volleyball, or at least squinting heavily). In fact, there is much in this biannual festival for Catholics to admire and support.
The ancient Olympians were pagans, but the founder of the modern Olympics, a Frenchman named Pierre de Coubertin, was a devout Catholic. He set out not to revive worship of the Greek pantheon but to recapture what was worthy in classical culture. He saw in sport not a rival religion but a substitute for war; and in the striving for athletic excellence—with neither victory nor profit first in mind but effort and sportsmanship—he saw a chance to build virtue and perfect human nature in its unity of flesh and spirit.
The Olympic motto, Citius, Altius, Fortius (“Faster, Higher, Stronger”) was devised, it should therefore not surprise us to hear, by a priest of the order whose philosophers emphasized that unity: the Dominican Henri Didon.
The twentieth century gave us not just the modern Olympic phenomenon but the Church’s premier athlete-pope in John Paul II. During his papacy, the zealous soccer player and skier offered numerous official greetings and blessings to Olympic organizers and competitors and to other athletic bodies. In <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/pont_messages/1984/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_19840728_inizio-olimpiadi.html">his message</a> on the opening of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, he endorsed both the virtue of athletic competition and the Olympics’ symbolic value for fostering international accord. “This great event,” he wrote,
<blockquote>has significance not only for the world of sport as the expression of friendly athletic competition and the striving for human excellence but also for the future of the human community, which through sport gives external expression to the desire of all for universal cooperation and understanding. I offer my heartiest congratulations to the men and women who are representing their countries and I hope that at this world-wide encounter they will be worthy models of peaceful harmony and human fellowship.</blockquote>
If the Olympics are pagan, they’re pagan in that grand, humanistic, admirable sense that the best of classical culture was—a sense that’s better than ninety-nine percent of the profane pablum that mean, mediocre modernity offers in its place. Despite all their imperfections, may they continue to inspire a natural standard of virtue and peace that, someday, grace may perfect in human hearts.

Are the Olympics Pagan?

Readers of the four Gospels are struck by the fact that when Jesus appears before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, he says nothing in his own defense.
This isn’t just surprising to us; it also was striking to Pilate. We’re told:
<blockquote>Pilate said to him, “Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?”
But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge; so that the governor wondered greatly (Matt. 27:13-14).</blockquote>
What should we make of Jesus’ silence? There have been many proposals.
<blockquote>During his trial, Jesus has been silent, a fact that has no genuine analogies in Greek, Roman, or later Christian trials. Jesus’ silence has often been explained with reference to the silence of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53:7 (with whom Jesus is thus identified), but Mark and the other Gospel writers do not alert their readers that such an allusion is intended; or with the silence of the righteous sufferer (Pss. 38:14-16, 39:9); as fulfilment of Psalm 22:15; as a reflection of Jesus’ portrayal as a sage or teacher of wisdom; as an expression of self-control and perhaps nobility; as Jesus proving that he is in command or showing his contempt for those who sit in judgment over him; or as showing that he is the eschatological judge before the final verdict (Eckhard Schnabel, Mark: An Introduction and Commentary, at 14:60-61a).</blockquote>
But what’s the real explanation?
It helps to note that his appearance before Pilate is not the first time Jesus has been silent. A few hours earlier, when he appeared before the Jewish ruling council, he was similarly quiet:
<blockquote>Now the chief priests and the whole council sought testimony against Jesus to put him to death; but they found none. For many bore false witness against him, and their witness did not agree.
And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’” Yet not even so did their testimony agree.
And the high priest stood up in their midst, and asked Jesus, “Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?”
But he was silent and made no answer (Mark 14:55-61a).</blockquote>
However, there was one thing that did prompt Jesus to make a response:
<blockquote>Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”
And Jesus said, “I am; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14:61b-62).</blockquote>
From this we see that Jesus apparently isn’t interested in responding to the charges made against him—even false ones like him saying that he would destroy the Temple—but there is one thing he is interested in answering: the question of his identity.
When directly asked if he is the Christ, the “Son of the Blessed” (i.e., the Son of God), he responds straightforwardly: “I am.” He then identifies himself with the heavenly “Son of Man” figure from Daniel 7:13-14, who was given everlasting dominion over all peoples by God.
At the time, this figure was believed by some Jews to be a divine person who was sometimes referred to as “the lesser Yahweh,” and Jesus’ identification of himself with this figure was regarded by the high priest as blasphemy, so he tore his robes (Mark 14:63-64).
Jesus’ silence before the council on everything except one point is then replicated when he is brought before Pilate:
<blockquote>Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?”
And he answered him, “You have said so.”
And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.”
But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate wondered (Mark 14:2-5).</blockquote>
Here again, Jesus is willing to address one question: the issue of his identity. When asked if he is king of the Jews, he responds affirmatively but somewhat cryptically. He could have simply said, “I am”—just as he did when the high priest asked if he was the Christ, the Jewish Messiah, who was understood as a coming king of the Jews.
However, here he says, “You have said so.” This is an acknowledgment that he does have that role, but he’s being cautious for a reason that we will come back to.
Other than this one point, however, Jesus does not respond to any of the other things said against him. Mark does not tell us what the charges were, but Luke fills at least some of them in:
<blockquote>They began to accuse him, saying, “We found this man perverting our nation, and forbidding us to give tribute to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ a king. . . . He stirs up the people, teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee even to this place” (Luke 23:2-5).</blockquote>
Jesus had no interest in responding to these charges—including the false one that he forbade paying taxes to Caesar (in fact, he had done the exact opposite—Mark 12:17, Luke 20:25).
When Pilate heard that Jesus was Galilean, he then sent him to Herod Antipas, but here again, Jesus was silent:
<blockquote>When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desired to see him, because he had heard about him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by him. So he questioned him at some length; but he made no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him (Luke 23:8-10).</blockquote>
Apparently, unlike the high priest and Pilate, Herod did not raise the issue of Jesus’ identity in a direct enough way, and Jesus ignored the accusations being made.
So what’s the reason for his silence? The answer is found by looking at Jesus’ recent actions.
Jesus has already made three major predictions of his coming death and resurrection (Mark 8:31, 9:30-31, 10:33-34), the most explicit of which is the final one:
<blockquote>Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise (Mark 10:33-34).</blockquote>
He thus foresaw that upon going to Jerusalem, he would be taken into custody by the Jewish authorities, turned over to the Romans, and sentenced to death.
Upon arriving at Jerusalem, he fulfilled a messianic prophecy from Zechariah 9:9 by triumphantly riding the foal of a donkey into the city, depicting himself as the king of Jerusalem described in Zechariah, and being proclaimed by the joyful crowd as “the king of Israel” (John 12:13), “the king who comes in the name of the Lord” (Luke 19:38), and “the Son of David” (Matt. 21:9). He even refused to silence the crowd when urged to do so by the Pharisees (Luke 19:39-40).
Then he set himself on a collision course with the Jewish temple authorities by driving out of the Temple those who bought and sold sacrificial animals and by overturning the tables of the moneychangers (Matt. 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-17, Luke 19:45-46; cf. John 2:14-22).
He was then arrested, tried by the Jewish council, and delivered to Pilate for execution—just as his passion predictions indicate he had planned.
This gives us the key to understanding both Jesus’ silence and his responses to the question of his identity.
He is silent to the charges against him because he is here to die. He is not interested in defending himself against false charges, like saying he would destroy the Temple or that one should not pay taxes to Caesar. His disciples knew the truth about these matters, but he isn’t interested in convincing the authorities of his innocence. He’s planning on being put to death.
His silence also may be a fulfillment of messianic prophecies, such as Isaiah’s statement about the Suffering Servant:
<blockquote>He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth (Isa. 53:7).</blockquote>
However, fundamentally he is here to die, and therefore he needs to be convicted of something that carries the death penalty.
This is why he responds on the question of his identity when the high priest asks if he is the Christ. He frankly says, “I am.” However, claiming to be the Messiah was not guaranteed to be regarded as a crime by the Jewish council, so Jesus does not leave it there: he also claims to be a divine figure, the Son of Man, which he knows that the high priest will regard as blasphemy and worthy of death.
However, claiming to be a divine figure was not necessarily a crime to the Romans. Their emperors, among others, were popularly regarded as divine, and Pilate likely would not have known about the Jewish Son of Man, anyway, so Jesus drops this part in front of Pilate.
Instead, when Pilate asks him if he is king of the Jews, he acknowledges this, but in a cryptic way that gives him what we now call “plausible deniability”—i.e., you’ve said that I’m the king of the Jews. I haven’t said that.
John clarifies that Jesus even told Pilate, “My kingship is not of this world” (John 18:36)—indicating that he isn’t interested in political power and thus not interested in challenging the authority of Caesar, who then held the authority to appoint Jewish kings.
Pilate thus emerges from his conference with Jesus and tells the Jewish authorities that he doesn’t find Jesus guilty of any crime, which causes the authorities to stir up the crowd to demand Jesus’ execution, and Pilate finally capitulates.
Jesus thus gives Pilate only an acknowledgment of his royal status, but it’s cryptic, and he clarifies that he’s not interested in political power.
This makes it appear that Jesus wanted responsibility for his execution to ultimately fall on the Jewish authorities, in accordance with messianic prophecy. As Jesus himself said,
<blockquote>Have you not read this Scripture: “The very stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”? (Mark 12:10-11, quoting Psalm 118:22-23).</blockquote>
We thus see Jesus performing a complex set of maneuvers in order to fulfill his mission: He is silent against false charges because he is here to die; he says enough to the Jewish authorities to bring about his conviction; he is truthful with the Roman authorities about his lack of interest in worldly rule; and ultimately, it is the action of the Jewish authorities that causes Pilate to capitulate and order his execution—in accordance with the prophecy that the Jewish authorities (the builders) would reject Jesus (the stone).

Jesus vs. Pontius Pilate

The relationship between <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/state-and-church">Church and State</a> is thorny. What form of allegiance do citizens owe to their religion? What do they owe to their country? When is it moral to resist state actions—and in what way?
Our ability to pose the questions is part of the heritage of the Christian faith—and not simply because of the word Church.
Every culture in history has had some kind of religion and some kind of government, so “church” and “state” have always existed. And they have always had a relationship, as religion binds people together and promotes the stability of society. The state thus needs to deal with it.
Except even that way of framing the issue is modern. It presupposes that church and state are two different things, and in many cultures, they weren’t.
<h2>Through ancient eyes</h2>
If you lived in a particular culture, you were usually expected to hold to the state religion and worship whatever God or gods it upheld. Thus, in Athens, one of the charges leading to Socrates’s execution was the allegation he did not believe in “the gods of the state” (Plato, Apology).
But that could be the case even if church and state were distinct, and in many cultures, they weren’t. The political leaders were the religious leaders.
In Egypt, Pharaoh was a god—the “living Horus” or human manifestation of the falcon-headed sky god. He was also high priest as well as political ruler. Pharaoh may have had two sets of duties—religious and governmental—but at the highest level, church and state were one.
The same was true in Rome. The priests (pontifices and flamines) were drawn from the political class, and the emperor was high priest (pontifex maximus). Some emperors were declared gods, either after their deaths (Julius Caesar, Augustus, Claudius) or worshiped in Rome during their lifetimes (Caligula, Nero).
<h2>Joined at the hip</h2>
A tight union between Church and State could support the stability of both, but it also made it difficult to change either. The two were joined at the hip and had a natural interest in supporting each other.
If a foreign traveler was willing to worship the local gods, well and good. He would not disrupt the social order. A state might even tolerate minority religions—especially among foreigners.
But if the minority religion started making converts, local religious officials would be alarmed. And if sizeable numbers began adopting a new faith, it would be perceived as a threat to the state. Thus, Christianity was persecuted as it expanded into new lands and began making converts.
Refusing to participate in the state’s prescribed religious rites was seen as an act of disloyalty and thus as treason. This is why such rites were used as a test in the trials of martyrs.
In some places, religious tests still are used. In the United Kingdom, under the Accession Declaration Act of 1910, the British monarch (and head of the Church of England) <a href="https://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/local-news/2022/09/08/formal-steps-after-instant-shift-from-uk-queen-to-king/">is required</a> to profess the Protestant faith as a condition of office.
This isn’t the case in America. The U.S. Constitution provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust” (6:3), though this doesn’t mean you’ll be elected or confirmed if your religion is out of favor.
Despite the historically close association of church and state, Christians have seen a sharper distinction between the two than other cultures—a distinction rooted in the history of the Faith.
<h2>Different from the beginning</h2>
Abraham came from a pagan family that worshiped Mesopotamian gods (Josh. 24:2), but Yahweh spoke to him and called him out of his native land.
In the age of the patriarchs, God’s people were governed along family lines, with the head of the household (or later, tribe) exercising ruling authority. The patriarchs also functioned as priests, building altars to God and offering sacrifices (Gen. 12:7-8, 26:25, 33:20, etc.).
This changed when the tribe of Levi was assigned the Israelite priesthood. That separated it from the governing authorities, in stark contrast from other nations.
When the Israelites first came into the Promised Land, they were governed by Joshua, who belonged to the tribe of Ephraim and thus was not a priest. Afterward, each tribe was ruled by its elders, along patriarchal lines.
There also were a series of “judges” (Hebrew, shopetim), though this translation can be misleading, as their principal function wasn’t hearing legal cases. They led battles against the enemies who often oppressed Israel. The term might be translated “chieftain” or even “warlord.” These leaders could be drawn from any tribe.
The era of judges ended with Samuel. He happened to be a Levite and a priest, but this was unusual. When he was old, he appointed his sons judges, but they were corrupt and took bribes, leading the people to demand a king, like in other nations (1 Sam. 8:1-5).
Until then, Israel was a loosely governed tribal confederacy, with God regarded as its overall monarch. Thus, when the demand for a king arose, “the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them’” (1 Sam. 8:7).
The first king chosen was Saul, who was of the tribe of Benjamin. Later kings, such as David, came from the tribe of Judah. Because the religious and governing authorities were separate, the distinction between church and state was in the consciousness of Israel, even if the institutions supported each other.
The line of kings ended with the Babylonian Exile, but when the people returned, the pattern remained the same. The priesthood stayed in Levite hands, and individuals such as Zerubbabel of Judah were appointed political governors, though ultimate power lay with the Persians.
Judea had only limited autonomy in this period, as various foreign powers sparred for control of the territory.
Around 167 B.C., the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes issued a decree compelling Jews to abandon their religion. This prompted a priest named Mattathias to begin a rebellion. It was ultimately carried through by his sons, especially Judah “the Hammer” Maccabee, which is why his family—the Hasmoneans—came to be called the Maccabees.
The Hasmoneans assumed the high priesthood and became the effective local rulers. In 104 B.C., one of them, Aristobulus I, assumed the title “king.” This was an unusual situation, not seen since the days of Samuel, when the political and religious leaders were the same.
Intrigues among the Hasmoneans led to their downfall. After political control passed to the Romans, the conniving Antipater the Idumean was given political control of Judea. He was Jewish by religion but an Edomite by nationality, and his son Herod the Great was appointed king by the Roman Senate.
When Herod died, his kingdom was divided among his sons, but the one appointed to rule Judea—Archelaus—proved so bad that he was replaced by a Roman governor, which is why Pontius Pilate was in charge during the ministry of Christ.
Through all this, the priesthood remained in Levite hands. There were dramatic changes in how God’s people were governed politically—by patriarchal elders, judges, kings, governors, and other officials—but the fact that church and state were separate helped the religion continue.
<h2>“Render unto Caesar”</h2>
During Christ’s ministry, the Romans held ultimate authority, but they often used client rulers—such as Herod’s sons Antipas and Philip, who had the title “tetrarch” (ruler of a quarter)—while Judea itself was under the Roman governor.
There also was a Jewish ruling council, the Sanhedrin, that had limited authority, principally for judging matters under Jewish law. The high priest sat on the Sanhedrin, as did many priests. They were joined by religious leaders such as the Pharisees as well as members of the secular Jewish aristocracy.
The complex relationship between religious and civil leaders is seen when the Jewish authorities determine to put Jesus to death. They had to get the consent of the Roman governor because they were forbidden to impose the death penalty (John 18:31).
The division between religious and political authorities, as well as the many forms the latter had taken, is part of the background to Jesus’ statement about paying taxes: “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” (Luke 20:25).
His opponents, who tried to trap him into making either a seditious or impious statement, were amazed, and “marveling at his answer they were silent” (v. 26).
This was a marvelous answer, one that would have been unthinkable in Egypt or Rome, where religious and political leaders were one and the same. In such nations, there could be no division between religious duties and civic ones, no separate spheres appropriate to church and state.
But drawing on the complex history of Israel and the undeniable situation of Judea at the time, Jesus acknowledged the legitimacy of the two realms.
<h2>“Obey God rather than men”</h2>
This didn’t mean one sphere wouldn’t encroach on the other, so Christians have had to face dilemmas.
When the Sanhedrin arrested the apostles, the high priest informed them, “We strictly charged you not to teach in [Jesus’] name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us” (Acts 5:28).
He may have been concerned that the apostles’ preaching would lead to a popular uprising against the council, or at least a wave of public disrespect eroding its authority.
“Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than men’” (Acts 5:29). They thus acknowledged that obligations to God take priority when in conflict with orders from a human authority (either religious or secular, as the Sanhedrin had both).
This principle doesn’t settle all questions about how apparent conflicts are to be resolved. Sometimes people think they have an absolute divine mandate when they don’t (cf. John 16). Or there may be ways to square two seemingly contrary things.
St. Thomas More would have been willing at the time to support the 1534 Act of Succession if it had been worded differently and required him only to acknowledge Anne Boleyn as queen and her children as in the line of succession for the English throne. These were matters of civil law he could accept, though he disapproved of Henry VIII’s marital situation. However, the requirement of repudiating the pope violated his obligations to God.
<h2>“No authority except from God”</h2>
The biblical authors recognized that God is in control of history. He at least allows every event to occur, for with omnipotence he could always stop it.
They also saw God’s providence including plans for running human society, and we have a responsibility to cooperate with these plans. St. Paul says, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1).
This is striking, because most governing authorities were pagan, yet Paul sees them as instituted by God. It’s especially striking that he wrote this to the Church in Rome, which was the seat of the empire. He expects readers to understand that even the pagan Roman Empire is, in some sense, instituted by God as a governing authority and owed obedience.
He underlines this: “Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment” (v. 2). And he explains that the ruler “is God’s servant for your good” by punishing wrongdoers on God’s behalf (vv. 3-5).
St. Peter says the same: “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right” (1 Peter 2:13-14).
This is striking, because the emperor at the time was Nero. Though he hadn’t yet begun persecuting Christians, he had shown himself a dangerous, vain, unstable ruler who killed his mother and had delusions of godhood.
Nero also came to office because of a murderous power play. His mother, Agrippina the Younger, married the emperor Claudius, got him to adopt Nero, and then poisoned him so Nero could replace him. Next, Claudius’s biological son, Britannicus, was poisoned to eliminate him as a rival.
Despite all this, Peter and Paul saw Nero as <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/civil-allegiance">an instrument of God</a> owed respect and obedience—so long as it didn’t require disobedience to God.
No doubt, they weren’t expressing their full views of the emperor in these passages, which are meant to encourage Christians to be peaceable toward the state—something that would protect Christians and further the cause of evangelization. But Peter and Paul wouldn’t have taught obedience toward rulers if they didn’t believe in it.
<h2>Diversity of regimes</h2>
Historically, Christian thinkers have been open to monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies—as well as combinations of them (Aquinas, ST I-II:105:1).
<blockquote>If authority belongs to the order established by God, the choice of the political regime and the appointment of rulers are left to the free decision of the citizens. The diversity of political regimes is morally acceptable, provided they serve the legitimate good of the communities that adopt them (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1901).</blockquote>
But what if you’re dealing with a bad regime?
The New Testament doesn’t go into when it is legitimate to change a regime. Christians were a tiny minority and had no need to deal with such questions.
However, the Romans had to face them. Repeatedly. Rome had been governed by kings, but they grew sick of them. The last, Tarquinius Superbus (“Tarquin the Proud”), was dethroned by a popular uprising around 509 B.C., after which Rome was a republic.
This lasted until the first century B.C., when a series of civil wars occurred. Among the key players were two groups of three men, known as the First Triumvirate (which included Julius Caesar) and the Second Triumvirate (which included Augustus). The triumvirates proved unstable, and when the dust settled, Augustus was declared Rome’s first emperor.
He had a reputation as a good (if ruthless) ruler, but not all his successors did. The mad emperor Caligula (r. A.D. 37-41) was so awful that his own guards killed him. Nero (r. A.D. 54-68) proved so bad that the Senate declared him a public enemy, and he was forced to commit suicide. That touched off the disastrous “Year of Four Emperors” (A.D. 69), which was wracked by civil wars as emperors rapidly succeeded one another.
Jews and Christians lived through these events, but they held no political power and did not have to weigh in on the legitimacy of these actions.
<h2>Tyrannicide?</h2>
That would change when the empire became Christian. Once responsible for public welfare, they had to face what to do about problematic regimes.
The principle that the authorities are owed obedience, however they got into power, meant that in most situations, one needed to tolerate a difficult situation. If a ruler issued orders directly contrary to Christian teaching, they could be ignored, but otherwise one needed to obey.
But what if one was confronted with a regime doing grave harm—with a tyrant such as Caligula or Nero?
Historically, the only reliable way to remove a tyrant was to kill him, lest he try to get his throne back and cause more bloodshed. This raised the issue of tyrannicide, or when it’s okay to kill a tyrant.
Given that the authorities govern on God’s behalf, and the need for social stability, Christian thinkers were reluctant to endorse tyrannicide. They could appeal to the fact that, even when Saul was trying to kill David, he refused to raise his hand against “the Lord’s anointed” (1 Sam. 26:9-11).
But many were prepared to endorse killing a particular kind of tyrant: a tyrant by usurpation, or one who seized power when he didn’t have a legitimate claim to it.
They could appeal to the Jewish queen Athaliah, who seized the throne for six years after attempting to kill the entire royal family. There was one survivor, who was anointed as the legitimate king, upon which Athaliah was killed (2 Kings 11:1-20).
Aquinas held, “He who kills a tyrant [by usurpation] to free his country is praised and rewarded” (2 Sentences 44:2:2).
But there was another kind of tyrant: a tyrant by oppression, one who gravely misused his authority. Catholic authors debated under what conditions such an individual could be killed, but in general there was a negative attitude toward this possibility.
<h2>The state of the question</h2>
The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/how-much-authority-does-the-catechism-of-the-catholic-church-carry">Catechism</a> doesn’t deal with tyrannicide, but it lays out principles for dealing with problematic regimes.
Christians should be subject to those in authority, but they have “the right, and at times the duty, to voice their just criticisms” for the good of the community (2238). They also need to lead an active political life (2239-40). When civil authorities issue immoral commands, Christians are to refuse to obey them (2242).
But armed resistance is not authorized unless
<blockquote>(1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights,
(2) all other means of redress have been exhausted,
(3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders,
(4) there is well-founded hope of success, and
(5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution (2243).</blockquote>
The Catechism thus envisions progressively greater interventions to address problems, from criticism to protest to armed resistance—the latter being permitted only in the gravest cases and under specific conditions.

Rendering to Caesar . . . and to God

Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer, on physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer’s role in the creation of the atomic bomb, was a <a href="https://collider.com/oppenheimer-global-box-office-165-million/">massive hit when it came out in 2023</a>. In the process, it revived an important perennial question: was the United States morally justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Morally speaking, this is an easy question. Targeting civilian populations for mass incineration is intentionally killing innocent men, women, and children. And as the British moral philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe points out in her 1958 essay “<a href="http://www.ifac.univ-nantes.fr/IMG/pdf/Anscombe-truman.pdf">Mr. Truman’s Degree</a>,” “to choose to kill the innocent as a means to one&#8217;s ends is murder.”
There’s no question that Truman (along with those who executed his orders) was guilty of murder on a mass scale. As Anscombe points out,
<blockquote>with Hiroshima and Nagasaki we are not confronted with a borderline case. In the bombing of these cities it was certainly decided to kill the innocent as a means to an end. And a very large number of them, all at once, without warning, without the interstices of escape or the chance to take shelter, which existed even in the “area bombings” of the German cities.</blockquote>
According to the principle of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/answering-the-trolley-problem">double effect</a>, Catholic moral theology sometimes permits you to do a good action that has some bad side effects. For instance, the FDA might approve a drug that helps most people but hurts a few. An army might fight a battle knowing that innocent bystanders will likely be killed.
But this principle doesn’t apply when the action is itself evil—like if the FDA approved a drug intended to hurt people, or if the army started aiming at the bystanders. In such cases, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html">John Paul II explained</a>, those “choices cannot be redeemed by the goodness of any intention or of any consequence; they are irrevocably opposed to the bond between persons.” Intentionally murdering 200,000 men, women, and children is inherently immoral, even if you are doing so to try to end a world war.
The Church could hardly be clearer on this question. At the time of the bombings, Pius XII was pope, and he <a href="https://www.pas.va/en/magisterium/servant-of-god-pius-xii/1948-8-february.html">described the atomic bomb</a> as “the most terrible weapon which the human mind has conceived up to date.” In one of his Christmas addresses, he <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2021-01/the-popes-and-the-atomic-threat-appealing-to-world-s-conscience.html">envisioned the horror</a> (already realized in Hiroshima and Nagasaki) of “entire cities, even the largest and richest in history and art, annihilated; a black blanket of death over the pulverized matter, covering countless victims with limbs burnt, twisted, scattered, while others groan in spasms of agony.”
This stance has been shared by every pope, and every relevant Church document, over the past three quarters of a century. Pope John XXIII wrote bluntly in <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-xxiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem.html">Pacem in Terris</a> that “nuclear weapons must be banned.” <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html">The Second Vatican Council</a> warned that “any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.” More recently, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2019/documents/papa-francesco_20191124_messaggio-incontropace-hiroshima.html">Pope Francis has echoed this</a>, calling the use of nuclear weapons “a crime not only against the dignity of human beings but against any possible future for our common home,” and describing it as “immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral. . . . We will be judged on this.” After visiting Hiroshima, Francis <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/speeches/2019/november/documents/papa-francesco_20191126_voloritorno-giappone.html">described</a> the devastation as “a true human catechesis on cruelty.”
Given the clarity of the Church’s stance on the matter, to say nothing of the clarity of Catholic moral theology, or natural law, or the teachings of Jesus, or the Ten Commandments, it’s perhaps surprising that John Paul II’s biographer George Weigel <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/09/trumans-terrible-choice-75-years-ago">took to the pages of First Things</a> to claim that the atomic bombings were in fact “the correct choice.”
Weigel’s argument proceeds by first blurring the distinction between military targets and civilian ones, claiming that “the militarist-nationalist fanatics who dominated Japanese policy until Emperor Hirohito’s decisive intervention in August 1945 planned to turn the entire Japanese population into combatants during an American invasion.” But the fact that a civilian might hypothetically become a combatant in the future doesn’t make him a combatant under either international law or Catholic moral principles.
Weigel next insists that “President Harry Truman had three options for ending the Pacific War without the unprecedented bloodletting of an invasion.” He could (1) increase the fire-bombing of Japanese cities; (2) “strangle Japan by naval blockade and starve her into a submission her leaders might not concede until millions, and perhaps tens of millions, were dead”; or (3) “use the atomic weapons developed by the Manhattan Project.” Leave aside the historical question, ignored by Weigel, of whether we could have negotiated a peace agreement with the Japanese. All three of the options Weigel proposes are murder: they’re simply different ways of killing lots of Japanese civilians to force the government to surrender.
In fact, let’s grant (at least for the sake of discussion) Weigel’s core argument: that in murdering roughly 200,000 civilians, Truman “saved millions, even tens of millions, of lives, American and Japanese.” Does that make it morally defensible, or “the correct choice”? I’ll let St. Paul answer: “Why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just” (Rom. 3:8).

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Matt Fradd joining Daily Wire

Growth of Church in USA

The Flannel Panel looks back on 2025 with a lively year-in-review, asking whether Catholics truly “won the internet,” examining the significance of Matt Fradd joining The Daily Wire, and reflecting on the continued growth of the Catholic Church in the United States. The discussion highlights how Catholic voices are shaping online culture, media, and evangelization in a rapidly changing digital and religious landscape.
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Matt Fradd Joins DailyWire and the Internet in 2025 | Flannel Panel

Pope Francis on Female Deacons: Why So Misunderstood?

Can Christians Ever Hate People?

<div>Does Catholicism teach that all religions are true?</div><div>No, the Catholic Church does not teach that all religions are true, even if elements of truth can be found in non-Catholic religions. For a primer on the Church’s teaching in this regard, see CCC 846-48.
</div>

Are All Religions True?

Is it a good reason to object to Catholicism because there are Catholics who seem to hold to political positions that conflict with Church teaching? Trent Horn discusses Catholicism and politics with a Protestant caller on Catholic Answers Live.

Catholicism and Politics

<div>Did St. Jerome believe in the Eucharist? "When we hear the word of God, Christ’s body and blood is being poured into our ears." </div><div>What you cite is not actually from St. Jerome but a writing of Church Father Origen that St. Jerome translated. Origen <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/origens-origin">undoubtedly had his doctrinal problems</a>, and yet he also wrote very well on other subjects, including the Eucharist.
In the text you cite, Origen actually affirms the reality of the Eucharist. He does so in comparing how the faithful rightfully respond when a eucharistic crumb falls to the floor by pointing out that they need to have similar reverence when God’s living word is preached to them.
The following excerpt is taken from <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/2002/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_20020605.html">Pope John Paul II’s weekly General Audience on June 5, 2002</a>:
<blockquote>Origen, who comments on our Psalm in one of his homilies, translated and disseminated by St. Jerome in the West, actually interweaves the word of God with the Eucharist: &#8220;We read the Holy Scriptures. I believe that the Gospel is the Body of Christ. I believe that the holy Scriptures are his teaching. And when he says: he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood (John 6:53), although these words can also refer to the [eucharistic] mystery, yet the Body and Blood of Christ is truly a word of Scripture, the teaching of God. When we are about to receive the [eucharistic] mystery, if even a tiny crumb falls, we feel lost. When we are listening to God&#8217;s word, when our ears perceive the word of God and the body and blood of Christ, what great danger would we not fall into were we to think about something else?&#8221; (74 Omelie sul Libro dei Salmi [74 Homilies on the Book of Psalms], Milano 1993, pp. 543-544).</blockquote>
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Did Jerome Believe in the Eucharist?

<div>Why attend Mass if one is in state of mortal sin?</div><div>Missing Mass is itself a sin, so why add another sin on top of the sin(s) already committed? If I am already sick, why would I purposely injure myself further?
Mass involves hearing the word of God, which can help move our hearts to repentance and true conversion which is something someone in mortal sin would need.
The essence of sin is a turning against God or our neighbor. By skipping Mass, we avoid both God and neighbor and solidify ourselves in our sinful state, whereas attending Mass can help begin to heal those relationships.
Attending Mass in a state of sin and being unable to receive Communion is a powerful reminder of the consequences of sin and can move us to repent and avoid sin in the future.
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Attending Mass in Mortal Sin

<a href="https://www.catholic.com/bible-navigator/primacy-of-peter/matthew1618-19">The go-to passage</a> for many Catholics defending the papacy is Matthew 16:18: &#8220;And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.&#8221; But some Protestants argue that by &#8220;on this rock&#8221; Jesus wasn&#8217;t referring to Peter, but to something else. Joe Heschmeyer explains why this reading of scripture doesn&#8217;t make any sense.

Answering Protestant Objections to “On This Rock”

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Can the Saints save you?

<div>Is applauding for the choir during Mass considered sacrilegious?</div><div>I would not say it is sacriligeous, but it is in very bad taste. Liturgical singing is not performance. The faithful should show their appreciation by singing along or participating, not by applauding. Priests should teach the faithful that this is not appropriate. What ends up happening is that no matter how mediocre or downright inferior the music is, the remaining people in church (since most have already left by the end of the song: in itself proof that hardly anyone understands what the music is for) applaud the choir. How sad.
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Don’t Applaud the Choir

<div>Why did Jesus speak in Parables?</div><div>Jesus spoke in parables to make the Kingdom of God more easily understood by the people. Often times when trying to explain something using a story to illustrate the point is the most effective way to communicate the information.
Parables were a common method of teaching used by Rabbis and prophets in the ancient world (see 2 Sam. 12:1-9). It was a teaching style well known and accepted.
Parables invite the listener into the story. Which character do we identify with and why?
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Why Did Jesus Speak in Parables?

Jim Blackburn explains the subtle theology of why eating the Eucharist does not constitute cannibalism.

How Is the Eucharist Not Cannibalism?

<div>Can someone go to hell if they don’t partake of the Eucharist? I believe I read somewhere that we need to take it once a year at least. Why? </div><div>Catholics are obliged to receive the Eucharist at least once a year (Code of Canon Law, canon 921 §1-2) to encourage the faithful to live a truly faithful life and benefit from the great sacramental graces of the Eucharist, since we are not supposed to receive Holy Communion in a state of mortal sin (Code of Canon Law, canon 916).
Regarding whether reception of the Eucharist is necessary for the salvation of souls, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-the-eucharist-necessary-for-salvation">please see our previous answer on this subject.</a>
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Why Eucharist at Least Once a Year?

Responding to a caller who struggles picking one political party over another, Tim Staples explains that the Church is not definitively for or against any political party, but that voting Catholics should keep in mind non-negotiable issues like abortion, euthanasia, and same-sex &#8220;marriage&#8221; when deciding who to vote for.
Transcript:
Host: Patrick in Temecula, California, listening on 1000 AM. Patrick, you&#8217;re on with Tim Staples. What&#8217;s your question, Patrick?
Caller: Well, it seems to me that most people&#8211;most Catholics identify with the Republican party. The quandary that I have is, I see &#8220;Thou shalt not kill&#8221; as&#8230;I&#8217;m having a hard time articulating this, but I can see how people would identify the Democratic party with abortion, and the Republican party with repealing it. I see the Republican party as dragging us into war, and I&#8217;m having a hard time picking a side.
Tim: Right. That&#8217;s a great point, Patrick. First of all, you know, we have what we call at Catholic Answers the <a href="http://stbern-bv.org/Voters-Guide-Catholic-English-1p.pdf">Voter&#8217;s Guide For Serious Catholics</a>, you might want to check that out. We put it out in 2004, and has, oh my goodness, it&#8217;s sold millions of copies. Which is, that&#8217;s quite a feat in Catholic circles. You know, in the world, ehhh, big deal, but Catholic circles, when you sell millions of anything, that&#8217;s amazing. But in our Voter&#8217;s Guide For Serious Catholics, one of the points that we make there is, really, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/catholicism-and-politics">the Catholic Church is not Republican or Democrat</a>. In fact, we call both Democrats and Republicans to repent.
And we challenge our people in our Voters Guide to vote in accordance with the issues, &#8217;cause imagine, Patrick, imagine if you have&#8211;if you have folks who are saying, &#8220;Okay, I&#8217;m gonna vote Republican because I&#8217;m Catholic,&#8221; well, what happens if you have a Republican candidate who is pro-abortion, pro-homosexual marriage, running against a Democrat who is pro-life and for traditional marriage? I mean, are you gonna vote Republican? Of course not. So that&#8217;s point number one.
But point number two: you make a very important point here. You know, what about war and such? Now, we could debate, you know, who has led us into more wars, you know, in fact I argued in this last election that we had a Democratic candidate who never saw a war she didn&#8217;t like. And we had quite a few Republican candidates as well who never saw a war they didn&#8217;t like. I find it somewhat refreshing that President Donald Trump has at least said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s not do this nation-building and, you know, going to war with everybody,&#8221; I mean, my goodness, we&#8217;ve got guys like John McCain who, I think if he had his way, we&#8217;d be fighting wars all over the place.
So, but, you know, we can debate those issues, right, who is really more the warmonger? But I think the most important thing, Patrick, to consider, is that there is an essential difference between war and abortion, in this sense. Now if we&#8217;re talking about an unjust war, alright, that&#8217;s&#8230;that&#8217;s a different animal. But war per se, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-a-just-war">wars can either be just or unjust</a>. And we can debate as Catholics&#8211;let&#8217;s take the Iraq war, for example. There were Catholics in good standing that were on both sides of the issue there; many who said, &#8220;That&#8217;s an unjust war,&#8221; and some who said, &#8220;It&#8217;s a just war.&#8221; You are not barred from Communion for holding either position. Catholics can legitimately disagree when it comes to that.
However, when it comes to abortion, my friend, we&#8217;re talking about something that is objectively, intrinsically immoral; there are no exceptions whatsoever. We&#8217;ve slaughtered, as I mentioned before, well over 50 million innocent babies. So I don&#8217;t believe you can put these two&#8211;these two are not on the same level. Abortion is the most grave evil of our time, and we need to consider it as such.
And this is why, Patrick, by the way, in our Voter&#8217;s Guide For Serious Catholics, we talk about abortion, euthanasia&#8211;which has spread all over this country in just the last 12 years. The amount of euthanasia in our country has been&#8211;it&#8217;s gone through the roof. Astonishing. And the line of demarcation, I believe, was the Terri Schiavo case, where we had, basically, this poor woman was euthanized basically on television. They took the cameras out for the last couple of weeks, because of course they don&#8217;t want to show the grim end to this woman&#8217;s life, but the bottom line is&#8230;whereas, 20, 30, let&#8217;s say 30 years ago, we were called extremists if we said, &#8220;Hey, abortion&#8217;s gonna lead to euthanasia.&#8221; My friends, it has, and now we have physician-assisted suicide, and we go down the list there in our Voter&#8217;s Guide, we talk about embryonic stem cell research, human cloning, which is now being experimented on all over&#8211;government doesn&#8217;t pay for it but it&#8217;s fully legal, it&#8217;s being experimented with all across the United States, and a lot of folks don&#8217;t even realize it.
And now, homosexual so-called &#8220;marriage.&#8221; We have these matters that are intrinsically evil that we as Catholics have a duty&#8211;in fact, the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, I&#8217;m trying to remember the year, it put out a document on certain proposals to legalize same-sex unions. And notice, it didn&#8217;t use the word &#8220;marriage,&#8221; it said &#8220;union.&#8221; I believe that&#8217;s 2004, as I recall. And it said that we, as Catholics, have a duty to oppose the legalization of homosexual unions of any sort mimicking marriage. It doesn&#8217;t have to be marriage, but any sort mimicking. These are deal-breakers for Catholics, whereas when it comes to war, we can have a real debate as to what is just and what is unjust.
So we&#8217;re not trying to be overly simplistic in our Voter&#8217;s Guide, we recognize you can have particular situations, let&#8217;s say if you&#8217;re living in Nazi Germany and you&#8217;re living under a government that you know is slaughtering Jews, is starting unjust wars all across the country, where you have a situation where that is more grave than the abortions going on. Of course that&#8217;s a possibility. But we&#8217;re laying out objective truths here, Patrick. We have to look at our situation, look at the objective truth, and then we can apply the subjective situation.
But if we don&#8217;t understand that there&#8217;s a difference between, you know, killing an innocent human being and killing someone who unjustly is attacking our nation or&#8211;look, I&#8217;m a father of seven children. Somebody comes into my house and wants to kill my wife and children, guess what? They&#8217;re gonna have to come through me. And I&#8217;m packin&#8217;, my friends, just so you know. If you come in my house&#8211;in fact, I sleep with my 9mm right under my pillow every night. Normally I have my hand on it, so don&#8217;t come in my house. I&#8217;m gonna defend my family, even up to and including, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, delivering the lethal blow, if it is necessary.
But you can never, in any circumstance, slaughter innocent human beings. So Patrick, you can see why Catholics are so up in arms over abortion, whereas when it comes to something like the Iraq war, I know lots of Catholic friends who are strongly opposed to the Iraq war. Bishops, priests, and so forth. But there is not the same level there as there is when it comes to abortion, because we&#8217;re talking about something like abortion. I mean&#8211;just&#8211;Cy, I think sometimes, and Patrick, we miss this. We&#8217;re talking about over 50 million babies that have been slaughtered, and now we&#8217;re right at almost a million a year that continue to be killed.
And then we&#8217;re talking about the wars total in Iraq and Afghanistan for all the years we&#8217;ve been there, what, 12 years or whatever it is now&#8230;we&#8217;ve lost something like 2500, I believe, men and women who have fallen. I mean, that&#8217;s a huge number, but to put things in perspective: you know, we&#8217;re talking about fighting&#8211;these are combatants that are fighting, and so forth, and we&#8217;re talking 2500; we lost almost 500,000 in four years in World War II. We lost right about 50,000 in ten years in Vietnam. And here, in Iraq and Afghanistan&#8211;now, we&#8217;re talking about losses on our side, of course there are losses on the other side, but we have to put these things in perspective.
I think at times, as the great Bishop of Rockford, Illinois said years ago, Bishop Doran, I remember he said, &#8220;Anyone who can vote for a pro-abortion candidate when you have a viable pro-life candidate has lost a sense of what we&#8217;re talking about when we&#8217;re talking about abortion.&#8221; And now we can add the other non-negotiables, like homosexual &#8220;marriage&#8221; as well.
Forgive me for ranting a bit there, Patrick, but I think that you&#8217;ve asked a really, really important question, and I hope I&#8217;ve helped some.
Host: Thank you, Patrick.

Catholics and Political Parties

Tom Nash answers a caller who wonders whether Christians outside the Catholic Church who do not receive the Eucharist can be saved and whether the caller&#8217;s father can receive the Eucharist before his process of annulment has ended.

Can Protestants Have Salvation Without the Eucharist?

Jimmy Akin provides several principles to help us determine whether a given Bible passage ought to be read literally or figuratively.
Transcript:
Host: Let&#8217;s go now to Anonymous in Sacramento, California. Anonymous, you are on with Jimmy Akin. It&#8217;s open forum, what&#8217;s your question?
Caller: Yes, good afternoon. Hi Cy, hi Jimmy. I&#8217;m a lifelong Catholic, my husband is in RCIA currently and he is grappling with the Real Presence of the Eucharist, and he asked me a really great question the other day, he asked one that I didn&#8217;t have a good answer to, I&#8217;m hoping you do.
Jimmy: What&#8217;s the question?
Caller: So he pointed to Matthew 5:29-30, and that&#8217;s where Jesus talks about &#8220;If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, and if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away,&#8221; you know, &#8220;It&#8217;s better to lose a member than to go into Hell.&#8221; And then he pointed to John 6 where Jesus is talking about &#8220;I am the Bread of Life, whoever eats my body and drinks my blood will have Eternal Life,&#8221; um, those aren&#8217;t&#8211;you know, I&#8217;m paraphrasing. He wants to know how to square those, why we would take one literally and not the other? There you go, Jimmy, thank you.
Jimmy: Okay. So I&#8217;d say several things here. The first one is, we do recognize that Jesus sometimes speaks literally and sometimes speaks symbolically, or figuratively. And we have to be sensitive and discerning to figure out which is the case in any particular instance. Fortunately, there are some tests we can use.
One of the tests we can use is, &#8220;Would this lead to horrible, horrible, horrible consequences?&#8221; If we took the Matthew passage literally, about how you should cut out, literally cut out your eye, cut off your hand if they lead you to sin, well, guess what? That happens to everybody. And so everybody would have to gouge out their&#8211;not just their right eye, but their left one too&#8211;cause they just switch over to using their other eye&#8211;and they not only have to cut off their right hand, but their left hand too&#8211;because they&#8217;d just switch over to using their left hand to sin. So everybody would end up blind and handless.
And we have a pretty good idea that that&#8217;s not what God means for mankind, because He was the one that made us with eyes and hands in the first place. So we have a pretty good idea that God wants us to have eyes and hands, they&#8217;re certainly very useful so our experience bears that out, and that gives us reason to think that Jesus is using figurative language here, and specifically that he&#8217;s using a figure known as hyperbole, which is exaggeration to make a point. Hyperbole&#8217;s very common in the Bible, it&#8217;s a common feature of human speech, but in particular of Biblical idiom. The language in the Bible frequently uses hyperbole, and so we&#8217;ve got good reason to think that that&#8217;s what Jesus is doing here.
So let&#8217;s jump over to John 6, with the &#8220;My flesh is true meat, my blood is true drink,&#8221; and so on. Why would we want to take that literally versus symbolically? Well, there are a number of reasons. One of them is right there in John 6, because some people balk at what Jesus is saying, and they say, &#8220;Well, this is a hard saying. Who can hear this?&#8221; And Jesus insists that what He&#8217;s saying is the case. He repeats it. Actually, He repeats His teaching several times, and John therefore, in John 6:66, tells us that many of His disciples no longer followed Him. Jesus was willing to lose disciples rather than say, &#8220;Oh come on, guys, this is just symbolic.&#8221; So that&#8217;s one reason.
He&#8217;s even willing to lose the core disciples, because He turns to them and says &#8220;Do you also want to go away?&#8221; And Peter says, &#8220;Well, Lord, you have the words of Eternal Life, so we&#8217;re gonna trust you on this one.&#8221; But Jesus is willing to lose even the core disciples over this, rather than do what He did on other occasions, which was clarify, like when they misunderstood about the leaven of the Pharisees, and they thought He was talking about some actual bread, He said, &#8220;Come on guys, I&#8217;m talking about their doctrine.&#8221; So He clarified that teaching for them.
And in fact, Jesus spoke in parables frequently, but one of the things that we&#8217;re told, for example in Mark, is that Jesus clarified the parables for the disciples in private. Well, that&#8217;s not what He does here. Instead of clarifying this for the disciples in private, like a parable, He draws a line in the sand and is willing to see them go, too. And so that&#8217;s a good indication that this isn&#8217;t a parable; this is something that, He&#8217;s really serious about this. This is literal.
Also, this isn&#8217;t the only place in the New Testament where we have this. This crops up in the Synoptic Gospels, in all three of them, and in 1 Corinthians, where Paul is emphatic about the fact that participating in the Eucharist is participating in the Body and Blood of Christ, and if you profane it, you can even die. So Paul&#8217;s very serious about this, takes it very seriously; we can then broaden out further, and look at how early Christians interpreted this. Like St. Ignatius of Antioch, at the very beginning of the second century, who interprets this, again, literally. And if you want to read about that, and what other early Christians said about it, you can go to Catholic.com, where we have a whole tract on what the fathers said about this, or you could get my book &#8220;The Fathers Know Best,&#8221; which also contains that information.
So we&#8217;ve got a bunch of converging lines of evidence saying &#8220;John 6 on this? Literal. Matthew 5 about plucking out your eye and cutting off your hand? Not so literal.&#8221;
Host: Thank you very much, Anonymous.

Why Do We Take Only Some Bible Passages Literally?

Did Jesus institute Easter Sunday as a replacement for the Passover feast? Karlo Broussard explains to a caller why Catholics worship on Sundays and how it can be related to the Jewish feast of Passover.
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Transcript (AI-Generated):
We can turn to Colossians chapter 2 verse 16, where Saint Paul writes, &#8220;Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath.&#8221; So, Saint Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is teaching us as Christians that we are no longer bound by the Jewish festivals, including the Festival of Passover, which was a precept imposed upon the Israelites to celebrate out of obedience to God. However, with the Advent of Christ through his death and resurrection, that precept has been abrogated, and we are no longer bound to adhere to that ritual.
Why? Because there is a new ritual that has been instituted for us by our Lord himself, which we call the new Passover, and that is the Last Supper and the Mass. Our Lord gives us the new Lamb of God, which is himself, his body, and his blood, along with his soul and his divinity. That&#8217;s why our Lord instituted the Last Supper within the context of the Passover meal, to show us that it is the new Passover, and he is the new Lamb. So, we have a new ritual which we must adhere to, and we see the early church practicing and performing that ritual with the breaking of the bread, as Luke calls it in the Book of Acts.
When do they do that? The common practice for the early Christians was to break bread, that is, to celebrate the Eucharist or the new Passover, on the first day of the week, which is Sunday, the day of our Lord&#8217;s resurrection. That became the day for the early Christians to worship God through the new Passover and the celebration of the Eucharist. So, on Sunday, we are no longer bound, given Saint Paul&#8217;s teaching, to the ceremonial precept of the Old Law to celebrate the particular festival or Feast Day of Passover. We are now bound, by the authority of the Church to bind and loose, to adhere to the new ritual of the Mass that is coming from our Lord himself, but on a specific day, Sunday, to celebrate the ritual of the new Passover.

Why Do Catholics Worship on Sunday?

Is Vatican II infallible?

In the words of British archaeologist William M. Ramsay:
<blockquote>Luke is a historian of the first rank; not merely are his statements of fact trustworthy; he is possessed of the true historic sense. . . . In short, this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians” (The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament, ch. 18).</blockquote>
Despite this, numerous modern skeptics—many of whom are just repeating what other skeptics have said—treat Luke as if he were hopelessly historically confused, particularly with regard to his birth narrative of Jesus, which says,
<blockquote>In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. [So] Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David (2:1-4).</blockquote>
One of the skeptics’ criticisms of this passage is the statement that Joseph went from Nazareth to Bethlehem because he was of the lineage of David.
Here is where mockery commonly begins.
“This is ridiculous!” the skeptic will say. “David lived a thousand years before the time of Jesus! The Roman Empire would never conduct a census this way! It would never require people to go where one of their ancestors lived a thousand years ago! Nobody would even know that! I mean, do you know the city where your ancestors lived a thousand years ago?”
Despite the venom with which some skeptics pound their pulpits on this subject, their criticism is simply misdirected. They are misreading what Luke says.
Prior to this point, Joseph has been mentioned only once in Luke, when the angel Gabriel comes to announce the birth of Jesus:
<blockquote>In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary (1:26-27).</blockquote>
This passage indicates three things about Joseph: (1) he was betrothed to Mary; (2) he was of the house of David; and (3) he apparently has some kind of connection with Nazareth, since that’s where Mary was when the angel appeared. That’s all we know.
So let’s read the second passage discussing Joseph (2:1-4) and see what one of Luke’s normal readers would make of it.
Luke tells us that “all went to be enrolled.” The first thing to note is that Luke doesn’t tell us what kind of enrollment this was. He expects the reader to already know that from the events of the day. Many have assumed that this was a tax census, but we don’t know that. It may have been something else. In fact, there is a good chance that it was a loyalty enrollment that we have other records of, in which subjects of the Roman Empire swore their loyalty to Augustus Caesar.
However that may be, people needed to be somewhere that they could participate in the enrollment, so they went “each to his own city.” Obviously, this applied only to people who were away from their city during the period of the enrollment. If you were already in your own city, you didn’t need to go anywhere.
Did Romans require people to go to their own cities for enrollments if they were away from them? Yes, they did. In A.D. 104, the Roman governor of Egypt, Gaius Vibius Maximus, issued a decree that stated,
<blockquote>Since registration by household is imminent, it is necessary to notify all who for any reason are absent from their districts to return to their own homes that they may carry out the ordinary business of registration and continue faithfully the farming expected of them (lines 20–27 in Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, 268).</blockquote>
So if you were away from your home city, you needed to go back there for events like this.
Luke then says, “So Joseph also went up.” From this, we can infer that at the time of the registration, Joseph was away from his “own city.” Therefore, he returned there.
Where was he at the time? Luke says he went up “from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth.” Okay, so he was in Nazareth in Galilee. That’s not surprising in light of the fact he was engaged to Mary, who was in Nazareth when the angel appeared.
So where was Joseph’s “own city”? Luke tells us that he went “to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem.” Thus, Bethlehem was Joseph’s “own city.”
We now come to the statement that really sets skeptics off: “Because he was of the house and lineage of David.”
Luke includes this line to help explain why Bethlehem was Joseph’s “own city,” but skeptics draw a completely unwarranted inference from this and assume that everybody in the Roman Empire was required to return to where one of their ancestors from a thousand years ago lived.
Does Luke say that? Of course not! It would not be remotely practical to conduct a census—or any other kind of enrollment—in that way. And not only is that obvious to us; it was just as obvious to Luke and to Luke’s readers. Everybody knew that there was no such requirement for Roman enrollments, and neither Luke nor his readers would have ever dreamed that someone would make such a ridiculous inference.
If Luke had the ability to speak with a modern, mocking skeptic, we can easily imagine him wanting to say something like, “Don’t be an idiot. That’s obviously not what I meant!”
So what did he mean? What would an ordinary first-century reader have inferred from what Luke wrote?
A logical inference would be that Bethlehem was Joseph’s “own city” because he had a contemporary connection with Bethlehem, because “he was of the house and lineage of David.” In other words, it was his place of residence because he was a Davidite.
And that would not be surprising. Inheritance was very important in ancient Israel. The whole land was an inheritance from God (Exod. 32:13), and each tribe inherited a particular portion of land (Num. 34:18). This area had to be preserved, and parcels of land could not be transferred from one tribe to another (36:1-9). A parcel could only be temporarily “sold” (really leased) to another person, and the owner got it back in the Jubilee year (Lev. 25:13-16). This included houses in unwalled cities like Bethlehem (v. 31).
All this created a legal framework that stabilized the possession of properties within particular families. This had the effect of anchoring the family of David in Bethlehem, and so there were Davidites there. We’re thus meant to understand that, because Joseph was of the family of David, he had a residence there—a home. In fact, it was his primary residence.
How, then, are we to explain Luke’s statement just a few verses later?
<blockquote>And when they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city, Nazareth (2:39).</blockquote>
This is at the end of Luke’s birth narrative, and so it is meant to be read in context of what has preceded it. The logical inference that Luke would expect his readers to make is that Nazareth was also Joseph’s and Mary’s “own city.”
In other words, they had two residences: Joseph’s residence in Bethlehem and their joint residence in Nazareth.
Why would they have two residences? Were they rich? Far from it. Luke relates that when they made the post-childbirth sacrifice for Mary, they offered “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons” (2:24). That was the offering prescribed for a poor woman who could not afford a sheep (Lev. 12:8).
We thus should not imagine that Joseph and Mary were rich and had two opulent homes. Instead, we should infer that their dual residency was a situation based on economic necessity.
Even today, many people have to live away from their family homes in order to find work, and they don’t just stay out on the streets. They find some kind of accommodation where the work is, but they still consider their family home their primary residence, and they travel back to it periodically. Usually, there are other family members there on a permanent basis. This is a pattern that happens in countries all over the world.
To cite just one example, if a couple are native to Sinaloa, Mexico but comes to Arizona to find work, they’ll have some kind of residence in Arizona and their primary, family residence in Sinaloa. The same is true of those who migrate for work elsewhere in the Americas, in Africa, Asia, the Philippines, and in the Middle East.
The <a href="https://jimmyakin.com/2022/03/where-was-josephs-residence.html">logical inference that Luke would expect</a> his readers to draw from these data is that Joseph had a residence in Bethlehem, which was his primary, legal residence (in keeping with Jewish property inheritance practices), so that’s where he went for the enrollment. However, for economic reasons, he spent most of his time in Nazareth and also maintained a no-doubt humble residence there.
No mockery is warranted. This all makes perfect sense if you read what Luke says and interpret it sensibly.

Why Did Joseph Go to Bethlehem?

“Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, what God has prepared for those who love him.”
As Catholics, we often hear this verse from First Corinthians quoted (or sung) in reference to an unfulfilled hope—typically, the hope of heaven. The words call to mind the unimaginable gloriousness of life with God that awaits beyond the shadow of death.
Yet attentive readers of Scripture will notice that, in its original context, Paul isn’t talking about a hope for something in the future. Quite the opposite: he’s talking about something that’s already happened.
<blockquote>Among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man conceived, 
what God has prepared for those who love him,”
God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God (1 Cor. 2:6-10).</blockquote>
“This” (what eye has not seen, and what ear has not heard) God has revealed to us—not will reveal, but did reveal. The lines we usually quote as a present thought about the future, Paul himself quotes as a past thought about the present.
So what’s Paul talking about, if not the hope of heaven?
To answer that, we have to begin at the start of the chapter. There, the apostle makes his famous declaration that he resolved to know nothing (no merely human wisdom) except “Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” This segues directly into the reading above. The wisdom that Paul is talking about here—the wisdom of God, which the rulers of the age didn’t have—is thus Christ, and him crucified.
Paul then pivots to those famous lines. He’s referencing a few different Old Testament passages (“as it is written”), but the main one is Isaiah 64:4: “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides thee, who works for those who wait for him.” Thus, these lines—seen properly in context—are about the revelation, in history, of Christ himself: his incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. What the Israelites had been waiting for—what eye had not seen and ear had not heard—is no longer hidden; it’s been revealed, through the Spirit, in Jesus. It’s a hope fulfilled, not an unfulfilled hope—in other words, just the opposite of how we typically use the verse.
So does this mean it’s wrong to use this passage, as the Catechism (CCC 1027) and countless other books do, in reference to the unfulfilled hope of heaven? I don’t think so. To be a Christian is <a href="From%20of%20old%20no%20one%20has%20heard">to dwell</a> in the tension of “the not here and not yet” and the “here and now.” The “not here and not yet” is our future life with God, especially at the end of time, when he will be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). The “here and now” is the present life of the Church, the extension of the Incarnation, as it moves through history. We need to look through both of these “lenses” (as my pastor once put it) to see properly as Christians. And between the two, the heavenly lens should be primary: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). Life here below remains a valley of tears, but God above “will wipe every tear” (Rev. 21:4). So the application of Paul’s lines to fulfillment of all revelation in heaven is fitting and understandable.
However, we also shouldn’t lose sight of what God has already accomplished through the body of Christ—for thirty-three years in the Holy Land, and even now in his holy Church. It’s truly a radical proposition: God has revealed the depths of God through the Spirit—and he invites us, here and now, into those depths, and into that Spirit!
The power of Saint Paul’s passage is precisely in turning our habitually skittering, forward-looking minds upside down: in a very real sense, the heaven we’re longing for has already arrived—and it’s Christ, and our life in him.
When we lose sight of this here-and-now aspect of the Christian life, we’re tempted toward a spiritual escapism at odds with the gospel. We stand around looking up to the sky (see Acts 1:11) instead of allowing the Spirit to put us to work on the ground. We pass by the needy instead of presenting our bodies as “a living sacrifice” poured out “as a libation” (Rom. 12:1, 2 Tim. 4:6). In short, we become, <a href="https://youtu.be/bQSiiRw9vYc">as the Man in Black sang</a>, so heavenly-minded that we’re no earthly good.
Dorothy Day was fond of a line attributed to Saint Catherine of Siena: “All the way to heaven is heaven, for he has said, ‘I am the Way.’” We eagerly await heaven, yes—and needless to say, this world isn’t it. But don’t forget: heaven came to earth. Christ is the bridge, the Way, between them. So to be in the Way is to be—imperfectly and incompletely, but truly—in heaven already. “We draw close to heaven,” Benedict XVI once said, “indeed, we enter heaven, to the extent that we draw close to Jesus.”
Your eye can see him in the poor, your ear can hear him in the Word, and your heart can welcome him at the altar.

ACTUALLY: Eye Has Seen, Ear Has Heard

<div>Is getting a tattoo immoral?</div><div>The Old Testament law strictly forbade tattoos. This was because in the surrounding peoples these marks were related to the worship of other gods. Generally, Christian culture has not included the use of tattoos in worship or as adornment. There have been certain exceptions; for example, among the Copts of Egypt and among the Ethiopian Christians, very small cross tattoos were drawn on the finger or forehead. This was in order to make apostasy from the Faith less likely, since it would always be evident that the person so tattooed was a Christian.
This being said, very moderate use of tattoos has not been regarded as evil—for example, with sailors. The current practice of large tattoos that cover principal parts of the body is wrong, however, since it is a simple truth that the human body already represents the beauty and the designs of God, and our adornment of our bodies should never replace their natural appearance and meaning. Thus St. Paul rails against exaggerated hairstyles and jewelry in women. Our body is not a billboard to advertise our interests but a way of reflecting the glory of God.
Of course, those who have been tattooed in this fashion should not be judged harshly. Their case is unfortunate, however, since they have an indelible mark they may later regret and which would be painful and even disfiguring to remove. So my advice is not to get a tattoo; but if you do, let it be in a place and of a size that you can ordinarily cover with clothing. And, of course, it should not represent anything immoral or irreverent.
In my opinion, a tattoo may be more inappropriate on a woman than on a man, although I don&#8217;t think it particularly appropriate in any case.
</div>

May I Get a Tattoo?

Tim Staples discusses St. Thomas Aquinas&#8217;s Five Proofs for the existence of God with an atheist caller who is seeking clarification, focusing particularly on the third way, the idea of a necessary being, its attributes, how we can know that this necessary being is the God of the Bible, and finally how we can reconcile God&#8217;s ultimate perfection and love with the apparent harshness He shows in the Old Testament.

St. Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways as a Path Back to Catholicism

Christopher Hitchens famously claimed that “religion poisons everything,” and Steven Weinberg argued that “with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil &#8211; that takes religion.” Here are six reasons those are silly arguments.

Does Religion Poison Everything?

Have Christians actually changed their views on Hell?

I’m a recovering sexaholic and have worked with people getting over those addictions and premarital sex.

I always hear people’s reasoning for shacking up is to figure out if you’re sexually compatible.

My niece shacked up with her boyfriend and had 2 kids. 10 years later they’re battling for custody in court. It seems to be worse for women.

How much of this is a result of fathers encouraging their daughters to go out and experience the world?

Shacking Up

Today’s feast is rare in that it falls on Sunday only once or twice a decade. But even on other days, it is unusual.
In every church, it is normal to observe the anniversary of the dedication, much in the way that we might observe our own birthday, date of baptism, or wedding anniversary. The four major Roman basilicas have, at least in recent centuries, had their anniversaries observed by the whole Latin Church—that is, St. Mary Major, St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John Lateran. But most of these are optional memorials, whereas today’s feast not only is obligatory, but outranks a Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Though those writing calendar rubrics rarely leave a complete set of explanatory notes about their decisions, we can suggest two primary reasons for this unusual pre-eminence of a particular church building. First, the proper title of the Lateran Basilica is in fact the Archbasilica of the Most Holy Savior and Saints John the Baptist and John the Evangelist at the Lateran. Quite a mouthful, that—no wonder we shorten the name. But the point is that whereas dedications to both St. Johns were added in the ninth century, the original dedication was to Christ the Redeemer, and so this effect makes the day a feast of Our Lord under that title. Second, the Lateran Basilica has long been considered the “mother” of all the churches of the world. Yes, even more so than St. Peter’s. So we honor this particular building, as Pope Benedict declared at an Angelus address in 2008, as “an expression of love and veneration for the Roman Church, ‘which,’ as St. Ignatius of Antioch affirms, ‘presides in charity’ over the entire Catholic communion.”
What a beautiful gesture for us—especially those of us who have chosen, from much prayer and wrestling, union with the Holy Roman and Apostolic See.
Perhaps we should say something about this particular basilica and why it is so significant. It is probably the oldest building made specifically for public Christian worship in Rome. It was dedicated on this day in the year 324 by Pope Sylvester I. Its construction was thanks to not the pope, but the emperor Constantine, who, when he entered Rome in triumph in 312, wanted to offer some sign and gift to the God of Jesus Christ.
This is not the place to judge the extent of Constantine’s personal faith. Whatever his theology at that point, it seems his conviction that it was this God who gave him victory was firm enough that he refused, on entering the city, to offer the customary sacrifices to the gods. Supposedly the Roman establishment was so scandalized by this sleight that Constantine hid from public view for a while.
The site he chose for a new temple was not in the midst of the city alongside the temples of Jupiter or Vesta or Mars, but to the southeast, just inside the walls, next to the Celian Hill on the site of an old barracks and adjacent to a palace that was part of the dowry of Constantine’s wife, Fausta. Yet a traditional Roman temple was a place for the deity, not for the people, hence unsuited for Christian worship, in which the new sacrifice offered was integrally related to the people offering it and the form of offering. So when the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer was built, Constantine used as a model the Roman basilica, a multipurpose rectangular building designed to hold large numbers of people.
The Lateran Basilica, as it came to be called, was the first such building made as a church. But whereas Roman basilicas were modest structures, this church was built on a grand scale, with opulence and beauty, designed to hold 3,000 people. Though Constantine was careful in not thrusting this too much into the face of the Roman establishment, the symbolism was clear enough: this was a symbol of the triumph of Christianity.
The Lateran Basilica from that point became the seat of the bishops of Rome, the popes. And the palace attached to it came to be their official residence all the way up to the Avignon papacy in 1309. The original basilica was destroyed by earthquake in the ninth century and rebuilt; it was destroyed again by fire in the fourteenth century and rebuilt. Later in that same century, it was destroyed by another fire and rebuilt.
Although the popes haven’t lived in the palace since the fourteenth century, the church remains the seat and throne of the bishop of Rome. When Pope Leo took possession of the church and celebrated Mass there for the first time this past spring, he was formally taking up the most tangible aspect of his ministry: the pope leads the universal Church because he leads a particular church with a particular relationship to the universal Church.
There is a concrete, material aspect to the Church that we disregard at our peril. There was something of a modern trend, a moment in history that I think is blessedly now fading away, suggesting that, because ultimately the Church is the people, not a building, the buildings are merely functional and can just as well look like a supermarket or a sports arena as a place of solemnity. This was taking a certain truth and using it as a weapon against other corollary truths. As a comparison, we might remember that the Christian tradition has always insisted on the priority of spiritual things. The state of a person’s soul is ultimately more significant than the state of his body. But this does not mean we can do whatever we want with our bodies, that they are of no significance at all, or that material things are of no significance. We often seem to live, in the twenty-first century, in a constant swinging pendulum between the gnostic extremes of materialism and spiritualism. The fact that many people in this world act as if temporal, bodily things are the only things that matter does not permit us to discard them for some supposedly pure realm of spirit.
“You are God’s building,” St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3. “You are the temple of God.” And so the basilica, in the imagination of the early Roman Church, became a kind of temple of temples, a holy of holies. Rather than something in competition with the ecclesia as people, they saw it as proof and a sign of that reality. How we house Christ’s body tells an important story to the world, and to ourselves, about what we value and how we treat God’s gifts.
The Church’s greatest “treasures” were, and are, God’s people, as St. Lawrence famously told the pagan authorities of Rome less than a century before the construction of the Lateran basilica. All the more reason to consecrate for them a place worthy of that high calling. Again we can see this in Constantine’s architectural decisions in the fourth century. As far back as we can find them, the rites of the dedication of a church building echo the initiatory rites of the faithful themselves: the building is instructed in the faith through a symbolic writing on the ground; it is purified with salt and washed with holy water; it is anointed with holy oil; upon the altar, which is its heart, incense is burned in the fire of charity; and there, at last, it becomes a place of sacrifice, like the human body and soul, where God’s own creation is returned to him in love and where the fire of God’s own love comes down to us to give life and power.
The story of Christ’s cleansing of the temple in John gives an interesting window into the early Church’s understanding of this dynamic. The old Temple was, they knew, soon to become almost irrelevant in view of the temple that was Christ’s own body. Even so, his disciples could look back and recall the words of Scripture: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” If the Temple was of no consequence in comparison with the true temple to come, why was the Lord so consumed with zeal for it?
The simple answer is that zeal for the Lord’s ultimate abode in heaven must take concrete form on earth, even while we know that here we have, in the words of Hebrews, “no lasting city” (13:14), but seek “a city which is to come.” The movement, emphasized over and over again in the great tradition, from visible things to invisible things, rarely means that we must discard the visible things.
The sacraments are the first and most obvious proof of this. We are asked to look beyond the visible form of bread and wine to the truth of the substantial body and blood hidden within, but this vision of faith does not destroy our sight. Our senses are elevated, educated, vivified, clarified. But they remain, because the Lord died not for us to become some sort of gnostic pure spirit, but to become human beings fully alive, body and soul, shining with the glory of God. The streams of grace flowing out from the holy temple, like in Ezekiel’s vision, bring new life to all creation. The many tangible and visible things that the tradition gives us, from the historical church of St. John Lateran to this and every parish church, are not merely doorways to some secret spiritual realm; they are engines of our sanctification, vehicles that invite us to peer through the mystical veil not just once, as some paltry symbol that can be discarded, its meaning spent, but over and over again as we move further into the beauty of God.
We are on our way home to heaven. To go there, we must first learn to love the home he gives us here, even while we look through and beyond it to the world to come.

‘St. John Lateran, Pray for Us’

Does the Bible allow for divorce?

<div>My sister’s son—my nephew—had surgery three years ago and identifies as a “transgender woman.” He’s now thirty-two. They’ll be attending another relative’s wedding soon. Should I go to that wedding, since my nephew will be present as “a woman”? Also, I don’t want my grandchildren exposed to this yet. They’re ages eleven, nine, and seven. Thankfully, they are not invited to the wedding, but what about summer? We each have cottages on the same lake. </div><div>In attending this wedding and interacting with your sister and your nephew at the event, you’re not promoting your nephew’s transgender identity. If he were attempting “marriage,” or was having a “coming out” party as “Audrey,” participating in such an event would be morally problematic, because you’d be at least condoning his actions by your participation. 
But that’s not the case. 
Instead, your nephew is going to be one of many guests at another relative’s authentic wedding. 
Boycotting the wedding because of your nephew’s presence would not be a good witness to the couple getting married, or to your nephew and sister. Nor would attending the wedding and shunning both your nephew and your sister. 
Your sister and nephew shouldn’t be shunned, as you correctly have concluded. Our true and ultimate enemies are fallen angels, not mere human beings (see Eph. 6:12). Your nephew is a human person made in God’s image and likeness (Gen. 1:26–27), and so deserves to be loved, as Jesus witnessed in dying on the cross for everyone. Your nephew and your sister are candidates for conversion—and we are all in need of God’s mercy for one reason or another. 
In that light, I’d continue the course you’ve taken. Continue to love your sister and nephew, which you understand necessarily entails <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/the-churchs-position-on-transgenderism-0">not supporting them</a> re: his transgender identity. That gives you a lot of room to talk, and hug, and otherwise convey your love, as he and his mother (your sister) need people like you in their lives. 
Regarding exposing your younger grandchildren to your nephew, that is a prudential matter, and one for which you can provide input to their parents. 
With the permission and cooperation of your grandchildren’s parents, you could help explain to your grandchildren that your nephew is confused, struggling with his identity, and needs to be authentically loved. 
In that regard, if your grandchildren do have interactions with your nephew, I’d monitor the situation with their parents, speaking with your grandchildren afterwards about such interactions, so that your nephew doesn’t try to coerce them into a misguided sympathy about his transgender identity, or at least doesn’t succeed in doing so. I don’t want to presume bad will by your nephew in this regard, but it’s also important not to be naïve. 
In summary, for your direct part, I would encourage you and your spouse to maintain good communication with your sister and your nephew, because, again, they need faithful Catholics like you in their lives, as they might not experience the gospel truth in word and deed from anyone else. 
</div>

How to Love Trans Relatives

Yesterday’s reading at Mass contained that most marvelously pithy saying of John the Baptist from John’s gospel: “I must decrease. He must increase.”
Today we see this play out in Luke’s account of the Lord’s baptism in the Jordan. This is, let’s remember, pretty incredible. People wanted John to be the Christ. If he had said he was the Christ, they would have had no trouble believing him. And John takes that potential power and influence and casually sets it aside.
His humility paves the way for the even greater humility of the true Christ, who himself enters the waters for John to baptize. Our Gospel selection for today doesn’t include some of the dialogue reported elsewhere between John and Jesus, but in a way, it’s predictable. John is confused. He has been talking all this time about the one who is greater than he, whose sandals he is not worthy to untie, who will baptize the world with fire, and this great anointed one approaches him and asks to be baptized like everybody else. Really, Lord, why? I mean, shouldn’t you be baptizing me?
This is part of a large pattern in the Gospels. Perhaps one reason this story appears to us in the immediate context of the Christmas season is that we are conscious of the Son of God’s human vulnerability and humility. This is all headed to the cross, but before that we find Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and declaring that he calls them not slaves, but friends.
At the baptism, Jesus is publicly identified as the Son of the Father, and this identity is witnessed by the Spirit in the form of a dove. Various heretics in the early centuries, grouped together under the loose label adoptionism, saw this as a moment when the human person Jesus was somehow elevated to divinity. Church councils repeatedly rejected this theory in the first several centuries, even as the formal articulation of Trinitarian and Christological doctrine developed. But the problem I have with this view of the baptism is that it seems to miss the way it fits in with the whole gospel trajectory. If the baptism necessitates some kind of progression or elevation of Christ, so does virtually every other incident of his life. If it is merely human to submit to baptism, what would it take to submit to crucifixion?
In fact, the Fathers’ reading of this story show how it is precisely Christ’s divinity, in his baptism, that makes the difference. Christ was not baptized so that he might be sanctified in the water and become somehow more divine. He was baptized so that he might sanctify the water.
What does it mean to sanctify or consecrate something? It means to set it apart, to mark it somehow. That is the most fundamental meaning of holiness—including, as a transcendent example, the holiness of God. God is utterly unique; he has no equal, no real comparison. When we are baptized, we are consecrated; we are set apart by what the Letter to Titus calls the “laver of regeneration” and the “renovation of the Holy Ghost.” And water has specifically been set apart for this purpose.
But think about this: when we are baptized, is this consecration something ultimately contrary to our nature? True, it is an elevation of our nature, yet it is an elevation that was always intended—our nature was, from the beginning, oriented toward supernatural fellowship with God. And so it is not so much that baptism changes us—though from the perspective of sin, it certainly does that—but that it restores and reanimates what we truly are.
We can apply that to other kinds of consecrations. When we bless water for baptism, we aren’t adding something to water; we are in a way reminding water of its true purpose, which is the life of God. When Jesus entered the waters of the Jordan, he wasn’t somehow invading nature with a foreign substance. He was meeting his own creation face to face and saying, “Remember me?”
There is a liturgical and sacramental shape to creation. When we celebrate the Mass, part of the miracle is not so much to realize that bread and wine can become body and blood, but to realize that so much of the time, they do not do so even though they could. Think of it as pulling back the curtain and showing the true purpose of all time and space—which is to say that it is the time and the place for fellowship with God. This is why we have—in the normal sense—sacred times and sacred places: to heighten our senses and our intellectual contemplation of the fact that God has entered all times and all places to the end of bringing all things into the light of his glory.
Today, as we remember the Lord’s baptism, remember also the hope that it contains—the hope that all things can and will be restored to God’s goodness. In our own baptisms, we were restored to who we are, but it is only in holding fast to our communion with Christ that we can remain who we are. We can say, with John the Baptist, I must decrease; he must increase.
Another way of putting it is this: if I am only myself alone, I am not even that. I can find who I am only in the voice of the one who calls me beloved, who knew me even before I knew myself, and who will call me again to himself in the last day. Amen.

Jesus Greets the Water

Is the Eucharist idolatry?

One of the most dangerous things that we can get wrong in Catholic theology is what the Church means by invincible ignorance. The Catechism reaffirms the traditional teaching that “outside the Church there is no salvation” and then explains that “this affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church,” quoting the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium 16) that “those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience—those too may achieve eternal salvation” (847). This ignorance—“through no fault of their own”—is what the Catechism means by invincible ignorance.
Understood properly, this is what Catholics have always believed, and what Scripture plainly teaches. But it’s possible to misunderstand the teaching in two serious (and dangerous) ways.
First, let’s consider what this teaching does mean. In short, it means that we’ll be judged based on what we knew (or should have known), not for what we didn’t have the power to know. Jesus gives the standard that “every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required; and of him to whom men commit much they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48). God gives some people more helps than others, but he also expects more of those people. In the parable of the talents, the Master (clearly representing God) “called his servants and entrusted to them his property; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability” (Matt. 25:14-15).
In his commentary on the parable, the Lutheran scholar <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Parables_of_Jesus/P2UvmRVLF18C?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;pg=PA274&amp;printsec=frontcover">Arland Hultgren points out</a> that “the sums distributed to the three slaves are enormous,” since a single talent was worth 6,000 denarii (a denarius being the standard daily wage for a laborer), or about sixteen years’ worth of salary. In other words, there is no one whom the Master leaves empty-handed or ill equipped. There are only those to whom “much is given” and those who to whom even more is given. When it comes to divine assistance, no one is poor: there are only the rich and the super-rich. Everyone has at least natural law and conscience, as St. Paul points out (Rom. 2:13-16):
<blockquote>For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.</blockquote>
The first error, then, is thinking people are more ignorant than they are: imagining that there are people out there living in some sort of state of blissful ignorance, unaware of the moral law or the demands of conscience, and that this ignorance is a sort of “Go Straight to Heaven” card. Outside those with severe mental impairments, that’s a terrible misunderstanding of what Scripture and experience teach about those who have never heard of Christianity. Instead, we find people trying to make it through life with only conscience and natural law, without the aids of divine revelation or the saving waters of baptism or sacramental confession or any of the other tools Jesus gives us to aid us in our journey. The truth is, the gospel really is good news, capable of saving non-believers (not endangering their salvation), which is why Christ commands that we “make disciples of all nations” while “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20).
But the second error is thinking people are less ignorant than they really are: that invincible ignorance means only those who lack information. The biblical evidence paints a different picture. Jesus, on the cross, cries out, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Reading that, we might think of <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/speeches-african-american-history/1965-malcolm-x-speech-ford-auditorium/">Malcolm X</a> mocking the nonviolent approach of many in the Civil Rights Movement: “You sit there when they’re putting the rope around your neck saying, ‘Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do.’ As long as they’ve been doing it, they’re experts at it, they know what they’re doing!” Likewise, how can Jesus say “they know not what they do”? Who knew crucifixion better than the Romans, and who knew theology better than the high priest and scribes and Pharisees? Yet St. Peter says the same thing, telling the “men of Israel” that they “denied the holy and righteous one, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and killed the author of life,” but that “I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers” (Acts 3:12-17).
It’s easy to think of “ignorance” as those who have literally never heard the gospel. But the people the Bible is calling ignorant did hear. Jesus reminds those who arrested him about how “day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me” (Matt. 26:55). They had been closely watching and listening to him. We hear throughout the Gospels about how “the Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven, to test him” (Mark 8:11), and how “the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him” (Luke 6:7), and how they debated among themselves what to do about him by saying, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on thus, every one will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation” (John 11:47-48).
When we talk about those in “ignorance” about the gospel, we might imagine someone on a desert island who’s never heard of Jesus Christ. The scribes and Pharisees were nearly the opposite, yet somehow both Jesus and Peter can say they acted in ignorance.
Instead of lacking information, it’s probably better to think of invincible ignorance with regard to understanding. Think about it this way. In the fourteenth century, the election of Pope Urban VI was disputed, meaning that two different men (Urban and Antipope Clement VII) both credibly claimed to be the pope. As the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/pope-urban-vi">Catholic Encyclopedia</a> notes, “the saints themselves were divided: St Catherine of Siena, St. Catherine of Sweden, Bl. Peter of Aragon, Bl. Ursulina of Parma, Philippe d’Alencon, and Gerard de Groote were in the camp of Urban; St. Vincent Ferrer, Bl. Peter of Luxemburg, and St. Colette belonged to the party of Clement.” Both the saints who chose correctly and those who chose incorrectly possessed the same information (the basic facts were known to all), but some of them understood that information, while others, through no apparent fault of their own, misunderstood.
A Catholic who knew that Urban was the true pope and refused to submit to him would be sinning gravely and endangering his own salvation. But both these fourteenth-century saints, and the first-century Jewish leaders demonstrate that there is such a thing as an ignorance of understanding, even among those who have all the right information.
In the last analysis, the question of which people are and aren’t “ignorant” (and which types of ignorance really are “through no fault of their own”) is known to God alone. I’m reminded of the Seal of the President of the United States, which has an eagle on it with olive branches (representing peace) in one talon and arrows (representing war) in the other. We hope for the best but prepare for the worst. We have been shown enough to know that we need to share the good news widely, and that we need to entrust others (including especially those who seem to knowingly reject the Faith!) to the justice and the mercy of the God who knows their heart.

The Truth About Invincible Ignorance

Detailed instructions about the celebration of Mass are given by the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ordinamento-messale_en.html">General Instruction of the Roman Missal</a>, in addition to the texts and rubrics (set actions) of the rites themselves, and this has the force of (liturgical) law. Some liturgical issues are also covered the Code of Canon Law.
Pope John Paul II was extremely worried by the issue of liturgical abuses. So he added to the above resources <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_dw80id.htm">Inaestimabile Donum</a> (1980), <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/laity/documents/rc_con_interdic_doc_15081997_en.html">On Certain Questions</a> Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Laity in the Sacred Ministry of the Priest (1997), and <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20040423_redemptionis-sacramentum_en.html">Redemptionis Sacramentum</a> (2004).
It is sometimes said that John Paul <a href="https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/how-john-paul-ii-restored-liturgical-sanity">restored order</a> to the liturgy, and certainly some of the wilder liturgical abuses of the 1970s, such as the use of invalid, homemade cookies for consecration in Mass, did come to an end. However, on many issues, law and practice were reconciled by changes to the law, not changes to practice.
For example, the first rules allowing the distribution of the precious blood alongside the host to the faithful at Mass specified that it should be for small, homogenous groups, and only for “particular” occasions (Sacramentali Communioni [1970]). Nevertheless, the bishops of the USA were permitted to allow it on Sundays in 1984, and restrictions on it become rather vague in later documents.
The same story can be told about the use of females to serve the altar and the reception of Holy Communion <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-ancient-is-communion-in-the-hand">in the hand</a>. On still others, practice contrary to the official rules is so widespread that Catholics could be forgiven for regarding it as normal. Examples would be the routine use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, the priest leaving the sanctuary to take part in the Sign of Peace, the saying of the Lavabo prayer aloud, and lay people cleansing the sacred vessels after Holy Communion.
The situation is unsatisfactory, to say the least. John Paul’s documents condemn laxity on liturgical law in the strongest terms, but ultimately, they failed to curb it. Their failure was symbolized by Pope Francis washing the feet of a non-Catholic woman on Holy Thursday in 2013. The law was not changed to allow the washing of women’s feet until 2016, and the <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/archbishop-roche-popes-foot-washing-change-is-a-return-to-tradition">new rule</a> still excludes non-Christians from the rite. Pope Francis was certainly making a telling, symbolic, point: the battle over liturgical law is over, and the legalists have lost.
There is clearly no point in doing what some did under Pope John Paul: to insist on adherence to liturgical law just because it is liturgical law. If bishops, seminary rectors, parish priests, or laity are going to argue for closer adherence to the law, they need better arguments than that. Naturally, the Holy See had reasons for all of its legislation, but some of these reasons are stronger than others.
The most powerful reason for a liturgical law is to ensure the validity of the sacraments. Such matters are, in fact, still widely taken very seriously: the Arizona priest, for example, who used an invalid formula for baptism <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/02/15/1080829813/priest-resigns-baptisms">rightly resigned</a> from his position, though it is regrettable that he was not stopped for a quarter of a century. Ministers of the sacraments must not change sacramental formulas or accompanying actions (pouring water, laying on of hands, etc.); the faithful have a right not only to valid sacraments, but to complete confidence in their validity.
At the other end of the scale, reasons for liturgical laws can be much weaker. In 1955, the Holy See decided to tweak the symbolism of the Holy Thursday Mandatum (the washing of feet) away from the idea of serving the poor and toward the service of Christ to his apostles. Pope Francis has <a href="http://www.lmschairman.org/2016/01/is-pope-francis-restoring-tradition-in.html">tweaked it back</a> again. A lot of liturgical laws are like this, and we should not allow disputes about them to disturb our own worship of God.
Then there are intermediate cases, where liturgical abuses can rise to the level of sacrilege: the wrongful treatment of holy things. <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/on-pets-as-family-members">A dog</a> receiving Holy Communion, for example, does not endanger the validity of the sacrament for others, but is an objective, grave offense on the part of whoever allows it, causes serious and justified upset to onlookers, and potentially undermines the doctrine of the Real Presence.
It’s not clear if this has ever happened: internet references to it usually turn out to refer to Episcopalian services. But short of this obvious outrage, there are practices that of their nature conflict with the teaching of the Church—not only on the Real Presence, but on the priesthood.
Readers will be able to think of many examples of inappropriately casual treatment of the Blessed Sacrament. Ask the question: is this what we would do if we really believed that the host and the precious blood contained the body and blood, soul and divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, our God and Savior? Many historic liturgical practices serve to emphasize this reality; their abandonment does the opposite, effectively contradicting it.
To give just one example, consider the practice of “self-intinction”: when someone receiving Holy Communion carries the host to where the chalice is being offered and dips it into the precious blood before consuming it. I hope most readers can see that lay people should not be wandering around carrying a consecrated host in their fingers, nor should spillage of the precious blood be risked in this way. Once we start thinking on these lines, we can take a view on the importance of the “act of reverence” called for, but often not given, before receiving Holy Communion—the manner of receiving Holy Communion, the use of lay people to distribute Holy Communion, the use of pottery or glass sacred vessels, and so on. What confirms and what undermines the doctrine of the Real Presence?
An example of a practice that undermines the Church’s teaching on the priesthood is the saying of the words of consecration by members of the congregation along with the priest. Those who promote this practice, if not necessarily all those who do it, must intend to minimize the role of the priest and to conflate it with the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/ddp/the-priesthood-of-all-believers">quite different priesthood</a> of the baptized.
If we recognize why this practice is problematic, we should be able to extend the principle to other issues: the way the celebrant can appear to be surrounded by lay people at the altar; a priest’s failure to wear proper vestments; and lay people taking on all kinds of priestly liturgical roles, from preaching at Mass to putting the Blessed Sacrament back in the tabernacle after Holy Communion. Everything that blurs the distinction between the priest, and his role, and the laity, and theirs, undermines in a practical way the Church’s teaching that a priest is not merely a convenient representative of the community, but someone able to act as Christ in Mass and in the sacrament of penance (confession), due to the ontological change made to him by the sacrament of holy orders.
Without creating pointless conflict, the Church’s more fundamental liturgical principles remain things priests and people should keep in mind, to keep the Faith clear to themselves and others.

Watch Out for Liturgical Abuses

Though a saint of the Catholic Church, Father Junipero Serra remains a figure of contempt in some circles because of his association with Spanish Colonialism in California. Who was the man? And what was his role in the vast narrative of the colonial era? Our guest Robert Senkewicz is co-author, with his wife Rose Marie Beebe, of the acclaimed book Junípero Serra: California, Indians, and the Transformation of a Missionary.

Serra in Context

Tim Staples delves into the complex theological concept of the kenosis, the self-emptying of Jesus Christ. The discussion explores whether Jesus withheld divine attributes during His earthly life and how the hypostatic union between His divine and human natures impacted His experience.
Transcript:
Is there any evidence for Jesus withholding divine attributes?
Right. Okay. It&#8217;s not that He withholds divine attributes.
It would be more proper to say, because of course, when you&#8217;re talking about Jesus in His divine personhood, He possesses all the divine attributes in full, because He&#8217;s God. The divine nature, as well as the three divine persons, cannot. It is impossible for a divine person to somehow deny the divine attributes. That&#8217;s metaphysically absurd, because they all three, of course, are the one God and possess all the, depending upon how you number them, the 14 or 15 divine attributes. Absolutely. All right. But what we are talking about in Jesus Christ, and here we go again. We&#8217;re talking about the kenosis once again. It&#8217;s in Christ&#8217;s humanity where the second person of blessed Trinity chose to humble himself. Let me think about that. That&#8217;s infinite humiliation of God, right? In the Incarnation,
in His humanity,
He withholds from what is His right, and that is the divine glory. You see, from the instant that Christ was conceived,
He merited by nature infinitely, right? From the first human act that He performed, He merited infinitely, and He continues to merit in every act, all the way up to and through the crucifixion of our blessed Lord, right? How can He merit infinite all the time? He can because of the hypostatic union, because everything that the human nature does must be understood to have as its subject the divine person. That&#8217;s what makes it infinitely propitiatory for our salvation. But He, the second person of blessed Trinity, chose to empty himself. Why?
Because if He accepted in His human nature the full reward of even His first action, guess what? He would be glorified. He would have the gifts of impassibility and subtility and agility and glory. All of that would be fully manifested in His human nature, and so therefore He wouldn&#8217;t be able to suffer. He wouldn&#8217;t be able to die, and so forth. And so He empties Himself of that which, you know,
Catholic theologians refer to it as His divine glory. But I think when they use that language, sometimes people get confused to think somehow He emptied Himself of His divinity. And that is heresy, okay? He can&#8217;t empty Himself of His divine nature. That&#8217;s metaphysically absurd. But what He could do is not&#8230; Here, the second person of blessed Trinity doesn&#8217;t permit the fullness of the glory that He has a right to, because He merited it, to be manifest. Why? So He could suffer and die for our sins, my friend. And you know, Cy and I were talking during the break of how if you look at Matthew 17 verses 1 through 3 in Luke&#8217;s version, in Luke chapter 17 verses 31 through about 35 there, and the transfiguration, what happens? He&#8217;s transfigured before Peter, James, and John. What is He doing? He&#8217;s manifesting what is His right, the fullness of the glory that awaits not only Him, but all of us. Amen. If we are faithful unto death, we will be glorified together with Him, says Paul in Romans chapter 8 verse 17.
We will be glorified together with Him if we suffer with Him in order to get there, right Cy? Well, Jesus, because He had it by right, He could manifest it anytime He wanted to, and He did. He gave them. Peter talks about this in 2 Peter chapter 1. Peter talks about how they saw His glory, and they&#8217;re talking about the transfiguration. Okay, so the point is, though, that Jesus, at every moment, He chose. This is why Jesus said, &#8220;Don&#8217;t you know I could snap my&#8230;&#8221; He didn&#8217;t say, &#8220;Snap my fingers.&#8221; I could call my Heavenly Father, and He would send a legion of angels and rescue me. But how would the Scriptures be fulfilled, right? In fact, He didn&#8217;t even need to call on the angels. He could do it Himself, you know. Jesus could, right? But what? He says, &#8220;How would the Scriptures be fulfilled?&#8221; Every instant. This is an important point to remember here.
When Jesus said in John chapter 10 verse 18, one of the most beautiful Johannine verses anywhere, &#8220;Think not that you take my life. I give it.&#8221; Right? &#8220;I give it as a ransom for many.&#8221; &#8220;I give it.&#8221; Why? Because nobody takes his life. He gives it. He could stop the whole carousel anytime he wants to. But there&#8217;s only one thing that keeps him on the cross, and that&#8217;s love.
The free choice of Him to continue to empty Himself for our salvation.

Did Jesus Christ Abandon His Divinity on Earth?

Why Dilexi Te is an Awesome Document

We know that pornography is a sin, but the word pornography has not always been seen as easy to define. The United States Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart in the court case Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) struggled to give a good definition, famously <a href="https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/potter-stewart/">saying</a>, “I know it when I see it.” Yet it is worthwhile to have as clear a sense as possible of what the word means, and also what actions constitute sin. This is essential for us to be able to avoid it in the first place.
Pornography is ultimately a means to lust, the disordered desire for sexual pleasure apart from its procreative and unitive ends (CCC 2351). Lust both fuels the existence of pornography and is fueled within the person by pornography.
Let us examine the definition of pornography in a few ways.
First, etymologically, pornography can be broken down into porne (or porneia) and graphe. Porne refers to prostitutes, but porneia also is associated with sexual immorality more broadly. Graphe can be translated into writing or depicting. So, etymologically, it is the depiction of prostitution or sexual immorality. This is fitting, because pornography is essentially prostitution mediated by the internet, movies, magazines, etc.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines pornography similarly. It states the following:
<blockquote>Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials (2354).</blockquote>
The definition of pornography according to the Catechism can be simplified as “the deliberate display of real or simulated sexual acts to third parties.” Sources such as Fr. John Hardon’s <a href="https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=35655&amp;randomterm=false">Catholic Dictionary</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHe9RMDLB54">Matt Fradd</a> elaborate that pornography is “intended to stimulate arousal or has that effect.”
<h2>What the Catechism Does Not Say</h2>
An examination of the objective definition of pornography reveals some interesting and countercultural points, especially in what it does not say. Several elements that are culturally associated with pornography are omitted from this definition given to us by the Church. For example, the definition does not say that the displayed sexual acts count as pornography only if the people are naked. Second, there is no distinction made about the medium. We may be tempted to believe that only movies or videos from websites that are explicitly labeled as pornographic are problematic. However, plenty of mainstream movies contain scenes that consist of “real or simulated sexual acts.” Therefore, even if the scenes do not take place in movies considered pornographic, the scenes are nonetheless themselves pornographic. Further, the definition does not limit the medium to only that which is visual or even that which is real. While the Catechism’s chosen word, “display” may seem to imply only the visual (videos and pictures), the core meaning is the depiction of sexual acts, and sexual acts can be depicted through means that are animated. They can also be depicted through audio only. They can even be depicted in ways that are intended to arouse through writing, which is what happens in erotic literature.
<h2>Even Erotic Literature?</h2>
While a whole separate article could be written about whether erotic literature really counts as pornography, and plenty of articles have been written on this topic, I will give a few short reasons why I would assert that it does count as pornography. First, when we looked at the etymology earlier in the article, graphe can refer to writing. Second, writing explicit descriptions of sexual acts is undoubtedly a deliberate display, and the whole industry of erotic literature exists to be source of romantic and sexual enjoyment. These sexual feelings are sought out and received by the reader from a source other than one’s spouse. Further, erotic literature does what the Catechism says, all pornography does. “It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world.” For these reasons, I contend erotic literature counts as pornography.
<h2>The Heart of the Matter</h2>
When all of the above is taken into account, our working definition of pornography can be “the deliberate display or depiction of real or simulated sexual acts to third parties which are intended to arouse the viewer or has that effect”. There are some omissions in the Church’s definition of pornography that a person who wants to know what how much he can “get away with” could fool himself into capitalizing on. The primary element here is the reference to depicting sexual acts. One could argue that a picture of a naked woman, or of a woman in a swimsuit, is not a display of a sexual act, and it is therefore is not pornography.
By the definition in the Catechism, this is technically true. This is one reason why it is possible to have nude art that is not pornographic, such as that present in the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/porn-and-nude-art-whats-the-difference">Sistine Chapel at the Vatican</a>. However, this is where we have to be brutally honest and dig to the core of the teaching, and also to the core of what God commands of us.
As stated earlier, pornography was created from the lust of the hearts of sinful fallen humanity. In itself, it fuels lust. However, in the two-thousand-year history of the Church, pornographic movies and internet videos have only just arrived on the scene. Jesus himself, over two thousand years ago, in a world without the advanced visual technology we have, stated that “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). Humans have engaged in lust for far longer than we have had access to the pornographic material of today.
This is the heart of the matter, and it leaves no room for one who wants to get away with as much as he can. This is why, when my Covenant Eyes colleague Sam Black <a href="https://www.thehealingchurch.com/">was asked on stage</a> at an event, “What is considered porn?”, he gave this answer:
<blockquote>What causes your heart to look with lustful intent? What causes your heart to treat another as a sexual object? What do you store in your memory for masturbation fantasies? Not just the object, or image, or video itself, but also consider the lust that comes from seeking to use these things for sexual gratification. Do you not know that you are defiled by what comes out of your heart? That is porn. That is porn to you (17).</blockquote>
<h2>Do Not Just Avoid Pornography—Pursue Holiness</h2>
Let us do a quick review. Pornography is the deliberate display or depiction of sexual acts to third parties which are intended to arouse the viewer or has that effect. This is all-inclusive of pornographic videos, sex scenes in movies, pictures of sexual acts, erotic literature, and other means of depicting such acts. Lust is disordered desire for or inordinate enjoyment of sexual pleasure, which is sought for itself apart from its procreative and unitive purposes. While a picture of a woman naked or in a bathing suit might not fit our definition of pornography since no sexual act is depicted, when looked at for the sake of sexual enjoyment they become a means of lust, and therefore serves the same purpose as pornography. This means that a follower of Christ cannot settle merely to ask the question, “does this count as pornography?” but he must ask himself the primary question: “is this virtuous or is this sinful?” Answering this question involves knowing the teaching of the church. It also involves a person taking himself into account, including his temptations, struggles, previous choices, and even fetishes. The human person is hardwired for sexual pleasure, and any explicit depiction of sex with real people is almost inevitably going to evoke arousal in its viewers. The same could be said for anyone viewing pictures of swimsuit models online or in magazines. Further, when anyone being depicted in such a way might be seen but not known, that person’s dignity is violated. That is why Pope St. John Paul II said that pornography shows not too much, but rather too little.
At the heart of the question “What can I get away with looking at?”, and at the heart of “Well, this does not even count as pornography,” is the very lust that Jesus condemns. At the heart of getting away with as much as one can is still the desire to use another, even if only a little bit.
Lust, at its core, is wrong because it entails the use of another person or persons for sexual pleasure. Pope St. John Paul II, before he was the pope, in his book Love and Responsibility, said that “the person is a good towards which the only proper and adequate attitude toward a human person is love.” People are never meant to be used; they are meant only to be loved. For a Catholic—and all people, for that matter—the question can never be How much lust can I get away with? Rather, the question that must guide our lives is How much love can I give to God and to others? How we live our lives will be the answer to that question, and that is all we have to give back to God, whose love for us is infinite.

What ‘Counts’ as Pornography?

As a Gen Z Catholic woman, I find it funny when beliefs that secularists labeled “outdated” become increasingly popular in my generation today. One of these beliefs relates to birth control and natural family planning.
Following the release of Humanae Vitae, secularists panned the Church’s view against artificial contraception as “outdated and incomplete.”  With the development of the birth control pill, women were able to more effectively space out the number of children they had or even avoid having children altogether. This newfound agency over their reproductive systems gave women a sense of empowerment: women could go to work full-time or pursue whatever opportunity they wanted without having to leave due to pregnancy or children.
One of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1nqbnt">first advertisements</a> for the Pill tapped into this exact sensation: “From the beginning woman has been a vassal to the temporal demands . . . of the cyclic mechanism of her reproductive system. Now to a degree heretofore unknown, she is permitted normalization . . . of cyclic function” (132). Women are depicted as slaves to their reproductive systems, so the promise of regulating reproduction gave women hope that they could be more detached from it and, frankly, more like men.
But this newfound “hope” and “freedom” felt by Catholic women on the Pill was squashed in 1968 by the words of Pope Paul VI: “The Church . . . condemns as always unlawful the use of means which directly prevent conception, even when the reasons given for the latter practice may appear to be upright and serious” (<a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html">Humanae Vitae 16</a>). Critics viewed this teaching as the Church placing restrictions on what a woman could or could not do with her body and derided it as oppressive. After all, the feminists sneer, “what do celibate clergymen know about reproduction and a woman’s body?”
Furthermore, what’s really the big deal with taking the birth control pill? After all, the argument goes, is it really so different from practicing NFP? Both have the same goal in mind but just achieve it in different ways.
Without addressing that question directly (which is done <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/contraceptions-dark-fruits">here</a>), I want to respond that many Gen Z secularists are realizing that the birth control pill really is a big deal. <a href="https://www.news-medical.net/news/20250113/Study-reveals-decline-in-hormonal-contraceptive-use-and-increase-in-fertility-awareness-methods.aspx">One recent study</a> reveals that between 2018 and 2023, there was a decline in the number of women on artificial contraceptives and a nearly sixfold increase in the number of women practicing fertility awareness to avoid conception. With more research revealing an increased risk of <a href="https://www.cancer.org.au/about-us/policy-and-advocacy/treatment-care/medicines-devices/combined-oral-contraceptives-and-cancer-risk">cancer</a>, <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/35039562/common-medication-pill-contraception-stroke">stroke</a>, and <a href="https://www.factsaboutfertility.org/oral-contraceptives-and-risk-of-depression-a-review-of-research">depression</a> associated with oral contraceptive usage, it is understandable why more and more women have shied away from artificial contraceptives and have opted for more natural means to avoid pregnancy.
The advocacy for women to track their cycles naturally and practice NFP is also ever-increasing across <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT62HHscK/">social media pages</a>. Since modern technology has given women the ability to more easily track their cycles (such as cycle tracking apps and the new Oura ring), Gen Z women have even greater opportunities to understand and track their fertility compared to women in previous generations.
Ironically, this same ability now is more in tune with “female empowerment” <a href="https://drtanyakelloway.com/blog/empowering-yourself-through-understanding-your-menstrual-cycle">online</a>. Feminists who once received Pope Paul VI’s words as restrictive and oppressive now find this knowledge empowering. It seems a deeper, more holistic understanding of their bodies allows women to be feel more informed and, in turn, contributes to a stronger sense of agency. Instead of having to rely on doctors or medication, women can just rely on their own understanding and knowledge to regulate their pregnancies.
This attraction to real freedom is not surprising, considering that it is God’s desire for us to be most free, and this can be attained only when a holistic understanding of the human person is found. This understanding is not a threat to the Church, nor is it unscientific. In fact, it is through the Church that we understand the extent of the dignity and agency owed to the human person.
This is exactly what Paul VI desired to promote throughout Humanae Vitae. Instead of placing arbitrary restrictions on what a woman can or cannot do (which is how feminists can interpret it), Paul VI outlines what healthy boundaries look like in a flourishing, Christ-centered marriage. One of these boundaries includes preventing the objectification of wives by their husbands, which the usage of artificial contraceptives can reinforce, since “a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman” and thus may “reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection” (<a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae.html">Humanae Vitae 17</a>).
Nobody perceives guardrails on balconies as restrictions unjustly placed on tenants, diminishing their freedom. Instead, they’re looked at as reasonable safety measures. This same mindset should be had for boundaries put in place within marriage, which is a sacred institution created by God. Being the “sanctuary of life” and foundation of society, how much more safety and protection should it be given? (<a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_01051991_centesimus-annus.html">Centesimus Annus 39</a>). The safe is not for replaceable items, but rather for priceless valuables. That is how the Church views the sacrament of holy matrimony.
Although many of these secularists are using NFP for sexual acts outside marriage (read <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/may-my-girlfriend-and-i-be-intimate-with-one-another-before-marriage">here</a> for why that is bad), I still consider it a win that more and more people are aligning with a Catholic appreciation for NFP and fertility tracking. Understanding that the Church’s morality is not outdated or arbitrary is huge in a day and age that views objective morals as nonsensical. Who knows what “outdated” Catholic belief will be trending online next?

How the Outdated Became Empowering

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Have you ever tried this method when discussing abortion? It may help!

Can Christians be universalists?

<div>Who wrote the New Testament?</div><div>As with the Old Testament, God is the primary author of the New Testament, and there are various human authors as well (CCC 110-14). Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the human authors of the four Gospels, and St. Paul authored the majority of the other New Testament books.
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