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What is the difference between the Douay–Rheims reims and the traditional Douay–Rheims?

Is it okay to not just pray for the souls in purgatory, but to ask for their intercession?

1 Cor 11 says to not pray with your head covered. So how do we reconcile that with clergy praying with heads covered (mitres, cardinals hats, berettas, etc) during Mass?

Should we offer Masses for the recently deceased leader of Iran and his party?

How does one pray to saints? Also, The Bible records Jesus’ words of prayer in the agony in the garden, but how do we know what he said if nobody was there to witness and report it?

How often can one make a general confession?

Can you help me understand this controversy of interpreting the bible as saying we are either “declared” righteous or “made” righteous?

I feel like God’s love and mercy has already washed my sins away even though I haven’t been to confession yet. What’s the deal with that?

&#8220;Is there a scriptural basis for St. Joseph&#8217;s Assumption?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the biblical foundations of St. Joseph&#8217;s bodily assumption into Heaven. Other topics include the differences between the Douay–Rheims versions, the appropriateness of praying for intercession from souls in purgatory, and the practice of clergy praying with covered heads during Mass.
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Is There a Scriptural Basis for the Theory of St. Joseph’s Assumption?

In this episode, Trent examines how some atheists falsely indict the Bible as evil or illogical because they didn’t read the text carefully.
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Transcript:
Intro:
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone, welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I&#8217;m your host, Catholic Answers apologist, Trent Horn.
In today&#8217;s episode, I want to go through three examples of Bible difficulties that are only difficult because the atheists who are reading them haven&#8217;t really read the biblical text carefully and are making some unfounded assumptions, so let&#8217;s jump right into that. Before we do though, I&#8217;m sure you can carefully read the subscribe and the like buttons on our channel. If you could hit those, it would be a huge help for me. We just passed 70,000 subscribers for the channel, and if we can make it to a hundred thousand by the end of the year, I&#8217;d be really grateful.
All right, with that said, let&#8217;s jump right into it. Here&#8217;s the first one. Number one, the all-powerful God can&#8217;t defeat iron chariots. This one pops up a lot in memes on the internet. There was even an atheistic apologetics website devoted to defending atheism called Iron Chariots, though it&#8217;s now defunct I think. Here&#8217;s a clip of Dan Barker, an atheist I&#8217;ve debated twice making this objection in a debate with the Christian apologist Kyle Butt.
Dan Barker:
Is he powerful? &#8220;Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh,&#8221; in Jeremiah 32. &#8220;Is there anything too hard for me? Jesus said, &#8216;With God, all things are possible,'&#8221; and yet in Judges 1:19, read this, &#8220;The Lord was with Judah. He drove out the inhabitants of the mountain, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley.&#8221; Why? Because they had chariots of iron. God is all powerful? God cannot even fight chariots of iron. God does not exist.
Trent Horn:
All right, so what&#8217;s going on in this passage? This part of the Book of Judges describes the Israelites attempting to drive the remaining Canaanites out of the Promised Land. It says, &#8220;The Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.&#8221;
The assumption here is God couldn&#8217;t drive out the chariots, but it doesn&#8217;t make sense to say God was incapable of doing that because, in Judges 4:15, it describes how God routed the Canaanite commander Sisera, and he had 900 iron chariots. It&#8217;s in the same book. The pronoun he in this verse, in Judges 1:19, refers to the nearest proper noun, the Tribe of Judah. It was Judah who took possession of the hill country, but was unable to secure the plains, not God.
This is similar to Genesis 39:2 which says, &#8220;The Lord was with Joseph, and he,&#8221; Joseph, &#8220;became a successful man, and he was in the house of his master, the Egyptian.&#8221; It&#8217;s true, the Lord was with Judah, but that doesn&#8217;t mean everything the Tribe of Judah did would be successful. The Lord was with Joseph in Genesis 39, but Joseph was still in prison. The phrase only means that God did not abandon the Tribe of Judah during their failure to capture that valley. The failure was Judah&#8217;s fault, not God&#8217;s.
According to James Jordan&#8217;s commentary on the book of Judges, he says this. &#8220;Chariots could not function in the hills, so Judah did not have to fight them there. Where the iron chariots could function, however, Judah did not succeed. As Judges 4 and 5 will show, God is fully capable of dealing with iron chariots. Thus, the problem was not the iron chariots. The problem was faith, or rather the lack of it.&#8221;
Other biblical commentaries reach a similar conclusion, so why was Judah unable to drive the people from the plains? Not because the Philistines had iron chariots, but because of spiritual factors that will be explained later in Judges 2. This is the Harris, Brown and Moore commentary on Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.
Likewise, Victor Hamilton in his book, Handbook on the Historical Books, says, &#8220;The Judahites failed to take an area that was far beyond their own borders, hardly a damning indictment.&#8221; Ultimately, the Book of Judges reveals that God keeps His promises to us even when we break our promises to Him. That&#8217;s why in the next chapter in Judges, after the defeat of the other Israeli tribes, God says, &#8220;You have not obeyed my command. What is this you have done? So now I say I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become adversaries to you.&#8221; For a more in-depth take on this verse, check out Inspiring Philosophy&#8217;s recent video on the passage that I&#8217;ll link to in the description below.
All right, number two, the Bible describes how to perform an abortion. I see this one everywhere on the internet, and I actually covered it in a recent conversation with Cy Kellett about Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks which you can check out on the link below, but it comes up so often, I felt it was worth visiting again. Here&#8217;s Cenk making this particular objection.
Cenk Uygur:
If you&#8217;ve gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband, here the priest is to put the women under this curse. May the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell. May this water that brings a curse into your body so that your abdomen swells or your womb miscarries. It is clear as day. There is no question about it. If you don&#8217;t believe me, just go read the Bible. It is pro-abortion. It&#8217;s not even pro-choice. It&#8217;s pro-abortion. It says, &#8220;If you think your wife has cheated on you, give her a toxic potion and make sure that she has an abortion.&#8221;
Trent Horn:
Numbers 5:11-31 describes a kind of trial by ordeal in the ancient world. It requires a wife suspected of adultery to drink water mixed with dust from the floor of the tabernacle. Pro-choicers claim this will cause the woman to miscarry if she&#8217;s been unfaithful, so this shows how God uses abortion. I do want to note though this test is much more humane than other ancient adultery tests like where a suspected woman is thrown into a river and, if she survives, that proves she&#8217;s innocent, or a good swimmer, I guess, but it&#8217;s unlikely the punishment in Numbers 5 causes the woman to miscarry. The passage never says the woman is pregnant, doesn&#8217;t mention an unborn child, and many acts of adultery don&#8217;t lead to pregnancy. The passage instead says, &#8220;Her body shall swell and her thigh shall fall away, and the woman shall become an execration among her people, but if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be free and shall conceive children.&#8221;
The biblical scholar Bruce Fisk agrees, saying, &#8220;The ritual in Numbers 5 rendered the guilty infertile.&#8221; Sometimes, the English translations like the NIV don&#8217;t get this right either, so it can be helpful to walk people through a Hebrew interlinear text. You can find it online really easily. Just look up Numbers 5:27, Hebrew text, and you can show that it does not mention pregnancy or a child. It just gives the literal translation that I just gave you.
We see the punishment isn&#8217;t miscarriage. It&#8217;s infertility, but even if God did cause a miscarriage, God&#8217;s killing of an unborn child conceived in adultery doesn&#8217;t prove the unborn aren&#8217;t human or that we can kill them. God punished King David&#8217;s disobedience through the death of David&#8217;s newborn son in 2 Samuel 12, but that doesn&#8217;t mean that human infants aren&#8217;t persons or that human beings can commit infanticide. God can take human life. We can&#8217;t.
This also answers a common gotcha question that atheists will ask pro-life Christians. They&#8217;ll say, &#8220;Is the Bible pro-life?&#8221; A lot of times, Christians will say, &#8220;Yeah, of course, the Bible is pro-life,&#8221; and the atheists will say, &#8220;Yeah, but what about all these cases where God kills people in the Bible like Noah&#8217;s flood or the death of the firstborn in Egypt?&#8221; If this happens, you should ask the person what he means by the term pro-life. If he means all killing is wrong, well, the Bible isn&#8217;t pro-life, but neither is almost anybody else. Almost everybody agrees you can kill in self-defense, for example.
Because life is a gift from God, God doesn&#8217;t do anything wrong by only giving people a certain amount of life, but if by pro-life they mean it&#8217;s always wrong for human beings to kill innocent human beings, then, yeah, the Bible is pro-life. We can make that case from scripture. We just have to be careful how we do it. Check out my video in the description below where I respond to a pro-abortion TikTok that makes this objection.
All right, number three, the Bible thinks gang rape is okay. Given that states like Florida are banning obscene books in school libraries, and rightfully so, some secular critics say the Bible should be banned because it contains obscenities. Here&#8217;s how one activist put it in a recent news story.
News Story:
It talks about adultery. It talks about bestiality. It talks about cannibalism. One doesn&#8217;t have to turn very far in the Bible to find something that is just egregious, and I&#8217;m not sure why we teach those lessons to our children.
Trent Horn:
One favorite story these critics like to bring up is the gang rape, murder, dismemberment, and subsequent rape and kidnappings that took place in Judges 19 through 21. You can find it in books like The Brick Bible, which looks like a Lego Bible for kids. It was actually made by an atheist for the purpose of mocking the Bible, so strap yourselves in. This is not a story you will hear on VeggieTales anytime soon.
After the death of Samson, there was no one to lead Israel. Judges 19:1 reminds the reader there was no king in Israel. In other words, there was no central authority to maintain order, so lawlessness was rampant. We&#8217;re then introduced to an unnamed Levite and his concubine. They&#8217;re about to spend the night in the city square of Gibeah. An old man sees them. He takes them into his home because he&#8217;s afraid about what might happen if they spend the night in the city square. However, his fears are soon realized as the men of Gibeah come to his home and they demand to rape the Levite that is staying there. The old man tries to protect his male guest, so he begs the mob to rape either his daughter or the Levite&#8217;s concubine instead, standup guy, right? The men chose the concubine. Verse 25 says, &#8220;They abused her all night. The next morning, the woman was found on the doorstep of the house, and the Levite cut her body into 12 pieces and sent the pieces throughout Israel.&#8221;
To see how awful this was, one atheist website calls this one of the top 20 evil Bible stories. Does this prove the Bible is evil though? No. It just proves the people who lived in Gibeah were evil. God never commanded this behavior, and the text does not approve of what happened. In fact, the entire passage serves as proof that Israel had descended into moral madness during the time of The Judges. Even the Levite&#8217;s actions to dismember the woman to send to the other tribes to send a message shows how far they had fallen.
As bad as this episode was, it even got worse. The leaders of the Tribe of Benjamin where Gibeah was located did not want to hand over the people who killed this woman. This resulted in a war among the tribes that resulted in the death of all but 600 members of Benjamin and, in order to keep the Tribe of Benjamin from going out of existence, the Israelites kidnapped dancing girls from the region of Shiloh for the men of the Tribe of Benjamin to marry, so all very bad.
One atheist website says of this episode, &#8220;These sick people killed and raped an entire town and then wanted more virgins so they hid beside the road to kidnap and rape some more. How can anyone see this as anything but evil?&#8221; John Loftus, the author of Why I Became an Atheist, says, &#8220;Why should we trust the writings of people who saw nothing wrong with this?&#8221; but how do Loftus and other critics like him know that the author of Judges saw nothing wrong with this?
No morally sane person, including the author of Judges, would disagree with Loftus&#8217; assessment that the events described in Judges 19 through 21 are evil. The author of Judges did not think his audience was so inept and stupid that he had to write in block letters what these people did was bad. Instead, the final verse in Judges hauntingly indicts Israel. &#8220;In those days, there was no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes,&#8221; and that&#8217;s the end of the book.
The Bible often records events for the express purpose of not recommending them but to use them as a graphic warning. The Book of Judges in particular is not an instruction book on how we should live our lives. It&#8217;s a warning about what happens when God&#8217;s authority is rejected. Pope Pious XI once put it this way, &#8220;As should be expected in historical and didactic books, the Old Testament books, reflect in many particulars the imperfection, the weakness and sinfulness of man.&#8221;
Well, I hope this was helpful for you all. If you want more resources on how to explain difficult Bible passages to critics, I&#8217;d recommend my book, Hard Sayings, A Catholic Approach to Bible Difficulties published by Catholic Answers Press. Thank you all so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
Outro:
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When Atheists Misread the Bible

We meet Tim Staples in the year 3,000 to ask what has changed in the Church and what has stayed the same? Could there be new sacraments? How much could the ones we have now change? And what will be the Catholic response to technology beyond our current imagination?

The Church in the Year 3000

There was a 1909 Pontifical Conference on Genesis that determined how to interpret creation. How and why has the Church’s stance changed on this since then?

What did Jesus mean “today you’ll be with me in paradise” to the good thief when he descended into hell and didn’t resurrect/ascend for a time after?

How can the Church infallibly determine one’s sainthood?

What does the church say about the apparitions of Mary in Medjugorje? What happened there?

Why are there holy people like St. Paisios of Mount Athos outside the Catholic Church?

Is there one person in mind that God has for us to marry?

How do we respond to the Protestant response that we don’t need an infallible authority to proclaim the canon when it wasn’t done that way historically?

I’m doing the Seven Sorrows Rosary; one of the mysteries is the Flight into Egypt. Can you give me more context about this to help me appreciate it more?

Jimmy Akin answers key Catholic questions on Jesus&#8217; promise of paradise, the Church’s stance on creation, sainthood, Marian apparitions, marriage, and more—offering deep insights rooted in theology and tradition.

Can the Church Infallibly Declare Saints? And More

Joe examines the controversy over &#8220;thoughts and prayers&#8221; between the left and right, and shows through Church teaching what the correct response is in the aftermath of tragedy.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer, and in the aftermath of 19 school children being shot, two of them fatally while they attended a school mass at Enunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. There were outpourings of grief all over. President Trump and Vice President Vance both announced they were monitoring the situation and called for prayers for the victims. But other public figures use this moment to denounce those offering their thoughts and prayers, thoughts
CLIP:
And prayers. That is all they&#8217;re offering. Thoughts and prayers just aren&#8217;t enough here right now. Let our kids were actually praying
Joe:
At the end of the day. Thoughts and prayers have led us to having more of these deaths, more of these shootings
CLIP:
Keep us in your thoughts and prayers, but also keep us in the thoughts for action.
Joe:
There are two ways of understanding those words. One is that they&#8217;re saying enough with the thoughts and prayers because they regard prayer as useless. But the other interpretation hopefully is that they just mean that prayer by itself. It&#8217;s no substitute for the other things we ought to be doing as well. After all, St. John warns that he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen more specifically. If anyone has the world&#8217;s goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him. How does God&#8217;s love abide him? In John&#8217;s words, we&#8217;re called to love, not in word or speech, but indeed and in truth. So if God has placed somebody in your life for you to take care of, it is not enough for you to just say, I&#8217;ll pray for you. St.
James warns us that if you see a brother or sister and need of food and clothing and you respond, go in peace, be warmed and filled, that does nothing. Your faith by itself is dead. It needs works in this case. It needs the works of caring for the people whom God has placed in your life. Failing to do this is literally damnable. As the second Vatican Council warns, you can&#8217;t use heaven as an excuse not to do the things you&#8217;re meant to do here on earth. The Christian who neglects his temporal duties neglects his duties towards his neighbor and even God and jeopardizes his eternal salvation. So it&#8217;s perfectly valid for people to ask whether the President of the United States of America could be doing more to stop mass shootings, for instance, by pushing for better laws, regulating the sales of guns beyond just tweeting about the need for prayer.
Now, on the other hand, legislation can&#8217;t possibly solve this problem entirely. There are currently an estimated 392 million guns in circulation in the United States alone, and nobody has a plausible plan that would effectively keep all of those guns out of the hands of criminals. At a certain point, all of us, even the President, are going to be powerless. And it&#8217;s times like these that remind us that we really do need prayers. In the words of Vice President Vance, we pray because our hearts are broken. We pray because we know God listens. We pray because we know that God works in mysterious ways and can inspire us to further action. Or as Pope be the 16th once reminded us, it&#8217;s in prayer that we draw in new strength from Christ. And so it&#8217;s wrong to accuse people of wasting their time by praying even when situation seems hopeless.
On the contrary, when our human efforts are not enough upon whom else could we possibly depend. So that&#8217;s why there&#8217;s something particularly grotesque about some of the current attempts to minimize or denigrate the power of prayer at a time like this. Now, look, if you don&#8217;t believe in God, I can understand why you might think that responding to a massacre by tweeting about the need for prayer feels like a futile gesture. But it&#8217;s more than a little hypocritical to complain about this while posting your own sad and angry tweets as if your sad tweets are going to solve the problem of gun violence or bring those kids back from the dead. But it&#8217;s not just that it&#8217;s hypocritical, it&#8217;s also just pretty gross to respond to the shooting of praying children by attacking prayer.
CLIP:
M-S-N-B-C host and former Biden Press secretary Janaki echoed Mayor Frey writing on X prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers do not end school shootings. Prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back enough with the thoughts and prayers
Joe:
As the current White House press Secretary reminded her predecessor.
CLIP:
Frankly, I think they&#8217;re incredibly insensitive and disrespectful to the tens of millions of Americans of faith across this country who believe in the power of prayer, who believe that prayer works and who believe that in a time of mourning like this, when beautiful young children were killed while praying in a church, it&#8217;s utterly disrespectful.
Joe:
But rather than distancing themselves from these kind of attacks on prayers, politicians like California&#8217;s Governor Gavin Newsom responded by saying, these children were literally praying as they got shot at the mayor of Minneapolis. Jacob Fry said almost exactly the same thing,
CLIP:
And don&#8217;t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying,
Joe:
Yes, these children were shot while praying by a man who mocked God and mocked the Eucharist writing on one clip. Where is your God using the face of the crucified Christ as target practice and writing on one of his guns? Take this all of you and eat a malevolent force that hates the innocence of children and hates the mass was at work here. And if your response to this is to suggest that this somehow proves prayer doesn&#8217;t work, you just become another voice shouting where is your God at the victims? But beyond being hypocritical and grotesque, it&#8217;s also politically idiotic. I mean, Vance rightly asked, why do you feel the need to attack other people for praying when kids were just killed praying? And he rightly described it as the most bizarre left-wing culture war of the last few years. After all, what is the goal here? Gun control is way more popular than atheism. So how are you helping your popular cause by marrying it to attacks on prayer or on religion? I mean, what do you gain by telling the survivors of this shooting they need to stop praying for their classmates in the hospital?
CLIP:
What do you want to say to everyone that had to go to the hospital?
I hope you&#8217;re okay, and I&#8217;m praying for you.
Joe:
As Christians, we know that prayer is indispensable. St. Alfon leg once warned, those who pray are certainly saved. Those who do not pray are certainly damned. Admittedly, it&#8217;s hard to show this to someone who doesn&#8217;t share the faith, but even if you&#8217;re not a Christian, there should be no denying the evidence that prayer at the very least, is helpful for the person praying. Numerous studies have shown that when people pray, they have better mental functioning control, even better pain tolerance. Now, of course, as Christians, we know that prayer does a lot more than that. As St James said, the prayer of a righteous man has great power and its effects. So prayer helps both us and those for whom we pray. And so it&#8217;s perfectly natural and indeed it is correct for us to respond to tragedies like this by offering our prayers. This is so natural in fact that we now see people saying they&#8217;re sending their thoughts or their vibes. That&#8217;s nonsense, of course, but it&#8217;s showing the void where prayer belongs. In a world that is removed, prayer from public life, thoughts and vibrations demonstrate man&#8217;s an unique desire for prayer in times of tragedy. But our true prayers, our actual prayers can never be divorced from action. Pope Francis reminded us prayer that doesn&#8217;t lead to concrete action toward our brothers is a fruitless and incomplete prayer. And to that end, there might actually be more common ground between say a JD Vance and a Mayor Jacob Fry than their first appears.
CLIP:
Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can&#8217;t you pray for the speedy recovery of these kids who literally just got shot yesterday while at the same time committing to making sure this doesn&#8217;t happen again or that it happens as infrequently as possible?
Joe:
Mayor Free responded to that by saying,
CLIP:
Well, maybe we&#8217;re not really having an argument then and hopefully JD Vance will pass this very necessary legislation that prevents kids from dying in the future. There&#8217;s a principle in Judaism known as Tikkun Olam, which is about healing the world. And essentially the meaning there is prayers are good, but they are not enough. They are a necessity, but they are not in and of themselves adequate. It&#8217;s only adequate if you can attach an action to the work.
Joe:
There are times when things appear from a human perspective hopeless, and all we can do is pray and as Bar is to attack people for praying at moments like these. But there are other times where we can use prayer as sort of an excuse not to do the hard work God is calling us to do. Now, I can&#8217;t promise you which policies would&#8217;ve prevented this or tell you what would ensure. We don&#8217;t have a situation like this one tomorrow, but I can say that in action or indifference, these are not acceptable. It is our duty as Christians, both to fight for those who have died and who will die tomorrow, and also to pray for them. And may the children who have died, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moki stand before God as martyrs for Christ as we wage our battle against the forces of evil. If you want to hear more about the power of prayer and some of the attacks on whether it works, my friend Trent Horn made a video responding to some of those objections and explaining why we believe in it. If you want, you can check that out right here for Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
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Why “Thoughts and Prayers” is Controversial…

In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Joe Heschmeyer to discuss the relationship between God&#8217;s forgiveness and the consequences of sin. Joe explains how while forgiveness is granted through Jesus, the temporal effects of sin still require purification and healing, both in this life and potentially in purgatory.
Transcript:
Caller: How does forgiveness work? When you go into church and you confess one, where does the priest get that authority? And also, anything heinous someone can do, I guess they can ask for forgiveness. And are they just completely cleansed of their sin or, you know, does God still judge them?
Joe Heschmeyer: Wonderful. So just if I can ask a clarifying question. In the scenario you give of somebody who does something heinous, are they truly contrite of the sin and going to God for mercy?
Caller: I suppose let&#8217;s go both ways on that. Let&#8217;s say, yes, someone truly is trying to repent, trying to, you know, rep their life on the right track or as well as they can. And the other case, someone is just going through the motions.
Joe Heschmeyer: Okay, wonderful. So, yeah, first of all, fantastic question. Second, the one who is ultimately wronged by sin is God himself. That every sin is a violation of divine law. Now, we might also hurt other people through sin. In fact, we do hurt other people through every sin. We do. Even sins that feel completely personal, even sins feel completely private, we are still hurting other people, partly just by not becoming the saints were meant to be, partly because we can have a disordered attachment to created things. But first and foremost, sin is an offense against God. And God, as the offended party, is free to forgive, and he&#8217;s free to forgive on the terms that he would like to forgive. And so one of the things that he does is he sends Jesus into the world with the power to forgive sins. And so in Matthew 9, you have Jesus healing the paralyzed man. And before he even heals the man&#8217;s broken body, he says to him, take heart, my son. Your sins are forgiven. That Jesus sees first the spiritual brokenness before he sees even the physical brokenness. And he thinks that is the most important thing to fix. And then, almost as an afterthought, to show that he has the power to forgive sins, he tells him, rise, take up your mat. And God and the crowds rejoice. Because they said, we&#8217;re told, they glorified God who&#8217;d given such authority to men, that this power to forgive sins is coming from the Father to the Son. But then in John 20, on Easter, Jesus breathes on the apostles and tells them, receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained. So he shares the power and authority that he&#8217;s received from the Father with his church. And he talks about this, actually in several different places that all authority from heaven and earth he&#8217;s been given go. Therefore, this is in Matthew 28, beginning in verse 18, the Great Commission. We are sent out with God&#8217;s own authority. And repeatedly elsewhere, he talks about giving his authority to his chosen followers. That doesn&#8217;t mean every individual has it, because you can see right there, he doesn&#8217;t breathe on every Christian. He breathes on the leaders. He breathes on the apostles. So that&#8217;s where this authority to forgive sins comes from. People who say, well, God alone can forgive sins. That&#8217;s the same thing people said when Jesus healed the paralytic. And in one sense, that&#8217;s correct. But God can share that authority as he chooses, and he does share that authority. Now then the other part of the question is, okay, so you&#8217;ve got somebody who does something heinous and they&#8217;re truly contrite for it. Yeah, no sin is bigger than the mercy of God. Now, there was something I said a minute ago that&#8217;s relevant here. Sin has all kinds of consequences. One of those consequences is this breach of my relationship with God. But there are other consequences. I do damage to my own soul. I harm my relationship with created things, I harm my relationship with my neighbor, etc. Etc. Being forgiven by God does not automatically make all of those other offenses or all the other effects of your offense simply go away. So it is possible for you to commit a crime, to be truly contrite, and still have to pay some kind of sentence for your crime. And it would be completely incorrect to say, I shouldn&#8217;t have to pay the consequences for my crime because Jesus died on the cross for me. That Jesus death on the cross is not meant to take away what we call the temporal consequences of sin. What Jesus&#8217;s death on the cross is meant to resolve is that debt that you can&#8217;t pay, namely the debt that you owe to God that you would spend all eternity unable to pay were it not for Jesus being the mediator between God and men. So that&#8217;s the difference. We have these eternal consequences of sin. Jesus handles that. He repairs the broken relationship. But there may be still some areas where we need to be purified and healed. And that&#8217;s the case whether we&#8217;re talking about our relationship with humans who may not trust us now with ourselves, because, you know, you&#8217;ve been doing drugs or eating junk food or getting drunk all the time, and it does something to your body, or just the fact that, like, you have to be prepared to stand in the fullness of the presence of God in glory. And so it&#8217;s not enough that you&#8217;re just forgiven of your sins, you have to actually be freed of all of the attachments, you might have to sin as well. So, yes, no sin is too big to be forgiven, but being forgiven of sins doesn&#8217;t automatically mean that all the consequences of your bad actions go away. That makes sense.
Caller: Yes. That makes actually really good sense. And in terms of those consequences, those are things that you might have to pay. So you die, but also here on earth, right?
Joe Heschmeyer: Yeah. Yeah. So the process of being purified of all of the impurities brought about by sin. So inordinate attachments, damaged relationships, all this stuff, this is all part of this process of purification. This is closely tied to the process of sanctification. Now, ideally, you are completely purified at the moment that you die. And if you&#8217;re not, one of two things is going to happen. Assuming that you die in friendship with God. So you&#8217;re not apart from God. You&#8217;re not destined for hell. You are a friend of God. When you die, you are therefore assured salvation. You can either be supernaturally transformed instantaneously by God. He can do that. He can heal you of all of the addictions and all of the attachments and all of the damage and all of that. He can wipe all that away with the snap of his fingers, as it were. But so often he doesn&#8217;t do that. I mean, I think anyone who&#8217;s ever gone through the process of being purified of an attachment through sin knows God is able to make that journey very easy. But he often permits us to experience what Hebrews calls discipline, because any son acknowledged by his Father is going to receive discipline, that he wants to make you godlike. And a lot of that means being purified. Which is why, for instance, 1 Corinthians 3, St. Paul can talk about those who are saved as through fire, that there is a purifying fire, not the fires of damnation, but a kind of fire of purgation, of purification. And that can happen here on earth. And that can also happen in the place we call purgatory, which is just as this instance of being prepared to stand in the presence of God. But one thing we know for sure from Scripture itself is that nothing impure will ever stand in the full presence of God. The beatific vision will not be enjoyed by those who are in a state of impurity. And so even Christians have to be reminded to be completely purified. As St. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 7, that this is our journey. It&#8217;s not enough to just say, I want to avoid hell. Our call is to become partakers of the divine nature. In the words of St. Peter Our call, in the words of 1 John 3, is to become not only children of God, but to become like God. And so anything we want that&#8217;s less than that, we&#8217;re going to have to be stretched. We&#8217;re going to have to grow so that we&#8217;re prepared for what God has ready for those who love Him.
Cy Kellett: I&#8217;m going to leave it there. Thank you for walking the dog, Ned. If you got time to give us an address, I&#8217;d love to send you Joe&#8217;s book. The Eucharist is really Jesus kind of as a welcome home gift as you come into the Catholic Church. Ned, thanks very much for the.

If I Sin Mortally, Does Confession Let me Skip Purgatory?

As people reject Christianity and other organized religions and check the “agnostic” or “none of the above” or “New Age” box on belief surveys, witchcraft is on a noticeable rise. In 2019, Pam Grossman <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/yes-witches-real-know-because-143015792.html?guccounter=1">declared</a> that “more and more women than ever are choosing the way of the witch, whether literally or symbolically.” Last month, former Disney Channel star Vanessa Hudgens, whom Variety <a href="https://variety.com/2022/film/news/vanessa-hudgens-witchcraft-reality-movie-dead-hot-1235395654/">calls</a> a “self-taught student of witchcraft,” released Dead Hot: Seasons of the Witch to inspire viewers to “open their hearts, minds, and soul.” And there are other examples, including <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/10/28/celtic-festival-samhain-2021-celebration-wicca-witches/6182226001/">hip witchcraft</a> and fears that witchcraft is now <a href="https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/witchcraft-too-mainstream">too mainstream</a>.
What exactly is witchcraft? This folksy spirituality is a branch of neo-paganism, a return to the worship of gods of all stripes and a turning away from what looks or feels like arbitrary, outdated, patriarchal rules, especially in Christianity.
Witches aim to unleash power from within themselves or harness natural or elemental power to achieve certain goals. Womanhood, the modern witch claims, is mighty, and identifying as a witch, whether by performing spells or hexes, keeping crystals on hand, or merely “tapping into” her inner witch, makes her more genuinely “woman,” someone to be in awe of, or perhaps even to fear. She (or these days, it might even be he) probably won’t look like the warty, green-skinned witches on Halloween decorations, but rather a creature who deals in a concept of womanhood that is dark and mysterious, dynamic and glamorous. She is a woman of the world who holds a fascination for the supernatural, seeking meaning for herself through herself.
Do her efforts pay off? There is no definitive yes or no, and certainly, the efficacy of spells and hexes may be retroactively determined by confirmation bias. But even if they ever do work, let us not be naïve; it is only ever through the permission of the Lord that there might be any worth, or appearance thereof. Not that the witch would agree.
But try as we might to eschew organized religion, the Spirit of the Lord calls to us. Many folks, unfortunately, misinterpret this as an invitation to explore false religions. It feels bizarre to type this, but here it goes: there are witches among us, and it is a problem.
The more people try to turn away from God, the more they go seeking him, and in all the wrong places. So neo-paganism, with Wicca, witchcraft, nature worship, and the like, alongside its counterpart, New Age, have seen a rush of interest. Folks look to the stars, to nature, to crystals, cards, and potions for meaning, answers, and rooting.
It seems, too, that the rise in witches corresponds with the feverish whooping up of late that women’s rights are on the line. What better time to tap into our inner goddess or divine nature than now, when “women’s rights” are under attack?
The dangers of witchcraft are not negligible. Traditionally, witches have been <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15674a.htm">said to pay honor</a> “to the Prince of Darkness, and in return receive from him preternatural powers.” Whether this is the case, over the centuries, there have been recorded confessions of accused witches confirming their involvement with demonic forces.
We mustn’t downplay why these women (and some men) feel the need to practice witchcraft. These people are seeking, and they are restless, and we know that the restlessness they experience will not cease until they find rest in the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
But first, they need to be introduced to Jesus in a genuine and heartfelt way—and it is up to Catholics to do the introducing.
How can we reach out to practitioners of witchcraft? As with any impactful evangelization effort, asking meaningful questions is always a good place to start.
Is the witch interested in deepening her understanding and love of the natural world? The Catholics have saints for that!
Is she looking to understand or tap into the divine? Jesus offers himself intimately and beautifully in the Eucharist, giving us the means to “be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).
Is she looking to ascend, through the use of sorcery, from the seemingly endless troubles and woes that afflict her and her loved ones in this life? Prayer and fasting are both powerful ways to align ourselves with God’s plan and make a real impact on those around us.
Is she searching for meaning and power in the use of crystals, potions, or other material objects? The Lord understands humans’ needs for the physical and has provided us with sacraments and sacramentals that we can touch, smell, see, taste, and hear to elevate our bodies and minds to the divine.
Does she want to live more attuned to the ebb and flow of the different seasons and stages of life? The liturgical calendar has it all, from feasts to ember days to entire seasons dedicated to various aspects of our faith, helping us to live a good and holy life.
Is she concerned for “the poor, the downtrodden and disenfranchised”? That is what the <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ritual-to-hex-brett-kavanaugh-tickets-51031211728">invitation to hex</a> Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh a few years ago suggested witchcraft is really for. Well, Catholic charities have cared for and upheld the dignity of millions of people whom the world seems to have otherwise forgotten—and no one has to get hexed.
Does she believe she needs magic as a weapon on the battleground that is our fallen world? In Padre Pio’s words, “the rosary is the weapon against the evils of the world today.”
Is the witch desiring a community of like-minded seekers, especially other women who strive to lead holy, beautiful lives? Hi! Welcome to the One True Church!
We can see that much of what someone interested in witchcraft seeks can be found in the Catholic tradition—but in its full and God-given form, not in a creature-oriented product that has the witch worshiping, relying on, or otherwise misusing creation (including demons), when she could and should be worshiping and relying on the Creator and Sustainer of all things.
The witch puts inordinate power in herself or seeks to harness power that is not granted humans according to their nature. She wants to affect the world and people around her through subversive and often destructive means. She is dissatisfied by the fullness of the humanity given to her by God. She holds typical feminist grievances and finds womanhood infinitely powerful but sadly chained by “the big bad patriarchy.”
The witch is a woman who is broken, lost, and oftentimes angry. She is in pain, whether she will admit it or not, and it isn’t a pain caused by the patriarchy or the injustice du jour. It is pain caused by missing out on God. She is seeking validation for her goodness, value, and beauty as a woman outside how God supports and nourishes womanhood through the Catholic Church. We ought to pray for her—that she might turn, with all the energy she has put into her false spirituality, to love the One who loves her unconditionally and won’t ever stop calling her home to him.

What to Do with Witches?

A caller asks the meaning behind St. Paul&#8217;s declaration that Christ became a curse for us in his Galatians 3:13. Joe Heschmeyer lays out biblical context and theological interpretations of this pivotal event in Christian history. Joe walks us through divine love, sacrifice, and the ultimate redemption.
Transcript:
In St. Paul&#8217;s epistle to the Galatians in chapter 3:13, he says that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it&#8217;s written curse is everyone who hangs on a tree. This corresponds to a part in Deuteronomy 21:23 to be specific that says that those who were hanged on a tree were cursed by God. How is it that we can understand Christ becoming a curse without necessarily overcorrecting and saying, oh yeah, and God was completely cursing God and leading to this kind of Trinitarian view of the atonement, and how can we get this without overcorrecting? So I just want to know how.
Yeah, that&#8217;s a very good question and I&#8217;m very glad you asked that. So the first thing is when we talk about blessings and cursing, there&#8217;s a sense in which I think we use these terms without fully understanding what we mean by them. And a blessing is, I mean, in short, good things and a curse is bad things. And so quite clearly Jesus undergoes bad things. I mean, that&#8217;s obviously too mild of a way of putting it, but he clearly is cursed in that sense because he is going through a terrible suffering. We often don&#8217;t want to speak in that sense. I think we&#8217;re uneasy. But we could talk about job as seemingly being cursed by God. That doesn&#8217;t mean he wasn&#8217;t loved by God, but it does mean that God willed that he went through some hard times and that&#8217;s something that we should take very seriously.
So I think there&#8217;s a way people read the language of blessing and cursing, and they think that the people God blesses are the ones he loves, and the ones that He curses are the ones that he hates. And so you read something like, Jacob, have I loved Esau? Have I hated even there? Love and hate don&#8217;t work the same way that they do when we use that term in English. So likewise, when Jesus says you have to hate your father and mother to follow him, don&#8217;t literally hate your father and mother. That&#8217;s actually sinful too, that rather this is talking about blessing and cursing. This is talking about prioritization. This is talking about, we could say divine predilection, but it&#8217;s not talking about literal like dislike in cursing in that sense. That&#8217;s the first thing. Second, there&#8217;s a beautiful homily that then Cardinal Ratzinger gave on this theme in 2005, and he&#8217;s looking at two lines.
One is the one you mentioned from Galatians three 13, and the other is a parallel text in one Peter chapter two, verse 24, in which Peter says, in his own body, he brought your sins to the cross. And that gives us a hermeneutic to understand that Galatians three 13 seems to be saying the same sort of thing, that Christ is bearing the weight of our sins. And Raser says this, he says Christ Mercy is not a grace that comes cheap, nor does it imply that trivialization of evil Christ carries the full weight of evil and all its destructive force in his body and in his soul, he burns and transforms evil and suffering and the fire of his suffering in love. The day of Vindication and the year of favor converged in the Paschal mystery in the dead and risen Christ. This is the vengeance of God.
He himself suffers for us and the person of his son. So notice there the Father isn&#8217;t pitted against the Son. The vengeance of God is that Christ who is God takes on the full weight of sin and transforms it by his love and by his total gift to the Father. So this is when I talk about a good and evil way of viewing the cross. You don&#8217;t want to view where the Father a abandons and hates Jesus on the cross, that he turns his back on him because Jesus&#8217; words on the cross, even after crying out, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? What does he say after that, father, into your hands, I commit my spirit that we know the Father is actually looking in love at Jesus on the cross, and Jesus tells us that he will do so. In John 10, he says, for this reason, the Father loves me. No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down freely. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening, that this is something pleasing and good to God, that God the son, is carrying the full weight and burden of sin and transforming it in some way by offering this on our behalf to the Father.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic answer, be sure to like, subscribe and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3t o 5 PM Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform or our Catholic Answers app.

Jesus Was Cursed By God in Galatians 3:13?

Reconstructed Dialogue in the Bible

<div>May the Blessed Sacrament be exposed on Good Friday?</div><div>No. Solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, which entails exposition of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/holy-communion">Holy Eucharist</a>, may not take place after midnight on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/maundy-thursday">Holy Thursday</a>. Following the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, there is a Eucharistic procession to the place of repose, such as the parish hall. <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ordinamento-messale_en.html">The Roman Missal </a>provides that “the faithful are invited to continue adoration before the Blessed Sacrament for a suitable length of time during the night, according to local circumstances, but after midnight the adoration should take place without solemnity” (The Roman Missal, “Thursday of the Lord’s Supper,” no. 43, emphasis added).
This means that the Blessed Sacrament is then reposed in a safe place outside of the parish church, typically the parish rectory (where the parish priest resides).
Because our attention is focused first on Our Lord’s passion and death on <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/good-friday">Good Friday</a>, no solemn adoration takes place that day, nor on Holy Saturday until after the Easter Vigil. Some parishes choose to resume perpetual adoration on Easter morning, instead of right after the Easter Vigil, but there is no specific Church legislation on that matter.
</div>

May the Blessed Sacrament Be Exposed on Good Friday?

Chapter 7 of the Gospel of St. Luke records an encounter that took place when Jesus was eating in the house of a Pharisee named Simon. As Jesus is “sitting at table in the Pharisee’s house,” a woman whom Luke refers to as “a woman of the city, who was a sinner,” enters the house, bringing “an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment” (vv. 36-38). Simon the Pharisee is aghast, thinking, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner” (v. 39). Jesus then uses the opportunity to contrast Simon and the woman, saying that “her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little, loves little” (v. 47).
That message is straightforward enough, but when you get into the nature of Christ’s forgiveness, there’s more going on here. For starters, we have clear evidence of Jesus’ divinity, which is why “those who were at table with him began to say among themselves, ‘Who is this, who even forgives sins?’” (Luke 7:49). That is, Jesus is forgiving not just those who wronged him directly. The woman who approaches him has apparently never met him before, yet he tells her that “your sins are forgiven” (v. 48) and, after the others murmur, adds, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace” (v. 50). As C.S. Lewis put it, in forgiving sins, Jesus “unhesitatingly behaved as if he was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offences. This makes sense only if he really was the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.”
<a href="https://sites.google.com/site/aquinasstudybible/home/luke-commentary/gregory-the-great-homily-33-on-the-gospels">Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) invites us</a> to grapple with another meaning of the text. Observing the beauty of the woman’s repentance, he remarks that “I feel more like crying than saying something. Indeed, what heart, even if it were of stone, would not be moved by the example of penance that the tears of this sinner give us?” As Gregory explains, her repentance is beautiful because she takes the same parts of her life that had been dedicated to sin and gives them to God:
<blockquote>It is very evident, my brethren, that this woman, formerly addicted to forbidden deeds, had used perfume to give her flesh a pleasant odor. What she had shamefully granted to herself, she now offered to God in a manner worthy of praise. She had desired the things of the earth by her eyes, but now mortifying them with penance, she was crying. She had emphasized the beauty of her hair to adorn her face, but she was now using it to wipe away her tears. Her mouth had uttered words of pride, but now, kissing the feet of the Lord, she was staring at that mouth in the footsteps of her Redeemer. Thus, all that she had in it of attractions to charm, she found there material to sacrifice. She turned her crimes into so many virtues, that all that in her had despised God in sin was put to the service of God in penance.</blockquote>
In other words, God doesn’t just want to heal us when we fall. He wants to heal us where we fall. The parts of ourselves that we devote to sin are parts of ourselves that we received from God, for his glory, and he wants to redeem us even there. Those are the parts of our lives where we should find there “material to sacrifice,” to be burnt up in the fires of love: “for the rust of sin is all the better consumed as the heart of the sinner burns with the great fire of charity.”
Nor is the woman of Luke 7 the only example of this in the New Testament. Another person who understands this is St. Paul, who can say in one moment that “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God,” and then, in the next breath, “but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor. 15:9-10).
Prior to his conversion, Paul (then Saul) was so zealous a persecutor of the Church that he approved of the killing of St. Stephen, whom he wrongly considered a heretic (Acts 8:1). St. Luke records how “Saul laid waste the church, and entering house after house, he dragged off men and women and committed them to prison” (v. 3). Yet by the grace of God, Saul became Paul, and this same zeal became a great engine of evangelization. The aspect of his character that once led to the persecution and death of Christians now led to his being the hardest working of all the apostles. God saw Saul’s zeal not as bad, but as misdirected. Instead of demonizing or eliminating that zeal, God redeems it by redirecting it toward the spread of the gospel.
What might this look like in our own lives? We can start by recognizing that sin is a perversion of something good. Our hatred of sin shouldn’t lead us into a hatred of the underlying good, or into self-hatred. Too often, we see those parts of ourselves that led us to wander from God, and we treat them as dangerous, boarding them up and barring the door. But God wants to meet us there, because those are the places where we actually need healing. That doesn’t mean putting ourselves back into sinful situations, or inviting what the <a href="http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson18.htm">Baltimore Catechism</a> calls “near occasions of sin”: those “persons, places and things that may easily lead us into sin.” But it does mean that we should emulate Paul and the woman of Luke 7 by having the courage and faith to offer God those passions and those places that once led us from him. Do you struggle with lust? Remember the holiness of the body God gave you (1 Cor. 3:16-17), and use it as he intended you to, for his glory. Gossip? Use your mouth to bless God and to speak well of your neighbor. Pride? Thank God for the gifts he’s given you, instead of thanking yourself. Whatever the case, turn your “crimes into so many virtues,” so that all that is in you that has despised God in sin can be “put to the service of God in penance.”

God Wants Even Your Wounds

<div>A deacon said that being anointed with holy oil at a healing Mass absolves me of my sins. Can I use this as my last confession?</div><div>The sacrament of anointing of the sick forgives sins only if the recipient is unable to confess (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P4P.HTM">CCC 1532</a>). If a person is able to get to a healing Mass, the odds seem pretty good that he&#8217;d also be able to go to confession.
</div>

Does Anointing Forgive Sins?

In this episode Trent, sits down with Catholic author Casey Chalk to discuss his book &#8220;The Obscurity of Scripture&#8221; and why Protestant views of sola scriptura are untenable given the need to interpret scripture.

Refuting Protestantism’s “Clarity” Doctrine of Scripture

<div>I know the Catholic Church entrusts that the souls of children who died without baptism to Christ, but I thought he told Marcel Nguyen Tan Van that they were in Heaven with 100% certainty.</div><div>You refer to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Nguy%E1%BB%85n_T%C3%A2n_V%C4%83n" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reported private revelations</a> of Servant of God Marcel Nguyen Tan Van, in which Jesus reportedly told him that all unbaptized children are saved.
In short, the Church does not rely on reported revelation for her official teaching. Indeed, even approved private revelation cannot add to the Church’s deposit of faith, which is contained in public revelation, “the Revelation of which Christ is the fulfillment” (CCC 67; see 66-67; 84).
As provided in her official teaching, based on the sacred word Jesus communicated to his apostles, “The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude” (CCC 1257). And pertaining to your specific question, the CCC provides:
<blockquote>As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus&#8217; tenderness toward children which caused him to say: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,” allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church&#8217;s call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism (CCC 1261, emphasis original, footnote omitted).</blockquote>
</div>

Marcel Nguyen Tan Van, the Church and the Salvation of Unbaptized Children

It&#8217;s common this time of year to hear about Jesus being born to an &#8220;unwed mother.&#8221; But is that accurate? Why do some Bible translations say that Joseph and Mary were &#8220;espoused,&#8221; while others say &#8220;betrothed,&#8221; &#8220;pledged,&#8221; or even &#8220;engaged&#8221;? And if they were only engaged (or dating!), why does Matthew 1 refer to Joseph as Mary&#8217;s &#8220;husband&#8221; and talk about how he considered divorcing her?

Was Mary an Unwed Mother?

How do atheists handle the question “How do you know what is essential to the category of God”?

I met an atheist who believes in the idea that the universe is circularly caused. How can I respond to this?

How can I interpret paragraph 9 of Inter mirifica as it relates to media?

What did St. Paul think of his previous faith and Judaism?

How do I respond to people who say you shouldn’t judge?

Is Tradition infallible?

Can a Catholic consider corporal punishment in general inadmissible?

AMA: Answering Atheist Arguments, St. Paul’s View on Judaism, and the Infallibility of Tradition

<div>Is a vow that is taken without understanding what it means still a valid vow?</div><div>Yes. For example, a person attempting marriage can make an invalid vow, although that would have to be determined by a Church tribunal. The Church addresses invalid consent regarding marriage vows in c<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/_P3Z.HTM">anon 1095 of the Code of Canon Law</a>:
<blockquote>The following are incapable of contracting marriage:
1. those who lack the sufficient use of reason;
2. those who suffer from a grave defect of discretion of judgment concerning the essential matrimonial rights and duties mutually to be handed over and accepted;
3. those who are not able to assume the essential obligations of marriage for causes of a psychic nature.
The Church also has laws governing vows taken by men and women religious. <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/E3.HTM">Here is an index regarding vows in general in the Code of Canon Law</a>.</blockquote>
If you have a specific case(s) of concern, whether regarding a married person or a person who has taken religious vows, contact your parish pastor, and he can refer you to the local diocesan marriage tribunal or help you connect with the relevant religious superior.
</div>

What Makes for an Invalid Vow?

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If this doesn't bother you, it SHOULD!

<div>How do I find out what is liturgically correct in Mass?</div><div>There are two basic resources that guide the celebration of Mass: the <a href="http://usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/roman-missal/">Roman Missal</a> itself, particularly the “Order of Mass,” which is usually also included in daily Mass Missals; and the <a href="http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/general-instruction-of-the-roman-missal/">General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM)</a>.
There are optional prayers and readings, depending on the time of the liturgical year, so don’t presume related variations are necessarily incorrect, as your daily Mass missal will not be as exhaustive as the Roman Missal. In addition, if you do see something problematic, approach your pastor in charity, and hopefully you can work things out at the parish level. If necessary, one can also bring liturgical concerns to the diocesan deanery level, the diocesan bishop, and, if truly needed, the Holy See.
</div>

Where Would I Find Liturgical Norms?

Do Catholics treat Mary like a God?

Was Mary the guide for the writing of the Gospel of John?

How do I get across that Catholics don’t worship Mary, and that this is not a threat?

Can you explain Mary as the new Eve?

Why does William believe there has been so many Marian apparitions and not others?

There is not one example in the Bible to pray to Mary, so why do we pray to Mary? Abraham is called the father of faith and not even he has an example of people praying to him.

&#8220;Do Catholics treat Mary like a God?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the role of Mary in Catholicism, addressing misconceptions about worship. The conversation also touches on whether Mary guided the writing of the Gospel of John and clarifies how Catholics view her as the New Eve, alongside the significance of Marian apparitions and the practice of praying to her.
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Do Catholics Treat Mary Like a God? Gospel of John, New Eve

<div>What can you tell me about Chaldean Catholics and the Chaldean Rite?</div><div>Chaldean Catholics come from a region that includes modern-day Iraq. Their Christian heritage goes back to St. Thomas the Apostle, who witnessed to their ancient ancestors. In the fifth century, they adopted the error of the heretic Nestorius, who held that the Blessed Mother is not the Mother of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, but only of Jesus’ human nature.
In time, by the end of the 7th century, Chaldean Catholics would see the truth of the Church’s teaching that Mary is indeed the Mother of God, although they remained a separated Eastern Church and thus not in full communion with Rome. Reunion with Rome took place in the 1500s.
The Chaldean Rite or liturgy can be traced back to the Syriac Christian culture of Edessa, and gained its present basic structure in the 7th century. The official language of Chaldean Masses is Syriac, which is an Aramaic dialect, and a number of Latin customs have been adopted.
For more on the history of Chaldean Catholics, please see this article from the <a href="http://www.cnewa.org/default.aspx?ID=59&amp;pagetypeID=9&amp;sitecode=hq&amp;pageno=1">Catholic New East Welfare Association</a> and this article from the old <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/chaldean-christians">Catholic Encyclopedia</a>.
</div>

An Introduction to Chaldean Catholics

Anyone who regularly discusses the Faith with unbelievers knows there are many kinds of unbelief. One kind that can drive the believer nuts is the “endless objections” kind. Rather than engage with the Faith, the endless objector will rehearse again and again the many “foolish” things that a life of Faith would compel him to accept. After all, “How could I accept a religion that would want me to believe in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/does-symbolism-undermine-biblical-authority">talking snakes</a>/<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/a-catholic-perspective-on-a-new-attraction">Noah’s Ark</a>/<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/for-goodness-sake">old-fashioned sexual ethics</a>/<a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp/an-evil-and-good-view-of-the-cross">God’s punishment of his own son</a>/[<a href="https://shop.catholic.com/hard-sayings-a-catholic-approach-to-answering-bible-difficulties-softcover/">fill in the blank</a>]?”
The Christian in this conversation can feel compelled to respond to each and every particular objection. But the overarching problem he senses is getting the objector to stop rolling his eyes long enough to consider the actual content of the Faith.
What to do?
Online, recently, I saw <a href="https://x.com/WWUTTguy/status/1747035780130951357?s=20">an evangelist suggest</a> that we simply tell the person, “You’re making excuses . . . attempting to justify yourself rather than bending the knee to Christ.”
This strikes me as a pretty good diagnosis accompanied by a hazardous prescription.
Even if (as seems likely) the person is using objections as excuses, that doesn&#8217;t mean the objections are “just excuses.” They are also actual questions. Accusing the person of refusing Christ, without giving him a reason to accept Christ, and without patiently addressing objections in a respectful way, seems unlikely to bear fruit.
Perhaps, by answering objections with good humor, the one sharing the Faith can build up trust. And as this trust is built, the Christian can ask questions, including, “Are you sure you are not just treating all of this as foolish to give yourself an excuse not to love God and neighbor as the gospel would require?”
Building relationships, establishing rapport, listening more than talking so the real obstacles can be discovered and removed—<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/winning-the-person-not-the-argument">these are the hard work</a> of sharing the Faith. We might want to offer our diagnosis of what is wrong with the other person, but, really, how likely is that to help?
What we want is an opening to share our Faith, rooted in what Christ has done for us. We can’t force the other person to accept it. Most don’t. We, ourselves, mostly didn’t, until the day we did.
Another evangelist, replying to the one mentioned above, <a href="https://x.com/ronstauffer/status/1747038642986758172?s=20">said he might ask</a>, “Are you saying you would become a Christian except for that one, single objection?”
This seems to me a better strategy. At least it requires the Christian to listen rather than accuse. Listening in such a way might provide, in time, an opening for a real discussion about <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/but-jesus-never-said-he-was-god">who Christ is</a> and what he means.
At the moment the discussion moves away from the endless objections and on to the person of Jesus, the Christian is evangelizing.

Answer Endless Objections With this One Weird Trick!

Recent media coverage surrounding OnlyFans contributor Lily Phillips and her decision to get “<a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/why-onlyfans-star-lily-phillips-decided-to-be-rebaptized-excl/">rebaptized</a>” raises sincere spiritual questions that deserve a biblical and charitable response.
Phillips’s words express a desire to return to God, a longing that every Christian can recognize as the work of grace stirring the heart. At the same time, Phillips has not demonstrated a public desire to leave the online sexual content lifestyle she lives. Additionally, the language she uses about baptism is an example of the deep and widespread confusion in our society about what baptism accomplishes and how conversion actually unfolds within the Christian life.
Two core issues require careful attention here. First is what the Church across the ages has taught about baptism and why rebaptism is excluded from Christian practice. Second is what Scripture reveals about repentance and conversion as the proper response for a baptized believer who desires renewal and discipleship.
<h2>Baptism as a Once-for-All Gift</h2>
From the beginning, the Church has proclaimed baptism as decisive and not repeatable. Scripture consistently presents baptism as a real and singular participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. St. Paul explains that through baptism we are buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:1-14)—a transformation that marks the soul of the person irreversibly and establishes a permanent covenant bond with the Lord.
This permanence stands at the heart of induction into covenant life. The Letter to the Ephesians speaks of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (4:5), thereby excluding any idea that baptism requires or even allows for repetition when faith weakens or moral failure follows. Likewise, the Nicene Creed (365) professes “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” a doctrine rooted in perennial apostolic teaching.
Baptism imprints a spiritual mark upon the soul that remains even when the baptized person drifts from God. The Catechism notes, “Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, baptism cannot be repeated” (1272). Hence, the grace given may be rejected or lie dormant, yet it remains real and accessible from the moment of baptism. Consequently, baptism never expires, and it never requires or calls for repetition. In fact, the Church guards this teaching precisely because baptism belongs first to Christ’s action in the soul rather than to human effort.
<h2>Why Rebaptism Feels Appealing</h2>
The origins of the practice are varied, but the cultural thrust of today began with sixteenth-century Anabaptists, who emphasized “believer&#8217;s baptism” only for repentant adults, earning the name “rebaptizers.” Joseph Smith&#8217;s Restorationist movement (for remission of sins, healing, covenant renewal), and various Orthodox churches (for converts from other traditions) also facilitated differing practices of rebaptism. Today, many people who seek rebaptism express some semblance of a genuine desire for cleansing, restoration, and a visible new beginning.
Modern culture associates authenticity with dramatic public gestures, and rebaptism publicly presents the façade of inner change. However, Scripture would beg to differ. God addresses post-baptismal sin through repentance, reconciliation, and transformation rather than through repeating the sacrament that already united the believer to Christ.
The New Testament repeatedly warns against treating baptism as something provisional. The Letter to the Hebrews concurs with Romans in teaching that Christ died once for all, and Christian participation in his saving work follows the same pattern (see Heb. 10:10-14). Therefore, repeating baptism would imply that God’s original gift lacked permanence, an implication the Church rejects.
<h2>Conditional Baptism Explained</h2>
There are rare circumstances wherein the Church recognizes that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-doubtful-validity-of-seventh-day-adventist-baptism">serious doubt</a> exists regarding whether baptism ever occurred. In such cases, conditional baptism may be administered using the formula, “If you are not baptized, I baptize you . . .”
This practice is not rebaptism. Instead, it safeguards <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/does-invalid-baptism-invalidate-other-sacraments">the integrity of the sacrament</a> while ensuring that no one remains deprived of baptism through uncertainty. In fact, conditional baptism applies only when facts remain unclear regarding the use of water, the Trinitarian formula, or the event itself. Where valid baptism already occurred, the Church with pastoral firmness forbids repetition.
<h2>Conversion as the Proper Path Forward</h2>
If baptism is permanent, then how does renewal occur for someone who desires to return to God after moral collapse or spiritual distance? Scripture answers this question with remarkable consistency. The biblical call always centers upon repentance, conversion, and obedience flowing from grace.
Jesus begins his public ministry with the command, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). Repentance in Scripture signifies a turning of the whole person toward God, involving the intellect, the will, and the moral pattern of daily life. This turning reaches far beyond emotion, spiritual sentiment, or public spectacle.
Zacchaeus is a clear example: his encounter with Christ compels restitution, generosity, and visible change. Likewise, the woman caught in adultery is forgiven but also charged with a command to leave sin behind. Throughout the Gospels, forgiveness always opens toward moral transformation.
Canon law is equally clear:
<blockquote>For an adult to be baptized, the person must have manifested the intention to receive baptism, have been instructed sufficiently about the truths of the Faith and Christian obligations, and have been tested in the Christian life through the catechumenate. The adult is also to be urged to have sorrow for personal sins (865 §1)</blockquote>
St. Paul reinforces this pattern when he reminds the Corinthians that former patterns of sexual immorality belonged to their past, and sanctification now defines their present identity (1 Cor. 6:11). Christian conversion therefore unfolds as a process grounded in grace and expressed through moral obedience.
<h2>The Teaching of Pope Benedict XVI</h2>
This understanding of conversion appears clearly in the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI, especially in his catechesis on repentance. <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100217.html">Reflecting on the preaching of John the Baptist</a>, Benedict explains that repentance involves a realignment of life according to God’s truth rather than a private spiritual preference. Conversion engages the whole person, including moral decisions, habits, and public conduct.
According to Benedict, conversion remains a lifelong journey rather than a single emotional moment. Grace initiates the process, and cooperation sustains it. Faith grows through obedience, humility, and willingness to accept correction from divine revelation.
<h2>What Authentic Conversion Looks Like</h2>
Authentic Christian conversion unfolds through several visible dimensions. First, repentance confesses sin truthfully and seeks forgiveness humbly. Second, reconciliation restores communion between the penitent and God through sacramental grace. Third, firm purpose of amendment of life gradually aligns one’s moral conduct with the gospel.
Conversion is rarely instantaneous. Scripture portrays virtuous growth as a process shaped by struggle, perseverance, trust, and cooperation with God’s divine life. Our intentionality matters: a heart turned toward Christ seeks constant conformity to his teaching rather than easy accommodation to prevailing culture or, worse, clinging to old ways of life.
The Church’s response to public claims of spiritual renewal always combines compassion with discernment. Encouragement and validation without truthful examination risks scandal. Baptism was established by Christ to be a once-for-all sacrament that anchors Christian identity securely in Christ. Conversion remains a lifelong response that unfolds through repentance, obedience, and grace. When these realities remain united, the Christian life reflects the fullness of the gospel.
Hence, Lily Phillips’s intent might have been good, but her execution and subsequent life choices warrant concern. Conversion requires returning to the font of baptismal grace in reconciliation, allowing Christ to complete the work he began in her original baptism, which remains indelibly sealed in her, compelling her (and all of us) to conversion and newness of moral life.

What Does the Church Say About Rebaptism?

For millennia, people assumed that the heart is the seat of our thoughts and emotions. Even the Bible and Church documents use this language. But more recently, medical science has suggested that the head—not the heart—is where our thoughts and emotions come from.
In this episode, Jimmy Akin looks at how we can understand the heart-centered language in the Bible and Church documents in light of head-centered science. He also throws up several cautions about taking the head-centered science too strictly and why we have reason to think that neither the heart nor the head is the ultimate cause of consciousness.
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Transcript:
Coming Up
People celebrate every St. Valentine’s Day using heart shapes. Greeting cards bear them, cakes and candies are made in this shape, and they’re used as decorations on anything connected with the holiday.
The shape—usually red, with two round lobes at the top and a point at the bottom—is idealized and only approximates what a human heart looks like, but it’s so common that it can raise a question: Why do we use the heart shape in the first place?
* * *
Howdy, folks!
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The Head-Centered Model
At least in the secular sphere, Valentine’s Day is a holiday that celebrates romantic love, but in modern medicine the heart is just a set of muscles that rhythmically contract to push blood around inside our bodies. What’s the connection?
The answer, as you might expect, goes back quite a ways. People have always known the organs of the body. Between cutting up animals and cutting up other people, they were quite familiar with them. But they didn’t always understand their functions.
For example, today we associate thought with the brain. This is known as the cephalocentric or “head-centered” view, but this view wasn’t dominant in history.
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) was one of the best anatomists in the ancient world. He noted all the blood vessels around the brain and concluded that its function must be to allow the blood from the heart to cool down (Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals 2:7). The brain was, in essence, a heat management organ.
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The Heart-Centered Model
On the other hand, there seemed to be a direct connection between the heart and mental phenomena. If you’re seized by a strong emotion—like love, lust, fear, anxiety, or excitement—your heart speeds up. In the absence of such emotion, it slows down.
Sometimes—particularly at moments of peak emotion—your heart may even “skip a beat.” (Technically, one chamber beats early, before it’s fully filled with blood, so you don’t feel the beat; then it over-fills as the normal cycle reasserts itself and you feel a more pronounced thump.)
It thus became natural for people to associate the heart with mental functions like emotions and intellect.  This is known as the cardiocentric or “heart-centered” view.
Several other factors may have also contributed to this view, such as the fact the heart is hidden (like our mental functions), that it is at the center of our bodies’ extensions (suggesting it’s important), and the fact that if it stops working, you die (associated with the spirit leaving).
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Biblical History
Whatever the factors played a role in its rise, the idea that the heart is the seat of the mind was common in ancient cultures.
Thus when the ancient Egyptians mummified you, they kept your heart inside your body, but they took out the brain so that its moisture wouldn’t cause the body to rot. This would have been done for the two ancient Israelites who we know were mummified, the patriarchs Jacob and Joseph (Gen. 50:2-3, 26).
The Israelites also accepted the cardiocentric model. Thus a man is said to rejoice “in his heart” (Exod. 4:14) or to have his heart “broken” (Psa. 69:20)—an expression we still use today. Angry people have their hearts grow hot (Psa. 39:3), and hearts “melt” with fear (Deut. 20:8). The heart is the seat of courage (2 Chron. 17:6), and God may fulfill the “heart’s desire” (Psa. 21:2).
In addition to the heart being seen as the place of these emotions, it was also seen as the seat of the intellect. Thus, before the Flood, God saw “that every imagination of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5), and when Abraham heard the prophecy of Isaac’s birth, he laughed to himself and “in his heart” said, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?” (Gen. 17:17). This mode of language is even applied to God himself, for after the Flood, “the Lord said in his heart” that he would not curse the ground again because of man (Gen. 8:21).
The cardiocentric model continued to be used in the New Testament, where the heart is still spoken of as the seat of emotions. Thus Paul tells the Colossians to sing “with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Col. 3:16), and he tells the Thessalonians that he wishes God will “encourage your hearts” (2 Thess. 2:17).
The heart is similarly envisioned as the seat of the intellect. Thus Simeon prophesied that through Jesus the “thoughts from many hearts may be revealed” (Luke 2:35), and when the disciples argued about who was the greatest, Jesus knew “the thoughts of their hearts” (Luke 9:47).
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Post-Biblical History
The image of the heart continued to be prominent in the post-apostolic age.
After the year 1000, devotion began to grow to the heart of Jesus. A prominent example is the Sacred Heart of Jesus devotion reportedly revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque between 1673 and 1675.
This devotion depicts Jesus’ heart surrounded by flames of love, with a crown of thorns and a cross above it, and a solemnity commemorating the Sacred Heart is celebrated on the third Friday after Pentecost.
Ordinary people continue to use language based on the cardiocentric model today, such as when we say that someone is “big-hearted,” “cold-hearted,” or “tender-hearted.” We may say that they have a “heart of gold,” a “heart of stone,” or that they are a “bleeding heart.” People “learn things by heart.” And, of course, the Grinch’s “heart was two sizes too small.”
We do this without even thinking about it, the same way we speak of the sun rising and setting despite what Copernicus and Galileo had to say.
Now, for us ordinary individuals, this doesn’t raise much of an issue. The presence of the cardiocentric model in folk expressions is no big deal.
But what about when the language appears in Scripture or Church documents—like those approving the Sacred Heart devotion? Does it conflict with the cephalocentric model that regards the head rather than the heart as the seat of mental activity?
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How the Head-Centered Model Began
The cephalocentric model also has a long history. It actually pre-dated Aristotle, having been proposed by the Greek philosopher Pythagoras around 550 B.C. Fans of the theory included Aristotle’s teacher Plato, and the Greek physicians Hippocrates and Galen, so it’s not like the idea was absent from Western thought.
Following the scientific revolution, evidence mounted that the brain was more associated with thought than the heart, and by the early 1800s, neuroscience had developed to the point that cephalocentrism was firmly established.
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Heart-Centered Language in Church Documents
The Church knew this, and so in 1899, Pope Leo XIII explained the Sacred Heart in symbolic terms, stating that, “There is in the Sacred Heart a symbol and a sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ which moves us to love one another” and that “whatever honor, veneration and love is given to this divine heart is really and truly given to Christ himself” (Annum Sacrum 8).
Similarly, in 2024, Pope Francis stated that,
Devotion to the heart of Christ is not the veneration of a single organ apart from the Person of Jesus. What we contemplate and adore is the whole Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, represented by an image that accentuates his heart. That heart of flesh is seen as the privileged sign of the inmost being of the incarnate Son and his love, both divine and human. More than any other part of his body, the heart of Jesus is the natural sign and symbol of his boundless love (Dilexit Nos 48).
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Heart-Centered Language in the Bible
What about the Bible? Does the cardiocentric language it uses mean that the biblical authors didn’t understand the role of the brain and the heart?
Well, they lived before the scientific revolution, so they would not be expected to, and that’s not a problem from the perspective of biblical theology.
The Second Vatican Council taught:
Since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings (Dei Verbum 11).
It also taught:
For the correct understanding of what the sacred author wanted to assert, due attention must be paid to the customary and characteristic styles of feeling, speaking and narrating which prevailed at the time of the sacred writer, and to the patterns men normally employed at that period in their everyday dealings with one another (Dei Verbum 12).
But there’s a difference between what someone asserts and what he assumes.
We therefore must distinguish between what the biblical authors assumed to be the case and what they were asserting by the language they used.
When Luke says that Jesus knew “the thoughts of [the disciples’] hearts” (Luke 9:47), he’s asserting that Jesus knew their thoughts, not that these thoughts were literally housed in their hearts.
We don’t know which school of thought Luke subscribed to. As an ancient physician, he may have been a cardiocentrist or a cephalocentrist, but either way it was normal for people of his day to speak of thoughts as coming from the heart.
That’s just one of the expressions they commonly used—like we do today.
In any event, Luke is not trying to teach us a medical theory; he’s telling us that Jesus knew what the disciples thought, and this assertion—not any background assumptions in the way it is expressed—is what is guaranteed to be true.
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Reasons for Caution
On the other hand, we shouldn’t be too quick to assume a strict correlation between the brain and mental phenomena. In the first place, there’s what’s known as “the little brain in the heart” or intrinsic cardiac nervous system (ICNS). It’s about forty thousand neurons that help regulate the heart’s activity, and things like a racing heart can affect emotional states (e.g., by causing fear and panic).
Even more surprisingly, there is evidence from heart transplant surgeries that something more than the physical organ—at least information—can be passed between patients. In one example, neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall recounts the cases of men he refers to as Jim and Frank.
Jim had bad lungs and received a heart-lung transplant. However, Jim’s own heart was still good and was given to Frank. After the transplant, Frank’s personality changed to be more like Jim’s, Frank began exhibiting Jim’s food preferences, and during intimate moments Frank began calling his wife by the name of Jim’s wife (The Heart&#8217;s Code, pp. 123-124).
Ultimately, neither the heart nor the brain may be essential for mental activity. Consistent with Christian teaching on life after death, the evidence of Near-Death Experiences reveals that people continue to have conscious experiences even during cardiac arrest, when the heart has ceased beating and brain activity goes offline within seconds. Yet people in this condition accurately report things happening around their physical bodies and even in other rooms of hospitals that they have no sensory access to.
All of this serves as a warning against reductionistic theories that would too closely tie mind and emotions to physical organs like the heart and the brain. Given the complexity of what we observe, this whole area is still—as it was in biblical days—a mystery.
* * *
If you like this content, you can help me out by liking, commenting, writing a review, sharing the podcast, and subscribing
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Thank you, and I’ll see you next time
God bless you always!

The Mystery of the Heart

The bible says there will be more people around the throne of God then there are grains of sand or dust or stars. My theory is that God can’t stop creating and continues to create humans everywhere. What are your thoughts on that theory?

Is homeopathic medicine from God?

Is there a conflict between the 4th Lateran Council and Vatican 2 Lateran promoting expelling heretics and Vatican 2 promoting religious freedom and being free from coercion?

Is it ethical to make AI music and share it?

Job 2:10. Are we supposed to assume that God creates evil? Is that how Job understood it?

&#8220;Can God create evil?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the nature of God and the existence of evil, alongside intriguing topics such as the implications of homeopathic medicine and the relationship between the 4th Lateran Council and Vatican II regarding religious freedom. Other questions include the ethics of AI-generated music and interpretations of Job 2:10.
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Can God Create Evil? Homeopathy and Religious Freedom

The pope, an atheist, a Muslim, a transgender, an abortion activist, and a pornographer walk onto a Disney set during Holy Week . . . 
No, that’s not the first line of a bad bar joke, but the premise of a documentary called The Pope: Answers, which premiered last week on Disney-owned Hulu. Co-directed by Spaniard Jordi Évole, whose past work includes a <a href="https://www.eldiarioar.com/mundo/opus-dei-asediado-escandalos-abusos-juega-futuro-congreso-extraordinario-exigido-papa_1_10111829.html">muckraking attack</a> on Opus Dei, it promised a no-topics-barred rap session between Pope Francis and a diverse group of young people seemingly chosen to represent every possible anti-Catholic grievance.
Since plans for the film were announced, some Catholics had been expecting a train wreck. Historically, the combination of skeptical journalists and Pope Francis speaking ex tempore has produced reactions from the faithful ranging from head-scratching to face-palming. Given the setup here, and a timeline for release that was at best ill chosen and at worst crassly calculated to disrupt the Church’s focus during its most solemn and prayerful days, many were expecting controversy to rival the optics of Francis’s most notorious in-flight press <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/francis-in-flight-contraception-doctrinal-development">conferences</a> or unrecorded <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/3/30/17179952/pope-francis-hell-vatican-interview-scalfari-italian">interviews</a>.
Based on the headlines from early reviews, the film did its best to ruffle feathers. An Argentinian woman who identified herself as both a catechist and an abortion activist presented the pope with a green scarf bearing a pro-abortion slogan—symbol of the recent successful movement to <a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/breaking-argentina-legalizes-abortion/">legalize abortion</a> in the pope’s home country—and he accepted it (before, as the headlines leave out, unambiguously upholding Church teaching on abortion). Persons identifying along various points of the “LGBTQ+” spectrum demanded more sexual diversity in the Church. And a Colombian woman defended her work making pornography because—can’t make this up—it allows her to spend more time at home with her family.
But two other moments in the film have come under the most scrutiny.
The one that made most of the headlines was when the pope was asked about the online hookup site Tinder. He responded that it was “normal,” because young people “have that eagerness to meet each other.” <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-says-using-tinder-normal-talks-inclusivity-disney-documentary">POPE</a> <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/04/pope-francis-tinder-disney-documentary.html">SAYS</a> <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/pope-francis-sex-tinder-documentary-b2316439.html">TINDER</a> <a href="https://www.aol.com/pope-francis-says-sex-beautiful-162958383.html?guccounter=1&amp;guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&amp;guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFF3db1RxDghcWKoBa1wGqIGEKgtuW6-ngr2ma3D744cqOpRcLembOBtB8hT8clrsrAQ2aihLRTghfb7ZUclVwzvgOObtKIkTbKe-SxD2SxMLqJxogTog-xLr2k_GDBcobMU457ZOp2AsPBQRMA59deGv2gSjOItW6qDyuAwi7US">IS</a> ”<a href="https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2023/04/11/pope-sex-is-beautiful-tinder-is-normal/">NORMAL</a>”!
But I’m not inclined to join the chorus of critics for this one. First, because Pope Francis probably doesn&#8217;t know what Tinder is, in the way that your grandmother probably doesn’t. He may think it’s an ordinary online dating site rather than a digital meat market (indeed, it was described to him in the question as &#8220;a place where young people meet&#8221;). And second, because even if he does know what Tinder is, surely the meaning of his response was not to endorse swiping your phone for sex partners, but to establish a baseline shared principle that the attraction between sexes is normal and good. (Whether that’s a point that even needs to be stipulated today is its own fair question.)
The other and much more bothersome headline-maker was when the pope remarked that the Church’s “catechesis on sex is still in diapers.” I found this unfortunate, for three reasons.
First, because it’s a belittling image. Babies wear diapers—and poop in them. Diapers are for people who don’t have intelligence or control over their faculties. Even if the pope just intended to express a lack of development in the Church’s sexual teaching, the metaphor does more—it invites an unserious attitude, even ridicule, toward that teaching.
Moreover, because the Church’s catechesis on sex is not in its infancy, as if Scripture and the Fathers and the Doctors and popes and theologians haven’t been teaching about sexual morality for two millennia. As if Francis’s recent predecessor John Paul II had not profoundly reaffirmed and synthesized and advanced the Church’s wisdom on the subject. As if the JPII generation has not seen a flowering of sex-positive chastity ministry, responding, as the Holy Spirit always does, to the challenges of the age.
Even beyond these points of fact, there is a dangerous underlying premise to this “diapers” business: the idea that, even after nearly 2,000 years, the Church still has only a baby&#8217;s understanding of what will make human beings flourish and lead them to salvation, and what will make them miserable and lead them to hell.
Yes, doctrine develops. The Church’s reflection on the revealed mysteries deepens and ripens; throughout history, definitions and precisions are made to counteract errors. But incremental and organic development of doctrine doesn’t sever Church teaching from its roots. The Church cannot endorse as good today the same moral acts that it expressly forbade to Christians of the past. Conversely, it can&#8217;t say, “Sorry for those past long centuries where we taught that such-and-such a practice was good and salvific; but all that time, our teaching was just in diapers. Now we know that the opposite is true. Tough luck, you guys who listened to us back then.”
Either thing would be monstrous. If we were forced to adopt such a freakishly protracted view of doctrinal development that even 2,000 years isn&#8217;t enough to settle on solid and reliable moral guidance on basic, universal questions, it would leave all Catholics in a perpetual cloud of unknowing over how and how not to live.
You might also say that it would invalidate the Church’s core claims. Sheldon Vanauken, the twentieth-century Anglo-Catholic convert who wrote the beloved memoir A Severe Mercy, once offered an argument that he formulated as “Women’s ordination denies the Incarnation.” He reasoned that if the Church were to start ordaining women after twenty centuries of saying it couldn’t, that would represent a) such a great injustice to the women of those twenty centuries, and b) such an admission of fallibility on a central aspect of the Faith, that the Church could not possibly call itself a reliable steward of divine truth. And since Christ founded the Church to be just that, his own divine authority would fall apart.
Likewise, if we believed that, after twenty-one or twenty-three or thirty centuries, our Church could grow out of its “diapers” and start blessing sexual behaviors that it had consistently called gravely evil, it would be impossible to continue crediting the Church’s claim to being an authoritative teacher of gospel truth.
But such a reversal of teaching is just what some in the Church hope for, even expect. It seems to be what Fr. James Martin expects when he tells a man that one day <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-does-fr-james-martin-really-believe">he’ll be able to kiss</a> his “husband” in church. It seems to be what the architects of the German Synodal Way, expressly calling for such reversals, expect.
I don’t think this is what the Holy Father wants or expects. But most of the young people gathered around him for The Pope: Answers, along with millions of other Catholics around the world who think the same way, plus countless others monitoring Rome for signs of change, do want and expect it. And I fear that the kind of language he chose in answering them, despite his good intention to thread the needle of accompaniment between discouragement and false hope, tends to lead such people not toward conversion, but to self-assurance that one day, a fully &#8220;mature&#8221; sexual catechesis will just affirm the way they’ve been living all along. Then they&#8217;ll be motivated to wait it out, not to change their lives.
I think we might take this as a caution, when we&#8217;re involved in defending and explaining the Faith, not even to give the appearance of being coy or apologetic about the hard teachings. Even when this is not our intention, the other party may choose to hear it that way. They may also find the object of your evangelization much less compelling. Who, seeking perennial wisdom and the full armor of God, would settle for a diaper?

Pope Francis on Sex and Diapers

The rector of St. John Fisher Seminary in the Diocese of Bridgeport, CT, explains how virtues are real powers that allow for fullness of life.

Virtue, Part 1, True Powers

When it comes to the Christian doctrine of hell, there is no lack of critics. One critique, espoused by David Bentley Hart, is that hell necessarily entails punishment without reform, which seemingly would be contrary to God’s goodness. In his book That All Shall Be Saved, he writes,
<blockquote>From the perspective of Christian belief, the very notion of a punishment that is not intended ultimately to be remedial is morally dubious (and, I submit, anyone who doubts this has never understood Christian teaching at all) (p. 44).</blockquote>
Is Hart right here? Does the Christian doctrine of hell entail a notion of punishment that’s not remedial?
It would seem Hart is correct, because the souls in hell aren’t able to reform themselves. Given the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/why-we-cant-change-our-soul-after-death">fixity</a> of their wills, they can’t repent.
St. Thomas Aquinas dealt with this very objection in his Summa Contra Gentiles (3.144). One response he gave was that the punishment of hell can be remedial for others, giving rise to a fear of eternal punishment that thereby inspires them to refrain from sin.
Such a notion is supported by the Bible. Consider, for example, Proverbs 19:25: “Strike a scoffer, and the simple will learn prudence.” Proverbs 22:10 is another: “Drive out a scoffer, and strife will go out, and quarreling and abuse will cease.”
Now, Hart might counter here and say that remediation for others is not enough. Punishment, he might argue, needs to be ordered to the remediation of the sinner himself.
Well, I think Aquinas’s other response to the objection can be helpful.
Aquinas targets the reason behind the objection made by his contemporaries—namely, punishment without the aim of remediation entails punishment for its own sake, which in turn entails delight in punishment for its own sake, both of which are contrary to the divine goodness.
Aquinas argues that this doesn’t apply to God when he punishes the damned in hell because he punishes “on account of the order that must be imposed on creatures, in which order the good of the universe consists” (SCG 3.144). For Aquinas, such an order involves the proportion between a sin and its due punishment, just as “rewards correspond proportionally to acts of virtue.” And this “shows forth [God’s] wisdom.”
Aquinas elsewhere calls this order the “order of justice” (Summa Theologiae I:21:4). In particular, it’s an order of justice for human beings. It’s called an order (or plan) of justice because in it, God gives to rational creatures what is due to them insofar as they are rational creatures, and God stipulates what is due to himself from rational creatures insofar as he is their Creator.
So what is it about God’s order of justice for human beings that makes punishment for sin fitting?
<a href="http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/11/does-god-damn-you.html">Consider</a> that God has ordained that there exists a natural relationship between pleasure and pain and good and bad be­havior. Feelings of delight and well-being are meant to nat­urally flow from good behavior, because good and virtuous behavior perfects us as human beings, which constitutes au­thentic human happiness. Feelings of shame and disgust are meant to naturally flow from bad behavior because such be­havior is not perfective of our human nature, which is the opposite of our human happiness. This is the natural way by which God directs us to him as our ultimate end.
The pleasures and pains associated with our good and bad behavior are not essential to good and bad behavior. Nevertheless, they flow from it. This is why some philosophers refer to them as “proper accidents” of good and bad behavior.
But proper accidents can be blocked. Take a dog, for ex­ample. A dog is supposed to have four legs, which is a proper accident for a dog. (The number of legs is not essential to what it means to be a dog, but flows from it.) But a dog may end up having only three legs due to injury or genetic defect.
Just as a proper ac­cident for a dog can be blocked, so too the proper accidents of good and bad behavior, the feelings of pleasure and pain, can be blocked. The pleasure that we normally experience when we do good can be blocked by circumstances or psychological harm. In some cases, unpleasantness is the actual result of the good behavior.
Like pleasure, the displeasure that’s naturally supposed to result from bad behavior can be blocked, too. For example, a person might try to rationalize his recreational sex in order to explain away the shame and guilt that naturally accompanies his sin. He might look to others who engage in it and say, “See? They do it. So it can’t be that bad.”
When a sinner doesn’t experience unpleasant feelings for bad behavior, but takes delight in it, or when a sinner expe­riences unpleasant feelings in doing good behavior, there is a real defect in nature, and things aren’t functioning the way they should. In the words of Pope St. Paul VI, there is “a per­turbation in the universal order established by God” (Indulgentiarum Doctrina 2).
This breach of order can’t be left alone, since the things of divine providence can’t be left in disorder. The glory of the divine order ultimately can’t be diminished. So out of justice to himself as the universal governor of the divine order that he established, and for the sake of manifesting the true nature of sin, God wills to set things right and restore back to order what is disordered.
The way this is done is for the sinner to undergo what is contrary to the pleasure received in the immoral behavior—namely, pain. In other words, the sinner is punished, thereby mending the breach of order.
Through sin, the sinner puts himself outside the “order of justice” spoken of above. Punishment, and particularly the punishment of hell, puts the sinner back into the “order of justice,” the order that exists between sin and displeasure. The sinner is “put in his place,” so to speak. And as Aquinas states, this “shows forth the wisdom of God.”
Putting the sinner back into this “order of justice,” through the punishment of hell, is in fact a form of remediation. We can see this in a few ways.
First, prior to everlasting punishment, the sinner is under the willful illusion that he can be happy by committing mortal sin. With the punishment of hell, the damned sinner is disabused of that illusion, and his mind thereby conforms to the truth that such human behavior cannot provide the happiness that he naturally seeks. That’s remediation.
Secondly, as a corollary of the first, the punishment of hell forces the mind of the damned sinner to consider the true nature of the mortal sin committed. Prior to everlasting punishment, the evil of mortal sin is willfully neglected for whatever good is perceived in the behavior. But in the everlasting punishment of hell, the evil of the sin is perfectly manifest, such that the mind can’t help but behold it for the rest of time.
Thirdly, prior to everlasting punishment, the sinner voluntarily directs his mind to consider other things besides God’s wisdom manifest in the “order of justice.” With the punishment of hell, the damned sinner cannot help but have his mind set on God’s wisdom manifest in such order.
Unlike the blessed in heaven, however, for whom God’s order gives joy and happiness, the damned sinner experiences torment by having his mind fixed on the truth of this order. This rectification of the disordered mind, again, is remediation.
So the punishment of hell is not entirely without remediation. It’s not the kind of remediation we like to think about in this life, where a sinner discovers his sin, repents, and gains heaven by his change of heart. That is to say, it doesn’t bring reform in the will of the damned. But God gives us many, many opportunities in life to turn back to him! A belief in hell certainly doesn’t discount that; in fact, believing in an eternal hell can deepen our appreciation for the unlimited opportunities God in his mercy provides sinners to change their ways while they yet live.
But every train has to come to a stop sometime. And so, for the sinner so intent on savoring his sin that all the opportunities in the world won’t dissuade him in life, there is hell. That’s where  the mind can no longer deny what it ought to focus on—namely, the truth of God’s design for human behavior and happiness, or the “order of justice.” And the damned will forever be re-minded of this truth.

What Good Is Hell?

I teach at a boarding school that operates out of a venerable century-old brick building that used to be an orphanage run by the Sisters of the Greek Catholic Union. The place has seen the coming and going of countless souls. Many, now lost to anonymity, have laughed, suffered, wept, and even died within its walls. It’s one of those buildings with many memories—places with an atmosphere, that give a feeling, whether good or bad.
We have our ghosts, and the boys who attend our school are accustomed to ghost stories—as boys should be. There is a long, narrow, ill-lit, seldom-used hallway up on the third floor with closets on one side and what used to be nuns’ cells on the other. The closet doors are sometimes found inexplicably unlocked and ajar. Further, there are legends of a shadowy form at the dark end of the hall, appearing where there isn’t enough light to see anything, accompanied by the swishing sound of a broom.
The Sweeping Nun is real for the boys at our boarding school. She is accepted—just as one might accept a mouse or a creaky floorboard. These things just happen in old places, and so do they happen here, from the third-floor hall to the Water Tower up on the hill to the old Orphan Cemetery out in the back woods.
I recently had my own hair-raising experience in our building. It was late on a summer night of shrieking crickets, and the school was empty—except for Farmer John, who tended our pigs and may or may not have been rattling about. I was passing in front of the building and admiring a great big orange moon bellying up over the black Pocono ridge, when I noticed a curious light glowing dimly in the windowed sun porch above me on the second floor. I went in to investigate.
Entering the dark balcony, flanked on one side with faculty office windows and on the other with the auburn moonscape, I slipped beneath the brick archways toward the mysterious glow—only to discover a small lamp left on by the natural history teacher over a tank of pond culture. I turned away from the window and the silent seating area at the far end, shrouded in shadow.
I then heard footsteps approaching me out of the darkness. I started, and immediately intuited that Farmer John must have been sitting at the end invisibly and was now walking sharply toward me. I turned with an apology for not noticing him, but I found the darkness empty. The footsteps clacked on across the concrete floor, notwithstanding, right up to where I stood, and ceased in silence. The step was a man’s, on hard, urgent heels.
I am not a signs-and-wonders person, but I enjoy the challenge this shivering time of year poses, with its bumps in the night that seem to concern those who have passed away. As Catholics, dare we say <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-are-ghosts">ghosts</a>? There is too much evidence and report to discount stories like the one I have here recounted. I don’t know what that was, but it was something.
Does it go against the grain of our Faith to believe in phantoms? Granted, much of haunted history is laced with hoax and hocus-pocus. But, on the other hand, is it right to call a place “haunted” and keep a straight face and a straight faith?
The Church doesn’t hold any dogmatic position on the matter of ghosts. So what might be said of ghosts from anything like a Catholic perspective, something that does not contradict Catholic theology? Is there any way that we can entertain what people would call “ghosts” without contradicting the doctrines of purgatory, heaven, and hell?
“The dead often do appear to the living,” wrote philosopher Peter Kreeft. “There is enormous evidence of ‘ghosts’ in all cultures.” And we mustn’t, as Carl Jung said, “commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything [we] cannot explain as a fraud.” As Catholics, we should be comfortable with the spiritual side of things—even if it is startling.
Catholics concede that all are spiritual beings. We have souls, we have a spirit, we bear the image of God. What’s more, all beings—whether they have souls or that divine image or not—have some spiritual aspect because existence itself is a type of supernatural reality. God is being; he is existence, He is. And all things that are must have a spiritual element or be part of a spiritual plane, insofar as they must participate in God’s existence.
As spiritual beings moving and living against the spiritual fabric of everything else, whatever that means exactly, we can perhaps, by some mystery, make and leave invisible impressions in that invisible atmosphere that surrounds us. These might be caused, we can imagine, in moments of tremendous spiritual consequence—moments of profundity, joy, sadness, terror, violence, death—and it is that impression only, like an image embedded in wax, that can manifest in things like doors, sounds, furniture, or even apparitions.
Such spiritual remnants, such lingering energies, may be what people have recognized as ghosts or ghostly presences. Whatever they are, I don’t believe they are sentient, self-conscious beings that can see us or speak to us. I think they are more like photographs or footprints left behind by some powerful spiritual event. By this thought, these phenomena would be akin to mystical “weather events” in the spiritual atmosphere of a place.
I once heard about a European priest who visited a parishioner’s family and, upon arriving, asked after the children. Their mother said they were in the next room, playing under a table. “Under a table?” The priest asked. “Yes, they like playing under there for some reason.” Approaching the table, where he could hear their little voices, the priest suddenly paused.
The children were singing—and from his musical studies, the priest recognized an old form of sacred chant. “Who taught you to sing that?” he asked. The children replied matter-of-factly, “The table taught us.” The priest traced the antique table to a period and place where it had been used as an altar during a time of persecution—a time when such chants may well have been sung at Mass.
It short, according to these musings, spiritual beings and spiritual events may be able to make a mark. In other words, we change the places where we live, where life happens. We leave behind wispy traces, enduring memories—or hauntings. That is one way of assigning some cause to the unaccountable events that so many have experienced without contradicting the doctrines of where souls reside after death. For, as Hamlet famously put it, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
This is not to deny that visitations from the departed have been permitted by God for some holy purpose, or that the dark powers that hate God and his children cannot control manifestations for some dread purpose. There are times when the blessed have communed with those on earth. But none of these spiritual demonstrations, which St. Thomas Aquinas <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/summa/5069.htm#article3">wrote</a> about with thirteenth-century credence, is a ghost in the way that we tend to imagine ghosts.
There is plenty of room for speculation when it comes to specters. But it is remarkable how, almost across the board, ghosts rarely seem to be accomplishing any purpose. They open doors or sweep hallways. They flit by and stare and rarely speak. And though some say that these are attempts at communication, it always seems humdrum. Who’s to say?
How these mundane manifestations fit in with moments of spiritual significance might point to how the simplest things in our lives can be of eternal moment. For all we know, that hallway and a broom were the means of a nun’s salvation. But if we might apply any purpose or point to any of these mysteries, it is simply to pray for the dead—to help those along as we may to their final resting place, which is not an earthly place.

A Catholic Entertains Ghost Stories

What Killed the “New Atheism”?

In this episode Trent examines a recent video from Fr. Casey Cole and critiques his claims that the Gospels are “theology, not history.”

Responding to Fr. Casey on the Gospel’s Historicity

Trent Horn explains to a caller who is living chastely in an invalid marriage why he is allowed to enter the Church but is not allowed on a retreat, and lists the steps he can take to rectify the situation.
Transcript:
Host: We go now to Vince in Cape Girardeau, Missouri listening on 89.1 FM, Vince, you are on with Trent Horn.
Caller: Thank you so much for taking my call. Trent, my question is this&#8230;let me preface with, what I&#8217;m rejecting is the apparent contradiction in the application of the Catholic morality code. I came into the Church in 2014 with an invalid marriage. My wife had been married previously and I had not, and we got married before I came into the Church some years before. I was told initially that I couldn&#8217;t come fully into the Church because of the marriage and so I asked the priest, &#8220;Does it matter if I&#8217;ve been living in abstinence?&#8221; And he said, &#8220;Yes that does, if you&#8217;re living as brother and sister you can come into the Church.&#8221; So I get that.
Well, this year in January, I had one of my RCIA teachers asked me if I would like to go to a Cursillo movement in March, and I said absolutely, I was excited and it thrilled, and then when I sold out the paperwork and then, you know, he was going to be my sponsor, he said, &#8220;Well, the priest has said that you can&#8217;t go because of your marriage, even though I&#8217;m still living abstinently from my wife. So the most important thing, coming into the Church, is allowable and acceptable; however for me to utilize the&#8230; like the Cursillo movement, the tools I guess, so to speak, to advance my faith, and help me be able to share my faith, I mean I can&#8217;t take part in that, because of the invalid marriage in which I&#8217;m still living abstinently, so do I stay where I&#8217;m at, and have conjugal relations, and just go to confession every week, or, you know, what—I am rejecting the application of&#8230;it&#8217;s not consistent. I can come into the Church but I can&#8217;t go to a Cursillo movement. Can you help me with that?
Trent: I think I can, though I do commend you, Vince, as people have been discussing in the Catholic blogosphere and news a lot lately about those individuals who are in invalid marriages, and speaking about whether they can receive Communion or not, and whether we can expect anyone to live as brother and sister, to live chastely if they&#8217;re in an invalid marriage, and many people just say, &#8220;Well, it can&#8217;t be done.&#8221;
Well you, my friend, are living proof it most certainly CAN be done, and so I commend you for that, and to—in this day and age when people think that God&#8217;s grace is&#8230;its power has no standing, can&#8217;t hold a candle to the power of the sexual urge, it&#8217;s very very sad, even when some Catholics say, &#8220;Well, yeah yeah, there&#8217;s grace, yeah yeah yeah, but look, you can&#8217;t expect people to live this way.&#8221; Yes you can, &#8217;cause as St. Paul says in the letter to the Philippians, through Christ—&#8221;I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.&#8221; So don&#8217;t give that up, continue to let God&#8217;s grace in your heart and to live the moral life you are living now. And it&#8217;s wonderful to see that, to uphold the beauty and dignity of marriage in what you&#8217;re doing.
So I would say it&#8217;s definitely—it makes no sense to say—I mean the only argument one could give is if, maybe if you were a leader in this program, and there&#8217;s a worry about about scandal or something like that, but I would say that if you have made this commitment to living chastely, that shouldn&#8217;t be an impediment at all to taking part in a retreat or any kind of other spiritual practice. Now, is the priest who said this, Vince, the same priest you spoke with about coming into the Church in the first place, or a different priest?
Caller: No, actually, it&#8217;s not. Since I came into the Church, there has been a changing of the guard, so to speak, so yeah, the priest that has told me that I can&#8217;t go to the Cursillo movement is a different priest than the one who said that I could come into the Church under the condition of chastity.
Trent: It reminds me of what happened to the Israelites in the Exodus. It says in the book of Exodus, you know, Joseph, a Hebrew, saved Egypt, and all the Jews were welcome to be there, and the book of Exodus says, well, then there was a new Pharaoh that came into town who didn&#8217;t know Joseph, and then everything fell apart for the Hebrews after that and they were enslaved. So here&#8217;s another priest that&#8217;s come along and may not be as familiar with your situation, you know, so I would recommend stay living the chaste, moral life you&#8217;re living, and understand that in living this life, the devil is going to throw all kinds of temptations at you, including temptations to be frustrated or want to give that up, through other Catholics who are not understanding, so I pray that you don&#8217;t give in to that temptation.
And to find a resolution here, you may want to appeal to go to maybe a larger regional director for the Cursillo movement, or a representative from the diocese, from the office of marriage and family, for example, in your own diocese, to go one rung up and say, &#8220;Hey, here&#8217;s my situation, I really want to do this, and the person involved here isn&#8217;t understanding. Can you help me?&#8221; It&#8217;s just similar to how we would resolve an issue anywhere else. That might be what I would recommend, but I&#8217;d also recommend to keep praying and stay strong in the face of temptations like these, to want to kind of give up in frustration, so do you see what I&#8217;m saying here?
Caller: I do. And you have been helpful, and you&#8217;ve given me a resource and I so much appreciate it, and I listen to the show often, a Catholic channel every day basically, and it has been very helpful and I appreciate you, Trent, thank you so much.
Trent: No problem. Stay strong, God bless, my friend Vince, have a good one.

Contradictions in the Church’s Application of Moral Teachings?

Catholic apologist Karlo Broussard joins Cy Kellett to engage with a college student exploring the complexities of faith. Natalie shares her perception of judgment and hate within Christianity, prompting Karlo to delve into the nuances of Catholic and Protestant beliefs. Together, they navigate the conversation about how to understand God’s forgiveness amidst differing interpretations of faith.
Transcript:
Caller: Hi. I was just calling because I&#8217;m a college student and I never had religion forced on me or anything like that, so I&#8217;m just kind of exploring. I do want to know more about your religion. And, like, obviously, I&#8217;m just going to say from an outside person&#8217;s view, from what I&#8217;ve learned, like Catholicism and Protestantism, I feel like when people should talk about God, they should talk about someone who&#8217;s all forgiving. That&#8217;s all like, just like an overall better person that anyone could ever be. And I just feel like there&#8217;s a lot of, dare I say, hate and judgment within the religion that I&#8217;ve heard so far.
Cy: Natalie, thank you for. I&#8217;m so glad you picked up the phone to call Dr. Broussard.
Karlo: Okay. So specifically with regard to your comment, Natalie, and first of all, thank you for calling in. You&#8217;re perceiving hate and judgment so far that is manifest on behalf of Catholics and Protestants. So my question to you, Natalie, in order to further the conversation, which particular instance or what exactly makes you think that it&#8217;s hateful or that we&#8217;re being judgmental? Is there a particular example that you can provide me in order to entertain and have a conversation with you about, like, what&#8217;s making you think we&#8217;re being hateful? What precisely?
Cy: Okay, go ahead.
Caller: I. I don&#8217;t think that, like, Protestants are completely hateful. I think there are perhaps maybe some scriptures or some ways that things are being addressed by followers. I&#8217;m not directly attacking the church or the Bible or anything like that. I would say some of the followers perhaps take some of the preachings to another level where I grew up in Texas and people were very hateful towards people who I thought were very, very good people. They gave back to the community. They volunteered, but they were attracted to the opposite sex or&#8230;
Karlo: Okay.
Caller: I had one of my friends have a really, really terrible situation where she had to make a really sad decision for her future, where she had to abort a baby, and it affected her, but there was just so much hatred towards her from the people following the Catholic religion.
Karlo: Okay, gotcha. All right. All right. So that gives me a little bit to work with, Natalie, and bear with me. I&#8217;m going to try to unpack that and share a few thoughts with you. So if by hate you mean showing a disgust for these individuals and looking down upon them as if they are no good and even wanting, expressing ill will towards them, if that&#8217;s what you mean by hate, and if that is what Catholics or whoever, whatever Christian was manifesting, then, Natalie, I would agree with you 100% and the Catholic Church would agree with you 100% that they need to repent because they were failing in charity and love toward another.
Now, if, and I&#8217;m going to be very careful and clear here, so see if you can follow me. If by hateful you simply mean a Christian voicing their opinion that killing an unborn baby is wrong and immoral, or that having same-sex romantic relationships is wrong and immoral, then we would respectfully disagree with this hateful charge. And the reason is, is because simply to say something is wrong and immoral doesn&#8217;t mean the person is hating them, right? I mean, because you just called in and you&#8217;re making a judgment. You&#8217;re saying, hey man, those Catholics are being hateful and that&#8217;s wrong and they shouldn&#8217;t be doing that. But Natalie, that very opinion that you have, that&#8217;s not hateful, right? I mean, because you can rightfully recognize wrong behavior by other people.
And so it&#8217;s possible, I don&#8217;t know what these Christians were saying, you know, so we would have to have more conversation as to exactly what they&#8217;re saying. But one thing to keep in mind, especially like in the Catholic-Protestant world, even we disagree with some things. We think Protestants believe things that are wrong and they will, and we&#8217;ll say it, and then they think we believe some things that are wrong and they&#8217;ll say it. We think certain lifestyle choices are wrong and immoral, contrary to human good and happiness, and we voice those opinions and judgments, but that doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean we&#8217;re hating the person.
And here&#8217;s the reason why, Natalie, think about this. Love. Would you agree with me that love is to wish what&#8217;s good for the other person and do what you can to try to help that person experience that good? Would you agree with that definition of love? Do you think that&#8217;s pretty sound?
Caller: Yes
Karlo: Okay. All right. Now consider this next step. Consider this next thought. Whenever I perceive somebody in the lifestyle choice of a same-sex romantic relationship, say, okay, we judge that behavior to be not good for the other individual. Like that&#8217;s not good for them. Now why is that the case? That&#8217;s a different question and that requires a lot of time to unpack. But just follow me for argument&#8217;s sake. Here we make a judgment that that&#8217;s not good for them.
Caller: The person has a right to make a judgment. God should be able to make that, unfortunately&#8230;sorry sir
Karlo: Well, okay. All right, I&#8217;ll answer that question, Natalie. I&#8217;ll answer that question. I understand. I understand. Notice the type of judgment we&#8217;re making. And I recognize that was a buzzword. I shouldn&#8217;t have used that word. When I say judgment, Natalie, what I mean is I&#8217;m thinking in my mind, you know what? That behavior is not right now. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with that, right? I mean, because you&#8217;re calling in saying those behaviors aren&#8217;t right. So notice I&#8217;m just making this thing in my mind like I&#8217;m thinking to myself, I. That behavior is immoral. I am not judging their culpability, nor is the Catholic Church, Natalie.
Anybody who is engaging in same-sex romantic relationships, or even a young girl who&#8217;s aborting killing her baby in her womb, we do not make judgments as to whether those people are culpable or responsible for these behaviors. What we&#8217;re saying, Natalie, is, hey, look, those behaviors are not right. They&#8217;re immoral. They&#8217;re contrary to human happiness. As to why we say that, that&#8217;s a different question. We&#8217;re gonna have to have a conversation about that. But at least you can see we&#8217;re trying to express goodwill toward another because we&#8217;re recognizing that these behaviors are not good for the person.
But my point here, Natalie, is to try and help you see that simply voicing one&#8217;s opinion that certain choices are contrary to what&#8217;s good for us is a manifestation of our love for them as opposed to hating them. And furthermore, we are not judging their responsibility or their hearts and what they&#8217;re thinking and what they&#8217;re feeling. We recognize it&#8217;s super complicated, but what we can voice our opinions about are the behaviors.
And so here&#8217;s the summary, Natalie. We judge the sin, not the sinner. And so hopefully that&#8217;s helpful. Any thoughts in response?
Caller: My response would be another thing with the Catholic Church. It has been in debate that typically people view Catholics as picking and choosing what they want, what they say is morally and divinely right. But, like, are we picking and choosing what we don&#8217;t want at that point?
Karlo: Okay, it&#8217;s a great question, Natalie. Now, with regard to picking and choosing, Natalie, we rely upon certain divinely established authorities that can tell us what God wants us to do at one period of time and what God doesn&#8217;t want us to do at other periods of time. And some things that we&#8217;re going to have to always do or always avoid.
So, for example, Natalie, the Israelites had Moses with divine, miraculous confirmation that they needed to offer sacrifices on the Sabbath every Saturday. Okay. Or they needed to offer sacrifices at their temple to worship God. All right, well, Jesus comes along and we have good historical evidence that he&#8217;s the representative of God. He&#8217;s actually God made flesh. He rose from the dead and performed all those miracles to provide us miraculous confirmation such that when he tells us, hey, Christians, you don&#8217;t have to offer sacrifices at the temple anymore. You can stop doing that and do other things like the Mass and stuff.
But here, Natalie, there are some things that are always binding on us, like taking the life of an innocent human being or same-sex romantic relationships. Those are things that we cannot pick and choose from. Those are things that will always be binding on us for us to reject those same-sex romantic relationships and reject taking the life of an innocent human being.
Caller: I understand. Taking the life of an innocent human being. Like, everyone, like, yeah, you should not take the life of anyone. It&#8217;s not your job.
Karlo: Exactly!
Caller: It&#8217;s also not the church&#8217;s job to tell someone, you know, you&#8217;re not going to go to heaven. You&#8217;re not going to have a good afterlife if you love the same sex. Because in reality, you know, God gave everyone free will for&#8230; No, actually, no, he didn&#8217;t. We took it. But what&#8230; It&#8217;s not like not hurting anyone. That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m saying is like, why is there so angry? But Natalie, like, they&#8217;re not hurting anyone.
Karlo: Okay, yeah, but, Natalie, consider this. And we&#8217;re running out of time in our hour here, so I&#8217;m gonna have to say this, and we&#8217;re gonna probably have to call it a quits here. And I&#8217;m so grateful for you having a conversation with me, but notice you said it&#8217;s not harming anyone. Natalie, perhaps it&#8217;s not physically harming anyone, but if these choices are immoral and contrary to our good as human beings and contrary to what God wants for us within the arena of sexuality, well, then it would be harmful to our moral characters.
It would be harming our souls because we&#8217;d be choosing wrongly here. And so, yeah, sure, it might not cause physical harm, but it would cause moral harm to go against what God&#8217;s plan is for us within the arena of sexuality. So I would just say if our position is true that those lifestyle choices are immoral, then to engage in them and to celebrate them would indeed be harmful, at least morally speaking.
And we don&#8217;t want to avoid just physical harm. Natalie, you&#8217;ve already expressed that we want to avoid moral harm as well, like being hateful and being judgmental. Those are bad moral qualities, and you called in saying that we should avoid them. And so what we&#8217;re saying is, if same-sex romantic relationships are bad moral choices, well, then we shouldn&#8217;t want to indulge in them. We should want to avoid them as well. And that&#8217;s an expression of love rather than hate.
Cy: Natalie, I gotta say, first of all, I know that Dr. Broussard and I are both super grateful for this call. It feels like it&#8217;s just the beginning of a long conversation because your questions are just wonderful questions, and it&#8217;s helpful to us to think through these things with you. If you&#8217;d like it, I&#8217;d like to send you a book we have called *Why We&#8217;re Catholic*. It&#8217;s about why we&#8217;re Catholic. If you&#8217;re interested in it, just give us an address. But also, I would like to continue the conversation. Maybe you&#8217;d call back again on another day. Dr. Broussard&#8217;s usually on on Tuesdays, but I just couldn&#8217;t. I can&#8217;t encourage you enough to keep asking the questions because it&#8217;s good for us, and we hope it&#8217;s good for you as well, and we&#8217;d like to be helpful.

Are Catholics the Most HATEFUL Christians?!

The sad case of the Alex Jurado scandal has made headlines throughout the Catholic internet. Whenever there is a scandal in the church, there is often much to be done in the aftermath.
Like Alex, I worship in the Byzantine Catholic Church, and the pastor of that church, Fr. Thomas Loya, has told us over and over again that the Catholic faith is about the way that God wants us to live and also how he wants us to see. To see God always present with us and to see all things as able to bring us into relationship with God is what he calls the “sacramental liturgical worldview.”
The following thoughts came about as inspired by Alex&#8217;s case, but they are not intended to address or analyze his case. What follows is not about this situation at all. Rather, they are some thoughts about how all of us should approach the modern communication method of text messaging and online messaging.
In light of this, and in light of the teachings of Christ and the Church, how should we approach the modern communication method of text messaging and online messaging?
<h2>The Good and the Bad</h2>
First, the ability to send and receive text messages and direct messages on social media can be a great gift, and we ought to recognize the good parts of it. We can quickly exchange simple information or ask and answer simple questions. Also, some people benefit from the ability to express their thoughts in written form, and it is a gift that such conversations can take place more quickly now than when it was more common to write letters.
However, there are downsides. Receiving a text message activates a hit of dopamine in the recipient, which should make it no surprise that a generation of young people is being raised that seems to prefer digital communication to in-person communication. Texting misses those essential non-verbal aspects of communication that can make all the difference in a conversation, such as tone and body language. Further, the written word can be subject to misinterpretation, even deliberate misinterpretation, and once texts are sent, they do not go away, even if they can be deleted from your phone.
In all this, some guidelines can help us as disciples of Christ to engage in the communication of texting. The thoughts that follow are not meant to be comprehensive, but they are a start.
<h2>Some Guidelines</h2>
Here are two teachings of Jesus that ought to lay the groundwork.
In Matthew 12:36-37, Jesus said, “I tell you, on the day of judgment people will render an account for every careless word they speak. By your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”
It seems obvious, but this applies not just to the spoken word. In fact, our written words are almost always more deliberate than our spoken words, so we will be held even more strictly accountable for what we put into writing.
In Luke 12:2-3, Jesus says that “there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. Therefore, whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and what you have whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed on the housetops.”
God sees what you send, so text in such a way that you would be perfectly okay with it if the recipient decided to take screen shots and post them on social media. Do not send in writing anything you would not be okay with the world seeing.
Does that mean couples should not send flirty, even verbally descriptive texts to each other that are more fitting to stay private? Of course not! It means that flirting with your spouse is not shameful. If flirty texts between a validly married couple were posted online somehow, that would not be a scandal—in fact, it would be an example for other married couples to follow, provided the conversation were not otherwise immoral or about doing something immoral.
For those couples who are engaged or still dating, there is also freedom to send flirtatious messages to each other, but in a way that is appropriate to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/should-nfp-be-taught-in-marriage-prep">their state in life</a>, although married couples certainly have greater freedom in this regard.
Another guideline, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIDotdzqlrU">recommended</a> by the mental health expert John Delony, for any readers who work with young people (such as a youth minister, a coach, or a catechist) is that adults should not text minors. If, for whatever reason, a minor must be reached via text message, then text the parents, or make sure that the text sent to the young person is also sent to the parents in the same thread. Even when the content of the messages is perfectly fine, you cannot go wrong in having added protection for yourself.
<h2>Sexting—Theological Considerations</h2>
Sexting can be defined as “sending nude or otherwise provocative images of yourself online or through your cellphone.”
Even between consenting adults, there are a number of problems with sexting, from a moral perspective and a practical one. If any material depicting sexual acts is sent over text message, that is pornography. If nude or otherwise provocative images or material is sent over text, that is being done for the sake of enjoying the images and is therefore <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-counts-as-pornography">an act of lust</a>.
To commit a sin of lust is not just to use another person, but also intentionally to provoke another person to look at you with lust. Another way to put this is that, in sexting, both the person sending the material and the recipient who uses the material lustfully are sinning.
When the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines pornography as “the removal of real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners in order to display them to third parties,” there is an expectation that privacy surround the sexual act and the naked bodies of the married spouses. The purpose of sexual attraction is to inspire a man and a woman to get married and engage in the marital act to deepen their bond and reproduce. The naked body is simply not meant to be experienced as mediated through a photo because it is not meant to be objectified or a source of pleasure for anyone other than a spouse.
When sexual acts or the naked body is recorded by video or photo—even in the hypothetical scenario where married spouses intend no one else to see such footage—there is an objectively increased risk that such material can be displayed to third parties because it now has been recorded on a device. For this reason, in my humble opinion, it cannot be recommended even for married couples to take and send explicit photos or videos to each other.
I make all of these points to comment on the theological reality of the proper context for sexual arousal and intimacy, in the context of consenting adults.
<h2>Practical Problems Regarding Sexting</h2>
First of all, the distinction between the “theological considerations” and “practical problems” of sexting does not imply that the practical problems do not in themselves have a moral weight. They do.
The distinction serves two purposes. The first is to make the distinction that there are good reasons not to sext that are rooted in Catholic teaching and others that are outside of it in other sources, such as the law. The second is to establish that even if, for whatever reason, society changed in such a way that sexting became a common behavior among teens and adults alike (which, according to this thorough <a href="https://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/sexting-statistics-what-do-the-surveys-say/">article</a> by Luke Gilkerson on the Covenant Eyes blog about sexting, thankfully appears not to be the case), our Catholic faith helps us see that it is still an immoral behavior.
Besides the theological considerations that I gave above, sexting should be avoided for many practical reasons. First, in many states, sexting minors has criminal implications for minors. Following the commission of this crime in some states, the persons involved, even as minors, may have to <a href="https://www.tpatrialattorneys.com/adult-vs-juvenile-sexting-laws/#:~:text=Sex%20Offender%20Registration%20for%20Life,%2C%20insurance%2C%20and%20personal%20relationships.">register as sex offenders</a>.
Second, once a picture is sent—perhaps even once it is taken—it is out of your control. Such pictures have been shared without the consent of the sender, and there are several documented instances of this among high school couples. Danah Boyd, senior researcher at Microsoft Research, <a href="http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/2011/RWW2011.html">says</a> that in nearly every school she visits, she hears the same types of stories of sexting gone awry.
<blockquote>Formula #1: Boy and girl are dating, images are shared. Boy and girl break up. Spurned lover shames the other by spreading images. Formula #2: Girl really likes boy, sends him sexy images. He responds by sharing them, shaming her.</blockquote>
In one <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/sexting">instance</a> I came across, the girl ended up taking her own life.
Those photos getting shared can have a devastating impact on a person’s reputation as well as a person’s standing with the law. These are just a few practical reasons why sexting is to be avoided all the time, but especially among minors.
<h2>Final Thoughts</h2>
Pope St. John Paul II said that the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of a person, but that it shows too little. The same can be said for every single “sext message” that has ever been sent.
A far more productive “revealing” would be to speak the truth with someone trustworthy about your complex feelings and experiences. For us fallen humans, real, in-person relationships are necessary for healing and growth in holiness. We need people that know us—our hopes, dreams, goals, desires, and strengths, as well as our weaknesses and our struggles. Do not let phones or texting replace those relationships.
Pray for Alex, who <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DMIf03XMLvm/">denies</a> the allegations being made of him. Pray for the victims. Pray that the truth may be revealed, and that everyone involved may have the wisdom to do the right thing going forward. Then put your phone down, and go love God and the people he has surrounded you with.

Texting Guidelines for Catholics

The Holy Mass celebrated by Fr. Paul Check at St. John Fisher Seminary in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
To learn how to explain and defend the Catholic Faith, visit Catholic.com.
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Daily Holy Mass: April 8, 2020

In this episode Trent sits down with fellow apologist Joe Heschmeyer to critique Gino Jennings’ attack on the doctrine of Mary being the mother of God and show how the denial of proper Mariology leads to heretical Christologies like those of Pastor Gino.

Oneness Pentecostal attacks Mary as Mother of God (REBUTTED)

How is it fair that God imposes his will on us.

Is cheating on college exams and quizzes immoral?

Where in the Bible can I find Mary’s perpetual virginity, and Assumption?

What circumstances would it be OK to celebrate defunct rites of Mass? 36:09 - Did Mary have birth pains

Why is missing Sunday Mass a Mortal Sin?

How can I offer my physical suffering up to God?

What happens to our free will when we go to Heaven?

Daughter in law diagnosed with Diabetes and she is very afraid to get pregnant because she will have to stop taking her medication. Is there an alternative to birth control? Or is birth control permitted in this case?

Why does God allow the devil to have power in the temporal world?

Can the souls in hell ask for forgiveness?

This episode tackles deep theological and moral questions, including God’s will vs. free will, Mary’s perpetual virginity and birth pains, missing Mass as a mortal sin, and offering suffering to God. Plus, insights on cheating, birth control in medical cases, and why God allows the devil power. Don&#8217;t miss this engaging discussion!

Why Is Missing Mass a Mortal Sin? & Other Catholic Questions

The Best Arguments Against Purgatory (and why they’re wrong)

Some people say that St. Peter could not have been the bishop of Rome because he was never in Rome at all. Apologist Trent Horn gives reasons why we can believe that he not only spent time in Rome, but was martyred there as well.
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Transcript:
Some people say that St. Peter could not have been the bishop of Rome because he was never in Rome at all. But archaeologists have discovered St. Peter’s tomb right below St. Peter’s basilica in the city of Rome.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, “it is probable that the tomb is authentic. It is also significant that Rome is the only city that ever claimed to be Peter’s place of death” (353). The Lutheran scholar Oscar Cullman, in his monumental study of Peter, concludes, “The excavations speak in favor of the report that the execution of Peter took place in the Vatican district (152.)
In 1 Peter <a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_E-RnmuKls&amp;t=313s">5:13</a> Peter says he was writing from the city of Babylon. This could not be the literal city of Babylon because the Jewish historian Josephus tells us that by the time of Emperor Claudius the Jews had left Babylon. In the second century emperor Trajan found Babylon to be nothing but a ghost town. Sean McDowell, an Evangelical scholar who has written the definitive treatment on the fate of the 12 apostles, says:
“The Old Testament city of Babylon was in ruins, so he could not have been referring to that city. Rather, it was a relatively common cryptic name for Rome, the enemy of God. Like the Hebrews exiled in the Babylon of the Old Testament, Christians in Rome felt themselves exiles in a foreign land, a sinful city that oppressed the people of God.”
Jewish literature, such as the Sibylline Oracles and 4 Baruch, as well as Christian literature like the book of Revelation, all used the name Babylon in reference to Rome. The evangelical scholar D.A. Carson likewise believes that Peter was in Rome about A.D. 63 or when 1 Peter was written and McDowell concludes, “it is historically very probable that Peter was in Rome for at least some period of time.” (60)
For more information about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com.
For Catholic Answers I’m Trent Horn, and thanks for watching.

Was Peter Ever In Rome?

<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3X7Ek0TWU&amp;t=33s">00:33</a> &#8211; What is acedia and how can we overcome it? &#8211; Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem. 
<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3X7Ek0TWU&amp;t=306s">05:06</a> &#8211; Answering objections to Moses being a real, historical figure &#8211; Jimmy Akin 
<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3X7Ek0TWU&amp;t=715s">11:55</a> &#8211; How do know that Jesus established all seven sacraments? &#8211; Tim Staples 
<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3X7Ek0TWU&amp;t=1130s">18:50</a> &#8211; Answering the accusation that Catholics worship saints &#8211; Karlo Broussard 
<a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq3X7Ek0TWU&amp;t=1439s">23:59</a> &#8211; Is it morally acceptable for Catholics to attend same-sex weddings or celebrations? &#8211; Jimmy Akin

Catholic Answers | Season 5 | Episode 6

As Catholics, we are rightly reminded that in the Church’s social teaching, there is a preferential option for the poor. This idea reflects the canon law obligation for us, in the first place, to do all we can within our means to assist the poor and most vulnerable (<a href="https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/inquiries/cornwall/en/hearings/exhibits/Frank_Morrisey/pdf/27_Canon_Law.pdf#:~:text=They%20are%20also%20obliged%20to%20promote%20social%20justice,poor%20from%20their%20own%20resources.%20Can.%20223%20%C2%A71.">can. 222 §2</a>). One of the most important ways to answer this obligation, in addition to material assistance, is to pray regularly for the poor.
Recent data show that the economic gap between the rich and the poor in our society has widened over the past few decades, and that expansion has sparked conflict. Added to this longer-term trend, the recent COVID pandemic only exacerbated the divide, as those with plenty were able to keep their jobs and work from an extra room converted into a home office, for example, whereas many with hourly jobs found themselves with no job at all when their employers shut down, often permanently.
In the Gospels, Our Lord speaks often of the dignity of the poor and our responsibility for their care. He goes even farther when, in several well known instances, he speaks pointedly to the rich and unflinchingly lays out <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-a-rich-person-get-to-heaven">the difficult path to heaven</a> ahead of them.
But is open conflict between the classes—the “haves” and the “have-nots”—what Our Lord had in mind? On the spiritual level, one thing that unites us all is our need for prayers. Who among us can say we are completely, or even mostly, self-sufficient? On the contrary, Jesus says, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.”
With that in mind, consider the following questions:
How often, if ever, do we pray for the rich—for those who experience material plenty? And if we are affluent ourselves, do we pray for God’s assistance as fervently and as often as we should?
Hold on a second, we might retort. If indeed we should pray for the rich, does that mean we should ask God to provide the wealthy with greater abundance? Prosperity gospel preachers like Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar, and Joyce Meyer might say sure, but no, that’s not at all what we are talking about.
From the beginning, spiritual warfare has been a central reality of Christian life—perhaps today more than ever—regardless of whether we recognize it and how much wealth we have. Given the general human tendency toward sin, all of us will be tempted by any number of vices. But if we do not have wealth, we may also be tempted to envy or jealousy—not only resenting the rich, but even wishing misfortune on them. Envy is a cardinal sin, so this is clearly not what God desires from us.
On the other hand, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/was-jesus-wealthy">the wealthy among us</a> might be tempted by different sins, like pride, vanity, and outright disregard for our fellow man. But consider how the rich succumbing to these temptations might have an outsized effect on society. Got an extra million dollars in your pocket? Well, Satan says, “Forget the poor. Buy a new yacht!” Own a prime piece of real estate? The Deceiver cajoles, “You don’t really want to donate that. Maximize your profit. And buy an even bigger yacht!”
These may seem like solutions looking for real problems, but there are significant implications of the wealthy losing such spiritual battles, above and beyond the ultimate destination of their souls. What could that million dollars, donated, have meant to a struggling pro-life ministry? Or that piece of land for a church bursting at the seams, needing both a new building and a place to put it?
Certainly, let us first pray for the poor, whose needs may well involve life or death and include such tragic hardships as homelessness, hunger, and untreated illness. But thereafter, let us also pray for the wealthy, that they might be strong against the temptation to selfishness and so use their largesse for the furtherance of the kingdom of God and the benefit of their fellow man.
Such a use of wealth in the context of the Church has brought great spiritual fruit over the centuries, as we can see in the smattering of canonized kings and queens—the heroic St. Louis IX of France among them—and some of the world’s great cathedrals and basilicas built primarily because of the generosity of the “haves.” And that’s not to mention how the wealth and influence of certain of Jesus’ followers enabled them to play pivotal roles in salvation history. For example, Joseph of Arimathea had the means to buy a tomb for Our Lord and the cachet to petition Pontius Pilate for the delivery of Jesus’ body. It is quite possible that right stewardship of significant wealth, the owner of which is seeking to use it according to the will of God, could have an even greater impact in the modern world than it ever had before.
Finally, for those of us who have few (if any) material needs, it is a given that we must pray for the poor first. But afterward, let us pray for ourselves, just as fervently as we might have done before we had wealth. Any Christian, frankly, who feels he does not need God’s help—even if it comes from a well-intentioned but mistaken desire for the Lord to “spend his time with those who need it more”—is putting his eternal destination at risk. God’s grace is available and necessary for all, though it can take different forms depending on our state in life. Pray for spiritual poverty at a level of fervor that matches our material wealth. Pray for the wisdom and courage that will allow us to use a significant portion of our resources for the benefit of our neighbor. Pray for humility, a virtue of which most of us could use more.
And let us pray for one another, in charity, regardless of our means or lack thereof. May we remain steadfast against the sin of envy on the one hand and the sin of selfishness on the other. The Lord desires that all men spend eternity with him in heaven. And we can not only strive for that ultimate goal ourselves, but also help each other get there.

The Rich Need Prayers, Too

Where do we see the Mass in Acts of the Apostles?

How do we defend the baptism of infants? My co-worker says you just need faith and it’s not necessary to baptize babies.

In Mark 12:30ff Jesus quotes the great shema. In Deuteronomy it says to love God with your whole heart, soul, and strength. Why does Mark add the word “mind” to that?

Why do some people feel reluctant to go to confession?

Is the papacy so tied to Rome that it could never be somewhere else? If Islam took over Europe could the pope be based somewhere else?

Why isn’t the book of Maccabees in the King James Bible? I’m trying to talk about the faith with my Seventh Day Adventist family members.

Mt 10:3 calls James son of Alpheus, and Mk 2:14-17 calls Levi the son of Alpheus. Could they be brothers?

My grown children think we are living in a simulation. How can I counter this?

You said the King James did not translate the deuterocan books. But I have two KJV Bibles that include the deuterocanonical books.

I’ve been getting along with my new coworkers because they are Christian. But today Mary came up and they really attacked Catholic teaching on Mary. What can I say to them?

&#8220;Where do we see the Mass in Acts of the Apostles?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the early Church&#8217;s practices, alongside topics like defending infant baptism against claims of its necessity, and the significance of Jesus&#8217; addition of &#8220;mind&#8221; in Mark 12:30. Other questions touch on the nature of confession and the papacy&#8217;s ties to Rome, showcasing a rich variety of theological inquiries.
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Where Do We See the Mass in Acts? Baptism and Confession

When can you fulfill your Easter duty?

How can we know that the Scriptures are divinely inspired?

Have you in your learnings come to understand what causes Same-Sex Attraction? Is there a theory you find convincing? Do you have a theory of your own?

Is monasticism selfish?  For example, how could have the apostles fulfilled the Great Commission if they were cloistered? And how would that apply today?  Can evangelization be accomplished from inside a monastic cell?

It seems to me that God’s ultimate goal is to get us back bodily in heaven with him. Would that be like the garden of Eden again and how does us eating the eucharist help with that? Or does it? It seems we need to eat our savior to be bodily with...

If somebody does something evil out of stupidity, how responsible is he for said action? Can he be at least partly excused?

This might sound silly, but I’ve wondered it a lot: If you are in mass and you’ve fasted the hour but find something in your teeth, does it break the fast to swallow it?

Would it be moral to shoot down a hijacked plane full of civilians over an unpopulated area, if it is believed the hijackers intend to crash it in a populated area? Would this be considered doing evil that good may come of it or double effect?

When exactly can Catholics fulfill their Easter duty, and why does the Church require it? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Jimmy Akin answers thoughtful questions from listeners on a wide range of topics. He explains how we know the Scriptures are divinely inspired without falling into circular reasoning, discusses theories about the causes of same-sex attraction, and examines whether monastic life conflicts with the Church’s mission to evangelize. Jimmy also explores the relationship between the Eucharist and the resurrection of the body, moral responsibility for actions done in ignorance, whether swallowing something stuck in your teeth breaks the Eucharistic fast, and how Catholic moral theology evaluates difficult scenarios like stopping a hijacked plane. A wide-ranging discussion covering Scripture, moral theology, and practical questions about living the Catholic faith.
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When Can You Fulfill Your Easter Duty? Jimmy Akin Answers Your Catholic Questions

Tim Staples answers a call asking whether it is improper for us to use the same gestures as the priest during mass, such as raising the hands during the Lord&#8217;s Prayer.

What to Do About Gestures During Mass

<div>Is it OK to attend daily Mass every day? </div><div>Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to attend Mass everyday. In fact, many people do just that.
<blockquote>The Church obliges the faithful to take part in the Divine Liturgy on Sundays and feast days and, prepared by the sacrament of Reconciliation, to receive the Eucharist at least once a year, if possible during the Easter season. But the Church strongly encourages the faithful to receive the holy Eucharist on Sundays and feast days, or more often still, even daily (CCC 1389).</blockquote>
Suggested reading: The Diocese of Salina&#8217;s <a href="http://salinadiocese.org/new-evangelization/2108-5-reasons-to-attend-daily-mass">5 Reasons to Attend Daily Mass</a>.
</div>

Mass Every Day?

I will never forget, years ago, when I was asked this question on Catholic Answers Live by a nine-year-old boy: “If Mary had to be without sin in order for her to carry Jesus in her womb, how could Jesus have come into a world where there is so much sin?” That’s quite a question, coming from a nine-year-old!
Along these same lines, many will ask, “If Mary had to be without sin in order to carry God in her womb, wouldn’t Mary’s mother have to be without sin in order to carry a sin-free Mary in her womb . . . and wouldn’t the same be true for her mother . . . and her mother, etc.?”
This same question was asked in the twelfth century, by no less a luminary than St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Although he understood Mary to be completely free of all personal sins whatsoever, he had a problem with the idea of the Immaculate Conception. And at that time, the dogma had not been defined. I say that to point out that this question is not one to be scoffed at.
In answering these two questions, it is important for us to remember—and this is true of all the Marian dogmas—that we are not talking about strict necessity with any of them. In other words, Mary did not have to be immaculately conceived in order to give birth to the Messiah. Jesus could have been born of a sinful woman if God had so willed it. For that matter, God did not have to become incarnate in the world at all in order to save us. He could have saved us in any number of ways. He is all-powerful. The Catechism of the Catholic Church rightly uses the language of “fittingness” (722) when it speaks of the Immaculate Conception. And in Lumen Gentium, the fathers of Vatican II provide the following:
<blockquote>All the salvific influence of the Blessed Virgin on men originates, not from some inner necessity, but from the divine pleasure. It flows forth from the superabundance of the merits of Christ, rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it and draws all its power from it. In no way does it impede, but rather does it foster the immediate union of the faithful with Christ (60).</blockquote>
What does the Church mean by fitting, or from the divine good pleasure? Think of it this way: if the president of the United States came to your hometown, it would not be a matter of strict necessity that there be television cameras, a parade, dignitaries, Secret Service agents, etc. The president could simply come to your town without any of the normal accompaniments. He is fully capable of it. However, it would not be fitting (and it might be dangerous). When the president comes to a town on an official visit, we expect to see a big to-do. Why? Because of the dignity of his office.
So it is with Mary. Her vocation is immeasurably greater than that of any king, president, or prime minister. She is the Mother of God. Hence, it was fitting that she be immaculately conceived in order to bring to the world “the King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16).
But what about the claim that Mary’s mother—St. Anne—had to be sinless in order to bear a sinless Mary in her womb? Or what about the entire world needing to be untouched by sin in order for Jesus to live in it? There would obviously be no strict necessity in those cases, either. But there are two points to be made for clarity’s sake.
First, though there is no natural necessity here, we do clearly see in Scripture and Tradition, as understood by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, the fact that the divine disposition in this matter has been revealed. Mary was, in fact, immaculately conceived, so any argument attempted against this revealed truth, through either a misuse of Scripture or reason, can be shown to be deficient. And in this case, the deficiency is obvious, because we can argue that Jesus’ relationship with the world—by virtue of being in it—is far removed from the intimacy of his relationship with Mary, his mother.<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> That intimacy increases the fittingness of Mary’s immaculate conception and sinlessness.
Moreover, there is an essential and infinite gap between Jesus and Mary that didn’t exist between Mary and her mother. Jesus was not just without sin; Jesus was God. Anne did not bear God in her womb, but Mary did; hence, Mary’s preparation by God was fittingly—and radically—different from Anne’s.
If, having dispelled the objections as given above, the apologist has more time to continue the discussion, I would recommend he become acquainted with what I presented in my book, <a href="CB378PB">Behold Your Mother</a>, as eight biblical reasons for Mary’s immaculate conception. And though it has always been hard for me to say which is the most compelling of the eight, number one is a strong contender. It’s also St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s favorite: the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-new-adam-rebukes-the-new-eve">New Eve</a>.
St. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in Against Heresies ca. A.D. 177, <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103322.htm">gives us a window</a> into the early Church’s understanding of this profound truth with what I would say is a deft usage of Luke 1:37-38:
<blockquote>Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.” But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. And even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam, but being nevertheless yet a virgin . . . having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, became the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race. . . . And thus also it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the Virgin Mary set free through faith.</blockquote>
Irenaeus emphasizes the fundamental link between Mary as “the New Eve” and her central role in God’s plan of salvation. But if we consider what most scholars—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox—will agree upon, that Old Testament types are necessarily and always inferior to their New Testament fulfillments, it would certainly be fitting to say—indeed, I argue it follows necessarily according to the revelation we have been given—that the New Eve would be conceived without sin. If she were conceived in sin, Mary would be inferior to the first Eve, who was created without sin.
Moreover, a true understanding of the New Eve renders null and void any thought of Mary ever having committed actual sins. Just as Eve’s sinfulness led to the death of all her children, as Irenaeus said, it would be Mary’s obedience, or sinlessness, that would lead to life for all of her children.
Couldn’t Mary have sinned after having obeyed God and conceived Jesus? It doesn’t seem fitting that she would have. Just as the New Adam, Jesus, never fell into sin, as Adam did, it is fitting that Mary would likewise repair the old Eve’s sin with perfect obedience. Even a single sin from the Mother of God would represent a much greater fall than Eve’s, because she was given so much more grace. That would be unthinkable.
Also, when we consider the manifold gifts in Mary’s life that go beyond what I can include in this brief article, such as her being everything from the “Mother of God,” “full of grace,” and “Ark of the New Covenant” to the “beginning of the New Creation” and more we could consider, and now “the New Eve,” we can see how each reveals in its own way the Immaculate Conception, via the plenitude of grace in Mary’s life. St. Augustine’s famous words from On Nature and Grace <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1503.htm">come to mind</a>:
<blockquote>We must except the holy Virgin Mary, concerning whom I wish to raise no question when it touches the subject of sins, out of honor to the Lord; for from him we know what abundance of grace for overcoming sin in every particular was conferred upon her who had the merit to conceive and bear him who undoubtedly had no sin.</blockquote>
And remember: it was not just Irenaeus who taught Mary to be the New Eve. The Fathers of the Church were unanimous on this point. That of itself is compelling. But when you look into the reasons for this belief among the Fathers, you quickly find its foundation deeply rooted in Scripture—and Scripture that goes far beyond Luke 1:37-38. Irenaeus quite deftly imvoked Luke 1:37-38 and the Incarnation to make his point, as we saw above, but the Scriptures are replete with examples. These go beyond what I can do here, but they end up providing <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/bible-mary-the-mother-of-jesus-in-the-word-of-god/">overwhelming evidence</a> for the Immaculate Conception.

It Makes Sense for Mary Not to Sin

As a pro-life advocate and author of a <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-2nd-edition/">pro-life apologetic book</a>, it has been disappointing to see pro-life laws be constantly defeated at the ballot box in the wake of Roe v. Wade <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/reaction-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade">being overturned</a>. Fortunately, overturning Roe has still resulted in tens of thousands of saved lives; and it’s no surprise that the pro-choice movement would strike back in the wake of their greatest defeat.
But I still wonder why it has been so difficult to oppose pro-abortion amendments or pass pro-life laws after Roe’s demise. I can think of a few reasons.
First, it’s important to remember that people are complex; so there are lots of reasons to explain these defeats. For a long time, a person calling himself “pro-life” would never have those convictions tested since legal abortion was the status quo. But now that the “quo of Roe is no mo’,” suddenly he may vote for abortion because only a thin group dynamic in his church or political party motivated him to keep identifying as pro-life.
And there is, of course, the lying from the pro-abortion side who use their friends in the media to say that pro-life laws will result in women being denied care after miscarriages and other nonsense.
But here’s one reason I wonder about but haven’t seen discussed: people are desensitized to death, so hearing that babies are dying from abortion doesn’t move them as much as it did in the past.
I used to work for a group that set up large graphic exhibits with pictures of the unborn—before and after abortion—at major public universities. When we did this in the early 2000’s, huge crowds would come to see the exhibit, and the students were boisterous. In some cases, we thought there would be a riot among the students.
But as the 2010’s began, we noticed a trend. Students were buried in their iPhones browsing the internet and didn’t care. I think for many the graphic images of abortion had become old news. They had seen far more gruesome content on the internet for years.
Fast-forward to 2023. When I browse Twitter to see what’s happening in the world, I routinely see channels pop up in my feed that post videos of people being killed in accidents and other unfortunate circumstances.
When I was a teenager, the only way to see a gruesome death was to go that one kid’s house and watch the cult classic Faces of Death—the one you could only find at that less-than-reputable independent video store. But how many teens and pre-teens today have grown up on a limitless diet of shock and gore, accessible 24/7 on their devices?
Perhaps the pro-life movement’s challenges in the future will be to sanctify society and save it from both traditional porn that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/three-things-you-need-to-know-about-pornography">demeans</a> life-giving sexual love as well as newer “gorn” (gore porn) that turns death (including unjust deaths) into something that piques our curiosity rather than our sense of justice.

We’re Desensitized to Death

It&#8217;s easy to say “thank you” . . . at least sometimes.
When our hearts are delighted, as at a wedding of a dear friend or family member, or when we receive unexpected and unsolicited help or generosity from a friend or from a stranger, the words “thank you” could not come more easily.
But what about unwelcome news, ill treatment, bad times? How do we react when the up and coming generation forswears marriage, when funerals outnumber weddings in churches across the United States? What about when our friends and even our family members spurn us, shun us, insult us, be it for our lifestyle or our politics or even our faith? How should we react to those?
When we witness—or suffer ourselves—injustice, malice, deceit, betrayal, or any of the human failings so well documented in the electronic devices to which we all are enslaved, our first reaction—mine, in any case—is not gratitude. “Thank you” is not something I say when the moral mire of our age disturbs my peace.
But when I look to Scripture to support my indignation, instead I find St. Paul scolding me. It’s not the moral mire that’s the problem, Paul says (though it certainly is a problem). No, the problem is my ingratitude.
Gratitude is an ongoing theme for the apostle to the Gentiles. “Rejoice always,” he exhorts us in First Thessalonians—“pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (5:17-18). Lest we doubt Paul’s credibility, remember that this is a man who endured beatings, whippings, stonings, imprisonments, and shipwrecks (2 Cor. 11:23-28). How did he get to be so grateful?
We find out in his letter to the Romans. Here Paul provides an apologia for thanking God in bad times: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (5:3-5).
We could grieve at the myriad opportunities out there to put Paul’s words to use. We hear of so many wounds to the Church, the bride of Christ, no small number of which are self-inflicted. I already mentioned some examples of the crisis in marriage, in marriages, in families. Nor does it end there. And it’s not that we should “rejoice in” these—we can never be grateful for evil. Rather, we must be grateful that God, in his infinite mercy, sees fit to take even our iniquity and work it to our good.
This is more than “count your blessings.” It’s a radical orientation toward prayer—perhaps new, perhaps hard to accept, but worth the effort.
Think of it this way: on this side of the veil, our prayers are divided into petition, contrition, thanksgiving, and praise. If you’re like me, you have trouble getting beyond petition! But when, God willing, we see the face of God, we will have no need of “please.” We won’t need “I’m sorry,” either—purgatory will take care of that. No, all our prayers will be thanksgiving and praise. “Thank you,” and “I love you.”
The book of Job describes a just man who loses everything. As his wealth, his possessions, his health, even his family fall into ruin, decay, and death, his friends exhort him to give up on the God who so clearly has forsaken him. Even his wife tempts him: “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God, and die” (2:9).
The good news is that Job keeps the Faith. He never forgets the one to whom he owes everything. But the bad news is that he complains along the way—complains quite a lot, actually, to the point that God comes and rebukes him directly. “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? . . . Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?” (40:2,9).
Don’t forget that Job is a just man! And yet here is how we can exceed him in virtue—with our gratitude. Every kind word, every pleasant feeling, is God’s gift, because God created our ears to hear and our bodies to feel. No matter our sorrows, we can remember that every breath we take is God’s gift. And even the man who convinces himself that he has nothing left to be thankful for can read Psalm 22—“my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, the psalm our Lord recited from the cross—and remember that God has prepared a city for such as him. That is the greatest gift of all, beyond all sensation, beyond all worldly goods: the chance to live forever in perfect happiness with our creator, a chance God gives freely, in love, as love, to everyone.
This, I think, is a good way to understand the words of Bl. Solanus Casey: “Gratitude is the first sign of a thinking rational creature.” G.K. Chesterton takes the same thought farther: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” In other words, the perpetually grateful are the happiest people in the room. Why? No matter their aches and pains and earthly heartsickness, they are living in the presence of God.
We can be the perpetually grateful, the happiest people in the room, because we have something that Job lacked: a personal Savior, God incarnate, come to cleanse us of our sins and redeem us. We have a Church that has opened for us its abundant treasury of graces, consolations, and indulgences. We have the saints, our models for holy lives, to illuminate the path to heaven opened up for us despite our unworthiness. And so we can exceed Job in virtue, in gratitude, even in the darkest times—because no matter what befalls us, God has prepared for us a city, with a standing invitation from Jesus Christ.
Let’s be thankful, then—when things are easy, of course, but especially when they’re hard. The God who made us deserves nothing less—and we’ll be happier, too.

Even When It’s Bad, Be Grateful

Tim Staples dispels the common myth that priests turn to pedophilia due to sexual repression from celibacy, and explains why celibacy is actually a sign of the highest love of all which wills the good of another.
Transcript:
Host: This question comes from Connie on Facebook Live: “Tim, can you explain why priests are to live chase lives? I recently had someone tell me that the Catholic Church is the reason why so many priests stray and have relationships with other people and abuse children.”
Tim: You know, that’s another popular myth. In fact, oh, what was our good friend from Penn State University that wrote the book “Priests and Pedophiles: The Anatomy of a Crisis?” What was his name? Dr…it’ll come—Philip Jenkins. Dr. Philip—great book. I read it back in 2001. He did extensive research on this whole quote-unquote “pedophile crisis.” And—parts are comical, because in one section he talks about a forty-year study that was done by the Archdiocese of Chicago on the “pedophile crisis,” and it was—when the actual information was gathered, he said there was actually only one case of actual pedophilia. It was mostly ephebophilia, which is— Oh, teenagers. Relationships with post-pubescent teenagers. And he says in this book, “Were it not for this one sad case, there would have been an absolute lack of actual pedophilia in the ‘pedophilia crisis’ of the Archdiocese of Chicago.” The problem was actually homosexuality, but of course the culture can’t say there’s anything wrong with homosexuality, because we say “It’s normal” as a culture, right? But that was really the issue, at least for the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Now there have been pedophilia problems and so forth, and one case is one case far too many. But the point is, in Dr. Philip Jenkins’ book, he did extensive research and found, number one: the percentage of priests actually involved is EXTREMELY low. We’re talking, like, 1.7%, versus in Protestant ministry it’s actually much higher. It’s not even close, it’s like three times higher. And most ministers are married. Yes! In fact, most pedophiles are married. Most—it’s father with daughter and such.
I mean, it’s—this thing got so blown out of proportion, number one, even on the numbers, but number two: celibacy has nothing to do with it. I mean, when we’re talking about pedophilia, we’re talking about a sickness. This is not—even secular psychologists will tell you—this isn’t even the normal sexual sort of deviancy like adultery or fornication or masturbation; this is a sickness, this is about power and control, and these people really need some serious psychological help.
Alright. But now, when it comes to actual celibacy, what you find is, celibacy is not part of the problem, it’s part of the answer! Celibacy is a great gift to the Church, and it is needed so desperately now because of the fact that we live in the midst of a sexually crazed culture where, oh my gosh, just go out and look at the billboards, open a magazine, turn on the TV. Celibacy is an eschatological sign for us today. When we see a Pope St. John Paul the Great, a Mother Teresa—St. Teresa of Calcutta, we see, lived out in their lives, the fact that sex dies when we do; love is eternal!
I mean, my gosh, we’re so crazy—the mentality in our culture is, “If you’re not having sex, you’re gonna go crazy!” Right? Which is an absolute lie! What does that say to elderly couples who can’t have sex anymore, or people in various situations in their marriages where they can’t have sex—“Oh, you must be deviant and sick because you’re not—” I mean, that is, it’s absolutely a lie, and thanks be to God for the celibates, like I’ve mentioned, who are that sign to us. Love, my friends, love which, at its core, is to will the good of the other, it’s completely disinterested.
And by the way, this is why Plato held the love between two men to be of such a high level, it’s because—not because he taught homosexuality, he didn’t—but it’s because it’s disinterested. You’re not asking for anything. It’s a love. That’s kind of—you know, Plato didn’t have the sense of celibacy that we do with the advent of Christ, but it’s that sense of disinterested love that is God. God gives, He creates, He redeems; not because he’s gonna get anything back, but He gives because He is Love. And that’s what we’re called to do even in a marriage situation, where I have a conjugal relationship; we have to constantly be reminded—and our celibate brothers and sisters remind us of this—of what love is. My wife is not a sexual object for me. She is to be put up on a pedestal, and I love her, and I give myself until it hurts to her without asking for anything in return. We have to remember that.
So at any rate, forgive me for going on and on about this, but I do think, in our modern era, too often we fall prey to that myth, that celibacy is the problem. No, my friends, celibacy is the answer. Jesus recommended it in Matthew 19:12. St. Paul recommended it in 1 Corinthians chapter 7. And I think those are two pretty good guys to take wisdom from: Jesus and St. Paul—and by the way, the Holy Spirit too.
And—don’t you think there’s something about the 19th century, the Freudian stuff and all that, it polluted our society with ideas that, in a weird way, have now been proven—no, that’s not how the psyche works. But yet, people are still poisoned with that idea that any kind of repression means I’m losing my humanity or something. Yes, it is incredible how we have ended up lowering humanity to the level of the lower appetites, and—to the animal level, when it’s our intellect and our will and our ability to rise above our appetites and our passions that makes us human.

Is Priestly Celibacy Responsible for Pedophilia?

The Los Angeles Dodgers <a href="https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2023-05-22/dodgers-apologize-invite-sisters-perpetual-indulgence-pride-night">reversed</a> their <a href="https://www.dailynews.com/2023/05/17/dodgers-withdraw-pride-night-invitation-to-group-accused-of-mocking-christians/">backtrack</a> on their plan to honor the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (SOPI) so fast, you might not even have been aware that they’d backtracked in the first place. After “thoughtful feedback from our diverse communities,” and after the mayor of neighboring Anaheim announced that she would invite the “sisters”—men who dress up as glam nuns to <a href="https://www.outtraveler.com/san-francisco/easter-hunky-jesus-foxy-mary">promote perversion</a>—to headline “Pride Night” at Angels Stadium, the Dodgers’ PR team not only reinstated the “sisters” to their Pride program, but offered a groveling apology for momentarily failing to recognize their “life-saving work.”
When I <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/drag-bunts">wrote about this a few days ago</a>, I praised those who had so quickly objected to the Dodgers’ endorsement of anti-Catholicism. The Catholic lobby, so to speak, had sprung into action and had its voice respected. I thought it was a promising sign, even if it made me lament missed opportunities to present such a unified front in the past.
Now the promising sign is wiped away. The Catholic lobby and the lobby of sexual deviance squared off over America’s pastime, and the deviance lobby won. I fear this will be a watershed event—a sign to all our institutions that they don’t have to worry about showing respect to the Catholic Church (e.g., by refusing to honor those who overtly mock it) or about accounting for Catholic beliefs in their corporate decisions (e.g., by not endorsing, or by moderating how they endorse, ideologies opposed to Catholic beliefs).
How did we get here? The slippery slope of moral decay and the devil’s insatiable hatred of the Church are big factors, for sure. But I think that some of this is self-inflicted, too.
Catholic author and sociologist (and my friend) <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/David-Carlin/author/B001JP1JOQ?ref=ap_rdr&amp;store_ref=ap_rdr&amp;isDramIntegrated=true&amp;shoppingPortalEnabled=true">David Carlin</a> likes to point out the essential incompatibility between Catholicism and modern gay activism. That is, they can’t coexist indefinitely as respectable societal forces; they can’t both occupy seats at our culture’s main dining-room table. Catholicism insists upon a certain ordering of body, will, and spirit, evident from nature and also commanded from God, that is necessary for human happiness. The gay-activist ethos rejects this ordering and so requires Catholicism to be false. So, every time our government, schools, corporations—and baseball teams—endorse the latter, they effectively say, &#8220;Catholicism is wrong.&#8221;
When we Catholics are united in our understanding of that ordering, we are formidable. The world understands what it’s dealing with; maybe is even compelled by the strength of our conviction. It’s clearer that groups like the SOPI are offensive to something sacred and intractably opposed to widespread and deeply held beliefs.
But when our side is lukewarm and divided in its convictions, the world will see less reason to respect us. Moreover, it will (not-unreasonably) pooh-pooh our premise that public endorsement of sexual deviance is an existential threat to our religion. If Cardinal Hollerich, and Fr. James Martin, and Dignity, and Out at St. Paul, and all those rainbow flyers for gay-affirming meetings in church basements, are Catholic things, they can say, your argument is invalid. We’re not opposed to Catholicism—just your (antiquated, dying) version of it.
Traditional Protestants are facing a similar problem. If they, for instance, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/19/sport/james-reimer-pride-night-jersey-lgbtq-spt-intl/index.html">cite their faith and the Bible</a> as justification for not participating in a “Pride” event, activists and the Twitter class are quick to point out the many gay-affirming brands of Christianity and of biblical exegesis that disagree with them. Some don’t stop at pointing out that these alternative Christian moral-sexual schemes now exist; they insist <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/nhl/2023/3/20/23648222/james-reimer-sharks-pride-warmup-christianity-nhl">such schemes are actually True Christianity</a>, and that dissenters from them are just using religion as a cover for bigotry.
But you might say this is to be expected of Protestantism, whose principle of sola scriptura tends to encourage moral and theological fracture and has done so for centuries. Whereas although dissent is nothing new to Catholicism, one senses a novelty in how widespread, how bold, how aggressive, how high-up our recent selling-out of traditional moral certainties has been. I think the Dodgers sense it, too.

The Call on the Field Is Reversed

My father received last rites and went to confession. The priest said that if he were to die, he wouldn’t have to go to purgatory. Is this true?

What did it mean when the Holy Spirit overshadowed Mary?

What are legitimate reasons to not have kids?

What’s the Church’s official teaching on the Nephilim?

Do you have to believe in all doctrines of the Catholic Church in order to be appointed a priest or bishop?

1 Corinthians 4:6 says to “not go beyond what is written.” Is this evidence for sola scriptura?

&#8220;Can you avoid purgatory after last rites?&#8221; This episode explores the nuances of last rites and their implications for salvation, alongside intriguing questions about the meaning of the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary and the Church&#8217;s teachings on the Nephilim. Tune in for a thoughtful examination of these important topics in Catholic faith.
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Can You Avoid Purgatory After Last Rites? Nephilim and Mary

Today people are fascinated by cryptids—hidden creatures—like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W55wLpMoelM">Bigfoot</a> and the <a href="https://youtu.be/ru0YLTXQH1w">Loch Ness</a> <a href="https://youtu.be/RXVMOwrmN_E">Monster</a>. In the ancient world, the most famous cryptid was the dragon, so did early Christians believe in them?
The term dragon (Greek, drakôn) appears in the Greek Bible, but normally it is in a symbolic context—like when the devil appears in the form of a dragon in the book of Revelation (e.g., Rev. 12). So this doesn’t provide good evidence for belief in literal dragons.
However, the term also appears in other contexts. For example, in Daniel 14, the prophet Daniel kills a large drakôn that the Babylonians worshipped. However, in secular Greek, the term drakôn originally referred to a snake or serpent, and it did not always have monstrous connotations. This is clear in Wisdom 16:10, where the author refers back to the snakes that bit the Israelites in Numbers 21 and describes them as “venomous drakontôn.” The author of Daniel 14 may thus have expected readers to imagine a big snake, and some modern Bible translations like the Common English Bible use “snake” in the passage.
The Bible thus doesn’t provide a good basis for documenting belief in literal dragons. However, we do find some in the early Church who were open to the idea. St. Augustine writes:
<blockquote>As for dragons, which lack feet, they are said to take their rest in caves, and to soar up into the air. While these are not too easy to come across, this kind of animated creature is for all that definitely mentioned not only in our literature but also in that of the Gentiles (Literal Meaning of Genesis 3:9:13).</blockquote>
This passage may not mean what it suggests, however. You’ll note that Augustine says dragons have no feet—which would point to snakes—but that they fly. There were—indeed—references to flying snakes in ancient literature. Isaiah mentions them (14:29, 30:6), and so does the Greek historian Herodotus (Histories 2:75-76, 3:109). So Augustine is likely not referring to what we would think of as a dragon but to flying snakes. (Note: flying—or, technically, gliding—snakes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16aGSx9gFO4">do exist in some parts of Asia</a>.)
The flying snakes that Herodotus referred to were small, but in another passage, Augustine envisions dragons that are very large:
<blockquote>Now dragons favor watery habitats. They emerge from caves and take to the air. They create major atmospheric disturbance, for dragons are very large creatures, the largest of all on earth. This is probably why the psalm began its consideration of earthly creatures with them (Expositions of the Psalms 148:9).</blockquote>
Augustine wasn’t alone in thinking about real, enormous dragons. Other Church Fathers did so also, and so did non-Christian thinkers.
The reason is obvious when you think about it. Although the term paleontology was only coined in 1822, humans have been running across fossils for as long as there have been humans. When they came across the bones of giant, monstrous animals, they correctly concluded that there used to be giant animals in the area.
In her book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/First-Fossil-Hunters-Dinosaurs-Mammoths/dp/0691245606/">The First Fossil Hunters</a>, historian Adrienne Mayor insightfully argues that it was the ancient discovery of fossils that formed the basis of the legends of dragons and similar creatures the world over.
St. Augustine himself reports finding a giant tooth on a beach, where the action of the waves presumably uncovered it:
<blockquote>Once, on the beach at Utica, I saw with my own eyes—and there were others to bear me witness—a human molar tooth so big that it could have been cut up, I think, into a hundred pieces each as big as one of our modern teeth. That tooth, however, I can well believe, was the tooth of a giant (City of God 15:9).</blockquote>
I’m not a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/should-catholics-be-young-earth-creationists-with-jimmy-akin">Young Earth Creationist</a>, but I have to agree with musician Buddy Davis’s fun children’s song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyUYckTo0A8">D Is For Dinosaur</a>:
<blockquote>When dinosaurs first roamed the earth, many years ago
People called them dragons (and just thought you’d like to know) 
So dinosaurs and dragons are both the same thing 
The only thing that’s different is we changed the dragon’s name</blockquote>

Dragons, St. Augustine, and Dino Bones

Apologist vs. Ex-Catholics of Reddit (Mass Grave Conspiracy Debunked)

God has a big voice and has lots to say. If he can speak into existence the whole of creation, then his words have immense power. But God is reserved and measured in his words. He doesn’t talk just to hear himself.
God speaks in a calculated manner. God could thunder from heaven, warning people, chastising sinners, and instilling fear, but he doesn’t. God is like a gentleman, reserved in speech and conduct. He wants us to know him and come to a knowledge of the truth, but he doesn’t shout or coerce us.
When God speaks to individuals, it’s usually through visions and dreams. When he speaks to groups, it’s typically through prophets who relay his word. A prophet is someone who speaks God’s word.
The ultimate Word of God is his Son. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). The Letter to the Hebrews informs us, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (1:1-2).
Understanding the power of God’s word and his discriminating use of it, let’s discuss the three times in the Gospels when God speaks audibly from heaven and is heard by everyone nearby. Knowing how rare his audible voice is, we see the importance of these announcements, all of which were significant concerning his incarnate Son.
In the Old Testament, God appointed three special offices: prophet, priest, and king. The prophet spoke God’s word, the priest officiated in the Temple, and the king ruled the people under God’s law. These offices foreshadowed the ultimate “Coming One” who would fulfill them, not as flawed humans, but as God himself with divine perfection. Everyone knew that the Messiah would be the ultimate prophet, priest, and king. Jesus fulfilled these roles, and God announced it from heaven.
Let’s examine each office individually and chronologically, from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to the end. His ministry is bookended by verbal announcements, with the middle one at a high point. Although each gospel doesn’t mention all three offices individually, we find them in all four.
Voice One: Baptism of Our Lord and His Priesthood
At the baptism of our Lord, Matthew, Mark, and Luke narrate that Jesus, accompanied by numerous others, approached John the Baptist in the Jordan River. This location holds immense significance, as it was the place where Joshua led the children of Israel into the Promised Land. Notably, Elijah, the revered father of the prophets and the forerunner of John the Baptist, ascended to heaven and entrusted his mantle to Elisha.
John the Baptist was not an ordinary individual performing baptisms. He stands as the final prophet of the Old Testament, and his parents, Zechariah and Elizabeth, hailed from the esteemed lineage of Aaron, the High Priest. The Bible states, “In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah” (1 Chron. 24:1, 10). “And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth” (Luke 1:5). Consequently, John was not only a prophet, but also descended from the hereditary bloodline of the High Priest.
Aaron, the first High Priest, was consecrated by Moses with the pouring of oil over his head (Exod. 29:7, Ps. 133:2). All subsequent high priests in the line of Aaron were anointed with oil poured over their heads (Lev. 21:10). After John baptized Jesus, Mark’s Gospel informs us, “He saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove” (1:10). In the context of John’s baptism, this event is interpreted by Peter, who says, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). A high priest’s ordination began with washing (Exod. 29:4) and then anointing (v. 7). The Holy Spirit is often represented by oil, even to the point of oil becoming synonymous with the Holy Spirit (CCC 695).
What occurred at the Jordan River? Who better to anoint Jesus than John, the prophet and priest?
At this juncture, we witness the involvement of the entire Trinity. Jesus steps out of the water, the Holy Spirit descends upon him, and the voice of the Father audibly confirms this anointing. “And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’” (Mark 1:11). This marks the public inauguration of Jesus as the Messiah, meaning “anointed one.” It serves also as an announcement of Christ’s kingship and also significantly applies to his priesthood. Christ did not become a priest at his baptism; rather, he began to exercise his priesthood. Jesus functions as a priest, ordained to carry out God’s priestly work of salvation. God made his approval known audibly above the muddy waters of the Jordan River.
Voice Two: Transfiguration of Our Lord and His Office as Prophet
Matthew, Mark, and Luke recount this remarkable manifestation of Jesus’ divinity. They also reveal him as the ultimate prophet, the New Moses, who will not only reinterpret the Law of God, but will himself be the Word of God. The parallels between Mount Sinai and Mount Tabor, the site of the Transfiguration, are striking—a mountain, a cloud, shining faces, the voice of God, and much more.
I want to emphasize one aspect of these two events. In the wilderness, God spoke to the people through Moses, saying, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen” (Deut. 18:15). This will not be just one of many prophets; this will be the definitive prophet. In the next few verses, God declares that he will put his words in his mouth. The command is clear: when this prophet, like Moses, appears and speaks God’s word, it is imperative—“you shall listen to him.”
At the Transfiguration, we hear the same words from God again: “And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!’” (Luke 9:35). At this new mountain, God announces that his Son is the prophet that he had promised over a millennium earlier. Jesus functions as the ultimate prophet, ordained to definitively proclaim the word of the Lord. God made his approval of Jesus as the prophet audibly known on the mountain in Galilee.
Voice Three: Kingship Revealed in Jerusalem Prior to the Passion
John 12 relates unmistakably to Jesus as king. He is heralded as king with his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, like King Solomon at his coronation, which had occurred a thousand years earlier on his father David’s mule (1 Kings 1:43-46; John 12:14). Jesus is anointed with the expensive ointment nard, reminiscent of King Solomon (John 12:3, Song 1:12).
In verse 12, Jesus employs language of ruling and exaltation, declaring, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” The Catechism explains that Jesus exercises his kingship by drawing all men to himself through his death and resurrection (786). St. Irenaeus <a href="https://archive.org/details/onapostolicpreac0000iren">describes</a> the cross as “his government, which is a sign of His reign.”
When Jesus says, “Father, glorify your name,” he uses royal language. Such terms held significant importance in biblical times, representing what was owed to Caesar. For Jews, they glorified God as their king. When Jesus uttered these words, God confirmed his assertions: “Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again’” (John 12:28).
This glory is shared by Jesus with his Father. In John 13:31, Jesus declares, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” He announces his victory, stating, “Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out” (John 12:31). And who is the ultimate ruler, the glorified king? Jesus himself. He is glorified and brings glory to his Father.
The third time God speaks from heaven, in the context of Jesus the king, he affirms his Son’s royal appointment and glorification.
Therefore, Jesus fulfills all the offices of the Old Covenant: prophet, priest, and king. God’s voice from heaven these three times affirms his Son’s priestly mission, prophetic word, and kingly rule.

3 Times God Spoke from Heaven

A king was born. He was born unlike most kings. There was no pomp or circumstance; there were no court attendants. There was only the bleating of sheep and the buzzing of flies. Giving birth in a cave-turned-stable was not like giving birth in a royal palace.
When a king is born, proclamations ring out across the land. But no one knew about this exceptional birth. So angels felt the need to sing out. They burst from the heavens in glorious harmony declaring the royal birth to a group of shepherds sleeping on the ground protecting their sheep. The darkness of night was rent with brilliant light encompassing the terrified shepherds. The lead angel announced, “Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
The king’s arrival had been foretold from of old. He was the long-awaited savior of the world. But why were shepherds the first to discover his birth? Possibly because this king was also the anticipated Lamb of God, who would take away the sins of the world. So let me ask: who are the first to learn of a lamb’s birth in the middle of the night? Shepherds, of course!
But the story recounted by Luke the physician is not the only account of the miraculous birth. Another account was written by an ex-tax-collector named Matthew, who informs us that the Jewish shepherds were not the only ones to discover this royal birth. Gentile magi—astronomers from the East—were also informed, but not by angelic choirs. They anticipated this historical event through astronomical observations and consultation with the Jewish scriptures. It was an unusual star that led them to the infant Jewish king. They traveled at great risk for many months, arriving from lands historically hostile to Israel. How amazing!
The magi brought gifts and fell on their faces before a helpless child in an enemy land. It is often assumed there were only three magi because three gifts were presented (frankincense, gold, and myrrh), but the number of distant travelers and the size of their entourage is unknown.
King Herod was in Jerusalem, enjoying his palatial pleasures, when the wise men arrived looking for the new king. Herod was worried. No one could help the magi. The star led them the last four miles to Bethlehem, where they found the child and fell prostrate. They presented gifts appropriate to royalty.
Luke and Matthew were not alone in writing accounts of the Christ. An old man named John, chosen by Jesus while still a young fisherman, wrote a personal account of his three years with the king. And Mark, who was Peter’s “secretary,” recorded Peter’s recollections of his years with Jesus. Four witnesses wrote four accounts, called the Gospels. They recount the one historical event from four different perspectives, just as in a courtroom four witnesses might testify about one case with four differing yet truthful accounts. Each Gospel writer had his own material, audience, emphasis, and style.
For example, each author deals with the genealogy and birth of Jesus in a different and fascinating way. Each account is true, non-contradictory, and essential to understand the whole story.
Matthew was a Jew writing to Jews. He adeptly demonstrated that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah and King, with royal pedigree through the lineage of King David to Abraham the patriarch of Israel and the father of the Jewish nation.
Mark, on the other hand, penned Peter’s Gospel from Rome and presents Jesus to the Romans as a servant with no genealogy. A key verse in Mark summarizes the whole Gospel: “The Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (10:45). A servant’s genealogy is irrelevant. Mark’s Gospel begins with Jesus working. King and servant: No opposites could be more extreme.
Luke, probably a Greek and the only non-Jewish author in the Bible, writes in part to fellow gentiles portraying Jesus as the ideal of humanity, with a genealogy going back to the first man, Adam. Jesus Christ is revealed as the perfect man to a Hellenistic audience steeped in Greek philosophy and struggling for human perfection and meaning in the aftermath of their failed “glory days.”
Lastly, John reveals a very different beginning or “genealogy.” He fleshes out the full mystery of the eternal king, starting with the words, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:1, 14). Jesus has no beginning—he is the beginning. John doesn’t write to an exclusive ethnic group; rather, he writes for the whole world and proclaims that Jesus is divine—by his nature, God. And as God, he is eternal and therefore has no genealogy. No science fiction has ever reached such heights. Truth is stranger than fiction; God has become man. As St. Augustine <a href="https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780918477248">said</a>, “[Jesus was] the Revealer of his Father, Creator of his mother; Son of God from his Father without a mother, the Son of Man through his mother without a father” (96).
So the four Gospels present Jesus Christ as both king and servant, as both God and man. Matthew and Luke tell the story of his birth; Mark and John do not. The four Gospels differ in other aspects as well. But such differing stories with such carefully selected details do not imply contradiction. Rather, it gives them diversity, beauty, and depth. As with a diamond, the many facets must be viewed and appreciated to glimpse the elegance of the whole.
It seems that Matthew may be telling the Nativity story from Joseph’s perspective, whereas Luke tells Mary’s story. Matthew alone records the angel’s appearance to Joseph four times, whereas in Luke, only Mary is visited by an angel. In Matthew, Mary’s virginity and honor are defended, something done by a loyal and loving husband. No words of Joseph are recorded in Matthew, but it does tell us his thoughts and his quick submission and obedience to the will of God. Mary’s submission and obedience to God are not mentioned in Matthew, but they are clearly recorded in Luke, where it is her words and thoughts expressed.
One could easily conclude that Luke spent considerable time with Mary, interviewing her about the miraculous birth and surrounding events. He relays many details that Mary had “treasured and pondered in her heart,” things only Mary would have known. Luke records the words of the angel, Mary’s response, and the glorious Magnificat. He even begins the story with an account of Elizabeth, Mary’s relative. And whereas the genealogy provided by Matthew relates to Joseph’s ancestry, some have considered the genealogy recorded in Luke to be Mary’s family tree.
Despite the variety of information provided, these texts, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, clearly proclaim the birth of Christ as a miraculous watershed event in human history. He is the Son of Man and Son of God, miraculously born of a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit in a cave-stable in Bethlehem and cared for by his legal, adoptive father, Joseph.
Did the wise men meet the shepherds? The tyrant King Herod died in 4 b.c. and he was alive at both the birth of Jesus and the arrival of the magi, so the magi’s visit had to take place after the birth of Jesus and before the flight to Egypt, since Herod died before the return of the Holy Family.
Since “the East” probably meant modern-day Iraq or Iran, the journey up the fertile crescent and down through modern-day Syria and Israel would have taken a long time. They must have calculated the time of birth pretty accurately, arriving shortly after the birth but before the Holy Family fled to Egypt. So the time frame certainly allowed for them to meet the shepherds. If I had been one of the wise men, I hope I’d have been wise enough to cross one more field to find the shepherds and get the full story—which is exactly what the Gospels have provided for us.

Kings, Shepherds, and the Gospels

Answering Redeemed Zoomer’s “14 Catholic Contradictions”

How do you keep your cool when defending the Catholic faith in public? What’s the hardest part of a debate? John de Rosa asks Trent Horn to share the tips he’s learned from his debates with prominent non-Catholics.
Want more from Trent Horn?
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<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/made-this-way-how-to-prepare-kids-to-face-todays-tough-moral-issues/">Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/why-were-catholic-our-reasons-for-faith-hope-and-love/">Why We&#8217;re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, And Love</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-how-to-talk-about-our-cultures-toughest-issue/">Persuasive Pro-Life: How to Talk About Our Culture’s Toughest Issue</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/answering-atheism-how-to-make-the-case-for-god-with-logic-and-charity/">Answering Atheism: How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity</a></li>
</ul>

How to Defend the Faith in Debates

<div>I am an Orthodox Christian. If the ancient church truly believed that the bishop of Rome was the leader that could clarify the dogmas, why did the emperors call for the ecumenical councils? Wouldn’t it be much more easy and orthodox to just ask the bishop of Rome? </div><div>First of all, I am heartened to hear that you recognize how close Catholics and Orthodox are. Although there remain tragic divisions, we shouldn’t overlook the profound agreement between the two. In terms of ecumenical councils, I think that this was largely pragmatic. For instance, the emperor Constantine paid for the travel (and board!) of the 318 participating bishops at the Council of Nicaea, even permitting them to bring guests (for instance, influential monks). The cost and logistics involved would have been difficult or impossible for Pope Sylvester to manage back then. 
But I think that your deeper question is whether the pope makes ecumenical councils irrelevant. As Catholics, we believe in both the infallibility of the pope and in the infallibility of ecumenical councils. Think about it this way: on the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/judaizers">Judaizer</a> question (the question of whether Gentile Christians need to follow the Mosaic Law to be saved), we get the answer first from St. Peter (Acts 10–11), and then from the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15). Did Peter have the ability to settle the question? Yes, in the sense that God had shown him the correct answer and preserved him from error. But it was clear that there were some Christians who thought that the apostle was wrong, and the Council of Jerusalem provided additional support. Peter, the first pope, was an apostle. As such, he had the ability to not only speak infallibly, but (unlike modern popes) to enjoy divine inspiration in particular contexts, such as when he preached on Pentecost (Acts 2), or when he wrote 1 Peter and 2 Peter. Nevertheless, the Judaizer controversy wasn’t settled by his acting alone. 
Far from making ecumenical councils irrelevant, I would argue that it’s only through the pope that we know which are the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-authority-of-ecumenical-councils">true ecumenical councils</a>. Between the legalization of Christianity and the end of 787, there were more than seven attempts to hold an ecumenical council. Famously, in 449, Emperor Theodosius II convened the so-called “Second Council of Ephesus,” under the authority of Patriarch Dioscorus of Alexandria. But the pope condemns this as a “robber council,” and today, neither Catholics nor Orthodox accept its legitimacy. So why do we only have “seven ecumenical councils” during this period? Because these are the seven accepted by the pope. 
Without the pope, there’s no clear principle by which to determine which councils are real, and which are robbers. Even the late Orthodox theologian and Bishop Kallistos Ware admitted, <a href="http://orthodoxeurope.org/print/11/1/6.aspx">“All Orthodox know which are the seven councils that their Church accepts as ecumenical, but precisely what it is that makes a council ecumenical is not so clear.”</a> (And in fact, some Orthodox claim there are really eight or nine ecumenical councils, which demonstrates the lack of clarity on the matter). 
The Bible doesn’t render the Church irrelevant, as some Protestants believe—and it’s actually from the Church that we know which are the proper books of the Bible. Likewise, the pope doesn’t render ecumenical councils irrelevant—it’s actually from the pope that we know which are the proper councils. 
</div>

Papal Infallibility Does Not Make Ecumenical Councils Irrelevant

In this episode Trent examines an attitude among “non-denominational” Christians that downplays doctrine and says “all that matters is just believing in Jesus.” Trent shows how belief in Jesus must correspond with obedience to Jesus’ commands and that requires sound doctrine.

The “Just Believe in Jesus” Fallacy

Scripture, St. John Paul II instructed us, tells us two things about God: that God is Love (1 John 4:8) and that God is Father (Eph. 3:14-15).
These two definitions of God also point to the two ends (or meanings, or significances) of the sexual act: mutual support and procreation. But I want to focus a bit more on what these definitions from God mean for the rich vocation of fatherhood.
The secular world may reduce fatherhood to a function: insemination as prerequisite to parenthood. That view is impoverished because it is in some sense merely technical: what a man does to become a father, not what a man is as a father. It’s not just a question of viewpoint. It’s a whole vision of God and the human person.
God is Father. St. Paul tells us that “I kneel before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:14-15). In other words, whatever fatherhood exists derives from, is a reflection of, God’s fatherhood. God’s fatherhood is the measure of any other claim of fatherhood.
That’s a tall order to fill.
On top of that, as the introduction to the Pater Noster at Mass tells us, “Jesus taught us to call God ‘Our Father.’ When his apostles came to him asking for instruction in how to pray, Our Lord’s answer was clear: “When you pray, say, ‘Father’” (Luke 11:2).
Jesus’ teaching is revolutionary. No other world religions really present us a God who seeks a personal relationship with us. Israel begins approaching that threshold, and Hosea even speaks of God’s love for Israel as that of a husband seeking to woo an unfaithful wife. But progress all the way to God as Father, which is the consequence of adoptive filiation through Christ—being “sons in the Son” (see Eph. 1:5-6)—is a Christian advance. Indeed, St. Paul teaches that that adoptive filiation, giving us the Spirit of Jesus crying “Abba”—Daddy (Gal 4:4-7)—shows just how intimate that relationship is.
This is what comes to us from the order of redemption made possible in Jesus.
Preceding this is what comes from the order of creation. Genesis teaches us (1:26-28) that we are made in God’s image, “male and female.” Sexual differentiation is not a biological accident, even less a discriminatory “gender binary.” It is a normative aspect of creation.
The gift of parenthood—paternity and maternity—is part of God’s original blessing and command. “God blessed them,” saying, “Be fruitful and multiply.” It’s not just a sheer command, arbitrarily imposed. Their fertility is the first blessing God pronounces to the newly made man and woman. It is a blessing not because God said so, but because it reflects God. Human beings through procreation share in the fatherhood of God. They share in the life-giving role of the Holy Spirit. They share in God’s role as Creator, and they really and truly continue that work here and now, in twenty-first-century America, by continuing the work of creation God began eons ago.
One might say, “It’s really personal, dude.”
When it comes to what God the Father teaches us about being fathers, let’s not forget—as my wife reminds me—one final example.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son has also been called the Parable of the Prodigal Father. Like many other human fathers—and like God the Father at the hands of humanity—the father in the parable experiences the stupidity and ingratitude of his child. It’s not just that the boy wants to leave; that might even be a normal aspect of growing up. It’s that he went to his father to “ask his share of his inheritance” (Luke 15:12). What he’s really saying is, “Dad, I want the money and don’t even want to wait until you’re dead to get it.” Fr. Paul Scalia put it aptly: “He wants what is the father’s but without the father.”
We know the story. What’s important is the ending. The kid does dumb things his father probably warned him against. It didn’t stop him. He almost certainly “knows better.” He has to learn “in the school of hard knocks.”
When he does, he makes his way home motivated not by love of his father as much as healthy self-interest: “How many of my father’s servants have food to spare and I am starving to death!” (Luke 15:17).
But even if the prodigal son’s horizons are limited, the father’s aren’t . . . though he’s apparently been scanning the horizon for God knows (and only God knows) how long for the child to come back. He doesn’t berate the boy. He doesn’t “nag [his] children, lest they lose heart” (Col. 3:21).
He takes the initiative. Even before his son gets there (“while he was still a long way off”), even before he opens his mouth with his well-rehearsed lines, his father moves. He knows what the child needs and remembers he is still his child. He keeps things in paternal perspective, even if that proves annoying to the elder brother.
If the father of the parable is God the Father, from whom our paternity derives, then is the parable not also an instruction in our vocation toward children who fall and yet “come to their senses”?
We could also look at St. Joseph, a model father who doesn’t say much (Scripture doesn’t record a word of his) but who does a lot, especially the two most important things: protecting his wife and child in whatever home the moment afforded, and working for them. In a world where fathers abandon home and where men are increasingly alienated from work, those examples are strikingly relevant.
As we approach Father’s Day, people will undoubtedly talk about the essential role fathers play and the social studies proving the beneficial “outcomes” of intact families in which fathers are present. A year after <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-the-deal-with-dobbs-v-jackson">Dobbs</a>, some might even speak about fathers who lost children—by or against their wills—to abortion.
But first things first. To discuss fatherhood means to see it as a vocation—not just in the limited “seventy years, or eighty for those who are strong,” but how it fits within the whole fabric of God’s work of salvation and Providence. How it flows from “the Father, from whom all paternity in heaven and on earth is named.”
It also cuts both ways. Not only is our paternity measured by the fatherhood of God, but our fidelity in imaging that fatherhood, in turn, affects faith in our world. In her <a href="https://ignatius.com/adam-and-eve-after-the-pill-revisited-aeaprh/">new book</a>, Adam and Eve After the Pill, Revisited, Mary Eberstadt asks whether the rise in religious disaffiliation among the young has a correlation with their lack of, or antagonism toward, images of the father they have (not) known at home. That’s a heavy thing to consider for today’s fathers.

What Is the Point of a Father?

In this episode, Trent responds to Stephen Woodford of Rationality Rules&#8217; video &#8220;If atheists acted like apologists&#8221; in which Woodford critiques Trent&#8217;s lack of concern over being called &#8220;homophobic.&#8221;
Transcription:
In one of my recent episodes I said I don’t care if people say I’m homophobic because that word can mean almost anything. Homophobia refers not just to people who have a malicious hatred of those who identify as LGBT, but even to people who express in the most charitable way possible that sexual acts between persons of the same sex are disordered. In my video I even showed how a Catholic school in Canada removed a book from its library that simply articulated these Catholic teachings claiming it was homophobic.
And now Stephen Woodford, the atheist host of Rationality Rules, wants to give me a taste of my own medicine in a video called when atheists act like apologists. So in today’s episode Iam going review his reply to me and show where it fails. So let’s take a look:
The basic argument seems to be that if I don’t like Stephen being an atheist who acts like me, than I shouldn’t like me acting like me. Except, as we will see, Stephen either doesn’t act like me or he does act like me and that’s totally fine.
I didn’t say anything about LGBT people being irrational or dishonest. All I said was their claim that a person with a penis is actually a woman is false. Having a penis is the opposite of being a woman. Stating facts about reality isn’t hateful. If Stephen said he’s not going to refer Jesus as the risen lord because that’s the opposite of what Jesus is, since Jesus is dead, from his perspective, I would say he’s mistaken, not bigoted. It isn’t bigoted to merely say someone has a false belief about reality.
If he want to go one step further and say theists who have access to arguments like his and choose to remain theists are irrational, go ahead. He’s just wrong, not hateful.
I agree saying someone is Christo-phobic for saying Christianity is false is silly just like it’s silly to say someone is transphobic for saying transgender ideology is false. True, a transgender club probably wouldn’t invite me to speak just as a Catholic church wouldn’t invite Stephen to defend on atheism. But I’d be happy to debate him on atheism at a place like the Franciscan university of Steubenville even though transgender associations would never host a debate on their ideology.
Remember Stephen is supposed to be impersonating me, not saying how he really feels about Catholics. But he really believes this. He thinks Christianity is drivel and that it has opposed scientific advancement. And guess what, I’m not offended and most Catholics I know aren’t offended. That’s because we believe in trying to persuade the world to accept our ideas. Unlike many defenders of LGBT ideology, we don’t have an entitled attitude that says people must accept what we believe else they’re bigots.
I miss Stephen Woodford from the 2010’s because back then he got it right: blasphemy laws are bad in a society where we are trying to discover ultimate truths about reality among different ultimate truth claims. So, while this take on blasphemy is supposed to be a caricature of me, that’s how Stephen actually felt just a few years ago, and frankly, I think he still feels this way today:
What Stephen would truly say to someone who complained he was blasphemous is the same thing I would say to someone who says I’m homophobic: I don’t care.
You should be able to tell people truths they don’t want to hear even if those truths upsets them. But guess what, it is usually defenders of LGBT ideology, not Christians, that want to use the power of the state to deprive people of their jobs and businesses just because other people disagree with their sexual morality.
If you want to say my beliefs don’t deserve respect, that’s totally fine. The atheist AC Grayling said “It is time to reverse the prevailing notion that religious commitment is intrinsically deserving of respect.” As an atheist you can’t ridicule Christian beliefs because you say they contradict reality but also say Christians can’t ridicule secular beliefs that contradict reality, like that women can have a penis. Keep in mind I stood up for Stephen a few months ago when he criticized the Catholic Youtuber Kennedy Hall’s bad arguments against the theory of evolution. When we publicly defend a certain view we open ourselves up to criticism, be it charitable or uncharitable and you have to get used to that. And Christianity has been enduring 2,000 years of criticism, some of it violent in nature, and has held up quite well.
Yes, it is what the Catholic Church teaches. The Catechism of the Catholic church says “Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that &#8220;homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.&#8221; They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (CCC 2357)
I think a lot of atheists would be surprised at what Stephen does next because they’d just say, “Yeah the Catholic church as an institution is homophobic. And if you don’t like homophobia, don’t send your kid to a Catholic school and don’t be Catholic. But instead, Stephen tries to argue that somehow this is just a personal prejudice of mine and the Catholic Church actually doesn’t teach this about homosexuality.
And if you’d like to help us continue to teach and defend what the Catholic church teaches, please like this video, subscribe to the channel and support us at trenthornpodcast.com.
And here is what the Pope said recently on 60 minutes clarifying that these blessings are for the people in these relationships since God wants to bless everyone regardless of their sins. However, the Pope was firm that same-sex relationships can’t be blessed because they violate natural law and the law of the Church, which is what this allegedly homophobic textbook said that was removed from a Catholic school.
I’ll also add the translator renders it “given right” but the pope said derecho natural, natural law. Same-sex unions go against natural law, which is what the Catechism says.
And of course, there were reports from last month that the Pope used a slur referring to gay people when he said there were too many gay men in the priesthood.
Next, Stephen makes the argument that I’m bigoted because the Church changed its teaching on slavery and so maybe it will change this teaching again. Even if that were true, that hasn’t happened yet, so Stephen can’t say I’m homophobic but the Catholic church isn’t even though I’m just saying what the Catholic Church teaches.
The first country to outlaw slavery was Catholic France in the 14th century. The leaders of the abolitionist movement were Christians like William Wilberforce. In contrast, consider David Hume, one of the leading atheists of the 18th century. Here’s Stephen praising his insights into morality:
However, Hume also said “I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites” and he loaned money for one of his patrons to buy a slave plantation. Hume scholar Felix Waldmann admits that “David Hume was a brilliant philosopher but also a racist involved in slavery”
The Church didn’t teach evolution was false for thousands of years and then change its mind and said it’s true. The Church doesn’t teach on scientific questions. Instead, it said that this new theory of origins doesn’t conflict with the theological truths that God created the world and human beings. If anything, Stephen should be praising the Catholic church for having a theology that is welcoming of scientific discoveries and not antagonistic towards them.
The Church has praised women before John Paul II’s letter on the Dignity of Women in 1988. In Luke 1:48 scripture says all generations will call Mary blessed and there are just as many Catholic female saints as male saints if not more. And recently Pope Francis made clear his position on whether women can be priests or deacons.
This is just an argument from skepticism. The Church was wrong before so maybe it’s wrong now? I could say the same thing to Stephen, science was wrong before about phrenology, a static universe, phlogiston, and a whole host of other pseudoscience’s. So, maybe it’s wrong now about evolution. But science has been right before and the Church has been right before, like when Christianity invented the hospital.
Notice the shift in the goal posts. At first Stephen was trying to show I’m bigoted but now he’s just reduced to saying, “Other Catholics disagree with you so maybe you’re wrong about homosexuality.”
Once again, “I do not care.”
There are atheists who disagree with Stephen on his views of gender. What matters isn’t what other people think. The only thing that matters is what evidence and inference says.
And more importantly, you can’t claim a Catholic like me saying what the Church officially teaches is being homophobic but then say the Catholic Church isn’t homophobic just because other Catholics disagree with Church teaching.
Finally, I want to note that Stephen’s video was called when atheists act like apologists, but don’t forget that Stephen and other atheists like him on YouTube are apologists. He is an apologist for atheism. Some atheists use the term apologist in a pejorative way similar to the term used car salesman, and they only apply the label apologist to religious apologists. But an apologist is just someone who uses arguments to defend a position. There are good and bad apologists for every position, including atheism, so Stephen shouldn’t act like this is unique to Christianity or religion in general.
Instead of using terms like homophobic or Christophobic, we should just engage one another’s ideas, even controversial ones related to sexuality and see which ones make the most sense.
Thank you guys so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.

Rationality Rules REBUTTED on Homophobia

Turn to page 63 to watch this free-for-all-Friday! Join Trent as he reveals the history and weirdest endings of this classic series of children’s books.

Remember “Choose Your Own Adventure” Books?

Catholic apologist Karlo Broussard joins Cy Kellett to respond to a thoughtful question from caller Colt about whether Protestants should be labeled as heretics. What does the Church really teach about baptized non-Catholics? Drawing on Vatican II’s Unitatis Redintegratio, Karlo explains how the Church distinguishes between formal heresy and sincere but mistaken belief, and why many Protestants may still be considered Christian—even if they reject key Catholic doctrines.
Transcript:
Caller: I&#8217;m kind of struggling with understanding the continuity, I guess I&#8217;ll call it. So the Vatican II document *Unitatis Redintegratio* basically says that those who are not, like, externally members of the Church, but are justified by baptism have a right to be called Christians. I definitely believe that. I&#8217;m just kind of struggling understanding, you know, the tradition, like the theological tradition. I&#8217;m just kind of basically calling, you know, Protestants and schismatics or like, calling Protestants heretics and then schismatics and so on, like the Catechism of Saint Pius X and so on, if you know what I&#8217;m trying to get at here.
Karlo: But yeah, all right. So in response there, I think it&#8217;s important that we understand what first a heresy is, and that sheds light upon who would be considered a heretic. And that, of course, is going to help us answer the question specifically. So the Catechism defines heresy in paragraph 2089 as the obstinate, and I underscore obstinate, post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same.
So at some periods within Church history, you have people who reject certain teachings of the Church that would be part of divine revelation and need to be believed with divine and Catholic faith. And such rejection at those particular periods of history were indeed considered to be obstinate. That is, not only a consistent denial of what we need to believe as part of divine revelation, but a consistent denial that involves full knowledge and deliberate consent.
Because at those periods in Church history, within the universe of discourse, within those that were considering to be rejecting divinely revealed truths, which is what a heresy is to say it is not true, where were those who were. Who knew better, right? They were raised within that Catholic setting. They knew, they read, we could make reasonable conclusions that they had full knowledge that these things were professed to be divinely revealed.
And insofar as they are obstinately opposed to it with that full knowledge and deliberate consent, not only were they guilty of heresy, but they could be deemed, quote, unquote, formal heretics. In our situations today, we have Christian communities that have arisen from the Protestant Reformation involving individuals who have not had exposure to Catholic teaching as to what is to be revealed in some circumstances such that they&#8217;re not responsible for their quote, unquote rejection of these truths.
And so for some, we can reasonably argue that they would not be obstinately rejecting such truths of divine revelation that need to be revealed with divine and Catholic faith, because these individuals are the sons and daughters of these communities that have sprung from the Protestant Reformation. So their level of culpability is going to be lessened such that their quote, unquote rejection would not be an obstinate rejection of these divinely revealed truths.
They may say, yeah, I don&#8217;t believe what Catholics believe about that, but for whatever reason, their intellectual shortcomings, it&#8217;s possible they&#8217;re not responsible for that, given their upbringing within these Christian communities that are the offspring or products of the Protestant Reformation. And so I think if we look at it through that lens, it&#8217;s reasonable to see why we wouldn&#8217;t go around throwing out the label of heretic to anybody who&#8217;s within a Protestant community, say, precisely because we have good reason to think they are not obstinately denying some truth that we need to be revealed, believe to be divinely revealed.
Any thoughts in response?
Caller: Yeah, I guess I&#8217;m just kind of having a hard time understanding, like, at what point do they know? Because even, like, so many Protestant pastors, let&#8217;s say, in a particular town, I guess coming from my perspective, it&#8217;s just hard when you&#8217;re wanting to, like, evangelize and so on if you&#8217;re just going to kind of call them all Christians. And that kind of creates a spirit of indifferentism. Like, I know it&#8217;s not. It doesn&#8217;t have to be that way. But like, I think a lot of people misunderstand when you. We start using terminology. If you see what I&#8217;m kind of meaning by that.
Karlo: Okay, all right. Well, I do understand what you mean by that, Cy, where it would seem that by calling our Protestant friends Christian and our separated brethren, that perhaps might lead to a spirit of indifferentism. And I agree that perhaps for some in practice it may lead to that. But as you rightfully point out, Cy, that would not be due to the Church&#8217;s teaching that they are our brothers in Christ, assuming they&#8217;re valid baptisms, but it would be due to the individual who is wrongly understanding what the Church means by evangelization.
Right. So consider this, Cy. If let&#8217;s just say you&#8217;re my separated brother in Christ and you&#8217;re a Protestant, and I call you a brother, and I recognize that you are a Christian. Here&#8217;s one way in which that truth would not lead to a spirit of indifferentism, namely that I recognize what you lack as a Protestant concerning the fullness of truth, of life in the Catholic faith is a lack of all of the gifts or the goods that Christ has come to reveal to us.
And out of love for you, I desire and wish that you come to experience those goods or gifts that you lack as a Protestant. And that would in turn move me to want to share those goods and gifts in the Catholic faith with you out of love. And that is the essence of evangelization.
So that&#8217;s at least one among other ways in which we can see how the teaching that you are a Christian as a Protestant, although separated, would not lead to a spirit of indifferentism. Because I recognize you&#8217;re not just a brother, but you&#8217;re a separated brother. Separated from what? Separated from the Church that Jesus established in which subsists the fullness of truth and life that Christ has come to share with you and reveal to you.
And out of love, I want to share those gifts with you. And so nothing could be further from indifferentism than that. That&#8217;s the true essence of evangelization. So perhaps, Cy, we can actually turn the table and say the Church&#8217;s vision of our separated brethren is a call to not be indifferent, but to evangelize our Protestant brothers and sisters with the fullness of truth, of life that subsists in the Catholic Church because we love them as our brothers.
Cy: I&#8217;m going to leave it there because there&#8217;s lots of folks on the line.

Why Don’t We Call All Protestants Heretics?

In this eye-opening episode of The Jimmy Akin Podcast, Jimmy reveals what’s really missing from the Book of Acts! Luke’s careful history deliberately left out Paul’s most shocking untold perils—including 5 brutal lashings, 3 additional shipwrecks, and the dramatic fight where Paul publicly rebuked Peter in Antioch. Discover why the great historian omitted these wild adventures and what they tell us about the early Church. You won’t believe how much more dramatic Paul’s story truly was!
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TRANSCRIPT: 
Coming Up
The four Gospels tell us the story of Jesus’ earthly ministry, which is also the beginning of Christian history.
Luke’s book of Acts continues that history through the next few decades.
But Acts is not a complete history. There are things that Luke leaves out.
What are these things, and why does he leave them out?
Let’s get into it!
* * *
Howdy, folks!
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to <a href="https://patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast">Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast</a>
&nbsp;
Introduction
The book of Acts does not tell us the full story of early Church history. It provides only partial information.
This is obvious from the fact that it just covers the period between A.D. 33-60, when it suddenly stops, providing us an important clue to when it was written.
That’s something we talked about in Episode 63.
Many scholars think that the narrative in Acts cuts off in A.D. 62, but after a careful study of biblical chronology, my own estimate is that Acts concludes in A.D. 60.
Even within that time frame, though, it is only a partial record.
For example, the book of Acts tracks the activities of basically three individuals:
<ul>
<li>Peter (Acts 1-6, 9-12)</li>
<li>Philip the Evangelist (Acts 8)—not the same guy as Philip the Apostles</li>
<li>Paul (Acts 9, 11, 13-28)</li>
</ul>
This gives us a big clue about who Luke’s main sources were in composing the book. They were Peter, Philip, and Paul.
The book ends with Paul spending two years under house arrest in Rome, between A.D. 58-60, and we also know that Peter was in Rome.
Since Luke was a traveling companion of Paul, it’s likely that Luke interviewed both Peter and Paul during this two-year period, and they provided him the information about their ministries that is reported in Acts.
What about Philip the Evangelist? How did Luke get information about his ministry?
Acts 21:8 records that, after Paul and his companions arrived in the coastal city of Ptolemais in Palestine, and
Acts 21:8-10
On the next day we departed and came to Caesarea [Maritima], and we entered the house of Philip the evangelist, who was one of the seven, and stayed with him.
So Paul and his companions—including Luke—stayed with Philip the Evangelist.
This event took place in Late May-Early June, A.D. 55, so that’s when Luke likely interviewed Philip and got the information recorded in Acts 8.
By the way, you’ll notice that Luke says we entered Philip’s house. This is one of what are known as the “We” Passages in Acts, where Luke shifts from describing what someone else did to what “we” did.
There are four of these passages:
<ul>
<li>Acts 16:10-17</li>
<li>Acts 20:5-15</li>
<li>Acts 21:1-18</li>
<li>Acts 27:1-28:16</li>
</ul>
The most obvious interpretation of these passages is that Luke is signaling that he was present for the events in them, so there is actually a fourth source in the book of Acts, which is Luke himself.
But Luke tells us almost nothing of the activities of the other apostles, or of other Christians, and so the book is not a complete history of the early Church.
It just focuses on certain key figures.
It does not even give us a complete record of what even its main figures did:
<ul>
<li>Peter vanishes from the narrative after chapter 12, except for a brief reappearance in chapter 15.</li>
<li>Philip has only a single chapter devoted to his activities.</li>
<li>And, as we will see, Acts does not record many of the activities of Paul.</li>
</ul>
 
Luke Passes Key Tests!
Some time ago, I did a study of the flow of time in the book of Acts.
Periodically Luke will provide time cues—especially in the material about St. Paul and in the we passages.
For example, he mentions that Paul spent three years in Ephesus (Acts 20:31), that Paul stayed in Thessalonica for three weeks (Acts 17:1-2) and that “we” sailed from Mitylene and the next day arrived at Chios (Acts 20:14-15).
As a Bible chronology geek, I couldn’t resist going through the book of Acts and making a list of all the explicit time cues—as well as providing estimates for more implicit time cues, like when Paul goes from one place to another and we can estimate how long it took based on ancient travel times and methods.
Stamford University has a really great website—known as the Orbis Database—that lets you calculate how long it would take to travel in the ancient world between different cities based on different factors, like what route you took, what season it was, and whether you walked, road, or sailed there.
Needless to say, I got really familiar with using the Orbis database, and I calculated the lengths of the travel times between all the destinations mentioned in Acts.
And here is where Luke passes a first key test.
He doesn’t always tell us how long it took to go from one place to another, but every time Luke does say how long it took, Orbis agrees.
Luke is not making up travel times. He’s recording them accurately, which suggests that he or someone else in Paul’s traveling party was keeping a travel diary of all the locations they visited.
Luke also sometimes gives vague time estimates, like if he says Paul spent “Many days” somewhere, I might reckon that as a month for my purposes.
I then put Luke to a second test.
I wanted to add all the time periods that are expressed or implied in Acts and see if they fit within the period of time that the book covers as a whole.
Could all of the activities ascribed to Peter, Philip, and Paul have taken place in the years within the timeframe that the book provides?
If—as some skeptics think—Luke was just making stuff up, if he was writing fiction rather than history, or if he was just a really bad historian, the numbers might not make sense.
Acts covers a period of 27 Years, from A.D. 33 to A.D. 60, but if he was writing fiction rather than history or if he was just a really bad historian, it might turn out that the total events he describes might add up to 40 or 50 years.
They might not all fit within the 27 years the book covers.
So what did I find when I added the numbers up?
Luke passed this key test also! My time estimates for the events Acts mentions only came to 13 Years in total.
That means that there is plenty of room in the 27 years that the book covers for all of the events Luke records—and more! So Luke passes that test as a historian. He does not give us an impossible chronology.
But if Luke records Peter, Philip, and Paul doing things that only took 13 years—and the book covers 27 years—then that means Luke is not giving us a complete record of everything that happened.
So what is he leaving out?
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The Perils of Paul
Back in 1914, the Eclectic Film Company put out a 14-part movie serial called The Perils of Pauline, which told the story of a woman named Pauline Marvin who had a series of harrowing adventures in which she narrowly escaped numerous perils.
Well, like Pauline, St. Paul faced a similar series of perils and had his own narrow escapes.
In 2 Corinthians there is a famous passage where Paul has become so frustrated with some of the people at Corinth that he has an epistolary meltdown, and he says some very interesting things about what he has done in his life.
When comparing himself to his opponents, he writes:
2 Corinthians 11:23-27
Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death.
Five times I have received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one.
Three times I have been beaten with rods; once I was stoned.
Three times I have been shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brethren; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.
Focusing just on the perils that Paul assigns numbers to, we get:
<ul>
<li>Forty lashes minus one from the Jews: 5</li>
<li>Beaten with rods: 3</li>
<li>Stoned: 1</li>
<li>Shipwrecked: 3</li>
<li>Adrift at sea for a night and a day: 1</li>
</ul>
So what we can do is compare this list with what Luke records in Acts and see how many of these events Luke mentions.
Any he doesn’t mention are things that Acts leaves out.
So how many does Luke record in the book of Acts? Exactly two.
Luke mentions the time Paul was stoned and one time where Paul was beaten with rods.
You might think he mentions more than that, because in 2 Corinthians Paul mentions being shipwrecked three times, and Acts ends just after Paul has had a climactic shipwreck, but that’s not one of the three that what Paul mentions.
We know that because 2 Corinthians was written sometime between Late A.D. 54-Early A.D. 55.
We know it was written before St. Paul went to Jerusalem for the final time, because in 2 Corinthians 9 he tells the Corinthians to be ready to make donations so that he can take them to the Jerusalem church when he makes his final visit.
For example, he tells them:
2 Corinthians 9:5
I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised, so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not as an exaction
Paul is currently on his way to Jerusalem, and by Acts 20:5-6 he had already passed Corinth.
Acts 20:5-6
These [companions] went on ahead and were waiting for us at Troas, but we sailed away from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and in five days we came to them at Troas, where we stayed for seven days.
We know this because in that passage St. Paul arrives in Troas (“we came to them at Troas”)—which is a city to the east of Corinth.
Therefore, 2 Corinthians had to be written before this point on Paul’s final journey to Jerusalem, and so what is found in 2 Corinthians must have happened Before Acts 20:6.
That means that all the perils Paul mentioned in 2 Corinthians must have occurred before this Acts 20.
But only two such perils are mentioned by Luke. One is the stoning at Lystra that occurs in Acts 14:19. Luke writes:
Acts 14:19
But Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.
So this incident is the single stoning that Paul mentions in his list.
A few verses earlier, Luke also mentions an attempted stoning at Iconium, but that attempt failed.
Acts 14:5-6
When an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to mistreat them and to stone them, they learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country.
Luke says that an attempt was made to mistreat and stone them, but Paul and his companions learned of it and fled.
So they weren’t actually stoned on that occasion.
The stoning in Acts 14:19 is therefore the same stoning that Paul mentions in 2 Corinthians.
The second event Luke mentions is in Acts 16:22, where Paul is beaten with rods at Philippi. Luke writes:
Acts 16:22
The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates tore the garments off them and gave orders to beat them with rods.
So this would be one of the three beatings that Paul refers to in 2 Corinthians.
But these are the only events in 2 Corinthians that can be referred to in Acts.
 
What Luke Leaves Out
There must, therefore, be two other times Paul was beaten with rods in the period Acts covers, but they are not mentioned in Acts.
In addition, all five of the times that Paul received the “forty lashes minus one” from the Jews are not mentioned in Acts.
Nor are the three times he was shipwrecked, because the only shipwreck mentioned in Acts 27 is after his final journey to Jerusalem and thus after 2 Corinthians was written.
Furthermore, when that shipwreck occurs, Paul and his companions slam into a bay on the island of Malta. Luke writes:
Acts 27:41-44
Striking a reef, they ran the vessel aground. The bow stuck and remained immovable, and the stern was being broken up by the surf. The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners, lest any should swim away and escape. But the centurion, wishing to save Paul, kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and make for the land, and the rest on planks or on pieces of the ship. And so it was that all were brought safely to land.
So they didn’t spend a night and a day in the sea. That must refer to an earlier event.
There are several other events mentioned in Paul’s letters that aren’t found in Acts.
Some of these are in the Pastoral Epistles—that is, = 1-2 Timothy, Titus—but these letters likely were written after the book of Acts closed.
This is not the case, however, for events found in Galatians, which was clearly written during the time period covered by Acts.
In Galatians 1, Paul writes:
Galatians 1:18-19
I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.
However, Luke does not mention this event in Acts.
Similarly, in Galatians 2, Paul writes:
Galatians 2:11-14
When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.  For before certain men came from James, he was eating with the Gentiles; but when they came he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party. And the rest of the Jews acted hypocritically along with him, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that their conduct was not in step with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”
Luke also does not mention this event in Acts.
We thus see that Acts is not only a limited record of a few key figures like Peter, Phillip, and Paul, it is also restricted even in what it records about all of these three.
Undoubtedly, each did many more things than are recorded in Acts.
And, in particular, St. Paul experienced many things that aren’t mentioned in the book even though they fell in the period it covers.
&nbsp;
Why Luke Omitted These Events
So why didn’t Luke record these events? There are several possible reasons.
<ol>
<li>Distraction</li>
</ol>
In some cases, he may not have wanted to because he didn&#8217;t want to distract the reader from his overall message.
For example, if he included Paul&#8217;s rebuke of Peter at Antioch, it could have distracted from the fundamental agreement between Peter and Paul—which is something present in both in Acts and Galatians.
His recording a disagreement between the two might have confused people about the fact that they were fundamentally on the same page.
<ol start="2">
<li>Didn’t Know</li>
</ol>
In other cases, Luke may have simply not have known about an event.
He wasn’t by Paul’s side during the whole time of his ministry. Indeed, the first “we” passage doesn’t even occur until Acts 16:10-17, so there was a lot of Paul’s ministry that Luke didn’t witness.
Still, Paul may have recounted some of these events to Luke, though, just as he did for the readers of 2 Corinthians. So why wouldn’t Luke include those?
<ol start="3">
<li>Too Repetitive</li>
</ol>
Likely, because they would have been too repetitive for Luke’s readers. Recording five lashings, three beatings with rods, and three shipwrecks before we get to the one in chapter 27 could be seen as overkill.
<ol start="4">
<li>Space</li>
</ol>
It also would have taken more space than Luke felt he had available to him if he were going to keep Acts to approximately the same length as his Gospel, which was the length of a typical scroll.
In the ancient world, there was enormous price pressure to keep books short. A single copy of the Gospel of Matthew would cost the equivalent of $4,000 after all the inflation the governments have caused.
That’s why each of the four Gospels is the size of a standard scroll or less.
Given that price pressure, we’re lucky that Luke wrote Acts at all, because together the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts required two scrolls, which would have cost something like $8,000.
Luke thus had good reasons for not recording everything that happened to Peter, Philip, and Paul—not to mention the other apostles.
Still, it would be fascinating to know more.
* * *
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What’s Missing from the Book of Acts?

In this episode Trent refutes anti-natalism (the view that having children is immoral) in both popular environmental literature and more advanced philosophical arguments.

Is it Immoral to have Children?

In this episode Trent shows how to apply a common Internet meme to liberal moral hypocrisy.
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Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/0lipnlnWsuuKIqVjeUn5QJynTf_57ssl47IK4n_c8BlPe20YWfkPi5-j5_67F6BCnPD-4Fv8fhV7UFLK9shAxCNiROQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=0.28">00:00</a>):
Last month, feminist Jill Flipovic tried to flip the script on people who rightly call out transgender lunacy by posting this. If we&#8217;re going to ban gender affirming surgeries for minors, we should ban all cosmetic surgery for minors. A 15-year-old should not be getting a nose job. A 16-year-old should not be getting a boob job. Exceptions, of course, are medically necessary procedures. The post blew up so badly in Flipovich&#8217;s face that she deleted it, but it reminded me of a common meme that ably summarizes how Christians can turn the tables on their liberal critics. But before I reveal what that meme is, I want to let you know that if you subscribe to this channel, you help us grow and reach more people, and if you support us for as little as $5 a month, you get access to bonus theology courses and other premium content at trenhornpodcast.com.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/pb11QxCPCGZelrCbAhbksuMw6Ph7gcDamR1p854wMi6Lsn-cks633PgyVjk5PKmbk04EDmf6YSogYWMFr6O023lemzc?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=50.16">00:50</a>):
And you help us keep those annoying ad reads out of the episodes. I hope that you find these terms acceptable and support us at trenthornpodcast.com. And so it&#8217;s no coincidence the meme we&#8217;re talking about today is the, your terms are acceptable meme. He&#8217;s the base Christian who proposes something sane. And then a secular liberal critic says, &#8220;Well, by that logic, you have to support this other thing I consider insane.&#8221; Of course, the based Christian knows the other thing is also sane. So he simply says, &#8220;Your terms are acceptable.&#8221; Flipivic&#8217;s now deleted post is a perfect example of this. She justifies so- called gender affirming surgery by saying teenagers have the right to alter their bodies in any way that makes them feel comfortable. So if a transgender teen boy who claims to be a girl isn&#8217;t allowed to get breast implants that makes them feel more comfortable and claiming to be a girl, then Christian should be consistent under Flipivic&#8217;s view and not allow teen girls to get breast implants that make them feel more comfortable, to which I say, &#8220;Your terms are acceptable.&#8221; In fact, there&#8217;s so much wrong with Flipivic&#8217;s argument.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/3J4yLrClmikVFVcXCTKDgoHgHy524VzumCogLRM_gyt0bT46LxSjiz9OOU-hF6klrkX54AMV6I7VHSv3299pUk084fQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=116.8">01:56</a>):
I don&#8217;t even know where to begin. First, she probably deleted the post because she said the quiet part out loud by admitting that so- called gender assignment surgery is an elective procedure that just affects your feelings and doesn&#8217;t treat an identifiable pathology. It&#8217;s more like plastic surgery than reconstructive surgery. For example, a mastectomy to remove cancerous breast tissue is medically necessary because of the threat cancer poses to the whole body. Doctors can objectively discover something is wrong with the breast tissue and this justifies removing it. However, in gender dysphoria, there is nothing wrong with the patient&#8217;s tissue, and removing it simply because a woman doesn&#8217;t want breasts anymore is mutilation, not medicine. It&#8217;s no different than people with body identity integrity disorder who can walk, but cosplay is being wheelchair bound. Their desire for doctors to sever their spinal cords is mutilation because the defect in the person is not something physical in the spine, is something mental in the mind that requires therapy, not surgery that causes paraplegia.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/BkHO3QPkCr3RE6QAfc9YUiunzqVMEFygN9aMkzO6cwxivpbmdfiXSQWSIzIU6H1dTAri2VTMpYqEGUEdYaEhqa48AQU?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=181.9">03:01</a>):
This is also true in cases like surgery to treat gynecomastia or large breasts in men, or breast reduction surgery in women. Doctors can still identify things like hormone imbalances that have created breast tissue that is unnaturally large for the patient in question. But even if such surgery wasn&#8217;t strictly a medical procedure, it was also justified by patient comfort. This leads to my second point. There&#8217;s a big difference between cosmetic surgery that slightly changes appearance like nose jobs or rhinoplasty and surgery that destroys or greatly impairs genitals and secondary sex organs like breasts. When a procedure has relatively little risk of serious lifelong negative consequences, it&#8217;s more appropriate to allow minors to access it. And third, anyone who is really gung-ho about teen girls getting breast implants should have their hard drives and internet history checked. This isn&#8217;t the own Flipovic thinks it is because most regular people would agree with the FDA&#8217;s recommendation that breast implants be reserved for adults, given the serious consequences for such a major surgery.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/S2lpym2YhjRFqcCdR63mhY0oUmR2A4u4vngJOhuP6MQWXgHXbUn50KPMTBoeXZ8OfFSIIBfyx8Fx0J3o6YgmLng8Ug4?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=248.49">04:08</a>):
The only justification for minors would be if the procedure was a reconstructive treatment for something like Poland syndrome, a rare condition where one pectoral muscle or breast is completely missing. What&#8217;s going on in this exchange and others like it is that the critic is using a reduxio ad absurdum. She&#8217;s trying to say the Christian position is false because it leads to an absurd conclusion. In some cases, the Christian has to show the absurd conclusion is only in the critic&#8217;s head, like thinking outlawing abortion will require autopsies for every miscarried embryo. Against that claim, a Christian can point out that it is illegal to murder 90 year olds, but less than 1% of natural deaths in this age group receive autopsies because they already have a high mortality rate. The same is true for the high mortality rate of children at the very beginning of their lives, who it should still be illegal to intentionally kill, even if autopsies are not performed on these children who naturally die at a high rate at this stage of life.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/R8ptbbXvFXHwJgrQGHi_a5pVs9V22da95bRZmJTVlXceC9PkkiKzMb1kMeLk_qbPeQ9YHqFc_9THOZ6ZMiaL_7Ilahk?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=306.87">05:06</a>):
But in other cases, a Christian can just embrace the critic&#8217;s absurd conclusion because it&#8217;s not actually absurd. As I said before, if you&#8217;re not willing to outlaw destructive gender surgery for children because you really want to make sure teen girls can get elective breast augmentation, then I&#8217;m going to have to ask you to take a seat because I want to know what you&#8217;re doing here. Hey, how are you? Good.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/P8fZpbu-CxHS1CJ5ZjgVxuYAMJb8YGzGH9OR6UJcQImm42h5vVDJt5nHVW0fjFR9Nbu8It9emqfUY-Q3Cgt_XMAO5Z0?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=329.24">05:29</a>):
Why don&#8217;t you seat right over there? Sure.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/0gpm_r-kPNnHd1HSjuyed2Abl15THQhlI8R_7RhJMVvkD_KitTiHeBJQkGaVpz7-s8Niyinf8TQGYdvRcPtQNZjsNfw?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=331.21">05:31</a>):
But most regular people find both of these surgeries to be inappropriate, so there is no contradiction. And you can see this in a few other examples of the your terms are acceptable meme in action. For example, taking children to Hooters is wildly inappropriate for kids too, but a lot of conservatives furious about grooming via drag queen story hour are just fine with that. No, I&#8217;m not just fine with that. In fact, I&#8217;ve never met anyone who is against kids attending LGBT drag shows, but also thinks it&#8217;s just fine to take kids to Hooters. But I will say Hooters attacks children&#8217;s innocence through immodesty, which is bad, but it&#8217;s even worse to attack a child&#8217;s innocence by exposing him or her to unspeakable perversity. So you say we shouldn&#8217;t though let kids go to drag shows or restaurants. Your terms are acceptable. If abortion is illegal, then a man leaving a girl who&#8217;s pregnant should be illegal too.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/bZvaN2CJtPy0xR_pN4GMoGSwFblETif8Gd9nxl32qeyUDZchbdei7JnV6sbyuhC810QJLvI2kWE3Y5ChDESCp3oy-0I?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=387.99">06:27</a>):
If women can&#8217;t back out of pregnancy, neither should men. You realize we already have this and it&#8217;s called marriage, so your terms are acceptable. Here&#8217;s another one. In 2019, Alyssa Milano called on women to have a sex strike and refused to have sex until state bans on abortion were repealed. Of course, many of the women who took up this challenge tended to not look like Alyssa Milano, and in the absence of a sparkling personality, it makes it easy to say to them, &#8220;Your terms are acceptable.&#8221; So as I said before, in some cases, you can refute the Reduxiou out absurdum by just showing the absurdim isn&#8217;t absurd. But in other cases, you need to call out the absurdity as only having a reality in the critic&#8217;s mind. You can see that in this parody law that claims if abortion is banned, then all men must be forced to get physectomies because abortion bans force women to give birth or something.
(WVTM News) (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/fTG27OtvlNyqW8tuL_2VD9IPuKoMNPhkJV3VacA2oIv-ietpsgpuLI8nvlj63Yr7DHxV9xPSaCc2YmHeO4D0IvcAK3U?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=442.03">07:22</a>):
State representative Rolanda Hollis&#8217;s bill would require a man to get a vasectomy within one month of his 50th birthday or the birth of his third child, whichever comes first and at his own expense. Hollis notes, while many see the bill as an overstep, she says year after year, legislation is introduced that tries to dictate a woman&#8217;s body and her reproductive rights. First,
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/CDA4nzQgpqhEUAG0gWcaMkMvCYNFQD9weGI82YLbDMbdMNnXQb1VH2BTGtQq0BJZMidd-ebVau4NJODeRfg_fRAVbIs?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=468">07:48</a>):
Contrary to what many feminists say, there is a law that only affects men&#8217;s bodies, not women&#8217;s. At the age of 18, every male US citizen must register for selective service, which means their bodies can be conscripted to fight in a war if the military draft is reinstated. Second, I&#8217;m always baffled by people who are so full of delusional opposition to pro- lifers that they think the only reason pro- lifers want to oppose abortion is because they want to control women. It&#8217;s one thing to say, &#8220;Well, pro- lifers are against abortion because they don&#8217;t want children to be killed. They&#8217;re wrong about that, but that&#8217;s what they think. &#8221; It&#8217;s one thing to think that, but it&#8217;s something else entirely if you think pro- lifers only want to control women and don&#8217;t care about unborn children at all. Now, the pro- life position would be anti-woman if men were allowed to get abortions and women were not.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/uIYjkUcGrD6sI_iS_zV9maXb3lVhyISqqJb5TC8dFuMVjBFrdPQTg9ABJFyZ63W-ndXwpElM6NwJWXt9xO3z6FzprBU?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=521.09">08:41</a>):
Or it would be anti-woman if abortions were allowed whenever the father of the unborn child permitted it, but not the mother. So that would be anti-woman. And I don&#8217;t know where anyone would get an idea that we are anti-women in that sense, though it doesn&#8217;t help when people like Nick Fuentes say, &#8220;Your body, my choice.&#8221;
Nick Fuentes (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/V31rVTU46IUFSPa5QDtcfNJ79mwzt63tx0g5HqzxnksmUZGik6QOghM0TwAjE7PFDSSNqOttK2wHn6SdySlp9E8Wtfw?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=539.09">08:59</a>):
Hi, I&#8217;m your Republican Congressman. It&#8217;s your body, my choice.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/U5KRENBC0NTvoT5hBirHCayWUs2P9xSLKLRXwHMj-vYKui2L8CIa283VnpKkz8bxatzos4aQTtw7MIWeHUsGFG-RSaY?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=546.14">09:06</a>):
Because what is the choice Fuentes is talking about? If it&#8217;s the choice to have sex, then the woman gets a choice too, otherwise it&#8217;s rape. If it&#8217;s the choice to have an abortion, then men don&#8217;t have a choice on that issue either. Men don&#8217;t get to choose if women have abortions because no one should be able to choose that because abortion kills innocent human beings. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m baffled when pro- choicers think pro- lifers only oppose abortion because they just want to oppress women. Even intelligent pro- choice advocates recognize this is a farce. People like philosopher Nathan Nobus, who I previously debated who says the following. Pro-lifers might be trying to control women, but they might be trying to ban abortion because they believe that abortion is wrong and should be illegal. Again, critics of abortion might respond that abortion advocates just want to engage in immorality without consequences.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/CT4AamAlopQ_CYq6wDRRD0oCac-t_J_WYqf85iKlZGk-9SNo15SHfLdtTYZG3G5stCYfHGluCrN1i35pHVOnxy8Y6dA?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=597.28">09:57</a>):
Is that true? No pro- choice advocates argue. Speculations about motives don&#8217;t engage or critique any arguments anyone might give for their views, and so are unwise and fruitless. But here&#8217;s abortionist Warren Hearn comparing pro- lifers to the Taliban, a Muslim Afghan terror group that does things like throw acid on women&#8217;s faces who are just trying to go to school.
Warren Hearn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/A0Q6nE2S_0iWicnNax6Ikdk5aiVBmrdPI-VpPquUqRoDipJXqUM0UOUTj5_yWCzTipalDjxJkVekNIziAdzoY45rdJI?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=618.02">10:18</a>):
We don&#8217;t have to invade other countries to find the terrorists. They&#8217;re here killing doctors who do abortions. The main difference between the American anti-abortion movement and the Taliban is about 8,000 miles.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/qdg7i5I_Tmm42_eOAmSsFGX6-l9K2cosbEfIdfy-zHMkfxzaiRU_F9asZun3_US9dystth5-T_JMp3R3DQXnLrlzE2Y?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=631.3">10:31</a>):
And what sets us back as a movement and makes people think we hate women is when prominent figures on the right, like Nick Fuentes, say vile garbage like this.
Nick Fuentes (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/nIJDppBv28nnZvkCOUgd83lk92z8PtxvVau10TW9JMwNg1qQc-1DbCIzpnmnvBr3pb-Cx-9jzd1a2YWTtz9gOiFhjv4?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=640">10:40</a>):
Women are made to be literally. Women exist for sex. That is why they are mothers or they are whores or they are nuns. End of list. Women are either mothers, whores or nuns, no other options. There are no female philosophers, there are no female inventors, there are no female generals or billionaires. They are mothers, whores, nuns, end of list. That&#8217;s what you can be.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/tiJ5exPFF8aKCYhZPPsmNGSplUyFLUOi3ik_JwAbx8_LEXtUUzYDBWwZ2Fu3qHSidH0VsKWicysHRGihF6b5WRuWlso?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=665.18">11:05</a>):
Of course, this is a crazy thing to say for someone who claims to be Catholic, given that the church has been blessed with married saints who did things beyond just having children. People like St. John Amola, who is a physician, or St. Theresa&#8217;s mother, Zelie Martin, who ran a business with her husband, and has been blessed with brilliant female philosophers like Edith Stein, who later became a nun and GEM and Scome who coined the term consequentialism in her critique of modern morality. So to pull everything together as Christians, we need to show those who disagree with us that the logical consequences of the Christian worldview are not insane. They are either fever, dream worries without basis in reality, or they&#8217;re not as crazy as you might think. If you like a good book to explain these moral issues to people of all ages, I recommend mine and Layla Miller&#8217;s book, Made This Way, How to Prepare Kids to Talk Abo Today&#8217;s Tough Moral Issues.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/4awnbscP1cFM0Oe_tg7KXYBCztis_DQPiAoTxpN6y_oM48ZgT6nUlwdje12PDVhEt9EopORm69q9gWRijgQyRvQWePs?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=714.62">11:54</a>):
I hope this episode was helpful for you, and if you want to help us create more episodes like this, please support us at trrenthornpodcast.com. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

Owning Liberals with “Acceptable Terms”

NPR <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/09/06/nx-s1-5092402/eco-chaplains-helping-people-deal-with-climate-grief">describes</a> seventy-eight-year-old Diane Ware, a “retired elementary school teacher” and environmentalist who got no satisfaction from the scuppering of a proposed natural gas pipeline in her Oregon hometown. The battle was won, but not the war, because “it may be too late to save a planet in deep peril.” Ware sank into depression and sought treatment for her “climate grief.”
Enter the eco-chaplain, “a new kind of spiritual adviser rising among clergy trained in handling grief and other difficult emotions.”
You can learn all about this peculiar quasi-spiritual therapist from the NPR story. More interesting to me than the treatment is the condition: climate anxiety, as <a href="https://sustainability.yale.edu/explainers/yale-experts-explain-climate-anxiety">Yale calls it</a>, or eco-anxiety, or climate doom (!). This is not to be confused with worry; worry is “a good and healthy thing,” per Yale Expert #2, “because worry as an emotion is a motivator; if you worry about something, you are motivated to figure out what you can do about it. We actually need more people to be worried about climate change.”
That’s one way to think about it. But if we take the above quotation and replace “climate change” with “heaven and hell,” then we’re on to something. We really do need more people to wrestle with the Four Last Things.
After all, why do we need more people to be worried about climate change? So they’ll fix it, right? But how? How much? Where? What even are they trying to fix? And how will they know when they’ve succeeded, or failed?
<a href="https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf">None of these questions can be answered definitively.</a> When it comes to this new phenomenon of climate change, there is no actual knowledge to leverage. We don’t know the ideal global temperature; there’s not even any such thing as a global temperature. (You want to average all the temperatures on earth—assuming you could ever do that—and then tell me the number means something? And we should act on it?) We don’t know which actions will solve the problem—which, remember, we can’t identify. Maybe abolishing gas-powered cars will do it. Pope Francis proposes a crusade on air-conditioning (see Laudato Si 55). But it’s impossible to be sure.
And so we all end up in a cloud of unknowing, with no idea what will appease Mother Nature and yet with vague instructions on how to appease. (The most popular ones involve <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cap-and-trade.asp">spending lots of money</a> on nothing in particular.) And if we mess it up, “<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/our-fragile-earth-how-close-are-we-to-climate-catastrophe/">some devastating tipping point</a>” will kill us tomorrow, or <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082019/12-years-climate-change-explained-ipcc-science-solutions/">twelve years</a> . . . er, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48964736">eighteen months</a> . . . from now, or <a href="https://theconversation.com/this-is-what-will-happen-to-the-climate-in-the-next-100-years-52051">a hundred years</a> from now.
This doesn’t look like light-bringing, mind-freeing <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/science-is-great-but-its-not-always-enough">Science</a>. It looks like a grim religion, at once rules-obsessed and effete, groaning for redemption but incognizant of the redeemer.
We can see parallels between the religion of climate change and the state of Judaism just before the Messiah. The Jews had their Temple, and they had their manifold sacrifices, and they had their Day of Atonement, but they could never really be sure if God had absolved them of their sins . . . or if another conscience-cleansing seventy-year exile was around the corner. Likewise, the anxiety-ridden climatista can speak out, lobby, write letters, and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2022/11/30/climate-activists-attack-paintings-mona-lisa-scream/10699588002/">splatter paint on art masterpieces</a> until he’s blue (or whatever color Sherwin-Williams offers) in the face, and yet he can’t know if his work has improved the “global temperature” by one iota.
The Jews, at least, had a promise from the one true God. The religion of climate change has only the stabbing finger of Greta “How Dare You?!” Thunberg. And now eco-chaplains.
Christianity, unlike the Church of Climate, provides the certainty that the ancient Jews and the Diane Wares of the modern world could only grasp at. “Come to me,” Jesus exhorts us, “all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28). His program emphasizes the good things those who follow him can expect, like comfort and inheritance and satisfaction (Matt. 5). And it’s not an unattainable goal, either: from the Ten Commandments to the Two Great Commandments to two rich millennia of the Catholic Church’s moral teaching, the Christian God gives us the Google map to our eternal happiness and the step-by-step directions on the left side of the screen.
Christians can be confident in a good outcome because Our Lord promised it to us—provided we follow the rules. In other words, Jesus authoritatively, reliably gives us both a clear goal and the means to achieve it—the exact two things the Church of Climate most needs and least has.
“No man knows the day or the hour” of the (climate) apocalypse, so anxiety at the thought of it is energy wasted. But every one of us can pursue the moral life, concretely, today. No eco-chaplain required—but a good spiritual director will help.

Climate Therapy with Your Eco-Chaplain

<div>Is it true that the Vatican released a statement saying that Jews don't need to be converted to find salvation?</div><div>No. The most recent statement from the Vatican I can find that addresses the issue of Christian evangelism to Jews is <a href="https://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/en/commissione-per-i-rapporti-religiosi-con-l-ebraismo/commissione-per-i-rapporti-religiosi-con-l-ebraismo-crre/documenti-della-commissione/en.html">The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable</a>, released in 2015 by the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews. The document was intended as a reflection on the fiftieth anniversary of the promulgation of <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html">Nostra Aetate</a> by the Second Vatican Council. In sections five and six of this reflection, the commission discusses &#8220;the universality of salvation in Jesus Christ and God&#8217;s unrevoked covenant with Israel&#8221; and &#8220;the Church&#8217;s mandate to evangelize to Judaism.&#8221; Among other things, the commission states:
<blockquote>Since God has never revoked his covenant with his people Israel, there cannot be different paths or approaches to God&#8217;s salvation. The theory that there may be two different paths to salvation, the Jewish path without Christ and the path with the Christ, whom Christians believe is Jesus of Nazareth, would in fact endanger the foundations of Christian faith. Confessing the universal and therefore also exclusive mediation of salvation through Jesus Christ belongs to the core of Christian faith (35).
The Catholic Church neither conducts nor supports any specific institutional mission work directed toward Jews. While there is a principled rejection of an institutional Jewish mission, Christians are nonetheless called to bear witness to their faith in Jesus Christ also to Jews, although they should do so in a humble and sensitive manner, acknowledging that Jews are bearers of God&#8217;s Word, and particularly in view of the great tragedy of the Shoah (40).</blockquote>
It should be noted that the Commission&#8217;s statement is prefaced with this disclaimer:
<blockquote>The text is not a magisterial document or doctrinal teaching of the Catholic Church but is a reflection prepared by the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews on current theological questions that have developed since the Second Vatican Council.</blockquote>
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