Manage Account

<div>Is the apostolic pardon the same as the anointing of the sick?</div><div>
The anointing of the sick is the sacrament given to those who are seriously ill.
The Apostolic Pardon is blessing with an indulgence that happens at the conclusion of the anointing of the sick if the recipient is in danger of death. The usual process is confession then anointing of the sick, and it is concluded with the Apostolic Pardon. While confession forgives the eternal punishment for sin, the indulgence attached to the Apostolic Pardon forgives temporal punishment due to sin.
The words of the blessing said by the priest for the Apostolic Pardon are:
<blockquote>&#8220;Through the holy mysteries of our redemption may almighty God release you from all punishments in this life and in the life to come. May he open to you the gates of paradise and welcome you to everlasting joy.&#8221;
or
&#8220;By the authority which the Apostolic See has given me, I grant you a full pardon and the remission of all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.&#8221;</blockquote>
</div>

The Apostolic Pardon

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Why Christians MUST convert SAVAGES!

The problem with "Bible Alone" Christianity... #biblicalinterpretation

<div>Can a non-Catholic Gospel singer sing at Mass?</div><div>In the Church’s <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_25031993_principles-and-norms-on-ecumenism_en.html">Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism</a>, this issue isn’t directly addressed. But based on the Directory’s provisions for non-Catholic readers at Mass, we think an inference can be made for a non-Catholic cantor or other singer:
<blockquote>The reading of Scripture during a Eucharistic celebration in the Catholic Church is to be done by members of that Church. On exceptional occasions and for a just cause, the Bishop of the diocese may permit a member of another Church or ecclesial Community to take on the task of reader (no. 133).</blockquote>
For similar reasons, including ecumenical ones, a bishop may allow—including through power deputed to his parish priests—a non-Catholic’s singing in such circumstances.
</div>

May a Non-Catholic Sing at Mass?

Why Did God Create Judas?

In the secular historical attack, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) is the symbol of European greed and genocidal imperialism. In reality, Columbus was a man of his time—a devout Catholic with an interest in evangelization, motivated by religious and personal goals.
During his lifetime, Columbus’s achievements were criticized and downplayed, and he waned in the public memory until preparations to celebrate the quadricentennial of his first voyage were undertaken in the United States. Irish and Italian Catholic immigrants embraced him and revived his memory, but the man and his motivations became lost in a political, societal, and cultural conflict, anchored by the secular historical attack, which culminated in slandering him as deliberately genocidal—a harbinger of destruction, enslavement, and death upon the happy and prosperous people of the Americas.
Russell Means, a leader of the American Indian Movement, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=columbus+and+the+crisis+of+the+west&amp;adgrpid=1332608666263490&amp;hvadid=83288113859176&amp;hvbmt=be&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocint=60677&amp;hvlocphy=91361&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83288407877894%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=3441_10851927&amp;mcid=2ae0518a79573e20b6ce0f4981cf8661&amp;tag=mh0b-20&amp;ref=pd_sl_1ax2uzc724_e">characterized this sentiment</a> with his opinion on the explorer: “Columbus makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent” (40). Other critics liken Columbus’s voyage to opening <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Crusaders-Epic-History-Wars-Lands/dp/0525428313">a new front in the Crusades</a> as that movement to the east became impossible with the rise of the Ottoman Turks.
In the United States, the vitriol directed against Columbus produces annual protests every October with the observance of Columbus Day. A growing movement wants to abolish Columbus Day as a federal holiday, and several cities already celebrate instead “Indigenous Peoples Day.” Columbus has become a Catholic symbol of the modern Western world’s obsession with a sanctimonious, victimhood-focused narratives rooted in anti-Catholic bias.
The real story of Christopher Columbus and his voyages to the New World begins in Portugal, with the actions of Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460). Henry studied ocean currents and wind movement to improve navigation for sailing ships and sent Portuguese vessels and sailors down the West African coast, seeking a trade route to India. He also invented the caravel, a light ship that was perfect for long-distance, uncharted exploration.
Henry and his sailors inaugurated the great age of explorers finding new lands and creating shipping lanes for the import and export of goods, including consumables never before seen in Europe. Their efforts also created intense competition among the sailing nations of Europe, each striving to outdo the others in finding new and more efficient trade routes.
It was into this world of innovation, exploration, and economic competition that Columbus was born. A native of the Italian city-state of Genoa, Columbus became a sailor at the age of fourteen. He learned the nautical trade sailing on Genoese merchant vessels and became an accomplished navigator.
Finally, in May 1486, he secured a royal audience with King Fernando and Queen Isabel of Spain. The queen was intrigued by Columbus’s proposal to seek the east by going west. The explorer requested a patent of nobility, the titles of admiral of the Ocean Sea and viceroy and governor of all discovered lands, and ten percent in dividends of all future trade for his daring trip. Isabel agreed, and queen and sailor signed an agreement in April 1492.
Columbus embarked from Spain on August 3, 1492, with ninety men on three ships: the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María. The crew comprised mostly Spanish sailors, with no soldiers, illustrating that the voyage was bent on not conquest, but exploration.
After thirty-three days at sea, Columbus’s flotilla spotted land (the Bahamas), which he claimed in the name of the Spanish monarchs. Columbus’s modern-day detractors view that as a sign of imperial conquest. It was not; it was simply a sign to other European nations that they could not establish trading posts on the Spanish possession.
On this first voyage, Columbus also reached the islands of Cuba and Hispaniola. He stayed four months in the New World and arrived home on March 15, 1493. The Santa María ran aground on Hispaniola, so Columbus was forced to leave forty-two men behind. He ordered the Spaniards to treat the indigenous people well and especially to respect the women, but he discovered on his second voyage that his order had not been heeded.
Columbus made four voyages to the New World, and each brought its own discoveries and adventures. Columbus left on his second voyage in September 1493 with a fleet of seventeen ships and 1,200 crewmen, including five missionaries. The third voyage was the most difficult for Columbus, as he was arrested on charges of mismanagement of the Spanish trading enterprise in the New World and sent back to Spain in chains (though he was later exonerated). Columbus’s fourth and final voyage took place in 1502-1504, with his son Fernando among the crew. The crossing of the Atlantic was the fastest ever: sixteen days. The expedition visited Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica and was marooned for a time on Jamaica.
Most modern accounts of Columbus’s voyages mistake his motives by focusing narrowly on the “what”—usually pecuniary or political—rather than on the “why” behind his expeditions. Columbus embraced the Catholic worldview of his age. In a letter to King Fernando and Queen Isabel in December 1492, Columbus <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Quest-Jerusalem-Religion-Voyages/dp/1439102376">encouraged the monarchs</a> to “spend all the profits of this my enterprise on the conquest of Jerusalem” (vii). And so his primary motive was to find gold . . . but to finance a crusade to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims and fulfill the conditions he believed were necessary for the Second Coming of Christ!<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a>
Columbus considered himself a “Christ-bearer” like his namesake, St. Christopher, and believed that the evangelization of all peoples was a condition for Jesus’ return. His first words to the people of Hispaniola illustrated his focus <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Age-Renewal-Catholic-Reformation/dp/168595247X">on evangelization</a>: “The monarchs of Castile have sent us not to subjugate you, but to teach you the true religion” (27). The explorer recognized that the native peoples of the New World required catechesis and was angered by the chief missionary who accompanied his second voyage, who believed that baptism with no further instruction was sufficient for the new converts. In a 1502 letter to Pope Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503), Columbus asked the pontiff to send missionaries to the indigenous peoples of the New World so they could accept Christ. Columbus desired the evangelization efforts in the New World to continue after his death, and he established an evangelization fund in his will to finance missionary efforts to the lands he discovered.
Columbus’s interactions with the indigenous peoples of the New World generate significant interest among modern people and are the foundation of much myth-making from the secular historical attack. Contrary to the popular myth, Columbus initially treated many of the native peoples with great respect and friendship. He was impressed by their “generosity, intelligence, and ingenuity” (see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Quest-Jerusalem-Religion-Voyages/dp/1439102376">Delaney</a>, 97). He recorded in his diary that “in the world there are no better people or a better land. They love their neighbors as themselves, and they have the sweetest speech in the world and [they are] gentle and always laughing” (107).
Columbus demanded that his men exchange gifts with the natives they encountered and not just take what they wanted. He enforced this policy rigorously: on his third voyage in August 1500, he hanged men who disobeyed him by harming the native people.
The secular historical attack posits that Columbus sailed to the New World intent on the enslavement of the native peoples. That myth is widely believed and difficult to eradicate despite the evidence in the historical record.
Columbus had no plan to enslave native peoples when he began his expeditions, but circumstances during the second and third voyages drove him to implement harsh measures, “including enslavement of Indians captured in military actions when there seemed no other way to restore order. But this was not a policy intended to establish a regime of slavery” (see <a href="https://www.amazon.com/s?k=columbus+and+the+crisis+of+the+west&amp;adgrpid=1332608666263490&amp;hvadid=83288113859176&amp;hvbmt=be&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocint=60677&amp;hvlocphy=91361&amp;hvnetw=o&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvtargid=kwd-83288407877894%3Aloc-190&amp;hydadcr=3441_10851927&amp;mcid=2ae0518a79573e20b6ce0f4981cf8661&amp;tag=mh0b-20&amp;ref=pd_sl_1ax2uzc724_e">Royal</a>, 66).
Columbus’s views concerning the native peoples changed over the course of his multiple voyages based on his interaction with the various tribes and with unruly Spanish settlers. He was a brilliant sailor, navigator, and fearless explorer, but he was not an able administrator. He was not a violent man, but he utilized violence at times when his poor leadership led to preventable crises. His intentions were good, as his contemporaries, including <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-church-and-the-native-americans">Bartolomé de las Casas</a>, who knew him, maintained, but he made critical errors in judgment from which the indigenous peoples suffered.
Columbus and his actions in the New World are not immune to legitimate criticism, but the use of this daring explorer, who fundamentally altered world history, as a Catholic target to attack the Church and Western history is a travesty of justice. There is no doubt that Columbus was a complex man, and his actions in the New World reflected the complexities of his experiences and the time in which he lived. He is neither the saint nor the genocidal fanatic portrayed by different groups with their own agendas in the modern world.
Read more on the Catholic black sheep of history in <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/canceled-twelve-catholic-heroes-that-history-turned-into-villains/?searchid=10400412&amp;search_query=canceled">Canceled</a>, available for sale in the Catholic Answers shop.

The Truth About Christopher Columbus

<div>If the Church declares someone a saint, how can we know with absolute certainty that he or she is in heaven?</div><div>While the Church has never formally defined canonization as an act of infallibility, the definitive and therefore infallible nature of this teaching is rooted in its necessary connection with the dogma of the communion of saints, which is professed in the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/apostles-creed">Apostles&#8217; Creed</a> and also—in summary form—within the Nicene Creed&#8217;s profession of &#8220;the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.&#8221; As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) provides,
<blockquote>The supreme degree of participation in the authority of Christ is ensured by the charism of infallibility. This infallibility extends as far as does the deposit of divine Revelation; it also extends to all those elements of doctrine, including morals, without which the saving truths of the faith cannot be preserved, explained, or observed (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s1c3a3.htm#I">CCC 2036</a>, emphasis added).</blockquote>
St. Thomas Aquinas elaborates:
<blockquote>Since the honor we pay the saints is in a certain sense a profession of faith, i.e., a belief in the glory of the saints, we must piously believe that in this matter also the judgment of the Church is not liable to error (Quodlib. IX, a. 16).</blockquote>
Because the Pope is formally decreeing that all Christians are to believe that a certain person is in heaven, and thus can be prayerfully invoked in a fruitful manner, the certitude of his decree also flows from the pope&#8217;s divinely given charism of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/papal-infallibility">papal infallibility</a>.
</div>

Are Canonizations Infallible?

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FAKE versions don’t kill the real thing!

Do Pets Go To Heaven? Jimmy Akin and host Cy Kellett tackle this question in light of records of near death experience.
Transcript:
Caller: We just lost our cat. And I told my son that you have an argument that pets go to heaven. So if you could give your argument that good pets go to heaven, we would really appreciate it.
Jimmy: Okay, so I should introduce a clarification, which is I don&#8217;t claim. Okay, so first of all, this idea that you hear that animals don&#8217;t have an afterlife is not church teaching. That is a theological speculation that is based on Aristotelian physics or metaphysics.
Physics in this case. And I, in episode 203, which is where I discuss this more fully of *Mysterious World*, which you can get to by going to Mysterious FM203, I go through the arguments for animals not having an afterlife and I conclude they don&#8217;t work. I think they&#8217;re bad arguments.
So I&#8217;m not convinced by that. I would say that I don&#8217;t propose they go to heaven. I don&#8217;t know whether they go to heaven or not. Heaven is full spiritual union with God. But I do think there is evidence that they have an afterlife and that at least some animals do, and that it may be a positive afterlife, even if it isn&#8217;t the kind of full union with God, you know, where you have this intellectual vision of God known as the beatific vision that humans can get.
I don&#8217;t know what animals get, but I do have evidence that they may well have an afterlife and that it may be a positive afterlife. Whether it would or would not count as heaven is a separate question.
So there are a number of lines of evidence, and I&#8217;m going to propose at least three lines of evidence that we have in favor of some animals having an afterlife.
One, and I&#8217;ve already mentioned the first one, which is that when humans have near-death experiences, they not only see like their departed relatives in the afterlife while they&#8217;re temporarily clinically dead, they also see animals.
And I did it. And I talk about this in episode 203 of *Mysterious World*. I did a search of a major database of near-death experiences. It has like more than 5,000 near-death experiences in it. And I found by searching on terms like, you know, cat, dog, rabbit, horse, pet animal, things like that, that as many as a quarter of the near-death experience reports that the database contained might have references to animals in them.
Now, I can&#8217;t say it&#8217;s exactly a quarter because what I didn&#8217;t do is read all 5,000 of the reports, but I did find that many. I did find like a quarter of that number that mentioned animals in some way. The actual percentage may be lower than a quarter because you might have one that has the word animal in it and pet in it and dog in it. And so that would look like three hits when really it would count as one if you actually read them.
But this is still a very common thing in human near-death experiences. So that&#8217;s piece of evidence number one.
Piece of evidence number two is a sub-case of piece of evidence number one. There is a kind of experience, and this occurs both in deathbed visions and it occurs in near-death experiences. It&#8217;s what&#8217;s called a peak in Darien experience.
And that&#8217;s P, E, A K, like a mountain peak. This is based on a literary allusion to a poem about a mountain peak in Darien Province, Panama. And I won&#8217;t go through exactly what the allusion involves, but basically the term has become attached to a kind of experience where you see someone in the afterlife, or you see. Basically you see someone in the afterlife that you did not previously know was dead.
For example, an early peak in Darien experience that got recorded about 100 years ago, you had this woman who had just given birth to a child, and she had this heart condition, and the birth was too much of a strain on her system. And so she was in the process of dying.
And they&#8217;d been afraid during her pregnancy that she might not even survive to give birth. So they had her in this maternity hospital and they were rigorously screening what information she was exposed to. But then as she&#8217;s in the process of dying, she starts having a deathbed vision and she&#8217;s like, oh, here&#8217;s my father, and he looks very happy and he&#8217;s welcoming me into the afterlife and oh, hey, what&#8217;s my sister Vita doing here too?
Because as far as the woman knew, her sister Vita was alive. But in fact, her sister Vita had died three weeks earlier. And they had asked the matron of the maternity hospital, is it safe to tell her with her heart condition that her sister Vita has passed on? And the matron said, no, don&#8217;t mention that to her.
And they even had the woman&#8217;s husband screen the woman&#8217;s mail to avoid anyone accidentally mentioning that Vita had died, because they thought that could trigger a cardiac event and she might not survive to give birth to the baby.
So as she&#8217;s having the near-death experience, she sees her father, which would be expected because everybody knew he had passed on. But then she sees someone that she didn&#8217;t know had passed on, namely her sister Vita. And that&#8217;s an example of a peak in Darien experience.
If you see someone in either a deathbed vision or a near-death experience that you did not previously know was dead, and then it turns out it&#8217;s true that they&#8217;re dead, that&#8217;s a peak in Darien experience.
So here&#8217;s the thing. Peak in Darien experiences happen with animals. So someone will be having a near-death experience or a deathbed vision and they&#8217;ll say, oh, here&#8217;s my grandmother and she&#8217;s holding my cat. And the person knew previously the grandmother had died, but they didn&#8217;t know that their cat had died. And it turns out to be true.
So they just like they saw their grandmother in the afterlife, they saw their cat in the afterlife. And in this case, what makes this different than the first type of evidence I mentioned is that it&#8217;s verifiable their cat had died while they were in the hospital and they didn&#8217;t know that.
So this would be, you know, preternatural evidence that they&#8217;re having a real experience that they&#8217;re really learning about their cat being in the afterlife because they had no natural way of knowing that. So it would be a preternatural experience.
Then there&#8217;s the third form of evidence that I would point to, which is that we have so. And again, this parallels other things with humans. Humans very frequently, it tends not to be talked about in our culture, but humans very frequently have experiences that are what are known as after-death communications.
And this is after-death communications are where you have like lost somebody who is close to you and then after they&#8217;re dead they show up again. And they can show up in a number of different ways. I also have *Mysterious World* episodes about after-death communications. So you can check those out for more info.
But like 40 to 50% of the population globally has at least one after-death communication at some point in their lives. Okay, well, turns out it happens with animals too. There are animal after-death communications.
I haven&#8217;t yet done a *Mysterious World* about those, but I have in the last couple of years there have been some research papers done on this, and I will be doing an animal after-death communications episode in the near future. But you can hear about the other stuff that I talked about, for example, by going to Mysterious FM203.
So the three pieces of evidence I pointed to here, and I could name others, but the three pieces of evidence I pointed to here are, number one, people having near-death experiences report seeing animals in the afterlife.
Piece of evidence number two, people have peak in Darien experiences involving animals that they&#8217;ve known which are then verifiable. And piece of evidence number three, people have after-death communications, particularly from animals that they&#8217;ve known.
So those would be the three pieces of evidence I would mention. Also, and this is something you might be interested in, but I just recently did an episode on animal end-of-life experiences.
So if you go to, and I can get the number for you for that pretty quick I think. Yeah, it&#8217;s episode 366. So if you go to Mysterious FM 366, you can learn about the kinds of end-of-life experiences that animals frequently have and see if you think your animal, your cat may have had any of the experiences that have otherwise been reported.
Cy: Annie, thank you. Thanks very much.
Jimmy Very sorry to learn that you lost your cat. That&#8217;s always sad.
Cy: Thank you for the call, Annie. Mike&#8217;s in Pennsylvania watching on YouTube. Mike, welcome. Go ahead with your question.

Do Pets Go To Heaven?

Many argue the story of the good thief on the cross disproves Purgatory&#8217;s existence. But was Purgatory always rejected by Protestants? Dr. Karlo Broussard explores the surprising history of the doctrine and reveals why the good thief might not be the slam dunk some believe.
Transcript:
Questions I often get from Protestant converts are obviously about saints intercession, but another big one is purgatory.
They tend to really struggle with the belief of purgatory.
One thing they usually bring up is the thief on the cross to reinforce that, &#8220;Oh, there&#8217;s no purgatory.&#8221; But I was just wondering, when did the belief in purgatory kind of end? Was it with the Reformation?
That&#8217;s a good question. So with regard to the ending of the belief in purgatory, Martin Luther initially believed in purgatory. So for example, in his 95 Theses in 1517, he wrote, &#8220;The Pope does very well when he grants for a mission to souls and purgatory, not by the power of the keys, which he does not have, but by way of intercession for them.&#8221; So there you have implied in there an affirmation of purgatory elsewhere in 1521, he would write the existence of a purgatory I&#8217;ve never denied. Yet in 1537, he calls purgatory a specter of the devil. And so there you have evidence of Luther rejecting the doctrine of purgatory, and many would follow suit after that. As far as the specific argument that Luther would give to reject purgatory, I&#8217;m not quite sure I would have to do more research on that to see which specific articles he uses, arguments he utilizes, and whether it maps on with contemporary arguments that Protestants will give, such as the good thief on the cross, or maybe 2 Corinthians 5-8, where some will interpret that passage to reveal that heaven is given to the saved immediately after death. With regard to the good thief on the cross, I actually wrote an article at catholic.com, and it&#8217;s entitled, &#8220;The Good Thief Isn&#8217;t Good for Protestant Doctrine.&#8221; I think that&#8217;s the title of it, yeah, &#8220;The Good Thief Isn&#8217;t Good for Protestant Doctions.&#8221; And they&#8217;re in ideal with this idea that the good thief reveals purgatory is not necessary, and it&#8217;s based upon our Lord saying, &#8220;Today you will be with me in paradise.&#8221; I also deal with this objection in my book, &#8220;Purgatory is for Real,&#8221; but you can get a snippet of that for free at catholic.com with that article. And our response there, Michael, is that even, first of all, it&#8217;s not quite certain that whenever our Lord says, &#8220;Today you will be with me in paradise,&#8221; he&#8217;s referring to heaven. It&#8217;s most likely he&#8217;s referring to Sheol, or the righteous abode of the dead before the ascension of Christ, where the Old Testament righteous souls received a beatific vision. So Jesus literally would have been telling him, &#8220;You&#8217;re going to be with me in this righteous abode of the dead,&#8221; or &#8220;Abraham&#8217;s bosom,&#8221; not heaven. And that would in no way exclude purgatory. The good thief may have to have undergone a final purification immediately after death before entering into Abraham&#8217;s bosom. But let&#8217;s say, Michael, even if Jesus were promising the good thief heaven on that day such that the good thief did not need purgatory, that fits with the Catholic understanding because the Catholic Church does not teach that purgatory is absolutely necessary for everyone. The Catholic Church actually teaches it&#8217;s possible for someone to die with such a fervent degree of charity where no final purification would be needed after death such that the soul could immediately enter into the presence of God in the beatific vision. So it&#8217;s possible that that could have been the good thief. The good thief could have fit that bill, so to speak, and met that description such that he would not need purgatory. So depending upon how we interpret what our Lord is telling the good thief on the cross, neither interpretation excludes or refutes the doctrine of purgatory. And so that&#8217;s a sketch of what I say in more detail in my book, Purgatory is for Real, and then also in that article, The Good Thief Isn&#8217;t Good for Protestant Doctions.
Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic Answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific. Or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.

When Did People Stop Believing in Purgatory?

Luke 1:43, where Elizabeth proclaims Mary as the “Mother of my Lord,” is usually the go-to biblical text for defending Mary “Mother of God.” But did you know there’s another text that we can appeal to?
It’s Galatians 4:4. There, Paul writes, “When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law.” The key is that God’s Son is said to be born of a woman.
There are two things to unpack here.
First, assuming we accept early conciliar Christology, like that of the Council of Nicaea, God’s Son, the Word, is divine, and thus is properly called “God.”
Second, any woman who gives birth to a person is a mother to the person to whom she gives birth.
With these two things in place, we can reason as follows:
P1:  Any woman who gives birth to a person is a mother to the person to whom she gives birth.
P2:  Mary gave birth to God’s Son (per Gal. 4:4).
C1:  Therefore, Mary is the mother of God’s Son.
P3:  God’s Son is divine, and thus is properly called “God.”
C2:  Therefore, Mary is the mother of God.
With the argument laid out like this, it becomes clear what a person has to deny if he wants to deny Mary as the Mother of God. Such a person would have to deny either premise one, a mother is someone who gives birth to a person; premise two, Mary did not give birth to God’s Son; or premise three, God’s Son is not Divine.
Common sense tells us that we can’t deny premise one. The very definition of a biological mother is someone who gives birth to a person. Mothers don’t give birth to anything else, like a nature or a body. The subject that is birthed is a person.
No Christian can deny premise two without denying an essential truth of the Bible, a truth that Paul makes explicit: “God sent his Son, born of a woman.”
Finally, no Christian can deny the divinity of God’s Son, the Word, lest he cease being a Christian. Recall John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
With a little help of reason to bring to light certain hidden premises, Galatians 4:4 provides a biblical basis for belief that Mary is the Mother of God, thereby providing another arrow in the quiver for hitting the target for this Marian dogma.

When Paul Does Your Homework for You

Tim Staples discusses how he would explain and defend <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/canon-law">Canon Law</a> to Protestants, and dispels the common misconception that it is meant to &#8220;add to the Bible.&#8221;
Transcript:
Host: Alexandria, who&#8217;s watching on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/catholiccom">YouTube Live</a>—hi Alexandria—asks the following, Tim: &#8220;How would you explain, or begin to introduce Canon Law to a Protestant?&#8221;
Tim: Great question. I know from my own experience, in fact Cy and I were talking off air here just a minute ago, but to me, as a young Baptist, and as a Pentecostal, Canon Law was that evil, dark book that these Catholics created to add to the Bible. &#8220;See, the Bible&#8217;s not enough! You gotta have&#8230;&#8217;Canon Law.'&#8221;
Actually, the way I like to explain it to folks is—I can tell you, from being a former Protestant youth minister, at my&#8230;we would call it an ecclesial community, but in our community, we had what&#8217;s called Church bylaws. The Assemblies of God has bylaws. Every organization, I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s a company, if it&#8217;s a business, you know what, even families, often you&#8217;ll find—we have in my house, we have a poster, up in the rec room, that says, &#8220;Staples Household Ten Commandments.&#8221;
Host: Oh really?
Tim: Including things like, &#8220;NO WHINING.&#8221; Okay, things like that.
Host: Oh, come on!
Tim: And just in case my kids are watching right now, NO WHINING! Alright? But anyway, the Code of Canon Law is just that. In a nutshell, it governs what we do as Catholics. And remember, and you discover this as a Protestant minister as well, you know, Scripture does not provide everything. Jesus doesn&#8217;t give us all the rules. Even around baptism, okay, yeah, you baptize with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Is that it? What else do you do? Are there any other—yes. There&#8217;s all sorts of things that you have to govern. You have to create a liturgy around this.
Now my Protestant friends would say, &#8220;Well wait a minute, liturgy, we don&#8217;t believe in liturgy.&#8221; Yes you do! Your whole church—I can tell you, when I was a minister, how many songs we were gonna sing&#8211;although sometimes we would &#8220;let the Holy Ghost move.&#8221; We&#8217;d sing an extra couple songs, right? But you had the worship, then you had pastor get up and preach, then you had altar call, then you had more music, you know, the dismissal—in fact, you have to have rules governing everything that you do. As human beings, we need it.
The Code of Canon Law is such a blessing to the Church, however, because it&#8217;s not done just by a group of guys who get together and say, &#8220;Hey, this is what we think.&#8221; But Canon Law is something that grew organically for centuries, out of the practice—out of—it comes out of Scripture, no doubt. Cause when you look at, for example, the section on the Sacraments, a lot of that comes right out of Sacred Scripture, when it comes to form and matter of what the Sacraments are. But when it comes to the rules and such surrounding the Sacraments, that develops organically over the centuries, and you need these rules in order to have a coherent practice of the faith.
So anyway, that&#8217;s a good way to get started in helping people understand, this is not some dark thing that adds to, you know, the revelation that God gave us in the first century, we have—no, it&#8217;s not that. But it helps us to be able to formulate what we believe as well as what we do in the Church.
Host: Thanks very much Alexandria, and everybody else watching on YouTube.

What is Canon Law?

<div>What is liturgical prayer?</div><div><blockquote>The word &#8220;liturgy&#8221; originally meant a &#8220;public work&#8221; or a &#8220;service in the name of/on behalf of the people.&#8221; In Christian tradition it means the participation of the People of God in &#8220;the work of God.&#8221; Through the liturgy Christ, our redeemer and high priest, continues the work of our redemption in, with, and through his Church. (Catechism, 1069)</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/liturgy">Liturgy</a> is the public prayer and worship of the Church.  Liturgical prayers are prayers set by the Church for a particular liturgy (e.g. Mass, confession, baptism, the Divine Office, etc).  They differ from private prayers in that they are not the intention of any one person or group but are the prayers of the Church as a whole.  As such they should not be altered by the presider since they do not belong to him.
</div>

What Is Liturgical Prayer?

A man from Turkey, raised Muslim, calls in to Catholic Answers Live to ask how he can become Catholic and practice the Catholic faith without putting himself in danger. Karlo Broussard and Jimmy Akin explain how he can be a faithful, practicing Catholic in a dangerously anti-Catholic environment.

Muslim Risks Everything to Become Christian

Were the author&#8217;s of Genesis inspired by other myths? Jimmy Akin and host Cy Kellett tackle this question in light of Humani Generis.
Transcript:
Cy: M. Duff Beer asks if we interpret Genesis as describing God&#8217;s creation of man through evolution and the Flood as describing a population bottleneck thousands or hundreds of thousands of years before Genesis was recorded. Is it possible that the author incorporated contemporary myths into the writing of Genesis? There are Mesopotamian flood myths that predate the writing of Genesis by at least 100 years, likely inspired by the flooding of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. If God revealed to me the knowledge of a battle between good and evil, I might visualize it as an Avengers-style fight or a Lord of the Rings-style battle. Because of my contemporary culture, would it be acceptable to think the writer of Genesis did the same thing, using a popular myth that already existed when Genesis was being recorded to convey why God destroyed the wicked and created the covenant, even if the means God used were different in prehistory?
Jimmy: Okay, so I wanna make sure we&#8217;re clear on what Duff Beer is proposing here. He&#8217;s assuming that we are interpreting Genesis as describing a population bottleneck that occurred thousands or hundreds of thousands of years before Genesis. And what he&#8217;s asking is if that&#8217;s what Genesis is talking about. Could the author of Genesis have described that population bottleneck? A population bottleneck is when a large part of a population dies off. So it&#8217;s like all the genetic material that survives has to go through this smaller number of people, which is why it&#8217;s called a bottleneck.
But he&#8217;s asking, could an earlier population bottleneck have been described in terms of stories that were told in Mesopotamia that were likely based on the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates, which is a well-known phenomenon that happens over there?
Well, personally, I don&#8217;t think that Genesis should be interpreted in terms of a population bottleneck that occurred hundreds of thousands of years earlier. I don&#8217;t think that there is any plausible mechanism for the societies to have transmitted information about such a population bottleneck up to the time Genesis was written, about 1000 BC. I think whatever Genesis is describing, it&#8217;s much more recent than that.
But we can go with Duff Beer&#8217;s framing of the issue. So if Genesis is describing a much earlier population bottleneck, could the author of Genesis have taken more recent events or stories and used them to depict that population bottleneck the same way that he says he might envision a fight between good and evil as something you&#8217;d see in the Avengers or a Lord of the Rings movie?
Well, we actually have a discussion of the extent to which Genesis might incorporate prior popular stories. This comes from Pope Pius XII&#8217;s encyclical *Humanae Generis*, which was released in 1950, 75 years ago. And things have shifted some since *Humanae Generis* was released 75 years ago. But the same fundamental principles are going to apply.
So if you look in sections 38 and 39 of *Humanae Generis*, Pope Pius XII says this. He says the first 11 chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking, not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which, however, must be further studied and determined by exegetes, which is what&#8217;s been happening in the last 75 years.
The same chapters, in simple and metaphorical language, adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people. If, however, the ancient sacred writers have taken anything from popular narration, and this may be conceded, Pius XII says so. He&#8217;s conceded they may have. The author of Genesis may have taken material from popular narrations.
It must never be forgotten that they did so with the help of divine inspiration, through which they were rendered immune from any error in selecting and evaluating those documents. Therefore, whatever of the popular narrations had been inserted into the sacred Scriptures must in no way be considered on par with the my other such things, which are more the product of an extravagant imagination than of that striving for the truth and simplicity which in the sacred books also of the Old Testament is so apparent that our ancient sacred writers must be admitted to be clearly superior to the ancient profane writers.
So he&#8217;s saying that the author of Genesis, especially in the first 11 chapters, may have taken stuff from popular narrations. He doesn&#8217;t call them myths, as that would have a pejorative connotation that he wants to avoid. But there were narrations, or stories, as I called them, about great floods. In the Mesopotamian context, there&#8217;s the equivalent of Noah, who was a guy named Utnapishtim. And so there were stories about Utnapishtim and how he survived the great flood.
In Greek stories, there was Deucalion, who was the survivor of the great flood. And what Pope Pius XII is saying is that the author of Genesis may have used earlier narrations like those coming from Babylonia, but in the process of incorporating them into sacred Scripture, he was protected by divine inspiration.
So I would say that the answer to Duff Beer&#8217;s question is, yes, these texts could have been influenced by earlier stories about a great flood and how people survived it, the same way that he&#8217;s proposing that you might have an earlier population bottleneck that then gets depicted in terms of more recent stories.
So I would say the basic answer to his question is, yes, it could have happened this way. But personally, I don&#8217;t think Genesis is talking about something that happened hundreds of thousands of years earlier. But if you do, you do you.
Cy: Good advice for Duff Beer. M. Duff Beer, thank you very much for the question. Lots more questions to come. We&#8217;ve got&#8230; Well, the Internet, because it&#8217;s made by people, has endless questions. And so we will get to more of those questions with Jimmy Akin right after this on *CATHOLIC ANSWERS LIVE*.

Was Genesis Inspired by Ancient Myths?

Did the Catholic Church remove the 2nd commandment?

<div>How does one deal with religious debates without getting angry?</div><div>When you speak with people about God and his revelation, you are working for their salvation and happiness, and this means that you love them. So loving the ones we speak with is the best way not to give in to anger. Better to be angry at the devil, the deceiver, than at the poor souls who labor under various errors. You should see yourself as helping the Good Shepherd to bring back his lost sheep, not as an opponent or accuser.
Pray for the ones with whom you speak before, during, and after your talking. Ask the Lord to give them all he desires for them and to use you as his humble and peaceful instrument. Then you will be imitating Christ and the apostles, and then, if anger against evil is warranted, it will be appropriately expressed and won&#8217;t be a general attitude.
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Keeping Your Temper in Religious Debates

Many Protestant-Christians argue that Christians should use <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/sola-scriptura-doesnt-work/">only the Bible</a> as the infallible source of truth. One way they do this is by attacking the ambiguity of Tradition. Catholicism claims that “Tradition” is basically everything that the apostles passed down to their followers orally, rather than through their written letters. Tradition, for Catholics, is just as infallible as the Bible.
But, Protestants contend, Catholicism does not point to any specific examples of Tradition. Scripture is easily consulted by opening the book in our hands, whereas Tradition is less easily consulted. As Protestant apologist Robert Zins said in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRDUue2NgjQ">debate</a> on Catholicism, “How many of you in here have held Paul’s tradition in your hand? And read it, and studied it, and obeyed it?” His point is that there is no infallible listing of teachings handed on by the apostles orally. Because of this, Protestants argue that Catholicism could simply invent new teachings and claim that they came from this mysterious source of “Tradition.”
To address this claim, I’ve compiled a few teachings that principally derive from Tradition. These teachings are examples of Tradition for two reasons.
First, the earliest Christians sometimes explicitly claim that the specific teaching was handed down from the apostles. If the earliest Christians are trustworthy, then this is a good first criterion.
Second, the earliest Christians sometimes unanimously hold to a specific teaching. If nearly every Christian writer throughout the world teaches the specific teaching or does not dispute it, then this implies that the source of the teaching is the apostles. A teaching would likely be widespread because it was a part of the Tradition. On the other hand, if the teaching was not held by men all over the world, but was just one particular thought from one particular man, then the teaching was likely not an apostolic tradition.
The following teachings of Tradition can be found in Scripture, but only implicitly. Many will debate whether these teachings come from Scripture, but if we know that a given teaching was handed down from the apostles orally, then the debate is cleared up.
Below are seven teachings that meet the above two criteria and thus qualify as specific traditions.
1. Prayer for the Dead. Catholicism teaches that Christians can <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-saints-pray-for-you-how-the-christians-in-heaven-help-us-here-on-earth/">pray for the souls</a> of the dead, for the dead might be getting purged of their sins before God. Prayer for the speeding up of this after-life purgation comes from the apostles, according to the popular patriarch of Constantinople, St. John Chrysostom (347-407). He <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/230203.htm">said</a>, “Not in vain did the apostles order that remembrance should be made of the dead in the dreadful Mysteries [of the Eucharistic liturgy].” The apostles taught that the prayer of the Mass would refresh the souls of the dead being purified.
2. Infant Baptism. Catholics hold to the teaching that infants, who are incapable of having faith in Jesus, can be baptized. The faith of the Church makes up for the infant’s deficit. This teaching of infant baptism has its origins in the apostles, according to Origen of Alexandria (184-254). He said that the “Church received from the apostles the tradition of giving baptism even to infants” (Commentary on Romans 5:9).
3. The Perpetual Virginity of Mary. This teaching says that Jesus’ mother, Mary, was a virgin her entire life. She never had sexual relations with Joseph. This dogma was <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/mary-ever-virgin">universally taught</a> by the early Church, even though there is no Scripture verse that says, &#8220;Mary never had relations with Joseph for her entire life.&#8221; St. Jerome refuted a man named Helvidius who claimed that Mary had sexual relations, by saying, “Might I not array against you the whole series of ancient writers? . . . Ignatius [A.D. 108], Polycarp [65-155], Irenaeus [130-200], Justin Martyr [100-165], and many other apostolic and eloquent men, who against [the heretics] Ebion, Theodotus of Byzantium, and Valentinus held these same views and wrote volumes replete with wisdom. If you had ever read what they wrote, you would be a wiser man&#8221; (19).
4. The Real Presence. Although many Protestants teach that Jesus’ phrase “this is my body” was purely symbolic, Catholicism teaches that Jesus was speaking literally. The bread mystically transformed into the body of Jesus yet remained under the form of bread. This teaching was affirmed by <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/the-real-presence">all of the early Church Fathers</a>. The reason nobody doubted or denied it is that the apostles had handed it down.
5. The Sacrifice of the Mass. Catholicism teaches that the Last Supper of Jesus (the first Mass), wherein he offered bread and wine, was truly united to his sacrificial death. All Masses offered by priests are therefore sacrifices to God. Many Protestant Christians deny that the Mass is a sacrifice, yet <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/the-sacrifice-of-the-mass">all of the Church Fathers</a> unanimously taught this. Scripture never says explicitly &#8220;the sacrifice of the Mass,&#8221; but this teaching is nonetheless a tradition. Church Historian JND Kelly <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Early_Christian_Doctrines.html?id=UivDgM0WywoC">said</a>, “The Eucharist was regarded as the distinctively Christian sacrifice from the closing decade of the first century, if not earlier. . . . It was natural for early Christians to think of the Eucharist as a sacrifice” (196).
6. Apostolic Succession. Catholics teach that bishops need to be ordained from someone with a direct lineage of succession to the apostles. This was never explained in Scripture as a requirement. Yet why did the <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/apostolic-succession">Church Fathers</a> consider it essential? Probably because it was an apostolic tradition. In fact, heretics who claimed that their doctrines stemmed from the apostles were refuted by Tertullian (160-220), who <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0311.htm">noted</a> that such heretics did not have lists of their bishops linking them to the apostles (ch. 32).
7. Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Scripture never says that there are three offices of leadership in the Church: bishops, priests, and deacons. It says only that there are elders or overseers and deacons. Yet St. Ignatius of Antioch spoke of a tripartite governance of orders that already existed for a while and was spread out in the various churches of Asia Minor (Letter to the Trallians 2:1-3). <a href="https://www.churchfathers.org/bishop-priest-deacon">Other early Christians</a> spoke of the same. Where did they get such an idea if not from Tradition? How could they be so confident that every Church had a single bishop above the priests and deacons?
Those who claim that Tradition is just a murky soup of undefined messiness are wrong. Catholics cannot pull doctrines from Tradition, as if from a magician’s hat. Instead, the apostles handed down teachings verbally, and the early Christians attested to them.

7 Specific Church Traditions

<div>Can you help clear up the misunderstanding about St Junipero Serra? Many say he mistreated the Native Americans, but he must not have been bad if he was declared a saint.</div><div>After an extensive investigation over many years, Pope Francis was pleased to culminate the Catholic Church’s examination <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2015/documents/papa-francesco_20150923_usa-omelia-washington-dc.html">by canonizing Junipero Serra</a>.
In summary, St. Junipero gave his life for the temporal and eternal well-being of the people he served in Mexico and modern California, and that is why he was much beloved by the Indian and Hispanic populations he served.
For more on St. Junipero in historical context, please see <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/01/padre-mestizo#login">this article</a>, <a href="http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimgraves/st.-junipero-serra-is-a-great-american-hero">this article</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/junipero-serra">this article</a>
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Setting the Record Straight on St. Junipero Serra

The Catholic Church in the United States observes the Sunday after January 1 as the Solemnity of the Epiphany. (Most of the rest of the world observes it on its traditional date, January 6, which makes it the “Twelfth Day of Christmas.”) It is also sometimes called “Three Kings Day.” Many Latin American Catholics celebrate it as Día de los Tres Reyes Magos.” 
Its practical marginalization in Catholic circles in the United States obscures the significance of this feast, which, at one time, rivaled Christmas as the celebration of the Lord’s Incarnation.
Epiphany comes from the Greek epiphania, which means “revelation” or “manifestation.” That’s the core of this celebration: the manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh. That’s why it was—and remains—so important.
We think of Epiphany in terms of the coming of the magi with their gifts to Bethlehem. The Church certainly celebrates that, but in its joy, the Church also gathers together a multiplicity of themes connected with the “revelation” of Jesus and his mission. The Magnificat antiphon for Epiphany Evening Prayer I captures them:
<blockquote>Three wonders mark this day we celebrate: today the star led the Magi to the manger; today water was changed into wine at the marriage feast; today Christ desired to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation, alleluia.</blockquote>
Yes, Jesus was revealed to the Three Kings, who came to him in his infancy. But Jesus is revealed as “my Son” when the Holy Spirit descends on him in the Jordan River, following his baptism by John the Baptist. And, as John the Evangelist writes, the first “sign” (John never calls them “miracles,” because they are “signs” of who Jesus is) happened at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, where he turned water into wine.
If we look at the Gospel (Matt. 2:1-12) the Church employs on Epiphany—the account of the Three Kings—we also see “revelation” occurring on multiple levels.
The magi are Gentiles. They are the first non-Jews to come to and acknowledge Christ. Yes, there were shepherds, but we can assume they were Jews. They lived in the neighborhood of Bethlehem. They receive a supernatural message: angels appear to proclaim the birth of a savior in the City of David. This is Jewish language, conveying Jewish Messianic expectations, involving a place, described in Jewish terms, pertaining to the quintessential Jewish king, David. After visiting the Christ Child, the shepherds depart “praising God,” suggesting they did so as Jews.
They might not have been highly regarded Jews—shepherds were relatively low on Israel’s social totem pole, in view of their nomadic mobility—but they’re Jews who receive a supernatural revelation in Jewish categories.
The magi are none of that. It is clear they come from a “faraway country.” In our terminology, they were part astronomer, part astrologer: they sought to discern in the movements of the heavens the designs of highest heaven. They acknowledge that their path in search of the “newborn king of the Jews” has been led by a star.
We should not dismiss them as “superstitious.” God meets people where they are. If the receiver isn’t ready for FM, God will send his message on AM.
And what the magi did is also something the Church encourages of its faithful. God reveals himself in the sacred books of the Bible, so we should come to know Scripture. But God also reveals himself in the book of nature, in a world whose order, beauty, contingency, and purposefulness all point beyond itself. They point to One who ordered it, gave it that beauty and purpose, and both created and sustains its being. The Church teaches that man can come to a certain knowledge of God even from the created world.
It was that knowledge that led the magi to search for the Christ Child.
That knowledge is not complete: although man can come to know that God exists from creation, just who that God is and what his designs are toward men is something he has to tell us. And that’s where supernatural revelation completes natural revelation.
The Epiphany Gospel shows that. The star led them far, to Jerusalem. The Gospel tells us they stopped at Herod’s court to supplement their information. Presumably, Israel should be glad it has a newborn king!
Revelation illumines our minds but does not necessarily bend our wills. Instead of a happy court, the magi find Herod and Jerusalem “disturbed.” It’s not that they lacked supernatural revelation. When Herod consults the Jerusalem establishment about where the Messiah is to be born, they readily pull out the appropriate index card: “Bethlehem of Judea: see Micah 5: 2,4.” They know—in a sense better than the magi—about this child. But only their heads are ready, in contrast to the magi’s heads and hearts.
Fortified with a booster shot of supernatural revelation, they continue in the light of natural revelation—the star—which leads them to the manifestation of him whom they sought: the child in Bethlehem. They see him for what he is: Israel’s true and greatest king. Herod and his sycophants see him only as competition.
Their gifts also “manifest” who this child is. At first glance, those presents seem odd for a child. I’ll admit I’ve never given any of my kids some frankincense under the Christmas tree.
Nor should I. Those gifts were symbolic, not in the sense that they weren’t real or didn’t matter, but because they symbolized the identity of their recipient. We try to give presents appropriate to the recipient. The magi’s consummately were. Gold is the gift for a king. Incense is a gift offered in worship to God. Myrrh—perhaps the strangest—was an ancient spice used for burial. Myrrh is needed for one who will die.
People today might think it strange to give a child a bottle of formaldehyde against his future embalming. But the gift of myrrh makes clear, even from his infancy, that this child’s life and destiny involve suffering and wrestling with death. Calvary already casts a shadow on Bethlehem.
A king, God, and one who is to die—how do those seemingly incongruent elements fit together? They fit in this child, and in the unfolding of his life, which is first revealed to and proclaimed by not those privileged with Scripture and supernatural revelation, but the natural revelation of a star. And through that revelation, we come to know the “light for the Gentiles and the glory of Israel,” in whom God’s universal offer of salvation is manifest.

Epiphany and the Magic Road Trip

<div>Who are the Nephilim and where did the Nephilim come from? Were the Nephilim aliens?</div><div>The <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/7-mysteries-about-the-nephilim" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Nephilim</a> were a group mentioned briefly in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/explaining-the-nephilim-of-genesis" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Genesis 6:4</a> and again in Numbers 13:33. The best-supported reading, both linguistically and historically, is that &#8220;Nephilim&#8221; refers <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/are-the-nephilim-biblical-aliens">to unusually tall, powerful humans</a>. The term is likely a loanword meaning &#8220;giants,&#8221; and the biblical text itself describes them as &#8220;mighty men of old, men of renown.&#8221; However, there is no biblical or other historical basis for believing them to be aliens, as some have claimed.
Genesis links the Nephilim to the union of the &#8220;sons of God&#8221; and the &#8220;daughters of men.&#8221; The oldest Jewish and Christian interpretation holds that &#8220;<a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/tjap/who-are-the-nephilim" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">sons of God</a>&#8221; refers to angelic beings who rebelled, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/tjap/who-are-the-nephilim">fashioned temporary bodies for themselves</a>, took human wives, and produced offspring who were large in size and possessed super-human strength. This reading was standard in ancient Judaism and appears in some apocryphal texts like 1 Enoch.
Genesis 6:4 explicitly notes that the same kind of unions happened again &#8220;afterward,&#8221; which explains why the Israelites later encountered tall peoples in Canaan who were identified with the Nephilim. In brief, the Nephilim were human giants, and Scripture ties their origins to illicit unions between fallen angels (demons) and human women. This is an interpretation that best fits the language of the text and the earliest historical understanding of it.
For more information, including another perspective on who the sons of God in Genesis 6:4 may be, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/explaining-the-nephilim-of-genesis">please see this resource of ours</a>.
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Who Were the Nephilim?

<div>My three-year-old nephew has an imaginary friend he calls "Mark." Are imaginary friends considered guardian angels or demons?</div><div>Imaginary friends are just that: imaginary. Young children often use their imagination to &#8220;bring alive&#8221; their toys and stuffed animals. Some children go a step further and create in their minds an invisible friend. There is nothing to worry about. What your nephew has created in his mind is perfectly normal and is a sign of creativity.
</div>

Are Imaginary Friends Bad?

<div>I recall a married Catholic couple who separated but didn’t divorce so that one or the other could enter religious life. What are their names? </div><div>You may be thinking of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/was-there-a-catholic-couple-who-separated-but-did-not-divorce-so-that-one-spouse-could-enter">Cornelia Connelly</a> (1809-1879), who with her husband, Pierce, an Episcopalian minister, converted to the Catholic Church. Pierce Connelly decided he wanted to become a Catholic priest. In those days, no special dispensation existed to allow a converted Episcopal priest to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood and continue to share a common life with his wife. To accommodate his vocation, Cornelia became a religious sister and founded the Society of the Holy Child Jesus.
Pierce’s vocation didn’t last. He eventually left the priesthood and the Church altogether, denied Cornelia contact with their three children, and pressured her to abandon religious life to resume life with him and the children. She refused and entrusted her children’s future to God.
A cause for her canonization has been opened and she has been given the title <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/all-saints-in-the-family">Venerable</a>. You can read more about her in Ronda De Sola Chervin’s book <a href="https://www.sophiainstitute.com/products/item/avoiding-bitterness-in-suffering">Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering</a> (Sophia Institute Press).
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Cornelia and Pierce Connelly

For anyone who has grown up in the Christian tradition, the Good Samaritan is a familiar story. Even in mainstream culture, the concept, if not the story itself, is pretty well embedded. And so you might find a lot of people who know something of what a “good Samaritan” is even without knowing anything about the parable as told in the Gospel of Luke.
The meaning of the mainstream concept sticks pretty closely to the literal meaning of the parable. The man asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”—seeking, perhaps, some excuse to limit the concept. The answer is classic Jesus, if we can put it that way. It’s not just that the category of “neighbor” includes people like the Samaritans—a people that any pious Jew in the first century would take great pains to avoid—but such a person, a heretic and a schismatic, is proposed as an example, above even a priest and a Levite, of someone who understands and practices the true heart of the Law.
The Lord is not here suggesting that heresy or schism don’t matter. It’s quite clear elsewhere in the Gospels that the Samaritans are in fact wrong, and they are in fact outsiders to the covenant. Doing good deeds in no way cancels out all those problems, so we should never read this parable as some kind of progressive tale about how religious differences are meaningless and we should all just be nice and get along. But the story does caution us against invoking boundaries in self-defeating ways. The boundaries that we have—whether we’re talking about the social-ethnic boundaries of ancient Israel or the sacramental and religious boundaries of the modern Christian landscape—are supposed to promote the authentic truth and goodness and beauty of divine revelation. They should never be an excuse from rationality or a mere cloak for petty sectarianism.
In other words, if a Samaritan can have mercy on a Jew, we should certainly be able to have mercy on a Samaritan—whoever that is for us. I don’t think this is meant to be very complicated, even if it remains challenging for people in every age.
But the sheer difficulty of this proposition—the fact that we so often do find excuses to avoid loving our neighbor as ourselves—gives us a little opening into the spiritual meaning of this parable that has been long recognized in the Tradition. How, if the priest and the Levite fail to follow the spirit of the Law, do the rest of us stand a chance? Who is this Samaritan?
When you’ve heard all your life, as many of us have, that the Good Samaritan is supposed to be a role model for us, it can be a bit shocking to realize that for the vast majority of Christians in history, our place in the story is not as the (potential) Samaritan, but as the semivif, the half-dead man on the road. (Indeed, if you have a pew missal from any time prior to 1970, you’ll likely see just this interpretation summarized in the notes on the Mass propers for the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.)
The Samaritan, then, is Christ himself. The priest and the Levite are the ministers of the old Law—or perhaps the Law and the Prophets—who are unable to help. As St. Paul says, the Law is good at offering condemnation, but it does not provide the power to save, the power to heal us and elevate our nature. Christ, the Good Samaritan, heals our wounds—with wine and oil, pretty obvious symbols of the sacraments—and puts us in a hostel—that is, the Church—to provide for all our needs until he returns. He promises to pay for everything from his own resources.
I first encountered this classic interpretation in William Langland’s great fourteenth-century English poem, Piers Plowman. In that version, the priest and the Levite represent faith and hope. The Samaritan—you guessed it—is charity. But again, Langland emphasizes the inadequacy of the Old Covenant, represented by faith and hope, to heal the wounds of sin and death.
Here are the words of Langland’s Samaritan:
<blockquote>“Have them excused,” quoth he,“their help may little avail:
May no medicine under molde the man to health bring— 
Neither Faith nor fine Hope, so festered be his wounds, 
Without the blood of a bairn born of a maid.
And be he bathed in that blood, baptised as it were, 
And then plastered with penance and passion of that baby, 
He should stand and step—as stalwart worth he never 
Till he have eaten all the barn and his blood y-drunk.
(B-Version, Passus XVII)</blockquote>
It’s a graphic image—no doubt a bit much for modern ears. Bairn in Middle English means a child, but otherwise I think the lines are pretty clear. The child is Jesus, and it is only through his blood, which in some sense “bathes” us in baptism and nourishes us in the Eucharist, that we shall ever be able to stand on two feet again.
The wounds of sin are simply too “festered” to be aided by mere faith and hope. We have heard the lesson from Deuteronomy where Moses insists that the word is “very near” to us. It’s a beautiful description of what the Catholic tradition has often called the natural law. In other word, the moral law is not some arbitrary imposition from on high; it is embedded in the structure and reality of creation.
Even in the Old Testament, though, people need God’s help to know this law. It may be written on their hearts, but that writing is hard to read when the heart is weighed down and corrupted by sin. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we see that even having an accurate understanding of the moral law is insufficient. It is only through grace—that is, through the intervention of Christ our Good Samaritan—that we can be healed. And it is only in holy Church, his halfway house between the world and our ultimate home, that this healing can continue until he returns.
Having understood this, though, we can return at last to the literal meaning of the parable, which is a lesson about loving our neighbor. If we have been so loved by God, if Christ has laid down his life for us, surely part of the healing and the power that he gives is the ability, in and through his grace, to ourselves act as neighbors—to risk ourselves on the dangerous highways of this world for the sake of the people that God created and loves and wants to bring home. As we receive his gifts of grace, his own body and blood, may we also share in his love for his people and his passionate desire to carry them home by way of the hospital that is the Church.

Heretics and the Good Samaritan

Jimmy Akin delves into the question of whether receiving the Eucharist is essential for salvation, and whether this excludes Protestants and Evangelicals. He explores Jesus&#8217; teaching in John 6 and explains the Church&#8217;s nuanced understanding, highlighting Vatican II&#8217;s clarification on the salvation of those outside the Catholic Church. Jimmy emphasizes the concept of normative necessity versus absolute necessity for salvation, providing a clear and insightful perspective on this complex theological topic.
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Transcript:
My question is kind of a two-parter. Is it true that receiving the Eucharist is necessary for salvation? And if so, would it therefore logically follow that Protestants and evangelicals who don&#8217;t have the Eucharist fall outside of that? And would that not contradict some of what Vatican II has said about someone being baptized, being a Christian, even though it&#8217;s outside of the church? Does that make sense?
Oh yeah, Jesus clearly teaches in John 6 that if you don&#8217;t eat his flesh and drink his blood, you have no life in you. However,
the church has also&#8230; that clearly doesn&#8217;t apply to everybody because it didn&#8217;t apply to the Jews who lived before the time of Christ. You know, they can get into heaven and they didn&#8217;t receive the Eucharist. Similarly, Jews living in other parts of the Roman Empire before the Christian message got to them, they could be saved and they didn&#8217;t receive the body and blood of Christ even after the time of Christ because the gospel hadn&#8217;t reached them yet. And the Catholic Church has clarified, particularly at Vatican II, that those who through no fault of their own are not Christian or not Catholic can be saved as long as under the influence of God&#8217;s grace they otherwise live up to the degree of light and grace that they have received, whatever level that may be. So it is possible for people who are Protestant or even non-Christian through no fault of their own to be saved. So the way we want to understand the normativity of receiving the Eucharist is not as an absolute necessity, but as a normative necessity. It&#8217;s something that is the normal way that it is a normal way that we receive salvation the same way faith in Christ is and the same way baptism is. And so this just goes into the same category as the other things that we need to do for salvation. We need to have faith in Christ, we need to be baptized, we need to receive the Eucharist, but all of those are normative necessities, not absolute necessities. And so if a person is not able to do one of those things through no fault of their own, then God knows they&#8217;re not at fault and he&#8217;s not going to hold them accountable for it.
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Is the Eucharist Necessary for Salvation?

Could this tactic help you win debates? @shamelesspopery

Protestant worship lacks this one thing… the Eucharist.

<div>Is there an archangel named Cassiel?</div><div>The Church rejects any attempt to name or identify angels that are not directly referred to in the canon of Scripture. Gabriel and Michael are mentioned in the New Testament and Raphael is mentioned in the book of Tobit.
</div>

Archangel Cassiel?

Some Protestants are quick to use Ephesians 2:8-9 as an objection to the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/what-is-the-catholic-understanding-of-the-biblical-plan-of-salvation">Catholic </a>understanding of salvation, particularly when it comes to baptism. Take, for example,<a href="https://www.gty.org/library/Print/Articles/A190"> this article</a> adapted from the writings of John MacArthur. Regarding the Catholic view of baptism, MacArthur claims:
<blockquote>The means by which justification is initially obtained is not faith, but the sacrament of baptism…As thousands of former Catholics will testify, Roman Catholic doctrine and liturgy obscure the essential truth that the believer is saved by grace through faith and not by his own works (Ephesians 2:8-9). In a simple sense, Catholics genuinely believe they are saved by doing good, confessing sin, and observing ceremonies.</blockquote>
MacArthur and many more Protestants view the sacrament of baptism as akin to a &#8220;good work&#8221; or &#8220;ceremony.&#8221; This differs from the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-baptism-really-necessary">Catholic belief</a> that baptism is a necessary instrument for receiving God&#8217;s sanctifying graces. Under MacArthur’s view, the Catholic view conflicts with Ephesians 2:8-9, which emphasizes salvation through faith rather than works.
Ironically, however, this very passage is actually about baptism.
Here is Ephesians 2:8-9 in context:
<blockquote>But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God—not because of works, lest any man should boast (v. 4-9, emphasis added).</blockquote>
Now consider this passage in Colossians 2, which St. Paul wrote around the same time, in the same prison:
<blockquote>&#8230;and you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses (v. 12-13, emphasis added).</blockquote>
St. Paul uses strikingly similar language in both passages. In each epistle, he describes how we are:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">dead in our trespasses,</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">raised up with Christ through faith, and</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">made alive together with Christ.</li>
</ul>
In Colossians, however, St. Paul specifies that all of this happens as a result of us being “buried with him in baptism.” Considering this, it is fitting to also interpret Ephesians 2:8-9 as referring to baptism, when we receive Christ’s sanctifying graces. Baptism is not a work, so that man may boast, but is the gift of God, as Ephesians describes. 
Thus, Catholics should not be threatened by the Protestant’s use of Ephesians 2, but can instead take the opportunity to discuss the sanctifying graces of baptism.

Turning the Tables on a Protestant Prooftext

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 covers just the period between A.D. 33 and 60, when it suddenly stops (providing us an important clue to when it was written). 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 (chapters 1-6, 9-12)</li>
<li>Philip the Evangelist (chapter 8)</li>
<li>Paul (chapters 9, 11, 13-28)</li>
</ul>
This gives us a big clue about who Luke’s main sources were in composing the book—at least for those parts that he didn’t personally witness, which are found in the so-called “we” passages later in the book, where Luke describes what “we” did.
Luke tells us almost nothing of the activities of the other apostles, or of other Christians, and so the book is also incomplete in that way.
It does not even give us a complete record of what 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>
Some time ago, I did a study of the flow of time in the book of Acts. Periodically, Luke will provide time cues, saying that Paul spent three years in Ephesus (20:31) or that he stayed in Thessalonica for three weeks (17:1-2) or that they sailed from Mitylene and the next day arrived at Chios (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 the  implicit ones (e.g., when Paul goes from one place to another and we can estimate how long it took based on ancient travel times and methods) and the vague ones (e.g., if Luke says Paul spent “many days” somewhere, I might reckon that as a month).
I wanted to add all these up and see if they fit within the chronological framework that the book covers as a whole. Could all of the activities ascribed to Paul have taken place in the years within the book that he was active?
The good news, from an apologetic perspective, is that they did. Acts appears to cover a period of twenty-seven years (A.D. 33 to 60), but my time estimates for the events it mentions came to only thirteen years in total.
That means that there is plenty of room in the twenty-seven 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 he also does not give us a complete chronology.
We know that the record is incomplete because of the information recorded in Paul’s letters. For example, in 2 Corinthians, there is a famous passage where Paul is 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, Paul writes:
<blockquote>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 (11:23-27).</blockquote>
So here are the totals:
<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>
How many of these does Luke record in the book of Acts? Exactly two.
The thing is, 2 Corinthians was written some time between A.D. 55 and 57, depending on which chronology you accept. No matter what, though, it was written before Paul went to Jerusalem for the final time, because in 2 Corinthians 9:1-5 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.
That trip is already underway—and he has already passed the city of Corinth—by Acts 20:5-6. We know this because in that passage, Paul is in Troas—a city to the east of Corinth. Therefore, 2 Corinthians had to be written before this point on his final journey to Jerusalem, and so what is found in 2 Corinthians must have happened before Acts 20:5.
This means that all the perils Paul mentioned above must have occurred before this point in Acts.
But only two such perils are mentioned by Luke. One is the stoning at Lystra that occurs in Acts 14:19. This is the single stoning that Paul mentions in his list. (Another stoning, at Iconium, was attempted in 14:5, but it apparently fell through because Paul mentions being stoned only once.)
The second is in Acts 16:22-37, where Paul is beaten with rods at Philippi. That’s likely one of the three beatings he refers to in 2 Corinthians.
But these are the only events in 2 Corinthians that can be referred to in Acts.
There must, therefore, be two other beatings with rods. They happened during the period that 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 is in Acts 27, which is after his final journey to Jerusalem and thus after 2 Corinthians was written.
Furthermore, when that shipwreck occurs, Paul and his companions ran the ship aground in a bay of the island of Malta (27:44-28:1). They do not 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 (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.
An example is the fifteen-day visit Paul made to Jerusalem, where he saw only Peter and James the Lord’s brother (Gal. 1:18-19). That’s not in Acts.
Neither is the much more consequential visit that Peter (Cephas) made to Antioch while Paul was staying there. There were fireworks between the two during this meeting (Gal. 2:11-16), but Luke does not mention it in Acts.
We thus see that Acts is not just a limited record of a few key figures (Peter, Phillip, and Paul). It is restricted even in what it records about all of these three. Undoubtedly, each did many more things than are recorded in Acts.
In particular, Paul experienced many things that aren’t mentioned in the book even though they fell in the period it covers.
Why didn’t Luke record them? 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 (present both in Acts and Galatians) between Peter and Paul.
In other cases, Luke may not have known about the event. He wasn’t by Paul’s side during the whole time of his ministry. Indeed, the first “we” passage doesn’t occur until Acts 16:10-17, so there was a lot of Paul’s ministry that Luke didn’t witness.
Paul may have recounted some of them to Luke, though, just as he did for the readers of 2 Corinthians. So why wouldn’t Luke include those?
Likely, because they would have been too repetitive for his own 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.
It also could have taken more space than Luke felt he had available to him if he were going to keep Acts approximately the same length as his Gospel, which was the length of a typical scroll.
Luke thus may have had good reasons for not recording everything that happened to Paul. Still, it would be fascinating to know more.

What Acts Leaves Out

Saying you’re “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/why-catholics-cant-be-pro-choice">Catholics for choice</a>” (i.e. the choice to kill unborn children) is like saying you’re a vegetarian for beef and pork BBQ. It doesn’t make sense, but if you repeat loud enough and long enough some people will let you get away with it and maybe even some other doozies.
I think Catholics for Choice could change their name to “Catholics for Clout Chasing” because their recent X post is a shameless example of that. Just say something blasphemous about the Blessed Virgin and guarantee yourself publicity in a world where there is no such thing as “bad press.”

Most informed people recognize this is a dumb argument, but they may not know the specific logical fallacy it employs. That’s the fallacy of equivocation: using the same word but with two different meanings.
The argument appears to be saying, “Mary had a reproductive ‘choice’ so everyone should have a reproductive ‘choice.’” And sure—Mary was free to choose to not conceive a child in her womb, and every woman should also have that choice because the marital act involves a free gift of self. But abortion is not a “reproductive choice.” <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/how-to-prove-life-begins-at-conception">Reproduction has already happened!</a> Abortion is instead the choice to kill a child before he or she is born.
Saying Mary was free to not become pregnant doesn’t mean women should have the freedom to not remain pregnant. That’s like saying the choice to not become a pilot means a person should also have the choice to not remain a pilot and be able to parachute out of a packed plane mid-flight, leaving the passengers to do the flying instead.
Pregnancy isn’t a job. It’s a sacred responsibility God entrusted to women. Mary received the most sacred responsibility of all: bearing the savior of the world. It’s blasphemous to use the sublime beauty of the Incarnation to argue for the evil of abortion—but when an organization’s very name is a nonsensical blasphemy, what more can you expect from them?

A New Low for “Catholics for Choice”

<div>May I marry on a Sunday?</div><div>Yes, a couple may get married on a Sunday subject to the availability of the parish and priest. There are only two days on which a wedding cannot be celebrated (Good Friday and Easter Saturday).
Outside of those two days, the sacrament of marriage may be celebrated, but there is a caveat. During the Sundays of Advent, Lent, and Easter, there cannot be a ritual Mass on a Sunday (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20030317_ordinamento-messale_en.html">GIRM, 372</a>). Therefore, on those Sundays, the couple would be married at a Mass in which the prayers and readings are from the Sunday Mass of the day rather than a nuptial Mass. On those Sundays, the Order of Matrimony without Mass may be fully used.
This, of course, is subject to the availability of the parish and priest. Some parishes simply cannot reasonably accommodate a wedding on a Sunday, and some priests have too many things on their schedule to accept a Sunday wedding.
</div>

Is a Sunday Wedding Possible?

I have to begin by saying that this is, as far as I can tell, the first time I have ever preached a normal homily on All Souls’ Day, because it is the first time I have ever observed it on a Sunday. It is a strange experience, if, at least, you treat All Souls as what it has always been: a day of prayer for the dead.
Some of our separated brethren, in a misguided appropriation of the November devotions, often conflate All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, basically making it a time to throw Grandma into the same category as Our Lady and just make a generic celebration of everything of the past without remembering the Church’s most basic intuition that there are some in glory who can pray for us, and there are many others for whom we are bound to pray. Unfortunately, I think many celebrations of All Souls in the modern Roman Rite, like funeral liturgies in the same, with white vestments and without all the hard old prayers like the Dies Irae, add to this confusion.
Some years ago, Pope Benedict lamented that the revised propers for the dead in the new missal seem to have expunged every reference to the soul. One priest is certainly not going to fix all this by complaining in a homily, but I bring it up because it is something of a scandalous elephant in the room, and even in places where all the old rites are observed—the sequence for the dead, the long old propers, the rite of absolution, and so on—we have a long road ahead of us to reclaim an authentically Catholic understanding of death, which would be the same thing as having an authentically Catholic understanding of the body.
This is, to put it mildly, a hard sell in our culture, because it would require us to accept that to be human means not unbounded freedom, but specifically a freedom limited by the givenness of the body. Death is both a mercy and a penalty, a further limit, and the temporary separation of body and soul requires a confrontation with these limits.
Part of the death-denial of our culture is that favorite trope wherein the mourning loved one gazes on the body in the coffin, declaring with confidence, “That’s not really Grandpa! He’s gone.” But this is a lie, even while it tells something partly true, because we really are our bodies, so the separation of death is no small thing, but a real crisis of human identity. We can speak of an enduring human identity—that is, the soul—only insofar as somehow the entirety of human existence is held in the memory of God who alone gives us being. So although the saints in heaven, the souls in purgatory, and the souls in hell are all really alive in God, their state is temporary until the resurrection, and we know very little about what these things are like apart from the bare bones of Catholic teaching and the occasional speculative vision from history.
A lot of Christians think of reality as a three-story building—the main floor is where we are, hell is something below us, heaven is above. And even if most Christians don’t believe that hell is literally underneath the ground, or heaven is up above the clouds, the way we think about them tends to rely on these spatial analogies. But in fact the formal teaching on heaven and hell is quite simple: heaven is where God is most present; hell is where God is most absent. But when you put it this way, things get confusing, because Christians are supposed to believe that God is everywhere. Does it mean that heaven and hell are just a state of mind
Not exactly. C.S. Lewis suggests in his wonderful book, The Great Divorce that hell is a state of mind—using one’s own mind as a prison—whereas heaven is reality itself. In other words, heaven and hell are not equals, just as God and the devil are not equals. Think of heaven as a beautiful open country with fields and mountains and forests, teeming with life and beauty. And if that wonderful place is heaven, hell is the shadow under a pebble under a blade of grass. You can live under that pebble if you want. You can convince yourself that it is the best place to be. But to live there, you have to become very small, very shadowy, and less and less like yourself, more and more subject to the tortures and cold and darkness of your own choice.
That vision from Lewis is incomplete, of course, especially when it comes to the role of the resurrected body, not to mention the way that God names and confirms our judgment after death. But it is still a helpful picture. The saints, whom we celebrated on All Saints’ Day yesterday, are the people who already live in the heavenly country. Some of them we know well, because we have a relationship with them and because they have in visible signs shown us their direct participation in the vision of God. Some of them we do not know at all, and that’s no surprise, because how could Holy Church, even with her supernatural gifts, ever presume to exhaustively catalogue the courts of heaven?
The “all souls” we remember today are everybody else. And just as we don’t really know everyone who’s definitely one of the saints, we don’t really know for sure who isn’t. This is why we pray: because we don’t let our ignorance of the afterlife stop us from loving those we love.
When Christians pray for the dead, we pray, in effect, that the people we know and remember will end up, hopefully with us, in that heavenly country. We don’t know how this works. Not really.
There are quite a few Christians, especially since the Reformation, who think it’s a bad idea to pray for the dead because we don’t know for sure what it accomplishes or how. This is just about the worst reason I can think of in the world. I don’t know exactly what it accomplishes for me to kiss my child. But sometimes we do things not because they’re useful, but because they’re good. And Holy Church does, in the end, assure us that, whatever the mechanics of purgatory, these prayers are both good and useful. Just as with the living, we know that prayer works. The fact that the working of prayer is a mystery should not prevent us from doing it.
Whereas All Saints’ Day is a celebration, All Souls’ Day is a general funeral for all our dead. It is sad, because death is sad. It is not a “celebration of life” or any other such nonsense. Even when it’s a good death, and when the family gather and share their love and their memories, it’s still sad. And what the Church offers in the All Souls’ requiem is a place to channel those feelings into prayer, to commend our friends and our family to God, not as a gesture of usefulness, but as a gesture of love. Love and hope—hope that in his mercy, God will bring us together at the Last Day in the place where he reigns in glory.
That personal hope is never very far from our prayers for the dead. Two of the more prolix parts of the traditional funeral rites, the Dies Irae and the Libera Me, speak in the first person, summing up, perhaps, the prayers of the faithful for their own deliverance. For example, in the Dies Irae we pray,
Through the sinful woman shriven,
Through the dying thief forgiven, 
Thou to me a hope hast given.
Despite all the language of hell, and punishment, and undying fires, and realms of darkness, these classic texts center on hope. Real hope requires a sober awareness of our situation! But the knowledge of these things grounds us more fully in the incredible grace and mercy of God, who pours out his gifts to us without measure. Because of that grace and mercy, we can wait a moment in the darkness of Good Friday with our beloved dead, waiting with them for the final joy of the resurrection.