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<div>How should we answer the statement that being pro-choice does not mean being pro-abortion? </div><div>First, ask, “What is the choice you’re defending to be protected by law?” Explain that it can’t be the choice to bear a child, which was protected by U.S. law long before U.S. law made abortion legal.
So they can’t reasonably argue that they’re defending the right of a couple, or even that of an unwed mother, to have a child. Again, that was already enshrined in U.S. law and thus is not a genuine issue in the abortion debate.
(However, as an important aside, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, one of the largest abortion providers worldwide, actually advocated “to protect society against the propagation and increase of the unfit” by means of her <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/webedition/app/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=101807.xml">“Baby Code.”</a>)
Second, point out that the choice &#8220;pro-choicers&#8221; are defending is the choice for a couple—or a woman alone—to abort a child. Acknowledge that pro-choicers do not favor the mandating of abortion in many or most cases, as has been the case in China for many years, despite a recent and minor relaxation in its one-baby-per-couple quota. Still, despite their presumably opposing such a government-enforced mandate, the choice pro-choicers are defending is the legal right for anyone who desires an abortion to have that procedure performed on their unborn child. Consequently, to that extent, they&#8217;re undeniably “pro-abortion,” because they are defending legalized abortion in those cases as a morally good thing that should be available for couples and individuals who seek them.
For more on this subject, please see Trent Horn’s <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/my-debate-with-a-pro-abortion-philosopher-at-stanford">account of his debate with a pro-abortion philosopher</a>.
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The Objection That ‘Pro-Choice’ Doesn’t Mean Pro-Abortion

<div>What Evidence for Objective Morality Can I Give to an Athiest? </div><div>You can point to our common human nature, that despite coming from various socio-economic backgrounds and cultures, human beings manifest that there is a common law of God written on our hearts, i.e., our consciences (see Rom. 2:14-16), that we can know basic right from wrong precisely because we’re human.
For example, even though they likely made themselves vulnerable to great physical punishment from radical Muslim men in Egypt, <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/cbs-reporter-lara-logan-discusses-sexual-assault-cairo/story?id=13504974">Muslim women wearing burkas interceded to save the life of a CBS reporter who had been sexually assaulted by a mob</a>. Based on their culture and religion that sometimes can be expressed in extreme ways, some might have expected these Muslim women to join in the beating of this “infidel woman,” or at least step away for fear of reprisals from the many menacing Muslim men gathered, especially later on when the Western media would not be around to report on their punishment. Instead, like the Good Samaritan who acted more righteously than a couple of devout Jewish leaders despite his (the Samaritan&#8217;s) espousing some heretical religious beliefs (Luke 10:25-37), these women illustrated that we are all made in God’s image and likeness (Gen. 1:26-27) and thus are capable of knowing and choosing right from wrong, including doing so in courageous circumstances.
For more on how belief in God better enables mankind to know and anchor themselves in the natural moral law than disbelief in God does see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-you-be-good-without-god">Trent Horn’s related article</a>. See also <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-atheists-be-good-without-belief-in-god">Karlo Broussard shorter presentation on the same subject</a>.
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Evidence for Objective Human Morality to Share with Atheists

Cy Kellett is joined by Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin to explore how Jesus passes authority throughout the gospels.
Transcript:
Caller: When Jesus is on the cross, he says to John, &#8220;Behold your mother.&#8221; The Church interprets that as all disciples, therefore, including Mary as their mother. I was wondering, in what context does that not correlate to, say, John 21, where Jesus gives his disciples the authority to forgive or bind sins on earth? How do those two play with each other, or how do those two work together?
Jimmy: We&#8217;re going to see if Cy Kellett can answer this question for us. So I&#8217;m going to break it down into sub-questions. Jesus tells the beloved disciple, &#8220;Son, behold your mother.&#8221; He tells Mary, &#8220;Mother, behold your son.&#8221; We&#8217;re told that from then on, the beloved disciple took Jesus&#8217; mother to his own. What did that mean in terms of what John did for Mary? What did he do for her once he took her to his own?
Cy: Well, a woman was dependent on a man in those days, so he took her to his home and watched over her.
Jimmy: Took care of her, particularly in her declining years as she was getting older. And, yeah, okay, good. First question answered correctly.
Cy: I&#8217;m glad we broke it up into bits, so at least I&#8217;m going to get some right.
Jimmy: Second question. Do you or I or any other Catholics today have Mary living in our house, and do we provide food and shelter and warmth and clothing and stuff for her in her declining years?
Cy: I feel bad about this one. I don&#8217;t know if I was supposed to, but no, I do not. I apologize if I was supposed to.
Jimmy: Okay, second question answered correctly. Ding, ding. So we are not receiving Mary as our own mother in the same way that the beloved disciple did. One way of expressing that would be to say that Jesus literally gave the care of Mary as a fictive mother to the beloved disciple. The rest of us share the maternity of Mary in a broader spiritual sense, but it&#8217;s not the literal sense.
Okay, now let&#8217;s look at the other points. Bryce actually mentioned two things. He mentioned binding and loosing, and he mentioned forgiving sins. Jesus gives binding and loosing to the disciples first before he gives them the ability to forgive and retain sins.
From what we know from Jewish sources, binding and loosing was a Jewish idiom that meant the power to make or modify laws. You could say, for example, &#8220;It&#8217;s a law. Today is a fast day. We&#8217;re all going to fast today.&#8221; Or if today already is a fast day, you could modify that law and say, &#8220;Okay, everybody, today&#8217;s no longer a fast day. We&#8217;re not going to fast today.&#8221; Jesus gives that power first to St. Peter in Matthew 16, and then he shares it more broadly with the other disciples in Matthew 18.
So here comes the question related to that. Could the power to bind and loose, and thus the ability to make or modify laws for the entire Christian community, be exercised by the entire Christian community? Or at most, could it be exercised by some subset of Christians, like the leaders?
Cy: Ding. Three in a row, man. I am killing it today.
Jimmy: So again, like in the beloved disciple example, Jesus is literally giving the ability to make and modify laws to the leaders of his Church. Any application that has to others is a derivative, extended spiritual sense.
Now let&#8217;s go for the other one that he mentioned, which was the power to forgive sins. He gives that to the disciples in John 20, and he says, &#8220;Whoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whoever sins you retain, they are retained.&#8221;
Is it plausible? Here&#8217;s the question. Is it plausible that Jesus gave the power to forgive sins to absolutely all Christians and made them judges of their own cases or the cases of other Christians with no discernment or training in discernment? Or is this a power that would have been given only to some Christians who could serve as objective judges of other people&#8217;s cases and whether they ought to be forgiven or retained in their sins?
Cy: Yeah, it&#8217;s gotta be the subset. We need a&#8230;
Jimmy: Ding. Fourth question answered correctly. So, Cy Kellett, Bryce, he&#8217;s provided the answer to your question. The literal sense of all of these passages applies to a subset of Christians, namely the beloved disciple in the first one or a group of the Church&#8217;s leaders in the second two. Any application that is there to the entire Christian community has to be in a different and extended sense that is not the literal sense of the text.
Cy: Bryce, what do you think?
Caller: Oh, that&#8217;s a fantastic answer, and I really appreciate it. I want to correct one thing real quick. I&#8217;m not in Arlington; I&#8217;m in Farmington.
Cy: Oh, Farmington.
Jimmy: Okay. Yeah, we have a Farmington, Arkansas, here too. But it was&#8230;
Caller: Answered the question perfectly. Thank you.
Cy: So you&#8217;re saying everything Jimmy did was perfect? All I had to do was name your town, and I got it wrong? Is that what you&#8217;re saying?
Jimmy: Bryce, don&#8217;t be hard on yourself. Sigh. There was a miscommunication. It says Farmington on&#8230; It says Arlington on the whiteboard.

Why Can’t All Believers Forgive Sins?

<div>Why isn’t it a contradiction for the Catholic Church to accept both Thomist and Molinist doctrines?</div><div>The Church upholds the authority of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas in their teachings on grace and free will. This is clear from the ordinary Magisterium over the centuries. Both the Thomists and the Molinists held that their teachings were at least compatible with St. Augustine and St. Thomas. So, ultimately, the controversy between the Thomists and the Molinists is a controversy about the interpretation of St. Augustine and St. Thomas.
The popes, although leaning initially heavily in favor of the Thomist resolution, which favored more literally Augustinian conclusions, nonetheless decided not to intervene and to forbid both parties from characterizing the other as heretical. What this ultimately has meant is that the interpretation of St. Thomas and St. Augustine has been freed from the rigid emphasis on efficient causality versus free will and has focused more on final causality. This means that the impasse found in the Thomist-Molinist divide must be overcome by a higher principle than efficient causality—namely, final causality. This resolution by way of finality, however, must also avoid the necessitating movement of grace as conceived by the Jansenists.
This is a lot for a short answer, but it will have to do.
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Thomist and Molinist Teachings

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus tells Simon, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.” Catholics interpret the rock as a reference to Peter. From this, Catholics infer that Jesus intended Peter to be the visible foundation and head of his Church on earth. This makes Peter the source of unity for Christ’s Church—for, wherever the foundation and head is, there is the true Church of Jesus.
Catholics appeal to this verse as biblical evidence for the papacy because the Catholic doctrine of the papacy is precisely that Christ appointed Peter and his successors to be the source of unity of and the identifying mark for Jesus’ Church on earth.
Some Protestants reply by conceding that Peter is the rock but challenge the idea that he is unique in being the foundation of the Church. Let’s look at two such replies.
1. “All the apostles are the foundation, not just Peter”
One argument appeals to Ephesians 2:20, where Paul teaches the “household of God” is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” Well-known Protestant apologists Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie <a href="https://archive.org/details/romancatholicsev0000geis">write of this passage</a>: “Two things are clear from this: all the apostles—not just Peter—are the foundation of the church . . . and the only one who was given a place of uniqueness or prominence was Christ, the capstone” (208).
Geisler and MacKenzie seem to be making two arguments here. First, since the apostles too are identified as the foundation of the Church, there’s nothing unique about Peter being the rock of the Church in Matthew 16:18. The second argument is that if Peter were unique as the foundation of the Church, then he would have been distinguished from the other apostolic foundation stones, as Jesus is distinguished. But since he’s not, Geisler and MacKenzie conclude that Peter is not unique.
In response to the first argument, there’s an assumed hidden premise that Geisler and MacKenzie never say out loud: whenever something is said of two people, those two people must be equals with regard to what is said about them. Only if this premise is true can Geisler and MacKenzie conclude that Peter has no unique status relative to the apostles based on the fact that the “foundation” metaphor is used for both Peter and the apostles.
The problem for Geisler and MacKenzie is that this hidden premise is demonstrably false. Consider, for example, how Jesus is called our shepherd in 1 Peter 2:25: “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the shepherd [Greek, poimena] and Guardian [episkopon] of your souls.” This Greek word for shepherd, poimena, is also used to describe pastors in the Church—for example, where Paul writes, “And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors [Greek, poimenas] and teachers” (Eph. 4:11). If we were to follow Geisler and MacKenzie’s logic, we’d have to conclude that Jesus has no unique status as our pastor, since the Bible says there are other pastors in the Church, too!
Now let’s consider the second argument: if Peter were unique as the foundation of the Church, then Paul would have singled Peter out among the other apostles as he did for Jesus. Since Paul didn’t do such a thing, Peter must have no special role as the foundation of the Church.
But why must we think that Paul would have singled Peter out among the apostles the way he did for Jesus? It’s reasonable to think that only if Paul’s focus were Peter and his role as the rock of the Church in relation to the other apostles. But that is not Paul’s focus.
Paul’s focus is on the Ephesians and their relation to the apostles and Jesus as pieces that make up the edifice of the Church, which Paul calls a “holy temple” (v. 21). The Ephesians are pieces built into the edifice. The apostles and prophets are the foundation. And Jesus is the cornerstone, “in whom the whole structure [of the Church] is joined together” (v. 22).
Since Paul’s concern is not the order among the apostles as the foundation of the Church, but simply the order that exists among the Ephesians, the apostles and prophets, and Jesus as pieces that make up the edifice of the Church, we shouldn’t expect Paul to highlight Peter’s unique status as the rock of the Church.
The “foundation” metaphor is being used in Ephesians 2:20 in a different context and for a different purpose. We must read it accordingly and not try to shoehorn its meaning into an entirely different context, such as that of Matthew 16:18. The reverse is true as well. We shouldn’t take the Catholic interpretation of Peter as the rock in Matthew 16:18 and force its meaning onto Ephesians 2:20. We have to remember that metaphors can be used in more than one way in the Bible.
2. “Peter is only a pillar, not the pillar”
Another Protestant counter derives from Galatians 2:9, where Paul writes, “When they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.” That Peter (called Cephas, the Greek transliteration of the Greicized Aramaic Kephas) is named second in this list of pillars is taken as proof that Peter is not unique in his role as the foundation of the Church. Protestant apologist Jason Engwer makes the argument <a href="http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-pillars-of-roman-catholicism.html">this way</a>:
<blockquote>It’s doubtful that people would have been grouping Peter with other apostles as pillars of the church and naming him second, after James, if he was thought of as a pope. Remember, Catholics are the ones who place so much emphasis on the alleged significance of Peter’s being a foundation of the church in Matthew 16, which is similar to the pillar concept in Galatians 2:9. It’s highly unlikely that the early Christians believed that Peter was such a unique foundation of the church, the infallible ruler of all Christians, including the other apostles, yet perceived him as described in Galatians 2:9.</blockquote>
We might summarize this argument as follows:
Premise 1: If Peter were unique as the foundation of the Church according to Matthew 16:18, then he would not have been listed second as a pillar of the Church in Galatians 2:9.
Premise 2: Peter is listed second as a pillar of the Church in Galatians 2:9.
Conclusion: Therefore, Peter is not unique as the foundation of the Church according to Matthew 16:18.
The underlying assumption of premise one is that being listed second must reveal an inferior rank. But we can challenge this assumption, for there are additional plausible explanations for Peter being listed after James.
The order of the list, with James first, Peter second, and John third, may simply be a consequence of the order in which these men’s names came into Paul’s mind as he was dictating. When we list people or things when writing an email or telling a story, we typically do not intentionally list them in order of importance or greatness unless we have a reason to—and so, without any indication of such a reason in this text, there’s no cause to think that Paul is doing so here.
Even if Paul did intend some significance to the ordering, it still does not require the conclusion that Peter did not have the special role that Catholics say he was given in Matthew 16:18.
First, because elsewhere in Galatians, Peter seems to be ranked above James. Evidence suggests that this James (not the brother of John—the other one) became the leader of the Jerusalem church when Peter left after his imprisonment (Acts 12:17). Recall Galatians 1:18-19, where Paul speaks of his first trip to Jerusalem shortly after his conversion and implies that Peter’s in charge. He writes, “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother.” So it would be a mistake to portray Galatians as if it uniformly supported James holding rank over Peter. The first chapter of the letter does the reverse.
So what is happening in Galatians 2:9? This trip takes place fourteen years after Paul’s initial visit with Peter (see Gal. 2:1), who had left Jerusalem and gone to Antioch after he escaped from prison. Peter’s absence from Jerusalem would have given James the opportunity to take the reins to oversee the Jerusalem church (cf. Acts 21:17-24). Protestant New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce <a href="https://www.ffbruce.com/the-epistle-to-the-galatians/">explains</a>:
<blockquote>On Paul’s earlier visit to Jerusalem, Cephas was the most important man in the church; Paul went up specifically to meet him, and adds that he also saw James. But all our evidence (scanty as it is) indicates that James became increasingly influential in the Jerusalem church. An opportunity to increase his influence at the expense of Cephas/Peter came with the latter’s departure from Jerusalem after his escape from Herod Agrippa’s prison (121-122).</blockquote>
That James had become the bishop of the Jerusalem church at the time Paul visits Jerusalem in Galatians 2:9 provides a plausible explanation as to why Paul might have intentionally listed James first. It could have been a way of acknowledging his current headship in the local church. Peter was only there temporarily to attend the Council of Jerusalem.
There is yet another plausible explanation: Paul was undercutting the claims of the Judaizers. These were a group of first-century Jewish Christians who argued that Gentiles needed to be circumcised if they wanted to be Christian. Paul called them the “circumcision party” in Galatians 2:12, and they held James in high esteem. In fact, in that same verse, Paul tells us that the Judaizers, whom Peter feared offending, “came from James.” So, if there were anyone that the Judaizers would have tried to pit against Paul concerning whether the Gentiles should be circumcised, it would have been James.
Paul counters this move by showing that James endorsed his view that circumcision is unnecessary for the Gentiles. And perhaps to drive home the point, Paul lists James first as a pillar: “When they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship” (Gal. 2:9). Paul thereby undercut any attempt by the Judaizers to make their case by appealing to official backing from the Jerusalem church.
These are just two of many Protestant comebacks to Catholics’ reliance on Matthew 16:18 to defend the papacy. But no matter where the discussion might go, Catholics can be confident that Peter is indeed the rock on which Christ’s church is built.

There Can Be Only One (Pope)!

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