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In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Tim Staples to discuss the necessity of baptism for salvation. Trent continues with details on how Jesus and the apostles emphasized baptism as essential, backed by scripture. Tune in to explore this critical aspect of Christian faith!
Transcript:
Caller: If Jesus death on the cross was not sufficient for the sins of the whole world, it was, brother. So why are you trying to add baptism, Jesus, except you&#8217;re born again, I cannot see the kingdom of God now. In Acts chapter 8, Philip was preaching to the Ethiopian eunuch. And the Ethiopian saw water and said, see, here is water. What does hinder be baptized? And Philip said, do you believe Jesus Christ, the Son of God? He said, yes, I believe it was only after his profession that he was allowed to be baptized. You cannot add baptism to salvation.
Tim Staples: Okay, let me jump in right here, because you&#8217;re going to start going off on a lot of different things. Let&#8217;s answer what you&#8217;ve said so far, okay? Number one, the reason why baptism is necessary for salvation is because Jesus says so. For example, in Mark 16:16, Jesus says, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. We&#8217;re not saying faith isn&#8217;t necessary. Absolutely it is. But so is baptism. This is why first Peter 3:21, St. Peter would say, baptism does now save us. And he had just said in verse 20, just as the water saved eight souls at the time of Noah, so baptism does now save you. And we also have verses like Romans 6:3, we are buried together with him through baptism, so that as Christ was raised to newness of life, we may walk in newness of life. We have in Acts 2:37,38, when the people after Peter preached masterfully on Pentecost, Jesus Christ, they said, what must we do? He said, repent and be baptized, each one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. I could multiply examples here, but I want to get to your second question, and that is, why infants? Well, in verse 39, and you have to understand, my brother, that we&#8217;re not adding anything to what Jesus did on the cross. Jesus is, according to 1 John 2:1:2. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not only our sins, but the sins of the whole world. Jesus is our salvation. However, Jesus can choose to communicate the graces of his salvific death to us in any way he so chooses. And he chose to use faith as an instrument, obedience as an instrument, as well as baptism and other sacraments. But right now we&#8217;re talking about baptism. And when it comes to infant baptism, it&#8217;s interesting, isn&#8217;t it, how St. Paul uses circumcision as sort of the image of what baptism is in Colossians 2, verses 11 and 12. He says, Baptism is the circumcision of Christ. Now we know that a Jew became a Jew and part of the covenant family of God through circumcision on the eighth day. Now, they didn&#8217;t have to accept Moses as their personal Lord or their personal prophet, I should say, because he wasn&#8217;t Lord, their personal prophet before they were circumcised. No, they understood a family covenant that a head of the household had authority to have his children circumcised on the eighth day. It&#8217;s interesting. Paul says baptism is the circumcision of Christ. Well, if circumcision was done to infants, how much more would baptism? Because circumcision didn&#8217;t take away sins. It was only a symbol that symbolized the coming of a sacrament that in fact would take away our sins and save us faith and baptism. Mark 16:16, as we said. So it&#8217;s the circumcision of Christ, says St. Paul. And this is why it&#8217;s so significant that Peter would say to a group of thousands of Jews who were listening to him when he proclaimed the truth of Jesus Christ. And they said, what must we do? As I said before, he said, repent. Be baptized, each one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins. And you sh. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. But then he says in verse 39, and this promise is for you and for your children. Every Jew listening would have understood what that meant, that it is for our children, just as circumcision was. And this is why St. Paul would again and again use the image of circumcision when he&#8217;s talking about baptism. For example, in Romans 3:27, he says, we are baptized into Jesus Christ, where there is no longer Jew nor Greek bond, nor free male nor female. Notice he uses the image of circumcision. Why? Because you had to be a free male Jew to be circumcised. Paul is saying, now we have baptism, which is the fulfillment of circumcision, and it&#8217;s open to everyone. So baptism of infants. Absolutely. But please understand, when we say baptism is necessary for salvation, we understand that we have examples like of the thief on the cross who could not be baptized. He&#8217;s hanging on the cross. We believe that if you do not have access to and cannot be baptized by your desire for truth for Jesus Christ, you will receive the grace of that sacrament. Because God is not bound by the sacraments. You and I are. We have to follow God. He tells us we have to be baptized for salvation, we have to do that. But God himself can save people in extraordinary ways, as he did the thief on the cross, as he did with Cornelius, for example, in Acts, chapter 10. But at any rate, that&#8217;s just a scratch on the scratch of the surface, but I hope that helps.
Host: Richard, any follow up, quick comment on that? We&#8217;re getting really short on time, but we wanted to, you know, be fair to you. And what Tim just said the whole time,
Caller: it&#8217;s a lie, folks. Don&#8217;t listen to this bozo!
Host: Oh, okay. Well, all right. Richard, Richard, hold on. If we&#8217;re listening to a bozo, the bozo&#8217;s names are Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, and those who wrote the Scriptures. Richard, brother, you&#8217;re just. Your ears are not open, my friend, and that&#8217;s unfortunate. You have been lied to, and I don&#8217;t say that with any animosity or anything. We&#8217;re going to pray for you, Richard. Tim is a convert to the Catholic faith. And that conversion came through, I&#8217;m sure, great study and sacrifice and probably be a lot of heartache and sorrow. And I don&#8217;t know that he could throw any more scripture verses at you that support what he was just saying.
Tim Staples: Well, you know what, Jerry? If I could, I would say I can really relate to Richard because I was raised a Southern Baptist. I used to preach what he&#8217;s saying from the pulpit, and I really understand where he&#8217;s coming from. I would only ask Richard, check out our website@catholic.com in fact, I&#8217;ll give you an invitation to check out my website@timstaples.com and you can talk to me. Personally, I&#8217;d love to hear from you and talk a whole lot more scripture, but we do have to move on to some other callers. Thanks so much, though, for calling in, Richard, and God bless you.

Angry Caller Thinks Baptism is Pointless…

<div>Should we confess﻿ not doing enough against abortion?</div><div>I do not think you should confess this unless there was a particular, individual instance at least when you did not do what you could. This should be concrete, not general. Otherwise, we could get ourselves into a state about all the evils that we are not doing enough to stop. All of us could do more for world peace or for the family or for the poor and so on, but there is not clearly a sin unless we refuse an opportunity where in justice we should have acted concretely in our own circumstances.
So, for example, if you hear some coworkers discussing whether one of them should have an abortion, and you do not say anything to encourage the protection of life, then you certainly should confess that; but if you have not volunteered for the local pro-life ministry when you could, it is not necessarily a sin if you have other good works you are doing.
</div>

Not Opposing Abortion Forcefully Enough

As a Catholic, it’s not hard to find Protestants who say my religion teaches a false gospel, and so it isn’t even Christian. But these Protestants shoot themselves in the foot, because they can’t even answer the question “What is the gospel?” in a way that doesn’t undermine their own argument.
The word “gospel” comes from the Greek word euaggelion, literally “good news.” But in almost every case, the word is used in Scripture without any explanation of what the good news is about.
Matthew refers to the good news of the kingdom or the good news being preached (4:23, 9:35). Mark describes Jesus speaking of the good news or the good news of God (1:14-15). Luke shows Jesus preaching good news for the poor (4:18). And these passages also point back to verses in Isaiah proclaiming the good news of God’s victory over his enemies (52:7, 61:1).
We know that the gospel was preached during Christ’s ministry, but what was initially preached was not a message about Christ’s death, his resurrection, or how he would redeem humanity from sin. At this time, the gospel was just the good news that God’s kingdom was entering the world and that things would finally be set right.
After Christ’s resurrection, we find some passages in Paul’s letters that are closer to a definition of the gospel as we know it today. Romans 1:16 says the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, “I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel [or the good news], which you received, in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it fast—unless you believed in vain.
Paul then describes this good news through what many scholars identify as an early creed that was formulated just a few years after Christ’s crucifixion. It says Christ died for our sins, was buried, rose three days later, and appeared to numerous people, including Paul.
Notice there is no description of the gospel being about our individual salvation from damnable sin, even though that is how the gospel is often summarized. Instead, the gospel is the good news of God’s kingdom entering the world that saves God’s people through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
But these verses about the gospel never say that it is about salvation through faith alone, or grace alone, or any other doctrinal formula. The gospel is just the salvation that comes through God’s power being implemented in his kingdom through his son.
Since Catholicism affirms this truth, that means the Catholic Church is not preaching a false gospel. The glossary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the gospel as “the ‘good news’ of God&#8217;s mercy and love revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It is this gospel or good news that the apostles, and the Church following them, are to proclaim to the entire world.”
People who say Catholicism teaches a false gospel usually arrive at this conclusion through two mistaken lines of thought.
First, they assume that “the gospel” is identical to all essential doctrines of the Faith, but as we’ve seen, the Bible never defines “the gospel” in this way. The Trinity and Jesus’ messianic status are essential doctrines of Christianity, but Scripture never says these truths are part of “the gospel.”
Second, these critics assume that essential doctrines for their denomination must also be essential doctrines of the Christian faith, and so those doctrines must be part of the gospel.
For example, when many people are asked to summarize the gospel in one Bible verse, they will point to John 3:16, where John says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Even though many Protestants say the Gospel of John is sufficient to proclaim the gospel, the word “gospel” is not in John’s Gospel. At best, this verse serves as a loose summary of the plan of salvation that flows from what the gospel is. But this verse is at least the start of a much better answer to the question “What is the Gospel?” than what the late John MacArthur said when he was asked <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g51niEf25ko">to summarize the gospel</a> in a single verse:
<blockquote>The greatest gospel verse in the bible [is] second Corinthians. “He made him who knew no sin sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of god in him.” . . . God punished Jesus for my sin, turns right around and treats me as if I lived [Christ’s] life. That&#8217;s the great doctrine of substitution, and on that doctrine turned the whole reformation of the church. That is the heart of the gospel.</blockquote>
MacArthur said the “heart of the gospel” is his particular, Reformed interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:21. This involves our sins being imputed to Christ so that God sees us on the cross, and so he consequently punishes “us” while punishing Christ. And now God sees only “Christ” when he looks at us, and so he rewards us with eternal life. But once again, the Bible doesn’t say this is “the gospel.” even though the Greek word for gospel, euaggellion, is used nine times in 2 Corinthians.
Even if the passage were teaching the doctrine MacArthur thinks it’s teaching, that wouldn’t make it part of “the gospel.” Protestants know that the gospel is not identical to “everything the New Testament teaches,” because all of the major Protestant denominations differ on what the New Testament teaches, but they don’t anathematize every other Protestant as preaching a “false gospel” just because he has mistaken theology.
If the “heart of the gospel” were a particular Reformed understanding of 2 Corinthians 5:21, then followers of John Wesley (i.e., many Methodists), who believe in an “imparted” righteousness rather than an imputed righteousness, would have a false gospel. The same is true for any Christian who denies the doctrine of “double imputation” and believes that 2 Corinthians 5:21 teaches something else.
This includes believing that the verse is a reference to the Incarnation, or Christ coming in the form of sinful flesh, as Romans 8:3 says. The verse could also mean Christ “became sin” in. the sense that Christ became a sacrificial “sin offering” on our behalf, since the Hebrew word for sin is the same word for “sin offering.”
The Christian faith, even just the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, involve much more than the message of the gospel. Even Protestants who believe that Catholicism preaches the gospel still must wrestle with a difficult question: which doctrines are essential to the Christian faith, and how do we know they are essential?
Many Protestants believe that Scripture is perspicuous, or that it clearly reveals the essential doctrines Christians must believe. The Westminster Confession says that those things that are
<blockquote>necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.</blockquote>
But isn’t it necessary for salvation to know if the largest Christian denomination in the world, Catholicism, preaches a true gospel or a false gospel? Even learned Protestants using ordinary means do not have agreement on this question, as can be seen in debates between Protestants on the question of whether Catholics are Christian or if they have a false gospel.
Ironically, this provides evidence that God’s authority structure for the Church is grounded not in something like sola scriptura, but in a living teaching office, or a magisterium capable of settling disputes definitively through authoritative, universal, and infallible teachings.
I hope that when Catholics are asked to explain “what the gospel is,” they will know both what the Bible teaches on this matter and how Christ’s Catholic Church brings us salvation and fulfills the “good news” of our salvation in Jesus Christ.

The Protestant Gospel Problem

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Are Catholics wrong about purgatory?

Karlo Broussard discusses the ideas that theologians throughout history have proposed about whether Purgatory is a physical place.

Where Is Purgatory?

Protestants believe the Bible is the only source for determining Christian truth. But as Karlo Broussard shows this belief is incoherent. If followed to its logical conclusion, Protestants would have to reject their knowledge of what Scripture is.
Transcript:
Protestants believe the Bible is the only source for determining Christian truth. This doctrine is called <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-protestant-achilles-heel">Sola Scriptura</a>, which is Latin for “Scripture Alone.”
But did you know that this fundamental doctrine of Protestantism is incoherent? Let me explain!
Notice the doctrine presupposes knowledge of what scriptura is—those books inspired by God that belong in the Bible. But if the Bible is the only source of Christian truth, then we couldn’t have such knowledge. Why? Because <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/proving-inspiration">the Bible never tells us which books are inspired</a>.
If Sola Scriptura were true, then we couldn&#8217;t know what scripture is. Do you see how it’s self-refuting?
Even if the Bible did give us a list of inspired books, and we believed the Bible was inspired, we couldn’t accept that list lest we be guilty of circular reasoning—“Why do you believe the biblical books are inspired?” “Because they say they’re inspired.” “Well, why do you believe them when they say that?” “Because they’re inspired.”
The only way to acknowledge the inspiration of Scripture and avoid circular reasoning is to appeal to an infallible Church established by Christ that tells us which books are inspired. But Protestants reject this idea, which gives rise to another conundrum.
If no infallible Church exists, and Protestants believe our knowledge that the biblical books are inspired is infallible, then we would have an infallible effect produced by a fallible cause, which is absurd.
The bottom line is Sola Scriptura is an unreasonable doctrine. So, of my Protestant friends I ask, “Why believe in a doctrine that can’t stand up to the scrutiny of reason?”
If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com.
For Catholic Answers, I’m Karlo Broussard. Thanks for watching.

Why Is Sola Scriptura Unreasonable?

<div>Does having a Mass said for dead person save them from hell at their judgment?</div><div>Having a Mass said for someone after death cannot save them from hell. The reason for this is that grace does not override our choices.
When we have a Mass said for a deceased person we are presuming he is at least in purgatory and that the Mass will help lessen or ease the temporal punishment due to his sins. In this case, we are assuming or hoping that the individual has repented of sin.
Someone who ends up in hell is someone who died unrepentant in a state of mortal sin.  Such a person has refused the grace and mercy of God and therefore has refused any benefit from the sacrifice of the Mass. A worldly and imperfect example would be if I gave you a coupon for a reduced admission to an event. In order to make use of the coupon, you&#8217;d have to actually be going to the event. The coupon is of no use otherwise.
</div>

Can Mass Save Someone from Hell?

Where Can First-Class Relics Be Kept?

Jimmy Akin explains why the Church regards the time of man&#8217;s first creation as an article of science, not of faith, and gives his own personal thoughts on when he believes modern man came to be.

What Does the Church Teach About Evolution?

Let’s talk about trees. That could be a sub-heading for three of our readings today
Ezekiel speaks about God’s provision for the house of David, symbolized by a tree. The context of this passage is the impending destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the chosen people. From a secular political viewpoint, this prediction likely came across as idealistic fantasy: how could a people ever recover from such a catastrophe, much less rebuild and thrive, becoming “majestic,” towering over all the other trees of the forest? This dramatic transformation is suggested also by our Lord in Mark, where the tiny mustard seed becomes the largest of plants, providing shade and shelter for many.
It&#8217;s likely that Jesus has just this passage from Ezekiel in mind when he makes his comments. It is also likely that both he and the prophet have in mind the many other scriptural tree images, especially those of the Psalter. Hence the fitting lines from our psalm: “The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree; and shall spread abroad like a cedar on Lebanon: such as are planted in the house of the Lord, shall flourish in the courts of the house of our God” (Ps. 92).
The first psalm in the Psalter presents a similar comparison:
<blockquote>BLESSED is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law will he exercise himself day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the water-side, that will bring forth his fruit in due season. His leaf also shall not wither; and look, whatsoever he doeth, it shall prosper.</blockquote>
This image of a godly person planted by the stream of the word of God has always struck me as an appropriate opening to the entire sequence of Israel’s song book. In a way, the psalms are just this taking of delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it, soaking it up, and allowing it to bear fruit.
No wonder, too, that the portion of Psalm 92 quoted above, Iustus ut palma, is a common text in the Church’s tradition of sacred music and liturgical poetry. This past Wednesday, I was celebrating a votive mass of St. Joseph, and there I was, struck by that same psalm as the Introit. Whether it’s Joseph or one of the martyrs, the Christian imagination has long appreciated the image of the saint as a tree planted and well established, drinking and growing not only for its own health, but for the sake of all around it. The saints nourish us with their fruit, shade us with their branches, protect us with their sturdy trunks.
I needn’t remind you that the Garden of Eden also featured trees. We discussed <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/genesis-is-true">last week</a> the nature of obedience and the significance of the forbidden fruit as a disordering of love. But today’s focus on trees and organic growth suggests yet another hidden meaning to that foundational story. For surely it is no coincidence that Adam and Eve are placed in a garden. Paradise is a garden full of trees and other plants. In other words, humanity is surrounded with creatures that grow slowly and deliberately, that flourish best when cultivated and assisted, but that cannot be forced or built or constructed from the outside.
Many of the Fathers and theologians have wondered what the human story would have looked like if our first parents had not fallen from grace. This is, mind you, not a firm teaching of the Church, but I find that the most convincing theory is that humanity was always, even before the Fall, destined for the supernatural vision of God. But even without the Fall, this supernatural vocation would have required a kind of development—in other words, it would take time for time-bound and material creatures, even creatures that were already in their own nature perfect, to acquire the habits necessary to unite themselves fully with the eternal. A true fellowship between God and man would require not some kind of external technology, but an interior growth.
Though the actual course of history took another turn—perhaps, in some mysterious way, a better one, as the sacred liturgy itself implies (“O happy fault”)—the necessity of growth remains. God is not some arbitrary despot toying with us through the chances of history. Rather, the fact of history, the fact that time goes on when even we in our limited imagination can conceive of it not going on, of God ending it all right now in fire, judgment, and the completion of all things, tells us that there is really no substitute for the work of time. The fact that inspired Scripture gives us so many tree images is a pretty clear warning. You cannot hurry a tree.
Just a few weeks ago at Pentecost, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/watch-your-language">we recalled</a> how the Holy Spirit’s coming to the Church reverses the division and separation symbolized by the tower of Babel in Genesis. But think back to the tower itself, or at least what the tower represents. In that story, the peoples of the earth unite behind a new technology, the brick, to conquer the heavens. On many levels, it seems a silly story. Who, really, could imagine building a tower to heaven? And in fact, shouldn’t we want to reach heaven? Yes, we should. But the story reveals the danger of treating heaven as a technological achievement. A tree does not reach into the heights simply because we build a pillar under its roots. The tree just has to grow, as do we.
The analogy works well, following the various scriptural metaphors, for individual persons. Yet it is also a fitting description of the Church. As the pastor of a parish in a missionary diocese, it is a constant challenge to remember that growth must always happen naturally.
Now, we can think about baptisms as, in a way, grafting on new branches to the organism. That, too, is a scriptural metaphor. So the point isn’t that all technology is bad—surely it is a good thing to understand how best to nourish a tree. The point is that you cannot just paint the leaves a different color, or attach more branches with a rubber band. Ultimately, the life of the parish has to be rooted and connected with its source, and it’s much better to have a healthy small tree than a dying tree with a bunch of pretty false bits taped on.
There are some limits to this metaphor. The Church, as we say in the Creed, is one. I’m not sure that that means we have to imagine her as a single tree, or as a single orchard, or a single large garden cultivated by the Lord. She is all of those things, and none of them, and more. There have been some bad and misleading arboreal metaphors over the years, chief among them a “branch theory” that many of us heard as Anglicans, asserting that basically the Catholics, the Orthodox, the Anglicans, and possibly other Protestants are all just “branches” of the one Church. That image is historically naïve and incoherent, repugnant to the teaching of the early Church, but it lives on because it contains some nuggets of truth, such as the validity of baptism and the true proclamation of certain parts of apostolic doctrine.
There are, if you will, threads by which these so-called “branches” hang on to the main body. But Jesus doesn’t call us to be loosely connected with the body, to receive nourishment in an accidental and haphazard way. He wants us to receive all of his grace. All of him for all of us. He doesn’t just want us barely to stay alive. He wants us to thrive, to grow, and to bear fruit, just as he intended from the very beginning. We can do that only when rooted in his word, nourished by his sacraments, and fixed in the place where he has called us.

Prepare to Be Gardened

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The deadly sin NO ONE talks about...

St. Thomas Aquinas lists fortitude—courage—among the four cardinal virtues. For the Angelic Doctor, fortitude is the virtue that enables a person to overcome great difficulties or obstacles to do what is right and good. I want to suggest that marriage, particularly in our day, requires fortitude.
I make that observation in conjunction with modern sociological data, which show that people are putting marriage off. Men and women marry on average later than ever before, if they marry at all. Plenty of ersatz substitutes today replace permanent marriage. And even though the Church still speaks of marital indissolubility, our society puts less enforcement behind the marriage contract than a plumbing contract.
Yes, I know—there are many socio-economic factors that inhibit marriage. Prolonged education, college debt, finding a job, establishing oneself in one’s profession, inflation, the cost of housing, woke norms for relations between the sexes—all these factors impinge negatively on getting married. Facing and then surmounting them takes courage. Advancing to parenthood—which, as the Church sees it, is a normal next step, not an “optional accessory” to marriage—requires even more courage. The fact that the gap between marriage and having children is also growing attests to this.
Young people might say, “Well, I’m not afraid of marriage per se. I don’t know how to find the right person, and I’m afraid I’ll lose my kids and money if she divorces me.” I’ve met good spouses like this, left on ice.
We shouldn’t downplay those concerns. Dating, too, has not just declined, but also assumed some unhealthy forms. If there’s one thing young adults criticize about the Church, it is how it’s “there” (or, rather, “not there”) for them. In an earlier, more church-going age, parishes might be places to meet. But today’s parish social life more often caters to seniors than spouse-seekers. Male educational and earning declines, coupled with something of a mutated double standard (“I’m independent, but I want a guy who protects and can support me”) make concerns about permanence real (even though the divorce rate has been declining).
These are real worries. Some require social fixes (e.g., how men are “falling behind”). Some can be addressed at the parish (e.g., a parish supper or movie night for young adults). All helping hands welcome!
In the end, though, we still come back to courage. It takes courage to set out into the deep, whether in the particular circumstances that living in our day requires or those certain constants to marriage that have always required courage.
One of them is faith. Do you believe in love? Do you believe that God gives you the grace to be with this one person, ’til death do you part?
In conjunction with that, do you see marriage as a vocation? The Church’s vocabulary has long cheated marriage by speaking of “vocations” as primarily connected with the priesthood and religious life. But marriage is a vocation.
“Marriage as vocation” probably requires a new catechesis of marriage. Young Catholics know that marriage is a sacrament. But what does that mean? First, as a sacrament of vocation, marriage is not—to borrow a modern phrase—a “moment.” It is not just “the wedding day.” It begins on the wedding day but ends on the day of death. Second, one is assuming spiritual responsibility for another. Marriage affects the spiritual, which means that thinking about marriage—and the things that lead up to it, like courtship and dating—will require Catholics to get a bit “serious.” Juice Newton had it right: “It’s hard to be a lover when you say you’re only in it for fun.”
That, of course, therefore implies that the choice of a spouse also involves spiritual discernment. Does this person share my values in what counts? In God? In the Church? In how we live as married people? In how we bear and raise children? Those things—and not just common interests, hobbies, or preferences—are what matters. They also raise questions about “mixed marriages.”
When people tell me that the religious dimension of their wedding and wedding plans are something subordinate, something “I’ll get to,” that should be a warning bell: it’s the marital equivalent of doing everything for Christmas except getting ready for Christ.
If one can trust another “’til death do us part” after such a process of discernment, then by all means, do the courageous thing and marry. Of course, that requires prudence (another cardinal virtue). Do I have a job? Some savings? Can we make a go of things?
But don’t let “prudence” turn into fearful paralysis. You cannot control everything. In fact, you’ll find in life that what you can control is relatively modest. Prudence means not being reckless, but prudence also is paired with another vital reality: faith in Providence, that “God who has begun this good work in you will now bring it to completion” . . . even if you might not know just how he’s going to do it. Because it may be in totally unexpected ways. All you should do is recognize that “God makes all things work for the good of those who love him” (Rom. 8:28)—especially when that love is multiplied by two or more “gathered in my name” (Matt. 18:20).
National Marriage Week is February 7-14, World Marriage Sunday February 9. Reading the signs of the times, we know there are challenges out there, and they are real. We know that there are lots of resistance to the Catholic vision of marriage. But when we consider the vision the Church offers us in marriage and, with faith that “God is for us,” let us make Jesus’s words our own: “Take courage; I have conquered the world” (John 16:33).

Marriage Takes Courage

<div>What 6 things had to happen for the Holy Spirit to come down at Pentecost?</div><div>Not sure why you think there were specifically six things.
In any event, there are a number of key events, though several are collectively known as one dramatic event in salvation history.
First, according to the divine plan, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity had to become man, Jesus Christ (Jn. 1:1-3, 14), and live out his earthly ministry. Indeed, God&#8217;s saving plan begins with the Incarnation (CCC 461ff.).
Second, Jesus had to suffer and die on the Cross for our sins, so that we might have new life in him.
Third, Jesus had to rise from the dead in triumph over sin and death (1 Cor. 15:12-22).
Fourth, Jesus had to ascend to heaven to complete his Paschal Mystery, i.e., his one Sacrifice of Calvary that encompasses his Passion and Death, Resurrection, and Ascension into heaven (Jn. 20:15-18; Heb. 9:11-14; CCC 1085), so that the Father would send the Holy Spirit (Jn. 14:15-31; 16:4-11).
For more on the importance of Pentecost, see my article <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pentecost-and-the-papacy">“Pentecost and the Papacy.”</a>
</div>

What Had to Precede Pentecost?

“I will turn aside and see this great sight.”
You might be forgiven for attributing this line from Christmas morning to the shepherds. Or so it seems to me. Here is what they do say, in Luke 2:15 (read at the dawn Mass, just a verse following the reading at night): “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened.”
The language is not, perhaps, as similar as my imagination wants it to be. In fact, the situations are rather different. Moses, while keeping his flocks near Mount Sinai, sees in the distance a bush alive with flame that does not burn up. The shepherds, keeping their flocks near Bethlehem, are confronted with what was no doubt a terrifying and amazing sight: an angelic announcement followed by the eruption of the heavens into song. Rather than being quietly pulled away, they are instructed in vivid detail: “And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:12).
Differences aside, I cannot help but see that first “go and see” moment—Moses on Mt. Sinai—as a figure of the second—the shepherds summoned to the manger. In fact, the Byzantine tradition has always seen in the burning bush a type of the holy <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/mary-mother-of-whom">Theotokos</a>, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the unburnt bush who carries the fire of the divine nature without being consumed. Many icons show Moses looking at a burning bush in which she and her divine son are enclosed, hidden for later revelation. And so, in a very real sense, the shepherds are called to see in fact what Moses saw only in symbol. To Moses, at the bush, was revealed the holy name of God. Yet in the manger, the shepherds see God, face to face. To Moses was revealed the Law. To the shepherds was revealed the Word made flesh.
And why is the manger such an important “sign” of this news? Luke sees fit to mention the manger three times in his short story. It’s an odd detail, in many ways—one we have trouble detaching from several centuries of imaginative nostalgia. Modern Christians seem to like imagining the Holy Family as outcasts, relegated to some faraway place inhabited only by the “friendly beasts.” But there simply were no such places in first-century Judea. Animals often shared the same structure as people. Not that babies were ordinarily placed in mangers, or that there is nothing unusual about the fact that seemingly no one in the household was willing to make room for a woman heavy with child. But the manger is a sign not just of lowliness somehow separated from human society, but rather a kind of lowliness within the ordinary crowded hustle of human life.
Still, Luke’s emphasis that this is a sign bears repeating, because it was not, before Luke’s account, a sign of very much emphasis among most Christians. We do not, after all, know what those first generations knew about the Lord’s nativity. There were several reliable witnesses, first of all Our Lady, who possibly shared such details with the apostles in due time. But the Nativity enters not at all in, for example, the teaching of St. Paul, which occupies most of the New Testament. In the epistle readings for Christmas, we heard about how Christ has “appeared,” as the promised fulfillment of God’s promises. It does not seem significant that the Lord first appeared in a manger.
Yet Luke finds this important. Maybe we could pin this to Luke as, by tradition, the first painter and iconographer of Our Lord and his mother—the Evangelist, in other words, with a real sense of visual impact. This is no small thing to point out, as the ancient iconographic tradition of the Nativity almost always includes representation of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/whats-the-deal-with-the-christmas-ox-and-ass">an ox and an ass</a>, emphasizing not so much a “stable” in the modern picture as the manger itself and the animals it normally served.
That visual tradition, I suspect, recalls a biblical memory that Luke would also have known, a verse from the opening lines of Isaiah, where God begins to indict his people for their failure in living up to the covenant:
The ox knows its owner,
and the donkey its master’s crib; 
but Israel does not know, 
my people do not understand (1:3).
The word “crib” there is sometimes translated “manger.” Either way it is the same thing we see in Luke 2. Israel, unlike the ox and even the famously stubborn donkey, cannot even recognize his master’s manger. The Lord tries to feed him, but he turns away.
Back to the Nativity, we begin to see, not very long into the story, how Israel fails to see his master. First there is the apparent scandal of the Lord’s own distant relations in Bethlehem who cannot find anywhere better for him to stay. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11). Much later, when Jesus begins to tell people how he is their food and drink, how his flesh and blood will be their salvation, they walk away, scandalized. How could this man give us his flesh and blood to drink? How could this man be our manger?
In the Nativity story itself, the whole thing is painted with sign after sign, layer upon layer. God the Son lies in a feeding trough—a feeding trough that God’s people refuse to see. He is born in Bethlehem, which means “house of bread.” And the shepherds, who do acknowledge him, suggest that the mediation of Moses between God and man has now transformed into a more lavish personal investment, where God’s favor is available even in the face of a child.
This child welcomes our love regardless of whether we bring him the perfect gift. We might see the manger as a reason to scold Joseph’s cousins, all these centuries later, for their failure to see the obvious. But failing to see the obvious is rather like what humanity has been doing since Adam and Eve, since Israel’s chronic failure to keep faith, like what you and I do time after time with our favorite, habitual sins, our routine shrinking away from baptismal grace. So in God’s providence, Joseph’s uncaring family become for us another sign. God incarnate certainly deserved more, but he didn’t need more. He was, after all, enthroned on the lap of the most beautiful creature under heaven, the crown of all God’s works, the future queen of heaven, the unburnt bush, the mystical rose. Just as at the Annunciation, her welcome was enough. We made no room for him, but she made for him a “meet dwelling place.” All we have to do is, like Moses, like the shepherds, turn aside to see.
Could it be any easier? There is a necessary time to confront the teaching of Jesus in his adult ministry, a necessary time to confront the doctrinal implications of his passion and resurrection, a time to weigh the consequences of our relationship with him and the Church he founded. But before we do any of that, we have to let him in. We have to make room. He is very small, but there is no avoiding this step. Sometimes we can treat Christianity as an elaborate exercise in building the perfect nursery, rearranging the furniture, finding the perfect décor, laying out linens, toys, books. But none of that has any point unless you actually take the baby home.
This Christmas, bring the Lord Jesus home. Let him in your heart. He stands at the door and knocks.

Bring the Child Home

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

Responding to Sedevacantists

Is hell empty? Michael Lofton joins us to answer the question that seems to be surrounded by controversy in many Catholic circles.

Is Hell Empty?

Defenders of divine simplicity claim that God does not actually get angry. Although it might seem to us as if God gets angry at things, this is simply the human interpretation of God, and not actually what is happening.
There are a few objections. First, it might seem rational to say that God gets angry at things. We sometimes see this in Scripture, like when the Israelites are worshiping the golden calf. Furthermore, it seems as if God would get angry at sin. If I see a bunch of sinful things, I am likely to get upset or angry. So why not God, too?
When speaking of God’s anger, it’s important to note that it’s not wrong to say that God has anger. After all, God speaks of his anger throughout Scripture (Jer. 21:5; Ezek. 5:13; Hos. 11:8-9).
However, the language of God “getting angry” is not exactly correct. The verses above talk about only God’s anger, not God going from being not angry to angry. Instead of saying, “God got angry,” it would be more accurate to say, “We are now noticing God’s anger.”
For an analogy, imagine that I am standing on the driver’s side (left side for Americans) of my car. It would be accurate to say I am standing on the left side of the car. Say I then move over to the passenger side. Then it would be accurate to say I am standing on the right side of the car. As obvious as this may seem, it’s a great example of my relation to something changing while that thing remains the same. Did the car change in any way? No—rather, my relationship with the car changed. Likewise, if I get sunburnt while my friend doesn’t even get a tan, does the sun change? Of course not. What changed was not the sun, but my relationship with it. Similarly, when God “gets angry,” it is not God who is changing; it is our relation to God.
Biblical depictions of God’s emotions are ways that we relate to God, not how he relates to us. When we say, “God is angry,” we aren’t saying anything about God. Rather, we notice that we have moved ourselves away from God’s infinite goodness. We use terms like “God is angry” to better understand the relationship turmoil. After all, if you do something your friend doesn’t like, he will be angry with you.
Humans get angry because we cannot think about everything at once. As such, we get angry in different circumstances. We can have a reaction that is excessive, and we can be mistaken about what is truly unjust.
Alternatively, for God, anger does not begin or end, and it is never excessive or mistaken. It is part of his perfect knowledge and will. (He likewise has the perfection of mercy, which must be kept in mind.)
Although it might seem rational, if God were to “get angry” at someone sinning, he would be in time and would be influenced by humans. Both of these are not allowed under the traditional view of God. It may seem to us as if God is becoming angry, but his emotions (for lack of a better term) are constant.
In order to better understand this, here are some quotes from the great St. Augustine:
<blockquote>We must take care . . . to understand that the anger of God is free from any turbulent emotion; for his anger is an expression of his just method of taking vengeance, as the law might be said to be angry when its ministers are moved to punish by its sanction (On the Psalms, 83, 10).</blockquote>
And . . .
<blockquote>Now when God is said to be angry, we do not attribute to him such a disturbed feeling as exists in the mind of an angry man, but we call his just displeasure against sin by the name ‘anger’, a word transferred by analogy from human emotions (Enchiridion, 36, 33).</blockquote>
Finally, <a href="https://aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/st-ia-q-3">here is a quote</a> from Thomas Aquinas discussing anger as we attribute it to God:
<blockquote>Anger and the like are attributed to God on account of a similitude of effect. Thus, because to punish is properly the act of an angry man, God’s punishment is metaphorically spoken of as his anger.</blockquote>
As Aquinas notes, God’s “anger” is an expression of the human interpretation of God. We view God as “getting angry” when he punishes humans, because when humans punish other humans, the person doing the punishing is usually unhappy. However, it is not as if humans made God angry. Rather, we entered into a relationship with God that had us interpret his love as anger. Much like how Adam and Eve did not make God change to become merciful, humans do not make God change to become angry.
Overall, we can somewhat understand God through attributing human emotions to him, despite these emotions being much too simple for a timeless, immaterial, and immutable being. God does not have emotions and does not change, but humans throughout time and in Scripture have attributed these emotions to God to better understand him, despite being technically inaccurate.

God Does Not ‘Get Angry’

If Catholics are right about John 6, every Christian is under divine command to celebrate the Eucharist. So is the Catholic Church right? Karlo Broussard joins us to explain why Catholics aren&#8217;t wrong.

Why Catholics Aren’t Wrong about John 6

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.
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.

Is the Eucharist Necessary for Salvation?

Is Mormonism actually Demonic?

Marriage theology makes the papacy unavoidable.

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?

Was Saul&#8217;s contacting the dead prophet Samuel by means of necromancy the same kind of action as our praying to the saints? Jim Blackburn tackles this question and explains why it’s OK for us to ask saints for their intercession.
Transcript:
Host: Damien in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, watching us on YouTube Live, what&#8217;s your question for Jim Blackburn?
Caller: Hi, thanks for taking my call today. We&#8217;ve got, in first Samuel, when Saul visits a witch and called up the prophet Samuel; my question is, how is that different from our prayers to Saints, and the communion of saints in general? Thank you.
Jim: Okay yeah, this is a question that comes up from time to time because it appears that that Saul is, in a sense, you know, reaching out to what he might believe to be a Saint for assistance.
But number one, what Saul is doing is different in that he&#8217;s not just offering his prayers up to a Saint, asking that a Saint take, you know, pray for me, pray with me for my intentions and take my intentions to Christ, take my intentions to God in Heaven. That&#8217;s what we do when we&#8217;re praying to the Saints. We&#8217;re not asking for their intervention in this life, we&#8217;re not asking for them to respond to us, for example, or interact with us in any way. We know that they&#8217;re in Heaven, and they&#8217;re closer to God than we are, and they might have his ear a little better than we do sometimes, and they can, in that regard, take our prayers to God, pray along with us, pray for us, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing when we pray to the Saints.
What Saul was doing did seem to be, you know, wanting more of an interaction with Samuel than that, and Samuel&#8217;s own assistance, not God&#8217;s assistance, with Samuels assistance. So this is&#8211;there&#8217;s distinct differences there. Also, the story of Saul doing this is not presented in such a way that we are to understand that that was even approved, that that was a good thing Saul was doing. The fact that Saul did this is is told to us in Scripture, but it&#8217;s not told to us in such a way that it that encouraged to do it or that we are somehow supposed to take this as necessarily as a good thing.
Okay, does that help, Damien?
Caller: Yes, thanks for clearing that up for me.

How are Our Prayers to Saints Different from Necromancy?

<div>Is fasting on Sundays prohibited by some Church law or is it just not recommended generally?</div><div>The reason fasting on Sundays is not usually done is that fasting is generally considered a penitential exercise, and penitential exercises are normally lifted on a solemnity (which Sunday always is). This is why every Lent many people ask if whatever they gave up for Lent can be partaken of on the Sundays of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/lent">Lent</a>. Each Sunday is also a miniature celebration of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/easter">Easter</a> Sunday, which therefore is considered a day of celebration and rejoicing rather than penance.
However, that being said, personal spiritual fasting is not prohibited on Sundays. Catholics are free to fast in various ways in their personal spiritual journey, though it is recommended that they do so in consultation with a spiritual director.
</div>

Is Fasting on Sundays Prohibited?

<div>Why did St. Thomas Aquinas’s feast day get moved?</div><div>St. Thomas Aquinas&#8217;s traditional feast day was March 7, the day he died. However, that day almost always falls during Lent. The Church moved his feast day to January 28, the day his remains were placed in their final resting place, so that his feast day would not be superseded by Lent.
When a saint is of particular importance to the universal Church, as is Aquinas, the Church may assign a date that doesn&#8217;t conflict with major feasts so as to ensure the saint can be honored throughout the Church. (This is, by the way, also why St. John Paul II was assigned a feast day in October. The day he died, April 2, always falls during Lent, Holy Week, or Easter.)
</div>

Why Was Aquinas’s Feast Day Moved?

<div>Why does God allow babies to die from illness and miscarriages to happen?</div><div>Miscarriages and infant deaths are indeed great tragedies. Because of our first parents’ original sin (CCC 390ff.), suffering and death came into the world. And death comes to some sooner than others, including those preborn infants who die via miscarriages and those born infants and other babies who die from illness or other tragic means.
And yet God does not abandon us in our contracted original sin and personally committed sins. He doesn’t let sin, suffering and death have the last word. Instead, he sent his eternal Son to redeem and save us (see John 3:16-17). Indeed, God wants to save everyone, including preborn children who are miscarried and babies who die not long after birth (CCC 1257-61; John 3:16-17; 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9).
In addition, through his one redemptive Sacrifice of the Cross, Jesus also shows how suffering can be redemptive. Similarly, though he does not actively will our sufferings, he can permit them so as to bring about a greater good (see Rom. 2:28), namely our holiness and eternal salvation, and helping foster the same for others, who may have experienced similar tragedies. In the end, we must always remember that death does not have the last word, and that earth is not our lasting home.
</div>

Why Does God Allow Miscarriages and Infant Deaths?

In a previous <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/defending-rebirth-by-water">article</a>, I defended rebirth by water baptism in John 3:3-5 against several challenges. But there are a couple of more I think are worth considering. I’ll address each in turn.
For example, some Christians deny the “water” because it doesn’t fit with the spiritual nature of the new birth. Here’s how the volume on John from <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Preachers-Outline-Sermon-Bible-Bible-KJV/dp/1574070053/ref=sr_1_1?crid=K8FFZPWMHCER&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9._rn5xwsDx2QHLbK1ZgB6IEslEahf7BiTXNDYhEH2okGRMH31-C2LffIuzT_uU2VlchiK1kwZGfsB8laDbsr05Cot6tyWtc-TAlf2KduB8ko2ZueASzbPV0TNw8Y_T6FpcRV7amqKa5Qrtc2mrn6-iYsCqlNvvzoh6eGnkE2Kve-fiI0XSNOc4DRWjVqYQCfozK6qAk0q56B5-BPyLTy1agQEDzQEP-wtyOafSwO6x3A.Ij8Y4woUX3uuV3JwcLh36yE0ETIbbIpPK4nzD30SfHY&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=John%3A+preachers+sermon+and+outline+bible&amp;qid=1721313769&amp;sprefix=john+preachers+sermon+and+outline+bible%2Caps%2C91&amp;sr=8-1">The Preacher’s Outline and Sermon Bible</a> puts it:
<blockquote>The new birth is spiritual, apart from any natural phenomenon. It has nothing to do with any physical substance, including water. It is not of the flesh, not any material thing. It is of the Spirit.</blockquote>
The “not of the flesh” and “of the Spirit” parts of the above quote are derived from verse 6, where Jesus says, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
Notice that this interpretation reads into Jesus’ words that anything and everything that is material or physical is excluded from being involved in the spiritual rebirth. But that is not what Jesus says.
Rather, Jesus juxtaposes two kinds of births: our physical or natural birth, which is “of the flesh,” and the spiritual or supernatural rebirth that is “of the Spirit.” The focus is the essential difference of the births, not what might or might not be involved with those births.
For example, our physical or natural birth is “of the flesh,” yet that doesn’t mean that anything and everything spiritual is excluded from it, since our natural birth does involve something spiritual—namely, our soul, which is informing the matter. But the birth itself is described as “of the flesh” because that’s an idiom Jesus frequently uses to express things that pertain to the natural order apart from God’s grace.
Consider what he says in John 8:15: “You judge according to the flesh.” There, Jesus is telling the Pharisees that they judge from an earthly perspective alone.
He also employs this idiom in John 6:63, when he says, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. The Spirit gives life, the flesh is of no avail.” Per John 8:15, Jesus is teaching his disciples that if they judge his teaching to eat his flesh and drink his blood from an earthly perspective alone, they won’t be able to assent to it. His teaching goes beyond human reason. Consequently, they need a power that is above reason, which only the Spirit can give, and that’s the gift of faith.
So the birth “of the flesh” that Jesus speaks of is our first birth, which is natural, and that natural birth doesn’t exclude any and all things spiritual, since the soul is present with the body in that first birth.
Our spiritual rebirth, on the other hand, is not a physical birth. It is a spiritual birth. That’s why Jesus says it is “spirit,” “of the Spirit.” But just because the birth is spiritual in nature doesn’t necessarily exclude any and everything material. It may well involve something material, like water, that serves as a means through which the spiritual rebirth takes place.
Consider again John 6:63. Jesus says, “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. The Spirit gives life, the flesh is of no avail.” Affirming that his words are spiritual, and are discerned by the Spirit, doesn’t mean he didn’t use audible sounds, something of the physical world, to communicate his words.
Similarly, just because Jesus teaches the new birth is spirit and not flesh doesn’t mean all fleshy and physical things, like water, are excluded. It simply refers to a particular kind of birth that is distinct from our physical birth.
That this is the focus is supported by the fact that Jesus draws this contrast in response to Nicodemus who thought the new birth was to involve a grown man entering into his mother’s womb a second time (v. 4).
Therefore, the spiritual nature of the new birth can’t be appealed to as evidence for water being excluded from the new birth.
Let’s consider one more counter-argument to our interpretation of the new birth being a reference to baptism. This one is offered by Todd Baker, president of B’rit Hadashah Ministries and pastor of Shalom, Shalom Messianic Congregation in Dallas, Texas. In commenting on the new birth of “water and Spirit,” Baker <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Exodus-Rome-Biblical-Historical-Catholicism/dp/1491724706/ref=sr_1_1?crid=20YP63CAGQ1TQ&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1Xy8q6sE6G10bJdE2SCSME24lyvIHQANFdP8IfQMZWo.YfPcaMSs3kj0o6wUw28tFIhyaRM4P9WB1WqE7DuvT4g&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=todd+baker+exodus+from+rome&amp;qid=1721316105&amp;sprefix=todd+baker+exodus+from+rome+%2Caps%2C94&amp;sr=8-1">writes</a>,
<blockquote>Nothing in this world can generate the power of spiritual rebirth; flesh can produce only flesh. . . . Even in the beginning of John’s Gospel, the reader is told that the power of spiritual rebirth, whereby the believer in Christ becomes a child of God, is not an act that can be exercised by human act of will, or physical generation, or performance of any kind—the act of sacramental baptism included— but is a supernatural, sovereign act of God alone, bestowed upon those who believe in Jesus Christ. Those who are baptized do so by an act of their own will. The new birth is altogether different from this; it is an act of God! . . . So then, “born of water” in John 3:5 cannot mean the physical rite of baptism as the agent for spiritual rebirth; it must mean something else.</blockquote>
For Baker, the spiritual rebirth is an act of God and therefore cannot involve any human act. Since the ritual of water baptism involves a human act, it follows that the spiritual rebirth can’t be a reference to ritual water baptism.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it would preclude humans being involved in several things that the Bible affirms humans are involved in when God exercises his sovereignty.
Consider, for example, the healing of the lame beggar that Peter performs in Acts 3:1-10. The effect of the miracle can be brought about only by God. Yet that doesn’t mean Peter’s action isn’t involved. God used Peter as an instrument to bring about the miraculous effect.
Consider also Paul’s teaching that we are justified by “faith.” Faith is a gift that God alone can give. Yet the act of faith itself, which God moves us to engage in, involves our intellect moved by the will to assent to what God reveals and the act of directing our hearts and minds to God as our ultimate supernatural end. That’s human action, actualized within us by God.
More examples abound. In John 16:8, we’re told that the Spirit will convict the world of sin and righteousness. However, we know that the Spirit uses preachers to establish that conviction.
Life itself is from God, yet he uses the actions of a human mother and father to be participants in giving that life to us.
One more example, which perhaps relates best to our topic at hand: Jesus heals the blind man in John 9:1-7. Yet he intentionally involved the blind man’s action—namely, Jesus commanded him to go and wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam. And upon doing that human act, Jesus healed him.
So just because an effect is brought about by God alone, like the spiritual rebirth, doesn’t necessarily exclude human action, like ritual water baptism.
Given that the two above counterarguments fail to disprove the spiritual re-birth of John 3:5 to be a reference to water baptism, believers in baptismal regeneration can still appeal to the passage as biblical support for their belief.

Spiritual Birth, Physical Things

<div>If I go to Mass Saturday evening and not Sunday morning, am I committing a mortal sin?</div><div>No, you are not committing any sin. The Church fully permits attending Mass on Saturday evening as a way of fulfilling our Sunday Mass obligation. 
</div>

Saturday Evening Mass Is Fine

Are Protestants under an anathema? 🤔

<div>If confession times are only after Mass and I have committed a grave sin , does this mean I can’t receive the Eucharist until the following weekend? And what if I slip and sin again before the following weekend?</div><div>If a Catholic has committed a mortal sin and cannot get to Confession to have that mortal sin absolved before fulfilling their Sunday Mass obligation, they should not receive the Eucharist in fulfilling that obligation. Which is a reminder that fulfilling the Lord’s Day means participating in or assisting at Sunday Mass, not necessarily receiving the Eucharist in doing so.
If your mortal sins are absolved in Confession after Sunday Mass, and then you commit a mortal sin before the subsequent Sunday and can’t get to Confession before that next Sunday, yes, you should abstain from receiving the Eucharist in fulfilling your Lord’s Day Mass obligation on that subsequent Sunday.
However, most parishes have regular Confession times sometime during the week before their weekly Sunday Masses, which would include the Saturday vigil Mass. Check the Confession times at other area parishes if your parish only offers the Sacrament of Reconciliation after its Sunday Masses. In addition, most parish priests will make Confession available by appointment outside of the prescribed weekly time(s). So check with your pastor and other area parishes in this regard. If needed, you can identify area parishes through your diocesan website, and then access the websites of respective area parishes to find their weekly Confession schedule and parish contact info.
Abstaining from the Eucharist until our mortal sins are absolved will give us a greater appreciation and hunger for the Eucharist, and thus enable us to better profit when we do receive our Lord in this most intimate, sacramental encounter.
</div>

Have Mortal Sins Absolved Before Receiving the Eucharist

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

Answering Protestant Objections to “On This Rock”

On Ash Wednesday 2004, the eagerly-awaited movie The Passion of the Christ hit the screen—and hit its viewers much harder. With ashen foreheads, Catholics across America cringed in their theater seats as they watched the portrayal of the intense whipping, beating, and stabbing of their Savior. Many in the audience openly wept.
As difficult as it was for the viewers to sit through these scenes, there is a reality that most audiences and reviewers missed: In comparison to the cinematic portrayal of the event, the actual crucifixion of Jesus was far worse.
<h2>Roman Crucifixion</h2>
Contemporary eyewitnesses, authors, and ancient and modern historians broadly confirm that crucifixion was a common practice before Constantine abolished it in the Roman Empire in the fourth century. But our focus here is on Roman crucifixion—for that is what Jesus suffered.
A study of crucifixion is such an analysis of violence and savagery that it is easy to lose sight of a central aspect of crucifixion: its intentional degradation. Under some Roman emperors, crucifixion was a common punishment for slaves. Cicero even refers to it as the servitutis extremum summumque supplicium (the highest and most extreme penalty for slaves). In his oration known as Against Verres, Cicero expresses that crucifixion <a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=‌Perseus%3Atext%25‌3A1999.02.0018‌%3Atext%3DVer.%3Aactio%3D2%3Abook%3D5">should be used</a> only on slaves and never against a citizen: “It is a crime to bind a Roman citizen; to scourge him is a wickedness; to put him to death is almost parricide. What shall I say of crucifying him? So guilty an action cannot by any possibility be adequately expressed by any name bad enough for it.”
It was standard procedure for Roman authorities to make crucifixions as public as possible. It was not enough for the Romans to simply crucify slaves and leave their carcasses to serve as food for the birds in the middle of nowhere. Instead, the Romans used crucifixion as a socio-political statement. Historian Barry Strauss <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Spartacus-War/Barry-Strauss/9781416532064">explains</a>, “Roman authorities also favored the most crowded roads for crucifixions, in order to impress the maximum number of people.”
As to the method of Roman crucifixion, the procedure generally occurred in three distinct stages: scourging at a pillar; the forced carrying of the cross; and nailing the victim to the cross, where he would eventually die. Each stage consisted of a tortured madness in which human misery was viewed as entertaining theater.
<h2>Stage One: Scourging</h2>
The process of scourging was given to those men who most enjoyed scourging others in the first place. In his book describing his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2848339M/Man's_Search_for_Meaning">noted</a>, “When the SS took a dislike to a person, there was always some special man in their ranks known to have a passion for, and to be highly specialized in, sadistic torture, to whom the unfortunate prisoner was sent.” The same basic process played out in the Roman scourging process.
The word “scourging” <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=scourging">comes to us</a> in English from the medieval French word escorgier, which means “to whip.” But the word fails to capture its innate ferocity. The victim’s wrists were tied to a post so that he could not defend himself against the weapons of torture, and then the beating commenced. In his book The Wars of the Jews, Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (A.D. 37-100) <a href="https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/‌text?doc=‌Perseus:‌‌text:‌1999.‌01.‌‌‌‌0148">writes about</a> the infliction of “stripes” before crucifixion, recounting that a woman was “torn to pieces with the stripes.” This was standard by design. One of the most popular devices used to scourge victims was the “scorpion”—a multi-thronged leather whip with affixed bone or metal. It was designed to hack into flesh and tear off the flesh to the bone.
Scourging was often conducted in such a way as to inflict the absolute maximum possible amount of pain without killing the victim; however, many victims of scourging died in the process. Nevertheless, the Romans often took it upon themselves to nail the scourged, dead bodies to crosses for public display. There were also instances in which the scourgers lost all interest in keeping their victims alive; with demonic ferocity, the soldiers simply beat them to death.
<h2>Stage Two: Carrying the Cross</h2>
For those who did survive the initial scourging—and the vast majority seem to have done so—the next step was forcing the victim to carry the wood of the cross to the designated place of death. For our purposes here, there is no need to go into great detail regarding this process other than pointing out the following: Carrying the wood of the cross to the place of death deliberately compounded the suffering already inflicted by the scourging. The shoulders, already ripped open by scourging, then had to endure carrying a massive piece of wood. This weight deeply compounded the pain of the open shoulder wound. The Roman philosopher Seneca, in observing the swelling of the crucified with “ugly weals on shoulders,” considered suicide as a preferable option to crucifixion.
<h2>Stage Three: Nailing to the Cross</h2>
After recounting the process of scourging and carrying the cross, it is striking that some ancient writers consider this the most violent stage of Roman crucifixion.<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> Though victims were sometimes tied to their crosses, they were typically nailed. In what seems to have been deemed a particular form of cruelty, some were crucified upside down. But they were not left to die alone. As Pierre Barbet <a href="%20σταυρός;%20stauros)%20occurs%20twenty-seven%20times%20in%20twenty-seven%20verses.”%20That%20it%20was%20a%20cross%20is%20further%20evidenced%20by%20the%20early%20Church%20fathers.%20Beyond%20that,%20the%20fact%20that%20the%20Romans%20routinely%20used%20crosses%20for%20crucifixion%20is%20evidenced%20by%20contemporary%20non-Christian%20historians%20such%20as%20Flavius%20Josephus.">notes</a>, a Roman guard remained—in part—to ensure that the crucified man was not rescued by friends or family by the dead of night.
Some guards occupied their time in sadism. Some of the crucified continued to be beaten and jeered on the cross as they approached their deaths. It also occurred that visiting wives, children, and friends of the crucified had their throats slit as the crucified men watched helplessly from their crosses. (This might shed new light on the reluctance of the apostles to visit Jesus on the cross and provide an increased appreciation of Mary, Mary Magdalene, and John the apostle, who stood at the foot of the cross.)
One of the most significant variables was how long it took for the victim to die. Some died quickly; others survived for days. Typically, the Romans allowed, by design, birds and wild animals to eat the crucified carcasses for food; however, the Romans did sometimes allow families to claim the bodies.
<h2>The Unique Wounds of Jesus</h2>
Jesus bore some injuries in common with most others who endured Roman crucifixion, but he also had unique wounds. To understand subsequent cases of stigmata, we must first grasp Jesus’ suffering and wounds—which we might call the first stigmata.
To determine the extent and particular nature of Jesus’ injuries, it would be reasonable to first turn to Scripture. The difficulty, however, is that the scriptures are not very detailed. For instance, regarding the hyper-violent and bloodthirsty scourging of Jesus at the pillar, the Gospel of Matthew simply states, “Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified” (27:26). Mark’s Gospel simply states, “And they crucified him” (15:24). Luke’s Gospel gives more attention to the burial of Jesus than to the specifics of his injuries.
We may reasonably ask, Why is there such a lack of details? The answer given by Barbet is simple: “The Evangelists certainly had no need to be more explicit. For the Christians who had listened to the apostolic teaching, and who later on read the four Gospels, these two words, ‘scourging, crucifixion,’ were all too full of meaning; they had firsthand experience, and had seen scourgings and crucifixions; they knew what the words meant.”
Scourging and crucifixion continued for three centuries after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Thus, the early Christians were presented with physical reminders of Jesus’ torment until the time of Constantine, who abolished crucifixion in the Roman Empire. Subsequent ages increasingly lost sight—and understanding—of these terms.
Relying on Scripture alone does not provide us enough insight in the third millennium after Christ. Thus, we need to turn to more sources.
Regarding crucifixion generally, we have already referenced ancient historians and archaeological findings for details. Other places to look include the writings of the Church Fathers, approved private revelation, and the Shroud of Turin.
We can also touch upon the advantage of the advances in science and medicine. In some respects, from the perspective of modern medicine, we now know more about Jesus’ wounds and sufferings than ever before. The most logical way to proceed in an understanding of the first stigmata—the stigmata of Jesus—is to look at them from a chronological perspective, beginning with the events of Holy Thursday and culminating with the Resurrection.
Contemplating the Crucifixion is hard, but it deepens the faith of any Christian who takes on the task. God&#8217;s Wounds, Catholic Answers&#8217; eye-opening new book by John Clark, provides the means to do this, and much more. <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/gods-wounds/?searchid=8653589">Buy it here.</a>

Crucifixion: What Really Happened

The sacrament of Confirmation can be baffling to today&#8217;s Catholics. What is it? What does it do? And what is the correct age to receive it? Father Hugh Barbour answers all our questions.

What Does Confirmation Do?

A caller shares that he is afraid of the possibility that after death, he’ll find out that God really is a fundamentalist. Joe Heschmeyer, Shameless Popery Podcast, gives the Catholic answer.

What if God Is a Fundamentalist?

<div>Why did Jesus not defend himself before Pontius Pilate? When are we to do the same?</div><div>While a Christian should never seek death, not defending oneself in order to achieve a greater good is permitted. Some examples would be:
<ul>
<li>a hostage can agree to stay behind while others are freed.</li>
<li>a soldier can jump on a grenade to protect others.</li>
<li>occupying a gunman as long as possible so others can escape knowing full well he will kill you once he realizes everyone has escaped.</li>
<li>allowing yourself to be taken prisoner/hostage so others can escape.</li>
</ul>
Jesus before Pilate had a purpose beyond its immediacy. Jesus was willing to be defenseless for the greater good of the salvation of humanity.
These situations are distinct from depression or apathy. It must truly be a free choice for a greater good and not mere indifference towards one&#8217;s life.
</div>

Why Did Jesus Not Defend Himself Before Pilate?

The Evidence for Papal Primacy

Tim Staples cites arguments from Scripture, ecumenical councils, and the papacy to explain the Roman Catholic doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son.

Comments on the Filioque Controversy

Atheists who believe that Jesus never existed (called mythicists) claim there are damning parallels between the story of Jesus and stories of other “dying and rising” gods. You’re likely to come across mythicist arguments through online videos such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNXTEMnpmb8">Zeitgeist</a>, which claims:
<ul>
<li>The Egyptian god Horus “was born on December 25 of the virgin Isis-Meri . . . at the age of thirty he was baptized by a figure known as Anup and thus began his ministry. Horus had twelve disciples he traveled about with, performing miracles such as healing the sick and walking on water. . . . Horus was crucified, buried for three days, and thus, resurrected.”</li>
<li>The Greek god Dionysus was “born of a virgin on December 25, was a traveling teacher who performed miracles such as turning water into wine.” Zeitgeist also claims that the Roman god Mithra was born of a virgin on December 25.</li>
<li>Ancient pagan cults also worshiped the “Sun” by mourning when it dies in the winter and celebrating when it “rises” in the spring to bring forth new crops.</li>
</ul>
Although similarities among beliefs can be evidence that one culture was the source for another culture’s belief, in many other instances, it can lead to a bad case of “parallelomania.” Biblical scholar Samuel Sandmel says this happens when a person <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/no-easter-is-not-a-pagan-holiday">falsely believes</a> that cultural borrowing has taken place and tries to prove it with highly implausible parallels. Straining to make connections, the “parallelomaniac” ignores more plausible explanations for why two different religions might have similar beliefs, stories, traditions, or customs.
In some cases, the imagined parallel simply doesn’t exist at all. In others, the alleged parallels are so trivial that they don’t really serve as evidence for culture-borrowing. Or it might, on closer inspection, turn out that the borrowing happened the other way around (e.g., paganism borrowing from Christianity). Or the borrowing might be real but related only to non-essential areas of belief.
When we apply these alternative explanations, we see that neither Catholicism nor Christianity can be explained as a mere offshoot of older pagan practices.
Many of Zeitgeist’s claims about ancient non-Christian religions simply aren’t true. There is no evidence the Egyptian god Horus was baptized, had twelve disciples, performed miracles like walking on water, or was crucified. In at least one instance, a deity that is supposed to parallel Jesus turns out never to have existed in pagan mythology. Zeitgeist claims that “Beddru” of Japan and “Crite” of Chaldea inspired the Jesus story, but there is no record of any deities by these names having a cult of worship.
Why would the producers of this film, or other mythicists, make up stuff like this? Odds are, they acted in good faith but uncritically followed older, amateur scholarship that had a bad habit of using poorly documented sources.
Many of their claims about Horus, for example, come straight from self-anointed (and long discredited) scholars from the nineteenth century, such as Gerald Massey. Contemporary Egyptologists do not trust his work today, and even Massey’s peers rejected his scholarship. The renowned British Museum Egyptologist Archibald Sayce, for instance, commended an 1888 article for its “through demolition of Mr. Massey’s crudities [and] errors.” His colleague Peter le Page Renouf <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4140151">said</a> of Massey that “no lunatic could possibly write more wild rubbish” (1,101).
When we turn to anti-Catholicism, we see similar uncritical reliance on shoddy scholarship. This is evident in claims from <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/meet-jack-chick">Jack Chick</a> tracts, such as, “The Holy Eucharist is placed in the center of a sunburst design called the monstrance. . . . Who dreamed this up? <a href="https://www.chick.com/products/tract?stk=74">The Egyptians called it Osiris</a> long before the popes called it Jesus.” Sure enough, Gerald Massey claimed that, in Egyptian worship, “flesh and beer were transelemented or transubstantiated by the descent of Ra the holy spirit” and that this sacrament was “continued by the Church of Rome.”
Chick further claims that the eucharistic host has the monogram IHS on it because in Egypt these letters stood for the gods Isis, Horus, and Seb. However, there is no evidence that ancient Egyptian religion had anything like the Eucharist, much less a host that included a monogram with the Latin letters IHS. (In reality, these three letters are often found on eucharistic hosts because they are derived from the first three letters of Jesus’ name in Greek.)
Another fiction is the claim that Nimrod and Semiramis were married Babylonian royalty who created a “proto-pagan Catholicism.” This isn’t possible, since, as modern scholars agree, they didn’t even live during the same period. Other claims, like “Catholic confessionals have a Babylonian origin,” ignore the historical reality that the Church practiced the sacrament of confession without confessionals for centuries. The regular practice of confessing privately to a priest in a reserved place was introduced into the Church through Irish missionaries in the early Middle Ages, not a Babylonian cult in late antiquity (CCC 1447).
In many cases, the alleged parallel between Christianity and paganism exists only in the creative mind of the parallelomaniac. In some other cases, though, the evidence from primary sources is accurate—and so a genuine parallel does exist—but the parallel is so trivial or general that it says nothing about any cultural borrowing. Ancient pagan deities, for example, may have performed miracles just as Jesus did, but we’d expect that any story about deities interacting with human beings would include miraculous details. So those similarities don’t suggest any borrowing.
Other alleged parallels are true only if you really strain your eyes and your reading comprehension. For example, mythicists say the Persian deity Mithra was born of a virgin (just like Jesus!), but the ancient source actually says that Mithra emerged fully grown <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctvxcrrjd">from a rock</a> (62). This is a “virgin birth” only in the most contorted sense of that term.
Similarly, that sun and son are homophones is true in English but not most other languages, including ancient languages like Greek or Hebrew. A similar error occurs in the identification of Easter with Ishtar (and honestly, the two sound similar only if you are prone to slurring your speech). Even more fatal to this alleged parallel is that nearly all European languages call the celebration of Christ’s resurrection a variant of the Latin word pascha. Christ is our new Passover (or paschal) lamb, as St. Paul describes him in 1 Corinthians. 5:7. (Easter comes from older Germanic words signifying springtime and the dawn.) 
Modern scholarship has also shown that Christian and Catholic beliefs are primarily rooted in Judaism, not paganism. In <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Riddle_of_Resurrection.html?id=97coAAAAYAAJ">his study</a> on ancient resurrection belief, T.N.D. Mettinger put it this way:
<blockquote>There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world. While studied with profit against the background of Jewish resurrection belief, the faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions (221).</blockquote>
It’s reasonable to expect human beings in different eras and cultures to exhibit similar religious tendencies, because it’s in our nature. God created us to be religious. The Catechism puts it this way:
<blockquote>In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being (28).</blockquote>
C.S. Lewis reached a similar conclusion when he said that God had revealed himself indirectly to pagans through their myths and that the Gospels were now God’s direct revelation. They were, as he said, “myth become fact.” I’ll close with <a href="https://www.amazon.com/God-Dock-Essays-Theology-Ethics/dp/0802808689">his advice</a> that shows that Catholics and Christians have nothing to fear from “pagan parallels”: “We must not be nervous about ‘parallels’ and ‘pagan Christs’: they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome” (59).

Jesus, the Pagan God

In this engaging clip, Cy Kellett and Catholic apologist Karlo Broussard delve into the sacrament of confirmation and its foundation in scripture. Karlo clarifies the purpose of confirmation, explaining how it enhances the grace received at baptism and is not merely an add-on, but a vital step in the Christian journey.
Transcript:
Cy: What is confirmation and where is that in the Bible? It seems like an add-on. Is there any scriptural evidence for confirmation as distinct from baptism?
Karlo: And it&#8217;s interesting, you said it&#8217;s an add-on, and in a way that&#8217;s actually true. But it&#8217;s a good add-on in the sense that the sacrament of confirmation is ordered toward communicating a distinct outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the baptized in order to confirm and enhance, intensify, perfect, and even elevate, increase, go on and on and on with the different words, all of the graces received in baptism.
And this is why baptism and confirmation are done at the same time for an infant in some of the churches within the Christian tradition, because confirmation is ordered toward perfecting that which has already been received in baptism. And so it&#8217;s not about becoming an adult in the Christian life.
Cy: You&#8217;re saying then that would mean that we believe we don&#8217;t just need to be saved, we need to be perfected.
Karlo: Oh, that&#8217;s a precise way of putting it, Cy.
Cy: I&#8217;m killing it today.
Karlo: You are killing it. Now, with regard to the biblical evidence for this, I will admit that the biblical evidence for the sacrament of confirmation is not as, in your face and explicit formally as the sacrament of baptism is. But I do think there is sufficient evidence to show us that there is a distinct outpouring of the Holy Spirit separate from baptism that believers receive.
So in Acts, chapter 8, verses 14 through 20, we read there how Philip baptizes some people in Samaria. And we know, according to Peter&#8217;s teaching in Acts 2:38, which is another text we could appeal to, through baptism, we received the promise of the Holy Spirit. So we know that these believers in Samaria would have received the Holy Spirit initially when they were baptized.
But in verses 14 through 17, we read about how upon hearing that the people in Samaria received the word of God through baptism, the apostles in Jerusalem sent Peter and John to go and lay hands on them and pray that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
The implication being that there is some distinct outpouring of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands that needs to be communicated that was not given initially in baptism. And this outpouring of the Holy Spirit was one akin to the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
Because in verses 18 through 19 of that same text, when Simon saw that the Spirit had been given through the laying on of hands, he offers them some money and said, &#8220;Hey, give me this power, right? That anyone I lay my hands on may receive the Holy Spirit too.&#8221;
So if you think about that, Cy, why would Simon want to pay for the power of the Spirit unless the only way he could know that such a power was given through the laying on of hands, such that he would want to pay for it, to have it so he could do it, is if there were some sort of visible manifestation of it? What sort of visible manifestation of the Spirit might that have been? The same kind as on the day of Pentecost?
So notice here, this distinct outpouring of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands is one that is akin to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. And this is why the Church teaches in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 1288, that the sacrament of Confirmation in a certain way perpetuates the grace of Pentecost in the Church.
What Pentecost was for the apostles, and that distinct outpouring of the Holy Spirit, is confirmation for us. So confirmation for us is our Pentecost experience. That&#8217;s what the sacrament of confirmation is.
And then we also have evidence in Acts 19:5-6, where believers in Ephesus were baptized in the name of the Lord, and then Paul lays hands on them and the Holy Spirit came to them. And guess what? Yet again, visible manifestations of the Spirit—they started speaking in tongues and they were prophesying.
So we see this model in Acts chapter 8 and in Acts chapter 19 in the early Church: baptism, which, given our prior exegesis of Scripture, we know communicates the Holy Spirit, and then a distinct giving of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands. That&#8217;s akin to the day of Pentecost. And that is what we call the Sacrament of Confirmation.
Cy: That&#8217;s actually quite striking because I feel like we need a better catechism for just the average Catholic, because I don&#8217;t think many Catholics think about Acts 8 when they think about Pentecost. But Acts 8 is really, really clear that this is a distinct thing from the baptism that these people received.
Karlo: Samaria.
Cy: Yeah, yeah. Like the Samaritans would be the correct term, right?
Karlo: Yeah.
Cy: So the Samaritans, they are saved, but the apostles still go back to them.
Karlo: Yeah. And notice that this outpouring of the Holy Spirit for those in Samaria could not be given by Philip who baptized them. They had to send for the apostles Peter and John to come and lay hands. So this communication of the Spirit is something reserved only to the apostles at this time.
Baptism was able to be communicated by Philip, but not this outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And of course, that&#8217;s what the Catholic Church teaches today, that the Sacrament of Confirmation requires an ordained priesthood, whereas the Sacrament of Baptism, the ordained priest is merely the ordinary minister of baptism, which implies that non-ordained people can communicate baptism in extraordinary circumstances.
So what you see here, Cy, is the Catholic Church is just being good old-fashioned Bible Christians.
Cy: Oh, I believe that, yes, I believe that.
Karlo: Taking the word of God, Sacred Scripture for what it tells us.
Cy: All right, so your association of the reception of the Spirit here, there is a Protestant objection to this and it comes from the third chapter of John&#8217;s Gospel, verse 8. I mean, excuse me, verse 8, the third chapter, verse 8. The Spirit is like the wind blowing where it wills. It&#8217;s not constrained or confined. It comes in unpredictable ways. So the confirmation is predictable, like we know the date; we give it a date, the date you were confirmed on. So confirmation would contradict this kind of free-flowing, blowing where it wills nature of the Holy Spirit&#8217;s action.
Karlo: Yeah. Yes. Several Protestant apologists will make this argument. One in particular, Todd Baker, in his book *Exodus from Rome*, Volume 1. I think he was actually a former priest, if I&#8217;m not mistaken or if my memory serves me correctly. But he makes this argument.
But here&#8217;s my response. The argument is presented as if the Spirit cannot be confined to come in predictable ways. But that&#8217;s not what John 3:8 says. Jesus merely compares the Holy Spirit with the blowing of the wind. So all that says and all that reveals is the affirmation that the Holy Spirit can come spontaneously.
It doesn&#8217;t follow from that that the Holy Spirit cannot come in predictable ways. So the mere affirmation that the Holy Spirit can come spontaneously like the wind—right, that&#8217;s true. But logically speaking, we can affirm that and at the same time affirm that the Holy Spirit can come in predictable ways, like in the Sacrament of Confirmation.
And the reason is because the logical content of thinking, &#8220;Well, the Holy Spirit can come spontaneously,&#8221; is not mutually exclusive from the Holy Spirit coming in predictable ways. So we can affirm both at the same time.
And so we have to be very careful with these sort of objections because again, the objection is stated as if the Holy Spirit cannot come in predictable ways, but that&#8217;s not what Jesus says.

Is Confirmation a Catholic Invention? Or is it Biblical?

In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Joe Heschmeyer to discuss why some Christians believe receiving ashes is a sin.
Transcript:
Cy Kellett: Here I am. We&#8217;re sitting in Mass today. It was beautiful. Lots of kids came, families and all that. Here to the chapel at Catholic Answers. A wonderful priest came and celebrated Mass for us. Then the here comes the reading for the Gospel and Jesus is really direct. Stop showing off with your public prayer. Stop showing off with your public fat. Wash your face, anoint your head. Because, look, the one who&#8217;s drawing attention to themselves or him or herself is already rewarded. He says several times, they already have their rewarder. He already got his reward. Then we all walk out of the chapel with a giant black mark on our forehead like we&#8217;re trying to show off to everybody. How can we Catholics get away with this?
Joe Heschmeyer: Yeah, this is, it&#8217;s great because on the surface it looks like we are being flagrantly hypocritical, like not just violating what the Gospel tells us to do, but actually having that be the gospel reading of that day. But surely the church isn&#8217;t just like, we don&#8217;t care what the Bible says. Here&#8217;s the reading. Obviously something else is going on. And the important thing is Jesus says in Matthew 6, 1, beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them. It does not mean that practicing your piety before men is automatically wrong. There&#8217;s the question is what are your motives for doing so? Because the motives of the hypocrites was that they wanted to impress the people around them. And Ash Wednesday is not about impressing other people with, you know, how holy you are or anything like this. Quite the contrary. The point of Ash Wednesday is a public acknowledgment that I&#8217;m a sinner. And so it really is the opposite of what the hypocrites, what the Pharisees were doing. They were talking about how holy, how self righteous they were. We are doing the opposite. Now, I think it&#8217;s important to recognize Matthew 6, which talks about not performing your piety before men in order to be seen by them, comes half a chapter after Matthew 5:16, which says, Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who&#8217;s in heaven. So within this very short span of time, we&#8217;re told, basically there are times and places where it&#8217;s good to do good works that you can be seen by others, where you, you want to do the right thing and you want to inspire other people. You know, if you&#8217;ve ever raised kids, you know, there are times where you&#8217;re very intentional about, you know, getting on your knees and praying by your bed so that your kids can see you pray. Like, you want to both do the right thing and you want to set a good example by doing the right thing. That&#8217;s not what Jesus is condemning in Matthew 6. What Jesus is condemning in Matthew 6 is doing the right thing to try to impress other people so they&#8217;ll be pleased with you. Right. Rather than to set a good example by your good works so that they&#8217;ll give glory to your Father who&#8217;s in heaven. So in both Matthew 5 and in Matthew 6, Jesus talks about times where we might think, oh, maybe we should do this pious work publicly. And he tells us to do it when it&#8217;s going to lead people to give glory to our Father in heaven and not to do it if we&#8217;re just trying to get their accolades so that we can be seen by them and our reward is just the acclaim of others. So by all means, you should embrace Ash Wednesday. You should have ashes on your forehead, but you should do it for the right reasons. If you&#8217;re doing it to show how pious you are, you&#8217;re missing the point of Ash Wednesday. If you&#8217;re doing it as a call to conversion to lead people into right relationship with our Father in heaven, then it&#8217;s good and you should do it.
Caller: I gotta be honest with you, Joe. I feel like I&#8217;m mixed. Like, in terms of what you&#8217;re doing. Yeah.
Cy Kellett: Like, when I think about my motives, I&#8217;m like, yeah, my motives are always a little bit mixed. You know, I do wanna give glory to God. I also kind of like people to think, oh, look at Mr. Holy Pants over there. You know, that&#8217;s kind of. I&#8217;m kind of a. Yeah, I don&#8217;t know.
Joe Heschmeyer: Yeah. It&#8217;s actually a great point because the catechism even points out that a good work can become a bad work if you&#8217;re doing it for sinful motives. Like, if you&#8217;re doing it for purposes of your own pride, then it stops being a thing that you ought to do. And so we want to talk about it in these two senses. It is perfectly acceptable for you to have a mix of motives, some of them better than others. That&#8217;s absolutely normal. You can go to work because we&#8217;re spreading the gospel, but also because it&#8217;s a lot of fun, but also because you want to feed your family. All of those things can be true at once.
Caller: Right.
Joe Heschmeyer: Not every motive has to be the highest, purest motive. That&#8217;s not a requirement. And that would be a heavy burden. We wouldn&#8217;t want to impose on anyone. However, while you can have higher and lower motives, you should never be led by sinful motives. And so if you cross that line into a sinful desire to win the acclaim of others like the hypocrites have where you want to seem holier than you really are and and you want to give a false impression of yourself, that&#8217;s when it becomes a problem. But the mere fact, even, even the fact that you want to be held in good esteem by others is not by itself bad unless you&#8217;re willing to be a hypocrite to get there. You&#8217;re willing to, you know, be self righteous or present one image publicly while you&#8217;re a very different person internally. Those kind of things, that&#8217;s when it becomes problematic.
Cy Kellett: Got it. All right. Why aren&#8217;t you Catholic? That&#8217;s our question for the callers today. 888-318-7884. Joe Heschmeyer, our guest and I&#8217;m going to go right to Mackenzie in Pasco, Washington. I always like it when Mackenzie calls.

Why Do Some Christians Think Receiving Ashes is a Sin?

<div>What does the Church do about a priest who is an alcoholic but has to receive both species as part of offering Mass?</div><div>A priest who suffers from alcoholism and should not consume wine can apply for permission to use mustum. Mustum is grape juice that is either fresh or preserved by methods that suspend its fermentation without altering its nature (for example, freezing). If a priest is unable to obtain mustum, he may ask the bishop for permission to receive only the host.
</div>

How Does an Alcoholic Priest Say Mass?

I was at a confirmation Mass recently in a diocese that does not follow the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/restoring-the-order-of-the-sacraments">“restored order”</a> of confirmation before first communion, so the vast majority of confirmandi were teenagers. Now, this parish has a reputation for catechesis, liturgy, music, and preaching of a specially high order. It was a surprise to me, therefore, to see the ministry of lector assigned to a couple of the teens.
Maybe you have encountered something like this yourself at confirmations or even first communions—the deputizing of kids for lectoring and other liturgical ministries. What do you make of that? Me, I think this is a disedifying practice, for three reasons.
1. Most children and teenagers are just no good at reading at Mass. If you’re someone who doesn’t think any lay person should read at Mass, go ahead and keep scrolling. Okay. If you’re still here: proclaiming the written word in a liturgy is an art and a skill. It requires practice and it requires maturity.
Shoot, many adult lectors do not perform their office particularly well. They are too theatrical or too monotonous. They do not sufficiently work through the complex sentence structures of the epistles or the unfamiliar names and diction of the Old Testament to make the meaning of the passages ring clear to the congregation. They are not practiced in modulating pace, volume, emphasis, and other aspects of their delivery—everything that makes up the skill set of any orator and, when combined with humble prayerfulness, of a lector.
As the <a href="https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/the-mass/general-instruction-of-the-roman-missal">General Instruction of the Roman Missal</a> puts it, the lector must be “truly suited” to proclaiming the readings, so that the assembled faithful “may conceive in their hearts a sweet and living affection for the Sacred Scripture” (101).
If lots of adults who get regular practice at the ambo fail to do justice to this sacred task, how much less can we expect a child, on average, to do so in his first shot at it? Diminishing the proclaimed word so that young people can feel a little more special on their special day is a bad tradeoff.
2. It encourages a false sense of liturgical participation. I have been a volunteer in parishes that presented liturgical ministries like a college jobs fair. Check out the catalogue of all the cool things you can do at Mass to be an “active participant”! At a confirmation, especially—already often treated as a coming-of-age ceremony, a Catholic bar mitzvah—handing out liturgical roles to the initiates similarly confirms the notion that adult Catholicism means getting out of the pews and doing something at Mass.
But of course, active participation in the liturgy means consciously and intentionally uniting ourselves with the action of the Mass—in its prayers, postures, and songs, and especially through intentionally joining the priest in offering to the Father the saving sacrifice of Christ. Should not a confirmation or first communion Mass be ordered first to fostering in young people that truest sense of participation?
3. It creates a hierarchy among the sacrament recipients. Instead of encouraging solidarity among first communicants or confirmandi by emphasizing their shared experience, giving ministries to a choice few stratifies them. The boys and girls chosen to read (or sing or bring up the gifts or work the collection baskets) may not-unjustly feel they have been allotted the greater portion. The other kids are just getting the sacrament; the selected few are getting the sacrament and a special part in the performance.
This has the potential to create resentment for the other kids—perhaps even discouragement at not being holy or good enough to be a featured Mass-goer—and also to inhibit the “chosen” kids’ reception of the sacrament with due humility and focused reflection.
So, on their first communion or confirmation day, let the children come unto the Lord and let that be enough, say I. And let competent lay ministers do their part to serve the beauty, intelligibility, and smooth functioning of the Mass.

Some Hectoring for Kids’ Lectoring

Why Are Holy Orders Necessary for Some Sacraments?

Catholic school doesn't automatically make you a theologian...

God Talk: Reason, Arguments for God, and the Problem of Evil

In Exodus 1:15, Pharoah commands two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill every Hebrew male child among them coming out the womb. But neither of them did as Pharaoh commanded because they “feared God” (v.17).
When Pharaoh asked them why they had let the male children live, they responded, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and are delivered before the midwife comes to them” (v.19). The author then tells us that as a reward “God dealt well with the midwives” (v.20) and “because the midwives feared God he gave them families” (v.21).
“Wait a minute,” one might say, “how can God bless the midwives for lying to Pharaoh? Did God bless <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-it-ever-ok-to-lie">an act of lying</a> because they had a good intention? Or, perhaps, did their good intention make it not a lie in the first place?”
Let’s say for argument’s sake that the midwives’ response is in fact a lie. There’s nothing in the text that demands we say God is blessing them for what they say. The only clear thing that God blesses them for is “because they feared God.”
Now, God’s blessing of dealing “well with them” (v.20) is in some way connected to what they did. But the blessing doesn’t have to be for what they said. It could be for their good intention and not for their act. Given that God elsewhere forbids lying, and verse 21 speaks of an explicit motivation for their action (they feared God), it would be reasonable to conclude that God is blessing their good intention and not their act of lying.
But I don’t think this is in fact a lie. The midwives do not actually assert something to be true that they believe to be false. Notice what they say, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and are delivered before the midwife comes to them” (v.19).
This is a general statement about Hebrew women and their quick birthing, not a statement about the specific women that the two midwives assisted in giving birth. For the midwives to lie, they would have had to say something like, “The Hebrew women that we helped gave birth before we came to them.” That would be an act of communication that asserts something to be true when believed to be false. But that’s not what they say.
The act of the midwives, therefore, is not a lie. It is an act of<a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/mental-reservation"> mental reservation</a>. They make a general statement about midwives and Pharaoh erringly takes it as a statement about what they experienced.
On this reading, God not only blesses them for their good intention and their fear of God, but also for their cleverness in justly misleading Pharaoh away from punishing them.
So, this is not evidence that God blesses a lie when there’s good intention. Nor does it show that good intention can make a lie not a lie. God’s simply in favor of good ol’ fashioned wit.

No, God Did Not Bless a Lie

Catholic apologist Joe Heschmeyer joins Cy Kellett to tackle a thought-provoking question about salvation and the possibility of losing it. Drawing from Scripture, including 2 Peter and the story of Simon in Acts, Joe provides insightful biblical examples to clarify the Catholic understanding of salvation and the importance of repentance.
Transcript:
Caller: I recently went to a Baptist service with my husband, and the pastor had mentioned in his sermon about, you know, that you can&#8217;t lose your salvation. This concerns me. I know there are a lot of verses in the Bible, you know, that talk about this, but I found the verse in Second Peter Chapter Two about the angels, and God cast them in hell. I was just wondering if that may be a verse I could use with him to show that, you know, you can lose it. Not that you will, but that you can.
Joe: I would look at that entire chapter, and I&#8217;ll get into why I would use the entire chapter. But you are dead on. You&#8217;re right on the money. I&#8217;m going to give you a couple other passages that are worth using as well. One is to take concrete examples. So, for instance, in Acts Chapter Eight, there&#8217;s a man named Simon who believes and is baptized. Now that is the formula for being saved in the Bible, Matthew 6, or, excuse me, Mark 16:16, whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.
But then Simon commits the sin named after him, Simony. And Peter responds to him after he tries to buy the gift of confirmation. &#8220;Your silver perished with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money.&#8221; So notice he&#8217;s pronouncing a curse of damnation on him, is what it really is. Your declaration, I should say, of damnation on him that he&#8217;s spiritually dead. He says, &#8220;You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours and pray to the Lord that if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you&#8217;re in the gall of bitterness and in the bond of iniquity.&#8221;
So notice what he doesn&#8217;t say. He doesn&#8217;t say, &#8220;I guess you never really believed,&#8221; or &#8220;I guess you were never really baptized,&#8221; and those are the two easy excuses you could come up with. Instead, he treats it as him clearly falling away. So now he&#8217;s back in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity, and his heart is no longer right, and he needs to be forgiven of that sin. This is different than just, &#8220;You need to believe Jesus is Lord.&#8221; He doesn&#8217;t say that. He already knows Jesus is Lord. Simon actually says in the next verse, &#8220;Pray for me to the Lord that nothing of what you have said may come upon me.&#8221;
So Simon knows who Jesus is. He believes in him. And he even, you know, even like the sin he committed, he said, &#8220;Give me also this power that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.&#8221; So clearly, even as he&#8217;s committing the sin of Simony, he believes in the Christian message because otherwise he wouldn&#8217;t believe in a Holy Spirit or the power of confirmation in the first place. So he&#8217;s not having a crisis of faith. You can&#8217;t say he didn&#8217;t really believe. That doesn&#8217;t make any sense. He clearly believes, has clearly sinned in a way radically contrary to the Gospel, and is now in a place where his soul is imperiled. And he is praying that if it is possible, God will forgive him and restore him.
That&#8217;s the first where it&#8217;s just so abundantly clear that unless you are committed to not accepting what the Bible says there, it&#8217;s clear what is being said.
The second is a little bit more of a confusing passage because it takes a little bit of working through, but it&#8217;s worth having in your back pocket. It&#8217;s Hebrews Chapter Six, where it says, &#8220;For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened,&#8221; that&#8217;s an early term for baptism, &#8220;who have tasted the heavenly gift,&#8221; the Eucharist, &#8220;and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit,&#8221; that&#8217;s confirmation, &#8220;and have tasted the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come.&#8221;
So these are people who are fully sacramentally initiated and they&#8217;re well formed in the faith, who then, verse 5, &#8220;if they commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account, and hold him up to contempt.&#8221;
&#8220;For land which has drunk the rain that often falls upon it and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed. Its end is to be burnt.&#8221;
This is explicitly talking about those who were believers, who had the sacraments, were well formed in the faith, who had received repentance and then rejected God and embraced apostasy. Now, the reason I say you have to be a little careful with that one is because there was an early Christian misunderstanding of it that said, literally, if you commit a mortal sin after you&#8217;re a Christian, you can never be saved. That&#8217;s not what Hebrews 6 is saying.
Hebrews 6 is warning that if you accept Christ and then fall away, what can we tell you that you don&#8217;t already know? Like, you seem lost, just because there&#8217;s not some new information that&#8217;s going to come your way. Whereas like a pagan who&#8217;s never heard the good news can hear the good news and convert, you&#8217;ve heard it, know what&#8217;s on offer, and then have rejected it. So it is harder for such a person to be saved. It&#8217;s not impossible at the grace of God. But that&#8217;s the second passage I&#8217;d point out is Hebrews 6.
Then the third one is the passage you mentioned, Second Peter 2. In 2 Peter 2, St. Peter says, &#8220;False prophets also arose among the people, just as there will be false prophets among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.&#8221;
So right there in verse one, we&#8217;re told these evil teachers or false teachers were, number one, ransomed by Christ. He was the master who bought them. Number two, Christ is their master or was their master. And number three, they have rejected him by embracing heresy. And it&#8217;s not only the evil teachers that have to be worried about this, but also the people among whom St. Peter is writing to who might fall into the trap. Because remember, he says, &#8220;These false teachers will arise among you.&#8221;
And then it says in verse two, &#8220;And many will follow their licentiousness, and because of them the way of truth will be reviled, and in their greed they will exploit you with false words.&#8221; So he&#8217;s warning the people to whom he&#8217;s writing that they are not immune from falling away. And who&#8217;s he writing to? He says in 2 Peter Chapter 1, that he&#8217;s writing to those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours and the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Even those people can fall away and embrace destructive heresy instead.
And then he gives this laundry list to show that you can&#8217;t just rest content in this life. And the critical example is exactly the one you pointed to in verse four. That if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment, then it follows that he could do the same thing to you, that if the angels were able to fall, you&#8217;re also able to fall.
So &#8220;once saved, always saved,&#8221; pretending like it&#8217;s impossible to fall. How&#8217;d that work out for the devil? Not so great.
So I&#8217;m going to jump a little bit forward now towards the end of the chapter, because he goes through a lot of examples like this. But down in verse 20, towards the end of the chapter, after they&#8217;ve escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So they know Jesus, and not just in an intellectual way, they know him in such a way they&#8217;ve escaped the defilements of the world. They are again entangled in them, the defilements of the world, and overpowered. The last state has become worse for them than the first.
&#8220;For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them.&#8221; So they didn&#8217;t just know about it, they were on the right road and then turned back. It&#8217;s right there. It&#8217;s explicitly there.
And then finally, in the very last verse, it has happened to them according to the true proverb, &#8220;The dog turns back to his own vomit and the sow is washed, only to wallow in the mire.&#8221;
So anytime you hear someone preaching &#8220;once saved, always saved,&#8221; just present them with these passages and say, &#8220;Well, how do you explain Simon in Acts 8? How do you explain this explicit warning against Christian apostasy in Hebrews 6? How do you explain this entire chapter of 2 Peter 2?&#8221; And don&#8217;t tell me we are different than the angels, because Peter&#8217;s point is you should learn from what happened to the angels because it could happen to you as well.
Cy: What do you think? Angels are in heaven with God and they&#8230;
Joe: Yeah, exactly. They didn&#8217;t have the full beatific vision, but before, they rebelled. But they had more than we have here on earth and still rebelled. Right.
Caller: Okay. So I just want to make sure that that would be an appropriate verse to show him or chapter that I could show him regarding that issue.
Joe: I guess I could have just said yes. Yeah, that&#8217;s a great one.
Caller: Thank you so much!