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Martin Luther (1483-1546) took the Christian world by storm in the sixteenth century. His work “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Protestant-Reformation-Hans-J-Hillerbrand/dp/0061148474">The Freedom of a Christian</a>” (1520), turned the theology of Christ’s atonement on its head.
Catholics thought that faith in Jesus, works of charity, and all seven Catholic sacraments contributed to man’s just standing before God. They also thought that certain works, called <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-do-i-know-if-its-a-mortal-sin">mortal sins</a>, forfeit salvation. Luther, on the other hand, said that faith in Christ alone contributes to man’s just standing before God. His teaching separated such works from salvation, and he supported it with multiple biblical quotations. With works separated from justification, Luther then naturally denied the existence of mortal sins, saying that only a lack of faith would forfeit salvation.
Two significant responses to Luther came out the next year. These responses were not as careful and specific as modern scholarly responses are, but they give an interesting glimpse into the past.
A bishop in England, St. John Fisher (1469-1535), preached a highly developed <a href="https://www.amazon.com/English-Works-John-Fisher-Part/dp/1164945734">sermon</a> on Luther in 1521 to refute his teaching on salvation. King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547), who ultimately became Fisher’s enemy, wrote (with the help of St. Thomas More) on the same team as Fisher in his <a href="https://www.google.fr/books/edition/King_Henry_the_Eighth_s_Defence_of_the_S/jpFdAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&amp;gbpv=1&amp;dq=henry+viii+defense+of+the+seven+sacraments&amp;printsec=frontcover">Defense of the Seven Sacraments</a> (1521). Because Luther’s “faith alone” teaching eliminated the salvific element of most of the sacraments, Henry attempted to rebut Luther’s views with various arguments.
Fisher’s “Sermon Made Against the Pernicyous Doctryn of Martin Luther Within the Octaves of the Ascensyon,” covered Luther’s teachings and salvation by faith alone. Fisher agreed with Luther that a Christian’s state of justification is maintained by faith but disagreed that it is by faith alone. Faith needs to be coupled with hope and love. To explain this, Fisher utilized an analogy and various scriptural quotations.
Fisher’s setup analogy would have been effective for his congregation to grasp. He said, “What marvelous power, what wonderful energy is in the beams of the sun, which, as we see this time of year, spread over the ground and quicken and bring to life many creatures which before appeared to be dead.” The sun’s beams bring life typically, but in the winter, they are unable to make trees grow. Fisher compared this to Luther’s teaching of faith alone: “Faith is a thin light without the rebounding of hope and the heat of charity.” In Fisher’s estimation, Luther’s idea about salvation does not bring life. Life occurs only with hope and love, for “no matter how much light a person has, unless he also has the heat of charity . . . he is only a dead stick and like a tree without life.” Faith alone is not sufficient.
To support this analogy, Fisher cited Scripture. He quoted three passages:
<ul>
<li>Paul: “If I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have charity, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2).</li>
<li>James: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26).</li>
<li>Luke: “Give alms and everything will be clean for you” (Luke 11:41).</li>
</ul>
The passage from Paul prioritizes love above faith, the passage from James denies Luther’s “salvation by faith alone” teaching, and the passage from Luke gives a specific work that contributes to salvation. Fisher said of Luke 11, “What is this cleanness but the justifying of our souls which is promised for the work of almsgiving?” Fisher saw a good deed as integral to justification in Luke 11, so Luther, he insisted must be mistaken.
Fisher then quoted a flurry of passages, as modern apologists do. Among them:
<ul>
<li>Matthew 6:14, 7:21, 5:20, 7:26</li>
<li>Romans 2:13</li>
<li>James 1:27</li>
<li>Romans 8:13</li>
<li>Galatians 5:6</li>
</ul>
For Fisher, Luther was wrong on salvation by faith alone, for he contradicted Scripture.
King Henry VIII tag-teamed with Fisher in one of the best plays of historical irony: he quoted from Luther’s various writings, then utilized scriptural passages to combat Luther’s “salvation by faith alone” doctrine. Henry’s evidence against “faith alone” included various aspects, but the largest was probably his reliance upon James 2. Then Henry provided a practical and historical argument against Luther’s single mortal sin of a lack of faith.
Henry quoted James 2 multiple times throughout his work. For example, in the context of baptism and confession, “faith without works is dead.” Henry also quoted James in the context of anointing. In short, per Henry, James “so narrowly touches Luther everywhere, as if, by his prophetic spirit, he had plainly foreseen him. For when Luther . . . despises good works . . . St. James on the other hand disputes.”
On to mortal sin, because Luther said that “no sins can damn thee but infidelity [lack of faith] only,” thereby abolishing the normal Catholic list of mortal sins by works, Henry attempted to refute him with a historical argument. Luther needed to be rejected because he contradicted St. Hierom (probably old English for Jerome), who had said that penance is “the table after shipwreck.” This statement is an analogy for the teaching that, after initial justification, man sails onward toward God, but if he commits a mortal sin, then he will wreck his ship. The man will lose his justification, but through the sacrament of penance, he can reboard a ship and be justified again. If the work of the sacrament of penance is intimately involved in salvation, then Luther’s “faith alone” idea does not work. So Henry cited St. Hierom as an authority on his side.
Besides this historical argument, Henry emphasized that Luther’s denial of mortal sin was a bad teaching practically. For if Luther was right that only a lack of faith is a mortal sin, then this, according to Henry, would encourage men to sin. Such a teaching by Luther was the “mistress of all impiety.” For suddenly, Henry exclaimed, “adultery will not damn them! Murder will not damn!” Henry’s point was that if such sins did not damn Christians to hell, then why would Christians avoid them?
Luther shook Christian Europe when he separated good and bad works from righteousness and supported this with Scripture. Catholics responded to Luther with practical, historical, and biblical arguments. St. John Fisher argued that Luther’s teaching was comparable to the sun in the wintertime, unable to give life to the trees. To support this analogy, he provided numerous biblical citations that appeared to contradict Luther. Two of King Henry VIII’s rebuttals were that Luther contradicted St. Hierom and practically encouraged men to sin. James 2 was important to both Fisher and Henry, as it is important to apologists today.
And so, as spectacular as it sounds to those familiar with <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/yes-more-and-fisher-were-real-martyrs">St. John Fisher’s end</a>, King Henry shines as a coworker with Fisher in their respective rebuttals to Luther.

Martin Luther’s Most Shocking Opponent

How can I help a friend get out of a bad situation where a child is involved?

I’m contemplating divorce and need advice.

What bothers me about the church is that when someone is in a relationship with a narcissist, the Church doesn’t take into consideration the pain caused by that person. What are your thoughts on this?

My son is going through a separation due to his wife coming out as bisexual. Please pray for us. No one ever talks about the devastation that’s left behind.

Ive been married for 30 years and my wife no longer wants to be close to me and wants to separate. What’s your advice?

Is it better to stay in a marriage than to divorce? How do you deal with all the conflict and misery?

I want to share what helped my husband and I save our marriage.

I’m new to Catholicism and have been divorced 3 times. Will this preclude me from becoming Catholic or being married ever again?

Discerning Divorce

<div>In older times, were genders separated at Catholic Masses?</div><div>Yes. It was a fairly common practice in many Catholic cultures into the mid-20th century. Though the 1917 Code of Canon Law did not require separation of men and women at Mass it did recommend it (<a href="http://www.jgray.org/codes/cic17lat.html">canon 1262 §1</a>). The 1983 Code makes no mention at all of this practice.
The practice is ancient. It is explicitly mentioned in the 4th century by St. Cyril of Jerusalem and <a>St. Augustine. It most likely was inherited and carried over from the same practice of the ancient synagogues.</a>
Many older churches have a St. Joseph statue on one side of the main altar and a Blessed Mother statue on the other side as a remnant from when this practice was more common. Some older churches even have all the images of male saints on one side and female saints on the other.
The practice appears to have been common in some areas and not in others. It would be difficult to call it a universal custom but it was most certainly not uncommon.
</div>

Were Genders Ever Separated at Catholic Mass?

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

May the Blessed Sacrament Be Exposed on Good Friday?

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Is this belief about Mary and purgatory actually Catholic?

In the first of two conversations with Karlo about the soul, Cy asks Karlo to explain what a Christian means by &#8220;soul.&#8221; Where is the soul? Does everything have a soul? What is the point of having a soul? Using the tools of philosophy, Karlo gets us some answers.

What is a Soul?

What happens to tribes that are not exposed to Christianity?

I’m a sponsor for a friend in RCIA. He has been donating to a Shriners hospital in honor of his friend. Is this a problem for him as he discerns the faith?

What mechanism do you have to rationalize today being right compared to the Church being wrong in the past on topics like Geocentrism?

Why does Mark’s gospel not mention Mary’s presence at the crucifixion?

Why does Jesus have to announce our sins in the final judgment? Does purgatory exist after the final judgment?

Ask Me Anything

The presence and management of children at Mass is an issue that can generate more heat than light. I would like to tackle it here on the basis of a slightly deeper set of principles than is usual.
Full disclosure: I am a father of nine; my youngest has recently turned three. We have had to manage a child under five at Mass since our first was born in 2003; for most of the time, we’ve had two under five. That may sound extreme, but even a couple who have just three children at three-year intervals will have a child under five, and sometimes two of them, for eleven years. This is a big chunk of your life.
The first question is whether bringing small children to Mass is good in principle. Children under the “age of reason” (usually about seven) are not bound by canon law to attend Mass. Often parents have no choice but to bring them in order to attend themselves. But supposing they had the choice—if they could attend different Masses, or leave the children with friends—is the ideal to bring them or leave them behind?
One consideration is the importance of attending Mass together as a family. Children need to see their parents on their knees before Our Lord.
Another is that children need to learn how to behave in church by being there. I’ll come back to this point, but the expectations and cues involved in Mass attendance are not the same as for being in a restaurant, art gallery, or classroom. Furthermore, it is not the case that a seven-year-old with no experience of church will be more tractable than a three-year-old who has always gone. If you want to control your seven-year-old in church, you need to prepare the ground.
The third consideration may surprise readers: babies and small children benefit spiritually from the liturgy. First, the habits of prayer and attention to the liturgy they begin to develop are virtues. Second, the liturgy has a direct effect on them. In the Old Testament, “little ones” and “babies at the breast” are explicitly commanded to attend the solemn proclamation of the Law on two occasions (Deut. 31:12, Joel 2:15-7). In the Gospels, Jesus proposed children not as marginal liturgical participants, but as ideal ones, both in receiving his blessing (Matt. 19:13-15, Mark 10:13-16, Luke 18:15-17), and in singing at his solemn entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:15-16), in both cases defending this idea against objections.
Babies are given baptism; in some Eastern Rites, they are immediately <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/where-is-confirmation-in-the-bible">confirmed</a> and then regularly given Holy Communion. I’ve no quarrel with the Latin Rite discipline of delaying Holy Communion until the age of reason—it used to be much older—but we should not condemn the Eastern practice. If babies can be baptized, they can receive Holy Communion. Before the age of reason, they are without sin. In a similar way, patients in a coma can receive extreme unction.
Again, small children can receive the blessings that are given in the liturgy. In addition to the blessing at the end of Mass, the priest blesses us every time he says, “The Lord be with you” or “Peace be with you,” and when he gives the absolution after the Confiteor. He blesses the congregation with the Blessed Sacrament in Benediction, and with holy water in the Asperges. He blesses individuals with relics, blessed candles, and blessed ash. There are similar absolutions, sprinklings, and blessings in the Liturgy of the Hours.
The influence of rationalism is strong in our society, so I labor this point. Sacraments give grace to those open to it, not only to those who may have engaged intellectually with liturgical texts. Blessings (and exorcisms) not only increase our devotion, but combat the influence of Satan. The Catholic liturgy and sacramental system are not solely about eliciting an intellectual or emotional response; we have something stronger than that, something with objective efficacy.
If this is so, it follows that the ideal situation is where children of all ages accompany their parents at the liturgy, and we should encourage and support parents in bringing their children to church.
How do we do this? I believe that the best way to think about it is in terms of a culture: a set of practices, expectations, and attitudes, diffused through the whole community, which smooths the way for the raising of Catholic children, and attendance at Mass by everyone else as well. However, cultures are not built in a day. If things are not working well, there is no quick solution. Expectations need to be recalibrated, habits established, strategies tested. These things take time.
In every social media exchange on this subject, people complain about parents failing to control children. We can’t see the reality of the experiences behind these statements, but where these terrible parents really exist, the best person to tackle the problem is the pastor, in private. People exasperated at the situation should take their problems to him.
What I do know from personal experience is that some people would be satisfied only if children were completely absent from church. If we accept that having children in church is the ideal, there has to be some compromise from these non-parents. They must learn to tolerate a degree of movement and low-level noise, and remember how the catechisms define prayer: the lifting up of the mind and heart to God. You may prefer to pray in an atmosphere of complete quiet, but the effort to pray among distractions may be a better prayer.
The tut-tutting, sour comments, and dirty looks parents receive, from members of the congregation or indeed from the sanctuary or pulpit, are not only disheartening, but make their job infinitely more difficult, because it makes them tense. This communicates itself to small children, whose behavior becomes worse. As a strategy for dealing with misbehaving children, ticking parents off in public is massively counter-productive.
It is much harder for parents today than it was for previous generations. The lack of children in most churches makes those that do show up the focus of everyone’s attention, deprives new parents of role models, and encourages people to get used to zero background noise. At the same time, were parents publicly to adopt the parenting styles of our predecessors in the Faith—who, our critics like to say, never tolerated bad behavior from their children—members of the public would ring the police.
Many readers will be thinking at this point: just send parents and children into cry rooms, and the problem is solved. This is a solution, however, not in the sense that it helps to establish the habits I have been talking about, but in the sense that it makes those habits—and the culture that will arise from fostering them—less necessary. If all the small children in the congregation are in a soundproof box, parents need not develop strategies for dealing with their children, children need not develop habits of prayerfulness in church, and other members of the congregation need not get used to children being around.
Indeed, on the first, parents sometimes feel that they can let their children run riot in a cry room, since they are inaudible to the majority of the congregation. On the second, children are removed from the example of older children and adults, and the atmosphere of the liturgy, so are less likely to develop habits of quiet and prayerfulness. On the third, cry rooms can make non-parents less tolerant of children making a noise in the main church, since, they will say, they should be in the cry room.
Now, in a community with a very pro-family ethos, they could be just another option, alongside taking children outside or letting them play at the back. It takes only a couple of grumpy comments, however, to make parents feel that being outside the cry room is like being on parole. One squeak from the little one, and they’re going to be blamed, and far more than if there were no cry room.
I want to end this article by reiterating two points. The first is the importance of developing habits of prayer in small children. This cannot be done by leaving them at home when everyone else goes to Mass, though this is not wrong in itself. It cannot be done by letting them make as much noise as they like in a cry room, even if that is sometimes convenient. It cannot be done by taking them outside, though this may frequently be necessary. It is done not by taking them out, but by bringing them in to Mass, by exposing them to the atmosphere of the liturgy, and consistently encouraging them, over a period of years, to be quiet, and as they get older, to attend more closely to the action of the Mass. This process is best done in a liturgy that is not itself noisy or chaotic. It is going to bring some noise and disturbance into that liturgy, but this is something the whole community can value and support.
The second point is that parents can be looking after small children at Mass for many, many years, and they need to be included in the community with respect during that time. If parents are driven out of our churches when they are having difficulties with small children, they won’t come back later on. If we don’t welcome parents, there will not be another generation of Catholics.

How to Handle Kids in Church

Jimmy Akin explains the conditions that St. Paul was living in when he penned his Epistles that we read today in our Bibles.