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Tim Staples explains the Church&#8217;s doctrine on predestination, with emphasis on how a member of the Body of Christ can lose their salvation only by rejecting, with their own free will, the sufficient grace that God gives them.

Can Members of the Body of Christ Go to Hell?

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent explores the problem of &#8220;normalcy bias&#8221; in life-threatening situations.
Transcript:
TRENT:
We all have biases, but sometimes our biases can get us killed. That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to talk about today here on the Council of Trent. Mondays and Wednesdays we talk apologetics and theology, but Friday we talk about whatever I want to talk about. That is the essence of free for All Friday. And if you go back through Council of Trent, we&#8217;ve done, my goodness, we&#8217;ve done at least over 300 free for all Fridays. I&#8217;m sure as someone, if they had a lot of time on their hands, could see what kind of moods I was in, what kind of hobbies or issues were peaking my interest at various times over the past eight years. I remember when free for All Friday started, I was really on disaster fix for a while. I was talking about disasters here. There I still have a book on disasters that I would love to write at some point, so maybe we will work on that. 
But today I want to talk about a thing called normalcy bias and how it manifests in disasters. And the catalyst for the discussion is a disaster that took place recently took place last month. It took place on New Year&#8217;s Day actually in Switzerland. So this was in a town, a ski town called Kranz, Montana, the region of Aice in Switzerland. January 1st, 1:26 AM local time at this bar, there&#8217;s a bar called LA Constellation, and you&#8217;ve got over a hundred people in there. They&#8217;re still celebrating New Year&#8217;s, they&#8217;re partying and they start passing out the sparklers. They&#8217;re really aggressive. Sparklers shooting sparks up, and there&#8217;s a waitress coming out with champagne and there&#8217;s bottle toppers with the sparkler going off and the band is still playing. You can see all this because there&#8217;s people who are recording it on their cell phones. The sparklers go and then they catch light the ceiling because the ceiling is covered in black acoustic foam, which is incredibly dangerous because acoustic foam is highly, highly flammable. 
The fire spreads quickly, and when it does burn, it emits a extremely toxic gas within the smoke that can debilitate people very quickly. But what&#8217;s interesting about the disaster is you see the fire start spreading at first, though it spread slowly, just the flames start licking around at the foam and going, and people just stand there and they watch this and they&#8217;re filming it with their cell phone for a while for at least like 30 seconds. And here&#8217;s the thing, it doesn&#8217;t take long. It doesn&#8217;t take long, 60 seconds or 90 seconds, sometimes even in 60 seconds, a room can be engulfed in flames, especially if it has the right material that is not flame retardant, and suddenly you&#8217;re trapped and you can&#8217;t believe what&#8217;s happened to you. But why is it that people, they&#8217;re just standing there and they&#8217;re looking at this. I was reading an article about it online saying that most people have never even seen a structural fire, right? 
You go back in history, lots of people were familiar with fires because we didn&#8217;t have modern safety apparatuses to prevent fires. We have ground fault interrupting circuits, GFCI, that&#8217;s the one where you plug in your blender, your Vitamix into the kitchen, and there&#8217;s too much power going into the outlet, and suddenly all the power turns off from the outlet and you&#8217;re like, Hey, what&#8217;s going on? You got to press the red button to click it back on again. That&#8217;s to prevent surge overloads. We have all kinds of things, smoke detectors. Now, office buildings, commercial buildings have usually have sprinkler systems in them, so we have a lot of things that are able to prevent fires. Usually. I have several friends who are firefighters, and usually when they go out for fires, it&#8217;s for buildings that are under construction or abandoned buildings. Those are the only things where you have structural fires today. 
Usually not people&#8217;s homes or office buildings or places where they work. So the thing is, we&#8217;re not used to them, whereas back in the day, a hundred years ago, you would have fires were a regular occurrence, so people were naturally afraid of them. In fact, they&#8217;re afraid so much that you know the phrase, you can&#8217;t shout fire in a crowded building as a limit to free speech. That&#8217;s not actually what was said. A Supreme Court case where they said, you can&#8217;t falsely shout fire in a crowded building because there were disasters happened a hundred years ago. There was, I think it was called the Italian Hall Disaster, where somebody just yelled, fire in this hall, and everybody panicked and ran out. There was no fire. Some people think that these were union strike busters who were trying to start a disturbance, and so people were celebrating. 
They were dancing and someone yelled, fire falsely, and everyone rushes for the exits. They get trampled on the stairs, the exit doors swing in instead of out. I believe that was one of the details that might be incorrect actually, but the fact of the matter is there were not enough exits. People were trampled, and a lot of people died as a result. There was no fire, but people were so scared of one, they were rushing out of the building. But nowadays, if you say that, people are like, huh? What? People could see fire? You could see here in Kranz, Montana, just back in January of this year, people are watching, they&#8217;re seeing a fire spreading on the ceiling, and they&#8217;re like, whoa, crazy. And what do they got to do? They got to pull out their phone and record it. Everything has to be recorded nowadays, and they&#8217;re just recording this as it&#8217;s happening. 
And I have watched, so in Twin, I&#8217;ve watched the National Fire Safety Board do demonstrations where they set similar conditions, start a fire on a roof, and you watch it and at first, oh, it seems it&#8217;s going slowly. Then all of a sudden the smoke is filled half the room, then all the room is 60 seconds or the fire flashes over and just immediately explodes out. It goes from a small fire to a big fire in an instant. And that&#8217;s something that also witnesses believe may have happened in this fire, and people are caught off guard. And so what ended up happening is that in this Kranz Montana fire, recently, 116 people were injured, 83 with severe burns and 40 people died in this fire. They&#8217;re in this resort. You think normally you get people out, but you also underestimate in a crowded room how slow it takes to get people out if people leave at the last second. 
Or people will usually, in a disaster situation like a fire, especially when people have to leave a room quickly, they will go towards the exit, the entrance, they&#8217;ll go to the entrance, they came in. So even if there are sufficient exits for everybody to get out, most people will naturally default to the entrance where they came in. If it&#8217;s the main entrance, there&#8217;s going to be a bottleneck, and then you&#8217;re not going to be able to get people out. That&#8217;s why when I go to event venues, when I go anywhere, even I go to the movies, I always look around and try to pinpoint at least two additional exits where one of my closest exits and have them and commit them to memory. That way I can quickly get out. It reminded me of the station nightclub fire in Rhode Island as February 20th, 2003, a hundred people died. 
230 people are injured. People are going to see a band called Great White playing at this nightclub. It was overpacked. People couldn&#8217;t find exits. They&#8217;re all rushing towards the main exit, which was narrow. But the same thing happens. You have sparklers going off on stage illegally. They were not supposed to be there, ignites acoustic foam, and the musicians are still playing, and they look up and they see the fire and they&#8217;re like, oh, man, that&#8217;s not good. People are looking and they see the fire start to spread and they don&#8217;t do anything. They just watch it. Then the fire alarm starts to go off. There&#8217;s no sprinklers. And because there was a grandfather rule, because the building was so old, it wasn&#8217;t required to have sprinklers. I think that rule has been changed since then. If anything, the older buildings are the ones that need to be retrofitted with sprinklers, and it&#8217;s a heartbreaking video. 
Don&#8217;t watch it. If you go watch it, it&#8217;s very sad that the people are still filming as they&#8217;re leaving and you see people trying to get out and the bottleneck forms and they get stuck in there. And then the smoke just starts to fill it up after 30 seconds and people are screaming, the flames are shooting out, and you don&#8217;t understand just how fast it can spread. But the problem is also that people operate under a condition called normalcy bias. This is also called analysis paralysis, ostrich effect. First responders call it negative panic. So when you think of a panic, people are screaming, running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Instead, negative panic is when you don&#8217;t run around and you act like an ostrich with their head in the sand. You don&#8217;t want to do anything. You just stand there and you can&#8217;t function. 
You can&#8217;t operate because your senses are overwhelmed. At the time, Amanda Ripley has written a really great book called The Unthinkable, who Survives When Disaster Strikes and Why, and she studied several different disasters to see, well, who are the ones who make it out of a disaster, whether it&#8217;s like a plane crash or a ship sinking a fire, who makes it out and who doesn&#8217;t? And what do they have in common? And so she says that when there is a disaster, people tend to operate. There are three phases of their response, denial, deliberation, and decisive moment. So denial is the first one, and 80% of people freeze up in a disaster or they don&#8217;t function. They don&#8217;t operate, not maybe for a long time, but in the first instant, they just can&#8217;t process what is happening. So they undergo a kind of denial and they will check with other sources to make sure, is this really a disaster? 
Is this really that bad? And they&#8217;ll ask you, are you leaving? Are you going to leave? 70% of the people, of the survivors of nine 11 who got out of the World Trade Center had asked other people if they were going to leave first before they decided to leave. They checked with other people to see what the situation was. And the problem is that the reason we call it normalcy bias is that our brains are prone to operate thinking that each day will be normal, like the last one, sun rises, suns today will be relatively like yesterday. Our minds are not primed to operate with the assumption that things could be radically different tomorrow than they are today. We like to keep a schedule and a routine, if you will. And so when things dramatically interrupt it like a disaster, our brain can take a long time to try to process the new information. 
It takes about eight to 10 seconds for the brain to process radically new information. And if you don&#8217;t have the ability to process it during that time, you tend to freeze up. Evolutionary psychologists believe one reason that most people will freeze up in a disaster. There&#8217;s fight, flight and freeze. And so people won&#8217;t just won&#8217;t know what to do. I was watching a documentary about the Estonia. This was a, it wasn&#8217;t the Estonia. No, the Zebu Ferry. This was a ferry in the North Sea, one of those car ferries where you drive your car on and it drives off, and they forgot to close the front door so they couldn&#8217;t see it from the bridge. And the ship leaves, and then water gets in when they&#8217;re out in rough seas and on a ferry, it&#8217;s very unstable because of the cars and the open area when water gets in. 
And so it capsized really quickly. But even as it was starting to capsize, one survivor talks about how he was running out and he saw his parents, and I think his sister just kind of staring off and he&#8217;s like, come on, let&#8217;s go, let&#8217;s go. And they just stood there and they were just staring off into the distance. They couldn&#8217;t even move. Their brains just could not process the idea that the ship they were on is sinking. It just wasn&#8217;t even in their minds. And now with all this dramatic new information, the ship is at a 45 degree angle. Water&#8217;s coming in, they can&#8217;t function because they hadn&#8217;t countenance that something like this could happen to them. That&#8217;s why many years ago when I went on the Catholic Answers Cruise, I was there by myself. But during the night, I practiced a drill. I had my clothes laid out with a life jacket, and I got up in the middle of the night, put on my clothes in the darkness, put on my headlamp. 
I brought a headlamp, had a life jacket, clothes headlamp, turned it on, and I was able to do that in about 10 seconds, and then I could make it out the door. I have a headlamp on and go on my way. Yeah, I know that&#8217;s really nerdy. Yeah, I know, but hey, at least I&#8217;m the one who&#8217;s going to be, I&#8217;ll make it to the lifeboat people. It reminds me of Dwight shrewd on the office when Michael drives the car into the lake and the car sewing of water, and Dwight says, do not panic. I have repaired for this. That&#8217;s what I&#8217;ll probably doing. Do not panic people. I prepared for this. But the Titanic, when the Titanic was sinking, normalcy bias caused a lot of people to die. They weren&#8217;t willing to get into lifeboats. They froze because they just had no thought in their head that this ship could actually sink. 
It was unsinkable. How could they have that? How could that possibly happen? And so they weren&#8217;t able to operate in that way, and people didn&#8217;t get into lifeboats. A lot of lifeboats in the Titanic were lowered half full because people felt more secure on this big ship, even though it&#8217;s sinking than on a little tiny boat. But it doesn&#8217;t have to be gigantic disasters either. It can be small events that can feel like disasters for us. So one example the researchers give are car crashes. Now, car crashes are a fairly normal thing. We drive a lot. And usually each year you will see, maybe you won&#8217;t see the crash itself, but you&#8217;ll see the aftermath of a car crash on the side of the road and you&#8217;ll say, oh, oh, that&#8217;s pretty bad. But the problem is, while we see a lot of car crashes, we&#8217;re not usually personally involved in car crashes. 
That&#8217;s a rare thing to happen to people. And so when we do get in a car crash, especially a serious one, it&#8217;s a totally brand new experience for people. And so you&#8217;ll have a disassociative moment, not be able to process what&#8217;s going on, and you&#8217;ll have this kind of normalcy bias will creep in thinking, oh wow, this can&#8217;t really be happening. Of denial. Then deliberation and then decisive moment. Like, what am I going to do in big disasters or smaller disasters in our lives? Did I say this before? I&#8217;ll have to check, but I can&#8217;t remember. I had to start and stop this episode. Evolutionary psychologists believe that normalcy bias could be the result of an instinct to protect prey from predators. That why would you freeze up in a life-threatening situation? Well, thousands of years ago, one of the biggest life-threatening situations we faced as animals and any animal faces is getting eaten by another animal, right? 
And if you&#8217;re scared, not sure what to do. Research has shown that prey is sometimes less likely to be eaten by a predator if they freeze up and they don&#8217;t move, right? Remember the Jurassic Park rule at the T-Rex, Ian freeze. Allen&#8217;s telling him not to move because the T-Rex s him and he moves anyway, try to draw him away. And so that could be the case. This is just an evolutionary relic, a relic of our evolutionary past where animals were more likely to survive in situations where they could get eaten, freeze and don&#8217;t move, and the predator goes and ignores them. That&#8217;s just one proposed solution. Evolutionary psychology, a lot of it&#8217;s kind of flimflam because you&#8217;re just proposing these theories that can&#8217;t really be tested. So it&#8217;s interesting in that respect, but otherwise, the normalcy bias is there. So be aware of it. 
And if you go out, just try to think yourself, okay, what would I do if the worst happened? You&#8217;re in a new place. Wherever you are, count the exits to the seats on a plane. As long as you prime that in your head, it will at least give you a fighting chance to get out of a bad situation because you&#8217;ve thought about it, you thought about it in your head, it&#8217;s going to be totally brand new to your brain. So the book, if you&#8217;re interested, is called Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley. So I would definitely recommend that, and maybe I&#8217;ll do a full free for all on that book here in the future, so as it&#8217;s the unthinkable, who survives when disaster strikes and why. But thank you guys so much and hope you have a very blessed day.

FFAF: How “Normalcy Bias” Can Kill You

What is dispensationalism?

Are we currently in the End Times?

What are the signs that will precede the return of Jesus?

Did Jesus get end-of-the-world prophecies wrong?

Will Jesus really return—like “a thief in the night”?

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“Are we currently in the End Times?” This episode explores the signs of Jesus’ return, delving into questions like what dispensationalism is and whether Jesus got end-of-the-world prophecies wrong. Join us as we navigate these important topics and more in this thought-provoking discussion.
[Encore episode, original air date July 25, 2025]
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Are We Currently in the End Times? Signs of Jesus’ Return

A follow up to his video, &#8220;Why Liberal Catholicism Is Dying,&#8221; Joe examines the results to a follow up study on priests in America, which results show some good, some bad and some ugly.
Transcript:
Joe:
They interviewed more than a thousand priests. It doesn&#8217;t appear they got anyone saying that they were extremely liberal. There is this sea change of orthodoxy coupled with compassion, but that&#8217;s the good news. Let&#8217;s talk about the bad news. The bad news is young priests are burning out. Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer, and today I want to briefly share the good, the bad, and the ugly about the future of the priesthood in the Catholic church in America. And I&#8217;m going to be looking at the 2025 report by the Catholic Project. If you&#8217;re not familiar, this is a group out of CUA Catholic University of America where they did a massive study looking at Catholic priests in 2022, did a large survey of several or a few thousand priests and then they were able to get follow up more in depth survey results in 2025 with 1,164 of those original priests.
So this let them go a little deeper. You may remember I did an episode earlier looking at young priests at a very broad level showing younger and newly ordained priests are way more politically conservative and way more theologically, orthodox and older priests. But here they went a little more in depth. So let&#8217;s us get a better view of what that concretely means because terms like orthodox and conservative could mean a lot of things to a lot of people. And so we now have I think a fuller, more nuanced picture. So I want to do something of a follow-up episode and then I&#8217;ll link to the original episode at the end of this one just exploring the good, the bad and the ugly because I think there&#8217;s some really good signs, but I think we would be lying if there weren&#8217;t some things that are also alarming about the picture facing young priests.
And I think the silver lining from that is there are things you and I can concretely do. So with that said, let&#8217;s start with the good. There is this sea change of orthodoxy coupled with compassion. I don&#8217;t mean to say that compassion is new. I mean to say that the kind of theological orthodoxy we have is not some cold pharisaic rigors, but rather we see something like a bleeding heart Catholic orthodoxy, which is great. It&#8217;s exactly what we would want from our priests. These study authors talk about, as I alluded to this massive generational shift and we see it both in political and in theological views. I&#8217;m much less interested in the political, much more interested in the theological, but these are both too big not to mention. So in both the 2022 and the 2025 study, we see again these huge shifts. So priests who were ordained before 19 75, 60 1% considered themselves either very or somewhat politically liberal.
Only 15 or fewer than 15% consider themselves politically conservative. Now if you compare that to those ordained since 2010, those who consider themselves somewhat or very conservative went from 15% to 51%. And meanwhile, the number of people considering themselves politically liberal has dropped to about 11% of priests ordained in the last 15 years. So there is this massive shift, and in fact even there that 11% is only priests who consider themselves somewhat liberal in that cohort, remember they interviewed more than a thousand priests. It doesn&#8217;t appear they got anyone saying that they were extremely liberal or very liberal. Maybe they did. There&#8217;s no number for the dark blue in that figure. So it looks like the radical left wing kind of priest is simply a thing of the past, and I&#8217;ve mentioned that before, but I&#8217;m much more interested in the theological trajectory because like it or not, there is a clear connection between the self-described politically liberal and the theologically progressive or less orthodox, more heterodox or heretical priests.
I don&#8217;t know a better way to put that, but we see this also has a massive generational bent to it as well. Among priests ordained before 1975, more than 70% describe themselves as theologically progressive. These days priests ordained in 2010 or later only 8%. And I wish there was a chart for this because I think the more you press someone on whether they&#8217;re extremely progressive, et cetera, you just see this total collapse that the radical, let&#8217;s question everything. Theology that you sometimes would get from left-wing priests, sometimes they&#8217;ll still get from older kind of baby boomer priests. It doesn&#8217;t draw anyone to the priesthood, and we can say that pretty definitively. Now by contrast, the young priests, over 70% of them consider themselves conservative or orthodox theologically or else very conservative slash orthodox. Only about 20% of them even consider themselves kind of theologically middle of the road.
Now, again, this leaves a lot of questions about what that actually means, but I think we can take a closer look at a few things. Number one, it doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re just blindly supporting whatever the Trump administration says because remember, you&#8217;ve got a lot of people who consider themselves conservative priests and that might be sounding alarm bells for people saying, well, what about all the bad stuff? What about sometimes inhumane crackdowns with ice and everything else? And it&#8217;s worth at least pointing out that it doesn&#8217;t appear that these priests are just blindly partisan. They are putting Phil of Jesus Christ first, at least in terms of their own self-reporting. Two thirds of priests who identified as very conservative still said they were at least somewhat concerned about the Trump administration&#8217;s policies among priests who identified themselves as conservative young priests who identified themselves, oh no, sorry, that&#8217;s all priests who identified themselves as conservative.
83% still said that they were concerned about Trump administration policies. So don&#8217;t hear conservative to just mean these are MAGA priests who will just co-sign whatever the administration does. It&#8217;s clear that they&#8217;re obviously going to be more conservative on some prudential issues, but it doesn&#8217;t seem like they&#8217;re doing this just blindly. In terms of the theological shift and what all this means, pastorally, Luke Kain, who has a good analysis of this in the pillar points out that the priestly priorities are really notable here. Only 11% of the priests ordained before 1980 said access to the traditional Latin mass should be a priority compared with 20% of those ordained between 1980 and 1999. So you see it basically doubles from about 10% to about 20% and then basically doubles again to almost 40% because 39% of those ordained in the 21st century think access to the traditional Latin mass should be a priority.
They&#8217;re also these younger priests more likely to focus on eucharistic devotion as a priority and less likely to focus on things like climate change, immigration, LGBT issues, poverty, racism, and social justice. There is one particular chart that I think drives all of this home. It&#8217;s figure 12 in the 2025 report, and it might be too small for you to see on the video, but if you pull up the report, you can see each of these issues and they just ask priests which things they can consider a priority. And I&#8217;m going to get more into that in a second, but I want to compare two issues, L-G-B-T-Q community versus access to traditional Latin mass. Now look, I think there&#8217;s a perfectly orthodox way of saying yes, people who are same sex attracted need to be ministered to, et cetera, and so just because someone says it&#8217;s priority or it doesn&#8217;t tell you what they think ought to happen, nevertheless, this is going to be a notable shift because among the oldest generation, those ordained before 19 80, 60 6% of them considered the L-G-B-T-Q community a priority, whereas the TLM community only 11%, so it&#8217;s a six to one variation, they&#8217;re six times more likely to regard the L-G-B-T-Q outreach as a pastoral priority and not Latin mass.
In contrast, among the priests ordained in the last 25 years, that six to one ratio has disappeared. They&#8217;re actually slightly more likely to treat the TLM as a pastoral priority 39 to 37%. So it&#8217;s about a one-to-one ratio now instead of a six to one ratio. Again, it&#8217;s a massive change. And so if you&#8217;re wondering what&#8217;s the future of the liturgy going to look like, well imagine when those people become bishops because in many of these cases, these priests are too young to be seriously considered its bishops, but this is the future of the diocese in America that this is what a lot of pastoral governance is going to look like a generation or two from now. So you can see on all sorts of issues, they&#8217;re less concerned about climate change, less concerned about immigration, less concerned about L-G-B-T-Q. They&#8217;re slightly less concerned about poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity, although still pretty concerned about it.
They&#8217;re more concerned about eucharistic devotion, more concerned about access to the TLM. They&#8217;re less concerned about racism and social justice, although still pretty concerned about social justice and they&#8217;re not particularly concerned about ality. So that&#8217;s kind of a data dump, but it should give us a little bit more of a sense of what does it mean when we hear that these young priests are theologically and politically conservative and orthodox. There is a cudgel that you might hear, which is, oh, well these guys, they hate the pope. They&#8217;re dissenting from the Pope and they dislike Pope Leo and et cetera, et cetera. And in the numbers, we just don&#8217;t see that as true overall, 86% of priests said that they had either quite a lot or a great deal of confidence in Pope Leo the 14th. Now, granted, this is over the summer. This is in kind of his papal honeymoon period, but that&#8217;s still massive.
And another 13% said they had some confidence. Only 1% of priests said they had very little confidence. That&#8217;s really good. That&#8217;s a really good sign. Additionally, most believed that relationships between the Vatican and the US would improve under polio. 28% said it would improve significantly. 51% said it would improve somewhat, only 3% thought it would get worse. Only 17% thought it would save the same. So four out of five of priests are just like, yeah, could and good for the church in the us. I want to go back now to that issue about priorities in the American church. Across the board. Priest think that we need to focus on young adult ministry, family formation, marriage prep, evangelization. These aren&#8217;t politically hot button, these aren&#8217;t controversial. These aren&#8217;t cross-generational or political in any way. So people don&#8217;t talk about this, but those are big things and those are things that priests are rightly focused on.
These are followed pretty closely by concerns for poverty, homelessness, food insecurity, as well as pro-life issues. Then following that, you have immigration, Hispanic slash Spanish language ministry, social justice, then eucharistic devotion, then racism, then artificial intelligence, which I thought was actually pretty fascinating to see it score as high as it did, followed by climate change slash ecology, ality, L-G-B-T-Q, and then finally access to the traditional Latin mass. But again, on that final one, remember there&#8217;s an enormous generational divide. So I think that the access to the TLM is going to rise in the ranks of priority as you get a lot of these younger priests becoming older. I think it&#8217;s also maybe helpful to hear the kind of things that priests are grappling with. Those are a bunch of different really big issues, really important issues that people want a good Christian witness on, and they often want a good Christian witness on from the priest.
And so just bear that in mind. Whatever your particular issue is that your pastor or your bishop may be trying to be a good witness and a good steward, a good advocate for a bunch of other really important issues as well. So maybe cut &#8217;em a little slack. Now, in the 2025 report, there is one part I didn&#8217;t love, which is they compared which things these different priests saw as a priority and which things they actually had a ministry for. And so only 6% of priests actually had an L-G-B-T-Q Ministry. Okay? I get what they&#8217;re doing there. But with an evangelization for instance, they&#8217;re less likely to have evangelization ministries than they&#8217;re to have pro-life ministries. There&#8217;s something worth exploring there like where we put in our actual time, money, and energies. But I have some caveats with it, and I have caveats because of Pope and John Paul ii, who I&#8217;m recording this on Wednesday, it&#8217;s his thief day.
He warns that we&#8217;re not saved by a magic formula. We&#8217;re saved by a person, Jesus, who says, I&#8217;m with you, and therefore we don&#8217;t need to go out and invent a new program. Rather, the program as it is, is simply the gospel and it&#8217;s living tradition. It&#8217;s ultimately centered in Christ himself. And this is a program which doesn&#8217;t shift with times and cultures. You don&#8217;t have a generational divide for who Jesus applies to. Okay, that&#8217;s a lot, but that&#8217;s the good news. Let&#8217;s talk about the bad news. The bad news is young priests are burning out at a remarkably high rate. This is something that I think we need to take very seriously. Now to measure this, they ask priests to agree or disagree with the following statements. It happens more and more often than I talk about my ministry in a negative way during my ministry work.
I often feel emotionally drained and I usually feel worn out and weary after my ministry work. So you can measure for yourself whether those are good or bad kind of questions to ask. But those are the questions they&#8217;re asking. And what they find is that diocesan priests are more likely than priests and religious orders to be burnt out. 7% of diocesan priests report having high burnout using this kind of method compared to only 2% of priests in religious orders in terms of having at least some burnout, 44% of death and priests report being at least somewhat burnt out compared to 31% of those in religious orders. That&#8217;s already going to be our first indication that this is at least largely about the amount of work we&#8217;re putting on the shoulders of our priests. And we also see a big generational gap. So in response to the prompt, I&#8217;m expected to do too many things that go beyond my calling as a priest.
Older priests, only 13% said yes to that among those who ordained 2000 or later 45%. That&#8217;s huge, and that&#8217;s worth exploring. So it raises this question, well, is this an issue of too much being put on the shoulders of younger priests or are they just expecting not to do things that the older priests knew they were going to have to do? One of the priests interviewed in the report talks about how he&#8217;s extensively helping with vocations, youth camps, local charities, that he works 60 to 70 hours. He doesn&#8217;t really, he will often go weeks with no real day off, and he puts an average of 20,000 miles on his car per year. Those are things I think we should be watching out for because this is one of those things that can come back and bite us in a big way. As the report says, one explanation is that priests are just being asked to do more and that a lot of young priests, one indication of this is a lot of young priests are serving in multiple parishes significantly.
There wasn&#8217;t an actual relationship that they could measure between the number of parishes a priest was serving in and burnout, which at least anecdotally I would say makes sense for this reason that at least in the diocese, archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, the diocese, I know the best, the large parishes are way more taxing. There&#8217;s a lot more things going on every night of the week. And then you go out into rural Kansas and you might have two or three parishes that are kind of in a general geographic region. So you might be in the car more than you would in the suburb, but your number of people you&#8217;re ministering to is a lot fewer. It&#8217;s a much more manageable workload. You might actually be bored rather than overwhelmed. In any case, I think this is something we need to take very seriously, that priests are burning out, and we don&#8217;t want to tax young priests to such an extent that they end up wanting to leave ministry.
Something like 3% of the priests they surveyed had considered leaving ministry. That&#8217;s relatively low, but it&#8217;s still too high, and that number could go up in a heartbeat because someone just has a really horrible month or two. So I would just say for the laypeople watching this, try to find ways of making your priest&#8217;s life a little easier, particularly if this is a priest who has a lot on his plate, so that&#8217;s the good and the bad. Let&#8217;s get to the ugliness, which is the ugliness of loneliness. And this is an epidemic I would suggest nationwide, but priests are not immune from it. And also if they&#8217;re overworked and they&#8217;re living alone, they might be particularly susceptible to this. So the questions that they asked was actually based on, I believe, A-U-C-L-A study on loneliness. The questions are, how often do you feel that you lack companionship?
How often do you feel left out, and how often do you feel isolated from others? And you score each of those from one to three from not very often to a lot. And so if you have a score of six or higher cumulatively, so if you do 1, 1, 1, only be three, you do 3, 3, 3, that&#8217;d be nine, that&#8217;d be the most lonely you could be. So a six or above, they rank you as lonely. In terms of loneliness, 27% of the older generation of priests considered themselves lonely, then they may not have used that word, but in terms of how they answered the questions, that skyrockets to 45%. So these two things, the burnout and the loneliness, I think we need to tackle together and say, these are good priests with the heart for Jesus Christ, who are striving to live out orthodoxy in a compassionate way, and we should do more to make their lives a little easier.
So it may be as simple as if you are on good, friendly relations with a priest, let them come over and just have a meal or test some time away. Sometimes that&#8217;s extra work. Know your priest well enough. Are they an introvert, an extrovert? How do they like to unwind? But if there are ways of making their life a little easier, you can bond with them, connect with them. You can help with both the burnout and the loneliness. And please, as a final bit of advice, pray for priests because they are targets spiritually. They&#8217;re susceptible to all of the temptations and everything else, everyone else&#8217;s, and we need them for the future of the church. Now, as I mentioned, I recently did a video exploring the 2022, so if you want to hear more about the political and theological shifts, you can check that out over here. I hope you enjoy that much deeper dive. Alright, for Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
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New Priests Are MORE ORTHODOX Than Ever, but there’s a catch…

In this episode Trent responds to a recent article from Fr. Thomas Reese called “Religious conservatives have lost LGBTQ rights battle. It’s time to surrender.” Trent shows why this is a bad option and gives us cause for hope (along with a healthy dose of pop culture references along the way).

No Fr. Reese, the Church Will Never Surrender

I admit that many popular expressions peeve me, whether it’s “I could care less” for “I couldn’t care less,” or “you can’t have your cake and eat it, too” instead of the clearer “eat your cake and have it, too.” But there’s one idiom in particular that gets my goat: “It’s not the end of the world!” After all, consider what we mean by it: as <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/not-be-the-end-of-the-world">Collins Dictionary</a> explains, “if you say that something bad is not the end of the world, you are trying to stop yourself or someone else being so upset by it, by suggesting that it is not the worst thing that could happen.” 
Theologically, this is a catastrophe. The early Christians looked forward to the end of the world and the return of Jesus, and even longed for it. The second-to-last verse in the Bible, after all, says, “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20). St. Paul could speak of the early Christians as “awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). And we claim to share this desire. Each Sunday at Mass, we say in the Nicene Creed that we “look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” 
But do we really? Or do we think of it more as the idiom suggests, as “the worst thing that could happen”? 
Partly, it may be because of how we get there. The Catechism points out that “before Christ&#8217;s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers” (675). Jesus says that in this trial, “many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold” (Matt. 24:12-14). He describes it as a period of “great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now”—so difficult that “if those days had not been shortened, no human being would be saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” (vv. 21-22).  It&#8217;s perfectly rational to pray “that you may have strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21:36). 
But for many of us, it’s what follows that most alarms us: the prospect of the world ending, and of standing before Jesus to be judged. It’s this fear that I want to address, because I suspect it reveals something about our choices. If everything we’re living for is here below, the prospect of the world’s end (or even our own death) must be troubling, since it’s the loss of everything we have. But as Jesus has explained, it doesn’t have to be this way (Matt. 6:19-21): 
<blockquote>Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.</blockquote>
Likewise, the moment in which we’re judged—whether at our individual judgment at the moment of our death (Heb. 9:27) or the Final Judgment at Christ’s return (Matt. 25:31-46)—is going to be the best or the worst moment of our entire lives. 
So perhaps we dread the return of Jesus because we’re not ready, either individually or in terms of the whole human race. That latter fact seems to be one reason that the Lord hasn’t returned already. When the early Christians grew impatient that the Lord hadn’t already come back in their lifetimes, St. Peter responded by suggesting that there may be millennia more to wait, in order to give humanity more time for repentance (2 Pet. 3:8-9): 
<blockquote>But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. </blockquote>
So how can we go from being a “not the end of the world” people to a “come, Lord Jesus!” people? Comparing his return to a thief coming in the night, Jesus tells us both “watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” and that “therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect” (Matt. 24:42, 44). Being watchful for the Lord is an important element of getting ready for the Lord, so that his return is good news. 
The <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html">Church’s liturgical year</a> aims to help us here. After all, the liturgical cycle exists to unfold “the whole mystery of Christ, from the incarnation and birth until the ascension, the day of Pentecost, and the expectation of blessed hope and of the coming of the Lord.” In this time of Advent particularly, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20020513_vers-direttorio_en.html">we’re reminded</a> that “it is not possible coherently to celebrate the birth of him ‘who saves his people from their sins’ without some effort to overcome sin in one&#8217;s own life, while waiting vigilantly for him who will return at the end of time.” In other words, we can’t separate our watchfulness in Advent, as we yearn for Christmas and the Lord’s return, from our readiness in Advent, our spiritual preparation for his arrival. 
Even the name “advent” (which means “coming”) encourages us in a twofold attitude of “waiting-memory of the first, humble coming of the Lord in our mortal flesh” as well as “waiting-supplication for his final, glorious coming as Lord of History and universal Judge.” We know that Jesus came into the world quite unexpectedly in his first coming, with a faithful few watching and waiting. We know that he intends to do so again. And so we should strive to be among those wise virgins who awaited the Bridegroom with lighted lamps (see Matt. 25:1-12). 
But it’s not enough simply to get ourselves ready. As Catholic Christians, we want to help others to know the gospel, and to prepare for the coming of Christ, and to be incorporated into the kingdom of God. Eschatology—the study of the end of the world—is closely connected to evangelization. Remember, that’s why St. Peter said Jesus hadn’t returned yet. And so, in the words of the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_ad-gentes_en.html">Second Vatican Council</a>, “missionary activity tends toward eschatological fullness.” Or in Jesus’ own words, “this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations; and then the end will come” (Matt. 24:14).<span data-ccp-props="{&quot;134233117&quot;:false,&quot;134233118&quot;:false,&quot;201341983&quot;:0,&quot;335551550&quot;:1,&quot;335551620&quot;:1,&quot;335559685&quot;:0,&quot;335559737&quot;:0,&quot;335559738&quot;:0,&quot;335559739&quot;:0,&quot;335559740&quot;:259}"> 
So perhaps this Advent is a good time to ask yourself (or better yet, God): am I watchful and hopeful to meet Jesus, or does the idea fill me with dread? And how can I better prepare my own heart, and my neighbor, for the coming of Christ at Christmas, at the hour of our deaths, and at the end of time?

The End of the World…Do You Feel Fine?

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“Our calendars are mistaken. Jesus wasn’t born in 1 B.C. but around 7–6 B.C.”
DEFENSE
The year of the calendar is not a matter of faith.
The Anno Domini (Latin, “Year of the Lord”) system of reckoning was created in A.D. 525 by a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis “the Short” or “the Humble”). It later came into international use. Made centuries after Christ, this calculation is in no way essential to the Faith. The Church does not teach Christ was born in any particular year, and it is universally recognized that Dionysius’s calculations are probably slightly off (Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 3: The Infancy Narratives, 61–62).
The estimate that Christ was born in 7–6 B.C. is based on the view that Herod the Great died in 4 B.C. Matthew records that, attempting to kill Jesus, Herod slaughtered the male infants two years old and under in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:16). This suggests that Jesus’ birth took place two or more years before Herod’s death, leading many to pro- pose a date of 7 or 6 B.C.
The view that Herod died in 4 B.C. has been popular for some time, but recent studies indicate that this view is probably wrong and that the traditional date of Herod’s death, 1 B.C., is correct. This would put the birth of Jesus in the 3–2 B.C. time frame, which is when the Church Fathers say it was. A large majority of early Christian sources place Jesus’ birth at this time (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed, 291).
Confirmation is found in the Gospel of Luke. It records that John the Baptist began his ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, or A.D. 29 (Luke 3:1). Shortly afterward, Jesus began his own ministry and Luke reports that he was about thirty years old at the time (Luke 3:23). Deducting thirty years from A.D. 29, and taking into account the fact that there is no “Year 0” (instead, there is a jump from 1 B.C. to A.D. 1), that would indicate Jesus was born around 3–2 B.C, when the Church Fathers say he was. Thus Dionysius Exiguus was probably only a year off.
TIP
On the problems with dating of Herod’s death to 4 B.C., see Finegan’s book as well as Andrew E. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul.
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The Year Jesus Was Born

Protestantism’s Most Unhistorical Doctrine

Do you have resources available in Spanish? Is CIR a supplement or replacement for other 12 step programs?

I’m in recovery and just want to encourage others. I went to Mass, gym and meetings everyday.

What resources do you have that we can use? My wife and I think my son has a drinking problem?

The last 7 years of my marriage I discovered my husband had a sex addiction. I eventually filed for divorce. What is known about this kind of addiction and its correlation to abuse?

I’m recovering but being exposed to new age theology through recovery programs. How do we address this?

I’m on methadone and having a hard time quitting. I’m having a hard time convincing myself this is a sin.&nbsp;

If you suspect your child has a drinking problem, you&#8217;re not alone. We share Catholic resources, signs to look for, and how parents can respond with both love and accountability—while staying rooted in faith.
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What Can I Do If My Child Struggles with Alcohol Addiction?

In this special anniversary show, Trent reflects on his favorite and least favorite moments as an apologist, what the future holds for debates, and most importantly: his favorite Power Ranger? Anything goes in this special Q+A episode of the Counsel of Trent!
Want more from Trent Horn?
<ul>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/made-this-way-how-to-prepare-kids-to-face-todays-tough-moral-issues/">Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/why-were-catholic-our-reasons-for-faith-hope-and-love/">Why We&#8217;re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, And Love</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-how-to-talk-about-our-cultures-toughest-issue/">Persuasive Pro-Life: How to Talk About Our Culture’s Toughest Issue</a></li>
<li><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/answering-atheism-how-to-make-the-case-for-god-with-logic-and-charity/">Answering Atheism: How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity</a></li>
</ul>

100th Episode “Anything Goes” Q+A!

I had a friendly chat with William Lane Craig

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals why you&#8217;re old box TV in the garage is worth more than it looks.

FFAF: Why Your Old TV is a Hidden Treasure

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent reveals how some of the modern things we use every day are actually hundreds or even thousands of years old.

FFAF: I just want to talk about Cobra Kai

Trent is back from Australia with an update on how the coronavirus affected his travel. He then weighs in on the debate over whether churches should close in order to curb the spread of this pandemic.
<a href="https://www.catholicanswersspeakers.com/trent-horn-speaker/">Book Trent</a> to speak at your parish or next event. 
Want more from Trent Horn? 
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<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="1" data-aria-level="1"><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/made-this-way-how-to-prepare-kids-to-face-todays-tough-moral-issues/">Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues</a> </li>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="2" data-aria-level="1"><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/why-were-catholic-our-reasons-for-faith-hope-and-love/">Why We&#8217;re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, And Love</a> </li>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="3" data-aria-level="1"><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-how-to-talk-about-our-cultures-toughest-issue/">Persuasive Pro-Life: How to Talk About Our Culture’s Toughest Issue</a> </li>
<li data-leveltext="" data-font="Symbol" data-listid="4" aria-setsize="-1" data-aria-posinset="4" data-aria-level="1"><a href="https://shop.catholic.com/answering-atheism-how-to-make-the-case-for-god-with-logic-and-charity/">Answering Atheism: How to Make the Case for God with Logic and Charity</a> </li>
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Coronavirus and Church Closures

In this episode Trent joins Matt at the Pints with Jack podcast to discuss the moral arguments of C.S. Lewis, William Lane Craig, and David Baggett.

What is the Best Moral Argument for God’s Existence?

The Gospel and the Gospels

I scrolled through my Facebook feed, one post after another. Photos of friends, pictures of coffee, quotes from famous people. Advertisements.
I stopped. There it was again! 
The same ad that I had seen over and over for the past few months. I hardly ever paid attention to the ads on Facebook, except this one. This one. I didn’t even notice the product being advertised, but that didn’t really matter; it was the tagline that got wedged in my brain so firmly that it replayed like a chant in my mind without my even really looking at the ad:
“What if, for 30 days, you just believed?”
Since my husband Pat had first begun his research into philosophy of religion, his reading list had transformed, book by book, into a study of Christianity. Simultaneously, this ad began showing up in my social media feed. So, while my husband was becoming more Christian-like by way of his studies, I was slowly being introduced to Christianity by way of my boredom-induced web browsing. The funny thing is that, as far as I’m aware, that advertisement had nothing to do with Christianity, and yet that is how I thought of it, how it kept niggling at me as I sat on the sidelines, watching Pat immerse himself in Christianity and become a better husband and father as he did.
I couldn’t help but wonder if there was something to all this Christian stuff. Could it—as wild and wacky as it sounded—actually be true? And even if it wasn’t true, were there enough potential benefits to living a Christian life, including becoming a better, happier person, that would make the absurdity of organized religion worth it?
What if, for 30 days, you just believed?
I didn’t even know what belief actually entailed. Did I need to “accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior”? What did that even mean? Could I just read a Bible? Should I pray? What kind of prayers? Did I need to give up my Sunday mornings, get out of comfy pajamas, and actually go to a church?
No, I decided. No, no, no. I couldn’t do that, not any of it. And so, as I had many times before, I scrolled right by the ad and left it at that.
And yet…
What if, what if, what if?
Meanwhile, Pat thrust himself deeper into Christianity, wrestling with his biggest hangups to a faith in Jesus. Miraculously, Jesus prevailed. Pat set aside his atheism and accepted Christ as Truth. He was eager for me to join him in this newfound belief, but through his years of internet marketing and his experience being my husband, he knew there would be no pressuring me into Christianity. He needed to finesse me a little, present the message in just the right way, and that meant he needed to address my concerns and my disbelief with dispassionate interest.
“You know,” he said to me in passing, “I got a book on Kindle you might like. It’s called The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.”
“Oh?” I said politely.
“It’s about an investigative journalist, an atheist, whose wife converts to Christianity, and he goes on to research Jesus from an historical perspective—he interviews all these experts, including anthropologists and historians and psychologists. Anyways, if you want to take a look, you can read it on your phone.”
And then he walked away.
He didn’t force me to talk about the book. He didn’t make me say I’d read it. He didn’t hand me a copy. But he did put the ball in my court—which was the smartest thing he could’ve done. I had, after all, become a “no” person. Had he forced me to make a judgment call right then and there about that book, I would’ve balked, and the impenetrable walls of Jericho constructed around my heart would have only grown stronger. Instead, he used two evangelization techniques that we ought to pay attention to.
One: often a person can be more persuasive when he can get someone to see that he isn’t being pushy, but rather that he’s allowing the space and genuine freedom for that person to make his own assessment of the Christian faith.
And two: know a person well enough that you can come to a discussion of Christianity from positions he is already interested or invested in.
His brief synopsis of the book did intrigue me. Coming from a family of journalists, being a lover of history and anthropology, and having a spouse who had seemingly left me in my non-belief? It all worked together to make me want to open the book. Pat hadn’t mentioned how the story ended. Did the writer get his wife to de-convert? Or did they coexist without treading on each other’s beliefs? Or did he discover that his wife was in the same spot as me—with the tiniest smidgen of hope, exhausted by cynical non-belief—yearning for truth?
What if, for thirty days, you just believed? 
That week, the advertisement showed up one final time in my Facebook news feed. This time, I gave the idea some serious thought, playing around with a kind of thirty-day faith challenge. That would be long enough to give a real attempt at trying on Christianity. If I got to the end of the month and realized I still didn’t believe, then, sure, I might have to eat a little crow, but I would also be in the position to have my atheism strengthened. If I gave this religion an honest try and found it wanting, then I could be even more confident that atheism was true and settle back in, as much as I might not want, into my closed world of nos. If I went through the thirty days and believed in Christ, well . . . future Christine could worry about that improbability when the time came. Besides, that last option was a bit too frightening to wrap my head around.

What If, for 30 Days, You Just Believed?

The Catholic Church’s celebration of and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/praying-to-the-saints">prayer to the saints</a> is an evergreen topic of apologetics. I find myself addressing it in a variety of contexts when I teach theology to high school and undergrad students. The upshot of continually returning to this same well of living water is that it forces apologists to <a href="https://youtu.be/Zm4RwawV4Lo?si=NIvIcPq1jnVO3NZV">get more creative</a> in our presentations. It also forces us to reflect more deeply on the Christo-centrism of these apparent “churchy” elements of Catholicism, contra those Christians who disregard the importance of the “capital C’ Church.
Here’s one line of argument for <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/the-saints-pray-for-you-how-the-christians-in-heaven-help-us-here-on-earth/">the intercession of the saints</a> that I find accessible and at least digestible by Catholic and non-Catholic Christians alike.
No Bible-believing Christian denies that St. Paul, on numerous occasions, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/where-does-the-bible-say-the-church-is-the-body-of-christ">refers to the Church</a> as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:27; Col 1:18, 24; and Eph 1:22-23). Let us grant for the sake of argument that “Church” could mean something as watered-down as “any person who believes in Jesus.” This definition at least allows for the possibility of including most saints of Catholic history. Even a staunch anti-Catholic would still have to accept the Apostles as saints and part of “the Church” so defined. Great! We now have actual people that we can all agree are part of the Church and therefore, according to St. Paul, make up the “body of Christ.”
Next, every Christian agrees that Jesus is no longer dead, but alive. This is kind of an important part of calling oneself a Christian! St. Paul hinges one’s entire faith in Jesus on belief in his Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:14.
Now, I am no medical expert, but I am fairly confident that a man’s head must remain attached to his body for him to stay alive. Better still, it must not only be attached but united to his body. A head can still be attached to a dead person, but to describe the head as united implies there is still a wholeness to the living person. The body and the head are still working together.
Now consider the man, Jesus. We believe that Jesus is alive. If he is alive, his head must be united to his body. If his body is the Church, then the Church must always be united to Jesus. That Church must, at the very least, include those faithful Christians of the Bible we call saints. Those saints, because they are part of a living body that is united to its head, must also be alive just as the head is. Those living saints must also include people like Peter, Paul and, yes, Mary! 
All this is to say that when the Church holds up models like the saints, prays with them, and acknowledges their power to intercede for us, it is simply recognizing the unity the saints share as a body with the head, Jesus Christ. The Church, in praising the saints, is actually praising Christ’s body. This is not only acceptable for a Christian, but necessarily follows from his faith in a living Jesus. 
The need to explain and defend “basic” doctrines like the Church or the communion of saints is not new. But when we preach the Gospel, we need to adjust our approach when we recognize the specific focus that will resonate with our audience. The modern world is starved for relationship—union with another real, living person. So let’s use this opportunity to show how the communion of saints lives right now in real relationship with Jesus—so closely united that they are the body to his head.

Living Jesus, Living Saints

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“The pope’s title “Vicar of the Son of God” in Latin is Vicarius Filii Dei. When you add up the Roman numerals in this title, you get 666. Therefore, the pope is the Antichrist mentioned in Revelation 13.”
DEFENSE
Vicarius Filii Dei is not one of the pope’s titles, and this method of calculation is unreliable.
Some have referred to the pope as “vicar of the Son of God,” but this is not one of his official titles. These are listed in the Annuario Pontifi- cio (“Pontifical Yearbook”), published annually by the Vatican press. They are:
Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, Servant of the servants of God.
The closest title is “Vicar of Jesus Christ” (Latin, Vicarius Iesu Chris- ti), but this does not add up to 666.
Some claim that the phrase Vicarius Filii Dei is printed on the papal ti- ara (a special kind of crown worn by past popes). These reports are false. None of the tiaras had this phrase, and popes today do not use tiaras.
One might argue the pope can still be described as the vicar of the Son of God, even if it isn’t one of his titles, but this produces an unreliable methodology. All kinds of people and things can be described in ways that add up to 666. The children’s TV character Barney may be a cute purple dinosaur, but that doesn’t mean he’s the Antichrist (CVte pVr- pLe DInosaVr = C+V+V+L+D+I+V = 100+5+5+50+500+1+5 = 666).
Ironically, this argument is often made by Seventh-day Adventists, whose founding prophetess was Ellen Gould White (ELLen GoV- LD VVhIte = 50+50+5+50+500+5+5+1 = 666).
Finally, while you can get 666 by taking each Roman numeral as an individual digit, out of its immediate context (VICarIVs fILII DeI = V+I+C+I+V+I+L+I+I+D+I = 5+1+100+1+5+1+50+1+1+500+1 = 666), Roman numerals need to be read in context. Placing a smaller number to the left of a larger one results in it being subtracted, not added. Thus “IV” means 4, not 6. In the same way, “IC” and “IL” mean 99 and 49, not 101 and 51. Read this way, Vicarius Filii Dei is 660, not 666.
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666 and the Pope

<div>His Eminence, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, will be offering a Pontifical High Mass (E.F.) on Saturday, December 11, 2021, at 11:00 a.m. CST., at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin.</div>

<div>This will be his first public liturgy ever since he began rehabilitation from the COVID-19 virus four months ago.</div>