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Karlo Broussard explains why Catholics are obligated to go to mass every Sunday.

Why We Go to Mass Every Sunday

Fr. David Michael Moses discusses using social media as a tool for evangelization, noting that the disciples would likely use it to spread Jesus&#8217; message if they were alive today.
Transcript:
Sometimes we look at all this social media stuff and we very rightly, I think, go, &#8220;This is so dangerous. Look what it&#8217;s doing to kids.&#8221; But there&#8217;s also the other side of it. There&#8217;s always the other side. Well, here&#8217;s also a tool that God put in your hands. And do you think the apostles would have done it? Do you think the apostles would have used social media or no? Would they have not?
Oh, I definitely think so. I definitely think so. I mean, I will say, you&#8217;re absolutely right. Social media is dangerous. Very, very dangerous. I would recommend for most parents just to keep their kids off of social media, honestly. The way I look at it, you know, a quick analogy is like social media is like a bad neighborhood. You know, a bad neighborhood is a dangerous place to be. I would not recommend my family, my nieces, and my nephews go live in a bad neighborhood.
But I do think that every bad neighborhood should have a Catholic church. And I think there should be a Catholic priest at that church who gets to know the area, gets to know the culture. They ought to be able to minister to the people. So I feel like even though it&#8217;s dangerous, that&#8217;s not a reason to just abandon it. I think certain people with the right disposition, the right training can go into that landscape and hopefully bring some goodness there.
So it is certainly dangerous, but I think it&#8217;s worth leaning into. And I could certainly see Jesus. I&#8217;m not sure if he would have his own account, you know, but I do think there would be people around recording what he was saying and posting it everywhere, and that would be part of the vehicle of spreading the message.
Judas would be monetizing it.
That&#8217;s a quality joke right now! Judas on the side, monetizing without telling anybody
Yeah, I got this Lord.
Too funny.
We got this, Lord. We&#8217;re going to make you famous.
So, well, yeah, I really like your dangerous neighborhood analogy. And there&#8217;s also a certain attitude sometimes in the modern world that Christians don&#8217;t belong in this space. You know, get out of our space. You know, there&#8217;s a secular bias that&#8217;s not a healthy secularism, but is a denuded secularism. Like, yeah, we don&#8217;t need you here. Do you feel that pushback sometimes?
Well, I do think that sometimes people try to avoid it, maybe avoid evangelizing there too much. You know, I just kind of think about maybe the enemy. If we were to say, &#8220;None of the Catholics are on social media anymore,&#8221; I think the devil would be like, &#8220;Really? You guys are just going to let me have it? You&#8217;re just going to give it to me and I can just run all of it.&#8221; You know, that would be his response.
I think when we say, &#8220;No, we&#8217;re going to enter in a very careful, mindful, prayerful way, look at this and see what we can do here,&#8221; that&#8217;s when the enemy is like, &#8220;Gosh, you know, I&#8217;ve got to deal with this now.&#8221; So I think it is something that&#8217;s really worth investing in the right way and can be a very, very powerful tool.
A lot of, I mean, one of, well, I should tell you this, the most common prayer request we get here at Catholic Answers is, &#8220;can we pray for something for you?&#8221; is that &#8220;my adult children will come back to the faith&#8221;. That is the most common prayer request we get.
And I saw a video that you did, by the way, we&#8217;re talking with Father David Michael Moses, if you&#8217;re just joining us. He&#8217;s a priest of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, but he&#8217;s also very popular online and reaching lots of people with the joy of his own priesthood and with the joy of the gospel. You made a video, which was very, very negative.
It was about how the churches are empty and young people are not vitalized and all that, but the images did not match the words. So you were saying the clichés about the Catholic Church, &#8220;Nobody comes, the pews are empty.&#8221; And a lot of it was at the SEEK Conference where there were like 20,000 young people. Was it the one that was up in Salt Lake City just recently?
That&#8217;s right. Yeah, absolutely right. So young people are interested in the faith. They do want the faith. They do want the faith. So how are you reaching them? And maybe that could help all the rest of us who are thinking about how to reach young people with the gospel.
Yeah, well, I think, you know, the church has a great history, right, of going into different places, learning the language, learning the culture, and then bringing the tried and true, faithful gospel to that culture and that place in that language. And I think in modern times, that&#8217;s very much the reality now is that a lot of the young people have kind of a new culture, right, and a new language.
And that&#8217;s not a reason to be afraid or to tell them to speak a different language. I think it&#8217;s fair for us to say, &#8220;Okay, well, let&#8217;s learn the language then,&#8221; right? Like the great missionaries in the past, learn the language, learn the culture, and try to engage as much as you can.
And just for me, you know, I&#8217;ve heard a friend say recently, &#8220;People don&#8217;t let you into their homes, but they let you into their phones.&#8221; And I think that&#8217;s very, very true. If we are going after the lost sheep. And in many cases, those are young sheep, right? It&#8217;s often the lambs who kind of lose their way.
If we&#8217;re going after the lost sheep, then, you know, I&#8217;m going to perish called, it&#8217;s called Christ the Good Shepherd. And Jesus tells us the Good Shepherd goes after the sheep. And so for me, if I&#8217;m a good shepherd, I want to be a good shepherd. That means I need to go after the lost sheep, but that probably looks like learning the language.
Because people don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t think you learn, people really don&#8217;t like the gospel. They don&#8217;t like what they think the gospel is. To kind of riff off of what Fulton Sheen talk about. People think they know the gospel, but they really don&#8217;t, right? They haven&#8217;t really encountered Jesus.
So I think if we are able to package things in the right way, then that can really make all the difference.
Tell me about that encounter with Jesus, because that&#8217;s the thing, isn&#8217;t it? The difference between the joy of the Christian life and the Christian life as obligation or as a series of &#8220;no&#8217;s&#8221; that God gives, it all comes down to that, the meeting and the knowing of the person of Jesus.
Oh, totally. I mean, that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s about. You know, and people get somewhat frustrated with the idea of religion, but really, religion is an organized way of most effectively encountering the person of Jesus Christ.
And you know, I think young people, they do think one thing that gets kind of lost today is this idea of greatness. Sometimes it&#8217;s framed as the kind of the Andrew Tate worldly, you know, having the cars and the mansions as greatness. But really, greatness is knowing the person of Jesus Christ. And that&#8217;s where the joy comes from ultimately. And that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re searching for.
So, you know, I heard a quote recently, &#8220;The magic that you&#8217;re looking for is in the things that you&#8217;re avoiding.&#8221; And I think the world so often puts out there the pleasure and the status and the comfort and all those things. And that&#8217;s not really what we&#8217;re looking for.
Like, that&#8217;s not really what we want. The magic we&#8217;re looking for—not magic in the world, it&#8217;s not magic—but magic like the meaning and the peace and the joy and the purpose. The magic is usually in the things that we&#8217;re avoiding, which is suffering, self-denial, taking up the cross.
These are the things that actually give purpose to our lives. And so I think it is about, with young people especially, saying, &#8220;No, sacrifice and suffering are not the worst evil to be avoided,&#8221; which is what the world says. It&#8217;s actually like pushing through these things. On the other side of some of that sacrifice is really going to be everything that you actually long for in life.
And what is that actually going to find there? It is the person of Jesus Christ.

Would Jesus Preach on Instagram? | Fr. David Michael Moses

The man who wrote the book <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/persuasive-pro-life-how-to-talk-about-our-cultures-toughest-issue/">Persuasive Pro-Life</a> gives us a primer on how to share arguments against abortion. Use these effective techniques to move yourself and others closer to the truth about tiny, little, unborn people.

Pro-Life Bootcamp

Some Christians object to the practice of invoking the saints’ intercession because they think it takes away from the unique mediation of Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5—“There is one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ”). But those who invoke the saints counter that just because Jesus is the one mediator who “always lives to make intercession” (Heb. 7:25), that doesn’t mean he can’t share that intercessory role with his saints.
In fact, we know that Jesus shares that intercessory role with at least some of his saints: the Christians here on earth. Saints, after all, is a common word used for all Christians in the New Testament, as seen, for example, in 2 Corinthians 1:1, Ephesians 1:1, and Philippians 1:1. St. Paul urges Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:1 that “intercessions . . . be made for all men.”
Now, some Protestants might counter the above argumentation and say, “Your response misses the mark. We’re not concerned with earthly mediation taking away from Christ’s unique mediation. We’re concerned only with the claim that there are other heavenly intercessors.”
Take, for example, Jordan Cooper, a Lutheran pastor and professor of systematic theology. In his online <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3046OcXloZU">video</a> “A Critique of Prayer to the Saints,” he argues that the Letter to the Hebrews’ description of what’s going on before the Father in the heavenly throne room doesn’t “leave room at all for a kind of other heavenly intercession.”
There are two ways that we can respond to this argument. One is more general, which considers Cooper’s argument itself. The other is more specific to what Cooper says elsewhere in his video.
Here’s the general response. Recall that Cooper’s argument says there can be no other heavenly intercessor because that role belongs to Jesus alone, who has ascended into the heavenly sanctuary to minister as our high priest. But isn’t the Holy Spirit a heavenly intercessor also? Paul says he is:
<blockquote>Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Rom. 8:26-27).</blockquote>
Must we deny Paul’s teaching that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us in heaven? Cooper’s logic would have us say yes.
Now, Cooper might counter, “Of course the Holy Spirit can intercede for us because he’s God. The heavenly intercession that I’m concerned with is creaturely intercession.”
But if creaturely intercession in heaven is the problem, then we’d have to reject the heavenly intercession of the elders in Revelation 5:8 and the angel in Revelation 8:3-4. Here’s what John sees in Revelation 5:8:
<blockquote>And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp, and with golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.</blockquote>
In Revelation 8:3-4, John describes an angel doing the same thing:
<blockquote>And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer; and he was given much incense to mingle with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar before the throne; and the smoke of the incense rose with the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God.</blockquote>
The “prayers of the saints” in both passages refers to Christians on earth. And the elders and the angel are presenting their prayers to the Lamb, Jesus, in the heavenly throne room. That’s heavenly intercession, performed by creatures.
If the elders in Revelation 5:8 and the angel in Revelation 8:3-4 can be heavenly intercessors without taking away from Christ’s unique mediation as our heavenly high priest, then so can the saints. There is in fact enough “room” in the heavenly throne room for multiple intercessors, especially when those other intercessors intercede with Christ in virtue of their union with Christ through grace.
Now, concerning our more specific response, Cooper contradicts himself in his video. In the above argument, he restricts any and all heavenly intercession to Christ. Yet, later in the video, when commenting on the elders in Revelation 5:8, he concedes that they intercede for us in a general way, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3046OcXloZU">saying</a>, “Certainly they are before God; it is likely that the saints in heaven pray for the church.” Which is it? Is it Christ alone who intercedes in the heavenly throne room, or do the elders intercede as well? That’s something for Cooper to answer.
In the end, Cooper’s objection to the appropriateness of invoking the saints in heaven fails. Jesus’ unique mediation in the heavenly sanctuary does not exclude other heavenly intercessors, like the saints. As members of his mystical body, the saints share in such heavenly mediation and thereby are made our heavenly allies.

Don’t Exclude the Saints

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Favorite Apologist?!

Sunday Catholic Word is the only podcast that looks at the Sunday Mass readings and focuses on the details that are relevant to explaining and defending the Catholic faith.

Sunday Catholic Word

Just a few days after celebrating a holiday that recognizes the end of slavery in the United States, today we mark one year since <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-the-deal-with-dobbs-v-jackson">the fall of Roe v. Wade</a>.
It still seems a touch surreal. When I was active in pro-life efforts as a college student and young adult, Roe was the boss monster at the end of the level that we could sometimes manage to take a few whacks at but never defeat. Time and again, we put our hope in legislators and presidents and judges only to have them let us down. We had to be content with nibbling around the edges of the law—parental consent here, partial-birth there—while keeping the focus locally on aiding and persuading women in crisis pregnancies and nationally on “changing hearts and minds.”
In fact, whether due to discouragement, mission creep, or an ultimate lack of conviction, in some pro-life quarters “changing hearts and minds” became the only goal—the most we could hope or rightly want to do. I recall many a debate over the years with other self-identified pro-lifers who claimed that it was imprudent, even wrong to change the legal abortion paradigm in America without first changing how Americans felt about abortion. And of course, the other side <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/it-was-never-about-just-hearts-and-minds">was all too happy</a> to echo this rhetoric. (Though they weren’t keen on “changing hearts and minds, either, so they invited us instead to “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/faith-abortion-and-voting-part-5">reduce the root causes</a>” of abortion, usually by expanding the welfare state.)
Now, changing hearts and minds is great. It’s the core of our mission here at Catholic Answers. But there’s another great truth we need to remember: the law is a teacher. That is, laws are not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow of persuasion—they are instruments of persuasion, too.
As Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons remarked when asked whether the arrival of legalized gambling to Springfield was a sin, “Once something is approved by the government, it’s no longer immoral.” It was a dry joke that underscores a truth of human experience: people look to the law for moral guidance, even when it’s bad.
We have seen this principle in action. Prior to 2012, same-sex marriage had been put to popular vote in states thirty-two times—including in California’s Prop 8 in 2008—and lost each time. Legislators and state courts in “progressive” states, unconcerned with changing hearts and minds first, kept testing the ramparts of the popular will: a <a href="https://www.mynbc5.com/article/from-the-archives-vermont-becomes-first-state-to-introduce-civil-unions/30337708">half-a-loaf measure</a> here, a seemingly <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160213204203/https:/www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8760044.html">harmless executive order</a> there, in each case teaching the people just a little more. Just prior to the Obergefell decision that mandated legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015, national support for it was in the low 50 percent range. Today it’s in the mid-70s. A Prop 8 today would have a vastly different result. We have been taught.
We could point to a similar pattern with other historical issues: <a href="https://nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-evolution-of-divorce">divorce</a>, contraception, abortion, marijuana legalization. Revolutionaries use the instrument of law to gradually shift majority opinion as well as the “Overton Window” of socially acceptable viewpoints.
This phenomenon occurs because we reflexively equate legality and morality—and for reasons that make sense. We have implicit trust in the wisdom of our lawmakers and in the inherent rightness and validity of law. Plus, being opposed to the legal status quo is psychically exhausting over time. Most people aren’t moral philosophers or cultural boat-rockers; it’s easiest just to let the law inform our values, even if sometimes imperceptibly slowly.
Today, as we mark Dobbs+1, we hope that new state-level abortion laws will save lives, indeed <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/dobbs-saves-lives">as they have already done</a>. But we can also expect such laws to teach—this time for good. That pro-life activism has managed to keep the fires burning for so many years in the face of Roe’s chilling effect is truly extraordinary; a work of God. Now, post-Roe culture will have to think and argue about abortion without the conclusion having been predetermined by nine judges from 1973. State laws banning or restricting abortion will form citizens and institutions in new habits of thinking about the humanity of the unborn. What was once unthinkable under the old, radical abortion paradigm—that the “right to choose” was anything but sacrosanct—is now the new normal, the baseline for further battles in capitols and courts.

Thoughts on Dobbs +1

<div>Is hell a just punishment? I hear this question many times from skeptics, and that "No human being deserves such a punishment." How would I combat this claim? </div><div>The Church reminds us that hell is the “definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed” (<a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm">CCC 1033</a>, emphasis added; see 1033-37).
For further perspective, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/to-hell-with-heaven">this previous response</a> in which I explain that the fallen angels basically said, “To hell with heaven.”
</div>

Is Hell a Just Punishment?

The story about the ten lepers is paired in the lectionary with the condensed version of the story of Naaman the Syrian. It’s one of those combinations that makes it clear that although there are some crucial new things happening in the ministry of Jesus, there is also a great deal that stands in continuity with the ministry of the Old Testament prophets. Here in particular we see in stark terms both the ingratitude of God’s own people and the receptivity of the Gentiles to God’s saving work. As one fourth-century writer describes it, strangers were more ready to receive the faith than Israel (Titus Bostrensis, quoted in Thomas’ Catena aurea).
Israel is supposed to be the light to enlighten the nations, a sign to the peoples of God’s goodness. Yet so often Israel is a sign of contradiction as well: a sign of humanity’s failure to acknowledge its divine vocation. This too, we should observe, is part of God’s good providence, for Israel’s failure is thus turned to a good end, to show how God is able to be faithful despite our unfaithfulness—as St. Paul puts it in 2 Timothy, “he cannot deny himself”—and how even this sign of failure can be transformed as a witness to the nations. Likewise the Church, figured, according to the tradition of the Fathers, in the ten lepers, is a sign of failure, for though her members are washed and made clean in the sacramental waters of baptism, they more often than not fail to accept with gratitude the new life offered.
Beyond these layers of reading, there is also a present reality that we can observe in Catholic life, which is how often those “strangers”—whether Protestants or non-Christians or whatever—seem more grateful for the gift of the Catholic faith than those who have known it all their lives. What’s more, the zeal and gratitude of these strangers, at times, get ridiculed and marginalized by Catholics who, like those nine lepers, would rather just “get their sacraments” and move on.
If I can venture a bold observation, the existence of the Ordinariates is one place where the Church has in a way institutionalized this experience, almost as if to say, this zeal for the goods of the Church is “meet and right”; it is normal; and it would be a distortion of the gospel of grace to act as if the response of the nine ungrateful is somehow what ought to be expected simply because it is more typical. We should not be surprised when the Naamans of this world approach us looking for salvation. This is why God created Israel in the first place. It wasn’t just to make one people feel special; it was so that “all the nations of the of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 18:18). This is why the Church exists.
Whether we are Israelites or Gentiles—which is to say, cradle Catholics or converts—the point of the story in the Gospel remains that the most important thing is not how we got here, but where we are—that the Lord has healed us, that the Lord has made us one of us own. And so today’s epistle from 2 Timothy is relevant, because in it Paul exhorts us to be faithful to our calling.
<blockquote>If we have died with him
we shall also live with him; 
if we persevere 
we shall also reign with him. 
But if we deny him 
he will deny us. 
If we are unfaithful 
he remains faithful, 
for he cannot deny himself.</blockquote>
That last bit can seem a bit contradictory, but it is meant I think to emphasize the fidelity of the Lord to his own promises. In other words, baptism is irrevocable, indelible. When he forgives your sins, they really are forgiven. When he incorporates you into his body, the Church, he really does incorporate you. The variable isn’t he, but we: our denial, our lack of perseverance, our infidelity. Or, in terms of the lepers of today’s readings, our ingratitude or our inability to recognize the gifts that we have been given, the gifts that ever stand before us, the grace constantly available in the Church through the sacraments.
Let us then strive for the enthusiasm and joy of Naaman and the gratitude of the Samaritan leper—not just to sit by and watch our healing, but to recognize that this gift is the sign of an even greater invitation to take part more permanently in the great work of God’s love.

Don’t Be Such a Leper

News flash: “Catholicism is “Bull#!*%” Hmmm…news to me, but apparently not to one of our followers:

The reason? The Church teaches, “Death was contrary to the plans of God the Creator and entered the world as a consequence of sin” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1008).
Why is this teaching so foul? “Scooby MIKE” argues that it runs contrary to the creation of human beings via evolution, which presupposes death.
Fortunately for “Scooby MIKE,” and all of us Catholics, there’s no stench here for us to worry about. Evolution indeed involves death. But when it comes to the creation of human beings, that is, beings with spiritual souls, evolution is hands-off. As Pope Pius XII stated in Humani Generis, the creation of a spiritual soul and its union with requires a direct and immediate act by God (sec. 36). Thus, the creation of human beings lies outside the material mechanistic processes of evolution.
This doesn’t mean, however, that God couldn’t have directed evolutionary processes (which would have involved death) to develop non-rational animals that would eventually become apt for union with a rational soul. Pope Pius XII teaches that when it comes to “inquiries into the origin of the human body,” it could have come from “pre-existent and living matter” (Humani Generis 36). Of course, this origin would have been under the governance of God.
That pre-existent and living matter very well could have been an animal somewhat like us in its biological makeup but lacking a rational soul. Therefore, the first true human being would only have come about upon the union of a rational soul with such matter.
But note that, before this union, such an evolutionary process wouldn’t have been the evolution of a human being. Rather, it would have been the evolution of a non-human being.
So, contrary to our friend’s claim, there’s no stench in the Church’s teaching that death entered human history after Adam’s sin in light of evolution

Evolution’s Not a Death Sentence

What are popular online Protestant apologists today telling their coreligionists who are encountering Catholic critiques of their religious tradition? “Confessional Lutheran, published apologetics researcher, and Church History enthusiast” Javier Perdomo gave us one such glimpse in his interview on the Protestant <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEucTL17vaA">YouTube channel Gospel Simplicity</a>. In a video entitled “What&#8217;s the Protestant Response to Catholic Apologetics?”, Perdomo not only responded to some examples of what we might call “soundbite” Catholic apologetics, but also offered recommendations to Protestants struggling with how to navigate these debates.
Some of Perdomo’s advice is commendable and relevant for all ecumenical debate, regardless of one’s religious convictions. Despite being an online influencer, Perdomo urges viewers (and listeners) to get off their devices, touch grass, read, and pray—a worthy exhortation, given how much time we waste consuming content that does little more than elevate anxiety, or engaging in less-than-edifying debate that is little more than caricature and name-calling. He complains about Catholic over-simplifications and straw-manning of Protestants, which of course should be avoided—whatever we are debating, all sides should always charitably attempt to interact with the very best arguments our interlocutors can offer.
The interview features some responses to common Catholic criticisms of the Protestant position. These include the Catholic contention that Protestantism is hopelessly divided (Perdomo: <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/you-catholics-are-divided-too">Catholics are divided, too</a>), or that the Protestant position reduces to individualism and subjectivity (Perdomo: Catholics suffer <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/stuck-in-a-circle-with-you">the same dilemma</a> because they have to individually and subjectively identify the contents of and then interpret magisterial teaching).
I will not belabor here what has been written elsewhere on these topics. Rather, I would like to focus on what Perdomo says at the end of the interview, when he speaks to Protestants trying to determine how to work their way through these often complicated ecumenical debates, many of which originate in the Reformation itself. He encourages Protestants to read the catechisms of various Protestant traditions, as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He urges them to read the early Church Fathers and “most importantly” Scripture, because otherwise, “you’re not going to even be able to know who’s right.” He tells them to join a church and “submit yourself to whatever elder you’re under.”
In one sense, this advice resonates with me, because it’s similar to what I often offered others when I was a Presbyterian seminary student almost twenty years ago. I vividly remember getting frustrated with evangelical friends of mine who loved debating the Bible and theology but who were not regularly attending any church or studying Scripture. But in another sense, I recognize now that such advice is incoherent and based on flawed premises.
Perdomo hints at one of these premises in his exhortation to Protestants to read the Bible to determine which theologians or scholars are right. Such advice presumes the <a href="https://stpaulcenter.com/store/the-obscurity-in-scripture-disputing-sola-scriptura-and-the-protestant-notion-of-biblical-perspicuity">Protestant doctrine of perspicuity</a>, which, though it has a variety of definitions over more than five hundred years of Protestant history, is typically articulated as meaning that the Bible is sufficiently clear that the self-identifying Christian, regardless of intellectual acuity or academic training, should be able to read it and determine what is necessary for salvation or the essentials of the Christian faith. To presume this doctrine is necessarily to define myself as the final interpretive authority of Scripture—whatever theologian or scholar I read, that source is evaluated according to my interpretation of the Bible. Moreover, such a presumption undermines the ability even to engage in open-minded research and charitable ecumenical dialogue, because any position at odds with what is the so-called clear teaching of Scripture would necessarily be disregarded as de facto erroneous.
Let me provide an example of what this incoherence looks like in practice. Imagine yourself as a self-identifying Protestant who wants to better understand debate among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox. You hold (perhaps inchoately) to some variation of sola fide, as do many Protestants across a variety of Reformation-originating traditions, and you do so because you’ve been taught, and perhaps you’ve even yourself determined, that it’s what the Bible plainly teaches. (By extension, this implicitly means you presume perspicuity, too).
So you begin reading the Church Fathers and prominent theologians and scholars across various Christian traditions, and some of what you encounter seems to contradict sola fide.
What should you do with such data? One option would be simply to disregard such positions out of hand. After all sola fide is clearly taught in the Bible! That would certainly be consistent with the doctrine of perspicuity, which since the earliest days of the Reformation has operated in close correlation with sola fide. Yet that option would also be contrary to the entire enterprise of rational discourse, in which we allow our opinions and beliefs to be challenged and welcome the possibility that we are actually wrong. It would be to effectively declare, “I refuse to have my opinions on the Bible’s meaning regarding salvation questioned, because I consider them indisputable!”
Another option would be to entertain the possibility of alternative interpretations of Scripture as equally possible. Perhaps the Bible doesn’t clearly teach sola fide, but it does teach something else, such as the historic Catholic position often understood as “faith and works,” or “faith working through love,” to use St. Paul’s expression (Gal. 5:6). But even to entertain that possibility would be to vitiate perspicuity—after all, the Bible is supposed to be clear on this. It’s not up for debate!
I hope you can perceive the dilemma here. The Protestant can resolutely hold to perspicuity in the face of contrary arguments, effectively treating the doctrine as a philosophical first principle, such as the law of non-contradiction or that the whole is greater than its parts. Such first principles cannot be proved; they simply are. Or he can consider the possibility that sola fide is wrong, but that would necessitate abandoning the perspicuity thesis, because he would have to grant that other interpretive positions on salvation have sufficient merit to be evaluated as possibly true—and so the historic Protestant doctrine would thus not be perspicuous. And if Scripture isn’t clear on salvation, dialogue and debate are required, as well as some means of authoritatively resolving those disputes (assuming we want them resolved).
What I’m getting at is that even to engage in the kind of open-minded study and debate that Perdomo calls for is to jettison the doctrine of perspicuity, because the doctrine itself is an obstacle to that enterprise. Perdomo (rightly and to his credit) wants to move beyond the caricatures, over-simplification, and even illogic that define so much of modern religious debate. The question is whether his own Protestant premises enable Protestant apologists to be up to the task.

A Protestant Advises Protestants

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DAY 229
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CHALLENGE
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“We don’t need the Church to help us identify Scripture. God’s word is self-authenticating.”
DEFENSE
This makes for good rhetoric but does not stand up to examination.
The word of God is powerful (Ps. 33:6; Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12), but this does not mean it is self-authenticating. Scripture records that even prophets could be mistaken about whether a word they heard came from God (1 Sam. 3:2–9).
Taken literally, the claim that Scripture is self-authenticating would mean that the text of Scripture has certain qualities that prove it to be (that is, authenticate it as) the word of God. What might these be?
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, “the heavenliness of the matter [in the Bible], the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God” (1:5). This is stirring rhetoric, but it can’t be cashed out in practical terms:
<ul>
<li>It is impossible to state a list of objective literary qualities that characterize all the books of the Bible and only the books of the Bible.</li>
<li>Even if one did so, one would need to argue why this collection of qualities shows it to be the word of God.</li>
<li>And why couldn’t someone write new literature that also displayed those qualities? If so, such writings would also self-authenticate as the word of God and would be new scriptures.</li>
</ul>
For a closed canon, one thus would need to specify a set of literary qualities that not only marked out the Bible as unique and as the word of God but that would also be impossible to duplicate.
This is not possible, as shown by the fact that nobody really applies this test. Those who claim Scripture is self-authenticating (including the authors of the Westminster Confession; see Day 236) end up appealing to factors other than the text, such as the witness of the Holy Spirit, meaning that the text is not self-authenticating.
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Self-Authenticating Scriptures?

Do you ever wish someone could explain <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/baptism">baptism</a> to you like you&#8217;re seven? Come on, there&#8217;s no shame in it! Listen to Jimmy Akin explain the basics of why we&#8217;re baptized on Catholic Answers Live.

Kids’ Show: Why Do We Get Baptized?

<div>For some particularly grievous sins, such as abortion, must priests consult first with their bishop before absolution?</div><div>
Certain sins are not just sins but also considered canonical &#8220;crimes&#8221; and thus receive canonical penalties that need to be lifted. Most reserved penalties can be lifted by the local bishop, but some are reserved to the pope. In the case of danger of death, any priest can remit validly and licitly virtually all penalties (can. 976).
In the situation of sins that are accompanied by a penalty that is reserved to the local bishop, he can grant the faculty of lifting the penalty to some or all of the priests of his diocese.
Sins that carry a canonical penalty are:
<ul>
<li>Apostasy, heresy, schism</li>
<li>Violation of consecrated species</li>
<li>Physical attack on a pope or bishop</li>
<li>A priest who absolves an accomplice in sexual sin</li>
<li>Unauthorized ordination of a bishop</li>
<li>Direct violation by a confessor of the seal of confession</li>
<li>Anyone who reveals the overheard confession of another</li>
<li>Pretended celebration of the Eucharist by a non-priest</li>
<li>Attempt to hear confession by one who cannot validly do so</li>
<li>False accusation of the crime of solicitation in the confessional</li>
<li>Attempted marriage by a religious or cleric</li>
<li>Formal cooperation in abortion</li>
</ul>
Formal cooperation in an abortion had previously been reserved for the bishop to lift the canonical penalty. However, <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-lettera-ap_20161120_misericordia-et-misera.html">Pope Francis in 2016</a> extended that authority to all priests in the sacrament of confession.
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Reserved Sins?

Why Doesn’t God Reveal Himself?

The New Testament teaches that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/predestination">predestination</a> is real. St. Paul says, “Those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29-30).
Scripture also refers to those whom God has “elected” (Greek, eklektos, “chosen”), and theologians often link this term to predestination, understanding the elect as those God has predestined to salvation.
Because the Bible mentions predestination, all Christian groups have a belief in the concept. The question is how predestination works, and on this subject there is considerable debate.
At the time of Christ, some Jews—such as the Essenes—thought that everything is fated by God to happen, so that people <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-gods-foreknowledge-doesnt-negate-free-will">have no free will</a>. Other Jews—such as the Sadducees—denied predestination and attributed everything to free will. Finally, some Jews—such as the Pharisees—believed that both predestination and free will have a role. For Christians, Paul rules out the view taken by the Sadducees. But the other two views have found supporters.
Calvinists take the position closest to that of the Essenes and place a strong emphasis on predestination. According to Calvinism, God actively chooses certain individuals to be saved, and he gives them grace that will unfailingly result in their salvation. Those whom God does not choose don’t receive this grace, so they are inevitably damned.
In Calvinist thought, God’s choice is said to be “unconditional,” meaning that it isn’t based on anything about the individuals. Belief in unconditional election also is traditionally shared by Lutherans, with various qualifiers.
Not all Calvinists speak of “free will,” but many do. When they use the term, it refers to the fact that individuals are not forced to do something against their wills. They can choose what they desire. However, their desires are determined by God either giving or withholding saving grace from them, so it is God who ultimately determines whether an individual will choose salvation or damnation.
This view also was held by Luther, who compared a man’s will to an animal whose destination is determined by its rider, which is either God or the devil:
<blockquote>The human will is placed between the two like a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills. . . . If Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run to either of the two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of it (On the Bondage of the Will, 25).</blockquote>
Advocates of this view sometimes accuse those who disagree with them of teaching, or at least implying, salvation by works, since it is the decision of an individual’s will—not God—that determines whether he will be saved. But this relies on an overly broad understanding of “works” that doesn’t correspond to the way the term is used in Scripture. Using the freedom that God himself has given an individual to accept his offer of salvation would not be either an action done out of a sense of obligation to the Mosaic Law or a “good work” that would earn one’s place before God. It would simply be accepting his gift.
Critics of Calvinism often accuse its view of portraying God as capricious and cruel. They argue that the doctrine of unconditional election implies that God arbitrarily saves some and damns others. They also argue that the Calvinist understanding of free will robs the term of its meaning, since individuals are not actually free to choose between salvation and damnation. They are slaves to their desires, which are determined by God.
Other Christians understand free will as freedom not only from external coercion, but also from internal necessity. That is, God has given human beings freedom to make choices that are not strictly determined by their desires. They can thus choose whether or not to accept his offer of salvation.
Being omniscient, God knows in advance whether they will freely choose to cooperate with his grace, and he predestines them to salvation based on this foreknowledge. Non-Calvinists often argue that this is what Paul is referring to when he says, “Those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined.”
The Catholic Church permits a range of views on the subject of predestination, but there are certain points on which it is firm: “God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end” (CCC 1037). It also rejects the idea of unconditional election, stating that when God “establishes his eternal plan of ‘predestination,’ he includes in it each person’s free response to his grace” (CCC 600).

What Is Predestination?

Dr. Edward Sri notes the similarities of Pilate&#8217;s indifference to the truth that sent Jesus to death and modern society&#8217;s indifference to truth that sends the unborn to <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/abortion">abortion</a>.

Relativism and Abortion

Catholics and Intelligent Design

<div>Can a layperson have a permanent key to the tabernacle in order to get hosts to take to homebound people?</div><div>The Code of Canon Law:
<blockquote>The person responsible for the church or oratory is to take care that the key of the tabernacle in which the Most Holy Eucharist is reserved is safeguarded most diligently (can. 938 §5).</blockquote>
General Instruction of the Roman Missal:
<blockquote>The one tabernacle should be immovable, be made of solid and inviolable material that is not transparent, and be locked in such a way that the danger of profanation is prevented to the greatest extent possible (314).</blockquote>
<a href="http://www.romanrite.com/nullo.html">Nullo Unquam Tempore</a>
<blockquote>The key of the tabernacle, in which the Most Holy Sacrament is kept, should be guarded with the utmost diligence, its custody resting as a grave burden of conscience on the priest who has charge of the church or oratory.
The key of the tabernacle must be most diligently kept by a priest. All the cautions mentioned up to the present will be in vain, if the chief caution, namely, the safe-keeping of the key of the tabernacle be neglected. . . . The key must be kept by the rector at home, or always carried about by him, care being taken against losing it; or let it be kept in the sacristy in a safe and secret place, under lock and key, the second key being kept by the rector as above. . . .
If he leaves the key in the sacristy under another key; he can give this latter to the sacristan during such time as he is absent and the key of the tabernacle may be needed.</blockquote>
The documents of the Church are very clear that there are not to be other keys to the tabernacle floating around. The actual key to the tabernacle must always be kept at the church. If someone has need of the tabernacle key, then it should be kept in a location under another key or code that the individual can have access to rather than keeping the tabernacle key. After all, if the person holding onto a key were to lose it, it is easier and simpler to change where the tabernacle key is kept than to change the lock for the tabernacle.
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How Should the Tabernacle Key Be Handled?

Is Christianity a religion full of contradictions? <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@bashir_gift_ug/video/7278195520537955589?is_from_webapp=1&amp;sender_device=pc&amp;web_id=6983056260526589446">This Muslim fellow on TikTok</a> thinks so. He thinks that, in professing Jesus to be God, we thereby affirm and deny at the same time certain attributes of God.
For example, he argues, “If you say God became man, you would put God in the nature of ‘not-knowingness,’&#8221; since “it is in the nature of man not to know everything.” Therefore, so it seems, to say that God became man is to say that God is all-knowing and not all-knowing at the same time.
He also thinks affirming the Incarnation robs God of his immutability. If God became man, he argues, then God would be subject to changing his mind, since that’s a quality of human beings. But insofar as He is God, He cannot change his mind. Therefore, our gent concludes, we Christians affirm and deny the immutability of God at the same time.
Here&#8217;s his other example related to Jesus’ divinity: “The Bible says in Mark 12:29 that God is one. So, if you say God is one and three at the same time, [that’s] a contradiction. One is one.”
Does the belief that God became man entail the contradictions that this Muslim thinks it does?
Well, for there to be a contradiction something must be affirmed and denied at the same time and in the same respect. For example, if I were to affirm that the tree in my yard exists outside and deny that it exists outside at the same time, then I’d be affirming a contradiction.
But if I were to affirm that the tree exists outside and, at the same time, deny its existence in my mother’s mind back in Louisiana (she doesn’t even know about the tree), then I wouldn’t be affirming a contradiction, since I’d be denying the tree’s existence in one sense and affirming its existence in another. Given the different senses, there is no contradiction.
The Muslim in the video fails to consider the different senses in which Christians say God is all-knowing and not all-knowing, immutable and mutable, and one and three.
Consider the all-knowing part. Jesus, who is God become man, is all-knowing in his divine intellect in virtue of the divine nature that he is identical to (along with the Father and the Holy Spirit). Yet, he is not-all-knowing in his human intellect in virtue of the human nature that he assumed to himself, since, as our Muslim friend rightly recognizes, human nature excludes the all-knowing nature of divinity. The sense in which he is all-knowing is not the same as the sense in which he is not-all-knowing. Therefore, there is no contradiction.
On to the alleged <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/gods-immutability-and-the-incarnation-irreconcilable-differences">immutable and mutable contradiction</a>. Christians profess that Jesus is subject to change insofar as he has a human nature, which allows him, a subject of action, to experience change. But he does not experience change in his divine nature. So, we don’t affirm and deny Jesus’ immutability in the same sense. Affirming X of one nature and denying X of another doesn’t entail a contradiction, because the affirmation and the denial are not in the same sense.
Finally, Christians don’t believe that God is one and three in the same sense. Oneness is attributed to divinity concerning being. There can be only one being that is subsistent being itself. “Threeness,” however, is attributed to divinity concerning the persons, or relations, that are identical to the one divine being. Being and relations are distinct concepts. Therefore, to affirm “threeness” in persons, or relations, is not to deny “oneness” in being. Thus, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/explaining-the-trinity">there is no contradiction</a>.
Of course, these responses don’t come close the depths of what great thinkers, like Aquinas and the early Church fathers, have probed concerning these issues. It’s always frustrating that objections like those in the above video only take seconds to make, yet a full answer requires a semester’s worth of theology and philosophy on the graduate level. It suffices to say, however, that since the above arguments from our Muslim gent fail, we can conclude that the Christian faith doesn’t entail a contradiction on these counts.

God Became Man, No Problem

<div>May a priest use an iPad to say daily Mass?</div><div>As far as I know, no universal rule has been issued by the Church, so it if the local bishops conference has not prohibited its use (<a href="https://cathnews.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Ipads-at-Mass.pdf">as the bishops in New Zealand did</a>), and the appropriate liturgical texts are legally available on the tablet device, then it would technically be an option.
The Church usually uses blessed objects for Mass that cannot be used for other purposes. So it would seem a bit odd that an object used for answering emails would also be used to say Mass.
However, if for some reason the proper liturgical books have gone missing or were ruined, it would seem reasonable to use an electronic device for immediate and temporary use. I could also envision an electronic device that is used only for Mass that is carried by a priest who travels between assignments that require him to bring his own liturgical books.
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Say Mass Using an iPad?

<div>What are the options for the "Mystery of Faith" prayer during Mass?</div><div>In the English Roman Missal, the priest simply says or intones, &#8220;The mystery of faith.&#8221; There are no other options in English.
In the English Roman Missal, there are three possible responses to this acclamation:
<ol>
<li>We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection until you come again.</li>
<li>When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again.</li>
<li>Save us, Savior of the world, for by your cross and resurrection you have set us free.</li>
</ol>
</div>

Memorial Acclamation?

Tim Staples delves into the complex theological concepts surrounding Mary&#8217;s power and the importance of free will. Responding to a caller&#8217;s question about St. Louis de Montfort&#8217;s &#8220;True Devotion to Mary,&#8221; Staples provides a comprehensive explanation of Catholic doctrine in contrast to Protestant perspectives, particularly those of Luther and Calvin. He highlights the significance of Mary&#8217;s role in salvation history and the necessity of human cooperation with God&#8217;s grace.
&nbsp;
Transcript:
Let&#8217;s go to Lincoln, Nebraska, where Sammy is listening. Sammy, thank you very much for the call. You got a question for Tim Staples?
You bet, thank you guys. All right, bro. Big fan of the show, first time caller. I&#8217;m trying to also entertain my two year old, so. Oh, this should be good. This should be good. So I&#8217;m reading The True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort. Awesome book. For that very reason, you know, to try to develop a true devotion. And I am really early into it. And I&#8217;m in the introduction here, paragraph seven.
And I could read the whole thing here, it&#8217;s pretty short, but basically what he&#8217;s saying, he gets to a point where he says the saints are saying admirable things about this holy city of God. I assume that&#8217;s in reference to Mary, but I&#8217;m not 100% sure, because then it goes on to say that, &#8220;Is in true immeasurable that the grander of her power, &#8220;which she exercises even over God himself, &#8220;incomprehensible.&#8221; 
So yeah, I just wanted further clarification on that. I just was questioning, you know, if this is in reference to Mary, how does she exercise power over God himself? Oh yeah, awesome brother. I tell you, that book is so rich. St. Louis de Montfort was of course the master when it came to the Blessed Mother. But here&#8217;s the key, what St. Louis is emphasizing, and especially at a time, you know, we&#8217;re in the same time in this sense that he was, where Protestantism is all the rage, and in particular Calvinism. And unfortunately, Luther and Calvin, who are two of, I would say of all of the reformers, those two were probably the most dangerous in their errors because they&#8217;re the language they used. And thanks be to God, you know, in our dialogue with the Lutherans, I know that doesn&#8217;t represent all Lutherans, because of course the Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Synod, and others didn&#8217;t have anything to do with that. I&#8217;m referring to the famous declaration that the Catholic Church signed with the Lutherans, of the Lutheran World Federation.
Where we came to certain agreements, at least on the initial grace of justification, that yes, there is human cooperation involved. But you know, just to give you a sense of things though, remember, Luther taught in his greatest work, as it&#8217;s called, his magnum opus, where he essentially denies free will. The book is called The Bondage of the Will. And in two different places in that book, he says that you and I are like a beast, right? If God gets on our back and rides us, he&#8217;ll ride us to heaven. If the devil gets on our back and rides us, he&#8217;ll ride us to hell. But the beast has no choice as to who rides him, right? And that was, of course, his whole thesis of Bondage of the Will. There is no free will. He calls free will every name in the book. And of course he&#8217;s dialoguing with Erasmus, who was a Catholic theologian, who I think does a pretty darn good job, even though he himself had his own theological issues, but he was a good son of the church. But here&#8217;s the point.
That sort of free will is a farce. There is no free will. And John Calvin took that, that Luther said, and put it on steroids with his idea of double predestination. So that you and I are basically puppets, dude. There is no free will. There is no cooperation. The idea of cooperation was absolutely anathema to Luther, right? And whether that&#8217;s cooperation preceding justification, because when God calls us, he never coerces us. We can, you know, as Acts 7, verse 55, in fact, verses 51 through 55, if you remember St. Stephen, when he&#8217;s about to get stoned to death, when he&#8217;s preaching the gospel there in Jerusalem, and they kill him for it, he says to them, &#8220;You,&#8221; to the elders of Jerusalem, he says, &#8220;You are stiff-necked at you who resist the Holy Spirit of God.&#8221; Right, they resist the Holy Spirit. They resist the grace of God, whom Stephen knew was calling them to salvation. Now, that means in preparation for the grace of justification, or after we receive the grace of justification, we can always resist. But understand, you and I know that as a Catholic. But remember, Luther and Calvin talk, that is absolute heresy. There is no free will and such. So when you read St. Louis, of course he&#8217;s coming with this as a backdrop, and he&#8217;s presenting the importance of understanding free will. Now, of course free will, we have no power to merit anything, unless it&#8217;s as St. Peter says in 2 Peter 3, 18.
He says, &#8220;Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.&#8221; You can only begin to merit and do what St. Louis is talking about. Once you enter into Christ, with our last caller, I talked about baptism. Baptism is the first sacrament, first chronologically, and it has a first in primacy as well. Of course, the Eucharist is the greatest because it&#8217;s Jesus and all other sacraments are ordered toward it. But baptism has a certain primacy because that&#8217;s the sacrament whereby we enter into Christ and then the doors are opened for all the other sacraments and the power of God so that we can begin to do what St. Louis is talking about. Right now, let&#8217;s get to that. Because once we enter into Christ, here&#8217;s the key, before Christ, what can we do? John 15.5, Jesus says, &#8220;apart from me, you can do nothing.&#8221; But what happens when we enter into Christ as my old Greek professor, Father Patrick Brennan, he&#8217;s long since gone to his reward, but I quote him all the time, one of the most brilliant men, if not the most brilliant man I ever met, he said, &#8220;Before Christ, we can do nothing after.&#8221; Look at John 14.12, right? Jesus says, &#8220;You will do greater things than I did.&#8221; We could talk a whole lot about what that means, right?
And St. Paul, in Philippians 4.13, he says, &#8220;I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me.&#8221; Right, now why is that? Because we now have the power of Christ working in us. However, my friend, we also have free will. So God, even when we&#8217;re in him, Si, God doesn&#8217;t force us to do meritorious actions. We must freely choose, see? But if we do as Christians, we can literally change the world. Now you say, but wait a minute, this thing, you got power over God? Absolutely.
Why? Because that&#8217;s the way God established his economy of salvation.
Lumen Gentium, the dogmatic constitution on the church has a beautiful section on this, as does the catechism, especially, I&#8217;ll point you to the catechism section 2008 through 2010, glorious section where it says that God has chosen to use the free cooperation of his creatures in his plan of salvation. What does that mean? That means if I choose to walk with Jesus, to say yes to Jesus at that coffee shop, let&#8217;s say, and go over and talk to some folks, and by God&#8217;s grace, they come to faith in Jesus. They come to the sacraments. Guess what?
I have cooperated with God in saving a soul. See, that&#8217;s why the Bible will say all over the place in 2 Corinthians 9.22, St. Paul&#8217;s, not 2 Corinthians, that would be 1 Corinthians 9.22, St. Paul says, &#8220;I&#8217;ve become all things to all men &#8220;that by all means I might save.&#8221; How can Paul save anybody? Because of his cooperation. Now, it&#8217;s God who&#8217;s the first principle of salvation. He&#8217;s the first cause. But because we have free will, and that&#8217;s the sticking point with Luther and Calvin, my friend, because we have free will, yes, if I choose not to walk over there, guess what? That person may not. Now, it&#8217;s true somebody else could come and whatever, but maybe not too, Cycala. The point is, yes, we have power over God. Now, granted, I know in our modern theology, we don&#8217;t like to use that language of over. I get what St. Louis is saying, I actually like it, because I think it&#8217;s poetic and I think it&#8217;s beautiful. But it also gets at the point here that God could do everything. 
He could come down here right now and answer this question a lot better than this knucklehead is doing. He could come down here and do literally everything we do at Catholic Answers and everything every Christian does. But he does not do that, Cycala. He chooses to use us and our free cooperation. And in that, we become, as St. Paul describes it in 1 Corinthians chapter three, verse nine, he says we are co-laborers with Christ, right? So yeah, there&#8217;s a certain power because, and maybe the ultimate example is what St. Louis is gonna get to if you keep reading with the Blessed Mother. We have example after example of the Blessed Mother who until she says, let it be done unto me, in Luke chapter one, verse 37, there&#8217;s no incarnation, my friend. But when she says, let it be done, the entire universe is changed. Jesus did not perform the miracle at the wedding of feast of Cana until mama says so in John chapter two, that is just a fact. That&#8217;s what it says. In fact, Jesus pushes back. He says, (Speaking In Foreign Language) In other words, what is this between you and me woman? I&#8217;m not gonna do this. I mean, that&#8217;s basically what he&#8217;s saying.
If you understand the Hebraism in that text that goes back to the Old Testament, that&#8217;s a powerful line of rebuke. Mama&#8217;s coming and saying, hey, these folks need a miracle here. And Jesus is basically saying no. But what does Mary say? Get ready, here comes the miracle. Basically, no, it&#8217;s not exactly. Pair of phrase, it&#8217;s a pair of phrase. That&#8217;s right. He says, she says, do whatever he tells and he performs the miracle. And by the way, he performs the miracle basically at the request of the Blessed Mother. And through that, Jesus performs his first miracle, enters into his ministry, and the apostles come to faith. That is a quote from John chapter two, verse 11. And we could go on to the foot of the cross.
It&#8217;s Jesus who prepares his mother for that sacred moment that was prophesied in Luke chapter two, verses 34 and 35 by Simeon the prophet, where he says, behold, this child is set for the fallen rising again. And basically, for the salvation of all, he says, for the many, and to be a sign of contradiction which shall be spoken against. But then he turns to her and a sword will pierce your soul that the dialogue, the thoughts out of many hearts would be manifest. That is the same people Simeon said Jesus was gonna die for, Mary was gonna spiritually die for.
Powerful text there. Of course, it&#8217;s fulfilled on the cross. And so yeah, Jesus in a sense didn&#8217;t even go and die on the cross until first he prepares his mother through the preparation of the prophet Simeon to understand Mary&#8217;s role at the foot of the cross, where Pope John Paul, I think brings it out so powerfully and beautifully in his masterpiece in cyclical on suffering. Salvatici Delores section 25, where Pope St. John Paul the Great says at that moment, the sufferings of Mary and Jesus were so intimately and integrally interwoven that her sufferings became a participation in the redemption of all. And we see that portrayed in the book of Revelation, chapter 12, the woman who gives birth to the Messiah in verses four and five, and then in verse 17 gives birth to all of us. So look, I think to sum all this up brother, it all really gets back to free will, the free will that Luther and Calvin rejected. 
And by the way, many of their followers are coming back to a belief in free will. Thanks be to God, but we can&#8217;t pass over. This is devastating when you deny this, because of course, if there&#8217;s no free will, we are puppets, we can&#8217;t merit anything, we can&#8217;t do anything, and it&#8217;s just a matter of if God&#8217;s gonna choose Cykeleth, he&#8217;s going to heaven, if not gonna choose Timsek, well, you&#8217;re going to hell and so forth. So understand that&#8217;s the context in what Saint Louis is saying. We have power over God in as much as, if we choose to cooperate, all heaven will break loose.
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Does Mary Exercise Power Over God?

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’

Many of us will celebrate Labor Day today by taking some well-deserved time off before the back-to-school, back-to-work, back-to-reality September rush kicks in. But sometimes, the chatter over Labor Day barbecues can actually be a cultural conversation about the dignity of work.
Take, for example, this attempted public shaming that backfired. Back in 2018, a shopper named Karma Lawrence spied former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens working at a Trader Joe’s in New Jersey, scanning groceries, and took a picture of him. On social media, Lawrence lamented what she thought was the bad . . . uh, karma that life had doled out to Owens. 
News sites picked up the story, which quickly went viral, leading to a torrent of support from friends of the actor as well as fellow thespians. They noted that most actors look for other types of work to support themselves between gigs, just as Owens was doing. Then superstar producer Tyler Perry <a href="https://abc7ny.com/entertainment/tyler-perry-offers-geoffrey-owens-a-job/4151534/">offered him a job</a>, and soon Owens’s phone was blowing up with opportunities to tell his story on talk shows. 
As for Karma? Well, you know what they say about that. She was forced to endure a social media shaming of her own. 
Owens, a Yale graduate, explained that decreasing royalties from Cosby reruns had put pressure on him to earn a regular living to support his family. Many of the tweets in support of Owens asked the question, “What’s wrong with someone doing an honest job?” At least, they wrote, he was working to support his family—no shame in that. In fact, it’s quite honorable.
What’s interesting to me about Owens’s story is what it says about the dignity and meaning of work.
We live in a culture in which labor is frowned on and retirement—the earlier, the better—the goal, with many Millennials embracing the FIRE (financially independent, retired early) movement, dropping out of the workforce often in their late twenties and early thirties. For some, such freedom means having the time to do what they see as meaningful, even if that happens to be another type of work. But there are many more who view any type of work as a sort of necessary evil, with the ideal life amounting to uninterrupted leisure. 
Even some Christians actually view work simply as part of the punishments stemming from original sin. But does that view . . . work?
The Bible notes that before our first parents fell into sin, work was there. God himself “worked,” establishing the heavens and the earth, after which he rested (Gen. 2:1-3). Yes, we are to imitate God in his rest, but his plan isn’t “all play and no work.” in fact, work is also one of the joyful gifts God gave his children in Eden’s paradise. Adam had a job to do: he was to “till” (Hebrew: ’abodah) and “keep” (Hebrew: shamar) the garden. These verbs are later used in the Old Testament to describe the Levitical priests’ service in the Temple, connecting Adam’s work with the task of worship!
Of course, the entry of sin into creation adversely affected the arena of work, too. The joy of work became toil: because of the disobedience of our first parents, God told Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread” (Gen. 3:17-19). 
But the goodness of work for humanity remains. As birds were created to fly, we were created to share in God’s work of creation, no matter what our job might be. 
When interviewed, Owens said to Good Morning America host Robin Roberts, “There is no job that’s better than another job. It might pay better, it might have better benefits, it might look better on a résumé and on paper. But actually, it’s not better. Every job is worthwhile and valuable.”
This is straight out of the Catholic playbook: the dignity of work and worker. Any honest job can be a means of worship and a means of personal holiness for the worker. The micro-marvel of tiny ants, dutifully working, carrying many times their body weight, gives God just as much glory as do the macro-marvels, like majestic mountain peaks piercing the clouds. 
It’s like that with our work, too. As St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, <a href="http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/furrow.htm">wrote</a>, “before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything acquires the value of the love with which it is done.” One might say that the greatest job, then, is the one that is done with the most love, for the glory of God.
Jesus spent the vast majority of his life as a worker. In that, he was redeeming us, too, albeit in a different way, by sanctifying work. God worked in St. Joseph’s workshop just as he did in building the heavens and the earth, in order to remind us that, through service in the most ordinary things of life—yes, even at Trader Joe’s—we can discover the divine.

Work as Worship

January 24 is the feast of St. Francis de Sales, a 16th&#8211; and 17th-century bishop. Looking at the Church’s liturgical calendar, somebody might ask, “Who cares about some guy that died 403 years ago? How does he matter to me?”
One reason Pope St. John Paul II canonized as many saints as he did was to provide people with more modern examples of holiness. But note the key point: the saints are examples, and holiness never goes out of style.
Holiness is not some ethereal quality, some optional je ne sais quoi. If you don’t end up holy, if you don’t end up a saint, your life was a failure. There are only two places to spend eternity: heaven and hell. And sanctity—holiness—is the admission ticket to the former.
That’s why St. Francis de Sales matters.
Francis came from a noble family of Savoy, a region that today would be the east of France bordering Switzerland, running down to the French coast around Nice, and then extending eastward into Italy around the Turin area. In the 1500s, it was on the frontlines of religious division: Geneva was just over the border, and that city was a Calvinist theocracy. Now, remember that Geneva and its environs are part of French-speaking Switzerland, which meant <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/advice-from-the-guy-who-makes-converts">there were still Catholics</a> left there. Francis was eventually sent to be their bishop. As a Catholic bishop, however, he was not going to get living space in Calvinist Geneva, so his episcopal see was in nearby Annecy, France.
Okay, you say, and so what? Why does a bishop from four centuries ago—even one with a tough assignment—matter to me today? Two reasons.
First, he was accessible. Though of noble birth and aware of the privileges of the episcopacy, Francis reduced himself to simplicity to hike the Alps to personally meet and tend to the spiritual needs of his flock scattered across the valleys. He met people where they were at. He realized that among the reasons the Reformation could spread was religious illiteracy: the debates were about refined theological distinctions, but many average people had only a rudimentary knowledge of the Faith, more the consequence of inheritance, social practice, and custom than explained teaching. Francis sought to remedy that.
He sought to remedy that because he himself, far better educated, had been caught up in it. As a nobleman, his family had big plans for him that included politics, not the priesthood. But at a certain point, Francis began seriously to worry about the question of his own salvation (the kind of anxiety that led a scrupulous Martin Luther into inventing a whole new theology). In the environs of Geneva, that anxiety was driven by the Protestant doctrine of predestination: that God had assigned some people (probably most) to damnation and there was nothing they could do about it, given that good works avail nothing to salvation. At a certain point, however, Francis became conscious of the fact that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8) and wants our salvation perhaps even more than we do. Buoyed by that trust, Francis shook off his anxieties and, with joy, embraced the priesthood.
Second, Francis countered the bleak hellfire and damnation of Calvinism with a focus on holiness. Holiness was not a rarefied virtue for some people: it was sine qua non for everybody. Holiness was not a clerical or religious preserve, while the laity mostly skated on the borderline between sin and grace. Everybody faces that borderline, but it is God’s will not that we simply squeeze under some minimal bar, but that we become holy. “Be ye perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48) is directed to everybody.
Nor did Francis approach holiness with glumness and depression, as if “I’ll have so much fun if I’m not holy.” No, Francis presented holiness as joy, as happiness. In our language today, he presented it as self-fulfillment. As Karol Wojtyła would write long before becoming pope, living the kind of life God wants us to live and a truly human life are in direct, not inverse proportion. To the degree human beings live the kind of life God wants, they also live a truly fulfilled human life. Holiness does not “alienate” us from our humanity (to riff on Immanuel Kant); it leads us to it.
Francis did not just talk. He wrote two wonderful books, directed to lay people. The <a href="https://ccel.org/ccel/desales/devout_life/devout_life">Introduction to the Devout Life</a> and the <a href="https://ccel.org/ccel/desales/love.all.html">Treatise on the Love of God</a> offered practical guidance in living a holy life. The Introduction was especially pathbreaking because Francis wrote it for ordinary lay people, not for religious, something quite unusual in his day.
The Second Vatican Council <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html">reminded us</a> of the “universal call to holiness” (Lumen Gentium 39-42). In doing so, it reminded us of Our Lord’s call to perfection, something we may never obtain but for which we can and should always try. (After all, if your lover ever told you, “I think I love you enough,” would you take that as a sign that everything is wonderful or that something is awry? Love is dynamic: if you are not moving forward, you’re falling backward.) We should not forget, however, that in the Church’s history, all the saints remind us that holiness applies to everyone. Some of them—like St. Francis de Sales—even made the effort to present that teaching explicitly to others.
Space limits us from talking about how Francis collaborated with St. Jane Frances de Chantal to tailor that call to holiness to women. She was responsible for founding the Institute of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin for those women who felt called to religious life. Both saints remind us that holiness is everybody’s affair in every time and place.
And that’s why, four centuries later, Francis still matters.