Manage Account

<div>May a Catholic receive the sacraments if the person’s spouse is not baptized but the marriage has been convalidated and dispensation granted?</div><div><p>If a Catholic is in a valid marriage, then he or she can certainly receive the sacraments. Whether someone&#8217;s spouse is baptized or not has no bearing on a Catholic&#8217;s ability to receive the sacraments.</p>
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An Unbaptized Spouse and the Sacraments

Discover

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<p><strong>DAY 62</strong></p>
<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
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<p>“Catholics should not use crucifixes because Jesus is no longer on the cross.”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>The reason that the cross is important is because of the Crucifixion.</p>
<p>This objection has more to do with group identity markers than se- rious theological reflection. Every group has practices that mark its identity with respect to other groups (e.g., circumcision and keeping kosher among Jewish people).</p>
<p>In Western Europe at the time of the Reformation, Protestants be- gan to distinguish themselves from Catholics by certain practices. One was an avoidance of three-dimensional images of Jesus, though two- dimensional images (e.g., paintings and illustrations) were retained. The aversion to three-dimensional images of Christ led to the use of bare crosses, without the figure of Christ.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with bare crosses. They were used long before the Reformation, and they are still used in Catholic circles. The reasons for them are not theological or ideological but practical (e.g., a cross may be too small to accommodate a figure of Christ) or artistic (e.g., so that a cross can be specially decorated).</p>
<p>There is also nothing wrong with crucifixes, which depict Jesus hanging on the cross. They are more vivid reminders of what Jesus did for us.</p>
<p>The cross was not important for its own sake but because Jesus died on it. Thus, Protestants also create paintings and illustrations of Jesus hanging on the cross. This reveals that the objection sometimes made to crucifixes is not based on an aversion to depicting Jesus on the cross. A three-dimensional depiction of the Crucifixion is not intrinsically any different than a two-dimensional depiction, which suggests that the Protestant preference for bare crosses over crucifixes is a matter of culture rather than theological principle.</p>
<p>True, Jesus is not on the cross today, but that is irrelevant. Today, the cross on which Jesus hung no longer exists as a single object, and it is questionable whether it ever stood without Jesus on it. Frequently the patibulum (the horizontal bar of a cross) was a separate piece of wood that was raised onto the stipes (the vertical pole) at the time of Crucifixion and then taken down when the victim was dead.</p>
<p>All Christian crosses—whether bare or not—recall the Crucifixion. It’s just a question of how vividly you want to do this.</p>
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Crosses and Crucifixes

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<p><strong>DAY 290</strong></p>
<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
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<p>“Genesis 1–11 contains many things that don’t correspond to the modern, scientific understanding of the world (such as talking snakes, a universal flood, and so on).”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>These chapters pertain to history in a true sense, but they are written according to a set of literary conventions that conveys truth using more symbolism than later passages.</p>
<p>The Magisterium has indicated this for Genesis 1, stating, “Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine ‘work,’ concluded by the ‘rest’ of the seventh day” (CCC 337). It has said the same for Genesis 3, stating, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man” (CCC 390).</p>
<p>The Magisterium has not yet similarly commented on other events in Genesis 1–11 (e.g., the Flood, the Tower of Babel), but it likely would take the same approach. Thus in 1950, Pius XII stated:</p>
<p>The first eleven chapters of Genesis, although properly speaking not conforming to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time, do nevertheless pertain to history in a true sense, which however must be further studied and determined by exegetes; the same chapters, in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people (Humani Generis 38).</p>
<p>The reason for the greater use of symbolism in these chapters is because of the remoteness of the events in time. This period is before Israel’s recorded history began, and truth concerning this period cannot be conveyed the same way it can for the period after detailed historical records began to be kept.</p>
<p>A different set of literary conventions were thus used for describing the period before the arrival of Abraham in Genesis 12. From Abra- ham to the time of Israel’s kings, less symbolism is used. And a more conventional way of recording history begins with the advent of the kings and the keeping of court records.</p>
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The Early Chapters of Genesis

<div>What is the difference between a rite and a particular church?</div><div><p>As Colin Donovan, Vice-President for Theology at <a href="https://www.ewtn.com">EWTN</a> notes well, <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_28051992_communionis-notio_en.html">“A Rite represents an ecclesiastical, or church, tradition about how the sacraments are to be celebrated.”  </a></p>
<p>A “Particular Church” is an ecclesiastical grouping of the faithful by the Pope, and overseen by a validly ordained bishop or some other lawfully deputed representative of the Pope.</p>
<p>The most common example of a “particular Church” is diocese, over which governs a bishop who is in full communion with the Pope. As <em>The Code of Canon Law</em> provides:</p>
<blockquote><p>Particular churches, in which and from which the one and only Catholic Church exists, are first of all dioceses, to which, unless it is otherwise evident, are likened a territorial prelature and territorial abbacy, an apostolic vicariate and an apostolic prefecture, and an apostolic administration erected in a stable manner (canon 368).</p></blockquote>
<p>The Archdiocese of Detroit provides more info on a diocese as a <a href="http://www.aod.org/our-archdiocese/archbishop-allen-vigneron/sharing-the-light-communications/parish-finances/faq-about-parish-finances/#1">“particular Church”</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>A diocese is a section of the People of God entrusted to a bishop to be guided by him with the assistance of his clergy so that, loyal to its pastor and formed by him into one community in the Holy Spirit through the Gospel and the Eucharist, it constitutes one particular church in which the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and active.</p></blockquote>
<p>Churches not in full communion with the Pope, yet which have valid apostolic successors (bishops) and a valid Eucharist, are still “true particular Churches” (CDF, <em><a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000806_dominus-iesus_en.html">Dominus Iesus, no. 17</a></em>).</p>
<p>For on more particular Churches, see <em>The Code of Canon Law</em>, canon 368ff.</p>
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Difference Between Rite and Particular Church

<p>In this episode Trent lampoons comedians who attack Christianity under the guise of comedy.</p>
<p><strong>Transcription:</strong></p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p2">Comedy is pretty subjective, but in today&#8217;s episode, we&#8217;re going to refute the objective nonsense pedaled by comedians who just want to ridicule or try to refute the faith. Now, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with poking fun at Christian culture before they got involved with politics. The Babylon Bee primarily made fun of modern evangelicalism, but these comedians were going to talk about today aren&#8217;t even trying to be funny. They just want to attack Christianity under the guise of comedy, and so we&#8217;re going to point out what&#8217;s wrong with their laughably bad arguments. First, here&#8217;s Sarah Silverman.</p>
<p class="p1">CLIP:</p>
<p class="p2">Christianity is super old, but it&#8217;s crazy. I mean, it&#8217;s born a sinner by being born. You are a sinner and you&#8217;re going to hell, but you can just apologize and then you can go to heaven. No big deal if you&#8217;re a murderer, same thing. It&#8217;s just apologize and go to heaven. You can be Hitler and go to confession and say, forgive me, father, I killed 6 million Jews, and the priest would just be like, no problem. Say 10. Heil Marys and Hitler goes to heaven.</p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p2">When it comes to salvation, I love watching non-religious people try to say God is unfair. On the one hand, they think it&#8217;s horrible. God would send someone to hell. On the other hand, they think it&#8217;s horrible that God would allow some sinners to repent and go to heaven, but this leads to the question, which sins should God forgive and which should he not forgive? Many of these critics will just offer an arbitrary standard of a good person or someone as good as them, which I refuted in my previous episode on the one fallacy that sends most people to hell. The self-serving nature of the good person standard is evident in Silverman&#8217;s case given who she is merciful towards. In this other monologue, she expresses being torn about condemning Louis c K&#8217;s sex scandal with women he masturbated in front of because well, Louis CK is her friend.</p>
<p class="p1">CLIP:</p>
<p class="p2">Here&#8217;s where I&#8217;m at on it as of this moment. It could change tomorrow, and if it does, I will keep you posted. One of my best friends of over 25 years, Louis CK masturbated in front of women. He wielded his power with women in fucked up ways sometimes to the point where they left comedy entirely. I love Louis, but Louis did these things. Both of those statements are true, so I just keep asking myself, I can. You love someone who did bad things. Can you still love them?</p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p2">If this were somebody else, Silverman would have zero empathy for him, but that&#8217;s what makes God so good. He doesn&#8217;t only love his friends. God loves the entire world and he desires the salvation of every single person. There is no sin too big for God to forgive and no person beyond God&#8217;s transformative and redeeming love. If you ever tell yourself that God could never love or forgive, you know that that&#8217;s not true. That evil thought comes from the devil. Ask God to bind it and free you from its influence in your mind. Next, we have George Carlin who thinks he has a knockdown argument against the pro-life position.</p>
<p class="p1">CLIP:</p>
<p class="p2">Here&#8217;s another question I have. How come when it&#8217;s us, it&#8217;s an abortion and when it&#8217;s a chicken, it&#8217;s an an omlet</p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p2">Because ding dong, chicken eggs are not fertilized. When you eat an omelet, you aren&#8217;t eating an embryonic chicken, but when you abort a pregnancy, you kill an embryonic human being and some eggs people eat are fertilized. In Southeast Asia, there&#8217;s a snack called balut, which are fertilized eggs typically from a duck, and you can tell that&#8217;s not a potential duck. It&#8217;s just a really tiny duck. In the same way, a fetus or embryo is not a potential human. He or she is a tiny human who is the victim of murder when he or she&#8217;s aborted</p>
<p class="p1">CLIP:</p>
<p class="p2">Is a fetus, a human being. This seems to be the central question. Well, if a fetus is a human being, how come the census doesn&#8217;t count them? If a fetus is a human being, how come when there&#8217;s a miscarriage, they don&#8217;t have a funeral? If a fetus is a human being, how come people say, we have two children and one on the way, instead of saying we have three children, people say life begins at conception. I say life began about a billion years ago, and it&#8217;s a continuous process. Continuous just keeps rolling along.</p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p2">Life may have been around for billions of years, but an individual&#8217;s life is not that long. I would&#8217;ve asked George Carlin, how old are you? Why would you only start counting at the moment you left your mother&#8217;s womb? How does your location change your value? Were you not a human five minutes before that time? We celebrate birth, not because it&#8217;s the moment we came into existence, but because birth is the moment. Our existence changed from being a private exclusive one with our mothers to being a public one that can be shared and more easily documented with other people, but our life before birth was still life. And when that life ends in miscarriage, for example, many people do have funerals in this case, but so what? Many people had no emotional reaction to George Carlin dying in 2008 or to the millions of other people who die every year. But that lack of an emotional reaction doesn&#8217;t mean those people. Were not people we speak about unborn children with potentiality like I have a child on the way, or we don&#8217;t count them in a census because they have a high risk of mortality. Carlin even notes this.</p>
<p class="p1">CLIP:</p>
<p class="p2">80% of a woman&#8217;s fertilized eggs are rinsed and flushed out of her body once a month. During those delightful few days she has, they wind up on sanitary napkins and yet they are fertilized eggs. So basically what these anti-abortion people are telling us is that any woman who&#8217;s had more than one period is a serial killer. Consistency. Consistency</p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p2">Throughout most of human history. Half of all children did not make it past the age of five, but that didn&#8217;t mean they weren&#8217;t human beings. People over the age of a hundred have very high rates, but that doesn&#8217;t mean it should be legal to kill people over the age of a hundred for any reason. Just because people are likely to die does not give you and I the right to deliberately kill them via something like dismemberment. Well, moving on to a less gruesome subject. Here&#8217;s Patton Oswald&#8217;s complaint about people who base their morality on what the Bible says.</p>
<p class="p1">CLIP:</p>
<p class="p2">Just because you like something in a book doesn&#8217;t mean you can have the thing you like in the book happen in real life. That&#8217;s what crazy people want. I can&#8217;t go to the White House with a bunch of green lantern comics and go, I want a green lantern ring. I saw it in a book. I like make the thing in the book. I like be here now. I would be justifiably tased if I did that. Nobody would go, Hey, we have to respect his beliefs. You&#8217;ve got to respect everybody&#8217;s beliefs. No, you don&#8217;t. That&#8217;s what gets us in trouble. Look, you have to acknowledge everyone&#8217;s beliefs and then you have to reserve the right to go. That is stupid. Are</p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p1">You kidding me?</p>
<p class="p1">Yeah. We shouldn&#8217;t make every law in the Bible the law of the land, but some laws like thou shall not kill or thou shall not steal will be pretty good. We can use reason to determine which biblical precepts would be good for society as a whole to adopt through civil law and which precepts should be adopted through the church or even through the individual&#8217;s private devotional life. But more importantly, Oswald is completely inconsistent because he does not believe it&#8217;s okay to insult people for believing a delusion. I know this because he apologized to his transgender fans for simply taking a picture with Dave Chappelle who had the audacity as a comedian to make fun of transgender people. So according to Oswald, if a Christian wants the government to protect the unborn via legislation or legislate the correct definition of marriage, then that Christian is just as nuts as someone who wants comic books to be the law of the land, and we don&#8217;t have to respect their beliefs.</p>
<p class="p2">But if a man with a penis says, I want to be a woman, call me a woman and let me change in a locker room in front of little girls, well then we have to respect her beliefs and say, okay, ma&#8217;am, write this way. So get over yourself. Oswalt, even though I will admit your epic Star Wars filibuster from a 2013 episode of Parks and Rec was pretty awesome. I&#8217;m going to give you that. And you know what else is awesome when you subscribe to the channel and it&#8217;s really awesome when you support us@trenthornpodcast.com for just $5 a month. You get access to bonus content and you help us grow and stay sponsor free. So if you have benefited from our content, consider just making even a $5 monthly gift or an annual $50 gift@trenthornpodcast.com. Next up, we have the worst argument from Ricky DVAs in his informal debate on religion with Stephen Colbert,</p>
<p class="p1">CLIP:</p>
<p class="p2">But science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction in any holy book in any other fiction and destroyed it, okay, in a thousand years time, that wouldn&#8217;t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book right and every fact and destroyed them all in a thousand years, they&#8217;d all be back because all the same tests would be the same result. That&#8217;s good.</p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p1">No, Steven, it&#8217;s not good. That&#8217;s an idiotic argument. First, DVE is just saying that we should only trust facts that can be replicated scientifically, and if we destroyed all books, we would eventually rediscover scientific facts. Actually, we probably wouldn&#8217;t do that because different cultures on earth haven&#8217;t made equal scientific advancements, so accidents of history can keep scientific knowledge from being discovered. Also, scientists are freaking out that even when they&#8217;ve discovered something through repeated testing, they often can&#8217;t repeat that continually in laboratories. This is something called the replication crisis, but even if Dravet were correct, it&#8217;s not like you can only believe in science because it&#8217;s discoverable and other forms of knowledge aren&#8217;t. It isn&#8217;t just science that&#8217;s repeatable. If you got rid of every philosophy book, people would still ask basic questions about reality that would lead you back to the classical arguments for the existence of God.</p>
<p class="p2">DVA is correct that if you got rid of fiction like Shakespeare from written texts and people&#8217;s memories, the works of William Shakespeare would never return. But if you destroyed all works of history, those works of history wouldn&#8217;t return either, but that would not prove the historical events they describe, be they Caesar crossing the Rubicon, Hannibal crossing the Alps, or Christ dying on the cross, and his disciples proclaiming his resurrection. That would not prove that those historical events never happened in the first place. Finally, I&#8217;ll leave you with a clip that takes a jab at common atheist attitudes from comedian Jeff Allen, who used to be an atheist but is now a Christian,</p>
<p class="p1">CLIP:</p>
<p class="p1">Was a shallow, vacuous, empty vessel. I really was, and I didn&#8217;t have anything to talk to this man about until I found out because of his wealth, he had access to some of the nicest golf courses in America. He was actually a member, a Merefield village here, and that&#8217;s all I needed to hear. He was my new best friend. What I didn&#8217;t know about him was he was a fundamentalist Christian, and I didn&#8217;t know that. And we&#8217;re sitting on the fairway one day just talking and we&#8217;re talking about life, we&#8217;re talking about this, we&#8217;re talking about that. And then he brings up the Bible and I said, I don&#8217;t give me the Bible. I don&#8217;t want to hear the Bible. And he says, what do you mean? And I says, I&#8217;m an atheist. I don&#8217;t believe in that garbage. And he says, well, what is it about the Bible you don&#8217;t think is true? And I said, I don&#8217;t know. I never read it. And he said, well, you&#8217;re not an atheist. You&#8217;re a moron.</p>
<p class="p2">And I have to tell you I would&#8217;ve hit him except that I would&#8217;ve lost access to Merefield village. I wasn&#8217;t going to do that. And I asked him to explain himself and he said, well, to be honest with you, a true atheist is not only a biblical scholar, but is scholarly in all the face of the earth. And after a long intellectual journey has come to the conclusion that there is no God of the universe, you on the other hand want to circumvent the entire intellectual process and just come to the conclusion that there&#8217;s no God that&#8217;s lazy and moronic. I didn&#8217;t know what to say.</p>
<p class="p1">Trent:</p>
<p class="p1">I couldn&#8217;t have said it better myself. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.</p>

Anti-Christian Comedians (REBUTTED)

<p>On June 13, Israel launched a surprise attack on key military and nuclear installations in Iran. Coming amid the ongoing armed conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, this raised the dual questions of what role the United States should play, and in which direction Christian sympathies should lie.</p>
<p><strong>Senator Ted Cruz offered controversial answers</strong> to both of those questions when he was interviewed by Tucker Carlson. Declaring himself “the leading defender of Israel” in the U.S. Senate, Cruz explained that the “number one” reason for this is that “as a Christian growing up in Sunday school, I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will—will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.”</p>
<p>When Carlson asked if this was a reference to “the government of Israel,” Cruz clarified that “it says the nation of Israel. So that’s in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that.” When pressed, Cruz couldn’t remember where in the Bible this was, leading Carlson to pounce:</p>
<blockquote><p>It’s in Genesis. But—so you’re quoting a Bible phrase. You don’t have context for it. You don’t know where in the Bible it is. But that’s like, like, your theology. I’m confused. What does that even mean?</p></blockquote>
<p>Carlson is right that the passage is from Genesis. More specifically, it’s from Genesis 12:1-3, in which God says to Abraham (then known as Abram):</p>
<blockquote><p>Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.</p></blockquote>
<p>So the passage says neither “the government of Israel” nor “the nation of Israel,” seeing as these words were spoken to Israel (Jacob)’s grandfather, Abraham. It is of <em>Abraham</em> that it is said, “I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse.”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it’s perfectly reasonable to see these covenantal promises as intended both for Abraham personally and for his descendants. After all, the prophesied “great nation” isn’t going to have a population of one. So the critical question is, <em>which</em> descendants of Abraham?</p>
<p>Many Evangelicals, particularly those of a more Dispensationalist bent, are emphatic: this is a passage about blessing Israel—both the historic kingdom of Israel created by God and the modern nation-state created by the United Nations.</p>
<p>After the October 7 attacks, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics &amp; Religious Liberty Commission put together an “<a href="https://erlc.com/policy-content/israel/">Evangelical Statement in Support of Israel</a>” declaring its full support for “Israel’s right and duty to defend itself against further attack.” The only biblical text mentioned in the statement (other than an allusion to Romans 13) is the ERLC applying Genesis 12 to the state of Israel.</p>
<p>This theology has important implications. A <a href="https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/americans-grow-more-divided-us-support-israel">Chicago Council on Global Affairs-Ipsos survey</a> from this spring (before the Israeli attacks on Iran) found that most Americans didn’t want the U.S. to side with either Israel or Palestine. That view was held by roughly two thirds of Democrats and independents and 58 percent of Americans generally. On the other hand, 58 percent of Republicans thought the U.S. should back Israel.</p>
<p>Regardless of political leanings and poll responses, is Genesis 12 really saying that we’re to “bless” the modern nation of Israel with military aid in its wars? Not according to St. Paul, who argues that the promises of Genesis 12 don’t automatically apply to whoever happens to share a bloodline with Abraham. Instead, they apply to whoever shares the <em>faith</em> of Abraham, including the faithful Gentiles (Gal. 3:7-9):</p>
<blockquote><p>So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are men of faith are blessed with Abraham who had faith.</p></blockquote>
<p>What Scripture does St. Paul point to in order to show that God would justify the Gentiles by faith? Genesis 12:1-3.</p>
<p><strong>Whereas Southern Baptists have identified God’s covenant promises</strong> as being passed on to Abraham’s physical descendants, Paul argues that this is not how the covenant ever worked. In his words, “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his descendants” (Rom. 9:8).</p>
<p>Abraham’s wife, Sarah, was elderly when God promised descendants through Abraham. When Abraham grew tired of waiting for God to fulfill his promises, he slept with Sarah’s young handmaid, Hagar, who conceived Ishmael—Abraham’s firstborn son. But God was faithful to his promises, and Sarah miraculously conceived Isaac in her old age.</p>
<p>In Paul’s words, “the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise” (Gal. 4:23). If the covenant passed on “according to the flesh” (Rom. 8:4), then it would have passed to Ishmael. Yet the covenant is instead continued through Abraham’s younger son, Isaac.</p>
<p>Likewise, in the next generation, the covenant continues through Isaac’s younger son, Jacob (later renamed “Israel”), after Esau (the father of the Edomites) forfeits his birthright for a bowl of lentils. So if we try to trace God’s promises to Abraham “according to the flesh,” then the covenant belongs not to Israel at all, but to Israel’s Ishmaelite or Edomite neighbors.</p>
<p>Instead, both the Old Testament and the New Testament present the covenant as passing on according to the promises of God. And if that’s true, then Paul is right when he says that Abraham is “the father of all who believe,” Jewish or Gentile, and says that the covenant applies to “those who share the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of us all” (Rom. 4:11-12, 16-17).</p>
<p>This is why John the Baptist warns his fellow Jews not to “presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham” (Matt. 3:9). And it’s why Jesus taught that “if you were Abraham’s children, you would do what Abraham did” and says, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (John 8:39, 44). So Abraham’s sons are the ones who keep the faith of Abraham, and it’s to us that the promises of Genesis 12 apply, not to whoever happens to be related to Abraham by flesh.</p>
<p><strong>This is what Paul means in referring to the Church</strong> as “the Israel of God” in Galatians 6:16. He’s not saying that the Church is “metaphorically” Israel, or that God abandoned Israel and started a new people. He’s saying there were two groups of Israelites in his day: those who accepted the promised Messiah and those who rejected the Messiah. And God’s covenantal promises continued by faith to those who accepted the Messiah, who were then joined by faithful Gentiles, who were “grafted in” to Israel (Rom. 11:17-24). Paul reminds these Gentiles how they were once “separated from Christ” and “alienated from the commonwealth of Israel” but now have been brought near in the blood of Christ, since Christ has created people from the Jews and Gentiles in his body, the Church (Eph. 2:11-15).</p>
<p>Getting this right is essential for Christians. In Jeremiah 31, God promised to “make a new covenant with the house of Israel,” saying, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (vv. 31-34). It’s this new covenant that Christ announces at the Last Supper that he’s creating with his own blood (Luke 22:20)—a covenant <em>with the Church</em>, which is why it’s the Church that celebrates the Eucharist (see 1 Cor. 11:17-26). If the Church <em>isn’t</em> “the house of Israel,” and you treat the promises of God according to bloodline instead of faith, then the Church is without a covenant and without a Messiah.</p>
<p>All of this is to say that the misunderstanding of God’s covenants promoted by Senator Cruz and the Southern Baptist Convention isn’t just a bad basis for foreign policy; it’s disastrous theology, since it undermines the New Covenant itself.</p>

Are Christians ‘Commanded’ to Support Israel?

What is the difference between the Douay–Rheims reims and the traditional Douay–Rheims?

Is it okay to not just pray for the souls in purgatory, but to ask for their intercession?

1 Cor 11 says to not pray with your head covered. So how do we reconcile that with clergy praying with heads covered (mitres, cardinals hats, berettas, etc) during Mass?

Should we offer Masses for the recently deceased leader of Iran and his party?

How does one pray to saints? Also, The Bible records Jesus’ words of prayer in the agony in the garden, but how do we know what he said if nobody was there to witness and report it?

How often can one make a general confession?

Can you help me understand this controversy of interpreting the bible as saying we are either “declared” righteous or “made” righteous?

I feel like God’s love and mercy has already washed my sins away even though I haven’t been to confession yet. What’s the deal with that?

<p>&#8220;Is there a scriptural basis for St. Joseph&#8217;s Assumption?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the biblical foundations of St. Joseph&#8217;s bodily assumption into Heaven. Other topics include the differences between the Douay–Rheims versions, the appropriateness of praying for intercession from souls in purgatory, and the practice of clergy praying with covered heads during Mass.</p>
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Is There a Scriptural Basis for the Theory of St. Joseph’s Assumption?

How One Argument Against Islam Backfires

<p>If evolutionary theory is correct, then chance plays an important role in the evolution of life. But how could God be the designer of life if things really do depend upon chance? Karlo Broussard continues is explanation of why Evolution does not eliminate God.</p>

Why Evolution Doesn’t Eliminate God (Part 2)

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<p><strong>DAY 272</strong></p>
<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
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<p>“Catholics use statues and pictures, but the Ten Commandments prohibit such religious images (Exod. 20:4–6; Deut. 5:8–10).”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>The Ten Commandments prohibit making idols, not religious images.</p>
<p>Idols are manufactured objects that people falsely believe to be deities. Their use was commonplace in paganism, and God rightly prohibited the Israelites from making them. However, not all religious use of images is idolatry, and God commanded the religious use of images in the Old Testament.</p>
<p>At one point the Israelites are being bitten by serpents, and God had Moses make a bronze serpent “and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live” (Num. 21:9). Looking at the bronze serpent to be healed was a religious act God authorized. (Nevertheless, when the bronze serpent began to be worshipped as a god itself, it was destroyed; 2 Kings 18:4).</p>
<p>Similarly, God commanded statues of golden cherubim be made at each end of the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant (Exod. 25:18–22). He similarly commanded images of cherubim be woven into the curtains of the tabernacle (Exod. 26:1). When the tabernacle was replaced by the temple, images of cherubim were fashioned on the temple’s walls, its doors, and its veil (2 King. 6:29–35; 2 Chron. 3:7, 14). And there were two giant (15–feet tall) statues of cherubim in the holy of holies (2 Kings 6:23–28; 2 Chron. 3:10–13).</p>
<p>The inclusion of these images on the ark, in the tabernacle, and in the temple indicates their religious function. They represent the inhabitants of heaven, the angels who surround God. In our age, now that humans have been admitted to heaven (Rev. 6:9, 7:14–17), it is natural for statues of human saints also to be placed in churches.</p>
<p>Most significantly, by virtue of the Incarnation, Jesus inaugurated a new age in which God took on visible form. It has been natural since then for Christians to depict Jesus in religious art. This includes the Protestant community, where two-dimensional images of Jesus are common. Adding a third dimension to make a carving or statue does not fundamentally change the situation.</p>
<p>All today recognize that images of Christ and the saints are merely symbols of the individuals they represent (a precursor of modern photographs). They are not idols (see Day 307).</p>
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The Use of Religious Images

A SLAM DUNK Debate For Catholics (Fatima DEBATE REVIEW)

<div>What does the term blessed mean as in the beatitudes?</div><div><p>As noted in the <em>Ignatius Catholic Study Bible New Testament</em>, the Greek word <em>markarios</em> is “an adjective meaning ‘fortunate’ or ‘blessed.’” “The term,” the authors add, “is not used as an invocation of God’s blessing but as a declaration that a person has either received a blessing from God (Matt. 16:17; Rom. 4:7) or can expect to receive his blessing in the future (Jas. 1:12; Rev. 14:13; 22:14).”</p>
<p>For more on this subject, please see CCC 1716ff. and <a href="https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/travels/2000/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20000324_korazim-israel.html">this homily of Pope St. John Paul II</a> during his trip to the Holy Land in March 2000.</p>
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Meaning of “Blessed” in the Beatitudes

<p>One of the most controversial aspects of LDS (Mormon) theology is what it teaches about &#8220;plural marriage&#8221; or polygamy. But many times, non-Mormons make bad arguments against this teaching. So here are some arguments to NOT use, as well as three important dimensions to consider in discussing the doctrine.</p>

Mormon Founder Joseph Smith Lied about Polygamy

<div>is there biblical evidence of individual judgement and a judgement at the second coming?</div><div><p>The <em>Catechism of the Catholic Church</em> (CCC) covers the particular judgment in CCC 1021-22. The Catechism cites several biblical passages that affirm each person will have a particular judgment with God, including Matthew 16:26; 2 Corinthians 5:10; and Hebrews 9:27.</p>
<p>The Catechism covers the Final or Last Judgment in CCC 1038-41. Two classic biblical passages that support this teaching are Jesus’ words in John 5:28-29 and Matthew 25:31-46.</p>
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Biblical Basis of Particular and Final Judgments

<p>Once you’re convinced Catholicism is true, is converting really necessary? That question might sound strange to some readers. After all, if you believe that the Catholic Church really is the Church founded by Christ, why <em>wouldn’t</em> you convert?</p>
<p>Well, lots of reasons. Maybe you’re part of a solid Protestant community. Maybe converting would create serious tension in your marriage or with your parents. Maybe you would lose your job in ministry. In some of the most extreme cases, maybe you live in a country in which converting to Catholicism is a capital crime. In short, people weighing whether to become Catholic are often dealing with much more than simply answering the question, “Is it true?”</p>
<p><strong>But as serious and well grounded as those hesitations may be</strong>, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html">the Second Vatican Council</a> doesn’t mince words:</p>
<blockquote><p>In explicit terms [Jesus] himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.</p></blockquote>
<p>This is simply a restatement of what Catholics have been saying for two millennia. The Church is, in St. Paul’s words, Jesus’ “body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). To try to have Jesus without the Church is to try to have Christ the head without the body of Christ, or to put asunder what God has joined together (Matt. 19:6; Eph. 5:30-31). In short, as the <em>Catechism</em> puts it (795), it’s not a matter of choosing among denominations, but about accepting the “whole Christ” (<em>Christus totus</em>), head and body.</p>
<p>Significantly, we’re not talking about a person who is innocently unaware of the Catholic Church or is still trying to sort out the truth of the Catholic claim. The person who sees the truth of the Catholic claim and yet refuses to respond to it is knowingly rejecting <em>the fullness of Christ</em>, cutting himself off from salvation.</p>
<p>If that seems like a steep cost, it should. Jesus was explicit that his message might prove destabilizing for family peace (Matt. 10:34-38):</p>
<blockquote><p>Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.</p></blockquote>
<p>Or more pithily: “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:16). Jesus compares the decision to follow him to that of a king deciding to go to war against an invading army twice his size (vv. 31-33). In other words, it’s not the kind of decision one ought to make lightly. It’s going to cost something.</p>
<p>You might object here: “I’m not saying not to follow Jesus—I’m just saying not to become Catholic!” But the whole point is that for the person for whom Jesus has revealed the truth of the Catholic Church, remaining Protestant (or Orthodox, etc.) is to cease to follow him. It does no good to say we’re going to follow Jesus on our terms, just as it would have done Jesus&#8217; original listeners no good to say they were going to follow the God of Abraham on their own terms. If Jesus shows you the way in which he wants you to follow him, that’s not the time to do your own thing or stay in your comfort zone. That’s the time to pick up your cross and follow him, even if he’s leading you somewhere weird and uncomfortable (like the Catholic Church).</p>
<p><strong>Fortunately, though, Jesus doesn’t just tell us about the high cost of discipleship.</strong> He also promises us that these earthly costs of converting will be worth it. He tells the rich young man, “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21). Perhaps piqued by this mention of heavenly treasure, St. Peter then asks, “Lo, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” (v. 27). Jesus responds by promising that “every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life” (v. 29).</p>
<p>In other words, discipleship isn’t just about sacrifice, but about investing, laying up for ourselves “treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:20). Converting to Catholicism can be scary, and it can be costly. But take courage: whatever it costs you will be well worth it, both in this life and in the life to come.</p>

Avoid Converting to Save Relationships?

<p>We couldn&#8217;t get him to name any names, but we did get Jimmy Akin to explain what the Bible has to say about the nature of the anti-Christ. Without doubt many will be surprised by just how little the anti-Christ is mentioned in the Bible, and that it is probably more accurate to talk about &#8220;anti-Christs.&#8221;</p>

Who Is the Anti-Christ?

<p><em>Popular Mechanics </em>recently re-shared an article on social media with the audacious title, <a href="https://twitter.com/PopMech/status/1725186913986810021">“A Groundbreaking Scientific Discovery Shows that We Can Reverse Death.”</a> Is that true?</p>
<p>It depends on how you understand death. In the old days, it was relatively easy to determine whether someone was dead: he stopped breathing and his pulse disappeared.</p>
<p>That was a useful way of determining death because breathing is necessary to get oxygen to the blood, and a beating heart is necessary to push oxygen-laded blood to the cells of the body. Without that happening, every cell in the body would die.</p>
<p>Of course, mistakes could be made. Someone might be breathing really shallowly, and he might have only a faint pulse, but if he really stopped breathing and his heart really stopped, he was dead. End of story.</p>
<p>Things got more complex in the twentieth century. Techniques became available to keep someone breathing and to restart his heart.</p>
<p>In the 1950s, ventilators were introduced. These are machines that act like bellows to move air in and out of the lungs.</p>
<p>Also in the 1950s, the first (external) mechanical hearts became available, and by 1960, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) could help keep blood moving during a cardiac arrest, adrenaline could encourage the heart to resume beating, and defibrillators could hopefully shock it back into a normal rhythm.</p>
<p>All this raised the question of whether people who met the previous definition of death (no breathing and no heartbeat) should be considered dead.</p>
<p>By the late 1960s, a new criterion was proposed: absence of brain activity. This could make sense because a functioning brain was needed to keep things like breathing and hearts going without mechanical aid.</p>
<p>So perhaps—some reasoned—if the brain was no longer working, if the patient was “brain dead,” you could forego artificial respiration and heart stimulation and treat the patient as dead.</p>
<p>This meant you could harvest his organs, if he was an organ donor—including his precious heart. The first successful heart transplant took place in 1967, so maybe someone else could use the organ if the donor was brain dead.</p>
<p>There has been a lively debate about whether lack of brain activity should be used to define death, and advocates of brain death as the key criterion have won a lot of converts to their view.</p>
<p>At the same time, there have been concerns that doctors have been defining brain death in a loosey-goosey way, such as merely being in a persistent vegetative state rather than truly and permanently lacking brain function. This would let them take more people off life-support—freeing up medical resources—and harvest organs from more people.</p>
<p>Personally, I am not at all convinced that the brain death criterion is adequately defined—or applied—today, and so a person who is actually still alive may be <em>killed</em> by the removal of their heart for a transplant. Consequently, I have <em>not </em>agreed to donate my organs on my driver’s license.</p>
<p>While the brain death debate has been going on, the concept of death has begun to be questioned on a new front: the cellular level. Hypothetically, one could argue that a person’s body isn’t fully dead unless all of the cells in it have died, and things like brain function, respiration, and heart action are just things needed to keep the cells alive.</p>
<p>We thus might be able to help save more people if we could intervene to keep their cells alive long enough to fix whatever is wrong with their brain, lungs, heart, or other organs.</p>
<p>The <em>Popular Mechanics </em>article <a href="https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a42216404/is-death-revesible/">discusses</a> a team of researchers who have been working on how to support the cells of the body when critical organs are not functioning. They call this system OrganEx, and preliminary trials on pigs have been successful, though human trials are still years off.</p>
<p>Other advances are also being made. It turns out that, if a person’s body and brain are cooled down in the right way, they can be brought back to normal functioning as much as six hours after cardiac arrest has occurred (see Sam Parnia, <em>Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death</em>).</p>
<p>We also now have implantable artificial hearts, and—though they aren’t yet as convenient and reliable as the one the biological version of Captain Picard had on <em>Star Trek</em>—we’re approaching the point where not having a functioning human heart may no longer be useful as a criterion for irreversible death.</p>
<p>What all of these advances have done is make death—which used to look like a simple either-or state—to look more like a process, and a process that in many cases can be reversed.</p>
<p>As medicine continues to advance, we may expect it to become more and more reversible, which will make it more challenging to define precisely <em>when </em>“final” death occurs.</p>

Can Science Reverse Death?

Frank Turek on the Bible & the Church

<p>Scripture speaks of two types of sin: “sin which is mortal” and “sin which is not mortal” (1 John 5:16-17). The latter of these, the Church calls <em>venial</em> (or <em>pardonable</em>) sin. So what it is that makes a sin <em>mortal</em> (or <em>deadly</em>)?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-do-i-know-if-its-a-mortal-sin">Three conditions</a> must be met:</p>
<p>(1) it must be a “sin whose object is grave matter,”</p>
<p>(2) it must be committed with “full knowledge,” and</p>
<p>(3) it must be done with “deliberate consent.”</p>
<p>Otherwise, you’re looking at an action which, although still objectively wrong,* is either venially sinful or not sinful at all. But how likely is it that our sins will meet all three criteria?</p>
<h2>Is It Impossible to Commit a Mortal Sin?</h2>
<p>According to some priests and theologians, nearly, yes. For instance, the late Fr. Jim Rude, S.J. wrote an essay in 2016 entitled “<a href="https://www.cal-catholic.com/mortal-sins-are-very-difficult-to-commit/">Mortal Sins Are Very Difficult to Commit</a>,” in which he recalled his habit of going to confession every Saturday during his teenage years. Instead of recalling this pious practice (one explicitly encouraged by the Church) fondly, he lamented, “Those confessions were rather sad, for there were usually mortal sins mentioned, but looking back on it I believe that there were never any mortal sins,” reasoning that “I was only fifteen and had no clue what a mortal sin was.”</p>
<p>Fr. Rude’s own description testifies against this: he was doing <em>something</em> as a teenager that he knew he wasn’t supposed to be doing, and subsequently confessing it. As he said, “there were usually mortal sins mentioned.” So it’s hard to believe that he “had no clue what a mortal sin was.” But according to Fr. Rude,</p>
<blockquote><p>A mortal sin is not simply some evil action, an action which is truly evil, but it is one that has to be done with the deepest understanding of God’s relationship to the doer’s situation. The doer has to understand who God is, his ultimate and eternal love, and the doer has to be saying to himself, “I know who God is and what he should mean to me, and I don’t care. Away with God! I’m going to rob or hurt or sex no matter what.”</p></blockquote>
<p>This is a gross distortion—and nearly an inversion—of the Church’s actual teaching. In Fr. Rude’s vision of morality, it would seem that the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to heaven. But this is the polar opposite of what Jesus says in Matthew 7:13. If mortal sin is possible only to one “with the deepest understanding of God’s relationship to the doer’s situation,” then nonbelievers and the spiritually lukewarm would seemingly be saved, since they lack such an understanding.</p>
<p>It’s hard to square Fr. Rude’s idea that mortal sin requires a conscious rebellion from God with Jesus’ own words on the matter. Foretelling his words of condemnation to the damned, Jesus says that they will say, “Lord, when did we see thee hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to thee?” (Matt. 25:44). That is, many of the damned <em>won’t</em> have thought that their hatred of neighbor was a hatred of God. St. John warns against this delusion, saying, “If any one says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20).</p>
<p>The position advocated by Fr. Rude has been explicitly condemned repeatedly by the Church, particularly by St. John Paul II. For instance, in <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_02121984_reconciliatio-et-paenitentia.html"><em>Reconciliatio et Paenitentia</em></a>, he cautions that “care will have to be taken not to reduce mortal sin to an act of ‘fundamental option’—as is commonly said today—against God, intending thereby an explicit and formal contempt for God or neighbor.” That is, the Church has never taught (and in fact, quite explicitly denies) that the doer has to say, “Away with God!” for his sin to be mortal. After all, the pope explained,</p>
<blockquote><p>Mortal sin exists also when a person knowingly and willingly, for whatever reason, chooses something gravely disordered. In fact, such a choice already includes contempt for the divine law, a rejection of God’s love for humanity and the whole of creation; the person turns away from God and loses charity. Thus the fundamental orientation can be radically changed by individual acts.</p></blockquote>
<h2>The Truth About Mortal Sin</h2>
<p>If I know that a course of action is gravely sinful, and I freely choose it, I’ve chosen some sin over God. I don’t need to make an internal speech telling God to get lost, because I’ve already done this by my actions . . . <em>even</em> if I try to delude myself that I can serve two masters. John Paul II thought this error serious enough that he repeated his warning in <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor.html"><em>Veritatis Splendor</em></a>, going on at greater length why this is a dangerous perversion of Catholic mortal theology.</p>
<p>But Fr. Rude didn’t just have a nearly impossibly high bar for “full knowledge.” His idea of consent was also exaggerated to such an extent that he imagined that priest-killing might not be mortally sinful. That might sound like an uncharitable interpretation of his ideas, but that’s his actual example:</p>
<blockquote><p>But also the doer has to act with full freedom. I look at articles in the news these days, like the twelve-year old who killed an eighty-two-year old priest while he was saying Mass, and I wondered what the kid was really doing, what he was really thinking. As horrible as his action was, I simply have a hard time believing that the kid committed a mortal sin by Catholic standards. And I look at people who grew up with horrible abuse during their childhood or poverty or continual gang experiences, and I wonder if they are really free to act in such an evil way.</p></blockquote>
<p>It is true that “imputability and responsibility for an action can be diminished or even nullified by ignorance, inadvertence, duress, fear, habit, inordinate attachments, and other psychological or social factors” (CCC 1735). It’s one reason we shouldn’t condemn others for their actions: we <em>don’t</em> know what sort of factors might be going on behind the scenes. But we also shouldn’t prejudge in the opposite direction, as if those who grow up in poverty no longer have free will or agency, or even the ability to sin.</p>
<p>John Paul II reminds us that “some sins are intrinsically grave and mortal by reason of their matter,” actions which “per se and in themselves, independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason of their object. These acts, if carried out with sufficient awareness and freedom, are always gravely sinful.” If murdering a priest while he’s saying Mass doesn’t meet this criterion, it’s hard to say what would.</p>
<h2>Where Does This Leave Us?</h2>
<p>Quite simply, as penitents, we are “obliged to confess in kind and number all grave sins committed after baptism and not yet remitted directly through the keys of the Church nor acknowledged in individual confession, of which the person has knowledge after diligent examination of conscience.” And if you’re not sure if it’s a mortal sin or not, confess it, since “it is recommended to the Christian faithful that they also confess venial sins” (<em>Code of Canon Law</em>, can. 988). And even if you haven’t committed any mortal sins of which you’re aware, get in the habit of going to confession nevertheless! After all, “deliberate and unrepented venial sin disposes us little by little to commit mortal sin” (CCC 1863).</p>
<p>For their part, <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19720616_sacramentum-paenitentiae_en.html">the Church reminds priests</a> that they “should be careful not to discourage the faithful from frequent or devotional confession” and that “it must be absolutely prevented that individual confession should be reserved for serious sins only, for this would deprive the faithful of the great benefit of confession and would injure the good name of those who approach the sacrament simply.”</p>
<p>Finally, if you have good reason to believe you’ve committed a mortal sin, and you go to confession, that’s not (as Fr. Rude puts it) “rather sad.” It’s rather (as Jesus puts it) a cause of great celebration, as “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7).</p>

How Hard Is It to Commit a Mortal Sin?

Everyone Who Goes To Purgatory Ends Up in Heaven

<p>Recent media coverage surrounding OnlyFans contributor Lily Phillips and her decision to get “<a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/why-onlyfans-star-lily-phillips-decided-to-be-rebaptized-excl/">rebaptized</a>” raises sincere spiritual questions that deserve a biblical and charitable response.</p>
<p>Phillips’s words express a desire to return to God, a longing that every Christian can recognize as the work of grace stirring the heart. At the same time, Phillips has not demonstrated a public desire to leave the online sexual content lifestyle she lives. Additionally, the language she uses about baptism is an example of the deep and widespread confusion in our society about what baptism accomplishes and how conversion actually unfolds within the Christian life.</p>
<p>Two core issues require careful attention here. First is what the Church across the ages has taught about baptism and why rebaptism is excluded from Christian practice. Second is what Scripture reveals about repentance and conversion as the proper response for a baptized believer who desires renewal and discipleship.</p>
<h2>Baptism as a Once-for-All Gift</h2>
<p>From the beginning, the Church has proclaimed baptism as decisive and not repeatable. Scripture consistently presents baptism as a real and singular participation in the death and resurrection of Christ. St. Paul explains that through baptism we are buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:1-14)—a transformation that marks the soul of the person irreversibly and establishes a permanent covenant bond with the Lord.</p>
<p>This permanence stands at the heart of induction into covenant life. The Letter to the Ephesians speaks of “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (4:5), thereby excluding any idea that baptism requires or even allows for repetition when faith weakens or moral failure follows. Likewise, the Nicene Creed (365) professes “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins,” a doctrine rooted in perennial apostolic teaching.</p>
<p>Baptism imprints a spiritual mark upon the soul that remains even when the baptized person drifts from God. The <em>Catechism </em>notes, “Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, baptism cannot be repeated” (1272). Hence, the grace given may be rejected or lie dormant, yet it remains real and accessible from the moment of baptism. Consequently, baptism never expires, and it never requires or calls for repetition. In fact, the Church guards this teaching precisely because baptism belongs first to Christ’s action in the soul rather than to human effort.</p>
<h2>Why Rebaptism Feels Appealing</h2>
<p>The origins of the practice are varied, but the cultural thrust of today began with sixteenth-century Anabaptists, who emphasized “believer&#8217;s baptism” only for repentant adults, earning the name “rebaptizers.” Joseph Smith&#8217;s Restorationist movement (for remission of sins, healing, covenant renewal), and various Orthodox churches (for converts from other traditions) also facilitated differing practices of rebaptism. Today, many people who seek rebaptism express some semblance of a genuine desire for cleansing, restoration, and a visible new beginning.</p>
<p>Modern culture associates authenticity with dramatic public gestures, and rebaptism publicly presents the façade of inner change. However, Scripture would beg to differ. God addresses post-baptismal sin through repentance, reconciliation, and transformation rather than through repeating the sacrament that already united the believer to Christ.</p>
<p>The New Testament repeatedly warns against treating baptism as something provisional. The Letter to the Hebrews concurs with Romans in teaching that Christ died once for all, and Christian participation in his saving work follows the same pattern (see Heb. 10:10-14). Therefore, repeating baptism would imply that God’s original gift lacked permanence, an implication the Church rejects.</p>
<h2>Conditional Baptism Explained</h2>
<p>There are rare circumstances wherein the Church recognizes that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-doubtful-validity-of-seventh-day-adventist-baptism">serious doubt</a> exists regarding whether baptism ever occurred. In such cases, <em>conditional baptism</em> may be administered using the formula, “If you are not baptized, I baptize you . . .”</p>
<p>This practice is not rebaptism. Instead, it safeguards <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/does-invalid-baptism-invalidate-other-sacraments">the integrity of the sacrament</a> while ensuring that no one remains deprived of baptism through uncertainty. In fact, conditional baptism applies only when facts remain unclear regarding the use of water, the Trinitarian formula, or the event itself. Where valid baptism already occurred, the Church with pastoral firmness forbids repetition.</p>
<h2>Conversion as the Proper Path Forward</h2>
<p>If baptism is permanent, then how does renewal occur for someone who desires to return to God after moral collapse or spiritual distance? Scripture answers this question with remarkable consistency. The biblical call always centers upon repentance, conversion, and obedience flowing from grace.</p>
<p>Jesus begins his public ministry with the command, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17). Repentance in Scripture signifies a turning of the whole person toward God, involving the intellect, the will, and the moral pattern of daily life. This turning reaches far beyond emotion, spiritual sentiment, or public spectacle.</p>
<p>Zacchaeus is a clear example: his encounter with Christ compels restitution, generosity, and visible change. Likewise, the woman caught in adultery is forgiven but also charged with a command to leave sin behind. Throughout the Gospels, forgiveness always opens toward moral transformation.</p>
<p>Canon law is equally clear:</p>
<blockquote><p>For an adult to be baptized, the person must have manifested the intention to receive baptism, have been instructed sufficiently about the truths of the Faith and Christian obligations, and have been tested in the Christian life through the catechumenate. The adult is also to be urged to have sorrow for personal sins (865 §1)</p></blockquote>
<p>St. Paul reinforces this pattern when he reminds the Corinthians that former patterns of sexual immorality belonged to their past, and sanctification now defines their present identity (1 Cor. 6:11). Christian conversion therefore unfolds as a process grounded in grace and expressed through moral obedience.</p>
<h2>The Teaching of Pope Benedict XVI</h2>
<p>This understanding of conversion appears clearly in the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI, especially in his catechesis on repentance. <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100217.html">Reflecting on the preaching of John the Baptist</a>, Benedict explains that repentance involves a realignment of life according to God’s truth rather than a private spiritual preference. Conversion engages the whole person, including moral decisions, habits, and public conduct.</p>
<p>According to Benedict, conversion remains a lifelong journey rather than a single emotional moment. Grace initiates the process, and cooperation sustains it. Faith grows through obedience, humility, and willingness to accept correction from divine revelation.</p>
<h2>What Authentic Conversion Looks Like</h2>
<p>Authentic Christian conversion unfolds through several visible dimensions. First, repentance confesses sin truthfully and seeks forgiveness humbly. Second, reconciliation restores communion between the penitent and God through sacramental grace. Third, firm purpose of amendment of life gradually aligns one’s moral conduct with the gospel.</p>
<p>Conversion is rarely instantaneous. Scripture portrays virtuous growth as a process shaped by struggle, perseverance, trust, and cooperation with God’s divine life. Our intentionality matters: a heart turned toward Christ seeks constant conformity to his teaching rather than easy accommodation to prevailing culture or, worse, clinging to old ways of life.</p>
<p>The Church’s response to public claims of spiritual renewal always combines compassion with discernment. Encouragement and validation without truthful examination risks scandal. Baptism was established by Christ to be a once-for-all sacrament that anchors Christian identity securely in Christ. Conversion remains a lifelong response that unfolds through repentance, obedience, and grace. When these realities remain united, the Christian life reflects the fullness of the gospel.</p>
<p>Hence, Lily Phillips’s intent might have been good, but her execution and subsequent life choices warrant concern. Conversion requires returning to the font of baptismal grace in reconciliation, allowing Christ to complete the work he began in her original baptism, which remains indelibly sealed in her, compelling her (and all of us) to conversion and newness of moral life.</p>

What Does the Church Say About Rebaptism?

<div>Is singing the Divine Mercy Chaplet allowed on Good Friday?</div><div><p>The classic time to begin reciting the Divine Mercy Chaplet novena <a href="http://www.marian.org/divinemercy/story.php?NID=2576&amp;title=Tips-for-Divine-Mercy-Sunday">is Good Friday</a>. And, in any event, the Church does not prohibit the Chaplet’s being sung on Good Friday. Indeed, hymns are otherwise sung during the Church’s official Good Friday liturgy.</p>
</div>

Is It OK to Sing Divine Mercy Chaplet on Good Friday?

<p>Taking our cue from his new book <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/one-less-god-than-you/">One Less God Than You</a>, we ask author and apologist John DeRosa how to respond when we are told that religion is for the weak-minded! Also, Cy does some role-playing as a German atheist&#8230;</p>

So What if Religion is for the Weak?

<p>Jesus was a Jew. This fact slips past most casual readers of the New Testament, but it is crucial to understanding Jesus and the book written about him—the Bible. Unfortunately, we are far removed from the ancient world of Roman-occupied Judea and the life of Israel in which Jesus lived.</p>
<p>Let me ask you a few questions. Were you born and raised in Israel? Did you study the Torah with the rabbis from an early age? Have you traversed the rocky hills and dusty paths to celebrate the mandatory feasts in Jerusalem? Do you speak Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic? I have not found many in my Catholic circle of friends who have. Without this background, we are at a disadvantage when studying the word of God as contained in the Bible.</p>
<p><strong>When we open the pages of our English Bible</strong>, we find a Jewish book! The setting revolves around the country of Israel and the worship of Yahweh. With one exception, the more than forty biblical writers were all Jews, and the one exception was most likely a Jewish proselyte. (Do you know who <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-acts-leaves-out">the only non-Jewish author</a> in the Bible is? I’ll give you a few hints: he was a physician, one of St. Paul’s co-workers, and he wrote the first history of the Church.) But the point is, how can we understand the Bible and the teachings surrounding Jesus without understanding his people, his culture, and his Jewish identity?</p>
<p>Paul wrote, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law” (Gal. 4:4-5).</p>
<p>David H. Stern, a Messianic Jew, <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/restoring-the-jewishness-of-the-gospel-david-h-stern/1112654030">writes</a>, “The Messiah’s vicarious atonement is rooted in the Jewish sacrificial system; the Lord’s Supper is rooted in the Jewish Passover traditions; baptism is a Jewish practice; and indeed the entire New Testament is built on the Hebrew Bible, with its prophecies and its promise of a New Covenant, so that the New Testament without the Old is as impossible as the second floor of a house without the first. Moreover, much of what is written in the New Testament is incomprehensible apart from Judaism” (62). Even if a skeptic ignores the importance of the Jews in God’s plan of salvation, which would be ridiculous, it would not change the fact that the Bible is Jewish, and Christianity sprouts from thoroughly Jewish roots.</p>
<p>Studying the Bible comes alive when the fresh breeze of Jewish understanding wafts over the pages. When reading any good book, it is difficult to reap the benefits without immersing ourselves in the world and spirit of the “story.” When reading <em>Gone with the Wind</em>, the reader benefits from plunging himself into the “feeling” of the Old South during the Civil War and soaking in the culture and surroundings of the characters. One doesn’t start the novel in the middle, for that would cut him off from the foundation and beginning of the story and make it impossible to gain a full appreciation of the setting, plot, mood, and characters. Too often, the New Testament is read without a familiarity with the first “chapters” of God’s Jewish story, which begins several millennia earlier in the covenants and life of the Old Testament.</p>
<p>Let’s take an example that is dear to the heart of any Catholic. St. Matthew records profound words between Jesus and Simon the fisherman. Jesus actually changes the disciple’s name, which in Jewish tradition signifies a change of status, from Simon to <em>Rock</em>. For us Westerners two millennia removed, without understanding the Semitic importance of a name, this means little. But to Jesus’ cadre of disciples from the stock of Abraham, the name change was profound and earth-shattering. Abraham himself had received a name change from God, which corresponded to the ratification of the Old Covenant. Abram’s name (meaning “father”) was changed to Abraham (meaning “father of nations”) which signified Abraham’s new status or standing before God.</p>
<p>Simon’s name change was significant. But <em>what</em> it was changed <em>to</em> was even more important. A Jew would instantly notice what most English readers miss: the name <em>Peter</em> is an English rendering of the Greek word for “Rock.” Jesus spoke Aramaic, and the word he used to rename Simon was the Aramaic word for rock: <em>kepha</em>. This is why we find Simon referred to as <em>Cephas</em> throughout the New Testament (e.g., John 1:42; 1 Cor. 15:5; Gal. 1:18). No one but God alone (and Abraham) had previously been referred to as “Rock.” Abraham was the rock from which the Jews had been hewn (Isa. 51:1). But God was the only one with the descriptive title of Rock (26:4). Peter now shares that title. What would a Jew think about such a name for a mere man?</p>
<p><strong>Another striking example of the necessity of understanding</strong> the Jewish ambiance of the Bible comes from the same passage. This involves Matthew 16:19, which mentions the “keys of the Kingdom.” Due in part to an ignorance of Jewish culture, this passage is frequently truncated, reducing the “keys of the kingdom” merely to Peter’s preaching on Pentecost (another word unknown outside the Jewish religion) “unlocking the doors of heaven.” Many Protestants make this mistake in trying to understand this passage without the benefit of a “Jewish background.” What did “keys” represent to the Jews who heard Jesus? What would a Jew understand from the image of the keys given to Peter by King Jesus?</p>
<p>The Pharisees had large portions of the Old Testament memorized, if not the whole <em>Tanakh</em>. The average Jew of Jesus’ time was intimately familiar with the scriptures. When Jesus told Peter he would receive the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” the Jews would immediately be drawn back to Isaiah 22 and the monarchical office of the royal steward, who ruled over the house of the king. Read Isaiah 22 yourself and consider the royal office of steward “over the house” in the Davidic kingdom. For those Jews who first believed in <em>Yeshua</em> the Messiah, who was soon to be seated on the throne of his father David and given an eternal kingdom (Dan. 7:13-14, Luke 1:26-33), these were profound words. When the new king is enthroned, wouldn’t the Jewish subjects expect the king to appoint his royal steward? Alleluia! Simon is renamed Rock, a foundation, and the Israelite name for the strength of God, and he is then delegated the keys of the royal stewards to govern the kingdom of King Jesus.</p>
<p>Ah, the Jews understood! What about twentieth-century men and women?</p>
<p>This should not discourage us from reading the Bible; rather, it should inspire us to excel in our knowledge of Scripture, its background, and the world of the Jewish people. The Church is growing from a Jewish root; the Church and the scriptures are Jewish. May the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob enlighten us and give us a love for the word of God as contained in the scriptures and the Sacred Tradition of the Church.</p>

Jesus Was a Jew

<p>One of the key events of Holy Week is the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot—something many Christians are convinced caused Judas to go to hell. I used to be one of them.</p>
<p>However, several times recently, Church officials have stated that—even though hell is a real possibility humans can choose—the Church does not teach that any particular person is in hell.</p>
<p><strong>For example, in his 1994 interview book <em>Crossing the Threshold of Hope</em>,</strong> John Paul II discussed who will go to hell and wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Church has never made any pronouncement in this regard. This is a mystery, truly inscrutable, which embraces the holiness of God and the conscience of man. The silence of the Church is, therefore, the only appropriate position for Christian faith. Even when Jesus says of Judas, the traitor, “It would be better for that man if he had never been born” (Matt. 26:24), his words do not allude for certain to eternal damnation (139).</p></blockquote>
<p>Similarly, in a 2006 audience, Benedict XVI said,</p>
<blockquote><p>Even though he went to hang himself (cf. Matt. 27:5), it is not up to us to judge his gesture, substituting ourselves for the infinitely merciful and just God (<a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/audiences/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20061018.html">October 18, 2006</a>).</p></blockquote>
<p>Despite these statements, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-judas-in-hell">it has long been commonly held</a> that Judas is, in fact, damned. So how can we understand the traditional opinion in light of the possibility of Judas’s salvation that John Paul II and Benedict XVI hold out?</p>
<p>One approach is to review the evidence we have for Judas being in hell and seeing how conclusive it is.</p>
<p><strong>A first type of evidence is something that many people may not be aware of:</strong> data from exorcism cases.</p>
<p>Christians are familiar with the concept of exorcism being used for possession by demons—that is, fallen angels. However, there are also occasional reports of spirit possession by human souls.</p>
<p>In Judaism, such spirits are referred to as <em>dybbuks. </em>A <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/dybbuk-Jewish-folklore">dybbuk</a> is “a disembodied human spirit that, because of former sins, wanders restlessly until it finds a haven in the body of a living person.”</p>
<p>Although dybbuks are more commonly associated with popular Jewish belief, they are also sometimes reported in Christian contexts, and that includes Judas. Exorcists periodically report that during the course of the rite, one of the possessing spirits will identify itself as a former human, typically a famous sinner such as the emperor Nero or Judas Iscariot.</p>
<p>If a possessing spirit identifies itself as Judas and speaks truthfully, then that would support the idea that Judas is a lost soul.</p>
<p><strong>The difficulty is the “and speaks truthfully” part.</strong> Demons—and any human allies they have in the possession racket—are working for “the father of lies” (John 8:44), which means that you can’t trust anything they say.</p>
<p>Consequently, the 1614 rite of exorcism—which is still in use—warns that the exorcist must “be on his guard against the arts and subterfuges which the evil spirits are wont to use in deceiving the exorcist” (n. 5). Further, it specifically warns that “neither ought he to give any credence to the devil if the latter maintains that he is the spirit of . . . a deceased party” (n. 14).</p>
<p>The Church does not have a teaching on whether damned souls can ever possess the living, so this is an open question theologically. However, because of how untruthful possessing spirits are, their identity claims are not a reliable form of evidence, and the Church has warned us not to pay heed to such claims.</p>
<p>I thus don’t think we can rely on evidence from these cases to prove Judas is in hell.</p>
<p><strong>Another source of evidence is the common opinion itself</strong> that Judas is damned, including by many Church Fathers.</p>
<p>The Holy Spirit guides Christian opinion—including the views of the Fathers—on matters of faith, and so this also could count as evidence for Judas’s damnation.</p>
<p>However, for it to be conclusive, two conditions would have to be met: (1) Judas’s damnation would have to be a matter of the Faith, and (2) the relevant parties would have to agree that this is <em>definitively</em> the case, meaning that there is absolutely no possibility of disputing it.</p>
<p>Neither of these seems fulfilled. For an infallible definition to occur, the members of the Magisterium (bishops teaching in union with the pope) must—at some point in time—come to a position where they are “in agreement on one position as definitively to be held” (<a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html"><em>Lumen Gentium</em> 25</a>).</p>
<p>However, John Paul II and Benedict XVI indicate that they have not done this. When John Paul II says (above) that “the Church has never made any pronouncement” on individuals who are in hell, including Judas, then that means it doesn’t have a teaching on this position, much less a definitive one.</p>
<p>Individuals—including many of the Fathers—may hold the <em>opinion</em> that Judas is in hell, but opinions<em>—no matter how common—</em>are not infallible Church teachings. Consequently, we can’t appeal to this kind of evidence as conclusive of Judas’s damnation.</p>
<p><strong>What about the idea that this might be a matter of the Faith?</strong> Here we come to the subject of what Scripture teaches. The reason that many in Catholic history have held Judas is damned is because of what Scripture says, so does this give us conclusive evidence?</p>
<p>John Paul II and Benedict XVI have already responded to the two passages in Scripture that one might appeal to.</p>
<p>John Paul II dealt with the passage where Jesus said, “Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born” (Matt. 26:24; see also Mark 14:21), and the pope said that Jesus’ words “do not allude for certain to eternal damnation.”</p>
<p>This is true. Although the warning is reasonably taken as meaning that Judas will go to hell because of what he has done, it—like biblical warnings in general about the consequences of sin—presupposes one thing: that the person <em>does not repent</em> (Jer. 18:7-10).</p>
<p>So if Judas were to heed the call, “Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out” (Acts 3:19), then his sins <em>would </em>be blotted out.</p>
<p>Now, here’s the thing: Matthew’s Gospel—the same one where Jesus warns of Judas’s fate—goes on to say this:</p>
<blockquote><p>When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood” (Matt. 27:3-4).</p></blockquote>
<p>Matthew <em>says</em> that Judas repented! He recognized that he had sinned and that Jesus was innocent, and he sought to return the money. When the priests refused to take it back, he threw it into the Temple (27:5a) so that he would not profit from his sin. That sounds like a sincere repentance!</p>
<p><strong>But what about what Judas did next?</strong> He hanged himself (27:5b), and this is the second text one might appeal to for Judas’s damnation. Even if he repented of having betrayed Jesus, wouldn’t he still go to hell because of his suicide?</p>
<p>The <em>Catechism of the Catholic Church</em> states,</p>
<blockquote><p>We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives (2283).</p></blockquote>
<p>Suicide does not always result in hell because a person may not be fully responsible for his action due to lack of knowledge, or psychological factors, and because “in ways known to him alone,” God may help the person to repent—even in the act of committing suicide itself.</p>
<p>Judas thus may have been so grieved by his offense that he wasn’t fully responsible for his suicide, or he may have repented of taking his own life while he was still hanging from his neck.</p>
<p>As Pope Benedict said, “Even though he went to hang himself, it is not up to us to judge his gesture, substituting ourselves for the infinitely merciful and just God.”</p>
<p>It thus appears that we <em>don’t</em> have conclusive proof that Judas is in hell, and there is still a ray of hope for him.</p>
<p>This Holy Week, let us thank God for his mercy upon all of us. It is a mercy that—in principle—might extend even to Judas.</p>

Hope for Judas?

Does the Mass Put Jesus Back on the Cross?

Every Spirit and Person at the Foot of the Cross

What Is the Golden Chain of Salvation?

<p>There are many points of disagreement that separate Jehovah’s Witnesses from Catholics. The most important of these is the Witnesses’ rejection of the dogma of the Trinity and Jesus Christ’s divinity. “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:15) is indeed the question that defines the Christian religion, and because Witnesses and Catholics (along with virtually all other Christians) come down on different sides of that issue, it’s not surprising that many consider the Jehovah’s Witness religion not be Christian at all.</p>
<p>The Witnesses are not, however, in agreement with the Muslims or Jews, either, because they believe that Christ was more than a man. Their belief is actually almost identical to the ancient heresy of Arius, which occasioned the Council of Nicaea. This heresy asserted that Christ is the greatest of all creatures, or a sort of super-angel. (In fact, the Witnesses identify Jesus with Michael the Archangel, a digression I’ll tackle momentarily.)</p>
<p><strong>Following quite closely Arius’s line of reasoning, the Witnesses focus on</strong> the separate personhood of Christ and any Scriptures that portray him as secondary to the Father or imply subordination. John 14:28 is often reached for (“the Father is greater than I”) along with 1 Corinthians 15:28, where the conquering Son becomes subject to the Father at the end of time.</p>
<p>Let’s give the Witnesses their due: There’s obviously more going on here than just the subjection Christ in his humanity would experience before the infinite, non-bodily Godhead of the Father. There’s something like an <em>economic</em> (i.e., related to the proper and practical ordering of things rather than to their essential realities) “subordination” of the Son to the Father (what Eastern Christians call the “monarchy” of the Father) that is part of the intrapersonal trinitarian relationships. There’s a procession to the Persons: No Christian would begin prayer with “In the name of the Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Father.” And the God of the creed that comes <em>from</em> God is the Son; to suggest that the roles be swapped is not only heretical, but nonsensical.</p>
<p>Having acknowledged, then, this point that seems so obvious and irrefutable to the Witness, you have already gone some of the way toward disarming him. This subjection of the Son, even <em>qua</em> his status as an eternal divine Person, does not change his essential divine nature. Scripture emphatically leaves us with clear evidence that the Son shares in the divinity of the Father.</p>
<p>The first chapter of the letter to the Hebrews is Exhibit A. Here we find a detailed exposition of exactly why Christ is not just an angel, but the creator of all things (v. 2), the inheritor of God’s name (v. 4), and of the same nature as God (v. 3). Christ is explicitly contrasted with angels, multiple times (vv. 4, 5-7, 13, 14), which is important to point out in dialogue with Witnesses, chiefly because they identify Christ with Michael the Archangel. This unique belief derives from St. Paul describing Our Lord as being accompanied at his second coming by “an archangel’s voice” (1 Thess. 4:16). Because of the importance ascribed in Scripture to St. Michael’s angelic leadership and spiritual combat, and because Witnesses believe that Christ is nothing more than the greatest angel, it’s not hard to see why this verse provides Witnesses with what they think is the perfect opportunity to connect the two entities.</p>
<p>Presented with the evidence of Hebrews 1, a Witness might respond, “Yes, but the Father <em>gave</em> Jesus all this, and so Jesus cannot be God.” Once again, don’t just dismiss that concern. As Catholics, we can accept the “from-ness” of Christ’s deity from the Father. It doesn’t change the fact of it, amply insisted upon here in Hebrews. If there’s one God, who created all things, who is absolutely unique, then Christian revelation is apparently telling us that this Jesus is part of who God is. Otherwise, how could the “fullness” of deity dwell bodily in him (Col. 2:9)?</p>
<p>John 1:1 is a precise statement of the Trinitarian divinity of Christ, but its usefulness is diminished because the Witnesses mistranslate it. The Greek construction for “the Word was God” doesn’t mean “a god,” as they’ve rendered it. It means “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3262756">divine</a>,” more literally (75-87). The dogma of the Trinity is the only possible way someone could be <em>with</em> the absolutely unique divine Being while at the same time <em>being</em> equally divine.</p>
<p><strong>Though most active Witnesses have no knowledge of (or interest in) the early Church Fathers</strong>, it’s crucial to realize that no Christians held views like theirs about the nature of Christ until Arius came along at the turn of the fourth century. Other nontrinitarians will dispute this, but their examples are generally of early Fathers using theological terms imprecisely, or simply references to the “economic” subordination I described above.<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">[i]</a> This is to be expected; before Nicaea, the Church hadn’t settled on precisely how to articulate its understanding of the Godhead. That certainly doesn’t mean there wasn’t a generally accepted, lived expression of that understanding from the very beginning.</p>
<p>That lived expression was (and is, within the Catholic Church) a relationship with God via the God-Man, Jesus Christ. Humanity and all creation are healed by the union between Creator and created. Pray for the Witnesses, whose theology precludes their experiencing this wonderful truth—the truth on which the Christian religion is built.</p>

Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Trinity

How do we properly understand typology as pointing towards the New Testament?

What does Jimmy think of the new document Antiqua et nova? Does he have any advice for the everyday person?

I have a friend who doesn’t believe God loves sinners and uses Ps 5:5 as evidence. Are there other verses to combat this?

What exactly are charisms from the Holy Spirit and how does one discern them?

Our visiting priest doesn’t say “do this in memory of me” when consecrating the bread but does it for the wine. Is this valid?

Can you assure me and help me further understand how God exists?

If the pope were to time travel, would the seat be vacant?

Would it be okay to ask a priest to bless my new firearm?

I’m teaching my kids the Glory Be, and it says “world without end” at the end of the prayer? Why does it say that?

AMA: Catholicism

<p>In classical theology, the “image and likeness of God” in man is identified with the rational soul—the spiritual dimension that sets the human race apart from all else that exists in material creation. The soul is where certain particularly human faculties exist—namely, human intellect and will. The intellect is given so that the human person may seek the <em>truth</em>.</p>
<p>In other words, God sets up a relationship between the human mind and what is objectively real according to the way he made the world. “For the human intellect is measured by things since an opinion is true or false according as it answers to reality,” says St. Thomas. “But the divine intellect is the measure of things: since each thing has so far truth in it, as it represents the divine intellect” (ST-I-II, Q. 93, a. 1 ad. 3). God gave the will so that mankind may seek the <em>good</em>, enabling the human person to freely choose what is objectively right.</p>
<p><strong>The image of God in man expresses itself</strong> in the fact that the human being, endowed with rational thought and will, like God, has a kingship in relation to the world of nature. Unlike the degraded status of a slave, forced to tend the world fashioned from the body of a defeated goddess, humans are masters of the world they inhabit.  Since humans are made in the image and likeness of God, Genesis 1 can declare boldly, “Let them have dominion.”</p>
<p>We must have a proper understanding of this term, <em>dominion</em>. God creates the world as a gift, a world imbued with meaning according to the eternal law of the divine mind. The gift character of the earth is expressed in Genesis 1:29-30: “God also said, ‘See, I give you every seed-bearing plant over all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food’” (1:29-30). The word <em>give</em> has the sense of a gratuitous donation to which there should be a proper response. Mankind should first recognize the Giver by treating his gift with respect; thus, the earth should not be abused or destroyed by human action.</p>
<p>Dominion thus means that the human person, who possesses intellect and will, can, like God, know what a thing is for and guide it to its perfection. The world indeed can be altered, as Genesis 2:15 teaches. Humanity has the honorable duty to “cultivate” the earth—to make something of it, to advance it toward its fulfillment. Like God, human beings can, with intellect and will, determine their environment. But that is not all; the human being is also called to “care for it.”</p>
<p>Dominion, then, does not mean that the earth is at the mere disposal of the human race, as if it were ours to dispose of according to our whim. To abuse the planet for human profit is a perversion of the biblical meaning of “dominion,” and indeed the human race stands accused of exploiting the earth and ruining God’s good creation. A false idea exists that, since the human person is, according to Scripture, superior to the rest of creation, the planet is simply at mankind’s disposal. This is not the true biblical meaning of dominion. If the world as a suitable place for man to inhabit is a gift, then that gift must be honored and respected.</p>
<p>The Catholic Church cautions against what it refers to as a “reductionist” view of nature in which nature</p>
<blockquote><p>appears as an instrument in the hands of man, a reality that he must constantly manipulate, especially by means of technology. . . . The reductionist conception views the natural world in mechanistic terms and sees development in terms of consumerism. Primacy is given to doing and having rather than to being and this causes serious forms of human alienation (<em>Sollicitudo Rei Socialis</em> 28).</p></blockquote>
<p>Exploitation of the earth is no more a Christian view than the idea that the world is so sacred that it should not be cultivated. It takes God’s gift and hoards it greedily, rejecting the purpose for which it was given (see <em>Centissimus Annus </em>37).</p>
<p><strong>This movement in our world today denies that the human being</strong> is special in any spiritual sense and accuses those who believe this of speciesism—the social, political, and cultural sin of seeing a hierarchy of value in the animal world—with the human being occupying the position of highest rank—daring to believe that the human being is separate from the rest of living species and of more value. It is a movement that seeks to equalize all of nature, in the process eliminating man’s special dignity. It may be summed up by the slogan, “This we know, the earth does not belong to man—man belongs to the earth.”</p>
<p>The radical environmentalists who identify with this expression have wishfully attributed it to Chief Seattle, the Native American leader who was influential in the settling of what is now the state of Washington. It comes, however, not from a native chief with deep innate wisdom about nature, but from a Hollywood screenwriter named Ted Perry, for a 1972 ecology film. Nonetheless, the statement is a very good articulation of a worldview opposite that of Genesis.</p>
<p>Genesis doesn’t teach that the earth is man’s own possession. God created the earth to be a gift to the human race; thus, as Genesis 2 states, human beings must “cultivate and care for it.” Nonetheless, man does not <em>belong</em> to the earth.</p>
<p>The human race lives in the world of nature. As corporeal creatures, humans are even intimately bound to the world of nature, since what is physical is constitutive of man’s very being. Yet the human person is not merely another part of the world. Like God, a human being cannot simply be collapsed into nature, as if the earth itself took priority over humanity. Genesis teaches that man, made in God’s image, is set apart: different, unique, special and like God, the human person may properly exercise certain prerogatives in relation to the world: shape it, alter it, perfect it. The earth is not to dominate humanity any more than the world is to dominate God.</p>
<p>The modern contradiction of the dominion laid out in Genesis, placing nature on equal footing with man, is a kind of reversion back to the pagan notion that the earth has a certain quasi-divine status. Therefore, humanity has no right to interfere with nature; to change it, probe it, manipulate it as if we were superior to it. We must simply leave it alone, coexisting as its equal—and in a sense be submerged into it as “the earth does not belong to man, but man belongs to the earth.” Some fringe elements of the modern anti-natalist movement even advocate that, for the sake of saving the planet, the human race should cease procreating even to the point of <a href="https://utopia.org/guide/what-is-anti-natalism-the-ethical-and-ecological-motivations/">its own extinction</a>!</p>
<p><strong>Scripture affirms that God wills the cultivation of the earth</strong> and that such proper alteration of the environment is actually a sign of his union with humanity—a sign of the covenant. The prophet Isaiah speaks of a cultivated vineyard planted on a fertile hillside, and the vineyard owner is described as a friend—God himself, who “spaded it, cleared it of stones, and planted the choicest vines. Within it he built a watchtower, and hewed out a winepress.” However, when the vineyard owner looked for his crop of grapes, all that was yielded were “wild grapes” (Isa. 5:1-2). God laments, “Why when I looked for the crop of grapes, did it bring forth wild grapes?” (v. 4).</p>
<p>Here we have an allegory: the vineyard is Israel, cultivated tenderly by God, yet his people, brought into a covenant with him, did not live up to that covenant, as Israel failed to produce fruit that should have come from such attentive care. The cultivated land, the land deliberately altered to produce fruit, stands for human unity and cooperation with God. Whereas land that is left to the wild, producing only wild fruits, is the opposite of human unity with God. Such land and such fruits are the consequence of failure to live within God’s covenant—it is a neglected land that returns to the wild, the reversal of the cultivated land, a land that stands for a people who are now cast out (see Isa. 5:5-7).</p>
<p>Allowing nature to return to the wild is a sign of God’s disfavor, whereas making something of the earth is a sign of divine blessing—but a blessing that rests on the human being acting in justice. Far from being something human beings should be ashamed of, dominion over creation is a way human beings imitate God—and it is an essential characteristic of human dignity.</p>

The Earth Is Made for Man

5 Bad Catholic Arguments We NEED TO STOP Using…

<div>How could Jesus speak with his mother at wedding at Cana? Is it because they didn’t start to practice gender separation back then, or is it a Jewish wedding? (It seems he’s very comfortable to hang out with Gentiles in the Gospels.) </div><div><p>Given their proximity in the womb and infancy, there’s always been a closeness between a Jewish mother and her son, including the Blessed Mother and Jesus. So conversation between them would’ve been normal and expected throughout their lives, including for Jesus to fulfill the Fourth Commandment.</p>
<p>On the other hand, as you noted, there is the separation of men and women for worship at Orthodox synagogues. For more on that, see <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/160962/jewish/Separation-in-the-Synagogue.htm">this presentation</a>.</p>
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Jesus Speaking with Mary at Cana

<div>Is it okay to buy a Bible for my nephews if my brother and his wife don’t practice religion?</div><div><p>It is certainly fine, but I would suggest that you simply give them a New Testament with the Psalms. There is a nice edition from Ignatius Press of a New Testament and Psalms. This will be easier for them to use and understand than if you were to include at this point the whole Old Testament. Give them rosaries also with a little leaflet (there are many available) on how to pray it.</p>
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OK to Buy Nephews a Bible?

<p>Catholic Answers Studios has developed a new video series called Ready Reasons! Mark your calendars! Ready Reasons launches on NOVEMBER 29th!</p>

Introducing: Ready Reasons

<p><strong>Episode 145: </strong><b>22</b><b><sup>nd</sup></b><b> Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C</b></p>
<p>In today’s episode, we look at three details that come from each of the readings for this upcoming 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C. The detail from the first reading, which is taken from Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29, relates to the topic of indulgences. The detail from the second reading, which is Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a, relates to the apologetical topic of the invocation of the saints, and in particular the Protestant objection from necromancy. The detail in the Gospel reading, taken from Luke 14:7-14, relates to the causal role that our works play for final salvation.</p>
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<p>Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/083125.cfm">Click Here</a></p>
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<p>Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a></p>
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Can Almsgiving Save You? Jesus, Indulgences, and the Saints

<p>In this episode, Trent answers a wide variety of questions from his patrons.</p>

Am I a Novus Ordo Hypocrite? (Patron Q+A)

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

<div>Is Mary a saint, and can I use her for my baptism saint name?</div><div><p>You may certainly use “Mary” as your baptismal name, as she is the Mother of God and Queen of Heaven and Earth and thus of all angels and saints (see CCC 966). If you don’t want to formally/legally change your name by taking an explicitly Christian name at baptism, you could instead take “Mary” as your Confirmation name and thereby make the Blessed Mother your special patron.</p>
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May I Use “Mary” as My Baptismal Name?

<p>What can our forebears teach us about dealing with persecution? In this bonus episode, we ask theologian Ben Safranski how one very important early Christian &#8211; Cyprian of Carthage &#8211; dealt with Roman persecution in some surprising ways.</p>

St. Cyprian of Carthage’s Advice on Enduring Persecution

<p>Featured Guests: Karlo Broussard, Carrie Gress, Scott Weeman, Tim Staples</p>
<p><a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hDwRQKsjoc&amp;t=21s">00:21</a><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> Is receiving the Eucharist necessary for salvation? – Karlo Broussard </span></p>
<p><a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hDwRQKsjoc&amp;t=316s">05:16</a><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> How is toxic femininity affecting modern society? – Carrie Gress </span></p>
<p><a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hDwRQKsjoc&amp;t=851s">14:11</a><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> What do you do when you’ve tried everything and can’t seem to reach a loved one struggling with addiction? – Scott Weeman </span></p>
<p><a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hDwRQKsjoc&amp;t=1044s">17:24</a><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> How can we resolve doubts and difficulties as Catholics? – Tim Staples</span></p>

Catholic Answers | Season 5 | Episode 1

The Actual Problem with The Viking’s Male Cheerleaders

Protestants, Stop Saying THIS About Catholicism

Reconstructed Dialogue in the Bible

<p>The term transubstantiation has been used for centuries within the Church but does it actually men? William Albrecht, co-author of The Secret History of Transubstantiation joins us to explore its true meaning.</p>

The Secret History of Transubstantiation

Why do people object to the Pope’s role in the Church?

Isn’t the papacy unbiblical and not meant to persist beyond Peter?

Does the Bible ever say Peter was in Rome?

What does “Babylon” mean in 1 Peter 5:13, and how is that connected to Rome?

found the Church in Rome with Peter?

Paul rebuked Peter—doesn’t that undermine papal authority?

Was Peter’s behavior in Antioch heretical or just scandalous?

Doesn’t Galatians 2 show Peter as just another apostle, not a leader?

Why do Protestants say we don’t need a Pope if Jesus tore the temple veil?

Does Jesus as sole mediator mean there’s no place for the Pope or priests?

Why is Hebrews 10 crucial to properly understanding the torn temple veil?

Is priesthood abolished in the New Testament?

What does 1 Corinthians 10 tell us about sacrifice, the Eucharist, and priests?

Why is there a structural Protestant objection to the papacy?

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<p><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">In </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Galatians, </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Paul </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">publicly </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">rebukes </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Peter—</span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">but </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">does </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">that </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">disprove </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">papal </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">authority? </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">We </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">unpack </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">what </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">really </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">happened </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">in </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Antioch </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">and </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">why </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">the </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Church </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">still </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">holds </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">Peter </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">as </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">the </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">first </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">pope, </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">even </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">amid </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">correction </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">and </span><span class="_fadeIn_m1hgl_8">scandal.</span></p>
<p>Join The <em>CA Live Club</em> Newsletter: <a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Click Here</a></p>
<p>Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a></p>
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Did Paul’s Rebuke of Peter Undermine the Papacy?

Does the Church teach that aborted babies are doomed to hell?

Can the magisterium override scripture?

What are your thoughts on when conversing with a protestant who adheres to sola scriptura about pointing out how they should accept one’s interpretation of scripture since they don’t accept any other authority?

I’m protestant dating a Catholic. I found out that her understanding of Catholicism is lacking. How do I talk to her and correct her without sounding condescending?

If we were meant for the afterlife, how come we all fight death?

<p>&#8220;Are aborted babies doomed to hell?&#8221; This question leads to a discussion on the Church&#8217;s teachings regarding the fate of aborted infants. Additionally, the conversation touches on whether the magisterium can override scripture and how to engage with a Protestant partner about differing interpretations of faith.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</span></a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit </span><a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</span></a></p>

Aborted Babies Are Not Doomed to Hell – Scripture and Authority

Can We Have Absolute Assurance of Salvation?

How do you respond to a Southern Baptist that denies the story of the Lazarus and rich man establishes the immediate judgement?

I’m protestant and considering OCIA but I hesitate on the rules that change in Catholics. How do we know rules won’t change in the future like attending Sunday mass, women veiling, etc.?

Is it correct to say the Sadducees and Pharisees had a similar relationship as Catholics and Protestants. Is this true?

How do we effectively evangelize Muslims especially when they come across as arrogant and even resort to using foul language?

How do I better explain apologetics to a crowd that is not religious at work?

<p>&#8220;Can we have absolute assurance of salvation?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the nature of faith and security in salvation. Other topics include responding to Southern Baptist views on the parable of Lazarus, the concerns of a Protestant considering OCIA, and strategies for evangelizing Muslims.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"><a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</span></a></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit </span><a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</span></a></p>

Can We Have Assurance of Salvation? Apologetics and Evangelism

<p><span><span>In this episode, Trent shares some tips with John De Rosa, host of classicaltheism.com, on how to be a knowledgeable but relatable defender of the Catholic faith.</span></span></p>
<p> </p>
<p><a href="https://www.patreon.com/counseloftrent"></a></p>

The ‘Art’ of Making Catholic Arguments

<p>How do we get kids off of screens and back into reality? Trent sits down with David Williams of Valor and Dan Kerr to discuss how to implement the principles of a classical, wisdom-based education.</p>

Raising Wise Kids in Foolish Times

<p>It&#8217;s easy to say “thank you” . . . at least sometimes.</p>
<p>When our hearts are delighted, as at a wedding of a dear friend or family member, or when we receive unexpected and unsolicited help or generosity from a friend or from a stranger, the words “thank you” could not come more easily.</p>
<p><strong>But what about unwelcome news, ill treatment, bad times?</strong> How do we react when the up and coming generation forswears marriage, when funerals outnumber weddings in churches across the United States? What about when our friends and even our family members spurn us, shun us, insult us, be it for our lifestyle or our politics or even our faith? How should we react to those?</p>
<p>When we witness—or suffer ourselves—injustice, malice, deceit, betrayal, or any of the human failings so well documented in the electronic devices to which we all are enslaved, our first reaction—mine, in any case—is not gratitude. “Thank you” is not something I say when the moral mire of our age disturbs my peace.</p>
<p>But when I look to Scripture to support my indignation, instead I find St. Paul scolding me. It’s not the moral mire that’s the problem, Paul says (though it certainly is <em>a</em> problem). No, the problem is my ingratitude.</p>
<p>Gratitude is an ongoing theme for the apostle to the Gentiles. “Rejoice always,” he exhorts us in First Thessalonians—“pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (5:17-18). Lest we doubt Paul’s credibility, remember that this is a man who endured beatings, whippings, stonings, imprisonments, and shipwrecks (2 Cor. 11:23-28). How did <em>he</em> get to be so grateful?</p>
<p>We find out in his letter to the Romans. Here Paul provides an apologia for thanking God in bad times: “We rejoice <em>in our sufferings</em>, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (5:3-5).</p>
<p>We could grieve at the myriad opportunities out there to put Paul’s words to use. We hear of so many wounds to the Church, the bride of Christ, no small number of which are self-inflicted. I already mentioned some examples of the crisis in marriage, in <em>marriages</em>, in families. Nor does it end there. And it’s not that we should “rejoice in” these—we can never be grateful for evil. Rather, we must be grateful that God, in his infinite mercy, sees fit to take even our iniquity and work it to our good.</p>
<p>This is more than “count your blessings.” It’s a radical orientation toward prayer—perhaps new, perhaps hard to accept, but worth the effort.</p>
<p>Think of it this way: on this side of the veil, our prayers are divided into <em>petition</em>, <em>contrition</em>, <em>thanksgiving</em>, and <em>praise</em>. If you’re like me, you have trouble getting beyond petition! But when, God willing, we see the face of God, we will have no need of “please.” We won’t need “I’m sorry,” either—purgatory will take care of that. No, all our prayers will be thanksgiving and praise. “Thank you,” and “I love you.”</p>
<p><strong>The book of Job describes a just man who loses everything.</strong> As his wealth, his possessions, his health, even his family fall into ruin, decay, and death, his friends exhort him to give up on the God who so clearly has forsaken him. Even his wife tempts him: “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God, and die” (2:9).</p>
<p>The good news is that Job keeps the Faith. He never forgets the one to whom he owes everything. But the bad news is that he complains along the way—complains quite a lot, actually, to the point that God comes and rebukes him directly. “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? . . . Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?” (40:2,9).</p>
<p>Don’t forget that Job is a just man! And yet here is how we can exceed him in virtue—with our gratitude. Every kind word, every pleasant feeling, is God’s gift, because God created our ears to hear and our bodies to feel. No matter our sorrows, we can remember that every breath we take is God’s gift. And even the man who convinces himself that he has nothing left to be thankful for can read Psalm 22—“my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, the psalm our Lord recited from the cross—and remember that God has prepared a city for such as him. That is the greatest gift of all, beyond all sensation, beyond all worldly goods: the chance to live forever in perfect happiness with our creator, a chance God gives freely, in love, <em>as </em>love, to everyone.</p>
<p>This, I think, is a good way to understand the words of Bl. Solanus Casey: “Gratitude is the first sign of a thinking rational creature.” G.K. Chesterton takes the same thought farther: “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” In other words, the perpetually grateful are the happiest people in the room. Why? No matter their aches and pains and earthly heartsickness, they are living in the presence of God.</p>
<p>We can be the perpetually grateful, the happiest people in the room, because we have something that Job lacked: a personal Savior, God incarnate, come to cleanse us of our sins and redeem us. We have a Church that has opened for us its abundant treasury of graces, consolations, and indulgences. We have the saints, our models for holy lives, to illuminate the path to heaven opened up for us despite our unworthiness. And so we can exceed Job in virtue, in gratitude, even in the darkest times—because no matter what befalls us, God has prepared for us a city, with a standing invitation from Jesus Christ.</p>
<p>Let’s be thankful, then—when things are easy, of course, but especially when they’re hard. The God who made us deserves nothing less—and we’ll be happier, too.</p>

Even When It’s Bad, Be Grateful

<p>Each year as Lent rolls around, many of us encounter a similar phenomenon: we scramble to find  something to give up, and when we can’t think of something in time, we end up choosing—again—to give up sweets. Yet we try to pray more, maybe we go to confession more frequently, and we try—however imperfectly—to become a little less attached to the things that keep us from God.</p>
<p><strong>What many people don’t recognize is that Lent is not</strong> just a seasonal exercise in discipline. It actually corresponds to something much deeper in the Christian life. The practices of Lent—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—are the traditional means by which the Church leads us into the first <em>stage</em> of the spiritual life.</p>
<p>Classical Catholic spirituality has long taught that the spiritual life unfolds in three “ages” or stages: the purgative way, the illuminative way, and the unitive way.</p>
<p>The Dominican theologian Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, in his monumental work <em>The Three Ages of the Interior Life</em>, explains that this division is not an invention of later spirituality, but the traditional framework used by the great masters of the spiritual life.</p>
<p>As he writes,</p>
<blockquote><p>under the title <em>Theologia mystica</em> all these authors treated of the purgative way of beginners, the illuminative way of proficients, and the unitive way of the perfect.</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, the spiritual life progresses through recognizable stages. Beginners first learn to turn away from sin and disordered attachments. Then they begin to grow in deeper understanding of God through a direct illumination in the soul by God. Finally, they reach a more profound union with him.</p>
<p>Lent, in many ways, is the Church’s yearly immersion into that first stage: the purgative way (although certainly purification persists throughout the entire spiritual life!).</p>
<h2>The Three Ages of the Spiritual Life</h2>
<p>Before we talk about the purgative way itself, it helps to understand the overall map.</p>
<p>The spiritual life unfolds roughly like this:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>The Purgative Way</strong> (Beginners)
This stage is focused on purification—turning away from sin, disciplining the passions (the lower faculties of the soul), and learning the habits of prayer and virtue.</li>
<li><strong>The Illuminative Way</strong> (Proficients)<br/>
Here the soul grows in deeper knowledge of God, guided more directly by the gifts of the Holy Spirit.</li>
<li><strong>The Unitive Way</strong> (The Perfect)<br/>
This stage is characterized by a profound union with God through charity.</li>
</ol>
<p>These are not rigid boxes. They are more like stages of growth. Just as a child becomes an adult gradually, so the spiritual life matures over time.</p>
<p>But the beginning is always purification. And that is exactly what Lent is about.</p>
<h2>The Ascetical Life and the Mystical Life</h2>
<p>To understand why the purgative way comes first, we need to distinguish between two important aspects of the spiritual life: the <em>ascetical</em> life and the <em>mystical</em> life.</p>
<p>The ascetical life refers to the part of the spiritual life where we actively cooperate with grace through discipline, prayer, and the practice of virtue. It involves effort, struggle, and deliberate conversion.</p>
<p>The mystical life, by contrast, refers to the deeper work that God himself does in the soul through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. In this stage, the soul becomes more directly guided by divine action. And according to Matthew 16, this stage involves more crosses that we are given than only acts of denying ourselves (i.e., God purifies us directly).</p>
<p>Garrigou-Lagrange explains the distinction like this:</p>
<blockquote><p>Ascetical theology treats of the purgative way of beginners who . . . exercise themselves generously in the practice of the virtues, but still according to the human mode of the virtues, <em>ex industria propria</em>, with the help of ordinary grace.</p></blockquote>
<p>In other words, in the early stages of the spiritual life, we are still learning how to live the Christian life through deliberate effort. We are cooperating with grace, but the initiative often feels as though it begins with us: we decide to pray, we discipline our appetites, we struggle against sin.</p>
<p>The mystical life comes later, when the Holy Spirit begins to guide the soul more directly (following the dreaded <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/dark-night-of-the-soul-not-what-you-think">dark night of the sense</a>).</p>
<p>But before that can happen, something has to take place first. We must be purified.</p>
<h2>Why Purification Comes First</h2>
<p>The purgative way exists for a simple reason: our loves are disordered. Even after conversion, most of us still carry deep attachments—to comfort, reputation, pleasure, control, or self-reliance. (The greatest enemy of the soul’s growth is disordered self-love!) These attachments cloud our spiritual vision and weaken our love for God.</p>
<p>The purgative stage is where God begins to clean house.</p>
<p>Garrigou-Lagrange describes this stage in sobering terms:</p>
<blockquote><p>The purgative way, proper to beginners . . . treats of the active purification of the external and internal senses, of the passions, of the intellect and the will, by mortification, meditation, and prayer.</p></blockquote>
<p>Notice the emphasis: purification of the senses, passions, intellect, and will. The entire person must be reordered.</p>
<p>The great masters always insist on this point: true mysticism presupposes serious asceticism. Only the pure of heart will see God.</p>
<h2>Lent and the Purgative Way</h2>
<p>This is exactly why the Church gives us Lent—we are all called to true holiness, the kind that leads to a mystical relationship with God.</p>
<p>The three traditional Lenten disciplines—prayer, fasting, and almsgiving—are not random acts of piety. They correspond directly to the purification needed in the purgative stage.</p>
<p>Each one targets a different dimension of the soul.</p>
<ul>
<li>Prayer: Purifying the Mind (and growing in humility)<br/>
Prayer reorders the intellect and the heart toward God. In the purgative stage, prayer is often simple and deliberate: daily mental prayer, meditation on Scripture, examination of conscience. This is how we begin to learn the habit of turning our attention toward God rather than toward ourselves.</li>
<li>Fasting: Purifying the Senses<br/>
Fasting disciplines our appetites. It teaches the flesh that it is not in charge. The purpose is not suffering for its own sake, but conforming our will to God and making the passions submit to the will. The person who cannot deny himself a small comfort will find it very difficult to deny himself a serious temptation.</li>
<li>Almsgiving: Purifying the Heart<br/>
Almsgiving attacks one of the deepest attachments we have: possession and self-interest.<br/>
Giving away what belongs to us—time, money, energy—loosens our grip on the illusion that our life consists of what we own. It helps to rid us of our attachment to worldly things so we can become attached only to God.</li>
</ul>
<p>Together, these three practices begin the work of purification that defines the purgative way.</p>
<h2>The First Conversion . . . and the Second</h2>
<p>For many Christians, conversion happens once: they turn toward God and begin practicing the Faith.</p>
<p>But the spiritual tradition speaks of something deeper—a second conversion that occurs as the soul begins to take the interior life seriously.</p>
<p>Garrigou-Lagrange connects this second conversion with the transition out of the purgative stage.</p>
<p>Quoting St. John of the Cross, he writes, “The night of sense is common, and the lot of many: these are the beginners.”</p>
<p>This purification prepares the soul for something greater.</p>
<p>The spiritual life is not meant to remain permanently in the beginner stage. The purgative way prepares the soul for the deeper work of God—the illuminative and unitive ways.</p>
<h2>Lent as the Beginning of the Journey</h2>
<p>With Lent comes the knowledge of Easter, the Ascension, and even Pentecost. Just as we know our forty days of penance leads to resurrection, we ought to know that the purgative stage is meant to lead to the illuminative and unitive. Though most of us won’t reach the unitive stage this side of heaven, we had better try! It is in the normal way of sanctity, which means that if you cooperate, God will bring you there (provided we suffer with him! see Rom. 8:17).</p>
<p>As Garrigou-Lagrange insists, ascetical theology is ordered toward mystical theology. The purgative way is not the end of the journey.</p>
<p>Lent places us squarely in that beginning again every year. It reminds us that the path to union with God always starts the same way: with purification, humility, and the willingness to let God begin his work in us, and that we must both take initiative and be receptive to his work.</p>

Lent Is Only Step 1 of 3

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<p><strong>DAY 277 </strong></p>
<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
<p>“Scripture says that the Jews were ‘entrusted with the oracles of God’ (Rom. 3:2), so we should look to them for the Old Testament canon. They reject the deuterocanonicals, and so should we.”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>There are multiple problems with this argument.</p>
<p>First, not all Jewish people have the same canon. Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) have a canon including deuterocanonical books. It was rabbinic Jews that Protestants were familiar with in the 1500s, and their canon that the Reformers borrowed.</p>
<p>Second, as we cover elsewhere (see Day 255), there were multiple canonical traditions in the first century. The Pharisee tradition, which gave rise to the canon used by rabbinic Judaism, was only one tradition.</p>
<p>Third, first-century Christians did not use the Pharisee canonical tradition. They used the Septuagint tradition, which they passed on to the early Church (see Day 273).</p>
<p>Fourth, the Pharisee canonical tradition continued to be debated after the split with Christianity.</p>
<p>According to now outdated scholarship, the Pharisee/rabbinical canon was settled around A.D. 90 at the “Council of Jamnia” (“Jab- neh,” “Yavneh”). However, there was no such council. Christians held councils to settle issues; Jews did not. This “council” was actually a Jewish school set up in Yavneh after the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, and it did not settle the canon of Scripture.</p>
<p>The so-called Council of Jamnia was more in the nature of a school or an academy that sat in Jamnia between the years 75 and 117. There is no evidence of a decision drawing up a list of books. It seems that the canon of the Jewish Scriptures was not definitively fixed before the end of the second century. Scholarly discussion on the status of certain books continued into the third century (Pontifical Biblical Commission, “The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures,” fn. 33).</p>
<p>Although the Jewish people were “entrusted with the oracles of God,” they had not reached a conclusion in Jesus’ day on what books counted as Scripture, and Christians should look to the decision of the Church on this matter—not that of a particular Jewish school, whose canon only solidified later in the Christian age.</p>
<p><strong>TIP</strong></p>
<p>For a good discussion of this from a Protestant perspective, see Lee McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority.</p>
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The Jewish People and the Old Testament Canon

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<p><strong>DAY 312</strong></p>
<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
<p>“Catholic teaching on merit is unbiblical. We can’t merit anything before God.”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
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<p>The term “merit” (Latin, <em>meritum</em>) refers to a reward. By extension, it has also come to refer to actions that God chooses to reward. The doctrine of merit is thus the biblical doctrine of rewards under another name.</p>
<p>The Bible is clear that our actions in this life can affect the degree of reward we receive in heaven. Jesus told us: “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” (Matt. 6:20–21).</p>
<p>Sometimes people imagine there will be no degrees of reward in heaven—that going to heaven is the only reward God gives. However, Jesus indicates that individual actions we perform are the subject of rewards.</p>
<p>He warns that certain actions will not receive rewards, such as doing good deeds to receive praise from men (Matt. 6:1–2, 5, 16), while other actions will receive rewards, such as doing good deeds to please God (Matt. 6:4, 6, 18, 10:41–42).</p>
<p>Similarly, Paul indicates that some people will enter heaven with greater rewards than others. He speaks of how individuals build on the foundation of Jesus Christ by doing various things, and he says that one day these works will be tested by fire. He then says, “If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:14–15). Some individuals, therefore, will both enter heaven and receive rewards in addition to that, but others will simply enter heaven.</p>
<p>Paul also discusses the nature of the rewards that we will receive, writing: “For he [God] will render to every man according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life” (Rom. 2:6–7).</p>
<p>Here he indicates that those who display “patience in well-doing” (literally, “in good work”) seek the rewards of “glory and honor and immortality” from God, and this hope does not disappoint, for God gives them “eternal life.”</p>
<p><strong>TIP</strong></p>
<p>See also Day 354.</p>
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Merit and Reward

<p>Modern movies continue to be problematic, promoting twisted popular agendas to young audiences and slipping past adult audiences. How can Catholics respond to movies and television that pose such grave moral challenges?</p>

Is Enola Holmes the Most Evil Movie Ever Made?

<div>Where is purgatory taught in the Bible?</div><div><p><span><span><span><span><span>One biblical passage in which the teaching of purgatory is conveyed is 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, For more on this topic, please see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/purgatory">our tract on purgatory</a>.  </span></span></span></span></span></p>
</div>

Does the Bible Teach Purgatory?

How can Catholics ask Protestants to be in communion with the Pope, when there have been so many schisms?

I don’t understand the teaching of no salvation outside the Catholic Church?

How do I explain Papal Authority? When should we listen to the Pope?

What do Catholics believe are necessary beliefs to be Christian?

I struggle with the teaching of Mary’s Virginity based on Matthew 1:24-25?

Is Catholic doctrine found in the Bible?

I’m confused by the belief in Sacrament of the anointing of the sick? I’ve heard different perspectives on going to Heaven with last rites?

What Catholic Doctrine Troubles You?

<div>What does Matthew 11:11-15 mean? Specifically: "the violent are taking it by force"?</div><div><blockquote><p>Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force. All the prophets and the law prophesied up to the time of John. And if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah, the one who is to come. Whoever has ears ought to hear. (Matt. 11:11-15)</p></blockquote>
<p>There are two common interpretations of this passage.</p>
<p>One is that it refers to those who would seize the kingdom of heaven for themselves and prevent others from entering. This interpretation is that those who are &#8220;taking it by force&#8221; are those who are trying to prevent the baptizing of John the Baptist and prevent people from coming to Jesus.</p>
<p>The other interpretation is that it refers to the impatience people have for the coming kingdom of God. In this interpretation the &#8220;violence&#8221; is not a negative but more symbolic. The kingdom of heaven is being depicted as a city being besieged on all sides by people who want to posses it.</p>
</div>

Who Is Taking the Kingdom of Heaven by Force?

<p>Are we allowed to pull the lever or not? Does your intention make a difference? The classic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem">trolley problem</a> DOES have an answer! Fr. Sebastian Walshe walks through the details of this contemporary moral dilemma.</p>

Answering the Trolley Problem

“Some Christians say they’re not Catholic because they don’t see any evidence for any sort of infallible authority continuing after the apostles.”

In the Nicene Creed when we pray “One Baptism for the forgiveness of sins…” does this mean we do not need confession?

Was Peter married?

If Mary was immaculately conceived, why did she have to die?

The Church does not seem divinely inspired, so how can it claim to teach infallibility?

Will sins confessed an absolved by a priest be read in our final judgement?

<p>&#8220;Why Aren’t You Catholic?&#8221; addresses the question of infallible authority in the Church, particularly in light of claims from some Christians. The discussion also touches on whether confession is necessary if baptism forgives sins, the marital status of Peter, and the implications of Mary&#8217;s immaculate conception.</p>
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Why Aren’t You Catholic? Authority, Confession, and Mary

<p>Questioning the historical record of apostolic succession? Jimmy Akin explores the challenges and evidence for tracing the lineage of Catholic bishops back to the apostles. He discusses the fragmentary nature of early Church records and the importance of &#8220;snapshots&#8221; documenting ordinations. Discover the safeguards within the ordination process that ensure the validity of apostolic succession.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><strong>Transcript:</strong></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Sophia is in Minnesota listening on our website, Catholic.com. Sophia, go ahead with your question for Jimmy.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Hi, Jimmy. Thank you very much. I, basically, I was, I&#8217;ve been thinking a lot about apostolic succession, and a lot of the defense for apostolic succession comes from the writings of the church fathers, which makes a lot of sense. But I was kind of wondering if there is like an actual line kind of recorded somewhere, and if there isn&#8217;t, are there like fragments of that line recorded somewhere?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">So there&#8217;s, to my knowledge, there is not a single comprehensive list map in all of the world&#8217;s bishops, all the way back to the apostles.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">There is, and this is easily available on a website, I believe the website is Catholicclergy.com, although I could be mistaken about that. But there is a registry within the Catholic church that traces the lineage of all current bishops back several hundred years. And I know that before that, we also have other indicators of who ordain, which bishop ordain who as another bishop. But it&#8217;s not, it&#8217;s not a complete list. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Also, the process has failsafes built into it. So it&#8217;s not just one bishop lays hands on you if you&#8217;re going to be consecrated to bishop. It&#8217;s typically at least three. So even if there was a danger that one bishop might have been invalidly ordained, the other two bishops putting hands on you will secure your ordination as a bishop. And so even though we don&#8217;t have, to my knowledge, a list going all the way back to the apostles for every single bishop, it is morally certain that that that we do have lines that go all the way back to the apostles. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">The problem is, we just don&#8217;t have good records in the earliest history of the church. The amount of surviving literature from like the second century is very sparse. A lot of it didn&#8217;t get written down and a lot of it that did get written down has not survived the ages. But even then, we do have records of like principal sees where like for the bishop of Rome, this guy succeeded this guy who succeeded this guy.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">So we do have records from that time and they indicate the substantial integrity of the lines of apostolic succession.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Okay, so just so that I understand, I might be repeating what you just said, but I just want to make sure I understand that there&#8217;s going to be like little snapshots of the apostolic line technique. Like, we&#8217;ll find little snapshots that we uncover, but we just don&#8217;t have it just because it was so long ago, basically. Yeah, and then after a certain point in history, like no later than the, I forget the 15 or 1600s, we&#8217;ve got the entirety of it for all the lines of bishops. So the defense of the earliest, the line, especially in the early church will be from like our knowledge of how the practice of ordination is, right?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Yeah, I mean, we do have records of them talking about ordination and saying this is what we do and this is how we do it. When it goes back to the apostles, we just don&#8217;t have all the links in the chain documented, but we have them saying this is what&#8217;s going on and it goes back to the apostles.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400">Hey, thanks for watching. If you like this Catholic answer, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out our live streams Monday through Friday, 3 to 5 p.m. Pacific, or find the episode after on YouTube, your favorite podcast platform, or our Catholic Answers app.</span></p>

Does the Catholic Church Have Unbroken Apostolic Succession?

<p>In this episode Trent shows you the best of “the worst” anti-drug, anti-bullying, and “stranger danger” PSA’s he endured as a child.</p>

Drugs, Bullies, and Stranger Danger!

<p><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto">Featured Guests: Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem, Tim Staples, Trent Horn, Christopher Check </span></p>
<p><a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chqumVqX_T8&amp;t=35s">00:35</a><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> How does someone awaiting RCIA live a Catholic life? – Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem </span></p>
<p><a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chqumVqX_T8&amp;t=278s">04:38</a><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> Are Catholics obligated to vote? – Tim Staples </span></p>
<p><a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chqumVqX_T8&amp;t=871s">14:31</a><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> “I reject the Church’s authority to teach on definitive morality” – Trent Horn </span></p>
<p><a class="yt-simple-endpoint style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto" spellcheck="false" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chqumVqX_T8&amp;t=1225s">20:25</a><span class="style-scope yt-formatted-string" dir="auto"> Catholic authors you should read – Christopher Check</span></p>

Catholic Answers | Season 4 | Episode 11

Is the Mass the Same Sacrifice as Calvary? A Response to James White

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<p><strong><span style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'segoe ui', Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'helvetica neue', sans-serif">DAY 161</span></strong></p>
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<p><strong>CHALLENGE</strong></p>
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<p>“The Catholic Church is wrong to say there are seven sacraments. It’s even inconsistent with its own history. Historically, some Catholic authorities have listed as many as thirty sacraments.”</p>
<p><strong>DEFENSE</strong></p>
<p>How many sacraments there are depends on how you use the term.</p>
<p>The Latin term sacramentum comes from sacrare, which means “to make sacred” or “to consecrate.” At one point, sacramentum referred to a sacred oath, but it came to refer to sacred rites in any religion.</p>
<p>St. Augustine wrote: “There can be no religious society, whether the religion be true or false, without some sacrament or visible symbol to serve as a bond of union” (Reply to Faustus 19:11). Thus Catholic authors have historically referred to Jewish rites such as the Passover lamb and various blessings as “sacraments of the Old Law” (ST III:60:2 reply to obj. 2, 6; reply to obj. 3, III:61:3, 4).</p>
<p>In the Christian context, “sacrament” came to refer to many Chris- tian rituals. Thus Hugh of St. Victor (1096–1141) listed thirty sacraments (On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith). Other authors in the Middle Ages gave different numbers (frequently between five and twelve), showing there was no fixed definition at the time. The term was flexible.</p>
<p>Eventually, a standard definition came into use. This definition recognized sacraments as rites instituted by Christ to impart grace. The Catechism states: “The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us” (CCC 1131).</p>
<p>When this definition is applied, the number of sacraments becomes clearer. Some rites—like baptism—were established by Christ to efficaciously convey grace or divine life (Matt. 28:19; 1 Pet. 3:21), and so they count as sacraments. Other rites—like foot washing—may have been established by Christ (John 13:1–17), but they don’t convey grace and so are not sacraments. Still others were instituted after the time of Christ and so are not sacraments. Many in the last category have come to be called “sacramentals” (CCC 1667–79).</p>
<p>The Church thus came to recognize that there are seven sacraments according to this definition: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders, and matrimony (CCC 1113).</p>
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The Number and Nature of the Sacraments

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<p>&#8220;Can I understand indulgences?&#8221; This episode dives into the topic of indulgences and their origins, while also addressing a variety of questions such as the reasons behind the cessation of Old Testament sacrifices and the validity of crystal healings. Join us as we explore these intriguing aspects of Catholic faith and practice.</p>
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Can I Understand Indulgences, Sacrifices, and Vatican II?

<p>Jimmy Akin sheds light on the recent Vatican document regarding apparitions and supernatural phenomena. He discusses the implications of this document for Medjugorje, exploring the Vatican&#8217;s new classification and its impact on the devotion surrounding the reported apparitions.</p>
<p>Jimmy&#8217;s Article: <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/medjugorje-closer-look-at-vatican-ruling">https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/medjugorje-closer-look-at-vatican-ruling</a></p>
<p><strong>Transcript:</strong></p>
<p>You know what, Jimmy? I saw there was news, and it&#8217;s related to something you have talked about on this show, and I don&#8217;t think anyone else has talked about, is that document that came out, the Vatican document,</p>
<p>on kind of how to proceed when there are claims of apparitions and supernatural things. And now there&#8217;s some news based on that from Medjugorje, and I think that&#8217;s what a lot of people have been waiting for. So can you kind of run us through what that&#8217;s all about, what was said?</p>
<p>So first of all, for more information, I wrote a piece about this for the National Catholic Register. They asked me to do a piece on it for them, so you can read that for more detail. But basically, what I suspected might happen did happen.</p>
<p>After the announcement of the new norms for evaluating reports of private apparitions, they took the,</p>
<p>Cardinal Fernandez was asked if, you know, they were gonna do Medjugorje, and he said at the time, well, I haven&#8217;t reviewed that material yet, but we should be able to proceed to a decision now.</p>
<p>And even though one of the now seven categories for classifying reports of an apparition</p>
<p>sounded like it was tailor made for Medjugorje, he kind of went in a different direction. He raised the possibility of given it what&#8217;s called a Nihilabstadt, which means nothing obstructs the faithful from having a devotion to this, but with some clarifications. And that&#8217;s what they did.</p>
<p>So a Nihilabstadt is now the highest ruling, the most positive ruling that can be given to an apparition without the direct intervention of the Pope. What a Nihilabstadt does not do is pass any judgment on is this genuinely supernatural or not. And so the Vatican has not made a ruling on are the reported apparitions at Medjugorje supernatural, in fact, at the conclusion of the new document on it, they say that three times. So they really want to make it clear, we&#8217;re not saying whether this is supernatural or not,</p>
<p>but they say, you know, a lot of the messages associated with it are wholesome and can be used for devotional purposes by the faithful, and there&#8217;s good spiritual fruit, you know, conversions and reconciliations of marriages and stuff like that connected with Medjugorje. And so the faithful can have a reasonable devotion here, but there are some clarifications they needed to insist on. And so you can read the article or the original document, which is linked in the article for more information about that. Basically, it leaves us in the same position that we were in before. People who think that Medjugorje is supernatural can continue to think that, but they&#8217;ve been put on notice by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith that not all the messages should just be regarded as this is the will of heaven. They specifically say that some of the messages can be misleading or are misleading, and there are some things in them that you just need to not pay attention to. So if you&#8217;re gonna think it&#8217;s supernatural,</p>
<p>don&#8217;t be thinking it&#8217;s just, this is what heaven says. On the other hand, they say that if you don&#8217;t think Medjugorje is supernatural, you&#8217;re welcome to think that too.</p>
<p>But they have ruled that there are genuine spiritual fruits connected with Medjugorje, and so you shouldn&#8217;t be downplaying those either.</p>

The Truth About Medjugorje

<p>Leviticus is an uncommon choice for the Mass lectionary, but today’s selection has a direct connection with the Gospel story about the healing of a leper.</p>
<p>To understand something of this man’s situation, we have to understand the status of leprosy in ancient Israel. It was more than just a neurological disease affecting one’s outward appearance; it represented a necessary break from common life, including the life of worship in the Temple. To be a leper was a tragic, isolating experience. As such, it has often been viewed as a symbol of sin—not that, even in ancient Israel, it was viewed as a moral affliction in itself, but its infectious disfigurement is a profound analogy for the way that sin disfigures the human person and cuts him off from fellowship with God and neighbor.</p>
<p><strong>To think about leprosy in this way leads us</strong> <strong>to wonder</strong> if there is some modern equivalent or analogy. Progressive Christians have a habit of asserting that this is how we ought to think about morally objectionable states of life. We should get rid of this concept of “uncleanness” once and for all, they say, privileging instead a concept of unconditional welcome and acceptance. So we have even very high-ranking prelates who cannot be bothered to describe things as moral or immoral; we have only <em>regular</em> and <em>irregular</em>, as if the habitual practice of mortal sin should be imagined as no more significant than filling out the wrong form at the DMV.</p>
<p>The trouble with this view is twofold. First, even if leprosy itself wasn’t <em>morally </em>objectionable, it was still dangerous. St. Damien of Molokai’s death in 1889, as what we sometimes call a “martyr of charity,” is a testament to the fact that leprosy is no joke; he knew quite well that the leper colony in Hawaii needed and deserved his love and pastoral care, but I don’t think he ever imagined that this made him safe. Second, if we look to the example of our Lord, his response to leprosy, more than once, isn’t to say, “Oh, hey, you’re fine as you are, go and be well!” No, he <em>heals </em>the disease. Indeed, in our story today, he asks the healed man to follow the procedures of the law to make sure he is reconciled to the community through the judgment of the priest.</p>
<p>So I think we should be wary of associating leprosy too closely with any modern controversial state of life. Surely the closest thing, in practical terms, is our recent memory of COVID. There we faced a culture of “clean” and “unclean” in more ways than one. Although no one that I can think of ever labeled the virus as a moral sickness, it became in many places an adjacent moral issue. In other words, the decision to wear a mask or not became a sign, depending on whom you were with, of you being on the side of the good guys or the bad guys. People were shunned or publicly pilloried for either their lack of seriousness about the virus or their overreaction to it.</p>
<p><strong>And I think what we saw—and, frankly, what we still see</strong>—with COVID is symptomatic of a broader culture that defines itself in terms of “clean” and “unclean.” We don’t use those words. No one wants to really use those words, even if we use various other words that mean the same thing. But the ideology of “taint” is all over the place.</p>
<p>There is a difference between a principled objection to a thing and thinking that seeing it, or being near it without throwing a fit, is somehow sinful. Never mind that a lot of people think they do not believe in sin. But seeing something, being able to process it and understand why it is bad, or worthy of our pity, is part of the moral development of us and our children. And this is where I think our Lord—and, again, St. Damien—can show us that there is a way of being compassionate without denying the presence of something evil, whether it’s natural disease or immorality. The leper needs healing. What some of our modern interlocutors do not seem to grasp is that the leper approaches Jesus with this specific desire. He doesn’t want Jesus to just affirm him as he is. He wants to be made whole.</p>
<p>The whole concept of healing—wanting it, requesting it, lacking it—requires a rational order in which there really are intrinsic goods that should be valued. The principal reason that some of the big popular causes—like “reproductive health” or “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/women-men-means-and-ends">gender-affirming care</a>”—are so false is that their concept of good and healing are completely cut off from any objective content apart from what an individual perceives to be good and real. Modern popular medicine would, if it were at all consistent with itself, demand that we “affirm” the leper and treat his disease as simply one equally valid approach to the human nervous system; we might as well go to the next stage and “affirm” the neo-Nazi who thinks that all races other than his own should be annihilated. That we are not allowed to make these comparisons in public without weeping and gnashing of teeth is a testament to our chronic inability as a culture to be rational.</p>
<p>St. Paul tells us that we should avoid giving offense. He also tells us to imitate him as he imitates Christ, and neither he nor Christ is exactly known for never having offended anyone. So this isn’t some blanket theology of niceness, as if all disagreements can be solved by a frozen casserole and a nonverbal like on Facebook. He has to mean <em>something</em>, though. Let’s not take the easy way out and imagine that his words are completely without challenge for us. The key goal isn’t niceness for its own sake, but the greater end of saving souls.</p>
<p><strong>Above, I painted a picture of nonrepentance — symbolized by the leper</strong> who thinks leprosy is the new normal. That can be disturbing, to say the least, and it’s fair to say that we’re bombarded with this attitude on a daily basis, whether from politicians or celebrities or people we see at school or work or the grocery store. But it’s not the whole picture. The fact that there are some loud lepers out there demanding that we all celebrate Leprosy Pride Month doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of others who think this is all nonsense and want the grace of God to help them in their struggle, whatever it is.</p>
<p>This in particular is where we need to take Paul’s advice, and our Lord’s example, seriously. Maybe we aren’t all called to go, like St. Damien of Molokai, to live in the leper colony. But we meet all sorts of people, people whom popular culture would want us to categorize and sort into clean and unclean, our sort of people or not our sort of people. That’s nonsense, too, because our sort of people, according Paul just a little earlier in 1 Corinthians, include “the immoral, idolaters, adulterers, sexual perverts, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, and robbers.” That’s quite the list, but, says the Apostle, “Such were some of you” (1 Cor 6:9-11). Emphasis on <em>were</em>, because the point of the passage is that these behaviors have no place in the kingdom of God. But we all have to start somewhere, and usually the best place to start is where we are.</p>
<p>Perhaps that’s where I should end, too: with a reminder that all these thoughts on lepers aren’t just about “us” and “them.” Sure, we need to think carefully about how to follow our Lord’s proclamation of the good news. But we always have to remember to hear that call ourselves. What healing do I need? Do I even recognize the places where I need healing?</p>
<p>As we head into Lent, there’s really no time like the present for a checkup. And let the healing of the sacraments help us all to better meet the world’s hurting people and bring them to Jesus.</p>

Lepers Need More than Good Feelings

<p>Can you imagine if, at creation, when God paraded the canine in front of Adam, his response had been, “I’m sorry, God. I’m really not a dog person”? This is obviously a ludicrous hypothetical, but I would argue that it’s equally ridiculous for any Christian to make that claim today.</p>
<p><strong>St. Roche, a nobleman who was orphaned at age twenty</strong> and followed the path of Francis of Assisi by giving all his wealth to the poor, is the patron saint of dogs. He was known for his service to victims of the plague. When he himself came down with the illness, a dog was the one who brought him bread every day and licked his wounds. When St. John Bosco was in need, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-dog-who-saved-john-bosco">a large grey wolfhound</a> defended and guarded him. The lovely St. Bernard derives its name from St. Bernard of Menthon (1008) who served the people of the Alps along with his canine companions and ultimately founded a <a href="https://catholicism.org/st-bernard-dogs.html">monastery</a> at the highest point of St. Bernard Pass. The monks and dogs at this monastery have a heroic history of saving travelers lost in the storms. Their work is so impressive that it drew the attention of <a href="https://www.littleflower.org/st-therese/who-is-st-therese/">St. Louis Martin</a>, who was ultimately unable to join the order, but he passed his admiration down to his beloved daughter, Thérèse, who deeply loved her dog, named Tom.</p>
<p>I am concerned that some of you may consider me a “dog person” who is, therefore, in opposition to cats. As the owner of several cats, I simply trust the feline, with her lofty attitude and high-minded ideals, to adequately defend herself in this matter. That being said, it’s worth stating that all animals are wonderful creations. The <em>Catechism of the Catholic Church</em> states, “Animals are God’s creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe them kindness” (2416).</p>
<p>However, we only have to glance at all the ways dogs have served mankind to be particularly impressed by the species. Archeological evidence shows that dogs were the <a href="https://www.boehringer-ingelheim.com/animal-health/our-responsibility/human-dog-relationship-historical-perspective#:~:text=There%20is%20archaeological%20evidence%20dogs,domestication%20of%20horses%20and%20ruminants).">first</a> animals domesticated by humans and since that time they have served us in numerous capacities. A dog’s keen sense of smell <a href="https://www.3dk9detection.com/news/5-incredible-things-sniffer-dogs-can-do">detects</a> an incredible range of things, including <a href="https://www.vetmed.wisc.edu/research-suggests-dogs-can-be-trained-to-sniff-out-cancer-in-other-dogs/#:~:text=The%20results%20of%20the%20test,of%20reliability%20when%20detecting%20disease.">cancer</a>, mold, explosives, diabetes, narcolepsy, and missing persons. Their <a href="https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/lifestyle/is-the-dog-human-bond-unique/">emotional bond</a> is so strong that they willingly love and guard other animals, making them invaluable to farmers and ranchers.</p>
<p><strong>Dogs are willing servants to mankind and, perhaps more importantly</strong>, devoted in their affection. No one praised this more eloquently than lawyer George Graham Vest in his famous <a href="https://www.historyplace.com/speeches/vest.htm#:~:text=The%20one%20absolutely%20unselfish%20friend,in%20health%20and%20in%20sickness.">speech</a>, “Eulogy of a Dog,” well worth reading in full. Vest concludes,</p>
<blockquote><p>If fortune drives the master forth, an outcast in the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies. And when the last scene of all comes, and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by the graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even in death.</p></blockquote>
<p>When God presented Adam with the dog, he gave us <a href="https://jimmyakin.com/2022/04/all-dogs-go-to-heaven-ghost-dogs-animal-afterlife-jimmy-akins-mysterious-world.html">a wonderful gift</a>. You can be allergic to dogs, feel annoyed by your friend’s ill-mannered dog, not have the time or space in your life to own a dog. However, out of respect for how well the species has fulfilled its vocation, you really shouldn’t dislike them.</p>