Manage Account

Cy Kellett welcomes apologist Joe Heschmeyer to discuss the concerns of a former Baptist pastor who is contemplating joining the Catholic Church.
Transcript:
Caller: I think one of my big ones that I have regarding why I&#8217;m not Catholic, whenever I speak to Catholics, they&#8217;ll typically bring up the Magisterium and how the Magisterium is the, I guess the way to say it is like the governing authority for the interpretation of Scripture and doctrine.
Joe: That&#8217;s not a half bad definition.
Caller: Part of my prop. Okay, that&#8217;s not a bad definition.
Joe: Yeah, not a bad definition. It comes from the word for teacher, magister. So it just means the teaching authority of the Church.
Caller: So, yeah, okay, great. So then the next step for me then is I go, well, I don&#8217;t have access to that. Like, I don&#8217;t. I can&#8217;t just go to the Internet and type in what does the Magisterium teach on X verse or something like that. It&#8217;s. I&#8217;m always, I&#8217;m always kind of thrown for a loop on that because it feels very much like an appeal to some ghostly authority I&#8217;m not allowed to directly ask a question to.
Joe: Okay, yeah, I see what you&#8217;re saying. I think so. The teaching office of the Church is described in the Catechism beginning in paragraph 888. Now, the first thing I&#8217;d say is the Catechism itself is a great summary of what the Church teaches on various topics.
The second thing that&#8217;s probably worth pointing out is there&#8217;s a difference frequently in how Catholics and Protestants particularly will approach these kind of questions. Where most teaching from the Catholic side is done at the level of doctrine, not at the level of the chapter or verse.
So this often throws people coming from a Protestant background for a loop because they&#8217;re expecting that there&#8217;s somewhere like an official Vatican kind of commentary, verse by verse, on Scripture. And that&#8217;s not the way the Magisterium tends to teach.
There are a handful of verses where in the course of defending a particular doctrine, the Church will say, for instance, with original sin, that when St. Paul talks about sin entering the world through one man, that this is in reference to original sin. But those are actually pretty few and far between.
The usual way that this is approached is ex doctrina, like the Trinity is defined, but it&#8217;s not. You have to read this particular Bible verse as supporting the Trinity. It is rather that taking the whole of Scripture, if your conclusion on the topic of the nature of God leads you to a non-Trinitarian conclusion, then you&#8217;ve read Scripture wrong. Whatever passage you&#8217;re reading that has led you in that direction, you&#8217;re misreading it. But it&#8217;s not verse by verse.
Think about the Nicene Creed, for instance. The Nicene Creed is doctrine by doctrine. It&#8217;s not verse by verse.
So then it&#8217;s like, okay, well, if I want to find out what does the Church teach on a particular topic, you actually could Google what does the Magisterium teach about X topic? And you&#8217;d probably find a pretty good summary. You might find it on our website, you might find it on the Vatican&#8217;s website. You might find any number of people talking about it, and then you look at what they&#8217;re quoting.
When you&#8217;re looking for magisterial teaching, you look to things that ecumenical councils have said, particularly in defining dogma. You&#8217;re looking at things that popes have said, particularly in defining some doctrine, some dogma, as a matter of faith and morals. And you&#8217;re looking for the clear witness of what the bishops in union with the Pope have said.
And if you have the Church Fathers and look at how 2000 years of Christians have spoken on it, and that can make at times, admittedly for a very deep dive. So I&#8217;m giving you this sort of deep dive answer. A much easier way in 90% of cases is just look up what the Catechism has to say.
And thanks be to God, there&#8217;s a lovely church down in Lafayette, Louisiana, the St. Charles Borromeo. Oh, sorry, it&#8217;s Picayune, Mississippi. My mistake. Picayune St. Charles Borromeo has a searchable Catechism of the Catholic Church. So you can literally just go to their website and put in whatever word and it&#8217;ll take you to the corresponding paragraph of the Catechism, which is a great way to get a short here&#8217;s what the Church teaches on XYZ topic.
Another good resource, if you want to stick around after we get done talking, is Trent Horn&#8217;s *Why We&#8217;re Catholic*, where it&#8217;s a good kind of primer on just like the kind of some of the big ticket items. And then that can give us sort of a basis to move forward from there. How does that sound?
Joe: Okay.
Joe: I think that that&#8217;s helpful, I guess then a follow up to that. Yeah, because I think that was a good distinction between it&#8217;s not so much about chapter and verse as it is the topics. Would you say that the Magisterium then all of the topics that it&#8217;s exhaustive or that there&#8217;s just topics it doesn&#8217;t speak on?
Joe: That&#8217;s the second one. There are topics it doesn&#8217;t speak on. There are topics that are still ar that we&#8217;re in the process of sort of looking at. So, for instance, bioethics. There&#8217;s all sorts of issues like for instance, embryo adoption where some couple practices IVF and then they convert and they realize they can&#8217;t just throw away their children. But maybe they&#8217;re not in a stage where they&#8217;re old enough or they&#8217;re young enough to carry these children to birth.
And then this raises this moral question of, well, maybe we&#8217;ve got friends or relatives who would be happy to bear these children, but that looks like having a donor. And all of those kind of moral questions, these are very new questions that weren&#8217;t even an issue at the start of my lifetime.
And so we&#8217;re never going to just exhaust here&#8217;s everything to know about God, or here&#8217;s everything to know about morality, or here&#8217;s every possible question people could ask. But the focus isn&#8217;t let&#8217;s make sure we have a common starting place and then all go interpret Scripture for ourselves. The focus is much more let&#8217;s make sure we&#8217;re arriving at the right destination on these issues of faith and morality.
Cy: I&#8217;ll tell you what, Joseph, what I&#8217;d like to do is send you a copy of *Why We&#8217;re Catholic*. But I&#8217;d also like to add a second book for you. It&#8217;s called *Teaching with Authority*.
Joe: Oh, that&#8217;s a great choice. Yeah, that&#8217;s direct on point.
Cy: How to cut through doctrinal confusion and understand what the Church really says. That&#8217;s by Jimmy Akin. So two books for you, Joseph.

Who Decides What Catholics Believe?

Discover

<div>What is the purpose of praying for someone in need? Will God only attend to the needs of those who have people praying for them? If so, doesn’t that seem like a competition, in a sense, to see how many friends a person has who are willing to pray for him?</div><div>The purpose of praying for another is that the love of God and neighbor, which is the life of the Church, is shared more powerfully when we bear each other&#8217;s burdens. God wants us to have concern for our brothers in the faith, so he encourages us to pray for others in order to perfect our charity, not in order to have winners and losers in a prayer competition! Christ even teaches us to pray for our enemies and our persecutors, so even to pray for those who do not want our prayers.
</div>

Why Pray for Someone in Need?

<blockquote>I am the good shepherd,
and I know mine and mine know me, 
just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; 
and I will lay down my life for the sheep.</blockquote>
Sophia Cavaletti, Catholic Bible scholar and founder of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, has a fascinating insight about the about translation of this verse. Jesus speaks about how the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Usually we understand this as laying down his life in the sense of dying—that is, on the cross—for the sheep. But the Greek doesn’t necessarily have go to in that direction. Indeed, the verb titheo could mean “lay down” in the sense of “set out,” as in to set out on the table. Cavaletti then suggests that we should say the good shepherd simply gives his life for the sheep—he lays it out on the table, like at the Eucharist. This giving does, ultimately, mean his willingness to die, but the dying isn’t as determinative as the self-giving. That matches well with some of the best Catholic thinking on the cross, too: arguably, the death of Jesus is only secondary, a kind of consequence, to his giving of his life to us in this world enslaved by sin.
In fact, that is a really interesting way to think about the Eucharist.
One of the critiques in the Reformation era was that popular piety focused too much on the Real Presence and not enough on the actual reception of Holy Communion. The Articles of Religion for the Church of England famously say that the Blessed Sacrament was not instituted to be “looked at or carried about,” but to be eaten. But this has implications beyond just the Eucharist, because it’s a statement about the Incarnation. Yes, we could say Jesus was born to die, but does that mean that no other part of his life had meaning? Does that mean that the disciples should have just ignored him and minded their own business until the crucial events of Holy Week?
Obviously not. Criticisms of eucharistic adoration inevitably become criticisms of the life of Jesus, because in fact, he spent much more of his life just being with his people than he spent dying for us.
The Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. He gives his life, not just his death. He is with us. This is a mystery worth celebrating and observing and proclaiming. As St. John puts it today, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God.” Again, Jesus came not just to die, but to give us life—the divine life, the fellowship of God. He came to share his divine nature with our human nature.
This is why Peter says so boldly in Acts that “there is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.” By salvation, Peter means being freed from sin and death so that we can become the children of God, so that we can share in the life of Jesus Christ.
Modern people often hear verses like this and recoil from the apparent exclusivity of the Christian message. What’s funny about that is that so often, they do so from a kind of Christian bias. In other words, they assume Christian concepts about salvation and then naïvely imagine that other religions offer a different solution to the same problem. But Peter’s claim, and the claims of Christianity, are unique. No other religion or philosophy even claims to offer the kind of thing that Christ offers here. No other religion or philosophy sees the same problem, which salvation through Christ is meant to solve; no other religion or philosophy makes the same claims about the high calling of human nature to fellowship with God.
Of course, there are others who do things like the Good Shepherd. There are plenty of people out there who will guide us, protect us, feed us—but these “hired men” are not the shepherd, because they care for the sheep only for their own reasons, not out of love. Only Jesus gives us himself completely, without holding anything back. Salvation isn’t some kind of clever solution to a problem; it is the gift of a person. So although Peter’s “no other name” comment is exclusive, we need to understand why: there is no other name by which salvation is given, because salvation is receiving the life of Jesus. How could we receive the life of Jesus through anyone other than Jesus?
Having received this life, though, in its infinite goodness, we become capable of our own kinds of sacrifice.
Catholics are good at talking about “sacrifice,” but that doesn’t just mean losing something or killing something. When Jesus says elsewhere to “take up our cross,” we rightly hear an emphasis on suffering for his sake. But the suffering itself isn’t the point; it’s that love shows itself in the willingness to do hard things, to overcome obstacles, to undergo suffering for the sake of the beloved. So to take up our cross means, actually, to practice what we might call a “eucharistic” life, a life of giving ourselves, of our presence, of sharing our gifts.
We do this ritually at every offertory through the hands of the priest—“Receive, O Holy Trinity, this oblation which we offer unto thee.” That oblation is not merely the host and the chalice, but the “sacrifice of praise,” the living temples whose hearts are lifted up to the Lord. Yet the whole movement of the sacred liturgy is that this offering is multiplied, transformed, changed, and returned to us anew. Our offering to him becomes his offering to us, a sort of oblation that turns the old idea about sacrifice on its head. We are not here appeasing some bloodthirsty deity; we have been invited to the table as children and heirs.
So our own “offering” in the world, whether it’s sharing a meal, having a conversation, or quietly suffering in love, is less some kind of transaction adding to our account than a sharing of the abundance of God’s own table. We don’t have to act as though we are in charge of all the sheep because we know the one who is.
And sharing the gifts of the Good Shepherd, it turns out, also draws us closer to him. When we make him known in us, we better know ourselves in him.
That is maybe one of the most comforting but also annoying aspects of the “Good Shepherd” image. The shepherd, in real life, does know the sheep better than they know themselves. That’s not the most flattering place to be, on the one hand. But it’s also a reminder that, ultimately, we really are in good hands. Christ feeds us with his own life and leads us with his own Spirit. Despite what we might think, we have everything we need.

Jesus Is for More than Eating

In a classic Bob Newhart skit (<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/blog/the-button-down-faith-of-bob-newhart">may he rest in peace</a>), a therapist sits down with his new client, promising he can cure her compulsion for five dollars in five minutes. It’s a bargain, and he does it with just two words: stop it!
However well (or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw">hilariously</a>) this advice may or may not work to cure compulsions, it’s the gold standard to combat a deeply rooted and destructive phenomenon in the Church and the world: people complaining about their spouses.
I’m not talking about what goes down in counseling with a spiritual director or about what spouses say to each other when working through their flaws together. These are both good-faith efforts to solve a problem. No, the subject here is the sort of thing everyone has a personal example of.
Sorry we’re late; Jane couldn’t be bothered to be ready on time. 
I’d have it so much easier with the kids if John didn’t interfere.
The sighs, the grimaces, the rolling eyes.
Aren’t these just idle comments? you might think. Just <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-venting-the-same-as-gossip">venting</a>? Everyone knows I love my spouse, so what’s the big deal if I let off some steam?
Here’s the big deal. It has a micro aspect and a macro aspect—what it does to your marriage, and what it does to marriage in general.
The micro involves realities about sin that can be easy to forget in an age of jealously guarded free speech. Yes, we have the right to say whatever we want . . . <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2148.htm">sort of</a>. But if I complain about my spouse, it’s highly likely I’m committing one of two sins: <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/detraction">detraction</a> if what I’m revealing is true, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/calumny">calumny</a> if it’s false. Both of these are mortal sins, categorized in the same class as <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+5%3A21-26&amp;version=RSVCE">murder</a> because <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-destructive-sins-of-gossip">they do violence</a> to someone’s good name.
Here are the <a href="http://scborromeo.org/ccc/p3s2c2a8.htm#2477">relevant passages</a> from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
<blockquote>Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty:
&#8211; of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them;
&#8211; of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.
Detraction and calumny destroy the reputation and honor of one’s neighbor. Honor is the social witness given to human dignity, and everyone enjoys a natural right to the honor of his name and reputation and to respect. Thus, detraction and calumny offend against the virtues of justice and charity (2247, 2279).</blockquote>
These are universal rules that apply to how we treat any old Joe we pass on the street. Imagine how much more gravely they apply to the one to whom God joined me under solemn vows!
Sure, there’s that phrase “objectively valid reason.” A lot can hinge on that. Maybe there really are—no, really—objective reasons to cavil about the spouse between rounds of poker or during girl’s night. But the bar should be pretty high—considering the gravity of the sins we’re talking about, probably as high as the bar to kill someone <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/what-does-the-church-teach-about-self-defense">without it being murder</a>.
Even if I can clear that hurdle, think about what happens next. I’ve established a connection, exclusive of my spouse, with people less important in my life than my spouse is meant to be. When these people see us together, they’ll remember that flaw I revealed, and I’ll know they know, but my spouse won’t. That’s conspiring against my spouse, and no matter how much I might desire to vent, it’s not going to do my marriage any good.
Then there are the macro problems. In the fight to preserve and protect marriage, there’s not much leeway to mess up. The modern world, from pop culture to politics to academia, is strongly biased against the institution of marriage as God intended it. We can’t help bathing in this cultural bias from an early age, and witnessing a friend belittling her husband, or a boss grousing about his wife, only reinforces it—personally, by direct experience. Each of those darts sticks deeply in our perception of the sacrament, increasing the risk of poisoning all marriages, including our own. Gripes beget more gripes, and it’s not a stretch to imagine a plague of complaining metastasizing into a <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/eight-things-you-have-to-know-about-the-churchs-teaching-on-divorce">plague of divorces</a> (CCC 2385).
As one of the feminist bogeywomen of yore put it, “<a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/the-personal-is-political-slogan-origin-3528952">The personal is political</a>.” Every individual marriage, with all its glories and pitfalls, is a representative of, an ambassador for, the sacrament of matrimony—a living testament to what this magnificent God-given sign is supposed to work within us.
Bob Newhart’s advice ended at “Stop it,” and that was enough for him, because he promised five minutes. But marriage lasts a lifetime, which means a lot of opportunities for Satan to use even our peccadilloes to drag us to hell. So what should we start doing to keep his claws off our marriages and our souls?
<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+peter+3%3A1-7&amp;version=RSVCE">St. Peter</a> and <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians+5%3A22-33&amp;version=RSVCE">St. Paul</a> have some excellent, albeit countercultural, advice. Here’s the short version:
<ul>
<li>The man’s wife is a part of him, like his own body, so he should love, care for, and cherish her as his own body. When he builds up his wife, he makes her all the more beautiful, and that beauty rebounds on his family and himself. He shows that he takes seriously his headship over his household: if he has problems (and what gossip-craving ear would even know it if he does?), he manfully deals with them instead of whining about them.</li>
<li>When a woman speaks reverently and respectfully of her husband, two things happen. One: She hardcore repudiates the worst of Eve, whom God cursed to grasp at her husband’s headship. Two: She establishes herself as the kind of woman who reveres and respects her husband. Her girlfriends will notice that and ponder it—a nudge for them, too, to be <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+2%3A19&amp;version=RSVCE">more like the new Eve</a> than the old one.</li>
</ul>
What it comes down to is that spouses are two parts of one whole. Once bride and groom say the vows, they are meant for each other, the two strongest human allies on earth—indeed, more than allies, fused together against a swelling tide of <a href="https://insidethevatican.com/magazine/the-final-battle-marriage-and-family/">diabolical attacks</a>. We should never forget that. Even those in truly bad marriages, to truly bad people, must strive to love their spouses as spouses even if they struggle to care for, cherish, respect, and revere them in the here and now. Many <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/is-there-a-patron-saint-of-marriage">bad spouses have been converted</a>, and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-st-helena-handled-a-difficult-marriage">good spouses sanctified</a>, this way.
This is the ideal for marriage, the star on which to fix our gaze. Reaching that heavenly place is a life’s work, and it starts with how we talk . . . <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=james+3%3A6-12&amp;version=RSVCE">or don’t</a>.

Stop Complaining About Your Spouse

To support this channel: https://www.patreon.com/counseloftrent

[NEW] Counsel of Trent merch: https://shop.catholic.com/apologists-alley/trent-horn-resources/

Be sure to keep up with our socials!
https://www.tiktok.com/@counseloftrent
https://www.twitter.com/counseloftrent
https://www.instagram.com/counseloftrentpodcast

Why Do Christians Talk Like This?

Dignitas Infinita

<div class="page" title="Page 55">
<div class="section">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
DAY 45
</div>
<div class="column">
CHALLENGE
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
“Why should we confess our sins to a priest? We should go to God directly.”
DEFENSE
We can and should ask God directly for forgiveness, but Scripture also reveals that it is his will—in some cases—that we approach his ministers in confession.
Prayer may be sufficient for the forgiveness of daily, venial sins, but Jesus indicated that some sins are more serious by instituting the sacrament of confession to deal with them.
After rising from the dead, he told the disciples, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” Then he breathed on them, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are for- given; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:21–23).
Previously, God had sent Jesus to forgive sins on earth (Matt. 9:6), and people glorified God “who had given such authority to men” (Matt. 9:8). Now Jesus shares this authority with his ministers.
Notice that he gives them the power to forgive or retain (not for- give) sins. The decision whether to forgive or retain a sin is serious, and Christ’s ministers must not make it in an uninformed manner. To perform their role, they need to be properly informed.
In particular, ministers need to know: (1) that we have committed a particular sin, and (2) that we are genuinely repentant. Since they have no way of knowing these things apart from our informing them, we are obliged to confess. Thus we have the sacrament of confession.
John 20:21–23 is also the background we need when reading the same author’s affirmation that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
TIP
Historically, penance has been celebrated in different forms. Early in Church history, it was common for it to be celebrated publicly, with Christ’s minister presiding over the service. Such public confession is envisioned in the exhortation, “Therefore confess your sins to one another” (James 5:16), which is done in the presence of “the elders of the church” (James 5:14)—the elders being the priests. In Greek, “elder” is presbuteros, from which we get the English word “priest.”
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Confessing to a Priest

Cy Kellett and Joe Heschmeyer engage with a listener exploring the journey toward joining the Catholic Church.
Transcript:
Caller: So question why I&#8217;m not Catholic? Well, because I haven&#8217;t started OCIA yet. I am inquiring.
Joe: That&#8217;s a good, that&#8217;s a good reason.
Caller: As I continue down this path, what are some, if you will, do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts, as far as what activities I should be participating in, how I should be praying? My wife and I happen to attend the Protestant church. So curious to know about where I should be sending my tithes, things of that nature, and also just how to, you know, engage my wife. This is something that brought to her attention. She supports my relationship with God. I don&#8217;t believe, at least not now, that she would want to go through OCIA with me. So really I&#8217;m looking for, you know, prayers and guidance as far as what I should do, what I shouldn&#8217;t do.
Joe: Very, very good question. And I like the context you gave. You&#8217;re, you know, coming from a Protestant background and then even about the whole relational context with your wife. I think in terms of do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts, I&#8217;m going to break this up mentally into a few different categories. One are going to be books. Then we&#8217;ve got prayers, then we&#8217;ve got overall practices, because it will be a spiritual journey and you will hit some obstacles along the way, almost guaranteed.
So in terms of books you can read, it can be helpful to have books that take a sort of overview level. And I would suggest a few in particular. Trent Horn&#8217;s *Why We&#8217;re Catholic* is an obvious one. If you stay on the line, we&#8217;d be happy to send it to you. Bishop Robert Barron&#8217;s book *Catholicism*, I think is a very nice overview of just like what it is to be Catholic.
Additionally, a book that I would recommend partly for you and partly for your wife would be Scott and Kimberly Hahn&#8217;s book *Rome Sweet Home*. And I mention that because he was ready to become Catholic before his wife was. Brilliant. I mean, he is, I like to say he stands alone. It&#8217;s really like Han Solo. I mean, he is one of a kind. His book I found very helpful for couples where one is ready to go before the other one is because one of the things he had to stop himself from doing was being really pushy about kind of the argumentative side.
And I&#8217;ve known a lot of, I&#8217;ll just say, a lot of theological nerd guys who were married to women who were not as nerdy about theology or as enthusiastic about upending their life to become Catholic or as enthusiastic about reading 20 books on being Catholic. I know that&#8217;s not everybody&#8217;s journey. But if you find that that resonates with you at all, that book I&#8217;ve found to be helpful on both parties&#8217; side of how they kind of live out that experience where one person may be ready and the other isn&#8217;t. In addition, it&#8217;s just a great resource for a lot of other reasons.
So that&#8217;s kind of the book list.
Second, in terms of prayers, entering into the life of the church and life of prayer in that way can be really rich. But I will give you a don&#8217;t right out the gate, which is don&#8217;t feel the need to do everything and don&#8217;t exhaust yourself. Like, if you get a gym membership on January 1st and your desire is, okay, I need to use every piece of equipment in here, you will by January 7th be like, I don&#8217;t ever want to go back to the gym because you&#8217;ll just worn yourself out.
There are a lot of good, beautiful, rich things that the church has to offer. There&#8217;s a storehouse, a real treasury when it comes to the spiritual gifts, including 2,000 years of really good prayers. And you can feel like you&#8217;re not doing enough by not doing all of them. And that&#8217;s actually not a good place to be. So you need to discern what are the things I can realistically say yes to and make sort of a part of my life.
And then the last thing doesn&#8217;t neatly fall into either the prayer or book category. But finding Catholics who you respect and can have, like, shared life with and like friendship with, it can be really huge. Because what happens to a lot of people is that they become intellectually convinced. And then, especially if you&#8217;re in a bigger, I don&#8217;t know where in St. Louis you&#8217;re at, but if you&#8217;re at one of the bigger parishes, sometimes they can feel kind of anonymous because there&#8217;s a lot of stuff going on.
And it&#8217;s like being a newcomer to a big city where if you&#8217;re not really intentional, you can sort of slip through the cracks. So that&#8217;s a lot. I know I kind of dumped a lot there. I&#8217;m curious about your thoughts or if there&#8217;s any part of that that went unanswered that you&#8217;d like me to maybe explain a little more about.
Caller: Again, practical was, you know, relationship with my wife. And she surprised me with a lot of questions that she&#8217;s asked. And I said, okay, we&#8217;re going to research this together. I&#8217;m going to research it. If you want a more thorough answer than I can provide off the top of my head. And I never want to be pushy. And that&#8217;s one thing I really feel called that I need to kind of slow my roll. But in terms of attending Mass and again, currently tied to the church that we attend. Oh, right, yeah, things like that. It happens to be a Pentecostal church. I am not a member of the church. That was my choice, theological points that I disagreed with. But, you know, do I continue to attend the church with my wife? Because I don&#8217;t want to drive a wedge between us.
So I guess it&#8217;s like, how much should I be doing with the Catholic Church right now? You know, what do I need to distance myself from with the current church I attend? So a lot of the practical, as I said earlier, the do&#8217;s and don&#8217;ts.
Joe: Yeah, okay, that&#8217;s very helpful. So first, I think you&#8217;re already doing the right thing when you&#8217;re moving at the speed of your wife&#8217;s interest and have questions and you&#8217;re validating those questions and then you&#8217;re looking for answers. That is helpful for both of you and I think can only enrich the relationship because you&#8217;re treating her spiritual journey with the seriousness that it deserves rather than just kind of expecting her to be a fellow traveler on yours.
Second, you should move at the speed of your own comfort in some ways, I would say, in terms of when you start going to Mass. And I&#8217;ve known of people who have done both, depending on the kind of Pentecostal church that might be a lot in a day, but I&#8217;ve known couples where, because they&#8217;re not on the same boat and because there was nothing heretical necessarily being taught at the Protestant service, they would do both.
You&#8217;re definitely going to want Mass to be a major part of your life before you finally become Catholic. But again, you don&#8217;t have to do everything all at once. And so at this point in your life, you&#8217;re not yet bound by, you know, the weekly obligation to go to Mass. That will be something you&#8217;re bound by once you become Catholic, God willing.
And so growing towards that becoming just part of your regular routine is really important. Now, again, it may be a situation where that means your wife goes alone to the Pentecostal Church or it may mean that you&#8217;re going to both. It might be something that you have to kind of work out with her. Maybe you go with her sometime and, you know, you have to sort of respect one another&#8217;s consciences.
In this, if she doesn&#8217;t feel comfortable going to the Catholic Church or if you don&#8217;t feel comfortable continuing to go to the Pentecostal Church, there&#8217;s a need for real mutual respect for one another in terms of that journey. And it seems like you&#8217;re off to a good start there. I would just continue to be mindful of not pressuring either of you to do something you can&#8217;t in good conscience do, kind of in the name of marital unity, that there&#8217;s a lot of stuff that you want to kind of hold on to there.
Pentecostals, it depends on a lot of situations. But one way to think about it is this. Every Pentecostal I&#8217;ve known has taken miracles very seriously. And so when you explain the Eucharist and explain that there is this real miracle that Jesus Christ is being made bodily present, I have found overwhelmingly Pentecostals don&#8217;t have a lot of the built-up opposition to the idea of a miracle that a lot of other Christians do.
They, you know, some Christians are, you know, they are not continuationists, they&#8217;re cessationists. They think miracles stopped in the first century. So the idea of any miracle on earth is weird to them. That burden is already overcome when you&#8217;re talking about Pentecostal-Catholic kind of questions.
And so I know you said you&#8217;re not a member of it, but if that&#8217;s kind of the basic worldview, presenting it in terms of here is this miracle and I want to be present for this miracle in which our Lord is at, and he&#8217;s here in a special and unique sort of way. Hopefully that framework will be helpful for her.
It&#8217;s kind of a practical thing in terms of tithing. Again, you will, once you&#8217;re Catholic, have an obligation to assist in the upkeep of the church. Technically, the Catholic Church doesn&#8217;t have a strict 10% rule. That&#8217;s all coming from the Old Testament. But that is a good model for what you&#8217;re giving. You do have a duty and justice to help build up the church. And what that looks like for every individual is something you have to spiritually discern.
So that&#8217;ll be something else that you know, as you&#8217;re moving forward. At some point you will want to be financially assisting the church. But it is not, you know, some Protestant schools of thought claim that there&#8217;s still like a strict 10% that is actually not something that historically has been taught by the Catholic Church because it&#8217;s not something we find explicitly in the New Testament, but it is nevertheless a good modeling guide.
I don&#8217;t know. Does that help?
Caller: It&#8217;s extremely helpful and good. I don&#8217;t want to take up too much of your time and other listeners, but as far as with the miracles, when my wife and I were discussing the Eucharist, a very good dear friend of mine, Father Gaurav Shroff, who is now at Korea, was explaining transubstantiation. It was like my wife was just totally blown away by it in a very good way. And so, you know, there are a lot of things that I think are, if you will, no pun intended, easier to swallow, so to speak. She has questions.
Joe: Yeah. So last thing I&#8217;ll say, because I know we&#8217;re actually going to go to a break here pretty quick. I know an old friend of mine, actually an ex-girlfriend from college who was Assemblies of God and became Catholic. And her description was that the Eucharist was like a magnet drawing her past all of her oppositions and inhibitions.
Wow. And it sounds like there might be a similar kind of phenomenon with your wife that it&#8217;s like, okay, once you realize, yes, if I become part of this, I get to receive Jesus in this radical way. There&#8217;s a strong spiritual draw for many people from more of a Pentecostal background.
And so I would just let that be kind of a guiding principle. Even when you inevitably hit a sort of I don&#8217;t know what to make of this moment along the journey, don&#8217;t let that stuff get in the way of saying yes to Jesus in the Eucharist.
Cy: Hey, hang on. We&#8217;re going to send you the book *Why We&#8217;re Catholic*. Right back with more Joe Heschmeyer. Why aren&#8217;t you Catholic?

My Wife’s Protestant — But I Want to Become Catholic…

Get more Shameless Popery on Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/ShamelessPopery

Listen to Shameless Popery on Catholic.com:
https://www.catholic.com/audio/sp

Before you prove it, make them care.

What is your 1-minute Elevator pitch defense for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist? What is the most effective argument in the shortest amount of time?

Is it appropriate for a Church to have a resurrected Christ instead of a crucifix as the center point of the Church?

How does suffering shape us for the better?

&#8220;What is the Real Presence in the Eucharist?&#8221; In this episode, we explore the essence of Christ&#8217;s presence in the Eucharist and discuss the most effective arguments for its defense. Additionally, we delve into the distinctions between public and private revelation, the appropriateness of a resurrected Christ in church design, and how suffering can shape our character.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Proving the Eucharist is Jesus in ONE MINUTE!

In 2019, America magazine published an article by Jean Molesky-Poz titled, “<a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2019/07/22/im-catholic-woman-who-was-allowed-preach-mass-until-it-was-banned">I’m a Catholic woman who was allowed to preach at Mass—until it was banned</a>.”
The article describes how, in the 1990s, Molesky-Poz and other women in her parish began giving homilies at Mass. She was disappointed when, in 2001, the U.S. bishops issued a complementary norm that did allow women to preach—just not during the time reserved for the homily—at the discretion of the local bishop.
She was further disappointed in 2009 when this norm began to be enforced by the new bishop in her diocese. Still, the new bishop allowed women to preach, just not the homily.
In 2013, another bishop arrived, and he decided to discontinue lay preaching. Molesky-Poz and her fellows were again disappointed, but this was the bishop’s call.
After the America article, Fr. James Martin, S.J., <a href="https://twitter.com/JamesMartinSJ/status/1153321681135525889">weighed in on Twitter</a>:
<blockquote>It is stupefying to me that women cannot preach at Mass. The faithful during Mass, as well as the presiders, are missing out on the wisdom, experience and inspired reflections of half of its members. St. Mary Magdalene, pray for us.</blockquote>
He then elaborated:
<blockquote>Just think. Women with PhDs in theology. Catholic sisters with decades of experience. Women spiritual directors. Authors. Mothers. Physicians. Attorneys. Teachers. Grandmothers. Women who work with the poor and marginalized. And on and on. The church needs their voices at Mass.</blockquote>
A vigorous discussion ensued, and, in the course of it, several important points were confused or ignored.
First, the whole issue was framed in terms of sex by both Molesky-Poz and Martin, which makes it sound as though the Church has something against women, when sex isn’t the issue: clerical status is.
Church law doesn’t forbid women from preaching the homily: it forbids laypeople from preaching the homily. This is one of the functions reserved to those who have holy orders (i.e., bishops, priests, and deacons).
It’s not the case, contrary to Fr. Martin, that half of the parish’s members can’t preach. Virtually all of its members can’t preach the homily. Only the priests and deacons can.
Lay men—including myself—cannot do so. If we set false modesty aside, I dare say that I could preach substantially better homilies than a large number of those I have heard. But I’m not resentful of the situation, because that’s not my function at Mass.
The issue isn’t just whether one has training in Scripture or public speaking. I’ve got those, as do many other people, and we can and do use them in a wide variety of contexts (Bible studies, faith formation classes, public lectures, etc.)—just not in the homily slot at Mass.
Priests and deacons are also trained in Scripture and public speaking, but they have something else: a special consecration and mission by virtue of their ordination.
It makes sense to have a special time in the liturgy for the ordained to preach, for as Scripture tells us:
<blockquote>The lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts (Mal. 2:7).</blockquote>
Mass is when the faithful are gathered for the highest form of sacred worship, the Eucharist being “the source and summit of the Christian life” (Vatican II, Lumen Gentium 11). It makes all the sense in the world to have a special moment during Mass when those ordained to the ministerial service of God preach to the faithful.
That time is the homily.
So, as a layman who is just as prohibited from preaching the homily as Molesky-Poz, I understand the principles involved, and I don’t resent the situation.
I can use my training and talents by speaking in other settings. By the consent of the bishop of whatever diocese I happen to be in at the moment, I can even preach in church—just not the homily.
This brings us to a second point that got lost—again because Molesky-Poz and Martin downplayed it: the faithful can preach in church with the bishop’s permission.
Let’s look at what the Church’s law actually is. Molesky-Poz discusses how, in the 1990s, she and other women in her parish were allowed to preach the homily. But this wasn’t actually allowed in the 1990s. According to the 1983 <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib3-cann756-780_en.html#CHAPTER_I.">Code of Canon Law</a>:
<blockquote>Can. 766 The laity may be allowed to preach in a church or oratory if in certain circumstances it is necessary, or in particular cases it would be advantageous, according to the provisions of the Episcopal Conference and without prejudice to can. 767 §1.
Can. 767 §1 The most important form of preaching is the homily, which is part of the liturgy, and is reserved to a priest or deacon. In the course of the liturgical year, the mysteries of faith and the rules of Christian living are to be expounded in the homily from the sacred text.</blockquote>
Canon law thus prohibited laypeople from preaching the homily at the time. In 2001, the bishops followed up on the invitation in canon 766 to make provisions for lay preaching in churches and oratories—and that canon specifically prohibited them from allowing lay people to preach the homily.
The text of the 2001 complementary norm is <a href="http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/canon-law/complementary-norms/canon-766-lay-preaching.cfm">online here</a>. Among other things, it says:
<blockquote>If . . . it seems useful in particular cases, the diocesan bishop can admit lay faithful to preach, to offer spiritual conferences or give instructions in churches, oratories, or other sacred places within his diocese, when he judges it to be to the spiritual advantage of the faithful.
In order to assist the diocesan bishop in making an appropriate pastoral decision, the following circumstances and cases are illustrative: the absence or shortage of clergy, particular language requirements, or the demonstrated expertise or experience of the lay faithful concerned.</blockquote>
So, if you have expertise or experience that would benefit people, you can preach, by the permission of your bishop, just not during the homily slot.
Preaching any other time is fine, if your bishop says so (see <a href="http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cclergy/documents/rc_con_interdic_doc_15081997_en.html">Ecclesia de Mysterio</a>, practical provisions, art. 3 §2). What’s more, laity can preach homilies in non-Eucharistic liturgies (ibid., 3 §4)!
Her bishop chose not to have lay preaching at Mass, but that’s not the case everywhere, which is a third thing she and Fr. Martin ignored. Martin says, “It is stupefying to me that women cannot preach at Mass.” He doesn’t add “in her diocese.” In other dioceses, they can, but Martin ignores this.
Even without lay preaching at Mass, Molesky-Poz continues to have an outlet for speaking in church. Toward the end of her article, she notes: &#8220;In our parish, we have formed a bi-monthly lecture, reflection, and discussion series, just for women.&#8221;
Any time a person is used to doing something and is then told not to, it can be disappointing. But if Molesky-Poz is knowledgeable about the Faith, she should understand the principles involved in having a moment of preaching reserved for those in ordained ministry, as I and other laypeople do, and that should enable her not to resent the situation.
What I find unhelpful is her—and Fr. Martin’s—tendentious framing of the issue in terms of divisive gender politics. That doesn’t help anybody. It would be better to bear in mind a few lines from St. Paul:
<ul>
<li>All of us possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up (1 Cor. 8:1).</li>
<li>Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful (1 Cor. 13:5).</li>
<li>Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding (Rom. 14:19).</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;

Can Women Preach at Mass?

If <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/is-the-mass-a-sacrifice">the Mass is a sacrifice</a>, doesn&#8217;t that mean Catholics are crucifying Jesus over and over again? Karlo Broussard explains how this common Protestant objection misunderstands what&#8217;s really happening during Mass.

Do Catholics Re-Crucify Jesus?

How does a man separate worry from his duty as a husband and father?

What scripture can I meditate on to ease my guilt of leaving a job that is in desperate need?

What are your thoughts on Phil. 4:6 saying not to worry. What do you think of false guilt?

How can we find peace when our children and grandchildren don’t practice the faith anymore?

Had a moment where a work situation stole my joy and peace. Offered it up through Mass but still had to deal with it afterwards. Besides trying to trust and continuing to “offer it up”, what can I do to not worry and trust Jesus more?

I was diagnosed with chronic anxiety. I need help and answers.

I am currently working to be a certified spiritual director. What piece of advice for someone who suffers from severe panic attacks?

Finding Peace in Advent

Ranking the BEST (and worst) Arguments AGAINST Catholicism (tier list)

Some Protestants claim that the Catholic Church changed the second commandment in order to justify its idolatrous practice of having graven images in its places of worship. But is this true? In this video, Karlo gives reasons why the Church didn’t change the second commandment and why its practice of having statues is not idolatrous.
Transcript:
Some Protestants like to charge the Catholic Church with changing the Ten Commandments in order to keep the idolatrous practice of having statues in its places of worship. They argue that Catholics omitted the second commandment in Exodus 20, which forbids the making of graven images.
But is this true? No, here are some reasons why.
First, it’s important to note as the Catechism of the Catholic Church does in paragraph 2066 that the division and numbering of the Commandments have varied throughout the centuries. The division and numbering that the Catholic Church follows, as well as the Lutheran confession, is that of St. Augustine, which differs slightly from the division worked out by the Greek Fathers, which is found in the Orthodox Churches and Reformed communities.
But concerning the commandment in question, like Augustine we see it as merely an extension of the first: “You shall have no other gods before me.” In light of the context, it seems that Augustine was right, for immediately after God prohibits the making of “graven images,” he says in verse five, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” The prohibition is against idolatry, not the making of images in an absolute sense.
If the commandment were a prohibition against making images, then God would have contradicted himself when he commanded Moses in Exodus 25 to make two gold cherubim and put them over the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant. But that’s absurd.
Finally, among those communities that have as their second commandment the prohibition to make graven images, they also combine the prohibition of coveting your neighbor’s wife and goods as one commandment. But a man’s wife is not the same as a man’s property. That these are two distinct commandments, which his how the Catholic Church views them, is made clearer in the list found in Deuteronomy chapter five.
So, the Catholic Church didn’t change the second commandment. And more importantly, it’s not guilty of idolatry in having statues in its places of worship.
If you want to learn more about this topic and others like it, visit our website at catholic.com. Also, visit CatholicAnswersSpeakers.com to learn how you can bring me out to speak at your event.
For Catholic Answers, I’m Karlo Broussard. Thanks for watching.

Did the Catholic Church Change the Ten Commandments?

What is up with Germany&#8217;s bishops and their attempts to re-write some basic Church teachings? Is a schism in the offing? We asked Ed Condon, one of the founders of the The Pillar, a new &#8220;Catholic media project focused on smart, faithful, and serious journalism, from committed and informed Catholics.&#8221;

Are the German Bishops a Danger?

Can You Reject Infallibility and still be Catholic?

News

Audience favorite topics

Open AI

Taylor Swift

Flannel Panel

<div>Is committing a small sin knowingly (thinking that God will forgive you) mortal?</div><div><a href="http://www.baltimore-catechism.com/lesson30.htm">The Baltimore Catechism</a>:
<blockquote>Q. 1183. What is presumption?
A. Presumption is a rash expectation of salvation without making proper use of the necessary means to obtain it.
Q. 1184. How may we be guilty of presumption?
A. We may be guilty of presumption:
1. By putting off confession when in a state of mortal sin; 
2. By delaying the amendment of our lives and repentance for past sins; 
3. By being indifferent about the number of times we yield to any temptation after we have once yielded and broken our resolution to resist it; 
4. By thinking we can avoid sin without avoiding its near occasion; 
5. By relying too much on ourselves and neglecting to follow the advice of our confessor in regard to the sins we confess.</blockquote>
In the situation you describe, the sin to be the most worried about is the sin of presumption. The sin of presumption starts out with committing small sins presuming that God will forgive them. But over time our conscience will become dulled to sin and we will be led to presume that God will forgive our mortal sins. However, at that point, because of our presumption, we will be missing the necessary condition for the forgiveness of mortal sins: sorrow for our sin.
</div>

The Sin of Presumption?

<div>When was Mary born?</div><div>There is no firm evidence on when the Blessed Mother was born. But if, as tradition holds, Mary was in her later teenage years when she married Joseph and conceived Jesus, this would tell us roughly when she was born, i.e., late in the B.C. (Before Christ) era.
For more information on the Blessed Mother, including on how her birth was prophesied according to the Protoevangelium of James, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/mary-ever-virgin">our tract “Mary, Ever Virgin.”</a> For further background on Mary’s heritage, see <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15464b.htm">this article</a>.
</div>

When Was Mary Born?

Would it be accurate to say the Nicene Creed is part of the deposit of faith?

What is palmarian church

Can there be a pope from one of the Eastern Catholic Churches?

How can one be a liberal Catholic and still believe in the teachings of Christ

Is it wrong to love God because you fear Hell?

Do we need to confess venial sins that were taken away by our last communion? Or does that show doubt in the efficacy of communion?

I see people often wondering if a life decision is God’s will. But as long as one is loving God fully, and loving their neighbor, isn’t everything that falls under that God’s will?

IS the Sabbatine privilege for wearing brown scapular endorsed by Catholic Church ?

is it true that God loves some people more than others?, hence why certain people have more graces, are chosen to be priests or even have a better fulfilled purposes in life. thank you.

What is your commitment when it comes to honoring/respecting parents or grandparents when they refuse to communicate to you and tell blatant lies about you regarding serious sins?

Ask Me Anything

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, is <a href="https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/what-did-archbishop-paglia-say-this">taking his turn on the hot seat</a> for a speech he gave that seemed to say the Catholic Church could live with laws and judicial rulings that permit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/death-with-dignity">suicide and euthanasia</a>.  
I found the speech <a href="https://www.ilriformista.it/sul-suicidio-assistito-e-arrivato-il-momento-di-una-legge-353478/">in Italian</a>, and Google was kind enough to translate it for me. And I&#8217;m going to tell you something you&#8217;re not going to like: It was a really good speech by a clearly brilliant mind. I learned things from it. How often does that happen in a short speech? 
That said, it was also one of the most senseless things I have ever read. 
What kind of leader thinks that when people are dying all around you, your society is collapsing, and you hold one of the highest positions of authority in both the Church and the pro-life movement, it makes sense to move off the big, pro-life themes and instead raise obscure hypotheticals about how the Catholic Church could accommodate itself, if it had to, to some leakage around the edges of the culture of death? 
I&#8217;m trying to think of an analogy. 
Maybe something like this: a bridge collapses. A highway worker has been given a yellow vest and two red flags. His is an important position. He could wave the flags vigorously to warn people not to drive off, but he gets into a debate with the people standing nearby about how we shouldn’t really blame the engineers and builders of the bridge. We should accompany them, engage with them in a mutually enriching dialogue. 
Look, dude, I&#8217;m all for accompaniment and enrichment, but wave the freaking flags. That&#8217;s your job. Do your job. 
Archbishop Paglia has been given a job that comes with a yellow vest and a pair of red flags. It is simply not his job to muse publicly about obscure possibilities as if he were some college professor.  
You got the yellow. You got the flags. Wave the flags. 
Here&#8217;s my bias: I am convinced the Church is plagued with good, often brilliant, men who have risen to the very top without, apparently, gaining any insight into their moment.  They engage and accompany and enrich—all well and good—but fail to teach, to lead, to proclaim.  
They seem to think that their job is to form committees and put out documents. They love long processes and listening sessions. They seem to think that their job is anything but the job of speaking in bold primary-colored-language to a lost age.   
They sometimes give wonderful speeches full of erudition and genuine insight. 
And those speeches are worse than useless because they confuse rather than clarify in an age when every Catholic bishop should be getting on his knees begging for help in being so radiantly clear it hurts. 
Dude, wave the flags!

Wave the Death Flags!

Episode 104: Year B &#8211; 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time
In this episode, we focus on four apologetical details in the readings for the 33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B. The first detail comes from the first reading, taken from Daniel 12:1-3. The apologetical topic is the reality of hell. The second detail is found in the second reading, taken from Hebrews 10:11-14, 18, and the relevant topic is the “once saved, always saved” doctrine that some Christians profess. Finally, the last two details that we will focus on come from the Gospel reading, taken from Mark 13:24-32, and the relevant topic is the accuracy and scope of Jesus’ human knowledge.
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-3e747287f40b833b body-half">
<div class="jsx-3e747287f40b833b body-half">
Readings: <a href="https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111724.cfm">Click Here</a>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<div class="jsx-3e747287f40b833b body-half">
<div class="jsx-3e747287f40b833b body-half">
Looking for Sunday Catholic Word Merchandise? Look no further! <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/catholic-answers-merchandise/?q=sunday">Click Here</a>
</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>

The Reality of an Everlasting Hell

Here at Catholic Answers, we’re used to hearing (and never fail to be cheered by) stories of people turning or returning to the Catholic faith after years of wandering in unbelief or sects. Sometimes these people credit the work of our apostolate as an instrument in their conversion. And we’re used to hearing about people who make the hop from pure secularism to spirituality-without-religiosity. For a recent example, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/red-hot-chili-peppers-flea-reveals-moment-god-made-perfect-sense">bassist Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers,</a> who says he’s “not religious in any way” but does “kind of believe in God . . . like a divine energy.”
Hey, it’s a start. Maybe next he’ll start kind of believing in wearing shirts on stage.
We can get behind any conversion—from the Latin conversio, signifying a “turning around [toward God]”—however hesitating or incremental.
But some such stories do tempt my inner cynic. One is the tale of Sarah Hurwitz, former lead speechwriter for Michelle Obama who was <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/07/02/1184875650/faith-religion-judaism-sarah-hurwitz">recently interviewed for NPR’s “Enlighten Me” series</a> about her return to her “childhood faith” of Judaism.
The general story would not be unfamiliar to many Catholic reverts. After her bat mitzvah at 13, Hurwitz said “thanks but no thanks” to the religion in which she’d been raised and for a couple decades sought, but did not find, spiritual fulfillment in worldly pursuits. Then, by seeming fluke occurrence, she found herself reconnecting with that religion and finding in it a needed feeling of purpose and peace.
Except, to hear her describe it, she didn’t reconnect with Judaism but with an NPR-sanitized version of it.
The first warning buzzer sounds when Hurwitz immediately makes it clear that her re-embrace of Judaism doesn’t involve anything so conventional as theism—“It wasn’t, ‘Oh, there’s a man in the sky taking care of everything.’ Nope.” Rather, it was “the idea of the spark of the divine in all of us.”
Now, in a sense this notion isn’t wholly incompatible with Judaism. After all, the Hebrew scriptures teach that we were created in the divine image. (And Christianity, which came from Judaism, teaches that through Christ we can be re-made in that image—divinized—by participation.) There are strains of a mystical tradition in rabbinic literature. But at root, in a plain, immediate sense, the God of the Jews is pretty darn transcendent. “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one,” goes the famous Shema (Deut. 6:4) at the heart of Jewish belief.
Or, in the words of the venerable “Theology 101” meme, “There is a God, and you are not him.” Historic Judaism is not about us but about God: his power and praiseworthiness, his wisdom, the favor he shows to his people. You can’t have Judaism, in a sense, without the “man in the sky.”
Traditional Judaism is also a religion of law and strict religious duty. But Hurwitz describes her version of it as “one big mindfulness practice” that is “calling you to notice the person in front of us and to respond lovingly and kindly and with generosity.” It’s “crowdsourced wisdom . . . about how to be a good person.” This sounds much less like Judaism and more like the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/cot/cot-29">moral therapeutic deism</a> that has been slowly emerging as our national religion. Less “Law of Moses” and more “Church of Nice.”
I know: it sounds like I’m nitpicking this woman for the flaws in her conversion, and right after I said that conversion is always good even when incomplete! But it strikes me that there’s a difference between being on a journey and switching the street signs. Even imperfect conversion, when authentic, should leave us bound to some divine truth that has convicted us, not filtering that truth into something that works for us. Were a Catholic revert to announce that he had reconnected with the faith of his youth, and say that by that he means some universalist, low-Christology, morally libertine, highly politicized boutique wing of Catholicism, I would have the same reaction.
In fact, Hurwitz seems to recognize this very thing when she counsels her interviewer, who admitted to sampling from a “spiritual buffet,” to stop “picking and choosing the parts that move you and make you feel good” and instead to “step into [a religion] as a complete system.” Hear-hear. By God’s grace may she one day embrace the fullness of Judaism, the religion of God’s intervention in time to save his people, and then, perhaps, its fulfillment in Jesus Christ—the Jewish man who is also God.

Moral Therapeutic Judaism?

What did you think was the best argument against Catholicism when you were protestant?

How do we justify bad things in Church history like the inquisition and bad things that popes did?

Why can’t priests absolve themselves?

In light of Mark 11:24, how can I maintain faith when things are hard?

&#8220;What was the best argument against Catholicism?&#8221; This question leads to a discussion on the challenges faced by Catholics, including how to reconcile difficult moments in Church history, such as the Inquisition, and the role of priests in absolution. Additionally, the conversation touches on maintaining faith during tough times, providing a well-rounded exploration of these important topics.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

What Was the Best Argument Against Catholicism? Popes and Faith

One of the most common questions about biblical interpretation is how much of the Bible ought to be taken “literally.” That’s a tricky question to answer, because the word literal actually has two distinct (but related) meanings.
When the Catechism of the Catholic Church talks about the literal sense of Scripture, it’s referring to “the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation” (116). It’s in this sense that the Church endorses St. Thomas Aquinas’s adage that “all other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.” So if we mean literal in this older sense, we should always start by taking Scripture literally. Whatever else the Bible might mean, it means what its authors intended.
That doesn’t mean that this is all that the text means. The Church historically speaks of the “four senses” of Scripture (CCC 118). In addition to the literal sense, there are three spiritual senses. We can see within the biblical text an allegorical meaning (for instance, foreshadowing the coming of Christ), a moral sense (giving us instruction for today), and an anagogical sense (in which we “view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland” [CCC 117]). Among the three spiritual senses, the allegorical looks back to the life and ministry of Christ, the moral looks at our lives today, and the anagogical looks at where we’re ultimately headed.
Take the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 14. What does the text mean? At the most basic level (which is precisely where we ought to begin), it means that God, through Moses, delivered his people from slavery by miraculously parting the Red Sea. That’s the literal sense. But we can also validly see a variety of spiritual meanings in the text as well.
First, we can see it as “a sign or type of Christ’s victory” (CCC 117). What God does for Israel at the Red Sea is a sign pointing us toward what he’ll do for the new Israel at Calvary. It’s also a prefigurement of baptism, a point that St. Paul makes when he says that “our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Cor. 10:1-2). All of that is reading Scripture allegorically.
But Paul doesn’t stop his reading of Exodus 14 there. The Israelites were “baptized,” and “all ate the same supernatural food and all drank the same supernatural drink” (1 Cor. 10:3), since they ate the manna and drank the water from the rock. Nevertheless, Paul warns, “with most of them God was not pleased; for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (v. 5). To use the modern parlance, the ancient Israelites were “sacramentalized,” but most of them still died in their sins. If that sounds like a warning to modern Catholics, it is. Paul’s immediate takeaway is that “these things are warnings for us, not to desire evil as they did” (v. 6). In other words, the point of Exodus 14 isn’t just to tell us what happened historically. It’s also to tell us how to live and how not to live. That’s the moral sense of Scripture.
Finally, there’s the anagogical sense. In the Exodus journey from Egypt (the place of slavery) to the Promised Land, we see a symbol of our entire lives, as God liberates us from sin and leads us to our heavenly homeland.
Notice that none of these is exclusive: reading the text in any one of these ways doesn’t require you to reject any of the other ways. Affirming that the Red Sea prefigures Christ, or baptism, or our exodus from sin doesn’t require denying that the miracle happened. Quite the contrary: If miracles occurred, and miracles are “signs” (Exod. 7:3; John 2:11), what are they signs of? Answering that takes us from the literal to the spiritual senses.
Perhaps none of this seems particularly controversial, but there are plenty of Protestants who reject this traditional way of reading Scripture. Gordon Fee (professor emeritus of New Testament Studies at Regent College in Vancouver) and Douglas Stuart (professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) cowrote How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth as a way of explaining biblical interpretation to a wider audience. In their book, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is currently in its fourth edition, they lay out rules for “how the Old Testament narratives are not to be understood.” First among these, they claim:
<blockquote>The Old Testament narratives are not allegories or stories filled with hidden meanings. While there may be aspects of narratives that are not easy to understand, you should always assume that they had meaning for their original hearers. But whatever else, they are not allegories.</blockquote>
So the allegorical reading of the Old Testament, so popular with both the Church Fathers and St. Paul, is against the rules for such Protestants. Nor is it only the allegorical that is disallowed; it’s also the moral. Their second rule says:
<blockquote>Individual Old Testament narratives are not intended to teach moral lessons. The purpose of the various individual narratives is to tell what God did in the history of Israel, not to offer moral examples of right or wrong behavior.</blockquote>
By this analysis, Paul broke the first rule by viewing the Red Sea as an allegory of baptism, and then the second rule for thinking “these things are warnings for us, not to desire evil as they did.” Of course, in a matchup between an apostle and a pair of Protestant seminary professors, the choice is clear. But it’s worth understanding why Paul is right and Fee and Stuart are wrong. St. John gives us the explanation towards the close of his own Gospel (John 20:30-31):
<blockquote>Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.</blockquote>
In other words, it’s not enough to say the biblical stories were written down because they happened, or because God was sovereign over them. Lots of things happen, and God is sovereign over all of them, yet the vast majority of these things were never recorded in Scripture. These particular events were chosen for a reason. That reason may be to teach us a moral lesson, or to prefigure something coming later in salvation history, etc., but it’s never simply “to tell what God did in the history of Israel.”
To take another example, the Protestant FAQ site Got Questions responded to the question “<a href="https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-literal.html">Can/should we interpret the Bible literally?</a>” by declaring that “not only can we take the Bible literally, but we must take the Bible literally. This is the only way to determine what God really is trying to communicate to us.”
The problem with this position is twofold. First, it rejects three of the four senses of Scripture by declaring the literal the “only way” we can know what God is saying. Or to put it another way, they’ve decreed that the literal is the only way that God is allowed to speak to us . . . despite an abundance of evidence (from the Psalms to the Song of Solomon to Jesus’ parables) that suggests that God is in no hurry to be bound in this way.
The second problem is that it misunderstands the literal sense. As I mentioned at the outset, the traditional meaning of literal is “the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation” (CCC 116). That plain meaning might be that the author was speaking metaphorically or using a figure of speech. But the <a href="https://www.encyclopedia.com/science-and-technology/computers-and-electrical-engineering/computers-and-computing/literal#:~:text=lit%C2%B7er%C2%B7al%20%2F%20%CB%88lit%C9%99r%C9%99l,literal%20sense%2C%20full%20of%20dread.">modern meaning</a> of literal is “taking words in their usual or most basic sense without metaphor or allegory.”
That’s a big difference: the biblical authors regularly employ figures of speech that aren’t meant to be taken literally in this second, modern sense of literal. Got Questions half-acknowledges this problem but says, “There are figures of speech in the Bible which are not to be taken literally, but those are obvious.” Such confidence is misplaced. If a reading of the Gospels suggests anything, it’s that Jesus’ audiences (be they the apostles or other listeners) found it anything but obvious which times were and weren’t “to be taken literally” in this second sense.
So when it comes to reading your Bible, just remember: take it literally, yes, but don&#8217;t be so modern about it.

How Much of the Bible Should We Take Literally?

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent breaks down the best and worst parts of Halloween.

FFAF: The Best (and Worst) Parts of Halloween

“Jesus says in John 5:24 whoever believes in him has ‘eternal life.’ He states, “24 Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life; he does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. Isn’...

Mt. 12:38 seems to contradict what Catholicism teaches on how much time Jesus spent in hell.

Why did the Church change so much in mass?

Can angels get hurt?

I think there is a contradiction between priests forgiving in persona Christi since they contribute nothing vs forgiving mortal sin.

It seems as though we worship an arrogant God.

&#8220;Is eternal security promised in John 5:24?&#8221; This episode explores the implications of Jesus&#8217; words on eternal life and judgment. Additionally, we delve into questions about the Church&#8217;s changes in the Mass, the nature of angels and their vulnerabilities, and the role of priests in forgiving sins.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Is Eternal Security Promised in John’s Gospel? Mass Changes, and Angels?

Browse all the Catholic Answers podcasts.

Podcasts

As we pray for a just peace in the Middle East, some Catholics and Protestants have been engaging in a different yet related battle—regarding whether the Temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt, how and when the Antichrist will appear, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/end-of-the-world-catholic-view-on-the-rapture">and God’s plan otherwise for the End Times</a>.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2p_cfipbEw">In a recent and wide-ranging interview</a> with former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan, Chad Ripperger argues, among other things, that the Temple in Jerusalem will never be rebuilt. At publication time, Fr. Ripperger’s interview has almost four million views (and more than 29,000 comments on YouTube). Meanwhile, in <a href="https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/2029681200189636717">an article</a> that has garnered 4.2 million views—including through <a href="https://x.com/tedcruz/status/2033258527372738590">the retweet of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz</a> (R-Texas)—<a href="https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree">Insurrection Barbie</a> decries those who are “systematically dismantling the evangelical foundation of the American right,” including “political Catholic integralists.” The essay even <a href="https://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=68815">criticizes Catholic Answers</a> for opposing the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/video/ted-cruz-calls-out-catholic-answers-as-a-problem">allegedly biblical doctrine of sola scriptura</a>.
<h2>Dispensationalism and the End of the World</h2>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/waiting-to-be-raptured">Dispensationalism</a> is popular among U.S. evangelicals, including many Baptists, Pentecostals, and self-identified non-denominational Christians. It considers the establishment of the modern political <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jews-and-the-rapture">State of Israel in 1948 the fulfillment of biblical prophecy</a>. Dispensationalism’s beliefs include <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/rapture-claptrap">the rapture</a>—typically before an anticipated restoration and defilement of the Temple by the Antichrist—and a literal thousand-year reign in which our Lord Jesus Christ <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/israel-and-the-church">will visibly return to earth</a> and then usher in the Last Judgment.
<a href="https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/2029681200189636717">In attempting to make her case</a>, Insurrection Barbie argues that dispensationalism is a latter-day restoration of true biblical teaching:
<blockquote>For most of Christian history, the dominant theological position regarding the Jewish people was supersessionism—Replacement Theology: the belief that the Christian Church has superseded the Jewish people as inheritor of God’s covenant promises. Under this view, the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now fulfilled in the Church, and the Jewish people have no ongoing special covenantal status.
Evangelical Protestants, particularly in the dispensationalist tradition, explicitly reject this. They hold that Romans 11:1-2 is definitive—“Did God reject his people? By no means!”—and that the modern state of Israel represents the physical fulfillment of God’s ongoing covenant faithfulness.</blockquote>
Insurrection Barbie mispresents the Church’s teaching, which espouses that—consistent with Scripture—the Catholic Church is the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/pentecost-and-the-papacy">restoration and fulfillment of the kingdom of Israel</a>, not the replacement; that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/kingdom-of-god">Christ the King’s definitive reign</a> therefore began almost two thousand years ago (Acts 2:29-36; Heb. 1:8); and that God continues to love the Jewish people who have not accepted Jesus, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/o-jerusalem-jerusalem">and thus his plan for them in Christ remains</a>, as St. Paul teaches:
<blockquote>Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved (Rom. 11:25-26; <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c2a7.htm">see CCC 674</a>).</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/apostle-paul-catholic-answers-guide-to-st-paul">As I’ve written elsewhere</a>, “Christians who don’t have an unbroken salvation history need to account for that lack of history,” and thus are prone to “dividing the doctrines of St. Paul from the teachings of Jesus,” including in failing to see that Jesus established his Church—&#8221;the pillar and bulwark of the truth” that Paul professes (1 Tim. 3:15)—as <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/kingdom-of-god">the restoration of his Davidic kingdom of Israel</a>, in which he reigns on high from heaven as “the King of kings” (Rev. 17:14).
<h2>Will the Temple Be Rebuilt?</h2>
“According to the Fathers, at least the ones I’ve read, the Temple will never be rebuilt,” Ripperger says (0:37:19ff.) A little later <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2p_cfipbEw">in his interview with Ryan</a>, he adds,
<blockquote>A lot of Protestants are thinking, “Oh, let’s help the Jews rebuild the Temple and that’ll usher in—because Christ is going to return.” They think the Temple is going to be rebuilt. And then, as a result of that—I should say that the Temple has to be rebuilt in order for the Antichrist to put himself in there. “So let’s do that, so that the Antichrist will come, and then that means Christ will come.” And that’s kind of their reasoning behind it (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2p_cfipbEw">0:38:28ff)</a>.</blockquote>
The Church does teach that there is no salvific or other covenantal need to rebuild the Temple. Jesus fulfilled the Old Covenant sacrifices—particularly for <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/when-did-jesus-finish-his-sacrifice">Yom Kippur</a> and <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-mass-beats-the-4th-of-july">Passover</a>—in his one sacrifice of Calvary, which culminated in everlasting glory in the heavenly sanctuary. This same sacrifice is offered anew in a bloodless manner, according to the order of Melchizedek, in <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-the-point-of-a-priest">each and every Mass</a>.
I’m <a href="https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/12/03/divinely-planned-obsolescence/">inclined to agree</a> with Ripperger that the Temple won’t be rebuilt. At the same time, as my colleague Jimmy Akin documents well, there is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/will-the-jerusalem-temple-ever-be-rebuilt">no Church teaching</a> on the matter, and a number of Church Fathers have actually predicted the Temple’s being rebuilt, including St. Irenaeus of Lyon (<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0103530.htm">Against Heresies, 5:30:4</a>) and St. Hippolytus (<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0516.htm">On Christ and Antichrist, 6</a>).
Because of their convictions about the modern State of Israel, dispensationalists are bullish on a U.S. foreign policy that promotes and protects Israel. But do they truly have the best interests of the Israeli people at heart?
Because of their misinterpretations of Ezekiel 38-39 and Revelation 20:7-9, dispensationalists believe that a war against Iran or Persia (Magog) and its ally Russia (Gog) will fulfill a key part of End Times biblical prophecy, <a href="https://bibleforcatholics.com/faith-family/blog/2026/04/07/the-theology-of-war-against-russia-iran-april-2026-newsletter/">as apologist Steve Wood explains</a>.
There is also concern that precipitously seeking to rebuild the Temple could trigger an even bigger war, given that it would require the destruction—or at least relocation—of the Islamic Dome of the Rock. (Granted, some Jewish and Muslims leaders argue that the mosque <a href="https://www.jpost.com/jewish-world/jewish-features/article-146269">could be spared,</a> although they are in the minority.)
<h2>The Antichrist’s Attack</h2>
All Christians agree that <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/the-antichrist-0">the Antichrist</a> will eventually arrive, as Paul prophesied:
<blockquote>Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God (2 Thess. 2:3-4; see <a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c2a7.htm">CCC 675-676</a>).</blockquote>
Dispensationalists think the Antichrist will fulfill this prophecy—along with a latter-day fulfillment of Daniel 9:27—in defiling a rebuilt Temple. St. Cyril of Jerusalem agrees:
<blockquote>He says “who opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God, or that is worshipped (against every God; Antichrist forsooth will abhor the idols), so that he seats himself in the temple of God” (2 Thess. 2:4). What temple, then? He means the Temple of the Jews, which has been destroyed. For God forbid that it should be the one in which we are!
Why say we this? That we may not be supposed to favor ourselves. For if he comes to the Jews as Christ, and desires to be worshiped by the Jews, he will make great account of the Temple, that he may more completely beguile them, making it supposed that he is the man of the race of David, who shall build up the Temple erected by Solomon (<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310115.htm">Catechetical Lectures, 15:15</a>).</blockquote>
In addition, many Catholics think the Antichrist will desecrate a major Catholic church, such as St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. Some Church Fathers say it could be a destructive both/and. St. John Chrysostom states unequivocally, “We have said enough to prove that the temple will never be rebuilt” (<a href="https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_05_homily5.htm?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Against the Jews, Homily 5, 4:1</a>). Elsewhere, he writes the Antichrist “will abolish all the gods, and will order men to worship him instead of God, and he will be seated in the temple of God, not that in Jerusalem only, but also in every Church (<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/23053.htm">Homily 3 on 2 Thessalonians, 2:3-4</a>, emphasis added). In addition, Hippolytus may mean that the Antichrist will temporarily ban the sacrifice of the Mass when he writes, in reference to Daniel 9:27, “He says, ‘And one week will make a covenant with many, and it shall be that in the midst [half] of the week my sacrifice and oblation shall cease’”—that is, for 3.5 years (<a href="https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0516.htm">On Christ and Antichrist, 43</a>; see St. Jerome, <a href="https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/jerome_daniel_02_text.htm">Commentary on Daniel, prologue, 9:24-27</a>).
In the end, though, because Christ is indeed King, the Church will ultimately triumph in her Lord Jesus (<a href="http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s2c2a7.htm">CCC 677</a>; see Matt. 16:18).

Will the Temple Be Rebuilt?

Does the Bible Teach Baptism Saves?

Is the Church drifting from the Truth?

What does Vatican I say about the papacy?

Why baptize infants if they can’t consent?

How to treat same-sex attracted friends?

&#8220;Is the Church drifting from the Truth?&#8221; This episode explores the implications of Vatican I on Church teachings, alongside discussions on the papacy, the rationale behind infant baptism, and how to approach friendships with those who are same-sex attracted.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Is the Church Drifting From the Truth? Vatican I and Baptism

Dartmouth provost and former Notre Dame dean Santiago Schnell recently <a href="https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/higher-ed-leader-urges-bishops-to-protect-catholic-identity-at-universities">made headlines</a> for urging the U.S. bishops to better safeguard universities’ claims to Catholic identities. I found myself agreeing wholeheartedly with his message—and reliving some of my own wild journey at a so-called Catholic university, when I was a new convert unacquainted with the ideological war waging in Catholic higher education.
The anti-Catholic indoctrination started small and was practically unnoticeable. I was in my freshman biology class when my professor began sharing how science doesn’t really prove anything—since certain proof would require an infinite number of experiments, and that was, of course, impossible. At the time, in my naivety, I thought this was ground-breaking. Little did I know that my professor was regurgitating the untenable philosophy of David Hume, promoting a skeptical worldview.
I found myself in my next semester’s biology class, listening to another professor explain how biological sex and species are both social constructs (hello, nominalism!). He continued that since homosexual behavior exists in the animal kingdom, homosexual relations among humans must be “normal.” At least this time around, I immediately realized his philosophy was poor.
Then came the theology professors. I had heard from some theology-major friends that the theology department was, to say the least, questionable. The professors encouraged students to refer to God by any pronoun, and some even argued that they or she was most fitting. One claimed that Jesus’ call for Lazarus to “come out” of the cave reveals that Jesus was part of the “LGBTQ community.” When Dobbs v. Jackson overturned Roe v. Wade, the theology department responded with a lecture series endorsing so-called reproductive rights. (The university itself even materially cooperates with abortion by <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/catholic-university-chicago-covers-abortion-care-services-through-student-health-plan">covering it in student health plans</a>.)
So, when I discovered that I was required to take a theology class to fulfill my core requirements, I seriously debated taking a class on Islam or Hinduism, which was sure to be less cortisol-inducing than the courses being taught by wolves in sheep’s clothing. Instead, though, I landed on “Jesus Christ in History,” thinking no one could seriously mess history up. How naive was I again.
On the first day, the professor taught that neither the Gospels nor any early Christian until the Council of Chalcedon endorsed Jesus’ divinity. A fellow student in the class told me that the lecture strengthened his faith—his Muslim faith. After class, I confronted the professor, knowing full well the early Christians believed Jesus was God, since I had read their writings myself. He dismissed my objections, simply responding that he keeps his Christian faith and his history separate.
I dropped the class.
Anti-Catholic propaganda wasn’t limited to the classroom. The student life experience included annual drag shows (<a href="https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/students-protesting-annual-drag-show-at-catholic-university-threatened-with-violence">including ones that mock nuns</a>), weekly <a href="https://www.studentsforreproductivejustice.com/">“Free Condom Fridays,”</a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DXKQMorEaw7/">LGBTQ masses</a>, and <a href="https://loyolaphoenix.com/2024/12/the-pro-life-league-comes-to-loyola-prompts-counter-protests/">assaults on pro-life students</a>. Even more demonic: the only dormitory with a connected chapel was said to have chapel hours restricted after students were caught having sex in the chapel.
Despite around thirty priests living on campus, the Faith was practically dead. I think this was a trickle-down effect: from priests who preached “queerphobia” as a sign of the times, to those who didn’t properly absolve sins in the confessional, to the Jesuit Superior who said drag shows could be done tastefully, the Faith seemed lacking among clerics, too.
Although I survived my undergraduate years with my new faith intact (<a href="https://www.theamericanconservative.com/youth-losing-their-religion/">most Catholics do not</a>), my soul was left extremely scandalized and disheartened. Worse, I discovered my school was not the exception to Catholic colleges, but was the norm: many Catholic universities host drag shows (<a href="https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/news/2026/05/lavender-lgbtq-events-at-catholic-universities-to-include-drag-show">among other LGBTQ-endorsing events</a>), <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/cna/catholic-universities-among-dozens-of-schools-with-links-to-abortion-industry-study-finds">have ties with the abortion industry</a>, and leave their students <a href="https://cardinalnewmansociety.org/wp-content/uploads/UCLAStudy.pdf">to be more supportive of abortion, gay “marriage,” and fornication</a> following graduation.
Thankfully, Pope Leo also seems to recognize the Catholic university crisis, as he recently <a href="https://www.ewtnnews.com/vatican/pope-calls-catholic-universities-to-be-authentic-instill-passion-for-the-truth">urged Catholic schools</a> to ensure that all academic disciplines are permeated by the Christian vision. Although I wholeheartedly endorse his message, I fear it doesn’t extend far enough. Many schools are not simply neglecting the Christian vision—but are directly attacking it. It’s difficult to find a Catholic school that does not host LGBTQ events, and it’s even harder to find ones that are boldly outspoken against LGBTQ ideology. Conversely, it’s easy to find schools that endorse this ideology and promote it everywhere—even in the chapel.
I am convinced that until the Church begins rigorously enforcing John Paul II’s <a href="https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_constitutions/documents/hf_jp-ii_apc_15081990_ex-corde-ecclesiae.html">Ex Corde Ecclesiae</a>, Satan will remain a tenured professor at many so-called Catholic universities, and we will continue to see souls not only become apathetic to the Faith, but directly hostile to it.

Catholic Colleges Are Leading Souls to Satan

Early Christians prayed to Mary and the saints! It’s one of the oldest Christian tradition we have.

<div>The Bible condemns communicating with the dead, such as the necromancy King Saul engaged in when he had the witch of Endor conjure the spirit of the prophet Samuel. How can the Catholic Church teach that praying to the saints is any different?</div><div><h3 style="text-align: center;"></h3>
<h3>Short Answer:</h3>
Necromancy is gravely wrong, because it involves communicating—apart from the Lord Jesus Christ— with those who have died, e.g., through seances and other forms of divination. In marked contrast, prayer to the saints is in solidarity with our Lord Jesus and thus couldn’t be accomplished without Christ. The saints are God’s collaborators, not his competitors, and therefore they are our heavenly friends whom Jesus has given to help us attain eternal life.  
<h3>Longer Answer:</h3>
Necromancy is a form of divination, which includes conjuring the spirits of humans who have died to gain knowledge, whether about the present or future. In addition, these spiritual interactions are done apart from—and therefore at odds with—the Lord Jesus Christ and his kingdom. Consequently, all forms of divination, including “practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers,” are clearly wrong, because “they contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone” (CCC 2116-2117, emphasis original; see Deut. 18:10-14).
The Philistines had encamped at nearby Shunem, and, in his fear, King Saul seeks the Lord’s guidance, including through his own personal prayer and the intervention of his prophets (1 Sam. 28:5-6). However, Saul does not receive God’s counsel, because he did not carry out the Lord’s will against the Amalekites (1 Sam. 28:18; see 15:1-34). Instead of repenting and beseeching the Lord anew, Saul in his desperation seeks clarity and reassurance apart from the Lord, namely, through the help of a medium, the witch of Endor, who helps him conjure the prophet Samuel, who, in turn, chastises Saul for this additional misdeed and predicts the imminent death of Saul and a number of his sons (1 Sam. 28:7-25).
In marked contrast, when Catholics pray to the saints in heaven, they do so through the power and person of Jesus, in whom all of Christ’s disciples are united, whether in heaven (the Church Triumphant), on earth (the Church Militant), or in Purgatory (the Church Suffering (CCC 954-959; see 1 Cor. 12:12-26; Rom. 8:37-39). So when we prayerfully intercede with the saints in heaven, we are not seeking knowledge and power apart from Jesus, but rather united with Christ and his kingdom.
In addition, St. Paul urges us to pray for each other, not simply for each of us to pray to God alone (1 Tim. 2:1-5). St. Paul thereby illustrates that asking for the prayers of our fellow Christians is not an offense against the one mediatorship of Jesus, precisely because—in doing so—we are united in Christ and therefore his mystical body, which is the Church. And if we can ask our friends on earth to intercede for us with the Good Lord, why not our friends in heaven? Scripture teaches that the prayer of a righteous man on earth avails much (James 5:16–18), so how much more does the prayer of a righteous man in heaven avail? Scripture shows that some Christian elders who have died are in heaven. They are distinguished from the angels and therefore must be humans who have died and gone to heaven; and they clearly bring the prayers of those on earth to the throne of God (Rev. 5:8).
<h2>Heaven-Sent: “The Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect” (Heb. 12:23)</h2>
Regarding the saints in heaven, Scripture refers to them as “the spirits of just men made perfect” (Heb. 12:23). Consider therefore the righteous man James references who is living on earth (James 5:16), but who then would die and go to heaven. He’s made perfect before entering heaven, and it logically follows that his prayers would have even greater effects, given the perfection of his soul and thus his greater union with Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit in heaven. This reality aligns with Jesus’ words about the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all of whom had died: “He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:32; emphasis added).
Those who have died but are now alive in Christ include Moses and Elijah, who appear to Jesus at the Transfiguration and speak to him about the paschal mystery he will accomplish in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31; 28-36; Matt. 17:1-8). If communicating with those who have died were an intrinsic moral evil, then Jesus would be guilty himself.
Also, when one prays to the Blessed Mother or another saint, he makes the sign of the cross when he starts and ends his prayer, a reminder that the efficacy of the prayer stems from his being one in our Lord Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus, the saints’ intercessory prayers couldn’t benefit us. Ditto with our prayers on earth for each other.
Consider further the Blessed Mother. Because of God’s tremendous blessing on her, and her cooperation with God, she is in a preeminent place to intercede among those in heaven (Rev. 12:1–2). Indeed, she is the spiritual mother of all believers on earth. As Scripture provides, the devil “was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus” (Rev. 12:17, emphasis added).
Some Christians might reply that the woman of Revelation 12 is Old Covenant Israel, who “gave birth” to the Messiah, or perhaps the Church, which is the New Covenant Israel and mystical bride of the Son. Arguments can be made for both of these typological fulfillments of “the woman,” and yet Mary is the most obvious fulfillment, because she actually gives birth to Jesus and so is the queen mother in the New Covenant, adorned with her crown in heaven (Rev. 12:1–-2).
For more information, see Karlo Broussard’s Q&amp;A on the Bible’s opposition to necromancy vs. praying to the saints in Christ and Jimmy Akin’s Daily Defense.
In addition, see our tracts on praying to the saints and the what the early Church taught regarding the saints’ intercession. See also two of our related articles, in which Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J., and Karlo Broussard explain the Church’s teaching in light of Protestant Christian counterclaims.
</div>

Is Catholic Prayer to the Saints the Same as the Necromancy Condemned in Scripture?

<div>Can I sin too much to the point where I have no chance of heaven?</div><div>Sin is not a matter of too much or too little. A single, unrepented mortal sin will lead to hell, whereas a life spent in mortal sin but followed by true repentance before death leads to salvation.
The problem is that many people think that they&#8217;ll have plenty of time for repentance at some future point. Unfortunately, we never know if this is our last day in this world. Any number of things could befall us. There is also a grave danger that a life of sin will lead to a hardening of the heart that will make repentance an unattractive option and therefore quite unlikely.
</div>

Can I Sin Too Much?

Even though we cannot attend Mass while we shelter in place, we can experience real liturgy in our homes by praying the Liturgy of the Hours— and it&#8217;s more accessible than you might think. Fr. Hugh Barbour explains how, even during the suspension of public Masses, you can still not just watch but participate in real liturgy.

Experience Real Liturgy in Your Home

What is the Catholic Church?

How do I deal with family who is fully immersed in homosexuality?

I’m evangelical. The premise that the Church that Jesus founded was the Roman Catholic Church is false.

My mom is a evangelical, former Catholic and anti-Cathoic. How do I bridge that gap and have a relationship with her?

&#8220;What is the Catholic Church?&#8221; This question opens a discussion about the Church&#8217;s identity and mission, while also addressing how to navigate family dynamics when dealing with issues like homosexuality. Additional topics include the challenges of engaging with an evangelical perspective on the Catholic Church and fostering relationships with family members who hold anti-Catholic views.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

What Is the Catholic Church? Homosexuality in Families

In this episode Trent refutes anti-natalism (the view that having children is immoral) in both popular environmental literature and more advanced philosophical arguments.

Is it Immoral to have Children?

These Worship Songs Need to be Abolished: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc4unEkYlDU&amp;t=168s
To support this channel: https://www.patreon.com/counseloftrent
[NEW] Counsel of Trent merch: https://shop.catholic.com/apologists-alley/trent-horn-resources/
Be sure to keep up with our socials!
https://www.tiktok.com/@counseloftrent
<a class="twitter-timeline" data-width="500" data-height="750" data-dnt="true" href="https://s.com/counseloftrent">Posts by counseloftrent</a>
https://www.instagram.com/counseloftrentpodcast
Transcript:
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/TZ2EjyIEbVZMQzOLG5CmXbT7zFUkPg7MhK7_OremMQI51vE0YlEWP67rDHGhjrDTaL_VKHxAjk-KvfghGN5Ncbtf5OA?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=0.16">00:00</a>):
There&#8217;s something about modern worship songs that is really off-putting to me, but I couldn&#8217;t quite put my finger on it until I heard news about one of my favorite worship songs from back in the day being turned super gay. I won&#8217;t quit my day job and become a songwriter, but I can tell you where these songs ultimately go wrong and it&#8217;s not their failure to tell people to subscribe to the Council of Trent or support us at trendpodcast.com so we can keep creating great content like this. No, they go wrong somewhere else and you can see this in the 1997 song Testify to Love from the Christian band Avalon. Even though it was from an evangelical group, you always heard this song at Catholic youth masses and retreats. If you&#8217;re a millennial or older from the life teen days, this should sound familiar. So let me try.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/JQMeTFtKW8IvWY6546LKF9iN4-uSfUhPnnTGq8FX0VBuptNKhbnuYk0rPzz617YgsG8otqUKytasn2zLUn45tumI0Hk?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=45.06">00:45</a>):
All the colors of the rainbow, all the voices of the wind. Every dream that reaches out that reaches out to find where love begins. Every word of every story, every star in every sky. Every corner of creation lives to testify and then there was a drum riff. Okay, hit it, Avalon.
Song- Testify to Love (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/dsHAKXi4O4PxzjlR2pqCeO46qpbJmX-8ujq9-1T_gsi-UXqMiQYyalmdsa8TUxCTHiwjFmlln58LcxvX19vbxq6d3uU?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=72.84">01:12</a>):
I will testify to this in the silences when words are not in love. With every breath I take, I will give thanks to God ear. For as long as I shall live, I will testify.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/ymRdW7bPVEuFS4MMh0645xTH3T4791TnXOcZs4l6zMuHTCTzu3tvOrIEv9yUSwGFGvTDXXruLOCE8RLMF64_7gJqEE4?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=95.54">01:35</a>):
Like shoulder pads in the 80s or Frosted Tips in the 90s, all I can say is it was a different time. And that&#8217;s also what two former band members from Avalon say because they want to reclaim the song as having a gay meaning to it. One of them is Michael Passons, who was kicked out of Avalon in 2003 for engaging in sexual relations with men, not just for quote being gay. Here&#8217;s how Paston tells the story in an interview.
Michael Passons (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/w_gXdH7lvpxru6Np9WKeiOQ-qywR0l-TqEj9BOZv5yilJZte14jXSoN0D8EuxJhWOu6apV6cqYI7nVCW3nXDsqTu36c?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=119.98">01:59</a>):
My bandmates were getting married. They were all getting married. I was in all their weddings and I was just getting angry that their lives were going on and I just started like WTF. I&#8217;m just going to do my thing because nothing&#8217;s going to change so am I just going to waste my youth? And so I started to see people.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/JUORPayrB5pjxyzPb3hqpSOS42ZvXt3uUY2vx2HMXdtnGR05TjDnbOCtOmPNbRntir29lu1Zqr7-IdXAkK3xN1ZhRPs?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=147.14">02:27</a>):
Passins reveals that someone saw him at a place he should not have been, possibly a gay bar, but he doesn&#8217;t say in the interview. He temporarily left the group after that and then rejoined. But when someone saw Passins in a &#8220;questionable situation&#8221; in 2003, he lied about it and then he was fired from the band. Now, many people who want to revise church teaching on homosexuality say they just want same sex couples to be treated and held to the same standards as opposite sex couples, but often that isn&#8217;t true. The problem is this theology creeps into conservative branches of Christianity because its advocates claim that all they want is the same sex version of monogamous, lifelong, opposite sex bonding in marriage. But for many of them, that&#8217;s not their end goal. In 2014, Mark Regners released a study showing that at the time self-identified gay and lesbian Christians were more likely to support evils like adultery, fornication, corn, abortion, and polyamory.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/9bzX76pQVeLfeQgJwGVJAxRF2mcCJmXvZcksIoflj-_SlE5xxHlma9Z6egWYyIDNtStTwlpWSR4uAl3B7UBrkW1YENg?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=203.04">03:23</a>):
They&#8217;re more likely than Christians who support so- called same-sex marriage and even more likely to support these things than members of the general population. And we see the same today in advocates for so- called same-sex marriage within the church. Brandon Robertson, who has been praised by Father James Martin, defends polyamory and really any supposedly consenting sexual relationship.
Brandon Robertson (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/F8lGgF45UYmLkV-EJAdMrTDpDgZi5HyMOllOsRgEuS2255RO2UqRvmlnkabhTgHrRyBt38iiS5jwv3VZ0Vt2oYIlbrk?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=222.98">03:42</a>):
In fact, the Bible doesn&#8217;t give a prescription of what any romantic relationship should look like. Instead, it gives us values. It says these relationships should be based on love, mutuality, respect, covenant, commitment. I think that three people can be in a loving, committed, covenant relationship. I think that because I&#8217;ve met them, they&#8217;ve been in my church.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/WEgD6cIdujbXGMMKVKAVvUTGU6uj53Z7NEa-_2JaVdDqSA3Hi16eZmp1jMmDAbY1NXwm0yZjLCx6l_cA6uFgVfVkuDc?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=242.4">04:02</a>):
Going back to passons, imagine he was just a man who is attracted to women, but he was unable to find a spouse, an incell, if you will. He then chooses to find sexual release through a parasocial relationship with a woman on OnlyFans. His bandmates discovered this and he refuses to stop doing this so he&#8217;s kicked out of the band. Most people would not say this is an example of hateful Christian bigotry. It&#8217;s Christians instead holding fellow Christians accountable to their own moral standards. But this example is just like Passin&#8217;s case. An unfortunate obstacle prevents him from being able to marry so he chooses a sinful means to engage in some of the pleasures that are associated with marriage. In both cases, we can empathize with someone being unable to marry and compassionately help him carry his cross, but we should not condone someone choosing a sinful response to such a trial.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/P11wLEPs5c3fOJ_hCWTUJyGFQDilsYl91A2U4WfnCFWA3oExBEKWXvZvgcrX73m3SUEDYzEQXBEDAJxCcQOvIesqOV4?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=294.2">04:54</a>):
But honestly, gay revisionist theologians would probably say that incels can have a kind of mutuality with OnlyFans creators that the ignorant authors of the Bible from their perspective couldn&#8217;t understand and would hatefully call prostitution, which is why we should not allow this to become a gay versus straight issue. It&#8217;s an issue of sexual virtue rooted in God&#8217;s plan for marriage being a one flesh union opposed to the alternative view, which is a kind of anything goes consensual morality that struggles as I&#8217;ve shown over and over and over again to explain why even horrible evils like relations with animals or dead bodies is evil. So back to Avalon&#8217;s new song. Last month, Passin, self-identified gay singer, Ty Herndon, and former Avalon band member Melissa Green, re-released a version of Testify of Love with basically the same lyrics. They say instead they are reclaiming the song&#8217;s meaning of loving everyone, which includes not saying sex outside of marriage is sinful.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/c-RBM8ijEccyW5WefLKJQqaDyNqNPhBoHqAUUfPAE4NVOjvUErqkNvs-zKihWiNoI2Vm-QNkOD8QDz999sVMqD84N4w?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=353.44">05:53</a>):
Green even said in her Substack that this was the song&#8217;s original meaning. She writes, &#8220;It is a song about love without exception, love that reaches every corner of creation, love that testifies through every star in every sky. Michael never needed to be redeemed. He was always whole and worthy. These songs always meant what they meant. The friendships were always real. What&#8217;s changed is that we&#8217;ve learned how to stand inside them fully as ourselves and as artists. It&#8217;s the song finally telling the truth. It&#8217;s possible there was always a gay subtext to this song and that the line about every color of the rainbow wasn&#8217;t so innocent. And by the way, I don&#8217;t appreciate the symbolism of the rainbow being ruined in the modern age, but that&#8217;s a whole other episode. But it&#8217;s also possible that this is a fanciful rewriting of history from someone who later left Christianity in 2017 to lead a non-religious group called The Imaginarium, not to be confused with the Wonder Emporium and then officiated Tyler Herndon&#8217;s gay wedding in 2020.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/-5j5-UfLsIalEHWON38YiyXPLa8s3z0C8CJ8EjzInNOP3MqAnjCOS6_fwUz6bu9Y090SlsVB2k03tE8KhEyQluG7Xzc?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=411.26">06:51</a>):
But Green is able to make these claims because the original song itself is vague and fluffy. When you just sing about love and going out there and making a difference and all these things, you can make a text mean almost anything. You can make the sacred become profane or worldly and you can make the profane become sacred. When you do that, a praise and worship concert becomes indistinguishable from a regular concert. A few months ago, I saw Journey perform their farewell tour and it was awesome. I even got emotional because they&#8217;ve been my favorite band for a long time and singing the songs with them, it kind of felt like being back at a praise service in nearly 2000s. I mean, given how vague modern praise worship is, it&#8217;s almost indistinguishable from some journey songs. For example, here&#8217;s Journey&#8217;s classic Open Arms. And then in a praise and worship service, you might sing this.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/zIZnwjFHtSXHPv-qkNWJViEj0tlbT5zxbzdkWlVB8OB9nCaeUqg4cgcmAgrROIt2AnsrGb5KYWcJGUv43QfL60-bS64?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=495.52">08:15</a>):
Okay. The last one isn&#8217;t a religious song, but you get the idea. Now, there isn&#8217;t anything wrong with a song reflecting on our love for God and you can prayerfully sing about reflecting in that love in various bodily postures. The problem is that this religious movement of the soul often gets described in a cliche way so that it&#8217;s indistinguishable from a song about our love for another person, which has given rise to the genre called Jesus Boyfriend music. This was even parodied on South Park where Cartman creates a fake Christian band that just replaces references and romantic songs with the word baby to the name Jesus.
South Park Episode (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/ahdPEwzVcREWvQ02itPphuBzo1vQk15p9WOajHmFqKQS17kkIGKjVC_cUAW5GurbNVgU4Q2rwwrKMS45tBDh4W7d4AY?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=533.73">08:53</a>):
We were looking over some of your lyrics. I want to walk hand in hand with Jesus on a private beach for two. I want him to nibble on my ear and say, &#8220;I&#8217;m here for you. &#8221; It seems you really love Christ.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/HPjjjIB4qD-vg0W_IIscRX6uCKN_F_EQAkW6Gu_jHEkVp6ed8Neruqy5PKO9b6VQOUeZjlrDlVQOKMG9WWfbrraSips?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=548.67">09:08</a>):
Yes, we sure do. You might think this is an overblown criticism and if you think that, you may not have heard how he loves by John Mark McMillan, which includes this line.
Worship Song (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/vwnAibFPO2j6DgvN1SyUXlX_19pZISptorUs5SiNKIFU0Rm3bNuTSKdZbo4UG5DXitKU3m2YcilvUj_F4ABAXFaB1p0?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=558.65">09:18</a>):
So heaven means earth like a stop you away kissing my heart turns violently inside a marchest.
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/uHEbsHVx7Lbk8xdYGpT_6G7IXj0FkDi14W_OpBISmL17Y-xQR-oCpltKVjHYAes5ouRz9WKtfPhz5BOOk7lKdQqhy8o?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=568.07">09:28</a>):
When modern worship songs are just all about us and how we feel toward God, God can get crowded out of the picture. Consider these lyrics from the song praise.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/KUv9LD_TlAM2IlUNPTr7Q1ZS9ywpXvCu2bu8jgCoEhTzk7sRZOjD_uSIX3tGllhAygq-UWjVjF6roAwOBRVwnoV8wXo?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=591.43">09:51</a>):
This makes it sound like we are the main character taking down Jericho and God is just kind of helping us out in the background. I also covered this in my previous episode that&#8217;s linked below about songs you often hear at mass that need to be abolished. Songs like All Are Welcome, which has been condemned by the USCCB for lyrics that make it sound like we create the church, not the Holy Spirit, which is a similar problem in the songs sing a new church. But the biggest offender of a song that&#8217;s all about me instead of all about the would be go make a difference, the jazzy outro song you eventually hear at some parishes with lyrics like &#8230;
Worship Song (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/CkwEbSeRNowFFDRfD0d-geAZWbV4YfNiuUOzHnD7cM9vZOETtsMFY917yH5XTKRUnSo4yZGvoNeBxkbpXrBIqVkC2Ik?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=626.45">10:26</a>):
Go make a difference so we can make a difference. Go make a difference in the world. Go make a difference. We can make a difference. Go make a difference in the world. I&#8217;m
Trent Horn (<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/n4tzvKw71SKc8deNwu6OichSdih9OTur22hQ8nfqWwAlrg_bQ_oW8-K9cQ85npWBblewgoczTNQKw5GbHc45UXMWIDQ?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=643.29">10:43</a>):
Not sure what the song&#8217;s meaning was. It was something about making a difference, I think. And once again, we should make a difference when we leave church, but just because it&#8217;s so vague and it&#8217;s about us, make a difference could refer to almost anything, including things like promoting LGBT ideology. Praise and worship services can have their place, especially as an alternative to the bad things that happen at secular concerts. Ephesians 5:19- 20 says, &#8220;Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the spirit as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to one another, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.&#8221; Or Colossians 3:16, &#8220;Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom and as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.&#8221; My concern is when these services stop being times to worship God in song and just turn into spectacles where we get really excited in a concert-like venue to sing songs about worshiping God instead of being focused on the act of worship itself.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/88cyaKPzGzt1FZEmTJNLKBg1Zb6rOd14oOWfkJjI-5ipRBcEdcLF9YjL-K5WMQK7_D7vewzhIKhIL01DB3M7UgpivCw?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=715.19">11:55</a>):
You can see that in this ex post which says, &#8220;I&#8217;ll never forget my friend telling me she used to cry at church because she thought she felt the Holy Spirit, only to feel the exact same way at a on direction concert. She&#8217;s now an atheist.&#8221; That doesn&#8217;t mean every song has to be Gregorian chant, though a little more of that in church wouldn&#8217;t hurt. There are hymns that have a focus on ourselves that are less likely to be warped because they&#8217;re rooted in God, such as an adaptation of the breastplate of St. Patrick called I Bind Unto Myself.
(<a href="https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/shared/KG8RhYFnyPAYbYZUlKlS6aqRFZIz-wOpxRoWdtjhuYYDDAYWqvQx87lv7LJqA5pHOPDwanS4uylOgW6xEgDEk3G5oy8?loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&amp;ts=774.79">12:54</a>):
And there&#8217;s even room for some of the cheesier stuff from back in the day, especially when it keeps our focus squarely rooted on God and his purposes. So once again, let me jog the memory of my fellow millennials and older crowd. When he rolls up his sleeves, he ain&#8217;t just putting on the ritz. Our God is an awesome God. There&#8217;s thunder in his footsteps and lightning in his fists. Our God is an awesome God. And the Lord wasn&#8217;t joking when he kicked him out of Eden. It wasn&#8217;t for no reason that he shed his blood. His return is very close and so you better be believing that our God isn&#8217;t awesome. God, take it away, Rich Mullins. God, He reigns. I know you know the gestures. God, you know the gestures, come on. Oh yeah. God, he reigns. He reins people. All right, thank you guys for joining us today. Don&#8217;t forget to hit the like button and leave a comment below of some of your favorite worship songs. So take care and I hope you have a very blessed day.
&nbsp;

This One Thing Makes Modern Worship Songs Terrible

In this episode, Jimmy Akin dives deep into Acts 2 to reveal exactly what happened on that wild day—mighty rushing wind, tongues of fire, and disciples suddenly speaking real foreign languages to an international crowd! He settles the glossolalia/xenoglossy debate with clear Scripture, proves it was a miracle of speaking (not hearing) and that the tongues—at least in this instance—were not private prayer languages. He also reveals how Pentecost was far more than a Babel reversal—it was the firstfruits of the greatest harvest in history.
Mind-blowing biblical truth you won’t want to miss!
&nbsp;
TRANSCRIPT: 
This week, we celebrate Pentecost.
The day of Pentecost was a momentous one in the history of Christianity, and some really unusual things happened on it.
So what was Pentecost, and what was the nature of the strange tongues that the disciples spoke in?
Let’s get into it!
* * *
Howdy, folks!
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years to come—and get early access to new episodes—by going to <a href="https://patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast">Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast</a>
&nbsp;
What Was Pentecost
Pentecost was an ancient Israelite feast. It’s first mentioned in Exodus 34:22, where we read:
Exodus 34:22
You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest.
Here Pentecost is called the Feast of Weeks. This is because it occurred seven weeks after Passover. Since there are seven days in each week, those seven weeks would add up to 49 days. 7 x 7 = 49
However, these 49 days were understood as the interval between Passover and Pentecost, so Pentecost is actually the 50th day, and that’s where its name comes from. In Greek, Pentécosté means = Fiftieth.
Thus Leviticus 23 says:
Leviticus 23:15-16
You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord.
Pentecost and the Feast of Weeks are thus two names for the same celebration.
The other thing to notice is that the Feast of Weeks is described as the firstfruits of the wheat harvest.
Firstfruits were the first and best part of a crop that you harvested. What you did was cut a sheaf of wheat and then take it to the temple to be presented to God as what is known as a wave offering, because the priest waved it in front of God’s presence.
Leviticus 23 states:
Leviticus 23:10-11
When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may be accepted.
This waving of the sheaf symbolized the fact that God is the source of everything we have, including the harvest. By waving the first sheaf of wheat you harvested, the priest symbolically returned the sheaf to God—acknowledging him as the source of the whole harvest.
Since the Feast of Weeks was the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, that made Pentecost a harvest festival. The wheat harvest was coming in, and it was time to celebrate that fact and thank God for giving you the wheat that would sustain you through the coming year.
In later centuries, Pentecost also came to commemorate the renewal of God’s covenant with his people, so—in addition to being a harvest festival—it also came to be a covenant renewal festival.
&nbsp;
Mysterious Events on Pentecost
Luke reports that, on the day of Pentecost in A.D. 33,
Acts 2:2-4
Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
This is one of several mentions of speaking in tongues in the Bible.
It’s mentioned several times in Acts, and the major discussion with it outside of Acts is in 1 Corinthians 12-14.
In the nineteenth century, the term Glossolalia was coined to refer to speaking in tongues. In Greek, Glóssa = “Tongue” and Lalia = “Speech,”, so according to its word parts Glossolalia = Speaking in a Tongue.
However, in the twentieth century, this term became involved in a controversy about the nature of the tongues in question.
In the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, it is sometimes held that “glossolalia” does not involve real human languages but “private prayer languages” that God enables a person to speak.
Consequently, some have begun to refer to miraculously speaking a real, foreign language as Xenolossy. In Greek, Xenos = “Stranger, Foreigner” and Glóssa = “Tongue,” so according to its word parts, Xenoglossy = (Speaking) a Foreign Tongue.
It’s also called Xenolalia, which would mean = Foreign Speaking.
&nbsp;
What Happened on Pentecost?
So what happened on Pentecost itself?
It’s clear that the manifestations the disciples witness are cause by the Holy Spirit, since they began speaking in other tongues “as the Spirit gave them utterance.”
The sound of the mighty, rushing wind signals the arrival of the Holy Spirit.
The Greek word Pneuma also means = Breath, Wind, Spirit, so the sound of the mighty wind symbolizes the arrival of the mighty, Holy Spirit.
The “tongues as of fire” (i.e., individual flames) that rest on each of them signify empowerment to speak in tongues.
Fire is a powerful force—you really don’t want to touch it!—so the tongues or flames of fire symbolize the power to speak in other languages.
It’s providential that both an individual flame and a language can be spoken of as a “tongue.”
&nbsp;
What Kind of Tongues?
But what about the tongues that they began speaking in? What were they?
The normal meaning of “other tongues” would be foreign languages—i.e., ones other than the Aramaic that the disciples would have known from their upbringing.
This is confirmed by the text, which goes on to say,
Acts 2:5-6
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.
This means that the disciples were not speaking in private prayer languages but real-world languages that the international crowd of Jews already knew.
However, some have proposed that something different was happening. Focusing on the statement that “each one was hearing them speak” in these languages, some have held that this is really a “miracle of hearing” rather than a miracle of speaking.
In other words, the disciples were still speaking in their native Aramaic, but the crowd was hearing them in whatever their own native languages were.
This is a creative idea, but it is poor exegesis.
First, the word “hearing” is consistent with both the idea that the disciples were miraculously speaking foreign languages and with the idea that the crowd was miraculously hearing foreign languages.
Acts 2:8-11
“How is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”
After all, if one of the disciples was miraculously speaking in Latin, then one of the visitors from Rome would obviously hear him speaking in Latin.
And if the disciples were speaking in Aramaic but these visitors were hearing them in Latin, then—again—they’d hear them speaking in Latin.
So, either way you go, Latin is what they’d hear.
The word “hearing” thus doesn’t prove one interpretation over the other.
We thus need to take a step back and look at how the text conceptualizes the miracle, and here we do get an answer.
Luke explicitly states that the disciples “began to speak in other tongues.”
He also conceptualizes the miracle as taking place on the part of the disciples—not on the part of the crowd.
The miracle is happening as soon as the disciples begin speaking; Luke doesn’t present it as beginning when others start hearing what is said.
The fact that this passage and others in the New Testament refer to the miracle as Speaking in Tongues rather than Hearing in Tongues strongly indicates that it is a miracle of speaking.
&nbsp;
Confirmation from 1 Corinthians
This is also indicated in 1 Corinthians 12.
Paul distinguishes between the gift of speaking in tongues and the gift of interpreting tongues. He says,
1 Corinthians 12:8, 10
For to one is given through the Spirit . . . various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
Similarly, he asks,
1 Corinthians 12:30
Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret?
So speaking with tongues and interpreting tongues are two different gifts.
And in 1 Corinthians 14, Paul makes it absolutely clear that speaking in tongues is not understood by itself. He writes:
1 Corinthians 14:5, 9-11, 13-14, 19
Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up. . . .
If with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning, but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I will be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me. . . .
Therefore, one who speaks in a tongue should pray that he may interpret. For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful . . .
In church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.
So—in order for tongues to be understood—it requires someone who has the gift of interpreting tongues, and so this is not a miracle of hearing.
In fact, Paul indicates that without an interpreter, not even the person speaking in tongues mentally knows what he is saying. That’s why he says that in tongues his spirit prays but his mind is unfruitful.
Now, some have argued that the speaking in tongues mentioned in Acts is different than the speaking in tongues mentioned in 1 Corinthians, but this is exegetically unsound.
Luke and Paul were companions, and if they were describing two different phenomena then the two companions would not use the same name for two different things.
We thus have very strong evidence that—on the day of Pentecost—the disciples were miraculously enabled (by those “tongues as of fire”) to speak actual, real world languages that they didn’t know.
&nbsp;
Other Kinds of Tongues?
This does not mean that the Holy Spirit cannot give other, related charismatic gifts.
In 2016, the Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith published a document titled Iuvenescit Ecclesia in which it noted that, although there are several lists of charismatic gifts in the New Testament,
Iuvenescit Ecclesia 6
None of these lists claims to be exhaustive.
And that
Iuvenescit Ecclesia 9
There has never been a shortage of different charisms arising in the temporal course of ecclesial history.
Including the charisms that inspire new movements.
I thus don’t have any problem with the idea of new charismatic gifts being given in new eras. If God wants to do miracles of hearing or give private prayer languages in later Church history, that’s up to him.
I’m not going to tell the Holy Spirit, “Hey, wait a minute! You can’t do that!”
It’s just not what Luke described happening on the day of Pentecost or what Paul described in 1 Corinthians.
&nbsp;
The Christian Meaning of the Feast?
So what is the Christian significance of the day of Pentecost?
You often hear it described as a reversal of what happened at the Tower of Babel. BABEL
Back in Genesis 11, mankind got too big for its britches and started building a tower to the heavens, so God came down and confused the people’s speech, giving rise to all the different languages, which fragmented mankind into different communities.
Now, on Pentecost, God is getting the band back together by miraculously uniting people despite the fact they speak different languages.
This is a possible interpretation, and I don’t have a problem with it. But if you stop there, I think you’re missing something, because you’re not looking at the nature of Pentecost itself.
Remember, it eventually came to represent a covenant renewal celebration. It already had that as one of its meanings around 150 B.C., so it’s possible that early Christians understood the Pentecost of A.D. 33 as a renewal of God’s covenant in the form of the new covenant that Jesus had announced, telling the Twelve:
Luke 22:20
This chalice which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
However, even more fundamentally, Pentecost was a harvest festival. It was the beginning of the wheat harvest, which was the most important harvest of the year.
And the Pentecost of A.D. 33 was the beginning of the major wave of converts that came into the Christian faith after Jesus’ resurrection.
Jesus had specifically empowered the disciples for purposes of bringing these converts in, telling them:
Acts 1:8
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
Then, in fulfillment of this prophecy, the day of Pentecost happens, the disciples preach to an international crowd of visitors, and they literally make thousands of converts. Luke tells us that:
Acts 2:41
Those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
I thus regard those three thousand souls as the firstfruits of the great Christian harvest of which we are all a part.
* * *
If you like this content, you can help me out by liking, commenting, writing a review, sharing the podcast, and subscribing
If you’re watching on YouTube, be sure and hit the bell notification so that you always get notified when I have a new video
We’re in our second year of the podcast now, and you can help me keep making this podcast for years into the future—and can get early access to new episodes—by going to <a href="https://patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast">Patreon.com/JimmyAkinPodcast</a>
Thank you, and I’ll see you next time
God bless you always!

Pentecost Tongues: Real Languages or Private Prayer?

<div>What is the difference between resuscitation and resurrection?</div><div><blockquote>Now it must be acknowledged that if in Jesus’ Resurrection we were dealing simply with the miracle of a resuscitated corpse, it would ultimately be of no concern to us. For it would be no more important than the resuscitation of a clinically dead person through the art of doctors. For the world as such and for our human existence, nothing would have changed. The miracle of a resuscitated corpse would indicate that Jesus’ Resurrection was equivalent to the raising of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:22-24, 35-43 and parallel passages), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44). After a more or less short period, these individuals returned to their former lives, and then at a later point they died definitively.
The New Testament testimonies leave us in no doubt that what happened in the “Resurrection of the Son of Man” was utterly different. Jesus’ Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying and becoming but lies beyond it—a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence. Therefore the Resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated event that we could set aside as something limited to the past, but it constitutes an “evolutionary leap” (to draw an analogy, albeit one that is easily misunderstood). In Jesus’ Resurrection a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for mankind.
(Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week—From the Entrance Into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, ch. 9)</blockquote>
Resuscitation would mean that Jesus was simply brought back to life and then resumed to live a normal life within the confines of the current laws of nature. Resurrection means that Jesus was entirely transformed into a new kind of living which is not confined to the laws of our fallen world.  It was not a return to the status quo but a complete transformation into a new beginning.
</div>

Resuscitation or Resurrection?

“If I had to pick between my two degrees and my husband, I’d choose my husband any day. Being his wife is my greatest accomplishment.”
I recently found myself in a minor internet war with other women over this comment I made.
Here is a list of some of the not-so-nice replies I received from it:
“I’m so embarrassed for you.”
“This is the saddest thing I have heard in a while.”
“Setting women back.”
“Seek help.”
For many Gen Z women, being married and starting a family is less likely to be seen as an accomplishment and more likely to be seen as a hindrance to true success. In a <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-gen-zs-gender-divide-reaches-politics-views-marriage-children-suc-rcna229255">recent NBC News Decision Desk Poll</a>, females aged eighteen through twenty-nine were asked to rank what is important to their personal definition of success. The number-one choice was “having a job or career you find fulfilling,” and number two was “having enough money to do the things you want to do.” Marriage ranked eleventh.
To them, if something gets in the way of a great career and financial success (which marriage and children can do), then it’s something to be avoided at all costs. If it assists in accomplishing these goals, it should be pursued.
That’s where we find these women who believe graduating with a Bachelor’s degree is a much greater accomplishment than finding a good husband. But as a Gen Z woman, I could not disagree more.
Don’t get me wrong—I’m grateful for my college education. But the value of education can’t be compared to the value of a good spouse and marriage.
Like many people, my decision to go to college was an investment made for a future career—a career that was not intended to change the world or save millions of lives, but to pay the bills and leave me contented at the end of the day.
When I decided to get married, however, I didn’t see it as an investment opportunity, but as my path to heaven. A path that not only I could walk, but also my husband and all the subsequent generations created from our union.
This is what makes marriage so invaluable: not only will it transform you, but it can lead to the existence of an entirely new generation. A generation that, if formed with love, will do far greater good for the world than any college degree could. (Because let’s be honest: most people will not make Nobel-prize worthy discoveries with their college degrees.)
If I were asked to forfeit my degree for my husband, and that meant working a minimum-wage job in a fast-food drive-thru, so be it. I vowed, “for richer, for poorer.” Many of my Gen Z peers would hesitate though—since true success for them is not found in the loving embrace of a good spouse, but in a fulfilling career and overflowing bank account.
As for me, I’ll stick to the wisdom of Scripture: “A good wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (Prov. 31:10).

Is Marriage Really Less Valuable Than a College Degree?

Many of the faithful in the West are probably wondering whether or not Pope Leo is a liberal pope, given several recent headlines and the release of his first papal document Dilexi Te. Joe gives a thoughtful analysis on why this is the wrong way to look at it.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer and Pope Leo just released his first magisterial document, Dielexi Te, an exhortation on Christian Love for the poor. It&#8217;s beautiful, rich, filled with quotations from scripture and from the church fathers. And honestly, the 2000 year history of the church is really brought out in a bold way. It&#8217;s also spiritually challenging for those of us who live in comfort and in luxury, but unfortunately it seems that many Catholics have greeted his exploitation with skepticism or outright rejection based on the belief the Pope can&#8217;t be trusted because he&#8217;s a liberal pope.
CLIP:
Now, I know a lot of you had high hopes for the new Pope after the incessant leftist activism of his predecessor, but I tried to warn you, Pope Leo is cut from the same cloth.
Joe:
This reaction isn&#8217;t totally surprising. For one thing by every metric, Americans live in a politically partisan age, and I think this is true throughout the West, we&#8217;re more likely to regard people from other political parties as immoral, dishonest, and close-minded people than we used to be. And we&#8217;re less likely to do things like marry someone from an opposing political party. So naturally, we in the West are absolutely primed to put one of the most influential figures in the world into this political paradigm to see if we can trust him or not. Now I get that that&#8217;s our first inclination, particularly in an age where trust in institutions is at the lowest it&#8217;s been in recent memory and we&#8217;ve just come out of a pontificate in which the Pope regularly opined on political issues in ways that were often controversial. But I do think it&#8217;s worth pausing for a moment, reconsidering the evidence and recalling church teaching because Jesus Christ doesn&#8217;t call us to be Republicans or Democrats or some other political party.
He calls us to be faithful servant to the Father. And I think Leo is doing the same thing. I don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s trying to get us to attach to a specific party affiliation. I think he&#8217;s calling us to be better disciples. By the way, if you&#8217;ll permit me to call your attention over shameless joe.com, we&#8217;d be grateful for your support. For as little as $5 a month, you can get access to exclusive q and a live streams. This new thing we&#8217;ve got called Joe Notes, which is a PDF digest of each episode covering the major points including a sheet of resources. You don&#8217;t have to go searching through the episode again before you share the faith with your loved ones. And additionally, your support is really important for this channel&#8217;s growth. Particularly many of you may know we&#8217;ve had technical issues lately. My producer is right now driving to Kansas City to help upgrade the studio and that wouldn&#8217;t be financially possible without all of my amazing patrons. So if you feel called to do so, please join over@shamelessjoe.com and just know your support really does make all the difference. Okay, so this idea of trying to peg the Pope as liberal or conservative or traditionalist has grown to such an extent that at the press conference announcing the release of the new document to Lexie Te, a Washington Post reporter asked Cardinal Cherney about it, to which he said,
CLIP:
I think as soon as you say a liberal pope, then we&#8217;re pulling the Pope and the ministry of Peter and his successors onto a very partial platform. It&#8217;s true. You can interpret these things from a political science or sociological point of view, and God bless you if you want to do that, but we can&#8217;t answer in those same terms and we shouldn&#8217;t. I&#8217;m sure that Pope Francis would be unhappy to be called a liberal pope, and I&#8217;m sure that Pope Leo would not enjoy the label either. And it doesn&#8217;t help. I mean, is the gospel liberal? Is the gospel liberal? I guess that&#8217;s my answer.
Joe:
I think that&#8217;s the right answer. The Pope isn&#8217;t trying to be a Democrat or a Republican. He&#8217;s not trying to be a political liberal or conservative. He&#8217;s trying to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ and to share the gospel in his fullness in his own words. He said recently,
CLIP:
I don&#8217;t plan to get involved in partisan politics. That&#8217;s not what the church is about. But I&#8217;m not afraid to raise issues that I think are real gospel issues that hopefully people on both sides of the aisle, as we say, will be able to listen to.
Joe:
And just as he is not tying the church to one political party, he&#8217;s also not trying to side with a particular faction within the church. Said he&#8217;s been very clear that he sees his role as building bridges and depolarizing the camps within the church. And he announced to the church and his inaugural masses pope that he would like that our first great desire be for a united church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes 11 for a reconciled world. That attitude is quite possibly what got him elected in the enclave. And it&#8217;s no wonder after all the church has been through years of nasty infighting during the Francis pontificate, rightly or wrongly, Pope Francis was viewed as being very political and his actions sometimes fed into this view. He seemed very willing to opine on controversial hot button questions. By the end of his pontificate, it was clear that the major tribes of the church had become more entrenched and more radicalized.
So this past May the world and the church was eagerly awaiting to see if the new Pope would be Francis II or John Paul III or Benedict XVII. But instead we got Leo the XIV. He took the name in honor of Pope Leo XIII because of his work in Catholic social teaching during the Industrial Revolution. And our current Leo sees a similar paradigm shifting technology emerging with ai, but our politically polarized brains don&#8217;t know where to categorize that or what to make of Pope Leo. So people will analyze even little details as proof that Pope Leo has unmasked himself as a secret conservative or a secret liberal or a secret traditionalist. Did he say the Latin mass when he was bishop in Peru? And according to which missile did he smile more during his meeting with Father James Martin or with JD Vance? And it&#8217;s in this context that there have been recently a series of back-to-back events which have caused people to conclude, I think incorrectly that the Pope is secretly or not so secretly a liberal.
The biggest evidence and in my view, the most obvious stumble in the Pope&#8217;s part occurred about two weeks ago after Cardinal Blase Cupich, which of Chicago announced plans to bestow a lifetime achievement award on Senator Dick Durbin, a pro-abortion politician. Now, that was obviously scandalous. It violated the CB&#8217;s policy that while shouldn&#8217;t cut off dialogue with those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles, we also shouldn&#8217;t bestow awards or special honors upon them. In fact, super&#8217;s own diocese of Chicago has that same official policy. Now several other bishops beginning with Senator Durbin&#8217;s own Bishop, Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois. These bishops denounced the move publicly. So as Pop Leo speaking with a group of English speaking reporters at Castel Gandolfo, somebody asked Pop Leo about this. Now to my mind, the most important part of the exchange is actually the very beginning.
CLIP:
Can I ask a question in English? Just a quick
One question in English. Thank
You. Thank you for speaking with us. I just wanted to ask one thing that has become a bit of a divisive subject in the US right now with Cardinal Cupich giving an award to Senator Durbin. Some people of faith are having a hard time with understanding this because he is pro or rather he&#8217;s for legalized abortion. How would you help people of faith right now decipher that feel about that and how do you feel about that?
I&#8217;m not terribly familiar with the particular case.
Joe:
As you can see from the clip, he doesn&#8217;t appear to be eager to answer the question. He was about to walk away before he, he&#8217;s asked for one more question and then it turns out to be on this very contentious topic and given how much Leo seems to have intentionally avoided public fights with other bishops, you can imagine why he might be reticent to suddenly be asked to speak publicly. So he sort of fumbles through an off the cuff answer.
CLIP:
I understand the difficulty and the tensions, but I think as I myself have spoken in the past, it&#8217;s important to look at many issues that are related to what is the teaching of the church. Someone who says, I&#8217;m against abortion but says I&#8217;m in favor of the death penalty is not really pro-life. So someone who says that I&#8217;m against abortion, but I am in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s pro-life.
Joe:
I understand why people didn&#8217;t like that answer. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a great response, but I personally have had plenty of times where somebody has called into Catholic Answers and asked an unexpected question and I&#8217;ve given an answer that came off more jumbled than I intended. For what it&#8217;s worth, when asked to opine on US domestic politics a week later, I think it&#8217;s extremely telling that this is how it went.
CLIP:
Holy Father, president Trump has sent 400 National Guard troops to your city Chicago
Against. Yes, I prefer not to comment at this time about choices made political choices within the United States. Thank you
Joe:
Very much. So I do think it&#8217;s only fair to try to steal man what our Holy Father was trying to express. First notice that Leo never actually defends Cardinal Cupich&#8217;s plan. In fact, I haven&#8217;t heard a single other bishop defending the idea. But Leo&#8217;s style seems to be to quietly address problems away from the spotlight rather than calling people on the carpet in front of the international press. I think this is because he pays closer heed to Matthew 18 than many of us online do. So I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s a coincidence that the very same day Senator Durbin suddenly announced that he was no longer going to be accepting the award. Second Leo never suggested that the death penalty was on par with abortion. I mentioned this because I&#8217;ve seen people claim that the Pope equated abortion in the death penalty and he simply did not.
Rather, he pointed out that being good on abortion but not other issues isn&#8217;t enough. I think there&#8217;s a better way of formulating what I think he&#8217;s trying to say by looking to what St. John Paul II said in his encyclical evangelism vitae on the gospel of life. Now, there JP two stress that amongst all of the crimes which can be committed against life, abortion is particularly serious and deplorable. But while abortion may be the worst offense against life, it&#8217;s not the only offense against life. JP two warned against an attitude of indifference towards society&#8217;s weakest members such as the elderly, the infirm, immigrants, and children. After all, think about it like this. Our love for the unborn is really another species of our love for the weak, the downtrodden and the vulnerable. Those we believe are the nearest to the Lord&#8217;s heart. Now, that doesn&#8217;t mean a nation can&#8217;t have an enforced sound immigration policies, but it does mean that we need to do so in a way that still treats immigrants as made in the image of God.
And similarly, JP two suggested that a culture of life would be more hesitant to have recourse to war, even just war, and would limit or even abolish the death penalty. So of course, it is outrageous to offer a lifetime achievement award to somebody who helps ensure the legality of killing children just because they happen to be good on issues like immigration. But as Catholics, we also have to remember that the creation of a culture of life is something bigger than just being right on the issue of abortion. That was the Durban controversy. The very next day Pop Leo found himself embroiled in a different controversy. Now, this time it wasn&#8217;t really over something he&#8217;d said, but what he did or where he was, and I&#8217;m honestly not sure this would&#8217;ve been a major controversy had it not followed immediately on the heels of the Durban comments. But Pope Leo was at a preplanned event in Rome about climate change, and while he was there, he blessed a block of ice and people were outraged and claimed that this was somehow pagan.
CLIP:
When we got the new Pope, I was really, really hoping that we would have something much better than Pope Francis and his disastrous reign over the Catholic church. And yet what we see there with that blessing, a block of ice that is a nod to the paganism of the environmental movement a hundred percent.
Joe:
But blessing a block of ice isn&#8217;t Pagan Christians have been blessing the goods of the earth for as long as there&#8217;s been Christianity. This is particularly true at the blessing of water. We find tullian talking about the blessing of the waters to be used before baptism as far back as about the year 200. Now, this Christian gesture doesn&#8217;t suddenly become pagan if the water happens to be frozen. And in this case, the Frozenness is intentional. This was a 20,000 year old block of ice from Greenland, which they watched melt into holy water, which of course symbolized climate change. But that I suspect is really at the heart of the bigger issue in countries like the US climate change, a heavenly partisan issue. We can see the stats showing about three quarters of Democrats believe climate change is a serious crisis compared to only about a quarter of Republicans.
But outside of the us, climate change isn&#8217;t an issue tied to one political party or another. Most Europeans, for instance, agree that it&#8217;s a serious problem even though people obviously disagree about what can and should be done about it. Now, hopefully, whatever your own views are on the ins and outs of climate change, we can at least recognize this isn&#8217;t about supporting one political party. And we can also hopefully recognize that if humans are destroying the earth, that&#8217;s a moral problem that the church should help us address. Particularly given that all the way back in Genesis, we find that one of our first duties is to be good stewards of God&#8217;s creation. So if we&#8217;re failing to do that, whether it&#8217;s by climate change or pollution or some other way, those are moral concerns that the church should speak out about. That doesn&#8217;t mean the church is going to have all the scientific solutions, but the church clearly does have a role to play in getting people to take ecological stewardship seriously.
And so that&#8217;s something we&#8217;ve seen several of the last Popes doing from St. Paul VI to St. John Paul II to Benedict vii, to Pope Francis. And I think that these dual controversies both overshadowed the release of deluxe te and also colored how people read it. It&#8217;s easy to kind of write it off. We should care for the poor as liberal plum. But the reality is it&#8217;s gospel truth. Jesus promises and warns us in Matthew 25 that whatever we do to the least of our brothers, we do to him. So service of the poor is literally inseparable from service to Christ. As Pope Leo points out in the document. For us Christians, the problem of the poor leads to the very heart of our faith since it&#8217;s in the poor, that we find the flesh of Jesus Christ. So caring for the poor isn&#8217;t an issue of left and right, it&#8217;s an issue of right and wrong.
That&#8217;s the message Jesus shows us in Lazarus and the Good Samaritan and throughout the New Testament. So before you go writing off to Lexie Te as some kind of liberal social justice agenda, I hope you&#8217;ll read it with an eye towards the gospel and towards our own final judgment. Now this Thursday I&#8217;m going to be offering my own deep dive into Lexie Te, where we&#8217;ll examine how caring for the poor is one of the central calls of the Christian life, how the document harkens back to the apocalypse and a lot more if it&#8217;s already released, you can click here to watch. But if you&#8217;re watching this before Thursday, you&#8217;ll instead see a video that further explains why I think Leo will be an awesome bridge builder. Either way, for Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer, God bless you.
&nbsp;

Is Pope Leo a Liberal?

A SLAM DUNK Debate For Catholics (Fatima DEBATE REVIEW)

<div>I would like feedback on whether one should have a Mass offered for someone who has died who was an atheist.</div><div>By all means, you may have a Mass offered for an atheist who has died. Obviously, he or she is not an atheist anymore! And should the person be in purgatory, the help received from the Holy Mass is considerable, especially if the atheist was originally baptized and so has the character of baptism, which relates the soul directly to receiving the fruits of divine worship.
</div>

Should I Offer Mass for an Atheist’s Soul?

Jimmy Akin explains the cultural and practical factors that have lead to the Catholic Church&#8217;s preference for baptism by immersion, while clarifying that both pouring and immersion are valid modes of administering the sacrament.
Transcript:
Host: Anonymous, listening—or, watching on YouTube Live, you are on with Jimmy Akin, what’s your question?
Caller: Hi! I had a question—oh, can you hear me?
Host: We can, yes.
Jimmy: Yes, you’re on the air, what’s your question?
Caller: Okay, sorry, I was just wondering about baptism. I’ve just been, like…in the Catholic Orthodox church which I’m a part of, we have, like, the standard baptism by immersion, and then if there’s any need to do it otherwise, if there’s any reason to make an exception, we’ll go by the exception. So what I was just wondering is, just curiosity as to why, like, the Catholic Church, like the standard is pouring instead of immersion.
Jimmy: Um, it’s just culture. That’s the fundamental answer. The Catholic Church recognizes that both immersion and pouring are valid modes of baptism; that’s something that’s been recognized since the first century, because we have at least the mode of pouring mentioned as a valid mode in a document known as the Didache, which dates back to the first century. So the validity of both modes is something that has been recognized widely down through history.
However, presumably because it can be a little awkward to immerse a baby, and baptism is normally performed with babies, or most frequently performed with babies, in the Latin rite of the Church, it ended up being the less common mode. However, the Church does acknowledge that immersion is a more expressive way of symbolizing the action of God in baptism and the washing away of our sins. So if you look in the Church’s current documents, there’s even kind of a little preference for immersion where it’s possible and appropriate, but for historical-cultural reasons, it is not the most common form of administration of baptism, and it tends to go to the fact that it’s a little harder to immerse a baby than it is an adult.
Now, that’s not to say you can’t immerse a baby; in fact, my understanding is that in many branches of Christianity—and it may be this way in the Coptic Orthodox church—but in many branches of Christianity, babies are immersed. And so it’s certainly possible, it just may cause a little more ruckus than it would just pouring—although, even pouring can cause a little bit of a ruckus with a baby.
Caller: Thanks, yeah and we do immerse babies as well. I was just curious about the difference and why that was the case, so thank you!
Jimmy: No problem, basically just a cultural difference just cause of how things evolved.

Why Does the Catholic Church Pour Instead of Immerse for Baptisms?

<div class="page" title="Page 291">
<div class="section">
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
DAY 281
</div>
<div class="column">
CHALLENGE
</div>
</div>
<div class="layoutArea">
<div class="column">
“Why can’t I, as a Christian, simply choose the beliefs I think are right? Why should anybody else tell me what I should believe?”
DEFENSE
This may be an attractive proposition in our individualistic age, but it wasn’t Jesus’ view.
If you’re going to be a Christian, that means listening to Jesus Christ, and he set up a Church, not a cafeteria. We aren’t allowed to pick and choose our beliefs like we pick and choose dishes in a serving line.
This is evident from the way Jesus teaches. In the Sermon on the Mount, he repeatedly takes on common interpretations of Jewish law and corrects them by his own authority, using the formula, “You have heard . . . but I say . . .” (Matt. 5:21–22, 27–28, 31–32, 33–34, 38–39, 43–44). The authority with which he taught was remarkable even in his own day: “The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt. 7:28–29; cf. Mark 1:22, Luke 4:32).
Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God. His teaching is backed by divine authority—“My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me” (John 7:16)—and one is not a faithful Christian if one rejects what Christ taught. That has implications, because Christ did not keep this authority to himself. He gave teaching authority to the ministers he put in charge of his Church, telling them: “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Luke 10:16).
He further promised them, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13), and he declared: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:18–20).
Jesus thus invested his Church with the authority to teach until the end of the world, and if we want to be Jesus’ followers, we cannot simply pick and choose our own beliefs.
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Cafeteria Christianity

Both Catholics and Protestants of the Reformed tradition actually agree on something pretty important: when we’re initially justified, we become a “new creation.” To back this up, both sides regularly point to two passages from St. Paul:
<ul>
<li>2 Corinthians 5:17—“Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.”</li>
<li>Galatians 6:15—“For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”</li>
</ul>
So where’s the disagreement? It’s not over whether Paul is talking about being a new creation. Rather, it’s over what that has to do with justification.
Catholics see these passages as evidence for their view that justification is rooted in an interior transformation—what we often call sanctification. Reformed Protestants agree that these texts describe sanctification, but they resist identifying sanctification with justification. On their view, sanctification certainly accompanies justification, but it isn’t what justifies us.
So which reading is right? I’m going to suggest it’s the Catholic one.
Before getting into that, though, let me say this: I don’t fault our Protestant friends for missing the connection between “being a new creation” and justification. After all, the word justification doesn’t appear in either passage. If the connection is there—and I think it is—it takes a bit of unpacking to see it.
Let’s start with 2 Corinthians 5:17.
Paul tells us that the condition for being a new creation is being “in Christ.” That phrase is doing a lot of work here.
In Romans 8:1, Paul explains what it means to be in Christ: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” To be in Christ, then, is to be free from condemnation.
Now, here’s the key move. The state of being justified and the state of being free from condemnation are logically identical. To be justified—to be in a right relationship with God—is precisely to not be subject to condemnation. And the reverse is true as well: if you’re not subject to condemnation, you’re justified.
Romans 6:23 reinforces this point. Paul writes, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” To possess eternal life is to be justified. And Paul tells us that eternal life comes only in Christ. So once again, being in Christ and being justified are the same reality.
Now take that insight back to 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Whoever is in Christ is a new creation.”
Since being in Christ means being justified (as Romans 8:1 and 6:23 indicate), and since being in Christ also means being a new creation, which entails interior righteousness (as Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:17), it follows that Paul is linking justification with becoming interiorly new—interiorly righteous. In other words, to be justified is to be transformed within. Or, said another way, interior righteousness belongs to justification itself.
That’s exactly how Catholics understand justification: as an interior state of righteousness that God brings about in us, not merely a legal declaration made from the outside.
Now let’s turn to Galatians 6:15.
The context makes it clear that Paul is talking about personal salvation—about justification. Just one verse earlier, in Galatians 6:14, Paul says he boasts in “the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,” because through it, “the world has been crucified to [him], and [he] to the world.” That’s Paul’s vivid way of saying he’s no longer under the dominion of sin. He’s describing his new, justified state.
Immediately after this, Paul contrasts circumcision with “a new creation.” Given what he’s just said about being crucified to the world, it’s reasonable to assume that he’s including himself—and every other Christian who has been crucified to the world—among those who are new creations.
This contrast is crucial. Circumcision was something some were relying on to be justified before God. Paul even spells this out earlier in Galatians 5:4, where he speaks of those who week to be “justified by the law.”
So Paul is setting two models side by side. On the one hand, there’s justification sought through circumcision and the Old Law. On the other hand, there’s being a new creation in Christ. The implication is hard to miss: being interiorly renewed—being a new creation—is the new basis for justification.
In short, our interior righteousness is not just something that is present alongside justification; it belongs what to justification is. It’s that on account that we are justified.
All of this means that Paul’s “new creation” language does support the Catholic understanding of justification—once the relevant texts are carefully unpacked.
And that leads to an important takeaway for Catholics today. Simply pointing to a verse about sanctification isn’t enough to make the case. We have to do the extra work of showing how Paul himself connects sanctification and justification. When we do that, the Catholic reading comes clearly into view.

Catholics and Protestants Agree! Kind Of . . .

Chapter 7 of the Second Book of Samuel recounts a conversation between King David and the prophet Nathan. David was settled comfortably “in a house of cedar” (v. 2) in Jerusalem, the city he conquered. Israel’s situation had been largely stabilized, the threats of its enemies contained.
But David is bothered: while he dwells in an elegant palace, “the ark of God remains in a tent.”
The tent contained the Ark of the Covenant, the tablets of Sinai. It’s hard to explain their significance to Israel. In one sense, they were Israel’s constitution. But the Ark of the Covenant was no traveling National Archives. The Sinai Covenant was more than a document. Written with the finger of God, these tablets were the basis of who Israel was—God’s people—and who Yahweh was to them.
Given their significance, David feels a disproportion between where he and they dwell. He proposes—and builds—a temple for them.
But God is never outdone by human effort (of whose inspiration he initiates through grace). Although Nathan tells David to do what the king has in mind (v. 3), he subsequently adds how God intends to match and exceed David. David might build the Lord a temple for a house, but God will make the “house of David” last forever through a Messiah from that lineage (vv. 11-16).
Man wants to build a physical house. God wants to make man himself a home in which to dwell. Man’s efforts are always so clumsy that Scripture sums them up as “he did not know what he was saying” (Luke 9:33) when Peter’s response to Jesus’ transfiguration (to which we are also called at the Last Judgment) was to propose building Sukkot tents. Or to giggle from inside a tent when the Divine Visitation offers a son in one’s old age (Gen. 18:9-15).
God would, by prevenient grace, create a human ark of the covenant, the Blessed Virgin Mary, to carry Jesus, the promised fulfillment of the Davidic house.
But if Jesus “fully reveals man to himself” (as both Vatican II and Pope St. John Paul II repeatedly insisted), God’s homebuilding did not end with Jesus as the eternal King. God aspires to do similar construction work among men through his Habitat for Divinity program.
In his conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus makes clear that the physical locus of worship is less important than that man worship God “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). It’s not that a sacred place is unimportant, but that its locus has changed.
Elsewhere, St. Paul makes that clear when he asks, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is within you?” (1 Cor 6:19). That doesn’t mean the Church is unimportant: a church is “the house of God” because he is really present there, in the Blessed Sacrament reserved in the tabernacle.
But the house in which God really desires to dwell, the tabernacle in which he prefers to be really present, is the human heart, the heart that worships him “in spirit and in truth.” That is why that human temple is sacramentally sanctified: blessed and consecrated in baptism and confirmation and fully rendered a tabernacle by the Eucharist. It is the dignity of that temple that spurs St. Paul to deplore its sacrilege.
In the Book of Revelation (ch. 21) the heavenly Jerusalem has no temple. The mediating structure of temple—of Church and sacrament—is no longer necessary in the Beatific Vision (see <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html">Lumen Gentium</a> 48), for “we shall see him as he is” and “be like him” (1 John 3:2). Revelation describes the heavenly Jerusalem as “God’s dwelling place . . . now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (21:3). What goes around comes around. David’s temple containing the Ark of the Covenant is replaced by God’s own temple, in which Jesus himself is the covenant by which man can be God’s people and he their God.
The practical consequence: building ourselves, through cooperation with God’s grace, into ever more fitting temples in which the spirit of God can dwell. The warning that we “work out our salvation in fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12) should make us aware that we can fail at the task—not because God does not enable us to succeed, but because we can refuse his grace. “If God does not build the house, in vain do the builders labor” (Ps. 129:1) does not mean there’s a shortage of people working on futile human construction projects. History is littered with them, building the “new man” without God. Joining our work with his grace, however, enables us to stand up houses—temples—on rock instead of sand (Matt. 7:24-27).

Where Does God Want to Live?

<div>How do we know St. Joan of Arc’s visions were truly from the saints?</div><div>There are various reasons, particularly the Church’s affirmation of her sanctity in canonizing Joan, something Church leaders wouldn’t do if they thought she were delusional or a fraud. Regarding her visions, <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/joan1.htm">one biographer</a> states,
<blockquote>We are not for a moment suggesting that St Margaret or St Michael or St Catherine assumed in fact a human body in order to manifest themselves to St Joan; nor do we care very much for the theory that these visions were a pure figment of her imagination. After all, these visions did change for many years the course of history for three nations and, in whatever manner they came, we may be allowed to think they were designed by God as the means for Him to influence and direct human affairs.</blockquote>
Indeed, history was impacted significantly as a result of St. Joan’s visions. Though being a simple peasant young woman, she impressed the King of France:
<blockquote>The king took her apart and had a long conversation with her. It is said that &#8220;she confided to him a secret which was known to him alone and to God, which gave him a great confidence in her&#8221;. What the secret was, no one knows and St Joan repeatedly refused to reveal it to her judges. Charles was impressed but would take no final decision yet.</blockquote>
She subsequently impressed a commission of theologians who, though they didn’t pronounce on the origin of her visions, counseled the king that Joan “must not be prevented from going to Orleans with the men-at-arms,” because “to do otherwise would be resisting the Holy Spirit and making oneself unworthy of the help of God.”
And St. Joan didn’t buckle despite repeated bad treatment, a temporary retraction made out of fear of being burned at the stake notwithstanding. Finally, again, we have the infallible judgment of the Church on Joan’s sanctity in canonizing her. Canonization is distinguished from evaluating a person’s reported private revelations, but the Church never would have canonized St. Joan had they not thought her associated private revelations worthy of belief.
For more on St. Joan of Arc and her life, see <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/joan1.htm">this article</a> and <a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/joan.htm">this article</a>. For more on private revelation in general, see <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/private-revelation">our tract</a>.
</div>

The Authenticity of St. Joan of Arc’s Visions

Is NFP ‘Catholic Contraception?

Can someone who is not Catholic and committed mortal sin at some point in their life still be saved?

What would be the grounds for canonizing a person who is not a priest, bishop, religious or martyr like Carlo Acutis?

&#8220;Is NFP just Catholic Birth Control?&#8221; In this episode, we explore the nuances of Natural Family Planning and its distinction from contraception. Additionally, we tackle questions about the salvation of non-Catholics who have committed mortal sins and the criteria for canonizing laypeople like Carlo Acutis. Tune in for a thoughtful examination of these important topics.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Is NFP just Catholic Birth Control? | AMA: Catholicism w/ Tim Staples

Remembering Pope Francis – Reflections from Our Apologists

Why can’t adults who are unconscious be baptized due to not being able to give consent but babies can be baptized?

Can you clarify if God is limited on performing miracles based on the person’s belief?

My protestant father says baptism isn’t important because Acts 1 says that John baptized with water but baptism with the spirit is what’s important. How do I respond?

How do you respond to the claim that baptism is a work?

What do we experience if we are in heaven and we see a family member on earth suffering?

What does it mean to have “full knowledge” of a mortal sin?

Why do we ask people to pray for us or for saints’ intercession when the Bible tells us that we’ll receive whatever we ask for in faith?

If Catholics are permitted to believe in evolution, is it a weaker version of evolution? How does it work with salvation?

Is it possible to receive one person of the Trinity in baptism and not receive the others?

My 7th Day Adventist neighbor brought up soul sleep and annihilationism. How do I respond to those topics? &nbsp;

Dropped Calls

Tim Staples cites Scripture and early Church writings to refute the common Protestant claim that the Eucharist is only a symbol of Christ&#8217;s body.

Is the Eucharist Just A Symbol?

<div>Can it actually be disproved that Jesus had brothers and sisters?</div><div>Jesus didn’t have any blood brothers and sisters. We cover this matter well in our tract <a href="https://www.catholic.com/tract/brethren-of-the-lord">“Brethren of the Lord”</a> and also <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/jesus-had-brothers">in a related article by Matt Fradd</a>.
</div>

Can It Be Proven Mary Had No Other Children?

We are in the middle of three major Sunday solemnities. May 28 was the Solemnity of Pentecost. June 4 is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity. June 11 is the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, often called “Corpus Christi.”
These three feasts are closely intertwined, though they might not appear so at first, especially since Ordinary Time weaves through the weekdays among them. Part of the reason for why they might seem disconnected could be the loss of the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/octave">Pentecost octave</a>. Pentecost used to have its own octave, so that Trinity Sunday was also its octave day (and probably the reason why the Holy See in the nineteenth century approved the still-valid indult that specifies the time for fulfillment of one’s “Easter duty”—when one should receive one’s Easter Communion—to run from the First Sunday of Lent through Trinity Sunday). Corpus Christi, in most of the world, is observed on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, though, in the United States, it’s another of those solemnities transferred to the adjacent Sunday.
I argue the theme connecting these three solemnities is life.
Pentecost is the celebration par excellence of the Holy Spirit. Each Sunday, we confess our faith in the Holy Spirit as “the Lord and Giver of life.”
The Holy Spirit is the giver of spiritual life. The story of Pentecost might accentuate the fortitude that the Holy Spirit provides, enabling us to bear witness to the Faith. No small number of priests will have called Pentecost “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/is-pentecost-the-birthday-of-the-church">the birthday of the Church</a>.” That is true, but it is also the first <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/where-is-confirmation-in-the-bible">confirmation</a>. Though some French theologians have recently spoken of confirmation as “the forgotten sacrament,” the truth is that the “gift of the Holy Spirit” that Jesus sent to his disciples assembled according to his instructions in Jerusalem’s Upper Room is the same gift that the bishop imparts when he signs candidates for confirmation, praying, “Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
The life of the Church began on Pentecost. But the Christian life always begins with the Holy Spirit. Whatever good we do, whatever good inspirations we have, whatever witness we bear to truth and goodness, begins with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Let’s not forget that: all our good is incited by the Holy Spirit. We are free to follow through or not, but the grace of the Holy Spirit is what prompts us. The sacraments “work” because the Holy Spirit works through them. God’s graces—actual and sanctifying—come to us from the Holy Spirit.
That’s why Jesus says the one sin that is unforgivable is “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.” What is that? Put simply: it is the persistent and finally impenitent refusal to accept God’s graces. God will forgive everything, but even God cannot forgive the person who doesn’t want to be forgiven (at least not on God’s terms).
The Holy Spirit did not just zoom down on Jerusalem and then rush back to heaven. The Holy Spirit is he who continues Jesus’ work and redemption in the Church until the Last Day, when Jesus returns. So we owe the Holy Spirit our spiritual lives.
We also owe God our physical lives. It’s said “it takes two to have a baby.” That’s not wholly correct. It actually takes three.
A man and a woman can contribute the physical components—the gametes—essential to man’s physical dimension. But they cannot infuse a soul, which is essential to the life of the body. Only God can do that. Only God is “Lord and giver of life.” So when human beings take affirmative actions to frustrate the giving of life—when they act to make their sexual intercourse infertile—they are also essentially telling God, “Your giving of life requires my approval.” Isn’t that a kind of blasphemy?
That leads us to the Trinity. No small number of priests will tell you, “The Trinity is a mystery”—and it is. But that doesn’t mean we are utterly ignorant of whom God is.
St. John is audacious. He attempts to define God. “God is Love” (1 John 4:8). God doesn’t love, like one action among many. God purely and simply is Love. And because Love is never self-centered, but always giving, God’s love cannot be anything else but a communion of persons, which is what the Trinity is. The Father loves absolutely, “begetting” his Son from eternity. The Son responds in love to the Father absolutely from all eternity. From where their love meets “proceeds” the Holy Spirit, from the Father and the Son.
So God is Love, and God is three Persons. And we are made in the image and likeness of that God.
That is why the human vocation is love. That is why St. John Paul II could write in his first papal encyclical that man “remains incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless . . . if he does not make [love] his own” (Redemptor Hominis 10). Given in whose image human beings are made, the failure to give in love is to be existentially frustrated.
For most people, that giving in love occurs in marriage and, through marriage, parenthood. Again, the Trinity provides us with a model of absolute, unreserved Love that gives life. God’s life and God’s love are the same; why do we think we can separate these realities in our lives?
Finally, we celebrate Corpus Christi. Jesus promised to remain with us until the end of time, and he does so, through the invocation of the Holy Spirit at each Mass, in the Eucharist. It’s not a “symbol” or a “memory.” It is the true Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ given to us. Jesus is a true human being, which means he encounters us as a true human being: bodily and spiritually, albeit under the appearances of <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/what-is-bread-what-is-wine">bread and wine</a>. That’s why the doctrine of transubstantiation is <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-a-catholic-reject-transubstantiation">not marginal</a> to our faith: Jesus really is here, and not just a reminder of him.
The Eucharist will always give us God’s life as long as we put no obstacle—i.e., sin—in the way. Mortal sin is such an obstacle, a form of “spiritual contraception”—the life God gives us in the Eucharist is brought into a sterilized and dead soul. So, again, this feast shows us what true love—and its intrinsic connection to life—entails.
We celebrate a truly rich, life-giving series of solemnities at this time of year. Let’s celebrate them to our spiritual profit.

The Life-Giving Sunday Trifecta!

Catholic young adults have never had more ways to meet a potential spouse. There are <a href="https://www.foryourmarriage.org/catholic-and-other-dating-websites/">dating apps</a>, <a href="https://www.ewtnnews.com/world/us/speed-dating-seek">speed-dating events</a>, <a href="https://nationalcatholicsingles.com/">conferences</a>, <a href="https://catholicaffinitas.com/">mixers</a>, <a href="https://nationalcatholicsingles.com/relationship-coaches-spiritual-directors/">matchmaking coaches</a>, and even <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/young-catholic-professionals_marriage-ycp-vocationstory-activity-7391505783588552704-6svN">organizations that now advertise the successful marriages they’ve inadvertently orchestrated</a>. 
And yet, the National Catholic Register recently published an <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/catholic-dating-inside-growing-divide">article</a> on how many young Catholic men and women are struggling to connect. The article pinpointed something most young adult Catholics have experienced firsthand: dating feels like a “future spouse” interview. Women feel scrutinized, men feel misunderstood, and everyone seems to be carrying around a secret checklist of must-have and deal-breaker attributes. 
It’s no wonder many young Catholics are lonelier and struggling more to connect than ever. 
Part of the problem is that we’ve become obsessed with the idea of marriage while simultaneously neglecting the kinds of relationships that make successful marriages possible. 
Somewhere along the way, many Catholics began viewing every single interaction with the opposite sex through a dating lens. Every conversation becomes a possibility. Every social event becomes an opportunity. Every new face is evaluated as a potential spouse. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CatholicDating/comments/t8snmz/the_pretty_girl_in_my_parish_who_returns_my_gaze/">Some have even convinced themselves</a> that prolonged eye contact is a sign from God that this person is their future spouse, instead of what it probably is: basic human acknowledgement. 
Instead of getting to know one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, we assess: Could this person be “the one”? Would I marry him or her? Could she be the mother, or could he be the father of my future children? 
And then there’s the LARPing…
The cringey theatrical performance of “traditional” marriage that has taken over a large group of young adult Catholics. Everyone wants a traditional spouse, a traditional family, a traditional home, and a traditional marriage. People are entitled to their preferences, of course—but a lot of what passes for “traditional” today seems to be cobbled together from ultra-patriarchal online apologists and a vague idealization of the 1950s. 
Some men want a wife who submits, stays home, dresses femininely, raises a small village of children, mills her own flour, and never questions their authority. Meanwhile, the same man works a remote finance job, answers emails for a living, and thinks paying rent makes him the lord of the manor. (He doesn’t tend livestock, or manage the estate passed down by his father, or fight in war. He uses Microsoft Teams.) 
Women are certainly not immune to fantasy either! We build our own imaginary husbands: perfectly masculine, “in touch with his feelings,” wealthy, spiritually mature, attractive, communicates with the efficiency of an AI Chatbot, and has an intense prayer life…and somehow available at the Theology on Tap this Thursday night. But obviously, finding all these traits in one person is relatively rare, and takes time. 
This is not to say that traditional family life is bad. It isn’t. Marriage is good. Motherhood is good. Fatherhood is good. Sacrifice is good.  
But LARPing and cosplay are not the same thing as virtue. A husband is called to sacrificial leadership, not domination. He is called to serve and love his wife, not boss her around like a &#8220;smart teenager.&#8221;  
Similarly, a wife is called to self-giving love, not simply to curate a beautiful life, secure a permanent best friend, or maximize earthly pleasures. Marriage is not just companionship with a ring on it. It is a vocation ordered toward sanctification and salvation. 
Ultimately, everyone is looking for a spouse. But far fewer people are asking whether they are becoming the kind of person who can actually love a spouse well, or be loved by one—the one question worth reflecting on to prepare for marriage. 
Instead, many Catholics are preparing for an imagined marriage. They’re looking for a character who fits the script they already wrote; someone who fits their plan and won’t require them to grow much or change. The <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/news/catholic-dating-inside-growing-divide">National Catholic Register article</a> agrees: many young Catholics think they know exactly what they want, but they don’t always understand what marriage is really for.  
This confusion has consequences. After years of hearing secular culture mock marriage as oppressive or unnecessary, many Catholics have swung in the opposite direction. They want marriage badly, but the desire itself may not be ordered properly. So instead of learning how to love another person well, they scan every possible suitor for signs that this person can deliver the life they have imagined—or for ways this person will fail to.  
Marriage is a beautiful vocation. But it was never meant to be an idol or a self-centered pursuit. Paradoxically, only when we stop obsessing over finding the perfect spouse and start pursuing Christ, friendship, virtue, and community, will we become far more capable of forming the sincere relationships that healthy marriage requires.

The Fantasy Spouse Is Keeping Catholics Single

<div>Is the Plymouth Brethren a cult?</div><div>Generally, the Plymouth Brethren (Plymouth, England, not Massachusetts!) would not be considered a cult. It is originally an attempt out of the Church of England in the early and mid-nineteenth century to return to a more radical Christian community like that of the first Christians. In this they have some similarities with the Methodist movement of the preceding century. This being said, there are some branches of this movement, the &#8220;exclusive&#8221; or &#8220;closed&#8221; branches, that make a great deal of excommunication for moral offenses and so have taken on the reputation of a cult. But generally, they are Protestant Christians who emphasize a pure profession of the faith with simplicity of life and worship, without a clergy but with a sharing of the Lord&#8217;s Supper at each service of the community.
</div>

All About the Plymouth Brethren

The greatest trick the devil ever played...

Jimmy Akin explains the different senses in which we use the term &#8220;mediator between God and man,&#8221; and why the senses in which this term is used in 1 Timothy 2:5 do not prohibit us from asking for intercessory prayer from Mary, the saints in Heaven, or our companions on Earth.

One Mediator Between God and Man: 1 Timothy 2:5 Explained

Is there a way to arrive at the conclusion of the personhood of God without resorting to revelation?

Does Eastern Orthodoxy have a singular authority like we do?

How come everyone takes the host for communion but not everyone gets the chalice?

Are extraordinary ministers of holy communion only to be used in emergency situations? My priest doesn’t always give communion at mass. He lets the EMs do it. Is that an abuse?

Was Adam one man or a group of men?

How do you start a conversation with someone who’s kind of a “new age junkie?” Like they’re always looking for a spiritual high or buying the next big self-help book, but can’t be bothered to open the Gospels?

Is there something that the early church believed in terms of doctrine that isn’t taught today?

Can human reason alone lead us to the conclusion that God is personal, even without divine revelation? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Catholic Answers apologists tackle deep philosophical and theological questions about God, authority, and the Church. The discussion explores whether Eastern Orthodoxy has a singular teaching authority comparable to the papacy, why Catholics often receive only the host and not the chalice at Communion, and whether extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion are sometimes overused. Additional topics include whether Adam was a single historical person or a group, how to evangelize someone immersed in New Age spirituality, and whether the early Church taught any doctrines no longer held today. A thoughtful conversation on Catholic theology, Church practice, and apologetics.
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>
</div>
<div class="jsx-baf003ec846595e7 body-half">
</div>

Can We Know God Is Personal Without Revelation? AMA: Dropped Calls

Returning again to the issue of church music, we build upon <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/how-to-tell-if-your-church-music-is-ugly">our last article</a>, which touched on official Catholic guidelines for liturgical music, to explore specifically why the piano is not a desirable liturgical instrument.
It may seem odd to exclude an instrument that is a touchstone of the musical West, and a king of instruments among the musical tradition that grew organically out of Christendom. The piano is so universal an instrument that many pedagogues consider it as specifically representative of the Western musical system, and music students must all practice theory on the piano and learn to be competent keyboard players. Being a crowning achievement of Western musical and technological development, the greatest composers have composed a wide and dazzling array of repertoire for this instrument.
Yet it is the acoustic nature of the instrument, along with contemporary cultural considerations, that renders it unfit for use in the Mass.
For most of the Church’s history, the development of instruments was pursued to support the singing voice, culminating in that centrally important liturgical instrument, the pipe organ. Where piano is concerned, there is record of a few small chapels and mission churches using piano as a pitch source when organ was not available in the later nineteenth century, though Church teaching at this time declared the instrument profane and not fit for the sacred liturgy (Pope Pius X, Tra le Sollecitudini). It is important to point out that churches lacking the money for an organ did not automatically turn to the piano at this time, especially as the Church’s foundational (and, according to Vatican II, still primary) musical expression—Gregorian chant—requires no harmonic accompaniment. The Church’s guidance, its tradition, and a mature sense of the sacred naturally set healthy limits on music for the Mass.
By way of illustration, we can consider the piano as akin to the modern guitar. Proponents of guitar in the liturgy point out the many mentions of plucked string instruments in the Bible, or the fact that “Silent Night” was originally premiered in a mass using guitar accompaniment. What is missing from this surface-level argument is context: those ancient Davidic-era instruments were gut strings strung over primitive resonators. Therefore, they were by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnPsE61hC4s">nature very quiet</a> and would require the near absolute stillness of a congregation to be heard. Even then, they would not be able acoustically to fill large spaces. Likewise with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7WMnJoauL8">the modern classical guitar</a> on which “Silent Night” was premiered: these are very quiet instruments, entirely meant for chamber performance. Furthermore, the playing style of these instruments generally supported harmony and melody and was not primarily for rhythmic drive. They therefore belonged to an involved classical style with which most modern Church players are entirely unfamiliar.

Context, therefore, is quite important in this conversation. Very few people attending a modern Catholic Mass have heard the classical guitar being performed, let alone the old European lute or the types of plucked instruments that would have dominated in antiquity. Rather, today, the guitar is a ubiquitous symbol of pop culture.
Similarly, while the piano is a great cultural accomplishment, most people do not come to mass with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZh-dbDgjnQ">Chopin preludes</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccyHT1sFmsg">Beethoven sonatas</a> echoing in their collective memory. For most people in our culture, the piano, like the guitar, is a bright and rhythmic accompaniment instrument for popular song. It is the instrument of “salons” (to use a papal term) and is tied more to entertainment than contemplation.
Piano is furthermore technically a percussion instrument, which lacks the sustain necessary to adequately support voices without playing in a consistently loud and repetitive manner. With its rapid onset attack (again, percussive) and rapid diminution, devoid of a true voice-like sustain, it is further not suitable for the accompaniment of the Church’s pre-eminent music, Gregorian chant, nor for much vocal accompaniment in general.
That being said, a fair examination of the use of piano in the Western classical tradition in solo song witnesses a variety of ingenious approaches, many of which require a virtuosic touch to effectively execute. Take, for instance, the varied accompaniments in Schumann’s masterwork, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaaBlfBdBO8">Dichterliebe</a>:
<iframe title="R.Schumann - Dichterliebe, Op.48 (Bostridge)" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SaaBlfBdBO8?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen=""/>
Another striking example is the simple but penetratingly profound modern masterwork by Orthodox composer Arvo Pärt, “<a href="https://youtu.be/jvXy69eF__Y">Für Alina</a>.” Coming out of eight years of self-imposed creative silence, Pärt drew on the nature of Gregorian chant to craft a new musical style. The resulting work is haunting in its simplicity, but it also demands a fine technique to deliver effectively. In the end, though not liturgical, it is nothing if not a profoundly sacred work. And yet as a purely instrumental expression, it is not fit for the liturgy, and this music would lose its particular character if a sung voice were added.
Now compare that with the accompaniment style of that perennial post-conciliar favorite (or not-so-favorite, depending on the audience): “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEZ4YkZ0FdY&amp;list=PLQPAnQzxVsFP1fApYHkxzaxG9se7yqmkO&amp;index=7">Gather Us In</a>.”
<iframe title="gather us in - closer view" width="500" height="375" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AEZ4YkZ0FdY?list=PLQPAnQzxVsFP1fApYHkxzaxG9se7yqmkO" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen=""/>
The accompaniment to the latter is considerably simple and yet also entirely percussive and pop-adjacent in its execution. This is an appropriate and functional compositional choice, given the setting: to support any congregation —indeed, to not only support, but also urge them forward—musically requires a transparent, boisterous, and (here is that word again) percussive style of playing, reminiscent of pop music. (Anyone familiar with the technical aspects of music production in the pop realm will not be surprised by this, as the bright onset of a piano must frequently be artificially boosted in mixes in order for the instrument to be effectively heard.)
When used in churches large or small, the technical subtleties that make up fine piano playing—the kind of highest expressions found in the masterworks written for the instrument—simply cannot translate or even be heard. What you have left, then, is the musical equivalent of a modern pop guitar, struck loudly, repeatedly, and without nuance, which renders it sonically unsuitable for Catholic liturgical composition.
We must admit that the ears of modern men hear guitar and piano as instruments of popular music. The more our popular culture devolves into profanity, the more inappropriate these instruments become for the liturgy, whereas the traditional sacred music and instruments of the Church simply sound even more sacred to us as a matter of cultural contrast. For instance, the flowing metrical nature of Gregorian chant is foreign to our modern rhythmic sensibilities, making it arguably even more transcendent and spiritually contemplative than back in the early centuries of the form’s emergence, therefore becoming therefore even more spiritually potent and liturgically necessary. The organ, in turn, has no popular style to claim it, and therefore—like Latin itself—it remains a means of communication free from profane pollution.
Finally, there is the nature of percussive instruments in reverberant spaces. The piano generally is intended to be a chamber instrument. Concert halls designed to host great pianists are surprisingly acoustically dry for buildings of their size (this to allow for the clear perception of the musical detail that is the hallmark of the tradition). The piano, in any truly reverberant space, loses the characteristic acoustic details that render it such an expressive and powerful instrument in certain contexts. This is because the reverberant nature of a cathedral, which helps sustained instruments like voice and organ blend and bloom, instead swallows up the dynamic life of the piano. It simply does not work.
Conversely, although one might make a begrudging (and temporary) allowance for a piano in a small or dry church that cannot afford an organ, to do so is still to invite mediocre playing in support of a pop-adjacent musical style that has never been fit for the liturgy.
In an era that encourages us always to turn to experts, we can see that the musical experts of history have spoken conclusively on the topic of the piano with choral writing. Mozart completed seventeen Mass settings and over 200 keyboard works, and a single one of his Masses or sacred choral works includes the piano. Indeed, before 1900, we are hard pressed to find successful works by the great composers where piano is used as an accompaniment to the choir. Starting in the twentieth century, there are some famous examples of composers including the piano in large-scale choral works, but only as percussive support to the accompanying organ or orchestra (Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms comes to mind, or Orff’s Carmina Burana, or Britten’s War Requiem). If piano is employed anywhere in a choral work, it is primarily as a percussion instrument.
If we are to take the greatest composers as our guide, then the use of piano in sacred spaces and for accompaniment in sacred choral works is almost entirely absent. The reason for this is simple: acoustically, it is a clumsy pairing, by its nature an instrumental combination that yields subpar and unsatisfying musical results.
The reason our modern ears desire this combination at all is because of our being suffused in pop culture, and per church teaching, pop (profane) culture is to have no place in our liturgical expression. Taken in turn with an honest consideration of what the Church has traditionally asked for in liturgical music, it seems that a general conversion of cultural preference is in order.

No Piano in Church

Did Vatican II Reverse Catholic Teaching On The Jews?

The story: French TV presenter France Pierron <a href="https://sundayguardianlive.com/sports/fifa-world-cup-2026-why-is-france-pierron-trending-l-equipe-presenter-slammed-for-just-to-cut-an-umbilical-cord-comment-on-jeremy-doku-210741/">threw a fit</a> because Jérémy Doku, a World Cup winger (apparently a soccer position and not an exotic bird/dragonfly), took a leave of absence from the tournament to witness the birth of his son.
<blockquote>
You’re leaving just to cut an umbilical cord? . . . Hundreds of footballers would do anything to be in your position. . . . And you’re going to throw it all away just to attend your child’s birth?
It’s a moment where the father isn’t really needed. He has a symbolic role. You hold her hand and take a photo. . . . [It] is a disgusting moment, excuse my language, where the father is useless, he&#8217;s just an extra.
</blockquote>
Pierron came under withering criticism, even from her own outlet, and issued a <a href="https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/tv-presenter-apologises-criticising-jeremy-054401988.html">brittle non-apology</a>. But I say no need. I’m here to defend her, at least a little.
I’ve cut four umbilical cords and will cut my fifth (<a href="https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/god-sends-miracles-to-those-who-ask-even-in-hell-on-earth/">out of six</a>) in a few weeks. I’ve typed blood, managed placentas, and guided a baby out. I also block off evenings with my wife to teach pregnant couples how to birth their babies together, with the dad leading. The first thing we teach fathers is that a successful birth requires more from them than just holding a hand, taking a photo, or even cutting the cord.
Cutting the cord is ceremonial, a token. <a href="https://www.pregnancy.com.au/birth/lotus-birth/?srsltid=AfmBOop9N0RWfW8M1kXOtXSSaddkgUc7nxovN-cfjskOChZgI8qnobfb">It’s not even necessary.</a>
From there comes a harder lesson: for most of Western society, Perrion’s description of ceremonial, token perinatal fatherhood, however brusquely presented, is accurate. In the labor and delivery room, even her detractors would struggle to imagine anything more. But there must be more if we hope to get past the <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/breckenridge-women-defying-birth-dearth">birth dearth</a> panicking our <a href="https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2024/04/06/douthat-the-birth-dearth-and-the-smartphone-age/">cultural commentariat</a>, and if Catholic fathers hope to pass on the Faith to their children.
The importance of motherhood is easier to perceive because we <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/07/cnbc-women-at-work-survey-2025.html">still notice</a> when it’s <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2026/06/16/for-working-parents-the-boundary-between-work-and-family-is-often-blurred/">compromised</a>. For decades, we’ve heard the refrain that women “really can have it all,” and witnessed the <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w14969">collapse of their happiness</a> as they try to be 100 percent mother and 100 percent worker. But decades before Gloria Steinem, men “couldn’t have it all” first—slaving away in coal mines and then factories and then cubicles. They glanced at the sleeping child in the morning before work and again upon returning home after bedtime.
For men, “career first, second, always” is taken for granted. We don’t need a scientific study (though <a href="https://ignitedbytruth.org/dads-make-all-the-difference-keeping-kids-catholic/">we do have one</a>) to intuit that children whose dads practice the Faith seriously are likelier to practice it as well. (In the linked study, mothers’ religious practices made no difference.) But how can children see their father practicing his faith when he is rarely home? I know a father who abandoned Mass for over a decade because he determined that Sunday was the only day his job allowed him to catch up on home obligations. Most of the dads I know with paternity leave (if they are offered it to begin with) will be fired if they use it. COVID lockdowns forced spouses to reunite on weekdays, and many of them <a href="https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2021/01/28/-honey-i-m-home-all-the-time-pandemic-life-for-married-couples-can-lead-to-sadness-anger">did not enjoy it</a>. And we wonder why the next generation eschews religion, marriage, and parenthood.
A man’s child, his family, is more important than his job. His family must be central, with the job orbiting it and subservient to it. Contra the impoverished view of France Perrion and her critics, the best births and the happiest wives are made from husbands who lead and protect them—not just at the birth, but through the labor, through the pregnancy, through the whole raising and education of that child.
“Are you saying a man can’t work?” Of course not—only that his family deserves the most and the best of him. If he wants to work harder than that—say, pursuing glory in the World Cup—let him, before he gets married. Otherwise, permission for a quick umbilical cord cutting ceremony might be the best he can hope for from The Boss. From there, it’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u-KWa3tL-0&amp;time_continue=2&amp;source_ve_path=NzY3NTg&amp;embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com%2F&amp;embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bing.com">Cat’s in the Cradle</a>” all the way down, and another Gen Z will have to “<a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/editorials/2025/12/11/gen-z-evangelization/">rediscover</a>” Catholicism.

World Cup’s in the Cradle: Men Can’t Have It All, Either

Why these worship songs feel off...

Should Christians be “Abortion Abolitionists”?

If Catholicism is in the Bible, where do you see the sacraments in the bible?

I hear a lot of Protestants use say “take it to the foot of the cross and lay it down.” What exactly does that mean and does it square with Catholicism?

I’m a recent convert. I have not been successful in convincing my friends and family about the Catholic Church. How do I convince them that it matters to belong to the Catholic Church as opposed to another church.

Where do we find Cardinals in the Bible?

Can we prove Catholicism and the papacy just by using logic and reason? How can people condemn the Church with the bible if the Church canonized the bible?

Sin clouds our mind and makes it harder for us to express our true free will. Mary was protected from sin so always had the clearest use of her free will. If God desired all of us to go to Heaven, why didn’t he give us the same grace he gave to Mary?

Former Catholic, looking into Orthodoxy… What is some proof for the papacy?

&#8220;Where are sacraments in the Bible?&#8221; This question opens a discussion on the biblical foundations of Catholicism, including the presence of sacraments. Other topics include the meaning behind the phrase “take it to the foot of the cross,” the role of Cardinals in Scripture, and how logic can support the papacy.
<a href="https://wvw.catholic.com/radioclub?email">Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter</a>
Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit <a href="https://www.catholic.com/speakers">Catholicanswersspeakers.com</a>

Where Are Sacraments in the Bible? Papacy and Logic

Did Jesus really give sight to the blind—or are these miracle stories just legendary embellishments? In this episode, we look at the Jewish Messianic expectations behind Jesus’ healing of the blind, the multiple independent sources that report it, and the historical details in the Bartimaeus account that point to eyewitness testimony. If these healings are historically reliable, then they reveal Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah and divine Son of God.
TRANSCRIPT:
The Gospels tell us that Jesus performed all kinds of miracles. But one category really stands out: healing the blind.
But here’s the question: Are these reports reliable?
Is this solid history? Or are we looking at legendary embellishment that developed decades later?
Stick around and you’ll find out!
&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;
Hey friends, Welcome back to the channel!
&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;
As I’ve argued in a previous episode, Jesus’ healings of the blind aren’t just a random miracle category. In the Jewish worldview, the blind receiving sight was a sign of the Messianic age. It was a sign that God had come to save His people. It was also presented as vindication of Jesus’s claims to be divine.
In Matthew 11:2-6, we read about how John the Baptist is in prison and starts wondering whether Jesus was really the Messiah.
So John sends his disciples to ask Jesus directly: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
And what does Jesus say?
He gives a list of miracles that he’s performed. And one of them is “the blind receive their sight.”
Now, that’s not some random comment. Jesus is echoing Isaiah 35, where we’re told that when God comes to save His people in the Messianic age, the blind would see.
So, Jesus is basically saying: “Yes, I am ‘the one to come’—the Messiah. And the proof is my miracles, one of which is that the blind now see.”
And just to make this even more interesting, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls—scroll 4Q521, often called the Messianic Apocalypse—also connects the blind seeing with the Messiah.
So this isn’t a Christian invention. This is Jewish expectation.
And that just adds to the importance of the question: Did Jesus actually give sight to the blind?
If he didn’t, then the Messianic claim collapses. And we would no longer be able to use this type of miracle as evidence to justify in Jesus’ claims to be divine.
So let’s examine the historical case.
The first thing this claim has going for it is something historians call multiple attestation. That simply means we have multiple independent sources reporting the same kind of event. The more independent streams of tradition you have, the stronger your case.
So what are the independent sources that attest to Jesus being a healer of the blind?
Well, for starters we have a saying in the passage that I mentioned earlier: Matthew 11:5. Recall, it reads, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight.” Luke records this as well in Luke 7:22. So whether it’s the Q tradition, or Luke borrowing from Matthew, or Matthew borrowing from Luke, that’s one independent line of tradition.
Now, combined with this saying we have multiple narratives. Two are in Mark and the other is in John. Mark 8:22-26 records the healing of the blind man of Bethsaida and Mark 10:46-52 tells the story of Jesus healing the blind Bartimaeus. John 9:1-41 records the healing of the man born blind. 
So, as New Testament scholar John P. Meier points out in Volume 2 of his book A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, not only do we have “multiple attestation of sources (Mark, John, and either Matthew or Luke, depending on who borrowed from whom for the saying in Matt. 11), we also have “multiple attestation of forms (miracle stories about Jesus and a saying of Jesus)” (pg. 698).  
That kind of multiple attestation is significant because it puts us on a strong trajectory for seeing the historicity of the Gospel portrait of Jesus as “healer of the blind.”
Now let’s get more specific. I want to spend some time on one narrative mentioned earlier: the healing of blind Bartimaeus, recorded in Mark 10:46-52. We’ll save the others for another episode.
The first thing that jumps out is that he’s named. That’s unusual in the Gospel traditions.
In fact, Bartimaeus is the only name recipient of a miracle in the Synoptic Tradition. In John, the only one named is Lazarus. 
That’s important because when you see a detail that’s discontinuous with common storytelling patterns, it’s more likely the detail wasn’t a legendary development originating from the community telling the story but a preserved memory deriving from an original primitive source.
So in the case of a miracle recipient who is suddenly named, discontinuous from the common patterns of the Synoptics and the traditions behind them—that suggests we’re dealing with an authentic preserved memory dating back to a time before the formation of the Christian community as an organized society.
Even Gnostic and apocryphal writings from the second century don’t typically name miracle recipients.
Now, another upshot of Bartimaeus being named is that he most likely was the eyewitness who preserved the story. 
New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham, in his Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, argues that named individuals in the Gospels likely became members of the early Christian community and served as tradition bearers. In other words, the reason their names are preserved may be because they were hanging out with the early Christians talking about what happened to them.
And that makes sense.
If someone was healed and then disappeared forever, their name probably wouldn’t get preserved in the tradition. But if Bartimaeus joined the community and told the story himself, that would explain why his name survives.
Contrast that to the father of the possessed boy whom Jesus healed in Luke 9—we don’t know his name. It didn’t get preserved in the tradition. But we do know Jarius’ name. It’s likely the boy’s father didn’t join the Christian community, whereas Jairus did. 
Having an eyewitness is great. But having the healed person as the tradition bearer is even better. That further ensures the story won’t be tainted with legendary developments or fabrications.
The next thing that the narrative has going for it is Semitisms. There are little details in the story that point back to an Aramaic-speaking Palestinian setting, which for historians is an indication of historicity. 
One detail is the Aramaic name “Bartimaeus,” which, as Mark must note for his Gentile audience, means “son of Timaeus.” That suggests Mark’s audience needed clarification—meaning the tradition itself most likely didn’t have that clarification as part of it. And if that’s the case, then the tradition likely came from an Aramaic-speaking context—a context in which such a clarification wouldn’t be needed. 
Another Semitic detail is Bartimaeus’s use of the Aramaic word Rabbouni, which translates as “Master.”
These Semitisms are historically significant because it places the miracle tradition very early—within the lifetime of eyewitnesses. And that precludes fabrications and legendary developments. 
Related to these Semitic details is the story’s precise familiarity with the Palestinian geography and Jewish customs. Mark tells us that Bartimaeus was “sitting by the roadside” outside Jericho, the road that Jesus and his disciples took as they left the city.
And it wasn’t just any road—this was the main route Galilean Jews took when going up to Jerusalem for Passover. Interestingly, right before this miracle, in verse 32, Mark tells us that Jesus and his disciples were “going up to Jerusalem.” Mark 14:1 tells us it was for Passover.
Meier talks about this geographic and cultural context in the previously mentioned Volume 2 of his A Marginal Jew, on pg. 688. 
That kind of familiarity with this Palestinian geography and Jewish custom strongly suggests the bearer of the tradition was an eyewitness from that area and familiar with the customs.
Yet another detail that helps with the historicity of the narrative is the title that Bartimaeus uses for Jesus: “Son of David.” Meier notes that this doesn’t appear in any other narrative in the four Gospels outside parallel stories that depend on this one.
So it wasn’t a title that Christians used in their early miracle traditions. That discontinuity suggests the miracle story wasn’t a miracle-story embellishment in early Christian preaching. Instead, it likely traces back to the historical setting of Jesus’ ministry, before the Christian community was an organized thing. 
There is something else to notice. These details and others don’t serve any apologetical or catechetical purposes. 
The narrative tradition names the recipient of the miracle—Bartimaeus.
It ties Bartimaeus to a specific roadside location outside Jericho.
It marks the moment in Jesus’ ministry (on the way to Jerusalem to suffer his passion and death. Mark tells us this in Mark 10:32).
Finally, the narrative marks the time of the miracle: shortly before Passover (that’s found in Mark 14:1).
These details aren’t doing any theological heavy lifting.
So why include them? Unless they’re simply the facts of the story, which is the kind of report that an eyewitness gives.
And THAT strongly suggests the historical reliability of the miracle story.
So, we have several details that when combined make for a strong case for the historicity of the Jesus’ healing of blind Bartimaeus.
Now, a skeptic might say: “Wait—everything you just said is worthless because the Gospels contradict each other when telling this story.” Luke says Jesus was approaching Jericho in Luke 18:35-43. Matthew (in 20:29-34) and Mark (in 10:6) say Jesus was leaving Jericho. Moreover, Matthew mentions two blind men whereas Mark and Luke mention only one.
So what gives?
Let’s take the number of men issue. If one Gospel tells a story involving two men and another tells that same story with only one, that’s not a contradiction. However, if Matthew had said there were two men and Luke and Mark made the assertion that there was only one, then we’d have a problem. But mentioning one doesn’t deny there were two. For whatever reason, Matthew chose to include the second man. Mark probably didn’t because he wanted to stay focused on Bartimaeus.
Okay, what about the issue of entering versus leaving?
One strong possibility is that the Gospel writers were referring to two different Jerichos.
Historians and archaeologists point out that there were two sites for Jericho at the time of Jesus: old Jericho and the newer Hasmonean-Herodian settlement, sometimes called “Herodian Jericho” or, as is the case in circles of biblical studies, “New Testament Jericho.”
The newer settlement was an elite winter palace complex built by the Hasmoneans and renovated and expanded by Herod the Great.
So, it’s possible that Matthew and Mark record Jesus leaving the Old Jericho and Luke records Jesus and his disciples approaching the new settlement.
Jimmy Akin discusses this in his book A Daily Defense.
Another possible answer is that Luke isn’t prioritizing strict chronology. Unlike modern standards for retelling events, ancient authors had freedom to arrange things topically or thematically instead of chronologically.
Why would Luke want to abandon chronology? Well, Luke’s next story is Jesus’ meeting Zacchaeus—also in Jericho. So Luke may simply be grouping Jericho-related events together: Jesus’ encounter with Bartimaeus and Jesus’ encounter with Zacchaeus.
And as Jimmy puts it in his book mentioned earlier, the precise direction of travel falls below the level of precision ancient authors were expected to track.
So whether we follow the “two Jerichos” approach or the “Lukan thematic” approach, the Synoptic accounts of Jesus healing blind Bartimaeus are reconcilable.
So let’s sum everything up:
-Multiple independent sources attest to Jesus healing the blind.
-The Bartimaeus narrative includes several historically credible details.
&#8211;And the alleged discrepancies are reasonably reconcilable.
Put it all together, and the case for the historicity of Jesus healing the blind is strong.
And remember: this matters because if Jesus truly gave sight to the blind, then he wasn’t just a moral teacher. He was fulfilling Messianic prophecy and proving true his claims to be a divine Messiah.
Well, my friends, that’s it for today! If you found this video helpful, make sure to like it, comment below, and share it with someone who might need to hear this. And don’t forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t done so already.
For more resources, check out Catholic Answers’s website catholic.com and my personal website karlobroussard.com.
If you want me to come and speak at your event, visit catholicanswersspeakers.com.
Lastly, I’d love for you to consider supporting me over on Patreon. I can’t continue doing this podcast without your financial support. For just $5 a month you can get early access to episodes, watch the episodes free of YouTube ads, and get access to one of my 6-hour online short courses entitled “How to Talk About Morality in an Age of Moral Relativism.” You can sign up over at doctorkarlo.com with “doctor” spelled out.
Thanks for hanging out, and I’ll see you next time! God bless.

Did Jesus Really Give Sight to the Blind?

The Jewish Roots of “Christ Is King”

<div>How do I reconcile the apparent contradiction of Vatican II and former teachings regarding salvation outside of the Catholic Church?</div><div>A literal understanding of being an official/external member of the Catholic Church as necessary for salvation is not the teaching of the Church. A priest, Fr. Leonard Feeney, preached that message and was excommunicated in 1953 for disobedience in refusing to come to Rome and explain his views. This error is now named after him and is commonly called Feeneyism or the Boston Heresy.
<a href="http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdffeeny.htm">The Holy Office in 1949 wrote to Fr. Feeney</a> and asked him to accept the Church&#8217;s definition/understanding of the doctrine extra ecclesiam nulla salus:
<blockquote>Therefore, that one may obtain eternal salvation, it is not always required that he be incorporated into the Church actually as a member, but it is necessary that at least he be united to her by desire and longing.
However, this desire need not always be explicit, as it is in catechumens; but when a person is involved in invincible ignorance God accepts also an implicit desire, so called because it is included in that good disposition of soul whereby a person wishes his will to be conformed to the will of God.</blockquote>
This was no different from what Pope Pius IX said in an address on December 9, 1854:
<blockquote>It must, of course, be held as a matter of faith that outside the apostolic Roman Church no one can be saved, that the Church is the only ark of salvation, and that whoever does not enter it will perish in the flood. On the other hand, it must likewise be held as certain that those who live in ignorance of the true religion, if such ignorance be invincible, are not subject to any guilt in this matter before the eyes of the Lord. But then, who would dare to set limits to this ignorance, taking into consideration the natural differences of people, lands, native talents, and so many other factors?</blockquote>
Similarly, in his encyclical <a href="https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9quanto.htm">Quanto Conficiamur Moerore</a> (August 10, 1863), Pius IX wrote,
<blockquote>There are, of course, those who are struggling with invincible ignorance about our most holy religion. Sincerely observing the natural law and its precepts inscribed by God on all hearts and ready to obey God, they live honest lives and are able to attain eternal life by the efficacious virtue of divine light and grace. Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments (7).</blockquote>
Most people, however, fall into some in-between category that is often impossible for human judgment to conclude how culpable an individual is for his lack of formal membership in Christ’s Catholic Church. But we must always remember that the Catholic Church contains the fullness of Christ’s truth and what is necessary for salvation. Elements of that truth are found elsewhere, but its fullness can be found only in Catholicism. If someone, through no sinful fault, is not a formal member of the Catholic Church but adheres to the truth of Christ that he does know, he is considered to be in an imperfect communion with Christ’s Church.
</div>

What Did Vatican II Say About Salvation Outside the Church?

In this free-for-all-Friday Trent discusses his favorite villains and why he always enjoyed playing the villain in his “acting days.”

FFAF: My favorite movie villains

As a leader in New Age thought, Deepak Chopra has taken it upon himself to explain the real meaning of Jesus. But does he shed light on the real Jesus or invent a new Jesus of his own? We asked Trent Horn.