Called to Communion - 09/29/20 - with Dr. David Anders

at ewtnews.com i'm theresa tomio and call to communion with dr david anders starts now what's stopping you from becoming a catholic why can't women become priests 1-833-288 ewtn i don't understand why i have to earn salvation 1-833-288-3986 is call to communion with dr david anders on the ewtn global catholic radio network hey everybody welcome again to the tuesday edition of call to communion here on ewtn the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters hey if that is you we would love to hear from you to try to answer those questions that you may have had floating around in your head for many many years or maybe for a short time uh you know most people who are non-catholics have questions about the catholic faith they may be walking around with some misconceptions that they've had for many years who knows love to clear those things up for you here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 if you're listening outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then 205-271-2985 you can also text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply and of course you can always send us an email ctc ewtn.com ctc at ewtn.com charles berry is our producer ryan penny is our phone screener jeff burson is on social media he can pass on any questions you might want to post via youtube or facebook just put those in the comments field and he will shoot those to us here in studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anders hey tom how are you well i'm great how are you doing oh i'm hanging in there thanks interesting question here from david who says i want you to know that i listen to you religiously every single day at uh while i'm on lunch time i am a christian but i'm intrigued by the catholic church quite frankly i love the way dr andrews explains things here is my question let's imagine for a minute that jesus shows up tomorrow on earth now i believe the living are here for seven years after jesus returns so how do the living people get from earth to heaven when they are alive i imagine there will be millions of people here when he shows up how do we make the switch from our earthly bodies to our spiritual selves when that seven years is up thanks david okay thanks so um catholic faith doesn't doesn't have an eschatology that includes this specific seven year period and i know that's a big thing for for uh uh dispensationalists right but that's not that's not actually scriptural and there's certainly no historical uh christian doctrine about that um but regardless the question whether or not you believe in a seven year interval uh the question is still a relevant one if you are alive at the time of the coming of the lord uh how does your translation to heavenly life occur and the uh here's a mistaken way of understanding it some people think that that when you die like you've got the physical earth right and then there's this this sort of upper realm someplace you know out beyond neptune called heaven and and you know your your spirit goes up there and flies off to heaven and you're in this other place called heaven and that's all she wrote and uh i remember when i used to teach college i taught history of christianity at a state university i used to ask my students and these would be protestant kids catholic kids i mean they came from all over and i would say okay guys got a question for you you die your body rots your soul goes to heaven and that's all she wrote do you think that's what the christian tradition teaches about the afterlife and the vast majority of them said yeah yeah that's pretty much the story and i was like um y'all ever pray the creed remember that line in the creed about i believe in the resurrection of the body or the resurrection of the dead they're like uh-huh said you know what that means they're like oh we don't know what that means i said okay it means what it says it means that at the end of time when christ comes back dead bodies will be raised out of the ground and re-animated so yes there is an intermediate phase when the soul goes off you know away from earth but then the soul is returned to the physical body and the physical body is reanimated and that's the mode in which we will experience everlasting life is an embodied existence and uh and and saint paul talks about this question that you've raised in a couple of passages first corinthians 15 also obviously the thessalonian correspondents and he's talking he tells us that we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye those of us that are awake and by that's a metaphor meaning alive at the lord's coming will not precede those who have fallen asleep nor vice versa falsely being done but rather will be the dead will be raised and will all be changed in an instant and be made like unto christ and the distinction between the resurrection body or the transformed body if you're alive in christ comes and in our current terrestrial strait will be as different as the difference between species of flesh he uses as an analogy you know if you cut open a fish and you cut open a cow they're both flesh but they're not the same right there's a difference because it will be a comparable difference an analogous difference that something fundamentally different from our present mode although it will still be embodied and it'll be a body capable of eternal life now the the glory and the joy of eternal life will not simply be physical immortality but the reward of the just which is the beatific vision and that is an immediate infused knowledge of the essence of god that will satisfy all of our intellectual curiosity and longing and all of our desire and the the just in heaven enjoy the beatific vision right now in a disembodied way but at the coming of our lord and the resurrection of the body we'll all enjoy that in an embodied way okay well we thank you so much for your email david hope that's helpful for you dante sent us an email are there souls damned in hell right now or do we need to wait for the second judgment before hell will be open to those damned souls oh no there are souls in hell right now even as there are souls experiencing the the beatific vision right now but uh their condition will change at the second coming of christ because those conditions will have added to them embodiment so the hell in heaven right now are disembodied states they will be embodied states wow it's all it's well okay i'm just i'm just trying to you know wrap my head around all this you know that you've got disembodied souls in this area but then they're going to become embodied but it's all laid out in the bible isn't it no not so much no i mean it's there it's there right but it's uh it's a little bit ambiguous at points which is why these fine distinctions weren't fully articulated in in dogmatic formula until the the late middle ages when when um uh when pope benedict the 12th actually in an encyclical benedictus days formally define the dogma that the souls of the just uh can in fact see god immediately upon death okay got it all right well we thank you so much for your question dante in a moment we'll get to the phones if you have a question for dr david anders lines are open for you at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 or you can chew to say a text text the letters ewtn to 5500 back in a flash with lots more on call to communion here on ewtn [Music] more to life the church has 2 000 years of wisdom to share on what it takes to live life gracefully we're so overwhelmed by how much our faith has transformed our marriage and family especially we want everyone to experience the incredible gift that the catholic vision of life and love really is more to life with dr greg and lisa popchak tomorrow morning 10 eastern on ewtn radio [Music] 60 seconds with archbishop fulton j sheen the eucharist is the greatest of all the sacraments because it contains in a substantial way the person of christ was the author of life it is the one sacrament to which all of the other sacraments look imagine six arrows in a circle all pointing to a center the center is the eucharist the six arrows are the other sacraments the eucharist is the sun around which the other sacraments revolve as planets all the other sacraments share in its power and they perfect themselves in the celebration of the eucharist it is a sacrament that is so sublime that human reason could never guess at it divine love is far deeper than we know the people you know and trust are on ewtn [Music] hey if you haven't caught the ewtn religious catalog tv show lately uh you're really missing out on something good every time it's on you're going to see a unique selection of holy reminders from books and paintings to rosaries and statues and everything in between and of course your purchase directly supports the important work and mission of ewtn do check it out tomorrow evening at five o'clock eastern on ewtn television in a moment we're going to get to the phones at 833 288 ewtn so if you have a question for dr david andrews do give us a call 833 288 got a very interesting question here from joe he just texted us he says i've been dialoguing with someone educated in the reformed tradition regarding salvation and justification my friend believes a person will gain final admittance to heaven based on what good works they have done through christ on earth well his articulation sounds very catholic to me is it consistent with the historical beliefs of his tradition nope nope nope no it's really not so so calvin had a very robust doctrine of moral improvement and sanctification and and it is characteristic of the reformed tradition to put a heavy emphasis on the ethical life the moral life uh growth in the virtues i mean these are things that characterize calvin and and in fact uh in in their transatlantic form of puritanism actually get kind of a bad name right i mean puritans are are known as kind of sticklers who who harp on every little thing right and and and frown at you if you have any fun and you know i mean that's kind of a stereotype of the puritan right is these these very persnickety legalistic folks that's that's a caricature and they were puritans all over the board and there were some who were like that and there were others who were libertarian you know almost free love types really well not free love but they were you know they were they were much more loosey-goosey so they're kind of all over the place but yeah there were those that were like that um but but traditionally there's a big heavy emphasis on the moral life and the reformed tradition um because in in reformed society the doctrine and salvation in the very same transaction in which the soul is justified and accounted righteous by god one is also joined to christ becomes a member participant in christ and through that union the sanctifying power of christ is believed to flow into the soul and so some of the puritans believed that the way you discern your election that's something no catholic would ever dream of doing you can't discern your election but the reformed people thought you could the way you discern your election is to look for signs of that union with christ in the development of your moral life and so some of the developments in puritanism where you know how do i know i'm saved well if i'm really saved then then my moral life will show all this fruit and evidence and i'll grow in these ways and have these kinds of virtues and affections and so forth so that's one of the reasons there's this heavy moral emphasis in the reformed tradition but but the whole tradition is extremely clear in all their doctrinal statements you can look at you can look at the the gallican confession you know the westminster confession it doesn't matter which uh the synod of dort any of the reformed confessions and uh and calvin's theology is very explicit that the ground of god's acceptance is not the good works of the believer but rather the imputed righteousness of jesus so in that regard calvin was a typical lutheran he was a typical protestant in the whole reformed tradition completely rejects the catholic understanding of salvation sounds like your friend may be a little bit confused about the basis of his own tradition and he holds a doctrine that is quite frankly a lot more catholic so good for him all right joe thank you so much for your question if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 here is ed to kick us off in melbourne florida listening on the great divine mercy catholic radio hello ed what's on your mind today uh good afternoon tom and dr anders um dr anders i'm hoping that you could um respond or comment uh regarding the earlier calls before the break on the resurrection and transformation of the body the physical body uh regarding c.s lewis and his description of hell and the problem of pain which i've read i'm reading it the second time because it's so awesome and as you probably have read it talks about hell using the analogy of a log being burned in a fire being at once tortured destroyed and separated and into bits and pieces and he says to have been a man or an x-man uh is how he describes the human soul in hell not really a human soul anymore or not really a person anymore some it's something else and it's separated and he says it rather it is a loose conjuries of mutually antagonizing sins rather than a sinner i'm wondering if you could respond or comment on that with respect to the physical restoration of physical bodies in hell okay yeah thanks so uh i'm actually looking at the text right now it is of course impossible to imagine what the consciousness consciousness of such a creature already a loose uh conqueries of mutually antagonistic sins rather than a sinner would be like okay um yeah so uh let me let me bring in a concept from the fathers that i was actually studying this morning in in the writings of saint athanasius the great in particular his work on the incarnation he makes much of the fact that in the creation god brought us us human beings from non-existence or non-being into being from non-being into being and maximus the confessor a great eastern theologian of the seventh century picks up on that idea and uh and really works it into his understanding of sin and grace and the the thing that causes us to be a substantial unity right is our participation in the divine logos in the word of god in christ in in in virtue uh love the pursuit of the pursuit of god is really it reifies us it causes us to be substantially because we're we're coming to participate more and more in that form that formality of the divine logos imprinted in us which is the ground of our being a substance and on that model sin is a kind of return to non-being because you're deflecting your attention and your being and your your your appetites and your consciousness from that that ground and center of your substantial unity it's a kind of dissolution of the person and uh uh and i think that's very similar to what lewis is talking about right um the holiness genuine holiness would come with a real integrity in the personality you know most of us experience a certain amount of internal conflict we have parts of our personality at war with one another you know we're anxious about the future we regret the past we're mad at ourselves uh we have this st paul in romans chapter seven talks about the law of the spirit of christ and of my mind at war with the law of sin and death and the flesh we're just this mess of of conflicting appetites and the more we come to holiness the more we come to unity right and the more the more single-minded more pure and heart we become and in in athanasius's model in maximus's model i think in lewis's model too the more real we become in consequence and there's a beautiful picture of that in another lewis novel which is the great divorce and it's it's an allegory about a journey from hell or purgatory to heaven of course that doesn't happen but he's just telling the story as an allegory and these souls that show up in heaven are insubstantial you know they're wraith-like they're ghost-like and the reality of heaven is so solid in comparison that they can't even walk on blades of grass they're like knives going through their feet because they're so wispy and the grass is so real but the longer they stay up there the more detached they become from their passions uh the more reified they become the more thing like the more substantial and they gain strength and solidity and unity and being and then they're able to actually fully embrace and enjoy the fullness of being that is the life of heaven and in comparison the life of hell is this dissolution of the person uh but it can't be so dissolved that it that it ceases to exist entirely because then there would be nothing there would be no subject to suffer and there is conscious suffering in hell but that trajectory from non-being to being from conflict to unity from dissolution to to substance uh i i find there's a note of that and i've already i've already alluded to it in the catholic tradition and writers like athanasius and maximus and um and that's why lewis wasn't making these things up out of whole cloth he was a student of the catholic tradition in particular he was heavily influenced by augustine uh and also by the 12th century platonists in the school of chakra and he if you read his books like the discarded image uh the allegory of love uh his uh his cambridge study in the history of medieval and renaissance literature you'll find these catholic elements woven all throughout his uh his uh his christian theology ed thank you so much for your call hope that's helpful for you that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 uh david you remember that uh before the break we took a question an email from dante regarding uh souls damned in hell uh you know are they i think dante should know a thing or two about that one would think so well it's it that's a real name by the way i'm just looking at his as his email address here but uh we did hear from uh diane on facebook uh regarding your answer for dante and diane says i'm kind of confused about the spirit then coming back to the body the people in hell stay in hell right sure but i mean go back and read revelation chapter 20 that gives a pretty vivid account of the resurrection of the body and then the final judgment and souls consigned to hell or heaven right so there is a there is a physical embodiment that takes place prior to eternity and and we will go into eternity in an embodied state will go in as a substantial unity and we are as substances we are a body soul unity and we are returned to that integrity for eternity very good diane thanks for checking us out today on facebook let's continue here with the phone calls at 833 288 ewtn here now kathleen in traverse city michigan listing online ewtn.com hi kathleen what's on your mind today hi um my son has was race catholic and he's always been a reader of religious books and he has read a book about calvinism and he has turned totally to that and uh to the point where he's uh at a non-denominate non-denominational church teaching a class on it and i wondered i heard you a while ago of saying that you were uh practicing calvinism or or thought it was the right religion and that there was a book that you read that pulled you away from it yes i wondered what that was and if you could give me any any clues that maybe something i could get him yes absolutely so first of all i i really would like to talk to him i would so much like to talk to him and i would invite you to share with him you know you've heard of this guy david anders and anders was a calvinist and and my own story is that i went and earned a phd in historical theology i wrote my doctoral dissertation on calvin and i spent you know a good seven eight years of my life plowing through the original texts of calvin in the original languages and i mean i read gazillions of pages that's a technical term by the way gazillions of pages of calvin and and and thousands and thousands of pages of calvin scholarship i mean i know the material very very well and and the fruit of all that is i became a catholic and and uh i would recommend to you and to him a little article that i wrote called how john calvin made me a catholic and i would love for him to read it and talk to me about it and you can find it at the website called thecommunion.com how john calvin made me a catholic and i would also recommend that this is the best resource really i can give you it's better than any single book the website called communion.com which which predated the existence of this radio show i mean it was kind of the inspiration for the title but the website called a communion.com is composed by a number of people i'm only one of them all of us were calvinists or reformed christians all of us became catholic and the website addresses many many many points at issue both in common and in conflict between calvinism and catholicism and it's written by really knowledgeable people seminary graduates and philosophy professors and these kinds of folks all of whom were calvinists have now become catholic i strongly recommend that you you give this resource to him uh i'd love him to start with my little text how john calvin made me a catholic now i will note something about your call that struck me is incongruous you said your son has become captivated by calvinism and is now teaching a class on it at a non-denominational church well i wonder if he is aware of the fact that calvin himself would have found the concept of the non-denominational church absolutely execrable and detestable calvin calvin understood that there was such a thing as denominations and he despised that notion with all of his heart and soul and believed completely and entirely in the notion of one holy catholic and apostolic church calvin did calvin believed in the concept of one holy catholic and apostolic church now he didn't think the pope was the head of that body yeah he thought he should be okay he thought he should be the head of that body but he did think that that there was denominational divisions right that there would be sort of independent congregations that would have their own governing structure and come up with their own doctrine and that's how non-denominational churches work right he thought that was just a horrible idea and in fact his very first uh work of theology that was widely acclaimed in 1536 he wrote the first edition of his famous institutes of the christian religion he wrote precisely to address that problem the problem of disparate interpretations of the protestant tradition uh because in the kingdom of france were all these folks running around claiming to be protestants some of them were doing some pretty wild stuff and giving protestantism a bad name and calvin actually wrote that text uh to try to get everybody on the same page and uh and to get rid of that problem of a denominational division and then in 1537 he went to geneva and he found the same problem he found all these people running around doing different stuff and he said i know what we need to do we need one statement of faith we need one catechism and we need one governing authority to enforce that uniformity on everybody in the whole protestant world it ought to be me well geneva responded by kicking him out right but that was his from the very beginning he was trying to unify everybody in one holy catholic church but you can't do it without the authority structure established by christ and that's the catholic church and that's the one thing that calvin didn't want to concede kathleen thank you so much for your call in a moment we'll talk with lin in omaha lines open for you as well 833 288 ewtn for call to communion jerry usher dr ray garendi father benedict rochelle you'll hear the leading catholic voices on the largest catholic media network in the world this is the ewtn global catholic radio network have you ever noticed that the world associates fanaticism with religion but gk chester says the strangest fanaticism that fills our time is the fanatical hatred of morality especially christian morality it's the irreligious who are fanatical in their hatred of religion they hate religion because religion is the only basis for morality they hate morality because it's clear that they prefer things to be vague vague to the point where they can call wrongs rights you cannot call something a right when it defies god's laws we can only call it a sin if we really care about respecting human rights chesterton says we need to treat them as divine rights all rights come from god and god is not going to break his own laws neither should we spend more time with the apostle of common sense visit chesterton.org for more information wings is the weekly newsletter that's packed with program info features and updates of all that's going on at the global catholic network just go to ewtn.com wings fill out your name and email address and you'll start getting your wings every week when you get yours send it to all your friends and they can send it to their friends and pretty soon we're covering the whole world with the good news about ewtn wings the weekly newsletter from ewtn the global catholic network tomorrow on more to life power struggle are you butting heads with the people in your life we'll help you resolve those conflicts that's tomorrow on more to life now back to call to communion with dr david anders [Music] hey glad you're with us here on call to communion on ewtn looks like three lines open right now eight three three two eight eight ewtn they do fill up quickly so if you have a question for dr david andrews do call now 833-288-3986 having said that here is lynn in omaha listing on spirit catholic radio hey lynn what's on your mind today well dr andrews i was just wondering i know you're really smart and much smarter than me but um you said that um right now there are people on hell and right now also that there are some people that are enjoying the beatific vision well i've thought of this many years even though um it's likely some maybe hitler's in hell but actually when we we really don't know what's out there after we die so ultimately we don't really know who's in heaven or hell and i hope that nobody goes to hell i even prayed that hitler after trillions of years in purgatory will hopefully make it to heaven so that's all i wanted to say um i wanted to respond to that comment you made oh yeah thank you so much i really appreciate that thank you very much so if the if the particular question you have is do we do we know with certainty that some particular soul or or any soul or that any soul is actually in hell do we know that right um well that's actually kind of a disputed question in catholic theology and you can make you can make a case that we do know and you can make the case that we don't know on the side of of yeah we can know uh really you there's one soul that where the with the verdict is pretty strong that we can conclude he's probably in hell it's not actually hitler although i'm not gonna i reserve no opinion in that case right but it's judas it's judas yeah and the reason so is because our lord said to him or of him that it would be better for him never to have been born right and uh and the apostles speak of judas like basically getting what was coming to him when he died right that he got the reward for his works right and and in the history of the catholic tradition the reflection on this question by the church fathers is overwhelmingly in favor of the damnation of judas and the the council of trent said that it is not lawful to interpret scripture in a way that contradicts the consensus of the fathers so that's a that's a binding norm in catholic dogmatic thinking if the fathers of the church are in unity on an issue that's pretty strong evidence that that's that that's the correct position to take and then the liturgy of the church uh in particular the traditional liturgy of the latin church overwhelmingly uh recognizes the damnation of judas as a fact all right so this pretty strong evidence from the ordinary magisterium uh teaching authority of the church and from sacred tradition that judas is in health um but not everybody shares that interpretation of the data and and there is a there is a another line of thinking that uh that we don't know for sure that even judas is in hell that we can't form certainty that there is any particular soul in hell um and uh and some sort of prominent proponent of that point of view would be bishop robert baron who who maintains that it is reasonable to hope not to expect not to expect but to hope that everybody is saved right and there's some people that don't agree with that all right so this is a disputed question um but that there is a hell and that we are all personally in danger of going there and that we need to repent of our sins and live a holy life so that we can merit the reward of heaven on that there's certainty right and that there are souls in heaven there is absolute certainty about that because we have the k we have the canonization of saints all right as protected by the charism of infallibility of the of the catholic church and we have the revelation of sacred scripture and the teaching of our lord man our lord even as he said about judas uh pretty bad for judas he also canonized the first saint in the catholic church and that was saint dismiss the faith on the cross jesus said tonight today you'll be with me in paradise and we have the vision of the mount of transfiguration we see moses and elijah up there with jesus and and uh of course the you know parable of rich man and lazarus and and abraham uh who's in glory and so you know pretty pretty solid evidence uh dogmatic teaching that there are souls presently enjoying the bliss of heaven and of course benedict xii and an encyclical infallibly taught our souls in heaven all right lynn thank you so much for your call we appreciate hearing from you logan is listening to us right now on youtube logan says well the only thing preventing me from becoming a catholic is my wife's prior marriage i know that going forward with a uh annulment would provide unneeded drama from her ex what advice would you give on that might be needed drama yeah right i mean like this is the thing you need to do get it over with yeah i get it with so so um the look i'm sympathetic to the the legal hassle uh that people present marriage situations can create in becoming catholic i mean i wrote about it in my book the catholic church saved my marriage about my own struggles in becoming catholic and how eventually i figured out i needed to have a con validation have my marriage blessed have a soccer ball away at marriage and i was kind of strongly adverse to that idea you know i was like i did that already don't want to do that again you know i get it i get it and you know many people once they get through that can look back on the experience and go you know it was kind of kind of a real pain to do all that but i'm glad i did it i'm glad i did it for a lot of reasons and one of them is that you have certainty in your conscience yeah i mean that's the point of the tribunal right i mean the tribunal is an objective judge it's an object it's not you making a judgment about your own case it's an objective judge empowered by the church to adjudicate these questions and the tribunal makes a judgment goes yep that was an invalid marriage yep it was well you're like now you don't have a crisis of conscience about it ever again now you might as well i don't my conscience is pretty clear already yeah but it'll it'll be a lot better when you know you've got a verdict from the church not your own subjective opinion but the church renders a verdict of nullity then you really know yeah we we're good we're good and then you have a public ceremony where the church validates your marriage and you know with certainty i've got a sacramental marriage i have the grace of the sacrament that's a really really really powerful powerful aid in the life of holiness and it's it's an analogy it's not the same thing but it's analogous let me make this comparison to the sacrament of reconciliation you know many people find the process of making an examination of conscience and revealing their sins to a priest they find that painful now i mean i have felt painful but generally i find it to be very curative and helpful and encouraging and i love to go to confession like 99.9 of the time but some people really struggle with the actual fact of doing the work of going and making a confession they just really find it distasteful i've met people who find it very distasteful um but then when you do it and they've had the absolution they walk out like a ton of bricks and they feel like you know it was tough i had to do it i'm so glad i did it you know and the same thing can be true of the whole the whole drama of the marriage tribunal it's kind of a pain to go through but when you've finished it you look back i mean you're you're you're looking 50 years into the future you're looking eternity into the future yes it's a it's a big inconvenience now but you got your whole life ahead of you and you'd love to live that life with with the certainty of faith and clarity of conscience and assurance of the offer of grace logan thank you so much for checking us out today on youtube it is called communion here on ewtn interesting email we received from ben listing in rapid city south dakota on real presence radio ben says i i have kind of a bone to pick with dr anders answer recently on a recent show about speaking in tongues i agreed with everything he said but i'm afraid some charismatic pentecostals and catholics alike wouldn't because dr dan andrews didn't go far enough he concentrated on acts and actual language speaking but didn't get to the gibberish speaking that clearly is what saint paul is talking about in first corinthians he also wrote that we are not to discourage the speaking of this kind of tongues and that some do have the gift of interpreting those kind of talks now i myself am not a tongues speaker but i have many charismatic friends in fact i thought i heard somewhere that saint pope john paul ii was a tongue's speaker so perhaps dr rangers could talk about gibberish tongues and the problems that the church has had negotiating these kind of waters okay so if i understand the the complaint the complaint is not that i was was critical of the use of glossolalia but that i wasn't critical enough perhaps so and uh you know look i i have to proceed with discretion and charity here because there is a spirituality that is allowable that is lawful within the catholic church and pope francis actually established a uh i don't know what that what the title of the office is but there's a a ministry of the vatican father kanta la mesa who's the the preacher to the papal household is heavily involved in it um to to basically provide pastoral care for the very large number of charismatic catholics so this is a legitimate allowed spirituality in modern catholicism that because the fact that's allowed doesn't mean that everyone has to embrace it right and it's novel and it doesn't characterize the history of catholic spirituality for really for two thousand years and it's a it's a very new thing and uh and it's not above criticism you know and it's it's reasonable to raise questions about it and to and to suggest reforms and places that need a little more work and consideration and for my purposes one of the big ones is it's certainly not manifest to me that what most people call speaking in tongues it's not at all clear to me in fact i'd say the weight of the evidence tends against uh it being understood as a supernatural phenomenon okay so i mean a lot of people make a lot of noises coming out of their mouths and say well that's the holy spirit talking well well i think there's a lot of psycho-linguistic evidence that that's not the case and i'm not saying that it can't be cathartic or have some sort of psychological value but i think we have to be very careful in our interpretations of that experience and when people naively assert that i've had some experience and that means god was at work maybe it's a little bit more a little bit more mileage between your experience and god than you think well thank you so much for your uh your statement there ben we do appreciate hearing from you call to communion here on ewtn i want to tell you about a wonderful group of folks that we are very close to here at the network it is the ewtn media missionaries these wonderful folks men and women prayerfully take ewtn to parishes and the community through the print and electronic media that we provide be sure to visit ewtnmissionaries.com today ewtn missionaries.com join us in sharing the eternal word with the world back to the phones now here on call to communion here is susan in tulsa listening on oklahoma catholic radio a first-time caller hi susan what's on your mind today hi uh i was calling to find out what the church's opinion is of a woman who was married and had children and then uh divorced and became a nun after that and then really didn't have anything more to do with her children yeah thanks i appreciate the question so um this is a this is a nuanced question and we have a duty of care for our children and we clearly do sure all right um and uh and and how one exercises that duty of care obviously changes throughout the course of one's life and adult children need a different kind of relationship than younger children and and i mean and so there you know there are changes there there there are plenty of cases in history of people who have entered religious life after having children who who made provisions to have their children cared for in an appropriate way and not just materially but emotionally and pastorally and morally and so forth uh in in ways that everybody involved flourished all right um some of those people were saints all right i'm thinking saint rita of casho was one um you know saint bernard of colorveau uh oversaw a number of vocations like this to religious life uh but it's clearly frowned on it's not the norm in the modern catholic church because i think there is a you know a sensitivity and understanding of this would be a very rare case to be able to pull this off charitably to to do it virtuously in a way that everybody was you know was had their needs really met would be extraordinarily difficult and uh and so uh someone who entered religious life as an escape from the responsibilities of family life and children and grandchildren and then really neglected those people and failed in their duty of charity um this would would be a very difficult vocation to live honorably right and uh and the fact that someone enters a religious life doesn't mean that the superiors of that community have done well i mean religious superiors are prone to making mistakes they can make mistakes and uh and so you know i really i hesitate to form a judgment about a particular case because i don't know the details of the particular case i can tell you that there is there's some historical precedent for that in catholic tradition um but clearly not the norm and would be discouraged because it would come with attendant difficulties that would be very profound we thank you for your call susan we appreciate that call to communion here on ewtn let's go to riyadh now in detroit listening on ave maria radio uh riyadh what's on your mind today yes how you doing thank you for taking my call um i have a question that's kind of linked to the to the political party now when when pontius pilate he um he washed his hands from the blood of jesus um when he watches him he says well he's i believe he's innocent but i don't want his blood to be on me and so he i guess he asked for water and he washed his supposedly as well that was symbolically that he didn't want anything to do with it but then he hands him over to the people that is going to persecute him or condemn him my question is that when it relates to the the party of democrat that supports abortion when you talk to different people that i you kind of use the sample and i want to know if i'm right or i'm wrong i say like even if you don't see they're like well we i don't i would never uh perform abortion i said but the part of you supporting the democratic party supports for abortion and so your blood is still on their in your hands if you support a party that does that whether it's a mayor or governor or whatever okay so let me i think i see where we're going and let me say right off the bat that at ewtn we do not take partisan positions uh in this or any electoral cycle or at any time we don't endorse candidates we don't endorse political parties uh we don't we don't disparage political parties and uh uh and we're not involved in that at all okay um and uh and i recognize that catholics can can fall across the political spectrum and uh and far be it from me to suggest that unless you hold my political ideology well you're you know you're not a real catholic or whatever not we don't do that we don't do that okay what uh uh what we do is catholics and what we do is a catholic radio network and what the bishops do what the pope does is we try to put out the church's moral theology what are the demands of justice what are the demands of charity and what does that entail in social life we teach those principles of catholic moral theology and but we don't prescribe policy we don't write laws we leave that to legislators and we hope and pray and teach and and work so that legislators will be informed by catholic principles politicians will be informed by catholic principles when they write their platforms when they write their legislation right and and that's the way we do it that's the way we do it now when it comes to the question of abortion clearly abortion is a profound and grave evil because it is murder and it is murder of the most innocent members of our of our society and murder on a grand scale uh and it's also a grave evil because not only is it murder but it is it is it is abusing women so deeply harmful to the women is highly manipulative of women uh many of the women that have abortions are coerced into having them they are lied to about having them um and and many of them experience profound regret in psychological trauma uh both because of if they if they come to realize what has happened with in their own wombs and towards their own children they are overcome by remorse they also feel tremendously violated uh when they recognize you know there's a big lie about how this is all to empower women and to care about women and they realize at the end of the day that they're a paycheck to a lot of people you know their money in the bank for abortionists who don't care about them as individuals certainly don't care about their children and you read some of the horror stories about what goes on inside abortion clinics and uh you know when the way it's uh assembly line move them in move them out kind of process and the conditions of sanitation and so forth are greatly lacking and um and it's a horror show and you know i recently read patricia sandoval's uh memoir and she talks about her experiences both as a participant in that process and i'm going to just curdle your blood to you know read a first person account of what goes on in some of these places so it's a horrible horrible societal evil and clearly clearly anyone who formally cooperates and by formally cooperating i mean intends facilitating this regime is complicit in grave evil i mean that's that is patently obvious we if you i mean it's like saying i'm i'm you know i'm personally against nazism but i'm uh you know i'm a vote for the bill to build auschwitz i mean you cannot you cannot be formally involved in facilitating evil on a massive scale like this and not be in big deep moral trouble all right um now does does that mean that every single individual who supports a political a political party or platform uh is personally culpable of this grave evil no it cannot possibly mean that and uh and you know when it comes to personal culpability a lot of factors that come in i mean one of them is our degree of awareness you know the gravity of our sin is increased the more knowledge we have about what we're doing and there are a lot of people in society that have been sold a bill of goods on this and are quite frankly deceived about what it is that they're doing now it doesn't stop it from being gravely wrong i mean it's still gravely wrong but there are individuals that are just that are just completely out to lunch on this intellectually and do not understand the gravity of what they do saint paul tells us that he was a murderer he paul was personally a murderer he was killing people but god showed him mercy because he acted in ignorance and that's our attitude right we recognize that there are people who are been duped by an ideology and we want to be personally compassionate towards them to love them not to condemn them uh and to welcome them into a more expansive vision of human dignity and we leave the judgment of souls up to god sure uh we thank you so much for your call and we would ask that uh when you ask a question or or pose that question to ryan our phone screener that that is the question that you actually ask when you do get on the air yep yep yep yep yep okay and let's leave let's leave politicians and parties out of it we're not going there at all let's go now to dennis in wisconsin rapids listening for the first time glad to hear from dennis what's on your mind today dennis yes hi good morning or good afternoon i went to my niece got married i'm a protestant but i met nice got married and the priest would not marry them in church because of the covet up here personal choice but i don't understand that because you have church every sunday but i also hear you that i've heard occasionally you say that if you're not married in church you that's you can get an element because of that okay so how can i help you well i'm just asking for the the answer to both of those questions okay is your is your niece a catholic yes she was yeah there she is and it's also the man that she married is the catholic okay well they're invalidly married so the catholic church doesn't recogni does not recognize that as a valid marriage even though the the priests would not marry them in the church well you just told me they didn't get married they got they had a protestant minister perform the ceremony that's not for for cat for protestants that's fine i mean two protestants can go do that that's fine but a catholic has a canonical obligation to marry in the presence of a priest or a deacon and they didn't do that so they're not validly married okay can you tell me why the priest besides the culvert i have no idea i have no idea i have no idea why he refused to marry them none whatsoever if he may have had a valid reason maybe he didn't maybe he was a curmudgeon right but i mean there's there's a lot of catholic priests and a lot of deacons in your diocese if they didn't like him they could have gone to somebody else dennis thank you so much for your call let's go to uh rainy in pensacola rainy we got about a minute what's on your mind today yeah i just have a very short question and that's uh you know we talked with there's the ark of noah and that is the ark of the covenant i was wondering and have break is that the same word and if it is what does it mean and then if there are different words what are what are the meaning of the two different words yeah thanks so actually i'm not hebreased by training i could find out pretty quickly um it would take me about a minute and a half to look it up and i don't have that much time on the show you know i'll tell you where i would go honestly i would either ask father mitch when he walks in the door because he is a hebrews knows hebrew pretty well or i'd go to biblehub.com and i would i would look up one of these texts in english and then i would simply go to the interlinear function that the website offers where you can you can see the english uh printed with the hebrew right above it and there's a helpful little link on the website where you can actually click the hebrew word or the greek word if you're in the new testament and it'll give you the root and the cognates and all the uses of that in the sacred text and then you can compare usages until in a glance i mean i do this all the time when i'm doing word studies and it's a very simple thing to you know to go pick up a lexicon or even today with the internet it's just easy peasy to go find out what the what the hebrew was underlying a particular english translation all right and there we go rainey we hope that's helpful for you thank you so much uh for your call and uh perhaps if we you know if we had gotten that particular call a little bit earlier maybe we could have unpacked it i don't know yeah well see now i gave away my secret uh-oh you know i gave him my my secret if yeah if he'd call during the break i would have done all my little my little exegesis here on the break and now to come out looking like a hebrew expert this is why you have two laptops in front of you instead of just one yeah that's right just keep you know double barrel fantastic all right thank you so much dr david anders sir hey thanks tom don't forget we do the program monday through friday here on ewtn 2 p.m live eastern time for you every day also an encore of that same show at 11 pm eastern and a best of show on sundays at 2 p.m eastern and of course you can check out the podcast anytime of the day or night and that is ewtn ewtnradio.net on behalf of our fantastic team i'm tom price along with dr david anders see you tomorrow here on call to come

Channel: EWTN

Views: 2,279

Rating: 4.8644066 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: NIaheqVZdPg

Length: 54min 3sec (3243 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 29 2020