Called To Communion - 4/12/18 - Dr. David Anders

what's stopping you from becoming a Catholic why can't women become priests why do Catholics worship Mary why do I need to confess my sins to a priest where is purgatory in the Bible I think the Pope has too much authority what's stopping you you are called to communion with dr. David Anders on the EWTN global Catholic radio network hey everybody welcome again to called the communion this is the program for our non Catholic brothers and sisters those of you who have questions about the Catholic faith maybe you just don't know where to turn to get those answers well you can turn to us and here's our phone number eight three three two eight eight EWTN that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six you can also text the letters EWTN to five five zero zero zero wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply again the phone number eight three three two eight eight EWTN Michael Burchfield is our producer Matt Kaminsky is handling the phones today he'll be the first voice that you hear when you call in Jeff person is on social media so he will be glad to host those questions that you post on YouTube and Facebook it pass those on to us we'll get them on the air and to hopefully get them answered for you very quickly I'm Tom price along with dr. David Anders Tom how are you today doing great how are you my friend glad to hear that here is a question we received this is a text from Travis as a habit as a habit now how often should I go to confession thanks Travis I appreciate it so the the bishops of the United States recommend monthly confession okay okay the practice in my family is closer to weekly confession and and I think you know depending on your state of life and and family status and so forth that can be that can be indicated pope john paul ii went everyday Wow which I don't recommend honestly you're not the Pope another my and I think if most people went every day we be tilting over in description ASSA t could be you know but regularly regularly is the is the the operative word here okay very good here's one now from matt in kansas who says hey love your show here's my question i know that there is no sadness in heaven but if i am fortunate enough to make it there only to realize that a loved one didn't make it to heaven how is it that this would not make me sad thanks Matt in Kansas okay thanks I appreciate that so there's several things to consider here one of them is what exactly in what does the happiness of heaven consist okay and what the Church teaches what Scripture teaches is that the happiness of heaven is the immediate and intuitive knowledge of the divine essence okay let me unpack that a little bit right now we don't have an immediate and intuitive knowledge of the divine essence our knowledge of God and His essence is remote alright and we know that God exists all right we know from the natural world from philosophy we know from divine revelation that God exists that He loves us that he cares for us and so forth but we don't know him as he is in himself we know some things about him okay but we don't have that direct and intuitive knowledge of God and intuitive is a big part of this too so what is intuitive natural intuitive for things that I don't have to reason to to know like I know intuitively like my own state of consciousness for any for instance it's just immediately evident to me that's how intimately we will know God st. Paul says that we all know him even as we're fully known us saw some pretty serious intimacy right this without the beatific vision now God is it's different from all other beings all right in that he is the the ground and the source of everything that is good okay so whenever you find something that you are attracted to that's pleasant that's beautiful that's good you're you're you are in a created and sort of participatory way in an indirect way engaging something that comes from the very nature and being in essence of God all right and you know I'm drinking a cup of green well green teas good stuff right but it's only good because God is good and God made green tea all right and if I had a you know a quantitative infinity of all the sort of finite goods that I might encounter in the material universe and stacked them all up all right they still wouldn't equal the infinite goodness of God's very own essence in nature okay once I encounter that good that ultimate good it is the fulfillment of all desire there's literally nothing left to be desired all right and we will we will continue to enjoy created being right for the sake of God all right so I can I'll still like my wife and my kids and you know whatever else is available to me in heaven but for the sake of God and in God will I like all these things will I love them and rejoice in them because they are gifts from God but it's ultimately God that's the fulfillment all desire so there can be nothing lacking in our state of subjective happiness at that point like once the will immediately encounters the divine nature in essence what could draw you away from that nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing right now one of the things that we don't see right in the nature of God right now is how to make sense of loss and suffering sometimes we do but a lot of times we don't but we know that God allows these things in his Providence because he intends to bring out of them a greater good right now we may not see that greater good in heaven we will and so what seems irreconcilable or contradictory like our eternal blessedness and the knowledge of the loss of someone that we cared about right we don't see how those things can be reconciled now in heaven we will see the reconciliation because we'll see there will see the sense of them revealed in the divine essence hmm all right so I can't explain to you how that reconciliation will be made known to you just that it will be made known to you in such a way that there will be nothing lacking in your experience of perfect bliss very good hey we thank you so much for that quick question it was a great one when we come back we'll be talking with Jennifer in Worthington OHIO we also have some text coming in and a couple of phone lines open for you right now eight three three two eight eight EWTN that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six called a communion in progress here on EWTN sharing the fullness of the Catholic faith one eight three three two eight eight EWTN one eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six this is call to communion with dr. David Anders on the EWTN global Catholic radio network EWTN National Catholic Register is America's most trusted dad leak news source try six free issues with our compliments if you like it you can subscribe later in a 35 percent savings off the newsstand price visit NC register.com today 60 on 10 with Monsignor Charles Pope the second commandment you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain the disclosure of a name in the ancient world belong to the order of trust and intimacy and so when God revealed his name to Moses it was an extraordinary outreach to us saying that we were called to an intimate trusting relationship with him and so we should always reverence this name as a great great gift we should obviously never use God's name to curse her to blaspheme or to berate others that's wholly inappropriate God's name is meant to bring blessing and likewise the vain use vain means empty and so some of these expressions like oh my god or you know and so on need to be avoided as well vain means empty and those are using God's name as an empty kind of expression of exasperation and then finally never ever to use god's name to swear an oath falsely second commandment you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain EWTN live truth live Catholic al Kresta the secular press just doesn't get our story they don't even understand you and so it's been coming upon us get the story straight and get the story out the leading Catholic voices are on EWTN radio what's stopping you from becoming a Catholic you are called to communion with a dr. David Anders to eight EWTN one eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six you know we talk an awful lot about trust on EWTN and on this program well let me tell you you can trust the news that you see on EWTN news nightly Lauren Ashburn and the wonderful team of Washington DC correspondents and really correspondents from all over the world worked very very hard to get you all the news that is going to affect you and your life so do check it out tonight 9:00 p.m. on EWTN that's EWTN news nightly with Lauren Ashburn if you're ready now let's get to the phones at eight three three two eight eight EWTN we begin here with Jennifer in Worthington OHIO listening to us on Saint Gabriel radio AM 820 hello Jennifer what's on your mind today hello and thank you my 17 year old daughter attends a non Catholic Christian school and yesterday the headmaster had a discussion and he said that women could not be in any leadership positions anywhere in the church or outside the church and he also said that couldn't or shouldn't isn't should not should not be in a leadership okay alright I understand that and he said that his thinking is in line with tat but teaching my daughter and a couple others in the school are Catholic I am two questions number one just in general how can we respond to that and then number two in particular how can we relate to pause where he said in 1 Corinthians 14:33 2:35 he says that women must be silent in churches they're not permitted to speak and if they want to know something they should ask their husbands at home and those are my question okay okay thanks well first of all your your non-catholic headmasters position is not shared by the Catholic Church either in the present day or historically and the number of women in significant leadership roles within Catholicism is is quite large so you know a very important female person in the Catholic Church is the Blessed Virgin Mary all right apart from whose intercession we would all be sunk alright and so she's an incredibly important person Queen of Heaven alright within the church militant that's those of us that are alive and kicking around on planet earth today I mean I'm thinking about a an August body like the International theological Commission which advises the Pope in the Vatican on matters of theology has a number of very prominent women both religious and lay on on that Commission appointed directly by the Pope the role of Catholic women religious in education health care advocacy for the poor you name it I mean there think of mother Teresa of Calcutta for instance you know there's it's just it's just mammoth and and and women religious of course have been part of the church's Constitution from the very beginning we read about the order of widows in Saint Paul's epistles and that of course have had a significant role in in church life for for millennia and in fact one of the things that was interesting made Catholicism controversial in the very early centuries is that in in many ancient cultures and in including an European barbaric you know Saxon Frankish culture prior to the advent of Catholicism marriage was something over which women exercised very little control outside of outside of Catholicism and women were essentially property to be disposed of by their their fathers or their husbands and and the idea that a woman would have to give consent in order to be validly married was something foreign to to their experience but the Catholic Church taught that a woman can withhold her consent to a marriage and that will and forced marriage is not valid marriage okay and there were women who were martyred in antiquity like Lucy and Agatha so forth who preferred to consecrate their virginity to Christ rather than to Mary and they were martyred for it and the church venerates their example of heroic dedication to the to the gospel even to the extent of separating from family bonds and and and blood and so forth as Jesus himself said when the gospel what he says if anyone loves husband or wife or father or mother fields or lands or children are very his own life more than me he's not worthy of me and generous always takes that that commitment of consecrated life and when you think about it the kind of the kind of radical freedom that that implies about the dignity and the nature of the human person very very seriously applying it with equal dignity to men and women we have in my own diocese of Birmingham Alabama we have far more women administrators in education than we do men we have women working in the ministry of local parishes schools of Catholic institutions and hospitals and so forth teachers we have canonists that are women that that make judgments for the marriage tribunals and other tribunals and so forth we have a woman in my diocese he's a very leading internationally recognized canonist Mother Angelica who I was just gonna say I'm sitting here give me the I was saving that trump card for yeah you know yeah a Jennifer you could certainly ask that headmaster who founded the world's largest Catholic media network the world's law well well I'm getting around to that because of the Headmaster's position is he's not making a claim about what happens in Catholicism he's making a claim about what he thinks is normative what ought to happen all right he is he is a chauvinist essentially no who's to exclude women from any position of leadership at all based on passages like this from st. Paul and first corinthians that have been taken I believe out of context and certainly out of the historic tradition the Catholic Church now within Catholicism there is no doubt that there is a historic tradition that differentiates the roles of men and women particularly in family life with respect to Authority all right and you you find sometimes some some rather strongly worded statements about about paternal Authority and husbands Authority and so forth up until the Second Vatican Council so there's there's a basis for that in the tradition the last document from the Magisterium I remember that sort of clearly enunciated difference of role and authority within family life would be caste canoe b by pius xi which repeats the traditional teaching very much in the kind of language that st. paul would use i think that since the council the church in the Magisterium in particular pope john paul ii has a more nuanced interpretation of that and this is getting around to your final question about how are we to how are we to understand 1st corinthians 14 in similar passages in the modern era um good resource especially for your daughter there's a book by erica bacchiocchi called women sex and the church a case for catholic teaching all right which you might want a reference also John Paul the second encyclical on the dignity of women it's what Dignitas muli erimar believes and essentially it's this okay the the modern feminist movement sex especially second wave feminism takes the position that biological sex and gender are two different realities all right that's like that's a Simone de Beauvoir and classic feminism takes the position that you know Beauvoir would say a person is not born but becomes a woman and what what she meant by that wasn't a denial of the reality of biological sex but there was all this baggage that would come associated with gender identity that's that's culturally conditioned and kind of foisted on the on on the society and that that conviction which is an ideological conviction has so overwhelmed the feminist movement that it's almost heresy in modern secular feminism to suggest that men and women are different or that they have different gifts and giftings that may be grounded in their biology alright now that's honestly it's kind of a lunatic position to take alright because both in our experience and empirically in the laboratory and all the way down to the level of the DNA men and women are not the same they're different alright but they're equal in dignity okay and so the position of the the modern Catholic Church is genuine feminism does not require that we that we force all women to be men and that's kind of where second wave secular feminism goes it means that equality for women has to mean that men and women operate in the same spaces with the same kind of tasks irrespective of their biology all right and that's Erica Biagio she and others argue that's really deeply unfair to women because you know women have a biological clock with respect to child-rearing that men don't have so insisting that they compete with men in a male-dominated realm often results in they're having to put off decisions of child-rearing and then you know the time runs out may realize okay I've made it to the top of the corporate ladder but I'm childless and I'm lonely yeah so genuine feminism is not how can I get more women to behave like men but how could I actually challenge the civil order and change culture in a way that would enable women to use all of their intellectual spiritual cultural emotional gifts in a way that doesn't violate their intrinsic femininity and particularly their capacity to bear children which is a huge biological burden that God has placed on them okay now when it comes down to family life huh this is I will tell you how I handle this personally as a dad who regards my wife is equal dignity with myself I recognize that just just sociologically fathers have a kind of influence over the life of their family that mothers don't have mothers have a kind of influence over the life of their family that fathers don't have you know and typically I mean not in every case typically women are more nurturing you know if my if my nine-year-old scrapes his knee or Buster's toe it's no doubt in my mind who he's running too far yeah okay and a lot of times when my wife she wants some of the kids to do something and she's having a hard time getting them to comply she appeals to me she's David coming here make the kids do X Y & Z all right do I bring an authority to bear in that situation that she's having trouble exercising the answer that question is yes in what way am i bringing it as a service to my wife hmm right I can I can step in sometimes and bring a weight of authority to a situation that's a that's helpful to her all right and and that's what it is it's the authority of service all right it's not the authority of domination all right and what it's one that regards the equal dignity of men and women but recognizing that they have different gifts they have different talents all of them are necessary for the flourishing of the family and for the kingdom of God and for civil society beautiful Jennifer thank you so much for your call that opens up a line for you now eight three three two eight eight EWTN that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six let's go to a Spirit Lake Iowa now and talk with Andrew Andrew is ten years old he likes to check us out via podcasting hey Andrew what's your question today thanks Andrew I appreciate the question to test us so that we will learn to rely on God's mercy and grace I mean God could have created all of us just immediately in heaven without our having to experience any of the difficulties of life all right whether those difficulties be demons or physical sickness or whatever but God created a world in which we would find it necessary to call out to him for help all right and and to rely on His grace and to grow in our spiritual life because that too is is valuable to God so he he allows these and other challenges so that we might learn to rely upon him and grace there you go Andrew thanks for calling our phone number here eight three three two eight eight EWTN this is called a communion here on EWTN radio and by the way if you're watching us on TV today you too can join in by sending us an email CTC at ewtn.com CTC at ewtn.com let's go to Erin now in Leesburg Virginia checking us out via Amazon echo hey there Erin what's on your mind today hi thanks for taking my calls my question is how can I be involved in some ecumenical events that happen in my community but just go there and not to give up my Catholic principles but to sort of add to it yeah thanks I appreciate it so I think it's it's very important that you have clear in your own mind what your obligations are as a Catholic and that you not do anything that would contravene those so for instance you would not be able to participate in an ecumenical communion service or Lord's Supper for instance right that's because the Eucharist is the is the sign in the bond of the church's unity so it's only the valid Catholic Eucharist that you can participate in and and there might be other religious services who's whose expression or formulation explicitly contradicts some point of Catholic teaching like say for instance you might some some you know Episcopal the United Methodist congregation that was celebrating a so called gay marriage you know you couldn't participate in something like that because it contradicts the very nature in essence and the meaning of the sacrament of matrimony but you know barring those kinds of exceptions there there are a lot of places where where Catholic and non-catholic people's agree on matters of the moral life religious liberty the dignity of the human person and and provided it's grounded in or based on those principles or those elements of truth and sanctification that we share then there's every reason in the world to celebrate those commonalities you know the pro-life movement has long been a privileged space for ecumenical engagement we have a crisis pregnancy center here in Birmingham that's founded and run by Catholics but Protestants are some of our greatest benefactors because they value the same ministry that sure saving babies and helping mothers so you know that really as long as is there's something that we share and conviction that's good we can celebrate that all day long and it can be fruitful also to have public discussions not only of our of our similarities but also of our differences not in a polemical way not you know to beat the other guy up and tell them why he's wrong but just to you know lay out here's what unites us and here's what separates us and let's let's see how we can overcome the ladder and and and expand the realm of the former sounds good Aaron thank you so much for your call here's a quick email from Noel is st. Thomas's belief correct that God does choose who will be saved please explain Thanks yeah that's correct absolutely this is the doctrine of predestination which is a Catholic doctrine and a biblical doctrine and so sometimes people get hung up on this because they confuse the Catholic dr. doctrine of predestination with the Protestant or Calvinist doctrine which is false in the church for Jack's there are a lot of distinctions between the two but the essence of the Catholic doctrine of predestination is that it's God who chooses us not we who choose God okay the idea that you know God just sort of without differentiation chooses the human race generally and that it's up to us to respond and then he then responds by giving us grace that's the that's the heresy of semi-pelagianism which was condemned at the council the Senate of orange in 529 ad God gives the grace necessary and efficient for salvation to those whom he knows will be saved why he gives it to some and not others is something I don't have time to get into because I hear the music coming but there's more than one opinion about that in Catholicism and there's a lot of room for theological speculation if he doesn't get if it's not God who chooses then essentially something is left to my moral effort in my free will that's not the way it works we'll be right back the Trump administration rolls back the Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate US bishops calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons Francis offers prayers for the victims of the California wildfire US House of Representatives has passed a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks hope Francis says the death penalty is contrary to the gospel your link to news headlines Catholics count on at the top of the hour we days on EWTN radio tell the boss you have every right to disconnect hi I'm Teresa Tomeo with another media minute here on EWTN a proposed law in New York City aiming to give employees the right to disconnect from their phones and emails without the fear of being fired that law proposed by a New York City Councilman would make it illegal for a company to require employees to access work email and other communications when they're off the clock it applies to regular time off sick days and vacation time if a violation has found the employer could pay a city fine of 250 dollars and an additional fine of $500 that will be given to the employee the councilman hoping to pass the law by the end of the year I'm Teresa Tomeo with another media minute on EWTN [Music] we need ewtn radio for the reason that mother angelica founded this entire enterprise she always saw this as a spiritual growth network it was to be an enterprise in media that reached people in all aspects of their life she saw this as a holistic approach to reaching the whole person in the middle of the world and bringing them truth and life Raymond Arroyo thinks Catholic radio is important so should you what's stopping you from becoming a Catholic you are called to communion with dr. David Anders one eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six quite a few calls coming in today but we have a line open for you right now eight three three two eight eight EWTN let's continue here with Roseanne driving through Tennessee listening to us via Sirius XM 130 hello Roseanne what's on your mind today the other day and he thought he heard you say that Mary did not give Jesus she did not have a vaginal birth and that that was dogma did he misunderstand you I hope no he did not misunderstand me that's a dogma of the Catholic Church and you can find it referenced in paragraph 499 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and and then you know for more lengthy discussion you might consult the encyclopedia the catholic encyclopedia on the dogma of mary's perpetual virginity because they're very specific about what perpetual virginity means it's not just that she never had conjugal relations with the man but also that her her biological integrity was was maintained even in the process of parturition so is a miraculous birth that's correct mat is a dogma of the church okay there you go Roseanne thank you so much for your call here's an email now from Chris from Texas who says hey dr. Andrews I scrolling through a religious discussion group online I saw a really interesting question brought up in the context of reconciliation between Eastern Orthodox and our church the Catholic Church so Doucet of a contest churches have any valid sacraments are they in a similar state as the Orthodox not in communion with Rome thanks love your show Chris right well you can't necessarily generalize about every set of a Cantus group okay what is a set of thing right a set of mechanists is a non Catholic religious movement of people that claim to be Catholic but not only do they refuse obedience to the to the Roman pontiff to the Holy Father they deny there even is one all right and there are some of these groups that maintain that well they recognize the office of the papacy was instituted by Christ they maintained that the office has effectively been vacant hence Vacanti s-- an empty chair sits the pontificate of Pius the 12th so they don't recognize the validity of john xxiii papal election or paul the six or any of the subsequent popes down to the to the present chair of st. Peter's Pope Francis so as to whether or not they have valid sacraments well that that is that judgment needs to be made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on a case-by-case basis all right so there are there are those that do have Allen sacraments as well as I understand but there are others where the validity of their sacraments is in question all right and so this is I mean anytime someone presents themselves as a valide ordained priest but they're not in obedience to the Roman pontiff and they wish to be reconciled to the church the church is going to look at their claim to valid ordination on a case-by-case basis and determine whether or not they actually have valid sacraments very good thank you for your question our phone number here 8 3 3 2 8 8 EWTN let's go now to Mary Ann in Dickinson North Carolina North Dakota excuse me Dickinson North Dakota checking us out today on real presence radio Mary Ann what's on your mind today my question is in regards to a mixed marriage mm-hmm there was some somebody called in last evening the family called in about their daughter marrying a non-catholic anyway in a mixed marriage don't both parties promise to raise the children in the Catholic faith yeah thank you that used to be the case in canon law that that if a Catholic person wanted to marry a non Catholic person that the priest would not would not officiate at the wedding unless both parties promise to raise children Catholic my understanding is now that the non Catholic party is not required to promise to raise the kids Catholic but but does have to recognize and understand the Catholic party's moral obligation to do so all right so it doesn't mean that the obligation to raise Catholic kids has gone away basically the burden for fulfilling that promise falls predominantly on the Catholic parent and and it made if a non Catholic parent suggested that he or she was going to actively frustrate the Catholic parents obligation to raise the children Catholic then that would be a serious problem okay very good Maryanne thank you so much for your call this is called a communion here on EWTN our phone number eight three three two eight eight EWTN eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six here's an email from John and Texas why did Jesus after the resurrection tell Mary don't touch me I have not risen to my father yet but then he tells Thomas to go ahead and probe the nail marks and his side yeah well I think there are two different kinds of touching going on here right in Thomas's case it was it was evidence of the bodily resurrection that he wanted to elicit I mean he was demonstrating rather he wanted to to retrieve from Thomas that act of faith in his Messiahship and his divinity and his authority that that tangible proof of the Resurrection would elicit all right in in the case of Mary she had no doubts that he was raised from the dead that's not that wasn't in question all right and and he pointed out that look my presence with you now all right what's most important is my sacramental presence with you and the Eucharist in the church and then my ascension into heaven is an essential part of the fulfilling of God's plan for the gospel throughout the whole world you know when Pilate said to Jesus are you a king Jesus's answer was that my kingdom is not of this world and Saint Paul tells us that we're to set our hearts not on things below but on heaven where Christ is seated at the right hand of God if Jesus we're sitting on a throne in Jerusalem right now ruling over a geopolitical Kingdom the nature of our adherence to the Catholic faith or to Christ would be very very different all right it's precisely because he's ascended into heaven all right and the nature of his kingdom is otherworldly and not the kingdom of this world that our adherence to the Catholic faith is in the domain of the ethical and of charity in a faith rather than than political domination or coercion very good John thank you for your email if you'd like to send us an email for a future program the address is CTC at ewtn.com CTC at ewtn.com let's go now to Nicholas in Canton Ohio listening also on Sirius XM 130 hey Nicholas what's on your mind today hey yeah I'm wondering I'm looking for a solid explanation of why women can't become priests okay thanks women cannot become priests for reason that is very similar to why men cannot become mothers all right or women cannot become fathers that that the priest stands in relationship to the church as a husband to a bride and a father to a family all right and that's it's not that that women the priesthood is not a some sort of utilitarian function that can be fulfilled just in virtue of doing tasks all right there are tasks that a priest has to do like celebrating the sacraments that's the principle one all right but it the priesthood is also not only about what a priest does but about who a priest is all right because the priest is an icon a type of Christ and his relationship to the church and and and that's that's that's essential to the nature of a priest all right you know there's a kind of priesthood that devolves to paternity in general all right we look in the Old Testament fathers of families had a particular role in offering sacrifice and in mediating the divine covenant to their children and to their families in virtue of their paternity all right and the church is like a great big family and and to deny that men and women are are different not unequal right but different they have different competences and they have different gifts I mean I can't be a mother and if you know if I lost my wife and I tried to pick up her job I could do a lot of the same functions you know I could do a lot of the same functions but they wouldn't have the same character of course because I'm not a woman and I can't be a mother I could I could try all day long I'm not it's not gonna happen all right and and my wife couldn't be a father she can try all day long she's not gonna be a father that's it thank you so much for your question we do appreciate it this is called a communion here on EWTN you know this program is specifically for non Catholics so if you're not a Catholic you're thinking about it and maybe there's something keeping you from becoming a Catholic let's talk about that at eight three three two eight eight EWTN eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six here is Clara now in st. Petersburg Florida listening on peace be with you radio hello Clara what's on your mind today hi I heard the lady that called them about the birth of Christ being a virgin birth and that it was part of the Catholic dogma I have two-part question first of all what is the dogma I don't know what that is and the other thing is if it was a virgin birth in my knowing of birth how was Jesus born them all right thanks so I appreciate the question Clara a dogma is a doctrine a teaching that that all Christians are bound to believe by divine authority all right so God has revealed it as true and we have a moral obligation to believe what God has revealed because God is trustworthy all right that's what a dog as the dogmas of the church are things generally that the church has formally defined as necessary or essential parts of Christian belief right not every doctrine is a dogma and there are there are particular teachings and Christianity that could be true it's not the fact that they're not dogma doesn't make them untrue but they've never been formally identified by the teaching office of the church as absolutely necessary for Christian identity right and yeah you know and there are there are positions within Catholicism about which Catholics can take different points of view they can disagree all right dogmas are not things that can disagree about the paradigm example of a dogma would be the dogma of the Trinity the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity there no there are no two views on the Trinity if you take some if you take a second view if you take a dissenting view you're no longer a Catholic in your faith all right Catholics believe in the Trinity period and that's what a dogma is the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity is also a dogma all right you can't call yourself a Catholic and claim to have the Catholic faith and deny dogma so in terms of the actual mechanism of Jesus's birth it was a miraculous partition where he he passed through the uterus in a miraculous manner that left the physical integrity of the Blessed Virgin intact that's all there is to it Clara thank you so much for your call this is called a communion here on EWTN here's an interesting question this is from Miriam via email and this is one of those subjects that pops up quite a bit with non Catholics they'll say well what about this what about this so here's Miriam's question would you please tell us about the Inquisition I would love to be able to respond in an educated manner when asked thanks and God bless yeah sure thank you well the first thing to know about the Inquisition is there wasn't just one there was more than one Inquisition and we have to distinguish the Roman Inquisition from the Spanish Inquisition the Roman Inquisition was an office that was set up by the Vatican by by the chair of st. Peter to bring due process and justice and fairness and standards of evidence and so forth to bear in the prosecution of heretics and and it that was really it was was his mandate because keeping in mind that in in pre-modern society and this is this is not just true of Christianity this is true of just about every religious culture throughout the entire world there's very little distinction between the practice of religion and one's conception of the civil order as such okay and and so minority groups whether religious or otherwise have often had had to suffer at the hands of majority and that was true in medieval Europe as well especially in the early days of the conversion of the empire and conversion of of the West and a culture that was a pre-christian culture that was very comfortable with things like trial by ordeal you know a lot of barbaric customs and some of those got imported into into early you know Frankish Celtic and sacks and Catholicism in a way that was unjust and the Catholic Church says well that's terrible you know we can't have pogroms and and you know plunging heretics into boiling oil and stuff like that we don't we recognize that Catholics have an obligation to hold the same faith and so the the end of seeking unity in the faith and even to the point of imposing church discipline to do so is a worthy and Noble in but has to be done in a fair-minded way alright and so the Inquisition was set up actually to prevent abuses not to create them this is the Roman Inquisition I'm talking about not short banishing possession and they did such a good job at that in fact that we have cases in the Middle Ages of people who were accused of merely civil crimes you know theft murder whatnot who would who would deliberately commit heresy so they could have their trials transferred into inquisitorial courts because the inquisitorial courts were viewed as much more fair-minded and civil and rational than than the secular courts okay now the Spanish Inquisition was set up by by Ferdinand Isabella of Spain to enforce Catholic orthodoxy on their particular Kingdom and it also became you know an engine of the monarchy and of the aristocracy and of the civil power in ways that were more conducive to a all right now the extent of those abuses is a matter of some historical controversy and that doesn't justify any abuse any abuses is as deplorable but it wasn't it wasn't like the Monty Python skit glad to hear that wow thank you so much for your question Miriam this is called a communion here on EWTN got a text here from Ora checking us out today on YouTube Ora says did Joseph go with our lady to visit Elizabeth and if he did how come he doubted Mary's pregnancy afterwards okay thanks yeah I'm not aware that there's that there's revelation on that one way or the other and I don't know of any tradition that addresses the question of whether or not Joseph accompanied our lady to visit Elizabeth or even the exact breakdown in terms of timing now there it's not that Joseph doubted Joseph didn't doubt okay Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant and and he assumed as was rational that she got pregnant in the normal way and so that was problematic okay and so that's why he was well maybe I should call this thing off and of course he got visited by the angel who said nope Joseph not not in the normal way this is a miraculous conception and it's in a coordinate the plan of God and God's desires that you take Mary home to be your wife he never doubted for a second he went oh that's the way it is I'm on board so be it okay thank you so much for your question or our phone number here eight three three two eight eight EWTN we do have a line open for you eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six called to Communion on EWTN question here from Jay who says can Catholics attend a non Catholic funeral yeah sure they can sure they can no big deal yeah the only thing you can't do you can't go and receive the putative sacraments of a non Catholic Church but in terms of attending the funeral yeah absolutely very good an email now from Al in Greenville South Carolina he says good day I wanted to ask if there was sin in heaven when the Angels rejected God when they saw his plan for Humanity wouldn't the Angels have sinned since they rejected God at that Thanks yeah thank you so here's the distinction we need to draw we talk about heaven as the abode of God and and and the angels are we talking about the the the reward of heaven which is the reward of the just which consists in the beatific vision okay the angels at the moment of their creation were not admitted to the beatific vision immediately upon creation all right it was necessary for them to merit eternal salvation and so they were created like Adam and Eve the angels were created in Grace and then the holy angels withstood the their moral testing and they believed God entrusted him and in that second they merited eternal salvation and passed immediately to the beatific vision the Angels that disobeyed God in Pride and resisted the divine will never experienced the beatific vision all right and so heaven in that sense heaven as the reward of the just wasn't something that they lost because they never had it hmm okay very good appreciate your a question there and thank you for checking in with us today Jay called a communion here on EWTN Steve sent us an email says could you please help me counter my friends argument that the Catholic Church is not the church that Jesus started in the year 33 he believes that there should be no denominations thus all congregations should be nondenominational what say you seems like a non-sequitur Qaeda all right so I I think that he's correct and saying that there ought not to be denominations okay and meaning that all Christians are Saint Paul tells us in 1st Corinthians chapter 1 verse 10 all Christians have to agree with one another on the content of the faith okay and Jesus prays for the same thing in John 17 that those who believe in Him might be one okay well you guess what you you're not gonna agree on the content of the faith without an objective authority that can define what that content is right if 500 years of Protestantism has shown us anything it's that outside of an objective religious authority that can define the hunters of Christian faith the Bible alone is absolutely not sufficient to bring about that outcome because it's not what it was given for the Bible's not never given to us or intended by God to be the final or sufficient rule of faith for the church Christ entrusted that job to the church's sacred Magisterium so yes I agree with you we all not to be divided into nominations but B I disagree with you that that eliminating sacred tradition of the matter stream will somehow accomplish that I mean history is proven quite contrary yeah Steve thank you so much for your email here's one now from John who says dr. Anders as you well know the Catholic Church puts an awful lot of emphasis on the presumed importance of Mary the mother of Jesus with that being the case why does she appear or disappear rather from Scripture after Acts chapter 1 wouldn't someone that important be mentioned at least as frequently as the other disciples thanks John yeah if you brought that principle to bear on the examination of every facet of Christian faith you would find that the vast majority of Protestant faith would would vanish evanescent ly like smoke yeah okay because scripture fails to mention the lion's share of what we think and do and believe in practice as Christians all right and we could I mean let me give you an example do you think it's important that women receive Holy Communion of course where is that ever mentioned in the New Testament no we're never mentioned I mean that's just one of countless examples the problem with your with your question the premise of the question is that somehow another the Scriptures are supposed to be a sufficient rule of faith for the church and they're not and they were never intended to be that okay thank you so much for your question John let's go now to Hoss in North Fork Nebraska listening today on YouTube hey there Hoss what's on your mind today not much guys I just wanted to ask a simple question I hope but evil okay so you know God created everything and I believe in that but I guess I don't want to say that God said evil but I would like to say you can't know something's good without experiencing evil you can't know something without its opposite like she's got no man without woman but people have told me that it's the creation of original sin but our weak creations of God and then our creations are God's creations just in a longer process you know like if I make something isn't that God Streisand already I understand what you're saying I understand what you're saying so Hoss what's the opposite of an avocado right exactly not non-being is there really is no such thing as the opposite not avocado okay and so I put that out because I disagree with the premise of the question I don't think it's necessary to to know the opposite of a thing in order to appreciate its intrinsic goodness I'm thinking about avocados today because I like them and I kind of want to eat one and there is no opposite of an avocado and I don't need to know the opposite of an avocado in order to know that avocados are good okay and and so it's not necessary to know non-being in order to know the goodness of being or to know the goodness of God okay now with respect to the second question but the origin of sin and the origin of evil the the Catholic position is first of all that that evil itself is non-being all right there's not a there's not a substance in the universe that we call evil it's not like you know you have you have matter over here and that's good or you have you know people and they're good and then there's this there's this squishy thing that floats around that gets into it's called evil evil is not a thing all right evil is simply the word we use to describe the action of a the freely chosen action of a moral agent of a rational moral agent who chooses some lesser good over a greater good so if for instance I like avocados but what if I chose an avocado in preference to my wife all right I said mmm I can eat this avocado I can save my wife from falling off a cliff think I'll eat the avocado okay well my wife is good and that avocado is good but she's a much greater good and if I chose the lesser good over the greater good that's what we call evil okay and you don't have to look any further for the origin of evil than just the capacity of rational Asians to freely deliberate between Goods and to and to make a preferential choice for one over the other that's where the origin of evil comes from okay as to the the elaboration can we somehow implicate God in that since God's providence is in control of everything well the way the church understands that is to separate to differentiate God's primary causality from his secondary causality okay and one of the one of the absolute bedrock philosophical convictions of the Catholic Church is that God makes use of secondary causality all right and it's in this way that he's that he's a separated in terms of moral responsibility from the commission of evil because it that arrives from the free actions of individual rational agents not from God directly all right also it's what preserves the integrity of national science and philosophy and the rational integrity of the universe because since God makes use of secondary causes we can investigate those secondary causes rationally through empirical sciences one of the reasons why the Scientific Revolution occurred in the Latin Catholic West and not in the Islamic world because Muslim philosophers denied the reality of secondary causality instead took the position that you're taking namely that God acts directly and causes everything immediately Catholic Church denies that does does make use of secondary causality and that way preserves his own moral innocence as well as seeding a kind of autonomy and integrity to the natural order that can be rationally investigated Hoss thank you so much for your question glad that you're watching us today on YouTube and dr. David Anders thank you my friend you Tom remember that we do the program each and every Monday through Friday at 2:00 p.m. Eastern with an encore at 11:00 p.m. Eastern here on EWTN radio and then we also play the best of the week on Sundays at 2:00 p.m. Eastern I'm Tom price have a great day we'll have a have another great show for you next time here on eat

Channel: EWTN

Views: 3,433

Rating: 4.5932202 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: FCE7RblHUCk

Length: 54min 21sec (3261 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 12 2018