Called to Communion with Doctor David Anders 02/25/21

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 call to communion here on ewtn it's the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters those of you who have questions about the catholic faith this is a great resource to get those questions answered uh we are all about going with the teachings of the church here is our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 if you're listening to us outside of the us or canada uh 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 if you're watching us on tv today you can certainly participate as well here's our email address for you folks ctc at ewtn.com ctc at ewtn.com charles berry is our producer ryan penny is our phone screener and jeff person is on social media he'll be glad to uh forward any questions you might want to pose via youtube or facebook because we are streaming there right now i'm tom price i think tom just dropped his microphone so okay we're all listening to the inside of his stethoscope at the moment all right here comes tom i am the embarrassed tom price along with dr david andrews tom how are you today some things we can recover from some things we can't fortunately that was that was recoverable well after if if that's the worst thing that has happened to me all day let's go with it all right here's an email uh from george who says did jesus know that he was god i have heard some say yes others say no who is correct david yeah thanks i appreciate the question well the catholic position on this is that being god christ was omniscient so of course he knew his own identity from the moment of his conception sure so there it is and george thank you so much for your email john is watching us on youtube john says how should we understand the reality of sin okay thanks that's a great question i really appreciate it so important catholic dogma on this is that sin and evil are not substances you know sin is not like a cancer in your body sin is not like uh you know a virus that you catch sin is not some organism that's pervading time and space sin is actually it's actually what we call it when a when a rational agent when an intelligent being deflects from the proportionate or appropriate good all right okay and so sin every sin every choice to sin is a choice for some good but under the wrong circumstances or under the wrong description and i've often used the illustration on this show of imagine you know you're walking down the boardwalk and you've got a little pizza restaurant on your left and a drowning victim on your right there's nothing wrong with choosing pizza except right then you need to go choose saving the drowning victim of course and that's how sin works you're choosing some good but under the wrong description at the wrong time in the wrong way in an inordinate manner and uh you know you walk into the convenience store and you see a snickers bar snickers bars are good but you don't have any money in your pocket will there be an inordinate way of laying hold of that snickers bar nothing wrong with the snickers bar it's the manner the time the occasion the circumstance of the taking that would make it immoral it could amount to theft for example right that's the way we think about sin sin is actually there's a there's a lack of something a lack of some proportionate or ordinate uh means or or end or object in an otherwise good choice right and the reason we emphasize that is because god didn't make anything evil everything in the world is good because god made it sure and there's a right way to choose everything but there can be a wrong way to choose a lot of things too in that wrong way is what we call sin john thanks so much for checking us out on youtube call to communion here on ewtn have uh two lines open right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 uh daniel's checking in on facebook daniel says how do you explain forgiveness to someone who is not christian or catholic the person i'm thinking of is always angry okay all right well you know for somebody who's not a christian and not a catholic uh i might just start with the psychological literature on forgiveness which is that unforgiveness is a great way of not hurting the person you're mad at and doing a bad job to yourself right i mean it's just it's just just a fact right so if you walk around carrying bitterness and resentment and unforgiveness in your heart you're not doing any harm to the person you're not forgiving but you're going to do yourself a lot of harm a lot of distress a lot of anxiety a lot of sorrow a lot of frustration and and so forgiveness is profoundly psychologically liberating act now you know when we bring in the catholic faith the christian faith we add a whole another dimension which is it by forgiving our neighbors we actually participate in god's own love and mercy and forgiveness and and we we grow in our relationship to him uh he forgives us and christ actually tells us that if we don't forgive our neighbors we won't be forgiven so we can we can free up our own psychology and we can free up our relationship with god at the same time all right daniel thanks for checking us out on facebook all the way in pakistan zagam says many protestants here in pakistan say that catholics pray in front of serve and worship statues how can i respond to them oh no we don't but pray in front of yes serve and worship no all right uh so let's deal with the prey in front of or well you've got to pray in something in front of something sure you know i mean you you're going to be proximate to some physical object if he walks outside and sit under a tree you're gonna be praying near a tree you know when i was a young protestant kid i used to go to the summer camps and we'd sing kumbaya and jesus loves me and the bible told me so and sometimes we'd meet out on a hillside under the stars or buy a pretty tree and those the the nature around us would sort of evoke an awareness of god's grandeur and majesty and beauty and that sometimes could contribute to our acts of devotion and nobody had a problem with that we weren't worshiping the trees no we were just hanging out with them and in the in the same fashion the catholic can go into a beautiful church or a cathedral surrounded by images or statues of the saints our lady and our lord maybe the crucifix and uh and these these signs these holy reminders can evoke in us not only a an awareness of the beauty of nature but the beauty of the saints the beauty of holiness the beauty of the the christian tradition christian history and and holy men and women of old and they likewise can evoke in us a sense of awe and wonder and hope and expectation and a longing to imitate their virtues that can motivate us to pray these aren't we're not worshiping these images we're using them as aids during our act of prayer yeah one of uh one of mother angelica's favorite things was to say these are just holy reminders that's that's all they are so uh zagham thank you so much for checking in on facebook all the way in pakistan in a moment we're going to get to the phones here and we'll talk with ralph in iowa also marie in south bend and i'd love to hear from you as well at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 it's called communion here on ewtn do stay with us [Music] lent a season of grace with father cedric pessena the same holy spirit that drove jesus into the desert has to drive us to lead us to control us to push us motivate us and empower us to change and to be illumined and i pray that this lent the spirit will touch you in powerful ways lent a season of grace with father cedric pissania sunday 8 p.m eastern on ewtn radio when god's people were in exile and they're about to come home and rebuild their fallen city of jerusalem they were going to be attacked by all the neighboring nations i mean when the city walls had fallen in an ancient world this was a big deal it was extremely dangerous you needed those walls to keep you alive so when they're about to go home and rebuild their fallen city nehemiah told them the joy of the lord must be your strength guys this was not a joy that was put on rose-colored glasses and pretend everything's fine you have no problems to really deal with feel just just feel happy and that's it no no he was talking to people who knew they might go home and die trying to rebuild that city joy has to be your strength of all the things that it's important for you to do right now self-care those things that make you feel balanced the things that feed your spirit that time in prayer the time in working out the time talking to friends these things are utterly crucial because more than money more than a good plan more than the security that comes from the world the joy the lord's gonna keep you strong right now stay in that joy for more text chris at 44144 this is chris stefanik on ewtn radio [Music] it's called a communion here on ewtn if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn let's begin this time with ralph in muscatine iowa listening on fm 105.3 hey ralph what's on your mind today okay i have a question in regards to genesis 2 versus genesis 3 about the two trees in genesis 2 it mentions that the lord says it that the tree is in the middle of the garden of tree of life and then he just there's nothing and then the tree of knowledge of good evil and that's okay and then a little farther down it says god says you know you're not supposed to eat from the tree of knowledge or good and evil and then genesis 3 though now it's eve saying it but it's quoted that you're not supposed to eat from the tree in the middle of the garden and god said quote you shall not eat it or touch it so i that the tree of life is in the middle of the garden so i've always struggled that and no one's given me a good answer okay so maybe eve's not a very good witness right you know i mean in fact when she tell when she repeats the story to the serpent she gets other details wrong yeah if you even touch it well god didn't say it doesn't touch it right so she embellishes and in ways that maybe i don't reflect so great on god uh because maybe she's having some doubts about this thing and so you know eve's not a reliable witness here right okay there you go and ralph thank you so much for your call we hope that's enlightening for you that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn if you have a question for dr david anders 833-288-3986 here is marie in south bend indiana listening on redeemer radio hey there marie what's on your mind today hey good day a quick question for you um you know when i prayed to jesus or god since i believe that he's omnipresent from a logical perspective i believe he hears my prayers um how do we explain mary and the saints hearing our prayer sure okay so yeah absolutely i really appreciate the question there are a couple ways to handle this first of all it's important to recognize that the church does not give us a a a definitive theory on how this works and so theologians can propose different solutions and there's not one that's the canonical solution to the problem i'm going to offer you two possible solutions one solution is that the saints don't actually have to have immediate conscious knowledge knowledge of our prayers in order for our prayers to them to be efficacious so how would that work out imagine a saint in heaven who simply says uh to god please hear the prayers of all those who seek my intercession well that would get the job done sure and it wouldn't require you know an intimate personal knowledge of every individual prayer request god knows the prayer requests and the saint just says look i'm i'm conferring with whoever's asking so whatever they want just please go for it all right that would work that get the job done okay here's another consideration when we are in heaven if we are privileged to to enjoy the beatific vision saint paul says that we will know him even as we're fully known that the the range and scope of the human intellect will vastly outstrip anything that we could possibly imagine in this life i has not seen here has not heard what god has in store for those who love him and uh and so you know right now in this life on a good day when the sun is shining and i've had a nice night's sleep and a cup of coffee i might be able to follow two conversations at once maybe maybe on a good day two conversations at once my wife could probably follow three but i i two's bodybuilder i could all i could manage right um that's more than one it is how many could i handle in heaven i has not seen ear has not hurt who knows how do i know that i wouldn't be able to handle a thousand conversations at once i don't know that is that within god's power to give me that i mean you know microprocessor can do that could god give me a microprocessor brain in heaven i imagine he could now and so god could make known to me through his spirit uh in a miraculous way as many conversations as he needed me to know or wanted me to know in that moment um so it's within the it's when the scope of divine omnipotence to make that happen either one of those strikes me as a plausible answer to your question okay and uh marie is that helpful for you it helps so much thank you i really appreciate it thank you you are most welcome call to communion here on ewtn let's go now to misty misty is in gratis ohio listening on sacred heart radio a first time caller hi misty what's on your mind today hi um good afternoon i am converting over to be a catholic and um i have a question for you sure um i would like to know the difference between a professional sin and a sin that i can pray to god to forgive me that i don't have to go to the father over sure i understand the question thank you very much it's important so first of all you may bring any sin into the confessional you're not required to bring any son into the confessional but you may bring any sin into the confessional okay at the same time you should bring all of your sins immediately to god in the privacy of your own prayer life before you've gone to confession right so if you if you're conscious of a grave sin on monday and you can't get to the confessional until saturday you do not have to wait until saturday to ask god to forgive you and in fact you should as soon as you are conscious of it and as soon as you are contrite you should ask for god to forgive you make a perfect an act of perfect contrition i'm sorry lord that i did this because it offends you and i've lost your love and fellowship and i want to come back just like king david did in psalm 51 you should do that even outside the confessional so the confessional does not set up a kind of absolute barrier between you and god's forgiveness nor is the priest going to stand there with his hand out saying no no no venial sins allowed keep those away from you right it doesn't work that way now what the church requires is that we make a confession of sins in the sacrament of all of our known mortal sins the sins that we know to be mortal in kind in number and that's all that's all the church asks it doesn't say you know you've got to give the three-year backstory to this sin yeah you got to give the whole part no don't say that kind number you know adultery three times murder four times grand larceny five times i'm sorry i'm done that's it that's good now uh how do you know when a sin is mortal and that's really the question so what are the kind of sins that i should that i certainly know i should take to the confessional well a mortal sin first of all is something that is gravely wrong it's gravely wrong and the church is actually not going to specify you know what's the fine line that divides gravely wrong from just almost gravely wrong we're not we're not going there right and really you have to kind of follow your conscience here uh but i mean it's rules of thumb rules of thumb grave injustices against the dignity of the human person or against god and we kind of know what those are you know saint paul lists these kinds of things in sacred scripture murder adultery fornication hatred of parents disobedience carousing factions drunkenness and the like these are the sorts of things that paul lists in his various vice lists you know the kinds of things you you really wouldn't want to get caught doing on the front page of the paper you know you just real profound grievances against the dignity of human person or against god uh you know um swiping a candy bar is not the same thing as uh running off with a new lexus the different in gravity sure and uh and so that's condition number one it's got to be gravely wrong secondly for to be a mortal sin we can't be acting under compulsion but we're acting freely we freely choose this and we choose it knowing it to be wrong knowing it to be wrong if we if we act in genuine ignorance or under compulsion then it's not really a mortal sin now is that really relevant could somebody be in that situation well sure sometimes i'll give the illustration you know today in the modern world when we have a modern state and criminal justice system we don't have to rely upon the vendetta system to to to obtain justice you know for a crime against us in some societies and primitive cultures throughout history they didn't have a criminal justice system and so it was a pretty fine line between civil justice and vengeance and it might be hard for somebody in a situation like that to really delineate you know am i am i am i exacting justice or am i murdering out of right of revenge and uh and that's you know we but we're not in that situation anymore so those are the distinctions if you're conscious of a grave fault that you acted freely you knew you were doing wrong go to the confessional confess it misty we hope that's helpful for you thank you so much for your call it's called a communion here on ewtn let's go now to brian in knoxville tennessee listening on siriusxm channel 130. hey brian what's on your mind today yes i'm a catholic but my spouse who we've been married four years is finally coming into full communion as of the easter vigil she's coming from a pentecostal apostolic background and her question has been that she uh uh everywhere that speaks of baptism in the bible besides i think it's the book of john where it says father son holy spirit everywhere else it says they were baptized in jesus name like acts 2 38 as you probably know says to baptize in jesus name so from what she's tried to explain to me is baptism has always been taught until like the third century to baptize them in the name of jesus was baptism transferred for at one time from jesus name to the titles of father son and holy spirit yes i appreciate the question thank you so much several things i need to untangle here first of all uh her her idea that the book of acts exists to give us a kind of comprehensive account of early sacramental practice it's just incorrect right so we when we should not look to the bible to answer all our questions about the proper method of administering the sacraments because the bible doesn't actually answer those questions it refers to baptism it refers to the eucharist it refers to confession but it doesn't spell out the rubrics for their celebration and uh and there's a good reason for that because the books of the bible were written for and delivered to people who were already celebrating the sacraments you know uh it's like if i refer to uh you know like a grand slam or a home run mentioning a baseball game somebody who knows the game knows what those terms mean sure uh you know but you wouldn't if i did the fact that i mentioned them on this show nobody would turn to the show for a comprehensive account of the rules of baseball you know uh i mean it really be the wrong show for that yes and uh and in the same way see the protestant premise and this is really a wrong premise is that god gave us the bible in order to give us a kind of comprehensive manual user's manual on the christian faith and that's not the purpose of sacred scripture the sacraments were already being celebrated by people who knew how to do them and the apostles say yeah remember when we made the home run they don't tell you what a home run is you know we baptize this guy they don't actually spell out what are the proper rubrics what are the what are all the practices that go into a baptism now in the book of acts when we read about being baptized in the name of jesus are they giving us a baptismal formula and telling us normatively this is the only formula or this is the normative formula to use for baptism no that's not what's being said that's not what's being taught in the book of acts the reason the apostles mentioned baptism in the name of jesus is to differentiate it from other baptisms that were being celebrated in the ancient world like the baptism according to john the baptist acts chapter 19 goes into this the apostles encounter some people who had been baptized according to john's baptism they say did you receive the holy spirit when you believe they said well we didn't know there was any holy spirit well what baptism do you receive john's oh no you need jesus as baptism you say it's shorthand for the one that comes from the christian church not the one that comes from john the baptist it's not shorthand for the baptismal formula for the proper celebration of the sacrament now there is a place in scripture where we get the formula and that's in matthew 28 when our lord himself tells us baptize them in the name of the father the son and the holy spirit so if you want the formula we need to do it jesus's way we need to do it jesus's way but not only jesus's way but the way according to the tradition of the church for 2000 years it is false that the church only began to baptize in the name of the father son holy spirit in the third century that's not true okay we need to hold on to the traditional formula of the church which we receive from our lord himself okay now having said that i do need to caution you if she is going to become a catholic and she has not been baptized in the name of the father son and holy spirit it is important that you let your priest know that because she will not have been validly baptized and so she needs to be a catechumen and not a candidate and if she if she has represented to the priest well i've already been baptized he may not inquire further and you need to let him know this because that's not a valid baptism unless she's been baptized in the name of the father son holy spirit all right brian thank you so much for your call we have one line open right now here at ewtn's call to communion 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 uh jessica is on youtube right now jessica says christians must love and forgive enemies devils can't repent or be saved is hating them sinful can a christian ever hate even in hating evil itself or is hate evil in and of itself okay so actually we love we love everyone and we love everything that god has made in so far as it is good insofar as it is good in so far as it is good right uh we don't love what is broken insofar as it is broken and so we do not love the broken will of the fallen angel and in fact we would we would we would x we would hate it right we would we would hate the brokenness of the fallen angelic will because it's a source of so much harm but we don't hate the fallen angel insofar as it exists because existence abstracted from the question of its brokenness existence of itself is a good it's good that things are you know like i'm glad there are apples but i don't want to eat one that's spoiled sure now i don't hate apples i hate the spoiling you know i don't hate angels i hate the fallenness of some of them that's the way we would answer that okay very good and uh let's see that's was jessica on youtube so jessica thank you so much for your your question we do appreciate hearing from you by the way those of you watching on tv this afternoon if you would like to uh shoot us an email you can do that anytime at ctc at ewtn.com ctc at ewtn.com i want to add something about those fallen angels yes all right loving means we want the good for someone the good for a fallen angel is to be punished so the proper thing to will for a fallen angel is that it be punished all right very good coming up in a moment we'll be talking with lee in westchester pennsylvania also mary in south bend indiana hopefully you as well at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 for call to communion ewtn radio brings you the holy rosary twice each day for over 25 years tune in every morning for mother angelica and every evening for father benedict groeschel only on ewtn radio celebrate the beauty and sanctity of humanity with the gift of life novena bracelet designed exclusively for ewtn it features nine prayer beads a saint benedict crucifix a miraculous medal and medal of saint anne with her daughter the blessed virgin mary ask for the prayers of these holy saints with the gift of life novena bracelet now available for just 39.95 to order go to ewtnrc.com and search for item number 739 and now the ewtn family prayer with father joseph family a prayer that we pray together is a powerful prayer so please pray together with me our ewtn family prayer today we pray for women considering abortion heavenly father we worship you you love the thought of each one of us and wanted us to exist and so you knit us together in our mother's wombs [Music] share your love with those mothers who are considering aborting their unborn children dispel their fears free them from pressuring boyfriends or parents and give them joy in their motherhood spare them lord from a life of regret so that they may enjoy the satisfaction of a motherhood lived in love amen hi this is psy kellet later today on catholic answers live two hours of open forum with jimmy aiken try to beat that catholic ants who's live 6 p.m eastern on ewtn radio now back to call the communion with dr david anderson [Music] hey glad you could join us today for call to communion here on ewtn we're going to go back back to the phones right now at 833 288 ewtn here is lee in westchester pennsylvania listing on holy spirit radio one of our longtime affiliate family there in pennsylvania hey lee what's on your mind today hello um in luke 22 verses 31 and 32 jesus tells peter that satan demanded to have you but i have prayed for you that your faith may not fail and i'm wondering if he says he's praying for him he's god himself so the only one he could be praying to is god the father however i thought that their powers were equal so why couldn't jesus just uh do something on his own rather than pray for his father's uh power to accomplish that great question wonderful question in fact and of course many times in sacred scripture we do see christ acting unilaterally so to speak on his own divine authority without specifically invoking the father and of course anytime christ acts it's the blessed trinity father son and spirit that are acting so it's not it's not like he's putting the father on the shelf when he does that right but he can he certainly can act as almighty god and does so now christ being almighty god is is nevertheless fully man this is catholic doctrine on the christ's person he's fully god and fully man and as a man christ has a human intellect and uh and as a human and having a human mind is able to is able to conceptualize god the father uh and uh and and have a verbal conversation in prayer the way we would prayer is an act of the mind an act of the intellect by which we use speech and and it is the appropriate thing for a human person even a divine human person to do to pray and acknowledge and invoke god and that's the appropriate that's the proportionate that is the just and right thing to do um and and so those prayers are genuinely efficacious he's not just he's not just putting on a show you know some sort of semblance for the sake of humans it's an actual intercessory prayer but it also but he also does this for purposes of setting an example everything that christ does is an example to us of how to live a perfect human life literally everything that he does and uh and so we can safely model our spirituality on every act of the divine person who is jesus including his prayer life all right and we thank you so much uh for your call lee all the way in the westchester pennsylvania appreciate your call call to communion here on ewtn let's go to mary now in south bend listening on siriusxm channel 130. mary what's on your mind today hi i had a question about heaven heaven is eternal it's outside of time but when a soul dies and enters heaven hasn't it changed heaven since there's a time before the soul is there and then there's a time after the soul gets there yeah so i'm just wondering about that sure i appreciate the question so uh in in your question you promised it with the statement that heaven is outside of time that's not altogether true that's not all together true god alone is eternal god alone is eternal the angels are not eternal the angels are not however fully temporal so they're not material beings and so they don't participate quite in the same way we do in this world of time and change and matter but neither but they're created beings and they don't exist necessarily so neither are they eternal like god they exist in a kind of intermediate mode that the scholastic theologians referred to as a fraternity a-e-v-e-r eve eternity or avon okay and the souls of the just would also exist in this sort of intermediate temporality between the material temporality of our world and the full eternity of god now at the resurrection we have another element which is the res the resurrection of physical material bodies uh which will be subject to local motion and therefore time as we know it and so the appropriate way to describe our life uh in the next world is not eternal but everlasting continuous everlasting existence but we won't participate fully in the eternity of god okay makes sense thank you so much mary for your call appreciate hearing from you today in south bend call to communion here on ewtn let's go to tim in buffalo listening online ewtn.com a first time caller hey there tim what's on your mind today well i'm interested in when you want to get a an indulgence a plenary indulgence you need to be completely detached from sin but how can you do that i can imagine that there's always something that i want to do that i shouldn't do but so how do i get completely detached yeah thanks i appreciate the question so first of all it's important to distinguish between uh an act of your will guided by your intellect and and the life of your passions because as animals humans have passions that are not fully rational and that are never going to be fully rational and uh and so the fact that you have an inordinate passion or an inordinate desire is not in itself sinful now uh we can have we our wills can become accustomed to following those inordinate desires and then we are intemperate and incontinent uh we can we can become adept at uh uh we can we can resist those those uh those passions but with difficulty in practice continents or we can become habituated to that resistance and habituated to the you know the consistent choice of the good and acquire the virtue of temperance um but the passions themselves are unruly beasts and they're going to stay that way until we die and so don't be saddened and don't be sorrowful if you find yourself you know being drawn to something inordinate or intemperate that in itself is not a sin and doesn't constitute an attachment really we want to we want to develop the virtue of temperance where we we consistently uh will the temperate response and and habituate our wills to that choice um and uh uh but you know the the the the uh the ancients had a word for this detachment they called it apathea that's where we get our word apathy but they didn't mean apathetic they meant not being the slave of those afflictive emotions and they developed spiritual disciplines to help us acquire this and and uh uh kind of akin to modern cognitive behavioral therapy they would actually examine their thoughts and go well that's not helping me that's not that's not doing me any good let you know and so you can kind of engage in this sort of self-reflective exercise where you examine your life and think about your past deeds and and and uh where you came from what you did wrong and well that wasn't really very helpful and that got me in a load of trouble i don't want to do that again yeah that's that's a useful way to go about that process okay hey tim thank you so much uh for your call today here on ewtn's call to communion molly is watching us on youtube right now molly says when someone tells you that their theological views are most closely aligned with calvin where would you recommend beginning in asking them to consider catholicism i would uh i'm not just tooting the horn here all right i really i'm really not i'd recommend they go to the website call to communion.com and uh well it has the same name as this show the two are only sort of sort of uh loosely connected right i participated in this website but i'm one of only many contributors all of whom used to be reformed or calvinist christians who have become catholic and it is a great forum for engaging exactly this question what would lead a calvinist to consider the claims of the catholic church um so that's uh that's really where i would start now um uh you know with uh with any calvinist like any kind of protestant i i think the kind of the money question if you will is did jesus give us a rule of faith did jesus make provision for the authoritative transmission of the christian faith you need to ask that question and uh and as soon as you ask the question you realize the answer yes he did whoever hears you hears me sure okay all right it's not sacred scripture it's not scripture alone it's not the bible alone it sure is hecate and calvin alone molly thanks so much for checking us out today on youtube call to communion here on ewtn looks like a line or two open at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 go to anthony now in saddlebrook new jersey listening on youtube anthony what's on your mind today hi guys thank you for your show uh dr anders i'm a cradle catholic and this question has always been in my own in my mind what percentage of non-catholic christians out there do you think do not know that the catholic church is the actual church that jesus christ founded okay and if so um if so do you think that they do not know because that information is being withheld to them yes i appreciate the question so protestant history is fairly nuanced on this right so if you were to ask luther or calvin they would admit that there is an historic continuity between christ and the catholic church of their own day they would recognize that but the way they would understand that is they would they would articulate they would claim that christ did in fact establish a church but that that church picked up along the way certain accretions that were you know sort of bleeding over from paganism or for huma from human ambition um that had a merely human authority and that over time you know like barnacles on a ship those things so weighed down the presentation or corrupted even the presentation of the gospel that the church as they understand it so they would say had become lost to view and the job of the reformers again as they understood it was to clear away those barnacles to blow away the smoke and let the clean pure light of the gospel shine out from underneath all that rubble that's almost exactly the way that calvin and luther depicted that so there was a recognition that there was an historic continuity there and i think a well-formed protestant is going to have that picture in his mind that's really going to be the claim that he makes now there are some abysmally ignorant people out there who who literally think that uh that the catholic church as an institution just popped into an existence in the fourth century or or some such time they they imagine that you know some human founder built it like john smith built a baptist but that's just that's just ignorance on their part so you know i can't give you percentages but i really think it has to do with education and uh you know and and catechism in their own tradition because different protestant denominations give a different give different accounts of christian history as their ecclesiology demands anthony thank you so much for your call it's called a communion here on ewtn have you ever heard the phrase redemptive catholic journalism let me tell you it's a thing it's a real thing and i can also tell you what exemplifies redemptive catholic journalism and that is ewtn news it's real it helps you advance the gospel and teachings of the church and you right now you can get our trusted catholic news in your email inbox how cool is that visit ewtn.com click on subscribe and then you'll see a whole bunch of menu choices be sure to click on ewtn news it'll start showing up in your email inbox a wonderful thing ewtn news all right let's go back to the phones here on call to communion on ewtn sharon listening in jeffersonville indiana on sirius xm 130. hello sharon what's on your mind today yes i would like to ask you the question i have a friend i went into the church in 94 and i had been baptized many years ago and in the baptist church and she told me i was confirmed in the catholic church and she told me that i should be i should have been baptized because all my sins wouldn't have been forgiven from a certain period of time and i know it sounds silly and crazy but should i have been i was baptized once okay so you were baptized as a baptist yeah okay and you were baptized in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit you bed in the cumberland river well then you can't then you can't be baptized again one here's the good news here's the good news your friend is correct that when a person is is validly baptized that all their sins are washed away but guess what happens when you go to confession all your chances are washed away not the temporal punishment due to sins but the sins themselves are remitted you're forgiven and you're restored to fellowship so uh in catholic history sometimes uh penance or confession is referred to as the second plank after baptism it's kind of like you know you're renewing that grace of baptism in your life so if you're conscious of sin go to confession boom you're you're brand new awesome appreciate your call sharon it's called to communion here on ewtn let's go to jerry on long island right now listening on sirius xm 130 jerry what's on your mind today thank you for taking my call hey dr andrews i had a question about tangibles materialistic things um being able to distinguish the difference between a uh scrupulous vanities and having too many and being involved in you know uh you know just materialistic things like if you're a collector of something and it seems sometimes be maybe a distraction um you know obviously if it's gonna come in between you and paying you your mandatory most important bills it's a problem i get that part but at times i still feel that um something is saying to me you know that's not what's important to do with your money or um and so since i i personally have a question or a feeling about where my monies go at times in different things like collectibles or clothing or cologne or a nicer car i i question the idea about you know the vanity of it sure and you know it's just hard to distinguish personally and at times i just feel like you know like although i do give a decent tithe and you know each week and consider you know my responsibility as a catholic to contribute each week sure okay so jerry let me ask you a question all right and you don't this is kind of rhetorical so you don't need to answer back the question would be what do prudent people around you say about your habits and if you said i have a hard time discerning what's the proper balance here between being over you know attached to material things and then having the necessaries and then maybe having what's lawful but not necessary what do prudent people around you say uh you know a good a good rule of thumb for acquiring prudence and prudence is really the virtue of making good decisions about these and other kinds of things is you spend time with prudent people so you know hang out hang out with some holy virtuous uh faithful catholic people that you really respect and admire could be priests could be religious could be laypeople and uh and and what are they what do they think about your lifestyle and you know you might you might if you close enough to them and you feel vulnerable if you might ask him you know jimmy tell me the god's honest truth am i going overboard here with this new camaro see what they say sounds like a plan jerry thank you so much for your call we hope that's helpful for you here's an email we received from mc who says dr anders since we need the church to give us the true interpretation of scripture why was scripture written in such a way as to be so easily misinterpreted or even directly collide with church teaching for example vatican 2 declared you can be saved outside the church yet john's gospel declares without consuming the transubstantiated eucharist there is no life in you because of biblical misinterpretations we now have some something like 36 000 versions of christianity what are your thoughts there yeah thanks appreciate the question i think that the difficulty with the question is it presumes that the christian faith is exegeted from the text of the bible and that that the the question about how do you know the christian faith is how do you get at the right interpretation of scripture that's the way the thing is frame right right i don't think that's how the christian faith works there was a christian faith there was a practicing christian church before there was a bible right how did they know what to do how did they know what to do well saint paul tells us he says the tradition i received from the lord i hand on to you right that we know the christian faith not by exegeting it from the pages of scripture but by receiving it from the church that's how we know you stay in communion with the church that's how you know now along comes the bible a few decades and a few centuries later what's the what's the function what's the purpose of the bible if it's not there to be the base text from which we comprehensively exegete the content of the christian faith that's not what it's for what is it for prayer the bible is a is a guide to prayer a guide to contemplation it moves our hearts and minds to consider christ and the apostles and the prophets in sacred history and raise our hearts and minds up to god for purposes of acquiring holiness and and the bible is a diverse book that contains different genre written in different cultures in different languages over centuries and it is it and it is ambiguous by design because that's how all good literature works you know i mean the the the hebrews read the psalms read the prophets correctly at one level christ comes along and says i'm going to give you an additional it doesn't contradict your early interpretation but it is going to augment it it's going to add dimensions that you haven't thought of before people heard christ they said we've never seen anything like this before right but it's good it's good and you know when i read biblical commentators i mean i read sent augustine and i go ah it doesn't get any better than this then i turn to saint thomas and i go ah it really doesn't get any better than this you know and uh you know and then i i read you know modern catholic writers who comment in sacred scripture i gain new insights right and these don't they don't contradict one another they're nested and layered together in the richness of the catholic tradition like russian dolls you know you peel or maybe onions and you peel back one layer and you learn something new if it was completely lucid and clear and utterly unambiguous then it would just give one insight but that's not the way that's not the way we engage the bible okay appreciate that thank you jerry for your call we'd appreciate hearing from you uh let's go to a question here from cf uh watching us on youtube today cf says what do catholics believe they are getting in the eucharist that the holy spirit does not give okay thanks so i think it's a false dichotomy right because we believe that the holy spirit is active in in the gift of the eucharist it's really it really the question is what different kinds of gifts does the holy spirit give us and in what different modes okay okay so i i believe that the spirit of god was active in the creation of the world along with the father and the son when they made aardvarks and aardvarks are pretty cool things they all know and then when i see an aardvark it evokes in me a consciousness of god's grandeur and beauty and the spirit's activity in the work of creation that prompts me to worship god in the manner appropriate for somebody contemplating aardvarks but it is an entirely different mode when the spirit of god moves the catholic priest in the homily to engage the text of sacred scripture and call me to repentance in faith the same spirit of god at work in the aardvark is at work in the catholic priest but in an entirely different and higher and more spiritual mode well the way the spirit is at work in the sacraments is is different yet again the spirit in the sacraments offers me the gift of sanctifying grace which is a participation in god's own inner life but the eucharist is different yet again from the other sacraments because not only does it offer me a participation in sanctifying grace under this sign of bread and wine but it also gives me the actual body and blood of jesus the son of god who gave himself for me on calvary is made present to me in the elements so that i might eat his flesh and drink his blood now do i see that do i taste that no i don't i hold it by faith because he taught it and in believing that i'm conscious of a excuse me of a profound intimacy with christ that is available to me in no other way not in aardvarks not even in catholic preachers all right cf thank you so much for checking us out on youtube another question just popped up from youtube and that is from uh elijah elijah says how would an orthodox become catholic the thing keeping me from becoming catholic is the liturgical reform any thoughts there yes so the us conference of catholic bishops and the and the holy see do not actually advise catholics to proselytize orthodox and we are instructed not to seek conversions from one from from one community to another but rather to pray for unity between the orthodox and catholic communion now if an orthodox person wishes to to join the catholic communion he or she certainly may and you do it the way that anybody would do it you would go to the priest and say i want to be received into the church you can certainly do that but recognize that the church sees the orthodox as a legitimate christian church with valid apostolic succession and valid sacraments and and and so the the ecumenical approach of the latin catholic church to the orthodox is to seek the full communion of these of these respective christian bodies and not and not necessarily just to proselytize and grab one you know into the other okay and i think we have time for one quick one here this is uh regarding psalm 137 verse 9. this is from jim in tucson jim says i'm puzzled by this line blessed the one who seizes your children and smashes them against the rock so this is what we call an imprecatory psalm and these would have been produced in during the time of the babylonian exile when something you know not not unlike the holocaust had happened and the babylonians had come in and really smashed up the the judeans and carried them off into exile and they were living far from home and they'd seen their own children smashed and their wives ravished and so forth and their crops destroyed and their children sold into slavery and they were in pretty low spirits and when you're in low spirits like that it's a pretty natural response to say god get them god get them well we we want justice lord we we want you to meet out to them what they did to us and the lord says vengeance is mine right and so that that that that cry that longing for justice of those who have been persecuted is not an unreasonable thing but we hand that up to god let him deal out in his own time and on the last day god will he will pay out justice to those who have persecuted the righteous and that's part of the purpose of the general judgment that those who have suffered for righteousness sake will be vindicated in the sight of those who cause them to suffer how many times have you heard uh i am so glad that i'm not god you know something like that very good dr david anders thank you sir thanks tom don't forget we do the program monday through friday right here on ewtn radio air time 2 pm eastern every weekday with an encore at 11 pm eastern every weekday on ewtn radio we also bring you the best of call to communion on the radio side 2 p.m eastern right here on sunday afternoons on behalf of our fantastic team i'm tom price along with dr david anders thanks for joining us today on ewtn's call to communion we'll see you next time god bless hello this is father brian malady please join me for open line thursday next on most of these ewtn

Channel: EWTN

Views: 2,954

Rating: 4.9047618 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: lj721V6IUeA

Length: 54min 10sec (3250 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021