Called to Communion with Doctor David Anders - April 27, 2021

news.com i'm teresa tomiel and call to communion with dr david anders starts now why can't women become priests 1-833-288 ewtn i don't understand why i have to earn salvation 1-833-288-3986 catholic radio network hey everybody happy tuesday to you and welcome again to call to communion here on ewtn this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters that's why the voice at the intro there she says what's stopping you from becoming a catholic very very simple and straightforward if you uh would like to tell us why you are not a catholic or uh what is indeed stopping you from becoming a catholic give us a call here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 if you're listening outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then 205 205-271-2985 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 you can always send us an email 247 ctc at ewtn.com all right charles berry is our producer ryan penny is our phone screener and jeff person is handling social media of course he'll be guided to uh post any uh questions that you might want to that put there on facebook and youtube i was trying to use the word post two different ways but the point is we're streaming on youtube we're streaming on facebook live right now so if you want to go to the comments box put that question of yours there jeff will shoot that to us here in the studio i'm tom price along with dr david anders tom how are you today very well how are you sir i'm trying to come up with all the different ways you could use the word post yeah you know there's uh quite a few actually that's right so we're going to lead off with an interesting question here from sean who says my protestant family has accepted that jesus established a church to carry on his teaching it's a good step yep but they claim that this church fell into heresy at the time of constantine so my two questions are a is this a common belief in protestantism and b if so where did it originate how would you respond to such claims thanks love your show sean thanks sean i really appreciate the question so i guess the first thing i'd want to know is what which heresy did it fall into and what's your evidence for that and second of all uh then what becomes of christ's promise that the gates of hell will not prevail against this church that he founded so those are the difficulties now um as to your claim is your question is this a common belief among protestants i'd say the answer to that question is yes however it's worth noting that the guys that started protestantism and i'm really thinking here of martin luther ehrlich zwingli john calvin cranmer major thinkers of the protestant reformation um and those that contributed to or composed their major directional statements they all loved constantine they all thought constantine was the bomb and so many times this this collection of reformers are referred to by historians as the magisterial reformers not because they believed in the papal magisterium but because they believed in the magistrate they thought that the civil magistrate the leader of the civil community was an integral part of the church and an ally in what they considered to be the reform of the church and because they wished to closely integrate their efforts at reform with civil government they were called magisterial reformers so naturally they they looked back to constantine and looked at constantine as the civil ruler constantine's engagement with early christianity and his desire to bring unanimity and a standard of orthodoxy for for all of christendom they thought that was just fantastic they loved that in that attitude that really positive evaluation of constantine among protestants it was common uh well remains common in some circles but it's clearly up through the first great awakening in the eighth in the 18th century if you read uh jonathan edwards for example who really is the progenitor of modern evangelical protestantism um and clearly it's it's seminal thinker he has a very positive evaluation of constantine so so where is this anti-constantine thing like they like constantine better than i do i mean really okay i'm i'm kind of iffy on constantine myself i mean i recognize that he was baptized at the end of his life and so you know i guess that's the easy way to become a saint just put it off to the very last minute you know you get all all the debt of all actual original sin washed away and then poof off you go right but uh you know he had kind of a checkered history up to that point right no not all together everything he did was you know didn't all turn to gold that constantine touched um they really like them so so what happens is that in the 19th century a a a protestant ideology emerges uh that i'll for lack of a better term i'll just call radical primitivism all right and uh and it's emerges particularly in the christian church movement alexander campbell barton stone and these guys look around at protestantism and they see well you know the reformers had put forth the the standard of the bible alone in the hopes of bringing unanimity and common cause to to their movement and the opposite has been the result and instead of bringing unity it's fractured christianity to to no end so obviously the solution to that problem is to double down on the claim of the bible alone that was what campbell and stone thought they said well they they imported too much of tradition uh and so they they said we're going to read the bible as if no one has ever read it before and then they just fractured protestantism again and created a new denomination but that push to sort of well if if we hadn't this didn't solve the problem maybe we weren't thorough enough maybe we weren't radical enough in applying the principles of the reformation so let's push the date for corruption from the middle ages back into antiquity you know let's get further and further back towards a primitivist model of the church and then let's blame it all on constantine so that's a that's an ideological control of christian history but certainly not grounded in any sort of facts about the life of constantine or early christianity and and to demonstrate that i'd really put the challenge show me what what heresy did constantine instigate uh and uh and what's your evidence for that claim and then finally what does that do to the promise of christ is this fairly common yeah i mean like primitivism is a is a increasingly pervasive part of the modern protestant especially evangelical mentality they've forgotten that their own founders were well they were primitives of a sort but not not this thing and they all all the early protestants loved constantine okay well there you go sean thank you so much for your email if you'd like to send us an email for a future show we would love to read it our email address ctc at ewtn.com ctc at ewtn.com all right we have lines open here on ewtn's call to communion uh in a moment we're gonna go to those phones let me give you the number 833 288 ewtn if you have a question for dr david anders perhaps you'd like to tell us what is stopping you from becoming a catholic 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 call to communion on this tuesday afternoon here on ewtn [Music] beyond damascus with dan danatay and aaron richards is our show for young adults everybody's talking about encounter everybody's talking about that mountaintop experience what we fail to often talk about is what happens after what happens beyond that damascus moment jesus christ is calling all of us to be missionary disciples disciples of jesus who are on mission to bring the kingdom of god here and now on this earth beyond damascus with dan demete and aaron richards saturday at 8 eastern on ewtn radio 60 seconds with archbishop fulton j sheen if anyone is coming from god with a revelation for our reason and the strength for our will reason is going to impose certain tests and these tests are three and they're tests that can be verified by reason and by history first whoever comes should be pre-announced two he should work miracles and attestation of the fact that he is a messenger third nothing that he ever teaches or reveals to us should be contrary to human reason though it may be above it those are three tests that's the standard that's a measuring rod first we say anyone who comes should be pre-announced after all brides pre-announced their wedding automobile manufacturers tell us when a new model would appear and if god is going to send someone to this earth certainly the least that god can do is to let us know i'm sending someone the people you know and trust are on ewtn [Music] it's called a communion here on ewtn our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 we'll go to the phones in just a moment here and talk with pia in commerce michigan but first i want to tell you about a book a wonderful book available right now from ewtn publishing a holy hour with mother angelica in 29 brief and brilliant chapters mother guides us with scriptural references and her own personal prayers meditations and intentions this book is a beautiful accompaniment to prayer accompaniment that is to prayer in front of the blessed sacrament and at home as well it's available right now at ewtnrc.com by catholic shop ewtnrc.com if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we're going to begin with pia she is five years old listening to us in commerce michigan hello pia how are you today hi dr david andrews all right what is your question today pia hi dr david anders why should god make tornadoes pia you are wonderful you are just so fantastic i am so excited to talk to you thank you so much for calling our show god made tornadoes excuse me tornadoes because he wants us to learn something he wants us to have problems to overcome he wants us to have reasons to help each other and he's he's gonna bring something good out of tornadoes we don't always know what that good thing is because we might see a tornado and think it's doing a lot of bad things and people get hurt and they suffer and that's bad but then you see catholic people and others coming together to help those in need um they love each other they help each other and we grow closer to god and and to one another and uh and so when bad things happen we can trust that we may not always know why but god has got something good in mind and we'll learn later what that is there you go pia thank you so much for your call god bless you hope that uh that helps you and that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 i remember uh when that big tornado came through oh golly it's probably been seven or eight years now uh but we were we were helping some people and you know these people david who had lost their home which was like a hundred years old oh man that was a tom oh we were we were helping them dig out and uh here comes a truck with uh two or three guys on it and they were just throwing out work gloves here you go here's brand new work gloves and then uh 10 minutes later here comes another truck throwing out uh you know bottles of water here you guys need to keep hydrated and i thought well now that is christianity in action we're gonna go back to the phones in a moment here at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 all right let's uh go to this question here from john who has a question about the councils he says dr andrews i often hear that proclamations of catholic councils are infallible and irreformable well if that's the case how do you explain the contradiction between the council of florence and vatican 2 regarding the possibility of salvation outside the catholic church thanks in advance john um okay yeah i think so i would qualify infallible certainly you're a formidable it depends on how you take the meaning of that word uh because a council can teach something true therefore it's infallible but it can do so in a way that is uh well let's say maybe adequate for the present circumstances but doesn't tell you everything you need to know and so it's it's open to clarification and the history of the councils is in fact a history of of the progressive clarification and specification of the meaning of catholic dogma the first four ecumenical councils which are really sort of dogmatic heart of the christian faith the nature of god the nature of christ i mean it took four of them to get the thing specified and uh i said okay jesus is really god we got that we got that we got our heads wrapped around that well then in what sense is he man how can he be both god and man and and and you had to run through a couple centuries of controversy to to hone down to specify precisely what's meant by that assertion so that's just the way catholic dogma operates so when the church teaches there's no salvation outside the church that's a very ancient christian dogma we find it that phraseology really comes from the writings of saint cyprian in the mid third century and it's become part of the church it's always been part of the church's self-understanding this is this is the appointed means for coming to know god and coming into community with the people of god those elect called out by him to be this visible society this instrument of life and peace and sanctification and redemption for the whole world and and uh and this is the extension of christ's incarnation this is jesus with us in and through the church and pinnacle of that of course is in the sacraments so that's always been part of the church of self-understanding but alongside that there is also a stream within the catholic faith that recognizes that god has been making saints from long before there was a visible covenanted community so the patriarchal narratives the sort of the first 11 chapters of the book of genesis is filled with the accounts of holy men and women who knew nothing of being part of some visible society of the elect called out by god for special purposes and yet we're they're specifically identified as those righteous men and women who walked with god and then god calls abraham specifically builds a community but alongside the ministry of abraham we encounter this shadowy figure of melchizedek identified as the priest of god most high to whom abraham offers a tenth now typologically allegorically that's a picture of christ but it's also an historical person in the life of abraham who abraham recognizes as having a share in in in god in some mysterious way and and uh all the saints of the old testament those who were or were not immediate members of of the body of israel job who's not an israelite are identified as righteous people who come to know god and are saved by him and our models for us in our sanctity jesus christ himself confronted this question of exclusivity in the in the christian faith when the apostles found those casting out demons in the name of christ and shall we stop them because they're not part of our number jesus answer is don't stop them if they're not against us then they're for us and the church fathers of the second and third century who the very ones who are making these claims about the nature of the church are harkening back to hellenistic philosophy and saying in socrates in plato in aristotle we have uh we have sort of proto-christians if you will because they participate in the very same devon log divine logos the incarnate wisdom of god it was made present in christ and uh and so how do you bring these two streams of thought together and that's the work of theology and ultimately of dogmatics and and the second vatican council didn't invent a new doctrine in specifying the meaning of the phrase no salvation outside the church it clarified long-standing catholic theological tradition we do appreciate that thank you so much for your email it's called a communion here on ewtn we have a couple of lines open for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 here is ken now in brooklyn a first-time listener hello ken what's on your mind today sir uh matthew 29 3 matthew 23 verse 9. matthew 23 verse 9. okay okay so how can i help you with matthew 23 9 is that the one that says call and father ah yes yes so your question is why then do catholics call their priest's father is that the issue yeah okay thank you very much uh well because there are plenty of other scriptures that do precisely that that refer to revered religious authorities as fathers or to a paternal and filial relationship so saint paul for example refers to timothy as his son in the faith he tells the corinthians that through the gospel he became their father old testament prophets were identified as father so when elijah is taken up to heaven in the whirlwind elisha says my father my father the chariots and the horsemen of israel and so clearly the words of christ here call new man father are not meant to to dispense with any reverential use of the term father even less are they meant to dispense with you know the way we refer to our natural biological fathers uh and it's worth pointing out that you read the context of matthew 23 jesus here does not really discuss the ministry of catholic priests at all it's just not in view and the larger context you know is he says don't well don't call anybody rabbi his own disciples called him rabbi right don't call anybody rabbi don't love your father or mother or lands or fields or children or wives more than you love me it really is the part of his larger moral catechesis about not preferring anything to the honor of god it's not an absolute prohibition on the use of the word dad that's true okay appreciate your call ken keep listening to ewtn radio we are with you 24 hours a day right here all right back to the phones right now and here is patty in south lyon michigan listening on the great ave maria radio a first time caller hey patty what's on your mind today hi we have a family member who is going to go through transgender um whatever and i don't know if they did it on messenger like through text messaging to let all the family know and everyone has responded except me because i i don't know how to respond because i know that the church doesn't what am i trying to say the church doesn't [Music] see this as they see it as perception not as anything that we should be doing um we are one man or one woman and that's the way it is so i don't know i want to respond but i don't really anything that i think of to respond would be an opinion and i don't want to do that so i'm best not responding at all what is your take on it okay thanks i really appreciate the question so you know from a catholic point of view i think it's very important to distinguish between the very real although very rare but the very real problem of gender dysphoria and that is when a person is very uncomfortable with their own biological sex and it's a very small number of people who who have this diagnosable condition historically i mean we have data on this going back i think about a hundred years and uh most of the clinical data going back for a very long time suggests and if you're an expert in the field you can correct my numbers if i get this wrong but it's something like one out of ten thousand people and overwhelmingly prepubescent boys very small young males four or five years old who uh you know they want to be like mommy and they don't identify they don't feel masculine and it's about a one in ten thousand sort of condition and it usually uh self corrects before adulthood the feeling passes the feeling passes right so that's that's the sort of standard clinical presentation of gender dysphoria it's a real problem and and it can of course in a very very small number of people persist throughout life and cause a lot of unhappiness and so as catholic people we look at all people with dignity and we don't want them to suffer and we want to we want to minister to them and give them therapeutic treatments and approaches that can help them cope with life and their circumstances and live happy and fulfilling lives and i don't claim to be a an expert in in therapy or psychology or or medicine so i'm not going to specify what those treatments should be but that's the typical case now what we have seen in just the last four or five years is an explosion of presentation of gender dysphoria or claims of gender dysphoria among adolescent women so doesn't it all fit the profile of of of the sort of what the the majority of the research on this shows and um and so these these adolescent girls they don't have a lifetime history of gender dysphoria didn't want to be boys when they were little um uh but are just presenting this way rapid onset is the term in adolescence their response to things like uh privity blockers and and cross sex hormones and and surgical interventions is not to improve their psychological condition after the fact post-surgical right um but to suffer enormously from from depression and anxiety uh dropping out of school and employment and society at alarming rates and uh and there seems to be pretty strong evidence that this that this uh this uh this trend this uh social trend has the capacity to be very harmful to a very large number of people and look you know um adolescents it's not hard to sell an adolescent on a radical cure for their anxiety i've been there done that having been adolescent once myself right you know i mean adolescence are not they don't have great critical judgment uh you know they tend to follow along with whatever the group think is social media friends or enormous influence and when some influential ideologically driven person presents you with this surefire you know wave a magic wand solution to your to your psychological problems the temptation to to buy into what is that like the latest greatest thing is uh is very high right anecdotally i know some stories about girls schools where junior high age girls where something like 20 30 40 percent of the class decides that they're transgendered after they watch a presentation on on on on gender theory right because it's a trendy hot thing to do oh yeah so um you know uh without in at all trying to prejudice or specify the way therapists should respond to real cases of gender dysphoria in that small population i think there's good reason for people of all good will whether catholics or otherwise to be very worried about the ideology of transgenderism that's sweeping the nation and doing in the words of abigail schreier bestselling author irreversible damage to young women yeah and you might look up the book by that title irreversible damage patty thank you so much for your call lots more straight ahead on this edition of call to communion here on ewtn 833 288 ewtn for register radio i'm matthew bunson this is monsie alvarado from ewtn news in depth hi i'm brian patrick with the catholic sphere get trusted catholic news every day on ewtn television and radio i'm raymond arroyo with mother angelica a remarkable life in the year 1943 mother angelica then rita rizzo experienced stomach pains and came to this home it was the home of rhoda wise ms wise was a healer a mystic who saw visions of christ and saint therese of the child jesus a year before she met young rita ms wise experienced the stigmata the wounds of christ on her head on her hands on her feet on the first friday of every month she would bleed and suffer the sufferings of christ this left a deep impression on young rita rizzo forevermore she would never consider christ's sufferings a story or some distant reality but a present reality in the world among us stay with ewtn as we celebrate the life and legacy of mother angelica [Music] unplanned the true story of abby johnson i would be the youngest director in planned parenthood history she believed in a woman's right to choose i've had an abortion myself so i don't have any problem with another woman making the same decision until the day she saw something that changed everything tiny perfect little baby and then it was just gone now she's pulling back the curtain on the abortion industry unplanned available at ewtnrc.com and the ewtn app hi this is psychelette at catholic answers live and later today we've got two hours of open forum with carlo broussard catholic answers live 6 pm eastern on ewtn radio now back to call to communion with dr david anders [Music] call to communion in progress on this tuesday afternoon as the moody blues once sang tuesday afternoon love that song here's our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six let's go to leticia in gainesville georgia listening online ewtn.com latisha what's on your mind today yes hi i was going to see if i can get some reference or if you could let me know how to explain to my daughter because we've been going back and forth in regards to um like same sex attraction and she's getting ready for her first communion she's going to be 16 years old and she responded that there's a they translated the words or there's some mistranslation i don't know how to say it um in regards to how they translated the bible and that and it's not really referring to same-sex but to other things and it was just basically a wrong translation okay thank you i really appreciate the question so that that question that that complaint might be relevant if catholics based their teaching on human sexuality simply on the words of the bible like if the only thing we had to go on was the bible well this this might be an important question however that's not the position that catholics have like we've never thought that you should just base your morality on what you can find in the bible now i'll come back to this translation issue all right but but here's like a much more important issue okay that this if the bible says it's wrong which it does why why that's the really critical issue why let's start with what we can know just from reason we're sexually sexually dimorphic beings meaning we male and female are are recognizably distinct for a very good reason because human sexuality is where babies come from that's where they come from i don't think anybody's going to dispute that and babies are a good thing and they're not just good for me or for you they're good for society you got to have babies no babies no society no tomorrow and when you have babies you got to do something with them right i mean you're not just gonna dump them in a hamper right you gotta raise them you gotta love them gotta educate them gotta gotta form them psychologically my wife is always rehabilitating cats and we found that like you know if you don't if you don't get the cat by a certain age and socialize it by a certain age you get a neurotic cat for the rest of your life right well kids are harder than cats you know it's a trick to raise them well love them and there are some people taylor made to do that job they're called parents they're biologically adapted to do the job i mean they're hormonally adapted to the job because the people who naturally bond in the child the most is the mother who gives birth and and the father who's bonded to the mother and sexual intimacy is not only the the cause of the pregnancy but it's also one of the means of the bonding and society has an interest this is true whether you're catholic or not whether you read the bible or not society has an interest in encouraging husbands and wives to marry to love one another and to take responsibility for their sexuality so that the new life that comes into the world is properly cared for by the people who are most responsible for bringing that life into the world and most capable of caring freud okay now stuff can't happen to a human being it's not their fault it's not their fault that makes it difficult to live this truth heterosexual people can have all kinds of hang-ups that make it difficult for them to live the vocation of motherhood and fatherhood and so we're compassionate towards them homosexual people obviously have all kinds of difficulties that make it difficult for them to live the vocation of father or mother or husband or wife and so we're compassionate to them but the fact of those difficulties whatever their calls doesn't do anything to diminish the truth of the human person and the truth of family life and ultimately the purpose of human sexuality right and so um you know if i if i uh the catholic church does not regard same-sex attraction in and of itself as a sin but rather as a wound as something that is impeding me in my life of my of being a fully fulfilled procreative individual now it is possible for a person to willingly choose to suspend that faculty you know to consecrate themselves to a more holy life or to god or maybe to the priesthood or something but uh but but that that act of free choice again doesn't do anything to denigrate or take away from the normative status of male female procreative relations okay so we're not condemning church doesn't condemn people who um who have same sex attraction it uh it it loves them and so yes but but your identity how you regard yourself uh shouldn't be defined by this wound in your nature that's something you deal with it's a real thought factor of your interaction with other people is oftentimes a source of suffering so we want to help you but that doesn't that doesn't diminish or denigrate the normative status of the procreative union of male and female and and society and religion and law have an interest in sustaining that promoting it because that's where babies come from it's how societies are built yeah um now when it comes to the teaching of sacred scripture uh this is just incorrect i mean your daughter's position she's been somebody got a hold of her and is feeding her a lot of nonsense that's right um because uh i mean scripture deals quite explicitly with uh the attraction the sexual attraction of male for male female female you can look at it in first chapter the book of romans is one of many examples and uh and and universally when this issue is addressed in scripture it's regarded as a kind of wound right as an evidence of something that's gone wrong in the human person that doesn't mean the individuals involved themselves are personally responsible for that like a lot of things can go wrong in your life they're not your fault but never ever regards that as a is a acceptable way to exercise your sexuality and every time scripture makes normative statements about sexuality like what do you do with your sexual faculty it gives us only two options marriage lifelong indecible fidelity to a spouse for the sake of raising a family or voluntary celibacy in the service of god that's it yep uh leticia is that helpful for you um yeah and i mean as far as like the translation is there anything that i can maybe reference her to other well so anytime someone makes a claim when someone makes an assertion you say what's your evidence for that the burden of proof is on the person who asserts sure is so i mean you may you don't need me to give you the list of proof texts that that speak about homosexual relations being immoral there's hundreds of them from the old to new testament um the burden of proof is on the person who who who asserts and says well this is an improper translation so go out and get 50 translations and compare them all i mean that would be my challenge and you're not going to find i mean you might find one published by some you know highly ideological publisher that goes along with the spirit of the age but i mean the vast majority and you can look in multiple languages i would tell people you know get on the internet look up the greek and hebrew i mean do the work it's just it's evident leticia thank you so much for your call we hope that's helpful for you and for her as well call to communion here on ewtn we do have a couple of lines open on this tuesday afternoon 833 288 ewtn is our number 833-288-3986 what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here on call to communion uh tracy is listening to us in lafayette louisiana on the great christ our king radio hello tracy what's on your mind today hi good afternoon um my question is this i have several family members and friends who have recently left the catholic church for a popular non-denominational church in our area and my question is how are the gospel passages regarding the holy eucharist explained in the protestant church when the messages seem so clear to me born and raised catholic yes thank you so much i really appreciate the question so protestantism has a long history of sort of foundering on this issue of the eucharist and in uh in the early days of the reformation martin luther who was sort of the original protestant recognized exactly what you said hocast corpus ma'am there it is in black and white this is my body my flesh is real food my flesh is real drink and not only scripture but luther once said even if we had no scripture luther wrote the consensus of the entire christian church for 1500 years everywhere throughout the world is unanimous on this issue and you should never go against the consensus of the christian faith you know with such a long history i wish that he had been more consistent in applying that criterion but when it came to the eucharist luther recognized that the weight overwhelming weight of tradition and scripture was on the side of the real presence and so martin luther world's first protestant insisted to thee death literally on the issue of the real presence of christ in the eucharist he would not budge on that question and he wouldn't even make common cause with protestants who disagreed with him about that there were other early protestants like eric zwingli for example in switzerland who denied the real presence of christ in the eucharist but they did not do so because of scripture what motivated them wasn't scripture what motivated them was arguably a kind of neoplatonic renaissance philosophy that diminished the role of flesh altogether in the spiritual life and so it didn't fit with his ideology to allow such a central place to the eucharist and so he reinterpreted these eucharistic passages in a way that cohered better with his ideology um a generation later john calvin in the late 1530s and early 1540s tries to come up with a mediating position between luther and calvin excuse me between zwingli and luther luther who believed in the real presence zwingli who denied it uh and so calvin uh has a his middle position is there is a real presence you do have christ's body and blood substantially but in a mysterious mode not through transubstantiation but through something he called the mystical presence calvin's position was hard to understand and a lot of people had difficulty wrapping their head around it but the general trend of protestantism over the next 400 years was away from a sacramental expression of the faith and towards a more either moralistic or a conversionistic account of christian faith and so protestants today tend to do what zwingli did they recognize the the texts that are in front of them but they simply relativize them in order to accommodate their their more um sort of uh gnostic or or neoplatonic approach to spirituality um and uh and they just simply assert you know i think without really good evidence they just assert that these are symbolic only that's what they do they just and then and honestly they don't give it a lot of thought in my experience i mean when i was in the protestant seminary i took courses in systematic theology and they had um i think we had divided up into about four classes and we had one section on god in revelation in which they hammered you with the doctrine of scripture over and over and over again we had another section on um christ and salvation there were three sections actually they hammered that over and over and over again and then we had another class on ecclesiology which is the doctrine of the church and the sacraments and eschatology what everybody tended to call leftovers and that was the way they viewed it like there's the bible there's jesus and then there's that other stuff that doesn't really matter and when i took sacramental theology as a protestant in an evangelical seminary it was uh it was a sort of well here are the range of available options to you on this uh pick whichever one you like here's the one that i the professor like as if as if disagreement on this matter really didn't didn't matter you know it was just ah that's that's like that's kind of the catholics there into that sacramental stuff we we know where it's all about it's all about scripture and jesus and yeah here's what you could believe if you feel like it wow it just wasn't central to their spirituality okay tracy thanks so much for your call called to communion here on ewtn first of all i'm going to give you the phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 don't forget tomorrow morning it's a catholic connection with teresa tamio and she's got a very interesting program tomorrow talking about a special six-week online course from the archdiocese of denver now being offered all about lessons from saint joseph then she'll be going to rome to find out all about travel restrictions currently in place in europe i have heard um sort of through the grapevine that things are starting to open up a little bit maybe uh i know that uh someone i know is is tentatively putting one toe in the water for a trip to the holy land so i don't know so anyway teresa is going to unpack it for you tomorrow morning 9 a.m eastern right here on ewtn radio here's a question now from albert who is joining us today via youtube how do we debunk protestants who accuse catholics of worshiping the virgin mary because they pray to her such as the rosary and i do need a biblical perspective answer thanks albert yeah thank you i appreciate the question so um i you know i'll i'll concede to the question in the terms of the question but i have to say it always irks me when people say talk to me about the catholic faith and leave out two-thirds of the data set yeah right when they say confine your answer to the bible like thanks for the handcuffs tom tell me about your wife but don't tell me anything that happened before yesterday you know it's like leaving out the whole story right i mean you don't do that right sure because jesus doesn't confine himself to the bible the apostles didn't confine themselves to the bible why should i okay but all right so uh erestus brownson is catholic theologian of the 19th century american and he i think gives the best answer to this question he nails it and i'm going to bring his insight which is scriptural background to your question brownson's uh conclusion is that protestants don't understand devotion to the saints because they have eliminated the notion of sacrifice from their idea of worship and that's true i mean that's that's factual um luther himself the the doctrine that he was most hard-nosed about was the holy sacrifice of the mass while he believed in the real presence he rejected the doctrine of eucharistic sacrifice namely that the eucharist is a sacrifice when catholics get together to worship god in the most sublime august and noble manner possible we offer christ's body and blood to god that is the supreme act of worship to offer sacrifice is the principle act of the virtue of religion now is that a biblical principle you bet your sacrifice o lord is a contrite and humble heart david writes therefore wash me and accept me and then i'll offer sacrifices on the altar saint paul says offer your bodies as living sacrifices this is your spiritual act of worship what is worship it is the offering of sacrifice and uh paul clearly teaches that the eucharist is itself a participation in the sacrifice of our lord the book of first corinthians now once you understand that to worship is to offer sacrifice and that's what scripture explicitly says then you ask yourself the question well do catholics offer sacrifice to mary and the saints emphatically no you don't believe me attend to the language of the mass when do we invoke the saints how do we invoke the saints with us in the mass as participants in a common act of worship whereby we offer the body of christ and ourselves to god the father they are not the recipients of the act of sacrifice they are they are our co-sacrificers they're worshipers along with us you know once um in catholic history there was a sect a cult that formed in arabia um of a kind of a radical pagan feminist kind of cult that attempted to worship the blessed virgin mary as a goddess oh right and um you've never heard of it the reason you never heard of it is that it's it sank without a trace because the the bishops and the authorities of the time looked at that and they were like get away from us with your worship of saints we don't do that and they buried it right and that was a non-catholic group who attempted that but like any time anyone has ever suggested and it's very rare offering actual worship to the saints the catholic church has always responded with horror as it should yeah coleridianism i just the name just came to me that was the name of the heresy the heresy of coloridianism okay we learned about it in epiphanies of salamis oh my okay well there you go albert thank you so much for watching us today on youtube call to communion here on ewtn let's go to julian julian is in cincinnati listening on the great sacred heart radio hey julian what's on your mind today hey um so the bible says in ecclesiastes chapter 9 for the living know that they will die but the dead knows nothing and they have no reward for their memory the memory of them is forgotten and in ezekiel 18 20 it says the soul that sinneth you shall die so how then can you as a catholic say that when you die you go to purgatory what does what does the word diamond mean in that case yeah i think so i think in ecclesiastes i think it means die right i mean i think i think the author of ecclesiastes is is advocating the mortalist position he's advocating that the soul dies that it doesn't live on and that there is no afterlife and he is doing so in the form of a lament and so uh the reason one reason that the book of ecclesiastes is in the bible is to demonstrate the kind of anxiety the existential angst uh the suffering the philosophical confusion that is part and parcel of human religious life in the same way if you read psalm 88 i mean everybody should go read psalm 88 i think it's my favorite psalm right now so the perspective of psalm 88 is that it's worse than ecclesiastes i mean ecclesiastes is like a trip to chuckies compared to psalm 88 i mean life is horrible all my friends are gone god hates me my one companion is darkness amen that's the whole song wow how many of you if i were in a class right now how many of you have ever felt that hands go up sure we've all been there yeah and and so if the bible were a kind of textbook and attempting to present a logically coherent whole doctrinal picture of the christian faith as a kind of guidebook on what to think or say or do at every moment and that's the way some people take the bible then then these are contradictions that we find between texts would pose a real difficulty but that's just not what the bible is the bible is an account of the spiritual progress of both individuals and the people of god over time culminating in the revelation of christ in jesus's own ministry he dealt with diverse jewish opinions about the nature of the afterlife the pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead and the life after right and angels and demons and all the rest of it the sadducees did not they were mortalists and they were the guys sitting here reading ecclesiastes jesus explains to them that that position is not correct i mean the the perspective of ecclesiastes is is wrong it's it's the experience of natural reason confronting the existential horror of existence without the benefit of transcendent hope so what does jesus do he offers that transcendent hope love it there you go julian thank you so much for your call i got to tell you a quick story here as we're running out the clock david uh adrienne and i were out to dinner last night with a priest friend of ours someone that you know and uh adrienne mentioned uh that she had just been booked to do a um uh renewal of vows renewal of wedding vows marriage vows for a couple that have been married for a long long time so the two of them are talking about okay well you need this for um you know the first reading this for that reading and the priest said well adrian you you go ahead and and pick out the uh the psalm but not psalm 88 he was very clear about that you know i i i think you should lead with psalm 88 a lot more often than we do honestly in my humble opinion i mean like you start with realism and then you offer the solution you know that is so true because uh think about how many um marriage and we've all been to many many wedding ceremonies and it's all very positive positive positive and and you think i'm always going to be this pretty i'm always going to be this handsome i'm always going to have this great job uh the kids are going to be golden and everything else uh but then reality comes knocking shortly thereafter doesn't it catholicism is not a formula to achieve perfect happiness in this life it's a it's a it's a tradition of wisdom and insight and illumination and grace to cope with the inevitable suffering that life throws at you it's coming and it's coming you're not we're all going to die of our last disease man it's true it's true you know there was there was a priest that did a did a song years ago i remember when we were doing a music show and the song title was everybody's going to suffer and it's true you know you you you see people who are seemingly leading these uh these these golden lives we don't know what's going on and we don't know what's what's going to be coming around the corner death but that is the beauty of catholicism to me there's something after absolutely dr david anders thank you sir thank you tom always enjoy our time together with you and with each other right here on ewtn radio you know we do this program monday through friday here on the radio at 2 p.m eastern with an encore at 11 pm eastern we also bring you a uh a great podcast always available charles will have it posted for us in the next couple of hours at ewtn radio.net ewtnradio.net where it's always available just for you on behalf of our fantastic team i'm tom price along with dr david anders see you tomorrow right here on ewtn's call to communion god bless [Music]

Channel: EWTN

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Id: hxnQ3iUBaq0

Length: 54min 0sec (3240 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 27 2021