Called to Communion with Doctor David Anders - July 29, 2021

what's stopping you from becoming a catholic why can't women become priests 1-833-288 ewtn i don't understand why i have to earn salvation 1-833 [Music] global catholic radio network hey everybody welcome again to call to communion here on ewtn this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters those of you who maybe have questions maybe a question maybe there's something that's been bothering you for could be decades uh maybe it's something that just popped up this morning and you would like to get that answered but mainly this is a program for non-catholics and for those of you who are non-catholic or perhaps catholic years ago we would just ask you what is stopping you from becoming a catholic here's our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight 288-3986 uh if you're listening to us outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then 205-271-2985 you can also text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply for some folks anyway and also you can send us an email we're going to get to one of those in a moment ctc at ewtn.com is our email address ctc at ewtn.com charles berry is our producer michael birchfield our phone screener jeff berson's on social media so if you want to ask a question via facebook or youtube where we're streaming right now you can do that by putting your question in the comments box jeff will shoot that to us here in studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anderson tom how are you very well how are you my friend well i'm doing decent thank you get that lawn mowed uh we've been having a lot of rain lately i i did i had to do it in stages front yard first and backyard second backyard's actually still a work in progress it's about half mode at the present i'm sure you will do your best here is an email uh from lourdes who says this is regarding the our father in spanish we ask that god not let us all into temptation instead of lead us not into temptation i think in english it should not state that god is tempting us what say you uh yeah thanks i appreciate i appreciate it very much so the the text in english does not say that god is tempting us that's not the way it's rendered the text asks that god not lead us into temptation not that he not tempt us right right now uh the the the word that is translated lead the greek word that is translated lead is the same word that is used uh to describe the men who carried the paralytic and placed him at the feet of jesus by lowering him through the roof they let him down and put him in front of jesus that's the same word all right so it has i mean it really does have the sense of picking you up over here carrying you over here and putting you down it's a very strong sense physically like physically moving into the situation of temptation so the way i like to approach this is to ask the question does god would god ever lead someone into temptation well the gospel says yes he led the son of god he led christ into temptation matthew chapter 4 says that the spirit of god led jesus into the desert so that he could be tempted by the devil now did the spirit of god intend that christ sin of course not of course not that's absurd why then would the spirit of god lead christ into the desert to be tempted by the devil so that he could conquer the devil so that he could conquer the devil so he could set for us an example of virtue and resisting temptation uh so that he could acquire merit that would be uh given to us it would merit for us the grace of redemption and when saint thomas aquinas asks the question why might god lead someone into temptation he gives three possible answers one would be to strengthen us in the practice of virtue the old soloflex ad used to say no pain no gain oh yeah the way you grow in virtue is to strengthen those virtue muscles so you know how am i ever going to develop temperance if people stop sending me these pecan pies they send me give me the opportunity to say no to them you know yeah um so you know sometimes you need be confronted with something that will challenge you and help you to grow in the life of virtue that's one reason we might actually god might actually want us to confront and overcome temptation another reason is so that we can acquire merit because if you do face temptation and resist it it's meritorious and so we're actually contributing cooperating in our salvation and the third reason is a little bit more somber and that is to chastise us for our sins because often sin is the punishment of sin sin is nothing other than an irrational act that's what sin means thomas defines sin but virtue is life according to reason sin is the opposite that's irrational act that means i'm doing something to harm me or arm somebody else yeah and you know it's kind of like your mother says don't hit yourself in that hammer don't hit yourself in the head with that hammer dave and you're like i'll show her bang ow you know i mean like the damage inflicted right is some is the is the punishment for the act and sometimes god might actually let us reap the fruits of our own actions so we can learn from those okay very good lourdes thank you so much for your question here's one from patrick that popped up on youtube how do you david as a catholic not turn from the faith after everything going on in the church sex abuse scandal the pope's decisions regarding the latin mass after all these things have happened how do you as a catholic not turn away from the faith yeah thanks i really appreciate that question to be honest with you it has never crossed my mind for one second like it doesn't even occur i i mean i have my own personal challenges with the faith the things i struggle with and sometimes quite deeply i've experienced angst and darkness and and you know being challenged with hopelessness like anyone right but never never because of what some man did i don't care if he's the pope or the priest or the bishop or a layperson or you know my spouse or anybody like my faith doesn't hang on the behavior of men that's just not where it's grounded that's not where the challenge lies like because i'm a catholic i expect people to be idiots and i'm not saying that any of the people you named is an idiot you understand i'm just saying like in general human race is made up of ease i'm like chief of idiots here right i expect people to do dumb things i expect people to send i expect people to be foolish so when they act that way it just confirms my catholic faith it doesn't undermine it okay right i'm catholic because i want to commune with christ not because i want to commune with some corrupt priest because i want to commune with christ now priests are part of the body of christ like lay people are like bishops are some of them are holy and virtuous some of them are vicious my faith doesn't depend on the sanctity or wisdom of any particular priest prelate or pope that is a great way to look at it thank you so much for your answer and for your question in a moment we're going to get to uh pam in lakewood colorado also cheryl and there's a phone line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 833-288-3986 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 have you ever heard someone say we need change gk chesterton says modern men are not familiar with the rational arguments for tradition but they are familiar almost wearily familiar with all the rational arguments for change we should not be too quick to favor the new over the old we should never tear down a wall unless we know why it was put up if we don't understand the purpose of a tradition we should first learn that purpose and then decide if the tradition needs to be changed or if we are the ones who need to change maybe the tradition is right and we are wrong spend more time with the apostle of common sense visit chesterton.org for more information and go to ewtnrc.com to discover more books and programs written and inspired by gk chesterton it's called communion here on ewtn if you have a question or something to add uh to say to dr david anders our phone lines are open at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 288-3986 lately i've been thinking a lot about our founders of ewtn the wonderful mother angelica i miss her every day and i'm thinking about her even more these days because coming up in two weeks is the 40th anniversary of the founding of ewtn when we went on the air august 15 1981. if you want to find out more about our dear founders mother angelica her remarkable life her words and her works you can visit ewtn.com slash mother angelica ewtn.com slash mother angelica if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we begin with pam in lakewood colorado a first-time caller listening on the ewtn app hello pam what's on your mind today hi thank you so much for taking my call sure i um yeah so someone just turned me on over coffee to ewtn and um i've been doing uh devotions okay my background is catholic um in colorado both sides of my family italians and slovenian more of a cultural catholic of course because uh some of us are not uh in a lot well mostly is i i kind of left the catholic church i'm married um a protestant man and we're still married and so i've been exposed to both sides for about 20 years each well i'm 65 now but um anyway i've been going to the catholic church because it's right five minutes away from my home it gives me some structure i i enjoy it i'm actually hearing the gospel for the first time in the catholic church i never heard it as a child but my big questions are the d i'm going to just give you three um but one is just the i felt like there's kind of like a feeling of deity of mary that's been some of the catholic church is not the one i go to praying to this thing and then works versus grace and mercy um and so those are uh just three i have more but i can i can go to town on those those are great i really appreciate it thank you so much uh so let's start with the the the allegation that catholics deify mary okay well clearly catholic doctrine does not do that does not do that at all and it denies that vehemently and in fact there was a heresy in the early centuries of christianity in arabia called choleridianism you've never heard of it no one's ever heard of choleridianism okay and the choleridian heresy was a sort of proto-feminist heresy that worshiped the blessed virgin mary as a goddess and the bishops smacked that one down so hard and so fast that it has vanished without a trace we only know about it because of the writings of epiphanius of salamis who who wrote a whole digest of ancient heresies and he mentions coleridianism and we went oh that one sunk without a trace because the one time in history that i actually am aware of that someone did in fact try to worship the virgin mary as a goddess it was utterly obliterated smackdown it was a smackdown and the church said nope we don't do that at all okay all right now um but to rightly understand the church's relationship to mary i'd like to tie it into your second question which is about prayer to the saints all right and so let's go there well i think if you've been going to a protestant church you're very familiar with the practice of praying for other christians most churches i've been in in my life catholic or protestant doesn't matter i have the practice of interceding for other people and that the bible commands us to do that you know saint james says pray for one another it's just a command just pray for one another saint paul opens all of his letters with prayers for the church that he's running to i pray that god would bless you in this way and that way and the other way right so praying for one another is something we have to do as christians in fact the command that we love our neighbors as ourselves is most imminently most appropriately expressed by our mutual life of prayer and support now scripture teaches us something else that not all of us pray with the same power or efficacy some people's prayers are more powerful than other people's prayers okay it's a biblical teaching right st james again in his epistle says the prayer of a righteous man availeth much it's very powerful but he upgrades the church he's writing to and says but you guys aren't getting your prayers answered because you asked with wrong motives that you might spend what you get on your pleasures so some people get their prayers answered some don't righteous people have more effective prayers less righteous people less effective prayers now does it ever happen that god himself would want the righteous to pray on behalf of the less righteous that he would instruct the people of god to recognize that disparity if you will in efficacy and to invoke it well yeah there's scripture on this so in job chapter 40 god says to the companions of job i'm really not happy with you guys but ask my servant job to pray for you and i will hear his prayer on your behalf hmm i'm not gonna listen to you guys but i'll listen to job if he prays for you moses does the same thing right after the incident with the golden calf god says moses step out of the way i'm getting ready to pull out a bazooka and moses says god don't do that don't bazooka the people of god the is the egyptians will think that you couldn't deliver them it'll be bad for your reputation and after all you did promise abraham isaac and jacob that you would bless their descendants and god says okay okay okay for your sake because you ask and add a fidelity to my promise to abraham i'll spare these people that i would otherwise bazooka right so he he spares the wicked okay because of the intercession of the righteous abraham genesis chapter 18 pleads with god will you destroy the righteous along with the wicked god says no for the sake of the the righteous i'll spare even the wicked all right that was my virus protection kicking and on the computer all right and then and then finally in the new testament saint paul himself in the book of colossians chapter one says that i fell up in my flesh he's talking about himself paul i fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of christ for the sake of his body the church and so you see this dynamic not only of mutual prayer and intercession but of the righteous for the less righteous and of that being integral to the way the body of christ works the way the people of god support one another it's all scripturally attested now does that relationship continue after death a relationship of mutual prayer and support and intercession of the righteous on behalf of the wicked yes it does so i would point you to revelation chapter 5 verse 8 where the the elders the saints in heaven offer the prayers of the faithful to god they don't just pray for them but they actually in an intermediary role scripture says they offer our prayers before the throne of god the holy angels do the same thing that's in revelation chapter 8. now if you look at the book of tobit which i know a lot of protestants don't like but it's it still uh definitely informs the theology of the new testament tobit chapter 12. you see the same situation archangel raphael told us carrying the prayers of tobias and sarah before the throne of god ii maccabees chapter 15 the prophet jeremiah who's dead and gone is praying for the people of god on earth praying for judas maccabeeus and the maccabean soldiers who are getting ready to go into battle right even the relics of the saints we learn in scripture are efficacious for miracles among the people of god second kings chapter 13 exhibits this when the relics of elisha bring a dead man back to life so the whole catholic practice is deeply represented and interwoven in the old and new testament and it reflects not the dynamic of worship or deification but the recognition that the saints are alive in god and they are praying for us and offering our prayers even as we pray for one another this doesn't deflect in any way from the glory of christ it's precisely how jesus makes his grace and mercy manifest to us saint paul said in 2 corinthians chapter five that we are christ's ambassadors as if god were making his appeal through us god always works through instruments through the medium of other human beings right that's how it functions because it's how you build up charity in the body of christ so that's the the rationale for seeking the prayers of the saints and the angels it's scriptural it's very traditional goes back to even before the new testament right archaeological and scriptural and textual data for this going back from antiquity right now what about the blessed virgin mary like why about her unique intercession well we mentioned earlier that we connect this to the personal holiness of the saints their power for intercession well mary is the holiest of all the saints she herself said all generations will call me blessed and then there's one other element and that is that to honor a noble or virtuous person for their virtues is not to worship them as almighty god but is to saint paul says in romans chapter 12 he says give to each one what is his due honor to whom honor scripture commands us to honor those who deserve honor now in civil society we honor war heroes civil rights heroes fathers and mothers of the country put statues up to them in washington dc monuments and the like we salute the flag we do all these things to show honor in civil domain well what's more important like i'm a big fan of george washington great guy george washington yes one of my sons had to do a book report on george washington over the summer for school good guy george washington right who's more important to me ultimately george washington or the mother of god george washington gave me my country but mary's fiat marries be it done to me according to thy word was the instrument of the incarnation of the son of god no it's not god right it's not it's she's not my savior but she cooperated with the plan of god in a way that was meaningfully cooperative meaningfully instrumental and she played a role just like paul played a role but her role was more important than paul paul preached christ mary gave birth to the god man yes and her out of an act of obedience is it is it wrong to honor her for that no it would be wrong not to because render honor to those to whom honor is due now a few more words on faith and works jesus is the one that tells us jesus is the one that tells us if you pray to your father in secret your father in secret will reward you the dynamic of merit and reward in the life of faith is built into the teaching of christ christ is the one who tells us that we will be judged by our works matthew 25 on the last day many will come to me and say lord lord and i'll say away from me i never knew you because you didn't feed the hungry or clothe the naked revelation 20 tells us the same thing the book of life will be opened and men will be judged according to their deeds that's scripture teaching all right saint james chapter 2 you're not justified by faith alone james says romans chapter 2 you're not it's not by hearing but by obeying the law that you will be justified now the problem for protestants comes in when they know that paul says we're not justified by works of the law but by faith well what does that mean what does that mean what it means is we are not accounted righteous by god because we keep the mosaic code circumcising yourself or your child or keeping the laws of kashrut or even outwardly conforming to the commandments is not going to establish you as righteous before god what you need paul says is a new creation the circumcision of the heart by the spirit where god's love is poured into you romans 5 5. and in this way you're enabled he says to keep the righteous requirements of the law that's romans 2 verses 25 to 29 so are we saved by faith yes are we saved by grace yes but how it's it's faith and grace acting through love poured into our heart by the holy spirit so it's not an inert or or or an unethical faith it's a faith that that lives in charity whereby christ then judges us worthy for heaven pam thank you so much for your call we hope all that is helpful for you that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 call to communion here on ewtn let's go to andy in boise idaho listening on the great salt and light radio andy what's on your mind today hi thanks dr anders for all you do and tom for running such a great show i really love your show it's helped me a lot thank you i'm an rcia now and part of that's because you've answered so many of my questions wow well thank you i had a question about stations of the cross and one of the statements made in them and i don't know if these are just devotionals or if they're doctrinal statements but it this is about the second station where it says that talks about the weight of the most heavy cross that i made for jesus by my sins let me weep for them ever while i live so my have my sins increased jesus is suffering and does every sin i make increase his suffering and is that a catholic doctrine or a protestant doctrine or is that just a devotional thing yes thank you so much i appreciate it so so christ glorified uh does not experience sensible or emotional pain so christ in heaven at the right hand of god right now is not he's not experiencing a physical or emotional pain but the incarnate lord who walked the earth and lived and died and rose again definitely experienced uh physical and emotional pain in his life it was it was integral to the redemption that he went one for us the crucifixion was intensely painful but it wasn't just the physical pain of the cross it was also his deep solidarity with the human race and uh anybody who's ever been a parent knows you know when your kid stubs his toe or hurts himself pretty badly you know he's worried about his toe you're agonizing oh yeah you're agonizing and and christ loves us far more deeply than we love our own children so he says oh jerusalem jerusalem how i long to gather you as a hen gather gather your chicks under her wings but you were not willing jesus agonized over the wayward state of humanity and identified with us in our waywardness to the full and to death on a cross so so in that moment in his historical life on earth because of his divine knowledge he knew all of our particular sins that we would commit in the future and he was weeping for those but he no longer weeps he's now glorified in joy with the father and is no longer suffering because of that but that was in his historical human life yes of course he did suffer for our sons okay andy is that helpful for you it is very much thank you so much you are most welcome in a moment we're going to get back to the phones here we'll be talking with cheryl in flemington new jersey also diane in west palm beach florida cecil is in kansas city where everything is up to date also mary in meridian indiana or idaho rather meridian idaho sebastian is a first time caller in walla walla washington very busy phones today but we do have one line open at 833 288 ewtn if you have something to say to dr david anders 833-288-3986 it is the thursday afternoon version of call to communion here on ewtn this is tracy sable from ewtn news nightly this is raymond arroyo host of the world over this is jeanette demelo from register radio get trusted catholic news every day on ewtn television and radio here's today's quote from mother angelica's perpetual calendar your mind is like a computer it's always on it never turns off when it turns off you're in his kingdom it doesn't matter what you do but it's extremely important that you make the effort to keep your eyes faced toward the lord mother's spiral bound perpetual calendar features an inspirational message for each day of the year it's available from the ewtn religious catalog at ewtnrc.com 60 on 10 with monsignor charles pope the fifth commandment you shall not kill at the heart of this commandment is an absolute insistence on the sacredness of human life we read in jeremiah chapter 1 and verse 5 before i ever formed you in the womb i knew you says the lord so every human life is sacred because it's caught up in the mind and the heart and the will and the love of god and no matter how we're conceived or any circumstances god has always known and loved every human person and for this reason we are to hold sacred every human life we are therefore to never murder never kill never seek vengeance of course we have issues of abortion euthanasia today and we have so many ways where we in some way disrespect the lives of other human persons and even our own life we have to learn to respect it as a great gift from god the fifth commandment you shall not kill for more about the ten commandments visit ewtnrc.com [Music] 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 grochelle only on ewtn radio [Music] what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here on ewtn's call to communion as promised let's go to cheryl now in flemington new jersey hey there cheryl what's on your mind today well thank you so much for taking my call um dr anders it's a blessing to speak with you i i am i'm a convert to the catholic faith uh my my whole entire family is my immediate family husband three boys are catholic um my question is my brother is getting married for the third time um both his former wives are still living and he's marrying a woman who uh was a former catholic is now in the uh a non-denominational church and my question is what's been on my heart and mind is how do we respond as a catholic family to a wedding like this yeah thanks i appreciate the question so uh your brother has never been catholic correct correct okay uh so your brother i would not expect your brother to understand and certainly not to appreciate the catholic teaching on marriage presumably the woman that he wishes to be with because she left the church she may or may not understand the teaching i doubt she does she surely doesn't appreciate it right and so i i think that um you know no one here can be presumed to respect her canonical obligation to marry in the catholic church i don't i think that's very unrealistic to think that they would regard that as a norm that they should follow i think it'd be different if they were practicing catholics and they wanted to go get married by justice of the peace you they they should know better and you could say hey you know don't you guys know you have to marry in the church with a priest but i wouldn't presume that they have that knowledge or that they would regard the church's teaching as of any account and so the likelihood that they would receive your admonition your silent admonition uh is very low and as a principle of moral theology one of the works of mercy is admonishing the center but we know we can't just go around admonishing every center for every for every infraction you know we would do nothing else with our lives and it wouldn't get very much done yeah and so moral theologians apply the standard that it needs to be something serious uh they're probably gonna listen and you're the best person to make the admonition and i'd say this is this serious yeah it's a serious matter who you marry is a serious matter but are they gonna listen no are you the best person to make the admonition probably not and so i don't think you're going to move them um you know there's another question about you what are you going to tell your kids and if you participate in the wedding is that sending a message to your own children about the meaning of marriage and so forth and that's really a prudential judgment that you have to make based on their age and maturity and how well you think you can communicate with them you know i think i think kids can be pretty smart and you can simply say you could say uh you know um uncle bobby's getting married we don't think he should and here's why and we're not real happy about that but we don't expect them to listen to us and so we've got to figure out a way to live familially how to live as a family and be charitable and maintain a relationship with him if we think that's of some value and i keep open the lines of communication so this is the decision that we've made and you know we're going to go or we're going to participate or we're going to be there or go to the reception or whatever you decide because we think there's a value there to have a relationship and we can't really expect them to listen to the church but you guys know better okay cheryl thank you so much for your call it's called a communion here on ewtn let's go to cecil now in kansas city listening on the great catholic radio network hello cecil what's on your mind today i was i returned to the church about 20 years ago and i keep hearing about the rapture when did it that ideal start and what's the catholic view of it yeah thank you the idea of the rapture is that christ comes back invisibly secretly um that there are actually uh there are three comings of christ the incarnation the secret rapture coming and then the coming at the end of time even though the bible only mentions two comings the rapture people will imagine three comings and that at the rapture he he grabs quote-unquote true believers quote-unquote true believers and pulls them out of space and time yanks them up to heaven and keeps them there and there are different ways they tell the story but generally seven years keeps them up in heaven for seven years well where all all kinds of nonsense breaks out on earth and at the end of that period christ uh you know come takes the quote unquote true believers and takes them back to earth and they set up a kingdom in the physical city of jerusalem where christ reigns as a monarch the jerusalem temple is rebuilt and people start sacrificing cattle all right just like in the old testament and that and that uh physical political monarchical reign of jesus literally on a throne in jerusalem lasts for a thousand years and then the end of time so that's that's the normal way the story is told balderdash okay i was i was actually thinking about father mitch who would say something like ain't that something that's something ain't that something exactly okay so the whole theory uh was put together in the 19th century was invented by a guy named john nelson darby it has no foundation in scripture it has zero foundation in sacred tradition it's not the faith of the catholic church it's not even the faith of most protestants so martin luther knew nothing about this john calvin knew nothing about this cranmers wingley they knew nothing about this and to this day most protestants don't believe it lutherans don't believe it reformed protestants don't believe it episcopalians don't believe it methodists don't believe it basically fundamentalists and those of a sort of baptistic frame of mind it's become a very popular doctrine in the last 100 years but it's very very novel and it it's the only it has no credibility but the way it people are persuaded of it is that um i think unscrupulous bible teachers cut and paste texts out of context from sacred scripture to weave together this narrative that is not evident in the bible like the only way you arrive at it is by letting someone like scofield or ryrie yank stuff out of context and paint this sort of esoteric picture of end times and i think the appeal of the message apocalypticism that's sort of cataclysmic events at the end of time apocalypticism is always attractive to people who feel marginalized by the larger society and and it's not just within christianity you can find apocalyptic sex in islam buddhism hinduism a lot of lot of religious traditions will will evolve uh apocalyptic pockets and they're usually people who feel marginalized or sort of kicked out of the mainstream and it's a way of sort of massaging their wounds so to speak and having some solace at the thought that all those guys that we don't like are going to get theirs you know we're going to get pulled out and saved and blessed and pampered and these guys will have it coming to them and it became very popular in the united states at a time when fundamentalists were being ejected from mainline denominational seminaries uh during the fundamentalist modernist controversies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries after the advent of darwinism and so they felt really kind of like the black sheep of the protestant world and people were looking down on them and considering them to be country bumpkins and things like that and so they sort of comfort themselves with the notion that well we're going to get zapped out to heaven ha ha ha and you guys are going to be left behind that's i think why the appeal i still think that's the appeal and it's a very harmful doctrine because it well first of all you you tend to identify yourself with the elect i'm one of the good guys you guys are all bad and that kind of contradicts the ethical teachings of jesus to look at the world construe the world in that way where i'm good and you're bad and it also makes you kind of unresponsive to the genuine social political needs of the world and you tend to look at reality through this apocalyptic lens rather than rolling up your sleeves and doing the work of bringing about social justice all right a great question cecil thank you so much for it it is called a communion here on ewtn uh deborah is watching us on youtube right now she says last week my sister also a non-catholic was here her eyes are being opened as well during an answer you said you were not a fan of the book of esther her favorite old testament book can you explain what is wrong with esther oh nothing's wrong with esther it's sacred scripture inspired scripture i love esther okay so let me let me put that remark back in context okay i think if i remember the call we were talking about the the the canonization the canon of the bible and how different books were were found to be or accounted to be sacred scripture and i think the argument that i was making is that if you just took the book some particular book of the bible and you didn't have guidance from sacred tradition what test would you use to discern whether or not it was inspired now this is an insane proposition right because we can't do it there is no such test that you could apply but i pointed out that in the book of esther god is not mentioned god is not mentioned so like it's a it would be a strange candidate you know if it were left to my judgment about you know should i canonize this book of the bible if it were up to me and you handed me a whole bunch of ancient manuscripts and says pick out the ones that god wrote right which is this is just nuts right obviously it's odd that it's odd that esther ends up in there right because god's not even mentioned in the book now of course we do know it's sacred scripture because the church has declared it to be such yes and because i approach esther as sacred scripture because the church tells me to i love it i love the book of esther and it's precisely in the hiddenness of god that i find him right esther teaches me something about the way god cooperates with human history and is undergirding all human action and historical progress in a very subtle way so esther reveals that to me but only because i know it to be sacred scripture if i just found this you know in a book of ancient manuscripts along with like swatonius and herodotus i wouldn't infer you know a theological message right right okay well they're good i'm i'm glad that you like the book of acts i like it fine i like it fine good stuff all right there you go deborah thank you so much for watching us today on youtube call to communion here on ewtn we do have a line or two open at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288-3986 we'll try to get to as many folks as we can don't forget tomorrow morning and every weekday be sure to join us for the sunrise morning show that's tomorrow morning 9 a.m at 6 00 a.m eastern until 8 a.m eastern it comes right up against the holy sacrifice of the mass on the sunrise program you can hear anna mitchell and matt swaim taking listeners through the morning with a fast-paced program it covers everything from current events breaking news to catechesis great show check it out tomorrow morning at 6 00 a.m eastern right here on ewtn radio let's go now to marion mary rather in meridian idaho and she's a first time caller hey there mary what's on your mind today well i'm wondering if a widow of advanced age is expected to be celibate the rest of her life if she has no intention of marriage uh the answer to that question is yes so if you uh you don't have to be celibate the rest of your life but the remedy for that is marriage but if you don't intend to marry then by definition according to catholic moral teaching you're celibate there it is mary thank you so much for your call here is sebastian now in walla walla washington listing on our great affiliate uh there khs i believe it is oh no no no i beg your pardon sebastian's listening on roku sebastian what's on your mind today hello it's great um it's great to it's good to be on your show today dr anderson i know i'm i don't know everything in the world and you're a heck of a lot smarter than me i'll tell you a lot just so far my one question that i never can seem to get to answer that i've asked a few people is why are catholics not allowed to be free masons yeah thanks i appreciate the question so historically freemasonry is committed to the doctrine of indifferentism indifferentism means that it doesn't matter what religion you follow and in fact i remember on my first visit to a masonic lodge to the grand lodge in philadelphia on an american history tour when i was in high school i remember our our mason tour guide made much of that commitment how the mason is expected to affirm belief in some god however you conceive it that so deism was required but uh but no god in particular you know just just a god it was abusive it just picked one you know and doesn't matter so much and that was part and parcel of the the enlightenment rationalism that thought and that deism was a rational way of to conceiving god's relationship to the world god was kind of a distant clockmaker you know who wound the whole thing up then kicked back and let it run and now you know we can approach things in a scientific way or a rationalistic way and god's a hypothesis to explain the origin of things but not an ongoing participant in the world of human action and history and the like and and uh and so you know you can think that if you want to that's kind of quaint but we enlightened masons know that it's really just this deistic clockmaker god that we need to be concerned about so we require belief in some god but you know you pick one well that's very contrary to the way the catholic church thinks about god and god's relationship to the world and of course the role of the catholic church in human history now related to that doctrine of indifferentism because that is so it's in such opposition to the catholic doctrine of god and his involvement in the world and the church's involvement in history masonry has historically been very opposed to catholic influence in civil society and the easiest way to see this is go to an historic catholic town or city like saint louis or mobile alabama which is a very catholic city and look for the masonic lodge and you will almost always find that it is in close proximity to a catholic cathedral or institution of higher learning so i remember my first trip to st louis i'm driving you know onto the campus of st louis university there's jesuit hall and lo and behold right around the corner there's the masonic lodge and it's there by design because the point was to kind of poach catholics out of their you know bastions of security into this quote-unquote enlightened way of thinking same thing goes in mobile there's the beautiful mobile cathedral right around the corner masonic lodge right so um why would the church encourage her members to join an organization whose own doctrinal statements contradict the teaching of the catholic church and whose own mission in the western world since the 18th century has been one of undermining catholic influence in society would seem kind of a performative contradiction indeedly that's by the way that's a word that i made up indeedly i like that word okay sebastian thank you so much for your question glad that you're listening in walla walla here is diane now in west palm beach florida listening on sacred heart radio via the internet diane what's on your mind today hello thank you dr anders thank you ewtn you're the ones who make me remember i need to be always charitable and patient you know i'm a convert to the catholic church i love our catholic faith and um my question uh is how to choose a bible to purchase but the reason for my question is that and you reminded me of this issue dr anders when you said something about when you quoted mary when she said um i i will be called blessed on her you know that was misquoted by a christmas cards that i accidentally i didn't notice it at the time but the christmas cards i bought said he will be called blessed um and then a protestant friend gave me a bible this is knowing when i was this is when i was already catholic um that that had that quotation wrong also um i he will be called blessed on on earth so i'd like to know how to choose a bible and make sure that it's correct and i i learned a while back that a bible um is a better you better to be purchased before the time of the 60s the 1960s i just wondered thanks i appreciate the question so your you can always be safe with an ecclesiastically approved translation of the bible um the the bishops the united states use the new american bible translation in the liturgy so if you use that you're going to be reading the same text as proclaimed at the liturgy i personally like the rsv catholic edition that's the one that i read you can always go to a much older translation like the douay which was specifically commissioned by the church as the sort of english catholic alternative to the king james which was a protestant translation of the bible and you're right that bible translators will import their own theological presuppositions into their translation and uh and will at times radically deform the meaning of the text to to confirm their prejudices and this process began of course with martin luther himself who inserted the word alone into his translation of romans to say we're saved by faith alone that was his unique uh peculiar teaching whereas the rest of scripture saint james says you're not saved by faith alone you're not justified by faith alone um and uh you know modern translations like the niv um are typically produced by teams of evangelical protestant scholars and and i know like the biblical scholar nt wright for example um thinks it's nearly impossible to understand the real meaning of saint paul if you read the niv because the calvinistic prejudices have so uh infected the translation is to radically alter the meaning of the text at least according to the judgment of the for the leading english language biblical scholar today in the world so i'd recommend sticking with an ecclesiastically approved translation like the new american or the rsv catholic edition appreciate your call it is called a communion here on ewtn glad that you're joining us on this a thursday afternoon let's go now to edward in san jose california edward what's on your mind today all right thanks for taking my call i'm actually really interested in apple's primus as i understand it from ewtn's website this was started by pope boniface the eighth in the year 1302 i believe what's hard for me to uh consider is that this wasn't during the apostolic ages early apostolic cases yet it started by a pope 1300 years later and it basically essentially says you are not saved unless you are subject to the roman pontiff so which basically eliminates all other apostolic churches how do you how do you handle that one yeah right i appreciate it so you're referring to the papal bull unum sanctum of course and uh first of all let's get clear on for this audience's sake the teaching that christ founded the church on the rock of saint peter gave him the job of teaching that's not something that boniface viii made up that's something that christ taught matthew 16 when he says to peter thou art peter and on this rock i'll build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven what have you loosen earth loose in heaven and so we find that doctrine of of peter's primacy and then the bishop of rome as the heir of that petrine jurisdiction we find that in the second century in the third century in the fourth century down to the time of manifest the eighth now uh it by the time you get to the 14th century in the latin church in the western church the political conflicts between the papacy and the roman empire and the various kings and principalities was pretty lively and uh i mean we'd had uh we had popes you know being uh assaulted and jailed by by emperors we have pope's excommunicating emperors it's a big brouhaha right and boniface the eighth of course is speaking in the context of a catholic europe to catholic uh monarchs who are politicizing the church and like boniface viii was no saint i mean he was politicizing the stew out of it as well wields this uh the doctrine of papal primacy in uh in this political way and trying to compel obedience and i really think that's how you have to situate it in his historical commonplace and the kind of controversies that he's dealing with but um you know in a in a much more extended way i mean the church today does not teach and in fact the church in antiquity did not teach that you have to be a card-carrying catholic to go to heaven that's not the teaching of the church and uh but christ did establish the church and the papacy is part of its intrinsic constitution and the church is the sign and instrument of our reconciliation with god and the means that god put in the world to draw people to christ so once you become persuaded of the truth of the catholic faith and this is the way the second vatican council words it once you are persuaded of the truth of the church well then it becomes for you a matter of conscience to obey the church but even then is our obedience to the pope or the bishop or the priest absolute no by no means because if if a priest or a pope or a bishop were to command something contrary to conscience then we would be honor bound to disobey the pope or disobey the bishop or disobey the priest you know so if somebody told me you know go go kill your grandmother i'm not going to do it right that'd be an immoral thing to ask and i wouldn't do it but if he says uh hey you know this is how we're going to celebrate the liturgy well that's the kind of thing that does fall to his competence yes and so i'm going to say okay i'm gonna go to i'm gonna go to massively pope tells me to go to mass there you go edward thank you so much for your call got a uh anonymous question here via youtube and this person is actually kind of rephrasing something that came up earlier in today's show this person says how can the catholic church be true when sexual abuse seems to be the fruit of her labors yeah thanks so that seems to be a kind of all or nothing statement right as if as if the church has produced nothing but sex abuse and that's just of course just completely absolutely false that the church has produced nothing but sex abuse right and uh so have people exploited the church's ecclesiology and bureaucratic structure in order to facilitate or cover up sex abuse the answer to that question is yes yes and and and that that points to you know massive flaws both in individuals and perhaps in well not perhaps indefinitely in some of the you know sort of administrative structures that the church has erected you know the last several centuries do those need to be reformed you betcha you betcha so does that does that undercut the divine authority of the catholic faith i don't think so i mean jesus didn't get rid of this problem in the company of his own apostles i mean christ made from from a human point of view he made a pretty bad choice for treasurer yeah christ traveled with a bunch of people and they took up donations and in fact one of the women that used to support them was married to one of herod's stewards so it's kind of like you know if if the secretary of state's wife were trucking around you know with jesus and they were putting money into the pot to support the apostles because you know you've got to have got to have money to buy bread you'd have bread to eat and have bread to move yeah and uh lo and behold the treasurer was a guy named judas and we know what he was doing he was uh he was pocketing the donations and stuffing him in his own back pocket rather than keeping them for the common good and that was jesus who picked that guy to be treasurer so if jesus is not going to get rid of corruption in the church you know i mean we're always going to have it can we do a better job can we can we govern you know church try to govern itself better and make reforms and be more transparent absolutely all day long but what are you going to do about people yeah well can all of us do a better job you betcha all right well thank you so much for your uh anonymous question we do appreciate that appreciate the fact that you're watching us on youtube a lot of folks watch us uh every day monday through friday at 8 at uh 2 p.m eastern right here on ewtn as we're doing the live show dr david anders thank you my friend thanks tom don't forget we also encore the program each evening at 11 pm eastern and we also put up the podcast generally it's posted a couple of hours after the program is finished on ewtnradio.net ewtnradio.net on behalf of our fantastic team i'm tom price along with dr david anders looking forward to our next get together and that's going to be tomorrow at the same time for call to communion we'll see you then god bless tomorrow on take two with jerry and debbie it's that time of the month again where you decide what topics you want to discuss call in and let's talk about what's important to you this show has proven to be one of our most popular so we have it once a month just for you so be sure to join the take two family and tell us what's important to you take two with jerry and debbie tomorrow noon eastern on ewtn radio ewtn live truth live catholic hello this is father brian malady please join me for open line thursday next on most of these ewtn stations [Music] in any language it means the same live truth live catholic ewtn the best way to pray is simply to open our minds and our hearts to god to allow his presence to begin to fill us to restore us to refresh us to make us new the best way to pray is simply to be aware of that presence and to say yes to it to give fiat to that presence as our blessed lady did in that way we delight in prayer and god himself delights in us 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

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: 9UBfgQIuNCo

Length: 55min 45sec (3345 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 29 2021