Called to Communion with Doctor David Anders - March 31, 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 1-833-288-3986 why do i need to confess my sins to a priest what's stopping you this is called to communion with dr david anders on the ewtn global catholic radio network hey there thanks for joining us here on ewtn's call to communion the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters uh maybe you were an active catholic years ago and now here it is wednesday of holy week and you're thinking golly i kind of miss all that uh what what do i need to do to get back into the church here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 ewtn or 3980 spelling it out on the number pad there or 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 and of course you can always send us an email ctc at ewtn is the address ctc.ewtn.com we'll have an email for you in just a couple of minutes here charles barry is our producer ryan penny is our phone screener jeff person is on social media if you have a question to ask via youtube or facebook live just put that in the comments box and jeff will shoot that to us here in studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anders tom how are you today very well how is your holy week progressing uh you know it's uh it's progressing is progressing well very good we gotta barely we're getting holier let's hope so we got a very timely call overnight last night from the ewtn listener comment line here it is my name is i'm from salinas california my question is i'm a catholic if i do not go to confession then will i not be able to go to heaven i hear a lot of people that go into presbyterian church now because they do not like to go to confession that is the only thing that's holding them back so what is the answer to that how many sinful things can an 87 year old person commit here you go yes thank you so the the the law of the church is that catholics are obligated to go to confession once a year in order to confess their known mortal sins so if uh if if you are sincerely persuaded in conscience that you have not committed a mortal sin then you are not under obligation to go to confession if however you are conscious of grave sin of mortal sin then you do have to go to confession now even if you're not conscious of grave sin it's still a good and useful thing to go to confession even though there's no canonical obligation um because when we go to confession the discomfort that you that you mentioned i don't like going to confession you say well why is that well for a lot of people it's they don't like the idea of burying their soul to another human being it's embarrassing right to confess your faults to somebody i understand that but in in in making that confession and making that act of humility uh well you're really giving yourself an opportunity to grow in the virtue of humility and that's true even if your your sins are slight even if they're minor faults right um you also give yourself an opportunity to really examine your conscience to to grow in your self-knowledge your self-awareness and you say well i'm 87. i think i know myself pretty well right and that's probably true you probably know yourself pretty well but we can always we can always grow in the virtues right none of us have there's no there's no maximal virtue right right you can you can grow and until our last breath we can continue to merit and grow in our relationship with god and look forward to greater and greater reward in the hereafter it's not an accident it's not for no reason that christ instituted the sacrament of confession this is not something the catholic church made up this is something that jesus gave us first thing he did when he rose from the dead he breathed on the apostles and said receive the holy spirit whoever sends you forgive are forgiven now he's the son of god and he's our lord why would he give the church a sacrament if he did not intend for the church to use it well it doesn't make any sense right i mean christ the son of god he could have given us he could have said well here's uh here's a brand new fleet of new cars right you drive all over the place and spread the gospel he could have given us any gift he chose but he chose to give this gift this gift to the church the forgiveness of sins and the sacrament of confession so obviously he intended for us to use it because it's for our own good it's for our own good and he loves us and he desires that we should be saved and grow in him there you go thank you so much for your call here's an email from paul who says dr anders i was listening to your program recently you discussed martin luther's interpretation of various chapters of saint paul which formulated his doctrine of faith alone you went on to describe how he divided scripture into the law and the gospel where the law was meant to scare an individual to accept the gospel of grace are there any books or publications you could recommend which would explore this topic in greater detail many thanks for your program any help you can provide on this topic and that's from paul yeah absolutely so uh probably the best place for you to go is a book by paul althouse called the theology of luther could you spell that um a-l-a-t-h-a-u-s now luther himself luther never wrote a systematic theology textbook he never wrote something like calvin wrote the institutes of the christian religion luther never wrote and institutes of lutheran religion he never wrote that document and some of his disciples did right some some lutherans that came after him did but luther himself never never did that so his his writings are very occasional and uh old house gives us the service of sort of summarizing from luther's own words goes through this massive corpus of of luther's writing and gives us a nice summation in a sort of systematic format but it's drawn directly from luther's own language so paul althouse theology of luther be a good place to go for information on those things sounds good thank you so much for your email paul and if you'd like to send us an email for a future show here's the address ctc at ewtn.com ctc ewtn.com i want to let you know we have some wonderful holy week and easter tridom and easter sunday programming coming up for you over the next couple of days here on ewtn radio if you want to find out more about that go to ewtnradio.net and click on the schedule tab and then you'll see a little button that says holy week programming that's where you want to go ewtnradio.net and then click on the schedule tab and then that will take you to a button marked holy week programming we'll tell you more about that as the hour continues here but i do want to tell you about our phone number which is 833 288 ewtn we've got john standing by from salem oregon you can join in as well 833-288-3986 the wednesday of holy week edition of call to communion here on ewtn stay with us catholic answers live one of the things that we often think about in our spiritual lives is how to do something big for god but really most of the time we should focus on how we can do something small for god it's these small things that help us consecrate our ordinary daily activities and help us do everything for jesus christ catholic answers live tonight 6 eastern on ewtn radio father john ricardo when the word of god is proclaimed in a special way when the gospel is proclaimed it's an event happening in our midst which is calling forth from you and me very concretely today as whatever it is that's going on in my life i come to mass i hear the word and now i have to respond to it always every time whatever it is my response is called for it's not just listening to someone read who then makes some comments one of the best things that lay people can do on their way to mass is pray that those of us who are going to preach will say something inspiring if for no other reason for your benefit pray for us i know many of you do but those of you who don't pray for us pray that the lord would open up our ears to hear what it is he wants to say to us to communicate to you otherwise you're going to sit through something really tedious which none of us want to do the people you know and trust are on ewtn [Music] it's called communion here on ewtn our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn two lines open right now at eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six one of those programs i was telling you about that we have lined up for you for holy week and the triduum and easter sunday and if you've never heard it if you've never experienced it it is fantastic the passion by radix that is coming up on good friday at 5 pm eastern here on ewtn radio and it's also available on dvd uh by going to ewtnrc.com but it's very very dramatic it's a one-man presentation by doug barry many people know him from life on the rock uh he's he's got a musical accompaniment it's just fantastic the passion by radix on good friday 5 p.m eastern right here on ewtn radio and you can also visit ewtn.com radio for a complete list of holy week programming on ewtn if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we begin today with john in salem oregon listening on the great modern day radio a first-time caller hello john what's on your mind today hey uh hello there yes my question is as i am coming into confirmation on this saturday is i'm having questions about mary and um not questioning her authority or anything of that but coming from the protestant background um when i talk to my friends i just don't seem to have the verbiage or the um appropriate i guess as a fighter pilot angle of attack to explain it but here's where it ends to me is when i read about people's experiences being called by mother mary i wanted to get your education on that point in hopes for better understanding and hopes for my protestant friends i just can't get over that sure absolutely um so i i'll tell you what has helped me right as a convert to the catholic faith and someone who used to have difficulty with marian dogma what opened the door for me on mary first was when i began to explore the early churches teaching on the intersection of saints right and so i i sort of came at mary talk about angle of attack i sort of came at her obliquely i didn't go straight into the marion dogmas i i started with kind of like something was easier to chew on a glancing blow so the whole idea of just not mary specifically but of the saints in heaven pray for us yeah yeah and uh the first thing i noticed when i began to study that was that it was everywhere in ancient christianity like you could not get away from it there was no there was no place where christianity went in the ancient world where devotion to saints and their intercession was not part and parcel of the presentation of the gospel in fact the earliest christian churches were actually built on the shrines of the martyrs and uh and and the the veneration of saints and celebration of the mass and the expression of the christian faith were so interwoven uh as as to be inextricable right and so i asked myself the question well why is that like why was that so important to the ancient church and uh and how could i you know i can't separate that from from ancient christianity why what how can i make sense of that well as soon as i ask the question i thought well you know my protestant friends tell me that the catholics imported this business of saints they borrowed it from paganism they say brought it into the christian faith out of paganism well is that true i'll start reading really doing the ancient history and i found out well no it's not true at all in fact the thing that the pagans hated most about christianity or one of them was christian devotion to the saints like the pagans were not a big fan of that at all precisely because of the in paganism you never mixed the holy the sacred with the dead you kept those things far apart so you put the cemeteries outside the city you put the temples inside the city what were the christians doing well they're running outside to the cemeteries gathering up a bunch of dead bones and then running back into the cities you know they're carrying around people's favors you know pagans are like oh these christians are gross you know they're running around with dead people that's nasty and uh julian the apostate roman emperor who left uh christianity went reverted back to paganism he just found that tremendously distasteful so i said okay well they're not really getting it from the pagans where are they getting it from and uh there's a german biblical scholar named joachim jeremias who who argues quite extensively and he among many well they got it from judaism that's where they got it from and if you read the old testament you'll find out there's an intense preoccupation with care for the dead in the bodies of the dead in the old testament um from genesis all the way to the end and uh and not only the care look at passage like second kings chapter 13 and we find out that the the relics the dead body of the prophet elijah is effective to bring miracles into the life of the people of god on earth and the idea was that the even the very bodies of the holy ones the saints the zarakim uh are so pervaded by the divine presence that they partake in a way of god's very own nature and uh and that's what ii peter ultimately offers to us as christians as the as the goal of religious life to be become participants in the divine nature and the saints are people who've sort of realized that to an imminent degree and uh and and so much so that their prayers and intercessions are effective for us even beyond the grave and we see that in scripture as well so ii maccabees chapter 15 book of tobit chapter 12 revelation chapter 5 revelation chapter 8 all depict saints and angels praying for the church of god on earth and the reason this makes sense in the light of redemption is that christ did not come to save us individually he came to save us as members of a new people right that he calls us into a covenant community and that we share in one another's merits and prayers and graces and benefits so saint paul can say in colossians chapter one i fill up in my own flesh what's lacking in the sufferings of christ for the sake of his body the church and uh and that made sense you know we're called to be new kinds of people to love one another to bear one another's burdens uh to pray for one another why would that situation end with physical death well only if death wins well jesus has conquered death so that the church is this one happy holy family that loves and prays for one another even in the next life that's a beautiful idea it doesn't detract from jesus in fact it's precisely what jesus came to create namely this one holy happy society called the christian church so that was beautiful and once i wrapped my head around the idea that hey saints praying for us in heaven that's a good thing it's it's deeply embedded in the bible it's deeply embedded in ancient christianity and it really enhances it it develops deepens my understanding of what it means to be saved that i'm a member of this company this body this communion of saints and of the faithful that's a glorious wonderful thing it's not in any way offensive or or difficult then i said okay well where is the blessed virgin mary in all of that and and the first realization i had was she's one of the saints now she's not just any old saint but she is one of the saints so the the first thing to get my head wrapped around was well if i'm okay with the idea of saints in heaven praying for me well i should be okay with the idea of mary praying for me because she's one of the saints now obviously there are some special things about mary the most special of all the most special of all is that she was the mother of god just just say that three or four times you know mother of mother of tom price mother of god kind of special mother of god i can't even get my head wrapped around that i mean that is so awesome who else in the whole history of the universe of whom can we say that they were the mother of god no one that is that is that is completely unique and it's so sublime that is just mind-boggling mary herself had an intimation of this when she says in her magnificat all generations will call me blessed all generations will cause why because she's the mother of god now uh there's something else we know about mary from sacred scripture namely that she is the mother of all of those who believe in christ the mother of the church now think about this for a second christ is the second adam see we were born physically the physical progeny of the first adam in the natural way but jesus comes that we could be reborn spiritually born again born anew of water in the spirit so to make a new race of spiritual people he's the second adam but his but his his generation is not physical it's spiritual all right well if he's the second adam right is there a kind of uh spiritual parturition if you will is there a spiritual maternity that that brings us to birth in christ in one sense it's the church the church is our mother who nourishes us and causes us to be born but our lady is a perfect icon of the church right and that's the way early christians understood her the second eve well now all the marian dogmas are beginning to fall in place all right so her her life of perpetual virginity mirrors demonstrates for us this life of perfect consecration that christian discipleship calls for jesus says that's the most perfect way her immaculate conception illustrates figures expresses her identity as the second eve who says yes to god and does not fall like is preserved from the stain of original sin all the marian dogmas begin to sort of coalesce around that central truth that she's the mother of god and these things flow from that profound dignity and i can look like all the saints i can look to the saints as models of holiness and intercessors who pray for me but i can look to mary imminently so even more so in that way and so this becomes for me now a very beautiful expression of what it means to be a christian is to be the son of mary one of she's my spiritual mother now your question about those who have personal experiences of mary and i don't know if you're referring to like private revelations visionaries and things of that sort those things can be a powerful confirmation of the teaching of the church and many people take great soulless and comfort in that they're they're not of the essence of the deposit of faith it's not necessary to believe in any particular um historical uh revelation or operation of of mary but they uh when when they are approved by the church they can be powerful confirmations that build us up in our faith and encourage us in our life of prayer so thank you so much john for your call that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn three lines open right at the moment eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six here now is anthony anthony is in saddlebrook new jersey listening on youtube hey anthony what's on your mind today hey guys uh love your show um dr anders uh i'm happy you mentioned uh the second order of st peter before because that's what my question is about uh peter saint peter writes that uh paul's writings are complex uh as well as they're they can be twisted to your own understanding does the church have an official viewpoint in terms of what context uh paul peters writing there or what verses he's particularly talking about yeah thanks i appreciate the question so uh you talk about second peter 3 16 um now this is a question about higher criticism like who who is the author of second peter when was it written where was it written for what kind of community what is was it written and on questions of higher criticism there is not like a definitive magisterial answer to those questions those are those are speculative academic questions where the church does have an authoritative stance is second peter belongs in the canon it's inspired scripture uh historians are permitted to sort of play around with the archaeological and textual evidence to try to come up with the best hypotheses on the higher critical questions now i think there are some things we can discern about ii peter second peter was written at a time when the church was already starting to to split up into sort of heretical sex that's a major concern of the document so chapter 2 peter warns about the false prophets that will come in there and introduce dissension and factions and draw people away from the faith well that was obviously going on otherwise he wouldn't have warned against it uh and also obviously the text was written at a time when paul's epistles had already begun to be gathered together and treated as canonical scriptures and read in the church now uh what were the elements of paul's writing that were misunderstood i don't think that the that say that saint peter specifies what was misunderstood about paul but i think we can maybe infer from some of the things we know uh from the context of early first and late second century christianity so the major heresies at the time that the apostles and their successors had to deal with were number one docetism which would be the leaf the belief that jesus christ did not have an actual body and and i don't know that anyone necessarily grounded that specifically in saint paul but paul has a very robust doctrine of the sort of cosmic uh logos you know in whom all things were made for whom all things were made and in whom we dwell and and so you know sort of platonizing interpretation of paul's very high christology could be problematic another one would be paul's attitude towards the law which could be misinterpreted as paul was being dismissive of the law and rejecting the old testament and the marxianites in the second century definitely read paul that way they tried to separate saint paul uh from the god of the old testament that'd be another temptation that maybe somebody wouldn't misread paul and and read that into his texts so you know paul himself says that there were those who misinterpreted his doctrine of grace as uh as antinomian he says some people have accused us of saying let us do evil that good may result their condemnation is justly deserved so docetism marcianism and antinomianism would be three bad interpretations of saint paul that were floating around in antiquity appreciate your call anthony it's called a communion here on ewtn our phone number is 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here's a question from logan in huntsville who says dr anders have come to understand through your show and through some study of aquinas that god is the state of being or existence itself i have also come to understand that the primary suffering of hell is complete separation of god from god rather so how can something exist that is separated from existence yeah thanks so saint thomas also teaches that god is in all things by his power by his presence by his essence um and uh we we talk about this as the technical term is the immensity of god uh what do we mean by that well we're familiar with the idea of god being uh omnipresent or ubiquitous that god is everywhere okay uh but you can misunderstand ubiquity as thinking well you know maybe there's more of god in an elephant than in a mouse you know like a gas can be extended through space and be everywhere in a room um but like not all of the gases in every part of the room you know more gases over here less gas over there saint augustine used to think of a god that way he used to think there was more of god in an elephant than a mouse the saint thomas says that's the wrong way to think about god's omnipresence all of god all of god is present in every or to every particle of creation right and uh and now here comes the break so i'm gonna have to come back and deal with that afterwards okay uh logan said tight we'll continue uh this discussion about aquinas and hell and all that uh in just a moment here we'll also tech uh talk with uh sherry in lansing michigan listing on her amazon echo lots more straight ahead here on call to communion our phone number just for you 833 288 ewtn call now [Music] in this year of saint joseph join us and make the 33-day consecration to saint joseph tonight 9 eastern after the rosary with father groeschel on ewtn radio 60 on 10 with monsignor charles pope the eighth commandment you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor at one level the reputation a person has is one of their most precious gifts and to intentionally harm the good reputation of someone is a very grave matter we can do this often through detraction by disclosing others faults without a valid reason or callumly just outright lying about other people likewise through rash judgment this commandment also protects the truth which is another very very great good to lie is to speak something that we know is false with the intention of deceiving others we ought to be dedicated to the truth it is the truth that sets people free while errors and lies entrap people in many difficult and often sinful situation the lord asked us to give witness to the truth of the gospel this commandment therefore asks us to stay dedicated to the truth and to other people's reputation the eighth commandment you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor for more about the ten commandments visit ewtnrc.com the world over with riemann arroyo coverage as seen through a catholic lens all people of faith and sincerity need to awaken to this and protect this fundamental right of religious liberty expert analysis does revelation judge history or does history judge revelation stories vital to people of faith it's part of our faith that comedy and tragedy naturally go hand in hand delivered to your inbox every week sign up today go to ewtn.com slash world over [Music] tomorrow on more to life do the right thing facing tough decisions we're going to help you know how to make the right choice that's tomorrow on more to life now back to call to communion it's called a communion here on ewtn we have a couple of lines open at the moment 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 what's stopping you from becoming a catholic well hey let's talk about it here on ewtn's call to communion and before the break uh we were talking about uh this question that logan in huntsville posed uh i'll repeat the thing it's not that long i've come to understand through your show and through some study of aquinas that god is the state of being or existence itself i have also come to understand that the primary suffering of hell is complete separation from god so how can something exist that is separated from existence okay yeah thanks so the first thing i was doing was defining the way in which god is in all things all right and and uh he is in all things so much so that all of god is present in everything right i mean you can't you're not going to get more of god in an elephant than in a mouse god is entirely and wholly present to every particle of created being you know god is the undifferentiated cause from whom flow all differentiated effects he is the containment in him we live and move and have our being saint paul says so in that sense the doctrine of god's immensity nothing exists not even hell itself outside of the immensity and ubiquity of god right another way in which god is present to all things is by his uh the eyes of god god's uh god's omniscience god has perfect knowledge of everything that is down to the slightest particle and that would include the souls in hell god's not absent in his omniscience from the souls of hell god's providence god's control of all things is total and complete not a sparrow falls jesus says apart from the will of the father so god's present to all things by his providential design now there is a special mode of presence special mode of presence uh among the the saved god's presence in their souls by grace god's presence in their souls by grace and the offer of grace is made to every single human being who is alive now that's the mode of presence that we would be denied in hell like permanent uh irreversible lack of the indwelling trinity in our souls that relationship of intimacy and love for which we are made like cutting ourselves off from that by our own choosing and and living without it forever now most of us have some inkling of an idea a little inkling of what that's like because we do this in our own historical life most people have had the experience of mortal sin you choose some creature over the creator and uh and then you suffer for it right and you you go well gosh i wish i didn't do that and then you go do it again right and uh and then we come to our senses like the prodigal son we come back to the lord and reconciled to him in his love and his grace and and uh what a relief that is well you imagine you know being stuck out there in the in the pig trough with the prodigal son and not having that opportunity to ever go back that's hell that's hell so uh technically the souls in hell are not utterly deprived of god's presence by his immensity or by his omniscience or by his providence they are denied of that that loving indwelling experience of god and their own souls are utterly turned in on themselves in an eternity of loneliness uh logan great question thank you for sending it to us here on ewtn's call to communion back to the phones right now at 833 288 ewtn here is sherry in lansing michigan listening on her amazon echo a first time caller hey sheri what's on your mind today good afternoon i have a question my daughter has she stepped away from the church and came back and um she has all her sacraments accept confirmation and it's this week here so she started the horizon rcia program at her palm parish and this week here has been really frustrating for her and myself um her records were wrong first of all it showed confirmation instead of first communion we had to get that strained out and that was a long process now today she got a call from her rcia who's lead and said that she could not be confirmed at easter vigil and she's very frustrated i'm frustrated and it's due to the fact they said that the bishop was not going to be at that church and i was wondering why that is and is there any alternative or anything that we can do yeah there is uh thank you so first of all ultimately this is of course entirely your bishop's discretion and so i can make suggestions but he's got to call the shots so i can't i can't necessarily change the outcome but i can give you some alternatives the bishop can delegate the the to a to a parish priest uh the faculty of confirming right and so that is a possibility i mean it it requires the bishop's permission uh but a priest can confirm someone in the catholic church with the bishop's permission well that's well that's how i was confirmed and how i was confirmed also right um so that's that's one possibility the other possibility is if she's being received into the church uh you know in in one parish and the bishop is going to be someplace else there's always the possibility of going to the someplace else right you know i mean like you could call the chancery and and say look you know this daughter wants to be confirmed very much and what can we do i mean you appeal beyond the parish actually to the diocese and see what you can do um but i i assure you the plan here is not to deny her confirmation no i mean this is this is an unfortunate bureaucratic snafu that amounts to a scheduling error right this is not it doesn't sound like there's some sort of profound problem you know sacramental problem this is just a this is just a logistical problem those can be solved you know um in my own life i had a friend who um there was just a kind of confusion about his coming into the church he was a baptized protestant he was given uh first holy communion and kind of the confirmation thing sort of got a little bit lost in the weeds and uh and so um you know the bishop said well we had a we had a emeritus bishop who was running around confirming people and helping out he said well send this send your friend over to such and such a parish because bishop foley's going to be over there he can confirm him and they showed up and man the dre was just confused out of her mind you know who are you people and what are you doing and you know the bishop emeritus came in and said it it'll be all right it'll be all right it's fine it's fine it's fine and so you know the parish staff are they're tasked with this monumental task of keeping all the roles right making sure the paperwork works yeah it's a big deal and uh and that can that can that that bureaucracy can sometimes get a little bit overwhelming but at the end of the day we want to get her confirmed and we'll make it happen sherry thank you so much for your call we hope that is helpful for you here's a call that came in uh actually overnight on our listener comment line hey dr anders this is mike in springfield oregon and i was calling about um christ descending into hell and i was sort of pondering uh saturday coming up here and and was just reading uh section 635 of the catechism that talks about how christ went down into the depths of death so that the dead will hear the voice of the son of god and those who hear will live so what was the status of the souls you know assuming say adam and eve uh died and and you know were to go to heaven were they in asleep and not in heaven at the time and if so where like were they in purgatory or were they just on paws waiting to be judged yeah you could explain how how that works uh really appreciate it yeah sure absolutely appreciate the question so um the book of hebrews tells us that at christ's ascension into heaven he opens the gates of heaven for us right he is the great high priest who who is at the right hand of god making intercession and and obviates the whole levitical priesthood becomes that permanent priesthood of jesus that uh that replaces abrogates all the others and so prior to the ascension of christ into heaven uh the souls of the righteous dead did not have uh the the privilege of the beatific vision right that's the reward of the just saint paul talks about first corinthians 13 that we will know him even as we are fully known i mean that is the promise of of redemption for believers um but the full enjoyment of that is only opened for us by christ's ascent so what happens to the righteous dead of the old covenant uh well they're not asleep they're not asleep right the doctrine of the church is that they had an opportunity they had a place of sort of natural happiness the the limbus of the fathers it's called where they awaited the coming of the messiah so they weren't in hell and they weren't in purgatory they were in the limbus of the fathers now it's empty today right nobody nobody there anymore right right um that was just a sort of holding tank if you will until the coming of christ the descent of christ to the dead where he liberated the spirits that were in prison okay appreciate that thank you so much for your call it is called a communion here on ewtn let's go to a tom tom is in twinsburg ohio right now listening on am 1260 the rock hey tom what's on your mind today um dr andrews has led a lot of people to the catholic church i could he tell me what was the biggest stumbling block for both protestants and non-christians and how he answered those two stumbling blocks yes thank you so for protestant christians there are a lot of stumbling blocks and and subjectively if you ask them what's your big problem with the catholic faith they'll give divergent answers some will talk about mary and the saints some will talk about the nature of salvation you know some talk about catholic tradition but i think the easiest way of handling all of those objections is uh it's a sort of cut through them to the underlying premise of all protestantism which is the doctrine of the bible alone right because most of their objections are framed around some kind of misinterpretation of the bible which they take to be the church's only and soul and authoritative rule of faith so rather than sort of you know i can get bogged down in the weeds with saints and angels and purgatory and all that i prefer to just go straight to the question how is it that we know the faith what provision did jesus make for us to have an authoritative interpretation of the christian faith just jump straight to that question and uh uh you know there's a story i've told before on the air a friend of mine who when i became catholic was not happy not happy with me at all and uh very upset that i'd become catholic and really wouldn't talk to me about it for a long time and then finally after several years begins to open up we start to share about his church my church and our experience of christian faith and i asked him one time i said um so bud let me ask you a question he says what's that i said you're protestant he says that's right i said you believe in the bible alone he says that's right i said okay how do you know the difference between a dogma and an opinion he says what do you mean i said well you know a dogma is what all christians have to agree on an opinion is well they might have different opinions and that's okay dogma you got to be on the same page how do you know what's a dogma and what's an opinion now note what you can't answer you can't just say well the bible because i'm not asking about what the bible says i'm asking about when there are divergent interpretations of the bible i'm not even asking how you know which one's correct i'm asking how do you know whether your disagreement is substantive how do you know if this is if this is worth fighting over or not there is absolutely no way to answer that question from within the framework of solo scripture the bible alone can't be done yeah right can't be done except by just arbitrarily asserting something and he goes huh walked away and six weeks later he was catholic you know now there's a lot of different ways you can kind of go at the question of soul scripture that was the one that worked on that occasion the other one i ask is well did jesus give us an authoritative means of handing on the christian faith he either did or he didn't if jesus never specified the way to hand on the faith then i guess we make it up as we go along but if you did specify what did he say and all you got to do is ask the question and you realize instantly well jesus never said if you want to know the christian faith here's 27 books of the new testament go read those never said that he did give us a rule of faith he gave us the teaching church going to all nations teach teach teach teach teach teach them everything i've commanded you i'll be with you to the end of the age you didn't say hand them a book you said teach them right christ gave us the teaching office of the church the magisterium so once once you get your protestant friend to wrap their head around that problem like they've got a problem on their hands their fundamental core doctrine is unbiblical they say it has to be in the bible to be believed all right where's that doctrine in the bible it ain't in there right once they wrap their head around that problem you know either either they ignore it and deny it or their heads explode and they become catholic right that's what happened to me my head exploded and i was like ah i can't be a protestant anymore eek you know so that's the thing with the protestants with the non-christians wow what is the number one objection that non-christians have to the catholic faith um uh there are probably many um i think probably the most difficult problem that a non-christian is going to face with catholicism is catholics i think catholics pose the greatest barrier to believing in catholicism historically that's definitely true you know i mean the scandals of catholics crusades inquisitions you know corrupt popes and emperors and and uh you know horrible bishops and all the rest of it i mean this this the scandals of catholic life are uh are probably the biggest impediment to actually taking the faith seriously what's the alternative how do you how do you deal with that well you have to point out to people like that that christ predicted that there would be bad seed in the catholic church balanced of course with the witness and testimony of the saints and so you know rather than looking at say like alexander the sixth or something ah he's the exemplary catholic you know these these borgia popes and the renaissance that did all this bad stuff you look to a mother teresa of calcutta you know you look to a john bosco you look to a francis of assisi and you say that's what that's catholicism done right yes and the promise is not that every catholic will come to sanctity the promise is that catholicism gives you the means to come to sanctity you know i mean here's the buffet i'm not i can't make you eat the vegetables got it tom thank you so much for your call call to communion here on ewtn earlier in the hour we were talking about some of the great programming coming up later this week um and one of those is a fantastic thing that we we bring you every year uh sacred music followed by liturgy now i'm talking here about the choral meditations on the eucharist and that is followed immediately by the solemn mass of the lord's supper live from the basilica of the national shrine of the immaculate conception in washington d.c now if you've never heard the choir there at the basilica it is unbelievable check it out tomorrow evening holy thursday at 5 30 pm eastern live right here on ewtn radio and television back to the phones now on call to communion here is cindy in las vegas listening on siriusxm channel 130. hey cindy what's on your mind today um hi hi dr anders i just have a quick question my son has been baptized my daughter-in-law has never been baptized and they're getting ready to have their first child and i would like for my granddaughter to be baptized how do i go about that process so yes thank you i appreciate the question so my first question to you your son and your daughter-in-law do they wish to have their child baptized um my son has not said no my daughter-in-law is a little on the fence she doesn't really have a religion she wasn't raised catholic or christian or anything so i think if i had some way i don't really want to say convince her to do it but just some way of telling her the positive parts of having um alana baptized okay all right so so the church will only baptize a child when the church has a well-founded expectation that the child will be raised as a catholic all right that's that's number one so it doesn't have to be the parents necessarily although that's the most appropriate people to provide the formation it can be a grandparent but somebody has got to step up and say i take the responsibility to raise the child as a catholic and the parents would have to consent to that right so if your daughter-in-law say doesn't want to take the child to mass she would have to consent that well you know grandmom is going to take the child to mass someone is going to take on that responsibility because baptism while it confers great grace is upon us it also confers obligations upon us right we become members of the body of the church and we have to live as catholic people so the church won't baptize without that expectation now um you know it if to to persuade your daughter-in-law that baptism is a great grace that she should confer upon her child without the gift of faith is gonna be a bit tricky right because the what we believe about baptism is it washes away original sin brings us sanctifying grace makes us members of christ body the church makes us priests in the catholic church well if you don't believe in original sin or grace or priesthood or or or the church you're not going to necessarily see those as positives right now there are some you know i guess verily human sociological kind of considerations that you could bring to bear i mean obviously from a merely human point of view to belong to a religious community and to live a religious life is statistically associated with happier people longer lives you know lower disease and divorce rates more virtue i mean it's you you can produce those kinds of arguments for purely human arguments for belonging to the catholic church you know having having a sense of belonging and history and culture and you know an ethical life and code and encouragement and hope for the future and so forth but ultimately our motive for baptism is not simply these things but the hope of eternal life right uh and so that's you know you have to have the virtue of faith and bring her to the catholic faith herself now if her husband if your son wants to have the child baptized and her and and his wife does not oppose it i mean she can stay on the fence right i mean she doesn't have to become catholic or concede to the whole thing in its entirety as long as she's not opposed and the husband is willing to have his children baptized and take the responsibility of raising me in the faith the church will still baptize them cindy we hope that's helpful for you thank you so much for your call it's called a communion here on ewtn steven's watching us on youtube right now stephen says since luther pulled so many people away from the church that jesus started would he be considered working for the devil yeah so i am not going to go there i don't blame you um but i will tell you that uh you know i'm i'm very glad that i live in the 20 i was born in the 20th century i live in the 21st right and then i didn't live in the 16th century uh because all luther was absolutely convinced that the pope was the antichrist absolutely convinced that the pope was working for the devil i mean he said that explicitly and and many catholic controversialists at the time took the very same opinion of luther right so there was a lot of swapping of accusations of being with the devil and working for the antichrist i mean i'm thinking about johannes cochleas and catholic polemicist kuklas who just had absolutely careless things to say about luther um you know from my point of view uh look i think luther was wrong i mean i really do think he was wrong and and i think that luther was a deeply wounded and very neurotic person and uh and and you know i think he suffered a lot psychologically and i think that he did cause a lot of harm and he i think he led people into situations that were quite that were quite bad and provoked a lot of violence and and uh and irrationality and ultimately led to kind of some of the crises of the wars of religion and secularism of the enlightenment all kind of flow out of luther's reformation it did a lot of harm but i would be the first person to admit that there are many lutheran people people who were born and raised in this tradition who are profoundly close to jesus and live virtuous and ethical lives and and and find within their tradition you know elements of truth and sanctification and so i i wouldn't want to throw you know lutheranism as such under the bus like that and that's not the way the church speaks about our protestant brothers and sisters we recognize that they have elements of truth and sanctification that can be for them a means of sanctity and even salvation and we pray for greater and greater unity and ultimately you know to come together into the one church so luther himself you know we should pray for his soul and recognize that he was a suffering guy and he didn't have all the answers and you know he was i think he was a little bit of a nut job personally but he but he meant well you know his heart was he was sincere if wrong okay thank you so much for your question uh and watching on youtube uh why do catholics call it good friday seems backwards since this is when christ was crucified right well you know saint paul said he would only boast in one thing namely christ crucified right it's the the the crucifixion of jesus uh it merits for us the salvation of our souls i mean the the the is for this that christ came right to give his life as a ransom for many he says he himself said the gospel of mark i didn't come to be served but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many and that ransoming of his life took place on calvary when he when he died uh in in perfect obedience to the father and in martyrdom for the truth and merited for us the grace of redemption now if we if we stopped the story there if that's all was to the show like we would we would be very sorrowful like the apostles we'd say well we thought he was the savior of the world and then they killed him all right but that's not the end of the story no of course we look forward to easter sunday when he rises from the dead god vindicates him all right it shows all people that he's appointed jesus as the judge of the living and dead by raising him from the dead and and then we can become participants in his resurrection but the crucifixion is sort of the presupposition of the resurrection and the resurrection is the fulfillment and conclusion of the crucifixion they go together they do indeed one more quick one as we're heading out the door from ann on youtube how do i explain why catholics walk with jesus's journey on the passion of the cross this holy week protestants seem to disregard this journey leading up to easter sunday um yeah so actually i could say a lot about this i don't think i'm going to have enough time to go into it too much but in the in the protestant doctrine of redemption most protestants not all most of them believe that by dying on the cross god punishes jesus for our sense that jesus actually is punished by god for sins he didn't commit that's not the catholic understanding of the death of christ but in my experience growing up protestant there is kind of an intense focus on the actual death on the cross and jesus's physical death as sort of like the only thing you need to be saved now the the catholic view is that jesus's whole life is uh is meritorious and and and makes satisfaction on our behalf right and so every aspect of jesus's life is is deeply implicated in the whole notion of redemption jesus recapitulates the entire human story in himself becomes a kind of second atom right reconstituting the human race in his own likeness and image and so uh you know this kind of comes to a head if you will during holy week and uh so all the events of christ's life become a deep focus of meditation for us okay hey you did get it in how about that all right appreciate that and thank you so much for your question we could not get to deirdre in ann arbor we just ran out of time as you can see here but uh deirdre please call us back next week we're back live on monday and we will put your call at the head of the line i promise dr david anders i hope you and your family have a blessed easter season thank you tom you too thank you don't forget uh easter is not just a day it is a whole season right david it is a season it's a whole season we're talking too talk about that more next week on behalf of our fantastic team here behind the glass i'm tom price along with dr david anders we hope that all of you have a holy and blessed easter we'll see you on monday god bless you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 3,869

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: SSHlqCNnUlg

Length: 54min 0sec (3240 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 31 2021