Called to Communion with Doctor David Anders - May 11, 2021

news.com i'm teresa tamio and call to communion with dr david anders starts now 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 is call to 1-833-288-3986 with dr david anders on the ewtn 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 are listening to our show right now perhaps you're not a catholic maybe you were an active catholic years ago stepped away from the church for whatever reason and now here you are listening to this show and you've got some questions about the catholic faith or maybe you're just angry with the catholic church for some reason and that's what's keeping you from becoming a catholic or returning to the catholic faith let's talk about all this here's our phone number 833-288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 if you're listening to us outside of north america please dial the us country code in most cases that's going to be the number one and then 205 also you can 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 for some folks may apply and of course you can always send us an email we've got one from the other side of the globe coming up in a moment here and that address ctc at ewtn.com ctc ewtn.com charles berry is our producer michael birchfield is our phone screener and jeff person is on social media if you want to pose a question via youtube or facebook by golly we're streaming there right now just put that question of yours in the comments section and jeff will pass that to one uh pass it on to us here in studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anderson tom how are you today very good i think i think it's time for a lunch update we haven't had one of those in about a week oh today was carrots mushrooms chickpeas uh let's say kale brown rice and red grapes now do you eat that separately or do you want it all up into a smoothie well neither so the grapes are their own thing yeah and i i basically sort of steam stir-fry the vegetables and then mix them in with the rice and eat that as a bowl and then have grapes for dessert sounds awfully good actually it was good here is an email from and and we were talking about this before the show is it qatar or is it cutter i've heard it pronounced four or five different ways one of those it will be and here it is and this is uh from moses who says dr david andrews the secular world is trying to divide us catholic christians further apart the vatican is saying blessings of same-sex marriage is sin before god meanwhile many of our elders in germany and elsewhere seem to be doing the opposite what do we learn from these kind of events thank you moses in qatar uh i think one thing that we learn is something that we've known for a very long time which is that catholics including bishops don't always listen to the pope yeah yeah you know in the age of exploration when europeans uh uh colonized and conquered the americans the american continents north and south america uh you know they were running around pillaging and doing what conquerors tend to do and the pope said repeatedly you cannot enslave the neighbors i mean the natives and they have dignity and human rights and have to be treated like people and evangelized and loved and they they said um thank you pope for your opinion and they went about carrying on their conquestorial activities and uh you know pope says well you're not supposed to abort your children and there are catholics that say well pope thank you for your opinion we're going to get about our business and and you know we've got a billion catholics in the world right and and to be a catholic means that we we hold to one faith uh one form of worship in the sacraments and we have one ultimately one temporal head over the whole church who has universal jurisdiction and that's what it means to affirm that but throughout history there have been individuals who have called themselves catholic who have decided to deflect if you will from one or more of those points of catholic unity which is why from the time of the apostles the apostles have had to continually remind the faithful you actually have to agree you got to get on board you know saint paul writes a letter to the church in corinth chapter 1 verse 10 i insist that you agree on everything because they weren't agreeing on everything and they were scandalizing themselves and their neighbors and that's been going on 2 000 years it seems to me now maybe i'm just being simplistic here but it seems to me that when you uh when you obey when you go along with the church's teaching it's actually very freeing it is freeing it is freeing and you know one thing i really appreciated on becoming catholic was i actually found it intellectually liberating and and here's why because before i was catholic i felt like it was incumbent upon me to have the right answer to every question but that's not something i'm actually equipped to do right and i'm not even equipped to discern when the right answers really matter and when they don't and so my faith even though i sort of felt that this was my sort of my own responsibility turned out to be you know i held the last most persuasive opinion that i heard a very human trait you know absolutely and and then when i became catholic i realized you know there's actually a fairly reasonable data set if you will of affirmations that i have to hold as a catholic these dogmas these morals outside of that i was actually given an awful lot of intellectual liberty and because the church has a principled way of defining here's what's dogmatically true here are the essential moral principles outside of that there's room for differences of opinion and so the church doesn't doesn't demand a kind of uh you know wooden literal uniformity on absolutely everything but it indicates here are the points on which unity is necessary all these other things you guys can disagree and i have your arguments and have your schools with all different theological positions and that's okay but here's where we have to come down and and one of them is god made us male and female for the procreation of the human person and human family and that's that's that's normative uh human sexuality and and that you just i mean that's that's the way we're put together going with that last persuasive argument that you heard and i i just finished reading a biography i won't say who it was but it was someone who is president of this country not recently but some years back who uh was kind of guilty of that he would go along with the last best persuasive argument and as a result you've got a ship without a rudder yeah and i mean one of the things that we've learned from cognitive science even in the last 20 years is rationality is much harder to come by than we think you know we we have we we have cognitive biases heuristic biases built into our into our cognition sort of from the ground up that dispose us to making really bad choices and it's very very very very difficult to over an eye on to impossible to overcome those biases yeah moses thank you so much for your email if you'd like to send us an email for a future show the address ctc at ewtn.com in a moment we'll be talking with mike in new kirk oklahoma listening on ave maria radio we have a line with your name on it right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 here on call to communion stay with us [Music] more to life is all about exploring what it means to live the catholic difference in everything we do our faith should change everything about how we think how we live how we love how we relate to others and it should help us discover godly solutions the challenges we face more to life with dr greg and lisa popcheck tomorrow morning 10 a.m eastern on ewtn radio father benedict groeschel i'm going to tell you about the most abused woman i ever met in my life you know her name as roe as in roe versus wade i talked to roe this woman is a great penitent a woman is a humble person who was deeply hurt she was kneeling in the basilica of the immaculate conception the national shrine in washington when i met her and i thought what reverence i didn't know this woman was but she was praying with reverence with great fervor and i asked a priest friend of mine who is that he says oh that's wrong god is not mocked this woman was abused by those who propagate the killing of children ewtn live truth [Music] it's called a communion here on ewtn if you have a question for dr david andrews our phone number is 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288-3986 we'll get to the phones in a second here i want to tell you about a wonderful new book from ewtn publishing if you're watching us on the web i'm pointing to it right there it sits it's called web of faith a curious catholic's answer to theological questions by fathers ken bregenti and john tragillio as you know they are host of the wonderful tv show web of faith they draw on their years of pastoral experience to compile a comprehensive list of some of the best questions ever asked of them including and i'll just give you a couple of these how to deal with family collapse which is not unheard of as you probably know what about this one bad words and unwanted thoughts what is sinful and what is not not every bad thought is sinful if you know what to do about it and how about this what the church teaches about cremation versus burial this is a great book we're glad to have it in the studio with us here web of faith a curious catholic's answers to theological questions it's available right now at ewtn rc.com by catholic shop catholic ewtn rc.com if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn here is mike to kick us off in newkirk oklahoma listing on the great ave maria radio hello mike what's on your mind today yeah i just uh i'm not good at talking that's okay mike you just take your time what's up okay i just want to tell you you too do a fabulous job i've taught rca for 23 years and i can tell you i listen to you all the time and i hear people calling in over a period of weeks different people with the same question and dr anders through patients that i don't understand goes into great depth every time and explains it and i'm just so happy that he does it uh and and thanks for taking my call i just uh wanted to get this out mike i i can't tell you how much i appreciate it and let me tell you something else 23 years of teaching rcia i can't tell you how much i appreciate that that is that is heroic charity it really is and uh and the church needs it you know the pope just came out with a mode appropriate about the role of the lay catechist in the church which i have not had a chance to read but i will tell you i know this much he says we need guys like mike yeah and i know he says that much right it's all in praise of the necessity and the and the vocation of being a lake atticus says thank you so much for doing that um and uh you know i'm i'm so happy we get to do this too i mean i i kind of wake up every day and pinch myself and do it do i really get to do this you know i remember one time when i was in seminary is the protestant seminary but i really enjoyed it and uh my one of my church history professors got into a doctrinal discussion and we're just kind of sitting there chewing the fat going back and forth on this theological question all of a sudden he just kind of looks up at us and says i can't believe i get paid to do this it's such a privilege you know to be able to teach theology and that's how i feel about being involved in this ministry of catholic radio it's just such a privilege well i am right there with you my wife says that i go to work happy and i come home happy and she wouldn't trade that for all the all the tv in china you know i mean i think tom price is like the catholic casey kasem he is just the fan one of the best radio voices i have oh you're very kind very kind i like working with him mike thank you very much for your call you made our day hey that opens up a line for you right now actually two lines open at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 call to communion on this tuesday afternoon here on ewtn radio let's go to uh indiana in salem oregon listening on modern day radio our affiliate number one hey there indiana what's on your mind today hi so my question is if um okay so the israelites believed in god even before exodus and the first uh is it four or five by five books of the bible they were written by moses so i would like to know what was there a bible was there you know something before he wrote the the first five books okay yeah thanks i can i can explain that so first of all um it's really not clear that most of the hebrews believed in one god uh before the time of the exodus and in fact they seem not to have many of them seem not to have because uh polytheism and idolatry are one of the things that the prophets are constantly correcting in the people of israel and so even during the exodus uh uh you know and all through israel's early history um you know they'd go to battle and something wouldn't turn out right and they'd say well let's let's peek around see if anybody has any gods and they find they find some statues and some idols buried in some guy's tent you know and it was sort of an ongoing problem and uh and so the prophets were always calling israel to the worship of yahweh into the one god uh but they didn't always get buy-in from the people um now what we know from sacred history is that since since god made the world what is god's existence and almighty power is evident from things that he has made and and throughout history there have been people who have come to knowledge of the one god simply from the created world and that's true not only within the history of israel but it's true throughout world religion and you can find it even even many of the sort of pluralistic uh polytheistic cults of of of the ancient world of you know the iron age and before the bronze age before even back into the old stone age or paleo upper late paleolithic uh transition will have a belief in a kind of ultimate high god you know sort of the god of above all gods which is not quite monotheism but they definitely have some notion of there being a top dog in the uh in the divine universe and uh you know there's a story from the life of a saint josephine pikita who's from the sudan 19th century so it's modern era but she was not exposed with to any christian teaching or hebrew teaching or biblical teaching at all in her early life in fact she was a slave but she came to the belief in the one god just from looking at the sun moon and stars and and recognize this is made by someone someone of great power and intelligence and beauty and she had the desire to worship him and give him honor and then when she finally heard the gospel from an italian diplomat who actually rescued her from slavery she said oh yeah that that's the guy i've been worshiping now i know his name wow and paul in the areopagus in acts chapter 17 acknowledges this he says you you greeks worship a god you don't know well i'm going to tell you his name you know and how he's revealed himself to us in christ and so first 11 chapters of genesis we find righteous individuals like enoch or like noah who are described as righteous and worshipers of the one true god even though they don't know much about the one true god the character of melchizedek who is described as a priest of god most high don't know much about melchizedek and his generations except that he worshipped god in in a righteous way then god calls one man he calls abraham and makes a covenant with him and a covenant is a sacred bond and he says you're going to be my guy and i'm going to be your god and i'm going to bless the world through your progeny through your offspring and abraham believes god and so the people of israel come spring from abraham god doesn't neglect his covenant with abraham or his or his offspring and so he's faithful to israel even though many of those children continued to hold the polytheistic beliefs of those around them and it was only through the process of israel's tutelage if you will as god brings them along and educates them with the law and the prophets over the course of centuries oh really over the course of centuries that israel finally sort of coalesces around the idea of of the one god and so around the time of the assyrian invasion in uh in the 9th century bc you begin to find israelite monotheism taking hold by the time of the babylonian exile of 586 in judea it's uh it's pretty firmly entrenched in the minds of the people of god the jews that there is but one god but it it actually took it took israel a while to get that message into their heads okay hey andianda indiana thank you so much for your call it's called a communion here on ewtn if you have a question or something to tell us tell dr david anders that is here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 what's keeping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here on call to communion alexander is listening in walker michigan on holy family radio a first time caller alexander what's on your mind today hello hi uh my question is is it cooperation in sin to watch a movie or play a video game which contains real not merely simulated sin such as bad words and modest dress etc even if you are not tempted to sin by them yeah thanks so i generally like to shy away from is x y z or sin what kinds of questions okay um and i always encourage people to raise those sorts of issues about their own moral choices with their spiritual director or confessor right as deep you know your own personal moral issues are really that's the right forum for that i'll give you some thoughts as a person of goodwill who wants to hopefully help you okay um i don't um you know i don't i don't see a lot of good reason given that there are so many entertainment choices out there um i don't see a lot of good reason to uh involve myself or other people in something that is likely to be an occasion of sin you know one of the things that we that we promise in the confessional is that we will avoid occasions of sin um and you know to say well you know this isn't this isn't an occasion of sin for me well i'm not i'm certainly not going to judge that all right and may or may not be the case i might that's not that's not what you decide that's why you take this up with your own pastor um but i know that i'm not i'm more opaque to myself than that you know and i'm i myself am prone to justification self-justification and and it is very easy for me to say well such and such is not a problem for me and then give myself a pass and then before i know it i'm like ankle deep in something that i don't need to be into right and and and so i think the prudent course is uh you know you got you've got a lot of great stuff out there to involve your time with um you know here's one way to look at it when you're on your deathbed and you're looking back over the course of your life how many hours of r-rated video games would you like to have played you know when you give account of yourself to god how many hours of r-rated video games would you like to have played in your life zero for me yeah yeah okay alexander thank you so much uh for your call you know just the other evening uh adrienne was was fixing dinner and i said let me let me find a movie for us to watch and i had on my phone a list of various movies that people had recommended to me over the last you know couple of months so i go to this one oh no can't watch that one nope what about no no can't watch that one so we finally we finally wound up with something but i'm not going to you know expose her to something nasty or potentially nasty i'm not going to expose myself either that's custody of the eyes you know two catholic sources on on media entertainment the u.s uh conference of catholic bishops has some movie reviews and and also deacon stephen grudenos who writes you know for right now nationally we have to register and has is that is that decent films what are the season films yeah decent films um and uh and he is great you know uh deacon uh great great stuff good stuff all right call to communion here on ewtn we have a line open for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 here's an interesting question that came in just now from albert on youtube albert says i observe that since vatican ii catholics have relinquished the great commission that is uh matthew looks like matthew 28 to evangelicals who are reaping great success for example mega churches your reflections please um yeah boy i got a lot of reflections on that mega churches taking my notes here okay okay so first of all um uh it is it is very questionable very questionable exegetically whether matthew 28 indicates anything like such a great commission like the language of great commission that is that is the language of of 19th century protestant missiology right the mission movement the world mission movement of 19th century protestantism was uh crafted this language of the great commission as if as if christ had laid the imperative of proselytis proselytizing on every individual christian they had to sort of get involved and play their part and go out and win proselytes that's not traditionally the way the church has understood matthew 28 matthew 28 if you read it in context is a commission to the apostles that's specifically to the apostles and i agree with you that the apostles and their successors the bishops have done a fantastic job down through the centuries of carrying out that commission which is what go into all nations make disciples and teach them everything i have commanded you well it's not at all evident to me that the catholic bishops have given up that charge i don't think they have i think they are still doing it i think and i mean obviously some do a great job you know you got you got media rock stars like bishop baron you know yeah some you know maybe not as flashy right but but they they preach the gospel in their own way and they oversee oftentimes a sort of a vast catechetical enterprise of teaching the faith right making disciples which is more than just making proselytes um now i also think that uh it is it is far from obvious to me that that megachurch congregations that gather you know 20 000 people or however many that that is somehow a sign of spiritual fruitfulness no i mean it's i'm not going to judge every individual congregation some may be spiritually fruitful some may not but i mean like i've been to rock concerts with more people than that she's like i think it's wrong criteria all right hey albert thanks for checking us out today on youtube appreciate hearing from you in a moment we'll be talking with loretta in syracuse new york watching us on facebook today we have a line open for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 what's keeping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here on call to communion [Music] in any language it means the same live truth live catholic ewtn hi i'm doug keck this is an ewtn bookmark brief just had the pleasure speaking with father jeffrey kirby about his latest book real religion how to avoid false faith and worship god in spirit and truth available through our ewtn religious catalog of course tell us father kirby what's so real about this religion that you wrote in this book yeah so it's so important real religion is distinguished from false religion false religion is all about ourselves it's it's self-worship so the book tries to unmask that and redirect us to real worship which is the worship of god the living and true god is that something you're seeing in an every day isn't a perish in the fact that people are missing that central point of our faith yes an alarming degree real religion is the solution is to cure the help for us to refocus on god the book real religion how to avoid false faith and worship god in spirit and truth we can use it now published by our friends at catholic answers available through the ewtn religious catalog ewtnrc.com for all those wonderful books i'm doug keck and we appreciate you stopping by ewtn podcasts are the perfect companion for busy catholics everywhere your favorite ewtn programs are waiting for you to listen to on your time with on-demand access to audio you can pause and pick up right where you left off anytime anywhere just subscribe by using your mobile device's free podcast app find old favorites or discover something new ewtn podcasts they're waiting for you i'm jerry usher and i'm debbie giorgiani join us for take two with jerry and debbie at noon eastern with an encore at midnight eastern now back to more of call to communion [Music] hey we're at the halfway boy here on call to communion but there is time for you to get in with your question or your comments about uh what is stopping you from becoming a catholic with dr david anders at 833 288 ewtn that's is in 833-288-3986 new york listening on facebook this afternoon hey loretta what's on your mind today hi dr anders well first of all your call streamer told me that i have to tell you how long i've been listening to ewtn i lived in buffalo new york my mom always watched mother angelica and we didn't have it here in syracuse and she'd say sit down and listen to this woman it was wonderful and i've been listening ever since so i just wanted to tell you how important ewtn has been to me and also i've learned more about my faith from ewtn than from anywhere else and i thank you all for for your testimony and your witness thank you loretta thank you oh you're welcome my question today is i have a son who was always very faithful and he unfortunately has um floundered ever since a problem that he had with a pre-servant a long time ago and i i've asked him if he'd forgiven if he has forgiven that priest yet you know because i'm sure god has forgiven him and nevertheless he went to he goes to a baptist church and the pastor asked on sunday uh he said i'm going to give you a teaser because next week we're going to talk about god and i wonder i want to know what language god spoke in and so i sent him articles that i i picked from catholic answers things like uh the whole the holy spirit spoke you know um and i i told him i said you're good at reading this so read what i've sent you you know but i i wonder if there is an answer i i wrote him i said well you know you know how jesus spoke and jesus is one with the father so that might be the answer but they're just wondering what language he spoke to yeah thanks i really appreciate the question and i think we can answer it from several different points of view the divinity the divine nature is immaterial eternal uh uh immortal and immutable the divine nature is not subject to change of any kind and that means that that in himself god does not think discursively that is to say in language because language is composite and it proceeds by by addition and subtraction conjoining and disjoining right i have a subject i have a predicate i have some object that i'm thinking about i assign properties to it like you know tom price is handsome right i have the concept of tom price and then i identify like the property of handsomeness you know and uh and all of that involves change and division in the in the human mind and it's all very finite and limited as well right because i'm only able to to think of you know a single property or a handful of properties at a time and i can't ever get a full comprehensive understanding of what i'm talking about well none of that could possibly apply to god right because he knows everything thoroughly in a single permanent instant and so he doesn't have to reason from from premise to conclusion and the way that god knows things he does know things he knows them better than we do but it's not through the medium of language which is a very limited medium so i would say in his in his nature god doesn't use anything even remotely like a human language now there is an analogy to human language in god and in in fact it is the procession of the divine word or the son uh in the trinitary in the in the in god's trinitarian nature he's three persons father son and holy spirit and the the son proceeds from the father by way of generation eternally begotten is the language that we use in the creed and saint john describes this this procession from god as a word he says in the beginning was the word and the word was with god and the word was god and he was with god in the beginning and then the word becomes flesh in jesus christ and so in a way that's analogous a human person who forms a concept in his mind and can express it in a word like it proceeds from his nature you know from him in a similar way the son proceeds from the father and so we can use the analogy of a word and if you wanted to say what language does god speak i would say he speaks the word he speaks the logos he speaks intelligibility right that's the basis for the creation of the whole universe when that word becomes flesh god speaks jesus what language does god speak he speaks jesus in the book of hebrews says that christ is the exact representation the perfect conformity to the divine image and if you want to know what god thinks and acts and is and what his character is then you look to christ the incarnate word of god right and that's not limited to any one human language he himself is god's divine communication god also speaks the language of creation the heavens declare the glory of god like you know i might be able to write really bad poetry god writes a universe right which includes all languages uh you know and all the way down to sea squirts yeah i mean god invented a panda bears i mean how cool is that right so god speaks that uh jesus the historical person who was born of the blessed virgin mary spoke aramaic but god speaks to every person in nature in their conscience and in their own language uh cardinal newman once said um no i'm sorry not cardinal newman the atheist uh frederick nietzsche once said that we haven't gotten rid of god because we still believe in grammar and what he meant by that was that if you if you if you think that grammar describes reality if syntax can describe reality well then you recognize that that reality is ordered and and if you if you begin with the idea that the order that language expresses is real that it really is in the created world you're gonna be led back to the idea of an ultimate ordering principle that is god right and so every language throughout the world has built into it the idea of order and sequence and syntax that that echoes forth and expresses something of god's inner nature beautiful hey loretta thank you so much for your call hope that's uh helpful for you and uh for your son as well call to communion here on ewtn let's go to tim now in minneapolis listening on siriusxm 130 a first time caller hello there tim what's on your mind today hi there i had a question for you um i'll just get right to the point i was raised in the lutheran church my partner my my lover he is catholic and so we have been going to the catholic church that is his you know desired faith um i'm wondering if i've heard different things different opinions on whether as a lutheran i am allowed to take communion in the catholic church with him yeah thanks that's an easy answer the catholic church is teaching on holy communion is that it is not safely received by anyone catholic or otherwise um unless they have been absolved in the confessional or are you know are have have come from baptism and are not conscious of any grave sin all right and and the judgment that someone has been absolved is reserved to the authority to the jurisdiction of the church right so like when i go to confession i get my sins absolved but i also have a judge the tribunal of the church that that can verify validate that i am properly disposed to receive communion so i have the authority of the church itself to tell me yes you can safely come to communion because as you're aware st paul says at first corinthians that that if we go to the if we go to communion we're not properly disposed we're really putting ourselves in spiritual danger and i'm never a good judge of my own spiritual condition and so the the verdict of the church in the person of the priest in the confessional validates that i am in fact properly disposed now here's the thing about the church's jurisdiction it doesn't extend outside the church you know like if my priest stands up at a baseball game and calls foul ball like sorry he doesn't have that right right that's the umpire's job yes you know the priest can't can't stop me for speeding on the highway his jurisdiction stops at the at the limits of the catholic church right right and so he he can't pass judgment on on you know a lutheran or an episcopalian or a hindu or or whoever right they're not subject to the church's jurisdiction because they don't they don't submit to it and so you know it's for for your safety the church says well like we can't we can't safely admit you to communion because if you're not subject to the church's jurisdiction we've got no way to validate that you're properly disposed now that's that's part of the story there's more to it than that here's another part of the story the sacrament of holy communion it's not just some private thing between me and god this is a public profession of my unity with the body of christ which is the church now if you know catholic ecclesiology we don't think the church is some some amorphous aggregate of everybody that has a private relationship with christ that's not what we think okay um we we think the church is a public institution founded by christ that's two thousand years old and has a direct line of descent from the first apostles to the present day bishops all right and and someone who's lutheran episcopalian baptist you know hindu jewish atheist is manifestly not visibly in communion with that society now i'm not saying you're a bad person because of that it's just a fact right but when you go to communion you're telling the world this is what i'm a part of i'm a part of this visible institution called the catholic church that understands itself as being 2000 years old and in direct apostolic succession to the first apostles so again like why would you want to go signal performatively by your actions that you are in association with a society that you're not in association with right you know um i i wouldn't i wouldn't you know i wouldn't want to go take the pledge of allegiance to uh you know to another country's flag right right you know and so so there's the question of the the safety of your own soul question of proper disposition to receive communion which needs to be validated by the church's tribunal of mercy which is the confessional there's the question of that public approbation uh i mean that public recognition profession of faith that i belong to that uh corporate unity that is the church's body right um you know and then there is all of us all of us have to uh assess our lives in the in the confessional against the standard of the church's moral catechesis right and so the question of my own personal morality well it's not personal it's public right right the standards of what's right and wrong in my personal life are defined by the public authority of the church so all of those things have to come in play for me to be properly disposed to receive holy communion so it's just not it's not it's not an act of of of prejudice or anger or hatred or rejection anything like that really is the church's pastoral solicitude and care that like you know communion is for catholics to come together as catholics when they know they're properly disposed they're in the state of grace they have fair assurance that they are uh you know to receive the body and blood of christ to offer the sacrifice of christ's body and blood to god and to profess their their corporate unity together as catholics and uh and so you know a lot of times non-catholics want in on that but they don't really know what they're asking for because they may be bringing say a lutheran understanding of the sacrament or a baptist understanding of the sacrament and think that well you know we're all just friends in jesus and this just means we're friends of jesus well to a catholic it means a lot more than that sure tim thank you so much for your call appreciate that call to communion here on ewtn on this tuesday afternoon here tom price along with dr david andrews coming up next on many of these stations it's going to be ewtn open line with father wade menezes and then at four be sure to join us for cresta in the afternoon today al is going to be talking with father charlie fox they'll be discussing what it means to be pastoral sounds like a very interesting program that's at 4 pm eastern right here on ewtn radio let's go to adida now listening in rock ledge florida on divine mercy radio adida what's on your mind today yes hello mr price um my question is um how do i identify myself as a catholic i have um other christians from a different denomination that um think that the catholics are not christians and so i mean how do i what do i what is it that makes me a catholic what yeah sure i totally understand your question so first of all let's get clear on one thing right to be a christian means to be a follower of christ that's what the word means yep it means to be a follower of christ catholics follow christ we base our lives on jesus and everything that we do is grounded in christ all of our sacraments the eucharist is the body of christ the priest stands in the person of christ right the sacrament of marriage represents the union of christ in the church everything we do is to reflect christ to recapitulate christ follow christ to obey christ to love christ catholics are christians because we are followers of christ now here's the catholic difference jesus said go into all nations and teach them everything i've commanded you that's what he told the apostles teach them everything i've commanded you he didn't say teach them the parts you like best teach them the simple parts teach them the easy part to teach them just these books and not those he said teach everything now much of what jesus taught was about the conduct of a society a whole group of people called the church he said to saint peter you're peter on this rock i'll build my church the gates of hell will not prevail against it whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven i give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven christ instituted sacraments he said go baptize people he said he said do this in memory of me take this is my body this is the chalice of the new covenant in my blood do this in memory of me um he he he cast out demons and gave the apostles a similar power he he called for the anointing of the sick right and gave that charge to the apostles he ordained priests to offer the sacrifice of the mass and and he gave this promise that the church would continue to the end of the age and he would be with the church and accompany it so to be a catholic means to follow the whole teaching of christ to follow his person and his example is his teaching including everything he said about the church everything he said about the sacraments everything he said about the the bishops everything he said about the forgiveness of sins and everything he said about the ministry of saint peter who is that rock and whose successor is the pope so a catholic is a follower of christ who follows the whole teaching of christ about the ethical life the moral life relationship with god prayer but also what jesus taught about the church the bishops the eucharist baptism and the company of the saints we take the whole teaching of christ what's conveyed to us in scripture but also what comes to us in sacred tradition all right adida thank you so much for your call today it's called communion here on ewtn if you want to call now we might be able to get you on at 833 288 ewtn jeremy's watching us right now on youtube jeremy says how do catholics interpret verses in the bible that evangelicals use to support eternal security of one's salvation for example romans 8 39 or john 10 28 no one can snatch them dr anders has made a huge difference in persuading me to change my thinking on ecclesiology well now i'm dealing with all the implications of that so thank you that's from jeremy yeah thanks so you know i'm a big believer in reading scripture verses in context and asking what is the sacred writer talking about and the the context of the entire book of romans is do gentiles have to follow the law of moses in order to be part of god's covenant people that's the that is the that is the whole show right there what is the relationship between jew gentile and the mosaic law and the question that the problem that paul is addressing was the existence of judaizing christians who taught gentiles if you want to be part of god's covenant people you must circumcise yourselves and follow the laws of cash root you know you have to avoid eating pork and all the rest of it and paul responds absolutely not the law of moses was there to distinguish jew from gentile to set jews apart from the gentile world but the promise to abraham was that god was going to incorporate the whole world all the gentiles too into the people of god and that law is only for a time it was a tutor to lead us to christ but now that faith in christ has come the basis for membership in god's family is faith in christ not the mosaic law and uh and so once you believe christ you receive that that gift of the spirit and god's love is poured into your heart and uh and in nothing not and he says elsewhere kind of elaborates not not not teaching about new moons or sabbath days or or you know eating meat sacrifice to idols like nothing like that none of these indifferent things that people insist on will separate you from this membership in this body now i'm going to say something that's going to surprise you a little bit but it's part of catholic teaching the catholic church teaches that mortal sin can send you to hell but it doesn't stop you from being a member of christ's body the church and so a soul in mortal sin is still a christian still belongs to christ still has a right to the sacraments especially the sacrament of reconciliation like christ did not institute the sacrament of reconciliation for atheists or for participants in another religion the sacrament of reconciliation is uniquely for catholics right st paul actually says if you go off into immorality as a christian you are uniting christ's body with that other person so don't do that because that's really bad right so so it's true nothing in all of creation not even sin can remove from us that that indelible mark of baptism that marks us out as one of god's holy people belonging to his covenant now does that mean that a christian can sin with impunity and not suffer consequences no it doesn't mean that at all because paul says in many other places like galatians chapter 5 if you do not and he says in romans 8 2 for that matter if you do not walk in the spirit right you will have no share in the kingdom of god so he gives these lists of vices and he says if you commit fornication or adultery or drunkenness or factions or hatred or disobedience to parents and the like you will not share in the kingdom of god you will not pretty clear right um and uh and and his whole charge to the galatians is you guys received the spirit by the hearing of faith but now you want to shipwreck your faith by turning back to these worthless things that don't actually they don't actually help you live righteously and he warns them you're in danger of losing the whole thing that's what he says in galatians so we're nothing can separate us from that membership in christ's body least of all any creature and that's what he says not no no creature can separate us from love that's true but your own sin can disqualify you from any share in the kingdom of god jeremy thanks so much for watching us today on youtube called communion here on ewtn dave in ohio says dr anders and tom thank you so much for your amazing show i have often thought that a convincing point to make against the quote saved by faith alone stance would be to say that even satan and the demons believe jesus is the son of god think of legion who shrieks i know who you are the holy one of god and satan and his and the demons are clearly not saved but i've never heard that point being used would that be a valid point that one could make to get across the point that more than faith is required for salvation david well sure and saint james makes exactly that point in james chapter two he says you people that say you have faith well you know the demons have got faith right they believe right that's right now i will tell you that back when i was a protestant and back when i used to believe faith alone business that argument didn't move me and and the reason why is protestants have a very idiosyncratic understanding of what faith is and they they they distinguish between sort of notional ascent and uh and a more sort of ethereal quality which is really this sort of uh sort of loving adherence to god and reliance on his promises that they consider to be saving faith and so the way they dealt with objections like that was to say well you've got like just mere notional ascent over here and then you've got the real saving variety over there now the problem with that first of all this is deeply unbiblical right scripture doesn't doesn't draw all these distinctions all right scripture clearly doesn't teach that we're saved by faith lord it doesn't say that at all right but but even subjectively like once you sort of attaching all these kind of ethereal qualifiers to well that's real faith and that's fake faith well it does away with any assurance real ultimately because like you can never discern from merely interior marks whether you have one or the other right like a friend of mine once said the elect know for sure they're going to heaven and i might be one of them love that all right very good dave in ohio thank you so much for your question we have got about a minute left and i've got a short quick email here this is from roseanne who says what does ihs mean i see it on priestly vestments and church ceilings thanks roseanne um that that ihs actually it's the first three letters of jesus's name all right and uh for jesus that's it yeah so uh have you heard other other versions of this i once heard uh maybe you've heard this too in his service you ever heard that that was wrong really yeah so the the the greek letter is that looks like an h can be e right it's the first three letters of jesus's name okay there it is roseanne thank you so much for that and in our closing seconds here since we've got just a moment uh why don't you tell us about the call to communion website uh call to community.com is a website that is dedicated to dialogue between protestants and catholics addressing the issues that we have in common and it variants and if i may say so it's a fine website and i think we maintain a high level of charity and and collegiality and goodwill and um and pace attempt to patiently answer people's questions and and some of the fellows that are contributors i'm only one of them i just really have an amazing gift at interacting with people in this medium and you know the com box the internet combox is one of the seedier places in the internet universe right not so on call to communion.com because these are these are legitimate seekers who really want to know what the stuff is yeah and we ask people if you're going to dive in there and ask questions so please be respectful and if people aren't then they get politely uninvited yeah check it out calltocommunion.com dr david andrews thank you sir thanks tom see you tomorrow right here on ewtn's call to communion i'm tom price hope that you have a blessed day take care

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: B5h92eUgAXE

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2021