Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - Feb 24, 2022

a catholic why can't women become priests 1-833-288 ewtn i don't understand why i have to earn salvation my sins 1-833-288-3986 a priest what's stopping you this is call to communion with dr david anders on the ewtn global catholic radio network hey everybody welcome again to call to communion here on ewtn radio this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters uh we are here at your service if you've got a question about the catholic faith we'll be all too glad to answer that question for you especially as it refers to the teachings of the catholic church what does the catholic church actually teach not what somebody who's not a catholic says or somebody who has some wrong ideas about the catholic what does the catholic church actually teach about itself and its beliefs 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 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 for some folks apply and of course you can always send us an email ctc ewtn.com the address ctc ewtn.com charles berry is our producer matt kabinsky our phone screener jeff burson handles social media if you're watching us right now on youtube or facebook live just put your question in the comments box and jeff will shoot that to us right here in studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anders tom how are you today we are rocking and rolling not in a good way it is uh it is a rough day here at uh well all over the planet i think yeah i'm definitely feeling in a somber mood today we uh we carried on ewtn radio and television a holy hour from our chapel uh for you know for the people of ukraine uh praying for their intentions and for their safety we also carried uh on radio essentials a special uh rosary just for you know what's what's going on today in in ukraine so please know that uh you folks are in our prayers we have listeners in ukraine we have an ewtn television network play out in ukraine uh in in the city of kiev and so we're we're certainly we've got skin in this game so st vladimir pray for us absolutely gonna lead off here with an email from uh paula who says how can we know god loves us and how do we experience that love yeah thanks i appreciate the question so the principal way that we know god's love is through the gift of his son jesus christ for god so loved the world that he sent his only son jesus that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life and christ showed his love for us in this that he uh willingly went to his death a torturous death of martyrdom for the sake of the people that he loved for our sake to both redeem us and to show us the way of salvation so principally in the person of christ we encounter the love of god now those who are united to christ in faith and charity the members of his body the church carry on that ministry of love throughout the world today and the church is a major institution of benevolence in the world whether through direct aid to the poor and the sick and the homeless and education and advocacy the churches around the world doing good all the time for the human family not just for catholics but for everybody in the name of christ and as his arms and legs and eyes and acts of mercy i think in a more remote way well it's up the good is not remote maybe our our perception that it comes directly from god might be more remote we experience goodness all the time i mean our life is suffused pervaded by goodness all the time you know i'm sitting here having a radio show this is to do that i have to rely on the integrity of my physical body my capacity to speak english good friends to have conversations with you know the lunch that's percolating in my system right now energizing this i mean there's this goodness everywhere things to be grateful for things to find beautiful things to enjoy uh and uh and by process of reflection we can understand those things to come to us from the hand of god so these are some of the ways i think that we could know uh and uh and experience god's love it's all there just sometimes we just have to open our eyes right you now it can be difficult because our lives can also be suffused with pain sure and that's what makes it challenging but the goodness is there as well thank you so much for your letter paula here's a quick one now from hector hector says dr anders why does saint augustine's page on wikipedia call him saint augustine the father of the protestant reformation yeah thank you so i have not visited wikipedia about saint augustine recently and i haven't read that quote um but it is he's not the product he's not the father of the prophet reformation he is however the church father whom the protestant reformers most frequently quoted so in in reformation ideology the reformers lutheran calvin and zwingli and cranmer did not want to be seen to be doing an entirely new thing right they understood if we come out with something completely new and have no kind of warrant or or ground in history we're gonna we're gonna look like the innovators that we are so we have to justify our innovations by suggesting that they accord with christian antiquity so they made a political use that is to say they mined the writings of the church fathers so taking selections that they thought they could use in a propaganda kind of way to to shore up what they were doing gives them give them cover give them some cover right and they they mind no one as much as saint augustine now in one sense luther himself did draw some inspiration from augustine he read augustine's book on the spirit and the letter which is basically a commentary on paul's letter to the romans and the the distinction between works of the law and the life of grace and luther departs from augustine's interpretation of saint paul he departs rather astonishingly from augustine's interpretation and yet the process of engaging the text was was an occasion for luther to develop his own thoughts so there was there was historical influence but not identity between luther and augustine now um the protestant presbyterian theologian princeton theologian bb warfield um tried to nuance this a little bit he he argued i think he's wrong but he argued that the protestant reformation was as he put it the victory of augustine's soteriology over his ecclesiology meaning well now i'm out of town i got to go define my terms warfield was wrong but i have some place i was going with well why don't we uh revisit that let's decide at the break all right we'll uh continue that excuse me and we'll also get to the phones and talk with johnny in vermont nancy in seattle we've got a couple lines open for you as well at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 stay with [Music] most us and exclusive catholic content is on ewtn radio i think ewtn news nightly is beneficial in a number of ways not only do we provide the news of the day but also thoughtful analysis on important issues that's all viewed from the lens of a catholic perspective something you will not find in mainstream media ewtn news nightly with tracy sabel tonight 9 eastern on ewtn television and radio parents when your kids seem really uncorrectable it's not always coming from a place of belligerence sometimes it's coming from self-loathing which studies show is more common among kids than ever before and if that's their head space they're not fighting you they're fighting the notion that they stink and that this mess up is just another proof of how messed up they are with that in mind one of my kids messed up really bad the other day and instead of pointing out to her what she had done wrong i decided to point out first how much i loved her how much god loves her i caught her off guard when i said you're good you know you're lovable there's nothing wrong with you you're gonna be okay i was amazed at how her guard went down how easy it was to correct your behavior after that don't get me wrong you need to set boundaries but you might want to attack them with love first and then correct them you'll be amazed at how differently that can pan out sometimes this is christophanic from reallifecatholic.com [Music] it's called a communion with dr david andrews on this rather somber thursday afternoon here on ewtn our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six several lines are open right now we're gonna get back to that discussion about saint augustine in just a moment first of all i want to tell you about a wonderful new book available from ewtn's religious catalogue it's called remember your death or memento mori it is a lenten devotional you know when sister sister teresa alethea noble began keeping a ceramic skull on her desk and then tweeting about it she had no idea she'd be starting a movement her daily tweets about memento mori latin for remember your death contained quotes and insights that have inspired others to remember death daily and now her series of tweets has led to a memento mori inspired lenten devotional each day contains a reflection written by sister teresa alithea based on the liturgy of the day for all of lent holy week and easter this devotional also includes a review of the day a daily moment of intercessory prayer and daily reflections including the church fathers and many of the saints so if you've been looking on looking around here and there for something to really make this lent something special this may be the book for you remember your death it's a lenten devotional available right now at ewtn rc.com it's a free standard shipping on online orders of 75 or more ewtn rc.com so david before the break we were tackling this question from hector which simply says why does saint augustine's page on wikipedia call him the father of the protestant reformation yeah thank you so i began to explain augustine is the first theologian really in the catholic tradition to make the language of grace and justification that we find in the writings of saint paul to make that central to his account of christian salvation so prior to augustine for the first four centuries of the church people quoted paul people read paul but when they thought about what does it mean to be saved was it mean to come into a relationship with christ they used different language to describe what actually took place inside the human person they didn't really tend to focus on the language of justification and grace that paul uses they preferred the language that saint peter uses in second peter 1 4 where he says that we become participants in the divine nature so what the greeks call theosis the latins called divinization was really kind of the principle model for understanding what happens when a soul comes into union with christ and there are other paul line images jesus is the second adam for example we're reborn in him recreated in christ's likeness and image this is the kind of language that characterized the first four centuries of theological reflection on the nature of salvation augustine is really the theologian who turned to saint paul's books of romans and galatians and used that as the principle metaphor for understanding salvation now why did people before augustine not do that why did those letters why were they not so prominent in the first four centuries of theology well the reason why is that in those letters paul's principle concern is to address a question that was no longer relevant for catholics namely how are jews and gentiles to get along and and how should gentile converts to the catholic faith think about the mosaic law well that pretty much got settled at the council of jerusalem and so uh from the council of jerusalem to saint augustine people said well that's interesting but it's not very relevant to me what what augustine did was he gave a kind of wider valence to this language than than paul's specific reference he said no this is actually useful for characterizing the entirety of the christian life and augustine interpreted paul to mean that if we are to do the good whereby we merit salvation uh we have to receive the power to do that good from the holy spirit that god actually changes us so that we can now merit salvation he changes us interiorly pours love into our hearts we can now we can now merit salvation and that's what augustine meant by uh justifying used to fikari in latin can be translated to make just that god actually makes us just that's how we're saved now what luther found in augustine was merely the contrast between um our our efforts without grace and our efforts with grace and luther said that's the distinction that i want to pull out of augustine the idea that god is the one that does the work in us now where he differed from augustine where august where luther differed from augustine is he denied that grace works by changing us for luther grace works by imputing to us christ's righteousness that god counts us as if we were righteous though we remain sinners that was that was luther's view so he he barred the distinction from ju from augustine namely the distinction between you know our efforts and god's help but he interpreted it in a very different way but that explains the way the reformers cited augustine and how they differed so i think maybe that goes to the wikipedia article now what i was starting to talk about before the break is even the protestants that that go to augustine for soteriology for the doctrine of salvation they recognize that his doctrine of the church of the saints of the sacraments oh man that's just so catholic is catholic all day long yeah all of it's catholic but they didn't like that part of augustine so much so a theologian like b.b warfield would try to kind of push the ecclesiology aside and just hold on to the soteriology but you can't do it the whole thing is a piece hector appreciate your email and david let me tell you what raised my eyebrows here in the first six words here why does saint augustine's page on wikipedia let me say just a little bit about wikipedia if i understand how it works correctly anybody can post something on wikipedia anybody can edit anything on wikipedia you know so it's a it's a you know i guess the nicest thing to say about it it's a it's a dynamic document and and it may or may not be accurate it's not it shouldn't be considered the world book inside but you know i just pulled up the wikipedia article on augusta and there's a little bit more a little bit more nuance to it than our than our caller suggests that's what wikipedia says many protestants especially calvinists and lutherans consider him okay one of the theological fathers of the reformation now i would agree with that statement yes they consider him to be one but they do so illegitimately nuanced is the key word yes yes all right very good hector thanks a lot for your email if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we begin with johnny in vermont listing on our lady of perpetual help radio hey there johnny what's on your mind today hi yes hello um i wanted to know why there is a belief in purgatory like where does that come from from biblical doctrine um sure absolutely i just don't know i don't know why i can help you i can help you so from before the time of christ this is a belief in a practice that goes back into second temple judaism so it precedes christianity jewish people had the habit they still have it today of praying for the dead praying for the dead and a lively belief at least among some of them in an afterlife and a future judgment so so the church inherited that practice is part of the patrimony of hebrew religion the belief in an afterlife belief that our prayers for the deceased are efficacious um and uh belief in a future judgment right all that the church has is his own doctrine but it inherited it also from hebrew and and jewish religion i didn't invent anything here and there's uh uh there's ample testimony about this and in the hebrew scriptures so in particular in a document that was composed shortly before the new testament second maccabees chapter 12 we find a case actually of the judean people offering specific prayers on behalf of the dead right so that's inherited now what christianity does jesus changed the emphasis in judaism rather significantly because there was a strong emphasis in in jewish cult and ritual on a kind of ritual purity right in order to draw close to the presence of god you have to you know have to have certain ablutions you know you have to bathe you have to perform certain sacrifices you have to avoid certain kinds of foods and even certain kinds of textiles right all those things would make you ritually impure or unclean christ changed that he kept the language of purity and impurity cleanliness and uncleanliness but he said it's not the things that go into your body like the food you eat that makes you unclean rather it's the stuff that comes out of your heart that makes you unclean fornication adultery hatred disobedience to parents factions jealousy that's that's the cleanliness we need to worry about and that that kind of cleanliness that kind of purity is necessary if you want to see god so christ matthew chapter 5 he says blessed are the pure in heart not the pure ritually pure but the pure in heart they will see god even the psalms said that psalm 24 says only he who has clean hands and a pure heart can ascend the lord's mountain right so um there's also a notion inherited from hebrew religion that you can do something wrong god can forgive you and yet god will also require an act of reparation on your part you have to do penance in other words even even though you're forgiven god will still require a penance uh we see this really clearly in the life of king david who did some pretty nasty stuff a couple of times and in each case he repented and then god would impose a penance on him so ii samuel 12 is an example of that second samuel 24 is an example of that so let's let's start building a composite picture here all right of of the divine and the human this life and the next purification and penance and what you have is a picture where in order to see god we need to be purified from our attachments to sin in our interior life we also have an obligation to make reparation for sins that we have performed and we see that people of god have the habit of praying on behalf of the dead it doesn't take a great stretch of imagination to connect those ideas in such a fashion that prayers on behalf of the dead are efficacious in helping people to achieve these two goals namely purification from sin and making acts of reparation if you've got those pieces of the picture put together you have the substance of the doctrine of purgatory yeah and so when those things got called into question at this time or that the church doubled down on what had always been the practice of christians and declared purgatory to be a dogmatic fact so we have sacred scripture backing this up we have sacred tradition backing this up and we have the explicit teaching authority of the church backing this up you've got three legs of the stool backing it up now what the church does not say and what popular imagination fills in is in what exactly does purgatory consist like if you go there what happens to you what's the process we don't really know now you'll see you know dante's purgatorio if you read the divine comedy some creative ideas about what might take place there that's just dante right that's not church doctrine so any images you have of like you know pitchforks and and you know balls and chains that's from popular imagination all we know is that there is an intermediate state where the souls of the dead can benefit from the prayers of the church in the process of purification and penance and as a ps johnny our uh phone screener matt wrote down that you said why do some catholics believe and others don't catholics believe it period uh well unless they're heretics well yeah i mean there are there's such a thing as a material heretic a material here is somebody who disagrees with church teaching unknowingly because they haven't been adequately taught johnny thanks again for your call that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 call to communion on this tuesday afternoon here on ewtn let's go now to nancy in seattle listening on youtube hey there nancy what's on your mind today oh hi dr anderson tom price so wonderful to see you both and i i listened almost every day i'm also in a very somber mood today and i really loved hearing when i just first tuned in dr anders spoke about himself feeling somber and and he said saint vladimir pray for us and i don't know who saint vladimir is i'd love to know more about him and his prayer and more about the beautiful rosary for the ukraine and um okay saint vladimir was the the monarch responsible for bringing christianity to the ukraine and he was pretty wild and crazy guy before his conversion and like a lot of uh you know 10th century monarchs he was all about you know pillaging and sacking and carrying on like a wild hooligan but after his conversion he reformed his life he cared for the poor um he he you know brought christianity to his people and he is revered by the ukrainians as a saint there you go nancy thanks so much for your call appreciate that and let's go now to jane a first-time caller in kirkland washington listening on the great sacred heart radio long-time partner of ours hello jane what's on your mind today hi well i'm curious about the church's teaching on intention for the laity um yeah certainly i appreciate the question so intention is can be done honestly i don't um not being a priest and not having to know the rubrics from the missile on distribution of holy communion i'm not exactly sure what the rules are on when and when it is it isn't appropriate of course it's extremely common it's the it's the typical mode in the eastern churches so there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it but but in terms of what does the roman missal say about when it's appropriate when it's not i just you know i don't say mass regularly i'm not a priest i've never said best never will so i'm not exactly sure what all the fine fine distinctions are about the rules but as a principle there's nothing wrong with it in principle okay very good does that help you jane well yes um but my question i guess i wasn't clear is more like intention for the laity meaning meaning a lay person taking the the consecrated host and themselves dipping it in the precious blood yeah uh yeah that's not appropriate no no that's not appropriate no all right and uh we don't we don't commune ourselves right we receive holy communion from the minister of holy communion that's how it's done yeah jane thank you so much for your call in a moment we're going to be talking with richard in uh lincolnton north carolina also nello a regular caller of ours in chisholm minnesota steve is in indiana we'll be hearing from him also david a first-time caller in north dakota they're all coming up on this edition of call to communion here on ewtn radio do stay with us [Music] ewtn is everywhere ewtn radio programming is provided free of charge to over 500 domestic and international am and fm radio stations it's a great teaching tool for catholics and non-catholics alike for a complete list of ewtn am and fm stations across america visit ewtnradio.net at the bottom of the page click affiliates ewtn the global catholic network [Music] you can be a part of call to communion text ewtn to 5500 wait for a response then text us your first name and question it's that easy message and data rates may apply we live in a world of extreme polarization often consumed by anger and anxiety a climate that is dividing our country and our world a division so wide there is even confusion within our church and today most secular news sources only serve to deepen this divide but at catholic news agency our mission is to be a witness to the truth of our catholic faith providing trustworthy relevant and timely news affecting the global church as well as in-depth coverage of the pope the vatican the church in the u.s and the ongoing battle for the culture of life every day cna's reporters and editors maintain a continuous faithful watch on the people and the events that impact lives and the souls of catholics delivering more news from a catholic perspective than anyone else catholic news agency a service of ewtn news trusted timely catholic engage at catholicnewsagency.com hi this is psychelette later today on catholic answers live we've got jimmy aiken two hours open forum catholic cancer is live 6 pm eastern on ewtn radio now back to call to communion [Music] it's called communion here on ewtn our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 we'd love to chat with you on this thursday afternoon let's go down to nello in chisholm minnesota listening on the great real presence radio hello nello what's on your mind today sir hello dr henderson and tell your screener thanks for taking my call okay question is um you know oftentimes we hear protestants will ask have you been saved and what i'm wondering is what do they actually mean by that i don't think that most catholics take that word to them it makes it sound like they know that they're going to heaven they've already made that judgment instead of god and so i'm wondering is not only what our difference is with that meaning but what's the difference between being redeemed being between being justified and being saved yeah sure i got you thank you so the the protestant language about salvation has an interesting history and it evolves over time the key figure here is the protestant theologian john calvin now you know that luther taught that people could be saved by faith alone right and if they had faith in christ then then jesus and god would impute christ's righteousness to them and he would count them as righteous even though they were objectively sinful that was luther's main contribution to protestantism that in the doctrine of solo scriptura now calvin added a few wrinkles calvin believed that it was possible to have certainty that you were that you were justified and that you could have certainty that you were elect meaning that you would persevere in that justification until death and he held that out as a kind of ideal of the christian life that a normally functioning christian life uh somebody would know for certain that they were elect that that they were saved and that their their that their salvation would project would endure to the end they would persevere and they would go to heaven westminster confession of faith the 17th century presbyterian confessional statement uh makes this quite explicit that that individual christians should strive to know with certainty that they were saved that they were justified that they were elect that they were going to heaven now uh puritanism the 17th century innovation that continued into the 18th century was an attempt to define the criteria so if calvinism and the westminster confession held out as a goal that the individual christian know for sure they're going to heaven puritanism was an attempt to define the criteria and this is a part of protestant history that many modern protestants are not aware of right because they only know the version that they've inherited in the last you know 100 years but puritanism actually was not of one mind on this question and different puritans gave different answers to how do you know some puritans for example taught that the way you had certainty was by way of inference from your moral life so that if you lived a righteous holy morally pure life you could infer from your moral behavior that you had the holy spirit living within you now uh they were still protestants because they thought that wasn't the basis of your salvation it was only the basis of your certainty right the so-called practical syllogism or syllogismus practice the saved necessarily do good works i do good works therefore i'm saved right now other puritans said okay you're mucking about with language but in effect you've become catholics again right because now you're now you're you're hinging your knowledge of salvation so much on the moral life rather than god's free grace his gift of grace that that you're behaving practically like catholics so we don't like that at the other end of the extreme were protest puritans that are now known as antinomians and hutchinson if you've ever been to boston you can see her statue right they have her ball her statue up there you know boston square or whatever um as a great martyr to religious conscience that taught that no works at all are necessary for knowledge of one's salvation right so all these people agree that they weren't necessary to be saved it had to do with whether you knew you were saved hutchinson and the antinomian said you don't have to reason from your good works even if you're living a libertine lifestyle if you have faith in christ the mere fact of faith itself is evidence of salvation now in the long run the hutchinsonians the antinomians won out okay um in um uh in the 18th century during the great awakenings george whitefield argued that um that conversion that this gift of grace and the spirit could come in a kind of instant and and one could have this powerful turn to god and that and the conversion the turn to god was itself a kind of witness to um witness to this uh change of the interior life that from which one could infer salvation a hundred years later charles finney asa mahan and the leaders of the second great awakening took that even further and said you can manufacture the experience that you can psychologically manipulate you can exhort a person to turn to god you don't have to wait for god's initiative and you can even use techniques like an altar call wow right and all it takes is a decision of the human will to turn to god and that is tantamount to evidence of salvation like what just the mere turning of the will to god in an instant is all you need to know you're going to heaven so then you get to the 20th century you get people like billy graham and bill bright of campus crusade for christ who literally bill bright literally prints a booklet called the four spiritual laws which more or less teaches read these words god i turn to you i repent of my sins i accept jesus into my heart and you now are saved so you've gone from you know lutheran calvin who really did believe in holiness of life in one fashion or another to 20th century protestantism where it has devolved into here say this prayer and you're going to heaven grabbing the uh the so-called get out of jail free card grabbing the get out of jail free card exactly and so many times actually i had a family member of mine had an encounter this week with a protestant that's that maintained that um in order to be to in order to go to heaven uh one needs to have conscious knowledge of having said this prayer on a determinate day of the week you know you could find it on the calendar wow and as long as you did that well that was the day you got quote unquote saved okay so that's that's a not an uncommon protestant view today okay um that is of course just completely wrong and it doesn't reflect the teaching of jesus at all christ actually gives the criteria by which we will be judged as the works of mercy feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and so forth and this life of active charity is in fact the gift of the holy spirit in us the spirit comes in changes our hearts causes us to love god and love neighbor whereby we do these good works and we're a judge to be righteous that's the that's the catholic view that's the jesus's view and salvation in one sense we find out when we get there right whoever perseveres to the end will be saved and unlike calvin we recognize that people can begin the life of grace and then turn away from it they can stop walking right now um your question about the terminology uh running a little bit long i may have to get that in detail later but basically justification in saint paul means the criteria by which god counts us as a member of his covenant community so you know in the old covenant you were you were a member of israel if you were a descendant of abraham and circumcised that's how you knew you were in the club right how do you know you're in the club today right the club being god's covenant people right right how do you know well it's not wrong to say that we are included in christ through faith that's not incorrect and that is true so a person can have faith and not charity and they will really be a christian and a member of christ's body the church that won't get them to heaven however that won't get them to heaven right in order to get to heaven one must persevere in acts of charity paul says we have to walk with the spirit keep in step with the spirit if we wish to inherit eternal life but in terms of what counts to make a person a christian yeah faith and baptism make you a christian but the life of charity is what gets you to heaven great question nello thanks so much for checking in with us here on ewtn's call to communion let's go quickly to steve in indiana listening on the great redeemer radio hello steve what's on your mind today yeah i've been watching some videos on these street preachers that they say to people [Music] that god only loves you if you repent and otherwise he hates you uh and he uses psalm 5 5 as a defense for that he says that uh that god hates the evil doers or workers of iniquity and i would like dr andrews to explain that to me yeah sure so scripture of course says that god loves the world and said his only son that whoever believes would have everlasting life all right and first timothy 2 4 also teaches that god desires that all men be saved now if you hate somebody i don't want them saved i mean like it doesn't make any sense yeah you fall in the lake and you're drowning and say help me help me and i'm like i hate your guts buddy i'm not helping you sink like a stone for all i care you know if you hate somebody you don't go to their aid god loves people who wants to save them now however we are capable of putting up barriers to god's love think of this as an analogy if god is like the light of the sun and there it is warm and life-giving and beaming down on everyone and everything and it's a nice bright sunny day i can go outside with my dark umbrella i can put up my dark umbrella and i can blot out the light of the sun and so i'm sitting here in the shade going it's so shady today everybody around me is getting to town you know well that's not the sun's fault that's my fault right and we can interpose our sin between ourselves and god in a way that makes us not responsive to his ever-present love his gift of himself to us in the world that he created and especially in the gifts of faith in the catholic church we can we can put our own sin between ourselves and that love of god and make ourselves incapable of receiving it participating in it and if a person does that well you've met a sourpuss before like this everything's bad they're cynical about everything and there's nothing happening in the world nobody hates me and uh and they experience reality as hateful and and that's the way scripture says we should think when the bible uses anthropomorphic language about god anthropomorphic means they describe god in human terms right god doesn't really have emotions it's a catholic doctrine god is simple and immaterial and of course to have human emotions you have to have a body god doesn't have a body so it would be a mistake to think of god like some sort of uh you know middle eastern potentate sitting on a throne with a scepter who's wrathful and angry and joyful and sorrowful and and and changes his mind and all that sort of that kind of language is used about god in the old testament descriptive poetic figurative language but it's better understood as describing our subjective experience of god as we ourselves make ourselves more or less receptive to his ever-present unchanging love we do thank you for your question steve hope that's helpful for you here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders tom price here reminding you to please join us for women made new it's one of our great weekend programs you'll hear it saturday at noon eastern with crystalina evert and this week father joseph mary and daniel campbell joined christolina to talk about the upcoming lenten season very timely program check it out saturday afternoon noon at eastern noon eastern time here on ewtn radio that will be 9 a.m pacific there you go let's go now to richard in lincolnton north carolina hey there richard what's on your mind today sir good afternoon tom dr anders i need some clarification my stepson started rcia a couple years ago and due to his work schedule and the rcia that was taking place in our town he couldn't make it so he waited a year and we're going to another church in another town and which falls good on a sunday right after mass but the pastor now the pastor that he was going to never made mention of this and the new guy he said that he needs an annulment well my stepson has never been baptized he's been married twice the first marriage was uh she was a calvinist they did get married in the church and there was issues there they got divorced and then the second marriage was just a las vegas thing but the pastor said that he has to get an anomaly never heard of such a thing especially he's never been married excuse me he's never been baptized and i can help you i can help you thank you appreciate the question so here's the position um you do not have to be a catholic and you do not have to be baptized in or to be validly married so you know if you are an atheist and you marry another atheist that's a that's a true marriage that's a real and valid marriage what is marriage marriage is the pledge of a man and a woman to be together lifelong fidelity for the sake of raising a family so the paradigm here is adam and eve adam and eve were not baptized they were not christians they were validly married they were truly married adam had a duty of fidelity to eve and she vice versa right why because they were put together to help one another and raise a family that's what marriage is and pagans can do that atheists can do that hindus buddhists they can do that you don't have to be catholic or baptized to have a valid marriage now if you're in a valid marriage whether you're baptized or not you are obligated to be faithful and so if you split i mean that's infidelity that's defection that's wrong you can't you cannot abandon your wife now it does happen it does happen that two people will couple with one another and they may call their union a marriage but it will fall short in some substantive way of what a real marriage is let me give you an example let's say a couple says well let's uh let's agree to live together until next tuesday and because that'd be fun and we'll we'll tell people we're husband and wife well the church would say that's that's not really a marriage the baptism's got nothing to do with it it has to do with the intent of the parties and the kind of union they mean to enter into let's stay together until next tuesday doesn't count let's stay together forever to have kids that counts here's another scenario what if i say well let's stay together forever but let's uh let's never have children let's commit to never having children church says that's not what we mean by marriage now the state of alabama might call that marriage but the catholic church does not call that marriage doesn't matter whether you're baptized that's not a marriage here's another situation i'm an 18 year old brain's full of mush and i say i have met my disney princess true love and i am completely capable of signing my life away to this person who will make me happy forever this is the vast majority of invalid marriages right and uh and then the church looks at that and says you know what 18 year old philamash you weren't capable of making that level of commitment because you weren't psychologically competent to take on the commitments that you took on uh this is not actually a real marriage it has to be a genuine informed mature commitment to take on this full responsibility now in those other situations uh if somebody were to come to the church and say well what do you think is this relationship that i'm in is this a real marriage the church will issue a verdict will make a fine a fact finding right about whether it's meets the standards for a real marriage and if it finds that the relationship does not meet the standards then it will issue what's called a declaration of nullity or an annulment and all an annulment is an annulment is not a divorce an annulment is just a declaration that this other relationship was not actually a marriage now from what you've told me um las vegas is out that is out that'll be an easy one that's an easy one okay the calvinist i'd have to look into it i'm it's not my job to look into it somebody have to look into it um but uh but very often when people in ask the church to investigate a previous relationship the church will come back with a declaration of nullity because the odds that your unbaptized son-in-law married this calvinist woman intending what the church means by marriage the odds that that took place is very low all right so my suspicion is it would not be difficult to get the annulment now why do you need an annulment because you can't have two wives you can't you cannot practice bigamy the fact that they are civilly divorced has nothing to do with it you know if the court declares that i am an onion that does not make me an onion if the church if the court declares that i am not married that means nothing they have no jurisdiction here because my marriage is in the sight of god the catholic church can decide matters of fact about the validity of marriage all the state of alabama can do or on your case the state of north carolina can do is declare what the state of north carolina uh will recognize and what they will patronize and what they will tax right and what they will exempt but they cannot make a a ruling they refuse to make a ruling about the morality of the thing that's what falls to the church now it is the second pastor is correct if he is married and he wants to become a catholic uh we need to regularize his marriage to make sure that he's not you know potentially a bigamist now i think it's going to go his way i don't think you have to worry about the process that's the reason the first pastor simply did not do his due diligence okay appreciate your call there richard let's go to uh david now a first-time caller in north dakota and uh listening on youtube hey david what's on your mind today sir hello ed thank you for taking my call i really appreciate your guys's ministry thank you um had a question for you um many years ago i took a class in seminary it's a wesleyan armenian seminary in contemporary theology from schleiermacher until until the first world war and something the professor mentioned was that uh pretty much everyone we were going to be looking at was protestant there was no no catholic writers during the time and i was curious if that was true or not nope not true sorry um there uh there was a contemporary movement in catholicism that today is falls under the term catholic modernism that was addressing a lot of the same issues that were motivating protestant liberalism that but the critic but not but not exactly the same issues the issue's a little bit different right some overlap the main overlap had to do with the use of biblical criticism in biblical studies so uh higher criticism is really a german protestant invention and uh but catholic scholars were aware of it and up until the early 20th century well actually up into the 20th century the catholic uh church tended to take a kind of grim view of biblical criticism higher biblical criticism although some of the major original higher critics were in fact catholics richard simone in fact was a catholic priest who was very very influential in the origins of higher criticism in the 17th century but the church took a kind of defensive posture about that and um and actually ruled that it was not permissible for catholic scholars to make use of higher criticism um one of the uh most celebrated names in catholic modernism is um is alfred loisi right he's a a very important figure in catholic modernism now in the 20th century the magisterium backtracked on that opposition and and pope pius xii issued was it the 12th which bias was it issued um divino aflante spiritu an encyclical that permitted the use of higher criticism and biblical studies and today catholic biblical scholars to a man and a woman make use of those higher critical methods they're also very familiar with the work of protestant uh liberal tradition and uh and interact with it quite frequently and if you were to read say someone like pope benedict xvi um joseph ratzinger you would find here's a pope who is profoundly familiar deeply deeply conversant with the protestant liberal tradition sometimes criticizing it sometimes sympathetic to it um and so now you know there's a great cross-pollination between uh modern protestant and catholic theology they're very very much aware of one another david you also had a question about uh holy images in one's homes right yeah my wife and i were just having discussion about that and we're asking what exactly is the why do we have why why do our catholics friends have the images in their house what purpose does that serve sure so it makes me think about saints whose lives i'd like to imitate uh you know saint paul said follow me as i follow christ i keep an image on my phone of my father and uh i think he's a saint you don't have to you know but that's my idea and the reason i keep the image of my dad there is that i want to be like him in his virtues and he's very close to me i know him really well so that's it's an easier step for me to imitate my father in his virtues but i also like to have images of other saints saint augustine st thomas saint francis catherine of siena therese of lizio some of my favorites because they model for me what the life of christian virtue looks like and so reflecting on them is uh you know i i identify with christ as a christian i'm in christ through baptism and through faith but i don't relate to the life of a galilean peasant that that vocation is very very very remote from me and the son of god is my savior but the material circumstances of his life are quite remote for me but see augustine was a scholar and a teacher and so was saint thomas now that's something that's nearer and dearer to my heart because that corresponds more directly to my own personal vocation so it's helpful me for me to see how holiness can live in that kind of life david i could also add something from my own my own experience here working with ewtn the founders of this network the wonderful mother angelica used to refer to this as holy reminders bingo and so you know i've always admired saint thomas moore just a a wonderful saint um and if i wanted to i would i would have a picture of saint thomas more in my home and you know not that i'm going to uh worship that or anything like that but it'll it'll make me smile when i when i see that image um yep absolutely and you know if you wanted a good example of how to righteously have your head cut off thomas more is the man for you i i could make a really stupid joke which i will not do at this time david thank you so much for your call when the radio goes off that's right that's right tony in maryland couldn't get to you today maureen in colorado anthony in houston couldn't to get to any of you three folks if you'd please call us back tomorrow we'll put you at the head of the line dr david anders thank you sir thank you tom don't forget we do this program monday through friday at 2 p.m eastern live with an encore at 11 pm eastern on behalf of our fantastic team i'm tom price along with dr david anders thanks for joining us we'll see you tomorrow god willing right here on ewtn's call to communion god bless the most original and exclusive catholic content is on ewtn radio i'm continually

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: eO3i6j1KaXc

Length: 54min 5sec (3245 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022