Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - Feb 7, 2022

listeners our brothers and sisters in the lord who have questions about the catholic faith who want to know a little bit more about what the catholic church actually teaches not what somebody else said that it teaches but what does the church actually teach and if you've got a question here's our 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 205 205-271-2985 you can also text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply and of course you can always send us an email we'll get to one of those in a moment here ctc at ewtn.com ctc at ewtn.com all right charles berry is our producer matt gabinski our phone screener jeff burson normally handles social media for us but i believe that charles is going to be handling that for a little while so if you want to ask a question via youtube or facebook live we're streaming there right now just put your question in the comments box and then charles to get that to us here in the studio i'm tom price along with dr david anderson tom how are you today great how was that weekend of yours yeah i was very nice thank you how are you fantastic we took a little drive spent the weekend on dauphin island which is just off the coast of mobile just a beautiful time in a beautiful city well that's fantastic i i took my dog to go play with his dog cousins that sounds like fun as well my my brother's dogs very cool here's a couple of questions here from mc dr anders could you please explain mark 16 verses 17 and 18. i'm thinking it does not mean that all who believe and are baptized will be able to do these things listed but if so how can i explain that to others and also could you please instruct me on how to respond to someone who says god commands people to not kill and then yet himself kills thanks m.c okay thanks i appreciate the question so mark 16 verse 17 to 18 says and these signs shall follow them that believe in my name they will cast out devils and speak with new tongues take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them and they'll lay hands in the sick and they shall recover okay so that as you correctly point out the text itself does not indicate that each individual follower of christ will manifest all of those gifts but the church will yes and in the same way we have an elaboration of this teaching in first corinthians 14 when saint paul talks about spirit in 12 and 14 when he talks about spiritual gifts he says to one is given this gift to another is given that gift one person speaks in tongues one does miracles one has gifts of healing you know one has gifts of helping or administration or teaching everybody doesn't possess the same gifts but the church collectively possesses the gifts that it needs to fulfill its mission now um uh to the to the question are we are not permitted to commit murder and yet god can determine the the end of our days well who else would yeah right i mean everything falls within the scope of god's providence and uh you know i'm not i'm not going to die uh because probably probably because god has directly sent a lightning bolt into my heart to smite me but i'll probably die of you know one of the sort of classic western developed world diseases you know cancer heart disease uh you know diabetes whatever that kills most of the population um and and of course my life is does not end with physical death because the catholic position is that i have an immortal soul and my ultimate destiny is to live forever in god so that physical death is not necessarily a bad thing it's not a bad thing and i can't determine the course of another person's life i can't determine whether they should be born or should die that falls to god it's not evil if god does it i mean god's god allows us to live god gives us the gift of life because it's good ultimately ordered towards an eternity with him all right very good m.c thank you for both of your questions here's a quick one now from mark watching on youtube regarding the quote whatsoever you bind on earth is bound in heaven is the authority christ gave to the church sufficient to accept purgatory oh you mean can i believe purgatory on the on the authority of the churches teaching it is that the question yeah of course of course i can't of course i can uh just like i believe that the gospel of mark belongs in the new testament because the catholic church says so no other reason to believe that teaching i mean the gospel of mark doesn't say it belongs in the new testament i hold that doctrine from the authority of sacred tradition all right so yeah so it if i didn't have any scripture yes or if i were illiterate or that was prevented for some reason from reading it or maybe i didn't have the intellectual capacity to understand it it would be perfectly sufficient uh for a reasonable faith for me to trust the authority of the church concerning the content of the gospel okay very good and a quick one here from matthew in ireland uh dr anders would a calvinist argue that the example of judas and jesus's dialogue with him provides an example of double predestination and what is the catholic response yes thank you i appreciate the question uh no no calvinists don't generally reason from the history of judas's life to the doctrine of predestination or double predestination that's they usually start uh they they don't start with a particular instance like the life of judas they start from a metaphysical first principle like god's omnipotence and uh and then reason like from the top down not from the bottom up that's just not that's not the way they typically argue no okay sounds good and uh thank you so much for your question via youtube and matthew in ireland very glad that you're listening to us and by the way if you are listening to us in ireland or any other country outside of north america we have a phone number just for people like you and that number is first the u.s country code and then 205-271-2985 that'll come right to us 205-271-2985 we're going to get to some busy phones in just a moment here we have three lines full three lines available for you at 833 288 ewtn in just a moment here we're going to kick it off with uh franklin in steel's tavern virginia also we'll be talking with lloyd in brooklyn david in fort wayne and like i say three lines are open right now so if you call now we're probably going to get you in on today's program 833 288 ewtn is that number 833-288-3986 [Music] the monday edition of call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn do stay with us [Music] the most original catholic content is on ewtn radio hello journey home family next time we'll welcome father gorov shroff to the program father is a former hindu and will share what led him to the catholic faith share the journey next time on ewtn's the journey hall the journey home with marcus grodi tonight eight eastern on ewtn radio and television [Music] i'm doug keck and this is an ewtn bookmark brief speaking with deacon richard eason about his book spiritual excellence the path to happiness holiness and heaven proudly published by all of us here at ewtn publishing available through our ewtn religious catalog ewtnrc.com for all things catholic spiritual excellence tell us deacon what's this book about the whole idea is that many souls in our world today are struggling with all kinds of issues issues that are robbing them of their joy happiness and peace in life the whole idea of this book that ewtn is publishing is to focus on what's the remedy for that so this book takes all of these issues hit on and provides scripture passages the spiritual writings of the saints the encyclicals of the pope the catechism of the church and touches on each of these issues very good spiritual excellence the path to happiness holiness and heaven by deacon richard eason thank you so much thank you deacon and of course this has been an ewtn bookmark brief see you next time thanks for stopping [Music] thanks for joining us for the monday edition of call to communion with dr david andrews our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 hey you can stay informed and educated with the latest news and truth on abortion euthanasia assisted suicide and the culture of death on ewtn's wonderful program pro-life weekly with prudence robertson and by the way we can also send you ewtn's pro-life weekly directly to your email inbox each and every week all you do is go to ewtn.com and click on the word subscribe we will take it from there ewtn.com click on the word subscribe that is a wonderful program if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we begin today with franklin in steele's tavern virginia listening on ewtn television hey franklin what's on your mind today yes hello um i want to ask a question of dr anders because i respect his opinion very much but it's not a definitive dogmatic question that is to say that he would give a dogmatic answer but i want his his opinion so i let's say we take the parable of the prodigal son and we say the prodigal son leaves home under the same circumstances as the original parable but he returns not after having been defeated in life but a while away from home he returns victorious with all the emblems and signs of victory he is not returning remorsefully or contrite but with small gifts or maybe you know something like small gifts for the older brothers children and pleasantries for pop in other words [Music] you know with a certain measure of um an attitude you know of having uh done a good thing how does pop react to him my personal opinion personal opinion and as the father of five children three of whom are grown i would personally strive to be to commend such a son on his successes to rejoice with him and his victories um to receive him an attitude of openness and gratitude and i would definitely not want to do anything that would seem like i had sour grapes or that my religion somehow made it impossible for me to appreciate good things that he had done in life to make myself look curmudgeonly or small-minded because i think that's the opposite of a catholic attitude you know jesus himself seems to me to have been remarkably unconcerned about whether other people thought he was correct or whether they thought his position was correct uh he went in search of the lost um and uh but when people didn't want to follow him he was unperturbed by that and and you know he would say off you go off you go you don't want to do it that's fine off you go have a nice day and i i think that's i think that we are much better influence on people by exemplifying the virtues that we wish they had rather than besmirching them or criticizing them for failing to have those virtues i think we jesus told us to be lights not sledgehammers yeah makes sense to my view franklin thanks so much for your call that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn looks like one line available right now 833-288-3986 call to communion in progress here on this monday afternoon here on ewtn radio going now to lloyd in brooklyn also watching on ewtn television hey lloyd what's on your mind today sir oh fine thank you how can we help you yes i'm concerned about the catholic assumption that when we partake of the body and blood of jesus the the eucharist we actually take it partake in of the body itself from the blood of jesus does this make us cannibals are they and if not if we aren't why not okay thanks i really appreciate it quite i really appreciate the question and no we're not cannibals this is what a cannibal does um a cannibal first of all identifies a victim kills the victim cooks the victim usually dismembers the victim masticates the victim chews swallows digests and metabolizes the victim we do none of those things so with respect to the eucharist we are not we are not uh predators who are seeking out some hapless victim that we can kill we kill no one jesus is not killed by us in the mass we do not dismember christ we don't break him apart we're certainly not cooking him and the eating that we perform of the blessed sacrament does not include the normal process of digestion that pertains to human food so the the crushing of my teeth does not crush the the body of christ such that it dissolves the body of christ itself the the species dissolves but the body and blood of christ are intact and undamaged by me secondly when i swallow the sacred host i do not metabolize the son of god you know the various protein molecules of his flesh into my body in this in the way that i would say a hamburger right because the catholic teaching on the real presence is that as soon as the appearance of bread and wine is gone so is the real presence the mode of christ's presence in the eucharist is mysterious and unique there is no other substantial presence in the universe like the substantial presence of christ in the universe in the in the in the sacred host so it is a let's talk about the nature of christ's presence in the eucharist we teach in the catholic faith that he is substantially present body blood soul and divinity but none of the properties of christ's body none of the accidents of christ's body are present what are some of the accidents of a body well uh extension in space so for example i'm if you extend me put me on the rack you know i'm about 5 10. used to be 5 11 and a half i've shrunk over the course of my lifetime um extension weight i weigh more than 100 pounds in less than 200. i'll take it out okay um you know these are uh divisibility is a property of my body you could separate my arm from my body for example none of those things pertain to the body of christ it has no extension so we don't have like you know i don't know if jesus was five eight i'm guessing just picking a number the eucharistic species is not 5 8 and it's not 5 8 5 8 feet 8 inches of the body of christ it's without extension there's not more of jesus you know when the priest holds up the large host that he's consecrated and they have a little bitty host they pass out to the there's not more of jesus in the big house than there is in the little there's not more of him in one host if he breaks the host in half you don't get half of jesus in one you know the upper torso and one side the lower torso and another extension in space divisibility weight you know there aren't 160 pounds of jesus in the host all of those things would be necessary for me to actually approach the body and blood of christ as a cannibal to ritually consume his body so that it could be incorporated uh you know uh nutritionally um uh uh into my own i don't do any of those things okay appreciate your call lloyd it is called to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn radio our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn here now david in fort wayne listening on the great redeemer radio hello david what's on your mind today hey good afternoon how are you great great what's going on well i i don't know i've been listening to the radio for a while this station for a little bit um i told the guy answering the phone it's like the past 10 12 years i've been on a path a journey i'm trying to get closer to god and trying to find what he wants me to do and that's led me from various home groups to um even what i guess the catholics would consider heretical maybe i'm just in various groups and um i've taken my wife and my children to these groups and and they're they're kind of at the point where it's like dad stop you're you know not another you know and i'm almost feeling this way myself like am i just doing this again you know everything seems right it sounds right it feels right i you know i've been developing a pretty intense what i think is an intense prayer routine in the morning from the some of the catholic books of hours and such how do i how do i combat that in my own mind and then how do i take this to my family okay yeah thanks i appreciate the question so the catholic church is compared in sacred scripture to a spouse it's the bride of christ and so i'm going to borrow that metaphor for a moment to talk about the nature of the act of faith in in divine revelation in the catholic church um when i asked my wife to marry me when you asked your mind where are you it's not like i had access to every potential woman or every woman alive on planet earth and i had algorithmically evaluated all of them and determined that jill was you know mathematically the perfect person for me and there was no one that could possibly be better that's not how love emerges rather i spent time with her intimate time where we mutually revealed ourselves to one another in this accelerating disclosure and we grew closer and closer and we're open to the possibility of a union and so such a union emerged and part of what has kept us together for these 30 years is that we share this tremendous story that we've built together is it theoretically possible i could have built a story like that with some other woman of course it is but in god's providence it was with jill and so she is uniquely the person for me because she's the one that i s to whom i said i do and i'm the one to whom she said i do and for 30 years we've been building upon that story and deepening it and enriching it with with bonds of of value and love now when i come to the catholic faith the church teaches that the evidences for the truth of the catholic faith are real uh their motives of credibility the reasons to believe the church is teaching but they don't compel the intellect like the intellect doesn't come to the judgment this there's no way this this has to be true nothing else could possibly be true because uh it doesn't work that way i mean i wasn't present at the resurrection if i had been if i'd been like thomas and put my hands in jesus's side and into palms thomas didn't have a choice but to believe yeah i do have a choice but to believe and like a beautiful woman who becomes my wife i see the catholic church and i see its positive influence in society i see the good that it does i see the saints that emerge from it i see the credibility of its claims the beauty of its claims uh the efficacy of its claims and then and then grace moves me to make an act of faith that actually transcends what the intellect is commanded by reason to do right and then entering into that life of commitment with the catholic faith is something like entering into a marriage having said i do i went forward at confirmations and said i believe everything the catholic church declares to be revealed by god i entrust myself to the church i build a relationship with the church over decades and and through this mutual self-disclosure the church disclosing itself to me i disclosing myself to the church not least in the sacrament of confession as well as i'm in the company of the faithful and among my catholic friends those bonds of love and commitment and value grow deeper and deeper in the catholic life that's the way it works um so i think that if you have a sufficient sense in the truth goodness and beauty of the catholic faith a motive for credibility and a desire to finally say i do to your catholic faith because you want to grow in relationship with god in the life of wisdom and virtue then do so but don't feel like you can compel your family to join you no one compels you you choose freely to become a catholic you're gonna say i do at the altar with the catholic church no one compels you to do this this is your own your own self offering to god through the catholic way you can't compel your family to be catholic with you and i think nothing will witness to them the beauty and truth of the faith more then you're finally resting in catholicism giving up the frenetic search from one group to another year after year and simply resting in the catholic faith for year after year after year instability now exemplifying rather than demanding the virtues that catholicism promises to transmit to you why don't we talk about that for just a moment since we have just a few minutes here you know i often say on this program the catholic the catholic life is a better life because i i really believe that uh well of course it is absolutely and you know i like to think about the example of christ when i when i say to people let's let's let's think about exemplifying rather than demanding these virtues jesus his own method of teaching was very paradoxical um you know he didn't go around telling people you know you've got to come follow me and do what i say um in fact he wouldn't even teach openly matthew chapter 13 verse 1 the disciples say why are you teaching the people in parables and he says because i don't really want him to understand i'm teaching you guys the secrets of the kingdom of heaven but to them i teach in parables now you know i struggle for a long time to make sense of that but i think i've got a handle on it now if you look at the content of the parables the parables don't convey dogmatic information what they do is they attempt to change your sensibility they're an attempt to get you to think about reality from a new perspective so classically jesus will take some character who is thought of by the populace as being unclean or unholy and jesus will tell a story about them to make you realize that oh in fact that's the holy person and i who thought i was holy i'm not that holy mm-hmm there the parables are attempting to shift aspect on you because if jesus just came out and said directly what he was thinking people who are so locked in their habitual modes about clean and unclean right and wrong who's the good guys who the bad guys are not going to receive the teaching so first he lays the groundwork by trying to shift their sensibility he does the same thing with the rich young ruler who comes to and says tell me the way to be saved he wants a formula yeah good teacher tell me the way to be saved and christ says um he doesn't accept that he goes why are you calling me good you know what to do keep the commandments he throws the thing back in the guy's face and then the fellow says oh but i need something else and jesus says aha now i have him where i want him yeah wow what a great question david uh we invite you to continue to listen to ewtn especially this program called communion we will be praying for you on your journey in a moment we'll be talking with nancy in washington matt in west virginia gladys in ohio we're also going to find out who hans kung was it's all coming up next here on ewtn's call to communion ewtn live truth live catholic pursue what matters most in 2022 life liberty truth from the capital to the classroom from the pulpit to the pew ewtn's national catholic register delivers in-depth news analysis and commentary through the lens of the 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ewtn publishing ewtn is the global catholic network for more about ewtn visit ewtn.com hi this is sci kellett host of catholic answers live later today christine flynn on the idea of living your best life catholic answers live 6 p.m eastern on ewtn radio now back to call to communion with dr david anderson [Music] what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here on ewtn's call to communion so glad that you joined us today we're going to get back to these very busy phone lines in just a moment here but first i was talking about hans kung because bradley is watching us today on facebook and bradley says why was hans kung censured by the holy see and i guess we've got to first ask the question who was hans kung yes kuhn was a german theologian who came to prominence uh around and after the second vatican council okay and uh he was censured by the holy see because he held positions that the that were not catholic in particular he was a an opponent of the doctrine of papal infallibility among other things but uh you know there's usually kind of a sort of a catalog of sort of popular theological issues that uh from generation to generation that people like to dissent from the from the dogmatic position in the catholic church he ended up sort of aligning himself with that way of thinking just kind of calling into question and doubting and but worse obstinately denying some cardinal doctrines of the catholic faith i see okay and bradley thanks for your question via facebook call to communion here on ewtn back to the phones now for nancy in edmonds washington listening today on youtube hey nancy what's on your mind today oh hi hi dr anders and tom price i listen to the show practically every day and i just love it thank you so much thank you uh yes and my sister-in-law uh for christmas gave me this the chosen um it's a dvd and telling you know greatest story ever told and it's kind of in these multi it's a multi-season presentation supposed to be a big hit so i just simply uh plugged it in to see what was going on and the first chapter of it was i have called you by name and so i just have a question um in the end of it they were showing um you know they they well okay in the middle of it they showed lilith and the jewish uh the you know the um rabbi came to cast out her demon and couldn't do it and when jesus appeared to her he did cast out the demon but he called her then mary um and so the thing is that i don't understand about this is i didn't know that lilith was at one i mean that mary magdalene was lilith and i don't know who lilith really is and i don't know um why she's not in so many bibles and i looked at just to kind of look around not in the king james not in the oxford bible and i just found it kind of mysterious and then i just got some other information that just didn't make sense so i came right to you guys and i just wondered if you could help me out to understand yeah sure thanks appreciate the question so i i probably upset a lot of people when i say this but i am not a real big fan of sort of uh you know creative narrative retellings of the life of jesus and i understand a lot of people like this series and i i'm not saying you shouldn't watch it go watch if you want to watch it i'm not going to tell you what to watch but a lot of people enjoy this kind of stuff because they say well you know it sort of fleshes out the personality of jesus and the apostles and puts them in context makes them human and relatable that's what they like about them that's precisely what i don't like about them because it's conspicuous to me that the gospels present jesus with no determinate personality i can't tell from the text of the gospels was jesus like did he line his shoes up in the closet really neatly like a conscientious person i don't know i don't know if he had that personality trait you know was was jesus somebody everybody falls on the scale someplace in the neuroticism they're either like you know completely neurotic and really emotionally messed up or they're absolutely like emotionless and stable like mr spock or my father um and uh and we're all like this it's not bad to have like high strong emotions and it's not necessarily good to be devoid of them i mean used to frustrate my mother to death she couldn't get a rise out of my dad for anything right it's just a personality trait i don't know where jesus fell in that continuum would he fall more on the neurotic side or more on the lesson erotic side no idea he wept i don't know we all weep i just don't know kind of go through all the major personality factors it's hard for me to get a composite picture of jesus as an historical person from the gospels because that's not what they're for yeah christ appears in the gospels as the bearer of an office and that is the messiah the prophet and the son of god who is conveying a message and he's exemplifying it by his actions namely total commitment to god to the point of death and love of one's neighbor and that's what i'm supposed to derive from it that divine personality right which is devoid in a sense of those human particularities is what's most manifest in the person of jesus it's why in the east the the tradition of sacred icons uh icons are not meant to represent reality they're meant to evoke the transcendent that's visible behind reality and the gospels are painted like icons on papyrus and so i take very seriously the gospel depictions of jesus and this the stylistic depiction of jesus in the gospels it's one of the reasons why i personally tend to shy away from watching these kinds of dramatic reenactments i'm not saying other people shouldn't that's my own spirituality that's my own choice for myself but another reason is that invariably the directors uh they add these inventions they make these historical judgments and they put them in the text and they put them in the film and then people watching them don't know was this representation scriptural is this canonical and it just kind of raises all kinds of confusions and so this lilith business is one of those now um the name lilith comes to us from jewish tradition and there is a jewish legend that adam had a wife before eve now this is not canonical scripture there's no part of the christian bible and no part of christian faith was part part of jewish legend that there was a character named lilith now it's interesting to me that the director of the film i didn't know this i haven't watched it uh would would identify a character from jewish legend as a demon and i wonder what that tells me about the director i don't know i just raised that question in my mind but this is clearly no part of the gospel narrative okay well there you go nancy thank you so much for your call today it's called communion here on ewtn radio let's go to matt now matt is in morgantown west virginia listening on light of life radio one of our great partners there hey matt what's on your mind today sir hi thank you uh dr anders i have a question about not what's keeping me from becoming catholic because i've already become catholic but why a convert to join the church due to the authority of its magisterium should remain catholic i was received in the church in 2007 from the episcopal church where as you know for several decades leading figures in the church took up positions contrary to scripture and tradition but were never corrected by any kind of central authority and this eventually this heterodoxy visually affected the whole church so the magisterium of the catholic church attracted converts like me because it seemed like there was a mechanism for holding leaders accountable but now it seems more frequent that leaders in the catholic church are rejecting church teaching without being held accountable but i'm thinking most recently of the cardinal archbishop of luxembourg yeah yeah sure sure i understand the question i totally do so uh it's the best of my knowledge the catechism still stands as the authoritative norm for catholic teaching the various councils not just those councils that the anglican church accepts but the council's up to including the second vatican council are still both extraordinary and ordinary magisterial teaching um the patrimony of papal theology especially since leo the 13th when this this genre of writing became so ample and catholic life uh remains uh in print online available and authoritative to inform catholic life um you know catholic teaching on marriage and human sexuality from pius 11th cassidy kenubi vatican twos gaudium at spes john paul ii theology of the body remains and will forever perennially remain part of the patrimony of catholic tradition the wellspring of catholic wisdom remains and is not going away for me to nourish myself upon now um and i know it that it's authoritative because it's been pronounced as such by the church now in any particular generation this or that catholic prelate this or that catholic prophet may or may not fulfill his job description and that's true of popes as well sure we had 200 years in the catholic faith with popes asleep at the switch between the 14th and 15th century i don't think there was a single canonized pope there were some good card players among them right but not any can not any canonized saints although john the uh uh john the 22nd who was a real you know what uh did give us the canonization of thomas aquinas which i think was one of his singular moments right even though he did a lot of other things that were not so high um he didn't get on his thomas aquinas um and we got thomas don't forget about him we got the doctors of the church now you may be confusing the magisterium of the church in in its its teaching office with the juridical power of the church and so you know the work of correcting and rebuking and disciplining falls while was also within the power of the keys but it is essentially a disciplinary function calling people to account holding them responsible for their actions now that that falls within the the personal virtue charism and prudence of of an office holder in the catholic church so if i'm i'm a priest i'm a bishop i'm a pope uh am i am i good at my job basically well that's not the sort of thing that's protected by the charism of infallibility that has a lot more to do with my own personal gifts and virtues and grace and a catholic bishop or a priest or a monk or whoever can fail miserably at his job description out of sin or incompetence but that doesn't threaten the integrity of the teaching of the catholic church and the teaching is the particular object of the magisteria magisterium means teacher the church has taught authoritatively and does teach authoritatively now uh and that's that's patent open and available to me it's not any less nourishing to my soul today than it was 500 years ago or 50 years ago all right matt thanks so much for your call called communion with dr david andrews here on ewtn tom price here reminding you to join us for more to life with dr greg and lisa popchak tomorrow morning at 10 a.m eastern on tomorrow's program are you experiencing disrespect or perhaps even outright verbal criticism of your faith dr greg and lisa help you get the healing and respect that you deserve check it out tomorrow morning uh 10 a.m eastern right here on ewtn radio more to life with dr greg and lisa popchak great great great program all right let's go back to the phones now and talk with gladys in dayton listening on siriusxm channel 130. hey gladys what's on your mind today hi thank you so much for taking my call and may god bless you thank you yeah i've got a question i've asked other catholics this question and i was getting two different answers so i'd like to know the correct answer i'd like to know if a non-christian or i'm sorry a christian who's a non-catholic if they're able to receive the last rights and anointing of the sick um and could they also get a funeral mass and then my next question to these questions is would it make a difference if that christian who's a non-catholic is married to a catholic okay thanks i appreciate the question so under a few circumstances a non-catholic person can receive last rites in the catholic church first condition is that this person needs to be in danger of death if they're not in danger of death they can't receive uh confession or or holy anointing or the apostolic pardon okay they're not in danger death they can't receive that but if they're in danger of death that's one condition secondly they have to have catholic faith in the sacraments meaning they have to believe that the church has the power to absolve sins they have to believe that this is truly christ's body and blood and the blessed sacrament they have to believe that the church has the power to grant the indulgence known as the apostolic pardon if they have well actually i'm not sure about i have to go back and check on that last one but they definitely have to because absolute partner is not a sacrament but they definitely have to have catholic faith in the sacraments in order to receive them illicitly and then finally they have to be properly disposed so if they have those three conditions that a non-catholic person can receive last rites in the catholic church um even though that person intends to stay non-catholic uh so i i look i'm not canonist yeah the son of one my understanding is the church spells out very specific conditions under which a catholic can't a non-catholic can receive last rites over sacraments namely they have catholic faith in the sacraments they're properly disposed and they uh and they're in danger of death and i don't think that the church specifies as a criteria that the priests investigate the individual about their intent in the future to become or not become catholic i don't think that's been articulated as a criteria now you could extrapolate and say well if you have no intention of becoming catholic do you really have catholic faith in the sacraments maybe so maybe what's keeping them out of the catholic church is fear rather than conviction right so i mean i also don't think the church has specified that as a criteria um could they have a mass said for their pose of their soul yes you have a mask said for just about any intention you want you can so if you have a mask set for the repose of someone's soul yes okay appreciate your call gladys hope that's helpful for you call to communion here on ewtn radio we will try to get to as many calls as we possibly can i got about about 12 minutes left in the show here now steve in gettysburg pennsylvania listening on his alexa device hello steve what's on your mind today sir hey hello good afternoon hey thanks for taking my talk paul um yeah so i have a devotion to thank james the greater um he's one of my patron saints and i know there's not a written about not a lot written about him except within the gospels but i was kind of curious to get dr andrew's thoughts on their traditions about st james and i know they were developed hundreds of years after he died but specifically you know what are his thoughts about saint james actually going to spain and galatia and um you know even even the apparition of our lady of the pillar and things like that i'd just like to get his thoughts about about those about the traditions yeah sure well as you correctly noted that most what we know about james comes from the gospels he was the son of zebedee the brother of john and apparently he was a bit of a hothead all right that's that's about what we know about him from the gospels there are about someplace between five and seven different individuals in the new testament named james it's a bit like mary it gets quite confusing after a while uh and so there is some dispute over which which uh uh descriptions apply to which james um when it comes to ancient church traditions about the uh the course of their lives after the ascension you know i these these sorts of these are small tea traditions which are the basis for a lot of pious practices and a lot of popular piety and i i think that they're usually edifying and permittable permissible and i would encourage them i would uh i would exercise a great deal more skepticism about their reliability than i would about the text of the gospels themselves and particularly when it pertains to questions of their relics um you know i mean uh critics and and uh and reformers catholic and non-catholic alive have endlessly parodied the legends about the relics of the saints and their multiplication in the high middle ages i heard a joke one time about a relic salesman that showed up in a town in england and was peddling the head of john the baptist and the townsfolk said you've you've well you we've got your number man we know you're fooling us we've already got the head of john the baptist to which he responded no no i've got the head of john the baptist as a child [Laughter] wow you know so i get i i personally am i'm a bit skeptical people tell me they've got a relic of a first class relic of an apostle i'm like yeah right um okay not for sure steve thanks so much for your call you know who i've always felt badly for saint james the lesser you know you kind of have an inferiority complex walking in the door well according to jesus he's be he's probably at the head of the table now right ah like the way you think back to the phones right now here is michaela in sioux city iowa listening to us on siouxland catholic radio hey mikayla what's on your mind today yeah i'm i grew up uh around a lot of catholics and stuff and um from my understanding my question is so from what i understand mary and the priest they have to intercede for us and i was reading through hebrews the other day and from what hebrews says it says that jesus is our high priest forever in the order of melchizedek and also paul in romans teaches that jesus intercedes for the saints so my question really is kind of this is why do we need mary and the priest to intercede for us i don't i guess i don't see where the bible says that okay thanks so let's be real clear when we say need okay um you know i don't need my buddy tom price here to pray for me i mean i'd like him to and it'd probably be beneficial to me if tom prayed for me and he does and i know he does right and i value his prayers and that's that's a token of our friendship that we can pray for one another but you know one of these days tom's got a few years on me you know he might he might make it to the heavenly gates before i get there and and uh i don't know maybe he'll be so busy up there he'll be brand for other things you know i don't know so maybe i'll be deprived of tom price's intercession one day hope not but maybe i will be can jesus get me to heaven without tom price's intercession of course of course he can uh but it's good that jesus make use of tom price's intercession for me because he's a friend and jesus wants the body of christ to be united in bonds of charity and this is how we are charitable one another we pray for one another moreover jesus commands us to pray for each other and from the old testament to the new this idea that the more righteous can pray for the less righteous is consistently taught beginning in i think genesis 18 when god says he's going to wipe out sodom and gomorrah and abraham pleads with the cities and says well would you spare everybody for the sake of ten righteous people god says well sure if you can find me ten righteous people i'll spare everybody else well abraham couldn't come up with ten so god wiped them out but the principle was there that abraham could plead he could intercede with god on behalf of the wicked and plead the ten righteous and god would spare the wicked on behalf of the the righteousness of the few moses book of exodus after the affair of the golden calf god says out of my way of moses i'm wiping them out and moses says well god please don't do that because then the egyptians will think that you can't deliver your people and remember your promise to abraham isaac and jacob god says okay okay okay okay because you asked moses you interceded and for the sake of my promise to abraham and the patriarchs i'll spare these wicked people who rebelled against me same idea book of job um the job chapter 42 job's companions have really angered god and god says i'm angry at you guys i'm not listening to you but you ask my servant job to pray for you and i'll listen to him i'll listen to him go to the new testament saint james chapter 5 says pray for one another pray for one another saint paul says of himself i fill up in my own flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of christ for the sake of his body the church he says in second corinthians chapter five that we have become christ's co-laborers as if god were making his appeal through us so the grace of christ which is the the ultimate and sole source of our salvation is communicated to us is shared with us through the intercession of the church not as some sort of restriction on our free agency or on god's but as a manifestation of god's goodness as he wishes to draw as many people possible into the work of redemption as he can god god doesn't need any of us it's like a father who goes outside to work in the garden and his five-year-old kid comes out and says can i help and the dad's like you really want to help go back in and watch cartoons you just got to get under my feet you know it doesn't need the help of the five-year-old because he loves the child and wishes to incorporate him incorporate him in a in a work of something noble and beautiful he says yeah come alongside let's do this together i'll show you a thing or two there you go right that's what god does with the saints all right and micaiah thank you so much for your call glad that you're checking in from sioux city iowa here now is uh paula in washington d.c listening on youtube this afternoon paula what's on your mind today hi doctor thanks for having me on the show i have a friend in my college that invited me to a center of opus dei um i had no idea what that was or meant and i went and uh it really was impacting for me hello we lost the call but uh on the screener notes it said uh why is there some controversy about opus dei yeah so opus dei is a technical term is a personal prelature it's an organization of catholics that organize themselves around certain principles according to the teaching of saint um jose escriva for for the purpose of sanctifying their life in the world and achieving personal piety right so it has a noble goal noble purpose um like any organization it consists of people and one that's uh sort of intensely focused on the development of one's ethics and morals in the interior life and there's a good deal of uh there's an authority structure and and people who uh sort of surrender themselves to the authority of the of the leadership anytime you have structured leadership like that especially in the spiritual realm there are opportunities for exploitation and abuse just like you would find in a school or or at the church at large or in government at large or whatever and so there have been people in these and other catholic agencies and organizations that have had bad experiences some of them quite horrific um but this is an allowable organization in the catholic church and i mean i know people who have been in and out of this organization with experiences both good and bad which is kind of the par for the course for human life very good appreciate your call quick question question here today from kayla dr anders can you please explain the debate between the septuagint and hebrew canons of the old testament is there a way to explain why catholics find the septuagint canonical to a protestant friend and prove its legitimacy yeah i don't think there's a debate i don't think it's a debate so the septuagint is a greek translation of the old testament and because it's in greek it tends at times to hellenize a little bit the teaching of the scriptures and move them in a direction more amenable to a greek philosophical temperament and that influences the way the new testament reads the old about 90 of the new testament citations of the old testament are from the septuagint the church fathers are reading the septuagint and it the the idea that the hebrew canon itself represents some sort of absolute frozen in time moment of canonical perfection doesn't actually capture the textual history of the book the hebrew canon was in flux and fluid we find different inundations and versions throughout ancient textual history it's not until the middle ages long after the christian era that the maseratis settled on one final textual form the septuagints actually earlier than the masery texts of the of the old testament in hebrew and so when saint augustine addresses this question which do we use he says you should default to the greek because it's the ecclesiastical translations one the apostles uses the one the new testament used fascinating appreciate that and kayla thanks so much for your question a fast-moving show today man the phones were just on fire plus we were able to get in a couple of facebook and youtube questions and a couple of emails too that makes it a well-rounded show dr david andrews thank you tom don't forget we do this program monday through friday 2 p.m eastern here on ewtn radio with an encore at 11 pm eastern you can also check out the best of call to communion don't forget about that saturday afternoons at 2 pm eastern as well and the podcast always available for you at ewtnradio.net i'm tom price along with dr david anders we will see you tomorrow have a wonderful afternoon and god bless wherever you are in the world you can access the

Channel: EWTN

Views: 2,647

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: DupesDvSx9o

Length: 53min 19sec (3199 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022