Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - January 14 2022

hurts now what's stopping you from becoming a catholic why can't women become priests 1-833-288 ewtn i don't understand why i have to earn salvation 1-833-288-3986 [Music] global catholic radio network hey hey we made it to friday how about that welcome again to call to communion here on ewtn radio this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters if you've got a question about the catholic faith please consider us as a resource to get that question of yours answered now we also have a question for you especially you non-catholics and that is what is stopping you from becoming a catholic or in some cases returning to the catholic faith of years back here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 i do recommend that you call early since it is a friday uh phones tend to bunch up a little bit on friday afternoons and then um you know if you can't get in then we can't answer your question until next week so again 833 288 3986 if you're listening outside of north america please dial the us country code and then 205 271 2985 you can also text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply at least for some folks also if you wish you can send us an email the address ctc ewtn.com ctc at ewtn.com charles berry is our producer matt gabinski our phone screener jeff burson handles social media if you want to ask a question via youtube or facebook live we're streaming there right now i can attest to that and if you send us your question uh just put it there in the comments box jeff will send that to us here in studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anderson tom how are you today doing very well how are you my friend well you know i'm doing all right right before we came on the air you and i were talking about the death of a dear friend of the network von hildebrand yes the widow of the great philosopher dietrich von hildebrand and i was thinking a few years ago she published a book called the memoirs of a happy failure which was the story of her life and it seems appropriate to recall that book today and if anybody doesn't know the life of alice von hildebrand go out and get a copy of the memoirs of a happy failure and i loved it and i corresponded a little bit with her did you yes i wrote her and she wrote me back and uh she was friends with my dear friend and mentor father lambert greenen and he used to love to tell me how they would sit and fight about whether plato or aristotle was the greatest philosopher love that yeah a great friend of the network she did a number of uh series for uh for the tv side of ewtn uh certainly a big supporter of all that we do and uh so we uh pray for the repository absolutely 98 that is a long long life all right let's get to an email here this is from an anonymous listener my wife says that there is no need for her to go to church she can have time on her own to pray to god she reads the bible constantly but now thinks the church is not right i myself love the catholic faith this has actually caused me to search more about what the church teaches so what can i do if anything to persuade persuade my wife thanks anonymous yeah thanks i appreciate the question um so your wife's contention that she can pray and read scripture on her own and therefore she doesn't need the church radically misstates the value of the church in our life so saint augustine once said that the reason god gave us the church was so that we would have people to be good to and it is precisely in its corporate nature that the church exists and has its essential value and it's uh so it ca segmented council said the church is sort of in the nature of a sacrament a sign and an instrument uh of god's grace in the world and what it affects is the union of all these disparate people that you would never rub shoulders with otherwise yeah you know you come to mass and and like it's it somebody said here comes everybody you know and and so you find yourself thrown into you know this massive humanity and what you're united in your faith in christ and the sacraments and so your commitment to that as an institution as something that calls you out of yourself and your own private devotions in your own private uh prayer life to engage in the corporate expression of the christian faith is something that you can by definition not do alone and the spirituality is not a a an utterly privatized and individual thing if it is you're living a deformed spiritual life our spirituality is meant to draw us out of ourselves and into communion with other people right and not just those with whom we have some natural affinity like our families but with other strangers with people who you know use the wrong kind of forks and wear funny boots smell strange eat weird foods right that those are the people we're supposed to be engaged with loving and caring for i also often think about you know those who have gone before us and in many ways we are standing on the shoulders of giants absolutely i mean the church includes everybody who has died in christ as well as those that are still alive yeah so in the book of hebrews chapter 10 verse 25 says that we're not to neglect uh meeting together as uh as some are accustomed to right we're supposed to actually part of our christian faith is that we're called to celebrate together now uh with what draws us together as a community is not simply our faith in christ but our but our common participation in the sacraments of the church and these of course were instituted by christ and he gave us the command do this in memory of me so we really can't neglect the public celebration of the liturgy given to us by christ without without disobeying the word of our lord yes indeed well you know what we've got a great hour straight ahead and we've got some open phone lines here is the number 833 288 ewtn if you have a question for dr david anders 833 again i'll give you that texting advice here's what you do you just text the letters ewtn to 5500 and then we will take it from there we're also going to get to a few more emails a very provocative email that we can tackle uh after the break david i i think you'll get a kick out of it uh one from kim and we'll we'll restate that uh after the break but she bakin says i love your show is protestantism considered heresy in the eyes of the catholic church so you can be thinking about that well i know how i'm gonna answer it but i'll hold off until we get there okay sounds like a plan again here's our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six call early because phones do tend to clog up on friday afternoons so we can get your question on the air and answer to your satisfaction hopefully it's called a communion with dr david anders here on this friday afternoon on ewtn stay with us [Music] have you ever heard someone say all religions are basically the same thing they only differ in their external forms in the way they express it gk chesterton says the truth is precisely the other way around the religions of the world do not greatly differ in rights and forms they do differ greatly in what they teach there's only one religion that believes that jesus christ is the son of god that he suffered and died for our sins that he rose from the dead only one religion that believes in one holy catholic and apostolic church the communion of saints the resurrection of the body and life everlasting spend more time with the apostle of common sense visit chesterton.org for more information and go to ewtn to discover more books and programs written and inspired by gk chesterton each week on the world over raymond arroyo challenges listeners and viewers with important political and cultural reporting and analysis of a wide variety of topics of interest to catholics and people of faith and you can get news from the world over in your inbox every week it's easy visit ewtn.com and click subscribe ewtn the global catholic network [Music] it's called communion with dr david anders here on this friday afternoon here on ewtn radio our phone number 833-288-3986 that's 833 288 ewtn we do have lines that are uh getting screened right now by our ace screener matt kabinsky he's taking care of that but we do have an availability right now at eight three three 288 ewtn if you enjoy something that we air here on the radio ewtn's bookmark brief with doug keck where he talks with various authors about their works well you can now receive weekly emails from us including a short video blog featuring the author giving a short synopsis of their work in his or her own words if you love these and i know that i do and my wife does visit ewtn.com click on subscribe and then you'll get ewtn bookmark briefs delivered right there to your inbox ewtn.com and then click on subscribe all right if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we begin with robert in cincinnati listening on the great sacred heart radio hey robert happy friday to you what's on your mind today i'm calling about something i've had an impression of from catholic radio uh it's that the mortal sins keep a person from going to heaven and in the bible where jesus talks about separating the sheep from the goats is the lack of doing positive things that keep someone from going to heaven so i'm wondering about that yeah thanks i appreciate the question so the catholic position is that what unites us to god is charity and charity is a supernatural virtue meaning that it is infused into us by god himself through the holy spirit and so it is possible for a person to have infused charity and to be physically passive and still go to heaven and i think probably the preeminent example of this would be saint dismiss the thief on the cross next to jesus uh you know he's he's literally nailed to a cross he's not he's not handing out food at a soup kitchen right so he's not doing those kinds of good works now i do think he had some good works about him he admonished the center he he bore testimony to christ he honored jesus he made acts of humility and penance and so forth but nevertheless i think the illustration is still ab to still apropos uh ultimately he was safe because christ forgave his sins and he had that infused charity in his heart similarly say a baby who leaves the baptismal font a baby is not out teaching sunday school or you know handing out food or clothing the homeless or something he's he's just a baby if that child were to die he'd die with sanctifying grace and his soul he'd still be saved um and uh and so your your question about mortal sin versus versus forming good deeds also remember that that you can commit a mortal sin by omission you can commit a mortal sin by omission and so failure to uh uh you know to do certain good deeds that you have opportunity to do that are presented to you according to your state in life and then turning away in hardness of heart well that could be mortally sinful in your case so the kind of lists that we have in matthew 25 i i think are illustrative they're not necessarily comprehensive and uh and clearly we have to be about the corporal and spiritual works of mercy in our lives as catholics but not in the sense that you know god is the great celestial accountant uh you know with his ledger and he's sitting there marking off okay well andrews was supposed to do 376 acts of charity and he only did 374 so too bad for him it doesn't work quite that way that's good news robert thanks so much for your call that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288-3986 we have two lines open three lines open right now so do give us a call if you've got that question for dr david anders eight three three two eight eight ewtn let's go now to uh stephen in nepal california listening on youtube hello stephen what's on your mind today dr david and guys please help me with my disbelief i've been stu i've been watching wtn for a long time it's my first time calling but i have a difficult time with the pope i love everything the church teaches but i'm having a tough time dealing with the pope and the splits in the church can you give me any ideas yeah absolutely i think i can certainly help you so how should we understand the unity of the church how should we understand the unity of the church there's several dimensions to this first of all of course we are united with all of those who are baptized in christ and who participate in the sacramental life of the church that that that's a form of unity that is not threatened in any shape form or fashion by say political wrangling or factions or party spirit or incompetence by you know a priest or a bishop or anything like that it's just you know i mean if you have a catholic friend and you're conscious of your shared baptism those kinds of things just go out the window i mean i i i'm not going to get into my political or theological hobby horses on the show but let's just say i have mine you know i have my political opinions i have my theological opinions i have catholic friends that have very divergent views on those same issues and yet that doesn't wound at all all in the slightest our charity for one and our love for one another and our shared commitment to our catholic faith which constitutes our bond of unity and so at some particular point in time you know one of us or the other might say well i like this thing that the pope or the bishop did or i don't like this thing that the pope or the bishop did and yet those kinds of opinions on policy they don't wound our unity and our charity for one another as catholics okay um now we're also united as catholics in our in our adherence to the dogmas of the faith so take me and my friend again well we both believe that god is a trinity that's a dogma of the faith we both believe that christ is truly present the blessed sacrament that's a dogma of the faith right we might disagree radically on how those truths should be communicated what the best catechetical methods are you know maybe what's appropriate or not appropriate in catholic ministry might disagree on things like that but we're united in the dogmas of the faith and there's other things we just recognize our human differences and that's okay the catholic church accommodates those kinds of things so the unity in the church doesn't crush out all diversity and if you have diversity you're going to have differences of opinion and we have sinful people that are insecure that have differences of opinion somebody's going to try to dominate the other and push their way through that's just the way human beings are oriented the blessing of catholicism was we don't have to split off into separate denominations when we have those kinds of fights yeah you know and so the catholic church is a great big massive family that has a system for reconciling these kinds of differences and keeping them all under one tent rather than going off and doing our own thing so that's kind of a beautiful thing about the church um you know you have a difficulty with the pope i don't know if what your difficulty is with the papal office as such or the present office holder um but from the context of your remark i i think maybe you're your concern's more about the issues of policy and again so the the pope is the is the bearer of an office a divine office one instituted by christ and so whether it's your pope or your bishop or your priest um everybody in the room can agree that's the pope yeah that's the bishop that's the priest so let's let's a little less heated if i pull it out of the paper and pull it down to the parish level let's say we have a priest that runs your parish and the priest says you know i've decided for our adult ed program this year we're going to do this handy-dandy little 800-page pamphlet that i wrote as opposed to this you know fancy production that ewtn was promoting you know we're gonna do the one that i wrote and i you know i might sit there and grumble in my pew and think this is a terrible pamphlet i wish he wouldn't ask us to do this in adult head i don't like this book right and uh and somebody else may think well father wrote the best book on the planet this is what everybody needs you know um that's fine but i still acknowledge that he's the priest so he gets to call the shot about the curriculum that we use right and i don't have to believe that all of his decisions are prudent or wise or sensible just that he's the he's the guy he's the decider that's all i have to agree to you and so really i think the catholic system provided you don't have to insist on absolute uniformity of opinion which of course is impossible is a perfect system for bringing different people with different perspectives and policy preferences and political ideologies together under one roof where we can all affirm our common catholic identity and our shared humanity stephen we hope that's helpful for you thank you so much for your call don't be a stranger now that you've been a first time caller it's okay to be a second time caller and on and on and on call to communion with dr david andrews here on ewtn radio we have three lines open at the moment 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 here's that uh text or that uh email that we alluded to earlier in the program from kim kim says dr anders i love your show is protestantism considered heresy in the eyes of the catholic church no it's not and i appreciate the question but let me make sure you understand what i mean so heresy is a canonical crime when a catholic obstinately refuses to accept a dogma of the faith so a non-catholic by definition can't be a heretic in that sense right because they're not they're not obstinately denying a dogma that they understand to be authoritatively taught by the magisterium they can be in error their opinions might be wrong but we wouldn't really talk or call them heretics you know when the council of trent listed its various anathemas in the canons of the council of trent if anyone holds this opinion if anyone holds that opinion let him be anathema and that's a canonical penalty the anathema they didn't really have in mind you know somebody that lived on the other side of the planet they were really thinking about catholics people that were in the the the catholic civilization who were defecting from the church and rejecting its authority and teaching well that person would be subject to a canonical penalty in the same way that i would be today you know if i got on the radio this that would be the end of this show you know and i said well you know today we're going to throw out the doctrine of the trinity or something you're like that i would be guilty of the of the canonical crime of heresy because i'm a catholic and i'm bound to hold those things um but uh you know my atheist next door neighbor who doesn't believe in the trinity wouldn't be he'd be an error but he wouldn't really be uh subject to the penalty of excommunication for the crime of heresy so the opinion would be protestants have erroneous opinions which if a catholic held they would be heretical right but we don't use the term heresy to describe them because most of them are operating in good faith and not obstinate denial of the church's authority which they don't recognize and haven't been brought to see the reason to recognize kim thanks so much for your email call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn radio going now to san antonio and christian listening on guadalupe radio hey there's uh christian what's on your mind today a lot um and uh i yeah it's a bit of a loaded uh question as uh i was explaining earlier um yeah um just a little bit about myself i was raised catholic you know baptized in the faith you know but my parents never really you know submitted my father did not my mom you know the way that my dad didn't my mom didn't submit to him and you know just cause a bunch of dysfunction you know and so you know a lot of my family my parents you know my mom is coming back and well anyway that's besides uh um it's really hard to find anybody to really talk to you know especially considering the fact we spent the last two years in a massive you know in a state of mass hypochondria you know fear and anxiety you know uh that's a whole nother thing you know but um you know it's been very hard to you know you know be in community you know you know iron sharpens iron as they say sure um uh but uh with that in with that i am doing a um preparation of saint joseph you know it's a consecration um [Music] for my you know for myself and my wife and my children um but with that in mind uh it's very hard to um it's very hard uh i guess it's a case of like saint monica because uh my wife is very much uh spiritually dead um as our you know her family you know nobody practices um she says she's too busy to you know pray or you know uh go to mass and i don't want to force her you know and it's very difficult because you know i just want to you know i'm trying to will her good you know i want i want her to be the best version of herself you know um and uh and it's not my i know it's not my my place to convert her that's god you know um but yeah that's pretty much sure yeah i think you've got a couple things going on here maybe i can help with so first of all most importantly when it comes to your wife the best thing in my judgment and i'm married 30 years coming up on 30 years and i've been catholic 17 and i've been christian my whole life uh best thing that i could advise you to do with your wife is to love her and i would personally i would seek and this is a very hard thing to do i would seek to detach from the expectations that you have of who she should become because as you have already articulated that is not within your power now here is the irony there's something ironic about my advice you will have a better chance of changing your wife when you stop trying to it's true and because of a natural psychological tendency that we all have and that is resistance when someone else is selling us something when someone comes and says you need to do x it might be just the x you already planning on doing but as soon as that guy gets in your face and tells you you must do it generally we put the brakes on against that kind of sales pitch so if you you exemplify the virtues that you want your wife to have you don't you don't force them or talk about them you exemplify them and as you affirm her and tell her that she is wonderful that you love her that she is right that you agree with her you find things about her position that you can support and agree with without contention without debate without qualification so that she feels totally loved and trusted by you um then and you and you just patently resist the the temptation to try to change her just exemplify the virtues don't talk about them you'll have a much more powerful powerful effect on her than by anything else including various devotions that you might try to kind of coerce her into god bless you christian you and your family thank you so much for your call lots more straight ahead on this edition of of ewtn's call to communion stay with us prayer is the only truly creative power in the world god is the only one who can create something out of nothing and when we pray we welcome god into our hearts and once he's there he's going to do something he's going to change things he's going to transform us he's going to make something out of the nothing that is me that's the power of prayer for me it's the only power that's guaranteed to change my life and the only way i know to make that happen is through prayer [Music] dear family let us pray together mother angelica's prayer for the united states lord god i ask in all humility that you bless this country as unworthy as we are protected from every evil protect it from the enemy protect it lord that it may accomplish thy will and keep thy commandments i ask lord with a pleading heart to look down upon us in our unworthiness give this country a renewal of devotion to you to your law and to your commandments lord let us be once more a country under you lord may we once more say in god we trust guide us and protect this country from every evil and every harm amen this is dr david anders if you missed part of today's show catch the encore tonight at 11 eastern check out the podcast anytime at ewtnradio.net and click podcasts [Music] i'm jerry usher and i'm debbie giorgiani join us for take two with jerry and debbie at noon eastern with an encore at midnight eastern now back to more of call to communion [Music] what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about that here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders two lines open at the moment eight three three 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 all right let's go to uh robert now in cincinnati listening on the great sacred heart radio hey robert what's on your mind today sir on july 20th 1969 air for air force colonel edwin aldrin shortly before he walked on the moon but after he had landed removed a communion kit that he had made was a chalice from his church and on the control panel in front of him he created an altar and he served or he shared in the eucharistic sacrament what is the purpose of explorers sharing in the eucharist when they are about to embark on a journey or when they are about to discover a new place or a new world okay thanks i appreciate the question well buzz aldrin if i understand correctly was a presbyterian and not a catholic i believe that's correct um and to be honest with you i i find his activity unintelligible from within the theological confines of presbyterianism it it makes very little sense and i used to be presbyterian and have my degrees in presbyterian theology and their doctrine of communion is is is uh irreducibly communitarian and the idea of private communion is typically anathema to presbyterians so i i can't make heads or tails sense within the context of his own tradition as to why aldrin would do this ironically it makes a slightly more sense for a catholic to do this right because uh catholics believe that christ is truly present in the blessed sacrament and can be carried away from the holy mass and that a person could commune outside of the church and to do so lawfully and profitably but more to your point why would someone seek to have a contact with the sacraments at moments of turning points in their own personal history or you know to mark some monumentous occasion well for catholic the celebration of the mass and i should note that columbus had priests that traveled with him on his voyage the celebration of the mass is the highest form of worship and not not merely the participation in the sacrament of communion but the entire right of the mass is our highest form of worship and we give glory and honor to god and so if one is motivated by the disposition to bring god into all things then it is appropriate to have mass for many intentions not the least of which would be you know setting out on some venture so that this venture would be dedicated to god's glory robert thanks so much for your call here is michael in new orleans listening on youtube this afternoon michael what's on your mind today hi i was feeling i've been feeling pretty unmotivated to do more than just kind of the bare minimum of my fulfilling my duties i'm a divorced dad i'm a nulled and i um i was just you know i'm looking for uh motivation and i've you know i i think that our main motivation as catholics should be to do things all you know good things out for the love of christ is that correct so thank you i appreciate the the question you know there is lacking motivation in one's spiritual life it has long been recognized as um as a difficulty that that religious people face and the the desert fathers used to speak of it they used to call it the noonday devil that was their language for this particular this particular weakness that i would just become slothful and sort of lackadaisical about my spiritual exercises and how to drag yourself out of that when you say should our motivation be for love of christ the answer of course is yes but i think that can that language can also be a stumbling block for a person if they only think about love for christ as i'm going to sort of picture imaginatively jesus as an object you know standing apart and away from me and trying to work up affectionate feelings for jesus the individual who stands off from me that can be for some people that form of devotion is very effective they have a lively imagination and they can really motivate themselves by this sort of imaginative you know imagistic thinking about jesus that that's not effective for other people who have different thinking styles or different effective dispositions and so remember that christ is the divine logos is what saint john says in chapter one of his epistle that means that he is the principle of our own rationality he it's our being made in god's likeness and image are able to being able to think rationally and live reasonably is because of our participation in christ who's the divine logos and saint paul in book of philippians chapter 4 says that whatever we do we should think about and talk about those things that are true good and beautiful noble and praiseworthy and so in a sense every time we engage the question of the reasonable good the reasonable good we are if we do this graciously participating in christ and doing it for jesus's sake and so you when a person can profitably and charitably and meritoriously give themselves to all kinds of good things and they can be christian activities if done in the state of grace so for example maybe you are an artist and you like paint and you might be thinking well you know my life of painting just seems to have nothing to do with my religious life well you don't have to paint little baby angels for your for your for your life of painting to be a gracious activity right as long as you're seeking to advance the good and you do so in a spirit of faith and in communion with christ and the sacraments you're really advancing the mission of the church artists are they are co-creators with god of the good the true and the beautiful oh yeah maybe you are a researcher and you're trying to figure out a way to you know jump electrons from from one dish to another maybe you're a musician and you know you want to learn a new song maybe you're a tennis player and you're trying to improve your serve i mean all these kinds of human activities um it can be gracious and worthy activities and they're they're appropriate for for catholics to be involved in and uh you know it you're not only spiritual you know when you're kneeling in front of the crucifix and you're picturing jesus now that is very helpful and i'm not knocking that but i would say if whatever it is that motivates you as long as this virtuous activity that serves the common good and your own health and welfare and mental uh clarity is like whatever that activity is find whatever it is that motivates you right and begin to integrate that into your sense of yourself as a person and as a catholic and and those things are good i mean i i myself try to maintain a few hobbies on the side and i find that they are very helpful they kind of you know the old the whole saying about an idle mind is the devil's workshop has some value in it you know as you're positive tom over here plays the drums i do you know not very well but that's okay well i don't play well either it's not a question of quality here it's a question of like enjoyment giving yourself to something that's a worthy exercise to motivate you keep you healthy keep you engaged keep you happy and uh and i find you know if i take some time for exercise take some time to play music i'm a better husband i'm a better father and i think i'm a better catholic as well and you begin to develop more competences in life that you can then turn to the service of the church or to your neighbor great call michael thank you so much for it it is called a communion here on ewtn radio we go to portland now and here is john listening on the great modern day radio john what's on your mind today hello i'm i called a couple days ago i'm a new catholic long-term long-time protestant still learning church history in the sacraments but i called sharing about that friend who had a horrific car accident oh yes there is an update um as i was taking her to an appointment and i did not thank you sir for making it very evident to not proselytize but just serve and i she knows i'm catholic she knows i'm a new catholic and we were talking and she was communicating with her father in a european country and that's when she brought up well you know i was raised catholic and i'm like what and goes my family's catholic in germany i went to a formation at eight so my question is sir is um she just survived that horrific accident and i don't know we have we all have imperfect families that do not maybe give us the best impression of the faith but i think i just want to invite her to meet a priest or go to mass or go to confession well you sure can right you surely can you should there's nothing wrong with that chief catholic yeah absolutely absolutely sure sure so i mean in your earlier call if i were if i remember the question really was how to be present to somebody who's suffering terribly and my counsel was you know through compassion and presence but if you've established a point of contact of dialogue about the faith then yeah absolutely go with that i mean that's perfectly appropriate and uh you know i mean if she doesn't want to she doesn't want to but you can certainly offer you could offer to take her to mass you could invite her to a catholic event you could you know ask her to go out to lunch with you and your priest or deacon or your other catholic friend and yeah all of that is fine oh that's fine all right i do i just don't know how people were raised in the 70s that because if you remember we're around the same age there was a lot of catholic you know excerpts in the 80s remember that oh sure that just yeah and so i don't know the mindset but i let alone don't know the german catholic mindset you know and so it's different from the united states to be sure and different from the rest of europe and germany has a history a centuries-old history of an established church and in their in their system you're pretty much a protestant or a catholic if you live there and they actually the state actually collects tax revenues in support of the churches and and so identifying as a catholic or protestant um is a little bit like registering as a republican or democrat on the voter rolls you know in the united states it becomes a kind of political category um that can be divorced from the living practice of the faith except for the purposes of you know who where where your collected tax revenues go yeah and that has an effect on the way the faith is lived and expressed and the kind of policy the decisions that are made and so forth and maybe not always a beneficial effect john appreciate your call thanks for keeping us up to date on that uh very very wonderful thing that you're doing there for your friend call to communion here on ewtn tom price reminding you to uh be sure to join us for women made new coming up tomorrow at noon eastern the host crystalina everett sits down with meg hunter kilmer this week they'll be talking about the saints who sinned suffered and struggled on their way to holiness it's a wonderful program women made new with christolina everett sunday our saturday rather at noon eastern right here on ewtn radio back to the phones now for frank on long island listing online ewtn.com hey frank what's on your mind today sir hey guys i love the show um just a quick question on like infallible teaching and doctrine like i'm trying to get my head around like what are absolutes like uh somebody wanted somebody asked me about like women priest or artificial contraception are they doctrine um are they dogma or are they like an infallible teaching and can any of those things be like changed or reversed and i i said no you got the idea yeah sure so on those two issues specifically women priests and contraception the teaching of the church cannot change cannot change uh and to to go into the nuances of why that is the case and i'll just touch on this a little bit so the highest level of of doctrinal authority in the catholic church are those things that have been proclaimed to be dogmas and that's when when the magisterium or uh you know either the person of the pope or or an ecumenical council but also the sort of the common consent and practice of all the catholic faithful down through the centuries that's what we call the ordinary magisterium if if those organs of teaching whether the pope or the pope and the council or just sort of the collective of the catholic faithful down through the centuries have held something forth as a t as a truth of the catholic faith in that solemn way that it's protected by the charism of infallibility and so it can't change is part of the deposit of the faith there are also truths that are logically connected to those um that it may not be the subject of the dogma precisely but it seems that you can't deny the one without denying the other and so you know because logic holds that they also are fall within that umbrella of of the church's infallible teaching now when it comes to um the question of of women priests and contraception these are issues that were never the subject of an infallible dogmatic declaration by a pope or a council the way say the dogma of the trinity is and yet they are truths that have been commonly and universally proclaimed for 2 000 years and as they have been called into question in the modern era the popes have consistently adverted back to that 2000 year witness as incontrovertible proof that this is the catholic position and so they are infallible teaching not by a declaration of the extraordinary magisterium but by the ordinary teaching of the church for 2 000 years now pope john paul ii scooted up to the line of an infallible dogmatic declaration with respect to women priests i mean he he got he got within like um you know a nano meter of that such that theologians even debate did was his language that of the an infallible declaration by the by the extraordinary magisterium and there's some debate about that question about the the kind of proclamation that he made but what is absolutely clear is that he removed any possibility of doubt so that the teaching is infallible the only question is is it infallible only by the ordinary magisterium or also by an infallible declaration of the extraordinary magisterium now i'm getting into kind of catholic you know deep in the weeds theology here but the long and the short of it is its infallible teaching frank thanks so much for your call let's go to janelle in spokane listing on sacred heart radio janelle what's on your mind today well it was something that i heard on a christian tv show and like i said i wish i could remember in detail precisely how they phrased this but the preacher said in fact and it was like this point blank there was no date references or anything oh yeah the catholic church kills all these christians and i'm thinking what period of history is he talking about but it was just like not an accepted like yeah the catholic church kills has killed all these other has killed christians and i'm going what reference would he be referring to that the catholic church has been going about killing christians and you know he didn't he didn't put any hysterical historical pinpoint to it and it was just point blank and accepted sure so what do you think he was talking about yeah thank you i appreciate the question so first of all the catholic church as an institution kills no one and never has as the church in its in its capacity as the church the church does not have you know we have priests and deacons we don't have executioners all right we don't kill people now catholic civilization christian civilization catholic countries throughout history have had have had civil governments that enforce laws that have had the death penalty as a as a consequence for certain crimes today in the united states of america i think you can correct me tom if i'm wrong about this but i think you could probably can't you get the death penalty for treason i think you can i believe so yeah federal crime you could commit treason in the united states and you could be executed for that now at different points in history heresy has been treated as tantamount to treason if the constitution of the of the civilization was grounded in a catholic worldview and catholic system and that is by by the way it's not something unique to catholicism that is the way every civilization on the planet has functioned until the the modern era post enlightenment right really until about the 19th century almost every civilization on the planet did not distinguish between the sacred and the civil realm in such a way that you know that that would be avoided um and people who were you know crime against religion in any civilization has often been regarded as a sort of crime against the body politic and would be treated as a crime and subject to the jurisdiction of the state which may or may not have execution as a penalty now that is true of protestant countries too so a preeminent example in my mind is the reformation in england that produced the anglican church and of course henry viii broke away from the catholic faithful and the catholic faith and from the pope particularly under his heir elizabeth elizabeth the first there was a brutal persecution of catholics in england uh priests in particular were tortured viciously and put to death saint edmund campion one of the most celebrated st john fisher you can go look them up brutally tortured and put to death for the crime it was a crime in england to be a catholic priest it was illegal to be a catholic priest in england and if you were caught you were put to death in england for the crime of being a catholic priest all right in the same way say if you went to france in in 1715 louis xiv who i am no fan of louis xiv by the way revoked the edict of not and made it illegal to be protestant in the kingdom of france and there were protestants in france in the 18th century that were tried and executed for the crime of being protestant they were doing the same thing to catholics in england sure were all right and eventually european civilization said you know maybe we should stop killing each other for holding different faiths has that ever happened in catholic civilization yes but this is not unique to catholic civilizations it's happened in protestant countries islamic countries buddhist countries hindu countries you name it and and the church is such does not kill people now the the scale here of your pastor friends assertion is absurd it's absurd uh because the the greatest martyrdom of christians in history took place in the 20th century under communism and nazism and the catholic church was a vociferous opponent of both of those ideological positions appreciate your call janelle before we go to craig in southern california a quick shout out here from kathy watching us on facebook kathy says thank you dr anders for being a key in my husband's discernment to become catholic at the age of 72. wow how about that how about that pretty awesome appreciate the the shout out there here's uh craig now in southern california listening on the ewtn app hey craig what's on your mind today hey guys thanks for taking the call um so my question is we read in noah's ark that noah and his wife and then three sons and three i guess spouses um were in the ark and the rest of the world uh civilization perished so my my question is does that mean that noah and and that we are all descendants of noah and then to add on to that was there any inter-family um reproduction or were the three spouses from a different bloodline and one more little thing is is how do we get if they were the original descendants of noah how did we end up with the different ethnic races like african-american and hispanic yes thank you very much i appreciate the question so i think the question presupposes a fundamentalist understanding of the bible and a fundamentalist understanding would be that the significance of the sacred text the meaning of the sacred text is to read it say you know as the man on the street would read the grammatical denotative sense of the words if they were just presented without context as if this were an account of of you know ancient uh you know flood geology and anthropology or something like that that's not the way the catholic church reads this text and so i wouldn't try to derive say information about the human genome for example from a consideration of genesis chapter six that's that i wouldn't go about that in that way um i wouldn't try to do anthropology and look at the question of human origins by tracing them back to genesis 6. the way the new testament reads this text and in particular i'm thinking of first peter chapter 3 verse 21. first peter says that the water that that drowned the civilization at the time of noah is a symbol for baptism and you might say well that doesn't seem very obvious on the face of it right but that's this is the this is the way the new testament approaches it looks at the stories and the laws and the symbols and the rights of the old testament as allegories that point that that that call for a spiritual reading uh fulfilled in in the rights and practices of the catholic church so we look to a story like noah and what we derive for it is first of all a moral principle about the consequences of sin um an anagogical or sort of aspirational principle that god will save those who turn to him in righteousness and we can hope for salvation from him an allegorical principle that the ark represents the church which is the means of our salvation from the condition of sin and uh in water which which purifies purified the world of noah from iniquity and purifies our hearts by faith as we submit to baptism that these are the kinds of things that a catholic would bring to a consideration of noah not not you know genomic information and ancient anthropology very good thanks so much for your question michelle watching us on youtube this afternoon michelle says the long process of rcia is stopping me from becoming a catholic why does that have to take so long it doesn't it doesn't i i i did my preparation to become catholic and i think about you know two weeks and was received on november the 16th and not at easter and there are exceptions to the rcia rule um i i know of parishes that actually have a two-track system they have a longer rca for catechumens who have not been baptized in a fast track for people who've already received instruction in the faith and have already been baptized so it's not an absolute necessity that rcia belong if rci in your own parish is uh is a bit lengthy and difficult and boring i'm sorry i could give you a trite catholic answer and tell you to offer it up but you might derive some benefit from it you know you really might and if your situation is such that it becomes too burdensome for you you can always have a conversation with the priest about alternatives sure sure and i think for a lot of people it is a good idea to have a an eight or a nine month program to to really under understand and unpack the fact sure i mean it can be of great value sure yeah sure all right so there you go and michelle thanks so much for your question a great show a great week of shows dr david anders hope you have a wonderful weekend thanks tom hope everybody has a wonderful weekend we do this program monday through friday here on ewtn on monday we will have a special uh mailbag program to uh you know talk about dr martin luther king and others so we'll see you live on tuesday i'm tom price we'll see you then god bless smart speakers help with a lot these days did you know you can use your smart speaker to hear the top stories of the day from a catholic perspective if you have an alexa just say alexa open catholic news welcome back

Channel: EWTN

Views: 4,008

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: RNqtm3IV3cg

Length: 54min 15sec (3255 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 14 2022