Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - January 27, 2022

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 everybody welcome again to call to communion here on ewtn radio this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters if you non-catholic listeners have a question about the catholic faith that has been bothering you for a while well give us a call love to take a crack at that explain to you exactly uh what the church teaches definitively on that subject here's our phone number 833 eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six if you're listening to us outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then you can 205-271-2985 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 the address ctc ewtn.com ctc at ewtn.com we try to hit a couple of emails on each one of our live shows all right then we have a ready to rock and roll here it is uh charles berry our producer we also have i had to pause there thinking well who's doing the phone screening today it's rich jesse and we have jeff burson handling social media for us if you want to ask a question via youtube or facebook live we're streaming there right now just uh put that question of yours in the comments box jeff will shoot that to us here in studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anderson tom how are you today i'm well how are you sir i'm doing decent thank you yesterday at the very end of the show and we actually kind of ran out of time but uh someone who called in had a question about the apostolic pardon yes and which this is something that comes kind of at the end of life correct and this person was saying well golly my uncle was you know when you know receive the last rights but didn't get the apostolic pardon because the priest didn't know anything about that or or i think more specifically he said the priest didn't know that he had faculties to grant him yes that's it thank you and so the question was where can he find it stated that priests have faculties to grant the apostolic pardon along with last rites yeah and and you know i'm not a priest so i never have to worry about whether i have faculty so i was like let me let me go check out where it's actually printed well first of all what is an apostolic pardon yes it is a type of plenary indulgence so a plenary of indulgence is when the church through the marriage and prayers of the saints grants uh an end for the remission of all the temporal punishment due to sin to someone who's properly disposed and in the state of grace okay um so this is uh a plenary indulgence granted to the dying so that they can have all the temporal punishment of their sin remitted at the moment of their death um and the priest has faculties to do that from the holy see from the pope and uh actually right after we left i i walked out of the studio and i ran into one of our ewtn priests who also happens to be a candidate okay and i said where's that actually written and he said it's in the ritual it's actually in the pastoral care of the sick that the priest takes with him that would instruct him and how to do the last rites it's also in the incaridian of indulgences okay so it's right there in the book all you gotta do is read it this is very good news all right very good so we thank you for that and uh here's a question we received from jacob can dr andrews please explain in more detail why we cannot quote feel the holy spirit working in our lives i know he has mentioned in the past how folks attribute feelings to the holy spirit and that this is not the case i would like a good explanation of this so that i can convey it to my loved ones who want to go to uh protestant churches because they like the feelings they get but i need some grounding not just saying that's not the holy spirit working thanks jacob yes thank you i appreciate the question so the easiest way to see this is to look at the example of jesus himself okay and think of christ in the garden of gethsemane or on the cross when he was experiencing this this dereliction of soul and this uh and suffering both physically and psychologically all of the alienation and hurt and loneliness and abandonment that a person can be oppressed with was not a happy clappy time for jesus on the cross at all and yet he was perfectly united uh to the godhead absolutely no no division whatsoever at all and so uh spirituality holiness union with god is compatible with any number of emotional states whether they be happiness and joy or sorrow or loss or even aridity and the teaching of the church is that all of these emotional conditions can be occasions for deeper union with god because the union that we seek with god is not a union in just in our emotionality which after all is something that we share with animals before i came to the studio today i took my dog for a walk and uh and he you should have seen him he was jumping all over the place like a jumping bean he had plenty of emotionality right he was as enthusiastic as anybody at a revival meeting i've ever seen you know but he has no spirituality my dog okay so it's not our animal emotionality that we're seeking principally to unite with god it's our will it's our will we want to be united with god in our will through charity through love and love is most certainly not an emotion it's a settled disposition of mind to to be united to another and to seek their integral good and if you're a parent or a spouse you know you can love somebody and be angry you can love somebody and be sad you can love somebody and feel rejected you can love somebody and be hopeful you can love somebody and be joyful you can love somebody and be bored out of your skull right love is not an emotion and we seek to be united with god principally and our will through charity now emotions are the context in which we make our acts of will and so they can be a great help to us obviously if i'm feeling joyful or happy or excited or hopeful or whatever it's easier for me to make acts of charity it's easier if my emotional life comes along and so we should seek to cultivate a healthy emotional life but it would be a mistake to equate our spiritual good with positive emotions okay well very good and uh jacob thank you so much uh for your email if you have a question uh in that you would like to put to an email and you want to send that to us we'll uh try to get to as many emails as we can the address ctc at ewtn.com ctc ewtn.com as i mentioned earlier we try to tackle you know at least one maybe two emails per show and then every now and then about about once a month i guess we do a mailbag program where we just tackle a whole bunch of emails and those are always a lot of fun so again the address ctc ewtn.com phone lines are filling up fast we have rob standing by in grand rapids tom in twinsburg ohio christopher in mount pleasant texas sheila is getting uh screened right now we have two lines open at 833 ew 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 [Music] then there's a prayer it comes from fear a lot of people are converted with this kind of prayer they know that old saying there's no atheists in foxholes well i hope that's true it's amazing that sometimes the greatest conversions happen when somebody is so afraid they suddenly reach out to god maybe their whole life they never reached out to god and suddenly they cried lord help me okay conversion 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 catholic faith with so much at stake in our country there's never been a more important time to read the register and with award-winning catholic journalism that goes beyond what you'll find from any secular news service you'll get the real story behind the events that unfold over the course of the year try the register for free today and get it delivered to your home office or parish get six free issues today online at ncregister.com forward slash radio or call 800-421-3230 and mention code radio the national catholic register read faithfully [Music] it's called a communion with dr david anders on this rather chilly thursday afternoon at least here in birmingham on ewtn radio our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 i want to tell you about something wonderful that's now available from ewtn's religious catalogue it is the way of the cross for kids dvd accompanied by a free coloring book in this animated special christine eva joseph and enrique follow the 14 stations of the passion and death of our lord jesus christ this is an inspirational program which introduces children to a familiar catholic observance in languages and images appropriate to their level of understanding now the disc itself is one disc 30 minutes long included our english and spanish versions so do check that out and we're throwing in a free coloring book it's a fun and creative way for children to learn about the sufferings of jesus as he approached his death wonderful thing offered to you to you from ewtn's religious catalogue it's available right now at ewtnrc.com you know lent is just around the corner this is a good thing to get if for those kids in your life perhaps a god child a grandchild it's available right now at ewtn rc and if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we're going to begin today with rob in grand rapids listening on holy family radio hello rob what's on your mind today this is hey rob what's going on yeah i uh was talking to my dad and he was trying to discount the importance of marriage using luke 11 27 and 28 where it says unless it is a woman or the breast that fed you and the woman that bore rather more blast disease to a base or here's my fans and i just wondered what your take on that was yeah thanks i appreciate the question so uh jesus's point is that physical parentage is of very little value compared with the spiritual affinity of those who love god and follow him and seek to be christ's disciples and that's true that's true so if if the only thing that mary contributed to in in giving birth to jesus were genetics then it would be pretty extraordinary but but that that in itself would not make her worthy of veneration right but in view of the genetics in view of the biological parturition of the son of god god also granted to mary a particular dignity namely that she would be immaculately conceived and preserved from every stain of original or actual sin that she would be imminent in charity and contemplation and therefore be the greatest uh of all creatures and worthy of of ultimate veneration now he granted her this dignity of holiness in view of the dignity of becoming the mother of god he he could have done it differently it's possible that christ could have become incarnate in some other fashion but god chose to do it this way because it was so fitting for our redemption given that through the disobedience of a man and a woman sin came into the world and the ruined human race was ruined it was fitting that through the obedience of a man and a woman of course the god man jesus christ and his mother mary that the second adam and the second eve would be the inauguration of the redemption of the human race okay appreciate that rob thank you so much for your call that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 if you call right now we can probably get you screened and hooked up and ready to go on today's program that would be a very good thing here now is tom tom is listening to us in twinsburg ohio on am 1260 the rock hey there tom what's on your mind today sir um dr anders has mentioned doctors of the church several times i was wondering what's the procedure for making a doctor of the church is it just up to the pope could say the venerable fulton sheen become a doctor of the church although there's some trouble with his body's location keeping him from getting canonized that's that's the stuff sure i understand the question thank you i really appreciate it so yet there was a tradition in the middle ages of identifying four doctors of the church from the latin west augustine gregory jerome and ambrose and so the title was one basically of kind of popular acclaim among theologians who regarded these as real seminal figures pillars among theologians and then in in the early modern period the popes the popes on their own authority began to expand their the range of the title and apply it to others that they thought were also uh exemplary in their in their theology and in their teaching and so today the procedure for being named a doctor is the pope names you a doctor and as to whether or not fulton sheen would be named a doctor of the church of course i'm not going to try to handicap the holy see right they're going to do what they want to do but um in my judgment my private judgment which is you know that and three dollars now will buy you a cup of coffee okay but in my private job i think it's unlikely and i'll tell you why because the people that are named doctors generally speaking have a tremendous influence on the the whole of catholic intellectual and spiritual life and bring some insight that that profoundly deepens the grasp that the faithful have on the nature of the deposit of faith on the mystery of christ paradigm example is saint augustine of hippo up until augustine of hippo for four centuries it was almost almost unheard of for people to give an analysis of the process of salvation in terms of original sin grace and justification that language was just there was a different idiom at use in soteriology the doctrine of salvation augustine's work in soteriology that's the doctrine of salvation and ecclesiology that's the doctrine of the church just fundamentally reoriented the theological vision of the west and in a way that's perennial i mean you'll still find the categories that augustine gave us in the catechism of the catholic church today i mean he really defined kind of the shape and tone and tenor of latin christianity thomas aquinas another doctor of the church thomas set forth sort of the authoritative way of thinking about the relationship of faith to reason uh science uh and uh in spirituality in a way that is the model for all catholic thinkers from from here on out um you know some people have made noises hoping that john henry cardinal newman saint john henry cardinal newman might one day be named a doctor of the church and i think the reason why he's got a chance at being named a doctor is he's sometimes called the doctor of the second vatican council because newman's theological vision his understanding of the scope of the history of catholic theology and what's called the development of doctrine was profoundly influential in the whole of 20th century catholic theology and the articulation of the second vatican council so it's had really kind of a universal influence on the entire catholic world that's that's the kind of thing that usually you're looking for in a doctor of the church fulton sheen fantastic communicator of the gospel absolutely wonderful evangelist you know we are big fulton sheen fans around here but in terms of original contributions to theology um he had his contribution was someplace else yeah okay well very good and uh tom thank you so much for your call by the way david that's a very timely question that we received from tom is that right because only seven days ago pope francis declared saint irenaeus bingo as the next absolutely next doctor of the church that's about 1900 years too late for my money yeah oh i love irenaeus good stuff there tom thanks again for your call that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 call to communion in progress here on ewtn radio we do have three lines open uh right now okay here's a question now from abigail listening to us on youtube abigail says i just ran across a quote history of the nazarene church that says the catholic church was started in 1054 during the great schism can dr andrew speak to that possibly uh i sure can thank you very much for what it's worth the nazarene church was founded in the 19th century okay yeah it's it's an outgrowth of the wesleyan holiness movement in north america um yeah that's absurd that's absurd it really is absurd and you don't have to be a catholic to see that it is absurd because the the idea of catholicism is that christ founded a visible institution with a determinate form of faith and worship and lines of authority uh and continuity that extend indefinitely into the future that's that's the basic idea in catholicism well we find that represented in the bible it's there in the first century it's very evidently there in the first century um jesus said to the apostles said to saint peter you are peter and on this rock i'll build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it and all the apostles go and make disciples of all nations teach them everything i've commanded you and i'll be with you to the end of the age and by the institution of that church christ intended a universal society that had jurisdiction over all its members regardless of which particular church they lived in that's why the council of jerusalem in acts 15 the apostles could legislate for the entire christian world because they were conscious of belonging to a single coherent determinant body i.e the catholic church the term catholic the term catholic was applied to that body to that institution for the first time by ignatius of antioch in the very very early second century and of course the fathers of the church who were conscious of their continuation from the apostles their succession from the apostles were meeting in council in ecumenical councils like the council of nicaea in 325 and again legislating doctrine and practice uh to be to be binding to be normative for the entire christian world um the the constant the niconoconstantapolitan creed that we recite in mass every week uh from the council of constantinople 381 understands itself refers to the self as one holy catholic and apostolic church so the idea that this entity only came into existence in 1054 is just is just patently absurd yeah well we do appreciate your question abigail thanks for watching us today on youtube call to communion here on ewtn one line open right now at 833 288 ewtn let's go to one of our podcast listeners it's christopher he is in mount pleasant texas christopher what's on your mind today hey thanks for taking my call sure um okay two questions real quick i'm gonna be as fast as i can uh the first one okay i'm a catholic now been a catholic since 2018. i was raised southern baptist now i have been divorced in my life but one of the biggest issues that pushed me out of the southern baptist church was the teaching a lack of teachings on marriage and divorce um i would sit in sunday school classes and bible study groups and when we study the ten commandments they get to the adultery commandment and the only thing that they would say is jesus said if you did it in your heart you did it now i'm trying to live a single and celibate life now and be holy about that and i had a real issue because when you've got people in the group who are unlawfully divorced and remarried and you bring that up and say well what about getting divorced and remarried and they say simply well we're all centered you forgive it's like so you're telling me not to even think it but this guy gets to go home and continue to be with so how can i help you so mike my question is am i being pharisaic in my attitude okay yeah i appreciate that i think i can speak to that so it is not wrong to want to have consistency and coherence in your theology that is not a bad thing and i i think there are a couple of reasons why your baptist friends have a difficult time with this one is as you know in the baptist world the only way they can do moral theology is they attempt to exegete it from the express words of the bible so if the bible condemns it it's it's wrong if the bible enjoins it it's mandatory if the bible is silent then they think it must be okay and that is an entirely insufficient way to think about morality because the bible doesn't speak to so many issues and doesn't speak with one voice on other moral issues so you'll you know between the old testament and the new you're going to get different perspectives on whether it's lawful to divorce your wife for example and you can only make sense of that in light of the full revelation of jesus as interpreted by sacred tradition and in accord with natural law and so you just need a much bigger data set to reason well about moral questions than the baptist is equipped to do and then secondly because they don't have a good doctrine of of ecclesial authority they have no way of determining whether marriages are valid or invalid other than the subjective sense of the people involved if somebody comes and presents himself as married well the baptist has no way of of gain saying that right they've got they've got no criteria to define valid versus invalid marriage and so they don't know what to do with the marital ambiguities that are so common in the modern world and because they have a doctrine of grace that jesus just forgives everything in the one hand they will say well you absolutely ought not to commit adultery but if you do oh well oh well and they they can't do much better than that okay and as it's understandable that that would drive you nuts and you would want to go someplace that had a clearer moral theology and a more coherent ecclesiology and a church that actually actually could rule on the validity or invalidity of marriages and bring clarity to these kinds of moral issues that's not wrong of you to want to have clarity in your moral thinking how else are you going to make moral choices if you don't have moral clarity in your thinking i think that's very good now what would be pharisaical i think would be um if armed with this knowledge you decide to go out and make sure that every baptist in the world understands catholic theology you know and that's not what christ has told us to do i mean our job is not to he says we're supposed to take the log out of our own eye before we take the the um splinter out of our neighbors and we primarily evangelize by being transformed in charity and having the mind of christ that we can be christ to people who live in darkness and they don't have moral clarity so we try to live morally clear lives morally pure lives so that we can we can evangelize by attraction through the power and holiness and the love of our own hearts great question great call thank you so much for it christopher glad you're listening to us via podcasting in a moment getting back to the phones with bill in columbus dave in virginia jerry in porterville california luke and ave maria florida lots more straight ahead on ewtn's call to communion [Music] i was listening to the ewtn and you were on with one of your little snippets and you said some words that brought me back to the church i've been away for a long time you don't know how much i appreciate those words and i don't know why those particular words that day got to me ewtn helping people grow in their love and understanding of god 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] this is a messy family minute with mike and alicia hernan we talk a lot on our program about the messiness of life but we thought we should take a moment to explain why it's important we live in a broken fallen world and we're constantly trying to repair relationships in situations that have become well messy why is it so important to recognize this because if we deny or ignore this reality or try to control our situation and make it neat and perfect we'll only end up frustrating ourselves and making the situation worse family life is never easy saint john paul recognized this when he wrote there is no family that does not know how selfishness discord and tension can wound the family but every family is called by the god of peace to have the joyous and renewing experience of reconciliation and unity restored families need to embrace the mess knowing that god is always calling us to reconciliation with him and our families and that he will give us the grace we need to get there for more inspiration visit us at messyfamilyminute.org you pick the topics for conversation it's unscripted tomorrow on take two with jerry and debbie on most of these ewtn stations now back to 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 our phone number and we have two lines open at the moment 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 going now to columbus nebraska and bill listening on spirit catholic radio 102.7 fm hey there bill what's on your mind today hi thanks for taking my call real quick and then i'll hang up so i can listen to you okay the gospel calls us on the parable of the sower that jesus tells the the disciples that the the secrets of the kingdom were not meant for some apparently as seemingly and that for them to hear them that they would turn and be forgiven and i just want to know what your thoughts on that are it you know with that gospel story thank you very much oh thank you i love this question this is a magnificent question so you'll notice that when jesus engages the text of the old testament that he reads it sometimes in ways that seem quite surprising or paradoxical even i think it's psalm 137 the stone that the building's builders rejected have has become the chief cornerstone jesus says that means me that means me no you go look at the text it's not evident that that means jesus from the literal sense of the text um the book of leviticus chapter 20 says that adulterers should be put to death jesus says no they don't no they don't oh pentateuch also says that men can divorce their wives jesus says no they can't and so he's always kind of engaging the old testament in ways that are a little bit shocking to some of his contemporaries and and uh this the the secret i think to all of this is that jesus is sort of doubling down on a theme that was very common in the prophets isaiah and jeremiah and ezekiel and so forth and that is that god doesn't desire the blood of goats and bulls or merely ritual observances what he desires is a contrite heart the gift of self that would uh eventuate in sharing one's bread with the hungry and taking in the homeless and caring for the poor and and doing justice to one's neighbor and having a reformed life that's a very common prophetic theme jesus takes that and really presses it to its logical conclusion which is that the whole of the law and the prophets is summed up in the command to love god in love neighbor and everything else has to be interpreted in light of that and so something like mosaic permission to divorce your wife has to be measured against the higher command that we should love our neighbor as ourself and so you know if you're a judean man in the first century and you divorce your wife because she burnt the toast and you reduce her to penury or to dependence or whatever and you you know you take the bank account run off and play golf that's not charitable and so christ says no it's not not that way from the beginning but god made them male and female said the two have become one flesh but god joins together man cannot separate there's a higher principle at work thus the mosaic law was a concession to human weakness you see yes now jesus understood as did saint paul that if you read the old testament or at least portions of it kind of as the man on the street would understand it you pick up the text you just read in a straightforward fashion and just say i'll just do what it says is easy it's an instruction book it's a guidebook it's going to lead you in places that you don't want to go um so go back to those texts about let's put to death people who break the sabbath or who commit adultery or who you know forget to wash before sundown if you take that in a straightforward uninterpreted kind of way you get you get saul before his conversion saul who says well here are these christians they're not keeping the sabbath like i want them to they're running around eating with gentiles they're doing all kinds of nonsense let's put them to death let's kill them and he does he kills them yeah and he thinks that he is god's good servant because he is obeying what he understands to be the literal text of the law then he meets jesus and wasn't he in for a shock and what he thought was going to be his redemption would would have been his damnation and the people he went to persecute come for him the way of salvation as he learns to show them charity rather than putting them to death he learns from them and gives himself to them in love and this this complete renovation in hit the way he reads the old testament now paul goes back and reads the same old testament but he reads it in a spiritual sense in an allegorical sense in an anagogical sense so that sarah and hagar become allegories not literal women but they become allegories for life in the spirit or life according to the flesh the rock from which the israelites drink in the old testament ceases to be merely a rock and it becomes a type of christ but to have this renovation in understanding the old testament paul says you have to have the mind of jesus you actually have to come to see the world through christ's eyes you have to be converted you have to meet christ and re completely revalue the way you see reality in order to benefit from this spiritual reading of the old testament and jesus teaches the exact same thing that that it's not enough to come into connection with the literal words of jesus one actually has to come to share in his way of seeing the world it's not information that he wants to convey it's a change of heart and so in mark chapter 10 for instance the rich young ruler comes to christ and says what must i do to be saved well jesus he wants a formula well jesus doesn't want to give him a formula yeah so he says you know what to do leave me alone why are you calling me good off you go go do go follow moses and the guy says but no but no i need something else i need something more and said ah now we're getting somewhere sell everything you have come and follow me come participate in my way of being come learn with me to see the world as i see it then you can really be saved well that's what the apostles did you see he called them to leave their nets to leave their tax collecting booths and whatnot and come follow him to come share in his way of life and therefore he was able to unfold to them the mysteries of the kingdom now with uh those to whom he spoke in parables they had not yet had this conversion they hadn't yet come to see the world as jesus sees it what is the function of the parables it's not to convey propositional information the purpose of the parable is to uh is to get you to see yourself in a new light to gain an insight on human relations and so most of the parables or many of them i should say have the effect of taking people that would have been perceived by jesus's contemporaries as righteous and showing them as unrighteous and people who would have been perceived as unrighteous and showing them to be righteous i think it's luke 17 there was the tax collector and the pharisee in the temple and the pharisees says i thank thee god that i'm not like that tax collector over there because i do all this good stuff and the tax collector who says have mercy on me lord a sinner and christ says it's the latter rather than the former that goes whom justified many of the parables have that form once you enter into the parables that jesus has to use on the uninitiated and you begin to revalue human relationships and see yourself in a new light now you're able to pass into the mind of christ and learn the mysteries of the kingdom that saint paul learned on the road to damascus now that transformation from darkness to light paul says in first corinthians 2 takes place only by a work of god's spirit without the spirit of god the things of god are foolishness to the man of the world but with the spirit what was formerly for us a letter that leads to death now becomes a promise that leads to life that's the spiritual reading of the bible developed in catholic tradition into the four senses of scripture the literal sense on which the other three are built but then the spiritual sense that gives us the moral that aspirational or anagogical that points us towards heaven and that typological or allegorical that we find fulfilled in jesus thanks so much for your call it's called a communion here on ewtn radio let's go to toledo now and talk with mark who's listening on the great ave maria radio mark what's on your mind today good afternoon and thank you um my wife and i are currently going through the rcia process and it's been wonderful but my my question is my wife and i were both previously married and we did complete the forms for the annulment uh through the catholic church now i'm i'm pretty sure that mine will be inaudible because i know that the church didn't recognize mine because we were married my first time by a judge however i'm not so sure about my wife and i was just wondering what do i do if for any reason hers doesn't get granted and mine does okay yeah thanks so let me ask you a question or two i assume you did this with uh i mean you had guidance from from your priest and from the tribunal and filling out the paperwork i mean you didn't just print this offline and do it on your own right i mean you have you've already talked to the tribunal about the process correct that is correct all right well that i'd say that if if you've already been in communication with the tribunal and they've instructed you on how to proceed um they wouldn't tell you to proceed if they didn't think there were plausible grounds right so a lot of annulments don't never get off the ground to begin with because they don't really have they don't really have a case right and so if people in the tribunal have already looked at your situation and said yeah we think there's a case here go ahead and fill out the paperwork i'd say right now i mean again i can't handicap the thing but i'd say that's pretty good odds that they think that's that's a reasonable case to make um so i wouldn't be too discouraged to worry about it now let's say that you know this happens and they it's one of you doesn't get granted the annulment um you can't appeal you know there are there are legal and canonical processes that you can go through but ultimately the purpose of the marriage tribunal the purpose of the canonical court is uh to find the truth and you know i i spoke to a candidate one time and he said he would bend over backwards to help anybody who who desired an annulment find valid grounds for an annulment he would he would go to great lengths and and i will tell you that that uh tribunal judges are human they make mistakes and i've heard of cases where the first time a judge looks at something he he he misses something yeah he says oh there's no grounds for annulment here and then he comes back to the paperwork later and goes well i'll be i didn't see that the first time and then you know so i mean you can you can keep working but but his point was i'm going to do my best to find for the cause of a nominee if one exists but i'm not going to hell for anyone like ultimately the the judge takes a vow before god that he is not there just to please men but to find the truth of course and that should be all of our disposition right that the reason the tribunal exists is to find the truth of the matter now if if it were the case that one of you was in fact validly married to someone else um that now becomes a matter for very profound pastoral discernment uh that is highly particular to your situation what children you have you know what the former relationships are things that are way beyond the scope of this show um your situation in that case would not be unfamiliar to the church not at all and and pastoral guidance uh would not be lacking and so at that point my my suggestion would be you know you exhaust your options and then you you just press in to the pastoral care of the church as hard as you can and get really good discernment and guidance from your priests on how to move forward appreciate your call mark it is called a communion here on ewtn tom price here reminding you to join us for ewtn news nightly tonight at 9 00 pm eastern tonight tracy sable takes a closer look at the possible candidates to be the newest supreme court justice also cardinal reinhard marks apologizes for clergy sexual abuse in germany a lot of important things in the news and we cover them all for you on ewtn news nightly check it out tonight 9 p.m eastern on ewtn radio and television all right we're going to go quickly to a question from levi watching us on youtube this afternoon levi says is the use of cannabis accepted in the catholic church i find it personally and equal to alcohol in terms of being used in moderation yeah thanks i appreciate the question so the church teaches that intoxication in any form is objectively immoral okay so if you drink to become intoxicated that's immoral if you use cannabis to become intoxicated that's immoral okay and there it is thank you so much for watching us to this afternoon on youtube levi appreciate hearing from you let's go now to jerry in porterville california listing on youtube jerry what's on your mind today hello good afternoon and thank you for taking my call so my question is uh um why is it a big deal when jesus called his mother woman during the wedding the wedding at cana and at the foot of the cross but not a big deal when he calls mary magdalene woman uh at his resurrection yeah thanks i appreciate the question so i think you have to look at the whole context of the narrative in john chapter 2 which is typological through and through i mean the language of the the purification jar is filled with water that christ turns to wine at the word of his mother of course recalls to our minds the purification rites of the old covenant which are insufficient to purify the soul from sin whereas the new covenant given to us in jesus that of course is uh is typified exemplified and manifest by the transubstantiation of bread and wine in the holy eucharist this is that when jesus scott hahn loves to point out this is the when the word new testament new covenant is actually used when christ says this is the blood of this is the cup of the new covenant in my blood right so the the the efficacious rights of the church to purify from sin are contrasted with uh the the merely ritual elements of of of hebrew law and the wedding feast at cana is a typological demonstration of the move from the one to the other now it happens at the word of a woman who says do whatever he tells you do whatever he tells you which is the opposite of our first mother eve who did not do whatever she was told and led the human race into ruin of course along with our first father adam but here the mother of our redeemer is the prompt for jesus's performing his very first sign which has this profound typological significance so i think you have to look at it in that context also remember that in revelation chapter 12 uh there is a woman who is depicted as in conflict with that ancient serpent the devil so that the the comparison to eve is very evident and yet we are told she is the one who will give birth to the child who will rule the nations with a rod of iron that's a reference to psalm 2 which is a messianic psalm so the the identification of mary with eve and as the woman of the new covenant is occurs in more than one place in the new testament and it's context context context you know how they say like the only one rule in real estate is location location location yes well an exegesis it's context context context there you go jerry thanks so much for your call let's go to tysons corner of virginia and we'll talk with dave listening on guadalupe radio dave what's on your mind today good afternoon fellas how are you doing very well can you hear me yes go right ahead hello yeah we're here can you hear us great there you are dr anders how are you great how about you good uh quick question for you i'm looking for a good book on funny enough for your last subject there was typology i got it and i'm i'm looking for a book that connects all the dots for me i got i got a bunch for you all right so the first one i want you to look at is actually a document from the holy see it's called verbum domini it's the post-inaudible exhortation on the word of god that was published under the authority of pope benedict xvi very good text on the interpretation of holy scripture um so that's number one um if you want some patristic references uh read saint gregory of nissa on the life of moses read augustine of hippo on christian doctrine it's one of the earliest treatises on biblical interpretation in the church read bible study basics for catholics by john bergsma read daniel harrington's book how catholics read the bible if you want to see typology done in real time you know cooking before your very eyes read john paul ii theology of the body um so all of these are great resources oh and if you want to see a good theologian thinking about typological interpretation when wrestling with the hardest texts of the old testament read matthew ramage's book the dark passages of the bible wow some great resources there for you dave thanks so much for your call from tyson's corner of virginia going now to uh luke very patiently listening to us in ave maria florida uh via podcasting hello luke what's on your mind today hi thanks for taking my call sure i was reading a biography of uh saint benedict joseph library and when it was describing him being a pilgrim in italy in the 18th century it made the biography made several references to him needing to show a communion certificate and a confession certificate to the priest and i was wondering if you could please clarify what that practice was and and what became of it yeah thank you i appreciate the question so until the 20th century in the latin west it was the practice for many centuries that the laity would only commune once a year and depending on what diocese you were in being admitted to holy communion once a year could be a bit of an arduous process if you have ever read the sermons of saint john vianney you'll know that a great many of them pertain to preparation for one's annual communion and the curie of r would always admonish people that they needed to come to confession and if they came to confession he wasn't just saying just going to hear their confession and absolve them and admit them to communion he was going to insist that they reform their life and so if they were up to something that he didn't think they ought to be up to unless they set for swore that activity he said well then i'm not going to admit you to holy communion wow and uh and he was he was a bit persnickety let's say the curious and so he was not letting past some things that i think would probably get passed today like he was not into you know gambling and drinking and saloons and all that kind of stuff you know and uh and so it used to kind of get under the skin of the young men in france because their grandmothers and mamas wanted them to make their annual communion and they went to the priest in a perfunctory sort of way and he was like uh i'm not letting you off that easy just because grandmama wants you to come to communion and he would preach you now yeah i know you could go down the hill here to the next parish and get father father laxity to let you in no problems don't do that don't go to father laxity you got to come to me and i'll admit you to holy communion if i think that that that you've done what you need doing all right so this is the context in which somebody might want to have certified that they had in fact been to confession and and uh and received permission from the priest to go to holy communion now obviously today with the practice of frequent communion in the church which is the norm now i mean most catholics receive communion every week when they go to mass they are a little bit on the honor system so you should not go to communion if you're conscious of grave sin the church tells you you should go to a sacramental confession first and receive absolution which is the same thing as receiving that permission from the priest to go to communion but uh but it's a little bit the honor system and it would be you you can't have it both ways you can't have frequent communion in this level of scrutiny yeah so you're either going to have annual communion and super scrutiny or you're going to have frequent communion and not so much scrutiny thanks for your call luke i think we have time for one maybe two more calls here is claude now in edmonton alberta canada listening on youtube claude what's on your mind today good afternoon gentlemen how are you today great very well what's on your mind very good um i would like to know where does the catholic church stand on psychiatry do they agree with it or not and do they feel is it a necessary practice thanks i appreciate the question the church is of the opinion that when science can demonstrate something to be true then it's true right so any if i if i can reasonably discern the truth of something using my natural faculties then that's true and revelation is not going to contradict that and with the growth of medical practice and and diagnostics we are in a better position today to understand the nature of mental health problems than we were you know 100 years ago or 200 years ago and we have discerned that there are therapeutic approaches therapeutic benefits that can be derived from pharmacology that can really help to alleviate psychiatric conditions since the church is about alleviating suffering and trying to get people healthy in body mind and spirit if there is a medical route to mental health then that's a legitimate practice now to say that does not mean that the catholic church endorses uh you know every philosophy or every metaphysical supposition that might underlie you know this or that psychiatric uh practice uh you know maybe a lot of neurologists and psychiatrists might be atheists and they might proceed with atheistic assumptions well the catholic church doesn't concede their atheism but it might concede that you know this particular drug is helpful with schizophrenia you say yeah there you go claude thanks so much for your question and we're going to try to squeeze in audrey in somerville south carolina audrey we've got about a minute what's on your mind today hi i love your show thank you guys so much i want to know did jesus know that judas was going to betray him when he chose judas yep sure did and chose him anyway you bet yeah for his for god's good purposes that's exactly right okay wow okay there you go all right thank you so much thank you thank you thank you audrey we actually got that answered super quick let me uh can we get to no we cannot get to rebecca in traverse city michigan because it would take a little more than uh you know 28 seconds to you know figure out a good so rebecca would you please call us back tomorrow and we will put you at the head of the line all you have to do is say hey i got left here we couldn't get to it today and we will definitely get to it tomorrow we'll put you at the head of the line all right dr david anders thank you great show thank you so much all right and don't forget we do this program here on ewtn radio at 2 pm eastern each day monday through friday with an encore at 11 pm eastern a couple of extra bonus things to tell you about first of all there is the best of cult communion we air that for you on saturday afternoons also at 2pm eastern and you can check out the podcast listen to previous shows listen to today's show whatever you want charles will have that posted for you a little bit later on this afternoon at ewtnradio.net ewtnradio.net on behalf of our fantastic team today that would be charles rich and jeff i'm tom price along with dr david anders thanks for joining us here on ewtn's call to communion hope to see you tomorrow right here on ewtn god bless [Music] the most original and exclusive catholic content is on ewtn radio

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Length: 54min 10sec (3250 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022