Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - September 10, 2021

david anders starts now what's stopping you from becoming a catholic why can't women become priests 1-833-288 ewtn i don't understand why i have to earn salvation is call to 1-833-288-3986 with dr david anders on the ewtn global catholic radio network what is stopping you from becoming a catholic that's the question we ask every day here on call to communion our program uh geared primarily towards our non-catholic brothers and sisters if you would like to answer that question for us or if perhaps you're in conversation with a non-catholic who has posed a question to you that you need some help with simply give us a phone call it's our toll free number it's 833 288 ewtn it's a free phone call anywhere in north america 833 288 eight six if you're outside the united states and canada never fear we have a number for you that number is one two zero five two seven one two nine eight five and we'll even put you straight to the front of the line if you are outside of north america at one two zero five two seven one two nine eight five you can always send us an email ctc at ewtn.com or you can text your question text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for a response text your first name in your question message and data rates may apply i'm jack williams sitting in today for tom price charles berry is your producer and our call screener is matt gubinski and our host as he is every single day at this time dr david andrews how are you jack i'm doing all right how about you i'm doing fantastic thank you very much got an email here from regina in north carolina and she says dear dr anders while discussing the catholic the catholic doctrine of purgatory with a protestant i cited the book of maccabees as evidence that even the jews of the old testament prayed for the dead the prophet pardon me the protestant said purgatory isn't in the bible moreover jesus's death on the cross paid our debts in full and is sufficient to get us to heaven he noted that the book of maccabees in the old testament preceded the coming of jesus and his atoning death once jesus died and rose it wouldn't have been relevant in any case i confess i'm stuck for an answer what say you dr anders yeah thanks i really appreciate the question uh so we got to deal with the question of uh jewish practice in the book of maccabees and what that says about the relevance of of christ's sacrifice the doctrine purgatory we have to understand what exactly happened what christ did on the cross for our salvation and how that may have impacts as well because both of those things are being claimed here so first of all um the the whole regime of of sin forgiveness penance which is we find illustrated multiple times in the old testament is never overturned by by the death of christ or in the new testament now that pattern which we find many places in the old testament i think is clearest in uh maybe in psalm 51 where king david sins grievously against god and then he says to the lord against you and you only have i sinned oh lord therefore wash me and cleanse me and purify me give me a right heart take not your holy spirit from me he's a sacrifice and offerings you do not desire but a pure heart you will not despise therefore after you have washed and cleanse me then i will present offerings on your altar so david it it begins by saying look i can't earn your forgiveness i can only appeal to you for renewal inward renewal in my interior life and forgiveness and based on my contrition but having received that i will in fact do an act of penance i will offer sacrifice and that's exactly what he does you find in the narrative of a second samuel both in chapter 12 and chapter 24 uh first with the episode with bathsheba and then secondly when david orders a census of the people the prophet confronts david david says you got me oops i'm sorry god forgives him and then david performs a penance now in one instance god imposes the penance in the form of a scourge a plague on israel uh in another instance david offers uh animal sacrifice and when he's given the opportunity to sacrifice somebody else's animal he says no i insist on paying for it because i will not offer the lord a sacrifice that costs me nothing so what's the purpose of this sacrifice it's not it's not to earn the forgiveness of god that he says that straight up front sacrifice and offering you do not desire o lord but pure heart you will not despise contrite heart you will not despise it's rather it's rather to make reparation for the offense against god once he's actually received forgiveness now when it comes to the question of the death of christ and does does the death of christ overturn that dynamic of of sin forgiveness penance and the answer is no underlying your friend's objection is this idea that the purpose of the death of christ was for god to punish sin in jesus and then having punished all the sins that there are in christ is absolutely nothing left for us to do and that's the whole function of the death of christ is to absorb the wrath of god on our behalf problem is that's not what scripture says about the death of christ the death of christ is not presented in the bible as a sort of substitutionary punishment but rather as an atoning sacrifice something that the worshiper gives to god something of value that the worshiper gives to god to make reparation for the offense against divine justice and and the divine honor and that's precisely the language the new testament uses about the death of christ so paul says it's a sacrifice of atonement book of hebrews likens it to the sacrificial system of the of uh levitical offering and um and in philippians chapter 2 because of christ's humble obedience god exalts him it's a meritorious thing it's a valuable thing that christ gives and he merits for us the grace of redemption now having received that grace does that mean that we no longer have to live lives of penance and that's what your friend is suggesting that if we've received the grace of christ that we no longer need to live lives of penance well that can't possibly be true because it's integral to the teaching of christ about the christian life when you pray pray in secret for your father to reward you when you give alms give alms in secret and your father will reward you when you fast fast and secret in your father who sees you in secret will reward you like the dynamic of repentance and acts of reparation is built into the fabric of the christian life by jesus so uh it's not obviated by the death of christ it's rather made effective in the same way david says i'm not going to give you offerings to earn your forgiveness but having been forgiven i will do acts of penance the same dynamic applies in the life of the christian i don't think i can earn the forgiveness of god but having been forgiven by god because of the death of christ i now have the grace that renewal and the interior life that purification that david talked about to do meritorious acts of penance it's ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders [Music] ewtn has its own official youtube channel with tens of thousands of videos covering just about every conceivable topic of interest to catholics and best of all it's free every day ewtn adds new tv shows live events devotionals homilies and specials to its youtube channel visit the ewtn youtube channel today ewtn the global catholic network [Music] hello i'm monte alvarado this week on ewtn news in depth on the ground coverage of the international eucharistic congress in hungary plus in-depth analysis on the impact of abortion restrictions in texas and as the nation prepares for the solemn anniversary of 9 11 we speak with the priests who bless the remains of those who perished at ground zero join us for ewtn news in depth this evening at 8 pm eastern exclusively on ewtn radio and television i do listen and i love ewtn my mother loved dwtn it's just a wonderful way and i thank you for what you're doing the courage that 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three three two eight eight ewtn is our toll-free number 833-288-3986 first up today is john he is in lincoln nebraska listening on spirit catholic radio john you are on with dr david anders hey thank you for taking my call um i thought i'd just call in and answer the uh the question again why aren't you catholic or why why aren't you going to church i think uh the reason why one of the reasons why is because how rude some people can be at church um how you know uh how they can sit there and judge people you know from their position they got this holier-than-thou type of attitude i you know i can't count how many times how many times i've heard people say well you're going to hell you know or you're going to burn in hell you know like that seems kind of like a childish response to something that they take issue with you know if they have an issue with you but yeah last time i was at church probably uh some there's two people some lady who just let this noise this noise came out of her mouth it was like like like what are you what are you doing here type of look and noise that was coming from there and then the same thing from another guy who was sitting kind of close by i wondered if i if i took their spot in the pew like you know like i don't know i don't know if they had like some sort of seating arrangement or something but it really felt kind of like not at home last time i was at church yeah just kind of like the rudeness that comes from people from church so yeah what a good what a good answer what a great answer i'm really sympathetic to that just out of curiosity when you said that you've had a lot of people say well you're obviously going to hell is that something you've heard in a catholic parish i think we lost him we may have lost him all right just just curious because i like that that would strike me as uncharacteristic of your typical catholic parish plenty of rudeness i mean i've met a lot of rude people who are catholic but i don't think i've ever encountered uh that specific kind of rudeness in a catholic parish just seems it's a little bit contrary to the catholic attitude about we're not the judge of who goes to heaven and hell that god is but but garden variety rudeness we we definitely got the corner on that market no problem there i totally agree with you now you know i guess here's my perspective on that um one of the greatest saints of catholic history a guy named francis of assisi lived in the 12th beginning 13th century and he lived in a time where there were a lot of rude catholics but he became really sort of intoxicated if you will by the vision of jesus that he found in the gospels and he was so found so compelling that he wanted to give his whole life to it and imitate christ and he did really heroically and moved a lot of people and his biographer is a guy named bonaventure and bonaventure wrote this life of francis and one line always struck me speaking about francis whom he called the servant of god bonaventure says the servant of god had no one to teach him had no one to teach him but christ himself meaning you know francis's own experience he really didn't encounter any fellow catholics in his hometown of assisi that that that had much to offer him in fact you know initially he got a lot of pushback even from his own family by about his decision to follow christ so radically uh and yet he committed himself to the person of jesus as he found him in the gospels and quite fruitfully and and i think no one would have said a francis that he was rude i mean he was an incredibly charitable person he would literally take the clothes off of his back literally and give them to you if he asked you to if you asked him to and uh yeah i'm not francis and and i would love to have that kind of holiness um but and i'm not looking for francis around every corner um but in my own experience of catholic life i have found charity and rudeness in the catholic church but my decision to be catholic was not motivated by an assessment of the kind of the the the decorum or the politeness of what i expected to find in the parish but like francis i was motivated by the character of jesus the person of jesus the teaching of christ and the fact that i became aware that christ is manifested to me in a uniquely powerful and efficacious way in the teaching and the sacraments and the liturgy of the catholic church and my goal my goal in going to mass is not i don't go there so i can necessarily find kind people although i do find kind people um but it's so that i can become a kind person and uh and so jesus challenges me uh first of all to really not to judge other people but to ask myself the question am i that rude guy how am i doing you know if i go to church and there's somebody sitting in my pew and that person is annoying to me for some reason how am i how am i doing with that fellow or that lady and uh and there's a whole there's like a whole architecture if you will there's a whole mechanism built into the fabric of catholic life for making me call attention to myself and assess how i'm doing with respect to charity towards my neighbor including those really annoying people that steal my pew it's called the confessional and i'm supposed to go to confession fairly frequently examine my conscience against the example of christ and and saints like saint francis of assisi so i can work on my own haughtiness and my own inclination to look down on other people who may look different than me or smell different than me or vote different than me or whatever and so i'm really sympathetic to the complaint yes they're rude people in churches i i don't deny that uh you know i would invite you to investigate the person of christ and uh the challenge that he puts to all of us to take the log out of our own eye before we look at the spec in our neighbors and to think about what the catholic church might offer me or you to help us become not that rude person and see those rude people in the pew next to us not so much as an occasion for running away but as exercising that grace of forgiveness and charity that we're all called to 833 288 ewtn is our toll-free number it's a free phone call anywhere in north america in 833-288-3986 new hampshire he's listening at ewtn.com jack you are on with dr david anders well good day to both of you um dr anders i i've enjoyed listening to you and and believe i've learned a lot but one thing that you have said a number of times that i find perplexing and that is that the sacrifice of christ was not a penal a substitution and why that puzzled me is that i believe it's in one of saint paul's epistles christ died for our sins and then isaiah in his prophecy about the suffering servant says he was bruised for our iniquities crushed for our offenses i believe saint matthew quotes that in his gospel so how is it then not a penal substitution yeah thanks i really appreciate the question so let me be very clear in the way i'm using that phrase and i really have in view a particular doctrine about the death of christ that comes from the protestant theologian john calvin and it's a view of christ's death that's very common in the american and anglo-american protestant world and this is the view the view is the idea that um that god is wrathful against sin and that it is an exigency of his nature he can't eradicate this from himself he must he must expiate his wrath upon a subject you know he's got to get it out of his system he's got to take it out on somebody and and there's no avoiding this and so since sin is a fact of the universe it is a it is a metaphysical necessity of god's nature that somebody must be punished for it but here's the strange thing and well that's strange enough but here's another strange thing in the doctrine the idea is that it's kind of indifferent who god punishes that he could punish an innocent person instead of the guilty person and he'd still get the wrath out of his system so to speak and therefore he'd be able to you know admit people to heaven and so jesus signs up for it and god punishes jesus who's innocent for sins that jesus did not commit and then acquits guilty people namely us and imputes to which are to impute to us a righteousness that we did not merit that is not our own now that is that is precisely john calvin's doctrine and it's the doctrine of many not all but many protestant people god punishes the innocent acquits the guilty imputes our sin to jesus impedes his righteousness to us now uh catholics typically find this to be a kind of horrific and deeply offensive doctrine for all kinds of reasons not the least of which is it suggests injustice in god because to punish the innocent and acquit the guilty is kind of the textbook definition of an unjust judge this is god's unjust we also don't think that it's what scripture says now the texts that you allude to say that christ dies on account of human sin no that's true that's the catholic position no human sin no death of christ but why and how does it work how does the death of christ actually deal with the problem of human sin and the answer to that question is not by way of imputation and penal substitution rather rather sacred scripture teaches that the death of christ is to be understood on the model of old testament sacrifice saint paul says that jesus's death is a sacrifice of atonement now i would encourage you go back and read the levitical ritual on sacrifice especially chapters four and five and following i think chapter five is the sacrifice of atonement and one thing that you will find is that hebrew sacrifice was not a penal substitution god is not wrathful and taking it out on an irrational animal that's not how it functioned rather the worshiper the hebrew worshiper brings something valuable and gives it to god now the immolation of the animal the death of the animal is almost incidental and very little emphasis is put on the manner of the animal's death the point of the death is to deprive the worshipper of its use and to make it appropriate for consumption in a sacrificial meal because you're not going to eat a live animal but it's not in the killing you see it's not in the infliction of a penalty on the animal that god is placated it is rather in the element of the giving the worshipper comes in offers something of value to god and we find in the old testament rituals not just animals but even even grains and fruits and things produce can be given to god uh there's even an offering called a wave offering seems to me you go and you wave something around right it's token there's no there's no infliction of penalty upon you know a banana rather the thing that makes it valuable is that the worshiper has this good thing and he gives it to god if it's an animal he emulates it and burns it deprives himself of its use and that element of sacrifice the the worshiper sacrifice giving something up from his crops from his herd uh you know from his pr the produce of his land that has the atoning value and i liken it in human relationships to you know let's say god forbid i offend my wife jax never offended his wife so this wouldn't apply to him but god forbid i i offend my wife and uh and i say i'm sorry and she forgives me and then i i come with a box of chocolate and some flowers and i say here this is to make up for the thing i did wrong well she's not going to take the chocolate and the flowers and throw it on the ground and stomp on it and say now i feel better i've taken out my wrath on the flowers no that's not the point of it the point is that i've offered something of value in token of reparation that's the model that the new testament gives us for understanding the death of christ it's something that's intrinsically pleasing to god because of the element of self-gift so philippians 2 for example because of his humble obedience unto death god exalts christ to the right hand see it's a meritorious self-donation that's acts chapter 2 talks about the exaltation of christ in view of this meritorious self-offering now having merited a reward for something that is intrinsically noble christ ascribes the benefit of that meritorious offering to his body which is the church and wins for us the grace of redemption which brings both forgiveness of sins and the gift of the holy spirit to empower us to live a holy life thanks so much we appreciate the phone call jack this is ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders we're asking the question what is stopping you from becoming a catholic you know perhaps you've had a bad experience when you were growing up perhaps you maybe live next door to a catholic that wasn't very nice to you perhaps there's just some particular doctrine or dogma that you perceive to be expounded by the catholic church that just doesn't sit right with you we'd love to help you work through some of those things today just give us a call it's a toll-free number free phone call anywhere in north america eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six that's eight three three two eight ewtn if you're outside the united states and canada your number is one two zero five two seven one two nine eight five and we'll even put you straight to the front of the line if you're outside north america at 1 2 0 5 2 7 1 2 9 8 5 you can always send us an email ctc at ewtn or you can text your question text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for a response text your first name and your question message and data rates may apply straight ahead we'll talk to dan and bill and hopefully you it's called the communion with dr david anders [Music] the words of blessed carlo agutis the eucharist is the highway to heaven and this continuously ask your guardian angel for help your guardian angel has to become your best friend this is what saint teresa of calcutta also known as mother teresa once said about prayer love to pray feel often during the day the need for prayer and take trouble to pray prayer enlarges the heart until it is capable of containing god's gift of himself ask and seek and your heart will grow big enough to receive him and keep him as your own that is why we need prayer [Music] now the ewtn family prayer with father joseph family a prayer that we pray together is a powerful prayer so please pray together with me our ewtn family prayer [Music] today we pray for the caregivers of the sick almost holy trinity father son and holy spirit we adore you you have first loved us and through your son you have taught us the excellence of self-giving love give to those who are caregivers of a sick parent or child brother or sister the assistance of your holy angels lessen their burdens and give them great joy in practicing a work of mercy and since charity is never forgotten by you reveal to them their heavenly reward amen hi this is psy kellett from catholic answers live can't go wrong with two hours of joe heschmeyer this afternoon catholic ants was live 6 p.m eastern on ewtn radio now back to call to communion with dr david anders [Music] it's ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders the number to be on the program eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six it's eight three three two eight eight e w t n interesting question from debra who's watching us on youtube she says uh it's most agree that hinduism is the oldest written religion why did god allow this how does hinduism correlate with the first spoken slash written language that is it isn't hebrew this confuses me greatly yeah thanks really appreciate the question so first of all i think that's actually factually incorrect i think in terms of our written evidence i think the epic of gilgamesh the sumerian epic is older than the rick veda which is the oldest part of the vedas and hinduism it dates to africa gilgamesh i think destroyed around 200 100 bc uh rigveda is like around 1500 bc or maybe later um and uh uh but it is interesting that i think the pros writing of the hebrew bible is actually the oldest prose writing not the oldest writing the oldest prose writing in existence in human history we have extant but but regardless of which sacred texts are oldest i really think the question has an unspoken premise which is that antiquity equates to authority and uh i i don't know why we would think that and i don't know why we should presume that and that's certainly not the doctrine of the new testament saint paul says that in the fullness of time god sent his son born of a woman born under the law that the incarnation of the of of the son of god incarnation of christ occurred at a specific moment in human cultural history for a reason there's a reason why christ was incarnate during the roman occupation of judea rather than some other time saint irenaeus put it this way he said that it was necessary for the human race to become habituated to the divine logos now what is the divine logos john chapter one says in the beginning was the logos in the beginning was the word the word was with god the word was god he was with god in beginning all things been made through him nothing was made that has been made apart from him and the divine logos was the true light that enlightens every man and became incarnate in christ now early catholic theologians coordinated that doctrine to an understanding of human rationality the kind of philosophical wisdom that would enable any human person to discern rationally the existence of god in the moral law and you don't have to read very far in the history of of human culture whether we look at hellenistic greece rome the hebrews for that matter uh the indian subcontinent ancient china uh to see that uh there's there's a lot of sense in the early patriotistic doctrine that there's a cultural evolution that happens in the history of the human race where sometime around um fifth or sixth century bc a certain conception of oneself of the human race begins to emerge across cultures a kind of theoretical wisdom and a sensitivity that you know hey it's not so much sacrificing to the sun moon and stars and to various polytheistic deities that we need to worry about it's it's transformation transforming our own interior or moral lives that we have to care about we certainly find that teaching in somebody like socrates or plato and early stoics uh and and so on and you find that emerge in uh in later hinduism early hinduism is you know very sacrifice driven uh like a lot of pagan religion you get to the upanishads and you get to have a slightly more philosophical ethical conception of the religious life and and the way the fathers of the church saw the incarnation of christ what the philosophers were grasping at in kind of an in kuwait fashion we received the fullness of that revelation in jesus and so christ is the fulfillment not only of uh hebrew prophetic expectation but also the intimations of the philosophers whether they be uh greeks or brahmanas uh or han chinese or whatever it might be that christ speaks to the universal longing of of man's religious consciousness and uh saint augustine of hippo wrote a magnificent book in the 390s called on true religion de verve lagunae where he makes this exact point and augustine says you know if if plato had stuck around for a few other centuries he would have rejoiced to see christ stay because what he could only write about in you know sort of highfalutin philosophical prose that not many people grasped or realized or certainly didn't live up to those ethical expectations jesus actually delivers and this was one of the compelling things about christianity that converted saint augustine he himself was a profound philosopher deeply engaged in moral and theological and philosophical questions but his moral life was all shot to pieces he was a sex addict augustine was and he's sitting around reading platinus all day long filling his mind with philosophy but it wasn't making a hilly beans difference to his moral life and he was profoundly conscious of his own moral weakness that he had this divided self his his sense of moral responsibility was divided against his own concupiscence and he like saint paul says wretched man that i am what am i going to do then he learns about the life of saint anthony of of the desert anthony the great anthony was an illiterate who heard the command of christ heard the admonition of christ if you would be perfect go sell everything you have give the poor come and follow me and anthony goes yeah we'll do that he gives away all of us all his possessions gives to the poor goes out to the desert and basically establishes egyptian monasticism and when augustine learns about the life of saint anthony he's just completely overwhelmed and he's cut to the quick and he says who is this guy who doesn't have an education and he's conquered himself by following christ and i'm sitting here with a phd in platinus from the best roman universities and i can't get out of my own way you know i'm i'm like stuck behind my own back that's the metaphor he uses and then he picks up the words of the new testament reads the the exhortation of saint paul to put sinful ways behind him and it's it's like a penetrating light fills his consciousness and he's keenly aware of an infusion of grace enabling him to do what all the great philosophy of the world had pointed to but had not accomplished in him and he gives his life to jesus and uh and really conquers morally conquers the divide itself and augustine the mature christian augustine lives at peace moral peace because he's filled with the charity of the love of god and and so this is the way the fathers of the church understood this yes there is this growth in religious consciousness throughout human history whether that's hellenistic or hindu or chinese or or hebrew and jesus is the fulfillment of all of that the incarnate word of god that gives light to every man thanks so much we appreciate that question uh we head next to dan in fort wayne indiana listening on redeemer radio dan thanks so much for holding welcome to the program thank you thank you doctor thank you for the beautiful advanced course and catholic doctrine many of us kind of checked out at the last high school or college this really brings us up to date uh my question regards what should our disposition be or our response be to those who give us bogus uh devotions uh you know in themselves beautiful and pleasing to god i suppose but objectively speaking i'm thinking of the saint gertrude the great card that i've seen several times in the past few years promises if you say this prayer you will release 1 000 souls from purgatory sure i'm with you yeah i think i can speak to that i really appreciate it so um first of all the catholic faith teaches that private revelation happens and it can be tremendously edifying and so if someone represents to me that jesus spoke to them the blessed virgin mary spoke to them and they don't say anything contrary to catholic dogma and this purported revelation seems to edify them and energize them in their life of catholic faith then i'm not going to say anything against it unless the holy church says something against it and and most of the time while the church doesn't validate most claims to private revelation neither does it contradict them unless it becomes you know sort of like a major international pilgrimage site they have to actually take a position on the content of the revelation and and the vast majority of people who have these kinds of experiences sort of fly below the radar and and their c their spirituality is either rational and healthy and and inducing leading towards you know charity and prudence and virtue or it's sort of neurotic and superstitious it can be one of the two um uh but uh but the fact that private revelation occurs it's a fact of catholic life now uh private revelation of any kind or claim to private relation must always be interpreted and applied in light of the dogmatic teaching of the church so the church explains to us how the the regime of of sin and contrition and repentance and faith and the sacraments and the life of virtues and the future judgment and the doctrine of purgatory how those things work out we have dogmatic teaching about that whole architecture and that's what we're bound to believe and so uh to the extent that we adhere to a particular private revelation in our own personal spirituality we must interpret and apply that in a way that does not contradict the public teaching of the church and so you know i think uh the brown scapular devotion is one that's very popular and has been of course uh fondly regarded by many of the popes themselves and they have encouraged it in the life of the catholic faithful and you know some of these kinds of promises get attached to that devotion and the way i personally address that is provided you meet the conditions that the church teaches regarding salvation and penance and purgatory and eternal life you know you're not you don't get a get out of purgatory free card right by performing a division unless perhaps the church attaches that indulgence to it provided i'm i'm living the faith in the way that the church tells me i have to live it then it can be an edifying thing to hold these sorts of private devotions in one's mind in one's consciousness or imagination as a as a way of motivating me uh to engage that faith and of course i can is clearly pious for me to believe that the blessed virgin mary is interceding for me and i'm going to seek her intercession you know but if someone approaches these kinds of things in a mechanical way you know in insert the prayer pull the slot machine out pops the eternal reward well that would clearly be superstitious now the catechism of the catholic church paragraph 21 11 i think if memory serves me correct says that it's not only private devotions as even the sacraments of the church can be approached in a superstitious manner if we approach them with this sort of mechanistic uh performative attitude if i come to the sacraments even the sacraments thinking that the the mere ritual performance of the act apart from contrition and faith and charity that that mere ritual performance will somehow guarantee or force god's hand to give me eternal rewards to approach them in that way is to misappropriate them and to engage in an act of superstition the point of the sacraments is actually to transform my inner life my moral life to conform me to christ so if so the sacraments of terriary even more so the private devotions eight three 833 288 ewtn is our toll-free number 833-288-3986 you know dr anders uh fits in very nicely here at ewtn with the philosophical and theological and intellectual history of a lot of the folks that have been on radio and television here at ewtn and one of the cornerstones of that was father benedict groeschel of happy memory but you can still hear father you can join us for the wisdom of father groeschel saturday mornings at 1 00 a.m eastern time right here on ewtn radio next up is bill in pittsburgh pennsylvania he is listening on the ewtn app bill thanks so much for holding on you're on with dr anders hey bill bill you there well tell you well let's come back to bill we'll try melanie she is in central alabama you know what david you and i are in central alabama yeah and so is melanie um she is watching us on youtube melanie you're on with dr anders hi vader i'm a first time caller and i am just starting the rcia process uh i was supposed to start last year but kobit gives it back i have a friend who raised an objection with me when she found out i was converting she's messianic jewish and her objection was that when the church was first being formed that it mixed pagan doctrine her her premise was primarily pagan paganism into uh christianity and that she had a problem with the catholicism because of that i know the premise is false but how do i explain yeah appreciate i appreciate the question i'm afraid i'm gonna let you down a little bit because i think it's true and it's not a problem right so i uh i mean there's they're pagan authors that are cited in the new testament and the church fathers all looked for points of commonality between the catholic faith and the pagan world their attitude was not all things pagan or bad and if we find any points of commonality between the hebrew bible or the new testament and the pagan world we should therefore reject those elements of the hebrew bible or the new testament their their attitude was rather hey look how christianity fulfills the religious aspiration of pagans and so i mean this is a debatable subject when i'm getting ready to claim right and and i i realize there are contrary points of view on this but john chapter 1 which we quoted earlier in their show where the sacred author speaks about the divine logos the eternal word of god who is god and by whom by which god made all things and who becomes incarnate in the person of jesus and is the true light that enlightens every man the idea of the divine logos as an agent of of of divine creation is not unique to christianity it's clearly a new testament doctrine but we also find something very similar in ancient stoicism and in uh the sort of jewish syncretist writer philo of alexandria and instead of being something to resist or to feel bad about the fathers of the church said yeah this is great this is fantastic this shows that christianity is relevant to the pagan world and and what what say the pagan philosophers were desiring what they were aspiring to they wanted to connect they wanted a way of being drawn into the invisible god who was behind all of reality who had made himself manifest in the consciousness of men through their rationality they wanted a way to know this god and be known by him and yet such a connection eluded them and what the christian faith presented was yes that god that you don't know acts chapter 17 saint paul says the unknown god that you worship i'm going to proclaim to you yes that god became incarnate in the person of jesus christ and so the idea that i should somehow resist either the new testament or or catholicism because we celebrate points of commonality with the religious history of mankind i mean that just strikes me as bizarre i mean why would i want to reject adoption because it speaks to the religious longing of the human race like it somehow has to be garish and and utterly unique and completely like discontinuous with the rest of reality in order to be true that doesn't make sense to me now that she may have other doctrines in mind so for example uh i used to think before i was catholic that all the things about catholicism that i didn't like as a protestant i really didn't like one of the things i found most distasteful about the catholic church was the fact that catholics carry around other people's dead bodies and that we venerated dead bodies and were kissing bones and things like that i thought that was gross and i said because i thought it was so gross i thought surely this can't be intrinsic to christianity this must be something that catholics brought into the faith from say roman paganism and that would make it bad that's how i thought then i actually read the history and what i learned was well that's actually one of the things the pagans hated most about christianity it was a roman emperor named julian the apostate apostate because he'd grown up catholic and left the church and gone back to paganism and what really got under his skin was the fact that catholics were walking around with all these dead bones because see in pagan rome death and the worship of the gods were things that you had to separate so you put cemeteries outside the city you put temples in the city you want the gods to look down on your city and be favorable to you you don't want to put anything unclean in front of the gods you have to be ritually pure so you offer sacrifice in the city you put all your dead stuff outside and what are christians doing well they're running out to the cemeteries and offering mass and then grabbing a bunch of bones and running around the city they're making everything impure they're going to make the gods mad we got to get rid of those christians let's go kill them and i read this and i discovered this and i thought okay well if they didn't import it from paganism where they get it from all i had to do was read the bible the veneration of relics is all over the old testament no place is it more evident than second kings chapter 13 when the the bones of the prophet elisha miraculously bring a dead man back to life think about joseph's command to his descendants that when they leave egypt and go up to the promised land they have to take his bones with them because he insists on being buried in ancestral land why would he do that well because the proper care for the dead was a very high value in israelite religion and uh we see this exemplified in the book of tobit especially where tobit really puts himself out and takes a lot of risk to make sure that that dead jews receive proper burial um when saul and his son jonathan are killed by the philistines and uh you know they're hung up and beheaded the israelites fast for seven days and then go recover the bodies and make sure they're properly disposed of this this this concern for the dead that they receive proper burial and honor and and in turn the relics of the dead being an intermediary between the people of god in heaven this is a deeply old testament hebrew biblical idea that's where the early church got it from and so we could sort of go down point by point in this way and we could delineate okay here are things that catholicism or the new testament brought over from paganism that are really admirable uh you know i mean algebra you know i mean corinthian columns you name it greek philosophy um and uh and here's some things they brought over from judaism and hebrew religion that also strike people is pretty odd like the cult of relics for example um so i i just think the objection is very misguided thanks so much we appreciate it melanie quickly we'll head back to pittsburgh pennsylvania i think bill is ready for us now bill you're on with dr anders good afternoon doctor um can you hear me yeah you're right there okay good um i am a catholic but i have a contention from uh the atheistic world it has me stumped i find myself in the same corner this morning or today with sam harris and i got to get out of there but i don't know how all right what's the problem the resurrection okay and he was uh founding off that all religion requires humans to kill other humans for sacrifice and christianity may be the worst of all in that the celebration of the crucifixion of the god man is uh is abhorrent and so his claim is that god must be abhorrent to require something like this and we must be important to worship in that fashion and i'm wondering what am i missing what am i forgetting what have i overlooked in my faith yeah thanks i appreciate the question well first of all the claim that all religions require one human to kill another is just factually false i mean i i could list several that would defy that stereotype and there's no point in doing it right now but that's just this that's not true um and uh i i think that uh sam harris's contention against christianity is motivated by the protestant understanding of the death of christ which is the death of christ as a necessity imposed by god uh to expiate his wrath on a subject and which does seem to make god into a tyrant um fortunately that's not the catholic view of the of the death of christ the catholic view of the death of christ is that jesus's death is a martyrdom and the actual killing the actual murder of christ is an evil that is punishable that's that's wrong so the agents that put jesus to death were wrong to do so in the catholic understanding but jesus's willing self-sacrifice his willing surrender to this evil of martyrdom is in fact noble and meritorious now sam harris i imagine would valorize uh noble martyrdom in the service of a noble cause like say perhaps the death of martin luther king jr who put himself at risk knowingly put himself at risk for the sake of the civil rights movement and uh uh and so this is a real danger that he was willing to take on and society rightly values that and says this this is a person who's worthy of of note worthy of respect worthy of civic honor because he paid this sort of price in order to achieve the good of civil rights and that's that's precisely the way in which the catholic church regards the death of christ that this is an evil that jesus suffered not metaphysically necessary in an absolute sense god could have redeemed the world in another way but because jesus signed up for it to obey his own divine command evil man strikes you on the left cheek turn to him the other also christ exemplifies this ethic of love and self-sacrifice we regard the death of christ as noble and therefore meritorious and jesus willingly entered into that precisely to confront the problem of human sin the kind of individuals that would put an innocent man to death which is reprehensible in the christian view thanks a lot bill we appreciate that phone call um david just in 30 seconds i hate to do this to you but bradley's watching us on facebook and he's uh had a conversation with someone who told him that religion led to 911 therefore i refuse to be part of any religion sure well that assumes that all religion is the same and it's clearly not so there's one religion that says you should wage holy war against your neighbor in order to kill him or convert him or something and then there's another religion that says you should love your enemy and in that way become sons of your father and uh you know and those are not the same religion so don't join the one join the other on behalf of our host dr david andrews our producer charles bury call screener matt gubinsky and our social media maven mr jeff person i'm jack williams again sitting in for tom price today we hope you have a terrific weekend say a little prayer for the repose of the soul of all of those who lost their lives 20 years ago at that faithful occurrence and pray for the consolation of their families as well so we get together next week god bless cresta in the afternoon presents the truth of the catholic faith

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: q7W3g26tYsg

Length: 54min 10sec (3250 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021