Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - September 20, 2021

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 this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters if you've got a question about the catholic faith this is a wonderful resource for people like you to get those questions answered you can also share with us what is stopping you from becoming a catholic or perhaps returning to the catholic faith of your childhood give us a call here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 if you're listening to us outside of north america please dial the us country code and then 205 271 two nine eight five you can also text the letters ewtn to five five zero zero zero wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message message and data rates may apply and of course you can always send us an email ctc ewtn.com is the address ctc at ewtn.com all right charles berry is our producer matt kabinsky is our phone screener jeff person's on social media if you want to ask a question via youtube or facebook live we're streaming there right now just put your question in the comments box jeff will forward that to us right here in the studio i'm tom price along with dr david anders hey tom how are you today great how are you sir oh i'm doing decent thank you how was that weekend of yours did you get to do the things you wanted to do or the things you it was um you remember the the the pre-socratic philosopher thales i've heard the name and his his uh his one of his propositions his statement about the underlying nature of reality is all is moist [Laughter] and i think we had a we had a weekend that thales would have been proud of here i was i was looking for the ark it was it was all moist it really really was so all that driveway work that i wanted to do oh well oh well there's always books to read right yep all right so we're going to lead off here with an interesting question uh this is from uh lori checking us out on youtube lori says what do you say to someone whose loved one has died and then they say something like oh they're an angel now well we know that humans don't become angels but these folks are grieving so how do you handle grief as a catholic yeah thanks i appreciate the question so i would distinguish between what is the the proper catholic understanding of the of the destiny of the soul after death that's one question and then there's the other question about what is the best pastoral response to someone who's suffering yeah right yeah and we really have to separate those two and so if if i'm dealing with somebody who is grieving and they're in great pain i'm not going to think that this is the opportunity to correct their their their deficient theology right right because like what why ultimately why do i care about theological questions why do i care about theological propositions only ultimately because i'm i hope to form my own and other people's interior lives in according with truth and charity right so that we can we become benevolent people who love god and find god in other people in all it seem in all things right that's why that's why doctrine matters not just so i can beat somebody over the head with the catechism and make them see sense right that's not the point of it um so i think the proper pastoral response to someone who is grieving is to say i love you i'm sorry yeah i think that's the best you can do you know in terms of the catholic position angels are a different species from the human person and they're they're immaterial spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation that's what sacred scripture says about them and so humans don't change species when they die uh and in fact we look forward to the resurrection of the dead when we will have our our mortal body well not our mortal bodies but our physical bodies our human bodies restored to us again not not so that we become this different thing called angels but that we will be glorified human beings that's the catholic position okay very good and uh lori thanks for checking us out on youtube kathy is watching on facebook she says my husband this is actually another angel question my husband converted to catholicism last year at the age of 72 listening to you while he was attending rcia certainly helped with his desire and conviction to become a catholic since coming into full communion with the church he absolutely loves being catholic now he was raised as a lutheran and was never really told about our guardian angels he doesn't deny their existence but seems to have difficulty understanding their importance any suggestions for how i can help him with this um well the fact that the church says that we have guardian angels and that it is beneficial to cultivate a relationship of intercessory prayer with them should suffice i mean this is the teaching of the church and the teaching of christ and i mean obviously one's devotion to one's guardian angel does not have to be the preeminent devotion in one's life right that should be to christ right of course yeah yeah um but uh uh and so i think you know keeping things in proportion and balance is adequate and in fact if you know if he doesn't have a particularly strong devotion to his guardian angel that's that's that's not a terrible thing uh that's all right you used to live a robust catholic life um but but this is the teaching of the church and the practice of the church i mean that's that's essentially the reason we do it because divine revelation has told us that this is uh this is the case and it's it's good for us to pray to our guardian angel as well as all the angels and all the saints um i i find particular comfort in the idea that there is an angel appointed specifically to me to watch over me protect me especially from spiritual harm and uh and to think about the fact that you know i mean this this fellow's hanging out and you know he he's watching what i'm doing and maybe that'll also give me pause if i think about getting into something i shouldn't get into yeah i got this i got this heavenly friend with me all the time trying to help me along the path and protect me from danger and especially from uh from the danger of sin and uh and i should both take advantage of that and also respect that is it a good idea to name your guardian angel well you know there people are of two minds on that question okay right and our own beloved and dear mother angelica of course uh had it was very conscious of her devotion to her grand angel and she liked to give him a name right and so i respect that other people take the position that if god wanted us to know their names he'd told us and uh so i'll just leave it at that okay sounds good well thank you so much for your questions via youtube and facebook uh by the way if you want to now you don't have to be on facebook or youtube to send us a question via email and that address ctc at ewtn.com ctc at ewtn.com no matter how you correspond with us we would love to hear from you especially on the phones right now since we are live on this monday afternoon rather soggy afternoon our phone number 833 288 ewtn if you have a question for dr david anders 833-288-3986 [Music] call to communion with dr david andrews here on ewtn stay with us [Music] i feel really blessed to be able to go on ewtn radio and answer questions from people all over the world at times their intellectual questions at times their emotional questions the important thing is being able to help people with what's of concern to them and how they can grow closer to god catholic answers live tonight 6 eastern on ewtn radio this is a messy family minute with mike and alicia hernan summer's over and change is on the horizon school is starting new schedules sports and activities are ramping up natural response for most parents might be panic i'm overwhelmed already plus family life is just full of unexpected transitions too a baby's on the way someone's sick we're moving or all three at once the temptation is to let good habits and discipline slide during these times of transition how can you as a parent use transitions instead of being run over by them in our family board meeting guide we encourage families to define their family's values and cast a vision use times of transition to go back to those values and vision and refocus seize the moment to start a new habit or correct a bad one and remember that our god is always there offering us grace ask him for his provision then tackle the transitions as a couple knowing that you're children of a loving father to learn more about creating a vision for your family visit us at messyfamilyminute.org [Music] call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn radio our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's we do have a couple of 833-288-3986 lines so do give us a call at eight three three two eight eight ewtn love to talk with you i think david uh that when people get to be of a certain age glasses are pretty much gonna happen yeah right yep you're wearing them i'm wearing them pretty much everybody i know either wears uh glasses or or contacts the question is how do you keep those glasses from getting smushed if you're you know setting them down someplace or switching between sunglasses and regular glasses here's something you might want to consider hard shell eyeglasses case with the sacred heart of jesus right there on the case how cool is this protect your glasses with the sturdy wooden case with a crushed velvet lining each case is hand painted with a high gloss finish and a decoupage icon of the sacred heart of jesus right there on the top this beautiful item is imported from russia very cool this hard shell eyeglass case now available at ewtnrc.com free standard shipping for online orders of 75 or more just put eyeglasses case in the search box i'm sure you'll see it right away ewtnrc.com very cool thing to have there for you or a loved one if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we're going to begin today with bob bob is in houston and uh let's see here uh clicking on this there we go and listen to guadalupe radio hey there bob happy monday to you what's on your mind today i'd just like to have a little deeper understanding of the first the attitude first beatitude yeah thank you so blessed are the poor in spirit um right so of course when luke tells the gives us the beatitudes he he changes it says blessed are the poor matthew tells us blessed are the poor in spirit so i think there's a number of ways we can read this one of them is poverty of spirit indicates our own awareness of our spiritual poverty right like like the in the parable of the uh the uh tax collector and the pharisee and the pharisees says i thank you god and i that i'm such a great guy and i'm not like this tax collector over here and the tax collector says lord have mercy on me a sinner that man is poor in spirit right he he's not putting on air isn't thinking himself greater than he ought to be right um you know another one would be one's disposition was interior disposition towards wealth right that i'm not uh engaged in just trying to acquire property and aggrandize myself in that way but i'm content with what i have and i you know maintain a dispassionate detached attitude towards material wealth or towards material well-being i mean these are two different ways of reading it um your father emerick vote dominican priest who has been a guest on ewtn sometimes says that i like this quote he says humility is not thinking less of yourself it's thinking of yourself less yes and i think that's another kind of detachment that that could be uh uh characteristic of the poor in spirit those who are not concerned with building up their own self-identity uh but rather thinking less of them thinking less frequently less often of themselves and more about other people okay is that helpful for you bob yeah i guess the the issue is i've been doing some internet searching and i've come up with some of those and it uh it seemed like it could be interpreted several different ways and i just wonder if there's one kind of solid hardcore but they all they're all kind of related but uh it's something that was kind of like a you know sure so you know someplace else i would encourage you to go is to to read some of the classic catholic commentaries on the sermon on the mountain the beatitudes in particular i'd direct you to saint augustine's commentaries on the sermon on the mount bob thanks so much for your call that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 call to communion with dr david anders here on this monday afternoon on ewtn radio rhonda is listening in dubuque on the great aquinas communications hey there rhonda what's on your mind today hello my question is do you think there is a common thread between the ark of the covenant and noah's ark perhaps it was like god's people were saved in the flood and the covenant is there to save all of us that live by god's way thank you i appreciate the question so i'll admit up front that i am not a good hebrew scholar nor the son of one but but my very tangential awareness of biblical hebrew and correct me you hebrew scholars if i've got this wrong but i don't think it's the same hebrew word i think we have two different hebrew words that are being translated into english with the same english word arc so linguistically i don't think there's an immediate connection that would be apparent in the text now and i'd have to go back and check the way the septuagint translates it into greek i don't know off the top of my head um but i would say in this respect there's a there's a commonality right um that all of the biblical covenants whether we're talking about the covenant with adam uh the covenant with um with noah the covenant with moses the covenant with david ultimately the new covenant in christ is associated with certain visible types and symbols uh that represent or or emblematic of uh the particular covenant now interestingly in the account of noah um it's the rainbow that is identified as the covenant sign rather than rather than the ark as such but when the new testament looks at genesis chapter 6 and the story of the flood it rather is the ark itself that saint peter points to as a sign and type and allegory of christian baptism right and the flood and being saved from the flood uh through the ark so there is would that be an archetype uh it is an archetype that's a thing before we get the word yeah couldn't resist jung was just reading uh you know genesis that's right that's right um so um uh you know so it is associated with the biblical covenant it obviously that's that's the image that comes most frequently to mind when we think about the story of noah in the same way the ark of the covenant different word um is associated with the mosaic covenant that's a type and symbol of the of that covenant so i do think it's it's significant typologically in that way um interestingly this weekend i was driving around downtown birmingham and we had a lot of rain and there was a tremendous rainbow tremendous rainbow that covered the entire expanse of the sky from one end to the other i've never like a perfect 180 degree arc you know in the sky and i turned to my wife and i said well god's promised not to kill us by drowning today that's right that's what the text says oh yeah you dodged the bullet there yep there you go rhonda thank you so much for your call call to communion here on ewtn with dr david anders our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833 280 interesting question here from austin watching us today on youtube austin says a proper disposition is needed to receive grace in sacraments and they are not magic of course but i struggle to answer protestants who just can't see why an infant couldn't reject baptismal grace they want to know why an infant can't reject baptismal grace what it says i'm trying to wrap my head around the question like do they want infants to reject baptismal grace you know or or are they puzzled by the fact that the infant has no agency in the question that the infant's not given the opportunity maybe that's what they're interested in they think perhaps so yeah perhaps the infant has to have personal agency uh uh you know and to choose the sacrament voluntarily in order for it to be efficacious well who says like based on what yeah that's certainly not how i experience grace i doubt it's how they've experienced grace you know i'm i'm a catholic today because oddly enough i was born in birmingham alabama and raised by presbyterian parents that taught me to venerate both the bible and sacred history and to follow the evidence where it where it leads and i'm not responsible for those attitudes or that formation that's something that came to me entirely without my choice yeah and uh there were assumptions and attitudes that were given to me in virtue of which i became catholic i mean that was that was a one form that grace took in my life including my own infant baptism as a presbyterian child right that all ultimately led me to catholicism and to an explicit and conscious act of faith and divine revelation that was developmental in my life and a response to all of those graces that had come before prevenient grace as saint augustine puts it um and i i would venture to suggest that everyone who's ever had any experience of god's grace they they certainly didn't choose it in that sense i mean god comes to them through instruments through agents through people through a book they find uh through a preacher they've encountered through a relationship they had um and uh and they're afforded these things through no goodness or merit of their own none of us experience grace as some sort of radically autonomous free choice but then having received grace we suddenly become very conscious of our participation in a way that in fact liberates us from our own pride and concupiscence and egotism all right call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn back to the phones now at 833 288 ewtn here is jennifer in cleveland listening on am 1260 the rock hey there jennifer what's on your mind today okay my question is um my father just passed away and i have been involved in funerals before but they usually mention that you know your dad is going to heaven but yet where in the world then does purgatory come in yeah thanks i really appreciate the question and you're right that that is often the way at catholic funerals priests tend to sort of conveniently or inconveniently as the case may be forget the catholic doctrine of the afterlife and i think their motive for doing so i think their hearts in the right place even though they may be deviating somewhat you know from the church they want to comfort people in their sorrow and they don't want to leave them you know thinking that their loved one might be suffering uh but that kind of presumption i think is misguided and i think there's another way they can get to the same end of providing comfort for for the loved ones of those who've passed on without actually without actually canonizing their loved one on the spot which is essentially what the priest is doing he's doing what only the uh only the pope uh and and universal church have the authority to do which is to make a declaration of canonization right and we don't know that any particular person unless the church has canonized them has gone to heaven um so what might they do instead uh they could say you know your loved one lived a seemingly holy and catholic life and and died with the sacraments and uh and and therefore you know we have a really solid basis for hope yeah and and we have we're not they're not totally removed from us and and they're things that we can do to be in communion with them and in particular the church says that we should pray for the souls of the dead and and we can have the confidence that no prayer is ever wasted so if they need those prayers well that's going to help and if they don't need them they'll pass them on to the next guy yeah you know and uh uh you know so i don't think there's anything in pious to for an individual to say i know this person that died and i can tell you that they were a faithful and holy soul and i certainly am not conscious of any grave sin in their life and they seem to even maybe have exhibited heroic charity and so i personally am of the opinion that they're probably in heaven like that's a fine attitude to take and uh you know i have loved ones that have passed on and i sort of feel that way about them so here's what i do i cover all my bases i go visit my father's grave and i say okay dad pray for me and if you need it i'll pray for you all right we're done we're covered we'll get all the bases covered you know yeah and uh i certainly don't despair no certainly don't despair okay is that helpful for you jennifer yes it is yes it is all right thank you so much for your call i want to make sure that something isn't you know being done that's not you know true or whatever now probably if he had he assumed he had a catholic funeral yes he did well then you know so the whole catholic funeral is predicated on the possibility of purgatory that's why you have a funeral mask you know something like the what what the priest is saying one thing with his mouth and doing something completely different with his behavior which is to offer a mass for the repose of his soul yeah jennifer thank you so much for your call very sorry to hear about your dad though question here from a reader of the call to communion website i need suggestions on how to get my new age thinking friend who was raised catholic back to the faith my praying doesn't seem to work she follows edgar cayce's stuff and talks about reincarnation and seeing dead people as a child yeah thanks really appreciate the question so again we have two different questions here one of them is what do we say to edgar casey and you know new age uh superstition and the other one is how do you get somebody who's locked up in that stuff to see reason yeah and those are two very different questions all right so let me speak to the first one first well casey was a fraud and i mean you don't have to go to catholic sources you can look up secular sources evaluating casey's alleged revelations and prophecies uh and they're false casey predicted the second coming of christ i think in 1998. well here we are i mean and and many such things he predicted the destruction of los angeles last time i checked los angeles is still there you know and uh and he's like so many charlatans and hucksters uh and you know quack mystics down through the centuries who are skillful uh psychological manipulators and they're able to weave a compelling story and put a lot of emotion into it and attract the attention of the vulnerable and the easily manipulated and uh and you know to perform seeming wonders and so forth and use the power of suggestion and maybe the placebo effect to to to manipulate people into thinking they've been cured of of you know mild illnesses and things like that and then that's people have a profound desire to believe people have a profound desire to uh to lay hold of an invisible world because they want they want suffering to be alleviated they want some voice of consolation to come from the to them from the beyond and they're just like when you read a good novel they're willing to engage in the very credulous suspension of disbelief in order to get that in in order to get that solace but i mean it's easily falsified by just looking at the content of the alleged prophecies and so they didn't occur they didn't occur yeah the guy's obviously a fake you know how do you get someone to see that well that's a different question and uh you know because a lot of times they'll have answers to these defeaters you know oh well that was just the prophecy for the unwary you know i mean that sort of thing you know but the the explanations become increasingly ad hoc and eventually they defy credibility yeah well he wasn't the first one to come along and i'm guessing he won't be the last one nope afraid not all right uh thank you so much for your question we've got a got to take a quick break here but we would love to get your question at 833 288 ewtn it's called a communion with dr david anders [Music] the words of blessed carlos ogutis our goal must be infinite not finite the infinite is our homeland heaven has been waiting for us forever christ is the answer with father john ricardo i tell often times in experience that i had at divine child when i was a young priest one year ordained first time i ever really saw the power of the blessed sacrament and we simply exposed the blessed sacrament at the end of mass one night i encouraged people i said you know what we've been in the habit of praying over people after mass i said we're not going to do that this week i'm just going to invite people to come out up and pray if they want to pray and i put the blessed sacrament on the altar i kneel down as i kneel down the church is in the sanctuary the whole church and as i'm looking at this and i'm looking at the people there and i'm looking at jesus under the appearance of bread there i saw the lord standing on the altar and he's just standing there looking out at all the people and then at a certain point he turned towards me and he just bowed and he says don't you see how easy this is you don't have to do anything you just have to put me out you put me out and i will work if you have a few minutes a day you can become an ewtn media missionary in your parish in your community or through prayer be a part of mother angelica's mission place your gifts and strengths in service to christ and his church by volunteering your time and sharing the eternal word with the world visit ewtnmissionaries.com today ewtn the global catholic network hi this is psychelette join us later today on catholic answers live as we do our best to explain and defend the catholic faith catholic answer is live 6 p.m eastern on ewtn radio now back to call of the communion with dr david anderson [Music] what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's 833-288-3986 all right let's go to uh john in st louis listening on the great covenant radio john what's on your mind today hi uh thank you for taking my call my question is what is the difference between consequentialism and gradualism yeah thanks appreciate the question so consequentialism is the moral theory that you evaluate the morality of an act in terms of its consequences or in view of its consequences uh gradualism and that's false by the way consequentialism is contrary to catholic moral principles because it can justify anything well that has good consequence therefore i can go shoot you in the head right i mean you can justify anything yeah this is this completely false moral theory right uh the catholics have a different position which is you evaluate the morality of an act on a number of terms one of them is the moral object has to be intrinsically good in itself right if i'm aiming to shoot you in the head to prevent some tragedy the moral object i'm aiming at is shooting you in the head but this other thing is a consequence it's an effect but i'm actually intending your death which is intrinsically immoral therefore i can't do it regardless of the consequences now catholic church kind of flips that upside down and looks at it this way you have to intend a good moral object but sometimes good moral objects come with negative consequences that you don't intend okay and the act is not vitiated just because it has a bad consequence if if the moral object itself the one that is specifically desired that's the term of the act the end of the specific act is itself an appropriate moral object you know taken with a right intention and with the right circumstances right and that we do this all the time we always are engaging in moral decision making and we cannot see we can't foresee all the consequences of our actions sometimes we even can and you've got to pick a situation where the right thing to do is going to have an undesired but unavoidable negative consequence that doesn't make the moral act itself intrinsically wrong but again consequentialism is the opposite of that it's evaluating the morality of an act strictly based on the consequences of the act not the moral object itself so it's wrong we reject consequentialism gradualism however is a beautiful moral principle of the catholic church and essentially teaches it is better to do less evil than more and it's it's better to do you know some virtue rather than none well that's patently obvious right and that's that's that's a beautiful teaching so you know you take somebody who's mired in a very complex difficult and bad moral situation uh you know like take take an example you got somebody who's who's addicted to you know i don't know he's got he's on five different drugs he's an alcoholic and he smokes too much all right he's in a bad way and you get him to cut down to half a pack a day like you have not solved the guy's problems right right but you've taken a step in the right direction that's intrinsically worth taking yeah and so if you can if you can move the ball down the field you know at all in the direction of appropriate moral object you're moving in the right direction and that's worth doing and that most of our moral development and growth in life has that form i mean most of us don't step out of the baptismal font perfect right you know and and uh and and we where we go forward in in halting you know steps we take two one step forward and two steps back and all that kind of business that's just the way people develop morally and and it's worth the uphill battle it's worth the struggle you're never going to get to perfection except one step at a time just say same way you eat an elephant you know one bite at a time that's right thank you so much john thank you for your call call to communion with dr david andrews here on ewtn radio we go to lamar in winterhaven florida listening on the ewtn app lamar what's on your mind today hey good afternoon guys uh thanks for taking my call sure i was reading i was reading through um saint robert bellarmine uh the other day on his thesis i just started reading a book by him and it was the one on the pontiff the contra of their cease and he was starting he was going you know these guys are attacking the pontiff and he said you know it's nothing new in history christ predicted it in matthew's gospel that uh you know this rock would be a target uh he says and right now it's the calvinist that the lutherans and it's the anabaptist and i went i kind of scratched my head and i went anabaptist i wasn't familiar with them and i said it seemed like john smith was around 1800 and i said well let me just call my good protestant uh resource dr david anders and see what he can fill me in on the anabaptist and if there's any connection with the baptist sure absolutely so anabaptism emerged out of the church in zurich in the 1520s uh ulrich zwingli was a reform minister reformed minister in that in that city and he was uh the protestant reformation that emerged in switzerland typically is understood as reformed protestantism as opposed to lutheran protestantism uh zwingli was its was its progenitor but its most famous exponent was john calvin who sort of moved it a little bit in a different direction from zwingli um and uh zwingli had rejected um catholic sacramental theology rather vociferously and and preached the importance of personal conversion and and the sacraments being merely symbolic and this sort of thing and so there were some folks in his congregation that heard that and said well if that's true if what you're saying is true then there's no value in infant baptism because i mean how can it's not affecting conversion if it's if it's just a symbol and they can't rationally cognize the symbol then it's not effective in them and therefore they rejected infant baptism and they called for the baptism of believers only um and uh um and and they thus was born the anabaptist means to be baptized again re-baptism um the anabaptist movement now they had other characteristic doctrines other than adulterer believers baptism they also tended to reject uh christian involvement in civil life and civil civil politics and many of them had um sort of radical and apocalyptic notions about the end of time um and you know rejection of various uh social mores and things of that sort some of them you know tilted into revolutionary rhetoric um and for all of these reasons they were pretty much anathema both to the magisterial protestants as well as the catholic church because they were really really socially disruptive i mean when you're saying that christians can't be involved in the civil government or civil polity in a society that's almost entirely christian yeah i mean that's it's tantamount to a call for for anarchism and you know that combined with their apocalyptic theology could be very destabilizing and uh and baptism infant baptism was not only theologically important to catholics as well as to reformed protestants but it was also sort of the glue that held civil society together as a christian polity and so the the more than just uh sort of you know secondary or ancillary sacramental theology was a stake the whole the whole civil order was at stake in the anabaptist question so for that reason um protestants and catholics alike both turned on the anabaptists and honestly they they were persecuted worse than probably any other group in the reformation because they never did control any particular government right they were never a majority population and they certainly weren't you know holding the reins of power and everybody liked to beat up on them so they had a pretty rough time of it you know and some of the groups the modern groups that have come down to us from anabaptist tradition are the mennonites named after their founder minnow simons and also the amish and you may be familiar with the amish we have a lot of them in the midwest upper midwest in the united states pennsylvania as well who are an offshoot of the midnight tradition and um and so today the anabaptist tradition is alive and well and anabaptists vary between themselves among themselves pretty widely on how rigorously they apply some of those early anabaptist principles they typically to this day remain pacifists uh but maybe not as as wholesale against any involvement in civil society unless of course you're in the amish and they're still pretty hardcore you know separationists right yeah and but with like in the larger mennonite tradition you'll find typically uh you know an aversion to um to serving in in in in the army and many of them are pacifists they're conscious objectors during the vietnam war that sort of thing um and uh and today the catholic church attitude towards mennonites and amish and anabaptist people is like towards protestants as well that we we celebrate that you have many things in common with them many elements of truth and sanctification that they possess uh in their communions and we wish them well but those are the historical origins and those are some of the places that we differ there you go lamar thanks so much for your call call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn radio want to remind you to be sure to join us for take two with jerry and debbie that's tomorrow at noon eastern tomorrow on the program is your parish life thriving or barely surviving tune in jerry and debbie want to hear from you take two with jerry and debbie tomorrow at noon eastern right here on ewtn radio it's one of our exclusives let's go now to uh lisa in tulsa lisa is listening on the ewtn app hey lisa what's on your mind today um thanks for taking my call so i'm reading um and after each major section there's a protestant response um and the one after the priesthood the particular guy um i can't remember his name actually and i don't have the book in front of me but so he writes a response and he says before 160 a.d current day protestants may disagree of course this was written back in 1963 or whenever um might disagree with the catholic church's interpretation of what it meant to be a priest like for instance anybody could be a bishop anybody could do communion um people could confess their sins to one another they didn't need a priest and he mentions this date 160 a.d but he doesn't give a reason why do you know of anything significant of that date yeah sure thanks i appreciate the question so um i i know this argument i'm familiar with this argument and it is largely an argument from silence right um because the earliest documents that we have on the christian church are you know internal to the church and they are they're the epistles of paul and the four gospels right and these are written you know from the 40s a.d up until the end of the century you know the earliest paul line epistles or maybe 10 20 years after the after the ascension of christ and the gospels are probably written around 70 a.d and later um and then we get a little bit of occasional literature at the very beginning of the 2nd century the early 100s but they're not dogmatic treatises they're like i said occasional texts that are dealing with local controversies um now within those texts we should add we have uh the letters of ignatius of antioch which have a very high doctrine of the priesthood and the episcopacy and certainly don't fit into the interpretive schema that your friend has articulated right but some scholars would argue that ignatius's letters represent only a wing of early christianity and are not characteristic of the whole thing um and you know they have but there's not a lot of there are no texts there are no coherent narratives about christian life that would that would reveal this this democratic populist christianity that they're positing i mean this is a this is a critical reconstruction an imaginative reconstruction based in part on the absence of of evidence rather than the evidence of absence and uh and i think also a a you know a discomfort with the orthodox catholic story and they're looking for ways to kind of devalue that now when you get into the middle of the second century we have a lot more literature from catholic writers from the likes of tertullian in north africa irenaeus of leon in southern france and other sources as well and then we do begin to see real ecclesiological debate about the role of the pope and the bishops and the authority of the magisterium and the coherence of the catholic project and some of that of course is political literature that's dealing with controversies with outsiders and so you can you can tell you can tell a story about a construction of catholic orthodoxy you know out of those out of those uh controversies and you can impose that on the data you know to give your own sort of critical reconstruction but again like i said a lot of this is an argument from silence which is ultimately not compelling and i think says more about the higher critical prejudices of the of the these polemicists right than it does about actually early catholic history now that being said i would add that catholics have no problem with the idea that there could have been or probably was diversity in in christian ecclesiologies in the first century like that's not a problematic claim for a catholic so if you if you if you do want to say well look here's this community over here and they weren't ordaining bishops and they were doing this crazy thing okay well that the new testament is largely concerned with nothing else other than dissenting and heretical groups running off and doing their own business yeah right so in the new testament itself bears witness to the fact that there was diversity in the early christian communities and you know the apostles are largely involved in trying to get everybody on board right it's not sure you know it can't it a little bit boils down to well you know what's your what's your philosophical presupposition about the significance of ancient christian history as well and how you're going to read that data um but i'd say i don't know that the year 160 in particular stands out for any particular reason other than that it's in the mid second century that we begin to see uh you know much more literature from catholic writers dealing with ecclesiological questions appreciate your call lisa call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn radio let's go to tom now he's a first time caller listening in st louis on covenant radio hey there tom what's on your mind today i have a question about the perpetual virginity of mary a catholic friend of mine we're both catholics he argues that she is not a virgin after the birth of jesus that she went ahead and had children and he says it's answered somewhere i think in luke at the wedding at kanish that she showed up with her children i said no you've got that wrong it's definitely she was a perpetual virgin for her entire life and i just wanted for dr andrews to be able to answer that and point me in a direction to where i can prove to him that he's not correct yeah sure so how about the catechism of the catholic church paragraph 499. there you go which teaches emphatically that the blessed virgin mary is ever virgin right so it's the dogmatic teaching of the church and you know you could also look to uh other you know other digests of magisterial teaching ludwig book fundamentals of catholic dogma um is a useful one for sort of pinning down the sources on the of you know for catholic dogmas of various kinds uh but your catechism is authoritative so you can go to there now um the this suggestion that mary showed up at the wedding feast of cana with other kids is just i mean go read john chapter two it ain't in there i mean that's just fantastic fanciful now there are texts in the gospels saint matthew's gospel in particular uh what is it chapter 13 i think that speak about jesus's brothers and sisters right but they never say that they were children of the blessed virgin never say they were children of the blessed virgin and if you trace out the lineage if you look at what is it matthew 27 and john chapter 19 you have to kind of do the uh the you know the cross column harmonization but if you read out the genealogies it's fairly evident that the kids that are being referred to are the children of mary the wife of clopas right who was a cousin to the blessed virgin mary so they are jesus's cousins and simply referred to in sacred scripture with the term brethren uh the way we often do colloquially colloquially today ain't that right brother that is right brother yeah exactly so yeah that headache never says they were children of the blessed virgin mary never never never okay there you go and when thank you so much uh for your call tom it's a call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn glad you could join us on this monday afternoon soggy uh notwithstanding here is a lorraine now lorraine is in baton rouge listening on our great partner there catholic community radio lorraine what's on your mind today yes i was thinking about the holy communion and how we are supposed to be in the state of grace when we receive holy communion but you have a family member or someone that's supposed to know not to receive communion because of their state that there hadn't been the church or and they decided they're going to go without confession to communion and so forth and on and i wanted to know in my situation if i committed the sin of a mission if i don't really say anything because i think they ought to know better yeah what i'm saying yeah sure thank you i appreciate the question so here's what catholic moral theologians say on the work of mercy called admonishing the center obviously we cannot admonish every center for every cent if we did we would do nothing all day long but go around admonishing people and we would not make any friends or influence people right yeah um so that's not gonna work so what kind of criteria should we apply to determine when we really should do something and here's what here's what catholic moral theologians will tell us the first of all is the matter grave okay is it grave secondly is the person i'm speaking to likely to listen do i do i have a some kind of objective basis for for uh presuming that they will actually respond to the admonition a priest friend of ours would say is he in receiving are they in receive mode and then finally are you the best person to make the admonition because maybe they need to be admonished but maybe we would get more traction if the admonition came from someone else okay now if if you know in your prudential judgment in any situation if you're faced with a grave evil the person is likely to respond when instructed and you are the right person the best person to make the admonition then yeah you've got a moral obligation to act um those circumstances are rare they really are when you consider the number of grave problems you run into in life that would actually qualify i'd say they're rare uh you know when it comes to this question probably the best person to make the admonition in my judgment is the priest the minister of holy communion and i know here at ewtn in the ewtn chapel they just make an announcement before every mass about what a proper disposition to receive communion looks like and to please examine yourself and see if you fall into that camp and if you don't please don't come to communion right um and uh so that's very useful and that's that's that's an easy way of getting the job done a lot of times family members are like the worst people to make these admonitions because you know we already know what uncle dave is going to say or we already know what uncle tom is going to say we've been down that road with them and we know better and we're not going to listen you're just going to end up provoking antagonism and they may double down on the behavior to show you how wrong you are in which case you haven't really advanced them to virtue at all so the goal here is not to be right the goal is to help you know so put your own conscience at ease unless of course you think you meet those three qualifications okay lorraine thank you so much for your call we have time for one more let's go to a barbara in south carolina hey barbara what's on your mind today well i would like to know where um the doctor gets his information about edgar cayce public domain sources like wikipedia to be honest with you i mean i i don't claim to be an expert in casey but i mean i've read casually about his life and uh ended a little harsh to make that kind of a judgment that he is a charlatan well do you think that he accurately predicted the return of christ in 1998 uh no i i don't think he predicted that he never gave i've studied him for 60 years and i'm an about methodist but i've studied him for 60 years and i found that you know he never gave dates he would give you instances where if this happened and that happened then uh you know something else was more likely to happen like the earth changes and so unverifiable prophecies in other words uh right he didn't well that's not very useful i would suggest right i mean if he's going to make prophecies and predictions about the future if they're unverifiable then they're unfalsifiable and then we've got no rational grounds to believe him or not but i mean from this issue i would just suggest that i mean if a genuine open-minded rational response to any claim of revelation or any authoritative claim at all right would be that it's responsive to evidence right i'm an ideologue or i'm superstitious if my own belief in someone's authority is not responsive to evidence so uh i would suggest a good scientific approach to this is you you you verify something scientifically by trying to falsify it so with respect to edward casey or anybody like that do your dead level best to disprove their teaching go read the skeptical accounts go read the criticism with an open mind regardless of how threatening that might be and uh and uh and if you think it withstands all of that criticism uh then we can have another conversation but i'm just like i said i'm just reflecting what's publicly available about casey and and debunkers and not not catholic debunkers but secular debunkers people who are you know just evaluating the claims that he made so that's what i would recommend barbara thank you so much for your call and uh for your question we do appreciate hearing from you in south carolina i have time for actually one more here from bruce watching us on facebook he says sometimes i i've wondered about this for years often after a catholic makes the sign of the cross they will kiss their thumbnail why is that to me it looks kind of weird you know that's a good question and i i have i have witnessed the practice and i have performed the practice and to be honest with you i've never actually investigated the origin of the practice except that that kissing is a sign of reverence that that catholics perform in a lot of devotional acts and since i have i'm just shooting from the hip here right maybe from maybe i'm shooting from the thumb but you know when i've used my own hand in a sort of you know quasi-sacramental function not not a sacramental function right but i mean i'm i'm invoking the blessing of the church and so forth that like i said kissing is an act of reverence and it's sort of like kissing the cross you know catholics venerate the cross and they kiss the image of the cross and the image of christ on the cross and i've got sort of a performative cross here in my hand that's the best i can do in terms of an answer yeah sometimes you can make and i've seen people do this they will make a little cross with the thumb and the forefinger now that's nifty so if that's what they're doing if that's what they're doing then they are kissing the cross right there you know i remember reading john of the cross one time on on venerating the cross as an act of devotion and you know he was advising people take a cross along with you and kiss it and you don't have to get fancy you can lash two sticks together you know always use but just kiss the cross it's a good thing to do definitely all right very good and uh we thank everybody for all their wonderful questions today because that's really what this program is all about uh getting those questions answered and asking you a question what is stopping you from becoming a catholic hey dr david anders thank you sir thanks tom remember we do program monday through friday at 2 p.m eastern here on ewtn radio we also bring you an encore every evening at 11 p.m eastern 8 p.m pacific time great way to get uh get caught up but a perfect way to get caught up is listening on demand at ewtnradio.net you can listen to the show whenever you wish ewtnradio.net on behalf of our wonderful team behind the glass here and that would be uh charles and matt and jeff they do a super job every day i'm tom price along with dr david anders see you tomorrow here on ewtn radio's call to communion god bless he is honored by the church as a saint with the title of the seraphic doctor matthew bunson and the doctors of the church one of the greatest

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: aKMNj5CY9tw

Length: 54min 10sec (3250 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021