Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - 05/21/26

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[00:00:00]TN News Link. I'm Anna Mitchell from the Sunrise Morning Show. The teenage suspects accused of killing three people at a San Diego mosque appear to have been radicalized by online extremism.

[00:00:10]The two male suspects killed themselves after Monday's attack. NBC News reports they left behind a 75page document filled with neo-Nazi ideology and hate speech about Muslims and others. And nearly 500,000 people have already registered for major public events during Pope Leo's upcoming visit to Spain. Organizers say about 250,000 people signed up for the Corpus Christi mass in procession, while another 160,000 registered for a June 6th vigil.

[00:00:37]Additional events in the Canary Islands in Barcelona are also expected to draw tens of thousands of attendees. For more news with a Catholic perspective, visit EWTN.com.

[00:00:48]Call to Communion with Dr. David Anders starts now.

[00:00:56]>> What's stopping you? you >> from becoming a Catholic?

[00:01:00]>> Why can't women become priests?

[00:01:02]>> Why do Catholics worship Mary?

[00:01:03]>> What's stopping you?

[00:01:04]>> Why do I need to confess my sins to a priest? Where is purgatory in the Bible?

[00:01:09]>> What's stopping you?

[00:01:10]>> I think the Pope has too much authority.

[00:01:12]>> What's stopping you?

[00:01:14]>> You are called to communion with Dr. David Anders on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network.

[00:01:22]>> Hey there. Welcome again to Call to Communion here on EWTN. Glad you could join us. This program is for our non-atholic brothers and sisters. If you've got a question about the Catholic faith and maybe you're not quite sure where to go to get the definitive answer, as in what does the church actually teach, by golly, you've come to the right place. Here's our phone number, 833288 EWTN. Call or text 833-2883986.

[00:01:51]If you are texting us, please give us your uh first name, where you're calling from, how you're listening to us, and uh your brief question, message, and data rates may apply for some folks. Again, that phone number 833288 EWTN. Outside North America, please dial 1 and then 205271-2985.

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[00:02:22]Pedro Keelles, our producer. Matt Kabinsky, our phone screener. Ace McKay is handling social media. I'm Tom Price along with Dr. David Anders.

[00:02:29]>> Tom, how are you today?

[00:02:30]>> I'm doing great. How about you, my friend?

[00:02:32]>> Doing decent, thank you.

[00:02:33]>> Got an interesting question here from uh Eaves who says, "Why would God want the church to be diminished or almost extinct and give Satan the power to destroy at the end of time?

[00:02:47]So I I don't know that the church will be diminished and almost extinct by the end of time. I don't think God has revealed that. Um so I I don't concede the premise of the question.

[00:02:59]>> Okay.

[00:03:00]>> I will concede that there are plenty of evils that humans and Christians confront on a daily basis for which we cannot give intelligible explanations.

[00:03:12]>> Yeah. and playing the let me think of a good reason why God would allow this game I think is a losing game.

[00:03:19]>> It is.

[00:03:19]>> And we have a whole book in the Bible about the problem of trying to explain divine providence in the face of evil.

[00:03:27]It's called the book of Job. And the interesting thing about the book of Job is course Job under goes horrific suffering. All of his friends are lay theologians. They all understand perfectly well why he's suffering. They tell him why this is happening and they tell him what to do about it. God shows up at the end of the book and he says, "You guys are all wrong."

[00:03:48]Job's only response is to be griefstricken and indignant.

[00:03:54]God says, "Job's closer to the truth than you guys on this one, and I'm not going to hear your prayers, but I'll hear Job's."

[00:04:01]And then God refuses to give an explanation.

[00:04:05]The entire book is a kind of parable on the unintelligibility of evil.

[00:04:09]>> Yeah, appreciate that. And uh thank you, Eve, for your email. We're uh taking those calls from you at 833288 EWTN. They're coming in right now.

[00:04:20]833288-3986.

[00:04:23]Call us or text us. Here's a question from Michael. I'm an extraordinary eukaristic minister and I was wondering if I have the ability to bless children who come up during communion.

[00:04:35]>> No.

[00:04:36]>> Yeah. Don't do that.

[00:04:37]>> You don't have that authority. Yeah. You are, as one priest we know says, shooting blanks. You saw that.

[00:04:44]>> Very good. Michael, thanks so much for your email. Here's one now from Victor.

[00:04:48]I heard someone once mention that Adam and Eve were not the first humans but rather part of a tribe of spiritual people. Can you explain this?

[00:04:59]>> Yeah. So, the biblical narrative doesn't know anything about any human tribes of which Adam and Eve are a part. Okay.

[00:05:07]>> All right. Um, however, anthropology and biology have a lot to say on this subject. And what we know about biological evolution and and homminid species and and uh and prehomoc sapien homminids and so forth is that um you know evolution happens within populations, not within singular individuals.

[00:05:29]And and the genetic evidence would strongly suggest a polygenetic origin of the human species. meaning, you know, this you don't just have a population of homminids and then suddenly, you know, Adam and Eve pop out of it. That's just not the way evolution works. And so >> when you're trying to reconcile biblical data with the anthropological and the geological and the genetic and the biological business is is very hard to come up with with, you know, a singular two individuals. What the church understands that they understand what the science is. And what they've said is, well, that's fine. You you do the science that you need to do. We're not going to stand in the way of scientific investigation, but when you're doing theology, you have to be sure to preserve the the unique status of a single pair that would be, as it were, Adam and Eve in relationship in parallelism to the second Adam, who's Jesus. Now, you theologians, it's your job to come up with rational accounts that can reconcile these things. And so an account that some theologians give is they imagine a polygenetic origin for homo sapiens and at some point in time God miraculously infuses the rational soul into a single pair. But that wouldn't be the sort of thing that you would be able to detect you know from from genetic data or evolutionary data because it's an intervention from outside the system and as far as the biology is concerned that that that's going to follow all the normal rules rules of evolution. So, you know, Pope Pius the 12th said, "God said that he made Adam out of the dust of the earth."

[00:07:00]Nothing stopping that dust from including a long series of prehomminid ancestors.

[00:07:06]>> Oh, okay. And Victor, thanks so much uh for your email. We're going to get to the phones in just a second. We'll kick it off with Parker in Springfield, Missouri. But first, a quick email here from Indira. Should Reiki healing ever be received or practiced by Christians?

[00:07:21]And if not, how do you explain the alleged healings that people have experienced through it?

[00:07:27]>> So, um, you know, St. Augustine wrote about superstition a long time ago and he he said, um, look, it's one thing to say to someone, if you eat this herb, your stomach will not hurt.

[00:07:45]It's another thing to say here, if you hang this stomachshaped herb around your neck on a pendant, your stomach will not hurt, right? Because the the one is alleging a kind of intrinsic natural property, right? That could interact with your body's physiology, and that's what we call medicine. The other is essentially alleging some sort of spiritual influence that that uh you know, from some sort of symbolic affinity. And he says, "Things of type A are not superstitious. Things of type B are superstitious. Away with things of type B." Um, you know, my my my understanding is that uh the Reiki practitioners alleged that they can manipulate or channel some sort of universal life energy force through touching the human body. Claims that of course have no basis in science, have no empirical verification for them. Um, now let's talk about what why they might work on the other side of this break.

[00:08:40]>> All right, very good. Uh, if you're listening to us today, Indira, please stay with us in a moment. We'll also talk with Parker in Springfield, Steve in Oklahoma City. Lots more straight ahead on this edition of Call to Communion. Do stay with us.

[00:08:56]EWTN's Cathedrals Across America and the Augustinian province of St. Thomas of Villanova invite you to celebrate the life of a wife, mother, and nun. St. Rita, the patron saint of peacekeeping, healing, and impossible causes from the National Shrine of St. Rita of Cashia in Philadelphia. Holy Mass on the Feast of St. Rita, Friday at noon Eastern on EWTN TV.

[00:09:27]>> This is a Messy Family Minute with Mike and Alicia Hearnen. A 2014 study entitled Understanding Former Young Catholics, found that emotional closeness with parents, especially fathers, is a powerful indicator of whether or not a child will remain in the faith. Bonding with your child goes a long way in sharing the truth with them.

[00:09:46]>> We want our children to be holy, and we need them to know that the path to holiness is found within the law of the church. But rules without relationship breed rebellion. Children do need to know the truth. But if a parent communicates the law without love, it may actually do more harm than good.

[00:10:03]>> By loving our children, we are nurturing their longing for a relationship with God. The love we have for them is only a shadow of the love that God, their heavenly father, has. It is that relationship that will help them follow the moral law and choose the good.

[00:10:16]Growing that relationship should be the goal of every Catholic parent.

[00:10:20]>> For more on your relationship with your child, visit us at messyfamilyminut.org.

[00:10:30]It's called Communion with Dr. David Andrews here on EWTN. Our phone number 833288 EWTN. Call or text 833-2883986.

[00:10:42]So before the break, we were starting on an email from Indira. I'll just recap that. Should Reiki healing ever be received or practiced by Christians? And if not, how do you explain the alleged healings people have experienced through it?

[00:10:56]>> Yeah. So before the break, I I gave you my opinion that uh there's nothing to Raiki healing that is based on a pseudoscientific theory and is therefore superstitious. Um the fact that people submit to spurious forms of you know as it were medicine and report positive outcomes is easily explicable in terms of the placebo effect which is very real.

[00:11:21]>> Oh yeah.

[00:11:21]>> Right. The reason why in in trials of drugs they always are testing against placebo is because just to give somebody a drug and have them report improvement doesn't demonstrate that the drug caused the improvement. Sometimes the anticipation of the drug causes the improvement because of the psychology of the human person. And so you have to account for placebo. Placebo is a real effect. It really does have curative properties. Um and uh and I would account for the the alleged efficacy of raiki through through placebo. Now as to whether that should be received in a Christian context, St. Thomas Aquinus, Doctor of the Catholic Faith, teaches that the rule of human acts is right reason. And we have a moral obligation to seek our own flourishing by following the rule of right reason. And so Christians, there's a moral imperative in the Catholic faith not to be irrational, which means to be aware of our biases and and uh and to follow the evidence where it leads, etc., etc. And that's not what our gut tells us about evidence. But what what can rationally be known, you know, by objective third parties and so forth. And so I think it's not in the Christians best interest to go in for this sort of thing. Now, you know, Reiki is also culturally associated with new age and and other factors that that are explicitly anti-atholic. That's not to say that Catholics operating, you know, within a much more orthodox theological mealu aren't also prone to various forms of superstition. Um, I'm not going to name them because I think I'd get my head taken off by by a lot of people, but there are a lot of health fads uh that circulate in the Catholic and Christian world. um that uh you know under the alternative health umbrella um and uh you know they're products that get sold and and and this kind of thing through uh through direct marketing and pyramid schemes and the other none of which have any scientific backing behind them and and maybe avoidance of certain kind of medical treatments or interventions that become it's sort of the fad you know I remember I'm sure everybody in the culture remembers that when the co thing happened in in 2020 that uh that the country split pretty cleanly and ideologically over response to CO right and the people making in my experience like my neighbors and friends that are making claims they weren't medically qualified to make these claims they were making claims based on what their what their political communities held right and so they were they were not making them for rational reasons whether or not they happened by accident to be right >> they made them irrationally nonetheless for insufficient reasons so Christians are very prone to this you're not immune just because you're a Christian. So, yeah, avoid, you know, whackadoodle new age medicine, but for that matter, avoid avoid whackadoodle right-wing Christian medicine. Like, be rational, follow, trust expertise, go where the evidence leads, follow the rule of right reason.

[00:14:10]Sounds like a good plan. Thank you so much, Indira, for your email. If you're ready now, let's go to the phones at 833288 EWTN. Here is Parker to lead us lead us off today. Parker's a first-time caller from Springfield, Missouri, listening on the Great Catholic Radio Network. Hey Parker, what's on your mind today?

[00:14:28]>> Hey guys, thanks for taking my uh my question here. Uh my question has to do with salvation. Um and I'm trying to understand what the the church teaching is on on, you know, uh people that practice modern Judaism and try their best to hold to the old covenant laws.

[00:14:43]Um does the church teach like a dual covenant theology or is it more superstitionist?

[00:14:50]um or is it kind of something in between?

[00:14:52]>> Yeah, thanks. I really appreciate the question. Let let me start with biblical theology and then we'll we'll move along into Catholic theology. All right. So, um first of all, in biblical theology, if you look at it in the Gospels, the teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, Jesus is not a critic of Judaism. In the Gospels, Jesus is a crit is a critic of individual Jews and the way they practice their religion. not Judaism, not this or that sect of Judaism. Yeah.

[00:15:22]>> But he was a he was a critic for example of of say tithing mint dill in cumin and neglecting love and justice and mercy.

[00:15:30]Yeah. Right. So um uh you know he he's a critic of of making an offering in the temple when you have enmity with your brother in your heart. So he doesn't tell his contemporaries don't bother with the Jewish temple. He says, "Before you go into the temple and offer your sacrifice, make sure you reconcile with your brother." And so he never he never advises his contemporaries to not practice Judaism, to not make temple sacrifices. He doesn't tell them not to stay ritually pure. He tells them, "Don't do those things thinking that they're sufficient." Just like John the Baptist who said, "Don't say you'll have Abraham for my father. God can raise up children for Abraham from these very stones. Rather, bring forth fruits in keeping with repentance." So Jesus's admonitions were to a moral renovation, not to religious conversion in the sense of leaving one tradition for another.

[00:16:19]Right? Um when uh when the Apostle Paul begins to preach, Paul has no consciousness of Judaism being one thing and Christianity being something else.

[00:16:30]Nor is he trying to convert people from one tradition to another. That's not the way he frames it at all. Uh Paul doesn't know that there is such a thing as Christianity. In fact, there's a Jewish New Testament scholar named Pamela Eisenbal who has a provocatively titled book that I think is nevertheless pretty historically accurate called Paul was not a Christian.

[00:16:48]>> Oh my.

[00:16:49]>> And what she means by that, she doesn't mean that Paul doesn't believe in Jesus the Messiah. Of course, of course she conceds that point. What she means by that is there's no thing in the first century called Christianity as opposed to Judaism. Right.

[00:17:00]>> Yeah.

[00:17:00]>> Because from the frame of reference of the New Testament, here's what you have.

[00:17:04]You have you have God's covenant with Abraham and Moses and you have the teaching of the prophets and you have this expectation of a coming day of the Lord when God is going to set all things to right. Uh he's going to vindicate his people. Um the nations will receive the word of the Lord. Uh you know the law will go out from Zion, etc., etc., etc. And all that gets lumped under the umbrella of the kingdom of God. The book of Daniel talks about one like a son of man coming and being given a kingdom, God's kingdom. He'll reign over that for all forever and ever. So and so forth.

[00:17:37]>> So it Jesus's contemporaries are waiting for this to happen. When is this kingdom going to come? When is God going to vindicate the righteous? And what Christ and John the Baptist do is they say, "Well, it's coming and it's coming imminently." And in fact, we're associated with this imminent coming.

[00:17:50]But you have wrong ideas about how to get on board, right? It's not enough to be ritually pure, to have temple sacrifices or to have the right genetic input or whatever. You have to have the the moral behavior that if you want to get on board. that's what we're going to preach. And then because those Old Testament prophecies always included the inclusion of Gentiles, St. Paul uh is it's communicated to him and he comes to understand that his unique role in this is he's the guy that's going to bring the Gentiles in.

[00:18:19]Now is he is he's not thinking about it in terms of converting Gentiles to Judaism. He's not thinking about it in terms of creating a thing called Christianity as an alternative to Judaism. He's thinking of this in terms of how is it that Gentiles who are not ethnically Jewish, >> right, >> are going to be reconciled to the God of Abraham.

[00:18:39]And if you've read Paul's letters, you know he works out a fairly sophisticated theology of history wherein the covenant of Abraham predates the covenant with Moses. And the ethnic descendants of Abraham are bound by the covenant of Moses and Gentiles are not. But they're all under the covenant of Abraham, right? But it's it's clearly St. Paul's belief in the book of Romans that those ethnic descendants of Abraham will will also have a role to play in in in in God's future plans. And he he points to himself as a remnant. I myself, he says, am a Jew. I'm, you know, I'm a of the tribe of Benjamin and etc., etc., etc. >> And uh and and all Israel will be saved.

[00:19:23]And I think it's clear from Romans 9:11 when he says all Israel, what he means is ethnic Jews as well as Gentiles who come to be included by faith in the covenant of Abraham. And of course, the big divide is who has to keep the law of Moses, right? And of course, not imposing it on Gentiles is a major point of the New Testament church. Now, the apostles continued, they said mass, they they separ they celebrated the Eucharist. Yeah. They preached the gospel. It's also evident from the book of Acts. continued to go to synagogue and temple. They didn't stop practicing those things. And there's nothing in the New Testament that says Jews as such should stop doing that. Now, of course, what happens is Christianity becomes a predominantly gentile religion. And the Jewish faction just kind of fades away over time.

[00:20:06]>> And then the early fathers made what I regard as a a serious theological error.

[00:20:12]And that is they mistook Jesus's critique of religious hypocrisy as a critique of Judaism.

[00:20:18]>> Right? And so there is something real historical historically about Christian anti-Judaism. I use the term anti-Judaism instead of anti-semitism because that's a different category.

[00:20:29]>> Okay.

[00:20:29]>> So you do get the development of anti-Judaism within Christian culture fasilely grounded in a misreading I think of Jesus's religious critique mistaking again a critique of religious hypocrisy for a critique of Judaism per se. And that's definitely not what Jesus was about. And it leads to some pretty unfortunate consequences which is a history of of Christian persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages. And we all know that story and it's pretty ugly, right?

[00:20:57]>> Sure. Well, um the Catholic Church doesn't really address that problem um explicitly until the Second Vatican Council when it uh articulates what I think is clearly the biblical position that I've already articulated, which is that uh ethnic descendants of Abraham have some role to play in divine providence and and and and not just negatively like not just as scourges or something to Christian truth, but as as real inheritors of the promise whom whom God wishes to redeem. And when you develop as well the theology that you do not have to be a card carrying Catholic to go to heaven. I mean the church is is the lumencium the light of the nations that makes the truth of God manifest and known and offers the means of grace in a very manifest way. But God offers grace to everybody in some way to be saved, including the Jewish people who because of the covenant of Abraham and because of the oracles of God composed in the Old Testament have a a kind of you know privileged access to the truth of about God and the moral life that we reasonably hope in the salvation of the Jewish people not not because of their rejection of Christ but because of their fidelity to the moral law. Right? And the church has a pretty nuanced doctrine of conscience, recognizing that it's one thing for a Pharisee in the first century to meet Jesus face to face, watch Christ cast out a demon, and and raise the dead and heal the sick and rise from the dead and then say, "I don't believe or I reject." It's an entirely different thing for someone to grow up in a culture that was historically persecuted by Christianity um understands itself, you know, to be a righteous suffering in the hands of of of gentile injustice, which is absolutely the case and to have a kind of deep cultural prejudice against anything Christian for obvious and understandable reasons. Someone in that situation is not operating in the same place that a first century Pharisee is operating. And so you know this kind of radical anti-Judaism which of course you know ultimately coaleses in the modern world with anti-semitism which is a racial category the church roundly condemns that attitude right and uh and of course John Paul II made a point of worshiping in synagogues and holding hands with Jewish rabbis and recognizing uh uh Jews as elder brothers in the faith and this kind of thing. So, the categories that you that you raised about dual covenants and supersessionism, you'll note that I didn't reference either of those. Um, because I think personal opinion, I think they kind of distort rather than clarify the biblical perspective and the teaching of the modern Catholic Church. Parker, is that helpful for you?

[00:23:34]>> Yeah, huge help, guys. I really appreciate it.

[00:23:36]>> We appreciate you. Thanks for checking in from Springfield, Missouri, one of the many Springfields here in America.

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[00:24:22]That will take you right to it. Back to the phones now for Steve in Oklahoma City listening on the great Oklahoma Catholic radio and I know that uh David, they're doing their fund appeal this week. So if you're listening to us in Oklahoma, please be very generous.

[00:24:36]Support your Catholic radio station.

[00:24:38]They are here for you. Hey Steve, what's on your mind today?

[00:24:42]Yeah. Hello. Thank you. If I remember correctly, about a week ago, Dr. Anders said purgatory is necessary so we can make uh reparation for our sins if we haven't done so already. And then a couple days later, he said it is available so you can make so we can make atonement for our sins. So my question is, do you Dr. Anders mean it is necessary for all sins or only for certain sins? Then if atonement only for certain sins, which sins? And also, would the normal person who dies at age 60 spend roughly 10 times as long there as someone who dies at age six?

[00:25:21]>> Yeah, thank you. Well, I certainly hope no six-year-olds are in purgatory. I I think that that that's this is before the age of reason and the age of personal responsibility, and there's nothing in Catholic faith that would make me presume purgatorial punishment for a six-year-old. um when it comes to the proportionality between this life and the next uh we cannot do that math.

[00:25:42]We're not privileged to that ledger, right? And so we don't we don't you know this idea that well you know somebody's going to spend x number of years in purgatory. First of all, time doesn't even flow the same in purgatory because you're disembodied in purgatory. So we don't even know what time means when you don't have physical space, right?

[00:26:01]Because time and space are allied notions in physics. As you well know, the medieval theologians considered the separated souls to be in a kind of different timestream, if you will, one that they called aam or a eternity. It's not the same thing as temporality. So there's just no proportionality at all.

[00:26:17]And trying to handicap this thing, you know, it's impossible. There's a lot in Catholic imagination in art that represents purgatory is something very analogous to human time. And I think that's all imaginative and we just can't go there. Um, in terms of for what sins must you do penance? These would be venial sins. Um, uh, and the reparation to mortal sins that you haven't completed in this life. There you go, Steve. Thanks so much for checking in from Oklahoma City. In a moment, Ed in Odessa, Texas, Sue in Louisville. Lines are open for you as well. 833288 EWTN. Call or text right now.

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[00:28:45]Eastern. On the next Speaking of Truth, what to do when longing for love.

[00:28:49]>> Now, back to Call to Communion with Dr. David Anders.

[00:29:00]Hey, glad you're with us for a Call to Communion here on EWTN. Our phone number 833288 EWTN. Call or text 833-2883986.

[00:29:11]Hey, I want to congratulate one of our great EWTN radio affiliates, Holy Family Radio, WLCR, AM and FM, serving Louisville, Kentucky, celebrating an incredible 27 years with us. How about that? Congratulations to our buddy Vince Heiser and his great team there at Holy Family Radio. From all of us here at EWTN, back to the phones now for Ed in Odessa, Texas, listening on the great Guadalupe radio. Hello, Ed. What's on your mind today?

[00:29:40]>> Hello. Hope everyone everyone is well.

[00:29:42]Uh yeah, recently I watched a YouTube video where a popular Catholic apologist was asked if he preferred the rosary over the chokeki. Uh I consider myself an all right Catholic but I have no idea what a chokei is. So can you give a little background? Is it legit or where does it come from?

[00:30:00]>> Okay, thanks. So I am unfamiliar with choki as a category in Catholic devotion. I am aware of Shakti as a concept within Hinduism. Um, so I don't know if we're talking about Hinduism here or if we're talking about about Catholicism, but in popular Catholic devotion, there is no thing that I'm aware of called choki. Any heard of a choki in Catholic devotion, Tom?

[00:30:25]>> Uh, no.

[00:30:26]>> No. So, I I think we're we're I think we're mixing and matching religions here, honestly. Our uh producer on the TV side, Brian, says a chaki, also spelled chaki or known as a kamboskini in Greek.

[00:30:39]>> Oh, there you are. East Orthodox.

[00:30:41]>> He's got it. It's a traditional knotted prayer rope used primarily by Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Christians, serving as a physical tool to help believers count prayers and maintain focus during repetitive devotions.

[00:30:53]>> Well, there you go. I'm not I'm not Greek Orthodox, so that would explain my ignorance of that. So here's here is the reflection on do you prefer a rosary or one of those things however you say it in Greek basically the position the Catholic Church has towards any form of devotion is uh provided it's orthodox in the sense of holds to Catholic belief yeah you you you pick whatever devotion is the one that will um get you praying the most and engage your u your moral imagination and energies the most you know I read doctor one time >> responding to the question what's the best way to cook vegetables and he said well the way that will get you to eat the most of them.

[00:31:29]>> Yeah.

[00:31:29]>> And that's sort of the same thing with prayer. You know, spirituality is a highly individualistic thing. The only thing that's required of Catholics is that they pray and that they go to mass and receive the sacraments. Beyond that, um there's a lot of leeway. I mean, there's tried and true methods that you can adopt, but you're not obligated to.

[00:31:43]And some people find the rosary to be tremendously life-giving. Others, like St. Terz of Leisio, for example, found it rather boring and and gravitated to other forms of prayer. So, you're allowed to do that.

[00:31:53]>> Ed, thanks so much for checking in from Odessa, Texas. Call to Communion here on EWTN. Going to St. Louis now to talk with Mary in and she's listening on the Great Covenant Radio. Hey Mary, what's on your mind today?

[00:32:07]>> Hi. Um I I was with family over the weekend and we're all cradle Catholics and um one of them attends mass every Sunday.

[00:32:17]The other one, you know, just kind of floated away for a while but then started taking um my mom. And so the question came up or I'm sorry the reply came up. I don't think priest should marry. And I'm like oh goodness um no they should not marry. And so I need a kind of quick kitchen table answer for that because one of them said that's a man-made rule. That's just not in the Bible. And I'm like no it's it's a request and a and a a grace from God.

[00:32:52]It's a vocation. So, uh, that's one question that I had. I'll let you go ahead and answer that one if you can.

[00:32:59]>> Yeah, sure. Okay. So, let me jump in on the celibacy thing. First of all, I want to respond to the quip. Well, that's just a man-made rule. So, is the speed limit.

[00:33:08]>> Does that mean we shouldn't have a speed limit? No, you have a speed limit because there's a very rational need for a speed limit. You don't have a speed limit, people are going to kill each other on the highway. Y um, you know, painting a yellow line down a two-lane road is also a man-made convention. Take away the speed limit and the yellow line and the rule that you have to stay on the right side of the road. What happens, right? Mortality is what happens. So there are very good reasons for certain man-made rules.

[00:33:33]>> Even if it were the case >> the priestly celibacy were merely a man-made rule, that would not be a reason to reject it >> if it had a sufficient reason, right, for the good of the church. Right?

[00:33:43]>> Now that being said, there's more to it than just a man-made rule. So it is true in sacred tradition and in sacred scripture there is no absolute requirement for priestly celibacy and we do have married Catholic priests both in the east and in the west that is there there are allowable exceptions to the celibacy rule so it's not a theological necessity that a priest be be celibate um however there is a strong biblical and traditional preference for priestly celibacy for the following reasons number one Christ, the great high priest and the model of all human priesthood was himself, of course, a celibate. Yep.

[00:34:21]>> And so, if you're going to base yourself on the master, well, that's a pretty safe assumption that you should follow his way of life. Uh St. Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, talks explicitly about this. And he says, "Not everybody has to be celibate, but if you have the gift, you should use it." That is the gift of celibacy. Because the man who marries is concerned with his wife and pleasing her and his family, but the celibate man is able to give himself entirely to the good of the church.

[00:34:48]>> Very common sense.

[00:34:50]>> Very common sense. And and if you have if you have been around a bad Catholic priest who makes poor use of his vocation, then it is very easy to draw the conclusion, dude, you should just marry.

[00:35:03]And I've met such priests. However, when you are around a good Catholic priest, a holy Catholic priest who makes good use of his vocation, then you have an experiential knowledge of why celibacy can be so valuable. Right? There have been in my life, I'm sure yours as well, celebrate Catholic priests who have been able to put themselves at my service and the service of my family in the church in tangible, meaningful ways that to me are almost unthinkable if those same men had been married. Yeah. Right. So the apostles council is sound.

[00:35:36]Uh when asked about the resurrection by the Sadducees, whether if a man had multiple wives in this life, whose husband would he be in the resurrection?

[00:35:45]Christ explains that in the resurrection we will not marry or be given in marriage. Right? That marriage is for procreation and bearing children down below, but up there no marriage. Um priesthood is therefore also a kind of esquetological sign. Esquetology means the doctrine of the end times. In observing the the celibacy of the priest, the faithful are reminded of their esqueological destiny and that there are things that transcend the values of this world. So the the the the vows that religious take of poverty, chastity, and obedience, which the regular priest doesn't take all those, takes some of those. Uh but nevertheless, that kind of consecrated life um if lived generously becomes a powerful witness to the faithful about the direction of their own lives. And a priest who's holy, and not all priests are holy, but a priest who's holy can really help the chastity of the faithful. You know, if you struggle with celibacy or chastity in your own life and then you see a generous priest who is living chastely and celibly in his own vocation, you think, well, that dude's got it worse than I do, you know, and he seems to be hanging on and doing well, you know, and that that can be a real encouragement to the faithful.

[00:36:56]>> Um the uh uh the practice of preferring celibacy in the priesthood is ancient in the church. Again, it's not it's not constant. It's not universal. There are exceptions. Um but the weight of sacred tradition and biblical council means that the church has always regarded this as having a sufficient rational foundation that uh that it is for the good of the church. Now >> um so there is a man-made element to it in the sense that it it's the church that defines the code of canon law based on the data of revelation and tradition >> and the church can change the code of canon law. Um, does that mean we shouldn't obey the Code of Canon Law because men made it? Well, again, do you the fact that men and women legislate in the United States in our government and they pass laws like this is where we're going to draw the the yellow line down the road and this is what we're going to set the speed limit. Ah, it's just man-made. I won't obey that. No, that that's a profoundly selfish attitude and one that doesn't regard the common good.

[00:37:58]So even if it were the case that there were no biblical or theological warrant for this and the church just said, you know, in our prudent judgment, this is the way we ought to go, that would not be a sufficient reason to jettison the practice.

[00:38:09]>> Mary, I believe you had a second question.

[00:38:12]>> I did. Um, so the other question that came up um was I don't believe in confession.

[00:38:20]Um, I can just tell God I'm sorry and that'll be fine. And I was like, "Oh goodness, you um you could, but why would you want to not be absolved of your sins? And why would you not want to receive all the graces to avoid the near occasion sin, you know, in the future?"

[00:38:39]And and so another uh good like um and I believe that is a a um >> it's sacrament. Yep.

[00:38:51]>> So I think it's required. Yep. And therefore I need another good >> I got you. I got you. So uh the person who says I do not need to confess to another. I will just confess to God is disobeying a direct command of the Bible. In James 5:16 the apostle writes therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. Now he may not be specifically referencing the confessional as such but the practice of mutual confession of sins is enjoined upon us by divine revelation and someone says I don't need that is saying I do not need to do what the Holy Spirit has commanded me to do in sacred scripture.

[00:39:29]>> Now the the business about absolution you're absolutely correct >> in John chapter 20 after Jesus has risen from the dead he appears to the apostles he breathes upon them and says receive the Holy Spirit. Whoever sins you forgive are forgiven. Whoever sins you retain are retained. Now, the person who says, "I don't need that."

[00:39:49]Well, it's kind of like, you know, in John chapter 1, it said, "The word was with God and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us."

[00:40:00]And someone says, "Well, I don't need that.

[00:40:04]I don't need the incarnation of the son of God. I don't need the atonement of the death of Christ. I don't need the baptism he provides for the church. I don't need the teaching of Jesus. Well, if you're going to reject one aspect of Jesus's teaching, why not just reject the whole darn thing? So, if someone is a Christian and they say, "I don't need the absolution of sins from a man."

[00:40:23]Well, then why on God's green earth did Christ give that power to the church?

[00:40:27]>> Well, yeah, >> right. He This is the first thing he did after rising from the dead. And then he promises, "Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven.

[00:40:37]Whoever sins you forgive are forgiven.

[00:40:39]Christ would not give this power to the church if he did not intend for the church to use it.

[00:40:45]Now what the church did in her wisdom is it combined two biblical teachings.

[00:40:50]Number one, the power of the church to forgive sins and number two the command of scripture to confess our sins and said we take care of those in one go.

[00:41:02]Right? And so the historic development of the confessional is an historic development. The way the church's gift of absolution has exercised over time has changed. But the fact of the gift and the command to confess are are of they are de feday. They are revealed by God. There is no option about that. Now practically they bring tremendous benefit and you've already alluded to some of them. First of all, for a good confession, you have to do an examination of conscience, >> right? It's very easy when you're in your own sort of prayer closet. Just go, "Oh, yeah, God. I'm sorry for all those sins I did." But when you go to confession, you have to go, "Okay, what are they? Let me really get specific here. Let me think about this to figure out what I need to fix in my life."

[00:41:44]That's helpful. Secondly, there's an act of humility. Why don't people want to go to confession? It's humiliating.

[00:41:50]Well, that's a good thing. It's there's an act of humility. You say what you did. You have to own up to it. You know, even the psychologists tell us that accountability to to another is the most effective tool for personal change.

[00:42:00]>> Very healthy.

[00:42:01]>> Right.

[00:42:02]>> Then there's the aspect of the sacrament that you already mentioned. What is a sacrament? A sacrament is a sign. It's a ritual to which God has promised uh grace. The grace that is in fact symbolized by the sign. Well, what's symbolized here is God's forgiveness.

[00:42:18]What's effected is God's forgiveness.

[00:42:20]The reason that he attaches it to a sign is so that we can have objective certainty. Right? If you just confess it to the open air, there's no sacrament, there's no sign that says, "The thing you've asked for has been granted you."

[00:42:34]And so you walk away somewhat uncertain.

[00:42:37]>> Yeah.

[00:42:38]>> But when you have that promise attached to a sign and the priest says the words, "I absolve you." Well, then you have objective certainty that you are absolved. That places you psychologically in a very different place in your Christian walk. you go forward with confidence knowing you're reconciled to God in the church. And so it there are all kinds of reasons uh why one should go to confession, why Christ gave us confession. Mary, a great phone call. Thank you so much for checking in from St. Louis. And uh Dr. Andrew laid out quite a bit of information there.

[00:43:06]You may want to check out the recording of today's program. Pedro will have it posted for you in a couple of hours or so. Go to EWTN.com/listen.

[00:43:16]EWTN.com/listen.

[00:43:19]You might be able to get one or two more phone calls in here. 833288 EWTN. Call or text 833-288-3986.

[00:43:28]Got a text today from Henry. Henry says, "When did indulgences shift from expediting earthly penences to removing purgatorial punishments?" Uh, was there basis for this in the tradition?

[00:43:42]>> Yeah, thank you. So um so when when indulgences come on the scene in the mid3rd century the specific context is as you mentioned the the penences imposed by the church. Okay. Um the doctrine of purgatory is is becoming articulated in the church's theology around the same time. And so indulgences in purgatory as theological ideas are co-developing.

[00:44:10]Now, um, by the time you get to the to the high middle ages, you you begin to develop, uh, well, let me add one other factor. Lurggically, lurggically, the church has always prayed for the repose of the dead.

[00:44:27]So, so hold these three ideas in in in together. Praying for the souls of the dead and offering masses for them.

[00:44:33]>> Yeah.

[00:44:34]>> Um, the doctrine of purgatory and the doctrine of indulgences. So all these are all these are present in antiquity.

[00:44:42]Well they have to kind of coalesce right in order to develop into the what historians call the cult of purgatory right which is sort of the the the active imagination around my prayers and penences being effective. you know, the the indulgences that I do and so forth, liberating the soul from purgatory, that that takes place as a process that really gets to he reaches this high water mark in the in the um in the in the high in the late middle ages. Um you begin to find the development of what are of what are called shantries.

[00:45:17]They're institutions that are endowed for masses to be set in perpetuity for the repose of certain souls. So all these things sort of grow organically over centuries. U there's an historian named Jacqu Lgo GFF who who writes a history of the development of the doctrine of purgatory. Um it's been a while since I've looked at the text so I can't give you the exact date. Okay. Right. Uh but it's a process. It starts in antiquity.

[00:45:45]Um but uh but post Caroly Carolynian you know when you get into say you know 12th 13th 14th centuries uh it really kind of rises to a fever pitch and it's accompanied by you know other institutions like the rise of chantries and confraternities and so forth. So by the by the time you get to the eve of the reformation um this is a a very lively part of Catholic devotional life but it's a development it happens slowly over centuries.

[00:46:09]>> All right Henry thank you so much for your text today. Here's a text from Sue in Louisville, Kentucky. We're just talking about Louisville. Sue says, "Uh, what is the difference between a baptism and a blessing that makes anyone even an atheist able to baptize, but one must have authority to bless?"

[00:46:29]>> Okay. Thanks. Appreciate the question.

[00:46:31]So, um, I can tell you that there are some differences.

[00:46:38]um whether those differences amount to a kind of smoking gun where you go, "Aha, now I know why God did it that way." You know, I don't know if we rise to quite that level of clarity and certainty, but I can give you a context. So, baptism of course is the right of entrance into the church and is necessary for salvation in a kind of an extended way. So it's just tremendously important and because of that the church understands that uh the church is strict about defining the conditions for validity.

[00:47:08]>> Uhhuh.

[00:47:08]>> But but loose about who has to perform it.

[00:47:12]>> Right. And for the very same reason we have we have to we have to know what constitutes a valid baptism so we know if we've had one or not.

[00:47:19]>> Right.

[00:47:19]>> Um a little bit loose on who has to perform it because of its importance and necessity.

[00:47:24]>> Right. Yeah. It's kind of like um I don't know this is a bad analogy. All my analogies are bad, but I can't ever think of good ones. Um you know, imagine um uh you know, the government has really strict rules about um say uh you know, who can write certain prescriptions >> and then you imagine, okay, let's say there's some sort of pandemic and everybody gets sick and there just aren't enough, you know, authorized individuals around. They're like, you know what, we're going to FDA is going to throw that rule out the window for a little while because we got to get everybody vaccinated or get everybody medicated or whatever. You see what I'm saying?

[00:47:54]you know, a little bit like that. So, like this is just so necessary to the beginnings of the Christian life that we're that this this not quite the same necessity.

[00:48:02]>> You know, we want to be a little bit more liberal in our application of the thing even though we're very strict on the definition of its validity. Um, and the the theology of blessing is very clearly tied to the idea of jurisdiction.

[00:48:14]>> Okay?

[00:48:15]>> And and so you have to have jurisdiction of some capacity to be in a position to confer a blessing. Think about Abraham blessing. um Jacob and Esau.

[00:48:24]>> Yeah.

[00:48:25]>> Right. You I mean like u they're they're supplicants here, >> right? They're seeking a boon from their father.

[00:48:32]>> Well, he's in the one in the position to give this blessing, right? Um they're not in a position to confer it on themselves. And um and so we're we're we're coming with that attitude of supplication, right? And so you have to have jurisdiction to stand in that place of authority. It's why parents can bless their children.

[00:48:49]>> Um but uh you know, I'm not going to ask the mailman to bless my children. Okay, Sue, thanks so much for your text. We have another text just came in from Jordan in Greenville, South Carolina.

[00:48:59]Dear Dr. Anders, I am a new convert to the faith, and I'm concerned about having too much of a devotion to the blessed mother. How do I know if I'm crossing a line? I know that Jesus is our one mediator with the Father. But is there a line that can be crossed in taking away from Jesus in asking Mary for her constant help and intercession?

[00:49:20]>> Yeah, sure. There's a couple lines you can cross. Um, but intensity is not one of them.

[00:49:26]>> Okay.

[00:49:26]>> So, here, let me tell you what I mean.

[00:49:28]Like, would you ever encourage a husband to back off on affection towards his wife?

[00:49:35]>> No, you wouldn't. You know, >> of course not.

[00:49:37]>> Um, now you might encourage a husband to seek help if he became obsessive about his wife or possessive of his wife in a way that bordered on neuroticism. you know, where he he he couldn't be out of her presence and he they were had this codependent thing going on. I mean, that that I'm not excluding those obviously, right?

[00:49:54]>> But uh but it just comes to sort of healthy virtuous affection. There's no maximal limit there like that. I remember actually my my father used to be kind of like ridiculously silly in the way he would compliment my wife. He had this little speech he would give her. Cutest, nicest, sweetest, most wonderful girl in all the world who was who I love with all my heart and who was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. It was kind of cheesy, but he had this little that that little mantra and he would just say it all the time, you know?

[00:50:19]>> And I remember one time saying to him, I was like, "Dad, I think it's adorable how much you love mom and how you compliment her, but like >> sometimes it gets a little silly, you know, like I mean, you ever you ever think about toning it down?" And he said to me, "Well, David, >> she needs to hear it." And then here was the real kickery. And he said, "And so do I."

[00:50:38]>> Like he was acknowledging this is this is me reminding myself of who I'm supposed to be towards her, you know?

[00:50:44]And so you would never want to put a maximal limit on that. In the same way um you know a proper and healthy devotion to the blessed virgin Mary can have the effect of inspiring you to virtue.

[00:50:58]>> Well do you want to put an upper limit on that?

[00:51:00]>> I don't think so.

[00:51:00]>> You don't want to put an upper limit on that. No. So where where would you go wrong? Okay. Um and this happens. All right. But this this can go wrong in in your adoration of God too. All right.

[00:51:12]when you start looking to the Virgin Mary for the wrong things, right? So, if you start imposing on your relationship with Mary like expectations and demands that are not that are not rational, they're not biblical, that are not traditional, that they're not warranted. Um and um you know like if you if you went to Mary with the settled expectation that she is absolutely going to deliver for you something that that like you don't have any expectation you should get you know like well you know if I say 50 million Hail Marys then I'll win the lottery. Well that that would be a deeply wrongheaded approach to Mary and devotion. You know that sort of thing.

[00:51:55]um you know someone who became obsessivecompulsive such that um you know like if uh let's say you were devoted to the rosary and uh and you pray you know five decades of the rosary every day and then uh you know one day you get called away because of some medical emergency and you only make it through four and a half decades and then you get this neurotic fear that you know God's going to strike you dead or something because you didn't say the last half decade you know that sort of thing that that's that's that's OCD.

[00:52:24]Well, that kind of stuff is really unhealthy, right? But uh but but healthy devotion to the blessed virgin, which is, you know, the desire to imitate her virtues and to trust in her intercession is kind of like love poetry. It's kind of like my father's affection for my mother. You know, there's no absolute limit on that, right?

[00:52:40]>> Because it's oriented the right way.

[00:52:42]Thanks so much uh for that text. We have one more to do. This is an anonymous text just came in. I was baptized into the Catholic Church this past Easter vigil. What does it mean for baptism to remove original sin?

[00:52:54]>> Right. Okay. So, original sin, thank you. By the way, original sin is an analogous term meaning it's not actual sin. The catechism says original sin is not actual sin. It's not personal culpability for the sin of Adam. It's a it's a figurative way of saying that we come into the world without sanctifying grace. So, when you're conceived, when you're born, you are not automatically in a saving relationship with God.

[00:53:20]That's what so it's a negative. It's a it's a pivotive concept like something's missing, right? Namely, the grace of God in your life, the the sanctifying grace of God in your life. You need that to get to heaven. And baptism confers upon you sanctifying grace where you're adopted as a child in God's heavenly family. That's what we mean by the removal of original sin. It's actually the infusion of sanctifying grace.

[00:53:45]>> Okay. Wow. I'm so glad we got in all the texts, all the calls, and all the emails. How cool is that?

[00:53:52]>> Now, we need some more. So, y'all send us some more emails.

[00:53:54]>> That's right. Because, you know, once a month we do a mailbag program and we'll answer nothing but emails.

[00:54:00]>> CTC at EW10.com.

[00:54:02]>> CTCEWTN.com.

[00:54:04]Fastmoving show today. Dr. David Anders, thank you, sir. We do it right here on EWTN on the radio side at 2:00 p.m.

[00:54:11]Eastern, Monday through Friday. And as I mentioned earlier, check out the recording of today's show. Pedro will have it posted for you in a couple of hours here. And that address is uh EWTN.com/listen.

[00:54:24]And then look for the picture of David 8 uh east EWTN.com/listen.

[00:54:30]You'll also hear and see all of our other great shows on that same website.

[00:54:35]On behalf of our fantastic team, I'm Tom Price along with Dr. David Anders.

[00:54:39]Struggling through a cold. I'd appreciate a prayer, too. Thank you.

[00:54:42]We'll see you next time here on EWTN.

[00:54:44]God bless.

[00:54:55]May is the month dedicated to the blessed mother. Pope St. John Paul II said, "Today we be to make the month of May a Marian month, celebrating it with many devout liturggical, catechetical, and pastoral initiatives. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

[00:55:15]That's prayer cards, statues, and more.