Ask Me Anything

Questions Covered:

• 01:12 - Did fetal microchimerism have a part to play in Mary’s assumption?
• 06:10 - There is a practice where people fast during lent from one thing (food, vice.) Some people say that when you pray Sunday evening prayer 1 on Saturday, it is now Sunday where you feast and you don’t have to fast from your Lenten fast anymore. Is this a sound practice or should one only stop their Lenten fast on Sunday?
• 09:55 - Is it true that the ends never justify the means? It seems that this belief would prohibit things like war. A popular moral question is; If the nazis asked you where a Jewish family is hiding, isn’t it best to lie? How else can you respond? I haven’t heard you speak on this and I’m interested in your perspective
• 13:22 - Why do priests not get to marry? Doesn’t this lead some into sexual sin anyways when they harm children in the worst cases? God gave us a holy marriage between men and women for this purpose. Why?
• 19:14 - If the West believes in original sin, and the Eastern Orthodox believe in ancestral sin, where does that put Eastern Catholics? I spoke with one Eastern Catholic priest who said they affirm ancestral sin, but I thought in order to be Catholic you had to believe in original sin?
• 21:08 - Both are good, but is it better to know history or philosophy? Concerning Catholicism or life in general (your opinion).
• 23:15 - I have a question concerning canon 285.2 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law.
• It states: “Clerics are to avoid those things which, although not unbecoming, are nevertheless foreign to the clerical state.”
• Is the law thinking of any special area here? Could you give an example of something that is totally fine to do for a layperson but not for a priest?
• 31:09 - Do you like tooled leather?
• 32:12 - Can you explain Vicarious Satisfaction as taught by Aquinas vs. Penal Substitutionary Atonement and is Penal Substitution the foundation for salvation by Faith Alone?
• 36:52 - Kinda a silly question, but when Moses, Elijah, and other old testament characters “saw God,” did they see Jesus before He was sent from heaven and born unto the world through the Blessed Virgin Mary? Or did they actually see “God the Father?”
• 40:41 - You have previously critiqued the philosophical version of the Kalam argument because you believe God is capable of actualizing a universe with an infinite past.  Let’s take that for granted. It seems to me that an atheist cannot make such an appeal to support the possibility of an infinitely old universe. Therefore, could someone use the philosophical version of the Kalam as a sort of “internal critique” of the atheist worldview. One can say, “What you describe is impossible without divine omnipotence making it happen.”
• 44:39 - To what extent is the Catholic dogma of the Assumption of Mary a potential stumbling block to reunion with Eastern Orthodox churches?  I have heard that they believe something similar, called the Dormition of Mary, but I don’t know if the belief is uniform among all Eastern Orthodox churches, or if it’s exactly the same as the Assumption.
• 47:59 - Why did God not give us a mortal sin (or Grace) detector so we can know with certitude what we did was deadly or venial or simply a vice?
• 51:00 - What if a person had no faith all its life, just refused to believe and then gets dementia or alzheimers is there still hope for them to get to heaven
• 52:32 - Can you please contrast the passage from Luke 1:28 where the Angel Gabriel addresses Mary with the greeting “Hail, full of grace,” with the passage from Acts 6:8 (also authored by Luke) where Stephen is described as “full of grace.”