Ask Me Anything

Questions Covered:

• 02:27 - I am an Eastern Orthodox Christian. If I got in a time machine and teleported back to post-schism Catholic Europe (let’s say the 1400’s) would it be a sin for me to receive the sacraments there? Would it then cease to be a sin if I teleported back to anywhere in pre-schism Europe, or post-schism Russia or Greece? Would it be a sin if a modern-day Protestant tried to receive the sacraments? Additionally, would there be any conflicts with a Catholic or Orthodox Christian from our time receiving the sacraments from a medieval priest?
• 06:13 - On a previous episode you were talking about theophanies and christophanies and how it’s possible that any of the three persons of the Trinity could be incarnate in any event other than Christ’s birth. I assume the angel Jacob fought and the angel in the furnace with the three youths are such examples. However there are also instances where actual angels have been incarnate, such as in the hospitality of Abraham. My first question related to this is, when these theophanies, christophanies, and angels were incarnate, should we assume that they had physical bodies? My second question is can fallen angels become incarnate, and if they can, would they have physical bodies when they do so?
• 14:42 - Was Genesis written after Jacob’s lifetime? I’m having a conversation with a friend who believes Eve had relations with Satan, stating that the word beguiled in Hebrew means to seduce body and soul. She bore Cain from that union and that’s why Cain isn’t mentioned in the genealogy. She also says that’s why Jesus told the Pharisees they were sons of the Devil.
• 19:50 - The video game character “Kirby” has a unique power: He has a nearly bottomless stomach, and whenever he consumes an enemy, he temporarily gains their powers in what is called a “copy ability”. If Kirby were to be received into the Catholic Church, what would happen when he eats Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist?
• 22:21 - I have heard it described that God created all the humans, angels, nature, and all of our world as an author creates characters in a book. God is a creator, and humans are sub-creators. When God created the world, he gave the beings in it various souls, vegetative for plants, sensitive for animals, and rational for humans. When a human author creates a world and a character to inhabit it, let’s say Bilbo Baggins, does that creature have a soul? Does that sub-created world have any eternity?
• 24:12 - I was watching Capturing Christianity with Fr. Lampert today when a caller asked about a spiritual/demonic attachment to him since living in a house where a woman was murdered by her husband.  It made me think of something horrible.  My mother had an abortion before having me. Could this have caused a spiritual or demonic attachment to me? I also wonder if the dramatic increase in abortion rates has anything to do with the increase in depravity in our culture, spiritually.
• 32:11 - I have a weird question pertaining to guardian angels and reincarnation reports. Do our guardian angels get transferred to other people when we die? For example, could my guardian angel have guarded another person who died at the same time I was conceived? Is it possible that reincarnation reports could actually be not the memories of the past lives of our souls, but the past assignments of our angels and somehow the knowledge is infused into our minds through our angels guiding and informing us?
• 35:25 - What do you think an alien grey meat would taste like, and would it a sin to eat one?
• 37:32 - If DNA haplogroups have proven all humans came from Africa roughly one hundred thousand years ago, why did God not choose an African man to create a Covenant with and likewise not choose to become incarnate with an African as Adam was? Wouldn’t it have been most fitting as Jesus is the new Adam?
• 42:54 - Suppose that we discover that the gift of creativity is much more literal than we thought, and then when someone crafts a fictional narrative, it creates an alternate world, a sort of pocket dimension, that follows their story. Would an author who tends to write dark stories without traditional happy endings have a moral obligation to write sequels to all his or her works and right any wrongs or evils in their no-longer fictional world?
• 47:54 - It says in the Bible that humans were created a little lower than the angels. I’ve seen this interpreted to mean that all physically embodied beings are necessarily lower than angels in power and intelligence because angels are pure spirits. But … Suppose that there were a physically embodied being that was exponentially more powerful and intelligent than humans currently are. For example, a sentient AI embodied as a Matrioshka swarm orbiting a gigantic star. Could such an embodied being become greater in knowledge and power than angels (or at least some of them)? Why or why not?
• 50:55 - Can you have your iRobot, or any robot or AI thing we come up with in the future to do work for us, work on Sunday?
• 53:45 - How much does the moon weigh?