In part two of Trent’s open-mailbag series Trent answers a variety of questions from his patrons.
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent: Hey everyone. It’s part two of our Thanksgiving week open mailbag Q and A, so let’s jump right in it and a big thanks to our supporters at trenthornpodcast.com. You make the podcast possible. And our questions come from our subscribers at trenthornpodcast.com. If you want to get on this action on a future Q and A open mailbag episode, be sure to go to trenthornpodcast.com. For as low as $5 a month, you get to submit questions, get access to bonus content, all kinds of great stuff and you help keep the podcast going. Visit it at trenthornpodcast.com. By the way, if you submitted a question and it didn’t make it into the mailbag because I would probably have to do like four or five episodes to get through all of the questions and some of them I think wouldn’t work as well for an open mailbag because it’s more, I would like to just cite particular documents and it’s more of a lengthy discussion.
I’m also sending particular private answers back to certain individuals who have asked questions. So if your question didn’t get answered, check your inbox. Hopefully I was able to get you a reply directly. I’m not always able to answer people’s question… I get a lot of questions that come to me through my website at trenthorn.com and I answer them when I can, but you get special access if you are a subscriber at trenthornpodcast.com. Even if your question didn’t get answered on this episode of the previous episode, I’ll still try to shoot you a message in your Patreon inbox. Let’s jump into some of the last ones here, see if we can get through all of these in part two.
So I think we got eight questions done last time. Here’s question number nine. Trent, can you talk about the Catholic church and mental illness? I know many people who believe you can just pray away anxiety or depression. I’ve also been told that having anxiety just means you don’t trust or believe in God enough. In the age we’re in, I’m curious to hear what the church is teaching us on using secular methods to help remedy these issues. Well, the church recognizes that science and medicine have developed, especially in the area of mental health. We’ve come to see that many of the issues, mental illnesses, that people have often involve things like imbalance in biochemistry and brain chemistry, hormonal imbalances, and so there are things that have biochemical or what are called pharmacological interventions. Not always, but in some cases, especially in very severe cases of mental illness, pharmacological or using drugs is an appropriate and maybe even a necessary intervention, but it’s not always the case that that’s required. So the church recognizes any medicine that does not conflict with the teachings of the faith is perfectly valid and listen.
So some methods are clearly wrong. Like some bonkers sex therapists will say, “Oh, you should watch pornography to help overcome the sexual problems you’re having with your spouse.” No, that’s just going to introduce problems you would have with your spouse. So that “kind of therapy” is not something that I would ever endorse. But other therapies, things that have been developed in the secular world can be applied to the faith because faith and reason are not opposed to one another. So you could take cognitive behavioral therapy, that’s called CBT is how it’s traditionally abbreviated. Cognitive behavioral therapy. I’ve talked about it previously on the show. I think in the description second section of the website, or sorry, at trenthornpodcast.com, I’ll link to that episode where I talked about a good book I read by Robert Jensen, The Worry Cure, because I deal with anxiety a lot.
I’m a little anxious, a little mouse sometimes, and I have these irrational thoughts and I know that they’re irrational but they still get inside of my head. And so that’s why training your brain to have different kinds of thought processes when these irrational thoughts enter your mind, can be very helpful. So I think that’s where cognitive behavioral therapy can have benefits. I definitely am not in favor of Catholics who think that anxiety is some kind of sin. The catechism says that 10,000 difficulties do not equal a single doubt. We can grapple with things the church is teaching or we can ask God, “God, why did you allow this to happen to me?” We can be sad with God. 1 Peter 5, I think it’s 1 Peter 5, yes, 1 Peter 5:7, cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
Jesus even said on the cross, my God, my God, why have thou forsaken me? Now of course he’s quoting Psalm 22, but we can share God the anxieties that we have. That’s okay. That’s an okay thing in the life of a religious person. It’s not that the idea that if you’re feeling bad or even that you’re depressed doesn’t mean that you’re sinning, it could mean that you have something anxious that you have to deal with. Possibly some kind of therapy or maybe with some kind of a medical intervention. And the church has grown more in its understanding of how mental illnesses can factor in to different behaviors we take part in. For example, the church once did not practice funerals for people who committed suicide because it was believed that suicide and suicide is a sin. It is a grave matter and it can be mortally sinful if a person chooses it freely understanding the gravity of the consequences.
So for example, if somebody… You think about murder suicides in the news, that someone kills their family and then they don’t want to take responsibility for their crime and so they kill themselves so that they don’t have to face punishment or face a trial. Well, on top of the sin of murder would be the sin of suicide in this case that your life is not your own, but we’ve seen in the development of studies of psychology and psychiatry that the vast majority of people who tragically take their own lives are people who have some kind of mental illness or there is some damage to their rational faculties. They’re not thinking clearly, they’re not thinking rationally. And so the catechism says in paragraph 2283 as a result of that, well, I’m sorry, in paragraph 2282 it says grave psychological disturbances, anguish, grave fear of hardships, suffering or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide.
And the next paragraph in 2283 it says, we should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives by ways known to him alone. God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The church prays for persons who have taken their own lives. And even people, I’ve seen people… I didn’t attend a funeral, but I know people who’ve recently attended a funeral for a teen who took his own life. And so the church has no opposition there because this isn’t scandal. This isn’t someone who took their own life to be a scandal to others or to purposely cause grave harm, this is someone with a tragically undiagnosed mental illness, and so because of that, has a reduced culpability for their actions. And so we pray for them, for the mercy upon their soul and for them to ultimately find friendship with God.
And you never know. As the catechism says, God can offer salvation to persons through means that we don’t know of. Through means that we are not aware of. And so we pray for them and we hope for them. All right, question… That was a bit heavy. So question number 10 more lighthearted. What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? Mint chocolate chip. I love finding the little chocolate chips in it. It’s like finding little hidden, buried treasure. So that’s an easy one. Question number 11, is it moral to listen to or watch true crime podcasts and documentaries? Can Catholics watch horror movies or read horror novels? I used to be a fan before my conversion, but I’ve been told it’s a sin or at least spiritually dangerous. What I would say now I love true crime. I love watching Dateline and they’ve got those correspondence on there.
Bill Hader does a wonderful impersonation of that one Dateline guy who’s always really folksy about everything. So he saw his father get shot in the face. Well, that must have been wild. It was just another day out in beautiful West Virginia, but a darkness was looming on the horizon. When I watch these I’m like, “What’s going to happen in this one?” And then I watch it. I know that terrible things have happened. I obviously don’t rejoice in that, but I like seeing in true crime novels or true crime docudramas, crimes that happen, but also seeing how the culprits of these crimes were eventually apprehended, how the cases were solved. I find that to be incredibly fascinating. So I enjoy watching it for those aspects. I even enjoy watching works of fiction that can have disturbing elements in them.
So I used to watch the TV show Criminal Minds obsessively because the show is about, and it includes real life examples of how to profile serial killers. That you see how a serial killer, how they operate, what they do. That can narrow, that can create a profile to see what age they are, gender, race, family background, work background. And so profilers really do. It’s not as magical as you could see criminal minds or they can immediately come up with exactly the right person and go and track them down, but criminal profiling is a real thing. It’s a tool used in law enforcement to try to find suspects. And so I enjoy those elements of it. Even on Criminal Minds though, some of those shows can get pretty disturbing and far out there. So if something is just, it takes away my peace or I’m like, “This show makes me upset,” I turn it off.
This episode, uh-huh, I can’t do that. So I turn it off. So I would say for you that it’s not categorical that it’s wrong to watch things that contain graphic depictions of violence. My goodness, our faith includes graphic depictions of violence. The Passion is an R rated film and some people should not go and see The Passion because they have a spiritual sensitivity and that would take away their peace to see such a graphic depiction of the violence our Lord endured on the cross. So you have to discern for yourself whether you are spiritually disposed to receive these kinds of disturbing elements. If you are and you can take that in stride and learn and gather something useful from it, great. If not, it maybe something you have to pass over. And so that’s where it would become to a person’s personal discernment.
Now, I will say another question you should ask when you’re watching art that deals with violence, you should ask, is it art or is it goren? So goren is a term that developed I think in the early part of the two thousands when there were horror films that were specifically focused on gore or splatter, and I remember going with friends to check these out and I wished that I hadn’t, but we went and saw Eli Roths movie, Hostel, which has very scary torture elements in it. And anything, even the sequels that goes further beyond that. And it’s graphic and it’s gross. And those films are derived and there’s others related to it that has these scenes of graphic violence, not for an artistic sake, not to show the evilness of a villain. Even in Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, there’s a depiction I think, talking about God and the problem of evil, and in The Brothers Karamazov, the story that’s told is about a guy who like takes a little girl and feeds her to a pack of wild dogs for example.
And that’s gruesome stuff, but it highlights the amount of evil in the world is set in contrast to the question, how can God be good in light of such a graphic vivid portrayal of evil? But if it’s just gore and violence for the sake of gore and violence, this goren or splatter film as it’s called, then that is almost on par with the difference in is it art or is it pornography? If it’s just violence for the sake of getting your jollies or whatever in some kind of sick twisted way, you should probably steer clear of that because you now are bordering on the edge of pornography. But if it’s something that serves understanding true crime or has an artistic merit to it, then it can be acceptable. You have to discern it for yourself.
Question number 12, can Catholic parents choose to send their children to a public school if it is a good fit for the child or are we bound to use Catholic schools wherever possible? I.e, is it sinful to deliberately not choose a Catholic school? You are not bound to send your child to a Catholic school. You’re not bound to do that. You are bound to provide your child with a Catholic education, but those are two different things. Paragraph 798 in the Code of Canon Law says, parents are to entrust their children to those schools in which Catholic education is provided, but if they are unable to do this, they are bound to provide for their suitable Catholic education outside the schools. So you may not be able to afford to send your child to a Catholic school.
It may not be even a good fit for your child. You may want to choose to homeschool your child and manage your educational development in that way, and so there, you provide them the Catholic education within your own home, either when they are being homeschooled or when they are no longer in a public or a government school. So I would say, of course, you should take caution that in many so-called public schools, really they’re government schools, your child can be a receiving all kinds of propaganda, sex ed stuff, but I’ll be frank. I know some Catholic schools where they have tons of non-Catholic students that go there, and so you go there and kids are still exposed to pornography. They’re still exposed to all kinds of things.
So for me, and especially at Catholic schools, what can be hard sometimes is that if you’re an on fire Catholic, you’re seen as a narc if it’s one of the bad Catholic schools that tries to cater to everybody. And so like when I went to public school, I was really Catholic. That was part of my identity. And for most people that’s cool because it’s a public school. You’re a Catholic, Catholicism is your big thing, great. Anime is their big thing, robotics club is their big thing. That can be your thing. Whereas at a Catholic school, it may not seem cool to be on fire about your faith because that’s what the school is trying to teach, and teenagers have a natural sense that they want to rebel anyways, but there are great Catholic schools.
I have seen and I have spoken at wonderful Catholic schools, and so if you know that it’s a solid school and you can afford it, you should take advantage of that. But if there are other means that you can provide, remember paragraph 798 in the Code of Canon Law, that if you can provide that suitable Catholic education outside of a school context, whether it’s homeschooling or just at home after a child is out of school, then you’ve met your obligations as a parent to provide a Catholic education to your children.
All right, let’s do two more personal questions for me. Trent, I enjoy your vast knowledge of different subjects, but throughout your educational studies, what was the hardest class you took? Math. I was as bad at math. I got off on the wrong foot in algebra one and after that, I was just always struggling. I just couldn’t wrap my head around so many of these highly abstract concepts. I can do it now with philosophy and things that are going on there, but when I was getting into calculus and pre-calc, that’s where I just couldn’t do it. But English, history, government, that was stuff that I really enjoyed and excel at. So that was the particular gift God gave me and that’s what I’ve enjoyed in schooling ever since, but don’t ask me that when my kids get to calculus, I’m going to say even algebra two, I’m like, “Oh, quadratic formula you’ve back again. I see it that I vanquished you once before.”
So I’ll have to get a tutor to help them with that stuff, but I’m glad I will happily help them with their English homework and their history homework. My wife is really good at math and science, so we’re a great team. She can help them in math and science, I can do history, government, English, all that other great stuff. Number 14, what is your favorite black and white TV show? The Twilight Zone is my favorite. I love those Rod Serling introductions. In a place we call the Twilight Zone. So there’s lots of great episodes of Twilight Zone, the original black and white anthology series. I think I’m going to save that for a free for all Friday, my top 10 Twilight Zone episodes, so stay tuned for that.
Question number 15, lately I’ve been hearing a lot where people say something along the lines of, God brought this person into my life or how some interaction with somebody was a nod from God that they needed and that he made that happen for them. My question then is how much does God really intervene in our world, in our lives? How can God bring someone into our lives when we have free will? It feels as though if God is wanting it to be divine intervention, it actually is. Or the basic point is just that how does God bring people into our lives when we have free will? Well, that’s divine providence. So by God’s divine providence, he can arrange the world in a particular way to achieve his good ends taking into account what we will freely do because he’s all knowing and all powerful.
I want to read you an excerpt that I wrote for Bishop Robert Barron’s, The Mystery of God Study Guide where we did a lesson on divine providence. And this is the story. I find it utterly fascinating. On August 4, 2013, 19 year old Katie Lentz left her parents’ home in Quincy, Illinois for Jefferson city, Missouri. While passing through a secluded patch of highway near the town of Center, an oncoming car crossed the center lane and struck Katie’s vehicle. Her car was reduced to a mangled pile of metal from which emergency workers struggled to free her. While trapped, Lentz asked for someone to pray with her, and a bystander’s voice responded, “I will.” The bystander turned out to be a Catholic priest who prayed with Katie and anointed her with oil. After ministering to Katie, the priest stepped aside and prayed that the rescue personnel would have better luck freeing Katie from the wreckage. After several minutes, the responder’s tools began working again and the wreckage became easier to dismantle. Katie was freed and then people tried to seek out the priest who comforted her, but he was nowhere to be found.
Now, some people thought he was actually an angel, but it turns out he was Fr. Patrick Dowling, a priest from the Jefferson City Diocese, that includes Center. It wasn’t a miracle, but it was providence. And here’s why that is. The priest was leaving at that time to go help another priest who had fallen ill. So what I wrote in the study guy was that if the priest at the parish near Katie hadn’t fallen ill, then Fr. Dowling would not have volunteered to travel through the rural area where Katie had her accident. Through an innumerable series of natural causes that happened in just the right order, God’s perfect timing or his providence, was made manifest.
The Vicar of Vocations for the Diocese of Charleston, Fr. Jeff Kirby, said the two great gifts that God gives us that are associated with his Providence are time and place. To be at the right place at the right time, in order to be of service to others is a clear act of God’s presence among us. To bring all those pieces together at that time and place is truly evidence of God’s providential care. So you have natural things like someone falls ill so the priest is going to leave at a time he normally would not have left, but God also takes into account that that particular priest would drive a particular route and go at a certain speed so that he would be in a place to meet Katie when she had her accident, to pray for her and to pray for her rescue.
So God takes natural causes like if we get sick or if there’s an electrical outage or whatever it may be. He knows all the natural things that will happen and he also knows what we will freely choose to do in a particular time and place. And so he takes all that into account of how situations will naturally unfold, what we will do in a wide variety of situations, to organize all that together using his omniscience and his omnipotence to bring about the greatest good. And ultimately, by giving us those opportunities or what I like to call divine appointments, but still, he doesn’t force us. He doesn’t force us. There, Fr. Dowling chose to say yes. He could have kept driving. He could’ve kept driving and be like, “Not my problem.” But he kept that divine appointment. Got out of his car, went prayed with Katie, and went and helped at the scene.
And we get these divine appointments all the time as well. And the question is, will we keep them and see God brought someone into our life to maybe to help them to do good for them and to trust in God in what this person is asking of us? Two more questions. Trent, why was John the Baptist baptizing people before Jesus was baptized? Where did John get the idea of baptism before Jesus proclaimed it in the gospels? Well, there had been Jewish ritual washing for centuries before the time of baptism of the New Testament. And so baptism comes from the word baptizo, which means to immerse, and so there are Jews, the Essenes who lived in the desert like in Qumran up by the Dead Sea. They lived apart from society. They would take part in these ritual washings and they would wash their entire body.
They would walk down steps into a ritual purification pool. And this was in Hebrew and mikvah. It was a sign of repentance. So John the Baptist was preaching that the water was a sign to God that we have repented of our sins and we seek his forgiveness, but it wasn’t something that was taught to be through which we receive the Holy Spirit and become sanctified. That’s why John the Baptist said, I baptize you with water, but one coming after me, I’m not worthy to loosen his sandals. He baptizes you with fire and the Holy Spirit. Fire of course being a symbol of purification in the Bible. So here, the baptism of John and Jewish baptisms that were popular in the century before Christ, were a way of demonstrating to God the desire for ritual purity and the desire for forgiveness of sins.
It was a sign of repentance. A pledge of repentance, but rather now with the baptism we received through the new covenant, that baptism is a way to actually have our sins forgiven and to be united to Christ. So that baptism now is… Colossians 2 says baptism replaces circumcision as the sign for us to enter into the new covenant. And finally, our last question. I hope my question is not too late. You just made it under the wire. Can you tell me more about why Catholics make the sign of the cross? Well, it’s a very old sacramental. I think it’s the most common sacramental actually. Something too that doesn’t communicate grace, but it predisposes us to receive grace. And so just making the sign of the cross on the forehead, over the heart and across the shoulders reversed if you’re in the Eastern right.
I haven’t switched rights yet. I’m not sure if I will, but we’ll see what goes from that. It’s the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics do the shoulders reverse. Instead of left to right, it’s right to left. I still do it left to right because I’m still under the Latin right even though I attend an Eastern Catholic church. And so it’s a sign, it’s a reminder of our baptism, it’s a reminder of our Trinitarian belief as Christians and the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Tertullian talks about that in his work, De Corona. He says, and this is going back to the third century, very, very old Christian practice. It says, in all our travels and movements, in all our coming in and going out and putting on our shoes at the bath, at the table, in lighting our candles, in lying down and sitting down, whatever employment occupies us, we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross.
I’ve also heard it explained this way, that when we make the sign of the cross, we’re acknowledging that we have the Father on our mind, we have the Son in our hearts and we have the Holy Spirit across our shoulders to bear the weight of the world that can lay down upon us. So it’s the idea of incorporating God in everything that we do and that our faith is distinctly Trinitarian. Our mind on the Father, it doesn’t mean we don’t have our mind on the Son of course, but our mind always on the Father and doing the Father’s will, sanctifying Christ in our hearts so our hearts are more conformed to be like his immaculate heart, I mean, his sacred heart, and then across our shoulders, the Holy Spirit helps us to bear one another’s burdens as Galatians 6:2 says, and to bear the trials of this life always keeping ourselves focused on our eternal destiny.
I hope that was helpful for you all. Really enjoyed this Q and A mailbag. For those questions I was not able to answer, I’ll try to send those to Patreons through your own private inbox. Great. Can’t wait for another open mail bag. And by the way, I hope you have a very blessed day and a very blessed Thanksgiving.
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