I recently confessed the sin of using artificial birth control. The priest told me he could not absolve me unless I intended to stop using birth control. I have never heard this before. Must I stop using birth control in order to be absolved?
Under the subtitle “Contrition,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 1451, states the following: “Among the penitent’s acts, contrition occupies first place. Contrition is sorrow of the soul and detestation for the sin committed, together with the resolution not to sin again.”
Notice contrition necessarily involves the intent to no longer commit the confessed sin. In your case, the intent to stop using artificial contraception is necessary to have true contrition, and thus necessary for absolution.
The authority the priest has to “not forgive” comes from the command Jesus gives his apostles in John 20:23: “Whosever sins you forgive, they are forgiven . . . whosoever sins you retain they are retained.” Notice the apostles have the authority to judge whether to forgive or retain (not forgive). This judgment is based on whether the penitent is truly contrite for the sin, which involves the intent to stop the sin.
The priest’s judgment is correct if you are not intending to stop using artificial birth control. I would encourage you to ask for God to give you and your spouse the strength to turn away from this sin and look to God’s plan for human sexuality and experience the joy and happiness he has in store for you.
The natural means by which spouses can avoid pregnancies in just circumstances and be in harmony with God’s plan for human sexuality is called Natural Family Planning. You can visit the Couple to Couple League website (ccli.org) to find out more information.
— Karlo Broussard
My seven-year-old granddaughter saw my brown scapular and asked me about it. I told her about it and why we wear them. She is asking me if she can get one. Can she?
Decades ago, it used to be the practice for children to be enrolled in the brown scapular when they made their First Communion. Although that is not routinely done now, there is no reason your granddaughter cannot be enrolled in the brown scapular and wear one if she would like to be.
— Michelle Arnold
Does the one-hour fast before Holy Communion begin at least one hour before Communion or one hour before Mass?
One hour before Holy Communion. The 1983 Code of Canon Law states:
“A person who is to receive the Most Holy Eucharist is to abstain for at least one hour before Holy Communion from any food and drink, except for only water and medicine.
“A priest who celebrates the most Holy Eucharist two or three times on the same day can take something before the second or third celebration even if there is less than one hour between them” (Can. 919 §1-2).
— Peggy Frye
I read that personal impurity is a mortal sin, but I find it hard to believe that a small act can send a person who was good all his life to eternal punishment.
A diamond can seem like just a small, shiny rock, and a roll of $1,000 bills may seem to be just a roll of paper. But to one who knows their value, they mean much more.
The Creator did not design the human sexual organs for masturbation. His purpose in designing them was so that the act of sexual intercourse would be a physical expression of vows made at the altar about a union that encompasses the very meaning of the lives of the two participants—and the lives of those who result from such acts.
To remove this act from its context simply to obtain pleasure for oneself is to lie with one’s body and so to sin against the Creator’s intention. So it is not a small act for those who know its significance.
— Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
What are some arguments I can share with a friend who believes in reincarnation?
There are several arguments that support the Church’s rejection of reincarnation, which Origen said in the third century “is foreign to the church of God, and not handed down by the Apostles, nor anywhere set forth in the Scriptures” (Commentary on Matthew, 13.1)
First, in the fourth century St. Ambrose of Milan wrote about how it would be impossible that “the soul which rules man should take on itself the nature of a beast so opposed to that of man,” or that man “being capable of reason should be able to pass over to an irrational animal” (On Belief in the Resurrection, 127). In other words, the migration of souls between human and animals is as impossible as the procreation of bodies between humans and animals.
Second, humans do not behave as if they possessed souls that lived before the birth of their body. The third-century Christian writer Tertullian put it this way: “For all men are imbued with an infant soul at their birth. But how happens it that a man who dies in old age returns to life as an infant?” (A Treatise on the Soul, 31).
Of course, a defender of reincarnation could say that while a person’s soul inhabits a new body, his memories and personality do not. But as St. Irenaeus argued in the second century: “If we don’t remember anything before our conception, then how do advocates of reincarnation know we’ve all been reincarnated?” (Against Heresies, II.33.1).
— Trent Horn
I’m on the RCIA team at our parish, and a few Sundays ago our director argued with me, stating that the perpetual virginity of Mary is not dogma and that it’s not doctrine of the Church, either. I know that she’s wrong, but would like some definitive, written proof.
The Lateran Synod of the year 649, under Pope Martin I, stressed the threefold character of Mary’s virginity, teaching of the “blessed ever-virgin and immaculate Mary that: she conceived without seed, of the Holy Ghost, generated without injury (to her virginity), and her virginity continued unimpaired after the birth” (Denzinger, 256). And II Constantinople, session 8, canon 2, declared: “If anyone does not confess the two births of the Word of God, one from the Father before the ages . . . the other . . . from Mary, the holy and glorious Mother of God ever Virgin . . . let him be anathema.” So it is a dogma.
— Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P
In 1986, I had an abortion. In 1987, I confessed this sin to a priest. Later I found out that a person who commits this sin is automatically excommunicated. I went to confession to my pastor, who told me that I was in full communion with the Church. I kept confessing the sin until I was told by a priest to stop. Now Pope Francis has given all priests power to forgive the sin of abortion. Does this mean that all this time I was in fact excommunicated?
In the United States, abortion is so common that many bishops delegate the faculty to lift the automatic excommunication for abortion to their priests. What Pope Francis did was to extend this faculty to all priests everywhere in the Year of Mercy.
You have confessed this many times, and the priest who asked you to stop doing so was correct. Please try to believe that the Lord forgives you. He did so the very first time you confessed. It may be that you are still dealing with grief for your lost child and that has been why you have felt the need to continue to confess.
Rather than confession for a forgiven sin, at this point perhaps you might want to consider post-abortion counseling. Most dioceses have this service available. Just call your diocese for information, or contact Project Rachel, a post-abortion healing ministry (hopeafterabortion.com).
—Michelle Arnold
Our parish has a lot of problems. We are a so-called mission church. We have no kneelers, although there is room for them. We have a regular priest who hears confession in the parking lot. I asked a parish council member to bring up setting up a space for a confessional, as we have plenty of empty rooms. However, the priest said no. The people talk out loud and carry on conversations before Mass to the point where one in particular stands with her back leaning on the pew and talking to the ladies about her problems. The priest himself walks around and talks out loud to people. There is a devoted person who leads the rosary before Mass who has told me she has had enough. That depresses my husband and me. Should we stay or go to another parish? We have a new deacon who seems to be more on the ball. Should we seek him out and try to talk to him about this?
If it were just a matter of the parishioners, I would advise you to stay, because the priest could bring them along. But the priest does not seem to be anywhere near doing that. I suggest that you pray on it, but don’t feel guilty if you decide to move on. We will pray for that parish.
—Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
How do we make sense of St. Athanasius’s statement quoted in paragraph 460 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God”? It seems the Catholic Church is affirming polytheism.
First, it doesn’t make sense the Catechism would use St. Athanasius’s quote to teach polytheism when it explicitly condemns polytheism in paragraph 2112.
Second, it is unlikely a saint of the stature of St. Athanasius would be ignorant of the metaphysical truth that God’s nature is unique and cannot be possessed by a finite creature. Consequently, there must be something more to it.
According to the original Greek of St. Athanasius, from which the Catechism quotes, the phrase “that we might become God” is better translated as “that we might be deified.” The Greek word for “deified,” theopoiethomen, has the connotation of participation in deity rather than actually becoming God.
Despite the mistranslation into English, the motif of participation in the divine nature seems to be what the Catechism intends to teach with this quote. The first line in paragraph 460 quotes St. Peter when he teaches Christians have become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). Furthermore, right after St. Athanasius’s statement, the Catechism quotes St. Thomas Aquinas concerning God wanting to make us sharers in his divinity.
The idea of sharing in the divine nature means we share what philosophers and theologians identify as God’s communicable attributes (goodness, holiness, and love) as opposed to his incommunicable ones (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and absolute simplicity). This participation in the divine nature is commonly referred to as theosis or divinization.
If Jesus is the only Son of God by nature (John 1:18, 3:16), and yet we can share in his sonship via participation (1 John 3:2), so too we can participate in God’s nature via grace although He alone is infinite.
— Karlo Broussard
How do I answer the Protestant objection to purgatory that, because the Bible says “when we are away from the body we are at home with the Lord,” this means after death we automatically go to heaven?
This is a misreading of 2 Corinthians 5:6-9 where St. Paul says, “So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight.We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.”
Paul is saying that even though our bodies feel like home, we would rather dwell in our true home with the Lord. These verses do not teach that when we are not at home in the body (i.e., when we are dead) that we are automatically “at home” with the Lord. This is just an expression of a desire Christians have and not a reality all of them will immediately experience. That’s because some believers must be cleansed of their sins in purgatory before they can dwell with God in heaven.
— Trent Horn
My wife and I are considering using an adoption agency that claims to be Christian, but it allows same-sex couples and single parents to adopt children. I think giving a child to a same-sex couple is morally evil, and the adoption agency is the prime agent of the moral evil. Would I be materially cooperating with evil by adopting a child from there?
No! On the contrary; you would be rescuing a child who would otherwise be denied a family life with both a mother and a father. Get to it!
— Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
Why should Christians celebrate the birth of Christ, when Jesus himself did not celebrate his own birthday, nor did his apostles? And since there is no date for his birth in the Bible, wouldn’t that be God’s way of saying that we are not to celebrate his birthday?
To put this into perspective, let’s ask similar questions about the births of other historic persons who are honored in American society for their secular accomplishments. For example, perhaps we should ask ourselves if Americans should celebrate President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, when it is very possible that he did not celebrate his own birthday. Since President George Washington was not born on February 22—he was born on February 11, a date that changed when England adopted the Gregorian calendar—could that perhaps be a sign that Americans were never meant to celebrate Presidents Day at all?
If you apply the same standard for celebrating Christ’s birth to all of the other historical persons whose births are deemed worthy of being commemorated, we would not be honoring anybody, no matter how significant their contributions to the common good of mankind. And if we did not apply those same standards to other historical persons that we are considering applying to Christ, then we would be asserting that it is valid to celebrate the birth of finite humans, but not the birth of the Incarnate God.
—Michelle Arnold
In my church we have paintings and statues of our Lady that portray her as a beautiful young woman, when in reality she was older than depicted when Jesus died. Why is this?
There are many famous portrayals of Mary as an older woman, such as Caravaggio’s painting The Entombment of Christ (1602-1603) and in Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ.
On the other hand, those artistic depictions of the Virgin Mary as a young beautiful woman are meant to convey a spiritual truth: the spiritual beauty of God as reflected in the most holy Virgin Mother of God. Her physical beauty reflects the glory of God. It is a beauty that comes from God and that leads to God (CCC 243). Her youthful image calls us to contemplate the Incarnation of Jesus in Mary’s virginal womb (see Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23). Sacred art can be a form of catechesis.
When Michelangelo was criticized for his Pieta sculpture showing Mary as a young woman when she was actually much older when Jesus died, “he answered that he did so deliberately because the effects of time could not mar the virginal features of this, the most blessed of women. He also said that he was thinking of his own mother’s face; he was only five when she died: the mother’s face is a symbol of eternal youth” (source: saintpetersbasilica.org/altars/pieta/pieta.htm).
— Peggy Frye
I am sixty-seven years old. I have a few health problems. A few years back I lost everything material. Including a home we had raised our family in. In an effort to avoid bankruptcy, I used all the money in my retirement accounts. At the end I was completely broke—oh yes, I had also lost a job I had for thirty-one years. Now I am working sixty hours a week in a sales position I really don’t like. I pray each day for a deeper surrender to God’s will. My job does not pay enough for my wife and I to really get by, and I am in a difficult work position. How do I tell if it is okay for me to look for something else? More than anything, I want to be in God’s will.
Usually we learn the Lord’s will for us by not choosing anything that is evil. This means that we keep trying to see what works. There is nothing wrong with looking for a new job—so long as you don’t jeopardize your current job while looking. Ask the Lord to help you with this. You are in my prayers.
— Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
“Christian witness” is the father’s stepbrother. This stepbrother converted to Islam a few years ago in order to marry a Muslim woman. I told my niece that he cannot be the Christian witness because he is a Muslim, but she has informed me that they intend not to disclose to the baptismal celebrant that the witness has converted to Islam. Should I inform the celebrant?
First, I think we should clarify that Christian witnesses really do not have any responsibilities, in the eyes of the Church, either at the baptism or in the child’s Christian formation. The practice of allowing a “Christian witness” to stand with the parents at the baptism was an ecumenical gesture, intended to allow parents to offer a social honor to non-Catholic Christian family or friends who did not qualify to be godparents. The responsibilities of officially witnessing the baptism and promising to assist the parents in the child’s Christian formation belong to the godparents.
That said, it is indeed problematic for someone who has apostatized from Christianity to be presented as a “Christian witness” at a child’s baptism. He should simply be presented as an honored family member who is standing with the parents at the baptism as a “witness” to the child’s baptism. If the priest is under the impression that this man is a Christian, you might privately correct that misunderstanding, but there is no need to ask or expect that this Muslim relative not be allowed to stand at the baptismal font with the family to watch the baptism from a closer vantage point.
— Michelle Arnold
Does God judge us the moment after death, or at the end of the world with all people?
Both. The Catechism says, “Each man receives his eternal retribution in his immortal soul at the very moment of his death, in a particular judgment that refers his life to Christ: either entrance into the blessedness of heaven through a purification or immediately—or immediate and everlasting damnation” (CCC 1022).
In other words, at the moment of death we are judged for what we did in the body (see 2 Corinthians 5:10). Our souls are aware of what happens, and they go to heaven or hell. Souls that go to heaven either go there directly, as in the case of martyrs or people who die perfectly purified from all sin, or they are purified in purgatory before being admitted into heaven, since nothing unclean can enter heaven (see Revelation 21:27).
Unlike the particular judgment that each soul will face at the moment of death, the general or “last judgment” will be the time when the eternal destinies of all people will be publicly pronounced, and the world as we know it will come to an end. According to the Catechism, “The Last Judgment will come when Christ returns in glory. Only the Father knows the day and the hour; only he determines the moment of its coming. Then through his Son Jesus Christ he will pronounce the final word on all history” (CCC 1040).
— Trent Horn
My wife and I are homeschooling our children, and the curriculum is advocating young-earth creationism, which puts the date of creation around 4,000 B.C. Yet we know this contradicts the contemporary scientific narrative. Does the Catholic Church permit Catholics to believe the age of the universe is older than 6,000 years?
Yes. The 13.8 billion-year-old universe theory does not contradict the Bible nor does it contradict Church teaching. Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical Humani Generis, teaches the first elven chapters of Genesis are history in a real sense although they employ figurative language appropriate to the ancient authors. This allows for a non-literalistic (some details aren’t meant to be taken literally) reading of the creation story and the genealogies, which in turn provides a way to harmonize the Genesis timeline and the scientific narrative of the history of the universe.
The Catholic Church has never made a definitive statement on the age of the universe, nor will it, since the age of the universe lies outside the realm of faith and morals. As such, Catholics are free to debate which theories the current scientific evidence supports best.
— Karlo Broussard
In my faith and morality book, the author stated that sanctifying grace is the greatest gift mankind has received. Sanctifying grace is an amazing gift, but isn’t Jesus Christ himself the greatest gift mankind has received?
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, sanctifying grace is “the gratuitous gift of his life that God makes to us; it is infused by the Holy Spirit into the soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it” (CCC 2023). Since sanctifying grace is God’s own life within us, it is a way of saying that it is God himself, as he lives in communion with us. That is probably why the author of your book identified sanctifying grace as “the greatest gift mankind has received.”
— Michelle Arnold
I have heard that your pastor can move your Sunday Mass obligation to a different day of the week if, for example, your work schedule makes it impossible to attend Mass on Sunday. My family and I will soon be taking a two-week cruise. This will include two Sundays at sea. There will not be a priest on board the ship. We will be in port on the Saturdays, but will have to be back on the ship before any Vigil Masses occur. So, I was wondering if my pastor could move our Sunday obligation to Saturday just for these two weeks.
I know of no such authority that a local pastor has. But such a dispensation is really not necessary. If you can’t get to Mass, you can’t get to Mass. God does not demand the impossible. I suggest that you attend Mass on those Saturdays, but understand that your obligation to attend Mass is dispensed if circumstances make it impossible for you to attend.
— Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
Did Pope St. John Paul II say the account of the Fall is just a myth?
Pope St. John Paul II referred to the creation stories in Genesis as “myths,” but he was also adamant that they were not mere fictions:
“[T]he language in question is a mythical one. In this case, the term ‘myth’ does not designate a fabulous content, but merely an archaic way of expressing a deeper content. Without any difficulty we discover that content, under the layer of the ancient narrative. It is really marvelous as regards the qualities and the condensation of the truths contained in it” (Pope John Paul II, General Audience, Nov. 7, 1979).
The Catechism says, “The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man” (CCC 390). So, for example, Genesis 3’s language about talking snakes and eating forbidden fruit may be a figurative way of describing our first parents’ sin.
— Trent Horn
I noticed a notation in the old Missal stating that during the Confiteor the faithful are to strike the breast once. Now with the new translation we say the words “through my fault” three times. Do we now strike our breasts three times?
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states the following:
“During the Confiteor the action of striking our breasts at the words through my own fault can strengthen my awareness that my sin is my fault. In the Creed we are invited to bow at the words which commemorate the Incarnation: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man. This gesture signifies our profound respect and gratitude to Christ who, though God, did not hesitate to come among us as a human being, sharing our human condition in order to save us from sin and restore us to friendship with God” (source: old.usccb.org/romanmissal/resources-bulletins3.shtml).
Since a specific number of strikes are not mentioned in the new Missal or in the USCCB’s guidelines, the customary single strike appears to be sufficient, but more are not excluded.
— Peggy Frye