Featured Guests: Don Johnson, Chris Stefanick, Rose Sweet, Jimmy Akin, Karlo Broussard
Featured Questions:
- 01:07 – What is the reason for religion? – Don Johnson
- 05:50 – If God is a loving God, why does he let us kill others? – Karlo Broussard
- 12:20 – What do you do if a family member falls away from the Catholic Church because of its stance on same-sex attraction? – Chris Stefanick
- 16:56 – Did God create physical illness? – Jimmy Akin
- 21:52 – How do I do if my wife doesn’t want to practice Natural Family Planning? – Rose Sweet
- 24:10 – How to talk to atheist classmates about the Catholic Faith? – Chris Stefanick
- 25:56 – How to approach a fallen-away Catholic Church? – Jimmy Akin
Transcript:
Hi, I’m Cy Kellett. Welcome to the J.K. Chesterton Studio, where we produce our radio program, Catholic Answers Live, each day. Today, we wanna share some of the very best questions and answers our guests and apologists have addressed recently.
Today, you’ll hear from Catholic Answers apologist Jimmy Akin and Karlo Broussard, and some fantastic guests including Don Johnson, Chris Stefanick, and Rose Sweet. You’ll hear them give straight answers to tough questions, such as, “Why would a merciful God let us keep killing each other?” “How do I respond when someone loses their faith based on what they’ve heard that the Church teaches on same-sex attraction?” “Did God create physical illness?” And, “What if only one spouse wants to practice natural family planning?” Thanks for joining us. Enjoy the best of Catholic Answers Live.
Alyssa, you are on with Don Johnson. What’s your question?
Hi. I’ve got a friend who … He doesn’t really see the reason for having a religion. He thinks that anything good you could get from a religion, you could better get from a proper form of government, specifically anarchism, ’cause it’s his chosen form of government or non-government.
And I just wanted to know how I could bring the topic to …
So-
… conversation to more fruitful.
Yeah. So, Alyssa, yeah. I appreciate that. Your friend thinks that whatever good we could get from religion could be provided another way. Is that correct?
Yeah, specifically by a proper form of social order.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, practically speaking, we could jump to that and say, “Oh, let’s see how that’s worked out in history.” But again, I wouldn’t jump to that. I wouldn’t jump to that, even as much as you might want to. Like, all right, how are all those anarchist groups working out amongst themselves?
No. Again, you’ve gotta go back to what I was just talking about. Ultimately, religion is not here to provide you a system of morality. It’s just not. In fact, C. S. Lewis was asked to give a talk on this one time, and the subject of the talk was, “Can we be good without God?” And before he got to that subject, I can’t remember the name of this talk, but C. S. Lewis, he did this long introduction saying how disgusted he was that they even brought the topic to him, because he said … What do you guys think? “It sounds to me as if you guys don’t care whether or not Christianity is true. It sounds like you’ve bene listening to all these foolish preachers.”
And that’s the term he used. “All these foolish preachers who are constantly telling you how good Christianity is for society, and you have forgotten that Christianity is not a patent medicine.” It’s not here to make you feel good. It’s not here to even provide a system of morality. It’s here because it’s true. It’s a … It claims to tell you what the universe it like.
So that would … Back up there. Now, Alyssa, I wanna give you a little secondary thing, though. Any system of morality, and this is one of those things where, if it’s sort of, if you get it and you can run with it, do it. But if not, don’t waste your time on it. But if you’re looking for a basis of morality, I would put Christianity up against every other one, and Lewis actually also uses this as an argument for Christianity. He says, “If there is morality at all, if there is a standard for right and wrong” … And in existence, right?
If morality is not just a myth or a social construct, then we have to have a standard for that basis, for that morality. Right? We have to have something that tells us, “This is better off. This is right. This is wrong.” No other worldview adequately provides that.
Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t attempts at it. There are attempts. But adequately, which worldview actually provides us a basis for morality? I think you wanna dig into that. You’ll find, again, it’s Christianity, and ultimately, it’s Catholicism that is that basis for morality, so that’s the direction I would go, Alyssa.
Okay. He doesn’t really believe in morality. He’s one of those people that says he doesn’t believe in morality, but acts like he does.
Yeah.
Right.
Thank you.
Here’s what I would do, Melissa. Smack him upside the head a couple times, steal his keys, go and tell lies about him to his boss, and … No, don’t do that. But as an …
I see where you’re going, though.
And just see.
Yup.
Just ask him.
Yeah. Right.
Ask him if he thought that was okay.
Morality, so you say, it’s easy to have the argument that …
It’s easy to do
… morality doesn’t exist until someone does something …
Yeah.
… immoral to you.
That’s exactly right. Francis Schaeffer used to do this. He had a place called L’Abri out in the mountains of Switzerland. This was back in the ’60s and ’70s, and all of these relativists, the hippies would come out there, and they would say, “I don’t believe Francis. I don’t believe in morality. That’s all just myth.”
And he would steal their backpack, or first thing. And they’d be like, “hey, you can’t” … Why not? And I think that it’s just sort of the thing. Really? Nobody … You’re right. Nobody acts as if morality is subjective. Nobody actually lives that out, and you might want to ask, “Why is that?”
If it’s true that there is no sch thing as morality, why can nobody live it out? That doesn’t make sense. I mean, why do you have to live this myth? Why isn’t it a free for all? Why isn’t it … And really, and this is the problem with anarchy, if you wanna get into that. Anarchy is a problem because people do bad things to each other.
The reason we need some form of governments is that people do bad things to each other, and something’s gotta control it, and the less self control we have, the more outside control we have to have, unfortunately and so that’s sorta how that plays out. Thanks, Alyssa.
My question is, if there is a true entity that y’all call God, and he’s so merciful and loving, why, since creation, if there was one, are we allowed to keep killing each other day after day, after day?
Yeah. Carl, what you bring up, my friend, is what we traditionally call in the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil, and in this particular case, it would be the problem of what we call moral evil.
And fundamentally, Carl, I mean, it is a mystery in the sense that we cannot fully comprehend God’s infinite wisdom and reasons with why he would continue to permit us to allow to abuse the freedom that he gave us. Okay? But, so the answer that I’m gonna give, Carl, can’t totally dispel the darkness of God’s permission of evil. Okay?
But I do think it can shine a bit of light that may very well be helpful for you. One way to think about it, Carl, is to think about this. What would God have to do in order to stop us from killing each other over and over and over again?
So what do you think, Carl, that God … What would God have to do? Would you agree with me, Carl, that maybe perhaps one way is that God could override our free will whenever we choose to kill somebody or do something evil. Would that be a possible way that God could do that?
No.
Okay. Why-
Not at all.
Why not? So you’re saying God couldn’t override our free will, and why couldn’t he do that?
Oh, he can do anything … Well, first of all, I gotta quit saying, “He” ’cause I’ve never met it, I’ve never seen it, or whatever.
For the sake of conversation. I gotcha.
I renounce my Catholicism.
Okay. All right.
Other than that, he’s got the … Or it’s got the power to do whatever it wants. It could have started over. It could have done everything.
Okay. Okay. So, if he is all powerful, then he would have the power to override our free will whenever we choose to do something evil. But you know, Carl, I would say that that actually wouldn’t be a good thing, because why would God create human creatures with free will? Right? With the ability to choose good or the bad, and then stop us from exercising that capacity whenever we choose to abuse our freedom?
So it doesn’t makes sense that God is going to stop our free will and violate the very nature that he gave us. That wouldn’t be smart. That would be like Cy and me putting an air condition system into my home in order to cool the house, and every time it kicks on, I go and turn if off. It wouldn’t make sense, right?
So God … It wouldn’t make sense. That’s not a good option for God to stop us from doing evil. So that leads us to the next question. Well, what’s another way? Well, perhaps, Carl, I would agree with you that God, being all powerful, he could set it up in a way to where we wouldn’t be killing everybody. He could have created us with a beatific vision, and Carl, that’s the language that we use for Heaven. Like all of the souls in Heaven right now, they see God in his essence, and their wheels are totally directed and perfected … Totally directed to God, and perfected. They can’t choose evil. They still can choose good, they still have free will, but they can’t choose evil.
So the question is, “Why didn’t God set up the universe in that way?” And ultimately, it’s a mystery, but I think one possible answer, Carl, is that God saw that there is a good in creating human beings in a way that we can actually cooperate with his divine plan of providence. That’s a great dignity, Carl, as opposed to not being able to do anything to cooperate with his plan of how he’s gonna order human history.
He chose for us to be real causes in history. He willed for us to actually be able to choose things and have real effects. Unfortunately, some of those effects are bad, but even the effects that we choose for the good are real effects that come from our cooperation with his plan, and that’s a great dignity that he has bestowed upon us as human beings.
So I would say that, rather than God’s permission of us killing everybody, taking away from God’s goodness, it actually points to God’s goodness, Carl, in as much as he respects the great dignity that he has bestowed upon us, and finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t bring in the Christian perspective which we know that God will order all things toward the good so that all of the killing that takes place, and all of the evil doers will be brought to justice, Carl, and God, being infinite in power, as you acknowledge, if that is the case, then there’s no good that he couldn’t bring about to rectify and cancel out, you might say, the evils that have taken place in this world.
And we know, from the Christian perspective, that that’s going to take place ultimately in Heaven in the next life where, Carl, by the light of grace, by divine grace, we will see how all of the evil will be brought to justice. We will see how God ordered all things toward the good, as Saint Paul writes in Romans Chapter Eight, “for those who believe in him.” So there’s a philosophical element here, but then there’s also a Christian element.
The flip side of that is, if God doesn’t exist, Carl, then all of the injustice in this world will never be brought to justice, and thus, we live in an absurd world, and there would be no point in living if all of the evils will not be brought to justice.
In this segment, a caller asks, “What do you do when a Catholic family member falls away from the faith because of their perception of the Church’s stance on same sex attraction?”
The question that’s usually behind that, “Why does a church teach X, Y or Z about sexual ethics?” And the reason people leave faith over it is often because they hear the Church’s teaching and presume that that teaching is totally incompatible with the message of a God of love.
So it’s gotta be answered. It’s gotta be answered with clarity and charity, because this is a huge block to the gospel. You see where I’m going there?
Yes.
I’m always thinking in terms of, “I wanna bring this person to a relationship with God. This is a serious block to the gospel for people.”
It’s crucial when we answer the question about same sex attraction to make it clear to people, right? That the Church’s teaching is not in congress with the idea of a God who loves us. Now here’s where the conversation usually breaks down, and they presume that it’s incompatible with a God of love. It breaks down at the issue of identity. Right?
The whole world would tell us that a sexual attraction is an identity, and if that’s who you are, you have to act on that in order to actualize who you are, in order to be yourself, and then if anyone would teach you some moral teaching contrary to that, it says, “Don’t act on that,” what they must be doing is hating who you are and telling you that you shouldn’t actualize yourself.
That sounds like a message of hate. Right?
Yeah.
The Catholic teaching, the truth, is that a sexual attraction doesn’t define who a person is, and a great story to point this out, how the Church not only teaches that, but loves people who are same sex attracted, if you’re listening right now, Mother Theresa of Calcutta. Back in the 1980s, AIDS broke out in the United States, an it was a climate of terror.
For anyone over 40, you remember? That we thought, “Hey, if someone sneezes on me, I might get AIDS.” We thought this might be the end of the world. We didn’t know how the virus was spread just yet.
In that climate of terror, Mother Theresa started the first AIDS hospice in New York City. So much for hating people that we’re disagreeing with about a moral issue, right? Before any community was ever, before any gay activity group was there, the Catholic Church was loving and serving people, and Mother Theresa once said, when someone referred to the “homosexuals” she care for, she said, “Do not call them homosexuals. Call them children of God.”
Because all of us, regardless of any attraction you have, you’re not primarily defined in terms of that attraction. That would be a reduction of a person. It’s undignified to look at a person and say, “I’m gonna sum that person up in terms of who they’re attracted to.” The primary thing that sums us up, at our core, who we are, is in relationship to the God who loves us and calls us to give our lives to him in love. We’re children of God. That’s who we are.
So the Catholic response to the gay movement, really, is primarily one of saying, “No, no, no. I’m not gonna reduce the person to an attraction. I’m gonna uphold the dignity of the person.” And obviously, if that’s the worldview, where this attraction isn’t you, but it is something you experience, well, that’s why the Church can say whether someone’s single and heterosexual, or they are same sex attracted. The Church would say … It would never teach us, and Jesus never taught us, and the Church, finally … There’s no saint who’s ever taught us, “You’re gonna reach fulfillment as a person by sexually acting out.” Right?
Right.
We don’t teach that because we’re not primarily sexual beings. We’re primarily human beings. We’re children of a loving father. So if that’s the context for the conversation, I think people might open their ears to what we’re saying, and if they disagree with us, at least it won’t be a block to what we’re gonna say next, which is, “God loves you and calls you to a relationship with himself.”
Now I know it’s not always easy to get that point across. It takes some studying to get that point across with any clarity, which is part of the reason we’re culturally losing with this issue, because whoever gets the greatest sound byte argument is the person who wins nowadays, and if they just go to, “Well, it’s not fair,” then that tends to close the discussion. Right?
But we have to keep engaging that particular question. When we don’t, we do people an injustice. I’ve seen people in youth ministry dodge around that question, and guys, I’m telling you, it’s the elephant in the room every young person’s wondering.
Right.
Hi. My question is, did God create physical illness? The reason why I’m asking this question is because I have a degenerative eye and kidney disease called Senior-Loken syndrome, and it has always been my assumption that it was a creation from God, and that he gave it to me for a reason, because … I’m a better Catholic because of it, and I can do so many things because I have this disease.
Okay. Well, there’s not a single up or down answer to this question. In the Bible, we do see language that talks about diseases like, say, a plague as if it was sent by God, as if he were actively causing it.
But, we also know that not all of the language that the Bible uses regarding God is literal. One of the things that we observe when we make a careful study of how the Bible uses language is that, particularly when talking about God, the Biblical authors, and ancient people in general, would speak as if God were actively causing things that we also have reason to believe he actually only allowed, and an example of that actually concerns a plague.
There’s a famous incident that’s recorded in the historical books of the Old Testament, where David took a census of the people of Israel, which is construed as kind of a lack of trust in God, like he’s trying to raise an army and he’s gonna trust in his army instead of in God, and so as a result of that, there’s a plague that comes upon Israel, and David then makes atonement. He actually buys the plot of land that then becomes the sight of the future temple, and so it’s a very important moment in Israel’s history.
But what’s interesting is that this event is interpreted different ways in different historical books. According to one passage, God himself stirred up David to take this census, but according to another passage, the Devil stirred up David’s heart to take this census, and both of them agree that it was a bad thing to do because David then gets punished for doing it, but one attributes it to God and one attributes it to the Devil. So how do we square that?
Well, the logical way, to my mind, and to a lot of interpreters’ minds, is to say that the ancients had a habit, because they wanted to depict God as strong and active, or speaking of God as if he were actively causing things, when really, he was only allowing them. And so the way to harmonize those two would be to say that, “Okay, actually, this was an evil thing, and the Devil stirred up David to do it, and God allowed the Devil to do that.”
But because of the way they tended to talk about God and kings, in general, as being very active and is causing everything in their kingdoms, it got framed in a different way, and so that means when we encounter language about God causing illnesses, that we have this question, “Is this literal, or is it just a way of talking about gOd based on hos people spoke back then, but really God’s only allowing the illness?”
And there’s no definitive answer to that question. Moral theologians and philosophers have drawn a distinction between what’s called moral evil, which is sin, and physical evil, which is suffering, in essence. And God can’t cause moral evil, because that would be morally evil for God to do. God himself would be sinning if he caused someone to sin. But, some … Many Catholic theologians have said, “God could cause suffering, because it’s not a moral evil. Suffering can bring benefits.” I mean, that’s why we have pain receptors in our skin, so that it can play a positive role in keeping us from hurting ourselves.
There are people who have a different condition called congenital insensitivity to pain, and they don’t feel pain. They can cut themselves, they can burn themselves, they can really injure themselves because they don’t have functioning pain receptors. So because suffering can play a positive role, many theologians historically have said, ‘Well, God can cause that,” and so God could, without sinning, send suffering into someone’s life actively, as long as he’s bringing some good out of it.
Hello. My wife and I were married about seven years, and she doesn’t wanna have … Doesn’t wanna use natural family planning. We have two children already. What can I do?
Well-
Or how should I live, as a good Catholic that has it?
Well, Anonymous, the first thing we do, as spouses in any marriage, is to follow our own consciences, and if we have trouble with a spouse who is not going along with the program, we go get some help right away. Go talk to a … I’m not gonna just say “a priest,” but a wise and holy priest. Get some council, and maybe a good therapist, a Christian or Catholic therapist, and ask your wife, you would just go and sit down.
When people don’t wanna do something, they’re afraid, and so beneath your wife’s reluctance to practice green, healthy, natural, beautiful, marital relations, is some kind of a fear, and if you can tap into that fear, you can maybe uncover what’s really going on and resolve the problem.
And we can’t solve your problem on the radio, but that’s what I would do. Try to find out, and start praying, what is the fear that’s holding her back?
If it is that she doesn’t want anymore children, well-
Well, all the more to practice natural … Here’s the thing. When people don’t wanna practice natural family planning, it’s because they’re lazy and they … They wanna have sex on demand. They don’t wanna have any rules or regulations. They don’t wanna go on a diet, they don’t wanna say, “No” to their urges. They just wanna do what they wanna do whenever they want, and, “Nobody better put a rule on me.”
So usually, that’s what’s going on with somebody, but natural family planning, as you know, and read up on this yourself so you have the answers for your wife, brings such intimacy into marriages, couples who practice it. There’s less than a 5% divorce rate for couples who practice natural family planning. There’s an increase in trust, love, intimacy. It’s just … It’s wonderful.
So, you educate yourself, stand in the gap for her, and pray, pray, pray, and go get some professional help, and try to uncover her real fears.
All right, Rose. Thank you very much.
And I’m praying for you both.
Thank you.
In this clip, a caller explains that when he occasionally mentions Christianity to his classmates, they are disgusted. He seeks advice on how to talk to atheists about the faith.
You know, now often people will act more disgusted than they actually are. I gotta point that out. Sometimes, they’re rebellious teenagers who maybe hate their grandma or parents, so they’re just acting out on that.
If you are being yourself, and you’re sharing from a sincere place of joy, usually, people will perceive, “At least thus guy is sincere about who he is and what he’s sharing with me,” and they won’t really reject it.
I think of Penn and Teller. Penn is a famous atheist magician comedian, and there’s a great quote I read from him. He said, “You know, people think that sharing your faith is mean of pushy.” He said, “How much do you have to that someone to believe eternal life is possible and not tell them that?”
He said, “I actually respect my Christian friends when they share their faith with me.” So keep sharing from a gut level. Keep being who you are. Peter, we have a whole world that’s constantly telling us, “Be who you are, be who you are,” and I think the world’s forgotten who the heck they are. Suddenly, in that context, we Catholics are afraid to be who we are?
Push back against that fear you’re feeling, and insist on being who you are in the most natural and relaxed way possible. And … If an atheist sneezes and you say, “God bless you” and they get offended, just smile, ’cause that’s who you are, brother. You know? Don’t let them stop you. Don’t let them stop, first and foremost, though, seeing the joy that it gives you, because they could reject you for a long time, but after a while, they’re not gonna reject your joy. You have something that everyone, everyone wants.
I was just wondering how do you initially approach a person who has fallen away from the Church, and is adamant that they made the right decision?
Okay. What did they fall away to?
Non-denominational.
So they’re still Christian, but they are non-denominational Christian.
Correct.
Okay. Well, it depends on the person, but my inclination would be to say, “You know, I appreciate the fact that you’re Christian. I think that’s great. I’m a Christian, too. I believe in Jesus Christ. I’m trusting him for my salvation. But I think that you may have been hasty in this, because the Catholic Church has been around for 2,000 years and it’s considered a lot of different objections, that people have raised, to the Christian faith in general, and to the Catholic faith in particular, and it may have an answer to some of the objections that you’ve had, and I’d be happy to help you find out if it does have answers to those. So if you’d like, I’d be happy to learn what it was that you think led you away from the Church, that what you thought was a good reason, and then let’s look at that together. I’d be happy to try to look up some answers for you if I don’t know them off the top of my head.”
Perfect.
Thank you.
Exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.
No problem. Thank you very much for that, Katherine.
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