Featured Guests: Eric Sammons, Stacy Trasancos, PhD, Jimmy Akin, Karlo Broussard, Tim Staples
Featured Questions:
- 01:09 – Why do we kneel and pray before statues of Mary and other saints? – Karlo Broussard
- 07:40 – How should we interpret a passage that talks about people who are 600 years-old? – Stacy Trasancos
- 12:40 – What happens to those who don’t have the opportunity and babies who are too young to learn about God? – Jimmy Akin
- 15:36 – Does evangelizing at a social gathering fall in line with the old evangelization? – Eric Sammons
- 17: 05 – How can we connect Peter and his successors to the authority of the Catholic Church? – Tim Staples
- 20:25 – What is the Church’s stance on evolution? – Stacy Trasancos
- 23:34 – How do you explain to a non-Christian cohabitation is wrong? – Jimmy Akin
Transcript:
Hi, I’m Cy Kellet, host of the nationally-syndicated radio program Catholic Answers Live. Each day in this studio, our apologists and guests take tough questions about virtually every aspect of the Catholic faith.
Today, we’d like to share some the very best of those questions answers with you. We’ll be joined by Catholic Answers apologists Karlo Broussard, Jimmy Akin and Tim Staples, and by writer Eric Sammons and scientist-theologian Stacey Trasancos.
The questions they address in this episode include why do Catholics pray to statues, how can we connect Peter and his successors with the authority of the Catholic Church, are people who have no direct knowledge of Christ saved, why is cohabitation wrong, what’s the Catholic view of evolution and a lot more. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show.
You are on with Karlo Broussard, what’s your question?
Hello. Thank you for taking my call. My question is actually on behalf of my girlfriend because I am Catholic and she is not. And there are two big things that she is struggling with.
Okay.
One is why we kneel before the Virgin Mary and other Saints and why we pray to them, because she sees that as worshiping statues, as basically a form of idolatry. And the infallibility of the church because I think, well, the church teaches that, but it’s like okay but just because-
Sure.
… they say it doesn’t mean that it’s true.
Sure.
So, she’s really big on the Bible, she is Protestant. So, it’s possible Biblical answers will be very appreciated.
Yes. Thank you so much, Mauro, for the question. So, here we go, I’ll give you a few nuggets that you can share and then always I wanna direct you to our website at catholic.com where we have tons of free articles online that you can read, Mauro, that deals with all of these issues.
So, first of all I think you mentioned probably about three items here. Number one, the idea of asking the Saints to pray for us. Particularly a key text that we normally go to is in Revelation Chapter 5, Verse 8. Saint John has a heavenly vision where he sees 24 elders or Presbyteros, souls in heaven surrounding the throne of the lamb of God, offering up bowls of incense which are the prayers of the Saints on earth.
So, we see a Biblical revelation that the prayers of the Christians on earth are being offered to Jesus the Lamb through the intercession of these heavenly souls, the blessed in heaven. I can’t philosophically say technically human beings because they’re not a body-soul composite, but the blessed souls in heaven.
So they’re interceding and that reveals to us, number one, they’re aware of us here on this earth, they’re aware of our prayers and the power that they would have to be aware of our prayers would be because of the beatific vision, because of the power of God. Notice they’re aware of multiple prayers because it says the prayers, plural, of the Saints. And Mary would be included within this communion of Saints.
So, if the Bible teaches us that’s what the Saints in heaven are doing, well, then it would follow that we could lift up our prayers to them and ask them to … When we say we’re saying to the Saints, that’s what we mean, Mauro, we’re requesting their help. And so it would follow from this Biblical text that we could ask their help to pray for us because that’s what they’re doing in heaven. So, we could unite our prayers with their prayers to go to Jesus, through whom we have access to the Father.
So, that refers to the intercession of Mary and the Saints in general. Now, there’s many other texts that we could go through but we just don’t have time.
Now, the second item you brought up, Mauro, was the idea of statues, of kneeling before the statues or bowing before the statues etc.
You wanna explain to your girlfriend, Mauro, that these acts that we perform in front of a statue is no different than you or your girlfriend … Let’s say your girlfriend was out on a trip and she had a picture of you in her purse and she would take that picture out and look at your pretty little face every night before she goes to bed and kiss the picture. She would be showing a sign of affection to the physical object, which is a representation of you, Mauro, and that would be an external manifestation of her love for you even though you’re not there.
Well, with regard to the statues, within our Catholic piety, Mauro, the statues represent these people, these loved ones in our Christian family who are perfected in God’s glory who are not only … They’re not absent, they’re present with us in spirit. And the signs of affection that we show to the statue is ordered beyond the statue to the person that the statue represents.
So, if we kneel before a statue of the Blessed Mother, if we bow, if we kiss the statue, these are all signs of affection to externally show that we love these perfected spirits in God. As Hebrews Chapter 12, Verse 24, “The just men made perfect.” Of course, men and women.
That would be an explanation for the piety in the presence of statues. We’re not worshiping the statues, nor are we worshiping the Saints by asking them to pray for us and showing them honor. These are simply external signs of affection.
So, we have the intercession in general, we have the statues and I think there was one more item, Mauro, that … Oh yeah, the infallibility. Was that the third item you had brought up, I think, the infallibility of the church?
Yeah.
Okay.
The infallibility of the church teaching, which I guess under-rules all of these questions in a way.
That’s right, that’s right. You got it brother, you got it. So, here’s the key text, a couple of key texts you wanna check out, Mauro, then we’ll have to go on to some more callers. But check out Matthew Chapter 16, Verses 18 through 19 and in particular Verse 18.
There Jesus promises to build his church upon Peter. He says, “Simon, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”
Peter’s name in Greek, Pètros, literally means rock. It doesn’t mean little rock, as some would like to say, but it means rock. And of course Jesus is building his church upon Peter, the visible foundation, yes, Jesus is the ultimate foundation, but Jesus is making Peter the visible foundation of his church, a visible source of unity.
And notice, Mauro, Jesus says, “The gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against this church,” that he’s building upon Peter the rock. And then he goes on to tell Peter, he gives him the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and then he says, “Whatever you gave bind and loose on earth shall be bound and loosed in heaven.”
That’s one key text where Jesus promises that the gates of the netherworld would not prevail against the church that Jesus is building and starting surrounding Saint Peter, that Jesus is making Peter is visible delegate, his vicar on this earth to speak on his behalf, to shepherd the flock of God on this earth. So, there we have one text among many that would suggest this understanding of the infallibility of the church.
So, hopefully those things are helpful for you, Mauro.
In this segment, a caller asks about people mentioned in the Book of Genesis who are 600 years old or older. How should we interpret that?
When it comes to interpreting Genesis literally, I don’t think anyone absolutely interprets Genesis literally. That’s the thing about our human language. You know in Chapter 3 when it says that Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened when they ate the fruit and they saw their nakedness? No one interprets Genesis to mean that they walked around with their eyes shut and that the immediate consequence of original sin was merely to alter the position of four eyelids. Nobody interprets it that strictly literally.
So, we don’t interpret it literally completely and there is a lot of metaphor.
The work though, ’cause there’s so simple answers here, the work is to think with the church. The work is to read the writings of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and read Pope Francis’s writings, read Pope Benedict XVI’s writings, read Pope John Paul II’s writings. Read what they were writing about Genesis and human evolution and see how they were working through it. Because it is difficult to get through.
But those questions you’re asking have been asked and people have thought about them. And there’s a difference in what was divinely revealed and that is historical, like with Christ. The church would not deny that, the church cannot deny that, that Christ was resurrected. But there is no certain dogma, no divine revelation, that absolutely says, “This is how the first man and woman were created.” So, there’s a difference there.
John?
Okay. Quick would though. What’s the line of, I guess the correct term is demarcation, that you put one on one side? ‘Cause I know that we’re only speaking today specifically about creation, Genesis, evolution, but my point is saying that that’s almost the most important thing is because you’re not gonna get into a business relationship, a marriage relationship, if the first date is going wrong. If the first business meeting goes wrong you’re probably not gonna continue.
So, this is the first thing that we have to deal with and I’m saying you can say now, because like you said the church fathers, the church historians, whatever, they have been working through this. And all that tells to me as a thinking person is, okay, you have two different stories. And so for centuries people have been, and the smartest people on the earth, have been trying to theologically, philosophically, even scientifically, interpret it in ways to reconcile them both only because they are being presented with an opposing truth or an opposing position that goes against what they say is the truth.
So, my only point is at what point do we really believe that Job was really a man who really all those things happened to him and God really had that conversation with the Devil or do we not? Do we really believe Jonah was in the whale or do we not? And the fact that you said that Jesus was real because … What gives you to confidence I guess to say, “Well, okay, within the Old Testament was just metaphor and parable,” and why not, what’s so different about the Gospel.
Yeah.
Okay, let’s let Dr. Transancos answer it. Doctor?
I have been exactly where you are because I’m a convert and I did for a while question everything I thought I knew about science and evolution and understood because I was comfortable with evolution when I converted and then I thought, “Wait a minute, did I just miss the whole boat here?”
So, I’ve been where you are and what helped me was I started studying dogmatic theology and I came to understand there are certain dogmatic, Dei Fidei doctrine that the Catholic Church defines and articulates very, very carefully. It’s in the writings and it’s referenced to other church answers throughout history.
There are things that are carefully articulated, like that man is composed of body and soul and that God created everything. And so we can never deny those things because if you deny one of those it’s a logical hierarchy, you start denying other things. But this isn’t one of them, how Adam and Eve were created.
Also, we don’t read the Bible at the very beginning to the very end. That’s the wonderful thing about scripture, is that it’s living, we read the old in the light of the new and the new in the light of the old. We read the Bible as a systematic whole and so we don’t start at the very beginning and say, “Well, if I can’t believe that then I can’t believe something else.” We try to look at how it all fits together. And when you add science into that mix it’s still the same very difficult mental exercise of trying to understand how it all fits together.
The question is what happens to people that either have no direct knowledge of God, those that live in say remote areas of the world, and babies that die before they’re baptized or they’re aborted?
Okay, okay. In terms of people who have no direct knowledge of Jesus, God only holds them accountable for the knowledge they do have.
So, he’s not going to condemn someone to hell who innocently, through no fault of their own, doesn’t believe in Jesus. Jesus is the only way to come to God but people can still be saved through Jesus Christ even if they’re not aware in this life of who Jesus is.
And that would be the case, for example, let’s say with a baptized baby. If a baby dies in infancy, the baby doesn’t know about Jesus in this life but is still saved through a connection with Jesus.
And in the same way people who are older, who say have never heard about Jesus, the same way the baby doesn’t understand about Jesus, as long as they otherwise respond to the grace they’ve been given and the knowledge they have, then they can be saved through Jesus as well because they haven’t put any barriers between themselves and God.
An example where that wouldn’t happen is let’s say the person has un-repented mortal sin, because we all have the law of God written in our hearts and know that there are certain things that are gravely wrong and if we do those things and we don’t repent then we are putting a barrier between us and God. So, ignorance of Christ is not an excuse, it’s not a get into heaven card.
Yeah.
But if someone through no fault of their own doesn’t know about Jesus and his church and they otherwise have a heart that wants to love up to the grace they’ve been given and follow God’s law, or the moral law as they understand it which is God’s law, then they can be saved through Christ anyway.
In terms of what happens with unbaptized babies, God hasn’t told us it seems. We know that they won’t be damned through no fault of their own, and we know that God is a loving and merciful God, and so the way the Catechism puts it is that we can entrust such children to the mercy of God. We don’t know for sure what happens with them. Theologians have speculated about ways they could be saved through Jesus, even without knowing about him and even without baptism, but God hasn’t told us it seems. And so we need to be circumspect about that and just recognize that we haven’t been given all the answers at this point, but we do know that God is loving and merciful and we can entrust the fate of such children to him.
One of the Catholic Churches in Jacksonville, it’s doing a street evangelist, each person gets a street and they go down it. They’re inviting people to a cookout on Saturday and then when you go to the cookout people talk to them, introduce themselves and then try to evangelize individually. Is that still following in the line of what you’re talking about?
It is. In fact, I think that’s a great idea. One of the challenges of Catholics when they evangelize is what do you invite people to? I talk about this in the book some. Because a Protestant invites them to their worship service and they just say, “Hey, come here,” and they’ll probably get an altar call or something like that.
But as a Catholic, if we invite them just simply to the mass, well, if they’re not Catholic we have to explain a lot to them before they get there, and if they are Catholic but maybe they haven’t gone to mass in years and they’re not in a state of grace, we have to explain to them the rules of communion and things like that. So, sometimes mass isn’t the best entry point, often it’s not the best entry point. Really other things are.
Something like a barbecue is a great idea because you can just have them come and talk and you can share your faith, you can talk about your parish, you can talk about Christ, his role in the church and what the church does. So, actually I think that’s a great idea if while you’re at the barbecue you’re doing things to evangelize the people who come. And the fact that you’re going out and inviting them is a great thing. You’re saying, “Hey, here we are, please come and find out more about us.” So yeah, I think that’s a great idea.
In this next slip a caller wants to know how can we connect Peter and his successors to the authority of the Catholic Church?
Well, where does the New Testament that, “Okay, I establish my church on Peter and the Apostles”? Matthew 16, 18, 19, Matthew 15 through 18, remember he says, “If you have a problem with your brother, you go to your brother, you try to sell. If you can’t sell it, you take one or two. If you can’t sell it still, you tell it to the church.” And the church has the final say. That’s the way Jesus established it.
Now, you have the church, meaning there I should, Matthew 15 through 18, all the apostles in union with Peter because they were all there. In Matthew 16 he calls out Peter alone and gives to him uniquely the keys to the Kingdom and then similarly says, “Whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven.” So, Peter has this unique authority to bind and loose and he’s the only one that has the keys. And then you have all the apostles that have a collegial authority with Peter.
But here’s the problem? Where does Jesus ever say, “Okay, I’m building my church on Peter and the apostles and all this, but that’s only for the first century? After the first century I’m gonna make a switch to Sola Scriptura. Then you’re gonna go, but nobody will have any more authority than anybody else, everybody will just go to the Bible.”
That is so foreign. This is what you have to point out. That is so contrary to anything that we see in the New Testament. In fact, Jesus, in the context of establishing his Kingdom, which is the church, and he gives this power … Let’s look at Matthew’s Gospel. What does he end up saying in Matthew 28:18? “All authority is given in me in heaven and earth, go therefore, teach all nations, baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you. And lo, I will be with you all days-,” Verse 20 says, ” … even until the end of the age.”
So, what’s implied there is that this authority that he establishes is gonna be here till the end of time, not till the end of the first century.
So then you wanna go to the Book of Acts, for example, in Acts Chapter 15 and show how the church functioned in the Book of Acts. It was not a Sola Scriptura church. When they had a problem that threatened to tear the fledging church apart, what did they do? They had a church council. Just look at Matthew, or I should say Acts Chapter 15, Verses 7 through 11 there. Peter stands up, they declare the truth of the matter and that’s the way things happen.
Now, again in my CD set, The Shocking Truth About the Pope and the Early Church Fathers, I take you through right from the New Testament, we go to letters like Clement, who by the way is mentioned in Philippians 4:3 as a companion of Saint Paul, Clement of Rome, who was the fourth Pope, was actually asked, this was probably about 90 AD, to settle a problem that was going on in the Corinthian Church. This is amazing, Cy, because John the Apostle was still alive at this time and yet they didn’t go right over to Ephesus and ask John to help, they appeal all the way to Rome in the West. Why is that? Because the Church of Rome was the recognized authority, the successor of Saint Peter.
Yeah. I get a lot of flack for believing in the possibility of evolution. What’s the church’s stance on that? And I see a lot of evidence for it, but every time people say, “Oh, there’s no evidence for it, blah blah blah, yada yada yada,” but go ahead.
Yeah, there’s a lot of evidence for evolution and evolution is undeniable these days. There’s so much evidence from different angles, not just the fossil record but radiometric dating and the genetic clock. And just reasoning through it, how did the diversity of species we have today come to be?
And evolutionary theory is a very strong theory. I don’t ever use the words, “I believe in it,” I just say it like that, it’s a theory with a lot of support, a lot of evidence, it makes sense. The current cutting-edge research on evolutionary theory is not throwing that to the side, like genetic drift and mutation. It’s adding to it. It’s adding to Darwinian evolution. So, okay, Darwinian evolution doesn’t explain everything, there’s more to it.
There’s a Catholic working on it … I’ve got so many tabs open on my screen. But in the Society for Catholic Scientists, there’s a Catholic working on evolution who is adding in part of the story as cooperation. Like, was there some kind of of cooperation between species and animals as they evolved?
There are people asking questions about language and intelligence and when that first appeared. They think language, the way we have language now, may have appeared even within just one generation.
So, there’s so much going forward with that and the church’s position on it is it’s okay to talk and to study that science and to learn about it. You never can deny the truths of our faith. You couldn’t say evolution proves we don’t have a soul, but we’re not gonna do that anyway. You can’t say evolution proves there is no God, that this just all happened by random chance. We don’t do that anyway. We say, “God created everything, and, oh, wait, how did the species evolve to be what they are today?”
And you really have nothing to fear when you look at it that way and when you understand that we also don’t have all the answers. We’ll probably never understand from a chemical standpoint how the first living thing appeared atom by atom. We’ll probably never understand that, but it’s reasonable to assume that life emerged from an animate matter because we’re made of atoms.
So, the church has a very open mind on that. You’re not required to believe one way or the other about the science, but you’re certainly allowed to investigate the science and actually encouraged to see what that tells us about what life means and what it means to be human.
My question is how do you explain why cohabitation is wrong to those who are not Christian?
Okay.
So without citing any scripture or church teaching, how would you explain it to them?
Okay. I actually just recorded a talk where I went into this subject. It’s called Understanding Chastity and we’re gonna have it available on DVD very soon so I point you to that for further information.
But to give you a capsule summary of it; basically the obvious purpose of sexual relations is making babies, the same way the obvious function of eating is to nourish your body.
There are other functions like bonding the spouses together, but the primary function of sexual relations is making babies. And babies need incredible amounts of care, there is an incredibly long list of things babies cannot do. Among other things, they can’t drive, they can’t walk, they can’t crawl when they’re born, they can’t even find food. They’ve got a sucking reflex, but the only way a baby survives is if somebody else takes the baby and puts its mouth in direct contact with the source of food. So, babies are very vulnerable and they take years and years to mature, two decades.
So, they need a stable, nurturing environment for a very long period of time. And the way God designed our species, or if you don’t wanna bring God into it the way our species developed, the natural caretakers of children are their parents. So the parents need to stay together for a very long time. And that’s what marriage is, it’s a permanent union between a man and a woman that’s oriented to the good of the spouses and to the procreation and education of offspring.
So, if you’re sleeping with each other outside of marriage you’re using the sexual faculty in a way that it’s not designed to be used, and that’s going to bring you one or another form of pain in the end. Because every relationship that doesn’t end in marriage is gonna end in one or another form of pain unless you and your spouse are both psychopaths and don’t feel normal human emotions.
So, you’re also being incredibly irresponsible in potentially having a baby or more with someone that you have not made a commitment with, so that the baby may not have the kind of nurturing, decades-long environment that it needs to grow to maturity. And basically you shouldn’t be engaging in baby-making behavior with someone you don’t have that kind of commitment to, that commitment being the one we call marriage.
Thanks for watching Catholic Answers Live. Join us each weekday for our live radio broadcast or check out our website at catholic.com. You can find us on YouTube at youtube.com/catholic.com or on Facebook simply by searching Catholic Answers. Jesus Christ is the light of the nation and we’ll see you next time on Catholic Answers Live.