I have been really hurting due to a question that I can’t seem to find an answer to wherever I look. Wherever I go, I can’t find a Christian that will answer my questions. I am Catholic, but this particular question causes me pain, because morality is the bedrock that my framework is built upon.
My question is, how do I know that Morality is real?
I heard that morality is just a herd mentality to ensure human survival. Like, for example, I don’t kill him, so he doesn’t kill me, a herd mentality. Homosexuality is wrong because it doesn’t ensure human survival. It’s a sort of empathy-like survival mechanism.
This does mean that if you do something wrong, since there would be no Objective Morality, that there is nothing actually wrong about it, and you could technically do whatever, and it would just be atoms moving across space-time, a scary thought indeed.
How do I beat moral nihilism? What are some arguments against it? What if someone is willing to accept it, because facts don’t care about your feelings? How do you show its real? What evidence is there? I still believe, but it hurts to have my framework attacked.
Those attacking the objective reality of morality based on its survival value are making a fundamental mistake, which is pitting objective morality and survival value against each other. They do not need to be seen in opposition and should be seen as in harmony.
According to the standard Christian understanding (and, specifically, the Catholic understanding), morality is rooted in human nature. For example, we need lifelong marriages because our offspring are born helpless and take 2 decades to mature. Therefore, they need care for decades, and thus the parents need to stay together for decades, which amounted to a full human lifespan before modern medicine. Therefore, human nature implies lifelong marital unions.
This would be different if God had designed us to be creatures like fish, which essentially fertilize their eggs and then leave them to their fate. No lifelong marriages would be needed.
We therefore must understand the rules of (human) morality in terms of human nature. They are given to us by God to help us survive and thrive, based on the way our natures work. Therefore, being a moral person has survival/flourishing value.
However, this is exactly what we would expect of a loving God in giving us his laws. They would be based around our nature and be meant to promote our good. They would thus draw upon our nature as human beings and make explicit the best ways for humans to survive and thrive.
God’s law for man thus is not an alien standard imposed on us that has nothing to do with human flourishing. Instead, on the Christian view, it is designed to promote human flourishing, based on our nature.
And this is what Scripture indicates: God gave man laws for man’s own good. The law is designed to help us. Following it is good for us.
This is explicit in various passages in the Bible. It’s also implicit in other passages. One that I find particularly interesting is James 1:22-25, which compares a person who hears God’s law and does not do it to a man who looks at his face in a mirror and then forgets what he looks like. The analogy James uses shows how God’s law reveals our own nature to us. If we forget God’s law, we forget our own nature.
The fact that morality has survival value thus is not contradictory to the biblical view of morality. It is built into the biblical view of morality. The biblical view presupposes that morality has survival value, and the two should not be put in opposition to each other.
When it comes to evidence for the objective existence of morality, we have the testimony of the human heart. Humans have a powerful intuition that some things are Just Right and other things are Just Wrong. Our hearts tell us that morality is objectively real (and they tell us this because God built it into us).
Even those who claim not to believe in objective morality inevitably slip back into assuming that it is real. They invariably fall back into the assumption that some things are just evil–whether it’s racism, sexism, torturing babies for fun, or whatever else it may be. They may be able to momentarily suspend their belief in objective morality, but they inevitably slip back into the view that it is real. So strong is the testimony of the human heart.
Further, belief in objective morality is a human universal. It appears in all world cultures in all periods of history. This only happens with things that are built into human nature, and so belief in morality is part of human nature.
We thus have powerful evidence from the human heart that morality is objectively real.
Furthermore, by believing in morality, we are simply going along with our nature (rather than fighting against it).
Finally, a critic of morality would have absolutely no grounds for trying to guilt us or cause us anxiety for our belief in morality, because if the critic was right then–on the critic’s own principles–we wouldn’t be doing anything wrong by believing in morality, because there would be no objective right or wrong.
And we’d be happier for just going with what human nature tells us–that morality is real.
We’d also reap the survival and flourishing benefits of leading a moral life.
A recent article by Thomas Reese, S.J. for National Catholic Reporter has attracted attention. There’s a lot to respond to in Fr. Reese’s article, but I have a word limit, so I’ll keep it short.
Under the deliberately provocative title “The Eucharist is about more than the real presence,” Reese discusses what he thinks is wrong in the contemporary Church concerning the Eucharist. And about halfway through, he states:
Since my critics often accuse me of heresy, before I go further, let me affirm that I believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I just don’t believe in transubstantiation because I don’t believe in prime matter, substantial forms and accidents that are part of Aristotelian metaphysics.
Thomas Aquinas used Aristotelianism, the avant-garde philosophy of his time, to explain the Eucharist to his generation. What worked in the 13th century will not work today. If he were alive today, he would not use Aristotelianism because nobody grasps it in the 21st century.
So, first, forget transubstantiation. Better to admit that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is an unexplainable mystery that our little minds cannot comprehend.
Reese is correct that Aristotelianism was an avant-garde philosophy in the time of Aquinas. Except for Aristotle’s work on logic, the rest of his philosophy had been unavailable in the Latin-speaking West for centuries, and it was just before and during Aquinas’s time that translations of most of Aristotle’s works were becoming available.
The major figure in synthesizing Aristotelian and Christian thought was Aquinas’s mentor, Albert the Great (c. 1200-1280), and the new ideas were considered quite daring. In 1210, 1270, and 1277, ecclesiastical authorities in Paris prohibited the teaching of various ideas connected with Aristotle’s thought, and Albert himself found it expedient to state, “I expound, I do not endorse, Aristotle.”
Aquinas’s own synthesis of Christian and Aristotelian thought was viewed with considerable suspicion, and some of the Condemnations of 1277 were directed at Aquinas’s ideas. Particularly suspect were Aristotle’s physics and metaphysics.
But what does any of this have to do with transubstantiation?
From what Reese says, you might suspect that Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) came up with transubstantiation, that the concept is inextricably bound up with Aristotle’s thought, and that it’s purely optional for Catholics. However, none of these things is true.
In the first place, the term transubstantiation had been around for quite some time before Aquinas. Its first recorded use was by Hildebert of Tours, who used it around 1079—two centuries before Aquinas. The term was regarded as an apt one for expressing what people believed, and it quickly spread among theologians.
It appears—and is endorsed—in a letter of Pope Innocent III from 1202 (DH 784), and in 1215, the ecumenical council of Lateran IV taught that Christ’s “body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the appearances of bread and wine, the bread being transubstantiated into the body by the divine power and the wine into the blood” (DH 802).
So transubstantiation was not the brainchild of Thomas Aquinas. What about it being inextricably linked to Aristotle’s thought?
That the term was proposed before the major translation of Aristotle’s writings into Latin and the integration of Aristotelian and Christian thought should be a big clue that there’s no essential connection between the two.
So is the fact that the term had been widely adopted—including by a pope and an ecumenical council!—during the period when Aristotelianism, and especially its physics and metaphysics, were viewed with suspicion.
The term transubstantiation itself is not Aristotelian, and Aristotle did not use it. The word is Latin rather than Greek, and it comes from perfectly common Latin roots: trans, which means across or beyond, and substantia, which means substance. Any Latin speaker of the day would naturally understand it to mean a change of one substance or reality into another, as you can tell from the context in which Lateran IV used it.
Neither do we find distinctly Aristotelian terms like prime matter, substantial form, or even accidents in the Church’s articulation of transubstantiation. When the Council of Trent met, it issued the following definition:
If anyone says that in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine remains together with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and denies that wonderful and unique change of the whole substance of the bread into his body and of the whole substance of the wine into his blood while only the species of bread and wine remain, a change which the Catholic Church very fittingly calls transubstantiation, let him be anathema (Decree on the Sacrament of the Eucharist, can. 2; DH 1652).
There’s nothing distinctly Aristotelian in that. The Council even avoids the Aristotelian term accidents and uses the term species—which means appearances—instead. The council thus articulated the faith of the Church without endorsing any particular philosophical school of thought.
I don’t know how much catechesis Reese has done in his career, but you don’t have to sit down and give a person a mini-course in Aristotelianism—or any philosophical system—to explain transubstantiation. It’s not a familiar term outside Catholic circles, but all you have to say is, “The bread and wine become Jesus. After the consecration, bread and wine aren’t there anymore. Jesus is present under the appearances of bread and wine.”
This understanding was present in the Church’s faith before the term transubstantiation was coined. Indeed, it’s why the term was coined.
Reese’s comments about transubstantiation, Aquinas, and Aristotle are thus misinformed and misdirected, but he raises the question of whether he can be accused of heresy and professes his faith in the real presence as proof that he is not a heretic. It’s good that he believes in the real presence, but is this sufficient to avoid heresy?
The charge of heresy is a very serious one and should be made only in the gravest circumstances. It is defined as follows:
Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith (CIC 751).
A “truth which is to be believed with divine and Catholic faith” is another way of saying a dogma—that is, a truth that has been infallibly defined by the Magisterium to be divinely revealed. Dogmas are a subset of other infallible teachings, which may or may not be divinely revealed.
It is commonly held that Trent’s canon (above) contains two infallible definitions: first, that the whole substance of bread and wine is changed into Christ’s body and blood so that bread and wine do not remain and, second, that this change is fittingly called transubstantiation.
The term transubstantiation was coined in the 1000s, so it is not part of the deposit of faith and not divinely revealed. Reese would not be a heretic for denying this term.
But in rejecting transubstantiation, Reese said that “Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is an unexplainable mystery.” On its face, that appears to be a doubt of (a refusal to believe) the explanation provided by Trent—that the whole substance of bread and wine are changed into the whole substance of Christ’s body and blood.
Reese thus should clarify whether he actually accepts this change, which is divinely revealed and was made a dogma by Trent.
Doubting this dogma obstinately would make Reese guilty of heresy—and that’s for the competent ecclesial authorities to judge, not me. I thus am not in a position to accuse him of heresy, but based on what he has said, he is dancing on the edge of it.
In some places, the demand for debaptisms has been going up, which could be rather surprising.
“What’s a debaptism?” you might ask. “Is that even a thing? How can you un-pour water on someone?”
The short answer is that No, debaptism isn’t a thing, but that hasn’t stopped people from asking for it. And yes, “debaptism” is the language they use. ThePillarexplains:
The Catholic Church in Belgium reported on Wednesday a sharp rise in the number of people asking for their names to be removed from baptismal registers.
The Church’s latest annual report, published on Nov. 30, said there were 5,237 such requests in 2021, compared to 1,261 in 2020 and 1,800 in 2019. …
Nevertheless, a rising movement in Europe promoting ‘debaptism’ has encouraged Catholics to write to Church authorities asking to be removed from parish baptismal records. The movement is a consortium of several political and philosophical factions among European secularists.
A Movement With Some History
This movement has been around for a while. For example, in 2012, NPR reported:
In France, an elderly man is fighting to make a formal break with the Catholic Church. He’s taken the Church to court over its refusal to let him nullify his baptism, in a case that could have far-reaching effects.
Seventy-one-year-old Rene LeBouvier’s parents and his brother are buried in a churchyard in the tiny village of Fleury in northwest France. He himself was baptized in the Romanesque stone church and attended Mass here as a boy. …
But his views began to change in the 1970s, when he was introduced to free thinkers. As he didn’t believe in God anymore, he thought it would be more honest to leave the Church. So he wrote to his diocese and asked to be un-baptized.
Problems for the Debaptizers
There are problems with what the debaptizers are asking for.
It’s not possible to un-pour water on someone after it has been poured on them. This makes debaptism physically impossible (though some atheist organizations have used tongue-in-cheek ceremonies with hairdryers).
However, it’s also not theologically possible to reverse all the effects of baptism. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
Incorporated into Christ by baptism, the person baptized is configured to Christ. Baptism seals the Christian with the indelible spiritual mark (character) of his belonging to Christ. No sin can erase this mark, even if sin prevents baptism from bearing the fruits of salvation. Given once for all, baptism cannot be repeated. (1272)
So, when you get baptized, an indelible spiritual mark is put on your soul, and nothing can remove this.
You can commit sins that will remove the sanctifying grace that baptism gave you, but the mark remains.
And — if you change your mind and repent — you can return to grace and resume life as a Christian.
You don’t need to get baptized again. In fact, you can’t get baptized again, because the spiritual mark remains.
What Happens in “Debaptisms”?
What happens when a person decides he doesn’t want to be a Christian anymore and sends in a “debaptism” request? The Pillar explains:
A spokesman for the Belgian bishops’ conference told The Pillar on Dec. 1 that when the Church received a ‘debaptism’ request, ‘it is noted in the register in the margin that the person has requested to be de-registered.’
‘You are not allowed to cross out or delete an entry in an official register,’ he explained.
That makes sense, because there needs to be a record of the fact the person was baptized. Suppose that they later change their mind and decide they want to live as a Christian again. There needs to be a record of the fact that they were baptized in order to show that they shouldn’t be baptized again.
What happened in the case of Monsieur LeBouvier? NPR reports:
‘They sent me a copy of my records, and in the margins next to my name, they wrote that I had chosen to leave the Church,’ he says.
Specifically, the revised record said that he “has renounced his baptism.” But that wasn’t enough for Lebouvier, and he sued the Church to have his name removed from the records.
A Parallel Case
Why would he do that? Let’s consider a parallel case — getting civilly married.
People sometimes go before a government official, get hitched, and then later change their minds and decide they don’t want to be married to each other after all.
When that happens, they get a divorce, and they seem to be happy with that. They don’t demand that the state go back and erase all records of them ever having been married.
There are good reasons the state doesn’t do that. Various legal matters may turn on the fact that the two people were married at one time (taxes, child custody cases, inheritances, lawsuits, etc.), and the state needs to have a record of the marriage — even if the state now regards it as dissolved.
Um … Why?
So why would someone like LeBouvier want his baptismal record obliterated?
Part of it could be confusion caused by poor catechesis. He might think that the existence of a physical record of his baptism itself makes him a Christian.
This would be a case of magical thinking, however, as it isn’t writing on a piece of paper that does this.
On the other hand, it could be cantankerousness. LeBouvier could have simply resented the Church and wanted to be difficult.
Instead of being satisfied with the fact that his parish noted in the records that he had renounced his baptism, he wanted to be a jerk and make a demand that he knew could not be granted, giving him a pretext to take the Church to court.
A Case Resolved
Whatever his motives, he ultimately lost. In 2014, the French Supreme Court ruled against LeBouvier, which is as it should be.
It’s a simple matter of historical fact that LeBouvier was baptized. That’s true regardless of what the effects of baptism are, and as an unbeliever, LeBouvier presumably wouldn’t even believe in the indelible mark it left on his soul.
It’s just true that — on a certain date — he was baptized in a certain parish, and there can be records of that fact occurring, just like there can be records of any other historical event taking place. Shy of having a flux capacitor-equipped DeLorean, there’s no way to go back in time and undo the event.
Just as the state can keep records of things that happened — like marriages — even if their effects are regarded as now neutralized (or not, from a religious perspective), so can the Church.
The Effect of a Document
There is a reason that people like LeBouvier might not be satisfied with the Church simply noting in the baptismal records that they no longer consider themselves Christian.
When people get a divorce, they get a court decree — a piece of paper that says they’re no longer legally married — and even though the state hasn’t gone back and erased all records of their marriage, the decree seems to satisfy them.
But the Church doesn’t have an equivalent of this when someone abandons the Faith.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law did envision the possibility of someone defecting from the Church “by a formal act.” This had certain canonical effects, such as no longer being required to have a Catholic wedding.
Defections and the German Kirchensteuer
But the German church tax system (Kirchensteuer) complicated matters. Under this system, the German government automatically takes a portion of an individual’s income and gives it to the church they are a member of.
Consequently, some Germans began defecting from the Church and claiming they no longer needed to pay the tax.
Apparently in response to the German situation, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts in 2006 instituted a cumbersome process that made it harder to formally defect. The process involved things like meeting personally with your bishop and convincing him that you really, most sincerely, did not consider yourself a Catholic anymore.
This had serious unintended consequences, as it meant that people who had been baptized but not raised Catholic — many of whom might not even know that they had been baptized — were now legally unable to contract valid marriages (because of the obligation to observe “canonical form”) and were condemned to the state of perpetual, objective fornication.
To my mind, the cure was worse than the disease caused by the German tax situation, but it meant that one no longer even got a letter from one’s bishop saying that he believed you no longer regarded yourself as Catholic.
Looking to the Future
As the secularization of Europe progresses, it remains to be seen whether future Church leaders will deem it appropriate to create a document certifying that “We recognize that you no longer consider yourself or wish to live as a Catholic.”
Hopefully, such a document will not be needed — and God forbid that anyone should want one.
But while the French courts ruled against LeBouvier, we can’t count on this remaining the case in the future.
Anti-Catholic and anti-Christian animus continues to spread in the legal system, and just as there are cantankerous litigants who may just want to “stick it to the Church,” there may be cantankerous judges who wish to do the same thing.
To head off the legal collision that could result from activist judges demanding that the Church mutilate its baptismal records, it could one day be prudent to create a way of formally acknowledging the sad reality of people who no longer consider themselves Christian.
I have been a sponsor for RCIA catechumens and candidates. Mary is a frequent topic of discussion with questions about immaculate conception, perpetual virginity and how do we know Jesus was not born vaginally.
Do you have any resources we might share with them, please?
Thank you for writing.
It is not Church teaching that Jesus was not born vaginally. What the Church teaches is that Mary remained a virgin before, during, and after Christ’s birth. However, it does not have a teaching on specifically how Christ’s birth happened. This is left for theologians to speculate about.
A common speculation is that Jesus came out of Mary’s womb miraculously and non-vaginally.
This speculation is found very early in Christian literature.
For example, the second century document known as the Infancy Gospel of James (aka the Protoevangelium of James) indicates a miraculous, non-vaginal birth, whereby there is a great light and Jesus suddenly appears outside of Mary’s womb and a later inspection confirms that she is still physically a virgin according to a common understanding of the time (see sections 19 and 20).
Even earlier than that, the first century document known as the Ascension of Isaiah–which likely was written in A.D. 67–similarly indicates a miraculous, non-vaginal birth where Jesus suddenly appears outside Mary’s womb (see 11:7-9).
We thus have very early Christian testimony to Jesus having a miraculous, non-vaginal birth, but this is still not Church teaching.
The Gospels contain some remarkable statements about prayer. They’re found particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, though there are parallels in Mark and Luke.
These statements sound very positive—as if you can ask God for anything you want, and he’ll give it to you so long as you believe.
When people take these passages in isolation—apart from other things the New Testament says—they can develop a false theology of prayer.
In Protestant circles, there is a movement known as prosperity theology (also known as the prosperity gospel or the health and wealth gospel), according to which God wants all his people to be healthy, wealthy, and highly successful.
If a Christian does not have these blessings, then he either hasn’t asked for them or he hasn’t asked for them in faith. Either way he is at fault.
But a careful reading of the New Testament indicates this view is distorted.
One encouraging prayer text is found in the Sermon on the Mount:
Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened (Matt. 7:7-8).
Jesus doesn’t mention limits on what you may ask for, and you might suppose you could ask for absolutely anything and receive it.
But he also doesn’t give examples. He doesn’t say, “Ask for fabulous wealth, health, and success, and it will be yours.”
He thus may have something more modest in mind, and he may mean this primarily as asking for spiritual rather than material blessings.
In both Matthew and Luke, Jesus immediately gives an analogy based on fathers giving their children things to eat. In Matthew, Jesus concludes that God will give “good things” to his children (7:11), and in Luke he says that God will give them “the Holy Spirit” (Luke 11:13)—suggesting the passage may be primarily about spiritual “good things.”
When we look at the rest of the Sermon on the Mount, we do not find Jesus encouraging dreams of a lavish lifestyle.
In the Lord’s Prayer, he teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (6:11), suggesting a daily, hand-to-mouth reliance on God—not fabulous riches.
Jesus goes on to explicitly state:
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (6:19-21).
He thus indicates earthly riches can be a spiritual distraction from God, and we shouldn’t set our hearts on them. He also says:
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (6:24).
He also tells us:
Do not be anxious, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well (6:31-33).
Jesus thus wants us to focus “first” on spiritual values and treat material needs as secondary. Rather than encouraging people to “dream big” about what God could give them, he encourages humble, ongoing dependence—asking God for what we need, not what we dream.
He certainly does not encourage us to imagine a success-filled life with no troubles, saying, “Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day” (6:34). Again, the goal is living a trusting, spiritual life—not one of runaway success.
Another encouraging prayer text occurs when the disciples ask why they failed to cast a demon out of a boy, Jesus says it was:
Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you (17:20).
This seems paradoxical. Jesus says the disciples have “little faith” but then says that if they had “faith as a grain of mustard seed,” they’d be able to accomplish amazing miracles. If so, shouldn’t their little faith have been enough?
The solution is found by considering who really performs miracles—God—and God’s power is unlimited. Therefore, it ultimately doesn’t matter how big your faith is, because God is the one who performs the miracle.
The reason the disciples failed is that they had inadequate faith and weren’t properly trusting God. Perhaps they thought they had been endowed with magical exorcistic abilities and had lost sight of God when using them.
Another text ripe for abuse occurs in the next chapter:
Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven (18:19).
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Agree on anything, ask God for it, and it will be done.
But not so fast. This statement is introduced by the word “again,” telling us that we need to examine the context, because Jesus is restating a thought he has already been exploring.
When we check the context, we find that it isn’t accumulating property for oneself but Church discipline. Jesus has been telling the disciples how to deal with a fellow Christian who sins. He says that if the offender won’t listen to others, take him to the church, and if he won’t listen to the church, excommunicate him. He then says:
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven (18:18).
The statement about agreeing “on earth” is in the context of exercising the power of binding and loosing, which deals with matters of spiritual discipline—not material prosperity.
When Jesus assures the disciples “again” of what will happen when they agree, he’s assuring them of the ability to bind and loose.
The final passage we should consider occurs when the disciples asked how the fig tree withered so quickly. Jesus replies:
Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, “Be taken up and cast into the sea,” it will be done. And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith (Matt. 21:21-21; cf. Mark 11:22-24, Luke 17:6).
This is essentially the same point we saw with the failed exorcism: It doesn’t matter the size of what you’re asking for, because God has the power to do anything. And Jesus puts the matter positively, saying that “whatever you ask” will be received.
But there is an unstated assumption that Jesus expects us to understand—that what we ask is in accordance with God’s will.
First century Jews knew not every prayer request is something God wills, and God’s will is the controlling factor.
Jesus himself bore witness to this in the garden of Gethsemane when he prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (26:39).
If the Son of God himself recognized that God does not will to grant every request, we’d better recognize it, too!
Jesus wants to encourage us to pray, and he may not mention this exception every time, but he expects us to recognize it.
It’s certainly found elsewhere in the New Testament. James warns those who boast of their business plans that they need to take God’s will into account, saying, “Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and we shall do this or that’” (4:15).
He also identifies one of the causes of unanswered prayer: “You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (4:3).
Asking for unlimited wealth and success would be precisely the kind of prayer that won’t be answered.
And that may be a good thing, for Jesus also says, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt. 19:24).
Various social media sites have claimed that—in the Old Testament—God originally had a wife that the Israelites worshipped.
This goddess was named Asherah, and she is mentioned at various places in the Hebrew scriptures.
The claim is made that we have no biblical texts that can be confidently dated prior to the reign of King Josiah (640-609 B.C.) that condemn the worship of this goddess.
Before that time, it was allegedly normative for Israelites to worship Asherah alongside God.
How accurate are these claims?
Not very.
It’s true that there was a goddess named Asherah that was worshipped in the Ancient Near East, and it’s true that some Israelites worshipped her.
But it is false to claim that this was a normative practice among Israelites—and that we have no texts from before the time of Josiah condemning the practice.
To understand the situation, we need to understand how the Israelite religion developed.
As a nation, Israel was descended from the patriarch Abraham, who came from “Ur of the Chaldees” (Gen. 12:28)—meaning he was from Mesopotamia, or modern Iraq.
As a native of Mesopotamia, Abraham was raised in the religion of the area, which centered on various eastern deities.
But the Bible records that eventually the true God—the Creator of the universe—called Abraham to leave Mesopotamia and come to the Promised Land of Canaan.
This is discussed in the book of Joshua, which states:
Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Your fathers lived of old beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods.
“Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many” (Josh. 24:2-3).
The Bible thus acknowledges that—before God appeared to him—Abraham worshipped other gods, which was the normal practice of people in the Ancient Near East.
When Abraham came to Canaan it was filled with its own people, who also worshipped a variety of gods.
Later, when Abraham’s descendants spent time in Egypt, they also lived among a polytheistic people.
Being surrounded by polytheistic people meant that the Israelites were tempted to join their neighbors in worshipping other gods, and they sometimes did so.
They even did so during the Exodus, as Moses was leading them out of Egypt and back to the Promised Land.
This is illustrated by the golden calf incident (Exod. 32) and by Moses’ instruction to offer their sacrifices to God, saying, “they may no longer sacrifice their sacrifices to the goat-idols after which they were prostituting” (Lev. 17:7, LEB).
While people did engage in these practices, they were not acceptable. Thus, after the golden calf incident:
Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tables out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain.
And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it with fire, and ground it to powder, and scattered it upon the water, and made the sons of Israel drink it.
And Moses said to Aaron, “What did this people do to you that you have brought a great sin upon them?” (Exod. 32:19-21).
It was similarly recognized that, upon returning to Canaan, the polytheistic inhabitants could tempt the Israelites into being unfaithful to God. Concerning the Canaanites, God says:
You shall make no covenant with them or with their gods.
They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you” (Exod. 23:32-33).
Also, God made a covenant with the Israelites that they would worship only him. This requirement is explicit in the Ten Commandments:
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
“You shall have no other gods before me.
“You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth” (Exod. 20:2-4).
The Bible thus depicts orthodox Israelite religion as involving the worship of God alone. However, it frankly acknowledges that unorthodox Israelites could and did worship other deities.
The struggle against this is a major theme in the Bible, and the prophets regularly condemn Israelites for worshipping other gods. You cannot read the Old Testament without repeatedly encountering this theme.
So what about Asherah? She was a goddess that was worshipped by the Canaanites—as well as other people in the Ancient Near East—and she was often regarded as the wife of the high god.
In the Canaanite pantheon, the high god—the head of the pantheon of gods—was named El, which is the Hebrew word for “God.”
El was also named Yahweh, and some Canaanites regarded Asherah as the wife of Yahweh.
Under the influence of their Canaanite neighbors, some Israelites did worship her—just as they worshipped other gods, like Ba’al and Milcom.
But according to the Old Testament, by doing this, they departed from the normative, orthodox Israelite religion and did things they were not supposed to.
What about the claim that this was normative before the time of King Josiah? Two points need to be made.
First, the theory depends on a very late dating of the biblical texts. There is good evidence that the books of Exodus and Leviticus were written around the time of David and Solomon (c. 1000 B.C.)—long before Josiah.
Furthermore, we have other texts before Josiah condemning the worship of Asherah.
For example, Isaiah 17:8 prophesies that a time is coming when the Israelites “will not have regard for the altars, the work of their hands, and they will not look to what their own fingers have made, either the Asherim or the altars of incense” to pagan gods.
The Asherim were pole-like religious objects used to worship Asherah, and even liberal scholars acknowledge that Isaiah 17 was written during the time of the prophet Isaiah (8th century B.C.), well before Josiah (7th century B.C.).
Even earlier was the event recorded in 1 Kings 15:13 that King Asa “removed Maacah his mother from being queen mother because she had an abominable image made for Asherah; and Asa cut down her image and burned it at the brook Kidron.”
Asa reigned between 912 and 870 B.C., and while 1 Kings wasn’t written until later, it records events repudiating Asherah that took place long before Josiah.
Second, the “Asherah worship was normative” view is just cherry-picking Old Testament texts.
If—at one time—it was orthodox for Israelites to worship Asherah, where are the texts praising her?
There aren’t any.
Advocates of this view must argue that any texts that were positive toward her were removed, and new, negative passages were introduced after Josiah.
That’s simply cherry-picking. You can prove anything you want—on any subject you want—if you get to pick evidence you think favors your position and ignore all evidence to the contrary.
For example, you could “prove” that the original thirteen U.S. colonies were founded by Russian immigrants by saying that—later on—all the references to Russian immigrants were mysteriously removed from our historical documents and replaced by references saying they were founded by English colonists.
The fact is, the texts we have in the Old Testament indicate that orthodox Israelites worshipped the true God, that unorthodox Israelites also worshipped other gods like Asherah, and that this practice was condemned from very early times.
There’s a pop culture buzzword you may have encountered: manifesting.
It’s discussed on social media sites and by self-help, lifestyle, and New Age gurus.
This isn’t surprising. People are always looking for ways to better their condition, and there are cultural fads in which people latch on to specific words and phrases that become “the hot new thing” for a time.
To appraise a cultural phenomenon, we need to look past trendy terms and examine the underlying substance. So, what is “manifesting”?
The current use of the term is too new to appear in standard dictionaries, but Wikipedia says manifestation refers to “self-help strategies intended to bring about a personal goal, primarily by focusing one’s thoughts upon the desired outcome. . . . While the process involves positive thinking, or even directing requests to ‘the universe,’ it also involves action-steps on the part of the individual.”
On TikTok, teenagers share stories about how “scripting,” or repeatedly writing down a wish, caused a crush to finally text them back. On YouTube, vloggers lead tutorials on how to properly manifest your dream future. On Instagram, someone will write that $20,000 will soon land in your hands, and all you have to do is comment “YES.” On Twitter, [extreme fans] will, ironically or not, attempt to manifest the release of a new Lorde album.
It’s easy to see these examples as superstitious. Superstition involves attributing too much efficacy to something.
Attributing too much efficacy to a remedy (“Eat this one superfood and you’ll lose your excess weight!”) is a form of scientific superstition. Attributing too much efficacy to a prayer (“Say this prayer three times; it never fails!”) is a form of religious superstition (CCC 2111).
“Just comment ‘YES’ and you’ll get $20,000” and “Write down your wish repeatedly and the boy you like will text you back” easily can be regarded as superstitious.
However, if it was obvious that attempts at manifesting a particular outcome never work, the practice would not be trendy. Even if most attempts to manifest fail, there needs to be enough plausibility and enough success for people to retain interest in the practice.
How might we explain that? We need to consider two kinds of causes that might produce success: normal and paranormal ones.
Random chance is an obvious possible natural cause. Maybe your boyfriend was going to text you back anyway, and he just happened to do so shortly after you tried to manifest this, lending plausibility to the idea that your manifesting efforts were the cause.
However, just because one thing happens after another doesn’t mean that was its cause. In logic, that idea is known as the post hoc ergo proper hoc fallacy (Latin, “After this, therefore because of this”). Or, as they say in scientific circles, “Correlation is not causation.”
Natural causes also can relate to manifesting in other ways. If you decide—with respect to a goal—that you’re going to think positive and act positive, that can help you achieve the goal.
Thinking and acting positively can make you more likable, and that can open doors and help remove obstacles. Similarly, self-confident action toward a goal can help you become “the little engine that could” in achieving it.
What about the paranormal aspects of manifesting? Here we need to differentiate more carefully than practitioners of manifestation may commonly do. What does it mean to ask “the universe” to manifest some desired goal?
It could mean that there are aspects of the universe and human nature that allow a human being to increase the likelihood of something happening by “positive thinking” or willing it to happen.
If humans have an ability to influence things in the world just by thinking about or willing them, then this would be a natural ability (i.e., one built into human nature), but it is not an ability recognized by mainstream science, making it some kind of psychic ability. In parapsychological terms, it would be classified either as a form of remote influencing or as a form of psychokinesis (mind over matter).
On the other hand, someone practicing manifestation may also be open to God or some other spirit taking a hand in helping them achieve their goal. In this case, the effect would be supernatural since it would be above (Latin, super) what human nature is capable of doing.
Could psychic functioning be involved in cases of manifestation? A knowledge of the history of Catholic thought on this subject would not rule out the possibility.
Doctors of the Church like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas held that God built weak abilities into human nature that today we would call psychic.
For example, both Augustine and Aquinas believed in precognition (Aquinas called it “natural prophecy,” to distinguish it from the supernatural prophecy God gives; see Disputed Questions on Truth 12:3).
More to the point, Aquinas believed that “when a soul is vehemently moved to wickedness,” it can physically harm another person. This was his explanation for the evil eye (ST I:117:3 ad 2; II-II:96:3 ad 1).
Aquinas didn’t discuss the reverse of this (i.e., could a soul vehemently moved by love physically help a person, such as healing them), but he’s talking about psychokinesis.
More recent Catholic authors—such as Fr. Alois Wiesinger (1885-1955)—have suggested that what today are considered psychic powers are the remnants of the “preternatural gifts” Adam and Eve enjoyed before the fall.
This is not to say that psychic functioning exists. It is simply to say that Catholic tradition has recognized its possible existence, and so the matter would need to be considered and the evidence for and against it evaluated.
When it comes to supernatural causation, this could play a role. Suppose a person is suffering in a terrible situation and uses manifestation to cry out for help, being open to God’s help. In this case, their efforts would be a kind of implicit, confused prayer.
Fortunately, God loves us even when we’re confused and aren’t thinking clearly about him. As a result, God might have mercy on such a person and intervene. God “sends rain on the just and the unjust” (Matt. 5:45).
However, there also is danger. Suppose a person is trying to manifest a sexual encounter outside of marriage with someone they’re attracted to. God isn’t going to help them with that, because the goal is evil. However, a demon might intervene to foster the parties’ temptations.
This leads us to the two fundamental problems with manifesting. First, there is a tremendous risk here of superstition—of attributing way more efficacy to it than is warranted—and second, it isn’t clearly thought out and doesn’t make the needed distinctions.
In other words, thinking positively, having goals, and taking concrete steps toward them are good. But don’t attribute too much efficacy to these things. And if you’re going to invoke superhuman powers, make sure you’re talking specifically to God (or his angels or saints), that you’re pursuing a morally licit goal, and that the result is dependent on God’s will rather than your efforts.
There’s an old saying, “Once a Catholic; always a Catholic,” but what does this mean?
It could be taken to mean that a person raised in a devout Catholic family and culture will always carry aspects of this heritage, even if he stops practicing his faith.
For example, in Ireland there are accounts of people being asked whether they’re Catholic or Protestant, and when they reply, “I’m an atheist,” the response is, “Yes, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?”
While the saying could be understood in terms of the culture one belongs to, it is often understood another way—that it’s literally impossible to stop being a Catholic even if you renounce the Faith and adopt another.
Is this true?
The matter is more complex than you might think.
Mystici Corporis
In 1943, Bl. Pius XII released the encyclical Mystici Corporis, in which he articulated membership in the Catholic Church this way:
Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed (n. 22).
This created a bright line between “members” of the Church and others, and for membership it was required that one had not “separated themselves from the unity of the body” nor have been “excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed.”
This directly contradicts a literal interpretation of “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”
If you can separate yourself from unity or if legitimate authorities can exclude you for grave faults so that you no longer qualify as a “member” of the Church, then you can obviously cease to be Catholic.
You would still carry the indelible marks on your soul of baptism and confirmation (CCC 1280, 1317), but you would no longer be a member of the Church and thus not a Catholic.
Lumen Gentium
In its 1964 constitution Lumen Gentium, the Second Vatican Council took a different approach. Instead of speaking in terms of membership, it spoke of “full incorporation” and said:
They are fully incorporated in the society of the Church who, possessing the Spirit of Christ accept her entire system and all the means of salvation given to her, and are united with her as part of her visible bodily structure and through her with Christ, who rules her through the supreme pontiff and the bishops.
The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion.
He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity.
He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a “bodily” manner and not “in his heart” (n. 14).
The Council also stated that catechumens are already “joined” with the Church (n. 14), that baptized non-Catholics are “linked” with the Church (n. 15), and that the unevangelized are “related in various ways to the people of God” (n. 16).
Lumen Gentium thus articulates multiple ways in which one can be linked to the Church. If you have all the links (including the virtue of charity that corresponds to the state of grace), then you are said to be “fully incorporated.”
This is another way of covering the same basic ground that Pius XII did, for he also acknowledged a variety of things that linked one to the Church.
However, Lumen Gentium does not identify a particular set of conditions needed to be met for “membership” and prefers to put the accent on degrees of incorporation and linkage.
As a result, in the post-Conciliar era, magisterial documents have tended to speak in terms of degrees of communion with the Church rather than membership, with those who have committed offenses like heresy, apostasy, and schism not being in “full communion” with the Church.
Heresy, Apostasy, and Schism
According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law:
Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him (can. 751).
Anyone committing these offenses would gravely injure their status with respect to the Church and certainly would no longer be in full communion.
But would they cease to be Catholic?
Certainly, the person himself might no longer identify as a Catholic. For example, if a person decided to reject the dogmas that the Church has defined and joined a Protestant church, he would no longer consider himself a Catholic but a Protestant.
Ceasing to identify as a Catholic would be even more obvious in the case of an apostate, for to commit that one must entirely renounce Christianity and be willing to say, “I am no longer a Christian.”
Some schismatics might no longer identify as Catholic (e.g., someone who joined an Orthodox church), but others might still claim to be Catholic (e.g., sedevacantists).
Would they still be Catholics from “the Church’s perspective”? The answer is not clear.
Under the membership definition articulated by Pius XII, the answer would be no, for they would have “separate[d] themselves from the unity of the body.”
On the analysis used following Vatican II, they would not be fully incorporated, but the Council did not provide a precise definition of who is and is not a Catholic.
On either analysis, it would not be possible to say, “The Church teaches you’re still a Catholic.”
At best, that would be an opinion, but it would not be Church teaching.
Baptism, Reception, and Ecclesiastical Law
Is there anything that would allow us to think of a former member of the Church as still “a Catholic”?
It would not be the indelible marks of baptism and confirmation, for people who have never been Catholic have those (e.g., Protestants are baptized and Orthodox are both baptized and confirmed/chrismated).
However, there is one thing that might allow us to think of an ex-Catholic as in some sense a Catholic. According to the 1983 Code of Canon Law:
Merely ecclesiastical laws bind those who have been baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it, possess the sufficient use of reason, and, unless the law expressly provides otherwise, have completed seven years of age (can. 11).
According to this canon, “merely ecclesiastical laws” (that is, laws created by Church authority) bind those who been baptized or received into the Church—provided they are 7 years old and have the use of reason.
There are no exceptions to this. There used to be a possible exception, but it has since been eliminated. So, even if a person leaves the Church, Catholic canon law still applies to him.
And if someone is subject to Catholic law, one might in some sense consider him still a Catholic.
Conclusion
However, this is a slim reed on which to base a literal interpretation of “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic.”
In the first place, canon 11 is itself a merely ecclesiastical law and could be altered (e.g., to include a new qualifier like “. . . unless they have committed heresy, apostasy, or schism”).
More fundamentally, as we’ve seen, the Church after Vatican II does not say an ex-Catholic is still a Catholic, and if we apply the analysis provided by Pius XII, an ex-Catholic (as opposed to a merely inactive Catholic) would not still be a member of the Church.
We thus should be on our guard against interpreting “Once a Catholic” in a literal way.
Fr. Michel Rodrigue, alleged seer promoted by Countdown To The Kingdom
Recently, I was asked to evaluate CountdownToTheKingdom.com, and I concluded:
I consider Countdown to the Kingdom to be a website that presents a highly sensationalistic, speculative, and unlikely prophetic scenario that is put together from scattered pieces of information and interpretations that the authors favor.
Despite our disagreements, my contacts with people from Countdown have been cordial and professional, for which I gave them credit in the article.
I was heartened to see that, in his response, Mark Mallett of Countdown had words of praise for me and Catholic Answers, and he concluded, “We hope this response will continue the cordial dialogue between us and Jimmy Akin.”
I am happy to continue to dialogue in that spirit, though I remain concerned. As I wrote previously, “I do not see the authors exercising the type of critical thinking and discernment that would lend confidence to Countdown’s conclusions.”
Consider two statements from the reply:
The Timeline [on the website] is . . . self-evident that the “end of the world” is not imminent, as Mr. Akin seems to think we are saying.
Mr. Akin’s argument that a seer should only be considered believable if they are “approved” is not supported by either Scripture or Church teaching.
Creating a Straw Man
Neither of these is my view. Countdown promotes seers who claim that various prophetic events are imminent, but the end of the world is not one of those events. As Mr. Mallett says, their timeline makes this clear.
Similarly, I nowhere implied that a seer’s lack of Church approval means the seer is unreliable. Instead, I wrote:
Countdown has chosen not to use Church approval as the standard for deeming seers credible. How reliable is its own evaluation?
The website does not show evidence that the authors have conducted detailed investigations of the seers they recommend or, if they have, that they properly applied critical thinking to their cases and objectively weighed the evidence.
I thus indicated one can conduct independent investigations into a seer, though I find Countdown’s lacking.
By misreading what I wrote, Mr. Mallett has created a straw man and given his readers the impression he has refuted me, when he actually has refuted views that aren’t mine.
Unfortunately, a lack of careful reading and evaluation is common on Countdown—as are two additional tendencies displayed by enthusiasts of particular apparitions: the tendency to magnify the credibility and relevance of information they think supports their views and the tendency to minimize or ignore evidence that casts doubt on them.
These are exhibited in the responses to my evaluation of the extent to which Countdown’s timeline is supported by (1) Church Fathers, (2) the Magisterium, (3) Fatima, and (4) current, reliable seers.
Concerning the Fathers
Mr. Mallett disputes my claim that—in formulating its timeline—Countdown takes passages it likes from the Fathers’ divergent views on Revelation while ignoring others:
The Church Fathers most affirmatively did not “diverge widely” on their view of the proper interpretation of the Book of Revelation. Almost all of them believed firmly that it promised “the times of the kingdom” on earth, within history, during its final “millennium”—before Christ’s final coming in the flesh.
It is surprising he cites the Fathers’ understanding of the millennium, for the Fathers famously disagree on this.
In support of Countdown’s understanding, Mr. Mallett cites early sources such as the Letter of Barnabas, Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian on the millennium.
Yet he fails to mention that patristics scholars recognize each of these sources as supporting millenarianism—the view that there will be a physical resurrection of the righteous, after which they will reign with Christ on earth for a lengthy period before the final judgment (both the Church and Countdown reject millenarianism).
Countdown’s authors unambiguously pick and choose when they accept things they like that these sources say about the millennium and simultaneouslyreject things they don’t like on the same topic by the same authors! (See Barnabas15:5, 7-8; Irenaeus, Against Heresies5:32:1 [on himself], 5:33:3-4 [on Papias]; Justin, Dialogue80-81; Tertullian, Against Marcion3:24-25.)
Concerning the Magisterium
There is no easy way to say this, but the authors of Countdown do not appear to have a clear understanding of what constitutes a magisterial act or a Church teaching. (For a thorough treatment, see my book Teaching with Authority.)
The Magisterium consists only of bishops teaching in union with the pope, and no statement made by a non-bishop is magisterial.
Except for the pope, bishops speaking alone are able to issue teachings only for members of their own dioceses.
Even when a bishop or pope speaks, he must do so in a way that authoritatively conveys a teaching for it to be an exercise of the Church’s magisterium. This is not the case when he merely expresses a hope, wish, fear, opinion, or speculation—or when he gives an interview or has a conversation.
Statements that do not fall in these categories don’t exercise the Church’s teaching authority. This includes statements by theologians, catechisms not authored by bishops, etc.
The only statements that engage the Church’s magisterium are made by men who are currently bishops (including the pope) to those they have authority over and when they declare a teaching authoritatively.
Not Church Teachings
Yet in his section dealing with the Magisterium, Mr. Mallett cites, among others, statements by:
Karol Wojtyła (not yet pope) in which he expresses an opinion in a talk outside his diocese
Charles Arminjon (not a bishop)
Paul VI in which he speculates in a private conversation
Leo XIII in which he speculates
Pius X in which he speculates
Benedict XV in which he speculates
Pius XI in which he speculates
Canon George D. Smith (not a bishop)
Louis de Montfort (not a bishop)
Pius XII in which he speculates
Joseph Ratzinger (not yet pope) in an interview in which he mentions a speculation of John Paul II
If Countdown thinks there are abundant Church teachings supporting its timeline, it would be because Countdown doesn’t have a clear grasp on what is and isn’t Church teaching.
Also, Countdown takes statements out of context to make them fit the timeline’s future scenario. When Benedict XV speculated in 1914 about wars arising in his day, he was talking about World War I, which had started a few months before. And when Pius XII speculated in 1944 about a hoped-for new era beginning, he was talking about the end of World War II, which concluded in Europe a few months later.
My original statement that “magisterial teachings on prophecy are minimal, and the popes have not provided teachings supporting the Countdown timeline” is true.
Countdown generates a contrary impression by citing statements made by people (a) who aren’t bishops; (b) who are bishops but aren’t pope and aren’t speaking to their subjects; or (c) who are popes but are expressing hopes, fears, or speculations rather than teachings—and by taking statements out of context and applying them to its timeline rather than the historical circumstance being addressed.
Concerning Fatima
I stated that “the interpretation of it offered by the Magisterium holds that it dealt with events in the twentieth century, not events in our future.”
In response, Mr. Mallet cited a statement by Benedict XVI: “We would be mistaken to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is complete.” By this, the pope merely meant that Fatima has lessons to teach us about how to live our lives. This is not the same as saying the fulfillment of its prophecies still lie in our future, and the Vatican interpretation—authored by Joseph Ratzinger—states:
Insofar as individual events are described, they belong to the past. Those who expected exciting apocalyptic revelations about the end of the world or the future course of history are bound to be disappointed.
This would reject an attempt to back up future events on Countdown’s timeline using Fatima.
Concerning Current Seers
I stand by my assertion that Countdown has not exercised proper critical discernment and, had it done so, it wouldn’t promote some seers it does.
Countdown’s pages on why it supports particular seers offer one-sidedly positive evaluations and ignore important evidence readers need to arrive at informed opinions.
The “Why Father Stephano Gobbi?” page makes no mention of his predictions tied to specific dates that failed to materialize or the opinions officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith expressed about him.
I must mention the growing and unchecked flood of transcriptions, translations and publications both through print and the internet. At any rate, “seeing the delicacy of the current phase of the proceedings, any and every publication of the writings is absolutely forbidden at this time. Anyone who acts against this is disobedient and greatly harms the cause of the Servant of God (emphasis in original).
Countdown appears to violate this decree by publishing excerpts from her writings (e.g., here).
These “Why?” pages are linked on Countdown’s homepage and are thus where it directs readers to go to learn about and form opinions on these seers. Yet the pages omit important information and cautions and provide a one-sidedly positive portrayal.
Concerning Approval of Seers
Mr. Mallett states:
Mr. Akin further asserts that we have chosen seers who are not approved by the Church. On the contrary, nearly every seer here has some form of ecclesiastical approval to one degree or another.
When I refer to seers being approved, I mean that the competent authority has investigated and approved their apparitions under the CDF’s norms.
Almost none of the seers Countdown promotes have this approval, as illustrated by the claim that they merely have “some form of ecclesiastical approval to one degree or another.”
Like many enthusiastic supporters of unapproved apparitions, Mr. Mallett inflates the “approval” they have. Having a priest, bishop, or cardinal say nice things about a seer is not approval. Neither is putting an imprimatur on a book. (That just means it doesn’t contain doctrines the Church has declared false.) Nor does being declared a saint mean that the person’s visions have been investigated and approved.
The Worst Case
The worst case of Countdown’s lack of critical thinking is its promotion of Fr. Michel Rodrigue.
I won’t here go into whether his bishops’ recent repudiations constitute formal condemnations, but this man is simply not credible. As I wrote, “he appears to be a fabulist who either greatly embellishes or manufactures significant elements of his life story.”
Fr. Rodrigue claims that on Christmas Eve 2009, he was saying Mass in Montreal when a woman suffered cardiac arrest and was verified as dead by doctors. Then Fr. Rodrigue miraculously raised her from the dead and sent her by ambulance to the local hospital to be checked out. The woman arrived back from the hospital before the end of Mass and came through a door that miraculously opened by itself. Upon seeing her return, the congregation applauded.
This is not credible. Anyone who goes into a hospital reporting that he even thinks he might be having a heart attack—much less someone who has just been revived from full cardiac arrest—will spend hours being tested and observed. There is no way the woman in Fr. Rodrigue’s story would get back to the church by the end of Mass.
Similarly, Fr. Rodrigue claims that, when eating in a Banff restaurant, he was infected by a Russian bio-weapon and that this was verified at a local hospital. But instead of the restaurant being closed and there being an immediate investigation by Canadian military, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies, he was allowed to make a five-day road trip back to Montreal.
If amazing events like these had happened, there would be extensive documentation, and there isn’t.
Absent documentation, one must conclude that either Fr. Rodrigue is not capable of separating fantasy from reality or that he is telling self-aggrandizing lies.
Either way, Countdown is not showing the kind of critical thinking and discernment with its sources that would lend credibility to its timeline.
When unexplained phenomena arise, many Christians often leap to the explanation of demons being responsible or they warn that certain activities can open you up to demons. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli discuss the accuracy of these claims, how we can really find out when demons are involved, and what can go wrong when we incorrectly think it’s demons.
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A reader writes:
In some places, the demand for debaptisms has been going up, which could be rather surprising.
The Gospels contain some remarkable statements about prayer. They’re found particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, though there are parallels in Mark and Luke.
Various social media sites have claimed that—in the Old Testament—God originally had a wife that the Israelites worshipped.
There’s an old saying, “Once a Catholic; always a Catholic,” but what does this mean?
