In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (March 14, 2017, 1st hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:
Why shouldn’t we only believe things verified by science?
How can we reconcile the Council of Trent saying that we have free will with John 6:44, where Jesus says “nobody can come to me unless the Father draws him”?
How can we reconcile differences in the Gospels like where Jesus exorcizes either one or two men, depending on which Gospel you read?
Are John, the Gospel writer, St. John, the Beloved Disciple, and St. John of Patmos are all the same individual.
Did the Blessed Mother know she was free from original sin?
Why do we not talk about the trauma felt by the soul of an aborted baby after it is separated from the body?
What is the Catholic perspective on physician-assisted suicide?
In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (March 9, 2017, 2nd hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:
Where is the physical location of Heaven?
How to explain praying to the saints to others, and what are some Bible verses that deal with this?
If you’re killed immediately after going to confession, will you go straight to heaven or might you go to purgatory?
Are physical illnesses caused by God?
Why do we take Jesus literally when he says the Eucharist is his Body and Blood but not when he says we should pluck out our eyes or cut off our hands if they lead us into sin?
How to answer Christians who say that the dead enter a sleep-like state until the Final Judgment?
In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (March 07, 2017, 2nd hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:
How did the Church determine the current election process to select a new pope? How did the Church determine that Linus was Peter’s successor, and how was he elected?
How should I deal with a priest who is extremely disrespectful to the pope? He has a podcast and takes time during his homily to criticize the pope. We’ve tried to talk to him and he pulls rank on us. What should I do as a lay person?
If God is unchanging, did he have a body eternally, and how does the incarnation relate to God being eternal?
I will be coming into the Church this Easter. How do I go about talking with my parents about my faith, who have been resistant?
How do we disprove reincarnation through philosophy if that’s the best method for resolution?
What is the best way to explain the Trinity to younger students?
Is it wrong of me to no longer go to my parish and go to a different parish that seems to have more to offer in the way of women’s fellowship, bible studies, etc?
I heard that there was a recent article that states Pope Francis said that people need to have fewer children because of overpopulation. I can’t find the quote. Do you have any information?
The Catholic Church associates the image of fire with the final purification known as purgatory.
Why does it do this?
Is there a scriptural basis for this image?
Also, what kind of fire is this?
In past centuries, many theologians have speculated that it might be a form of material fire.
Although that has been a common opinion historically, there’s a difficult question that the idea raises: How could material fire affect the holy souls in purgatory? They don’t have their bodies, so how could material fire affect them? And why would it accomplish a spiritual effect on them?
More recently, some theologians have suggested that the fire is something else entirely.
In fact, they have suggested that the fire of purgatory is an intense, transforming encounter with Jesus Christ.
You might be surprised to find out just who has been proposing this idea.
Is St. Peter the Rock on which Jesus built his Church?One of the most controversial passages in the Bible is Matthew 16:18, where Jesus tells Peter, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.”
Catholics see this passage as evidence that Jesus made Peter the first pope.
Many Evangelicals look at it as just the opposite.
Who is right?
It’s an interesting question, and I’ve been on both sides of the question. In fact, this passage played a pivotal role in my conversion to the Catholic Church.
You may think you’ve heard all the arguments about whether Peter is the rock, but I’m going to show you the one that convinced me, and you probably haven’t heard it anywhere else . . .
The Basic Argument
A common claim in Protestant apologetics is that in Matthew 16:18, Jesus is actually contrasting St. Peter with the rock on which he will build his Church.
The argument is based on the fact that in Greek the word for Peter is petros, while the word used for “rock” here is petra.
It is often claimed that these words meant two different things–that petros meant a small stone or a pebble, while petra meant a large rock.
The idea is that Jesus is contrasting Peter–a tiny, insignificant stone–with the great rock on which he will build his Church, which is often said not to be Peter but Peter’s faith.
How well does this argument work?
By the Way . . .
Incidentally, if you’re interested in this type of information, you might want to check out my Secret Information Club.
If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.
I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.
The very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is an “interview” I did with Pope Benedict on the book of Revelation. What I did was compose questions about the book of Revelation and take the answers from his writings.
He has a lot of interesting things to say!
If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:
If God is all-good and all-loving, how could he send someone to hell?
At first glance, it seems that he would not. But God is infinitely higher than we are, and our finite minds can only grasp a tiny bit of his infinite mystery.
Therefore, we need to check our intuitions about what God would or would not do against what we know.
In particular, we need to check them against what God himself has told us in his word.
In this video, I take on the question of whether God would really send someone to hell, and I show that we must reject the simple answer, “No, God would never do that.”
But we also see that the matter isn’t as simple as saying that God “sends” people to hell.
Drawing on the teaching of Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, we reveals the real reason that people “go to hell”–and the fact that we can avoid this as long as we open ourselves to God’s love.
No matter what we’ve done, no matter how bad our sins, we can–as long as we live–always be saved if we turn back to God and embrace his love.
Here’s the video!
I’m also preparing a message to the Secret Information Club where I “interview” Bl. John Paul II about hell.
Very few churchmen are willing to speak at any length about the doctrine of hell, but John Paul II was one of them, and drawing from his writings, I compose an “interview” that presents his wisdom on the doctrine of hell, its biblical basis, how we should understand it, and what it means for our lives.
If you’d like to receive the interview, you should sign up for the Secret Information Club by Friday, June 15th, and you’ll have the interview in your email inbox on Saturday morning.
Incidentally, before he hopped on a plane for Israel this afternoon, the globe-trotting author, blogger, and apologist Steve Ray sent me an email (and permission to use it) in which he said:
“Bravo, Jimmy! I look forward to your secret messages as a member of your Secret Information Club.
Actually, I like it that you do a lot of research I wish I had time to do.
Don’t tell anyone–this is a secret–but I copy each one and save it in my Logos Bible Software program for future reference.
Very valuable, fun, and great content. Keep up the good work.”
In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (March 21, 2017, 1st hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:
In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (March 16, 2017, 1st hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:
In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (March 9, 2017, 2nd hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:
In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (March 07, 2017, 2nd hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:
