Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

If Enough People Reject Church Teaching, Does That Make It Wrong?

Dissent_magazine_US_logoIt’s no secret that, today, a lot of people disagree with the Church’s teaching on various points.

That’s no surprise. The Church, like Christ, has always been “a sign that is spoken against” (Luke 2:34).

What’s more surprising—and scandalous—is that in our age many professing Catholics reject Church teaching, even teachings regarded as infallible.

The most famous example is the Church’s teaching on contraception. Opinion polls have revealed widespread dissent from this teaching, even among Catholics.

Sometimes those seeking to justify this dissent argue that the Church’s teaching on contraception has not been “received” by the faithful, and therefore is not authoritative. (More recently, Fr. James Martin, SJ has proposed a similar argument concerning homosexual behavior.)

What are they talking about?

 

Reception and the Sense of the Faithful

After reviewing how the Holy Spirit assists the Church when it infallibly defines a teaching, the fathers of the Second Vatican council stated:

To these definitions the assent of the Church can never be wanting, on account of the activity of that same Holy Spirit, by which the whole flock of Christ is preserved and progresses in unity of faith (Lumen Gentium 25).

The Council teaches that the Holy Spirit preserves the flock of Christ in the unity of faith. And so, when the Magisterium infallibly defines a teaching, the Holy Spirit guides the faithful to accept—or “receive”—that teaching.

This process of reception reflects what theologians have called the “sense of the faithful” (sensus fidelium) or the “sense of faith” (sensus fidei).

According to Vatican II:

The whole body of the faithful . . . cannot err in matters of belief. This characteristic is shown in the supernatural appreciation of faith (sensus fidei) on the part of the whole people, when, from the bishops to the last of the faithful, they manifest a universal consent in matters of faith and morals (Lumen Gentium 12; CCC 92).

The Holy Spirit thus gives the Church—including the ordinary faithful—a supernatural sense of what constitutes the true faith, and when the Magisterium infallibly defines a point of faith, the Holy Spirit guides the Church’s members to accept or receive this teaching.

 

Clarifying the Sense of the Faithful

In the debate over contraception that followed Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, dissenters argued that so many Catholics rejected its teaching that the process of reception had not occurred and thus that the teaching was not accurate or authoritative.

They even used quotations from Vatican II—like the ones we have just seen—to argue their point.

This led defenders of the Church’s teaching to try to clarify the proper role of the sense of the faithful.

One point they made was that the process of reception is just that: a process. You can’t look at the immediate reaction to a teaching as a definitive guide. You have to give the Holy Spirit time to do his work in guiding the faithful.

Over time, a number of documents appeared that treated the subject of reception and the sense of the faithful.

One of the most thorough was produced by the International Theological Commission.

The ITC is not itself an organ of the Magisterium. Instead, it is an advisory body run by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Its documents are submitted to the pope and the CDF, and they are only published “on condition that there is not any difficulty on the part of the Apostolic See” (Statutes 12; cf. 11).

The ITC’s published documents—like its 2014 Sensus Fidei in the Life of the Church, which was authorized for publication by Cardinal Muller—are thus considered theologically orthodox.

 

The ITC on Reception

The ITC notes that, despite the generally smooth reception of magisterial teachings:

There are occasions, however, when the reception of magisterial teaching by the faithful meets with difficulty and resistance, and appropriate action on both sides is required in such situations.

The faithful must reflect on the teaching that has been given, making every effort to understand and accept it. Resistance, as a matter of principle, to the teaching of the magisterium is incompatible with the authentic sensus fidei.

The magisterium must likewise reflect on the teaching that has been given and consider whether it needs clarification or reformulation in order to communicate more effectively the essential message (n. 80).

 

Conditions for the Sense of the Faithful

The ITC pointed out that just because a person is a Catholic doesn’t mean he is authentically displaying a true sense of faith. The fact Catholics disagree on various points guarantees that they can’t all be right, and it’s obvious that some Catholics are more faithful than others.

Through his work in our lives, God offers all the baptized guidance in discerning truth from falsehood, but we still have free will, and so we must cooperate with his work for this guidance to bear fruit.

The commission thus identified a set of criteria that an individual needs to authentically participate in the sense of faith:

a) Participation in the life of the Church
b) Listening to the word of God
c) Openness to reason
d) Adherence to the magisterium
e) Holiness—humility, freedom, and joy
f) Seeking the edification of the Church

All of these are common sense.

  • If a person was baptized Catholic but subsequently has never darkened a church’s door, he is so disconnected from his faith that he can’t be said to display a supernatural sense of faith.
  • The Faith is contained in the word of God, and so a willingness to listen to Scripture and Tradition is needed.
  • A person who is unreasonable, who is determined to hold his opinions regardless of the arguments brought forward, is not displaying the discernment needed to distinguish truth from falsehood.
  • Christ gave us a Magisterium, and a person who fundamentally refuses to listen to that Magisterium is not authentically faithful.
  • Holiness is a key goal of God’s work in our lives, and a person who doesn’t seek and display holiness is not cooperating with that work.
  • Finally, God guides individuals to build up or edify their fellow Christians, and someone fundamentally oriented toward creating division and disedification is not cooperating with him.

 

Opinion Polls and the Sense of the Faithful

In many parts of the world, America included, most Catholics don’t even go to Mass on a regular basis. They thus don’t seem to have the level of involvement in their faith needed to meet even the first criterion laid out by the ITC.

When you consider how many Catholics display the qualities listed above, it is clear that public opinion polls cannot be relied upon as a guide to the sense of the faithful. Thus the ITC comments that one can’t identify the sense of faith with public opinion:

i) First of all, the sensus fidei is obviously related to faith, and faith is a gift not necessarily possessed by all people, so the sensus fideican certainly not be likened to public opinion in society at large.

Then also, while Christian faith is, of course, the primary factor uniting members of the Church, many different influences combine to shape the views of Christians living in the modern world.

As the above discussion of dispositions implicitly shows, the sensus fidei cannot simply be identified, therefore, with public or majority opinion in the Church, either. Faith, not opinion, is the necessary focus of attention.

Opinion is often just an expression, frequently changeable and transient, of the mood or desires of a certain group or culture, whereas faith is the echo of the one Gospel which is valid for all places and times.

ii) In the history of the people of God, it has often been not the majority but rather a minority which has truly lived and witnessed to the faith. The Old Testament knew the ‘holy remnant’ of believers, sometimes very few in number, over against the kings and priests and most of the Israelites. . . .

In many countries today, Christians are under strong pressure from other religions or secular ideologies to neglect the truth of faith and weaken the boundaries of ecclesial community. It is therefore particularly important to discern and listen to the voices of the “little ones who believe” (Mk 9:42) (n. 118).

Therefore, one needs to think twice before one takes the latest opinion poll—whether about contraception or anything else—as a sign that a particular Church teaching has not been received by the faithful.

Obviously, many who dissent from Church teaching are regular churchgoers, and they may meet multiple criteria identified by the ITC. However, the fundamental point remains that the true sense of faith is displayed by those who are authentically faithful and not simply those who are baptized.

How Could Catholics and Protestants Commemorate the Reformation–Together?

reformationIn recent years both Catholics and Protestants have been puzzled by occasional mentions in the press that the two groups would be jointly commemorating of the upcoming five hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

What on earth?

Why would Catholics commemorate such an event?

Let’s talk about that.

 

“And So, It Begins . . .”

According to legend, on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenburg, Germany.

Despite the legend, we don’t have solid evidence that he actually did this, but it is true that in 1517 Luther published a set of 95 propositions he proposed for academic debate.

Surprisingly, the 95 Theses do not refer to or sola scriptura or sola fide—doctrines that later came to define the Protestant movement. In fact, the concept of justification isn’t even mentioned in them.

Instead, they deal with indulgences, purgatory, and various Church teachings and practices connected with them.

With time, however, the debate widened to include additional subjects, and within a few years a whole host of doctrines were under dispute.

Attempts were made for several decades to reconcile the parties involved, but with time the divisions hardened, and the Protestant-Catholic split has been with us ever since.

 

Anniversaries of the Reformation

Whether or not Luther did anything on October 31, 1517, that date became standard for marking the anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.

Even today, some Protestant churches celebrate “Reformation Day” as an alternative to Halloween.

And even in groups that don’t have a problem with Halloween, there are periodic celebrations of the anniversary of the Reformation.

The centennial anniversaries—1617, 1717, 1817, and 1917—had particularly notable celebrations in the Protestant community.

Now we’ve arrived at the five hundredth anniversary—2017—and this has posed new challenges, for both Protestants and Catholics.

 

Mutual Animosity

In the past, it seemed obvious how the two communities should mark hundredth anniversaries of the Reformation.

For Protestants, it was obvious that they should have a big party—a celebration of Luther and his colleagues as (small “s”) saviors of Christendom, who rescued the Christian Faith from popish corruption and heresy. The Reformation was a glorious triumph, and that needed to be celebrated.

For Catholics, the reverse was true: The Reformation was a horrible tragedy, and it should in no way be celebrated. There should be no Catholic marking of the occasion, except as the anniversary of one of the darkest days in history, with the memory of Luther—the arch-heretic—thoroughly execrated.

Given the mutual animosity between the two groups, these ways of looking at the event were a given.

 

A Change in Attitude

The twentieth century saw a change in attitude between the two groups.

While there are still strongly anti-Catholic Protestants and strongly anti-Protestant Catholics, the two communities have, as a whole, developed much warmer relations.

A variety of factors have contributed to this warming.

In the 1500s, religion was closely tied to the local government. The principle cuius regio, eius religio (Latin, “Whose region, his religion”) meant that the religion of the local ruler would be the religion of the state.

Consequently, subscribing to a different faith could be seen as a politically subversive act, and feelings of nationalism got tangled up with religious sensibilities.

As society has become more secular, though, those tensions have eased among Christians.

Indeed, growing secularism has led Protestants and Catholics to band together. Here in the United States, Roe v. Wade led to unprecedented cooperation between the two on the subject of abortion, and more recent developments have seen the two sides uniting in mutual defense of religious freedom.

We’re also living in an age of increased social mobility and communication. People no longer spend their whole lives within ten miles of the tiny agricultural village where they were born, and they can communicate with anyone in the world via the Internet.

These factors have all led Protestants and Catholics to get to know each other better, to build bridges, and to form alliances.

Socially, we are not the enemies that we once were. Now, we’re usually allies.

 

“That They May Be One”

Accompanying these changes, both groups have also meditated more profoundly on Our Lord’s requirement that Christians must work to overcome differences and strive for unity.

On the night he was betrayed, Jesus spoke—repeatedly—about the need for Christian unity.

Among other points, he said that it would be by Christians’ love for one another that the world would know they are his disciples.

For Christians to be locked in conflict and mutual hostility therefore creates a barrier to the spread of the Gospel, and this came to weigh more heavily on Christian leaders as the gospel began losing ground to secularism.

Over the course of the twentieth century, Christian leaders became more and more convinced that we needed to find a way around the old hostilities and to begin rebuilding the unity we had lost.

This put the approaching five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation in a new light.

 

Jesus on Christian Unity

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10).

“And now I am no more in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to thee. Holy Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me, that they may be one, even as we are one” (John 17:11).

“I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word,  that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.  The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me” (John 17:20-23).

 

“What Unites Us”

As Christians began to move closer together, they began a mutual re-examination and re-appraisal.

A starting point for this was the willingness to acknowledge the good in each other’s communities: Protestants acknowledged that Catholics were not all bad, and Catholics did the same for Protestants.

This applied not only to personal morals but also to our respective theologies.

In the years of conflict that followed the Reformation, attention focused on our theological differences, but we share a great deal of theology—belief that there is only one, true God, that Jesus Christ is his Son, that God is a trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Concerning Jesus, we believe in his Virgin Birth, his atoning death on the Cross, his bodily resurrection and ascension, and his Second Coming.

We believe in the general resurrection and the final judgment, in heaven and hell, in sin and salvation, in the holy Scriptures as the inspired word of God, and in numerous additional truths.

In words commonly attributed to St. John XXIII: “What unites us is much greater than what divides us.”

 

Purification of Memory

Preparing for the Jubilee Year 2000, St. John Paul II called for a “purification of memory.” This, he explained, “calls everyone to make an act of courage and humility in recognizing the wrongs done by those who have borne or bear the name of Christian” (Incarnationis Mysterium 11).

The jubilee year may have been a particularly appropriate occasion for this, but such a re-examination, in general terms, was already well underway.

The mutual Catholic-Protestant re-assessment meant not only seeing the positive aspects of the other party, it also meant acknowledging the flaws of our own side.

For Protestants, this meant a frank examination of Luther and his colleagues with the understanding that they could and did make mistakes.

For Catholics, it meant a look back at the time leading up to the Reformation, and the Reformation itself, with an awareness of our own forebears’ mistakes.

There were things in the Church needed of reform. That’s why we held a Counter-Reformation.

The Council of Trent did not meet simply to condemn things Protestants were saying. It has numerous decrees dealing with reforming various aspects of the Catholic Church. And there was a vast amount of reform work done in Catholic circles in the century following the council.

Both groups also have troubled histories in the years since the Reformation began. Pope Benedict XVI noted:

“Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church’s leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden” (Letter, July 7, 2007).

And once the divisions between Protestants and Catholics did harden, we had the European Wars of Religion, mutual martyrdoms, and ongoing mutual persecution and hostility.

 

From Heretics to Separated Brethren

For centuries, Catholics and Protestants routinely described each other as heretics. Yet today this language has largely been dropped.

Why is this?

There is no official definition of the term “heresy” in Protestant circles. It is taken to mean some kind of highly unacceptable theological view, though there is no agreed-upon standard of what counts as a heresy.

Consequently, the growing acceptance of Catholics as fellow Christians, along with warmer social relations, has led most in the Protestant community to retire the term for Catholics.

In the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council set a new and more positive tone by referring to Protestants not as heretics but as “separated brethren.” The basis of this term is found in the fact that they are brothers in Christ by virtue of their baptism, but they are separated since they are not in communion with the Catholic Church.

While this description is accurate, is there any reason—other than politeness—to think that the term “heretic” should be avoided?

Unlike in the Protestant community, the term “heresy” has an official definition in the Catholic Church.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains: “Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same” (CCC 2089).

The phrase “some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith” refers to a doctrine that has been infallibly defined by the Church as divinely revealed—i.e., a dogma.

While Protestants have been baptized and do deny or doubt various Catholic dogmas, they typically do not do so out of bad faith (Latin, mala fide) and therefore do not meet the requirement of obstinately denying or doubting a dogma.

The requirement of bad faith obstinacy for heresy has been part of the Church’s understanding for a long time (cf. Code of Canon Law [1917] 1325 §2).

Thus the Second Vatican Council remarked: “The children who are born into these communities and who grow up believing in Christ cannot be accused of the sin involved in the separation, and the Catholic Church embraces upon them as brothers, with respect and affection” (Unitatis Redintegratio 3).

Consequently, the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity indicated that people who were born Protestant did not need to make a formal abjuration of heresy upon becoming Catholic (Ecumenical Directory [1967] 19-20).

Thus Protestants are not typically referred to as heretics because they are not presumed to have committed the canonical crime of heresy.

 

From Celebration to Commemoration

As the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation approached, some in the Protestant community began to ask how it should be marked.

In light of the mutual re-assessments that had taken place, where both parties acknowledged each others good points and their own flaws, the previous kind of celebrations no longer seemed credible.

It would no longer do to one-sidedly portray Luther and his colleagues as glorious heroes against dark-hearted and devilish Catholic villains.

Further, one thing both groups could agree on is that something tragic happened at the time of the Reformation: It was a great rending of Christendom that did not correspond to Christ’s desire for Christian unity and that, if mortal men had acted correctly, would not have happened.

Protestants and Catholic might hold differing views about who was at fault—and many would say there was plenty of fault on both sides—but both could recognize an enormous tragedy as having occurred.

So if the kind of “rah-rah” cheerleading style of celebration wasn’t what was called for, what should the first centennial of the Reformation in the ecumenical age look like?

And who should be involved?

Some in the Protestant community made a striking proposal: It should include Catholics.

The Reformation affected all of western Christendom, and now that Catholics and Protestants again regarded each other as brothers, a way needed to be found that the two communities could mark the occasion together.

This meant holding not a celebration of the Reformation but a commemoration.

 

Remembering Together

To commemorate an event means to remember it together (from the Latin, cum = “together” and memorare = “to remember”).

Catholics could not properly celebrate the Reformation—which involved a grave wound to Christian unity—but they could remember and honestly assess the event with their Protestant brethren.

And so both Protestant and Catholic churchmen approached their leaders and asked if it was possible to find a way for the two communities to jointly remember—not celebrate—the event.

In the Lutheran community, that meant getting the approval of the Lutheran World Federation. And in the Catholic community, it meant the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity developing proposals that would ultimately have to be approved by the pope.

 

What’s a Pope to Do?

Some might think that any kind of joint commemoration of the Reformation is a bad idea, but put yourself in the position of the pope and ask what the alternative is.

Maintaining frosty silence?

Meeting requests for a joint commemoration with firm denials?

Answering press queries by saying, “The Reformation was a horrible tragedy and Martin Luther was an arch-heretic and a historical villain of enormous proportions?”

The fundamental question that confronts every pontiff is how to ensure the good of the Christian community, for Christ made Peter the chief shepherd of his Church, and that means his successors have the chief responsibility for promoting the unity among Christians that he willed.

That means that, when approaching the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, the pope will not be looking to reinforce old divisions but to find a way to encourage Christian unity.

Thus, though joint commemoration is a delicate prospect that undoubtedly involves some discomfort, the fundamental orientation of a pope would be to look for a way to bring something positive out of the occasion.

And it’s easy to see what some of the desired elements for such a commemoration would be:

  • That it not be a triumphant celebration of the Reformation
  • That it involve our joint profession of the Christian Faith
  • That it invoke our common Christian patrimony
  • That it involve prayer for forgiveness of the wrongs committed by both groups
  • And that it ask the Lord for future growth in the Christian unity he wills

Not surprisingly, these were exactly the factors Benedict XVI named in speaking of the forthcoming event.

 

Benedict XVI on the Joint Commemoration

On January 24, 2011, Pope Benedict gave an address to delegates of the United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany in which he spoke of the 2017 joint commemoration. He said:

Today ecumenical dialogue can no longer be separated from the reality and the faith life of our Churches without harming them.

Thus, let us turn our gaze together to the year 2017, which recalls the posting of Martin Luther’s theses on Indulgences 500 years ago.

On that occasion, Lutherans and Catholics will have the opportunity to celebrate throughout the world a common ecumenical commemoration, to strive for fundamental questions at the global level, not—as you yourself have just said—in the form of a triumphant celebration, but as a common profession of our faith in the Triune God, in common obedience to Our Lord and to his Word.

We must give an important place to common prayer and to interior prayer addressed to our Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of mutual wrongs and for culpability relative to the divisions.

Part of this purification of conscience is the mutual exchange appraising the 1,500 years that preceded the Reformation, and which we therefore have in common.

For this reason we wish to implore together, constantly, the help of God and the assistance of the Holy Spirit in order to take further steps towards the longed-for unity and not to be satisfied with the results we have achieved so far.

 

Arrival of the Anniversary

In preparation for the anniversary, there have already been a number of concrete forms of commemoration.

Thus on October 31, 2016—the beginning of the anniversary year—Pope Francis participated in an ecumenical prayer service in Sweden with representatives of the Lutheran World Federation.

On that occasion, he said: “As Catholics and Lutherans, we have undertaken a common journey of reconciliation. Now, in the context of the commemoration of the Reformation of 1517, we have a new opportunity to accept a common path, one that has taken shape over the past fifty years in the ecumenical dialogue between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church.

“Nor can we be resigned to the division and distance that our separation has created between us. We have the opportunity to mend a critical moment of our history by moving beyond the controversies and disagreements that have often prevented us from understanding one another.”

Additional commemorations are scheduled at events throughout 2017, and especially on October 31.

Most of these will be of brief duration, and they will largely echo themes that have already been explored.

The most substantial common statement on the anniversary, however, is a preparatory document that appeared in 2013.

Then, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation issued a document titled From Conflict to Communion: The Lutheran-Catholic Common Commemoration of the Reformation in 2017.

It is available on the Vatican’s web site, and it is the most informative joint reflection on the anniversary of the Reformation, the history that ensued, and where Catholics and Lutherans stand today.

Is the Vulgate the Catholic Church’s Official Bible?

VULGATESt. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate is the most influential Bible translation in the history of western Christendom.

As a translation, it’s been astoundingly important—even more than the King James Version.

For many centuries, it effectively was the Bible for countless Christians.

Through long ages in the west, educated people could read Latin but not Greek or Hebrew, and there were few Bible translations in the vernacular available.

There is no getting around the fact that the Vulgate has a uniquely influential place here in the west—or that it continues to have a unique role today.

But does that make it the Catholic Church’s “official” Bible?

 

How would you show that?

If you wanted to show that the Vulgate was the Catholic Church’s “official” Bible, you’d need a text where the Church declares it the official one.

Otherwise, it’s not.

Since “official” is a legal status, such a text would belong to canon law, and the logical place to look for it would be in the current edition of the Code of Canon Law.

But there is no such text.

The Vulgate is not mentioned in the current Code of Canon Law. Neither is it mentioned in the original, 1917 edition of the Code. Nor is it mentioned in the 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.

So we are not off to a promising start.

We will need to look at other documents of current law and see if any of them declare the Vulgate to be the Church’s official Bible.

Before we do that, though, we should clarify an important point.

 

The Original Languages

Despite its influential role, the Vulgate is a translation.

It thus does not contain the text of the Bible in the original languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek).

While it can play a useful role as a translation, it cannot replace the original language texts.

This is an important point, because some Catholics have placed so much stress on the Vulgate that some people have been confused on this point.

 

Trent’s Statement

To see this, let’s start by looking at what the Council of Trent had to say regarding the matter:

[This] sacred and holy Synod—considering that no small utility may accrue to the Church of God, if it be made known which out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, is to be held as authentic—ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever [Decree Concerning the Edition and Use of the Sacred Books, 1546].

Or, more simply:

[This Synod] ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition . . . be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic.

“Authentic” in this context means “authoritative.” So Trent is saying that, of the Latin editions available in its day, the old Vulgate was to be considered the authoritative edition for use in lectures, debates, sermons, and expositions.

Note the qualifiers: “out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation.”

Trent isn’t saying anything about original language editions. It’s just talking about Latin ones.

It also isn’t saying that the old Vulgate can’t be superseded at a later date by a newer Latin translation.

Both of these points will be important.

 

Pius XII’s Statement

In 1943, Bl. Pius XII commented on Trent’s statement, writing:

And if the Tridentine Synod wished “that all should use as authentic” the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin Church and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts.

For there was no question then of these texts, but of the Latin versions, which were in circulation at that time [Divino Afflante Spiritu 21].

Here Pius XII does two important things.

First, he makes the point we’ve already mentioned—that the Vulgate does not “in any way diminish the authority and value of the original texts” (i.e., the ones in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek).

Second, he clarifies that Trent’s declaration “as all know, applies only to the Latin Church.”

This is important because the Latin Church is not the whole of the Catholic Church.

 

Non-Latin Catholic Churches

There are more than twenty other Churches—the Melkite Church, the Chaldean Church, the Maronite Church, etc.—that are also part of the Catholic Church.

These Churches—being in the East—historically did not use Latin.

Instead, they celebrated the liturgy and read the Scriptures in other languages, such as Greek and Aramaic.

Thus, rather than using the Latin Vulgate, Greek-speaking Catholics historically have used the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament and the original Greek New Testament.

Aramaic-speaking Catholics historically have used an edition in Syriac (a form of Aramaic) known as the Peshitta.

In these Catholic Churches, the Vulgate was never the primary version of Scripture.

We thus need to be careful that we don’t represent what Trent said as applying to the whole Catholic Church. It doesn’t.

As Pius XII pointed out, it applies only to the Latin Church.

 

Current Law?

Since the time of Trent, canon law has been completely reorganized, and thus we need to see what current law has to say concerning the Vulgate.

We’ve already seen that the Vulgate is not given any special status in the current codes of canon law (Western or Eastern), but this does not mean it isn’t dealt with in other legal documents.

In fact, St. John Paul II dealt with it in a 1979 apostolic constitution known as Scripturarum Thesaurus.

This document promulgated a new, revised edition of the Vulgate—known as the Nova Vulgata, Neo-Vulgate, or New Vulgate—which had been in preparation for some time.

In this short document, the pope makes some of the points we have already discussed—such as when he notes that “in the regions of the West the Church has preferred to the others that edition which is usually called the Vulgate.”

However, the point we are interested in is what he says to say about the legal status of the current edition of the Vulgate. Concerning it, he says:

[B]y virtue of this Letter we declare the New Vulgate edition of the Holy Bible as “typical” and we promulgate it to be used especially in the sacred Liturgy but also as suitable for other things, as we have said.

“Typical” is a term of art in canon law. To declare something to be the typical edition of a work means that it is the authorized reference edition that is to be consulted in cases of dispute.

Thus here John Paul II declares the New Vulgate to be the typical edition—or authorized reference edition—of the Vulgate.

This, not prior or parallel editions, is the one that the Church will be using.

He also promulgated it “to be used especially in the sacred Liturgy”—about which we will have more to say—and “also as suitable for other things,” the other things including “sharing the word of God with the Christian people” (at least those who speak Latin).

John Paul II thus did not declare the New Vulgate to be the official Bible of the Catholic Church.

He declared it the typical edition of the Vulgate and he authorized it for certain uses, especially in the liturgy.

 

The New Vulgate in the Liturgy

When the liturgy is celebrated in Latin (at least in the ordinary form), the New Vulgate is the translation used in the Scripture readings.

It is also used when Scripture is quoted in the prayers of the liturgy.

Its role also was clarified in a 2001 document known as Liturgiam Authenticam, which was released by the Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW). It provided that:

[I]t is not permissible that the translations [of the liturgy] be produced from other translations already made into other languages; rather, the new translations must be made directly from the original texts, namely the Latin, as regards the texts of ecclesiastical composition, or the Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek, as the case may be, as regards the texts of Sacred Scripture.

Furthermore, in the preparation of these translations for liturgical use, the Nova Vulgata Editio, promulgated by the Apostolic See, is normally to be consulted as an auxiliary tool (no. 24).

Thus when the Latin Church’s liturgy is translated into vernacular languages like English or Spanish, the Scripture readings are to be based on the original biblical language but the New Vulgate is to be “consulted as an auxiliary tool.”

The document goes on to name the situations in which the New Vulgate is to be consulted. They concern things like when translators have to choose:

  • among different manuscript traditions (no. 37)
  • among possible renderings of passages that have traditionally been rendered one way in the liturgy (no. 41a)
  • how to render certain words that can sound strange in the vernacular if rendered literally (no. 43)

Because of questions that arose concerning Liturgiam Authenticam, the CDW later sent a letter which discusses the matter further. In part, it said:

[I]t is reasonable that a translator of the Scriptures should work with the original languages before consulting other versions, including the Latin.

Afterwards, however, it can only be beneficial for a translator to consider the Latin text as a window through which to view the same Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic text from the standpoint of a healthy sympathy with the best insights of the Latin Church over the centuries.

This is substantially what the recent Instruction calls for as regards the preparation of translations intended for use in the Roman Liturgy.

It was thus clear that the New Vulgate be used as an aid—an auxiliary tool—in developing liturgical translations. It does not serve as the base text to be translated.

 

The Accuracy of the Vulgate

No translation of a lengthy text is able to capture all the nuances found in the original language, and thus no translation is perfect in that sense.

What degree of accuracy does the Church claim for the Vulgate?

Pius XII stated:

[The] special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown, in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as critical, but rather as juridical.

Here the pontiff indicates that the Vulgate was “free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith or morals”—meaning that it contains no theological errors, for these would have been discovered in the long centuries of its use in the Church. It was therefore safe to quote without fear of theological error.

However, this does not mean it is not subject to revision and improvement as a translation of the original languages. Thus Pius XII noted that Trent did not view the Vulgate as authoritative in the Latin Church “particularly for critical reasons.” Indeed, he noted that:

It is historically certain that the Presidents of the Council received a commission, which they duly carried out, to beg, that is, the Sovereign Pontiff in the name of the Council that he should have corrected, as far as possible, first a Latin, and then a Greek, and Hebrew edition, which eventually would be published for the benefit of the Holy Church of God (no. 20).

Thus even at Trent it was asked that a corrected edition of the Vulgate be produced which would improve it as a translation, even though it already contained no theological errors.

In the same way, the Church makes no claims to unalterable perfection for the New Vulgate. The CDW explained:

While constantly defending the inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures as such, the Church has never claimed unalterable perfection for her own officially approved Latin edition of the Scriptures, and has sought to improve that version several times.

It is not to be excluded, and indeed, it is to be expected, that such work continue in the future.

 

The Bottom Line

From what we’ve seen, the Vulgate historically has been an extraordinarily influential translation in the Latin Church.

It has been given special recognition by the Church, and it does not contain theological errors.

At the same time, it has always been recognized that it could be further improved, like any biblical translation.

The current edition, known as the New Vulgate, is the typical Latin edition of the Scriptures used in the Latin Church, especially in the liturgy.

However, none of this supports the claim that the Vulgate is the official Bible of the Catholic Church as a whole.

It is an important translation that the Latin Church uses for certain purposes, but the Church has not declared any single edition of the Bible to be its sole and definitive version.

Does Fasting Cause Loose Skin?

dog-picture-photo-shar-pei-puppiesSince I started reporting on the amount of weight I was losing by Intermittent Fasting (IF), I’ve had various people ask or comment about loose skin.

Some have assumed that–as I’ve lost 70 lbs now–I must have a lot of loose skin, and they’ve wondered if I’m considering having a tummy tuck.

Others have said that they want to lose weight, but they’re afraid of getting loose skin, and so they are holding back from doing so.

Some have wondered if the prospect of getting loose skin causes me any worries.

To be honest, the idea of developing loose skin never even occurred to me until people brought it up.

Further, even if it were a problem, it would not deter me. I would get down to a weight I consider appropriate for my height and build and deal with any loose skin problems at the end of the process.

I’m determined.

Click here to get information about Intermittent Fasting and how it’s worked for me.

But the good news is: the problem isn’t really materializing.

There are a few places on my body where the skin is a little loose (particularly where my limbs join my torso), but this may only be a transient phenomenon, for reasons I’ll explain.

What I can definitely say is that loose skin has not been a problem where you would think it would be–around my stomach.

Like most people who’ve struggled with weight issues, I carried a lot of extra weight around my stomach, and so a lot of that weight has now come off.

At one point, I was wearing pants with a 44″ waist, and at that point I probably weighed around 80-90 lbs more than I do now.

I’m now wearing pants with a 34″ waist, so that means I’ve lost 10″–nearly a foot–from around my waistline.

But: I do not have loose skin around my waist. I certainly don’t have any 10″ of extra skin there. Instead, the skin around my waist has shrunk with my waistline.

Why is this?

If you Google “loose skin,” you will find pictures of people who have lost weight and who now have lots of loose skin. (I don’t really suggest that you do that, BTW. Rhett and Link could feature “loose skin” as one of their “Don’t Google That” segments. That’s why I went with a picture of puppies for this post.)

It thus seems that there are ways of losing weight that result in lots of loose skin, but it appears that Intermittent Fasting does not produce this effect.

A while ago, I saw a video interview with the Canadian nephrologist Dr. Jason Fung, who specializes in IF, and he says that at his clinic, he’s never had to refer a patient for a tummy tuck.

Instead, the patients’ skin shrinks as they fast.

His idea is that the reason for this is that, as your body is looking for things it can burn for fuel, it identifies any excess skin you don’t need as something it can re-absorb and so gets rid of it.

Presumably, there is some hormonal trigger for this: Your body originally sensed that it needed to make new skin as you gained weight, and with the hormonal improvements that accompany fasting, it identifies that skin as no longer needed.

That’s why I think the few places where my skin is a little loose may be temporary.

Frankly, though, I’m just delighted to have the weight off. Health is more important than cosmetic issues, and those can be dealt with other ways if needed.

As you might imagine, it’s a little weird talking about this issue, but I’ve tried to be very open about my weight loss journey, and I wanted to report the good news to people–especially those who have been very concerned about whether they’d get loose skin–that it really hasn’t been a significant issue.

And I can go you one better: A place that you might think you’d get loose skin, and where it would be especially problematic to do so, would be your face. Extra loose skin there would make you look older.

Well, this definitely has not been a problem. I have lost weight in my face and neck–enough that people volunteer the fact they can see the weight loss there if they haven’t seen me in a while–but I definitely haven’t developed new wrinkles or sagging skin.

See for yourself.

no loose skin

Body Fat Testing and Weight Loss Targets

body fat testing

One of the most common measures of how much weight someone needs to lose is based on what’s known as their Body Mass Index (BMI).

The trouble is, BMIs were not designed for this function, and they have severe limitations in diagnosing overweight and obesity. That’s really not what they’re for.

In particular, they don’t differentiate between lean body mass and fat. People with lots of muscle and bone can thus be told they’re overweight even though they’re not carrying much fat.

If you want to determine how much fat you’re carrying, you need to use special tests–the gold standard of which is being dunked in a tank of water and seeing how much of it you displace, allowing your overall body density to be determined.

From that, your personal level of lean body weight (i.e., everything but fat) and fat can be estimated. Info on that here.

In the last few months, through Intermittent Fasting, I’ve lost around 70 lbs, and it’s time for me to start thinking about what my final goal will be.

When I first began Intermittent Fasting, I decided not to initially set a final goal for my weight loss. Instead, I would figure out my ultimate goal as I went along, based on factors like overall health and on my body composition–that is, how much fat I still had on me.

So recently I went to get dunked in a tank to get an initial read on what my body fat percentage is.

Here are the basic results:

  • Current weight: 187 lbs
  • Lean body weight: 140 lbs
  • Fat lbs: 47 lbs
  • Lean body %: 75%
  • Fat %: 25%

That 25% rating is listed as “Fair.” By comparison, the two weights I’m about to mention (below) would both be listed as “Very Poor.” For me the “Good” range would start at around 22% or 182 lbs, so that’s only five lbs away.

Incidentally, based on my present body composition, they estimated my current Resting Metabolic Rate would require me to consume 1881 calories per day. That means I’d need to eat 1881 calories just to lie in bed. Any exercise raises the number of calories beyond that.

I am exercising, and I’m not eating that many calories per day, so I’m losing weight.

As a matter of historical curiosity, I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation to see what my body fat % would have been when I was at my peak weight of around 318 lbs and what it would have been when I started Intermittent Fasting at around 256 lbs.

For purposes of the calculations, I assumed the same lean body weight of 140 lbs. It wouldn’t have been exactly that, but it would have been close to it. Here are the results:

  • Fat lbs (at 318 total lbs): 178 lbs
  • Fat % (at 318 total lbs): 56%
  • Fat lbs (at 256 total lbs): 116 lbs
  • Fat % (at 256 total lbs): 45%

So, since my peak, I’ve managed to cut my body fat % by an estimated 31%, and in the last few months by an estimated 20%.

Of more interest is where it’s going to go, because that helps me establish what my final fat loss goal will be.

Our bodies do need some fat to function properly, but there isn’t an exact number that has been established as optimal (note: optimal and average are not the same thing). For a sample of ranges, see here.

Presently, for my purposes, I’m going to assume that somewhere between 10% and 17% is what I’ll shoot for. That would give me the following parameters as a goal:

  • Total body weight (at 17% body fat): 170 lbs
  • Total body weight (at 10% body fat): 156 lbs

These numbers are also historically in line for what a man of my height (6 feet) would weigh before the obesity epidemic began to set in during the 1960s and 1970s. So no, they are not too low, except by the inflated average weights of our own day.

The numbers assume the present level of 140 lbs lean body mass. If I change that (e.g., if–after I finish losing fat–I decide to build additional muscle, which I’m inclined to do), the numbers will rise accordingly.

I would therefore need to lose between 17 and 31 lbs to be in that range.

Precisely how much I lose is something I will continue to re-evaluate as I go, based on overall health, etc.

Then I’m likely to start building muscle (and thus putting weight–of the good kind–back on).

I’m not trying to do both at once, however. My understanding, including from professional trainers, is that it’s almost impossible to do both at once (for reasons I won’t go into in this post).

What I could do is alternate periods of fat loss with periods of muscle building, but that would only slow down the process of fat loss. I’d rather get rid of the fat and then start building muscle.

Wish me luck!

Fasting Update: The Soup and Noodles Solution

miracle noodle pho

In the months I’ve been doing Intermittent Fasting (IF), I’ve changed around what I’ve been eating for my one meal a day, and I’ve noted that (as expected) different meal types have resulted in different amounts of weight loss.

(NOTE: In addition to the food choices discussed below, I’ve also been taking my vitamins and nutritional supplements to make sure I’m not missing out on needed nutrients.)

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE INTERMITTENT FASTING I’VE BEEN DOING.

 

Phase 1: Low Carb IF

When I first started IF, I was eating a low carb diet, and I saw rapid weight loss. This was great, and very encouraging.

However, I’d spent something like 15 years (maybe more) eating low carb, and the number of calories I was eating in the one meal was low enough that I decided to try . . .

 

Phase 2: The Carb Vacation

In this phase I largely went off the low carb diet I’d been on for so long, and in my one daily meal I allowed myself to eat a more normal American diet–e.g., regular pizza, pasta, etc. (not the low carb versions).

I still kept the carbs somewhat down–e.g., I would eat thin crust pizza instead of regular or thick crust–but I allowed myself more carbs than I had in ages.

I also allowed myself popcorn, which has some carbs but not a huge amount (especially if you do the little 110-130 calorie microwave bags).

The carb vacation was fun, but I noticed that it slowed down my weight loss dramatically. I was still losing, but not nearly as fast, and that began to get discouraging.

So it was time for . . .

 

Phase 3: Fewer Calories and Carbs

I started drawing down the number of calories and carbs I was eating, with the primary emphasis being on reducing calories. The lower those go, the less the ratio of macronutrients (carbs/fat/protein) matters.

At the zero point, a percentage of nothing is still nothing, and the macronutrient ratios don’t matter at all.

I wasn’t at the zero point, but I wanted to get closer, and as I did so, I saw the weight loss rate increase again. (Still without the hunger you might think would be there; since my body is in fat-burning mode, it has a fuel source and doesn’t need to turn on the hunger signal.)

One food I started turning to in this period was soups–the pre-made kind (Progresso, Campbells, etc.), just for convenience.

Because they’re mostly liquid, soups have a lot of heft to them (meaning: they weigh more in your stomach) and, though their carb counts are higher than what I’d normally want, they typically don’t have that many calories.

A large can of soup has a net weight of around 18.5 ounces (more than a pound of food with all that liquid!), but comparatively few calories. For comparison purposes (based on what I currently have in the kitchen):

  • 1 large can Campbell’s Chunky Creamy Chicken & Dumplings: 340 calories
  • 1 large can Campbell’s Chunky Grilled Chicken & Sausage Gumbo: 280 calories
  • 1 large can Progresso Chicken Noodle: 140 calories

Also, soup is hot food, and that helps, too.

I’ve always liked crackers with my soup, but instead of that I’d allow myself to have popcorn, which is high in crunch factor (satisfying the psychological need to chew) but lower in carbs and calories than crackers.

With the new emphasis on fewer calories and carbs, I saw the weight loss pick up again!

Around this time I also started . . .

 

Phase 4: Adding a Snack

When I first started doing research on IF, I ran into advisors talking about occasionally allowing oneself a very low calorie snack (e.g., 35-50 calories).

Now, the whole point of intermittent fasting is not to be eating all the time. If you let yourself adopt the “grazing” strategy that has been so prominently recommended in (misguided) diet advice in recent years, you’ll ruin what you’re doing and may actually gain weight.

Consequently, at first I didn’t use any snacks. But occasionally I would have a psychological need to just chew something, even though I wasn’t hungry.

So I re-thought the snacking issue and decided to experiment with allowing myself to have up to 1 snack a day (many days I still have 0 snacks), of a very low calorie variety, on the view that a single bump of <100 calories sometime during the day would not materially throw off weight loss.

I’ve written about snacking ideas here.

Quick tips:

  1. Sliced bell peppers make good snacks
  2. So do homemade pickles

Also: Most pickling recipes are way overcomplicated. All you need to do is put sliced cucumbers into a container, cover them with apple cider vinegar (or another vinegar, but apple cider vinegar tastes better), and leave them in the fridge for a few days. That’s all!

My experience was that, indeed, adding this form of minimal snacking did not materially interfere with weight loss.

By this point I was optimizing the basic strategy, so I carried the optimization further in . . .

 

Phase 5: Low-Carb Soups and Noodles

As I turned over ideas for further optimization in my head, I started thinking about how to further improve the soup strategy.

The things that make soups satisfying include:

  • It’s got taste
  • It’s got heft (weight, due to all the liquid)
  • It’s hot

So what could I do to get the calories down while retaining the satisfaction level of a well-made soup?

The first thing that occurred to me was egg-drop soup.

All you really need for that is chicken broth and eggs. Everything else is optional (some good options include: black and white pepper, salt or salt substitute, green onion garnish, mushrooms or other low-carb, low-cal veggies).

So I pulled out a carton of chicken broth and a carton of Egg Beaters (which are really colored egg whites, so they’re lower in calorie than whole eggs–though whole eggs are fine), and was very pleased with the results!

Also, my mind drifted back to the various low-carb noodles that exist. The best ones are:

What all these have in common is that they are basically fiber and water, which means they satisfy the need to chew, take up space in your stomach, and have next to no calories.

Noodles (whether low carb or not) also are meant to have basically no taste, so you need to add something to them (e.g., a sauce) to give them flavor.

So I thought: Why not use these in soups?

The different noodles have different properties. Zucchini noodles won’t withstand boiling well, so they need to be put in near the end of cooking.

Shirataki noodles will withstand boiling, and they have a more chewy texture, which would help with the psychological need to chew even better than zucchini noodles.

The downside of shirataki noodles is that they often have an odor that needs to be taken care of by boiling or–better–by dry roasting (i.e., fry them in a pan with no oil), although Skinny Pasta (not the same as Skinny Noodles) claims to have eliminated the odor issue (I’ve got some on order; will let you know what I find).

It struck me that a particularly good bet would be kelp noodles. These don’t have the odor problem that shirataki noodles do, and they can have an almost crunchy texture, which would give even more chewing satisfaction.

But all three kinds of noodles could work: I could get broth (chicken, beef, veggie) or a soup base (e.g., miso, pho, hot and sour), add the noodles, and have a really good, satisfying, low-cal, low-carb soup!

I could even add low-carb, low-cal veggies to the soup and keep everything in the range I wanted.

This seemed so obvious that I thought, “Why hasn’t someone already done this commercially?”

As I was in the store picking up ingredients to do just this, I discovered much to my surprise that someone already had!

Miracle Noodles has produced a line of ready-to-heat-and-eat foods incorporating their product (a version of shirataki noodles), including the Miracle Noodle Pho pictured above. (They have several other, similar products–see the scrolling flavor selector on the right of the Amazon page.)

I’ve already tried the pho, and it was awesome! It comes only with noodles and sauce (you have to add your own veggies if you want them), but it was really good! And a whole package (2 servings) is only 76 calories!

With that few calories, one could even have a big bowl of soup as a snack during the day and another at night.

So that’s what I’ve been doing recently.

I might, for example, have a bowl of nothing but chicken or miso broth and low-carb noodles during the day (keeping the calories to 50 or so), and then another, more elaborate bowl (with veggies and popcorn) during the night.

Also, soup is not the only thing to which one can add to such noodles. Other things can give them flavor.

Thus I’ve been experimenting with low-carb, low-cal mac and cheese (ziti shaped low carb noodles plus a cheese sauce). In this case, to keep the calories low, I’ve deviated from standard low-carb advice and used low-calorie cheeses for the sauce. On a normal low-carb diet, you don’t do that since low-cal substitutes typically have more carbs, but the number of carbs we’re dealing with here is so small that it doesn’t matter.

Other sauces–e.g., pasta sauces–are also totally possible.

So that’s the current phase of my diet, which is based on Intermittent Fasting using low-cal, low-carb noodles in low-cal, low-carb soups and sauces. These aren’t the only things I’m eating (and I am taking my vitamins to make sure I’m getting enough micronutrients), but they are the core.

And the results have been dramatic! I’ve seen more rapid weight loss since implementing this strategy than I have since I started the program.

Of course, I won’t eat this way indefinitely. But I have found this–in my case (no medical advice is being offered here)–to be a useful strategy to incorporate during this phase of my journey.

And, as I’m only 15-25 lbs from what may be my ultimate goal (having lost 128 lbs overall and 66 lbs since beginning Intermittent Fasting), I’m going to be changing my eating plan soon enough anyway.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO ABOUT THE INTERMITTENT FASTING I’VE BEEN DOING.

Shin Godzilla Review

Shin-Godzilla-2016I just finished watching Shin Godzilla–the 2016 Japanese Godzilla movie, whose name means “Godzilla: Resurgence”–and it was surprisingly good!

The movie is a complete reboot of the Godzilla franchise, meaning that it is a first contact story.

In this continuity, Godzilla has never appeared in Japan before, so we get to see people struggling to come to terms with a giant kaiju attack in a world where one has never occurred before.

This is unusual in a Godzilla film, as all of the previous sequels have at least treated the original, 1954 movie as Japan’s first encounter with Godzilla.

The film is two hours long, and the first 28 minutes are surprisingly goofy (so my inner MST3K crew was active), but then it gets quite good.

(NOTE: Apparently much of the goofiness in the first 28 minutes is due to the fact that the filmmakers are implicitly criticizing the way the Japanese government reacted to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, in which they were trapped by their own bureaucratic habits, said stupid things in press conferences, and dealt ineffectually with the early stages of the crisis.)

My initial impression (though I’ll need to think about it) is that this may be the best  Godzilla film except for the iconic 1954 Japanese original (the one without Raymond Burr)–which is absolutely mythic.

One of the things I liked about this film is how fresh it felt. After thirty previous Godzilla films, you wouldn’t think there would be a lot of new things to do, but this film managed to find a surprising amount of virgin territory to explore.

Of course, the movie’s plot reflects up-to-date technology, so the fact that everyone has a cell phone results in things appearing online before the Japanese government is even aware of them, and it’s nice to see government officials scrambling to keep up with what the public has already learned through social media.

There’s also an interesting and fundamentally productive cooperation between Japan and the United States in the movie, though it’s clear the relationship has bumps.

Some viewers might want more kaiju action that we actually get in the film. Godzilla periodically goes into dormant periods as his body adjusts to changing circumstances, so he doesn’t mount a constant assault on Tokyo (which he really doesn’t do in any movie). This gives the human characters a chance to devise ways of dealing with him.

When Godzilla is active, though–or at least once he’s up to full steam–wow! At the midpoint of the film Godzilla mounts a devastating attack that is easily the most spectacular thing he has ever done on screen!

Despite the fact that the Godzilla action isn’t continuous, the film is surprisingly quickly paced and doesn’t get boring, even when the puny humans are the focus.

The film also more credibly establishes Big G as a global threat than in previous films. Given the way this version’s biology works, if they don’t stop him now, the human race–and apparently most of the biosphere–is toast.

Perhaps the thing I liked most about the movie was the fact that the humans–and particularly the military–is not portrayed as ineffectual.

Often in Godzilla movies, they aren’t able to even dent him until, at the last minute, a scientist comes up with a magic bullet that suddenly kills or neutralizes Godzilla, ending the film.

In this movie, however, the military is able to do damage to Godzilla before the final climax (in fact, that’s apparently the reason for his longest dormant period).

And when the final confrontation occurs, the humans have mapped out a creative, multi-stage plan to execute, in which they intelligently take down the big lizard in stages.

This plan has them doing things we haven’t seen before, such as overtaxing Godzilla’s ability to shoot rays and wear down his offensive capabilities, as well as intentionally knocking down skyscrapers onto Godzilla so that they serve as huge kinetic weapons and pummel him like giant clubs. Cool!

Of course, there is sequel potential here, and the final shot of the movie hints what the sequel will likely involve.

There are things about the film I didn’t like, but overall it was a fun watch, and I’d recommend it to fans of Godzilla films and other kaiju movies.

Here’s where you can watch it on Amazon.

Everyone Keeps Missing the BIG Question About Doctor Who

new tardis

In the wake of the 13th Doctor announcement, everyone is focused on the fact the next Doctor will be a woman.

But the TARDIS also has changed it’s appearance (note the St. John’s Ambulance logo that characterized Steven Moffat’s tenure is gone).

Up to now, the Doctor has referred to the TARDIS as “old girl,” but if it also has regenerated, the real question is: Has the TARDIS become a male?

Will she now start calling it “old boy”?

Do Dogs Go to Heaven? And More!

Do-pets-go-to-heaven-620x350

In this episode of Catholic Answers Live (July 11, 2017, 1st hour), Jimmy answers the following questions:

0:15 What are some of Cy’s favorite books?

2:30 What’s significant about John Paul II’s book “Crossing the Threshold of Hope”? (Hint: One thing is that he basically revealed the Third Secret of Fatima in it!)

4:50 Did Joseph Ratzinger ghostwrite many of John Paul II’s writings?

6:35 How to find hidden treasures in John Paul II’s and Benedict XVI’s Wednesday audiences.

11:50 How to respond to the challenge that Catholicism is false because it bases its teachings on things other than the Bible–the word of God.

16:00 What is the new path that Pope Francis has instituted for people becoming saints?

25:17 – What are some early church sources about the immaculate conception?

31:26 – Can a pope be a heretic personally?

33:40 – What is the earliest evidence for Purgatory?

37:50 – In Acts 11, St. Paul says his proof for the Gentiles in the Church is that the Holy Spirit falls on them. Is this analogous to the Holy Spirit working in other churches today?

44:06 – What are we supposed to be doing in the afterlife?

46:30 – How do we define grace? Someone told me we merit grace, but we also receive initial grace free of merit. So what are the different kinds of grace, where are some places we can find them in the Bible?

54:55 – Can a non-baptized person, who’s married to a Catholic, receive a Catholic funeral and burial?

57:50 – Do dogs go to Heaven?

Resources Mentioned:

The Drama of Salvation by Jimmy Akin

Click here to watch the video on YouTube.

Use this link to listen to the MP3.

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