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."

A Crown Of Thorns

A reader writes:

Dear Jimmy,

I was wondering if you could help me, im rather at my wits end and i dont know what to do. I read an article on your website dated March 08, 2004 and it was a real eye-opener.

For about 8 months now i have been really struggling with bad thoughts. I am a young christian, who by no means is perfect, but i love God and respect him. However the bad thoughts that i have are pure evil, often satanic in nature and anti-God.

They upset me so much, everyday i am often in tears asking for forgiveness. I then get scared that they are going to come true against me or my family and loved ones. I would never ever want them to come true, i would never do them and i hate them but i dont know what to do to get rid of them.

Your article stated that it is best to ignore them, but i feel i cant as these are so bad and so against God that i need to ask for forgiveness. How can i ignore something so evil?

I dont wish to burden you with my problems but i dont want to be this bad person anymore. I just want them to go away so that i can lead a good life, pleasing God not upsetting him.

I want to begin by saying that my heart goes out to you. You are carrying a very special cross that is close to Jesus’ heart. I will pray for you and I ask all who read this to pray for you, as well as for all who suffer from this condition.

I cannot make a medical diagnosis as I am not a doctor, but it sounds very much to me like you are suffering from an episode of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that is manifesting itself as sinful thoughts. I am virtually certain from what you have said that this is what is happening in your case.

First, a little info on OCD:

One of the characteristics of OCD is that it generates obsessions, which are recurrent thoughts that one cannot get rid of, that one finds painful, and that are "ego-dystonic." That is, you feel like they just force their way into your mind unbidden, even though you don’t want them there.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder where part of your mind tries to throw painful thoughts at you in order to increase your stress level. The reason you get recurrent thoughts about sin rather than thoughts about happy things is that these thoughts pain you. That’s what the condition tries to do: Give you painful thoughts.

It is obvious from what you write that you do not want these thoughts, that you hate having them and want desperately to be rid of them.

That’s good!

It shows that these thoughts are ego-dystonic and thus (THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART) they are NOT SINFUL.

Merely having a thought occur to you is not a sin, no matter how bad the thought it. At most, having the thought occur to you is just temptation. It only becomes sin if you endorse it with your will. But the fact that you clearly do not want these thoughts and that you oppose them means that you are not consenting with your will (CERTAINLY not in the fully human way needed to commit a mortal sin).

As a result, you are shouldering a particular kind of cross–or, to use a better analogy–you are wearing a particular crown of thorns. That means that you are especially close to Jesus’ heart, because that he looks with special compassion on those who suffer in this manner.

Now let me give you several pieces of good news, which I’ll follow up on below:

IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT THAT YOU HAVE THIS CONDITION!
THIS CONDITION IS TREATABLE!
YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
THESE THOUGHTS ARE NOT SINFUL!
GOD LOVES YOU!

In regard to the first piece of good news, it is not your fault that you have OCD. It is a condition that is rooted in the biology of the brain. In particular, it seems to be related to a deprivation of the neurotransmitter serotonin.

In regard to the second piece of good news, the condition in very responsive to treatment. You CAN get better. You DON’T have to feel this way. While you may or may not be able to completely eliminate the thoughts that you are having, you can get a grip on them so that they are not causing you the kind of torture that they are now. I’ll say more about treatment below.

In regard to the third piece of good news, OCD is a very common condition. About one in every 40 people has OCD. (Consequently, there are lots of OCD resources and support groups out there.)

In regard to the fourth piece of good news, I’ve already sketched the basis for it: These thoughts are not things you are endorsing with your will (certainly not in a human manner) and so they at most represent temptation (and really not even that since you aren’t attracted but rather horrified by them).

In regard to the fifth piece of good news: It’s true! GOD LOVES YOU! He will be with you while you deal with this condition, and he will never leave you nor forsake you.

Now let’s talk treatment. I have a significant amount of familiarity with this as I encounter a good number of OCD folks in my line of work. In fact, some of the other readers of the blog have OCD. Here’s what I can recommend regarding treatment:

Go to a doctor, preferably a psychiatrist, and get diagnosed.
With the doctor, explore getting on a medication known as a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI), which is the class of drugs that has been shown to have a marked impact on OCD symptoms. Other medications may be helpful as well, but the SSRIs generally are the main ones used.
If your symptoms do not require medication, consider using the nutritional supplements like 5-HTP, which is a precursor of serotonin and thus has a similar effect to an SSRI: Increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain. (NOTE! DO NOT USE THIS NUTRITIONAL SUPPLEMENT AND THE DRUGS MENTIONED ABOVE AT THE SAME TIME WITHOUT A DOCTOR’S SUPERVISION!)
Get cognitive-behavioral therapy or counselling to help you work your way past the thoughts. This is important as medications alone don’t make all the thoughts go away. You can get this kind of therapy from a psychiatrist or psychologist.
Consider joining an online or face-to-face support group for OCD sufferers.
Watch the TV show Monk on USA Network. It’s about a detective who has OCD and who manages to be a productive member of society anyway. In fact, his OCD makes him a better detective as he notices (and obsesses about) details that nobody else spots. Many OCD folks really appreciate this show and say it helps them in that it offers a sympathetic portrait of someone with their conditions, lets them laugh about it, and lets them see their condition from an "outside" perspective.
When you are in confession, DO NOT attempt to laboriously explain all of the thoughts that you are having. Attempting to do this will reinforce and re-awaken the thoughts. This gives you an excusing cause from making a materially integral confession in regard to the thoughts–which you really don’t need to do anyway since they aren’t sinful since you don’t approve of them, but I know you’ll feel the need to confess them (if you’re Catholic). Here’s how to do that. Say this: "I have obsessive compulsive disorder, which causes me to have thoughts of a sinful nature that I do not want and do not approve of. I wish to confess any slight degree of cooperation of the will I may have given to these thoughts." And LEAVE IT AT THAT.
Talk to your doctor/counselor/spiritual director about the need not to dwell on these thoughts in confession. Once they tell you (as they will) that dwelling on these thoughts has a tendency to reinforce and re-awaken them and that it is better not to dwell on them in detail in confession you can say to any priest who asks, "I have been told by a medical professional/my spiritual director that I should not confess these in detail lest it make the problem worse." (If nothing else, you can say that "a professional" told you this since I have told you and I’m a professional.)
If you’re not Catholic, you should seriously investigate becoming Catholic (a) because Catholicism is true and (b) because the sacrament of confession will provide tremendous relief for you. There is nothing like having a priest authorized by God to absolve your sins (John 20:21-23) do so. When you can rely on the sacrament, you won’t have to worry about trying to do mental rituals in order to try to "feel" forgiven. Also, Catholics have long pastoral experience in dealing with folks who have conditions like this. In Protestant circles there are few established means for dealing with the condition known as scrupulosity (which correlates highly with OCD). Indeed, the term generally isn’t known in Protestant circles. But these are much better understood in Catholic circles.
Finally, to the extent you possibly can, simply ignore the thoughts. Relax and put them out of your head. You may find it helpful to say to yourself: "Sorry! But I’m not allowed to listen to that part of myself!"

Hope this helps, and God bless!

Let This Cup Pass?

It seems that my reflection on Benedict XVI’s "human moment" in accepting the papacy was significantl on the mark.

After writing the post I discovered an article in which it’s reported that Cardinal Ratzinger actually prayed that God would not have him elected pope.

EXCERPT:

"I prayed to the Lord that they would elect someone stronger than I, but in that prayer he obviously did not listen to me," the Holy Father said today during a meeting in Paul VI Hall with some 5,000 Germans who came to Rome to support him at the start of his pontificate.

"I want to tell you something about the conclave without violating the secrecy," the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said. "I never thought I would be elected, nor did I do anything to make it happen, but when slowly the unfolding of the votes led me to understand that the ‘guillotine’ was coming closer and looking at me, I asked God to spare me this fate."

He said he then remembered a letter that he had with him from a German cardinal. That cardinal reminded his countryman what he said at Pope John Paul II’s funeral Mass, quoting Jesus’ words to Peter, and encouraged him that "if the Lord addressed that ‘follow me’ to me, I could not refuse the call."

"The Lord’s ways are not easy, but we are not made for ease; therefore, I could only say ‘yes’ to the election," Benedict XVI said in German in his impromptu address to his compatriots.

"I thought that my work in this life had ended and that years of tranquility awaited me," he added.

GET THE STORY.

A Human Moment

It’s been over a week now since God graced us with the election of his holiness, Pope Benedict XVI. On the day it happened, I was elated—and I still am!

Unfortunately, that day was the day I had to go out of town. I had only three hours between the time his election was announced and when I had to leave, and into that time I had to finish last minute packing, last minute message checking, last minute things at work—plus a couple of media appearances to comment on the election.

It was hectic!

Amid this swirl of events, I tossed a couple of ex-Cardinal Ratzinger’s books in my suitcase for reading on the trip and downloaded the audiobook version of Salt of the Earth for listening on my iPod. (Cowboy hat tip to the commenter who pointed out it is available from Audible.Com!)

But I had no time (substantively speaking) for blogging on the event.

Since I’m back, I thought I’d share with you something I thought when I first saw Benedict XVI emerge to greet the crowd and the world, waving his arms and smiling.

I thought he was having a very human moment.

Lemme ’splain: I am as certain as a certain certaintor on Certainty Day that Benedict XVI was God’s choice for pope. There were several fine gentlemen in the college of cardinals who could have served as worthy—even outstanding—successors to John Paul II (and to Peter), but Cardinal Ratzinger stood out like a gemstone, and I am thrilled and delighted that the divine element in the conclave expressed itself through the human element of the cardinals.

But the human element is always there. The cardinals could have used their free will in such a way that they could have elected an unworthy or even disastrous successor. However unlikely it was that this would happen (and I pointed out its unlikeliness before the conclave), it still remained up to the cardinals to exercise their free will in harmony with the motions of God’s grace.

And they did!

Among them was Cardinal Ratzinger, who had to accept his election in order to become pope.

He had to continue accepting his election on an emotional level even afterwards, and it seemed to me that he was still in the process of doing this when he first appeared.

When I saw the new pope emerge on the balcony, I detected something in his smile and wave and posture that suggested to me that the human element of the man born Josef Ratzinger was still adjusting to the new reality. The divine element of his role as the Vicar of Christ was still sinking in on him.

He was nervous. He wasn’t comfortable with his new role yet. He was doing what needed to be done in such a moment, but on a human level he still felt like a humble cardinal “playing the role” of pope—not one comfortable with the role and the weight of responsibility that God had placed on his shoulders.

It reminded me of a moment in I, Claudius where, just after Claudius has been proclaimed emperor, he keeps taking his crown off in private and tells his friend, Herod Agrippa, “I feel like a fraud!”

Herod places the crown back on Claudius’ head and wisely tells him: “You won’t once you begin to work.”

I suspect something like that is happening here.

Benedict XVI originally emerged onto the balcony still feeling like he was Cardinal Ratzinger. But as he sets his hand to the plough and pushes more furrows through the ecclesiastical ground, he will feel more and more like what he is: Benedict XVI.

There’s nothing like experience on the job.

Howdy, Folks!

I’m back from my trip to Kentucky and am now digging into get back to regular blogging.

Found over 160 new pieces of (non-spam) e-mail waiting for me when I got back, so that should give me a running start on new topics (in addition to those I’ve thought up in my absence).

I want to thank those who e-mailed for their patience while I attempt to work through the backlog.

I also want to say a special thanks to my co-bloggers for their valiant efforts in my absence! I really appreciate the assist, guys, so public kudos to y’all!

What If We Found A New Letter Of Paul? (Part Two)

Earlier I suggested that the only way a significant movement to include a new document in the New Testament would get started was if we found something that looked like an authentic, first century apostolic epistle, gospel, or proto-gospel.

Let me clarify what I mean by the latter.

It is standardly assumed that there are lost sources behind the four gospels as we have them. The most talked about is a source called "Q," which is allegedly where a bunch of the material in Matthew and Luke comes from. It is not clear whether Q was an oral source or a written source, but many assume the latter. It also is not clear if Q even existed (there are other ways to account for the material besides positing Q and there are arguments against Q), though this is the standard claim these days. (Personally, I’m not convinced, though I’m open.)

Luke, at any rate, mentions that he used written sources in composing his gospel, and unless he’s referring exclusively to Matthew and Mark, that means there’s a lost source.

If we turned up Q or something else that looked like it might be a source behind the canonical gospels, that would be what I’m calling a "proto-gospel," and it would really set the cat among the pidgeons. The scholarly debates would be endless.

And it would be one of the few things that could conceivably spartk a New Testament inclusion movement.

How would that play out?

First, there’d be a buncha folks going "Ooo! Aaaah!" over the document in an uncritical manner and it would sell a bazillion copies.

Then there’d be a buncha folks going "I’m very favorably impressed, but we mustn’t be hasty."

Then there’s be a buncha folks going "Hey, let’s reserve judgement on this thing."

Then there’d be a buncha folks going, "This looks fake to me."

And finally there’d be a buncha folks going "This new document is of the devil!"

There’d be a big fight that would remain inconclusive for some time, probably generations.

Eventually, some publisher might decide to stick the document in Bibles it’s printing. Then there would be another huge controversy over this. (To mitigate it, the publisher might print the document as an appendix, not claiming it to be authentic or inspired but merely "useful," but that would still start a huge controversy.)

In the end, though, standard Bible would continue to outsell the ones that had the document in it. A few Christians (in newly-created denominations following denominational divides over the new book) might use it, but traditional Christians–who would be and would remain the great majority–would not include it in their Bibles, however fascinated or perplexed they might be by it.

What would the Catholic Church do?

Nothing.

Certainly in the beginning.

In our lifetimes we might get a few cautionary statements, but the attitude of the Church would very much be a "Let’s wait and see" attitude. The Church is not about to preemptorially endorse a work of such a sensitive nature if it might turn out to be fake. Neither is it about to preemptorially condemn such a work if it might turn out to be genuine. We’d get cautionary statements telling Catholics not to regard it as Scripture but to otherwise reserve judgement on it, and that would be about it.

And that’s probably the way it would stay.

Forever.

Hypothetically, the Church could use its infallibility to make a determination that the document falls into one of the following classes:

Fake
Authentic but not inspired
Authentic and inspired but not to be included in the New Testament
Authenatic and inspired and to be included in the New Testament

But the odds of any such determination at any date, even long after our lifetimes, would be very, very low.

The reason is that not making a determination would be so much easier than making one. It would be hard to prove it fake since, per supposition, we’ve already said that it appears authentic.

It would be hard to prove it authentic but not inspired since (a) we have no independent test for inspiration besides Tradition (which is absent here) and (b) we have no precedent for an authentically apostolic work that is non-inspired.

It would be hard to prove it authentic and inspired but not to be included among the Scriptures because of (a) the lack of a test for inspiration apart from Tradition and (b) we have no precedent for an inspired work that is not to be included in the Scriptures.

It would be hard to prove that it should be put in Scripture because (a) again, no independent tst for inspiration and (b) we have no precedent for including new works in Scripture.

The Church would thus find it much easier to simply downplay the matter, to be open to what value the document might have historically, but not to do anything to encourage folks to think of it on the same plane as the known Scriptures.

The only way I can see an infallible determination being made would be if, probably after centuries, a huge controversy was tearing the Church apart and one was needed for pastoral reasons.

In that case the likelihood would be that the decision would come down this way:

While this document may have many useful and instructive things to tell us, the Holy Spirit did not choose in His providence to shepherd it into the New Testament at the time it was codified. He did not choose to have it be part of the patrimony of Christendom down through the ages. Consequently, since the Scriptures as they have been historically known form the patrimony of the Church that God intended it to have uniquely in all ages of its development, it is hereby infallibly defined that the new document–whatever value it may have–is not to be placed in the canon of Scripture.

Only it’d be said more flowery than that.

What If We Found A New Letter Of Paul? (Part One)

The recent and ongoing decipherment of the Oxyrhynchus papyri raises a question of what the Christian community would do if we found a new Christian document purporting to be from the first century, say a new letter of St. Paul or a "lost gospel."

The paramount question in folks minds would be: Should this be added to the New Testament?

There are parallels for this already.

In the 20th century we found a whole slew of early Christian and semi-Christian documents. In particular, the Nag Hammadi find gave us a bunch of Gnostic gospels dating from the second and third centuries.

Did those get added?

Nope. We got a bunch of breathless documentaries on The History Channel and A & E, and a bunch of folks got confused by them, but there was no serious move to add them to the New Testament. Not even the Jesus’ Seminar’s publication of the Gospel of Thomas alongside the four canonical gospels caused any serious move to add it to the New Testament in the broader Christian community.

The reason is that these documents have almost no historical value and were written way after the apostolic age, automatically disqualifying them from New Testament inclusion in the eyes of traditional Christians.

If Oxyrhynchus turns out to have more of the same, expect more of the same.

But what if we find something from the first century?

Again: It’s already happened.

We’ve long had Clement’s epistle, which dates from the late first century. We’ve also got things like the Epistle of Pseudo-Barnabas and the Didache, both of which are first century texts.

There has been no move to include these in the New Testament either. While Clement was a pope, he wasn’t closely enough associated with the apostles for his epistle to make it in. It also contains material that, to modern eyes, would make it problematic to include (e.g., his seeming treatment of the phoenix as if it were a real bird).

Pseudo-Barnabas is even worse in that regard (he gets his biology demonstrably wrong regarding rabbits–saying that hares develop a new bodily orifice [apparently on their posteriors] for each year of life, kind of the way trees get rings).

And the Didache, despite its presentation as "the teaching of the twelve apostles" was demonstrably late and not clearly written by apostles or their associates, however much useful info it may have on first century Christianity.

So the mere find of a first century document would not create a mass movement to stick it in the New Testament.

The only way that would even conceivably get started would be if we found what appeared to be a first century gospel, proto-gospel, or epistle of an apostle.

If we found something that looked like the epistle to the Hebrews, for example, that contained lots of neat doctrine but doesn’t claim to be written by an apostle, no mass inclusion movement would begin.

Even if we got something by a known New Testament figure, like Timothy or Sylvanus or Apollos, there wouldn’t be a big inclusion movement.

Only if we got an apostolic epistle, a gospel, or a proto-gospel would a significant inclusion movement even get started.

What would happen then?

See next blog post.

Oxyrhynchus!

Oxyrhynchus! It’s not something you use to wash your clothes!

It’s a place in Egypt where, a century ago, a huge load of ancient manuscripts were found. (This tends to happen in Egypt, where the desert climate better preserves documents written on papyrus, which has a nasty tendency to rot in wetter climes.)

A BUNCH OF STUFF WAS DISCOVERED AT OXYRHYNCHUS,

including some fragments of what later turned out to be the Gospel of Thomas (we got the full text from the Nag Hammadi find later on) and the Gospel of the Hebrews–both being apocryphal gospels that are not inspired and do not belong in the New Testament.

This much is common knowledge among folks with a passing familiarity with biblical archaeology.

But what many have been less familiar with is the fact that many of the Oxyrhynchus texts remained unread because they were simply illegible. In fact, 800 boxes of the things remained unread at Oxford.

NOW THEY’RE BEING READ.

A new technique using infra-red has enabled scholars to finally read the documents, and the results thus far have been stunning.

EXCERPTS:

The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye – decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a "second Renaissance".

The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus ("city of the sharp-nosed fish") in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford’s Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world.

The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy – the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery

Now, as this story starts to break further into public consciousness, you’re going to hear a lot about the possibility of new gospels being discovered, and the secular media will do its part to try to suggest that any that are found are as early as possible, so as to make them rivals for the canonical gospels.

Take all this with a big spoonful of salt.

While it is theoretically possible that documents from the first century could be found, it is more likely that additional works from later than that would be found. These might be simply copies of Gnostic works we found at Nag Hammadi and be no big deal (despite media hype) or they might be new documents. In any event, it would take a good bit of time to figure out what their dates are, and the first dates proposed would likely turn out to be wrong.

It is possible that documents could be discovered that would contain accurate historical traditions of Jesus or the apostles, but the discovery of anything actually by them is unlikely (which is not to say that we mightn’t find things falsely attributed to them).

If we did discover, say, a new letter of Paul that looked authentic, it would set off a huge debate in the Christian community over what to do with it, but the odds of it being added to the New Testament (certainly in our lifetimes) would be remote.

What it might do, though, is prompt a lot of folks to realize how dependent on Tradition we are for the canon of Scripture–that it was Tradition that guided the early Church in identifying as authentic the manuscripts that we now have in the Bible. Any new document appearing to be authentic would lack a tradition of use in the churches and thus would not readily be added to the Scriptures of any group of Christians–except those already favorable to Gnostic texts out of an attraction to heterodoxy and novelty.

More later on what would happen if we found such a document. In the meantime,

GET THE STORY.

A Libertarian Case For Marriage

In order to win the battle on marriage in this country, pro-family individuals need to be able to make their case in a way that is not dependent on religious arguments because so many (even persons of faith) will allow these to be partitioned in public debate and ignored at voting time.

Fortunately, the natural law basis for marriage is clear enough that this is fairly easy to do.

Some even have hopes of putting the argument in a way that may appeal to libertarians.

JENNIFER ROBACK MORSE, FOR EXAMPLE.

Animal Yucks

No! This post ain’t about yucky animals! It’s about animal laughter.

Back in grad school, my Medieval philosophy professor was convinced that her dogs laughed–or rather, had a canine equivalent to laughter–but didn’t have a scientific study or report of one to back it up.

But LiveScience.Com has one.

EXCERPT:

"Indeed, neural circuits for laughter exist in very ancient regions of the brain, and ancestral forms of play and laughter existed in other animals eons before we humans came along with our ‘ha-ha-has’ and verbal repartee," says Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University.

When chimps play and chase each other, they pant in a manner that is strikingly like human laughter, Panksepp writes in the April 1 issue of the journal Science. Dogs have a similar response.

Rats chirp while they play, again in a way that resembles our giggles. Panksepp found in a previous study that when rats are playfully tickled, they chirp and bond socially with their human tickler. And they seem to like it, seeking to be tickled more. Apparently joyful rats also preferred to hang out with other chirpers.

GET THE STORY.

New Pope's Reaction To Ratzinger Fan Club

Apparently the former Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was once presented with a Ratzinger Fan Club t-shirt, enjoyed it, but claimed he couldn’t keep it because he couldn’t be his own fan:

“He was humble, outgoing and laughed at a T-shirt that read ‘The Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club.’

“That’s how Chris Haehnel, 15, of St. Charles, remembers his visit in Rome with the man who Tuesday became Pope Benedict XVI.

[…]

“Chris, then a freshman at Duchesne High School in St. Charles, already had studied Ratzinger and papal politics. He said he liked Ratzinger’s conservative stands on moral issues. He gave Ratzinger a T-shirt he bought from an online fan club.

“On the front, it read ‘The Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club. Putting the smackdown on heresy since 1981.’ Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and combating heresy was part of his job.

“Ratzinger laughed at the shirt, Chris said, but said he couldn’t keep it because he couldn’t be his own fan. When he flipped over the shirt to find a quote attributed to him — ‘Truth is not determined by a majority vote’ — he laughed again and said, ‘That’s true. That’s true.’ Chris still has the shirt.”

GET THE STORY.