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."
When you look around society today, it doesn’t look good.
Even in the Church, people are committing abortion and contraception.
They are sleeping together outside of marriage, using porn, and doing a host of other things that can endanger their souls.
It can be tempting to conclude that most Catholics in America today are going to go to hell.
Is the situation that bleak?
A Question from a Reader
A reader writes:
I belong to a great parish, full of wonderful people who love God and neighbor.
However, I can’t help but be aware that at least from an objective viewpoint, most of them seem to be in a state of mortal sin per the Church’s teaching.
The most common one is the use of contraception, but there are plenty of others, including cohabitation prior to marriage, remarriage outside the Church, etc.
The Church views all these things as mortal sins, although it’s clear these people don’t view them that way.
Our society at this moment makes it really difficult for people, especially young people, to do what the Church expects.
I also know that most of these people genuinely and sincerely do not believe they are sinning. They continue to pray, to attend Mass, and have faith in Christ, which indicates to me that they don’t desire to cut themselves off from God.
Is it truly likely that the vast majority of American Catholics will end up in hell?
There’s a very interesting thing that the authors of the Bible do.
It’s a technique they use, and it’s very subtle.
Most of the time, we readers miss it.
In fact, most people have never heard of it at all.
But it’s real, and it can give us important clues about the meaning of Bible passages.
Here’s the startling truth about . . . the hidden pyramids of the Bible!
It’s Called What?
Sometimes the Bible uses a little-known literary form that most people have never heard of.
It’s called chiasmus.
Whatever does that mean?
We begin to get a glimmer when we consider the origin of the name.
It’s from the Greek letter Chi, which looks like the English letter X.
In a Chi—or an X—there are two lines that cross each other. If you consider just the bottom half of the letter, they form a peak.
One line goes up to the peak and the other descends down.
Like a pyramid.
And that’s what a chiasmus is like, only with words or blocks of texts instead of lines.
A chiasmus is a sequence of elements that can be divided into two halves, with the second half being a mirror image of the first, like steps leading up one side of a pyramid and down the other.
A simple example of a chiasmus is Jesus statement that the “first will be last, and the last first” (Matt. 19:30), which has an A-B-B’-A’ structure.
What’s surprising is now a knowledge of chasmus can unlock the meaning of certain portions of the Bible.
On the Cross, Jesus offered his life as a sacrifice to make it possible for us to be saved.
But what about the people who lived before he made that sacrifice?
How can they be saved? How did his death relate to them?
One outstanding question is how Jesus’ sacrifice could apply to people before it was even made.
Scripture gives us some interesting possibilities . . .
“From the Foundation of the World”?
One image that some have looked to is found in Revelation 13:8, where in some translations we read a description of Jesus as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
If this is the way that the passage is to be understood, it would seem to teach that Jesus’ sacrifice is available to people no matter when they lived in history.
In other words, although Jesus was slain in A.D. 33, from God’s eternal perspective, that sacrifice has been available “from the foundation of the world” and thus able to save anyone in world history.
Is This the Right Interpretation?
Although it’s theologically true that Christ’s sacrifice can save anyone in world history, that doesn’t mean that this is what the passage intends to say.
There is another–better–way to look at the passage.
Is it okay to pray when you have doubts about God?
It’s great to have strong faith, to feel confident in what you believe.
That way you can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
But not everybody is at that point.
Some people are still coming to faith. Other people find their faith wavering at times.
So what about then? Is it okay to pray when you have doubts?
A Real Question
This is a real question. A reader writes:
I am going through a rough time and wanted to know whether it is okay to pray the rosary while being a bit skeptic about Jesus and Mary.
I find it a bit difficult to believe that Jesus is God, that Mary intercedes for me, that God exists, and that God has no evil in him.
Do you think, if God exists, it would be okay for doubting him while praying–or praying without hoping that somebody out there is listening?
Do you think its okay to pray to the Father than going through the Son and his Mother?
I’d like to say first that I am sorry that the reader is going through a rough time. I have been through rough times myself, and I will be praying for him.
I also invite other readers to pray for him and for everyone who is suffering. Whenever possible, I like to universalize my prayers that way.
Whenever I’m praying for someone in particular, I try also to pray for everyone else facing that difficulty. One of my favorite prayers is found in the Divine Mercy Chaplet:
“For the sake of His [Jesus’] sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
I’m also pleased to give the reader good news regarding his own prayers . . .
Did Pope Francis just admit the existence of a “gay lobby” at the Vatican? If so, what will he do about it?
Pope Francis recently made the news by, apparently, acknowledging the existence of a “gay lobby” at the Vatican.
What did he say? What did he mean? And what will he do in the future?
Here are 10 things to know and share . . .
1. What did Pope Francis say?
According to press reports, Pope Francis recently said:
“In the Curia there are holy people, truly, there are holy people. But there’s also a current of corruption – there’s that, too, it’s true…. The ‘gay lobby’ is spoken of, and it’s true, that’s there… we need to see what we can do.”
The comments were purportedly made during an hourlong audience the Pope held last Thursday with the Religious Confederation of Latin America and the Caribbean (CLAR).
An unsigned “exclusive, brief synthesis” of the encounter – featuring a series of pull-quotes, but not a full transcript – was apparently provided to and subsequently published on Sunday afternoon by Reflexión y Liberación, a church-focused Chilean website with sympathies toward liberation theology.
These thus were not public remarks, which raises a question about their authenticity.
What’s the difference between creation, evolution, and intelligent design?
Creationism, Evolutionism, and Intelligent Design are three of the major positions on the question of how we got here.
What’s the difference between these positions?
That seemingly straightforward question proves surprisingly controversial.
Let’s take a look at it . . .
The Basic Question
The basic question at issue in the contemporary origins debate is whether or not the world was created.
It could be tempting to simply put participants in the discussion into two groups—creationists and evolutionists—and leave it at that.
Some on both sides of the issue would like to do exactly that.
In fact, some of the people who most readily identify themselves as creationists or evolutionists often speak as if these are the only two options.
Name Calling
Some creationists dismiss everyone who doesn’t hold their view as an “evolutionist” (using this term in a negative sense).
Some evolutionists dismiss everyone who thinks that the world was created as a “creationist” (using this term in a negative sense).
When this happens, the two camps are using prejudicial language. They’re calling each other names, and that doesn’t advance the discussion.
They’re also distorting the issue, because there are clearly middle positions on this question. In fact, there’s a spectrum of them.
The Spectrum
It’s possible to divide up that spectrum in different ways. In fact, it’s possible to divide it into a mind-numbing array of fine-tuned categories.
That gets unwieldy, though, and it seems that, today, most participants in the origins discussion would say that they advocate one of four major positions:
Was St. James the Just the leader of the early Church–or was St. Peter?
Some claim that it was James, not Peter, who was the leader of the early Church after the time of Christ.
What evidence can they provide for this claim?
And what evidence is there against it?
Which James?
“James” was a common name in first century Judea, and there were several men named James who are mentioned in the New Testament.
Unfortunately, precisely how many Jameses there are many is not clear.
They are described different ways, and it is not clear whether a James described in one passage is the same as the James mentioned in another.
The James who assumed a prominent leadership role in the Jerusalem church after the time of Christ is known as “the brother of the Lord.”
This James is sometimes identified with James the son of Alphaeus, who is also identified with James “the Less.”
However, Benedict XVI noted:
Among experts, the question of the identity of these two figures with the same name, James son of Alphaeus and James “the brother of the Lord”, is disputed [General Audience, Jun. 28, 2006].
Regardless of how this issue is to be settled, there is one James in the New Testament who is clearly not the one in question—James the son of Zebedee, because he was martyred quickly (Acts 12:1-2).
Advocates of the “James not Peter” viewpoint have two major texts that they can appeal to, and neither is very good.
In 1992, actor Michael O’Hare was cast as Commander Jeffrey Sinclair, the lead character on the television program Babylon 5.
He remained with the show for its first season and then was suddenly written out.
When the second season began, Sinclair was replaced by Capt. John Sheridan, played by Bruce Boxleitner.
While I very much enjoyed Boxleitner’s performance, I–like all the existing fans–wondered what happened to O’Hare.
The truth is something I never guessed . . .
What People Did Guess
The leading theory in fandom was that the executives at Warner Brothers (or its subsidiary PTEN, which ran Babylon 5) had demanded that O’Hare be fired and replaced.
According to the common account, the show was struggling to get off the ground, and O’Hare’s performance was thought to be a drag on it.
A new, more likable main character needed to be brought in, and so the stoic Sinclair was replaced by the ebullient Sheridan.
It was thought that this was unfair to O’Hare, because he had been intentionally asked to play a character who was wounded.
The Battle of the Line
Sinclair had fought at the Battle of the Line, when the Minbari nearly destroyed Earth.
Something mysterious happened to him during this battle, and his memories of it had been erased.
The result left him one of the walking wounded.
During the first season of the show, cracks began to appear in the wall that had been built in his mind, and his memories began to resurface, bit by bit.
In one episode in particular, a covert group of agents from Earth put him through a kind of psychological torture in an attempt to force his memories to resurface.
Because he was mentally injured by the mysterious thing that happened to his character at the Battle of the Line, O’Hare was asked to initially play the part as solemn and reserved.
The idea was that he would open up as his character arc progressed and as he learned what had happened to him and he dealt with it.
By the end of the first season, he was less stiff and formal than he had been at the beginning. The loosening up was happening.
It seemed unfair that, just as the character was reaching this point in his personal story arc, he was written out by the executives’ demands.
Not the First Time
It wouldn’t have been the first time that this kind of thing happened in a television series–or even a science-fiction series.
In the long-running BBC Doctor Who franchise, the sixth actor to play the Doctor–Colin Baker–had been asked to play a deliberately abrasive Doctor in 1984.
When he was first introduced, he acted arrogant and erratic and physically attacked his uncomprehending companion.
He also declared: “I am the Doctor, whether you like it . . . or not!”
It seemed like a deliberate affront to the fans of the show, who immediately began to complain about the “unlikeable Doctor.”
The idea was that the arrogant, erratic Doctor would eventually be transformed into a likable one over the course of his character arc, but this wasn’t clear to the viewers, many of whom had a strongly negative reaction.
The show suffered as the result of this disastrous creative decision, and Colin Baker was fired in 1986 and the part went to Sylvester McCoy.
O’Hare’s Departure
Had the same thing happened on Babylon 5?
Had J. Michael Straczynski’s (JMS’s) creative decision to introduce Cmdr. Sinclair as an initially stiff, wounded character doomed him, just as he was starting to loosen up on the show?
This is what a lot of fans thought.
Their speculation seemed confirmed when, after O’Hare’s departure was announced, JMS took out an ad in the Hollywood newspaper Variety (if I recall correctly) endorsing Michael O’Hare, seeking to help his career as an actor.
It looked like JMS and O’Hare were on the same side against “the suits.”
Truth Is A Three-Edged Sword
But it turned out that the truth is something far stranger . . . and more tragic.
It can only be told now that O’Hare has passed away.
Michael O’Hare suffered a heart attack in September 2012 and died a few days later.
Just a couple of weeks ago, at a science-fiction convention in late May 2013, JMS revealed the truth that had been hidden all these years.
Between the Darkness and the Light
According to Wikipedia:
During the filming of the first season of Babylon 5, O’Hare began exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia.
Halfway through filming, his hallucinations worsened and the stress of playing a character who was suffering from a similar mental illness was becoming overwhelming.
Remember that O’Hare was being asked to play the character of Sinclair, who had been psychologically wounded at the Battle of the Line and who now was suffering with breakthrough memories caused, in part, by the attempt of sinister, persecuting government agents to force his missing memories to the surface.
It became increasingly difficult for O’Hare to continue work, his behavior was becoming increasingly erratic and he was often at odds with his colleagues.
O’Hare sought treatment for his mental illness, but feared that, as the main character of Babylon 5, taking an extended medical leave of absence would destroy the show just as it was getting off the ground.
This brings us to the same point that many fans suspected: the future of the show was in question.
Only instead of it being O’Hare’s on-screen performance as judged by executives that was a threat to the show, it was O’Hare’s psychological health, as judged by O’Hare himself that was the threat.
Acts of Sacrifice
So what happened next?
J. Michael Straczynski, the show’s creator and main writer, offered to suspend the show for several months to accommodate O’Hare’s treatment; however O’Hare refused to put so many other people’s jobs at risk.
Straczinski agreed to keep his condition secret to protect O’Hare’s career.
O’Hare agreed to complete the first season but would be subsequently written out of the second season so that he could seek treatment.
The Long, Twilight Struggle
According to Wikipedia:
He reappeared in a cameo appearance early in season two and returned in season three for the double episode War Without End which closed his character’s story arc.
He made no further appearances in Babylon 5.
Although his treatments were somewhat successful, he was never fully cured.
On his return to Babylon 5, Straczinski promised again that he would keep his condition secret to his grave.
O’Hare told him to “keep the secret to MY grave” pointing out that fans deserved to eventually learn the real reason for his departure, and that his experience could raise awareness and understanding for people suffering from mental illness.
On May 25th 2013, Straczynski fulfilled his end of the promise and finally revealed the reasons behind O’Hare’s departure from Babylon 5.
Beyond the Rim
Here’s the video of JMS explaining what happened to Michael O’Hare and the other actors from the series who have passed, including Richard Biggs (Stephen Franklin), Jeff Conaway (Zack Allen), and Andreas Katsulas (G’Kar).
Discussion of Michael O’Hare’s departure begins at 9:40.
Is the Catholic Church the one, true Church? Here are 7 things to know and share with others . . .
In today’s brave new world of ecumenism, the Catholic Church no longer claims to be unique, right?
After all, Vatican II didn’t say that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church.
It merely said that the Church of Christ “subsists in” the Catholic Church.
So that means the Catholic Church no longer views itself as the “one true Church,” right?
Not so fast . . .
1. The Source of the Issue
The source of the issue is found in Vatican II’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, where we read:
8. This Church [the Church of Christ] constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure.
These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.
2. “Subsists In”?
The matter would be much clearer if the Council had used the traditional language of saying that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church.
Instead, they use the unfamiliar wording “subsists in” (Latin, subsistit in) instead of “is” (Latin, est).
This can make it appear that the Council was backing away from the claim that the Catholic Church is the Church of Christ, and many people–including Catholic theologians–took it in precisely this way.
Did Pope Francis intentionally poke Protestants in the eye?
Did Pope Francis intentionally poke Protestants in the eye?
In a recent column, Presbyterian Bill Tammeus appeared to accuse Pope Francis of “intentionally offering a poke in the eye to people outside your faith tradition.”
He asks if Pope Francis is “saying that I, as a Presbyterian, cannot follow Jesus outside of Catholicism? That’s what he appears to be claiming, and I think it’s a dicey position to highlight so early in his papacy.”
Did Pope Francis “intentionally“ poke Protestants in the eye? Did he say that Presbyterians cannot follow Jesus?
Ever since the start of the Protestant Reformation nearly 500 years ago, Protestants have been understandably dismissive of the idea that the Roman Catholic church is the only true Christian church.
I hope that Tammeus realizes that this is not what the Catholic Church claims. That’s too simplistic (see below).
And yet the leaders of the Catholic church have made that claim persistently over time in various ways.
Oops. Maybe not. Well, I certainly hope he at least understands that this is not the way the Magisterium articulates the issue.
The [way leaders of the Catholic Church have made that claim] that stirred up the most resentment under Pope John Paul II was contained in Dominus Iesus, issued in August 2000 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI.
The declaration said churches outside the Catholic church “are not Churches in the proper sense.”
Okay.
Mr. Tammeus: It is my great pleasure to inform you that your concerns are to a substantial degree misplaced.
