Why did John the Baptist have trouble recognizing Jesus? (and more!)

CatholicAnswersLogoIn this episode of Catholic Answers Live (1/6/15), Jimmy answers the following questions:

  • I don’t feel that receiving communion in the hand is appropriate. If indeed, this is the Real Presence and every particle is fully Jesus, why was it approved to receive communion in the hand in the first place given the ability to unintentionally desecrate the consecrated host?
  • If the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without original sin, did she experience a natural death?
  • How can I effectively talk to people about the Faith without being abrasive?
  • Wasn’t the original intent for receiving Holy Communion on the tongue to avoid spillage of the particles of the consecrated host rather than for reverence?
  • Does the Church teach that Mary directly helps us or is her assistance via her intercession for us to God
  • How can someone be tempted to do something that’s impossible for them to do?
  • In the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, I have a problem with the statement, “Eternal Father, I offer You the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ…”   Can you explain the meaning of this line in the Chaplet?
  • Since John the Baptist’s mother recognized the Savior in Mary’s womb, why didn’t John himself recognize Him?
  • If Catholics receive grace through the sacraments, how do non-Catholics receive the sanctifying grace to be saved?
  • What is the Church’s stand on pornography from a pro-life perspective?
  • How can you speak with adult children who are leaning toward New Age thinking, expressing that love is the most important thing, finding that the riches of the Vatican are a problem, etc.?

Use the player at the bottom of the post or CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

What did Jesus mean when he said not to judge others? (and more!)

CatholicAnswersLogoIn this episode of Catholic Answers Live (12/23/14), Jimmy answers the following questions:

  • What did Jesus mean when he said not to judge others?
  • Can divorced and civilly remarried people receive Communion?
  • Is it true that “Once a deacon, always a deacon”?
  • How to argue for the intercession of the saints?
  • What does “the fear of the Lord” mean?
  • Why are Catholic obliged to believe what the Church teaches?
  • How to help a neo-pagan son?
  • Can deacons a dispensation to get married?
  • If Jesus is omnipresent, why is his presence in the Eucharist important?
  • Was Jesus in his incarnation created?

Use the player at the bottom of the post or CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

You Mean Fish *Aren’t* Vegetables? Christian vegetarianism (And more!)

CatholicAnswersLogoIn this episode of Catholic Answers Live (9/25/14), Jimmy takes on the following questions:

  • How is the landowner in the parable of the workers in the vineyard “fair”?
  • How to deal with nephew getting married tomorrow in a non-Catholic ceremony?
  • How to understand Romans 9 when it talks about the “vessels of wrath”?
  • Who are “the elect”? What are the different ways this word is used?
  • Technically speaking, what is a shrine?
  • Can people with dementia receive the sacraments?
  • If salvation is a gift then why do we need to go to confession?
  • How to help a godchild who has a health problem and whose parents are in a destructive relationship?
  • What obligations do we have regarding attending weddings that are known up-front to be invalid?
  • How to respond to people who say that we must abstain from eating meat?

 Click here to listen to the link or use the player, below, on the web site.

 

Did Jesus give Judas Communion–And, if so, WHY? (And more!)

CatholicAnswersLogoIn this episode of Catholic Answers Live (9/16/14), Jimmy answers the following questions:

  • How to describe the relationship between faith and reason?
  • Did the priest used to break the host during the words of institution?
  • How do Protestants defend divorce and remarriage in light of what Scripture says?
  • Can priests “reach down into hell” and save souls? Can we pray for the damned?
  • Was Judas in mortal sin? Did Jesus offer Communion to Judas? If so, why did he do so when the Church today doesn’t offer Communion to those in mortal sin?
  • A Lutheran caller asks why he couldn’t receive Communion from an extraordinary minister when he was in the hospital?
  • Who is going to be resurrected—and why?
  • What is the Church’s teaching on predestination? What is Jimmy’s personal opinion?
  • What translations are approved by the Catholic Church? What makes them approved? Can I read translations that aren’t approved?
  • If the gates of heaven were closed before Jesus’ death and Resurrection, where did Moses and Elijah go?
  • What happens to those who never knew about Christ and who were never baptized?

What did Pope Francis mean when he said he wants “a poor church for the poor”? (And more!)

CatholicAnswersLogoIn this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Jimmy takes on the following questions:

  • What did Pope Francis mean when he said that he would like “a poor church for the poor”?
  • How can anybody be a saint if we are all sinful?
  • Can a priest say the ordinary form of the Mass facing East or facing the altar rather than the people?
  • Where did the idea that either the man born blind or his parents had sinned?
  • How to obtain an annulment?
  • What happened to the people who rose from the dead at the time of the Crucifixion?
  • What does it mean when the Apostles’ Creed says that Jesus descended into hell?
  • What does it mean when Hebrews says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering?
  • How to respond to “None is righteous, no not one”?
  • How to respond to the claim that humans are equal to all other species?
  • What does St. Paul mean in 1 Corinthians 8 when he talks about us using our knowledge to tear down our brethren rather than build them up?
  • Why is there a difference between documentary process and formal process annulments?

Can You Give Candy to the Baby Jesus? (And More!)

CatholicAnswersLogoIn this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Jimmy takes on the following questions:

  • Can we “interpret Scripture with Scripture”?
  • What does the word “desuetude” mean and how does it relate to women’s head coverings?
  • Can we wear pictures of people other than saints?
  • Is leaving candy before a statue of Baby Jesus okay or is that idolatry?
  • Is the Church contradicting Scripture with its teaching that the use of force in legitimate defense is okay?
  • Do we grow in our relationship with God in heaven?
  • Can Latin Catholics attend the Melkite rite?
  • Is the ice bucket challenge a Satanic ritual? Do you have to mean for a ritual to be Satanic for it to actually be Satanic?
  • What does a former Catholic who has been attending a non-Catholic church need to do to return to the Faith?
  • Thomas Aquinas’s arguments may prove the existence of God, but how do you prove the existence of the God of the Bible?
  • How does it work when a person has enough evidence for the existence of God but they choose not to convert?
  • How to deal with religious compulsions? Are they sinful?

Is the Church the New Israel & more!

microphoneJimmy appears on Catholic Answers Live in this episode of the podcast and answers these questions:

  • Why does the book of Baruch not appear in some early lists of the Old Testament canon?
  • Are we sinning if we don’t have a different disposition when praying to Mary and the saints than when praying to God?
  • Did St. Jerome write anything concerning Tobit being inspired, given the question of the Sadducees in Matthew?
  • Would it be appropriate or even mandatory for the Blessed Sacrament to be removed from the Tabernacle if someone is going to speak in a church?
  • How has the Church changed its evaluation of the writings of St. Faustina Kowalska?
  • Is it better to serve the poor by giving them money or making sandwiches and passing them out?
  • How to explain to an ex-Catholic (now Protestant) why they shouldn’t receive Communion in the Catholic Church? Also, how to explain why Transubstantiation does not occur in Protestant services?
  • What is the official Church teaching regarding the idea that Mark was the first Gospel written and that Matthew and Luke used Mark and a lost source known as Q?
  • Is the Church the New Israel?

(Original Airdate: December 9, 2013)

YOU CAN CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE.

Or use the player below at JimmyAkin.com . . .

What Now?

If you like the information I’ve presented here, you should join my Secret Information Club.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Secret Information Club is a free service that I operate by email.

I send out information on a variety of fascinating topics connected with the Catholic faith.

In fact, the very first thing you’ll get if you sign up is information about what Pope Benedict said about the book of Revelation.

He had a lot of interesting things to say!

If you’d like to find out what they are, just sign up at www.SecretInfoClub.com or use this handy sign-up form:

Just email me at jimmy@secretinfoclub.com if you have any difficulty.

In the meantime, what do you think?

Pope Francis on Evangelization

microphonePope Francis recently released a major new document on evangelization—how to share the gospel of Jesus with others.

In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Jimmy discusses the document and the implications it has.

In this episode, Jimmy discusses the issues:

  • Is Pope Francis the most misunderstood pope in recent history?
  • Is the press malicious or just incompetent?
  • Does the Pope hate capitalism?
  • How should we understand Pope Francis’s treatment of Islam?
  • What level of authority does an apostolic exhortation have?
  • How did Pope Francis write this document?
  • Are there translation problems in this document?
  • What is the major thrust of the document? Should we evangelize “without words”?
  • Does Pope Francis understand his pontificate as being “to the world” in addition to “to Catholics”?
  • What are the priorities of Pope Francis’s pontificate?
  • What to make of the interview with an atheist journalist that was taken down from the Vatican web site?
  • What level of authority do press interviews with the pope have?
  • Should the Vatican web site publish papal press interviews?
  • What is the Acta Apostolicae Sedis?
  • Will Pope Francis do major specific things in his pontificate? Is he an innovator or an implementer?
  • What to make of Pope Francis washing the feet of a Muslim girl on Holy Thursday?
  • Does Pope Francis hate the Traditional Latin Mass?
  • Why shouldn’t we read our own preferences into what the pope says and does?
  • Will the rule on women’s foot washing be changed? Should we be upset about this?
  • What gravity should we attribute to rubrics in the liturgy, and how does it relate to the doctrines in the hierarchy of truths?
  • How to understand John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis in relation to each other?

(Original Airdate: December 9, 2013)

YOU CAN CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE.

Or use the player below at JimmyAkin.com . . .

Pope Francis Washing Women’s Feet & The Popes Who Thought About Resigning . . . But Didn’t

 

Recently, Pope Francis washed the feet of several young people, including young women. He did this in the wake of Pope Benedict's resignation. Here are two interesting discussions of Pope Francis's actions and a look at recent popes who thought about resigning but didn't do so in the end.

It has been widely reported that, when he was still the cardinal archbishop of Buenos Aires, the future Pope Francis washed the feet of women during the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.

Now he has done so as pope.

Did he break the Church’s law?

What does this event mean, and how can we understand what he was trying to do?

CLICK HERE TO READ WHAT I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT THAT.

 

Popes Who Thought About Resigning . . . But Didn’t

Benedict XVI’s resignation may have been the first papal resignation in hundreds of years, but it didn’t come completely out of the blue.

He’d already indicated that he had been thinking about the subject of resignation.

What is less well known is that other recent popes had been thinking about it, too.

lot of recent popes.

CLICK HERE TO READ WHAT I’VE WRITTEN ABOUT THAT.

 

Two Conversations

This special, extra episode of the Jimmy Akin Podcast contains two conversations I recently had on these subjects on Al Kresta’s and Drew Mariani’s radio shows.

I thought they were very interesting, productive discussions, and so I thought I’d share them with you.

Use the player or links below to listen!

(Or, if you’re reading by email CLICK HERE to go to the original post and listen.)