Internal Struggles Common to All

There is a famous (among philosphers) passage in Plato where there is a particularly good illustration of the kind of struggles we often fight with ourselves–the same kind we read about in the New Testament in passages like “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” and St. Paul’s description of his internal struggles in Romans 7:13-25.

I wanted to keep track of the passage in Plato for use in the future, because it shows that these struggles are common to all humans, even the pagan Greeks.

I hadn’t read it since grad school, so I looked it up where it is.

It’s found in Book 4 of The Republic, where Socrates is talking with Glaucon, where we read:

SOCRATES: Well, I said, there is a story which I remember to have heard, and in which I put faith. The story is, that Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing them open, he ran up to the dead bodies, saying [to his eyes], “Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.”

GLAUCON: I have heard the story myself, he said.

SOCRATES: The moral of the tale is, that anger at times goes to war with desire, as though they were two distinct things [SOURCE].

You can see why this is such a vivid illustration–both wanting and not wanting to look at dead bodies.

Creepy!

But exactly the kind of thing that we all find ourselves faced with on occasion.

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 . . .

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Why was Jesus baptized?

BaptismOfJesusThis Sunday, the Church celebrates the baptism of Jesus Christ.

It’s an event that is recorded in all four gospels, so we know it’s important.

But there’s a question that has puzzled Christians all down through the ages.

It even puzzled John the Baptist, who performed the baptism.

Why was Jesus baptized?

 

The Problem

We all know what baptism does.

According to the Catechism:

The fruit of Baptism, or baptismal grace, is a rich reality that includes:

  • forgiveness of original sin and all personal sins,
  • birth into the new life by which man becomes an adoptive son of the Father, a member of Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit.

 

By this very fact the person baptized is

  • incorporated into the Church, the Body of Christ, and
  • made a sharer in the priesthood of Christ [CCC 1279].

 

So, as you can see, it’s quite clear why Jesus would need to be baptized. He . . . hey, wait!

Jesus didn’t need to achieve any of those things!

Why, then, was he baptized?

Why did he insist on it, even when John the Baptist resisted?

 

The Answer

Here’s a short video to explain . . .

(Click here to watch the video on YouTube.)

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 the “parable” of the loaves and fishes: 11 things to know and share

francis-windowRecently Pope Francis has said a few things about the miracle of the loaves and the fishes that have concerned a few people.

They’ve thought he might be denying that it was an actual, physical miracle.

What’s more, the press can’t be blamed, because these statements weren’t the subject of media-distorting headlines or news stories.

They’re right there in the pope’s own words—in context!

So what should we make of these?

Here are 11 things to know and share . . .

 

1) What, precisely, did Pope Francis say?

He has said two things. One was in a Sunday Angelus he gave on June 2, where he stated:

This is the miracle: rather than a multiplication it is a sharing, inspired by faith and prayer. Everyone eats and some is left over: it is the sign of Jesus, the Bread of God for humanity.

This makes it sound like he’s advocating the lame “miracle of sharing” theory, according to which people in the crowd had food hidden on their persons and then shared it with others after Jesus’ disciples began distributing the five loaves and two fish.

This theory downgrades the miracle to a purely natural event.

I’ve written about that before. And not just once.

 

2) What was the other thing he said?

More recently, in a video appeal released in December to help a hunger relief project, he stated:

The parable of the multiplication of the loaves and fish teaches us exactly this: that if there is the will, what we have never ends. On the contrary, it abounds and does not get wasted.

This makes it sound as if he’s saying that the multiplication of loaves and fishes wasn’t even a natural event. Instead, it sounds like he’s saying it’s a mere parable—a fiction designed to teach a lesson.

 

3) What should we make of these?

KEEP READING.

The Five(ish) Doctors

The_Five(ish)_Doctors_RebootJust a note about the recent, 50th anniversary Doctor Who special, The Day of the Doctor.

I’m glad they didn’t try to put all of the living Doctors in it.

Even with ensemble casts, there is a maximum number of main characters that a story can sustain and still be emotionally moving.

One that number, which varies from story to story, is exceeded, the addition of new main characters begins to detract, as the sheer task of finding things for all of them to do takes over and the core of the story is muddied–or lost.

The program–er, programme?–Doctor Who has passed the maximum number of main characters more than once.

For example, in the two-part David Tenant spectacular The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End (y’know, the one where the earth gets stolen and the journey ends–also the one where the metacrisis regeneration happens), they tried to do a story which had the Tenth Doctor and all of his previous companions and their families.

Some where reduced to contributing basically nothing to the story. Martha Jones, for example, ends up running around talking dramatically about something called “the Osterhagen Key”–an ominous device that they never actually use (thus violating Chekhov’s rule that if you show a gun on the mantlepiece in Acts I of a play, it must be used by Act III).

Martha is plot superfluous. If you delete Martha from the story entirely, it would have wound up exactly the same way. (Though the same thing has been said of Indiana Jones.)

Even worse was the show’s 20th anniversary special, The Five Doctors, which tried to give major parts to all five incarnations of the Doctor to have appeared by then–as well as some of their companions.

It didn’t work.

The plot was a mess, and in large part because of the excessive number of main characters.

Steven Moffat wisely shunned this approach in The Day of the Doctor. Instead of trying to give major screen time to all eleven of the Doctors, he wanted to focus just on those since the new series began–plus one more. That would have made for main characters, plus several supporting ones.

Eminently doable.

Then, to pay homage to all the Doctor’s incarnations, he gave a brief moment of screen time to each of them via previously-recorded footage and images.

Unfortunately, spoilsport Christopher Eccleston (the 9th Doctor) wasn’t game to play one of the core Doctors of the story, but the show went on without him.

Not having pre-2005 Doctors as principal actors apparently didn’t sit well with some of them. Colin Baker (the 6th Doctor), in particular, has made some peevish remarks on not being included.

But I didn’t mind that.

Apart from the maximum-number-of-principal-characters problem, some of the previous Doctors are dead. That can be solved by recasting their parts, though (as happened in The Five Doctors, since William Hartnell was already dead).

Then there is the fact that some of the actors who played previous Doctors have aged so much that they could not play their younger selves. This being a mushy-science science fiction show, you could get around that by explaining that they all passed through some kind of field as they were pulled together, causing them to age, and that will reverse itself when they go back to their own spots in the Doctor’s timeline. (It is an unsatisfying explanation, but it could be done.)

But the fundamental problem remains: Too many principal characters will ruin the story, and there is no way to have eleven main characters would be a nightmare.

So that’s my thought about that. Now: Here’s an awesome 30-minute video by Peter Davison (the 5th Doctor), about the actors’ attempt to get into the 50th anniversary special.

Hilarious. Drags a bit in parts, but has some jaw-dropping moments.

If you need a key to decode everything going on in the video, THIS GUIDE SHOULD BE HELPFUL.

The Yearly Benedict/Francis: The Audiences

benedict-francisThe pope’s weekly audiences offer a fascinating look at topics that often aren’t covered in the major papal documents.

Unfortunately, in recent years, the folks at the Vatican web site have not been giving titles to the audiences that indicate their content. All you get (normally) is a list of dates.

To help me navigate these in the future, here is an annotated version of Pope Francis’s 2013 audiences that indicates their content, as well as Pope Benedict’s final audiences.

Although these are found in reverse-chronological order on the Vatican web site (like a blog!), I’ve put them in chronological order here, since most of them form a walk though the Apostles’ Creed for the Year of Faith.

Incidentally, papal audiences like these seem to be pre-written, way in advance.

This means that Pope Francis was almost certainly delivering texts at his Wednesday audiences that were prepared for Pope Benedict.

He clearly took liberties with them. Many passages in Pope Francis’s audiences were expressed in his own voice, rather than Pope Benedict’s.

Now that the Year of Faith is concluded, we’re likely to get our first pure taste of Pope Francis’s style of audiences in 2014.

For now, here’s a review of 2013 . . .

 

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Francis

When was Judas replaced?

JudasIscariotFaceI’ve been doing some work on biblical chronology–the study of precisely when in history various events recorded in the Bible took place–and I thought of something that I haven’t seen pointed out before.

In Acts 1, Peter prompts the Eleven to replace Judas Iscariot, and they do, with Matthias being selected to take his place.

When would this have occurred?

It’s bracketed in a very small window of time between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost.

The election of a new apostle would presuppose the presence of the Eleven, and the text indicates that those actually present included the full “hundred and twenty” (v. 15), indicating a major gathering of the full, embryonic Christian community.

This could only have occurred on the first Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) or on the first Lord’s Day (Sunday) following Ascension Thursday.

When would those days have been?

Based on previous chronological work I’ve done, I’ve determined that the most likely date for the Crucifixion is the traditional one: April 3, A.D. 33.

I don’t say that just because I’m a fan of tradition (though I am), but because when you sort through the mountain of data that pertains to the issue, that’s the date that emerges as the most probable.

Given that, Easter Sunday would be April 5th, and Ascension Thursday would be May 14.

Pentecost, on the Jewish way of reckoning it (seven weeks after Passover, not seven weeks after Easter Sunday), would have been Friday, May 22.

That gives us this schedule of days:

  • Thurs., May 14 (Ascension)
  • Fri., May 15
  • Sat., May 16
  • Sun., May 17
  • Mon., May 18
  • Tues., May 19
  • Wed., May 20
  • Thurs., May 21
  • Fri., May 22 (Pentecost)

So there you have it: Matthias was most likely chosen to be Judas’s successor on Saturday, May 16 or Sunday, May 17, A.D. 33.

A new kind of blog post for a new year?

champaigne-bottleOver the past year or so, I’ve being doing a particular type of blog post that tends to be longer, exclusively faith-based, and coordinated either with the liturgical year or the news.

It’s been a very successful effort!

Unfortunately, it’s been mostly done at my Register blog, with comparatively little totally fresh content here at JimmyAkin.com.

The fact is that I don’t have time to compose those longer, detailed posts both for the Register and for other outlets.

That means that JimmyAkin.com has largely been linking to content that I’ve been posting in its entirety elsewhere.

I’ve felt bad about that.

There are people who visit and subscribe to JimmyAkin.com despite that situation. In fact, there are over 1,000 people who have signed up to get email updates from the blog, but I’d like to serve them and others even better by having more exclusive content here that people can read without having to click through to another site.

But there’s still that lack of time problem.

So here’s what I’ve found myself thinking: I periodically have thoughts, make discoveries, etc., that are small enough I can write them down quickly, that wouldn’t take up one of the long-form blog posts.

Often, they are ideas or notes that I mean to incorporate into some later work (a blog post, a book, etc.) and I don’t want to lose track of them.

  • I’ve thought about writing them in a big Word document, but that would be messy, particularly with all these thoughts on different subjects in one file.
  • I thought about keeping a bunch of different files, but that’s awkward.
  • I thought about putting them on Facebook, but Facebook’s search features are terrible and it would be hard to find them later.

Finally, I thought, “I should just create a blog for these.” That way I’d have a searchable record of them, with the individual thoughts/discoveries as discreet items.

Then I thought: “You already have a blog, stupid. . . . And it needs more attention!”

So here’s what I’m going to do: Even though I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, I’m going to experiment with doing short posts that capture interesting things I don’t want to lose track of.

I hope you’ll find them interesting, too!

Many (most?) of them will be religious. Some may not be.

The links to my other work in the blogosphere will also continue, so these new posts will be in addition to, not a replacement of, the kind of postings I’ve been doing this year.

Here we go!

P.S. Happy New Year, everyone!

9 Things You Should Know About How the Church Celebrates January 1

On January 1, the Church celebrates several things connected with Mary and Jesus. What are they? And why do we celebrate them now?

January 1 is an important day in the Church’s liturgy.

There is a lot that we commemorate on this day!

What we are celebrating, and why we are celebrating it now, can be a little confusing.

Here are nine things you should know . . .

 

1. What exactly are we celebrating on January 1?

According to the Universal Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar [.pdf]:

1 January, the octave day of the Nativity of the Lord, is the Solemnity of Mary, the holy Mother of God, and also the commemoration of the conferral of the Most Holy Name of Jesus [Norms, 35f].

 

2. Didn’t this day used to signify something else?

Yes. Pope Benedict explained:

It was Pope Paul VI who moved to 1 January the Feast of the Divine Motherhood of Mary, which was formerly celebrated on 11 October.

Indeed, even before the liturgical reform that followed the Second Vatican Council, the memorial of the circumcision of Jesus on the eighth day after his birth — as a sign of submission to the law, his official insertion in the Chosen People — used to be celebrated on the first day of the year and the Feast of the Name of Jesus was celebrated the following Sunday [Homily, Jan. 1, 2008].

 

3. Why would the commemoration of Jesus’ Most Holy Name be moved to January 1?

January 1 is eight days after Christmas, and it was on the eighth day after his birth that Jesus was officially named.

At the time, the official naming of a son was done at the time of his circumcision, when he was officially placed in the covenant and the Chosen People.

Thus St. John the Baptist is given his name at the time of his circumcision (Luke 1:59-63), and so is Jesus:

And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb [Luke 2:21].

 

4. Don’t we celebrate Mary’s motherhood on other days, like the Annunciation and Christmas?

KEEP READING.

The Weekly Francis – 22 December 2013

Pope Francis is having his "Inaugural Mass"? What's happens in this Mass, and why is it important?This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 30 November to 21 December 2013.

Angelus

General Audiences

Messages

Speeches

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

Papal Tweets