Catholic Apologetics: The Blessed Mother

Mary - Is Mary the mother of God?  Yes, for St. Elizabeth herself calls her "the mother of my Lord" in Scripture (Luke 1:43).  Jesus Christ is God (Hebrews 1:8) and Mary is His mother, therefore, Mary is the mother of God (the Son) for Christ was both God and human in the womb of Mary.  Did Mary remain a virgin her whole life?  Yes, for the "gate" in which the Lord passed is closed to all others (Ezekiel 44:2).  The brothers of the Lord spoken of in the Gospels are most likely St. Joseph's children from a previous marriage or Jesus's cousins as there is no word for "cousin" in the Aramaic language.  In addition, Jesus is mentioned as "the" son of Mary, not "a" son of Mary in Scripture (Mark 6:3).

What do Catholics believe about Salvation?

Scott Hahn: Defending the Faith

“How could a man this smart be a Catholic?”

The following comes from Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction:

I shudder to think of it now. There I was at a CS Lewis conference and the esteemed teacher Peter Kreeft had been talking about ten things to learn from JRR Tolkien about evil. A brilliant talk. And, at the break, I had a chance to corner Kreeft to ask him a few questions. In the course of that short conversation, he mentioned to me how he had become a Catholic while attending Calvin College.

Everyone else probably knew it, but I didn’t. And I was surprised. But here’s the thing that surprised me and makes me shudder to think of it now: my immediate thought was, “How could a man this smart be a Catholic?”

By the grace of God, I didn’t actually say that to him. I sometimes wonder how he would have reacted if I had. But I didn’t.

And, by the grace of God, my reaction didn’t stop there. I moved on to a pivotal question: “What does he see that I don’t see?”

It was a pivotal question because I then realized my own bigotry and ignorance about Catholicism. All I knew about it was what I had been told by well-meaning (and not so well-meaning) Protestants – or what I had seen in the lives of a few Catholics. I’d read the Chick Tracts. I’d seen The Godfather. What else did I need to know?

I had concocted a lot of answers without ever asking the right questions. I had already rejected something I knew nothing about. And a very short conversation made me realize it.

At any other time of life, I might have left it there – acknowledged my ignorance and gotten on with my life. But at that moment I was already wrestling with some important issues. I was an Anglican and had been watching the implosion of the Episcopal Church in America. I began to wonder, who has the authority to interpret Scripture and establish doctrine?

I thought back to my formative years as a Baptist. There it was mostly a “me and my Bible” sensibility, as it is for so many Protestants. Every individual with his own leather-bound Word of God got to be his own Pope. That was easy.  Just me and Jesus. And if I belonged to a community of believers, that was all right, too. But it was an optional extra.

That didn’t ring true for me. How did millions of “little churches” line up with Jesus’ prayer for unity? Was that only wishful thinking on His part? And who had the authority to say that my interpretation of the Bible might actually be wrong? Very few, and only if I agreed with them.

As an Anglican I had conceded to – no, I actually desired – some semblance of authority and structure. But the founders of Anglicanism were determined not to repeat the “mistakes” of Rome. The reigning Monarch was the head of the Church of England. And the Archbishop of Canterbury would not be the Pope, but the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion worldwide. In other words: no authority, apart from a sweet grandfatherly influence. We have seen in the last decade or so what that really means.

It wasn’t on my mind to leave Anglicanism. I was in for the fight. But the questions nagged at me and I had to wonder what I was fighting for. Catholicism wasn’t an option. Nor was the Eastern version. And yet… that encounter with Peter Kreeft was like a slap in the face. What does he see that I don’t see?

I was determined to find out. I couldn’t imagine myself ever becoming a Catholic, but it was a decent compromise to explore the Ancient Church, believing it was neither Catholic nor Eastern Orthodox.  That was a safe bet. I could be objective and without prejudice. And so I made the effort. As John Henry Newman has pointed out, to go back into history is to find oneself in staunch Catholic territory. Beware!

Since becoming Catholic, I have encountered a lot of people with the same sensibilities I had at that meeting with Peter Kreeft. They think they know Catholicism, but they don’t. They think they know Catholics, but they don’t. And it’s up to us to show them who we really are and truly believe.

And such is life as I find it.

What about the bad Popes?

Why would God create someone knowing they would go to hell?

Catholic Answers: How did the Old Testament canon develop?

Tim Staples and Defending the Faith

Praying to Mary: A Biblical Defense

Michael Coren: Ten Lies About Christianity

Matt Fradd on Evangelizing

The following comes from Matt Fradd:

When evangelizing we ought to keep three things in mind. Those three things are summed up nicely in a single verse of the first letter of Peter:

“but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence” (1 Peter 3:15).

1. Sanctity

“In your hearts reverence Christ as Lord.”

Evangelization without a sincere desire and effort on the part of the evangelizer to grow in holiness will inevitably be ineffective.

One may be funny, entertaining, compelling, and even moving, but without the grace of God it will all come to naught.

Pope Paul VI in his decree on the apostolate of the laity wrote “Since Christ, sent by the Father, is the source and origin of the whole apostolate of the Church, the success of the lay apostolate depends upon the laity’s living union with Christ, in keeping with the Lord’s words, ‘He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing’” (John 15:5).

2. Reasonableness

“Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you.”

The word used for defense in the original Greek is apologia, which is where we get the word apologetics. I can’t tell you how many people initially think that my job is to travel the country apologizing for the Catholic Church (it’s always fun to disappoint them).

Are you prepared to make a defense for the hope you have? To Atheists? To non-Christians? To Protestants?

The Catholic Church is a champion on reason. Did you know that the first Vatican council define infallibly that one can come to know with certainty that God exists wholly apart from Divine Revelation?

If you’re not yet an apologist. Here are three free resources you should look into:

www.strangenotions.com – a site containing great articles on the existence of God and the historicity of Jesus Christ.

www.catholic.com – the first site you should visit if you have any questions about Catholic teaching.

Catholic Answers Live - Catholic Answers Live is a daily, two-hour radio program dedicated to Catholic apologetics and evangelization. It’s amazing. Start downloading their podcasts. Listen to them while you’re driving to work, working out, making sandwiches (I don’t know), and start educating yourself!

3. Gentleness

“yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”

In other words, don’t be a jackass (dynamic equivalence version?). People don’t generally hold to beliefs which they know are in direct defiance of truth. They have their reasons for believing it, reasons with which, though you can’t agree, you can sympathize.

For 5 tips on how to be gentle and reverent, see my article, How to Argue Without Being a . . . Male Donkey

Catholic Apologetics: Purgatory

Purgatory - Does a cleansing state of the soul exist before entering Heaven for those who need it?  Yes, for Scripture says nothing unclean or impure will enter into the kingdom of Heaven (Revelations 21:27).  St. Paul mentions the saving of a person's soul, but through fire (1 Corinthians 3:13-15).  In addition, Jesus mentions being forgiven for sins in the next world (Matthew 12:32) and that we shall not be released until we have paid for all our sins (Luke 12:59).

Chris Stefanick: Mass boring?

Catholic Answers: Is purgatory a physical place?

Tim Staples: How are we saved?

Tim Staples is a great apologist!  He is a great witness to our Catholic faith!

Peter Kreeft: Who's in authority here?

The following comes from Peter Kreeft at The Integrated Catholic Life:

All the beliefs that divide Catholics from fundamentalists are derived from the teaching authority of the Church.

Because Catholics believe in the Church, they believe a fuller, more complex and mysterious set of things than the narrowed down fundamentalist. Thus, the Church is the essential point of divergence.

In the fundamentalist view, the Catholic Church exalts itself over the Bible, adding to God’s Word: It is man arrogating to himself the right to speak in God’s name.

But for Catholics, the fundamentalist puts the Bible in place of the Church as his “paper pope.” Instead of a living teacher (the Church) with a book (the Bible), the fundamentalist has only a book.

Fundamentalists believe that the Bible authorizes the Church. They accept a Church only because it’s in the Bible. Catholics, on the other hand, believe the Bible because the Church teaches it, canonized it (i.e., defined its books) and authored it (the disciples wrote the New Testament).

Last week we looked at the fundamentalist idea of the Bible and contrasted it with the Catholic view. Now we must do the same with fundamentalist notions of the Church.

The most important point here is that the fundamentalist view is a new one while the Catholic view is an old one. The Catholic Church and its claims have been around for more than 19 centuries, fundamentalism for less than one. The historical argument for the Catholic Church is thus very strong. Fundamentalists have to believe that the early Christian Church went very wrong (i.e., Catholic) very early, and went right (i.e., fundamentalist) very late. In other words, the Holy Spirit must have been asleep for 19 centuries in between.

Fundamentalists usually know very little about Church history. They don’t know how many Catholic doctrines can be traced back to the early Fathers of the Church — e.g., that appeals to the Bishop of Rome to definitively settle disputes throughout the rest of the Church occur as early as turn of the first Century; or that the Mass, not Bible preaching, was the central act of worship in all the earliest descriptions of the Christian community.

Five key differences between fundamentalists and Catholics center on the Church’s (1) nature, (2) mystery, (3) authority, (4) structure and (5) end.

Nature

Fundamentalists agree with Catholics that the Church was founded by God, not just by men. For a fundamentalist the Church is not just a religious social club, as it is for a modernist. But while fundamentalists see that God commanded the Church’s beginning, they do not see that He still dwells in it intimately, as a soul lives in its body and as He lives in faithful souls. For a fundamentalist, the Church’s origin is divine but its nature is human.

Mystery

Fundamentalists see the Church in the opposite way from which they see the Bible. They affirm the divine identity of Scripture and minimize or ignore the human side of its authorship. But they stress the human side of the Church and ignore its divine side. In other words, they’re Docetists about the Bible and Arians about the Church. (Docetism was an early heresy that denied Christ’s human nature; Arianism denied His divine nature.) Catholicism alone has consistently affirmed the mystery of the two natures both of Christ, and of the Church and Bible.

Fundamentalists often accuse Catholics of the error of the Pharisees and love to quote Mark 7:7-8, Jesus’ rebuke to the Pharisees for teaching as divine doctrines mere human traditions. The Pope and bishops are men, after all, and fundamentalists bristle at the thought of ascribing to these humans a divine authority. But they’re inconsistent, for they ascribe to the human writers of the Bible a divine authority, and (of course) they ascribe to Christ a divine authority, though He was also human. So the principle that God can and does speak through human authorities is a principle based on Christ and Scripture.

Maybe the simplest way to see the difference is this: Fundamentalists see the Church as man’s gift (of worship) to God, while Catholics see it as God’s gift (of salvation) to man. For fundamentalists, we’re saved as individuals and then join in a kind of ecclesiastical chorus to sing our thanks back to God. For Catholics, we are saved precisely by being incorporated into the Church, Christ’s mystical Body, as Noah and his family were saved by being put into the ark. (Many of the Church Fathers use the ark as a symbol for the Church.)

It’s as if — to extend the metaphor — fundamentalists prefer to be saved by clinging to individual life preservers, then tying them together for fellowship.

To Catholics, the Church is “the mystical Body of Christ.” The Church is a “mystery.” Fundamentalists don’t understand this category. “Mystery” sounds suspiciously pagan to them. They want their religion to be clear and simple (as Moslems do). They’ll admit, of course, that God’s ways are not our ways and often appear mysterious to us. But they don’t want their Church to be mysterious, like God, because they don’t think of it as an extension of God but as an extension of man.

In other words, they think of “mystery” as mere darkness or puzzlement. But in Catholic theology it’s a positive thing: hidden light, hidden wisdom.

Fundamentalists say that they emphasize “the Church invisible” more than “the Church visible” and accuse Catholics of overemphasizing the latter. Fundamentalists draw a sharp distinction between these two dimensions of the Church so that they can explain Scripture’s strong statements about the Church as applying only to “the Church invisible” (the number of saved souls, known to God) and not to the visible Church on earth.

Why? Because if they referred such statements to the visible Church, the claims of the Catholic Church to be that single, worldwide, visible Church stretching back in history to Christ, still forgiving sins and exercising teaching authority in His name — well, these claims would surely seem more likely to be true of the Catholic Church than of any other visible Church.

Fundamentalists also have a very individualistic notion of the Church. The Catholic sense of a single great worldwide organism, a real thing, is not there. The Eastern Orthodox Church usually has an even more powerful sense of the mystery and splendor of the Church than most modern Western Catholics do. They’re east of Rome spiritually as well as geographically — i.e., more mystical. Fundamentalists are west of Rome — much too American.

Authority

A third difference concerns the authority of the Church. This follows from the previous point: Fundamentalists lack the Catholic vision of the Church as a great mystical entity, an invisible divine society present simultaneously in heaven and on earth, linking heaven and earth as closely as man’s soul and body are linked. And lacking this vision, authority can only mean power, especially political power. Thus, fundamentalists sometimes sound like their archenemies, the modernists, when it comes to criticizing the “authoritarianism” and political power of Rome. For both fundamentalists and modernists lack the Catholic understanding of the Church and its authority as much more than “political.”

Yet fundamentalists tend to be quite authoritarian themselves on a personal level — e.g., in their families. They are more willing than most people to both command and to obey authority, if it’s biblical. The issue that divides us is not authority as such but where it is to be found: Church or Bible only?

Structure

The structure of the Christian community also divides us. Fundamentalists usually criticize the “hierarchical” Church. This is often more a matter of politics than of religion, sometimes stemming from American egalitarianism rather than religious conviction. But when it is a matter of religious conviction, such criticism usually takes one of these three forms:

• First, fundamentalists charge that Catholics worship the Church and the hierarchy, especially the Pope. There’s a fear of idolatry coupled with a fear of the papacy mixed up here, a confusion between sound principle (anti-idolatry) and a gross misunderstanding of facts. While I’ve met many Catholics who love the Pope and (unfortunately) some who hate him, I’ve never met or heard of anyone who worships him!
• Second, the hierarchy is suspected of corruption just because it’s a hierarchy: It is structurally, culturally, un-American. (So is the hierarchy of angels “un-American.” But that doesn’t mean it’s corrupt.) Of course, 500 years ago there was some truth to this charge, but fundamentalists are still fighting Luther’s battle.
• Third, there’s often an unadmitted racial prejudice against Italian Popes. Some people, when they hear “Italian,” immediately think “mafia” and “Machiavelli.” This element is rarely admitted, but it definitely plays a part in anti-papal prejudice.

Beyond these irrational criticisms, I’ve never come across any solid theological argument against the papacy. The current Pope (Blessed John Paul II as of the time of this essay – Editors) has done much to temper fundamentalist fears by his holy personality, wise words and strong opposition to abortion and to the excesses of some contemporary theologians.

End

Finally, fundamentalists and Catholics have different visions of the end or task of the Church. For fundamentalists, that task is only two things: edification of the saved and evangelization of the unsaved. For the Catholic, these two ends are essential, but there are also two others.

• First, Catholics also emphasize the Church’s this-worldly tasks — social justice and the corporal works of mercy such as building hospitals and feeding the poor. Fundamentalists say the Church “shouldn’t get involved in politics” (though many of them are thoroughly politicized on the far right). And when did you last see a fundamentalist hospital.
• Second, there’s a still more ultimate goal. Evangelization, edification and social service are ultimately only means to this greater end in the Catholic vision. The Church is there for the world, yes (the first three ends), but in a more ultimate sense the world is there for the Church, for her eternal glory and perfection.

The Church’s ultimate task is to glorify God, to be the Bride of Christ. The world is, in the long run, only the raw material out of which God makes the Church. In fact, the universe was created for the sake of the Church! God’s aim from Day One was to perfect His Bride, to share His glory eternally.

When we speak of this eternal glory we have in mind first of all the Church as invisible, as “mystical”; but there’s a substantial unity between the Church invisible and the Church visible, between the Church as inner organism and the Church as outer organization, between its soul and body, as there is between man’s soul and body.

You can see this mystical thing, as you can see a man. The most holy thing you can see on earth has its seat in Rome, its heart in bread and wine on the altar and its fingers as close as your neighbor.

It isn’t that fundamentalists explicitly deny this Catholic vision of the Church; they just don’t comprehend it. They may have things to teach us about being on fire with religious zeal, but we have much to teach them about the fireplace.

A fireplace without a fire is cold and gloomy. But a fire without a fireplace is catastrophic.

Jesus: Liar, Lunatic, Legend, Mystic, or Lord?

The following comes from Dr. Peter Kreeft at Strange Notions:

For Catholics, the doctrine of Christ's divinity is central, for it is like a skeleton key that opens all the other doctrines. Catholics have not independently reasoned out and tested each of the teachings of Christ received via the Bible and the Church, but believe them all on his authority. For if Christ is divine, He can be trusted to be infallible in everything He said, even hard things like exalting suffering and poverty, forbidding divorce, giving his Church the authority to teach and forgive sins in his name, warning about hell (very often and very seriously), instituting the scandalous sacrament of eating his flesh—we often forget how many "hard sayings" he taught!

When the first Christian apologists began to give a reason for their faith to unbelievers, this doctrine of Christ's divinity naturally came under attack, for it was almost as incredible to Gentiles as it was scandalous to Jews. That a man who was born out of a woman's womb and died on a cross, a man who got tired and hungry and angry and agitated and wept at his friend's tomb, that this man who got dirt under his fingernails should be God was, quite simply, the most astonishing, incredible, crazy-sounding idea that had ever entered the mind of man in all human history.

The argument the early apologists used to defend this apparently indefensible doctrine has become a classic one. C.S. Lewis used it often, e.g. in Mere Christianity, the book that convinced Chuck Colson (and thousands of others). I once spent half a book (Between Heaven and Hell) on this one argument alone. It is the most important argument in Christian apologetics, for once an unbeliever accepts the conclusion of this argument (that Christ is divine), everything else in the Faith follows, not only intellectually (Christ's teachings must all then be true) but also personally (if Christ is God, He is also your total Lord and Savior).

The argument, like all effective arguments, is extremely simple: Christ was either God or a bad man.

Unbelievers almost always say he was a good man, not a bad man; that he was a great moral teacher, a sage, a philosopher, a moralist, and a prophet—not a criminal, not a man who deserved to be crucified. But a good man is the one thing he could not possibly have been according to simple common sense and logic, for he claimed to be God. He said, "Before Abraham was, I Am", thus speaking the word no Jew dares to speak because it is God's own private name, spoken by God himself to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14). Jesus wanted everyone to believe that he was God. He wanted people to worship him. He claimed to forgive everyone's sins against everyone. (Who can do that but God, the One offended in every sin?)

Read the rest here!

What do Catholics believe about Salvation?

Fr. Dwight Longenecker: On Punching Heretics

The following comes from The Catholic Thing:

There was an odious man named Frank in our fundamentalist church when I was a boy who had a brood of badly behaved children. When one of them would act up, Frank would haul the miscreant out of the sanctuary and wallop him. When he would re-appear with the unfortunate sprog, Frank would mutter sanctimoniously, “Sometimes we need to administer love to our children.”

The memory brings to mind another fracas at church in an earlier time. At the Council of Nicea, Bishop Nicholas of Myra punched the heretic Arius in the face. Arius had been asked to defend his doctrine that Jesus Christ was only a created being and not God incarnate. The future Santa Claus, fed up with this nonsense, got up and administered some love. St. Nicholas is also known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. Some work. Some wonder.

Nicholas was not the only one of the Fathers inclined to physical expressions of orthodoxy. St. John Chrysostom was so troubled by Christians who advocated teetotalism that he preached a homily encouraging the faithful to revolt: 

Paul is not ashamed. . .in writing to Timothy, to bid him take refuge in the healing virtue of wine drinking. Not to drink wine?  God forbid! For such precepts belong to heretics. . . .Should you hear any one in the public thoroughfare, or in the midst of the forum, blaspheming God; go up to him and rebuke him; and should it be necessary to inflict blows, spare not to do so. Smite him on the face; strike his mouth; sanctify your hand with the blow, and if any should accuse you, and drag you to the place of justice, follow them, and when the judge. . .calls you to account, say boldly that the man blasphemed the King of angels!

Most of us would hesitate to follow John Chrysostom’s robust advice. Explaining to the sheriff that we had struck the progressive Christian because he had “blasphemed the King of Angels” is not our style. Our new beatitude is “blessed are the milquetoast for they shall inherit a peaceful life.” We prefer to do battle with words, not swords, for we are sure that fingers tapping keyboards are more effective than fists striking faces.

Read the rest here.

Can non-Catholics receive grace without the sacraments?