What is Paul's view on women, and why does he seems a bit sexist for me?

For example, in 1Cor 11, he talks about covering head, a pretty trivial thing for me. In this section, it seems to me that he looks down on women quite a bit as subordinate creatures to men.

^(-)  For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man.
Not God?

- That is why a woman ought to have a veil on her head, because of the angels.
I was told that this means that not to offend the angels in the liturgy, but why would it? And why the angles, why not God or men?

Please, don't ban me or delete. I was banned from several catholic places for asking this simple and honest question, yet I received no explanation or answer.

Whenever I debate and argue for intelligent design, I use Aquinas’ fifth way, which I think is very strong. The way I understand it, it’s impossible to refute without just disbelieving it as a matter of faith, ironically. But when I argue with people, they either have NO idea how to refute it, or they just assert that it is nonsense without demonstrating why. This leads me to think it’s very very strong, but academics swear that it’s very faulty, but I don’t see how. Is it actually a home run for intelligent design? Or is it really just very weak and I think it’s strong?

Have a question yet don't want to debate? Just looking for clarity? This is your opportunity to get clarity. Whether you're a Catholic who's curious, someone joining looking for a safe space to ask anything, or even a non-Catholic who's just wondering why Catholics do a particular thing

Hello Friends,

The recent hubbub with Fr Martins getting the cops called on him, twice, for touching a young girl's hair, brought the ongoing tour of the relic of St Jude to my attention again, and so, I thought I would do a quick post about it. Or maybe I should say "recently ongoing until now", since I think that the tour was placed on hold ... whatever. That isn't what this post is about.

This post is about how the relic of St Jude that has been on tour in the US until recently is almost certainly not authentic. By that, I mean that we cannot tie that relic to the historical Jude with any certainty.

According to the organization running the tour,

The most reliable ancient records identify the place of Saint Jude’s martyrdom and burial to be the city of Beirut.  Sometime later, his body was transferred to Rome and placed in a crypt within the original Saint Peter’s Basilica, completed by the Emperor Constantine (in 333 AD).  Today, his remains are in the left transept of the current Basilica (completed in 1626), below the main altar of Saint Joseph, within a tomb also holding the remains of the Apostle Simon. This resting place has become a popular destination for pilgrims who have a devotion to the Apostle of the Impossible.

The arm of the saint, which is making its way across North America as part of this tour, was separated from the greater portion of his remains several centuries ago and placed in a simple wooden reliquary carved in the shape of an upright arm in the gesture of imparting a blessing. 

https://apostleoftheimpossible.com/the-relic/

But this description is ... incomplete, at best. The source that I will be using for the rest of this write up is a book by the Evangelical scholar Dr Sean McDowell called The Fate of the Apostles.

To start with, our most ancient sources all seem confused as to who Jude actually was. And there is good reason for this: the New Testament itself is not very clear. Take a look at the this table that I took from page 26 of the Fate of the Apostles:

Why do Mark and Matthew call out Thaddeus and Acts and Luke call out Judas?

There are two possible explanations. First, Thaddaeus might have been an original member of the Twelve who dropped out for an unknown reason, whom Judas, son of James, replaced some time later. Some have suggested that the exact composition of the Twelve may have varied from time to time. It seems unlikely, however, that Matthew and Mark would include in the list a dropout instead of his replacement. This differs from the case of Judas, since Judas was essential to the furtherance of the story and his betrayal is indicated in the list. Second, Judas, son of James, and Thaddaeus might have been the same person. It was not uncommon for Palestinian Jews to have both Semitic and Greek names. Furthermore, Judas, son of James, needed to be distinguished in some way from Judas Iscariot. He is referred somewhat awkwardly as “Judas, not Iscariot” in John 14:22, yet it seems unlikely this was his usual designation.

The Fate of the Apostles, pages 26 - 27

I would consider this data underdetermined. Both the theory of the members of the Twelve varied over time, and the theory that Judas and Thaddeus are the same person, seem to make sense to me. Dr Sean McDowell says:

...we know almost nothing about Thaddeus’s life both before and after the ascension. Nevertheless, there are a few areas of speculation surrounding his life. Some have argued that Thaddeus was a zealot, like Simon the Canaanite. Whether or not Thaddeus was zealot, he was always placed next to Simon in the apostolic lists, which has led some to conclude they were close friends or ministry partners. Others have argued that he was probably the son of James the Great, and some have suggested that Levi is the apostle Thaddeus. These are certainly possibilities, but cannot be upheld with any high degree of confidence.

The Fate of the Apostles, pages 237 - 238

And if you think that the biblical evidence is shaky, the extra-biblical evidence is far worse. Dr Sean McDowell quotes another historian, Dr Thomas E Schmidt, saying that

[Simon’s and Thaddeus’s] traditional areas of missionary activity are literally all over the map, which may indicate either that they traveled extensively or that ignorance of their movements made them convenient subjects for invention.”

And then Dr Sean McDowell adds his own words, saying:

It could be that some of these are true and others false. Traditions needs not be accepted or rejected in their entirety.

Dr Sean McDowell then goes on to list all of the various traditions about the travels and death of Jude / Thaddeus / Judas. Most of these come onto the scene around the same time, in the 6th and 7th centuries, 500+ years after Jude would have died.

In the Acts of Thaddeus, in ~6th Century, it is reported that Jude died in "Berytus", or what we today call Beirut. This matches what the St Jude Relic Tour website claims and it may be the "earliest and best source" that was mentioned.

There are other early accounts outside of the Acts of Thaddeus though too.

A Coptic tradition independent of either the Greek or Latin Acts of Thaddeus reports that Thaddeus ( Judas) preached and died in Syria. According to the account, Peter joins Thaddeus as they preach, cast out evil spirits, and heal the wounded and sick. In their preaching, the apostles incorporate well-known teachings of Jesus (for example, The Rich Young Man, Mark 10:17–27). After their ministry was finished, Thaddeus died peacefully and Peter continued on his way. However, a separate tradition exists of his ministry and fate in Syria, where Thaddeus is shot with arrows and stoned to death.

The Fate of the Apostles, page 239

Although Berytus / Beirut is in modern day Lebanon, not modern day Syria, I doubt that the ancient authors had a very specific location in mind when they wrote about the general region of Syria and so I think that this checks out with Beirut.

However, we have other accounts from the same period that tell a very different story:

In contrast to these stories, the Western tradition pairs Simon and Judas (Thaddeus) together as missionaries and martyrs. The (Latin) Pseudo-Abdias (c. AD sixth/seventh century) places their activities in Persia ... The story further reports that the religious leaders in the city of Suinar, Persia, eventually arrest Simon and Judas, allowing them either to worship statues of the sun and moon, or die; they choose martyrdom, and are killed with swords.

Pages 240 - 241

Suinar, Persia, is not in Syria and is definitely not Beirut. Interestingly, Sean mentions an earlier source too, saying that

the Latin Hieronymian Martyrology (c. fifth century) also reports the Persian city of Suinar as the place of their passion and death. [referring to Simon the Zealot and Jude / Judas / Thaddeus]

Page 241

And it keep getting worse.

There is yet another Western tradition placing the ministry of Judas in Mesopotamia, and his death in Armenia. According to the Breviarium Apostolorum (c. AD 600), “Jude [Thaddeus], which means confessor, was a brother of James, and he preached in Mesopotamia and the inlands of Pontus. He is buried in the city Neritus in Armenia, and his feast is celebrated on 28 October.”

Dr Sean then quotes Saint Isidore of Seville (late 6th / early 7th century), who writes that:

Jude, the brother of James, spread the gospel in Mesopotamia and in the inlands of Pontus, and with his teaching he domesticated the untamed and uncivilized people, as if they were wild beasts, and he submitted them to the faith in the Lord. He is buried in Berito, in Armenia.

Dr Sean says that the 5th Century historian Movsēs Xorenac’I:

Movsēs Xorenac’I states that Thaddeus was martyred and his body buried in Artaz (Book IX).

OK, Dr Sean McDowell does go on about this at some length, but I think I have proven my point and will end here. I will jump ahead and quote Dr Sean's conclusion to the chapter on Jude:

As with the other minor apostles, the evidence for the missionary work and fate of Thaddeus is mixed. One difficulty in ascertaining traditions of Thaddeus is the uncertainty surrounding his identity. Possible confusion with Addai (Doctrine of Addai), as well as traditions involving Jude, the brother of Jesus, temper the confidence of these conclusions. As far as his fate is concerned, some traditions hold that Thaddeus died as a martyr, including death by the sword, stoning, beaten with sticks, shot with arrows, as well as some martyrdom accounts that do not describe his means of death. But there are also some accounts that he died peacefully. Accounts of his peaceful death and his martyrdom occur in both Eastern and Western traditions. There seem to be independent lines of his martyrdom, but also independent lines of his natural death. Traditions vary considerably as to when, how, why, where, and whether he died as a martyr, which could mean there was no known fate for Thaddeus and stories could be invented out of thin air to meet the theological needs of various communities.

Pages 242 - 243

We have evidence that Jude died and was buried in Beirut in Syria, "Syria" more generally, which could include Beirut, Suinar in Persia, Neritus in Armenia, Berito in Armenia, and Artaz in Armenia. That's at least 5 different cities across 3 separate countries.

Yet the Catholic Church is parading around some ancient bones from Beirut and claiming that these are definitely the bones of St Jude? How the heck can be so sure that we have the right bones?

We can't. But the Church parades them around anyway, without telling people about the super shaky historicity of these relics. And I think that's kinda dishonest.

I would love to get your guy's thoughts on this one - thanks!

Catholics call Mary many things- Mediatrix of All Graces, Mother of All Christians, Holy Queen, Ark of the New Covenant (after all- most of the Rosary is "Hail Marys" and a "Hail Holy Queen/Salve Regina"), Mother of God, etc and so forth.

I know that Catholic definition of Mediatrix of All Graces is not being a Mediator between God and mankind, but the notion/idea that by virtue of Mary being chosen a vessel for God Incarnate in human form, she was the person from who was the means for grace to appear to the rest of the world in the form of Jesus Christ. So I get that definition, even though I disagree with it, because the focus on Christianity should be Christ, not Mary (Solus Christus or In Solo Christo)

So here are my questions:

1.) If Mary was without sin during her conception (Immaculate Conception), than why did she refer to God as her Savior (Luke 1:47). If you are already immaculate and without sin, what do you need saving from?

It is true that Protestants consider Mary the most blessed of all women (Luke 1:42). But being blessed for all for generations, or being considered blessed for all generations does not equate to supernatural abilities or otherworldly capabilities. There were many people in the Bible who were considered blessed and favored by God, but that did not mean that they had supernatural abilities or otherworldly capabilities after death.

Also Paul says in Romans 3:23

"There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus".

And addition, Paul says in Romans 5:12-14

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

2.) Why refer to Mary as "Theotokos" when God the Father/Jesus/Holy Spirit existed since the beginning of time? How can Catholics say that Mary is the Mother of God, when God existed from the beginning of time?

"Theotokos" is not mentioned once in the Bible, and is more or less an idea that came about at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, and one of the main issues was to refute Nestorianism (which is a heretical doctrine) and the argument of the term "Christotokos" (Bearer of Christ) vs "Theotokos" (Bearer of God). The arguement for Theotokos is John 1:14:

"And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth"

John says in John 1:1

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"

Jesus = the Word, so Jesus has been around from the very beginning in His natural God form. So how can Catholics, or the Catholic Church say that Mary bore God, when God, in His Holy Trinity, existed since the beginning of time. "Christotokos" is much more accurate.

3.) If Jesus and God held Mary in such high regard, as the Catholics do with all her titles, prayers, and praise, then why did He say that everyone who does His Father's will is His mother or brother or sister?

There is no doubt whatsoever that Jesus loved His mother, but Scripturally, He did not play favorites with his mom.

John 12:45-50

"While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”

He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

4.) What is the justification for Mary being the Mother of All Christians with the whole "Woman behold your son" and then telling his disciple "Behold your mother"? in John 19:26-27

From a purely logical and rational standpoint, Jesus was telling his disciple to look after His earthly mother after he passed away, because He loved his mother, and wanted someone to look out for her. How can Catholics equivocate this act to Mary being the spiritual "Mother of All Christians". This, in my opinion, is a humongous leap of faith, and is the logical fallacy of equivocation because it is applying a situation between Jesus and the disciple He loved to the guardianship of His mother, and expounding it into universal spiritual application to all Christians.

5.) If an angel in Heaven said not to worship or pray to him, and worship God alone- than why pray to Mary for intercession. If angels existed way before Mary was conceived, and were the closest ones to God before the creation of mankind, and are in the presence of God, why would they say to worship God alone, and not mention anything about Mary?

Revelations 19:9

"And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

6.) Why does Paul not mention anything about Mary in his Pauline Epistles? If she is such an integral part of Christian theology, why would he not mention her in his epistles to direct recognition and adoration to her? Paul was sent out by God/Jesus/Holy Spirit to convert the Gentile world- you would think if Mary was part of the plan that God would instruct Paul to teach about venerating her and showing her proper respect?

Hi everybody! Today's write up is about the Chapter 2 of "A Cariologist Examines Jesus", by Dr Franco Serafini. I will repeat what I said in my first write up - this is a good book and I highly suggest that you all pick it up, especially if you think that I am being unfair or misrepresenting the author in any way. I am always happy to be challenged and corrected!

A key term that I will be using in this write up is "testing into compliance". This is a term that we use in Pharma to mean something like "if you don't like the result, keep testing until you get the result you do like and then ignore all other test results". I am sure other industries the same term to mean something similar too.

Here is how FDA defines "testing into compliance":

FDA inspections have revealed that some firms use a strategy of repeated testing until a passing result is obtained, then disregarding the OOS [out of specification] results without scientific justification. This practice of “testing into compliance” is unscientific and objectionable under CGMPs [this stands for Current Good Manufacturing Practice]. The maximum number of retests to be performed on a sample should be specified in advance in a written standard operating procedure (SOP). The number may vary depending upon the variability of the particular test method employed, but should be based on scientifically sound principles. The number of retests should not be adjusted depending on the results obtained.

Source: https://www.fda.gov/media/71001/download

I believe that Dr Castanon-Gomez, the lead investigator on the Buenos Aires Eucharistic Miracles investigation, "tested into compliance" with regards to the identification of the AP Samples (anatomic pathology samples) that were collected from the hosts.

Here is the TLDR:

The sample from the 1996 host was analyzed at a lab called "Forensic Analytical" in Hayward, California, first, and that lab said that "no known morphological features could be recognized". After that, the samples were shipped to Dr. Robert Lawrence of Delta Pathology Associates in Stockton, California, and Dr Lawrence thought that the sample was epidermis - the outer skin layer. Then that same sample was shown to Dr. Peter Ellis at the University of Sydney, in Australia, who also said it was skin cells. Then it was shown to Dr. Thomas Loy at the University of Queensland, again in Australia, who also said it was skin cells. Then it was shown to Dr. John Walker in Sydney again, who believed it could have been muscle tissue. Then it was shown to Prof. Linoli in Arezzo, Italy, who researched the miracle of Lanciano. According to Dr Linoli, it was possible it could have been heart tissue. Finally, it was shown to Prof. Frederick Zugibe, chief medical examiner and cardiologist in Rockland County in New York, who said it was heart tissue.

This is a clear cut case of testing into compliance. Dr Castanon Gomez kept testing. He was getting closer and closer until he finally got the answer he was looking for all along.

Now that you have seen the TLDR, I will go through Chapter 2, pulling out the quotes from the book.

...

First thing that is included in this subsection of Chapter 2 is that, regarding a sample taken from the 1992 host: 

A preliminary orthotolidine blood identification test^(29) yielded a negative result.

^(29)The orthotolidine test is a presumptive test looking for the presence of blood that involves the reaction of the o-tolidine molecule with blood hemoglobin in the presence of hydrogen peroxide.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 44). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition.

Then Dr Serafini adds that 

a small amount of human DNA was indeed detected, although the following DNA profiling analysis failed to identify any of the standard STR30 sequences.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 44). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

To be honest, I am not sure how we know that the DNA was human DNA if it couldn’t be sequenced, or, how we ruled out the chance of a false positive. This is a point that Dr Serafini does mention, a little later on, but only regarding the 1996 sample, not the 1992 that we just discussed. But let me read that quote out about the 1996 sample: 

Notably, even if the DNA was reported to be of human origin, the final report could not but hypothesize a nonhuman origin for it as, once more, no human DNA profile could be determined by means of standard STR analysis. We shall return to this subject later on in a dedicated chapter on DNA.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 44). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

I will talk about DNA in the context of Eucharistic Miracles too, but for now, I will add that, still talking about the 1996 sample here, 

the presence of whitish fibrous material along with a brown-reddish substance adhering to it was noted, although no known morphological features could be recognized. After drying, darker particles became apparent, and an orthotolidine test was performed on these, with negative result.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 44). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

So, both the 1992 and the 1996 samples failed the blood identification test,  and the 1996 one didn’t even look like human morphology under a microscope. Well, I guess that Dr Castanon-Gomez wanted another opinion, because the leftover material from this 1996 samples was sent to a researcher in California named Dr Robert Lawrence. Dr Lawrence prepared an AP sample from that material, and: 

Dr. Lawrence dared suggesting it could have been in keeping with clusters or fragments of keratinized cells — hence epidermis, the most superficial skin layer or, more accurately, inflamed skin, infiltrated by white blood cells.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (pp. 45-46). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

I guess that that still wasn’t good enough for Dr Castanon Gomez, because he sent the samples out again, to more researchers, this time in Australia. 

In Australia, Dr. Peter Ellis at the University of Sydney and Dr. Thomas Loy at the University of Queensland confirmed Dr. Lawrence’s interpretation about the epidermal origin. In Sydney, however, Dr. John Walker believed it could have been muscle tissue.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 46). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

Ahhh, muscle tissue is closer than skin tissue! But not close enough for Dr Castanon Gomez. We don’t rest until we find someone who will tell us what we want to hear, that its human heart tissue. So, what should we do… I know! Lets send it to the guy who did the testing on the Miracle of Lanciano, Dr Linoli! He will tell us what we want to hear! 

Even the no-longer-young Prof. Linoli in Arezzo, who researched the miracle of Lanciano, was involved: according to him, it was possible it could have been myocardial tissue. There was a need for a more authoritative and definitive opinion. Thus, the research team decided to turn to Prof. Frederick Zugibe, chief medical examiner and cardiologist in Rockland County in New York. His academic profile, made up of scientific discoveries and numerous publications, together with his thirty-year experience of ten thousand autopsies, is impressive at the very least. On April 20, 2004, the investigators Ron Tesoriero and Mike Willesee were in Prof. Zugibe’s New York office, and the microscope slides were still the ones prepared by Dr. Lawrence. The meeting was filmed, Tesoriero holding the video camera and Willesee interviewing. Prof. Zugibe wished to know the origin of the material to be examined, but the two Australians initially kept quiet. Zugibe insisted, but Willesee explained it was better that way for him and the inquest. Zugibe scrutinized the samples under the microscope and his words were recorded. He began by saying: “I am a heart specialist. The heart is my business. This is heart muscle tissue, coming from the left ventricle, near a valvular area.”

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 46). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

This seems to me to be a super flagrant case of testing into compliance. If a pharma company did this when testing their medicine for efficacy, executives would wind up in jail and the pharma would need to pay millions of dollars in fines to FDA or whatever regulatory agencies were involved. Just keep getting second opinions until we get the answer we want, and then claim victory?? This should be deeply concerning to anyone who thinks that the Church should be rigorous in her investigations of these kinds of events.

To be clear, I do think that there are some surprising things about the Buenos Aires host, just like I did with Lanciano. If you want to read about some of the surprising things (like the survival of white blood cells in water), pick up a copy of this book yourself! Honestly, its a good book, well worth the read, and the kindle edition is like $10 or something.

But all in all, I think its quite clear that this case is far less "suypernatural" than some folks like to make it seem.

...

Post script: I think that Dr Castanon Gomez is a complete nut. Evidently, Dr Serafini, the author of A Cardiologist Examines Jesus, shares at least some of my reservations about Dr Castanon Gomez, but I think that that should be the subject of another essay.

Most Christians agree that people who lived their entire lives never hearing the name Jesus will be judged in the end according to the moral compass given to them. This is based on inclusivist views held by many Christian traditions, emphasizing God's justice and mercy toward the uninformed.

The introduction of the gospel imposes an additional requirement: explicit faith in Jesus Christ. This requirement is distinct from natural morality and relies on belief in supernatural claims that may lack empirical evidence, requiring faith. Good people who reject claims lacking sufficient evidence may become atheists and, under Christian doctrine, face condemnation for not accepting the gospel. These individuals, who might have been saved under the inclusivist framework, are now condemned simply because they encountered the gospel and rejected it for lack of evidence, even though they are morally upright people.

Conversely, morally bad people who accept the gospel because they are easily swayed may achieve salvation, even if their actions demonstrate a rejection of their moral compass. Their salvation is granted solely based on belief, even though they are morally corrupt people.

This framework creates an apparent inconsistency in the moral logic of salvation.

Exposure to the gospel paradoxically jeopardizes the salvation of some good people while potentially securing the salvation of some bad people.

It undermines the principle of moral accountability by prioritizing belief in a specific story over adherence to a moral conscience.

Have a question yet don't want to debate? Just looking for clarity? This is your opportunity to get clarity. Whether you're a Catholic who's curious, someone joining looking for a safe space to ask anything, or even a non-Catholic who's just wondering why Catholics do a particular thing

Some background explanation, I come from a country in SouthEast Asia and am Roman Catholic (a minority faith here so tiny even Muslims another minority outnumber my faith by a significant amount). In my nation's Catholic subculture, a lot of old customs such as lighting objects on fire that bring certain scents like flowers to honor the dead so that their souls can still smell it have been replaced by similar Catholic rituals such as lighting frankincense and myrrh incense sticks. Burning sticks to give light for the dead seeking their way to the underworld? Phased out by novena prayers utilizing candles for those we'd hope to be in purgatory if they aren't in heaven who are being cleansed of their sins. Annual family feasts for the dead where patriarchs and matriarchs of each specific family units of the larger extended house talks to the god Kinoingan? Replaced by annual memorial mass for the deceased with a big expensive lunch and later fancy even grander more expensive dinner.

And so much more. Basically the missionaries who converted the locals who are the ancestors of the Catholics of the region I live in centuries ago, worked with various pagans in my area centuries ago to Catholicize indigenous traditions or worked to find a suitable replacement. So we still practise the old rituals of heathens from centuries ago but now with specifically Catholic devotions such as reciting the rosary with beads while bowing in front of Mary statues who look like people from our clans and tribes that echoes some old ritual counting bundles of straws while bowing in front of a forgotten mother goddess whom now only historians and scholars from my country remember her name.

So I can't help but wonder as I watch Youtube videos introducing the barebones of Sinology........ Why didn't the Catholic Church simply convert the cultural practises during the Chinese Rites Controversy? I mean 6 minute video I saw of interviews with people in Southern China and asking them about Confucian ancestor worships, they were lighting incense and sprinkling water around from a container........ You can do the same with frankincense and myrrh in tandem with holy water! Someone at a temple counting beads and chanting on the day her father died? The Rosary anyone? At a local church?

Just some of so many ideas I have about converting Chinese customs. So I couldn't understand the rigidity of Pope Benedict XIV in approaching the issue and why Pope Clement XI even banned the basic concept of the Chinese ancestry rites decades earlier in the first place. Even for practises that cannot be converted in a straightforward manner because they are either just too incompatible with Catholicism such as alchemy or too foreign that no direct counterpart exist in Catholic devotions such as meditation while seated in a lotus position, the Church could have easily found alternative practises from Europe and the Middle East that fill in the same purposes and prevent an aching hole among converts.

So why didn't the Catholic Church approach Chinese culture with sensitivity and try to fill in the gaps of much sacred traditions of China with syncretism such as replacing direct worship of long dead individuals with intercessory prayers and mass for the dead? Why go rigidly black and white yes or no all out or none with approaching the Chinese Rites during the debates about how to convert China?

Like instead of banning Feng Shui completely, why didn't the 18th century Papal authorities just realize to replace old Chinese talismans and whatnot with common Christian symbols and religious arts and teach the converted and the prospect converts that good benefits will come using the same organization, decoration patterns, and household cleaning Feng Shui commands because God favors the diligent (esp those with the virtua of temperance) and thus God will bless the household because doing the now-Christianized Feng Shui is keeping with commands from the Bible for organization and house cleanliness? And that all those Christian art that replaced the old Chinese amulets at certain angles and locations across the house isn't because of good Chi or bad Chi but because the Christian symbol will remind those who convert about God and thus the same positive energy will result that plenty of traditional Chinese talisman and statues supposedly should bring fro being placed in those same areas?

But instead the Church's approach to missionary work in China was completely inflexible with the exception of some of the Jesuits who were were actually working directly inside China with the locals. Considering the Catholic community of the SouthEast Asian country I live in and who I'm a member of practically still are doing the same basic practises of our ancestors from centuries ago but made to align with proper Catholic theology and laws, I'm really in disbelief that the Vatican didn't approach Chinese culture in the same way during centuries of attempting to convert China esp during the Chinese Ancestry Rites Controversy of the 1700s! That it took 200 years for the clergy of Rome to finally open their mind to merely modernize ancestor reverence of the Sinitic peoples under Catholic doctrines rather than forbidding it outright starting 1939 simply flabbergasts me! Why did it the pattern of events in history go these way for the Sino-Tibetan regions unlike other places in Asia like the SEA country I'm from?

Hello folks, hope everyone is doing well.

Twelve days ago, I wrote a post on this subreddit called "Concerns regarding the Historicity and the Scientific Analysis of the Miracle of Lanciano: A Review of Chapter 1 of "A Cardiologist Examines Jesus" (2021) by Dr Serafini". I need to make a substantial correction to that post, because I made a pretty egregious error in it. This error comes in from the section that I labeled "Scientific Concerns". Here is what I wrote:

I read Dr Linoli’s report, and I didn’t recall anything about the blood type being AB. This piqued my interest. Why was Dr Serafini saying that Dr Linoli’s report said that the blood type was AB when you can read the short report from 1971 yourself and there is no mention of AB blood?

This is an error - Dr Linoli's original 1971 report does say that the blood type was AB. I claimed to have read the whole report after having translated it into English though, so, how did I make such an egregious error?

Well, here is the link that I was using to access Dr Linoli's original report:

https://www.storiaechiesa.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Linoli1.pdf

If you read the "full report" at that link above, you will not find any mention of AB Blood, or of blood typing at all. But here is where my error is - that isn't the full report. That is only the first half. I did think that the report ended kinda abruptly, but I figured that it was less abrupt in Italian, or that the last sentence was cut off in the scan or something. The report linked above is 11 pages long, the last 7 of which are only pictures of Anatomic Pathology samples, which I figured was a kind of appendix, but I was wrong. I did not realize that if you change the "1" at the end of the URL above, it brings you to the second half of the report:

https://www.storiaechiesa.it/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Linoli2.pdf

There are another 11 pages here, for a total of 22 pages. And sure enough, in this second half, Dr Linoli does talk about blood typing and he comes to the conclusion that this blood is Type AB.

I have now completed my translation of the full 22 page report into English, and I am including a link to my translation here. For the remainder of this post, I will be quoting my translation of the Italian report by Dr Linoli, but if you wish you fact-check my translation, then please do. I have included the full Italian in an appendix to my translation for ease of access.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XJeyWSNCv2RDg5515Naa20vYNKiibkhh1NQPB9rHiB0/edit?tab=t.0

OK, now let me quote my translation of the report by Linoli to show you were Dr Linoli says that the blood was type AB. This quote comes from section 6 of the report.

The absorption-elution reaction according to SIRACUSA (1923 [12]), standardized by FIORI et al. (1963 [3]), was used for the determination of the blood group (ABO) in the elution liquid of the ancient Blood and Meat of Lanciano.

The method is widely accepted as fully valid for determining the blood group in those cases that do not allow the use of classical tests, such as tissues, body fluids, dried blood spots, etc.

Fig 14 - Absorption-elution test x 80. Above - the haemagglutination for Lanciano Blood: on the left, with anti A serum; on the right, with anti B serum. Below, the haemagglutination for Lanciano Meat: on the left, with anti A serum; on the right, with anti B serum. The tests allow us to affirm that Lanciano Meat and Blood belong to the AB blood group.

The test revealed that the ancient Blood are equipped with the agglutinogens A and B; therefore, they belong to the blood group AB (fig 14).

To see the image of Fig 14, please see the second half of the Italian report or my translation, both linked above.

Big thanks to YouTube Account: Patrick_Bard for pointing out to me that changing the end of the URL brings you to the second half of the report!

OK, that was the main point of this post, to show that I made a large error in my original write up. Dr. Linoli did claim that the blood was type AB. If you care to get my further opinions, keep reading, but if you only wanted to get my correction, then that is it.

.....

I still think that something weird is going on. Afterall, remember how I pointed out that Dr Linoli said that the testing was 

“insufficient to preliminarily specify the optimal quantities of antigen and antiserum”? 

Dr Linoli did say this. So … what is going on? 

Well, take a look at that section from the beginning and you will see that Dr Linoli says that 

To define to which species the ancient Blood and the ancient Meat of Lanciano belong, very small fragments were macerated in distilled water with micro-Potter. The zonal precipitation test of UHLENHUTH (1901 [14]) was performed with the elution liquid, difficulties having been found for a bilateral immunodiffusion reaction according to OUTHCHERLONY (1958 [10]) due to the limited liquid available, insufficient to preliminarily specify the optimal quantities of antigen and antiserum to be involved in the reaction (PIAZZI, 1969 [11]).

And this section actually makes sense once you have the full report. Section 5 seems to be talking about this Uhlenhuth zonal precipitation reaction. The way that this test works is kinda weird, and its not really done anymore. Its old. Paul Uhlenhuth developed this test in 1901, and it was used to determine if blood was human blood or not, and the way that we did this is that we took a rabbit, and we injected the rabbit with human blood. The rabbit’s immune system then generates antibodies specific to human blood antigens. The blood serum from the animal (antiserum) is then collected and the unknown blood sample is mixed with the prepared antiserum. If the unknown sample contains human blood, a reaction occurs between the antigens in the sample and the antibodies in the antiserum, leading to the formation of a precipitate. The appearance of a precipitate confirms that the sample is human blood. If no reaction occurs, the sample is not from the species for which the antiserum was prepared.

And this is what Dr Linoli is talking about in Section 5. Linoli shows us a picture of some test tubes and says that tubes 1 and 2 are the tubes that have the precipitate, and those were the tubes that contained the material from the Lanciano blood, which again, he had to prepare by essentially taking dried samples and dissolving them into water,  but apparently this confirms that the samples are human blood. 

Now, I called this method old and that we don’t do it anymore. Why? Because now we know about DNA and we can just test the DNA in the blood and tell you, not only whether or not the blood is human blood, but exactly which human the blood belonged to. 

Uhlenhuth developed this method in 1901, and DNA was discovered in 1953. When Dr Linoli wrote this paper, in 1971, DNA testing was in its infancy. Today, its very easy to get a genome sequenced. You can have your own genome sequenced today for about $40 (thanks, Black Friday deals).  So, yeah, I can’t tell if there is precipitate in those two tubes that Dr Linoli is showing, but if there is, then the rabbit’s antiserum reacted with something in the solution that Dr Linoli made. Great! If its blood, there should be DNA in there, and we could do testing today to confirm Dr Linoli’s results from 50 years ago. I won’t hold my breath, but maybe one day some Catholic scientist will be brave enough to recreate a solution from the blood of Lanciano like Dr Linoli did and submit that sample for genetic sequencing. 

OK, so that is the UHLENHUTH test, but what is the Outhcherlony test? Well, that test is used to identify the presence of specific antigens or antibodies. Its also an old test, and it works by letting antigen and antibody solutions diffuse into a gel, and when the antigens and antibodies react, they will form a visible line in the gel, and the locations of the lines are supposed to tell you which kinds of antibodies are present. But none of this matters, because Dr Linoli said that the Outhcherlony test was insufficient to preliminarily specify the optimal quantities of antigen and antiserum. In other words, there were no results here. No antibodies or antigens were identified. 

What Dr Linoli does not mention in the first half of the paper is the absorption-elution reaction according to SIRACUSA, standardized by FIORI et al, which was used for the determination of the blood group. Dr Linoli only mentions this reaction in the second half, which I entirely missed.  Here is where Dr Linoli talks about that. 

Dr Linoli is correct in his paper, where he shows this picture and the agglutination in the samples and how that indicates blood type AB for this kind of test. 

This video on YouTube shows how this kind of test that Dr Linoli used works: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ysaMKoqmr8&t=308s

(5:30 mark) 

So, that is it then, the blood really is AB? Its certainly possible, and seems far more plausible to me after having read the full report instead of the half of the report where none of this is discussed. But I still think that the possibility of false positives is substantial and can easily be remedied through genetic sequencing. 

Let me dwell on the false positive concern for a moment. According to this paper, published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, there are a variety of reasons that false positives can occur: 

https://juniperpublishers.com/jfsci/pdf/JFSCI.MS.ID.555788.pdf

It is known that pseudo agglutination may occur when cold agglutinins are present and when erythrocyte suspension is contaminated. The reason for the detection of false positives may also be attributed to contamination [8]... Since antigens in blood stains found on an open field are destroyed much sooner than in other environments, samples should be sent to test centers where the examination is conducted in a very short time

Assuming that I am correct about the historicity of the Lanciano host is better in terms of sample stability, but even assuming that I am correct about the historicity, we are talking about a sample that is hundreds of years old. I hardly think that this hundreds of years is what the author of this paper has in mind when they wrote about the importance of getting the testing done “in a very short time” for samples exposed to “the field”. 

I think that the testing that Dr Linoli attempted is a valiant attempt at testing samples that are extremely old and are clearly not blood anymore, if the sample ever was blood in the first place. There are no red blood cells, which makes me wonder how there could be surviving antibodies and antigens, the chemical characteristic are way off, all of which I said in my first video, but now that I read the second half of the report, I can see that the Teichmann test was negative, compared with a human blood sample that gave a positive result. Same for the Takayama test.  

In brief, the Teichmann test is supposed to tell “Is this blood” by searching for hemoglobin, and Dr Linoli tested the Lanciano blood and he tested recent human blood. The Lanciano blood tested that it was not blood at all - which really just means “No hemoglobin was detected”. Same thing happened with the Takayama test. But then Dr Linoli used the paper chromatographic test developed by Massimo Franchini, which searches for antigens and antibodies, and that came back positive, and so, he proclaims that the nature of the Lanciano material has been confirmed to be blood. 

Conclusion (II. III and IV): The negativity of the Teichmann-Bertrand test and the Takayama test does not exclude the presence of blood, it can also occur in the presence of organoleptic ferments, plant extracts, finely divided metals.

The positivity of the search for oxidases, generically indicative for the blood, can also occur in the presence of organs rich in ferments, plant extracts, finely divided metals.

The chromatographic test on paper (FRANCHINI, 1966), or as used here more finely in a thin layer, has full value for the recognition of blood even in seriously damaged materials, which no longer provide the hemoglobin reactions.

The present study thus confirms the true haematic nature of the ancient Lanciano Blood.

Hold on though, has it been confirmed? Or did you just keep testing into compliance? 

That is my main concern here. This stuff from Lanciano appears to have some characteristics of blood, but it lacks others. Linoli also said that there were vegetable cellular elements in there, and that the calcium levels were way off, which sounds to me like it could have been a 16th century dye or something like that, but we will never know for sure because this material is simply too old to still be blood, dye, or anything else. Whatever this stuff used to be, its a solid now. Its not even a liquid anymore. We cannot say with any certainty that this stuff used to be blood. And until we can get a genome sequenced, I think I am quite justified in remaining skeptical.  

That was my main concern, and I don’t think that my main concern has changed. But I did want to correct my egregious error. Thanks for reading!

As a child I always had trouble reconciling how animals such as carnivores, scavengers, and others predators existed before the fall of man.

If the sin of Adam and Eve brought death into this world, why would creatures such as tyranosaurous, or even cats (as cute and cuddly as they may seem) exist?

Cats are the perfect killing machine. Sharp teeth and claws, perfect for piercing and tearing flesh. Binocular vision, perfect for providing depth perception while hunting prey. Predators exist in nature and have since almost the beginning of life itself.

Did God create these creatures which are obligated to inflict pain and suffering on other animals in order to survive. As cats are obligate carnivores, they cannot survive without eating meat, which necessitates killing other animals. This certainly doesn’t seem like a moral deity concerned with preventing the unnecessary suffering of innocent animals.

If the idea is that it’s not immoral because animals are not rational the way humans are, as someone who studies animal behavior this is not entirely true. While humans may be incredibly intelligent, other great apes are perfectly capable of empathy, love, deception, violence, hate, planning, use of tools, etc.

According to a consensus of scholars, immigration—at least in the U.S.—does not lead to an increase in crime; if anything, it may reduce it and contribute to long-term economic growth. I see no valid reason why U.S. Catholics, should support mass deportations of people who have a God-given right to earn a sufficient livelihood and pursue higher standards of living, thereby enhancing human dignity and contributing to the common good. Even undocumented immigrants tend to commit fewer crimes or have lower crime rates than native-born citizens.

To many in my view did swallow up trump propaganda!

Also experts explain that US immigration system is the problem to be solved not immigrants themselves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4JCPTAI0AM

Research on crime

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235261537_Immigration_reduces_crime_An_emerging_scholarly_consensus

https://publications.iadb.org/en/immigration-crime-and-crime-misperceptions

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317952235_Immigration_and_Crime_Assessing_a_Contentious_Issue

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117

Employment effect:

https://journals-sagepub-com.hr.idm.oclc.org/doi/10.1068/c09151r?icid=int.sj-abstract.citing-articles.117

https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/2044/the-impact-of-immigration-on-the-employment-of-natives-in-regional-labour-markets-a-meta-analysis

Wage effect:

https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.hr.idm.oclc.org/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0950-0804.2005.00255.x

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/281775/1/1879034409.pdf

Economic growth

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27075

https://link-springer-com.hr.idm.oclc.org/article/10.1007/s41996-023-00135-x

https://www.nber.org/papers/w23289

Fiscal impact:

https://academic-oup-com.hr.idm.oclc.org/book/10676/chapter-abstract/158719530?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Assimilation

https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/12976/revisiting-economic-assimilation-of-mexican-and-central-americans-immigrants-in-the-united-states

God, has to reveal His Son to us so that we can believe in Him. This does not come through simply flesh and blood means.

(And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.) Matthew 16:17

God, knows that if He reveals His Son to someone, then they fall away, the end state is worse for them.

(For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.) 2 Peter 2:20

Why wouldn't He then not reveal Himself to any whom He knows would fall away and only reveal Himself to those who would overcome the world? Why would He intentionally reveal to someone whom He knew would fall away, only to provide them a greater punishment?

I think that even if one remains unconvinced by the arguments for the existence of a God, or of the evidence for Christ's resurrection, one might choose to be Catholic for some practical reasons: to have a moral framework, for the community, etc.

These are my reasons for rejecting that choice: why I think it is better to not be a Catholic. Some of them are still in a pretty rough/incomplete state, but in my mind I think these are the core themes or concepts that bother me most.

People are not bad. There is nothing depraved or inherently bad in people. People who do bad things usually do not do them because they are “bad”: they do them because they are broken (like psychopaths) or because they don’t have enough information or have developed bad habits or have been failed in their upbringing. The Catechism states: “Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc. (387). Leaving aside any revelation, this explanation actually works very well. People do not have an “overwhelming misery” nor an “inclination towards evil and death” (CCC 403). As is expected in an evolved creature, people are certainly born with selfish tendencies, but also with a sense of right and wrong, and even an altruistic, sympathetic inclination to help others.

Likewise, people don’t deserve bad things/hell. In Reasons to Believe, Scott Hahn writes: “With eyes of faith, we do not wonder why God allows so much suffering, but rather why He doesn't allow more. We're not looking at a world full of innocent people suffering unjustly. We're looking at a world soaked through with oceans of mercy, because all of us are sinners, and none of us deserves even the next breath we're going to take.” Through eyes of reason, this claim sounds bizarre, cold, craven: a kind of Stockholm syndrome.

Why does God allow pain or suffering at all? We live in a universe with an arbitrary level of suffering; we can easily imagine a pleasant world where the worst evil is a stomachache and another filled with constant torture and horrific agony. Is “free will” really dependent on being in this little zone of suffering that we are in?

For Hell, how or why can God carve out a place where He is not? How can temporal choices, which are made with limited, imperfect information, have eternal effects?

These two beliefs, that people are inherently depraved and that people without grace deserve hell, can have absolutely awful consequences when applied in social and moral structures.

God is not good. That is, God is not bound to act according to our human sense of right and wrong. In his dilemma, Euthyphro asks whether God commands things because they are right or whether things are right because God commands them. The issue is whether God can do (or command) something that is not right. Ed Feser’s objection (“the Euthyphro dilemma is a false one; the third option that it fails to consider is that what is morally obligatory is what God commands in accordance with a non-arbitrary and unchanging standard of goodness that is not independent of Him... He is not under the moral law precisely because He is the moral law”) does not stand up when we consider the cases in which God’s actions or God’s law conflicts with our own moral system (cf. on the one hand, His jealousy and behavior in the Old Testament killing families in earthquakes, genociding entire peoples, requiring vicious punishments, etc., or on the other the modern sense that prohibiting homosexual relationships is bigotry or unkind).

If we can’t trust our sense of right and wrong, then morality is meaningless. What is the point of having a moral sensibility?

Putting God first causes problems. As noted above, people are not inherently bad, but one of the easiest ways to be evil is to think you are doing God’s will, which can subjugate any natural feelings of sympathy or kindness. If you think you are doing God’s will you can rationalize anything, from suicide bombings, to selling children born out of wedlock, to “prosperity Gospel” style selfishness,

Faith should not be a virtue. “St. Paul speaks of the ‘obedience of faith’ as our first obligation […] Our duty toward God is to believe in him and to bear witness to him” (CCC 2087). Faith according to the Catechism is thus a virtue, a gift (CCC 1815), and a kind of groupthink (“I cannot believe without being carried by the faith of others, and by my faith I help support others in the faith”, CCC 166).

Faith is an attribute that needs to be guarded carefully: “The first commandment requires us to nourish and protect our faith with prudence and vigilance, and to reject everything that is opposed to it” (CCC 2088). Even “involuntary doubt” the “hesitation in believing, difficulty in overcoming objections connected with the faith, or also anxiety aroused by its obscurity (CCC 2088) is described as a sin against faith. Inability to believe likewise is described as sinful: “Incredulity is the neglect of revealed truth or the willful refusal to assent to it.” (CCC 2089).

All of these aspects of faith describe something owed, even if it makes no sense; something given, though some might not "have" it; something fragile that cannot brook disagreement or questioning. This is the exact opposite of how an open-minded person should live and experience and investigate thoughts and beliefs.

By their fruits you shall know them; the leaven is bad. There is no “power” in Christianity; Christians are just as bad, and often worse, than the people they live amongst. Catholics get divorced just as often as non-Catholics, have as many abortions as non-Catholics, commit as many crimes as non-Catholics. In fact, international murder rates have a negative correlation with religiosity; atheists have lower divorce rates and less domestic violence than Christians; the most secular countries have the highest levels of happiness.

Living as a Christian can be a waste of a life. In a homily one time, a priest told the story of how the family and friends of Bl. Carlo Acuti would ask him if he would like to go visit some other country to go see and have Mass in some other beautiful churches. To which he replied, why would he want to do such a thing? He has God at home: he can go see the Lord any time in the Host at his chapel. The message is that anything else is less real, less meaningful, a distraction. To live that way, however, is to miss out on the richness of our world and the joys of human experience.

This is also kind of what Sheldon Vanauken felt in A Severe Mercy: Christianity sucks up all of the air in the room; it demands everything from you.

Some church teachings (like original sin, hell, the crucifixion) can lead to excessive and unnecessary guilt, anxiety, fear, and depression, especially in children. “Religious trauma” is a real thing experienced by people who have left the church (and probably subconsciously in people still in the Church).

The church teaches that women are special in their own way, but are certainly less like God than men. Because God is masculine, human men have some qualities that women do not, qualities that put them in a higher position than women; “wives must be subject to their husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:24), “I do not allow a woman to teach or to hold authority over a man. She should keep silent.” (1 Timothy 2:12). This is an awful position for women to experience and for a society to embrace.

I have also debated this with other groups a while ago.

Salvation. In other words, what steps/decision/works/lifestyle would cause someone at the Great White Throne judgment to be a sheep and not a goat?

By biblical doctrine, this would include fundamentalists (like most SBC), charismatics, pentecostals, conservative lutheran, calvinist/reformed such as conservative presbyterians and a few others. I am somewhere in between calvinist and reformed...

I just finished "A Cardiologist Examines Jesus", by Dr Franco Serafini. This essay is probably going to be the first in a series of essays that I do covering this book, but the book itself is not that long. I read it on Kindle but the paperback is only 308 pages. I think it does a good job getting to the good stuff without too much fluff or filler, so, I do recommend that you pick this book up if you think that I am misrepresenting the book or if you think that I got something totally wrong. Which is possible. I have made mistakes before and will definitely make them again.

This essay outlines my concerns with Chapter 1, which is titled "Lanciano (Eighth Century)".

Historicity Concerns

From the title, I knew that this chapter would have a certain … bend to it. In the first paragraph, the author says that:  

[The tradition surrounding the Lanciano host] is so ancient that a precise historical documentation regarding the original event has been lost over the centuries. However, the inhabitants of Lanciano managed not to lose sight of the origins of this miracle until modern age through oral tradition and very strong uninterrupted devotion. 

What happened exactly? In all likelihood, a Basilian monk was celebrating Mass in Lanciano at the church of Sts. Legonziano and Domiziano between AD 700 and 750. In Greece and the Byzantine East, Basilian monks were following St. Basil’s Rule, according to the spirituality of the Desert Fathers and St. Anthony the Abbot in particular. Between AD 600 and 700, many Basilians were fleeing from persecutions — mostly by Persians or the Byzantine emperor himself if he was an iconoclast — and found refuge in Italy. In Lanciano, one of these monks, whose name has not been passed on, was celebrating Mass. I shall then turn to a 1631 manuscript — written in good-quality Italian nine hundred years after the miracle — which clearly explains the events:

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 16). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

The author’s complete lack of any skepticism here regarding a story that didn’t emerge until the 16th century but that purported to be about the 8th century is shocking to me, and this is one area that I would really love to push back on. 

After that brief introduction to the miracle, there is a section called “A Blackout of Eight Centuries”, and you would think that Dr Serafini would maybe add some skepticism in here… but he does not. He does start off by saying that: 

There are currently no reliable historical documents about the origin of these relics.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 18). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

But then he immediately launches into an apologetic about how there were records but the dog at them! I mean, they were stolen by Basilian Monks. 

The first written text explicitly mentioning a eucharistic miracle preserved in Lanciano dates back only to 1574, during the first ecclesiastical review of the relics themselves, requested by Archbishop Antonio Gaspar Rodriguez. Giacomo Fella, a historian from Lanciano, in 1620 wrote of the sworn declaration he received from two Conventual friars of Lanciano, Fr. Antonio Scarpa and Fr. Angelo Siro. The two remembered the existence, up to sixty years earlier, of a Gothic manuscript book written in Greek and Latin and covered by two small boards, which was certainly decisive in determining the origin and dating of the miracle. Well, the manuscript book was kindly shown to two passing Basilian monks who were hosted in Lanciano. Since the times of the Trojan Horse, it has not been advisable to trust Greeks! I am joking, but the following day, early in the morning, the two Basilians disappeared for good without saying goodbye, and with them disappeared the precious book, which mentioned a former fellow brother of theirs whose lack of belief had stained the good name of their order. Thus, the Gothic manuscript book no longer exists and neither does a notarized declaration confirming the theft of the book itself, which the historian Fella had recommended should be written as evidence of the theft.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 18). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

For the record, this is the timeline of events: The earliest written record that we have of the event is from 1574. In 1620, two monks swore that, 60 years ago, in the 1560s, so, ten years earlier than the earliest written record, the records were all stolen! So … the earliest record of someone having stolen this book is from 60 years after the book was stolen? Which was conveniently ten years prior to the actual oldest record of the existence of this legend? Come on now. This strains credulity, does it not? 

And then Dr Serafini goes on to talk about how, even though we don’t have anything older than the 16th century, regarding this 8th Century miracle, its reasonable to believe that the tradition is older, because of the strongly convergent interest of Italians of older centuries. 

Oral tradition about the remote event was put down in writing in the elegant 1631 document that I already cited, or in stone on a monument of the same year, but the first eight centuries since the miracle of Lanciano remain a “black hole” for historians. A black hole, yes, but one nevertheless lit up by archived documentation demonstrating the strongly convergent interest of the Franciscans, the diocesan clergy, the brotherhoods of both the ancient church of St. Legonziano, where the miracle happened, and the more recent 1258 church of St. Francis built on top of St. Legonziano, where the relics were moved later on—a common interest that brought about tensions and disputes, even to the extent of papal edicts being issued to confirm the custody of the St. Legonziano-St. Francis compound (and hence of its precious, yet never mentioned, content). 

Around the eleventh century, a theological dispute grew up in the Church about the presence of Christ in the Eucharist; it led to a flourishing of treatises that set the foundations for the later definitive definition of the concept of transubstantiation. That refers to the transformation of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of the Body and Blood of our Lord during Mass at the moment of consecration despite remaining under the visible species of bread and wine. 

An important theological contribution was provided in 1073 by Guitmund of Aversa, a Norman monk who wrote De corporis et sanguinis Christi veritate in Eucharistia (On the Truth of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist). In a passage there, he recalled a miracle he was told about by his teacher and friend Lanfranc of Pavia. During his infancy, Lanfranc had heard that in Italy “a miracle had taken place in the hands of a priest who, while celebrating Mass, saw the true Flesh on the altar and the true Blood in the chalice. He was afraid to consume them and thus called on the bishop for advice. The bishop, along with other fellow bishops who came together for the event, took the chalice containing the Flesh and the Blood, carefully sealed it, and set it in the center of the altar for it to be perpetually preserved amongst the most important relics.” Fr. Nicola Petrone, a Conventual Franciscan that recently studied the miracle’s history, believes the miracle mentioned by Lanfranc is referring to the one in Lanciano, which is unlike any others known to us from the early Middle Ages in Italy because it is fully complete and has survived through so many centuries.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (pp. 18-19). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

Now would be a great time for Dr Serafini to bring up the Mass of St Gregory, no? The Mass of St Gregory is a legend that legitimately originated in the 8th Century about the 6th Century saint, Pope St Gregory the First. In this legend, a woman in the congregation at mass says out loud that she cannot believe that the Eucharist really is the body of Christ, and so, Pope St Gregory prays for a sign, and then the Eucharist is transformed into a bleeding finger!

The similarities between the legend of The Mass of St Gregory and the Miracle of Lanciano should be obvious. In both cases, during the celebration of a mass, God turned the Eucharist into actual flesh in order to quell doubts that the Eucharist really is the body of Jesus. 

And since this legend is legitimately from the 8th Century, the fact that Italians in the 13th Century were talking about a miracle very similar to Lanciano shouldn’t be surprising, right? But Dr Serafini points to the general interest of pre 16th Century Italians in legends like the Mass of St Gregory as evidence that Lanciano was a real, historical event from the 8th Century, and its just that people weren’t calling out the Miracle of Lanciano by name when they were talking about Tropes like those found in the mass of St Gregory? 

Why can I not take all of this as evidence that the story is entirely made up, and its based on earlier legends like the Mass of St Gregory. I view that interpretation as making a lot more sense of the data! 

But Dr Serafini does not mention the Mass of St Gregory at all in this chapter. Dr Serafini, I understand that you are like a soccer fan for Catholicism. But you said that you weren’t going to censor anything in the introduction. It really seems to me like you censored the Mass of St Gregory from this chapter. A discussion of the historicity of the Miracle of Lanciano without discussing the Mass of St Gregory would be like discussing the historicity of Noah and the Flood without talking about any other flood myths like the Epic of Gilgamesh. 

That is enough on the historicity side though. Now lets talk about the scientific side of things. 

Scientific Concerns

To start with, I have concerns just about the sample size. Dr Serafini says that the sample that Dr Linoli took was only 20 milligrams. 

By applying great force with his scissors, he snipped away two minuscule samples from the edge, a total of 20 milligrams of tissue.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 22). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

20 milligrams might not mean anything to you, but let me quote from a 2020 paper titled “A well‐tolerated core needle muscle biopsy process suitable for children and adults”, published in the Journal “Muscle and Nerve”. 

…While open muscle biopsies are proven to be safe and have the obvious advantage of larger sample sizes, when repeated sampling of muscles is necessary, core needle biopsy provides a safe and viable option. The amount of muscle from core needle was about 400 mg in total and is sufficient for most purposes, and is remarkably consistent. In some instances, a lower mass was obtained from individuals with muscle disease relative to healthy individuals, likely due to a higher proportion of fat and fibrosis within the core volume… 

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7756388/#:\~:text=Our%20experience%20here%20indicates%20that,3).

That comes from section 8, “Discussions”, which is talking about general guidance. From the abstract, we can see that this specific study looked at: 

…  471 muscle cores from 128 biopsy procedures, [from which] 377‐550 mg of total muscle tissue was obtained per procedure with mean core weight of 129 mg (SD, 25.1 mg)... 

That 400 milligram guidance is for muscle tissue. So, when I hear that a sample was prepared using only a single 20 mg sample, I am immediately skeptical that we can be confident in any claims made on such a small sample. And keep in mind that this work was being done in the 1970s. Medical technology has improved a lot over the last 50 years and medical doctors today aren’t even using samples that small to make clinical decisions for their patients. 

Regarding the report that Dr Linoli published in 1971, Dr Serafini calls Dr Linoli’s report “an impeccable one, even by modern standards”. 

The more technical details (which we will carefully examine in several following chapters: Heart, Blood, and AB Blood Group) became the subject matter of a thorough scientific publication accompanied by extensive photographic evidence: an impeccable one, even by modern standards.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 24). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

Dr Serafini does not mention that this report was never peer reviewed and was not published in a peer reviewed journal. How then does this 1971 report qualify as being impeccable, especially by modern standards? It wasn’t even shown to be impeccable from 1970s standards - it wasn’t peer reviewed! 

Also, Dr Linoli’s 1971 report is readily available online. Its in Italian, but I took the time to translate the whole thing. Its actually not that long of a report. But you can check the links down below for the full Italian report as well as my English translation. 

On the very first page, Dr Linoli’s report uncritically retells the myth surrounding the origin of the Lanciano material, even claiming that “memory of this event has never been lost throughout the centuries” … despite the fact that there is no evidence of the event until the 16th century, like we already talked about. Then Dr Linoli refers to the “miraculous flesh and blood”, which, to me, demonstrates that this report is a theological report, not a scientific one. It is cosplaying as scientific, but it is not. 

Interestingly, on page 24, Dr Serafini says the following about the report: 

On March 4, 1971 — one of the coldest days of the century in Italy — Prof. Linoli finalized a scientific report in snow-covered Lanciano. It summarized the following points: 

2. The Flesh is made of heart muscle tissue. 

3. The Blood and the Flesh belong to the human species. 

4. The blood group is AB and is identical in the Blood and the Flesh: hence, in all likelihood, both belong to the same Person. 

5. Blood proteins could be fractionated in the ratios of normal fresh blood. 

6. Chloride minerals, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, and sodium were detected in reduced quantities in the blood, whereas calcium was present in excess.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 24). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

Look at number 4, that the blood type is AB. I read Dr Linoli’s report, and I didn’t recall anything about the blood type being AB. This piqued my interest. Why was Dr Serafini saying that Dr Linoli’s report said that the blood type was AB when you can read the short report from 1971 yourself and there is no mention of AB blood? Well, read ahead in “A Cardiologist Examines Jesus” and you will find a chapter called “AB Blood”. Let me read an excerpt from that chapter: 

The Miracle of Lanciano 

Of course, the 1970 scientific assessment assigned to Prof. Odoardo Linoli also involved determining the miracle’s blood group. Linoli’s analytical method and his results have been thoroughly documented and published. They are readily available, along with extensive photographic evidence. 

In short, he used the absorption-elution method and could then state the following in his final report: “The delicate absorption-elution test allowed it to be objectively concluded with full certainty that both the Blood and the Flesh of the eucharistic miracle of Lanciano belong to the same AB blood group.”

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (pp. 172-173). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

Now lets read  the actual 1971 report. The below excerpt is my English translation via Google Translate of the Italian original, which can be found in the middle of page 663 in the PDF that I have linked below.

To define to which species the ancient Blood and the ancient Meat of Lanciano belong, very small fragments were macerated in distilled water with micro-Potter. The zonal precipitation test of UHLENHUTH (1901 [14]) was performed with the elution liquid, difficulties having been found for a bilateral immunodiffusion reaction according to OUTHCHERLONY (1958 [10]) due to the limited liquid available, insufficient to preliminarily specify the optimal quantities of antigen and antiserum to be involved in the reaction (PIAZZI, 1969 [11]).

Now, maybe it is the case that Google Translate has just totally failed me, but this really seems like Dr Linoli was saying that the blood type could not be determined. 

But Dr Serafini is saying that Dr Linoli’s report could have stated that it can “be objectively concluded with full certainty that both the Blood and the Flesh of the eucharistic miracle of Lanciano belong to the same AB blood group”. 

This seems totally wrong to me, and people in the audience might be like really scratching your heads here, but I think I know what is going on. I am going to take a stab at things, but this is something that I would really need to clarify with Dr Serafini himself, so, hopefully I do get that opportunity. But here is what I think is going on. 

The “absorption-elution method” that Dr Serafini is talking about works in a certain way in which a negative result looks identical to the AB blood group. Let me explain: 

The testing that Dr Serafini mentioned, the type that Dr Linoli performed, is searching for antigens in your blood. People with Blood Type A don’t have A antigens in their blood, they have B antigens in their blood. If you find B antigens in some blood, you haven’t actually determined that that person is blood type A just yet, but you have determined that that person is not blood type B. The same is true in reverse: People with Blood Type B don’t have B antigens in their blood, they have A antigens in their blood. If you find A antigens in some blood, you haven’t actually determined that that person is blood type B just yet, but you have determined that that person is not blood type A. If you find both A and B antigens in someone’s blood, that person is blood type O! If you find neither, that person is blood type AB. 

What happened in Dr Linoli’s testing is that he did not find either A antigens or B antigens in the sample. As tempted as you might be to say “Oh, neither one was found? That means that its AB” - you can’t do that! All you can say is that neither antigen was found. You know what else comes up as the same result? Pure water. Water contains neither antigen. Yet water is not Blood Type AB. Dr Linoli was right. Its inconclusive. Dr Linoli found results that are consistent with Blood Type AB, sure, but this is also compatible with pure water, that is it say, that could be not blood at all, based on that result. 

https://www.testing.com/tests/blood-typing/

In fact, Dr Linoli admits in his paper, as does Dr Serafini, that no red blood cells were found either! Dr Serafini admits as such on page 23. 

There were no red or white blood cells in the blood specimen either, and some of the test results were inconclusive. Others needed adaptations in the analytical protocol to account for the unique nature of the ancient and highly dehydrated sample.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 23). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

They also both admit that the hematin and hemochromogen tests were negative, which is looking for hemoglobin. 

He did not hide the difficulties he encountered (such as the negative results of the hematin and hemochromogen tests) and faithfully adhered to the objectives he laid out at the beginning of his study.

Serafini, Franco. A Cardiologist Examines Jesus: The Stunning Science Behind Eucharistic Miracles (p. 27). Sophia Institute Press. Kindle Edition. 

So, you don’t find any red blood cells, you don’t detect antibodies, you don’t find hemoglobin - its almost as if, even if this stuff was blood a couple hundred years ago, its not blood anymore. Its too old, its out of stability. I work in clinical trials and there are tests that we consider out of stability in just two days if the blood is kept ambiently, much less hundreds of years. 

OK, I better end this here. At first, I was planning on making only one essay covering this book, but after I saw how much I had to say about just the book’s first chapter, I thought that it was better to break it up into at least a few essays. 

One final note is that I may be getting a chance to speak to Dr Serafini in a multi-hour video call, and I really hope I do, because I would love to get answers to some of these questions. I think that my concerns here are real concerns, but maybe Dr Serafini will have quick answers that put my concerns to bed. We’ll see! But until then, this had been Kevin Nontradicath. Thanks for reading.

now dont worry im not considering running off and become an atheist or anything im just asking why i shouldnt become a not-Catholic-Christian

because i realized that the only reason why im sticking around in Catholicism is because im a cradle cultural Catholic and the Protestants ive been fellowshipping with through discord give really good advice thats rooted in scripture and naturally because of verses like 1 timothy 2:5 and 1 john 1:9 they dont think we should be doin confession and intercessory prayer and tbh it makes sense and the CCC seems to me to be the word of man while the Bible is the word of God

and i havent really seen evidence that constantine founded the Catholic church but at the same time i havent seen evidence that he didnt

and also 2 timothy 4:3-4 makes it look like to me pro-Catholic arguments arent what i need to hear but what i want to hear

so yeah why should i not become a sola scriptura believing Protestant who thinks the Eucharist is symbolic

TW: Suicidal ideation

I am an ex-Catholic, and I’m not sure if questions like these are allowed on this sub. It’s not about philosophy or theology, but about subjective experiences.

Something that’s been bothering me for a while is that some people claim confession is a positive, healing experience. I just can’t wrap my head around that; it makes no sense to me. For me, confession was an absolutely horrendous, almost psychologically torturous experience. It caused such intense feelings of suicidal ideation that I felt I desired nothing more than death, and I became passively suicidal. There could be other contributing factors—like people claiming I was “possessed” because confession made me anxious, or priests who didn’t treat me well—but overall, confession was always a terrible experience for me. I just don’t understand how anyone could see it as healing.

So, I have some questions for you about how you view confession from a personal and psychological perspective. I don’t care whether it “forgives sins” or not. I don’t believe in Jesus’s divinity, so him saying to the apostles to forgive sins is irrelevant to me.

1. Was confession a healing experience for you? If it was, in what way was it healing?

2. How do you feel before, during, and after confession? Do you notice any positive psychological effects from confession?

3. Do you think confession with a priest is better for you than confessing your sins in a prayer?

4. If confession stopped being a Catholic practice (for whatever reason), would you miss it?

5. If you’re comfortable sharing, what was your best and worst experience with confession?

6. If everyone were suddenly to become Catholic and started going to confession, do you think confession would have a positive impact on the population’s mental health?

7. Have you ever felt emotionally violated, invaded, or uncomfortable during confession?

8. Have you ever felt pressured or forced to go to confession?

9. Have you ever felt absolutely unbearable feelings of guilt or shame (before, during, or after confession)?

10. Has a priest ever asked you inappropriate questions about sexual sins?

11. (Skip this question if it makes you uncomfortable.) Do you think it was harmful for you as a child/minor—or for children/minors in general—to be required to confess sexual sins to adult men?

Edit: Just to clarify, by children, I mean everyone under 18.

Thank you in advance for your answers.

Please don’t tell me to go to confession or how I should confess. I’m not asking these questions to confess, and I’m done with the Catholic Church. The thought of ever going to confession again absolutely terrifies me; I’m just trying to understand.

Hello everyone, I’m one of the new mods for this sub. I’ve studied the Catholic faith in depth since I was 8 and have even studied in seminary for about 2 and a half years. Feel free to get to know me, get information on the faith, or provide suggestions for the sub.

Christians like to point out that atheists are just as bad as christians, so you can't argue that a bad christian disproves christianity. I would like to argue the contrary. That many bad christians do disprove it, because they're the ones making the claim that you can know them by their fruits, and their fruits are sexual assault, hiding sexual and financial crimes, and etc.

Most varieties of christianity have this dogma as very essential to their religious doctrines. According to it, based on the biblical texts of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus of Nazareth had a miraculous birth in Bethlehem born of a virgin named Mary. But for long historians know the historical basis for this is very fragile at best. First off, I think it's better I put on some of the basic ideas of New Testament scholarship, which are as follows: the oldest texts in the New Testament are the authentic epistles of Paul (for my arguments here though, we don't have however to worry about the problem of the authorship of the pseudepigraphic or the disputed epistles); of the four canon gospels, three of them, Matthew, Mark and Luke, are what we call synoptic, meaning they can be all read together because they follow the same pattern; and this pattern of the synoptic gospels requires an explanation as to why they were written so similar one to another, and this explanation needs to put one of them serving as model for the others. So far so good. Now, historians almost unanimously consider the gospel of Mark as the first to have been written, because of many reasons which I think it would be unnecessary to treat here for my argument. Even if someone is to pick a minority view of the gospel of Mark not being the first, my arguments would still be strong enough for my conclusion, so I hope I can just take for granted the Marcan priority. To add to that, most scholars also believe in an old hypothetical written source, called Q, so that both the authors of Matthew and Luke based their accounts on the gospel of Mark, and also on Q- Q is posited to explain the similarities between the gospels of Matthew and Luke which are not in the gospel of Mark.

Now, to the virgin birth and its historical problems. As said above already, this story is found only on the gospels of Matthew and Luke in the Bible. In the extrabiblical later sources in which it appears- like famously the gospel of James for example- it’s dependent on these two biblical accounts. So these two are really the only thing we have. Well, then, the first problem becomes obvious: why is it not in the earlier gospel of Mark? And also, it’s supposedly not in Q either, since, as we shall see, the two accounts we do have differ a lot one from another (so that if Q talked about a virgin birth, it was to be expected the accounts of it in Matthew and Luke would be more similar). This means so far that the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life (gospel of Mark and supposedly Q) do not have the virgin birth. It appears for the first time after these accounts were written.

And now, Paul’s epistles also don’t mention it. One could say they mention very little about Jesus’ life, which is true, but a small clue is still a clue, and, moreover, they had perhaps one ideal place they could mention it- in Galatians 4:4 (“God sent his son born of woman, born under the law”)- and yet they failed to do it. The thing is that this also points to the idea that if Paul knew about the virgin birth, he would perhaps have written it there (since God sent a son not only born of any woman, but of a virgin also, this seems worthy of a mention), and not doing so means that he probably didn’t know about a virgin birth. Of course, he may have known it and still just choose not to mention it, but as I said, this a small clue on the whole of my argument, but a clue nonetheless. In concluding, I say Paul didn’t know it, and the reason he didn’t was because it is a later legend not present in the beginning of christianity. But we will get there.

So far, what we have is this: the earliest sources we have on christianity do not mention the virgin birth. We see it for the first time in two later accounts. Now we have to examine these accounts.

First, the gospel of Matthew. It is attributed to an apostle of Jesus, Matthew, but almost no modern scholar would accept this attribution. The text is too dependent on another source- the gospel of Mark- to be the work of an eyewitness, and the traditional attribution seems to depends in part on a fragment from the church father Papias which is not very credible. In any case, even if it were written by Matthew, this would still change nothing in my argument, since Matthew wasn’t an eyewitness of Jesus’ birth after all. As for the date, since the gospel of Mark is generally thought to have been written around 70 CE, the gospel of Matthew must be after this. Now, the gospel of Luke. It was probably not written by Luke either, but as this Luke was a companion of Paul, not an eyewitness of any aspect of Jesus’ life, it doesn’t matter in the slightest.

So now we can go on to see both accounts. The surprising thing about the infancy narratives of Jesus’ life is that they agree on nothing aside from the general idea: Jesus was born in Bethlehem of a virgin named Mary, who was betrothed to a man named Joseph, in the reign of Herod. Aside, from that, they tell stories surrounding this which differ on everything. On Luke, Joseph and Mary lived in Nazareth and will travel to Bethlehem later thanks to the census of Quirinius (which I will speak about later). On Matthew they appear to live in Bethlehem. On Luke, an angel appears to Mary. On Matthew, the angel appears to Joseph. On Luke, shepherds adore the baby Jesus. On Matthew, it’s the Magi who adore him. Then only Matthew has the whole story about the flight into Egypt and the massacre of the innocents.

Some christian apologists try to defend these differences by putting on just one big account of it: so, Matthew does begin with Joseph and Mary already in Bethlehem, but it doesn’t explicitly say they lived there, which is what would contradict Luke; the angel would have appeared more than one time, first to Mary and then to Joseph; Jesus was visited both by shepherds and by magi, etc. The problem with this explanation is that it’s essentially non-historical. You don’t have this big narrative of Jesus’ birth in any text, you are making it up for the manifest purpose of justifying everything. No serious scholar accepts this. Even religious scholars admit some of the things there are legendary, while believing on the central point of the virgin birth. And now we arrive at one more problem.

There is one thing at least in each account which is at odds with the historical context at large too. For Luke, it’s the census of Quirinius. It happened on 6 CE. But the same gospel says Jesus was born during Herod’s reign, and Herod was dead by the time of the census. Worse still, the gospel says Joseph had to come back to Bethlehem for the census because his supposed ancestor, King David one thousand years ago, was from there. This absolutely makes no sense at all, neither from a practical point (imagine if we had to do that today!) nor from historical roman practice in censuses. Some apologists have invented all manners of justifying this, but again, no serious scholar will even consider it.

Now, for Matthew, it’s the massacre of the innocents. We know from the ancient historian Flavius Josephus a good deal about Herod’s reign. In no place he mentions this massacre, and he does mention a lot of terrible things Herod did. Safe to say, if he knew about the massacre, he would have mentioned it. Now, some apologist may say here that the massacre was just localized and small enough that Josephus didn’t come to know it. But, from everything else in my post, I point to the final conclusion that the simplest explanation is that it’s all legend.

And so we can conclude. The virgin birth is legend, not history, and we know that because it appears only in later accounts, which have their own problems and discrepancies, and because there was a clear reason the christian communities of the first century would come up with this legend. It was an interpretation of two texts of the Old Testament: Micah 5:2, interpreted to say the Messiah would come from Bethlehem, and the greek translation of Isaiah 7:14 (which was a faulty translation from the original hebrew meaning), interpreted to say the Messiah would be born from a virgin. There it goes.

Just for one final word, I know some religious scholars who believe in the virgin birth, and can be indeed respected in academy. But they admit to believe in it out of faith, and admit pure historical research does point otherwise. From the top of my head, if I’m not mistaken, these were the positions of Raymond Brown and of John Meier. One may have no problems with this position, but then, why be a christian at all? If God really exists and revealed christianity, couldn’t he have done it in a more obvious way, without all these difficulties?

This is my last text for now.

It is said that psychopaths are incapable of repentance. If this is true, it is due to material factors, such as the individual’s genetics and the development of their body, nervous system, and brain.

However, according to Catholicism, the creator of the human body is God. The Almighty is the agent behind the growth of the fetus while still in the mother’s womb. He is responsible for all embryological complexity and intrauterine hormones, making it possible to affirm that a psychopath is born as such by divine will and design. In other words, psychopaths are incapable of repentance thanks to God.

Moreover, in the Catholic Church, just one mortal sin is enough for a person to lose the state of grace, with the consequent loss of salvation and condemnation to hell. In other words, if someone lives a righteous, holy life without committing sins, but before dying makes the mistake of overeating—for instance, eating three slices of pizza—then, thanks to this single sin, they will go to hell for all eternity unless they receive the sacrament of confession/penance in time.

Furthermore, according to the Catholic Church, for a person to validly receive the sacrament of confession/penance, repentance is indispensable. If they are not repentant, receiving forgiveness would actually result in sacrilege, so the sinner would leave the confessional with more sin than when they entered.

Thus, we already have some premises. First, to be saved and not go to hell, one must be in a state of grace, that is, without sin. Second, to be in a state of grace and free from sin, it is imperative to confess validly. Third, to confess validly, the individual must be repentant, in contrition. Fourth, psychopaths are naturally incapable of repentance (by God’s own design).

It can therefore be said that psychopaths can never confess validly and are thus incapable of receiving forgiveness for their sins through a priest. As a result, in theory, all psychopaths die and go to hell. However, to say this implies that God is evil, for He would have created beings incapable of repentance and forgiveness. Consider this: if the psychopath goes to hell because they did not obtain forgiveness for their sins, this would be God’s fault, since it is the Almighty who prevents their repentance through their body (His creation).

To resolve this conflict and ensure that God remains good, the only solution is to admit that God saves all psychopaths, regardless of repentance, forgiveness, or valid confession. Even if all of the psychopath’s confessions are sacrilegious, God must still necessarily save them, for otherwise, He would be creating beings only to condemn them to hell beforehand.

Therefore, if God is good, He saves all psychopaths, even the worst of them. Thus, God would be evil if He created beings incapable of repentance and forgiveness and condemned them to hell. If there are psychopaths in hell, it is the Creator’s fault, not the creature’s.

OBS1: We chose to use pre-Vatican II sources, limited to the year in which Pope Pius XII died,that is, 1958 AD, in order to include traditionalists and sedevacantists in the proposed reflection.

OBS2: The position of the international theological commission that unbaptized abortions will be saved is more beneficial to them than limbo. Therefore, far from "refuting" my argument, it actually confirms it.

It is certain that the traditional doctrine of the Roman Church condemns the practice of abortion as a mortal sin, given that those who commit this crime would be depriving the unborn child of the possibility of salvation in Christ Jesus. However, it is also true that the Catholic Church, through its priests, doctors, and Ecumenical Councils over millennia, has taught that most of the born are condemned (sic) to hell, while aborted babies would go to the limbo of infants, a place where they would enjoy full natural happiness.

The Church has always opposed abortion, since apostolic times, as proven by the Didache (or the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles):

[…] Chapter II

1 The second commandment of the Teaching (of the Twelve Apostles) is:

2 You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery; you shall not indulge in pederasty, you shall not fornicate, you shall not steal, you shall not practice magic or sorcery (charlatanry). You shall not kill a child by abortion, nor a child already born; you shall not covet your neighbor’s goods.

Moreover, Saint Augustine taught that the unbaptized cannot obtain salvation, as they are not members of the Church but belong to the devil. In one of his numerous passages on the subject, he asserts that (AUGUSTINE, 1984, p. 276):

[…] Anyone who denies that children are snatched, when baptized, from this power of darkness, of which the devil is the prince, that is, from the power of the devil and his angels, is refuted by the truth of the sacraments of the church.

Additionally, the Church itself, in an official declaration at the Council of Florence (1438 AD -1445 AD), explicitly stated the dogma “outside the Church there is no salvation” (extra Ecclesiam nulla salus) as follows:

[…] It firmly believes, professes, and proclaims that no one who is outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews, heretics, and schismatics, can participate in eternal life and will go into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are united to Her.

Thus far, it is evident that for the Church, salvation is a reality only for its members, that is, Catholics, so that the unbaptized and all those who in some way do not participate and are not in full communion with it will not inherit the kingdom of heaven. Currently, this would mean closing the doors of heaven to 82% (eighty-two percent) of the world's population, since according to estimates, only 18% (eighteen percent) of humanity is in communion with the Pope — which is the criterion for determining whether someone is part of the Church or not. In other words, according to the immutable and dogmatic truth proclaimed by the Church in Ecumenical Council, more than 6,600,000,000 (six billion six hundred million) people today would be doomed to eternal death, to hell.

It is worth considering the act of faith found in the final part of the Bible Ave Maria, which states: “My God, I firmly believe in all the truths you have revealed and that you teach us through your Church because you can neither deceive nor be deceived.” Thus, the dogma presented in the aforementioned Council is true at all times, otherwise, God (through His Holy Church) would be lying, which is contrary to the divine nature.

As if the damnation of so many souls was not enough, some renowned saints like Saint Leonard of Port Maurice — canonized in 1867 by Pope Pius IX and called “the great missionary of the eighteenth century” by none other than Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori (the most contemporary of the Doctors of the Church) — taught that due to the abundance of mortal sins committed and the infrequent reception of the sacrament of confession, the majority of Catholics would also be condemned to hell (that is, condemning themselves).

In one of his most famous books, the sermon entitled “the small number of those who are saved,” Saint Leonard states that:

[…] Saint Vincent Ferrer will show you by a fact what you ought to think. He relates that a subdeacon of Lyon, having renounced his dignity and having retired to a desert to do penance there, died on the same day and at the same hour as Saint Bernard. Appearing to his bishop after his death, he said: “Know, my lord, that at the same hour I expired, thirty-three thousand people died. Of that number, Bernard and I ascended to heaven without delay, three entered Purgatory, and all the others fell into hell.”

Our chronicles testify to an even more frightening fact. One of our Franciscan religious, celebrated for his doctrine and holiness, preaching in Germany, portrayed the ugliness of the sin of impurity so strongly that a woman fell dead of grief in front of everyone. Then, coming back to life, she said: “When I was presented before the Tribunal of God, sixty thousand people arrived there at the same time from all parts of the world; of that number, three were saved by passing through purgatory, and all the rest were condemned.”

O abyss of the judgments of God! Out of thirty-three thousand, only five were saved! Out of sixty thousand, only three went to heaven! Sinners who hear me, of which number will you be? … What do you have to say? … What do you think?..

It is observed, then, that out of 33,000 (thirty-three thousand) people, 5 (five) were saved and that out of 60,000 (sixty thousand) people, 3 (three) went to heaven, passing first through purgatory. In the case of the first judgment, the ratio is 1/6,600 (one in six thousand six hundred), and in the case of the last judgment, the ratio is 1/20,000 (one in twenty thousand), obtained through simple arithmetic. If all divine judgments are like this, it is correct to infer, according to Saint Leonard, that the probability of a human being reaching heaven is between 1/20,000 (one in twenty thousand) and 1/6,600 (one in six thousand six hundred), which, in percentage, is equivalent to 0.005% to 0.015% of people being saved since the Redemption wrought by Christ, at least (before the sacrifice of the Cross the number would be lower, for sure).

It is certain that Saint Augustine condemned unbaptized newborns to hell, but another Doctor of the Church as important or more important than he, namely, Saint Thomas Aquinas, had more compassion for the little ones and decreed that the unbaptized, despite still bearing original sin, did not commit any sinful acts, thus being free from actual sin, which justified a favorable treatment for them. In this way, he defended a separate place for them, far from hell, a place closer to God, which, although not within the Body of Christ (within the Church), would allow them to enjoy full natural happiness. They would not see God face to face (beatific vision), would not have supernatural happiness, but would experience in their souls the maximum happiness a living human being could experience.

In one of the letters from the Montfort website, there is the following passage:

[…] Saint Thomas Aquinas, the greatest of all theologians, taught that the unbaptized who die without sin suffer no pain from the loss or “internal affliction” — nihil omnino dolebunt de carentia visionis divinae — “In Sent.”, II, 33, q. ii, a.2). At first (“In Sent.”, loc. cit.). Saint Thomas explains that the limbus infantium is not merely a negative state of immunity from suffering and bitterness, but a state of positive joy in which the soul is united to God through knowledge and love of Him, provided by natural capacity.

Thus, the Thomistic position is much more optimistic than Augustine's and was adopted by the Church in the centuries following Aquinas’ death until just before the Second Vatican Council. From all that has been stated, it is clear that, according to Catholicism (and Thomism in particular), being aborted guarantees a 100% (one hundred percent) chance of eternal happiness in the afterlife, while being born, growing up, and living represents an enormous risk of over 99.9% (ninety-nine point nine percent) of going to hell and staying there eternally, suffering the worst punishments and torments, enduring fire and demons.

Therefore, it is concluded that the Catholic position against abortion makes no sense, as it is almost certain that the person born, baptized, and a member of the Church will suffer the second death. The most rational thing would be for Catholics to encourage abortion since the unborn are guaranteed full and eternal natural happiness, according to the opinion of Thomas Aquinas, who, alongside Saint Augustine, is one of the greatest Doctors of the Roman Church.

Addendum: When I was Catholic, in the final stages of my belief, I would catch myself asking God why I was born and running a 99.9% risk of going to hell, when I could already be in the limbo of infants enjoying complete happiness.

Hello, guys! I am a Brazilian former Catholic. I wrote some personal reflections on Catholicism that I will be sharing with you throughout the week. I'm using ChatGPT to translate. =) 

Animal suffering in the Catholic view

One of the reasons I stopped being Catholic relates to animal suffering. According to the traditional teaching of the Church, the pains that humans endure have a reason, a justification. For example, God allows the faithful in a state of grace to unite their daily sufferings with those of the Crucified Christ, whether to earn merits and achieve a higher position in the heavenly hierarchy, to shorten time in purgatory, or even to alleviate the punishments of hell.

It is also worth noting that, according to official Catholic teaching, human suffering is only useful if the person is in a state of grace. If they are not—meaning if they are in mortal sin—then all suffering is useless and will not serve any of the purposes mentioned above.

However, unfortunately, when it comes to animal suffering, Catholicism has not been able to develop any theological justification for such a phenomenon. The reason for this is quite simple: according to the Doctors of the Church, especially Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, there is no life after death for them. Spiritual beings capable of subsisting apart from a physical body are only angels and human souls. Heaven will be inherited only by humans, for the animal soul is mortal, says Aquinas, based on Aristotle. Therefore, all the pains of animals are useless. There is no redemption for them, no hidden treasure, no value at all in their suffering. They suffer for nothing, in vain. They suffer just to suffer, simply.

This happens because the Bible, and especially the doctrine developed by the Church, is extremely anthropocentric, caring about nothing but God and His “special” creation, the human being. So much so that “all things were made for the pleasure of man.” Thus, the Bible and the Church Fathers teach that animals are inferior slaves, whose skin is destined to make clothing, whose flesh is to serve as food for human beings, and whose milk is not meant to nourish their offspring but rather to quench the thirst of men. These examples extend to the use of animals in religious sacrifices, for God, for some reason, forgives a human being when an animal (an innocent life) is slaughtered on the altar of the temple; as a means of transport; and as slaves in fields, to pull plows.

Moreover, the “great” Thomas Aquinas teaches that humans have no duty of charity towards animals, although he suggests that we treat them well because the treatment given to animals reflects the treatment given to humans. Aquinas meant that animals should be treated well not for their own sake, but because of (guess what) human beings. Aquinas adds:

“No irrational creature can be loved with charity. And for three reasons. The first is that we have friendship with whom we wish well. Now, we cannot properly wish well to an irrational creature, which is not capable of possessing any good. Second, because all friendship is based on sharing life, for nothing is so proper to friendship as living together, as the Philosopher (Aristotle) says. Now, irrational creatures cannot share in human life, which is rational. Therefore, we cannot have any friendship with irrational creatures, except perhaps metaphorically. The third reason is charity itself, which is based on participation in eternal happiness, of which the irrational creature is not capable. Therefore, it is impossible for us to have the love of charity towards the irrational creature.” (Aquinas, 1980, p. 2,232)

A terrifying text, I know, and there are those who call this man the “Angelic” Doctor. I’m not sure exactly what kind of angelic category Aquinas fits into. Continuing, as you can see, the Catholic God has given no purpose to the suffering of animals. Think of a kitten being eaten by worms or whose eyes have been gouged out by some wretch. These pains won’t educate it, that is, they won’t teach it anything, because Catholic doctrine calls it irrational and, as such, incapable of learning anything. They won’t earn it heaven, they won’t lessen its punishment in hell, they won’t shorten its time in purgatory—in short, all the justifications the Church found for human suffering find no shelter in animal suffering.

Animal suffering in the Kardecist (Spiritist) view

I’ll be brief. In the Spiritist view, the justification for suffering is the same for animals and humans. Since we all have a common beginning (life starts in the atom, then moves to the mineral, then to the plant, animal, humanoid, higher life forms, until pure spirits—in other words, we humans were once animals in past lives, and current animals will one day become human), suffering in the various forms of life serves to teach and help in spiritual progress. Kardec gives the example of a diamond that needs to be polished to reach its best version. If the diamond could feel, the polishing process would surely be painful.

Conclusion

Therefore, based on all that has been said, the conclusion I have reached is that the Catholic God is evil, for He creates beings to suffer needlessly. I do not want to and cannot believe that such a wicked being exists, which is why I prefer Kardec’s view.

It is said that the Catholic God wants the salvation of all and that He died for our sins precisely for this reason. However, when we take a closer look at the Church's doctrine, we realize that this is not quite the case. In fact, it seems that the Catholic God does everything to hinder our salvation.

First of all, God is omniscient, meaning that He knows and is aware of all things—past, present, and future. When He created Lucifer and the fallen angels, He knew in advance that they would rebel and all the evil they would cause to humanity. Moreover, according to Thomas Aquinas, God made the angels in such a way that once they decided not to submit, they could no longer turn back or repent of their choice, solidifying their will. See, God makes it impossible for demons to repent and choose the side of "good" because He created them in this manner, incapable of reversing their decisions.

Furthermore, being omniscient, God also foresaw Eve's sin, yet He chose to "test her." After the commission of original sin, He could have simply forgiven them with a mere snap of His fingers or something of the sort, as it is said that He is love and goodness and that His mercy surpasses His justice. However, God did not want to forgive Adam and Eve so easily, and we know that being God and omnipotent, He could indeed have forgiven them in any way, without requiring anything in return or even demanding something of little value in exchange for His forgiveness. He could have told Adam and Eve, for example, “I forgive you, as long as you do 50 sit-ups.” Everything would have been much simpler.

However, this is where things get complicated, as God did not want to forgive them so easily. He actually wanted a grand sacrifice, to sacrifice Himself, for the Doctors of the Church say that each sin against God is infinite because His majesty is infinite. Thus, only with an infinite sacrifice would it be possible to restore His glory and appease His wrath. However, we have seen that this reasoning does not hold up, as being omnipotent, He could have forgiven them just as easily, as demonstrated earlier. If He were limited by the need for an infinite sacrifice, He would not be omnipotent and would cease to be God.

Moreover, being omniscient, God knows in advance which human beings will choose to follow His laws and “love Him” and which will be indifferent to Him. He knows this even before creating the soul, before its conception. And even so, knowing, for example, that a soul will reject Him, He decides to create it, knowing it will spend less than 100 years alive on Earth, leading a suffering life (since most of humanity suffers greatly) only to end up condemned to hell ("to be condemned," as the Doctors say) and spend eternity there, in the worst way, with the worst punishments and torments, with individualized torture designed to fit their profile perfectly. I reiterate, in hell, that person will receive treatment that displeases them the most, and this will be forever, that is, much more than a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, or a billion years.

Continuing, this infinite sacrifice was accomplished by delivering Himself to death, over which He triumphed by rising three days later. And now you might think: “We are saved, Christ has set us free!” A delusion, for the salvation of Christ does not come for free. You must fulfill a series of rites and prerequisites to earn the merits of Jesus and gain entry to heaven. First, you will need to receive the sacrament of baptism and be a member of the Catholic Church, that is, to be in communion with the Pope, as we proved in a previous text.

After entering the Christian life, a person must avoid committing sins. And that’s where things get interesting, for it was God Himself who created the list of sins, that is, the list of things that offend Him. He sanctioned the criminal code, I mean, the code of sins, and included whatever He deemed fit. For example, He included in the list of sins things like masturbation, sex outside of marriage, gluttony, swearing, and other contingent things that might not have been included. A considerable part of these behaviors considered sinful are natural to humans; they are things an average person is inclined to do when they feel like it or as spontaneous manifestations of their personality. Therefore, the Christian finds themselves unable to express their being, to act naturally, having to be “on guard” all the time, always worried about not offending His Majesty, who is easily offended by practically everything. Thus, the Christian cannot relax, does not have a moment of peace, is in constant alertness and self-analysis, for any movement could be sinful.

Not only is it insufficient to declare the sinfulness of basic human behaviors, but the Church also teaches that just one mortal sin is enough for a person to lose the state of grace and go to hell if they die without confession. In other words, God established through His Holy Church that it is not twenty instances of masturbation, not 15 episodes of gluttony, not ten instances of sex outside of marriage, but rather that such behaviors practiced just once are enough for a person to spend eternity being tortured in the worst possible way. In other words, God can condemn someone eternally because of five minutes.

Moreover, it is worth recalling the numbers from Saint Leonard of Porto Maurizio in the book "The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved," which attest that Christian salvation is one of the most difficult entrance exams in history, if not the most difficult, with an incredibly low approval rate. As I wrote in a previous text:

“Out of 33,000 (thirty-three thousand) people, 5 (five) were saved, and out of 60,000 (sixty thousand) people, 3 (three) went to heaven, first passing through purgatory. In the case of the first judgment, the proportion is 1/6,600 (one out of six thousand six hundred), and in the case of the final judgment, the proportion 1/20,000 (one out of twenty thousand) is obtained through simple arithmetic. If all divine judgments are like this, it is correct to assert, according to Saint Leonard, that the probability of a human being reaching heaven is between 1/20,000 (one out of twenty thousand) and 1/6,600 (one out of six thousand six hundred), which, in percentage terms, is equivalent to 0.005% to 0.015% of people being saved since the Redemption brought about by Christ, at least (before the sacrifice on the Cross, the number would certainly have been lower).”

We have already seen that the list of sins was made by God, and that the number of sins necessary to go to hell (that is, one) was established by Him. Furthermore, the exceedingly high rate of the damned has been demonstrated. It seems that everything He has done so far has been to hinder our salvation, not to facilitate it. If He genuinely wanted to make salvation easier for people, He would remove some behaviors from the list of sins and/or increase the tolerance, that is, the number of times one could sin without going to hell (how about allowing ten times instead of just once?).

But the difficulty does not stop there. Just as Jesus made the angels incapable of reversing their first and most important decision, He also established that once a person dies, they are unable to repent of their sins. And why is this, if not to prevent souls from leaving hell? If they do not repent, there are no reasons to save them, but once again I repeat, who prevents their post-mortem repentance is God Himself. Thus, He does not care to remove them from hell out of pure personal whim, considering that the condemned chose not to flatter the divine ego while alive. Such divine behavior resembles, at the very least, a narcissistic individual.

Furthermore, some theologians admit that souls in hell can repent. But then, what goodness would there be in a God who hears the cries and repentance of His children and solemnly ignores them? He watches the suffering of billions (perhaps?) of souls, sees them begging for forgiveness in the worst possible place, and is unmoved. If He were moved, He would find a way to take them out of hell; after all, He is omnipotent and, in theory, is not limited by His own rules, being the one who creates them. Or does hell (His creation) prevent God from taking them out of there? It would be absurd to think so.

The Church should have adopted the thesis of apocatastasis by Origen and Saint Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian Fathers, according to which, at the end of times, all will be saved and redeemed by the blood of Christ, even the demons. Such doctrine aligns much better with the idea of a benevolent God, but unfortunately, it was set aside by Catholicism, which preferred eternal hell, perhaps as a means to effectively threaten people and achieve conversions.

Therefore, God knows in advance who the condemned are and does everything to hinder our salvation, always choosing the most difficult means for humans while still requiring to be called good. I believe that in the way Catholic doctrine is presented, it would make more sense for God to be called evil. However, if it were possible for the Church to change dogmas, adopting apocatastasis in place of eternal hell would make it possible to conceive of divine goodness, for the sufferings of hell would be means of purification for souls to enter heaven, and not mere capricious and senseless divine vengeance.

So, generally the answers christians give to the problem of evil (why is there evil in the universe if a good God created it and sustain it?) are that they are a result of human free-will, or that God allows evil because he can bring good out of it. And I can even accept the idea that some amount of evil would perhaps be inevitable in a world populated by free creatures as are human beings. However, I’d argue the problem of evil goes far beyond that.

In the eighteenth century christian philosopher Gottfried Leibniz established the idea that we live in the best of all possible worlds: as God is omniscient, he knew all the worlds that could theoretically exist (that is, worlds which don’t entail any contradiction). So, a world with free human beings and absolutely no evil or suffering at all would not be possible. It’s a contradiction, so it could not exist. After thinking about all the possible worlds, as God is good, he must have chosen the best one to bring into creation- even the second best, or the third best, etc., would not be good enough for an omnibenevolent deity. This means our world is the best there is.

Now, this obviously sounds ridiculous, and was very smartly ridiculed by Voltaire in his novella Candide. We certainly could very easily think about a world that was in every point equal to ours, except by the fact that a single child who in our world died of cancer, in this hypothetical world would come to live a happy and fulfilling life until their old years. This world, anyone would agree, would be a better world than ours, even by just this one person. But there is really no reason why this world couldn’t exist. Therefore, we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

Then it becomes obvious that God did not create the best possible world. Assuming he existed, he created ours, which could be better. Why? Some other christian philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas in a more or less analogue debate on the Middle Ages, would say there is no such a thing as the best of all possible worlds, as God could always create one more good person in any world, and this world would then become better. So the idea of a best possible world is as impossible as the idea of the biggest possible number- we could always just add 1 to this number and it would become even bigger. Fair enough, but if that is so, why didn’t God create, like, the world with the least amount of suffering, or least amount of suffering by happiness ratio? As is obvious by the above example of a world equal to ours but with one less child dying by cancer, our world is not the world with the least amount of suffering by happiness ratio. It could easily have more happiness and less suffering. So there is no reason God would not have done this. Except that the most likely explanation for this, which is the simplest explanation (Ockham’s razor), is that God doesn’t exist. Another solution, sure, would be admitting that God is not that good, or that interested in humankind.

But my point is that if the problem of evil is put in these terms of not only the very existence of evil, but rather the amount of evil that exists, then the classic christian arguments from free-will cannot solve it.

Edit: my computer's auto-correction.

According to the wiki page,. Utraquism

was a belief amongst Hussites, a reformist Christian movement, that communion under both kinds (both bread and wine, as opposed to the bread alone) should be administered to the laity during the celebration of the Eucharist.

I'm an Anglican (ACNA), and there is much I do agree with the Catholic Church about, but this is one area where I don't. The laity should receive under both kinds

It is clear that people of all religions have abortions: https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2020/10/people-all-religions-use-birth-control-and-have-abortions.

The main reasons (U.S) women have abortions are: unreadiness for a child, financial difficulty, relationship problems, being done having children, and personal or fetal health: https://www.guttmacher.org/journals/psrh/2005/reasons-us-women-have-abortions-quantitative-and-qualitative-perspectives.

Some of these reasons can be sidestepped entirely or removed or improved with:

• Improved access to contraception; safer, cheaper, and more effective contraception; other forms of contraception (the male pill, etc.)
• Better sex education
• Better social conditions; financial and career support for new mothers; better wages in general; cheaper childcare, etc. (which all would hopefully be part of our future societies)

And we have seen declines in abortion rates in recent years, due at least in part to aspects of these.

However, the first two will not generally be available to some subset of Catholics (of course, most Catholics do use contraception). It seems likely to me that contraception avoidance already explains the overrepresentation of Catholics in the breakout by religion in the first Guttmacher link above.

I think a majority of people seeking abortions in the future will be Catholics who shun or cannot access contraception and recognize too late their reasons to not have a child.

I’m not sure what the Church’s position is on expanding the duties of clergy in general, but here’s my personal suggestion: Women won’t be allowed to join the priesthood or deaconhood; rather, nuns will have an expanded and more active role in the Church. This would include being able to perform Mass and the Sacraments. I feel this would go a long way in compromising the two views on the subject, as it would afford women the ability to perform the most visible duties of priests without actually being ones themselves.

Thoughts?

Hello! Admittedly a non-Catholic here, but respectful of those beliefs. I do have a question about the alleged apparitions at Fatima, Portugal. Two points:

First, what is meant by the apparition saying to the children: “God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If people do what I ask, many souls will be saved and there will be peace.”? It seems to be saying that devotion to Mary’s “Immaculate Heart” can save souls, rather than through confession of faith in Jesus Christ as outlined in Scripture. Am I misinterpreting her words?

Second, the apparition commands these children to sacrifice, and they end up physically harming themselves with rope. I’ll leave it at that - any explanation is welcome.