Matt Fradd's Blog, page 7

Answering the Best Pro-Choice Argument

Many times pro-lifers have to convince abortion supporters that the unborn child is a person. Yet some pro-abortionists agree with us on the unborn child’s personhood and dignity. They’ve created another argument to attempt to justify abortion called the Violinist Argument.

In a nutshell, it says that someone can be equal to another but not have the right to their body. To support this point, pro-abortionist author Judith Jarvis Thomson asks you to imagine that you’re kidnapped, wake up in a hospital bed, and find a violinist attached to you. The violinist will die unless they stay connected to you because you’re the only person in the world with the body type to sustain their life. The doctor says you only have to be connected for nine months.

Thomson argues that although the violinist has equal rights to you, they don’t have the right to use your body without your consent. Therefore, you have the right to unplug them.

According to Thomson, pregnant women have the same right to “unplug” from the child in their womb through abortion.

Here’s why the Violinist Argument fails.

1. In most cases, a woman consented to the act of sex that produced the child.
Generally, most people know that pregnancy is a possible outcome of sex. That’s why when a couple has sex, breaks up, and the woman finds out she’s pregnant, the father has to pay child support. He may not want the child, but he consented to the sex that led to the child’s conception.

In the violinist scenario, you were kidnapped and attached to the musician. You had no idea the misfortune would befall you.

2. Parents have a responsibility to their children.
The violinist is a stranger, so you have no obligation to keep them plugged into you. But parents of an unborn child have an obligation to care for their offspring. They’re not required to do that for a stranger.

This is also why abortion is still wrong in cases of rape. Even though the woman didn’t consent to intercourse, she is still the mother of the child. While she isn’t obligated to care for the child long-term, she does have to provide for its basic needs until another caregiver can be found.

3. The uterus is in the woman’s body, but it’s meant to nurture other bodies.
A spin on the violinist argument goes like this: “You give birth to a child who gets kidney disease and will die unless you give them a kidney. You’re not obligated to give them your kidney. In like manner, a woman isn’t obligated to give her unborn child her uterus.”

Now ask yourself this: “What is the nature and purpose of the kidney versus the uterus?” The kidney exists in your body, for your body. That’s why the law can’t force you to give someone else your kidney.

But the uterus exists in your body for another person’s body. During a woman’s fertile years, her uterus is frequently preparing to receive the next generation’s body.

Like all other pro-abortion arguments, the Violinist Argument fails on many levels. Supporters could try to find a better argument for abortion or, better yet, embrace the dignity of every human person, born and unborn.

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The Most Common Objections to Entering Religious Life

We still await a renewal of religious life in the Church, as the number of men and women entering religious communities remains historically low.

It’s likely that some of you reading this have a call to religious life. But there may be things standing in the way of discerning your call.

Here are a few of the most common objections people make to becoming a religious sister or brother.

1. I can’t commit to something for the rest of my life.
We live in an age of broken promises. The high divorce rate has destroyed many people’s faith in life-long commitments, including religious life. Plus, our modern world offers us seemingly limitless alternatives to whatever vocation we are considering.

When you join a religious order, you don’t immediately promise to stay there for life. You go through a period of discernment where you’ll test your call. Don’t let fear of commitment keep you from trying religious life. If it’s not meant for you, God and your superiors will make that clear.

Time spent in a religious order is never wasted. You’ll grow in ways that will help you in the future, no matter what vocation you ultimately choose.

2. I have a strong desire for marriage.
Good! Then you’ll make a great sister or brother. Here’s the thing: The vocation to marriage is written in our human nature. Even those called to the priesthood or religious life may feel the tug toward marriage at some point.

Religious life doesn’t destroy our marital instincts, it elevates them. Every religious is called to be a spouse of the eternal Bridegroom and a spiritual mother or father to the people they encounter.

Religious life is simply a different way to be a spouse and parent.

3. There are difficult people in the community I’m thinking about entering.
Religious life isn’t easy. Those of us on the outside are tempted to look in and see nothing but brothers or sisters living in eternal peace and harmony. But becoming a religious doesn’t automatically purge us of annoying habits. In fact, one way that religious life sanctifies you is by teaching you to continue loving even difficult brothers or sisters. Frankly, that’s not much different than marriage, where spouses have to learn to put up with each other’s faults.

If you’ve thought about religious life and still aren’t sure about your vocation, talk to a priest or a spiritual director. Religious life is a very fulfilling vocation that will do much to help you reach heaven.

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Do Catholics Believe the Church is More Important than the Bible?

Protestants believe in sola scriptura, the idea that Scripture alone is the final authority for determining Christian beliefs and practices. Catholics contend that we need an authoritative Church to correctly interpret the Bible.

Some Protestants have countered this by saying that Catholics believe that the Church is more important than the Bible.

That’s not true. Here’s why.

The Church is not a source of revelation.
When we speak of the “three-legged stool” of Scripture, Tradition, and the Church, note that only Scripture and Tradition pass on God’s divine revelation. The Church is not a source of revelation but rather the infallible interpreter of the other two “legs.” In this sense, you could say that the Bible is more important than the Church.

But Scripture needs an authoritative interpreter, which is the Church’s Magisterium. When there seems to be opposition between the words of Scripture and the Church, we listen to the Church.

“Doesn’t this put the Church above Scripture?” you may ask.

No. Any perceived conflict between Scripture and infallible Church teaching is really a conflict between our personal interpretation of Scripture and that of the Church. The same Holy Spirit who inspired the Bible also guides the Magisterium. And if there’s one thing we know about God, it’s that He does not contradict Himself.

The Church’s magisterial authority doesn’t make it better than Scripture, as Vatican II explains: “This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit; it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.”

In other words, the Magisterium is a servant of God’s Word, and God wishes to speak to us through His Church’s voice.

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What to Do When God Makes You Wait

Nobody likes to wait, especially in our fast-paced world. We enjoy fast food, instant connections with people via social media, and on-demand news updates.

Yet life still makes us wait on many things, whether it’s discovering our vocation, finding a new job, or recovering from a long illness.

God gives us a special virtue to help with the waiting: patience. It’s something we can all use more of.

What is patience?
Patience is a form of courage. There are two parts to courage: attacking and enduring. Enduring involves patience.

Patience helps you hold onto something good and preserve the use of your reason despite obstacles, especially obstacles that have stood in your way for a long time.

For example, you may have to care for a sick loved one for a month. This places some obstacles in the way of certain goods you want to pursue, such as traveling. Patience helps you wait for that good or opens you up to another good God wants to give you in its place.

Patience balances you between two extremes.
Some people expect nothing but bad things out of life. Others think they are above misfortune. Both extremes are dangerous.

God wants you to experience some trials in life to help you grow, but He doesn’t want you to be destroyed by them. Patience helps you peacefully accept that bad things will happen and fortifies you so you can face them. The good will win in the end.

Patience doesn’t require you to be a doormat. There are some obstacles in life that you should confront. For example, if you’re bullied at work or school, you should take steps to stop it. (This may require getting help from others and that’s OK.)

Be assured that God will grant you complete freedom from tribulations if you follow Him. He can neither deceive nor be deceived. Meditate often on this truth to find the patience to bear whatever life brings you.

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What To Do When You’re Sad

Sadness is part of our human condition. But admittedly, it burdens the soul and can negatively affect our relationships, especially when it persists for a long time.

So what do we do when we’re feeling blue? The internet is full of quick fixes for sadness, but the root often goes deeper than what life hacks can cure.

Instead, let’s turn to our Christian tradition to find constructive ways to manage sadness.

Recognize that sadness is morally neutral.
In itself, sadness is neither good nor evil. This is freeing. Sometimes well-meaning Christian leaders can make us feel guilty about being sad, saying, “The Gospel frees you! Why are you sad?”

It’s true that God’s will for our future is eternal joy in heaven. But on the way there, sad seasons will come and go. There’s no escaping it.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can do to mitigate a particular moment of sadness (we’ll get to that soon). But you’re wasting your time if you think you can go through life without ever experiencing a heavy heart.

Cultivate virtues that help deal with sadness.
St. Thomas highlights patience, by which we weather the sorrows of life. The virtue of perseverance strengthens you for lengthy periods of grieving.

God has given you both these virtues at your baptism, and He wants to grow them in you. Practice them and pray for the strength to live them in your daily life.

St. Thomas’ remedies for sadness.
1. Pleasure. This isn’t hedonism masquerading as Christianity. We mean the delight you feel when embracing something good, such as food, drink, or a morning walk. By pleasure, we temporarily escape the fatigue sadness forces on us. (St. Thomas mentions sleep and baths as practical pleasures to alleviate sorrow.)

2. Crying. Yes, this most intellectual of saints says crying your sorrow out is healthy. It’s better to do that than keep the feeling locked inside you, eating away your joy.

3. Friends. The compassion of those around you goes a long way toward alleviating sorrow. Sadness often festers in solitude when you’re alone with your thoughts. A true friend will be happy to share your burden.

4. Contemplating the truth. This doesn’t mean you need to become a great philosopher. You simply need to recall something that’s true to keep you grounded in your identity and mission.

For example, if you’re anxious about an upcoming work deadline, but have never missed one before, call this truth to mind to calm your spirit.

As we celebrate Christ’s resurrection, may our Lord fill you with hope so that, no matter what you’re suffering, you’ll have the confidence that one day you’ll be free of sorrow and full of His joy!

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Was Christ’s Resurrection Merely a Hallucination?

We Catholics believe that Jesus Christ literally rose from the dead. The credibility of our entire faith rests on this truth, for as St. Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).

However, there are Christians who doubt the historicity of the resurrection. They, along with atheists, put forth different theories to explain Christ’s empty tomb on Easter morning.

One popular explanation is the Hallucination Theory. The gist of it is that the apostles were really sad over Jesus’ death. They so longed for consolation that they thought they saw Jesus comforting them.

There are several problems with this story.

People who have grief-induced hallucinations of the dead rarely think they’re resurrected.
It’s true that some people have hallucinations and think they’re seeing the faces of loved ones. But when they explain their visions, they rarely mention they think the people came back from the dead. They primarily think these are visits from loved ones in the afterlife.

If the apostles did hallucinate about Jesus, they would think, “He’s okay. He’s in Abraham’s bosom.” But they preached that Jesus truly came back from the dead.

It would have been easy to find Jesus’ body.
If the apostles were hallucinating, it would have been easy for the Jewish leaders to find and show the corpse of Jesus to prove He was dead. And it would have been tough for anyone to hide the body. In Jerusalem, Jesus’ physical appearance was well-known.

St. Paul names several witnesses to the resurrection.
“For I handed onto you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures; that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures; that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. After that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me” (1 Cor. 15:3-8).

Could all of these people — who were not always in the same location when they saw Christ — have hallucinations of Him? Unlikely.

The resurrection was a real, historical event. It was not a spiritual resurrection, but a bodily one. It was an event that opened the door to our future reunification with our bodies after death!

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Does Mass Count If You Watch It on TV?

The first Mass happened approximately 2,000 years ago on the first Holy Thursday. Since then, much of the Mass has stayed the same, including the miracle of transubstantiation. Priests still repeat Jesus’ words: “Take, eat; this is my body.”

Some things have changed, including the way people participate in Mass. While televised and streaming Masses have been around for a while, they became more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic since many churches were closed. Lots of Catholics became so used to watching Mass from home that they continued to do so after churches reopened.

This raises the question: Does watching Mass on your TV, computer, or phone fulfill your Sunday obligation?

Does Mass count if you watch it on TV?
The answer is no. The Church requires you to be physically present at Mass.

The Church does teach, however, that you can be relieved of your Sunday obligation for serious reasons, such as illness or dangerous weather. If you have to stay home, you can decide whether to watch a live-streamed Mass. You are not obliged to do so; therefore, there’s no need to confess skipping it.

If you do watch a livestream on a device, you can still pray along with those in attendance, listen to the homily and make an act of spiritual communion with Christ.

But virtual Masses will never replace actually being at Mass. We live in an age where we communicate with each other more through screens than face-to-face. Virtual communication has its benefits, but we need to reprioritize in-person relationships. Attending your parish each Sunday for Mass is one way of doing that.

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5 Reasons Jesus Christ Died

On Good Friday we commemorate the death of our Savior. Jesus, in the greatest act of love the world has ever known, freely chose to suffer and die for our salvation.

But Jesus is God, so did He have to die? Couldn’t He have found a less painful way to redeem the human race?

The answer is yes, but St. Thomas Aquinas gives us five reasons why it was fitting for Jesus Christ to die.

1. “To satisfy for the whole human race, which was sentenced to die on account of sin.”
Adam and Eve brought death upon the human race when they disobeyed God. Aquinas quotes Genesis 2:17, where God warns the first couple not to eat of the forbidden fruit: “In what day soever ye shall eat of it, ye shall die the death.”

We also lost our original holiness and could never get that back on our own. Christ paid a debt He did not owe because the debt was too big for us to pay.

2. “To show the reality of the flesh assumed.”
Aquinas quotes the early Church Father Eusebius: “For, as Eusebius says…’if, after dwelling among men, Christ were suddenly to disappear from men’s sight, as though shunning death, then by all men He would be likened to a phantom.'”

Some early heresies taught that Christ’s body was only an illusion, not real flesh. Yet phantoms can’t suffer wounds to the flesh. Christ chose to identify with us even in our physical suffering and death.

3. “That by dying He might deliver us from fearing death.”
There are few things we fear as much as death. Religions and cultures have developed different ways to manage or conquer this terror.

If death truly was the end, or if we had no hope of eternal life, then this fear would be justified. But Christ destroyed death and opened the gates of heaven. Though this doesn’t remove all nervousness surrounding death, we know it’s not the end.

4. “That He might set us the example of dying to sin spiritually.”
Christ never sinned. However, Aquinas says that Christ died “in the body to the likeness of sin — that is, to its penalty.” In doing so, He inspires us to die to our sins so that we can enjoy the freedom of His grace.

5. “That He might instill into us the hope of rising from the dead.”
St. Thomas quotes St. Paul, who challenges the Corinthians: “If Christ be preached that He rose again from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection from the dead?”

If Christ can raise Himself from the dead, then it’s unreasonable to think He can’t raise us.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

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Can Polygenism, Original Sin, and Adam and Eve Be Reconciled?

Over the past couple of hundreds of years, some scientists have endorsed polygenism: the belief that humans have more than one original ancestral pair. Of course, this runs counter to the idea that Adam and Eve begot the entire human race.

We’re not endorsing the idea of polygenism (there are lots of problems with it), but we can show that it is not as contradictory to our beliefs about Adam, Eve, and Original Sin as some non-Catholics have claimed.

There are two models that show this. Note: This is a hypothetical thought experiment, not a statement of doctrine or science.

1. There was an original rational human couple that sprang from “near humans.”
Only humans have spiritual, rational souls. Other living beings have souls, but they are not spiritual.

Archeological evidence points to the existence of what we may call “near humans” or “anatomically modern” humans. Their bones are similar to ours, but they don’t display the characteristically human behavior of what we’ll call “behaviorally modern humans.”

Around 50,000 years ago, these early humans suddenly started acting like us. This could be when God infused spiritual souls into a behaviorally modern couple, our “Adam and Eve.” This caused a great leap forward in human abilities and led to this couple’s children dominating the land. Merely anatomically modern humans were soon wiped out.

2. Adam and Eve could symbolize the human race.
“Adam” means “man,” as in “mankind.” “Eve” is derived from an ancient Hebrew word for “life.” They appear in the Book of Genesis, a book that — while communicating truth — uses a lot of symbolism. In this case, Adam and Eve could be a symbol for the early human community, which as a whole turned its back on God.

This goes to show that, try as they might, those who want to disprove the Church can’t rely on the idea of polygenism to dismantle core beliefs about our origins.

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Do Dinosaurs Disprove God?

Atheists and agnostics sometimes claim that animal pain disproves God’s existence. Why would a benevolent Creator let His helpless creatures needlessly suffer?

We came across one person who claimed that God couldn’t exist because dinosaurs spent ages ripping each other apart. Human suffering may be redemptive, but animal suffering isn’t. When a T-Rex kills a stegosaurus, it appears that nothing good happens to the dead dinosaur.

Yet, dinosaur violence doesn’t disprove God. Here’s why.

Animals don’t have the same rights as people.
If you give dinosaurs the same rights as yourself, then it does seem that God treated them unfairly. But animals don’t possess human rights. They may have some rights. How many? Nobody agrees on the amount.

Dinosaurs don’t necessarily come out on the negative side.
Even if you have some bad in your life, there is probably plenty of good as well.

It was the same for dinosaurs. In general, they had it good on earth for a very long time and no natural catastrophe or predation negates that fact. A grown stegosaurus who got eaten enjoyed many years of life before its fateful death.

Like all suffering, dinosaur suffering could have led to a greater good.
Young, helpless, carnivorous dinosaurs probably relied on their parents to bring them meat. If they had no meat, they died.

This type of death, and the total extinction of dinosaurs, was brutal. But the human race is grateful that we don’t live in the shadows of the velociraptor and T-Rex.

We don’t know if animals have an afterlife.
Many Catholics assume they don’t, but the Church has never officially settled this question. It’s a real possibility. People have had credible near-death experiences and said they saw their pets in heaven.

If dinosaurs have an afterlife, that more than makes up for their suffering on earth. They may not enjoy the beatific vision, but they’re happy. We know that in heaven all pain and suffering will cease. Anything suffered in life on earth will be minuscule compared to the joy of God’s kingdom.

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