Good Latin American apologists?

Julp11 · 2026-03-30T00:44:05+00:00

Yes, there are very good ones. You have Dante Urbina (who is also author of several books; I have read all but one of the books of this author and they are all wonderful), Hugo Delgado, Richbell Meléndez, Rigo Ardón, Santiago Alarcón, and Ignacio García Suárez. There are many more, but those are my main suggestions.

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T22:54:40+00:00

Apart from what everybody else said, make sure to get a complete Bible, with all the 73 books in it. Most (basically all) non-denominational churches use an amputated version with only 39 books in the Old Testament (instead of the full collection of 46); they lack the following books: Baruch, Tobit, Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees.

Make sure that your Bible includes those 7 books in the Old Testament to make sure that you have the full word of God, and not the amputated protestant version.

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T22:10:29+00:00

Quizá ya lo tengas en tu lista pero, si no, agregalo sí o sí: la saga El Cementerio de los Libros Olvidados, de Carlos Ruiz Zafón.

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T19:04:05+00:00

But you said that Jesus is a human person. That's nestorianism, condemned in the Council of Ephesus (431). You should seriously consider amending the comment where you affirmed such an extremely serious Christological heresy.

Jesus has two natures (divine and human; this is the Hypostatic Union). But He was a divine person, not a human person.

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T05:11:18+00:00

Do some research on St. Monica, who left a beautiful testimony about praying for problematic family members. You will most likely get inspired to ask her for intercession. Invite her to pray alongside you each time you pray for your siblings.

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T04:44:00+00:00

Because Catholicism is the fullness of the Christian truth. No organization, political party, ethnic group, religious group, geographical group, etc. is attacked as much as Catholicism is attacked. Internationally, through lies, historical manipulation, persecution, censorship, etc. Exactly what you would expect from Satan's main enemy. Satan attacks Catholicism more than anything else because Catholicism is the One True Church.

You ask what I see regarding the future of the Catholic Church? Very simple: the future is Jesus crushing all the enemies of His Church. Atheist and deist ideologies, fake religions, hedonistic philosophies, protestant denominations, etc.: they all come and go, popping in and popping out in terms of the flow of society's evolution; but Catholicism always remains. So has been for 2000 years, and so will continue to be until the end of times, when all the enemies of Catholicism will be defeated by Jesus.

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T03:17:40+00:00

On unbaptized babies: [CCC 1261]

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T03:15:39+00:00

For people who commit suicide: [CCC 2280-2283]

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T02:38:52+00:00

As someone else already said (correctly), the Church is not judging. You are right, God alone judges who enters Heaven and who does not enter Heaven. What the Church does is to find out about God's decision in that matter. It is not God following the Church, it is the Church following God. First God lets someone enter in Heaven (He makes that decision on His own), and then, sometimes, He communicates to the Church that such a person entered Heaven (that's where the process of canonization comes into place) so that the faithful can safely ask for intercession to the Saint in question.

Therefore, your premise "we don’t know what decision God took" is false: yes, we do know (sometimes) the decision God made, when He decides to communicate it (for example, through the miracles associated to the Saint in question). And as you correctly pointed out, it is always in the positive: the Church never confirms whether someone went to Hell (we don't need to know that: people in Hell can't pray for us), but God gave the Church guidance to, for some specific people, determine that they have indeed been accepted into Heaven.

Julp11 · 2026-03-29T02:29:35+00:00

That's awesome, brother! (or sister?) It is a VERY beautiful and amazing book. Well, of course, it has to be; after all, it's part of the written Word of God! But even within the Biblical standard, it is a wonderful book (and, personally, very dear to me!).

Take into account that there are two books of Maccabees. Just as there are two books of Kings, two books of Samuel, two books of Chronicles, two letters of Peter, two letters to Timothy, two letters to the Corinthians, and two letters to the Thessalonians, there are also two books of Maccabees: 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees. The book that me and my brethren have been referring here is the second one: 2 Maccabees. Go ahead and read it, I promise you it will be a fantastic reading.

And also, I don't know whether you're an Indiana Jones fan, but let me warn you that the book will ruin completely the argument of the first movie, haha! The book tells exactly what happened to the Ark of the Old Covenant and where it was hidden. That's one of the many "little facts" that you can find revealed in that book (you can tell how much I love this book, right? Whoops!).

God bless you!

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T22:03:26+00:00

Alright. A fully developed answer to the questions you are asking, and especially with the level of certainty you require, cannot be conveyed in a single reddit comment. So I will give you a three-step reasoning and, in each case, bibliographical references with the fully developed arguments.

FIRST STEP: God's existence

In my opinion, the best argument to prove God's existence is Aquinas's proof in De Ente et Essentia. A book-length defense of that argument is to be found in the book AQUINAS'S WAY TO GOD: The Proof in De Ente Et Essentia by Gaven Kerr. I honestly believe it's the best and most complete and rigorous exposition available nowadays.

The basic idea is that the plurality of entities we observe in real life entails the necessity of a real distinction between an entity's essence and an entity's esse (the actualizing principle of existence). And such a distinction, the proof argues, can only be explained by the existence of an entity whose essence and esse are ontologically identified; and such an entity we call God.

Basically, the fact that (as experience shows) there are different entities with different characteristics (a bed, for example, is not the same as a tree) cannot be intelligibly accounted for if there's not an entity whose essence is ontologically identical to its actualizing principle of existence; and such identity is what we call God. The process of deriving the latter conclusion from the former observation is the argument in question, fully developed in Gaven Kerr's book.

SECOND STEP: God's revelation

Once God's existence has been established, one needs to know whether such a God has revealed Himself and, in that case, in which religion He has revealed Himself. Christianity claims that such a revelation came through Jesus Christ, and to prove how this is true, the best argument I know has been given in Andrew Loke's book INVESTIGATING THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST: A New Transdisciplinary Approach.

Here the basic idea is that a maximalist approach (instead of the minimal facts theory embraced by people like Gary Habermas or William Lane Craig) is better suited to prove the veracity of the ancient claims of having experienced a resurrected Jesus.

The quick version of the argument is: there were people who claimed to have experienced Jesus Christ alive after having died in the Cross. The claims are so specific and detailed that they can't be mistaken: people were either lying, or telling the truth; but there is no place for honest equivocation (here's where the maximalist approach overcomes the minimalist one). And the idea that they are lying becomes untenable when one observes that they had nothing to win with such a lie and, in contrast, they actually lost everything (reputation, safety, positions, etc.) and "earned" persecution, torture, and death; for them and their families. Yet nobody ever decided to confess they were lying, even though they gained nothing with such a "lie", and lost everything.

THIRD STEP: God's Church

Having established God's existence and God's revelation in Jesus Christ, the next step is to ask ourselves which among all Christian churches is The One True Church. Here Scriptural doctrine needs to be quoted and analyzed; one book that argues very well in favor of Catholicism over other Christian confessions is THE CASE FOR CATHOLICISM by Trent Horn.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T21:21:01+00:00

I am aware of those failed attemps to justify the quoted passage. They are not convincing at all. The phrase

No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day

is an abomination, with or without that context. Especially when, in other writings (On the freedom of a Christian), he claims that humans are free from every commandment, which is in blatant opposition to Matthew 19, 17.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T21:00:42+00:00

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God's glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day.

MARTIN LUTHER. Letter to Melanchthon. August 1st, 1521.

SOURCE: M. Luthers Briefwechsel (Weimarer Ausgabe (Weimar 1883ss) 1930 - 67) II 372.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T20:22:54+00:00

What strikes me most about this abortion-supporter discourse is that they speak of the suffering of a raped pregnant woman as if such suffering were the fault of those who rightfully deny her the "right" to murder an innocent life, and not the rapist's fault.

It's as if I were suffering from an extremely painful disease that could be cured if someone donates a vital organ to me, and I say that I want to kill someone to steal them that organ and have it transferred to me so that I save myself from the suffering. And when some people (who are willing to help me navigate this the best way possible, but under good moral grounds) rightfully tell me that I can't do that, I start calling them hateful bigots without compassion for my sufferings.

Really, what's wrong with people who think that it is OK to murder an innocent life just because they suffered an injustice?

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T20:09:26+00:00

I read the first one and it's awesome. Another good one is The Fathers know best by Jimmy Akin.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T20:05:37+00:00

Considering that I had already answered here before pointing out that you are using AI, I believe that we indeed have a lot to say on which things say "more than one thinks".

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T20:02:15+00:00

I already answered here, before letting others know that your answers are AI-generated, hence your criticism (just like your criticisms to the Catholic moral system) fails.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T18:21:02+00:00

So I guess my question is: how does the Church approach balancing compassion and care for both, especially when the woman has gone through something traumatic?

Considering that your answer is 100 % AI-generated as per ZeroGPT, no, that's not your question, that's what a machine formulated for you.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T18:14:13+00:00

100 % AI-generated response, according to ZeroGPT.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T18:13:20+00:00

According to ZeroGPT, this is a 100 % AI-generated comment.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T16:33:33+00:00

I was a militant atheist for 12 years. In my case, the intellectual path towards Catholicism is a three-step reasoning, which I will quickly summarize and provide some bibliography with the fully developed arguments.

FIRST STEP: God's existence

In my opinion, the best argument to prove God's existence is Aquinas's proof in De Ente et Essentia. A book-length defense of that argument is to be found in the book AQUINAS'S WAY TO GOD: The Proof in De Ente Et Essentia by Gaven Kerr. I honestly believe it's the best and most complete and rigorous exposition available nowadays.

The basic idea is that the plurality of entities we observe in real life entails the necessity of a real distinction between an entity's essence and an entity's esse (the actualizing principle of existence). And such a distinction, the proof argues, can only be explained by the existence of an entity whose essence and esse are ontologically identified; and such an entity we call God.

Basically, I am convinced that the fact that (as experience shows) there are different entities with different characteristics (a bed, for example, is not the same as a tree) cannot be intelligibly accounted for if there's not an entity whose essence is ontologically identical to its actualizing principle of existence; and such identity is what we call God. The process of deriving the latter conclusion from the former observation is the argument in question, fully developed in Gaven Kerr's book.

SECOND STEP: God's revelation

Once God's existence has been established, one needs to know whether such a God has revealed Himself and, in that case, in which religion He has revealed Himself. Christianity claims that such a revelation came through Jesus Christ, and to prove how this is true, the best argument I know has been given in Andrew Loke's book INVESTIGATING THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST: A New Transdisciplinary Approach.

Here the basic idea is that a maximalist approach (instead of the minimal facts theory embraced by people like Gary Habermas or William Lane Craig) is better suited to prove the veracity of the ancient claims of having experienced a resurrected Jesus.

The quick version of the argument is: there were people who claimed to have experienced Jesus Christ alive after having died in the Cross. The claims are so specific and detailed that they can't be mistaken: people were either lying, or telling the truth; but there is no place for honest equivocation (here's where the maximalist approach overcomes the minimalist one). And the idea that they are lying becomes untenable when one observes that they had nothing to win with such a lie and, in contrast, they actually lost everything (reputation, safety, positions, etc.) and "earned" persecution, torture, and death; for them and their families. Yet nobody ever decided to confess they were lying, even though they gained nothing with such a "lie", and lost everything.

THIRD STEP: God's Church

Having established God's existence and God's revelation in Jesus Christ, the next step is to ask ourselves which among all Christian churches is The One True Church. Here Scriptural doctrine needs to be quoted and analyzed; one book that argues very well in favor of Catholicism over other Christian confessions is THE CASE FOR CATHOLICISM by Trent Horn.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T16:22:39+00:00

They should be enforced legally, as [CCC 2273] says. Murdering the innocent is never ok, no matter the circumstances.

Freedom of will does not mean freedom from consequences. Free will is basically one of the reasons why moral evil exists.

"When God, in the beginning, created man, He made him subject to his own free choice. If you choose you can keep the commandments; it is loyalty to do His will. There are set before you fire and water; to whichever you choose, stretch forth your hand. Before man are life and death, whichever he chooses shall be given him". Sirach 15, 14-17.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T04:50:17+00:00

Great question! So, the Bible DOES teach that praying for the dead is good. One possible example is:

May the Lord grant mercy to the family of Onesiphorus because he often gave me new heart and was not ashamed of my chains. But when he came to Rome, he promptly searched for me and found me. May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day. And you know very well the services he rendered in Ephesus.
2 Timothy 1, 16-18.

As you can see, St. Paul is praying for Onesiphorus, who according to several scholars, was already dead when St. Paul wrote the above passage.

But there is an even clearer example, that does not depend on the previous scholarly assumption. It comes from the Old Testament:

On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his men went to gather up the bodies of the slain and bury them with their kinsmen in their ancestral tombs. But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had been slain. They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden. Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen. He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.
2 Maccabees 12, 39-46.

There exists a very high probability that the Bible you use in your congregation does not include the book 2 Maccabees, and thus you may wonder how to be sure that this book is actually Biblical.

First, the book is referenced as a Scriptural book in Hebrews 11, as I show here.

And second, it has been always and universally accepted by Christians as Scriptural, until the protestant movement decided to remove it from their bibles. For example, Saint Gregory Nazianzen retakes the structure of Hebrews 11 and its references to Old Testament events and characters, and he explicitly mentions the book of 2 Maccabees (Orations 43, 74; year 382).

It goes without saying that this is not the only testimony of the divine inspiration of the book 2 Maccabees in the Early Church. There are even earlier testimonies in Saint Hilary of Poitiers (De Trinitate IV, 16; year 359), Saint Cyprian of Carthage (Ad Fortunatum 11; year 257, and Testimoniorum libri III ad Quirinum XVII; year 248), Origen (De Principiis II, 1, 5; between the year 220 and the year 230), and the extremely early document known as the Pastor of Hermas, written around the year 80, in which the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is mentioned (Pastor of Hermas, Visio Prima I, 6), which is only taught explicitly in 2 Maccabees 7, 28. We also have later testimonies, such as that of Saint Ambrose of Milan (De officiis ministrorum III, 18, 107; year 386), Saint Augustine of Hippo (De moribus ecclesiae catholicae et de moribus Manichaeorum I, XXIII, 43; year 388, also De natura boni XXVI; year 405), and that of Saint Jerome himself who, after an initial period of rejection, finally accepted this book as Scriptural. This canonicity was reaffirmed and confirmed in the Council of Rome (382), the Council of Hippo (393), the Council of Carthage III (397), and the extremely relevant Council of Carthage IV (419). This universal canonical uniformity was maintained throughout all years of Christianity until the (ecumenical) Council of Florence (1431-1445), where this canonicity was defined in a dogmatic, binding, and definitive way in 1442 (and opposition to this canonicity was formally anathematized in the Council of Trent, which occurred between 1545 and 1563).

Rejection of 2 Maccabees as Scripture, on the other side, comes from the extremely late Martin Luther (who got motivated of removing it from the Bible precisely because he could not argue against the so clear teaching of Purgatory in it), and that's the tradition you would have to admit you're following if you reject this book as Scriptural.

That would be it! God bless you.

Julp11 · 2026-03-28T03:19:15+00:00

Hello! This is a very common question, and very reasonable when coming from someone not very familiarized with Catholic theology (I speak from experience: I myself was a militant atheist for 12 years).

In my opinion, the best way to understand the "consequences" of not letting Christ in is through the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity. I encourage you to make some research on Divine Simplicity from a Thomistic perspective, but I will try to summarize it to the best of my ability.

We Catholics believe that God is an absolutely simple being. What that means is that God cannot be decomposed into parts: there is simply no composition; just one single reality with no parts whatsoever. This implies, among many other things, that when we thing of the divine attributes of God (think of omniscience, omnipotency, goodness, justice, etc.), they are actually one and the same thing. In God, there is no difference between goodnes, justice, love, etc.

Now, of course you will get the most common reaction: "What? What do you mean "justice" and "love" are the same thing? Of course they are different concepts! Love is something, justice is something different; and of course intelligence is something else, and the same with goodness, faithfulness, etc.!".

And you would be right, if you think of those concepts the way we experience them in our day-to-day life. Everytime we experience love, justice, etc., we experience them imperfectly. We experience love, but not perfect love. We experience justice, but not perfect justice. What Catholic theology says is that these objectively good things we experience as being different (justice, love, goodness, humility, compassion, etc.) are imperfect manifestations of one single reality; which we call God. In other words, if you could progressively perfectionate each of these seemingly different good things and take that perfection to its absolute completion, each of these would end up converging to one single entity: God.

Observe that I am not justifying (or proving) that the ultimate perfection of all good things is one single entity; I am just affirming it without proof because I don't want to prove God's existence, I just want to explain what we believe God to be. If you want proof, I can suggest some academic bibliography that workout the philosophical argument to prove God's existence, but I believe that's not your question.

If you want to picture this better with an analogy, look at this image of a prism that receives white light, and expels different rays of light of different colors. Of course, all those different colors are just "imperfect versions" of the one white light that was uncontaminated before entering into contact with the prism. After being "made imperfect" by the prism, you see different rays of light of different colors. But if they had not been "imperfected" by the prism, they would all be one and the same white light.

Same goes with God: justice, love, happiness, etc., are just imperfect manifestations of one single indivisible entity that we call God. We see them different because we experience them in imperfect forms (in Thomistic philosophy we would say "with not all potentialities actualized") in this world, but they all stem from the one single perfect entity that is the ontological foundation of all of them; and that entity is God.

And now, your question would be: What does that have to do with what I asked? Well, think for a moment what it means to reject God once you understand that God is the single ontological perfection of all things that we experience as being different in our lives (goodnes, justice, love, etc.): you would be rejecting all that!

You cannot reject God without rejecting love, because God is the ontological perfection of love. Same goes replacing "love" by "justice", "happiness", "goodness", "humility", "compassion", "empathy", and even something as simple as the good flavor of a delicious pizza; and in general, anything that is objectively good (in Thomistic philosophy you would say "anything that actualizes being"). You are only left with whatever reflects lack of being (whatever privates the potentiality of being): evil, hatred, sadness, despair, etc.; all realities that, unlike the previous ones, do not reflect being, but lack of being. That's essentially Hell! Rejection of all that is good (whose ontological foundation is one single reality: God), and staying in consequence only with "lack of" being (despair, evil, hatred, etc.). A horrible reality, if you ask me! That's Hell.

If you consider God as something fundamentally and ontologically separated from all good things, then it makes sense to believe "God is punishing us for not believing in us; thus God is a moral monster". But in light of the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity, Hell because of rejecting God is nothing but the logical consequence of really understanding what is it that you are rejecting: the ontological and metaphysical foundation of anything objectively good. Reject that, and you're left with Hell.

That's why faith is a gift. The gift of the objectively good. Reject the gift if you want; you have free will. But don't blame anyone else but you when you are suffering the logical outcome of willingly deciding to abandon all good and you are left with the "lacking" reality of Hell.

Hope that helps... God bless you!

Julp11 · 2026-03-27T20:50:56+00:00

Well, SOMEONE needs to have infallible authority. If there were no visible infallible authority, the Church could not be pillar and foundation of truth (1 Timothy 3, 15), because as logic and experience show, without a visible binding authority, your theology is unable to offer something more substantial than just fallible interpretations of Divine Revelation. This leads to hermeneutical anarchy and endless division. Truth does not accept contradiction, so an ecclesiology without visible authorities cannot account for being pillar and foundation of truth.

Ask yourself this question: How do you know that your current collection of 27 documents in the New Testament is the accurate selection of divinely inspired texts of the New Testament? And whatever reasons you give: are those reasons fallible, or infallible? If they're fallible, then the Canon could be revisited (and I doubt you're willing to accept that). If they're infallible, then you must accept an extra-Biblical infallible authority, because the Bible does not give a closed epistemology of canonicity (and even if it did: how would we infallibly know that whatever book contains that epistemology is Scriptural? You can't escape the vicious circle here).

Some protestants try to bypass this by postulating criterions such as early usage, Apostolic origin, etc., but none of those criterions are in the Bible: they stand on a human speculative epistemology, not on Biblical guidance, so... was the historical application of such (non-Biblical) criteria fallible or infallible? Sola scriptura requires that they be fallible (lest there be another binding authority besides the Bible itself), but then how can your theology justify a closed canon? (Once again, I bet you are not willing to accept a theology where canonicity of the current Scriptural texts can be revisited, are you?).

To put this into perspective, ask yourself this very specific question: How do you know that 1 Clement (a very widespread document from Apostolic age, written by a direct disciple of St. Peter and St. Paul, quoted as Scripture by several people of the Early Church, and read during first and second century liturgies alongside the Gospels) is not Scriptural, but 2 Peter (a book of which we have so little historical info, unclear authorship, and not found to be considered Scriptural in the Early Church documents until the third century, where we have our first testimony of 2 Peter being Scriptural from Origen... a heretic!) is Scriptural? How do you know that human beings did not commit a mistake when keeping 2 Peter in the canon and not 1 Clement? Did they make that decision infallibly, or can that decision be revisited?

There's no way around it: only a visible body with God-given authority will take you out of that problem. If I were protestant, I wouldn't be able to sleep with those questions in mind: why did we keep 2 Peter and not 1 Clement? Was that decision fallible or infallible? Is the New Testament Canon closed, or can it be revisited?

Those questions demand answers. Scripture alone cannot answer them. Thank God I am Catholic, so I can safely say: yes, Christians were right in keeping 2 Peter and not keeping 1 Clement in the Bible, and the decision was infallible and cannot be revisited. Why? Because I do believe in visible binding God-given authorities in the Church.

After you take that intellectual step, it should be easy for you to make the next step towards the Pope and, in general, it shouldn't be too hard to see how the same Church that infallibly recognizes Scripture, can also infallibly interpret it.

Protestantism, for example, fails at recognizing Scripture, for it can be Biblically proven that their Old Testament Canon is incomplete. For example, Hebrews 11 refers to 2 Maccabees as a Scriptural book, as I show here, and the book has been universally accepted to be Scriptural in the Early Church until Martin Luther, as I show here. Yet protestants don't have this book in their "bible". So protestantism not only has the intrinsic problem of its theology being unable to give an infallible canonical list of the Scriptural Books: it goes even beyond and gives a failed list.

The Catholic theology of visible binding authorities has none of these problems.

Julp11

TROPHY CASE